Now, he's passing through the town, after pushing his grandmother's corpse in the cart all morning, and he thinks I need some whisky. So he goes into the shop, for there is a shop in that village, a store that sells everything, where the shopkeeper is a very hasty-tempered man. Anansi, he goes in and he drinks some whisky. He drinks a little more whisky, and he thinks, I shall play a trick on this fellow, so he says to the shopkeeper, go take some whisky to my grandmother, sleeping in the cart outside. You may have to wake her, for she's a sound sleeper.
So the shopkeeper, he goes out to the cart with a bottle, and he says to the old lady in the cart, "Hey, here's your whisky," but the old lady she not say anything. And the shopkeeper, he's just getting angrier and angrier, for he was such a hasty-tempered man, saying get up, old woman, get up and drink your whisky, but the old woman she says nothing. Then she does something that the dead sometimes do in the heat of the day: she flatulates loudly. Well, the shopkeeper, he's so angry with this old woman for flatulating at him that he hits her, and then he hits her again, and now he hits her one more time and she tumbles down from the handcart onto the ground.
Anansi, he runs out and he starts a-crying and a-wailing and a-carrying on, and saying my grandmother, she's a dead woman, look what you did! Murderer! Evildoer! Now the shopkeeper, he says to Anansi, don't you tell anyone I done this, and he gives Anansi five whole bottles of whisky, and a bag of gold, and a sack of plantains and pineapples and mangos, to make him hush his carrying-on, and to go away.
(He thinks he killed Anansi's grandmother, you see.)
So Anansi, he wheels his handcart home, and he buries his grandmother underneath the banyan tree.
Now the next day, Tiger, he's passing by Anansi's house, and he smells cooking smells. So he invites himself over, and there's Anansi having a feast, and Anansi, having no other option, asks Tiger to sit and eat with them.
Tiger says, Brother Anansi, where did you get all that fine food from, and don't you lie to me? And where did you get these bottles of whisky from, and that big bag filled with gold pieces? If you lie to me, I'll tear out your throat.
So Anansi, he says, I cannot lie to you, Brother Tiger. I got them all for I take my dead grandmother to the village on a handcart. And the storekeeper gave me all these good things for bringing him my dead grandmother.
Now, Tiger, he didn't have a living grandmother, but his wife had a mother, so he goes home and he calls his wife's mother out to see him, saying, grandmother, you come out now, for you and I must have a talk. And she comes out and peers around, and says what is it? Well, Tiger, he kills her, even though his wife loves her, and he places her body on a handcart.
Then he wheels his handcart to the village, with his dead mother-in-law on it. Who want a dead body? he calls. Who want a dead grandmother? But all the people they just jeered at him, and they laughed at him, and they mocked him, and when they saw that he was serious and he wasn't going anywhere, they pelted him with rotten fruit until he ran away.
It wasn't the first time Tiger was made a fool of by Anansi, and it wouldn't be the last time. Tiger's wife never let him forget how he killed her mother. Some days it's better for Tiger if he's never been born.
That's an Anansi story.
'Course, all stories are Anansi stories. Even this one.
Olden days, all the animals wanted to have stories named after them, back in the days when the songs that sung the world were still being sung, back when they were still singing the sky and the rainbow and the ocean. It was in those days when animals were people as well as animals that Anansi the spider tricked all of them, especially Tiger, because he wanted all the stories named after him.
Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.
What's that? You want to know if Anansi looked like a spider? Sure he did, except when he looked like a man.
No, he never changed his shape. It's just a matter of how you tell the story. That's all.
CHAPTER THREE
IN WHICH THERE IS A FAMILY REUNION
Fat Charlie flew home to England; as home as he was going to get, anyway.
Rosie was waiting for him as he came out of the customs hall carrying a small suitcase and a large, taped-up cardboard box. She gave him a huge hug. "How was it?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Could've been worse."
"Well," she said, "at least you don't have to worry about him coming to the wedding and embarrassing you anymore."
"There is that."
"My mum says that we ought to put off the wedding for a few months as a mark of respect."
"Your mum just wants us to put off the wedding, full stop."
"Nonsense. She thinks you're quite a catch."
"Your mother wouldn't describe a combination of Brad Pitt, Bill Gates, and Prince William as 'quite a catch.' There is nobody walking the earth good enough to be her son-in-law."
"She likes you," said Rosie, dutifully, and without conviction.
Rosie's mother did not like Fat Charlie, and everybody knew it. Rosie's mother was a high strung bundle of barely thought-through prejudices, worries, and feuds. She lived in a magnificent flat in Wimpole Street with nothing in the enormous fridge but bottles of vitaminized water and rye crackers. Wax fruit sat in the bowls on the antique sideboards and was dusted twice a week.
Fat Charlie had, on his first visit to Rosie's mother's place, taken a bite from one of the wax apples. He had been extremely nervous, nervous enough that he had picked up an apple - in his defense, an extremely realistic apple - and had bitten into it. Rosie had signed frantically. Fat Charlie spat out the lump of wax into his hand and thought about pretending that he liked wax fruit, or that he'd known all along and had just done it to be funny; however, Rosie's mother had raised an eyebrow, walked over, taken the remains of the apple from him, explained shortly just how much real wax fruit cost these days, if you could find it, and then dropped the apple into the bin. He sat on the sofa for the rest of the afternoon with his mouth tasting like the inside of a candle, while Rosie's mother stared at him to ensure that he did not try to take another bite out of her precious wax fruit or attempt to gnaw on the leg of a Chippendale chair.
There were large color photographs in silver frames on the sideboard of Rosie's mother's flat: photographs of Rosie as a girl and of Rosie's mother and father, and Fat Charlie had studied them intently, looking for clues to the mystery that was Rosie. Her father, who had died when Rosie was fifteen, had been an enormous man. He had been first a cook, then a chef, then a restaurateur. He was perfectly turned-out in every photograph, as if dressed by a wardrobe department before each shot, rotund and smiling, his arm always crooked for Rosie's mother to hold.