An excellent tapster, who enjoyed climbing palm-trees, had a dream that he fell from a tree while tapping for palm-wine. He visited his friend Tabasco, a herbalist, but Tabasco was too busy to pay attention. The tapster told Tabasco about a hunter who fell into a red water anthill and went mad. The tapster agreed to help him, but Tabasco was too busy.
The tapster went out into the forest, encountering signs warning of drilling danger to the Dela Oil Company. He found a cluster of palm-trees and rode through thick cobwebs to reach them. He made a mark on a tree-trunk, which became a festered wound. He then encountered a river with a viscous water and a borehole with three turtles watching him. One of the turtles had Tabasco’s face. A multi-colored snake emerged from the borehole, burning his skin with a roseate flame.
The tapster laughed and was hit by a heavy object, causing his substance to dissolve. The river heaves, and the tapster sees a world revolving in red lights, women going to distant marketplaces, signboards getting bigger, and employees of the oil company working to level forests. When hungry, another creature fed him pulped chameleons, millepedes, and bark. When thirsty, another creature gave him a leaking calabash of green liquid. One day, the tapster counted the eggs of their nights together, and he screamed. The snake stuck its head out from the borehole, and the laughter of death roared from the sun. The laughter found him, crashed on him, and left large empty spaces in his head.
The tapster, a man who had seen the sky and earth from various angles, eventually stopped and cursed the place. He was rewarded with several knocks, but as the eggs tormented him, he learned patience and the importance of being still. A voice came to him, telling him that everything in his world has endless counterparts in other worlds. He saw wars, bombs, collapsed bridges, roads, and human skeletons. He also witnessed attempts to level the forest area and drill for oil, witch-doctors, and armed robberies.
One day, he pursued a course into a borehole, where he saw a multi-colored snake twisted around a soapstone image, alligators, and an old man who had died upside-down. The snake told him bad jokes and he was put out for a long time. When he recovered, he traced his way out and saw the man who had died reading the bible upside-down. He fled from the borehole, but his impatience reached new proportions. The voice came back to him, saying that humans only understand pain, not pain. He listened without thinking and was told that if he wanted to leave, they would have to beat him out.
The voice then offered him some thoughts to replace the knocked-out thoughts, explaining that even good things in life can poison him. There are three kinds of sounds, two kinds of shadows, one gourd for every cracked head, and seven boreholes for those that climb too high. The voice explained that there are several ways to burn in your own fire, and your thoughts are just the footsteps of you tramping around the disaster area of your own mind. The tapster fell asleep, learning the lessons of the world around him.
A tapster wakes up to find three turtles lazing at the edge of a borehole. The turtle with Tabasco’s face has a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a stethoscope around his neck. They discuss the number of heavenly bodies in the sky. The tapster, who has been dead for six days, is blown black ticklish smoke into his face by the turtles. The tapster floats into a familiar world, experiencing a tickling sensation in his nose. He dreams of mythical figures competing to keep his nose on his face, including the blacksmith, tortoise, and witch-doctors. His mother drives them away by scattering a plate full of ground hot pepper, worsening his nose problem.
A voice tells the tapster to wake up, and he sneezes, causing the snake to lose its opal eyes. Green liquids spout from the borehole, blowing away the snake, signboard, and turtles. Tabasco, an herbalist, pours a libation on his soapstone image of his shrine, which has two green glass eyes. At the foot of the shrine are two turtles in a green basin. The tapster asks the herbalist where he is, but he reveals that he fell from a palm-tree and has been dead for seven days. The herbalist offers to pay the tapster for his services, as he has never had a more interesting case or conversation.
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