Taduno's Song

by Odafe Atogun

  ‘It’s the only way to secure Lela’s release.’

  Aroli gritted his teeth. He saw no other way.

  *

  They went out to buy a guitar from a second-hand shop, and then they got something to eat. Returning to Taduno’s house, they spent the rest of the day in the upper room where he used to rehearse his songs. For over thirty minutes he strummed the guitar. The music it produced was melodious, dreamy; and it transported Aroli back to a time and place he struggled unsuccessfully to recall.

  A smile lingered on Taduno’s face as he played his guitar. He played it in very simple tones, eyes closed. Carried away by the moment, he opened his mouth to sing a song from another time, a love song about a beautiful woman. But the sound of his voice caused everything to fall apart. He shook his head, struggling to hold back his tears.

  His voice sounded terrible. He flung the guitar aside, and for a long time he simply stared at the wall.

  *

  ‘Do you want to try again?’ Aroli asked later.

  Taduno responded by picking up his guitar, and he began to stroke the strings with feathery fingers. His music poured forth, slowly, patiently. He played for hours, eyes closed, making no attempt to sing this time. Sweat beads stood out on his face like golden dew. His shirt became soaked. His music transported them away from that room to another world. It was a unique experience for Aroli – music without words – yet, he understood the meaning of his song. He knew it was the song of a man broken and rejected by a society very dear to his heart, an adagio of pain, played so beautifully even time became still.

  They both opened their eyes when the song came to an end.

  ‘Your music is out of this world,’ Aroli complimented.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It was good you did not attempt to sing. If you keep playing with that kind of passion you will discover your voice again.’

  Taduno nodded. ‘I need the right inspiration,’ he said, as if talking to himself.

  ‘How did you use to get inspiration?’ Aroli asked.

  ‘From the street, from the suffering on the street, from seeing so much injustice, from every little act of love shown by one person to another, from the struggles of every day, from the collective joys we share.’

  ‘You must find that inspiration again.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. And then he told Aroli about TK, the music producer who gave him his break when he first came to pursue his dream in the city as a teenager. ‘He was a very good man, very passionate about music,’ he concluded.

  ‘Oh yes, everyone knows TK, the music producer who got on the wrong side of government. One of his artists got him into trouble with the government. And going by all you have told me, you must be that artist. It makes more sense to me now. So it is true that we are the ones who forgot you, the ones who lost our minds . . .’

  A short silence followed.

  ‘I’m tempted to pay him a visit,’ Taduno spoke his thought aloud, ‘but I’m afraid he wouldn’t remember me, just like everyone else.’

  ‘It may be worth trying. You never can tell.’

  *

  Time became so slow that every tick was an agonising reminder of Lela’s plight. The letter he had written to her remained in the mailbox and all he could do was focus on practice. Other than playing his guitar – without making any attempt to sing – he had nothing else to do. So he allowed Aroli to drag him to Mama Iyabo’s restaurant every now and then for a meal. ‘So you don’t starve yourself to death,’ Aroli would say. And they would eat among people who gave him polite smiles reserved for strangers. And he would listen as Aroli shared jokes with them. And he would wonder about them, how they could be so different when they did not realise that you knew so many secrets about them.

  He understood that Aroli was attempting to connect him back to society, to his chief source of inspiration. He did not resist, but he did not encourage him either. He simply enjoyed whatever intimacies his interaction brought. And by so doing, he discovered that he could smile and laugh again, even though the underlying fear in the depth of his soul remained.

  On a Friday night, exhausted from playing his guitar, Aroli dragged him to the bar along the slow-rushing canal. The place was so packed the open air was bursting. It was packed with all classes of people – the upper class, the middle class, the lower class, and the classless class.

  They were all drinking and murmuring against the government. It was mostly in bars that people found the courage to speak openly. So they poured out their venom. And they drank their beer and ate roasted fish with pepper and onions and soggy chips.

  Even though the music was loud in that garden bar, the voices of the people drowned the music. Arguments rose and fell. Everyone wanted to be heard, no one wanted to be quiet. Everyone was gripped by Friday night fever. Taduno was not left out as he drank bottle after bottle of beer. He smiled back at the pretty and not so pretty girls who smiled at him. And he actually took time to gaze at them, and even to wonder about them.

  ‘You haven’t mentioned Janet since I returned,’ Taduno observed in a rare moment of light-heartedness.

  Aroli made a face. ‘She left me. Said I was not giving her the stability she needed.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’ He wished he hadn’t brought up the topic.

  ‘It’s okay. I mean, I have moved on.’ Aroli shrugged.

  Aroli’s tone of voice piqued Taduno’s curiosity.

  ‘Anyone new, any new one?’

  Aroli laughed. ‘Not really. I’m taking a break.’

  ‘Taking a break?’

  ‘Women are too much hassle.’

  Taduno took a long pull at his drink.

  Aroli gulped some beer too and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘I don’t need women now, I need money.’ He laughed to himself.

  The voices of the revellers began to get louder, much louder than the afro music blaring from four giant speakers which shook with fright at the intensity of the music emanating from them.

  At a nearby table an argument broke out between two men: one with a long beard, the other with a bald head, two opposite people. The man with the long beard was tall; the man with the bald head was short. And their argument went in opposite directions.

  ‘Mr President is the Antichrist,’ the man with the long beard said loudly.

  ‘How can he be the Antichrist?’ the man with the bald head countered. ‘He is just an evil dictator.’

  ‘I say he is the Antichrist! Check out his record. He started out by running the Nigerian army all by himself. Then he overthrew the civilian government and began to rule the country all by himself. Next he will want to rule the whole of West Africa, then Africa, and then he will rule the whole world all by himself. He will unify the world under one government, and then we will all be forced to take the mark of the beast. And you tell me he is not the Antichrist?’

  ‘I disagree. The North Korean dictator is the Antichrist. He will destroy Japan, then America. Then he will force all other countries of the world to bow to him. And he will become the Supreme Leader of the whole world.’

  ‘You don’t know what you are saying.’

  ‘Look, let me tell you, all the President wants is to become the richest man in the world, nothing more. He is not interested in becoming the Antichrist and ruling the whole world. Call him a thief, call him a looter of our national treasury, but certainly not the Antichrist.’

  The argument went back and forth until it ended in a brawl. As bottles and chairs started flying, Aroli got to his feet. ‘I think it’s time to leave,’ he said.

  Taduno grinned. The people were beginning to inspire him again.

  *

  He played his guitar all night that night, alone in the upper room. He played quietly. His music told the story of two opposite people, one tall and one short; one with a long beard and the other a bald head, two brothers who wanted to kill each other over nothing.

  As night got sleepier, he dimmed the lights and hid hi
mself in the shadows drawn across the room. Peace settled upon him. He moved around in a slow dance; and, seeing himself as never before, he realised that he had become one with the shadows in that room.

  SIX

  His practice sessions got more intense as the days went by. Most times he practised alone while Aroli went about the business of earning a living as an estate agent, taking okada rides from one appointment to the next, sweating to sell and buy houses for people, or to find them affordable accommodation, often with very frustrating results.

  The rest of Taduno’s neighbours began to take an interest in him once again. They wondered why he locked himself away for long hours, sometimes for a whole day. Driven by renewed curiosity about a man who had made a strange entry into their lives, they would gather on the street outside his door, and listen, entranced, to the beautiful music that floated from an open upper window. They wondered why his voice did not accompany the music of his guitar; so they waited, hoping to hear the sound of his voice, curious to know what it sounded like in song.

  But all they heard was the faint music of his guitar. And they did not know that the reason why they did not hear him sing was because he was afraid to hear the sound of his own voice.

  *

  Sometimes, Judah came to watch him play his guitar. Their friendship was growing. The boy would just sit with his hands on his cheeks and wonder at the beauty of his music. He found it amazing that he understood the meaning of his wordless songs, and he could not understand by what magic the strings of his guitar responded to his touch with words so simple and colourful.

  ‘The song you just played is for Anti Lela,’ the boy told him one day.

  ‘You can tell?’ he responded with a smile.

  ‘Of course I can tell. I can tell you miss her so much.’

  ‘Yes, I miss her so much, and I’m doing everything possible to find her.’

  ‘I know you will find her soon,’ the boy said hopefully. ‘Your music will help you to find her.’

  ‘Yes, I will find her soon,’ he replied sadly. ‘You see, my voice is bad at the moment. I need to discover it to find Lela.’

  The boy nodded in understanding.

  And he played yet another song, about a boy and a man, two people who loved a woman so dearly it was difficult to tell who loved her most. He knew that the woman could hear his song from a distant place, and this knowledge lifted him with inspiration as he danced with practised steps in tune with his music.

  *

  After a week of endless rehearsals, playing the guitar without attempting to sing, he found his way, in the company of Aroli, into the heart of Mushin, to the studio where he started his music career. On the taxi ride to the studio, he was overcome by a flood of memories.

  He recalled that morning in June, almost twenty years ago, when he first walked into the studio as an eighteen-year-old. He had learned of the studio days after he arrived in the city on a rickety bus from the village, with a big dream and a battered guitar which his father had given him as a birthday gift. Intrigued by the name ‘The Studio of Stars’, he made up his mind that it would be the studio that would make him famous.

  And so, early one morning, a month or so after arriving in the city, he found his way to the studio. His heart was beating unevenly, and all he could think of was whether they would accept his kind of music. He arrived at the studio and walked into a brightly lit corridor, with his battered guitar dangling from his shoulder, and the first person he encountered was a short squat man with an Afro cut, dressed in a colourful buba top and jeans. He thought the man looked funny in his odd combination of native top and western trousers. And his nerves suddenly disappeared as he laughed quietly. He realised that the man was laughing too, quietly. But he did not know why the man was laughing. He did not know that the man was laughing at his battered guitar and cropped trousers, like Michael Jackson’s, and his dusty Old Testament sandals.

  They faced each other in the brightly lit corridor – the squat middle-aged man and the skinny teenager with a big dream and a battered guitar.

  ‘What brings you here, boy?’ The man had a rich voice, and there was an amused look on his face.

  Taduno sobered up instantly. ‘I came to make music,’ he stammered.

  ‘What kind of music do you sing?’ Something about the teenager had seized the attention of the man.

  ‘The kind of music that tells stories,’ Taduno replied naively.

  ‘All music tells a story,’ the man responded.

  ‘Well, my music tells a special kind of story.’ Taduno could feel his confidence returning.

  ‘Would you play me your music?’ the man asked, in a gentle voice.

  Taduno hesitated.

  ‘My name is TK, I own this studio.’

  ‘Oh!’ Taduno exclaimed, unable to say anything more.

  ‘I would like to hear your music,’ TK continued, with an encouraging smile. He had been in music the whole of his life and something told him the young man standing before him was special. ‘Come with me. Please?’

  Taduno disregarded TK’s invitation. He unslung his guitar from his shoulder, and right there in the corridor, under the brightly lit bulbs, he began to strum the guitar. The battered guitar produced a mesmerising tune. And then he began to sing about two funny men. One laughed because he thought the other was funny. And the other thought the first one was funny and laughed too. And the two of them laughed, not knowing that they were both funny men.

  It was a short piece; it screamed of the originality of Taduno’s talent. When he finished, TK began to applaud with a big smile on his face. The first set of studio staff were just starting to arrive, and seeing TK clapping they joined in, certain that he had discovered a prodigious talent. Soon, the whole corridor became filled with applause. And the legend of Taduno was born.

  Taduno and TK established a great friendship and together made music that resounded in every corner of the country.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ Aroli said. ‘We’re almost at the studio.’ And then, glancing at Taduno, and seeing that he was smiling, he asked, ‘Why are you smiling?’

  The smile on Taduno’s face broadened. ‘Because we are almost there,’ he replied.

  *

  He could sense that the air in the studio was different as he and Aroli walked in. It was not the same place he had walked into that June morning, almost twenty years ago. It was as if something had died there that was once alive.

  The studio offices were situated on either side of a long corridor. The first door to the right was the reception – that had not changed. To the left, the waiting room – that had not changed. A security guard normally patrolled the corridor, directing visitors to the reception. But there was no security guard in the corridor at that moment, and Taduno took the impulsive decision to ignore protocol. As they continued along the corridor, he noticed that a lot of restructuring had taken place. The corridor was no longer as brightly lit as it used to be, and offices had been reorganised. The office that used to be TK’s was now marked Conference Room. They moved on, and came to a door marked Studio Manager.

  Taduno took a deep breath wondering if, like the rest of the world, TK would have forgotten him. He adjusted his guitar across his shoulder; then he knocked softly on the door.

  ‘Come in.’ The voice behind the door was brisk – and it wasn’t that of TK.

  Taduno and Aroli went in cautiously.

  ‘What do you want?’ the man seated behind a huge desk demanded roughly when he looked up and saw their strange faces. ‘How did you get to my office without my secretary informing me?’

  ‘So sorry if we barged in,’ Taduno said softly, ‘we are friends of TK.’

  That got the man’s attention. ‘TK?’

  ‘Yes,’ Taduno replied hopefully.

  ‘TK is no longer here.’

  ‘No longer here? He owns this studio.’

  ‘He used to. Not any more. I own the studio now.’ To prove his point, the man pointed to the
nameplate on his desk which read ‘Mr Player’.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘TK got into trouble with the government,’ Mr Player said. ‘His biggest star was making trouble with government, so government came down hard on him. He was on the verge of losing everything. I saved him by buying the studio.’

  ‘You saved him by buying the most precious thing in his life?’

  ‘What can be more precious in life than life itself?’ Mr Player asked with an ironic grin.

  ‘Who’s this star that got TK into trouble?’ Taduno’s voice was pained, knowing the answer that would follow.

  ‘Nobody knows him now. In the beginning everyone knew him. Then he became a stupid radical who fought the government with his music. Can you imagine anyone fighting government with music?’ Mr Player gave a small laugh. ‘Well, government destroyed him completely, beyond recognition. Now no one knows him, not even the government.’

  ‘And TK, what happened to him?’

  ‘He became an alcoholic when the government came down on him. He lost his biggest star. His other artists deserted him. He could no longer cope. He began to spend his money on alcohol. He was going to lose the studio, so I bought it from him.’

  ‘Where can we find him?’ Aroli asked.

  ‘I cannot help you with that. I learned that he lost his house and became homeless. If you will take your leave now, I have important business to attend to.’

  Taduno could not hide his dismay. He stammered words even he could not understand.

  Aroli thought fast. ‘You may be interested to know that my friend here is the biggest-selling star of all time,’ he spoke in a rush, hoping they could salvage something from their visit.

  ‘I don’t know him,’ Mr Player said, without interest.

  ‘His name is Taduno.’

  ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘That’s because he died and came back to life.’

  Mr Player sat up behind his desk. ‘Died and came back to life?’ His eyes grew round with fear.

  Taduno was too stunned to utter a word.

  ‘Yes,’ Aroli said, a serious expression on his face. ‘Maybe if he plays his guitar you’ll remember him.’