The Echo Chamber

by Luke Williams

  So there was play-acting involved in trading! This was a revelation to me. To have noticed drama at the market, and to have become aware of Iffe’s place in that drama, might have been to shatter my admiration for her. It might have led me to feel I had caught her unawares, and had discovered the artlessness or inauthenticity beneath her charm. But it was the contrary. My eyes shone for her all over again. It was thrilling to recognize qualities in her that until now my observations of her had taught me to reject. Those gifts of presence and personality that had impressed me for their authenticity – the unhurried gestures which seemed always to call up from the well of human feelings a genuine response, the moisture on her nose indicating an honest day’s work, her rich voice I thought the very embodiment of natural resonance – shifted meaning, became the contrary, for I now admired those gifts precisely for their theatricality.

  By four o’clock, when the last of the onions had been packed away, we began our journey home. I paused before setting off, for I experienced a splendid joy in treading in the place Iffe’s feet had landed only a moment before. I felt extraordinarily happy and light. On the bus, I recall the grey mass of cloud that hung over the sea. What else do I recall from that day? Stepping from the bus to discover the street-lamps had been newly electrified and the humming in and out as we walked between them. Coming round the corner to the first sight of home, where under the swallow’s nest Riley’s pointer sat waiting to gulp down what fell to her from that teeming pod. And yet the last thing I recall was the presence at my side of Iffe, who became more beautiful to me the longer I stayed in her company. And I knew I could no longer consider myself an autonomous being, and that I wanted to be like Iffe in every way, and would do everything in my power to assimilate her qualities, the moment when, walking through the front garden, she looked at me, raised her clammy fingers to her lips and yawned.

  12

  Babatundi the Idiot Boy or How I Acquired My Name

  Near the beginning of my history, when I wrote, ‘The only object that emits a sound is Father’s pocket watch,’ I was mistaken. There is a second object whose noise disrupts my work: a radio. Every evening at six it turns on automatically, and for half an hour, receiving a weak signal, hisses and pops; the volume of my tinnitus increases; I hear a kind of wandering, high-pitched tone, as well as certain voices, different in tone from the voices I normally hear – all of which ends abruptly after half an hour.

  I suspect that, years ago, during his retreat in the attic, my father set the radio to switch itself on and off at these times. No doubt it has been sounding ever since, including these months when I myself have been living in the attic, writing these stories. Yet I only discovered the radio last week. Why? Perhaps because of my growing deafness. Perhaps because of my tinnitus. Or maybe because I have been concentrating so hard on interpreting the sounds of my past.

  For a week now I have been trying to find the radio, in order to silence it. I wait for six o’clock, then attempt to follow the whispering and popping sounds to their source. I suspect the radio is hidden somewhere in the south-east corner of the attic, among debris and items of my father’s – clothes, mouse droppings, discarded cups and plates, medals, mouldy cricket gear, boxes of maps and papers, dust-curtains that on windy nights swell and fug the room – but I cannot be sure, for the attic amplifies and distorts even the slightest sound. But this is only partly why I’ve failed to find it. The radio remains hidden chiefly because I confuse its noise with the noises in my head, which do not stem from a fixed point or source. They are not like other sounds – sounds which one can listen to at will and may silence by going away, stopping one’s ears, or by refusing to listen – since not only do they fizz and thunder in my head, it is with my head, and not my ears, that I hear them.

  It is half past six. I have just tried, and failed, to find the radio. Now I will return to my history. I must try to block out the sounds of the present and concentrate on those of my past, which I am trying to traduce into words, as the needle inscribes the wax disc. So then, I can reveal that some months after I started to accompany Iffe and Ade to the market, the harmattan season began.

  …

  One could not see the harmattan when it came. One sensed its approach in the slightly cooler air, on hearing the sand-laden wind, in the grey clouds that began to outlast the day, but altogether more clearly in its effect on the animals. The watchdogs and feral cats, the cart horses, lizards and birds – all grew quiet and recoiled from our human world. The swallows, who had appeared so riotously at the end of the rains, now sang mutedly, shot quickly from nest to garden and back again, cheerless in flight, and I noticed they shied from power cables, washing lines and radio masts and perched exclusively in trees. And Riley’s pointer, normally so alert and friendly, with her heavy trembling head and giant’s paws, she who with her enthusiasm sometimes knocked us over, now, upon seeing us pass, sadly lifted her muzzle, with drops of saliva hanging from it, then set it down on the kennel floor.

  The harmattan, when it arrived in earnest, swept the streets clean. It left behind a red emptiness in our quarter of town. Only here and there a lonely man, with a beard of sand, bent horizontal by the force of the wind, could be seen clinging to the corner of a fence. The air was rich with the smell of desiccated earth, which pattered against the windows, blotting out the sounds.

  I was not allowed out of doors. Father warned me that I might suffocate in the storm, and spoke about newspaper reports of an unfortunate child who had been discovered, many years after his disappearance, near Birnin Kebbi, his nostrils packed with sand. I pictured a body hauled up from the earth, shrivelled and grey, with a strange peaceful face. The boy continued to haunt me for several weeks. And yet my father’s story, designed to prevent me from going outside, was unnecessary, not because I was afraid of the storm, but because I had little interest in it. I mocked the harmattan. It was so random and unrehearsed, nothing more than base elements picked up and blown south by the wind, the crude unthinking journey of sand. With my new-found esteem for the theatrical, I imputed to all natural phenomena a tired antiquity.

  I had no desire to walk in that landscape swept of all colour but cinnamon, but I could not go with Iffe to the market. I became bored, and pestered Father to look after me. For several days he stayed at home, and he told me stories, and we played together, and I felt happy. Soon he was called back to work. To pacify my tears and rage, he let me take the radio to my room, and I listened to the BBC. I imagined the radio’s interior as a tiny lounge where, at ten each morning, seated on a leather armchair, after having placed a record on his phonograph, the announcer spoke to me. I was ready to admit that in the radio – as in my dolls’ house with its hinged façade, allowing me to manipulate its inhabitants’ lives – there reigned a different scale of reality. But nothing was stranger than hearing the announcer’s deep tone of voice, since I believed that little people spoke in small, high voices. This detail did not trouble me for long, since I reasoned that the radio, with its miraculous technology, transposed all voices into a lower key. I took great pleasure in listening to the BBC. I especially liked to hear the Bow Bells, with their sad and lovely descending peal, sounding just before the news.

  Sometimes I would switch the radio off and try to pick out Iffe’s voice from the uproar of the storm. I wished, by straining my powers, to absorb its rich timbres, as one slakes a thirst, experience them as she did, from deep within herself, from the great echo chamber of her chest. There was a patchwork quilt embroidered by my mother during the war, under which I tried to capture Iffe’s lovely tones, so that I could study them in depth; in those thrilling moments when I thought I caught a word or two, I buried my head under the quilt. I had the sensation that somehow I inhabited Iffe and understood her from the inside out. By missing her, I sought to recreate her, summon her, by turning into her. How lucky I was to have her as my guide and teacher. If only she felt the same way about me. I wanted to believe she missed my presence at the market, and i
magined her slumped over piles of unsold onions, tormented by the harmattan, cursing Father for preventing me from leaving the house.

  It was strangely uplifting, then, when I discovered her in a bleak mood. One afternoon, on bringing home vegetables for our evening meal, she appeared quiet and sad, and spoke to Ade in undertones. She was short-tempered and, I noticed, eager for Ben’s attention: very different from the person who until now had appeared so strong and sovereign. Did she miss me so much! I was not sure if I liked this new Iffe, however. She was distant and distracted; some of the playfulness had gone from her character, and with it, I felt, a little of her style. I noticed Ben addressed her with a strange new name, Nne. I do not know how long she suffered in that sombre mood. Nevertheless, the following morning, I noticed her presence was commanding once again. It was hard to imagine she had ever entered that melancholy region to which, out of vanity, I half-hoped she would return.

  The pattern continued; on coming back from the market, Iffe, or Nne, as I had started to think of her after her return, spoke little and seemed afraid of being alone; each morning she shone anew. I had not known a person could hold within her such divided states. It was a thrilling discovery, and yet it posed a problem for me. I understood now I would have to assimilate not a single set of qualities, but two.

  One evening towards the end of the harmattan I was sitting beneath the kitchen table, watching Ben prepare a chicken for our evening meal: he pulled apart its legs, first the left, then the right, then smashed down his knife to cleave them from its body. With what indifference Ben chopped that raw and pimpled flesh! There was no sign of grief in his eyes, not for the chicken (who, I knew, had spent its short life crowded into a dirty coop), nor for myself, who watched appalled. Ben cut the chicken into pieces and placed them into a pot of boiling water. He added chillies, onion, garlic and stockfish. After sprinkling salt and pepper into the pot, he covered it with a metal lid. Shortly after, Iffe or Nne came into the kitchen. Immediately the room dimmed, became dusted with a grimy atmosphere, and every sound seemed to fall an octave. We ate quickly and in silence. At one point during the meal Nne spoke. What she said was truly surprising to me, and helped me to understand the realm of high drama she moved in. Perhaps it was true; perhaps it was her way of demystifying the powers of her rival; or perhaps she was giving me a sign.

  ‘The Honeymans’ cook is a witch,’ is what she said.

  Ade and I gasped. We knew about witches; knew that they were mostly old women; knew that because of a mysterious object in their stomach, they needed only to wish evil and evil would happen. We had heard, enviously, that they could turn into any animal they chose, most often birds, in whose guise they did extraordinary things. And we had heard the stories about Mrs Honeyman, who had taken to her bed when her private parts had mysteriously caught fire.

  The harmattan began to blow itself out. The animals returned. Lizards basked on the warm walls of our garden; for the first time in many weeks I heard the swallows, under whose nest, after dinner, I was allowed to sit. One evening as we were listening to the radio, Father said, ‘Tomorrow you may go to the market.’ Next morning my prospects swelled further; as we were walking to the bus stop, Ade whispered, ‘Today you and I will visit Babatundi.’

  In the weeks after the harmattan we went to visit Babatundi as often as we could. I remembered it was Babatundi Ade had visited on the day of his beating (which, of course, only added to my excitement). As we approached we always made sure that Sagoe, his older brother, was not around. Sagoe was greatly feared by the market children. It was said he had caused Babatundi’s limp, having thrown him from the branches of a tree.

  It was easy to slip from the onion stand to visit Babatundi: running north through the vegetable quarter; passing the meat section; skipping by cloth sellers and traders in bicycle parts where the market narrowed into uncovered lanes; hearing sounds of men and women calling and whispering; skirting the juju stalls to emerge into a wider space; running through the dusty labyrinth of streets; going by stalled trucks, porters with heavy loads; slowing to kick a fish head along the road; Ade shouting for me to hurry; running straight at houses, and between houses; and finally rounding a corner to a lane heaped with rubbish, sided by rows of flimsy huts with gaping doors – there, after checking that Sagoe was not around, we would come to a halt.

  ‘Babatundi!’

  We always found him guarding the lane which led to his garden. He stood on his gate with his feet between the bars, swinging back and forth. A thin boy, taller than Ade, his head was large. Somehow he appeared advanced in age, but I could not have said exactly why – perhaps it was his ashy skin, the corrugations below his eyes. He stood with bare feet on his gate. The sunlight showed the curious aspect of his baldness, his hair patched like continents on his skull. Later I saw beads of perspiration, which seemed threaded on his long lashes. And from beneath his lashes the eyes were wide, wet, slow-moving, and curiously grained.

  ‘Babatundi!’ Ade sat on the kerb, cracked and mossy like Babatundi’s feet, and threw stones at the rubbish heap. I joined him there. Babatundi wore military trousers torn at the knee, a filthy vest, a string of beads around his neck. Minutes passed before he seemed to notice us. There was a patting sound, a high jingle, and the gate swung, moaning at the hinge.

  ‘Babatundi!’ His usual mood was one of indefinite sadness. But sometimes he threw out a look of violent force. Stepping off his gate, he would grip the bars with both hands and shake it ferociously. Then he would thrust his head forward and let out an ugly bellow. I think it was rage born of anger at his own speechlessness. But the fit would leave him as suddenly as it arrived. He would step back on to his gate, pat the wall and start to swing back and forth, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

  It was summer of 1953. I was six years old. At that time a delicious laziness invaded my whole being. Every afternoon Ade and I lay on the bank opposite Babatundi’s gate, stretched out in the sun like lions, dozing, listening to the distant sound, like far-away crashing waves, of cars and trucks, and their bright horns, or else watching Babatundi swing back and forth on his gate. As the day grew late, we would pick ourselves up, brush the spores from our clothes, wave to Babatundi, and amble back to the market.

  There was one afternoon when things happened differently, however; and it was on that afternoon I acquired my name. I remember very clearly. We were sitting on the bank. Hours passed, filled with heat and boredom. Babatundi quietly moaned, laughed to himself. Scorched thistles crackled on the rubbish heap, and the grass appeared to salivate with glistening sap. At one point in the afternoon Ade peeled himself from the grass and approached me, appearing serious. I sat up. He told me he had something to show me and took a playing card from his shorts’ pocket. It was the Ace of Hearts. I gasped. It showed a nearly naked dancing girl. She was beautiful: blue-eyed, with dark hair clasped in a fountain above her head. Sitting on a baby elephant, with one leg stretched out in front of her, she wore nothing but a tiny blue skirt and tassels attached to her breasts. Ade pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Shhh. I will show it to Babatundi. It is the way to reach his garden.’ He walked slowly, earnestly up to the idiot boy with the card held before him. In a lightning movement, Babatundi jumped to his feet and started to run, limping down the alley leading to his garden, leaving his gate uncaptained.

  ‘Come on!’ Ade shouted. I let out a cry of delight and started to follow. As Babatundi moved futher off his legs became hidden from view – curious how he attained grace when just his upper half was visible. The slow climbing and falling, like the motion of a galloper on its carousel.

  We ran to the end of the alley, and there it was: Babatundi’s garden! A dusty yard scattered with patches of sour-smelling grass. In the middle was a tree whose trunk and lower limbs had been painted pale red. Broken mirrors hung from its branches by different lengths of cord, also cowrie shells, shining in the brightness, and little rounds of metal on which a strange script had been painted. The idiot
boy was waiting for us under the tree. Solemnly, as if events had been rehearsed, Ade offered him the playing card, and Babatundi snatched it, turning his back on us. Emitting an obscene moan, he lowered himself heavily to the ground and started to rock back and forth with the card held close in front of his eyes. I was frightened and intrigued. I could tell Babatundi was enjoying himself because a certain softness had come into his movements. He seemed completely transformed and, as he leaned forward, dragging his bad leg behind him, and collapsed on his front, I became scared. I turned to leave, but Ade took hold of my arm. Putting a finger to his lips, he led me to the other side of the tree.

  ‘Look,’ Ade hissed. In front of us was some kind of barrow piled high with junk, through which Ade began to rummage. I was too excited to help, so I watched as Ade pulled out a collection of wonderful junk: cowries, pieces of broken pottery, feathers, flints, pages of books and magazines, stuffing into his pockets polished stones, badges marked with Babatundi’s script, gutting the barrow of a shiny farthing, a postcard, a mouse’s tail. I could not see Babatundi as Ade emptied the contents of the barrow, and at first I could not hear him, perhaps because of the whine of the traffic, or because he himself was quiet. But gradually I started to hear a low yellow groan that came and went and rose steadily in pitch.