The Echo Chamber

by Luke Williams

  Jungle warfare is a particularly harrowing and unnerving business. We had to move slowly through unmarked paths, and we were vulnerable to ambush at any time. So, every 500 yards we halted, set up our weaponry and astonished the bush with fire. The rocket tubes fizzed and crashed and the Maxims spluttered like handfuls of matches, sending swarms of angry bullets into the forest. The rifles grew hot, the Maxims exhausted all the water in their jackets, and the empty cartridge cases, tinkling to the ground, formed giant heaps round each man. And all the time our bullets were shearing through flesh, smashing and splintering bone. But the Benin army kept on coming, all day for many days, as we advanced towards the capital.

  Dear reader, we took no chances. When we came to a village our soldiers fired volley after volley until the enemy was driven into the centre, which was then shelled remorselessly, rushed and captured. On arrival in a village Rawson would march in and call for the chief. I translated. He had a great idea that African chiefs should creep on all fours and kiss his left boot. Then we would plunder the supplies, throw fire into the huts and smash everything that would not burn. It was the same spectacle everywhere.

  Did the British have no law against shooting at people they couldn’t even see? It was an atrocity that ran contrary to the conventions of war in Europe, which forbade violence against those who were unable to defend themselves. Did such conventions not extend to Africa? Did the hearts of those officers not feel tainted by the slaughter they enacted? Were their souls not inwardly marked? Were they not cursed in later life, like myself? Did they not wake up exhausted with fevered dreams? The evidence points in the opposite direction. After the expedition, Rawson was knighted, and a Benin clasp was added to the General Africa Medal. Captains received CBs, Distinguished Service Orders, officers were promoted, etc., etc.

  Alas, it was not the same for me. I trace the beginning of my destruction or mental unravelling to the following incident. At Ologbio, where we were resting before the final push, I was called before the Admiral. Perhaps I had mistranslated something, and one of the village chiefs had not kissed his left boot. I protested. But he was set on my punishment, and out came the hippopotamus whip. I was made to strip, kneel, and my hands were tied to a water cart. I am unable to recall what happened next. Therefore, I will quote from the diary of E. J. Grave, an English solider who witnessed such a flogging that same year: ‘The chicotte of raw hippo hide,’ Grave writes, ‘especially a new one, trimmed like a corkscrew and with edges like knife blades, is a terrible weapon, and a few blows bring blood. Not more than twenty-five blows should be given unless the offence is very serious. Though we persuade ourselves that the African’s skin is very tough, it needs an extraordinary constitution to withstand the terrible punishment of one hundred blows; generally the victim is in a state of insensibility after twenty-five or thirty blows. At the first blow, he yells abominably; then quiets down, and is a mere groaning, quivering body till the operation is over … I conscientiously believe that a man who receives one hundred blows is often nearly killed and has his spirit broken for life.’

  The next thing I knew we were at Benin City. I was lying in a tent, gasping for air, writhing, nearly slayed, with a thousand rats scratching at my back and flies sucking at my wounds. I became delirious and remained that way for several weeks.

  Terrible fate!

  I returned to my village. My mother embraced me and put me to bed. I dreamed of my History. From between the covers of those (as yet incomplete) tomes came howls of anguish and hysterical laughter. I woke up trembling. After that I refused to leave my room. I lived as if in a dream. I was no longer able to walk or read or grasp a pen. Instead I listened into my thoughts. They scolded me in the harshest terms, mocked my life, my goals and ambitions. I did not eat for several weeks. And when I finally ate, at the bidding of my mother, nothing tasted as it had tasted before. Potatoes tasted like onions, and onions tasted like apples, and apples tasted like goat, and goat tasted like okro, and okro tasted like figs, and figs tasted like stew, and stew tasted like mud, and mud like bones left out in the sun and eaten out by rats, and these bones tasted like porridge, and porridge like vomit, and vomit like champagne, champagne on the king’s table, which tasted like iron, and this iron like smoke in my mouth, which stung like smoke in my eyes.

  What troubled me more than my malfunctioning taste buds were the howls and mad cries of my African brothers who had perished and who made a sound in my ears like forests falling, hideous cries like the sky in flames.

  Who was torturing me?

  I asked myself this question more than once.

  In time I got better. I began to read. I told my mother to unpack my library and began to study. With the end of the old rope we begin to weave the new. For the next decade I lived in my mother’s compound. I did nothing but write my long-planned History, and I forgot about the screams of my African brothers. I buried them between the covers of the tomes I was writing.

  And here I am, today, an old man without the strength to leave my bed, or the courage to kill myself. The howls of my African brothers have returned to plague me. Now I make an effort to understand them, and they say to me, The destruction of our African continent was not a unique event in the history of the world. They say to me, Honour, justice, compassion and freedom are ideas that have no converts. They say to me, There are only people who intoxicate themselves with words, shout them, imagining they believe them without believing in anything else but profit and personal advantage. They say to me, There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

  14

  ‘First Snow in Port Suez’

  Today, I visited my maternal grandfather, Mr Rafferty. I had not intended to break from writing, but three nights ago, after finishing ‘Massacre at Benin’, I found myself unable to progress. I barely remember the process of transcribing the pamphlet; I worked without pause, hardly taking in the sense of the words – the relief of abandoning my own history and copying another’s! It was not until the following day when I printed the chapter out and read it slowly, checking it against the original (two errors: ‘smiled’ for ‘soiled’, ‘odours’ for ‘orders’), that I was stricken with fatigue and emptiness. I found myself in a bind. Far from calming me, as I had hoped, far from allowing time for the din of my past to quieten and become intelligible to me once again, the process of transcription stirred up clamours of a more disturbing kind – in me, but not of me. I was haunted by the swarms of bullets, the screams and hysterical laughter of the Benin army. It was as if the process or undertaking of these last months had been reversed: no longer was I traducing sounds of the past on to my computer, into words on the page; now words on the page – Kemi Olabode’s words – were, as I copied them out, evoking ancient sounds.

  I did not fully understand the source of those disturbing feelings, which were quite different – more painfully wretched, heavier – than the depression which sets in when confronted with barbarism, with evidence that all power is a form of violence exercised over men and women. I merely lay on my mattress, haunted by the sounds.

  After seeing my grandfather this afternoon, however, I have a better understanding of my response. I had concentrated on ‘Massacre at Benin’ because I had wanted to take a break from writing my own history. But there was a second, more important reason: I realize I chose this text because Kemi Olabode’s experience told me something about the country of my birth; something that was hidden from me during my childhood; something that, being unsavoury, and brutalizing, the British in Lagos did not talk about. Kemi Olabode sought to enlighten us; that is why he sent his pamphlets to every colonial officer, at his own expense. But he was mistaken; he had worked under the illusion that the British in Nigeria were ignorant, that they were unaware of the crimes of slaughter that had won them control of the colony. And perhaps some of us were genuinely ignorant. Perhaps there were people who, like the children of the colony, did not know how our home had been established and admini
stered. But these were few. Most, like my father, knew enough. And so Kemi Olabode’s writings were ignored. It was not knowledge the colonials lacked. What was missing was the courage to understand what they knew and to draw the right conclusions.

  But I am getting ahead of myself. Before I understood this, I needed to dress myself, leave the attic, and the house, and travel to Edinburgh to visit Mr Rafferty.

  …

  The city was cold and dark. The pavements were damp, and people were walking with purpose. Orange streetlamps flickered on at some point; it can’t have been much past two. I took my grandfather to the central library to choose some books, Marine and Pocket Chronometers, English House Clocks. As we left the library, walking along George IV Bridge, past empty cafés and slow-moving traffic, I said, for no reason in particular, ‘When I take you back to the institution, perhaps I could stay on with you.’

  Mr Rafferty cocked his head.

  ‘Well,’ I said as we stepped out into the road to pass a group of tourists. ‘I feel as though I’m in need of a … rest.’

  Mr Rafferty said nothing.

  We continued on towards the Meadows. As we were crossing the fields, with their rows of cherry trees, bare in the chill air of winter, I stopped, and Mr Rafferty stopped beside me.

  I said, ‘What do you think?’ Mr Rafferty said nothing. ‘About me perhaps staying on as your neighbour?’ I laughed. Mr Rafferty smiled, pointing to his mouth. Then he pressed his lips shut and placed a finger against them.

  ‘I’m to be quiet?’ He shook his head, pointing to himself. ‘You want to be quiet?’ He nodded vigorously. I shrugged. I had heard from the doctor at the institution that he sometimes lapsed into episodes of speechlessness, but I had not yet encountered this myself.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I guided him to a bench, and we sat in silence for a while. To our right, in the near distance, rose the great mass of Arthur’s Seat, concealed by low, drawn-out, unmoving banks of cloud. Here and there, moving in and out of the cloud, along the brown and black basalt crags and the vivid grass, I saw tiny figures, the last of the day’s walkers, together with their dogs.

  Eventually I said, ‘Very well, there’re too many words already.’ I didn’t know what I meant by that. The low sun hung over the muddy grass. The Meadows smelled of swamp. Groups of heavy boys butted against one another, while joggers made circuits of the park. Mr Rafferty seemed to enjoy the activity; his face was raised high, like a dog sniffing the wind.

  I took a deep breath and said, ‘My difficulty, Mr Rafferty, is this.’ And I found myself explaining my troubles following the transcription of Kemi Olabode’s pamphlet. Only then did I realize I hadn’t yet not told him about my history. It is true, on previous visits, I’d asked him questions about my past, tried to gather information, but I’d never told him why. Now, as I explained my project in full, I became eager, almost excited, and I talker faster and faster.

  Mr Rafferty’s face was illuminated by an odd yellow light. It gave him a look of knowingness. I didn’t know how much of what I’d said he’d understood, or even heard. I sighed.

  ‘I’d better take you back …’ Mr Rafferty said nothing. We rose and began to walk towards the institution. But I wasn’t ready to leave him yet. I had an idea. ‘Come,’ I said and took his arm. ‘There’s a place I’ve been meaning to visit for a while.’

  The bookshop had hardly changed. There was a time, in my twenties (during the lost years following the break-up of my first, and only, love affair), when I haunted its narrow shelves and rested on the trestle-tables piled with magazines: Spare Rib, Living Marxism. I would sit for hours on the wooden ladder, reading, or chatting to the owner of the shop. Now I hoped to find some literature about Benin. I sought out the ‘Genocide’ section and absorbed myself in the titles. Mr Rafferty shuffled through the shop, his book bag swinging like a pendulum from his wrist. He disappeared into the children’s section.

  Some time later I heard a loud crash, a yelp, a dog’s bark. I looked to see Mr Rafferty kneeling on the floor, gathering fallen books, watched warily by the shop’s dog, a wonderful black-and-tan creature which bore an injured expression. I rose and set Mr Rafferty upright. Still he didn’t speak; he only looked at me with an expression not dissimilar to the dog’s.

  Walking home, I found I could not stop talking, an effect of my grandfather’s silence. I told him about my childhood in Lagos and my friendship with Ade. Mr Rafferty said nothing. But when I told him of how I got my name – how, in fact, I had named myself – he squeezed my arm, and his lips curved into a smile.

  We had reached the reception hall of the institution, and a nurse approached. Once again, Mr Rafferty squeezed my arm. He pointed to the ceiling. Immediately I understood.

  ‘You would like me to come to your room with you?’ He nodded. ‘All right. But let’s get some hot chocolate from the machine on the way.’

  Mr Rafferty’s room had been recently cleaned. The chair had been placed on the table and the floor shone, smelling of disinfectant. Mr Rafferty motioned for me to sit on the bed. I tried to hand him his chocolate, but he turned, took the chair down and climbed on to it.

  ‘Mr Rafferty! Sit down!’

  He was reaching for a shoebox on top of the wardrobe. Grasping it, he moved to step down from the chair; his foot wandered above the shining floor, feeling for the tiles, and I rose and helped him down. We sat together on the bed. Still ignoring his cup of chocolate, he put the box between us. Apparently it had once contained ladies’ shoes. A picture of the model was pasted to its side: ‘Nana’. It was a t-bar type shoe. This notion of giving shoe-styles ladies’ names, like hurricanes! Mr Rafferty lifted the lid. Inside were piles of letters. He flicked through them until he found it: a postcard. He handed it to me. I looked briefly at the picture, then gasped in recognition. I turned it round and read the back: ‘Dear Grandfather …’

  15

  The Snow Queen

  It’s a dog-eared black-and-white postcard, foxed heavily, especially around the sky. On the reverse is its title, ‘First Snow in Port Suez’, and the date of the snowfall, 12 January 1942. Below this is the message I wrote to Mr Rafferty:

  Dear Grandfather, Today it has been decided by Her Majesty’s Government that my country shall no longer be mine. I must come to Scotland, where I will see you. I am looking forward to meeting you and to hearing many new noises. Father says you are touched. Also, of hearing what the radio sounds like where you are. Your fond granddaughter, Evie.

  I do not recall writing this message. I do recall the postcard, however, for there was a period when I would stare at it for hours. It interested me not so much because it connected me to Babatundi; nor because it found a natural place in my tin marked ‘unica’, whose contents I was always anxious to bolster. Its chief attraction was that it pictured a winter scene: a wide sky blurry with snow, under which flowed a street where people walked, past ice-spangled windows. It was 1956. I had lived only in Nigeria, where the seasons alternated between intense heat and torrential rain, a cycle broken only once a year, in November, by the harmattan. (Nearly five decades since leaving Nigeria I am still unused to northern winters.) So it was that, as a child, I associated snow with a kind of enchantment: with my father’s stories of skating on frozen rivers; with ice-cream, that trace of winter, as dew is to spring, which I had tasted only once; and with Father Christmas circling over white-roofed cities. One of my greatest wishes at this time was to experience real snow. Since this was not yet possible, I concentrated my desire on the postcard.

  It is a bright, shadowless street in Egypt. Children stand on the boulevard in the foreground, their faces turned up to the sky, arms outstretched to catch the swarming flakes. They are wearing hats. Hatted also, and in greatcoats, a dozen soldiers march off to the left, past the windows of the Grand Hotel Continental. Looking carefully, I can make out street signs in Arabic and English, half-hidden by the drifts. What interests me most of all, then as now, is a slight figure almost lost at
the edge of the photograph, in pale bonnet and skirt, bent forward at the hips, thrusting out in front of her with a cane.

  Although fixed forever in the photograph on that miraculous day in January 1942, I can see clearly – in her hunched shoulders and downward gaze, in the little spurt of snow pushed up by her dogged cane – that she longs to leave it. It is a sentiment I can now understand. Yet as a child this astonished me. I felt almost offended on behalf of the snow, to which I attributed a kind of sentience unique among the elements. It was my notion that clouds were not formed of dead matter, but were independent presences in the sky, one step higher in the chain of being from certain growths – sea-coral or bushes – with their ability to rise and drop at will. As for the storm, it was simply the clouds bidding to climb higher in the sky, so shedding their bulk in the form of snow, like a balloonist dropping ballast from her machine. I would imagine myself in ‘First Snow in Port Suez’, among the children, my face turned to the sky, my mouth open wide to gulp down the flakes of frozen cloud.

  Previously I’d seen no value in photographs; their stillness, and their silencing effect on the past – separating sound from vision at the moment of the shutter’s click – bred in me mistrust. Yet there must have been instances in my childhood when I’d overcome my scruples, because once or twice I had taken down the family album. I recall an image of my mother in her watch shop, one of Father on the swing, several of my parents’ wedding, and one of a bagpiper with enormous cheeks. For several hours I had stared at the photographs. I was trying to imagine the sounds the camera had failed to capture. And as I tried – I was studying the inflated bagpipes and the player’s puffed-out cheeks – I found I was able to hear the piercing drone of that animal-like instrument; and when, later, I examined the clock-faces in Mother’s shop, I had heard, and even felt physically, the clamour of three o’clock. It was as if my eyes, in a process of miraculous traduction, were standing in for my powers of hearing. It was not unlike the process Riley’s pointer undertook when, sitting on the veranda below the swallow’s nest, some six feet above her big drooling jaws, she would savour with her eyes the chicklets’ tender flesh.