The Echo Chamber

by Luke Williams

  29

  Last Visit to Mr Rafferty

  I visited Mr Rafferty today. We had arranged to meet outside the institution, by the churchyard gates, but when I arrived he wasn’t there. The air was mild but damp. The sun nowhere to be seen. Yes, the sun could be seen, I don’t want to mistake any facts, there was a tiny trace of it, a leaden spoke of sunlight basking on the cemetery lawn. I stood watching the light on the unkempt grass, wet from the early rain. It wasn’t green but a hazy dun colour, like everything else that day. It was because of the dark glasses I was wearing, I realize now. The glasses are large and rectangular. The lenses extend around my ears, covering my temples, the kind partially sighted people wear, or the very old; and it was from my neighbour, the blind old woman who says Pff instead of good morning, that I stole them.

  There I stood by the churchyard gates. Everything was dim and quiet. It was Sunday, and the street was remarkably bare. Nobody seemed to have any business in town. I turned and pressed my face between the bars of the gate. I watched the trees lining the cemetery path, saw their boughs swaying in the wind, displaying the first shoots of spring. I don’t know how much time went by. I said to myself, Perhaps Mr Rafferty has forgotten our arrangement, and felt a sliding sensation, since I’d been looking forward to this visit. Did I miss my grandfather? I think rather it was because of a hope. Three weeks ago I completed my transcription of Ade’s letter. Since then I’ve been barely able to write. In the attic all is quiet. The sounds of my past are muted too. The only unceasing noise is the ringing in my ears, now nearer, now further, now filling my head. It seems to grow louder as the other sounds fall quiet. I write ‘ringing’, but it is also a hissing, roaring, buzzing, humming, fizzing, and any number of maddening sounds. Sometimes they are soft and merely annoying. At other times they are so persistently loud as to torment me. And so, frustrated by my internal clamours, I’ve been unable to concentrate on my past. Sometimes I think I should stop writing my history altogether.

  When, previously, I turned to my papers – transcribing Mother’s diary, as well as Kemi Olabode’s pamphlet relating the Benin massacre, and Ade’s letter – I felt calm, a kind of happy emptiness, despite the appalling content of the stories. Copying, I was able to work for hours without pause. I forgot all noises, internal and external, past and present. No doubt they continued to sound, but I no longer heard them. It was as if a mesh of silence had fallen and enveloped me, as if the radio silence I loved as a child had invaded me once again. To cease writing in my own words and simply copy and copy and copy – that is something I would like to do. But first let me try to relate my trip to Edinburgh. Perhaps, by writing about the present, I will be able to block out its noise and finish with these stories of my past, complete my history before it is lost.

  Forward.

  I felt a presence behind me, turned and saw my grandfather. He was dressed in a raincoat and hat and, with his round unevenly shaved face, he looked ancient and lovely in the tawny light. I saw immediately he was in one of his restless moods. He’d dressed hurriedly. His trousers were somebody else’s, and he’d mixed up his coat buttons. At that moment every sad thought vanished from my mind. He clutched me to his chest. He gave off a pungent, earthy scent, a smell of damp wool and rotten leaves (Perry had died, and Mr Rafferty had taken over the hothouse). Then he spoke – but no sound came from his mouth. ‘Sorry,’ I said. My earplugs! If I was to communicate with him it was necessary for me to unblock my ears. I removed the cotton wool and put it in my coat pocket. I had expected, the instant of removing the plugs, the light, the full sunlight of sound, to intrude blindingly into my day. But the world was silent as before. I looked at the ground, astonished. Had I become completely deaf to the outside world? It is true that sometimes I hear little for hours on end, but I had thought this was because the attic had fallen silent. For the first time I was out of doors without my earplugs – and on the street all was quiet. Mr Rafferty’s lips continued to move. I linked my arm in his, and we set off down Mankind Street.

  The question was to examine this new silence. It had a disturbing empty quality (accentuated by the dark glasses), very different from the attic, that echo chamber of whispers and faint rustlings. And this quiet on the street was different too from when I stuffed my ears with cotton wool. Then I heard, more clearly than ever, the din of myself. We turned on to a busier street then joined a path that wound over a rolling grass heath. I looked at Mr Rafferty, whose lips were moving. He was talking. But to whom? Did he know I could not hear a single word? That’s not quite right. Did he know I could scarcely hear a single word? I caught, here and there, a murmur corresponding to the motions of his lips. In truth I was not completely deaf. But it strikes me that I would be better off if I were completely deaf, since I heard enough to be distracted by the sound of his words, although too little to make sense of them.

  What am I saying?

  Where was I? On the street. With my grandfather. We walked beside a rise of black rock and sick-looking weeds. At the top of the hill we stopped. That’s when I noticed the passers-by, looking at me, not at my face but right into me. With my dark glasses and uneven gait it seemed they thought I couldn’t see. They stared brazenly, amusement on their faces. I was almost totally deaf, and the passers-by looked at me in the mistaken belief that I was blind! It began to rain. I guided Mr Rafferty to a bus shelter, and we sat on the red plastic bench. The passers-by were no longer staring but running for cover. Under the low grey sky, on the black, narrow street of few sounds, I watched them flee. After a while my grandfather said, ‘It’s getting dark.’ This I heard – I hear things a little more clearly when sitting – but not immediately. His words seemed to expire as soon as they left his mouth, before they made sense. It was like hearing a complex piece of music for the first time. I asked him to repeat. He did, a little louder. I shook my head, asked him to repeat himself once more. Finally he brought his lips up to my ear and shouted. My head rang. And yet I understood him. It’s getting dark. It had taken nearly ten minutes for him to convey the simple fact that the afternoon was drawing to a close!

  How strange the human heart is! My condition was dismal. I was wet, cold, deaf, mistaken for blind, sitting at a bus stop sheltering from the rain, with a man who is not complete in the mind, myself of late having been feeling strange, bodily, and spiritless also, resigned to the knowledge that things are changing and ending – and yet my joy was limitless.

  I asked my grandfather to lean forward and speak into my better, right ear. I held up my hand for him to stop, so that I might take in what he had said. And yet this time all I heard was a series of consonant-sounds and vowel-sounds, scattered, dissipated, each one isolated from the rest. They carried less significance than a sneeze, since I was absorbing only the physical or tonal quality of his words. I asked him to repeat himself once again, and, as he did, at certain moments, without being able to give the sequence any clear sense, I managed to collect, hold and finally reproduce, in my head, the sound of individual words; from these I managed to piece together a kind of meaning.

  ‘Yes!’ I cried, beside myself with joy. It was as if, after listening to the complex piece a number of times, I began to pick out a phrase or harmony. I wanted to be certain I had understood correctly, so I repeated what I thought he had said. Mr Rafferty stood up and began to wring his hands, a new development. What was he trying to convey?

  ‘Sorry?’ I said. He repeated. We repeated the process just described. Finally I understood that I had been shouting.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, as quietly as I could. And yet it was hard for me to judge the volume of my voice. In this the loss of hearing is like the loss of smell. The person who cannot smell may give off a strong unpleasant odour, and so it is with deafness; unable to hear the fullness of my own voice, I am prone to shout.

  ‘Now we have established I need to speak quietly,’ I said or shouted, ‘let’s go back to what you were trying to say originally.’ I repeated what I thought he’d originally s
aid. Mr Rafferty concentrated hard, trying to string my words together, then smiled and nodded his head. Apparently my meaning matched his meaning. What a bother to understand the most basic things! It had taken ten minutes to establish that the afternoon was ending. A further ten for me to understand I had been shouting. Night was drawing in. The longer we talked the darker it became. Nevertheless, we proceeded. Word by word. Sentence by sentence. No syntax to speak of. Here is a part of our conversation.

  Mr Rafferty: It’s getting dark.

  Me: Let’s get along.

  Mr Rafferty: Where to?

  Me: Back home.

  Mr Rafferty: …

  Me: Sorry?

  Mr Rafferty: …

  Me: I can’t hear you.

  Mr Rafferty: You’re shouting!

  Me: I’ll try to speak quieter.

  Mr Rafferty: Sorry?

  Me: I said I’ll speak quietly.

  Mr Rafferty: Night is drawing in.

  Me: The longer we talk the darker it becomes.

  Mr Rafferty: Where are we?

  Me: I don’t understand.

  Mr Rafferty: Who are you?

  Between my grandfather’s words and my replies a greater or lesser interval passed. The problem was that in the interval he grew impatient, and often spoke again, so my replies did not always connect to what had gone immediately before. What is more, I tended to respond without taking the necessary time to make sense of his words, acting on what I believed he might have said, rather than what I thought he had said. And when I paused so he could absorb my response, we encountered further problems, for once he had strung together from my words the sentence I had pieced together from his, as far as I understood it, the original meaning was more or less changed, or altogether lost, according to I don’t know what principle. We were like deaf-mutes, signing in the dark. And indeed, as we talked, I saw pools of streetlight sparkling on the wet road. Dusk had turned to night. Soon after, we came to a halt. Not a conclusion, nothing so satisfying. Mr Rafferty stood, turned and in exasperation leaned his forehead against the bus shelter. I took my glasses off and rubbed my temples. His breath was steaming up the perspex. The little round of fog grew with each exhalation. I stepped forward and brought my right cheek close to his left cheek. I wanted to get a better look. He didn’t seem to notice me, so I leaned my forehead against the shelter. For a moment our breaths mingled on the perspex. There was no one else on the street. We remained side by side without moving. Now and then a drop of moisture, slipping down the perspex, cut a channel through the fog. We tried to converse again, this time with me talking and him tracing words in the fog, but without success, for it seemed that with each word we spoke we understood less, and the more we talked the darker it became.

  30

  Auto da Fé

  Let me do away with my papers. I do not want to see them again. I will burn them, my personal papers I mean. The others I will keep. The Encyclopaedia Britannica? It will remain in the attic to help me with my work. As legs for my desk. As printed matter to transcribe. What else? Novels, histories, newspapers, books of poems and essays, testimonies, labels, handbooks, posters, timetables. These papers will also be saved from the fire. My objects? It is long past the time when I should have cleared out the attic.

  In a moment I will carry my objects to the garden. I will descend the ladder with a succession of loads and assemble them into a heap by the marram grass. No, not a heap. By nature I have always been meticulous. So then. I will categorize them, according to their degree of inflammability. I will start with my own papers, Damaris’ diary, and my mother’s, and Ade’s letters, all those I have copied on to my computer. I will also burn the personal papers I have not transcribed. Yes, on to that pile I will throw Aunt Phoene’s letters, tickets from Damaris’ shows, ‘First Snow in Port Suez’, Taiwo’s Gideon Bible, my father’s magazines, as well as the mimeographed sheet depicting the bird’s-eye view of Lagos (whose street-names I had planned to type out). The sheets of my history? They ought to be the first of my papers into the flames; for, having been dried out by the sun, they are highly flammable. What is more, they are the most personal of all my papers. And yet I have decided to spare them, even though it pains me to corrupt my order, since I wish to continue to block the light. Objects to be spared. That is a category all of its own. It will include – let me see – the wardrobe door, my computer, printer, blank paper, heater, my supply of beans. What else? I will keep the hand-painted miniatures Mr Rafferty gave my mother (every now and then, as I work on my transcriptions, I may want to gaze on them, as others gaze on a view, you never know): the littoral with full tide and crab, the warship setting sail from an Eastern city, Scheherazade kneeling beside King Shahrayar, who is wrapped in the bejewelled blankets of his divan. Once my personal papers have been separated from the heap, I will set them alight. Then I will cast my collection of photographs into the fire. One by one will go pictures of Damaris – naked in Easdale, asleep on Route 61 – as well as group photos of Ben, Iffe, Ade and myself standing awkwardly on the lawn in Ikoyi, also the portrait of Hogan Bassey, glistening with sweat and holding aloft his champion’s belt, torn from the boxing magazine, and Father on his swing, and the drop spilling upward from the bowl of milk, together with the family album, Mother in her watch shop, the bagpiper with enormous cheeks, and all the rest. Next, I will feed the fire with the fabrics I own, including all my clothes (except my pyjamas and dressing-gown, which I am wearing): the patchwork quilt, the Indian dhurri, the seaweed-green chiffon scarf, the white dress I wore on the Royal Mile to mimic Damaris in mime. Next, animal matter: an elephant tusk, a fishing eagle Father shot during his tour with Mother, also the mouse’s tail, my whale-tooth necklace, a twist of hair from Riley’s pointer, and my collection of feathers, including those I kept from The Snow Queen, as well as the mappa mundi, I must not forget the mappa mundi, since it is made of vellum.

  Now I have mentioned it, let me pause to say a few words about that decrepit map, before returning to the matter of the pyre. Throughout this history I have noted its dissolution, mostly on account of the moths. What I have not realized until now is the ingenious effect the process of destruction has brought about. A moment ago I got up, unhooked the mappa mundi and threw it on the floor, with the other animal matter to be burned. And there on the wall, in the space where the map had hung, I noticed a series of patches – light, roughly circular shapes, set off against the darkness of the wood. I stepped back. I stared at the pattern on the wall, then understood. The moths had eaten holes in the mappa mundi, exposing the wooden boards beneath. Where the holes appeared, the sun (this, before I covered the skylight) had blanched the wood. And so the mappa mundi, that fantastic counterfeit which my father bought in 1963, has left a kind of negative impression of its decayed state, a series of brightnesses, like smaller continents themselves, joined by darker connecting lines. All that is left of the map is a record of the moths’ hunger, a static, lucent accumulation of all the seas, nations and races they have devoured, a disturbing image of dissolution that has reduced the original (if I may say this of a forgery) to a few faint patches on the attic wall. As I continue to gaze at the wall, I realize that this second map is not so much a negative impression, but rather a reinterpretation of the first. Of course, the moths did not honour national boundaries or geographical facts, but diverted rivers, joined states, parted continents, creating fresh rifts, new gulfs; they flattened mountain ranges and worked landmasses into disparate shapes. The process of creative destruction was arbitrary; or rather, the process was dictated entirely by the hunger of the moths. And yet it strikes me now that the map engendered by the moths is every bit as real or valid a representation of the world as the mappa mundi itself.

  Where was I? The fire. After animal I will throw in all those objects made of vegetable matter: elephant grass, melon seeds, the length of twine which I stretched taut and passed my finger lightly across to produce a tremulous humming, as well as mother’s trunk itself. What
next? Technology: the pocket watch, the tape recorder, the telephone from empty cans and lengths of string, not to mention Father’s bike, and the phonograph with its great horn. But how will I know if they will burn less readily than certain items of animal matter? It is not so easy to order my objects strictly in terms of inflammability.

  Perhaps I should begin again, using a different method. Maybe I should burn my objects chronologically, according to their date of arrival in the world. No, this method would not be an easy thing to determine either. To judge the age of the elephant tusk, say, I would need to know the age of the elephant. And how to judge the age of the elephant in comparison to the chameleon, or the slate from Easdale, or the mappa mundi? (A further complication: should the impression of the map now be classed as an object? If so, how would I burn it without destroying my attic? And into what category would it fall? Animal? Vegetable? Unica?). Impossible!