Luke Williams - The Echo Chamber

What could I have done? How might I have reacted in a different way? These are questions I ask myself now. I could have cried out or made myself faint. I might have disturbed events by sending dinner plates crashing to the floor. Yet I only watched. And if I did not understand the nature of my complicity at the time, if I did not feel that, like Iffe, I had acceded to the violence, nevertheless I could not sleep. I was filled with the atmosphere of the evening, of my fear and pity and admiration for Ade, and with the high colour that had appeared so suddenly on his skin, and I wandered in my thoughts for several hours, just as, for several hours, I turned in my sheets. And when, after the midnight chimes, I rose and climbed through my bedroom window and crossed the garden, black beneath the starless sky, to the compound and unlatched the door and tiptoed up the stairs, uninvited, to let myself into Ade’s bedroom, and behind the closed door took him in my arms, there was no alteration from the atmosphere of the evening. He accepted me without a sound. My hands moved over his back and beneath his pyjama trousers, where I passed my fingers over the welts. Ade stiffened and let out a soft high note, then relaxed when I drew him to my chest.

Several days went by, curious memorable days, so short while they lasted, and so long after, and already I was forgetting life before the market — my period of confinement, as I thought of it now. I tried to take in and appraise everything about me. And I found myself passing through a threshold of understanding: aspects of the market I had been unaware of, or confused by, or careless towards, acquired meaning. For several weeks Lagos vibrated in bright colours and tones. The town appeared available, well-ordered, fabulously precise.

I liked to be beside Iffe every hour of the day. With fierce attention, unmoving, just as Riley’s pointer would stand beneath the swallow’s nest with her head cocked, I studied Iffe. In this way I was able to equip myself with a fixed point from which to understand the market. I had always needed to create order out of what confused me; even in the womb, on hearing Father recite Gray’s Anatomy , I had formed a crude taxonomy of my body. Now, for the first time out of doors, I began to understand the complex system of the market, its relationships, its rules of trade. A new world opened up to me.

Every morning Iffe brought out a table-top, cleaned its surface with a rag and propped it on two crates, on whose bleached plywood sides was printed, as Ade read out, PEARS SOAP IS THE BEST! The wholesale man arrived and filled her baskets, and she formed the onions into piles. It was wonderful to see the onions stacked this way — lovingly, in tiers like a ziggurat, and always the finest specimen, the ripest, most pinkly translucent onion at the summit.

I took my position beside Ade beneath the table. The sky, streaked with pale gold and a farther blue, spread itself towards the lagoon. The trading day had begun.

This was how the process went: the buyer approached, halted, greeted Iffe, then chose and paid for one of the piles; at which point, I supposed, she would pack up her onions and leave. But she would almost always remain by the table, for the most important part of the transaction was still to take place. The buyer would stand looking doubtfully at her pile. She was hoping to persuade Iffe to grant her a number of extra onions. This gift would vary — from a single onion to half-a-dozen, occasionally more — and was always contested.

There were a thousand techniques for obtaining a greater gift and a thousand small differences between each customer’s technique. My impulse is to record them all, every ruse and procedure I observed. Yet I must press on with my history. So I will record here only the most common: there was the shaking of the head and the clicking of the tongue; there was the wry smile and placing of hands on hips; I witnessed buyers swaying from side-to-side while appearing to make complicated calculations; I heard suggestions that the pile might ‘grow a little’; revelations of how little their husband earned, and what great appetites men possess; there were complaints about the meanness of their husband’s elder wives; heartfelt flattery and crocodile tears, mocking laughter and veiled threats; pleading of great friendship and near-starvation; there was mention of heavy taxes and high-priced juju, of greedy uncles, outsize children, mute but hungry dependants with accusing eyes. And there were attempts to embarrass Iffe by refusing to leave until the gift had increased. Iffe countered each technique with arguments equal or greater in strength. Nevertheless, with reluctance, as if each concession amounted to an equivalent emptying of her belly, she would grant to each customer a few extra onions.

I noticed that, no matter how powerfully Iffe bargained, she always projected an image of friendship and generosity. To make each customer feel happy with her purchase, and return another day — that was her aim. And so Iffe introduced a kind of mock-intimacy at the onion stand, an air of human closeness mixed with spectacle; her gifts encouraged this, since the extra onions, wrapped at the end of the sale and quickly removed from view, could be assessed only by the one involved in the transaction; and since that person could not know the size of another’s gift, she had no standard by which to judge her own, whose true value remained elusive.

Several times a week the Honeymans’ cook came to buy onions. She was an old woman with dry skin, and her hair was wrapped in a white scarf, which indicated she had performed the hajj. Tall, yet hunched, grasping, shrewd, reptilian, she had very few of her teeth left. Often she chewed — but on what? And from between those dark gums came all her cunning, gossip and sour odours.

‘Ku aro,’ she said one afternoon, and put her empty basin on the ground. She chose a pile of onions and paid. There was a pause. The real bargaining was about to begin. The Honeymans’ cook began to sway from side to side. She gathered her loose jaw into an attitude of firm (yet somehow benign) force, raised her black eyes to a point on the horizon and said, ‘I think the world will soon end.’

‘I cannot believe it,’ Iffe replied.

‘Buy a small pile for two pennies? Whasamatter?’

‘I cannot believe the world will end because you don’t get a pile for less than two pennies.’

‘Can a porson chop if onions begin to cost money like that?’ The Honeymans’ cook gestured to a passer-by. ‘Eh? Have you seen anything like it before?’ But the woman continued down the vegetable line.

‘This girl na waya o!’ cried the Honeymans’ cook. Then, imploringly, ‘Drop on a little.’

‘This is how I sell it.’

‘Don’t be a stronghead.’

Iffe said nothing.

‘You think I’m an oyinbo?’

There was a pause.

‘Or picken with a small belly?’

‘I need to make profit,’ Iffe said.

The Honeymans’ cook remained silent. She passed a bead from hand to hand. Then, after several minutes, she bent as far as her hunched frame allowed and said, conspiratorially, her wide grey lips close to my ear, ‘This is not the first time the price is so high.’ She unbent herself and said loudly, ‘Iffe, I think you can remember! That time of Hitla. There were very few onions in Eko. Five pennies couldn’t buy a single pile. Ikoko Omon, can you imagine! People begin to use that onion powder. Yekpe! ’ The Honeymans’ cook made a hacking sound that might have been laughter. ‘Our trouble was more than. Iffe, can you remember?’ Iffe nodded her head. ‘So,’ the Honeymans’ cook bent to address me once again, ‘I asked a few questions. And they said this Hitla is the man who is stopping onions from reaching Eko. I said this Hitla must be a nonsense foolish man. Does he want everybody to die? Ikoko Omon, do you hear! But it was not Hitla but the government. They were chopping onions for the soja! Ehen. Well, Iffe, she wouldn’t allow her people to starve. Some woman. Not so? Ikoko Omon! Eh? So she said she must gather a protest because she wants her people to prosper. The reason is because she is a big honest woman.’ The Honeymans’ cook raised her hands above her head. Passers-by had stopped to listen. She coughed at length, then continued her story. ‘Oh yes. I remember. Iffe went to the Alaga and said that she will join the onion sellers in a big protest. The Alaga began to look at Iffe, straight for her in face. “Iffe,” she said. “Iffe, you are a good woman before.” The next day now Iffe took the women to Government House. They were singing and dancing, up down, up down up. The noise of the women grew. But some they were getting scared. The government was trying to cut their heart. Some were forming fool. Some began to hala. So Iffe closed her eyes and said, “All those who are getting scared … go home.” Not so?’ Iffe smiled. The Honeymans’ cook was enjoying her story, as was I, and the onlookers too. ‘And Iffe kept her eyes closed. Well, so when she opened them no porson went. Very soon Iffe asked to see the governor. But he didn’t agree to come out. So the women sang.’ The Honeymans’ cook gestured expansively. She sang for me.