Luke Williams - The Echo Chamber

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 imagined 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.