Luke Williams - The Echo Chamber

‘It was on the day I finished school that I came to Lagos,’ he began. ‘I had heard a man in my village say that its streets were paved in gold. But something must have arrived to spoil my mind, because I believed him … even though his advice was useless, less than useless even, because that town was to become the theatre for all my miseries to come. When I reached Lagos I was straight away robbed of all my belongings and forced to sleep inside a ditch. The next day I woke with no idea of what to do with myself. I was walking by an old clothes shop and I saw a man with a broken head swap his vest for one or two pence. I caught the malady and was instantly relieved of my coat. I received in exchange seven pence. Now I was thinking only one thing to myself, and that was that I must have some food to chop, some drink to drink and a bed in which to sleep. Soup, some hot drink, and a cheap dosshouse was the first assault upon my seven pence. As for!

‘Evie, believe me that night was a troublesome night indeed! I think you must remember what I told you about my life and maledictions. Well, many times my bedfellows spoke to me. Are you asleep? Ehn? Are you asleep? I was not in the mood to talk, and so I made no reply. To silence them completely I began to snore. Zzzzz! Zzzzzz! I began to snore very very loudly, and for some minutes everything that was not myself was very quiet. But soon one of my bedfellows got up and started to unlace my boots! Whoever said that poverty acquaints us with strange bedfellows was not telling a lie! Several times after I fell asleep this same fellow tried to unlace my boots, so I had to stay awake. After guarding my boots carefully throughout most of the night, I fell asleep just as day began to break. When I woke the sun was knocking on my skull. The sun knocks in the morning, Evie, that is a fact which has not been sufficiently observed. When I got up I found that my boots were not on my feet! And my pennies were not in my pocket. And not one of my bedfellows remained to wish me good morning.

‘Are you following me?’ Nikolas asked. I nodded. ‘What do you make of that, eh?’ He gave a peculiar kind of wise grin, as though I must now see what kind of legendary creature I was dealing with.

‘After I left that dosshouse,’ he continued, ‘I strayed about town, looking for something to chop. I began to pray to God and I said to Him, If You are thinking of me, and if You want me to survive at all, You must help me to find those golden streets . I still believed the vulture who told me that the streets of Lagos were paved in gold. But it was not long before I discovered those words for what they were really worth … as much as the leaf which has been used to wipe somebody’s backyard!

‘So. I had to stop many times in order to lie down on the ground and pick the stones out of the bottom of my feet as well as rest my stiff leg. This was not an easy matter. And when I was occupied with lying on the ground, I was prey to everyone who wished to speak to me or accost me. I am not telling a lie if I say that I had plenty of strange encounters, and I acquainted myself with myself better than before, because what marks us bodily the mind cannot forget. And once during this period I even fell in love, but that is another matter entirely. On some days I received a penny or two. There were plenty of days when I received nothing at all, and I just lay there like mumu , not fit to pick myself up and begin to walk without falling on to the ground again.

‘Once I was lying on the ground, and many wretched porsons came and sat down beside me. We discussed our terrible hunger. One of us thought we should go to the market and chop rotten oranges. I thought to myself that this was a very bad idea indeed. I accepted the invitation. At the market I filled my hat with oranges. I took a seat and chopped them all in one go. Every single one! And I am telling you they made a dirty supper. That night I slept with my belly full on a heap of stones. As day began to break I became sick. I experienced pains in my stomach and backyard. I vomited and shitted myself inside out. Day after day for many days I lay in the street and not one soul will come to help me. Even porsons will come to rob me and beat me with a mallet. That is when I knew for certain the truth of that wise man’s saying, which is that man will be a beast to man. The next thing I remember is that I was up on my hands and knees. And I was very very thirsty. I crawled to the canal and drank plenty of water. It was after that I discovered that my hat was gone, and my vest and trousers were gone as well. And I discovered that I was bald, as if a bird had chopped all my hair. And inside my head was a kind of rumpus, as if a fly had flown through my earhole and was causing trouble, buzzing and dancing, conducting important business inside my head.

‘I said to myself that a one-eared man does not thank God until he meets a deaf man at prayer. It was clear what was happening to me, but what could I do? Did I continue to have no sleep? Yes. Did I find my hat plus the rest of my clothes? No. Did I find a new pair of boots? No. Did my hair grow back? No. Was I at that time skinny like a reed, meaning a puff of wind will cause me to fall on to the ground? Yes. Had I lost every hope? Yes. Had I even lost the desire to better my condition as well? Yes. Did I learn a thing or two about trickery in order to chop? Yes. Did I drink plenty of hot drink? Yes. Did I respect female honour? No. Did my stiff leg get better? No. Did I frequently take refuge in the horizontal? Yes. Was God happy with me at all? No. Did I think the world was at its end? Yes.’

Nikolas paused. After I don’t know how long, he said, mysteriously, ‘If darkness on a visit is so dark, what does it look like in its own home?’ I was close to tears. I shook my head. ‘Evie, there are times in life when things are not themselves but stand for other things.’

‘You are a philosopher,’ I said.

‘I just don’t eat.’

But from his life of misfortune he had descended to a position of great power. I soothed him with this thought. I pointed to his gold bracelet, and his sleeveless jerkin brocaded with gold thread.

‘Porsons nowadays,’ he said, ‘do not know a thing about gold. But we who live in the pits know one or two things. For instance, it is not so much gold’s value or beauty which captivates us, but even its practical use as well. Look,’ he held his bracelet up to the candle, ‘see how the metal acts as a reflector? Perhaps you thought I was acting the big man, eh, Evie? But I was not acting the big man. I will not wear gold as a simple extravagance. We in the pits live in dimness, so we must put gold’s reflective properties to use. This is why we value gold very highly.’

We were sitting in his chamber. The air was close, wet, pungent, stinging, and the warmth which rippled off the bare walls made me think of steam that rises from a horse’s back. Nikolas said it was because we were closer to the earth’s raging core, and I believed him. I believed everything he said. I had only recently recovered from my dissolution in my husk. I felt peculiarly vain and wicked, and sullen, proud, self-serving, even idealistic — I almost never thought of Ade and his fall. And yet there were moments when a great heat of kindness towards the world came over me. But the heat cooled easily, and my mind returned with base thoughts, blood-hate and destructive ill-will. I did not see the good in most. Those in whom I did, however, I abandoned myself to with child-like love. So it was with Nikolas. He had peculiar visceral ways and wanted to turn the world upside down, believing one learned more from suffering than from studying books, that darkness triumphed over light, and that nightsoil was not waste matter — not the ejected poisons of our human gut — but a precious resource; black gold he called it. Wasn’t it nightsoil which caused flowers and vegetables to grow? Didn’t that remarkable substance support the walls of certain houses and towns? And couldn’t one use its dried-out cakes to fuel a fire that burns throughout the night?