Luke Williams - The Echo Chamber

‘All this is true,’ Nikolas told me. He was sitting on a black throne-like chair, myself on a stool by his feet. ‘And believe me, it is no coincidence that when porsons sit on the toilet they come by many great ideas.’ I started to laugh, but he silenced me with an upraised hand. ‘Who is to say that nightsoil is unsavoury, eh, Evie?’ His voice rose in anger. ‘Europeans think the toilet is unclean and avoid mention of it at all. No doubt the toilet is unclean. But if the toilet is unclean so is their own backyard. I will never know why Europeans flush away their excrement but collect their nose-droppings in white little squares of cloth … what is it, a handkerchief!’ His tone was facetious, and yet his nostrils flared, always a sign, I came to learn, that he spoke in earnest.

He continued, his voice growing brighter. ‘Let me tell you something that is true. All of Africa has been plundered by Europeans who think our problems can be solved by exposing every speck of grime and eradicating it. This is why we nightsoil workers are such a denigrated race. Condemned to work by night. Cursed by God and the human race. Believe me, our only honour is precarious, our only liberty provisional and underground.’

It was 1959, or thereabouts. I was twelve years old and had been living with Nikolas for several months. At least that is what I believed at the time. I had fallen in with his routine, his strange talk and eccentric ways. The mood in his chamber was high-spirited, and I was infected by that mood. I felt hungry for kindness and knowledge and I was flattered that someone, finally, understood my worth — and that person a noble leader! And yet all this time I had barely left his chamber. Now, writing this history, it strikes me as odd that I did not yearn to discover the wider reaches of the pits. If the thought did not occur to me, I believe it was because I was overawed, and free and happy, simply, to be in Nikolas’ company.

The heat in the pits was great, and yet Nikolas shook constantly. I thought his trembling came from violence-blighted youth; and also his agitated mind, which embraced a whole Westminster of plans, decrees, slanders, debates, advice, inventions, speeches and reforms. He had a theory about everything. He told me that most people would risk their lives over something they don’t care a whole lot about.

‘I am talking about a man’s vest or his stone collection. But those things that are important to that very same porson,’ Nikolas said, ‘he will completely disregard. For reasons hardly imaginable he will build himself a house in a remote town with no running water, in some pit overgrown with thorns and which is scattered with stones.’ Another time Nikolas advised on brushing my teeth. The common idea, he said, is to brush after breakfast. But this was a mistake. He told me I should brush my teeth as soon as I woke up, otherwise dirt accumulated during the night would be swallowed down with my first bite of the day.

He liked to keep up with the news and, I learned, had his men collect the papers from the bins outside Government House. Now I was fully recovered it became my job to read him the headlines, first the international headlines from The Times , then the national and local, most often from The West African Pilot and The Daily Comet — Lagos papers, Zik’s papers. We read about the problem of hygiene at the shambles, and Nikolas said, ‘The government is trying to shut the market butchers down even though they have been supplying the meat trade for many years. The government favour the great English firms. They will grant plenty of licences to the English and even to some French. Never to a native butcher.’ He mistrusted every colonial officer, as well as businessmen, politicians, priests, missionaries, military men, journalists, even nuns. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that we might be confusing over politicians and thieves, eh, Evie? Lagos is built on stolen land, and the government is the biggest estate agent.’ But Zik, for him, though a political man, the leader of the NCNC, in line even to become first President, was not wolf-like as were other politicians but honest, noble, a poet.

Nikolas now revealed that he acted as Zik’s spiritual doctor. Apparently (though I never saw it) there was a tunnel leading from the pits straight to Zik’s house. In twenty minutes, whenever he called (how? Was there a telephone in his chamber?), Nikolas could walk right into Zik’s study, where he advised on cultural matters, war, diplomacy, love, the future soul of Nigeria. He also counselled Zik on his anxieties. Apparently the old politician’s nerves were shot. He had a strange attachment to a mechanical doll that one of his deputies, Usman, had given him. He even thought of her as a living creature. He won’t admit it in public, but to me he will come right out and say it, ‘ She’s alive, she’s alive, the little aje! ’ Apparently he feared that the American doll with her white dress and plaits would escape and try to kill him.

Nikolas told countless such stories. From his perspective most of the population was nutty. Everybody in Lagos had some kind of loose bolt in her personality, a secret history or vice. A wife of one of the DOs liked to pretend she was the Austrian princess Sophia von Hohenberg. There was a government clerk from Hausaland who wrote perfect English and dealt with forestry and who claimed he had invented electricity. Everyone, said Nikolas, was like their reflection in the lagoon, turned face on face and scattered by the wind and tide.

‘Maddest of all are the Europeans, the foolish, spiritless, cruel old colonials who will make the laws into an exquisite justification for plundering.’ His voice rose half an octave. He was working himself into a fury. ‘Nigeria,’ he shouted, ‘is nothing more than a cesspit for madmen and murderers.’ He stretched himself higher, and his head struck the ceiling. ‘Ow! … Look at this cave! Not a surface — not a cranny — that is clean. It stinks! It is a sewer! When a man is forced to dwell in shit, what does he care for beauty and truth?’ Then he came over to my bed. Suddenly calm, he said, ‘But you will understand all of this already, Evie … because if you are not yourself a nightsoil worker you must know that your soul speaks in fellowship with my own.’

Another evening he said, ‘Evie, there are plenty of times when I wonder how different everything could be for us if we in Africa had developed our own Enlightenment. Our own science that will suit our African tempers better than as we find them today. Then we would not have been forced to adopt the European ways, and Africa might have opened up a world of technology entirely of its own.

‘Let me give you an example that I have been thinking about for quite some time. Imagine if we Africans had not been taught to keep our history in books. Before the missionaries and that Crowther, do you think we could forget our history easily at all? Do you think our memories were very short? Not for one moment! Our memories were very very long. I am not saying that writing and books are completely at odds with what might be called a good idea. What I am saying is that, if books had been invented by Africans they would have been printed on something that will not dissolve in the rains and flake away in the dry season and give an honest man a paper cut. And let me mention as well that they would not have been so strictly ordered page by page as they are today, so that there is no changing them. And even they would somehow allow for — how shall I say it? — a kind of conversation inside them. If this had happened, English books would not be as popular as they are, and talk of throwing away our native languages would be less noisy. But more than that. Our thoughts might not be imitating Europe but might have pushed forward into territories quite of their own! Do you follow me, Evie?’