At Iffe’s instruction Ade and I stayed by the onion stand. We squatted beneath the table that held our wares, so my view was near-level to the ground, a view of stones, insects and straw, of sandals and bare feet with their movement of pendulums, of loose sack fibres, newspaper, a single crushed tomato, and with purple lizards darting between. Women — I quickly understood the market was a female realm — stopped beside us. Some bargained for onions, others exchanged greetings with Iffe, and each rested her gaze on mine. For many I was something new entirely and outside their reach of knowledge. Others bent, tight in their wrappers, to look more closely, to press my hand or grip me firmly, as though I was a robust and precious foodstuff, and called me beautiful and in admiration or with envy said I would attract customers, bring luck on Iffe. When they left I opened my hands to find I held gifts from their stalls, different kinds of fruit, which Ade and I ate. I recall particularly a guava, with its pink wet flesh, it was the first guava I had tasted, with a strange musty flavour I did not wholly like.
I took off my shoes. Ade and I huddled close, not speaking, and for some minutes we took in our ground-level view. A woman stopped who sold the morning’s haul of lagoon-fruit. We pinched our noses. We stared into the dead eyes of fishes.
If I was a novelty, and attracted crowds, Iffe too was venerated among the traders. She was a significant woman, tall and uniformly wide from her shoulders to hips — and she had grace. Her movements were unhurried, stylish, difficult to interpret yet full of meaning, and I noticed a certain heaviness about her limbs, as though she bore or carried them through a thicker element. She wore sandals, a blue skirt and white blouse without sleeves, and looked wise, regal, with a blue headscarf sculpted on her head. I admired the flushed region of skin that dappled her upper arms.
But it was her voice that impressed me most and seeded a kind of devoted exhibitionism in me. When she called out the price and quality of her onions, the sound came from deep in her chest-cavity, and I had the impression her larynx was not a crude organ — not, like others’, an instrument for telling lies — but cut and shaped like the sound-box of a cello; I judged there was freedom for such workmanship within her chest and neck. It wasn’t merely that her voice was strong, although undeniably it was, but that when she spoke she seemed to cast out more than merely sound; she made the air vibrate and, yes, I felt she projected a kind of truth. I once caught the scent of cardamon on her breath but her words were not directed at me. I felt the drumming of my heart, I wanted her attention badly and caught my breath when I believed she glanced down.
Although Iffe’s stand seemed modest with a single basket of onions, when one observed the small traders — there were several with sacking by the roadside which carried a dozen or fewer onions, surplus from their gardens, as well as roaming hawkers with their trays of cheap plastic wares, sea-sponges, matches, melon seeds, kola nuts, peanuts — seeing the hierarchy of sellers, I felt Iffe was a considerable woman. I learned this from one of her regular customers, the Honeymans’ cook, who told me Iffe was in line to become an O-lo’ri Egbe — soon she would represent the interests of all the onion sellers in the market. I had noticed she was ready with advice and that she solved disputes and laughed and judged quantities and prices for others, as well as pursuing her own trading practice. So Iffe was in demand, and I remained unnoticed by her. But But I listened for her voice with its rich, clear resonance emerging from between teeth that seemed to shine.
Our onions became fewer. The morning bloomed.
Some foods I knew, but several I had not encountered before. I had no need to ask, for Ade was being very attentive, in his man’s vest and sun-blanched shorts. He seemed put out by the attention I was drawing, therefore proud to show his knowledge, and he pointed to one stall and then the next, identifying wares. ‘Yam.’ ‘Cassava.’ ‘Okro.’ And the vegetables, whose names Ade spoke aloud, and which I repeated, names that until now I had known only as sounds, acquired meaning: each became real to me. It did not escape me that I myself was still to find a proper name, yet in that moment I found no fault in this. It made me feel free. And it was fun to try each vegetable, newly labelled, to see how it suited. ‘Okro,’ I said aloud. ‘O-k-r-o.’ I thought it a pretty name, only I did not like the k’s hard emphasis. ‘C-a-s-s-a-v-a.’ I liked it better, the middle fricative and the rhythm it made. But I was not a scaly root. I felt I had greater capacities.
With red-purple onions Iffe was filling the basin of the Honeymans’ cook.
‘When do we eat?’ I asked.
‘Soon,’ Ade said. But business was good. Certainly I was bringing luck, for Iffe was already in conversation with the next buyer. Leaning forward on the table-edge was a fat man with tribal woundings. I drank some water. I felt a tingling in my eyelids and when I closed them I saw bright lights. I lay my back against Ade’s. There was a sunburst in my head. Then momentary blackness. Until now, I thought, I had lived in small places: my knowledge was theoretical, principally aural. And just as, a fortnight ago, during the rainy season, I had dreamed of being in Lagos, so now, amid the heat and smells and peculiarity of the market, in the morning’s white light, I dreamed of returning home.
Iffe bought soup and fufu and portioned our lunch into three. I ate happily, swallowing the meat, scooping the fufu into balls and dipping them into my soup. The food was wonderful, yet Ade refused to eat.
‘Chop!’ Iffe said, but Ade turned his head.
‘Fufu makes me sick,’ he said. Iffe put down her bowl.
‘A disobedient chicken obeys in a pot of soup!’ she said, and struck him sharply on his leg. Ade did not reply but stepped back among the onion sacks, and his eyes were bright as he bent his head to the bowl. He ate until the bowl was empty. Then, without warning, he jumped to his feet and fled from the stand.
‘Trouble calls you!’ Iffe said.
A cloud-shadow passed over the vegetable line. Traders returned to their stalls. I lay down beneath the table and for several minutes I did not move. Many stopped at our stand and many more passed by it. My feet pulsed. I felt I slept. The sky was vast, uncomplicated by cloud. My feet stopped hurting. I slept.
When I woke Ade was back by the onion stand. He knelt beside me. I saw that his shorts were torn, and his skin dusty, rank-smelling. He seemed as full of shame as of pride, and wretched in both. My instinct was to turn from him, for in Iffe’s silence I sensed her anger, as she took down the table and began to gather the day’s unsold onions into a heap. I too was disappointed with Ade, for though I liked him enough, he had abandoned me; my displeasure was not for being left alone but for the adventures he had had without me. For all this he was supporting my head, pillowing it in the crook of his arm, and, despite the sickly odour — he had vomited the soup, which had stained his vest — I smiled up at his face.
As we left the trading district I felt very aware of Iffe: when she walked, as when she stood at the onion stand, she seemed to inhabit a sovereign world — where, I thought, to be admitted would be the endorsement of my day. I ran to keep up with her; and when, on the yellow bus, she took a seat in the front row, and I saw the effort of our day’s trading had raised a band of moisture across the bridge of her nose, I wanted to be beside her. But I followed Ade as he moved to the back of the bus. We motored quickly eastward. At one point during the journey Ade began to laugh.