12. Babatundi the Idiot Boy or How I Acquired My Name
Near the beginning of my history, when I wrote, ‘The only object that emits a sound is Father’s pocket watch,’ I was mistaken. There is a second object whose noise disrupts my work: a radio. Every evening at six it turns on automatically, and for half an hour, receiving a weak signal, hisses and pops; the volume of my tinnitus increases; I hear a kind of wandering, high-pitched tone, as well as certain voices, different in tone from the voices I normally hear — all of which ends abruptly after half an hour.
I suspect that, years ago, during his retreat in the attic, my father set the radio to switch itself on and off at these times. No doubt it has been sounding ever since, including these months when I myself have been living in the attic, writing these stories. Yet I only discovered the radio last week. Why? Perhaps because of my growing deafness. Perhaps because of my tinnitus. Or maybe because I have been concentrating so hard on interpreting the sounds of my past.
For a week now I have been trying to find the radio, in order to silence it. I wait for six o’clock, then attempt to follow the whispering and popping sounds to their source. I suspect the radio is hidden somewhere in the south-east corner of the attic, among debris and items of my father’s — clothes, mouse droppings, discarded cups and plates, medals, mouldy cricket gear, boxes of maps and papers, dust-curtains that on windy nights swell and fug the room — but I cannot be sure, for the attic amplifies and distorts even the slightest sound. But this is only partly why I’ve failed to find it. The radio remains hidden chiefly because I confuse its noise with the noises in my head, which do not stem from a fixed point or source. They are not like other sounds — sounds which one can listen to at will and may silence by going away, stopping one’s ears, or by refusing to listen — since not only do they fizz and thunder in my head, it is with my head, and not my ears, that I hear them.
It is half past six. I have just tried, and failed, to find the radio. Now I will return to my history. I must try to block out the sounds of the present and concentrate on those of my past, which I am trying to traduce into words, as the needle inscribes the wax disc. So then, I can reveal that some months after I started to accompany Iffe and Ade to the market, the harmattan season began.
…
One could not see the harmattan when it came. One sensed its approach in the slightly cooler air, on hearing the sand-laden wind, in the grey clouds that began to outlast the day, but altogether more clearly in its effect on the animals. The watchdogs and feral cats, the cart horses, lizards and birds — all grew quiet and recoiled from our human world. The swallows, who had appeared so riotously at the end of the rains, now sang mutedly, shot quickly from nest to garden and back again, cheerless in flight, and I noticed they shied from power cables, washing lines and radio masts and perched exclusively in trees. And Riley’s pointer, normally so alert and friendly, with her heavy trembling head and giant’s paws, she who with her enthusiasm sometimes knocked us over, now, upon seeing us pass, sadly lifted her muzzle, with drops of saliva hanging from it, then set it down on the kennel floor.
The harmattan, when it arrived in earnest, swept the streets clean. It left behind a red emptiness in our quarter of town. Only here and there a lonely man, with a beard of sand, bent horizontal by the force of the wind, could be seen clinging to the corner of a fence. The air was rich with the smell of desiccated earth, which pattered against the windows, blotting out the sounds.
I was not allowed out of doors. Father warned me that I might suffocate in the storm, and spoke about newspaper reports of an unfortunate child who had been discovered, many years after his disappearance, near Birnin Kebbi, his nostrils packed with sand. I pictured a body hauled up from the earth, shrivelled and grey, with a strange peaceful face. The boy continued to haunt me for several weeks. And yet my father’s story, designed to prevent me from going outside, was unnecessary, not because I was afraid of the storm, but because I had little interest in it. I mocked the harmattan. It was so random and unrehearsed, nothing more than base elements picked up and blown south by the wind, the crude unthinking journey of sand. With my new-found esteem for the theatrical, I imputed to all natural phenomena a tired antiquity.
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.