It was not until I was beside her that she noticed me. Her gaze fell on me for a brief moment, then with her unhurried grace of movement, she turned her back on me.
‘Go away,’ she said with her back still turned. Those words astonished me. All the years I had known Iffe, she had been indifferent to my presence. At the onion stand, travelling home on the bus, sitting at the kitchen table eating our evening meal — she had seldom paid me any attention. Now she had addressed me directly and, what is more, she had demonstrated high feeling. And yet what she said sent a pain through my limbs, for with those words, spoken with her back turned, she no longer expressed indifference, but contempt.
I walked away half stunned, half afraid, my feet hurting. I made my way further from the site of the shooting, dragging myself out of sight of Iffe and the wounded women. I stumbled and fell in a heap on the ground, weeping from sheer exhaustion.
The place I had come to was almost unrecognizable. Shattered stalls and enormous upturned coils of corrugated iron poked out of the debris. I sat on a basket and looked out at the grey vista between two broken shacks opening on to the wreckage beyond. I could see no people, only squashed fruits, bright colours staining the ground. I had entered the former market district, which had been razed to the ground. I looked about me, seeing what was left of the trading lines, which could only tentatively be called lines, since all things appeared alike on the levelled land. To my right was a highway in the process of construction, and beyond this other new roads, lined with banks of trees, symmetrically spaced, and tall buildings forming street-canyons that reflected sounds, doubling them, making them collide, overlap and shooting them upward towards the high roofs, invisible in evening light.
On the other side of the new thoroughfare I saw that fires had blackened the streets, and in places still burned. The smoking earth was dotted with irregular pale-red flares. I came across a trestle table shorn of its feet, propped against an upturned cart, and the pair formed a crooked tent-shaped space, into which I crawled. I told myself that I had come across the remains of the onion table, the very table under which I had spent so many hours, listening, and this made me happy and bitter. By my feet a few embers still lingered on the scorched earth, and I saw that the fire that had razed the market district had exposed a cluster of new shoots; those untouched by the flames shone the freshest green. I settled under my shelter, and my thoughts were sad and fearful, many-branched, thoughts that turned, first on Iffe, then on Ade, and finally on the pits, to which I longed to return. I had been drawn to that underground kingdom because I believed it would bring me darkness and silence. I had believed I would remain for ever in my husk. I had thought that I would live as truly as I had lived in the womb. And yet from that desperate kind of quest, from that heady feeling of having been able to make out a silent world, nothing now remained.
It was early morning when I woke. I sat up, shivering. Drawing my blouse close, I found a piece of paper in my pocket. I unfolded it and spread it flat on the ground. It was the bird’s-eye view of central Lagos, one of the hand-drawn maps from the demonstration, which I had collected when the speaker with the deep voice had had his soldiers scatter them from the stage. As the sun rose I examined the map. And there I saw, laid flat before my eyes, the island on which I had spent my whole life; and at its centre I could pick out the nearly complete rectangle of Tinubu Square, the grey lines indicating the principal streets, with black dots representing the palm trees, as well as the lighter, more intricate paths of the market district, where the occasional forked outline marked the artist’s impression of a passer-by. And later, when I rose and ducked under my shelter and walked beneath the highway, over rubble which in places still smoked, I was myself standing on the grey streets lined with palm trees. I was myself the pale outline on the market path, a tiny blot on the wasted land. I looked around at the high buildings quivering in the new day’s light. And I felt crushed.
PART THREE
22. The Hothouse
This afternoon I travelled to Edinburgh to visit Mr Rafferty. Stepping from the bus on to his street, I heard the church clock strike three. It was starting to get dark. A chill wind blew across my legs. By the churchyard gates I stopped to remove my earplugs: ever since I finished the chapter on the pits of the nightsoil workers, when the noise of the earth blighted my dreams, my tinnitus has become louder and louder — my head is filled with all kinds of whizzing, popping and hissing noises. I’m finding it harder and harder to press on with this history. Every now and then, if I am lucky, I manage to write for an hour or two. But it’s slow work.
On the street I stopped to listen to a group of children running from school. Above the shapeless hubbub now and then I heard a cry — perhaps of joy, or of fear. A trio of cyclists coasted past. Did one of them ring her bell? I couldn’t say. I stood shivering, listening to the sounds. This occupied me for a while. Finally, the green man’s pips started up, and I crossed the road and entered the hospital grounds. It was getting colder. Nevertheless the December sun shone richly on the twisted grass.
The door to my grandfather’s room was open, and I entered without knocking. He was waiting for me, dressed in his greatcoat and hat.
‘Hello, Evie,’ he said and kissed me on the forehead. Happily he knew me this afternoon. Happily he seemed to know himself too. This was a good sign, for I had come to ask him about 1961, the year I arrived in Scotland, of which I recall very little.
I do remember my first visit to Mr Rafferty. Even then, his needs were minimal, like my own today. He no longer travelled, rarely left the institution, and his main pastime was restoring clockwork. Now the staff have confiscated his tools, but then my father and I would bring him watches from the junk shops on Cockburn Street. We would look on as he squinted at the silver cogs and loosely sprung coils, picking them apart. Then, hunched over the hands restored behind glass, he would wind the mainspring and wait for the miracle.
Now Mr Rafferty was struggling with his laces. He had shaved off his moustache (I felt before I saw it) and grazed his upper lip. It was difficult to connect this pale old man with the masterly watchmaker he had once been. I looked away. The whining in my ears climbed in pitch, and for several minutes I sat on the bed.
‘Shall we get going?’ I said. I was keen to leave the institution. My grandfather is more likely to engage in conversation outside the building.
As we left the institution I saw he was in a happy, helpful mood. He led me through the hospital grounds, saying, ‘I want to show you something.’ The late sun fell on his face, which seemed naked and embarrassed without his moustache. We walked along a ridge by the perimeter wall, then joined a walkway cut between rose thickets. Mr Rafferty said, ‘It’s brisk out,’ and his breath rose visibly. This seemed to please him. I took his arm to stop him slipping on the flagstones, and after a while he led me to a clearing. In front of us stood a hothouse. Lately I have noticed that when I stop still after walking I hear a deep sound in my head, like a funeral chord. I heard it now. Perhaps that is why I let Mr Rafferty pause outside the glass doors: the bass notes made me forget my purpose.
The hothouse is a big, square building with arched windows set in pillars of stone. A sweep of glass forms the roof. Mr Rafferty said, ‘Let’s go inside.’ I wanted to leave the institution and get to the park, where I planned to question him about our first meeting, and about my father’s state of mind in those days. But now the funeral chord shifted several keys higher, acquired dissonance, distracting me. Mr Rafferty was tugging at my sleeve.