Taduno's Song (2 page)

The amount of dust that covered everything amazed him, and he knew that it would take several days to do a thorough cleaning. That could wait. He had more urgent matters to deal with, top of which was getting in touch with Lela to find out exactly what was going on. She lived just three streets away with her parents, and he suspected that she would already be in bed at that time of night. Knowing that she maintained a strict routine of waking up at 5 a.m. to clean her parents' compound before getting ready for work, he made up his mind to catch her first thing in the morning.

He left the candle on his bedside table and fell asleep long before the light burned out.

*

He slept soundly at first, then fitfully. When he awoke, he sensed strongly once again that something had changed about the city.

It was getting on to 4.30 a.m. He spent a few minutes
in the bathroom and was soon ready to leave the house. He opened the front door to the breeze of a cold morning, and turned up his collar for protection. For a moment he took in the empty street, and his heart began to race at the prospect of seeing Lela again after so many months.

He was locking the door behind him when a voice barked at him from the street. ‘Who are you?'

It was still dark; he could not make out the face of the person questioning him but recognised the voice as that of Aroli, his neighbour of many years. Aroli was a poet and estate agent, famous in the neighbourhood not for his writing or his job, but for his habit of knocking loudly on people's doors and softening their reaction with a smile. He often told anyone who cared to listen, ‘I'm a poet by profession, and an estate agent only by virtue of the fact that poetry cannot put food on my table, in the interim.'

Taduno approached the shadowy figure and was soon able to make out Aroli's face. ‘Aroli, it's me,' he whispered. ‘I returned last night.'

‘You who?'

‘Me, Taduno,' he said, raising his whisper and cupping his mouth with his hand.

The two men inched closer until they were peering into each other's face. And then Aroli backed off. ‘I don't know you! Who are you?' His voice was a fearful snarl.

Taduno sighed with frustration, certain Aroli was merely trying to pull a prank. ‘Come on, Aroli, it's me, Taduno.'

‘I don't know you! How did you know my name?' Aroli continued to retreat, putting up his hands in readiness to defend himself.

‘Please stop this joke,' Taduno begged. ‘I don't want to announce my arrival yet.'

And then Aroli raised an alarm that brought out the entire street. They came out with sleep still in their eyes, carrying sticks and stones. Aroli was not a man of violence, so he planted himself between Taduno and the invading crowd, his hands flailing above his head. He did not want to be responsible for the spilling of a man's blood.

‘He says he knows me,' Aroli spoke at the top of his voice. ‘Please let's give him a chance to identify himself before we take the law into our hands. Poetic justice may not be necessary after all. Please let's give him a chance to speak.'

There were a few sniggers in the crowd, and everyone seemed to calm down. Aroli had a way of settling people with the funny use of words – usually out of context (poetic licence, he called it) – and with his gentle smile.

Morning light was breaking rapidly through the clouds now, and Taduno could make out the faces of his neighbours. He knew them all, and he called out their names one after the other, in a rush, desperate to save himself from being lynched like a thief. He told them things about themselves. They were all amazed as he spoke, and gradually the sticks and stones fell from their hands. But confusion remained on all their faces, as on his. And as the light of the new day got brighter, it became very clear that, indeed, none of them knew him even though he knew them all.

He told them about his girlfriend Lela, whose letter had prompted him to return home from exile. Yes, they knew
Lela, the pretty light-skinned maths teacher. But, they informed him, ‘government agents arrested her two weeks ago', so she was not available to corroborate his claims.

‘I received a letter from her a week ago.' His voice was filled with hysteria.

They responded with blank stares.

He looked as confused as they were. And then, realising that the something that had changed about the city was actually something that had changed about him, he began to cry wretchedly.

*

They told him he could stay in the house he claimed to have lived in for ten years, so long as he did not make trouble with anyone. After all, the house had been empty since the owner died many months before. Rather than allow it to turn into a ghost haunt, they figured it was better to let someone stay there.

They saw him as a nice and decent person. According to one elderly man, ‘the mystery that unites us will solve itself in due time'. So they let him stay.

Behind his back they whispered that he was a nice man who had obviously lost his mind – a sick man who deserved their compassion.

A dash to Lela's house confirmed his worst fears. He was not who he claimed to be, and Lela had indeed been arrested by government agents.

Lela's seven-year-old brother Judah, who he fondly called Lion of Judah, and with whom he sometimes played
street football, gave him the distant look of a stranger. He felt pained to the bone.

‘Lion of Judah, it's me, Taduno. We used to play ball together. Last Christmas I bought you the trainers with red lights. You wear them when we play ball.'

Judah studied his face with a frown. Then he shook his head slowly as if to say he could not identify it as that of the uncle who bought him the trainers he loved so much.

Much as Taduno tried to jolt the boy's memory, his eyes failed to light with recognition.

Everywhere he went it was the same story. Friends he had known since childhood claimed they didn't know him. He went round to the houses of relatives scattered across the city. Nobody knew him, but they did all agree on one thing – he was a nice man who had lost his mind. And they smiled at him with pity. As a last resort, he thought of going to the studio where he began his music career, but afraid that the story would be the same, and certain that that would sever his last hold on reality, he decided against it.

He roamed the city like a man knocked senseless by a vicious blow. Not knowing what to do or who to turn to, he returned to his house, which they said belonged to a dead man. First he checked the safe where he had kept his title deed for many years, but he could not find the documents. ‘Who am I?' he muttered to himself and began to wander numbly through the house in search of clues.

His spirit lifted when he remembered his photo albums. It occurred to him that they could be the key to resolving his identity. In the albums were a number of photos he had taken with some of his neighbours – at birthday parties,
naming ceremonies and other special occasions; photos of him and Lela, some taken on romantic outings, many more in that house of a dead man. He was ecstatic with delight.

For hours he searched desperately for the albums. He searched until sweat was running down his entire body, into his shoes, and every living part of him began to ache. Still, he searched; way past midnight. And as the city slept, gripped in one gigantic nightmare, he finally accepted, with crushing resignation, that his precious albums had been swallowed by the same mystery that erased his identity.

He would not give up. He needed to find something, anything, that connected him to a society that no longer knew him. There had to be something. He remembered the papers; he used to be front-page news before he went into exile. Frantically, he gathered all the old papers in the house and searched through them. But he couldn't find a single mention of himself in any of them. Somehow, he had been erased from the printed pages.

Defeated and exhausted, he joined the city in sleep. When he awoke it was seven o'clock. ‘Is it possible that there is some truth in legend?' he asked himself. For several minutes he tossed and turned in bed, and then he drifted into a state of half sleep, and lingered in that state until early evening when the frenetic noises of the city slowly began to ease.

*

Aroli paid him a visit that evening. He knocked on the door in a manner that would have woken the dead.

‘Find a seat, please,' Taduno said awkwardly, after letting him in. ‘The place is dusty. I haven't had time to clean.'

A huge smile remained plastered on Aroli's face knowing Taduno must still be reeling from his loud knocking.

‘I'm sorry about this whole confusion,' Aroli began, ‘but I'm sure things will sort themselves out.' He shifted uncertainly in his seat. ‘How are you settling in?'

Taduno shrugged and laughed. ‘Well, I'm getting used to being a stranger.'

‘I'm sure you'll not feel like a stranger for too long. Everybody likes you. They want you to settle in and see yourself as one of us. Let me know if you need anything. Feel free to come round to my place any time. I live three houses away. I . . .'

‘I know, Aroli,' he interrupted him. ‘I know you live in a two-bedroom apartment in a block three houses away. I know you have a sister called Bukky, who used to live with you; then she got married and moved with her husband to Accra. I know you have a girlfriend called Janet, who you are confused about. I know your name is Rolland, but everyone calls you Aroli. I know you have a fake
Mona Lisa
, which you bought from Ojuelegba, hanging on the wall of your living room, above your thirty-inch Sony TV. I've visited your apartment many times before and you've visited me countless times. I know you, Aroli, I know you well, the poet/estate agent who goes around banging on people's door with a gentle smile. How can I not know you?' A faint smile warmed his face.

Aroli shifted uncomfortably, lost for what to say.

Without bothering to ask whether Aroli wanted a drink,
he went to fetch two bottles of beer from the kitchen. He opened them and passed a bottle to Aroli, and together they drank in silence.

‘I guess you must be hungry,' Aroli said, when they finished drinking. ‘Let's go and get something to eat.'

They went to Mama Iyabo's restaurant a few streets away where they ate
amala
and
ewedu
soup, and everyone gave him that polite smile normally reserved for strangers. And he smiled back at them in like manner, not because he saw them as strangers, but because he no longer knew himself.

*

He went out in the morning to get some provisions and the papers. Then he returned and locked himself away from the world for seven days and seven nights, hoping that by the time he re-emerged something would have changed about the city and that that something would have changed the city in a way that people would begin to remember him, and he would find Lela again, and all that had forced him to go into exile would have changed too, and it would be a happy homecoming for him after all.

His neighbours became very worried about him. They gathered outside his house every day for those seven days, wondering if he had done something to himself, debating whether to break down the door.

But Aroli implored them not to take a hurried decision. ‘After all,' he told them, ‘Taduno is a nice man who would
not want anything bad to happen to anyone, least of all himself.' And so his neighbours exercised patience. And on the eighth day he emerged. And apart from the fact that his neighbours were delighted to see him, he realised that nothing had changed about the city. Nothing had changed about him either – except that he had grown a full beard.

THREE

It was while shaving off his beard that Taduno experienced his most lucid state since returning from exile; and it occurred to him that losing his identity was not so bad after all. He realised that he was no longer a man on the run from the law, as was the case before. Considering this advantage, he began to see himself as his neighbours saw him – a man with no past – and he realised that if he must find Lela and unravel the mystery that now surrounded him, he must continue to see himself that way.

During the time he had locked himself away from the world, he had agonised over Lela's plight. He wondered why government agents arrested her, a simple teacher – a maths teacher for that matter – who worked only with equations and never involved herself with suppositions or anti-government activities.

He had always taken care not to reveal much of his life as an activist to her. Even when he had to go into exile
he had simply left her a note saying ‘Where I go I know not'. Could it be that he compromised her with that simple note?

For a while this question haunted him. And then, making up his mind to find out more about Lela's arrest, he returned to her parents' house, where he found Judah kicking a ball on the street with a couple of kids. The boy was the lone star: he had on the trainers with red lights, the others played barefoot.

‘Judah,' he called out.

The boy pulled out of the game and walked up to him. He had a smile on his cherubic face, unlike the last time when he wore a confused frown.

Taduno wasn't surprised. Everyone was being so nice to him, Judah no exception. He smiled back at the boy.

‘Sorry to interrupt your game.'

‘It's okay.' Judah looked down at his trainers and then up at Taduno's face, and it was clear that he still could not connect the two.

‘I want to talk to you about your sister.'

The boy nodded eagerly. ‘Have you found her?'

‘No, I have not, but I'm going to find her.'

Judah beamed. ‘Thank you!'

‘When was the last time you saw her?'

‘The day some men pushed her into the back of a black car, a big black car. It happened right there,' he said, pointing to a spot on the street. ‘I was playing football with my friends that evening. I'm always playing football on the street, so I saw it all, I saw the men.'