Taduno's Song Read online

  TADUNO’S SONG

  Odafe Atogun

  Published in Great Britain in 2016 by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  www.canongate.tv

  This digital edition first published in 2016 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © Odafe Atogun, 2016

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78211 805 3

  eISBN 978 1 78211 806 0

  Typeset in Goudy Old Style by

  Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  For Samuel . . . for the years we could not share

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Acknowledgements

  ONE

  The morning the letter arrived he was like a man in a shell, deaf to the voices in his head from a distant place, calling him, imploring him with old promises.

  It was a dull morning with no hint of sun, no hint of rain, no hint of anything; just a dull morning that brought a letter in a stained brown envelope from his homeland, delivered by an elderly postman wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and boots twice the size of his feet.

  Studying the handwriting on the envelope, his eyes lit up in recognition. But then a frown crept across his face and he wondered how a letter simply marked TADUNO – no last name, no address, just Taduno – managed to reach him in a nameless foreign town. He thought of asking the postman how he found him with no address, but because he could not speak the language of the people of that town, he merely gave a small nod of thanks and watched the elderly man drag himself away in his oversized boots until he became a speck in the distance.

  The letter changed the tone of his day and he knew, even before he began to read it, that the time had come for him to go back. He had always known that that day would come, but he never suspected it would be prompted by a mysterious letter portending a vague but grave disaster.

  He settled into a chair by an open window and studied the empty street. He saw no movement, no life, nothing; just an emptiness that came at him in waves. A small sigh escaped him, and as the barking of a lone dog cracked the quiet neighbourhood, he adjusted his seat for a better view of the street. He saw the dog a little way off, scrawny and lonely, wandering with an invisible burden on its tired back. It was the first and only time he would see a dog in that town, and he suspected that, like himself, it must have strayed into exile from a country governed by a ruthless dictator. He felt sorry for the dog. He shook his head and began to read the letter.

  20th February, 19—

  Dear Taduno,

  I hope you are very well and that the country where you have found refuge is treating you kindly. I know you’ll wonder how I managed to get this letter across to you without an address. Well, all I can say is ‘where there is a will there is always a way’.

  At first I did not want to write because I thought you deserve the opportunity to start life afresh and build new memories. But I must confess that ever since you left, life has been an unbearable torture for me. I have never stopped thinking about you, and I never will. Do you remember all the dreams we shared but never lived, the future we never realised? I remember. I have remembered every day since you left. But that’s not why I write this letter.

  Forgive me if my letter disrupts the peace you must be enjoying now. Forgive me if it brings back all the bad memories you fled. Forgive me for this invasion of your new life. But I thought I would not be doing you any good by failing to inform you now of what may turn out to be a tragic discovery for you later.

  In time to come, should you yield to the pull of your roots, you may be returning home to unpleasant surprises. Since you left, very strange things have been happening in Nigeria, and Lagos particularly has changed in a way I cannot describe with words. I must confess, I don’t know exactly what is going on – nobody knows; all I can say is that things are changing drastically here, and the city of Lagos is not the same as we used to know it.

  This is why I thought I should write, to encourage you to build a life elsewhere knowing that very soon nothing may remain the same here.

  For me, I continue to hold on to old memories. They are all that will be left when there is nothing left. I pray earnestly that you find new memories to cherish.

  Look after yourself.

  Goodbye.

  Lela

  By the time he finished reading, it was no longer a morning with no hint of anything. The letter had changed that, and now he felt the urgent need to get some fresh air. He left the letter on the coffee table and went out into the garden where he wandered without any sense of time, troubled by the terribleness of a message he did not understand. He went through the letter again in his mind, very slowly, and he shuddered at the prospect of building a life elsewhere without Lela. Why would she even think like that? What’s going on back home? Questions ran across his mind; a familiar fear tugged at him.

  *

  Hours on, the grumblings of his stomach led him back into the house. In the kitchen, he could not make up his mind what to eat. The indecision killed his hunger, replacing it with a need to read the letter all over again.

  The echoes of his footsteps followed him into the living room, but he could not find the letter on the coffee table where he had left it. He looked under the table, all over the floor, everywhere. He searched frantically without luck. And then it occurred to him that, possibly, the elderly postman had returned to get the letter while he was out in the garden. But how could he? Surely he couldn’t have gained entrance into the house.

  For some reason, he remembered the lone dog. He felt its hopelessness, its loneliness, and he wondered how it was faring in the street.

  He searched for the letter all morning, but he couldn’t find it; and, telling himself that he did not need to find it to take the decision to return to his homeland, he began earnest preparations to leave a town where he had been living in exile for almost three months.

  *

  He had arrived in that town with a single bag and the dream of returning home one day to continue the fight to liberate his country from a ruthless dictator.

  It was a very beautiful town indeed, and for hours he roamed the largely deserted streets shrouded in secret and ageless silence. The town boasted very stately houses, many unoccupied, as stated by small silver signs posted on low gates. He discovered that every empty house had a key in the front lock, as if waiting to be occupied, begging to be occupied. He wondered at the sheer magnificence of the houses. He wondered at the manicured gardens. He roamed the streets until his legs got weary. And then he settled into a small white house with a big garden in a remote neighbourhood where life is as quiet at midday as at midnight.

  He did not make friends, partly because he did not unde
rstand the language and partly because he lived on a virtually deserted street. He wondered why there were so many empty houses in the town, why he rarely saw people in the streets. At first he was consumed by fear, knowing he was an illegal occupant of the white house. But as the days went by and no one came to evict him, his fear waned and he settled into the monotony of a safe life far away from the reach of the Nigerian dictator.

  The town was a perfect haven for him. No one knew him and no one made any attempt to know him. He spoke to no one, no one spoke to him. The few people he encountered on his lonely trips to the grocery shop in the centre of town simply stared at him, without hostility, without friendliness, knowing he was a harmless stranger amongst them. The owner of the grocery shop would merely give him a toothless grin as he paid for his groceries. Somehow, he never had any problem knowing the right amount of money to pay. He would carry his grocery bags, one in each hand, and walk quietly back to the white house.

  He spent endless hours missing his homeland. He missed Lela so dearly. He missed his guitars too, and he wished he could make beautiful music to lift the quiet spirit of that town. He would sit in the garden of the white house, alone with his thoughts, while silence echoed around him. When he wasn’t sleeping, he lived his life in the garden. He ate in the garden, read in the garden and dreamt about his homeland in the garden. And on receiving Lela’s letter, it was in the garden that he took the final decision to return home.

  He had very little to pack over the following days, and he did so with the slowness of a man whose heart was filled with memories of pain. He thought of going to say goodbye to the owner of the grocery shop, to share his toothless grin one last time. He longed to say some sort of goodbye; a thank-you maybe, for the hospitality he had enjoyed in that town. But knowing how sad goodbyes could be, he told himself it was best to leave with no goodbyes. So he focused on packing his single bag the same way he had arrived with it.

  His preparations complete, he paused to reflect on his experience of exile, and he realised that it was far different from anything he had ever heard or read. In exile you live life counting the seconds and minutes and hours, allowing yourself to be consumed by ennui, as indistinct days roll one into another.

  *

  The day before his departure, he roamed the streets in search of the scrawny dog, eager to know that it was doing well. Everywhere he went he felt eyes peering at him from curtained windows, but he wasn’t concerned because he knew that he would be gone in the morning. So he explored the town, as far and fast as his legs would carry him.

  He saw faces he had never seen before and discovered places he never knew existed. His search led him on, hour after hour, through near-empty streets and along desolate paths. He searched everywhere, but he failed to find the dog. For a while he was sad; but knowing that the people of that town were very accommodating, he told himself that the dog would find a good home. Comforted by this thought, he returned home to Lagos.

  TWO

  He arrived not knowing what to expect. While riding home in a taxi from the train station, it came as a surprise to him that the city where he had spent most of his adult life had changed drastically in three months. The smells and noises were still the same, and the people still spoke in so many tongues and tones. Yet there was something which had changed about the city. He could not tell what it was, but with his heart beating unevenly, he began to realise what Lela meant in her letter.

  He thought it very strange that no one had recognised him since his arrival. The taxi driver averted his eyes and avoided conversation. He wondered why. For a moment he remembered the legend of a great painter who was forgotten by his own people. Saddened by his fate, the painter had gone to a crowded square where he had drawn a life-size portrait of himself.

  Taduno gazed out of the window as the taxi crawled and then sped through the city. He wondered how someone could find themselves in their own painting.

  He arrived home under the cover of darkness and sneaked unnoticed through the back door into the old detached house where he had lived for nearly ten years. He took a deep breath to reacquaint himself with the home which life in exile had denied him. He chose not to turn on the lights so as not to draw the attention of his neighbours. Instead, he lit a candle.

  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.