Then, in the middle of the night, when I was still amongst the images, a mighty cry woke us up. I looked and in the darkness I saw Dad’s face. Then it vanished.

‘What did he say?’ Mum asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You didn’t hear?’

‘No.’

‘I did,’ Ade said in the dark.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said: “OPEN THE DOOR.”’

Mum rushed from the bed, tripped over my foot, and hit her head against something. She didn’t cry out. She opened the door and went back to the bed. Mosquitoes and night-moths came in. We slept but Mum got up and woke us, saying:

‘No onemust sleep. Wemust bringback your father’s spirit.’

TEN

WE SAT STILL. The wind blew in leaves. The air smelled of the forest and the sleeping ghetto. Strange dreams, floating on the wind, looking for dreamers, drifted into our room.

‘Tell us a story,’ I said.

Ade sat up. His limbs were peaceful.

‘Tell us the story of the blue sunglasses.’

‘Okay.’

We waited. Mum went and sat on Dad’s chair. She rocked back and forth. I saw Dad’s spirit hovering round her. Then it entered her and I heard Mum shiver. She got some ogogoro, made a prayer and a libation, and we drank. As if Dad’s personality were taking her over, she lit a mosquito coil and a candle. Then she lit a cigarette. She rocked back and forth in Dad’s restless manner of a great lion in a man’s body. Her face serious, her features altered, she began to speak.

‘Oneday Iwassellingmy provisions.Iwentfromstreettostreet.Thesunwasvery hot, there was no shelter in the sky or anywhere. I was tired. I began to see things. I began to complain, weepingabouthowhardthisworldis.ThenIcametoacrossroad. I saw a tortoise crawling out of the bushes and crossing the road and I was about to pick it up when it spoke to me.’

‘What did it say?’ I asked.

‘On another day I was hawking things in the city when a white man came to me. He had on the blue sunglasses. It was very hot. The sun and the dust made my eyes red. The white man said: “If you tell me how to get out of Africa I will give you my sunglasses.”

‘And what did you say?’

‘I said, “There are many roads into Africa but only one road leads out.” He said: “What road?” I said: “First tell me what the tortoise told me.” He was confused. “I don’t know what you aretalkingabout,”hesaid. So I told himthat I wouldn’t show him the only road out of Africa, Then he told me his story. He had been here for ten years. For seven of those years he was an important man in the government. Then all the Independence trouble started and for three years he tried to leave but kept failing. Hecouldn’tfindaway out.Every timehepreparedtoleavesomethingcamealong and prevented him. He even got on a plane but the plane went round the world and when he got out he found himself here, in the same place.’

‘So what happened?’

‘So I made him buy all my provisions. Then I asked him to tell me what the tortoise said. Hestopped and thought for alongtime. Then abus went past slowly. It had a motto written on its side. The white man laughed at the motto and read it out and I said that’s what the tortoise told me. ‘What?” he asked. ‘All things are linked,” I said. ‘What has the tortoise got to do with it?” he asked. I said: ‘If you don’t know you will never find any road at all.” Then he gave me the blue sunglasses and before he left he said: ‘The only way to get out of Africa is to get Africa out of you.”

‘Then what happened?’

‘On another day I was selling fish in the market. A strange Yoruba man came to me and bought all my fishes. When his hands touched them they all came alive and began to twist in my basin. I threw the fishes on the floor and they wriggled and I started to run away, but the man held my hands. ‘Don’t you remember me?” he asked. He was a black man but he was familiar in an odd sort of way. “I gave you the blue sunglasses,” he said. Then I remembered him. But it took some time, and I first had to turn and twist my mind around. He was the white man. His face and his nose and everything was exactly the same except that now he was a Yoruba man with fine marks on his face. “I met you five hundred years ago,” he said. ‘I discovered the road.” ‘What was it?” I asked. Then he told me his story. “When I left you,” he began, ‘I became feverish in the head and later in a fit of fury over a small thing I killed my African servant. They arrested me. I sat in a cell. Then they released me because I was a white man. Then I began to wander about the city naked. Everyone stared at me. They were shocked to see a mad white man in Africa. Then a strange little African child took to following me around. He was my only friend. All my white colleagues had deserted me. Then one day my head cleared. Five hundred years had gone past. The only way to get out of Africa was to become an African. So I changed my thinking. I changed my ways. I got on a plane and arrived in England. I got married, had two children, and retired from government service. I was in the Secret Service. Then before I turned seventy I had a heart attack and died. They buried me in my local parish cemetery with full national honours.” “So what are you doing here?” I asked him. I was afraid now. I was very scared. He said: “Time passed. I was born. I became a businessman. And I came to the market today to buy some eels and I saw you.” I said:

“But I only met you two weeks ago.” “Time is not what you think it is,” he said, smiling. Then he left. That is the end of my story.’

There was a long silence.

‘Strange story,’ I said.

‘It’s true,’ Mum replied.

The wind blew the floating dreams into our room. The yellow light of the candle fluttered. The candle had burned low. I felt I was in another place, a country of white fields.

‘Look!’ Ade said.

The wind had blown the dawn into our room. At the door, sitting on its tail, was a black cat. We stared at the cat in silence. It stared at us.

‘The world is just beginning,’ Mum said.

The cat turned and went back out of the door. We all got up and followed the cat. Sitting outside our door, her wounds still livid, was Helen, the beggar girl. We stared at her in puzzlement. Then she got up and went to the housefront. We didn’t follow her. When we went back into the room Dad was sitting up on the bed like Lazarus.

‘KEEP THE ROAD OPEN,’ he said, and fell back into sleep.

We touched him and he didn’t move. Mum was happy. Ade kept smiling. Mum was happy because Dad had begun to snore. Ade kept smiling because he could hear his father’s weary footsteps, as he made his long journeys, like an ancient hero searching for his son. Ade heard his father’s footsteps, heard the anxious hypertensive beat of his heart, and was following him through his guilt and confusion, as he made his way to our house. But Ade also smiled because his father had been delayed gettingto our place by a funeral cortege. It was not a big procession, and there were only a few mourners at that hour, all of them prostitutes, except for Madame Koto, who wore dark glasses and a black silk gown, and who was thinking about the money she could make from the fabulous political rally rather than about the prostitute whose body lay charred in the cheap wooden coffin and who had died from electrocution after the wind blew the tent away.