‘What happened to him?’

‘They hanged him.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘They hanged him.’

‘Who?’

‘Across the seas.’

‘The seas hanged him?’

‘No. Another continent.’

‘A continent hanged him?’

‘No.’

‘What?’ ‘They.’ ‘Who?’ He paused. I was confused. ‘Some white people.’ I didn’t understand. He took the picture from me and put it back amongst the others. ‘Why?’ ‘You’retoo youngto hear allthis.’ I becamemoreinterested. ‘Why?’ ‘Why what?’ ‘Why did they hang him?’ He was silent. I thought for a moment. ‘Is it because of the white bird?’ ‘What white bird? Oh, that one. No.’ ‘Why?’ He was silent again. Then he said: ‘Because they don’t like piano music.’ I could see he wanted to change the subject. He put the pictures back in the case.

His eyes were different. His voice had changed when he said: ‘Eight of the people I took pictures of are now dead. When I look at the pictures of deadpeoplesomethingsingsinmy head.Likemadbirds.Ishouldn’tbetalkingto you like this. You are a small boy.’ He stretched out on the mat. That was when I noticed that he smelt of a sweet perfume, a curious incense. I asked him about it. ‘For protection,’ he said. ‘Protection from my enemies.’ ‘I smelt it before you knocked on the door,’ I said. He smiled. He seemed pleased with his charm’s efficacy. He lay very quiet and after a while I thought he was asleep. I wanted to hear him talk. ‘Tell me a story,’ I said.

‘Blow out the candle and sleep.’ ‘Tell me a story first and then I will sleep.’ ‘If I tell you a story you won’t be able to sleep.’ ‘Why not?’ He got up and blew out the candle. The room was quiet. I could hear him breathing. ‘It’s a hard life,’ he said. ‘That’s what the rats used to say.’ ‘What do rats know about life,’ he said. ‘Why is it hard?’ I asked. He was quiet. ‘Go to sleep.’ ‘Why?’ ‘If you wait tillthesunbird starts to singyou won’t beableto sleep.’ ‘Will you come and visit us?’ ‘Every day.’ I knew he was lying. That was when I knew we wouldn’t be seeing him for a long time. It even occurred to me that we might never see him again. But his lie made me less anxious. I was going to ask him to promise that he would come and see us often, but he started grinding his teeth. I lay awake hoping that he would suddenly resume talking, the way he did when he was drunk. He did start to talk, but he was talking in his sleep, and I couldn’t make out what fantastical things he was saying. Then he turned, and he kicked, and his teeth-grinding lessened, and his speech quietened. He had convinced me. I would miss him.

In themorninghewas gone. I felt sad hewasn’t there. Hehad taken pictures of everyone except himself. And after a while I forgot what he looked like. I remembered him only as a glass cabinet and a flashing camera. The only name I had forhimwasPhotographer.HeleftawrittenmessagetoDadtosay hewasleavingand to thank us for our help. Dad was pleased with the letter and on some happy nightswe sat up and talked about many things and many people, but we were fondest of the photographer. And it was because of our fondness that I was sure that some day we would see him again.

BOOK FOUR

ONE

MADAME KOTO GREW distant. Her frame became bigger. Her voice became arrogant. She wore a lot of bangles and necklaces and seemed weighed down by the sheer quantity of decoration she carried on her body. She walked slowly, like one who has recently acquired power. Her face had taken on a new seriousness, and her eyes were harder than ever. I didn’t go to Madame Koto’s bar so much any more.

Dad spokebadly ofher,thoughatfirsthedidnotpreventmegoingtositinherbar. I would sit there amongst the flies which increased with the customers. When the thugs came in I would slip out and wander. Afterwards I would play in front of our house.

On some afternoons, after the first visitation of the thugs, it seemed that nothing ever happened in the world. In the mornings Mum went hawking. On some evenings she returned early. She often had a vacant look on her face, as though the market had disappeared.

In the afternoons the heat was humid. The shadows were sharp as knives. And the air was still. The boiling air made even the birdcalls sound like something heard in a stifling dream. The sweat of those afternoons became vapours in the brain. It became possibletosleep witheyeswideopen.Itwassohotthatsleepwalkingseemednatural. Time did not move at all.

I would sit on the platform in front of our house and watch the rubbish along the roadside reduced to crust by the flies and the sun. A flock of egrets, flying past overhead, always made the children jump up and down in the street, singing:

‘Leke Leke

Give me one

White finger.’

The children would flap their fingers, palms-down, to the flight of the birds. When the birds had gone, white dots in golden-furnace sky, the children would look at their fingernails and find one or two of them miraculously speckled with whiteness.

Time moved slower than the hot air. In the distance, from the forest, came the unending crack of axes on trees. The sound became as familiar as the woodpeckers or the drumming of rain on cocoyam leaves. The noise of machines also became familiar, drillingan insistent beat on thesleep-inducingafternoons.

Sometimes it seemed that the world had stopped moving and the sun would never set. Sometimes it seemed that the brightness of the sun burned people out of reality. I satoneafternoonthinkingaboutthephotographerwhenIsawaboy runningdownthe street, his shorts tattered, his shirt flapping, and he was chasing the metal rim of a bicycle wheel. Three men were behind him, also running. But as he passed the van a terrible light, like the momentous flash of a giant camera, appeared in the sky, blinding me with its brilliance, and I saw the boy’s shadow vanish. I shut my eyes. Luminous colours, like the flames of alcohol, danced in my eyelids. I opened my eyes and saw the metal rim rolling along by itself. The boy had become his own shadow. The three men ran past the metal rim. The boy’s shadow melted and the rim rolled over and fell near the gutter. I screamed. A dog barked. I hurried over and picked up the bicycle rim and went to the burnt van and looked all around and I couldn’t find the boy anywhere. I asked the traders at their stalls if they had seen the boy and they replied that they hadn’t seen anything unusual. I threw the rim on to the back of the burnt van, now bulging with rubbish, and sat in front of our compound, puzzled, annoyed.

That evening I heard that an old man who lived near us had been staring at a lizard, while drinking ogogoro in the afternoon heat, when a flaming-yellow angel flew past his face and blinded him. I did not believe the story.

TWO

THEN ONE AFTERNOON time moved and something happened in the world. I had been sleeping on the cement platform and when I woke the photographer’s glass cabinet was gone. Someone had set fire to the rubbish on the back of the burnt van. The rubbish crackled with flames, the smoke was black and awful, and through the afternoon the street stank of smouldering rubber and burning rats.

It was impossible to escape the thick smoke, which formed a haze on the hot unmoving air, and it was impossible to avoid the pungency of the smells, which were harsh on the lining of the throat. So I began to wander. There was music and dancing at Madame Koto’s bar. The place was packed with complete strangers. Madame Koto was singing joyfully above the loud voices and the vigorous revelry. The bar stank of cheap perfume and sweat and spilt palm-wine and trapped heat. The benches and tables had been moved. Paper handkerchiefs were soggy on the floor. Bones and cigarette stubs were all over the place. I looked for Madame Koto but all I saw were men in bright hats, women in phoney lace, waving white handkerchiefs in the air, dancing and stamping to high-life music. The men, covered in sweat, so that it seemed they had just emerged from steaming rivers, had bits of foam at the sides of their mouths. The armpits and the backs of the women’s dresses were wet. I couldn’t see where the music was coming from.