and not so pretty girls who smiled at him. And he actually took time to gaze at them, and even to wonder about them.
‘You haven’t mentioned Janet since I returned,’ Taduno observed in a rare moment of light-heartedness.
Aroli made a face. ‘She left me. Said I was not giving her the stability she needed.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’ He wished he hadn’t brought up the topic.
‘It’s okay. I mean, I have moved on.’ Aroli shrugged.
Aroli’s tone of voice piqued Taduno’s curiosity.
‘Anyone new, any new one?’
Aroli laughed. ‘Not really. I’m taking a break.’
‘Taking a break?’
‘Women are too much hassle.’
Taduno took a long pull at his drink.
Aroli gulped some beer too and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘I don’t need women now, I need money.’ He laughed to himself.
The voices of the revellers began to get louder, much louder than the afro music blaring from four giant speakers which shook with fright at the intensity of the music emanating from them.
At a nearby table an argument broke out between two men: one with a long beard, the other with a bald head, two opposite people. The man with the long beard was tall; the man with the bald head was short. And their argument went in opposite directions.
‘Mr President is the Antichrist,’ the man with the long beard said loudly.
‘How can he be the Antichrist?’ the man with the bald head countered. ‘He is just an evil dictator.’
‘I say he is the Antichrist! Check out his record. He started out by running the Nigerian army all by himself. Then he overthrew the civilian government and began to rule the country all by himself. Next he will want to rule the whole of West Africa, then Africa, and then he will rule the whole world all by himself. He will unify the world under one government, and then we will all be forced to take the mark of the beast. And you tell me he is not the Antichrist?’
‘I disagree. The North Korean dictator is the Antichrist. He will destroy Japan, then America. Then he will force all other countries of the world to bow to him. And he will become the Supreme Leader of the whole world.’
‘You don’t know what you are saying.’
‘Look, let me tell you, all the President wants is to become the richest man in the world, nothing more. He is not interested in becoming the Antichrist and ruling the whole world. Call him a thief, call him a looter of our national treasury, but certainly not the Antichrist.’
The argument went back and forth until it ended in a brawl. As bottles and chairs started flying, Aroli got to his feet. ‘I think it’s time to leave,’ he said.
Taduno grinned. The people were beginning to inspire him again.
*
He played his guitar all night that night, alone in the upper room. He played quietly. His music told the story of two opposite people, one tall and one short; one with a long beard and the other a bald head, two brothers who wanted to kill each other over nothing.
As night got sleepier, he dimmed the lights and hid himself in the shadows drawn across the room. Peace settled upon him. He moved around in a slow dance; and, seeing himself as never before, he realised that he had become one with the shadows in that room.
SIX
His practice sessions got more intense as the days went by. Most times he practised alone while Aroli went about the business of earning a living as an estate agent, taking okada rides from one appointment to the next, sweating to sell and buy houses for people, or to find them affordable accommodation, often with very frustrating results.
The rest of Taduno’s neighbours began to take an interest in him once again. They wondered why he locked himself away for long hours, sometimes for a whole day. Driven by renewed curiosity about a man who had made a strange entry into their lives, they would gather on the street outside his door, and listen, entranced, to the beautiful music that floated from an open upper window. They wondered why his voice did not accompany the music of his guitar; so they waited, hoping to hear the sound of his voice, curious to know what it sounded like in song.
But all they heard was the faint music of his guitar. And they did not know that the reason why they did not hear him sing was because he was afraid to hear the sound of his own voice.
*
Sometimes, Judah came to watch him play his guitar. Their friendship was growing. The boy would just sit with his hands on his cheeks and wonder at the beauty of his music. He found it amazing that he understood the meaning of his wordless songs, and he could not understand by what magic the strings of his guitar responded to his touch with words so simple and colourful.
‘The song you just played is for Anti Lela,’ the boy told him one day.
‘You can tell?’ he responded with a smile.
‘Of course I can tell. I can tell you miss her so much.’
‘Yes, I miss her so much, and I’m doing everything possible to find her.’
‘I know you will find her soon,’ the boy said hopefully. ‘Your music will help you to find her.’
‘Yes, I will find her soon,’ he replied sadly. ‘You see, my voice is bad at the moment. I need to discover it to find Lela.’
The boy nodded in understanding.
And he played yet another song, about a boy and a man, two people who loved a woman so dearly it was difficult to tell who loved her most. He knew that the woman could hear his song from a distant place, and this knowledge lifted him with inspiration as he danced with practised steps in tune with his music.
*
After a week of endless rehearsals, playing the guitar without attempting to sing, he found his way, in the company of Aroli, into the heart of Mushin, to the studio where he started his music career. On the taxi ride to the studio, he was overcome by a flood of memories.
He recalled that morning in June, almost twenty years ago, when he first walked into the studio as an eighteen-year-old. He had learned of the studio days after he arrived in the city on a rickety bus from the village, with a big dream and a battered guitar which his father had given him as a birthday gift. Intrigued by the name ‘The Studio of Stars’, he made up his mind that it would be the studio that would make him famous.
And so, early one morning, a month or so after arriving in the city, he found his way to the studio. His heart was beating unevenly, and all he could think of was whether they would accept his kind of music. He arrived at the studio and walked into a brightly lit corridor, with his battered guitar dangling from his shoulder, and the first person he encountered was a short squat man with an Afro cut, dressed in a colourful buba top and jeans. He thought the man looked funny in his odd combination of native top and western trousers. And his nerves suddenly disappeared
