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.
He
