Drummer Boy in A World of Wise Men – Tobi Ogundiran

Dele stepped out of the house and into a world misted over. He groaned and rubbed his eyes, wishing he could have slept in a little more, at least long enough for the sun to rise and chase away the mists. He staggered to the side of the house, still half-asleep, tied several empty water kegs to the handlebars of his bicycle, then swung onto it, pedaling out.

Harmattan had come out of nowhere, and several months early. Dele hated the dry, cold air and how it made his skin ashy and cracked like the bark of an old tree, how it sucked the moisture from his lips so that he was forced to coat them with oil, lest he yawned or laughed or smiled suddenly and his dry lips split in a spray of red blood. Most importantly, he hated how the mists reduced visibility and made him feel like he was the last boy in the world, the others gone someplace far where he would never see them again.

The predawn silence hung heavy as a wet blanket. Except for the rhythmic creak of Dele’s rusty pedals and the occasional small explosion as he crushed a stone beneath the wheels, there was nothing to be heard. He climbed the arched stone bridge leading to the stream. Mists churned on either side, thick and white as clouds. If he squinted a little, he could imagine he was high up in the clouds on a road leading to a happy place. A different world perhaps. One where his mother loved him and his father had not left them –

Dele came to a screeching halt.

Someone was blocking his path. Shrouded in the mists was an unnaturally tall figure. It was hard to tell what they were wearing, but it looked like a single white cloak, made of the mists themselves. A large, fraying wide-brimmed hat cast a shadow over the face. And in both hands was a long staff.

Dele felt his mouth go dry. “Hello?” he called, his voice barely a whisper. Dele was not the bravest of boys, he would be the first to admit. In fact, it was one of the reasons he hated having to get up so early to fetch water from the stream. But it was morning, and all irrational fears belonged in the dead of the night.

He blinked and the figure vanished. Dele shook his head, relaxing his death grip on the handlebars and tried to calm his thrashing heart. His imagination had always been overactive. That, combined with mists, and the fact that he was still half-asleep. He must have conjured something that was not there.

That was what he told himself as he resumed his pedaling down to the stream.

*

The small wooden shack poking out the side of the main house like an afterthought had been his father’s workhouse. Even now, three years later, Dele half-expected to see Papa striding out, a wide smile on his lips, saying Dele, my boy, would you like to hear some new rhythms? Papa had been a drummer, his talent so unparalleled that he had been courted by several aristocrats in Ibadan, looking to add him to the ranks of their griots. Dele remembered the night he had last seen his father. The man had been standing just outside the shack, a silhouette beneath the half-moon, an unreadable expression on his face. If Dele had known that that would be the last time he would see his father, he would have hugged him tightly and never let go. He would have demanded to know what he was thinking, what that expression on his face had been. Now Papa’s face was a blurred picture in his mind’s eye, as though an unseen hand had smeared it in an attempt to blot him from memory forever.

Dele pushed his way into the shack and unhooked the now brimming kegs from his bicycle. Then he emptied them into the rusty water drum in the corner before stepping out.  As he stepped past the clucking chickens towards the front of the house, Dele heard voices.

His mother stood at the doorway, with little Funmi at her hip. She had a discoloured old wrapper tied around her breasts and was scowling at the two men before her.

“… appreciate it very much if you returned it to us.”

“I told you. I don’t know anything about it,” replied Mama, voice clipped. “Half the time I had no idea what that man was up to. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He left me with the kids and ran away.”

“Mama?” Dele asked, “what is going on?”

She scowled even deeper when her eyes fell on him. “Your good-for-nothing father, that’s what it is,” she said. “These gentlemen claim he didn’t complete his payment for the talking drum before he vanished.”

Dele looked at the gentlemen and felt a spike of fear. They were tall and thin and smiling. A smile which seemed to him too wide. Stretched and forced like a child’s impression of a happy face.

“What do you mean?” he said, in spite of himself. “Papa owned several drums. All of them were gifts –”

“Not quite,” said the man nearest to him, that rictus of a smile still on his face. “All but one, which he had us make for him and promised to pay in installments.”

Dele was dumbfounded. He knew all his father’s drums. He knew their history, their origins, and the names of the aristocrats who had gifted them. Never had his father had to pay for a drum.

“You’re lying,” he blurted.

“Dele!” Mama chided, but the man waved his hand and smiled. He took off his hat and squatted so that he was eye-level with Dele.

“It’s been three years!” he said. “Why are you just coming now?”

“We come from far away,” the other man said, and Dele could have sworn there was a flash of … something in his eyes. It was a look he had seen on the faces of the urchins in the town square: hunger, bordering on lust.

 “We only want to recover our drum,” he said. “Our … proprietors are quite displeased.”

“This drum, what does it look like?” Mama asked.

“Oh, it’s a talking drum,” said the first one smoothly. “It is quite unique in composition and structure. It has alternating bands of red and blue ropes holding both drumheads to the body.”

Dele’s heart gave a jolt. He knew exactly what they were talking about. He had found this drum in the shack merely weeks ago, buried beneath the mountain of his father’s belongings. In fact, he had secretly been drumming on it in the sugarcane field, and had been pleasantly surprised to find that he was good. Not quite as good as his father had been, but close enough, and that had made him feel, for the first time in three years, kinship with his Papa. When he drummed, he could feel Papa’s presence; he could hear his laughter and smell him.

“The shack,” said Mama, bouncing Funmi on her hip as she began to fuss. “Most of his things are there. Take the drum. Take all the drums, I don’t care.” And she slammed the door in their faces, leaving Dele with the two men.

“Well,” said the first man after a moment’s silence. “Would you like to come with us to the shack?”

Dele shook his head ever so slightly, petrified. There was something wrong, something awfully wrong about these men and he couldn’t put his finger on it. But he knew, as surely as he knew his name, that they must not have his father’s drum.

The men exchanged identical looks before nodding at each other. They swept towards the shack in eerily mirror-like movements, flowing kaftans snapping at their heels.

Dele watched them go, watched them vanish into the shack, before he turned and stumbled into the house, racing past his mother who was banging pots and plates in the kitchen. He raced up the stairs to his bedroom where he locked the door and dragged out the knapsack from beneath his bed. Then, kneeling on the floor, his heart thrumming in his ears, he pulled out the talking drum from the sack.

The talking drum was easily the most beautiful thing he had seen. It was not new – far from it; the twin drumheads were jaundiced with age; there were bleached circles in the centre where the drumming stick had beat against them several hundred times; the hourglass-shaped wood connecting both drumheads was dark with age, and the red and blue ropes running across its length were well worn and fraying. Dele hugged it, cradling it in his left armpit as if he were about to beat it.

This was the last piece of his father he had. This drum, more than all the other drums, had spoken to him. There was no way he would let them take it from him. Carefully, he replaced the drum in the knapsack, tightened the drawstrings and slipped it back under his bed.

Dele ambled over to the window and peered out at the shack, watching as the men came out and began arguing. He couldn’t hear what they were arguing about, but it was not hard to guess that they hadn’t found the drum. At the sight of them, that tingling feeling of unease returned. He watched them cross the front yard and knock on the door. Mama appeared in the doorway and after a few moments of terse conversation, she slammed the door so hard that the shutters of his window rattled.

The men hovered by the door. Dele stood, barely able to breathe, waiting to hear Mama’s angry footfalls as she ascended the stairs, coming to tell him he had been found out, to turn in the drum before she gave him a good ass-whooping. But no such thing happened. He heard his sister fussing downstairs, heard the soft coo of Mama’s voice as she calmed her. And the men, after what seemed like an eternity, turned to leave.

Dele watched them leave, weak with relief. As they turned round the corner, the taller one whipped around and looked straight at him. Dele jumped and hastily drew the shutters, but not before he saw the man wiggle his fingers in a bizarre appropriation of a wave, not before he glimpsed that disturbing, knowing smile.

Later that night, as Dele settled to sleep, he pondered why his feeling of unease around the men had felt familiar.

*

Cold. It was so cold.

Dele turned, burrowing deeper beneath the covers. Through the murky depths of sleep, he heard the clipped, rhythmic clack … clack … clack of wood on wood. It sounded as though someone were drumming. A clipped staccato. Dele opened his eyes and saw the wooden shutters half-open, snapping open and close as the wind buffeted them. Clack. Clack.

 That was why it was so cold. Groaning, Dele pushed out of bed to shut them. He could have sworn he had locked them before going to bed. In the dead of the night, the mists came out to play, and that frigid harmattan breeze took on a vengeful edge. The mists had poured into his room, covering the blackened wooden floors like a rug of clouds. Dele shook his head, slammed shut the shutters and slid the bolt in place, then dived for his bed.

He froze.

In his sleepy inspection of the room, he had seen something. Something tall and white lurking in the shadows. Dele cracked open his eyes, then slowly turned to look in the corner.

The thing from the bridge was watching him.

It was tall, so tall that the tip of its hat grazed the ceiling. White mists crawled down its body, bleeding down its form to join the swirling mass on the floor. In one hand was a long staff.

The sleep burned away from Dele’s eyes. He scrambled back on the bed, until his back was pressed up against the headboard, until he had nowhere to go. He would have screamed, but fright ate his voice, overpowered him, paralyzed him. The room fell away, reality breaking into fragments like a puzzle shattering into its individual pieces. The world as he knew it vanished, until there was just him and that thing which was watching him, alone in a suspension of absolute darkness.

Then it moved – glided – towards him. It reached down over Dele, bent like a stalk in a breeze, like a long palm tree. Dele looked up beneath the hat and saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. A grey, wet hand snaked out of the cloak of mists and closed a three-fingered fist around his upper arm.

It burned. Good God, it burned. He heard a swooshing wind, and a cacophony of baritone laughter. He saw fire and darkness and a thousand roiling bodies in the yawning maw of a mountain.

Dele found his voice and screamed –

*

 – awake to find the sun streaming through the open window and his mother standing over him, yelling at him to move his lazy behind to the stream before she gave him an ear clout he would never forget.

*

Later that evening, Dele sought out his secluded spot in the sugarcane field and drummed.

He beat the drum and it talked. It was not called a talking drum for no reason. Yoruba was a tonal language, with highs and lows and mids, like the notes of a musical scale. Indeed, it was musical, and the talking drum, in the hands of a skilled drummer could mimic the inflections of a speaker.

Dele danced in the sugarcane field, kicking up dust as he coaxed a complex polyrhythm out of the drum, the tall endless rows of sugarcane stalks his rapt audience. He was deep in concert, in conversation with the drum. They were of one mind. With each stroke of the stick, he formed words; words formed sentences; sentences formed ideas.

He lost himself in the thrill of the rhythm, feeling that now familiar, trance-like conjuring. He could smell his papa, could feel his pride. In fact, a few feet before him stood Papa himself. He would remain there so long as he continued drumming. He remembered now. It seemed he could only remember when he beat the drum. It summoned his papa.

Tears sprung to his eyes. The sweet, cloying smell of sugar filled his nostrils. He could not stop drumming, would not stop drumming, for if he did the trance would break, and his papa would go again. And he did not want that. He wanted to be with him forever and ever.

And so Dele drummed. Even as his arms tired, even as the sun sank below the horizon and the skies bled a bright lavender. Even as the mists slowly crept out and the cold dried out his lips, splitting them as he grimaced and laughed and tasted blood. All the while his papa faded into existence, until he was no longer just a mirage but something solid, as real as the sugarcane stalk against which he rested.

And when exhaustion finally took him, he fell into his papa’s arms – his papa’s strong arms – and knew contentment.

*

Dele was aware of the sweet smell of sugarcane when he came to. He opened his eyes. By the warm light of the lantern next to him he could see old vines crawling across the ceiling, a set of rickety stairs leading up to a bolted trapdoor, and his papa, seated on a stool by the straw bed, worry etched across his features.

“Papa!” Dele threw himself into his papa’s arms, nearly toppling him off the stool. He buried his face in his father’s chest, as the floodgate of emotions he had kept bottled up ever since his papa’s disappearance was unleashed. Papa held him tightly, stroking his back as Dele wept. When he finally pulled back, staring into his papa’s face, he said: “Are you really here?”

Papa looked down at him, his mouth curved into a half-smile. “I am, my boy, I am.”

But Dele knew his papa well, could read the undertones in his voice. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I shouldn’t be here,” said Papa.

“But –”

He held up a finger, shaking his head. “You’ve done something. It’s —” he ran a hand through his sparse white hair, “Oh, I suppose it’s my fault … but how could I have known? It’s why I left …” he was speaking more to himself now.

“Papa …?” Dele asked tentatively.

“You should never have touched that drum,” said Papa. “You should never have played it.”

 “But it was the only way I knew to remember you! And it brought you back! Where did you go Papa? Why did you leave?”

Papa had a pained look in his eyes. “I left to keep them away.”

Dele looked at his father, saw the lantern-light reflected in his warm brown eyes. “Them?”

“The Wise Men,” he said.

Dele shuddered. He knew exactly who Papa was talking about. “The men who made the drum? They came –”

“Not those men. They are merely agents of the Wise Men. Minions. And they did not make the drum. The Wise Men are … well, in this world they might appear as tall beings, dressed in white, bearing a staff.”

Dele let loose a small gasp.

“You’ve seen them?” Papa asked sharply and when Dele nodded, he cursed.

 “Who are they?” Dele asked, voice barely a whisper. “These … Wise Men?”

Papa was silent for such a long time that Dele feared he would not speak. When he finally did, his voice was hoarse and sent gooseflesh springing all over Dele’s body. “Agents of darkness. Evil, evil creatures …”

Dele licked his dry, split lips. “And what do they want with me? With you?”

Papa looked at Dele, placed a large hand on his shoulder. “We come from a long line of drummers,” he said. “In the olden times we were called Gatekeepers. We play the talking drum and seal the gates which protect this world from the Wise Men and their devices.”

“This world? There are … other worlds?”

“Countless.” Papa buried his face in his hands, then ran his hand through his hair. “Three years ago, when I … left, it was because the Wise Men were gaining access. You will remember harmattan came early that year. The mists, the cold – these are all signs of their proximity. So I took my drum and went to investigate. When I found the gate, I saw that it was open. Ripped apart. It was irreparable from this side; the only way to close it and keep it closed was to go to the other side.”

Dele looked at his father, tears in his eyes. How he loved this man. He had known, deep down that his father hadn’t simply abandoned them. He had held on to that knowledge even when Mama cursed his memory.

“What is on the other side, Papa?”

His father gave him a look.  In it, Dele saw it all. The horror, the terror. The evil.

“In time I would have trained you,” said Papa. “Taught you the nuances of Drumming.” He went on his knees, and held Dele tightly. Dele leaned into his touch, savouring it. He could smell his warm coconut breath. “Your yearning for me, however, was very strong. Every time you beat the drum, you filled it with power and gave life to your desires. You wanted me here and so you opened the gates.”

Dele’s eyes clouded with tears. “I didn’t mean to. I just … I missed you so much.”

Papa crushed him in a hug. “It’s ok, my boy. I know.” His deep voice rumbled in Dele’s ear.  “I’ll have to lure them back to the other side and drum the gates close again.”

Dele held him tightly. “No! Papa! Don’t go!” He could not bear to lose him again, not when he knew what it was to hold him again, to hear his voice, to feel his beating heart against his chest. “Why does it have to be you? Are there no other drummers?”

“Ours is not to question, or to shirk, or to pass on our responsibilities to others,” said Papa. “Someday, when you’re older, you’ll understand.”

“Let me close it then,” said Dele. “I opened the gates from this side, I can –”

“No!” barked Papa suddenly. “No. You almost died, doing that. I’m surprised you were able to – you’re still too young for all this …”

They remained like that for a few minutes, Dele’s small arms wrapped around his father’s torso. Papa finally managed to pry him away. He lifted his chin. “Listen. The Wise Men are drawn to people like us. Because you opened the gates, your signature is all over it, and they won’t stop until they have you.” There was a pained expression on his face. “I can’t … I won’t let that happen.

“We are in an old cellar in the sugarcane field. In the morning I will lure the Wise Men through the rip and seal it again. Right now, they’re out there looking for you. But they can’t find you here –”

At that moment there came an ear shattering boom. The trapdoor rattled as if struck by a massive fist. Clumps of mouldy earth detached from the ceiling and dropped to the ground in putrid puffs.

There was a look of abject horror on Papa’s face. “The Wise Men,” he breathed. “Impossible. They couldn’t have found –”

He looked at Dele, then ran coarse, shaky hands all over him as though searching for something. He froze when he found it, looking at the three-fingered print on Dele’s upper arm where the Wise Man had seized him.

“They marked you,” said Papa disbelievingly.

Dele felt his mouth go dry. “I – it was a dream …” he croaked. Or was it?

“They won’t come so easily now, not until they have you.”

The pounding continued, the trapdoor rattling dangerously. Dele thought he could hear another sound; a haunting high-pitched shriek, like wind beneath eaves.

Papa crossed to the corner in two wide strides and seized the talking drum. He came back and knelt in front of Dele, slinging the strap around Dele’s neck.

“Once the door breaks,” he said, pressing the drumstick into Dele’s small and sweaty hands, “I want you to cloak yourself. Beat the rhythm of cloaking into drum – it shouldn’t be too hard for you.” He paused. “The drum will help you.”

Tears stung Dele’s eyes, and even though he knew the answer, he could not stop himself from asking, “and you, Papa, what will you do?”

Papa gave a shaky grin. “Force those things back where they belong and guard the gate as I always have. Don’t you worry, my boy, everything will be –”

Dele was already drumming. A tribal rhythm filled the air. The drum growled, then sang, then talked, invoking an incantation. Dele knew what he wanted, and it was not to hide, it was not to stand aside while his papa sacrificed himself. He wanted his papa here with him. And so he beat his thoughts into the drum, pounding his intentions into the yellowed drum skin.

The trapdoor exploded open and four Wise Men shot down the stairs, staffs angled like spears. Dele’s Papa rose up to meet them, and was met with a membrane of iridescent light: Dele’s drum was ablaze; twin beams of red and blue light sheared out of the two drum heads to form a ball of light which separated them from the Wise Men.

Papa turned to Dele, his face a mask of disbelief. “I told you to cloak yourself, not the both of us!”

But Dele had no ear for his papa. His will, the very substance of his soul was focused on holding that bubble of light, on keeping the prowling Wise Men out and away. His drumming hand was a blur of light and shadow. His vision swam. Blood, hot and sticky, trickled out of his nose, and he heard a high keening sound in his head. He was only vaguely aware of his papa before him, on his knees, his face a mask of terror and anguish, begging, begging him to stop, to let go –

But Dele would not let go. He would hold that bubble of light for as long as he could. Even if it killed him.

The creatures screamed with rage, pressing themselves against the ball of light, and each time they touched the bubble Dele could hear them, smell them, feel them. And it took everything to keep on drumming, but he kept at it even as he tired, even as his lungs turned to air, even as the ball of light grew smaller and smaller and the Wise Men clustered around like hounds at a feast. The bubble would not hold much longer; there was only one thing to do. Dele threw himself into the rhythms and searched for the gate.

Papa must have realized what Dele was about to do, for he reached for his own drum and struck up a counter rhythm.

“No – NO!” Dele felt the power wrenched from his hands; his drumming stuttered to a stop and the bubble popped out of existence. The Wise Men swarmed forward and were caught in the webbing of his Papa’s rhythms. They froze, flies in a web, shrieking abominably. Dele was on his hands and knees, tears streaming down his cheeks, watching his Papa drum and dance, and drum and dance. His Papa caught his eyes and grinned – a wholesome grin which crinkled his eyes – and in it was everything that went unspoken, every thought and promise that mere words could not quantify.

And then they began to fade. Their very image broke in the ripples of a disturbed river, washing them away and out of this world.

*

It took Dele a long time to find his way out of the plantation. It took him longer still to traipse back home. With dawn came the twittering of birds and a warm, golden sun. There were no mists, there was no desiccating cold; harmattan was gone. It never should have come in the first place.

 Dele met his mother and the town huntsman conversing in worried tones at the front of the house. She looked disheveled, like she hadn’t slept. When her eyes fell on him, she swept towards him, fury etched across her features.

“Where have you been, you this boy?”

Dele opened his mouth to speak, then burst into tears. The anger melted from his mother’s face and she dropped to her knees and swept him into a crushing hug.

“It’s ok, my boy,” she crooned. “You’re here, now. I was so worried. I can’t – I can’t bear to lose you too.”

And Dele held her tightly. Hadn’t he always yearned for this? For her to see him and love him? If only she knew how close he had come to being lost. And maybe she knew. She was his mother and perhaps she would always know. But now that he was here, in the safe confines of her embrace, he could handle the fact that Papa was no longer with them.

He, Dele, would be the drummer. He would keep his mother and sister protected from the malice of the Wise Men. And maybe one day, when he was old and strong enough, he would reopen the gates and fetch his father.

THE END