The Line That Did Not Breathe

The call was made at 2:17 a.m. when Lagos was feigning asleep. The kind of fan I had over my bed was still, NEPA had taken light again, and the room was like a secret. My phone had vibrated once on the table. I let it ring, then picked it up.

“Hello?” I said.

Nothing answered me. It was nothing but a gentle, broad silence, as though a man had opened a door in a deserted hall.

“Hello?” I said again, louder this time.

Still nothing.

I sat up. There was a generator coughing somewhere down the street, and then the generator had gone to a low hum. A dog barked once and stopped. The call timer continued swinging, the number of seconds, and there was no sound in them.

“Is someone there?” I asked.

The silence did not move. It did not click or crackle. It was fine, like the other party was set in a mute position.

I checked the number. Unknown.

I hung up and went back to sleep, yet my body did not. My ears felt open, waiting. The phone shook once more after some minutes. Same number.

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I answered quickly. “If this is a joke, abeg stop.”

The silence was back, smooth and stable.

I took a stand and walked up to the window. The streetlight was off. The roofs appeared in white lines on the moon. I pictured a person standing at some place with the phone to ear when he is saying nothing.

“Talk to me,” I said. I heard myself whispering in the room.

The call was twenty seconds long and then it came to an automatic end.

In the morning I informed my friend Kunle at the bus stop. We waited till the yellow danfo, which was never on time, came.

"Probably the network problem," said Kunle, and he shrugged. “Or wrong number.”

“But it was quiet,” I said. “Not broken quiet. Clean quiet.”

Kunle laughed. “Silence is silence.”

At work, the calls came again. One during lunch. One as I was leaving. Each time, I answered. Each time, nothing. I began talking without greeting as though I was a continuation of a talk.

“Who are you?” I asked once.

“Do you need help?” I asked another time.

It did not stop being silent, but I heard it.

I was not able to sleep that night early. I was seated on the bed holding the phone. At the time that it sounded I was responding before the initial strike.

“I’m here,” I said.

long time was nothing. Then, very faint, I caught a breath. Not loud. Only enough to feel that it was real.

“Ah,” I said. My heart moved fast. “You can breathe. You can talk.”

The breath stayed. No words came.

“My name is Tunde,” I said. “I stay in Surulere. You can tell me something, in case you are calling me.

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Silence again. But it felt different now. Close.

“I will not shout,” I said. “I’m not angry.”

The breath became somewhat stronger and died away. The call ended.

The following day, the calls were stopped.

I waited. A week passed. Two weeks. I said I was done, yet at times I picked the phone and listened to it, despite it being switched off.

During one of the nights, I was caught by a sudden rain when my phone rang. Same number.

I answered. “Hello.”

A voice came, thin but clear. “Tunde?”

“Yes.”

“I am sorry,” the voice said. It was the voice of a woman, who was older than me. “I was not sure how to start.”

“That’s okay,” I said. I sat down slowly.

Your name was on the phone of my son, I saw. “He saved it as ‘Bus Stop."

I smiled a little. “We used to talk while waiting.”

“He is gone,” she said. I dial his phone but I do not hear anything. And I wanted the same silence when I called you. I did not want questions.”

The rain hit the roof hard. I listened to it with her.

“I understand,” I said.

We stayed on the line. Neither of us rushed. She did not say his name. I did not ask where he went. Silence returned, but it now rested between us, like a common chair, to which we both agreed.

But after some time she told me, "Thank you, thank you."

“Thank you for calling,” I said.

The call ended. The rain softened. The room felt cooler.

I had set the phone on the table. The silence around me, as had never been before, seemed complete, as though it had never been there before.