Still he did not turn. I began to feel uncomfortable, standing there within the door, waiting. Then he started and turned. He looked surprised to see me. I was surprised that he was so young. My auntie said he was the only person that knew anything about anything on Poverty Street. This man couldn’t be more than twenty-five. (He was actually twenty-eight, I found out later.)

‘Welcome. We’ve never met before…’ he began, then he stopped and snapped his fingers. ‘You are… you are Madam Godwill’s nephew, from Jos?’

Everyone called her that, because of her restaurant. Her name was Rachael, Auntie Rachael.

‘She said she’d send you over. Come in and sit down. What is your name?’

He was seated on the only seat in the room. There was only the bed left. He pointed at it. It was unmade and covered with clothes; I pushed aside the shirts and trousers and sat down. Now I had to turn my head to see him. He was back staring out through the window at the lighted windows of the storey buildings. His head was bushy; he had a goatee that made his pointed jaw more pointed, like a needle, and infinitely long. I told him my name.

‘My name is Joshua,’ he said.

Apart from the bed and chair and table, the only other furniture in the room was a big stack of books on the floor at the head of the bed, on the side near the wall. Perhaps he was an insomniac, like my father, whose stack of books lay in exactly the same position in his room. My father said certain books could act like sedatives when you can’t sleep at night. I leaned over and picked up the one on top. The title was in a foreign language – not French. Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. But the text was in English. I leafed through it idly, waiting. I heard the chair creak; I closed the book.

‘You like the book?’ he asked, coming over. He was in jeans and singlet. His feet were bare – the toes long, the big toes pointed away from the others.

‘The title is not in English.’

‘German. Karl Marx was the founder of Marxism – that is, if you consider Marxism purely as an ideology.’

I didn’t understand exactly what he meant, but I nodded.