A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa (10 page)

“I do feel we did well,” she said on the walk home.

“It’s the first shot you need to make,” Henry said, and she saw he was unhappy with how he’d done.

At dinner, he ate little.

“Are you feeling ill?” she said.

“I hope not,” he said.

The following day Henry seemed withdrawn but took his usual walk into town to preach morning and afternoon. Two Mohamedan men escorted him home, and Emma thought this would enliven him. They were his greatest challenge and his greatest desire, and for three reasons she could tell. One, they were almost impossible to persuade on religious matters, and Henry loved debate. Two, he believed they worked on the minds of the heathen kings, persuading them against Christian missionaries. Unless some Mohamedans were converted, the road north would never open. Finally, she believed he thought of them as the Egyptians, a mysterious race of Africans, and he desired some knowledge from them. But Henry did not mention the men at supper. Emma hated to think her husband might be unhappy over her good show with the firearm, but she could find no other cause. Best to maintain her own equilibrium.

Monday morning she took up copying some of the vocabulary words he had asked her to inscribe into clean manuscript. This work went well, and that afternoon she met her students as usual, along with Tela, who always claimed Emma’s hands and seemed to bring a different child each time. For the first time, Emma pulled out the Yoruba book of ABC, which included brief teachings on the gospel. She had feared everyone would grab for it, but one of the boys took control, making everyone line up by height, and then she gave each a chance to hold the book, down to a toddler who could barely stand. Emma forgot all about Henry and served her young guests a pan of corn bread. She hugged each one before sending them home.

In the evening she spoke freely about the school. Henry listened and then clasped his hands together, turning them out as a man will do to crack his knuckles. He stroked his chin, pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped his forehead. Then he ran his fingers through his hair.

“My word, Henry,” she finally said. “What is it? You’ve been sour for days now. Nothing pleases you.”

He said nothing, and they sat in tight silence. The baby moved. Here was a great miracle, but Henry was so engaged in wounded pride he would rob them of joy. Hadn’t he required her to give up pride? Did not the same apply to husbands?

“You’re sour because I did well with the rifle,” she said finally. “I thought you liked my capacities. Why are you against them now?”

His lips seemed thin and when he opened his mouth, it was with a click, as if he had been forced. She expected a remark against her infemininity. He would quote Paul on women submitting themselves to their husbands. At the moment, Paul did not inspire her.

“We’re short on funds,” he said at last. His whole body seemed to constrict. For the first time, she thought he looked his age.

“What do you mean?” she said. She knew their supply of packaged goods was late; they had received letters but once. Still Henry had shared their accounts in Lagos, only three months back. They had enough to get them through the year and into January. A full third of their loads coming off ship had been cowries traded for in Accra, enough African money to last a good while. In addition, hadn’t Henry told her he had personal money in European coinage? She had trusted him to keep the large view while she tended her corner of the budget. A splintering fright filled her heart, and she wanted it to go away immediately. “How are we short?” she said when Henry didn’t speak. “We’ve followed our plan.”

“There have been expenses. It seemed best not to worry you—with the baby. But if you’re going to feed the multitude, you may as well know.”

How smallish of him! Feeding the multitude. “I can’t imagine a pan of corn bread has put us back,” she said.

“I thought you wanted to know,” he said.

“Yes, but putting it on me for giving crumbs to children.”

“Every bit counts,” he said.

“Perhaps you could enlighten me to the additional expenses,” she said. The room was hot, and she got up to push the shutters open.

“You’ll be sick with the evening damp,” he said, and got up just as quickly to close them.

“You’ve worried me plenty enough now,” she said, careless in her language.

“For one thing, I paid a man to clear the field and prepare the shooting lesson.”

“Oh, Henry, that can’t have cost more than two strings. Certainly our personal account has not been expended.” She said this more as a question than a declarative.

“If you don’t want to hear, I don’t know why you asked. Perhaps when you’ve cooled down,” he said. “I’m going out to smoke.”

As soon as he left, Emma took up her sewing. She should have been in charge of their funds. She knew how to keep books! After a while, she pulled out the diary, making a record she hoped someone might read:
feelings deeply wounded
. But as she closed the box, light struck the scallop on the lid; she remembered how in making the gift, Henry had seen into her heart. She considered going to him on the veranda. But he would not yield, not this soon. She must learn to see into
his
heart. She pulled the journal back out and blackened the line she had written. She prayed. “Let me grow in light and grace. Make me a solace to my husband. Bring us into your perfect harmony.” She snuffed the light, then lay with her hands crossed over her chest, listening to the drums, feeling the rise and fall of her breath.

· 8 ·

The Wasp

H
ENRY MADE A
selection of Yoruba words to send to the Smithsonian, along with a proposal for the grammar section of the book. He sealed the package before beginning a letter to the general secretary of the mission board.

Sept. 12, 1853

Dear Brother Taylor,

Greetings again from Ijaye in Yoruba land. We are in the rains here. It’s a fine thing on a Sunday morning to gather in the chapel as the clouds open and the people’s voices rise in thanksgiving. I wish there were a way I could capture the sound so that you might hear it.

The work progresses well. I preach at least twice a day. People gather in droves, in my own yard and in town. There has been no recent fighting in the country to distract their attention. As I speak of Jesus, I see the spark of the gospel in many a face.

We have been back in this country for nearly five months and we have received only one packet of letters. You can imagine how hard this is on my wife. I have made do on a single payment in addition to what we brought with us. If we do not receive something soon, we will be down to cassava flour. The trip upcountry cost double what I imagined. On the chance that my earlier letter did not make Richmond, I enclose again an itemized account.

Since I last wrote, I have been fighting illness, on one occasion shaking so violently my wife and cook must hold me. The fever inevitably deranges my spleen and liver. I might welcome such tribulation as a lesson in discipleship, but it is too much for a woman to bear.

Isn’t there another man who can come help us? My heart bleeds for the multitude of this country who have yet to hear the gospel. Two is better than one, and a threefold cord is not easily broken. If any brethren in Georgia . . .

Henry paused. He recalled that poor man in Texas, the one whose leg he sawed off. The whole panorama of Indian slaughter, fighting Mexicans. Women whose names he never bothered to know. His sinful years plagued him like the devil.

Emma entered the house. He slid the paper under his blotter. She went out again, but he left the letter where it was. Maybe he wished she had been less handy with the rifle. But that outing was the least of his concerns. Nor was it finances that worried him most, though he had calculated too close to his costs as a single man. Rather it was his health. Just after the wedding, his nerves seemed to worsen. He’d had to slip away and take care of himself on the train, drinking a whiskey. He hadn’t thought how much he would feel the responsibility of a wife. Perhaps he had been too quick in turning down Emma’s father’s offer of land—it appalled him to think she might consider him a blunderer. Then the sickness on ship and his spleen acting just as before. As glad as he was to think on a child, Emma’s condition brought an extra burden. It was a frightful lot: a wife with child in Africa, in a town far from the next station, and he her doctor.

If he were sick again, the waking nightmares might return. What would his wife think, seeing him in such a state? It was one thing to contemplate in a Georgia garden a husband out of his head, quite another to confront his craze in an African town, far from family and friends.

In a thatch enclosure at the back of the kitchen, he washed in cold water. Midway through his toilet, he checked the area of his spleen. It protruded slightly, but it wasn’t worse. Henry had enough medical training to be haunted by bulges. He was likewise troubled by breaks and erosions in the skin. This fear he transferred to cracks at the bottoms of houses, fissures in the earth, interstices anywhere indicating a breakdown. One of his toenails had developed a fungus, making it thick and yellowed on one side. He tried to keep it filed and neat and yet, viewed in a certain light and from the right angle, he could see into the nail as into a small catacomb.

Back at his desk, he felt more confident for the cleansing and finished the letter to Taylor. Henry turned his wedding band. He considered that his progress with Emma had been good; she was adaptable, if occasionally smug. For a moment he let himself remember her at night, the pale crescent of her collarbone, her arms winged back against the sheets. This point of charity helped him feel his mastery more keenly. Their time in bed was more than good; it was sublime, and the understanding that God had allowed him such a gift after his early sinning rekindled his conviction.

A map of the African country lay to his right, and he pulled it to the fore of the desk. With Lagos now under British rule, the mission could assume a permanent office in the port city. The next station would be Abeokuta, where the Anglican mission was strong. It was a great town to be sure, almost glorious, nestled in rocky cliffs, rising and falling in stony waves. A green missionary could stay there, maintaining a church and serving as a relay station for those farther inland. Next was Ijaye, his present residence. If only another man could be sent. After Ijaye came Ogbomoso; he had scouted the town on his last tour. The altitude was higher, the land drier. It was a perfect location for his next move, and the king was eager for a white man. Henry kept his pencil aloft, taking care not to damage the map. After Ogbomoso came Ilorin, a true Mohamedan town. The first time he had seen the turbaned men in flowing robes mounted on their gaily caparisoned steeds, his heart had run with the eagerness of love. Not as one loved women but as one loved the greatness of the earth. The men seemed purely themselves like the horses they rode. If only he could reach them.

Something in Henry pressed forward, as if motion itself might yield the miracle of contentment he had sought as far back as he could remember.

A wasp came into the room, and Henry watched its lazy spin. It had been building a nest for two weeks but accomplished little. Emma had asked why he allowed the thing. “I want to see how long it takes,” he said. He was beginning to believe the wasp might never finish. Amazing how even the insects slowed in the heat. “You carry on,” he said to it. “Let me see what you’ve done by tomorrow.” Henry touched up his hair in the manner he liked and found his hat. Rev. Moore was due to return any day. The fellow was a bit odd, a confirmed bachelor, his station a mile’s distance from Henry’s house, uphill, through town, and down the other side. He might as well walk over and see if Moore’s servant had the house in order.

The man had arrived the evening before. “Why didn’t you send someone to alert me?” Henry said.

“No need. I was just getting ready to walk in your direction,” Moore said.

There was no mail from home, only a note from David and Anna Hathaway, Anglican missionaries in Ibadan, another large town in the region. Moore had stayed with them on his way up. Twice before, Anna had sent gifts to Emma by carrier. There were newspapers from England, but neither payment nor supplies from the board in Richmond.

Henry started home, feeling more tender toward his wife. He wished he had a letter for her.

The fellow nearly ran into him. “
Wahala
,” he cried, “trouble—at the town gate.”

From twenty yards back, Henry could see how oddly the body lay. Closer by, he recognized the young man who had asked for baptism some weeks ago. A medallion of blood pooled at his head. His confederates quickly related the story. A hunt. The lad was on the lookout in a tree; a branch snapped and he had fallen, hitting his head on a rock. The mother was sent for. Henry knelt beside him. “Can you hear me?” Henry said.

“Yes, master.” The fellow’s mouth smelled like broken twigs.

“Do you believe that Jesus is the true Lord, the Son of God, the only Redeemer, who died to save you and rose on the third day?”

“Yes sah.” Barely a whisper.

Henry ordered someone to find water.

“By the grace of God you are saved,” he said to the young man with the broken head.

The hunter seized, then relaxed.

“Because you desire it, I will baptize you,” Henry said, his hands on the fellow’s still heart. An African lament began, the down tempo of men, the high trills of women. The young man’s eyes never opened, so there was no need to close them. When a woman brought water, Henry poured it on the lad’s forehead and kissed him.

The incident troubled Henry, and he spent the afternoon outside the town, walking through farms and saluting the folks he found along his path. He came upon a baobab grove of three trees, decorated with magic trifles and a diviner “on seat” in a little mud house for anyone who came by needing his fortune told. In the shadow of the trees, Henry told himself that the death of a Christian believer was cause for celebration, but still he trembled, thinking on the young man’s broken head. Finally he shook himself up. “What a fool I have been,” he muttered, “fretting on matters small as grocery money when men are dying about me.” Thinking so, he experienced that strange excitement that came with fighting, desire and fear together. Back at the house, he added a
p.s.
in his letter to Taylor:
Wife with child.
A reliable man would carry it to Abeokuta; the letter would be in Lagos in five days and might arrive in Richmond by the end of the month. After sealing the envelope, he examined the wasp’s nest. “Not one bit of progress,” he said aloud. The experiment was over. He took a stick and knocked it down.

Midafternoon, Henry talked with two of his churchmen about dividing the town into sections for preaching. Privately, he considered his wife, how through preoccupation with her he had let himself weaken. He embellished this train of thought. Emma was overindulged. He had become distracted by baser whims. They must resubmit themselves to their calling, and being husband and minister, he must lead. This thought once gained shone clear as a glorious rainbow.

After supper, he offered Emma the newspapers and the letter from the Hathaways. When it seemed she might speak, he moved ahead of her, reporting the young man’s death. Even then, he did not allow himself to show feeling and made little room for her to express sympathy. His voice carried forward like a locomotive at set speed.

“I have let myself tarry like that wasp,” he said. “Our true home is not this house but the church, and our task is to build up the kingdom. We will spend more time in prayer. In the afternoons when it is too hot for you to be out-of-doors, you will copy words into the manuscript for the vocabulary. With concerted effort, we might send the whole off before the baby arrives.”

Emma looked at him with large eyes, her hand on her belly. He remembered she had already been doing the copying. How could he have forgotten? Well, she could do more.

“Do you understand me,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

He thought he had gained enough ground and patted her hand. “Invite Moore to dinner.”

“Yes,” she said.

Henry kept to himself in the bed. The next morning he was up before daybreak, took a cold breakfast alone, and when Duro arrived, left word for Emma that he would not be home for dinner. He preached all through the town, finally arriving at the night market, where he ended with the parable of the talents and the servant who buried his when he might have invested for God. Duro was waiting on the piazza with a lantern, a shower of light escaping the tin globe. “Thank you,” Henry said. “You may go to bed.” The man said nothing, but turned, and Henry thought:
He’s hers now.

He kept this pace for two weeks. He was grateful Moore was back. The British missionary dined with them regularly. Henry introduced topics to draw Emma to converse with the reverend and let his mind dwell on his own work. His stamina was good, and the crowds he drew were lively. He was sure his health was improving. Wouldn’t it be so, God rewarding him for the renewal of his commitment? Their little chapel swelled to overflowing, crippled men coming in to sit on mats, just as in the New Testament. Emma led the choir, and he thought she seemed content enough, expecting the baby. The rest of the congregation joined in on the chorus, with all sorts of improvisation. Women in the front began to dance, their arm bracelets adding to the general pitch of music. Even some birds flew in and circled around. Henry thought he had gotten the balance of things in goodly order.