A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa (7 page)

In Boston all of the houses were tall and smashed together like books on a shelf. The horses seemed to prance higher as if they had nowhere to go but up. Hooves on cobblestones replaced the sound of the train. Emma felt she could lean into the city’s rumbling and it would catch her, everything so odd and regular. But she felt perfectly comfortable. Her husband looked out for her. They dressed for their photograph.

“Imagine yourself a tree on a still day,” the photographer said. Emma held herself tight, but still it seemed that something inside her clambered and sang. God and Henry were very close in her mind on that morning in Boston.

On earth as it is in heaven . . . remember.

Part
Two

CHILDREN

OF GOD

· 6 ·

Arrival

. . . I long felt the want of something fulfilling, something to give my life purpose as God willed. I know now more than ever that in going to Africa, I shall find what I seek. It seems to me I have embarked upon the road to eternal life.

—EMMA TO HER MOTHER, ABOARD SHIP, 1853

T
HE
N
IAGARA
SET
sail for Liverpool, and right away Emma learned how little she knew of ships. The second night she was seasick. A few days later, she smelled fire and ran from their room, but the flames were already extinguished. An overeager subcook had fired the stove too high. The watery deep sent shivers up her spine. “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee,” she whispered, walking on deck, forcing herself to face the sea. Henry, on the other hand, appeared completely at ease, conversing with the captain about weather and masts, passionate about movement.

England was a wearying, cold place, and she was glad when they could leave on the steamer. She was not seasick this time, even in a squall when they had to take their dinner sitting on the floor. Later on deck she saw her first Africans, or she supposed they were her first Africans, for they were not slaves but sailors, three of them, all at ease and confident among their mates. One day she saw a woman so well outfitted she looked as if a small empire were required to set her up. She had enough cloth on her head to make three girls’ smocks. On her body she wore a loose green bodice; her wrapped skirt corresponded in a green-and-white print, and about her she pulled a yellow shawl. To this arrangement was added sandals of dyed leather. Emma pressed her skirts; her dress seemed a little bland by comparison.

“Surely,” she said to Henry in the dining room, “she must be a princess.”

“More likely she’s kept by a European. It’s a disgrace,” he said.

Emma was doubtful. She could not imagine the woman being lorded over. Henry ate hastily and stood before she was finished. It put a first dent in her image of his fitness as a husband.

One day in mid-April warm winds came up from the south, smelling almost green with land, and Henry, eager for Africa, talked nonstop about the mission. “You’ll be called
oyinbo
for ‘white person,’” he said, “but it’s not to be taken unkindly.” They practiced conversations in the Yoruba language. He told her the history of the area where they would live, how the northern Fulani tribes had first conquered the Hausa and then swept southward, destroying the old kingdom of Oyo, getting as far as Ilorin, bringing Mohamedanism with them. But they had been stopped at Ogbomoso, a town he had once visited. Emma saw great brown men on steeds, carrying furling flags, but was challenged to remember which kingdom was which. “Imagine,” he said, “a line of mission stations, going into the interior to central Africa.” He ran his fingers up and down her sleeved arm as he said this, gazing out at sea.

* * *

E
MMA WOKE WITH
a sense of being alone. She felt along the bed. In a moment she lit a candle. Where was Henry? She became agitated. By the time he returned, she was distraught.

“Where were you?” she said, hitting at his chest with her fists.

“What is it?” he said. “Are you unwell?”

“You left.”

“I only took a stroll. Why are you crying?”

He pulled her to him, but she pushed him away.

“Has someone alarmed you?” he said.

She collapsed onto the bed, shaking. How could she begin? At last she thought she could compose herself, and she sat up, wiping her face. “You know I am sincere,” she started, “about our work.” She stopped, overcome by her own pity. Then she felt another surge of desperation. “We can’t be always moving,” she said, turning her face to him, pleading and angry, “up and down the country. You must stay with me!”

“My dear girl,” he said, sitting beside her, pulling her close. “We’ll be fine. I’m here. You’ll see the house. Remember, I told you of Rev. Moore. We have enough white people for a village.”

It was a silly, ridiculous thing for him to say, and her heart turned at his effort for her. She even laughed in a sad way.

They lay together again.

In the morning, Henry woke her, bringing coffee. “I’ve saved some good news.”

Emma thought he looked more stalwart than ever.

“The Smithsonian has agreed to publish the Yoruba vocabulary I’ve been at work on, as soon as I finish the manuscript. They want a basic grammar with it—idioms,” he said.

Emma forgot all about her doubt, her husband’s leaving in the night, talk of moving to the interior. He was so brilliant and true, she could serve him as a handmaiden if he asked her.

The port at Bathurst was deep, allowing the ship to dock close in. Henry went ashore to purchase rope. Emma waited on deck. It was becoming quite clear to her that she did not like this being alone when he was the only person in the world she knew. What if something happened and he never returned? She imagined all sorts of disaster: Someone had lured him into an alley to take his money; he had fallen and hit his head and lay wounded, unable even to send for help. At last she spotted him on the wharf, and all night she clung to him. The next day he was sick with dysentery. Her fear of losing him the day before made her oddly happy to nurse him. A small dosing of laudanum improved the dysentery, but Henry was weakened and one night she woke to find him shaking so with chill she feared he would fall out of bed. African fever, the captain told her. “Do you mean malaria?” she said.

“Something like that,” he said.

She treated her husband as the captain instructed: extra blankets for the shivers and cool baths for the fever that followed. She fed him sugar water. The pattern of chills and fever repeated itself three times, and only on the fourth day would Henry agree to a little quinine from his medicine kit. He gagged on the bitter drug. “It’s worse than the malaria,” he said, gulping water furiously. But it seemed to turn the illness. In her journal she recorded the first sickness:
cold, heat, cold, heat, X 4. Very depleting of husband and myself in worrying over him.
She meant it as a helpful note, but when she returned the journal to her writing box she felt a little sorry that it had been necessary to fill the beautiful pages with a portrait of Henry in weakness.

Once well, he was twice impatient with her. She attributed his state to the illness and forgave his diminished gallantry. She considered adding another note to her journal, about the effect of illness on the spirit. But then Henry was so considerate in their intimacy.

At last they arrived at Accra. After breakfast Emma discovered a fullness in her throat. Her brain seemed dull and she thought she should return to their room and find a less constricting dress. She sank into bed and fell asleep. When she woke, she was chilled to the bone. “It’s my turn to nurse you,” Henry said, but six blankets could not warm her. Finally she slept again only to wake with her head afire. The illness was like an animal in the room that she watched from a perch outside her body. In the morning she lay absolutely still, her eyes following an oblong of light from the portal as it moved across the wall, turning from white to pink. When the light was gone, she could still see it with her eyes closed. Her whole preoccupation was holding the light against the animal. On and off she slept. When the fever broke, she was drenched in sweat; the tangled mass of her hair took hours to comb. They weighed anchor in Lagos on May 1, but Henry and Emma remained on board two days due to the roughness of the sea. They witnessed an unloading of coffins. “What are those for?” Emma said.

“British officers bring them on assignment,” Henry said.

Emma was too weak to experience dread. If she had to endure the African fever too many times, she might rather die. Early the next day, she and Henry were lowered into a canoe that took them to a lardman barque waiting in the shallows. Emma observed the long belt of green along shore, huge crashing breakers on a short steep beach. She held Henry’s arm with both hands. “I’m going to close my eyes,” she said.
God be with us
, she prayed in her heart.

“You’ll miss your entrance to Africa,” he said.

“I’ve already seen it,” she said.

Heading into a Lagos crowd was different from viewing the Bathurst market from deck. Everyone shouting and calling
oyinbo
, white man. Children running like low-flying agile birds. Men along the street taking advantage of their arrival as a good time to rest, watching and pointing and carrying on with each other. A thick smell of fish and smoke. This was a different sun. It scattered color and rearranged it. Blue under the curves of coconut palms. White on the ground. Red shadow where the gullies ran. The sky green. Emma raised a hand to shelter her eyes. A boy pushed a toddler into their path. When she reached for him, the poor child wept as if he had been left in a lion’s den. Everyone laughed. Emma held on to Henry.

“There’s Daniel now,” he said. They were to stay at the guesthouse of the Anglican mission—also known as the Christian Missionary Society. Henry had told her of the native British agent who would come to greet them and look to their loads. As Henry conferred with him, Emma noticed several women headed their way, all with trays on their heads and most of them only half dressed. The bottom half was dressed, the upper half full open to the sun. She knew to expect it; Henry had told her. But to see them coming was an altogether different matter. Emma felt herself utterly naked and ashamed.

“Mah,” one woman said. “Please, buy.” A fly landed on the woman’s chest.

“Not now,” Henry said to the seller.

The woman clucked. “Please mah, buy,” she said, lowering her tray, displaying the contents. Emma recognized nothing.

“She knows English,” Emma said, trying hard not to look at the woman’s chest.

“Enough to bargain,” Henry said.

Daniel intervened, dusting the women away, and by pulling her hat close around her face, Emma was able to walk the three necessary blocks to the guesthouse without seeing much.

“A bath,” Emma said when the British woman asked what she could get for her. Shown to their room, Emma saw that their bed frame was set in tins of water. This was against ants, Henry told her. She wondered if it might be against scorpions too. This nearness of danger brought her personal effects leaping to mind. “My writing box!” she said. “We didn’t leave that to the agent, did we?”

“He carried it on his head, coming with us, didn’t you see?”

“Please go get it,” she said, trembling.

At dinner they learned that their Ijaye associate, Rev. Moore—the man who, with Henry and Emma, would be enough for a white village—had gone to England to see to a deceased uncle’s estate. “He expects to be back in three months’ time,” their hostess reported. Emma was disheartened.

When they took their first walk down a Lagos street a few days later, she found her new world more harmonious than what she had experienced on their initial landing. Because the British women strolled along these lanes, she was not such a spectacle. The native yards were neatly swept, every one of them boasting lovely shade trees; however, the doors to the houses were so low that Emma could not imagine getting her skirts through. Then suddenly, she heard a rallying cry and from every corner women emerged with baskets on their heads and babies on their backs, several of the women uncovered in the manner of the ones who had so distressed her. Her hands flew to her bodice, the sense of harmony extinguished.

“They’re going to collect fish for the evening meal,” Henry said.

“If you don’t mind, let’s turn back,” Emma said, her eyes stinging. How would she ever become accustomed to such immodesty?

She sought the high veranda of the mission guesthouse and had a good cry, but it left her dull, not restored. Out in the harbor she saw a ship. They might still escape. No. Henry would not leave. She was wretched. He should have prepared her better. It was late afternoon when he came to call her.

“Your hair has fallen,” he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze. Then he squatted in front of her. “It’s time for tea.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh!” Her torment came back full force.

“What is it?”

“Those women,” she said.

“What?”

“They’re uncovered.” Her voice rose. “It’s shameful. I can’t bear it. Think of me!”

He lifted a fallen braid. “Pin this up,” he said, “and listen.”

She looked into his face, browner now from the days on deck.

“They are children of God. The custom here is different. We must love their souls.”

He stood and pulled her up and into him and she pressed her damp eyes against his shoulder. “I am not much help to you,” she said.

“You are perfect,” he said.

The next afternoon, Henry returned from town in good humor. “I have our carriers,” he said. “They wanted to rob me, but I’ve got them down to a reasonable price.”

It would be hard to rob a man in this country, Emma thought. The currency was strings of cowry shells, forty to a string, and bunched together into what was called a head. It took two thousand shells to make a dollar. A robber would need swift oxen to make away with such money.

Taking their leave on a Monday morning, Emma gazed on the comfortable accommodations of their British hosts, with their French moderator lamps and wool rugs and lace doilies. “Do be careful, dear,” one of the women said to her in an aside; “the swamps are full of boa constrictors and crocodiles.”

Henry estimated a full week’s journey to the house in Ijaye. Emma insisted that her writing box should be covered in burlap and carried in front where she could keep an eye on it. The man who picked it up placed on top of the packaged box a large fan of palm leaf to shield him from the sun. Other carriers assisted one another in heaving loads onto their heads, and off they went. Emma was carried in a chair for some way and then they took to canoes. Once out of the low country, Henry planned to purchase a horse. The early rainy season was underway and the increase of water swelled the vaporous lagoons. Emma dreaded to think what slimy things were in them. At one stop she watched a huge horrible insect emerge from a rotting log. Finally they reached a place with firm shore. Emma needed to relieve herself. “Where must I go?” she whispered to Henry.