Ama (68 page)

Shyly, Ama changed the subject.

She said, “We have one thing to thank our oppressors for.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“They have given us a common language.”

“Do you think that we have to give them credit for that?”

“Of course not. They are the masters; we are their slaves; it follows that we have to learn their language. But we arrived here speaking many different tongues. We didn't know one another. Had you ever heard of a place called Angola? Now we know that we are all Africans.

“Do you remember,” she asked, “after I unlocked your chains, I tried to lead you to the boys?”

“Yes, but I knew that there were two of my own men in the sick-bay. They were stronger, in spite of their sickness. And there was another thing. I didn't want to involve the youngsters in what was, to me, an unknown and risky enterprise. As it turned out, I was right, wasn't I?”

“What I wanted to do was to get the boy Kwaku, to use as an interpreter, so that I could brief you properly on the situation up on deck.”

“That makes sense. I didn't think of it. I was impatient, anxious to get on with what we had to do.”

“A typical man,” she smiled.

“If there is one thing that this country has taught me, apart from Portuguese, it is to force myself to allow time for thought before making important decisions. It has been hard. It is not in my nature.”

“Do you remember, later, when we were standing together on the deck?”

“Of course.”

“I tried to tell you that I had locked the captain in his cabin. He was drunk. My plan was that you would take him hostage before tackling the guards.”

“You had locked the captain in his cabin?”

He slapped his forehead with an open palm.

“I didn't understand. If we had used the captain as a hostage we might just have succeeded in forcing the guards to leave at least one hatch cover long enough to let us unlock it. Oh, oh, oh. We were so close to success. If only I had understood and given more credit to that brilliant intelligence.”

He pointed to her head.

“Can you ever forgive me? We might have won. You would still have had both your eyes. And that boy I killed, the best of the lot he was, might have survived.”

“George Hatcher he was called,” she mused. “He was a good lad, simple, not a scrap of malice in him.”

She drew her thoughts together.

“Can I forgive you? There is nothing to forgive, bra Tomba. We were the victims of a cruel trade. We still are. We did our best to escape, but we never really had much of a chance. Even if you had gained control of the ship, what could you have done? Could you have sailed it, even with the captain and the six guards under your control? Where would you have taken us?”

“Some uninhabited stretch of the coast where we could have built a new society, where we could have lived in peace together,” he replied, but without the strong conviction that his words suggested.

“A
quilombo
in Africa? Like Palmares. Have you been told the story of Palmares?”

“Yes, I know the story and of other
quilombos
too. Even today there are some that survive.”

“And have they made any difference to our condition as slaves? No, my brother, that is not the way. You must talk to Olukoya. If we have a leader at this
engenho
, it is Olukoya. Olukoya will ask you, ‘Is it not true that we are many and they are few?'“

“That is true.”

“Then how is it that they find it so easy to control us?”

“It is because we are divided amongst ourselves. We are suspicious of one another, Akan of Angolan, Yoruba of Hausa.”

“Ahaa! Yet there are some things that unite us all.”

“That we are Africans; that we are black.”

“More than that.”

“That we are slaves, that we are treated as property to be bought and sold.”

“Bra Tomba, you are a good pupil!”

“Sister Ama,” he replied with a smile, “you are a good teacher. The more I listen to you the more I am astonished at the quality of your mind. It is unusual in a woman.”

“You sound like a
senhor de engenho
talking about his slaves, all his slaves. Women can think as well as men if you would only give us half a chance. Anyway, you flatter me too much. It is true that these ideas were in my mind, but they were all mixed up, without proper form. It is Olukoya who has helped me to understand. Without his guidance I would still be confused.”

“So what does this your Olukoya say we should do?”

Ama wondered whether she detected a note of jealousy in his voice.

“In one word, prepare.”

“Prepare for what?”

“To take over this country; to make ourselves the masters. Or, rather, to do away with masters altogether.”

“And how will we do that? It sounds wonderful but isn't it as farfetched as the dream of another Palmares?”

“Not if we do our work properly. Olukoya says we have two main tasks. One is to learn all the skills of the Portuguese that give them an advantage over us, particularly reading and writing, but also how to make sugar, since that is the life blood of this country.”

“And the other?”

“Olukoya says he can describe it best if you picture a spider's web. The centre, where the spider sits, is Salvador. The points where the threads meet are
engenhos
like this one. The threads are messengers, men like our Josef, who travel in and out. When the web is complete, our people in Salvador will be able to reach every
engenho
, practically every slave in the country. When we are ready the messengers will spread the word and we will rise together, all at the same time. If we do that they can never defeat us.”

“Hmm,” said Tomba. “Exciting things are happening in this place. I must meet this Olukoya.”

* * *

The sound of music floated up from the
casa grande
and the smoke from cooking fires rose in the still air.

She had taken him to the rocky outcrop which was her reading place.

“Did you know that the bridegroom was on the ship with us?” she asked him.

“You are joking, surely? How?”

“His name is William Williams.”

“I know that. I talked to the man he calls his valet.”

“The captain of our ship was called David Williams. This man is his nephew. He used to work for a white man at Anomabu, a man called Richard Brew. Brew died, the night of that first terrible storm, if you remember. Williams senior collected his nephew. He was going to take him (and us) to a place called Barbados, but then the second storm struck us and damaged the ship. That was how we came to Bahia. Williams (the uncle) never intended it. He must have left his nephew behind here when he returned to his country. Now the nephew is an important person, the ambassador of his king in Salvador.”

“When I first saw him a few days ago,” Tomba replied, “I thought his face was vaguely familiar, but I put the thought aside. I find it difficult sometimes to distinguish between the faces of white men. Now that I come to think of it, he gave me a strange look when I opened the door of the carriage for him. It was the first time I had seen him at such close quarters.”

He paused. There was a comfortable silence between them, as if they had known one another all their lives. From the
casa grande
there came the sound of cheering and hand clapping.

“Ama, tell me,” he asked, “how do you know all these things? About the voyage, about the whites?”

“You don't know much about me, do you? Nor I about you, for that matter.”

“Tell me, then,” he asked her, “tell me the story of your life. From your earliest memories. Your parents. How you lived. Tell me how you became a slave. Leave nothing out. Nothing. I want to know everything about you.”

“We will be here all night,” she warned him.

“Never mind,” he said.

He looked at her and she thought for a moment that he was going take her, but the moment passed and he lay back on the flat rock and closed his eyes.

“Well?” he asked, opening his eyes for a moment. “I am waiting.”

* * *

She told him all.

She told him about her happy childhood, when her name was still Nandzi; about her love for her mother Tabitsha; about Satila's extended courtship of the little girl that she then was; she told him about Nowu.

When it was time to tell him about Itsho, she hesitated and he noticed.

“Some things are difficult to speak of,” he said. “I had no right to ask you. Tell me what you will. If there is anything you find too painful, pass over it. There will always be another time.”

She closed her one eye and tried to summon up Itsho's spirit. To her surprise she saw his face before her almost at once. He was smiling. He moved his lips. No sounds came out but she knew what he was telling her.

“You have been faithful to me,” she heard him say. “All these difficult years you have been faithful to me. Even when you lived with Mijn Heer, you were faithful to me. There was never a time when you didn't turn to me when you needed me. I shall watch over you until the end of your days on earth. This man Tomba loves you. Tell him everything.”

“I am sorry,” she told Tomba and wiped away a tear.

Then she told him about Itsho; about their long talks and their expeditions together; she told him about their love for one another; and about her fear of losing him when it was time for her to go to Satila.

She told him about that long ago morning when she had been left alone to look after Nowu.

“I saw a puff of dust on the horizon,” she told him. “I looked at it but paid no attention. My thoughts were elsewhere. If I had not been daydreaming, I would have had time to take Nowu and run and hide. They would never have found me.”

“And you would not be here today and I would never have met you.”

She smiled at him and took his hand. He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. She held him for a moment and then she pulled away.

“Not now,” she said. “There will be plenty of time.”

It was a strange experience. She had never told her own story before. She recalled the first day of the march from Kafaba to Kumase, when she had composed a dirge for herself and her fellow slaves, straight out of her head. That day she had felt as if her spirit had left her body, as if it were floating above her, watching her. Telling her own history now was much the same. It was as if she was telling a story about a stranger, a different person, someone else.

She told him about the rape. It was a long time since she had thought about that day, but as she told the story it all came back to her: the agonising pain in her womb and the humiliation, the degradation of it all. Tomba took her hand and held it in both of his, shaking his head at the terror of it.

“And then?” he pressed her.

She told him about the ride, loaded on Damba's pack horse like a bundle of stolen goods; about the encounter with Itsho; about the failed rescue attempt. She told him about her discovery of Itsho's mutilated body and about how Suba and Damba had helped her to bury him that day.

She told him about Yendi, about Kafaba and Kumase; about the Ya Na and Koranten Péte: and about Akwasi Anoma the drunken bird man who had also raped her. She told him about Minjendo and Esi who were her friends. She told him about the elephants they had met on the way down the Daka river and about her first encounter with the forest on the road to Kumase. She told him about musketeer Mensa and about the magnificence of Kumase and the Asante royals; about the death of Osei Kwadwo and about the coup d'etat which led to the enstoolment of Osei Kwame.

She told him everything but when it came to telling him about her part in the young king's passage to manhood, she was too shy and so she said, “My throat is dry from all this talking and you must be getting bored. It will be dark soon. I think it's time we went back down or Wono will be worried. I'll continue tomorrow if you like.”

* * *

The wedding of Tomba and Ama was celebrated in a more modest fashion than Williams' and Miranda's.

Tomba ran from the Engenho do Meio to the Engenho de Cima after work on Saturday night just as he did several times a week. Ama had a basin of hot water ready for him to take his bath.

Josef took the part of Ama's father and Olukoya spoke for Tomba. Josef poured libation, speaking to Ama's ancestors, first in their own language, of which, at his own insistence, Ama had taught him a few words, and then in Fanti. Olukoya did the same, speaking in Portuguese so that all could understand. Josef called on the ancestors to bless the union of their daughter with the man she had chosen to be the father of her children. Olukoya had a more difficult task. He and Tomba had become close friends. Tomba had told him about his unusual childhood and about his ignorance as to who his forebears were. He had been brought up without any system of belief and religion played no part in his life. He had no family, except perhaps Ibrahima, and therefore no ancestors. So Olukoya addressed his words to the ancestors of all the African slaves. He spoke of Tomba's struggle against the slave trade in his part of Africa and of his attempt, with Ama, to take control of
The Love of Liberty
. He spoke of his courage and he called on the ancestors to watch over him and his new family, not as a man of this or that nation, but as an African.

They passed the bowl of garapa round and each of the guests drank from it. Then the older women and those who had feigned illness so that they could spend the day cooking, brought in the wedding meal, which they had improvised from bush meat, trapped in the forest, a stolen sheep and the produce of the allotments.

Drums were beaten and there was singing and dancing around the fire.

Benedito came to them after Mass the following day and advised them both, for the sake of their eternal souls, to beg the priest to marry them in church. They promised to consider his advice. Ama asked the Senhora, who had returned to the Engenho de Cima after Miranda's marriage, to speak to the Senhor on her behalf but her mistress thought it better that Ama make her request to the Senhor in person.