Ama (72 page)

* * *

Maria Cabinda, the cook, was standing at the kitchen door, looking out at the glow in the dark sky.

She was worried about her husband who would be fighting the fire and about her two young children. If the wind were to turn, the fire might cut the men off from the stream. Then they would be unable to stop the inferno sweeping from the fields, through to the yard and the mill, and on to the
senzalas
.

“Go and bring them up here,” Ama suggested but Maria was afraid of Jesus' wrath. She had done that once before when one of them had had a high fever. Finding them asleep in a corner of the kitchen had driven him into a paroxysm of rage.

Ama told her what she had done with Kwame. Maria knew where the cave was.

“If you like, take them there and let them sleep with Kwame. When Tomba comes, I'll ask him to go up and spend the night with them. Don't worry: I cover for you. I'll tell Jesus you have gone to help fight the fire. He could hardly complain about that. And I'll finish the cooking.”

* * *

The fire turned out to be less serious than had at first seemed likely.

Prompt action confined the damage to three tarefas. Vasconcellos trudged up to the
casa grande
, his face streaked with ash. Ama suppressed a grin and quickly turned her head.

At first Jesus was exhilarated at his success in forestalling a potential catastrophe; but his mood quickly turned to anger. He would have liked to strangle the unknown arsonist. Of course he would impose a stern collective punishment; but that would do little to help him to meet his target this year. Output had declined. If he could not force an improvement his very job might be in jeopardy. It had all seemed so straightforward and simple when he had taken over.

“Rum!” he commanded.

He didn't even notice the absence of the cook. Ama served him his food. By the time he had finished the second course the bottle was half empty. He started to mumble to himself. Returning from the kitchen with the third course, she saw him bang the heavy table with his fist. He turned and glared at her. She averted her eye.

When he had finished eating, she cleared the table. Then she went back to the dining room. He was still sitting there, staring at the empty bottle.

“Will there be anything else,
Senhor
?” she asked quietly.

He turned to stare at her. Then he drained the dregs of the rum from his glass.

“Will there be anything else,
Senhor
?” he mimicked. “Yes, One-eye, there will be something else.”

He rose and grabbed her at once by the shoulders, pulling her towards him. She struggled to free herself but he was too strong. He forced her lips apart and drove his tongue into her mouth. She tasted the foulness and the rum. Pulling her arms free she thrust his head from her. Then, almost instinctively, she attacked him at the only place where he was vulnerable: she sank her teeth into his lower lip. He screamed in agony and threw her away so violently that she fell backwards. Her head struck the stone floor. She lay there immobile, stunned. He dropped onto her and ripped her cloth off. Then he was inside her, thrusting away his hatred and frustration.

When he had finished, he rose and stood over her where she lay sobbing on the floor. He said nothing. She turned over on her side, away from him, hiding her face in her hands. He fingered his bleeding lip. Then he drew his right boot back and deliberately, with all his strength, kicked her in the buttocks. Ama screamed and then she lost consciousness.

When she came to, he had gone. Slowly, painfully, she got to her knees. Taking hold of the edge of the table, she pulled herself to her feet. She stood still for a while, dizzy, afraid that she would faint again. Then, step by step, she crossed the open space to the nearest wall. She closed her eyes and rested her weight against the door post. Step by step again, across the kitchen. She went out and, by force of long habit, took the key and locked the door. She met no one on the way. It seemed an age before she reached the
senzalas
. All was quiet: the exhausted fire fighters had dragged their heavy legs back to their hovels and quickly fallen asleep.

Tomba came out of the cabin. He had just arrived. The moon had risen. She could see the sweat glistening on his bare torso.

“Ama,” he asked as he saw her approaching, “where's Kwame?”

Then he saw from her crippled gait that something was amiss.

“Ama, what's wrong?” he asked as he went to help her.

“Senhor Jesus,” she replied. “He raped me.”

“Vasconcellos raped you?” he asked as if in disbelief.

It happened regularly. The women almost accepted it as part of the condition of their life. But it had never before happened to his Ama, not, at least, since they had been married.

“Tomba,” she asked him wearily, “bring me water, I beg you.”

He ministered to her needs, wiped her face, blew up the embers of a fire and put a basin of water on it. She told him about the fire in the cane fields and what she had done with Kwame. Then she stretched out to try and sleep.

“Have you got a knife?” he asked her.

“Not here,” she replied without opening her eye. “In the kitchen.”

“Where's the key?” he asked.

She sat up.

“No, Tomba, no!” she commanded, her voice rising.

“Where's the key?” he demanded.

She felt the corner of her cloth.

“I don't have it. I must have left it in the door or dropped it on the way. Tomba don't do it. I beg you Tomba. I beg you.”

She was sobbing now.

“Can you walk?” he asked her, gently but firmly forcing her to her feet.

“Tomba, what will you achieve? You will bring tragedy down on all our heads. Think of Kwame. Let it be. You cannot reverse what has been done.”

“Come,” he told her. “I might need your help.”

* * *

They didn't find the key and it wasn't in the kitchen door. He whispered instructions to her.

“For the last time, Tomba, I beg you. Remember what we did together on the ship.”

“It is because of that, that I must do this,” he said. “Now are you ready? Do what I say.”

He banged on the jalousie shutters of Jesus' bedroom. At first there was no answer and Ama hoped against hope that in his drunken state the man had fallen asleep somewhere out of earshot. But then they heard his half-awake slurred speech.

“Who the hell is that making that confounded row?”

“Senhor Jesus. It is I, Ama, One-eye.”

“Go away. I'll have you whipped to an inch of your life in the morning if you don't stop that row.”

“Senhor. The fire has started again. They have set the cane fields on fire.”

That woke him up, drunk as he was. They heard him swear as he struggled to pull on his boots. They went round to the veranda. Ama stood a little way off where he would see her in the moonlight as he opened the door. They heard him fumble with the key. The door opened and he stepped out. He was holding a musket at waist height, his hand on the trigger. Tomba, standing beside the door, felled him with a single blow. The gun fell to the floor.

In a moment Tomba had dragged him back into the house.

“Ama, come quickly. Bring the gun and close the door behind you. Now lock it. Do you have a candle? And some rope to tie him with?”

He had already stuffed his cloth into the man's mouth. Now he wound it round and round his head to secure the gag. Then he turned him face down and sat on him.

Ama returned, not with a rope but with a pair of manacles and a pair of leg-irons.

“The keys are in the locks,” she told him.

“Excellent,” he replied. “Now a knife, the sharpest you can find. Or, better still, a meat chopper or an axe.”

“Tomba, I beg you. It is enough. They will torture you before they kill you.”

“Never mind. Do as I say.”

“What about Kwame? And me?”

“I must do what I must do.”

Ama thought,
I cannot reach him. It is as if he has changed into some other person, as if he were mad.
Then she remembered him telling her how the loss of Sami had driven him mad, by his own admission, mad. She shivered and felt she would faint. In the kitchen she sat down, sank her head upon the table and tried to consider her options. She could unlock the front door and run to Olukoya and Josef for help. But by the time they got back Tomba would already have found a weapon and done his worst. Then she would have to live out whatever time remained to her with the knowledge that she had failed him. And what could Olukoya and Josef do but give him up to the militia?

“Well?”

Tomba was standing in the doorway. She pointed to the drawer where the knives were kept. He turned the contents out onto the table.

“Tomba, for the last time.”

She put her arm on his naked back and caressed him. He shook her off and continued to examine each of the knives in turn.

She went to the doorway and lay down on the floor, face down, with her head towards him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I am prostrating myself before you, as the Yorubas do before their gods. Kill me, rather.”

He stepped over her. She rose and followed him.

He turned the man over and sat down on his stomach. Jesus' manacled hands were behind his back, under him. Tomba put the instruments down beside him. Then he removed the gag.

“You may say your last prayers,” he told the manager of the Engenho de Cima.

“Who are you?” Vasconcellos demanded. “I warn you. Release me at once or it will go hard with you.”

“It will go hard with me anyway, shit-face. Make your confession and beg for absolution before I cut out your tongue.”

Ama was shocked. She had never heard Tomba use foul language before. She hugged herself and rocked from foot to foot. Closing her eye she tried to summon up a vision of Itsho. But all she could see was a dark void.

“Right, Senhor Jesus,” said Tomba, “you've had your chance. No prayers.”

He forced the man's mouth open and wedged a wooden spoon between his teeth. Then he seized Vasconcellos' tongue with a pair of tongs and pulled it out of his mouth. In a moment he had sliced it off. The blood spurted over him. He stood up. Ama caught a glimpse of the terror in his victim's eyes. Then she vomited.

When she rose to her feet, Tomba had pulled the man's pants down. Now he ripped off his blood-soaked shirt as well. The manager lay naked. Tomba took a cushion from a chair and put it under the man's head.

“I want you to have a good view of this,” he told Vasconcellos.

Then, using his knees, he forced the man's legs apart. He grabbed the end of his slack penis with the tongs and pulled. He waved the blood stained knife before the man's eyes.

“Tomba, no, no.”

Ama tried to pull him away but he shrugged her off. She ran to the door, turned the key and in a moment was running down to the
senzalas
.

* * *

When they reached the
casa grande
, the front door was standing open as Ama had left it.

“Tomba,” Olukoya called quietly.

There was no answer. He went inside. Josef followed. Ama had insisted on returning with them. Seeing her state of mind, Josef had told Wono to come too.

“Wono, don't come in. Just look after Ama,” Olukoya called back.

“I must see, I must see,” Ama cried.

Breaking loose from Wono, she followed them.

Jesus Vasconcellos lay dead in a pool of his own fresh blood. By his side were the severed organs. Tomba sat on the floor with his back against the wall, staring into space. He was still covered with the blood of his victim.

Olukoya spoke to him but he did not reply. Olukoya shook him gently by the shoulders. Tomba did not react. Then Ama knelt before him. She said nothing, just took his limp, bloodstained hands and rubbed them in her own.

“Josef, we may need Wono's help,” said Olukoya. “Do you think she can take this?”

“I'll speak to her.”

“Lock the door behind you. Then bring her through to the kitchen. We need to talk this out.”

* * *

Olukoya sat at the kitchen table, his head in his hands.

“Wono. I'm sorry you had to see that. Josef and I need to talk, to make plans. I would like you to join us but I don't think it would be wise to leave Tomba and Ama alone. And we are not ready to take them away. Will you sit and watch them?”

Wono nodded.

Olukoya said, “Josef, my brother, we are in real trouble. We shall be lucky if we come out of this alive. They will miss Tomba at his
engenho
early tomorrow morning. The first thing they will do is to send a messenger to ask after him. We must all be far from here before the messenger arrives.”

“What about the body?”

“My first thought was to burn it, and this building, too.”

“There's not much here to burn. The building is of stone.”

“You are right. And it would delay us too much. We must bury the body in a place where they will never find it.”

“What worries me is the overseers,” said Josef.

“Yes, that is the first thing. Go down to the
senzalas
and round up ten men we can trust. While you are doing that, I will search the house for arms. Ama may be able to help. Don't waste time telling the men why they are wanted: we can tell them all together when they get here. We'll give them whatever arms we can find. But no more bloodshed, mind; not if we can avoid it. It will only make our situation worse.”

* * *

“My brothers and sisters,” Olukoya told the assembly. “Something has happened tonight which has put us all in great danger. I am going to tell you about it and what I think we must do to save ourselves. I want you to listen to me calmly and quietly. If there are any questions, I will hear them when I have finished.”

“Jesus Vasconcellos is dead.”

A murmur of shock passed through the crowd. Then there was applause.