Ama (9 page)

He was in a generous mood, enjoying the change of scene after the boredom of the Yendi court.

“That is the girl, you know,” Nandzi heard him tell the men, “who ran away from Yendi one night and was found sleeping in a tree, half dead, the next morning, with a leopard on guard below.”

Vanity conquered Nandzi's fear of the unfamiliar surroundings and, gingerly, she led the other two women down the slope, offering a hand when she had stepped into the nearest canoe. She grabbed a branch with one hand and used the other to ram the end of the torch into the clay bank. Then she removed her cloth and lay back in the canoe, looking up at the flickering shadows in the lower canopy and listening to the sounds of the night. She knew the calls of most of the nocturnal animals of the savannah, but the sounds of the inhabitants of the riverine forest were strange to her.

“Are you going to sleep here tonight?” said one of the women. “Are you not scared of the crocodiles?”

They were both Asantes. Nandzi raised herself on her elbows. The women had stripped and were rubbing themselves with loofah sponges. Their wet bodies gleamed in the dim light.

Nandzi struggled to compose a reply.

“I was just resting,” she said, “and listening.”

* * *

The elephants still occupied their minds.

When Nandzi returned to the camp, the man who had been sitting behind her was telling the story of how the elephant came to forsake the forest for the country of the long-grass. He had come to the part where the spider has defeated and killed his giant adversary in a head-butting contest. Two young men had illustrated the episode with an impromptu performance. Now cheers and laughter echoed through the forest as Ananse preened himself over the prostrate body of the elephant.

“Then the family of Elephant came to Ananse and said, ‘Spider, you have defeated the head of our family. We admit it. All we ask is that you do as our custom demands.'

“‘And what, may I ask, is that?' inquired Ananse.

“‘The victor must provide the family with a coffin; and the coffin must be carved from solid stone, as befits a family head.'

“Ananse thought for some time. He had a cutlass and an adze and a knife. He could make a coffin of wood; but a coffin of stone? He could not see how that could be done. Nevertheless he agreed and told the late elephant's family to come back ‘tomorrow next.'”

Nandzi squatted on the outside of the circle and watched the faces of the listeners, reddened, it seemed, by the fire, all their attention on the story teller.

“The next day Ananse cut down a tree with his cutlass. With his adze and his knife he carved the tree trunk into the image of a man with a musket raised to his shoulder, ready to fire. When the carving was finished, he dragged it to the front gate of his compound. He dressed the carving in batakari and trousers. Then he hid in the bush to watch what would happen.

“The family of Elephant arrived at the appointed time to collect their stone coffin, but before they could enter Ananse's compound, they saw the man-image, standing ready to fire at them. Then Ananse beat the great fontomfrom drum, making a sound like the thunder of gunshot. Panicking, the elephants at once turned tail and fled; and they didn't stop running until they had left the forest and passed into the savannah. Ananse just laughed and laughed and laughed. And then he called his wife and children and they cooked and ate the flesh of the dead elephant.

“That is my story of how the elephant came to forsake the forest for the country of the long-grass. I do not vouch for its truth. You may believe or not: that is for you, the listener, to decide.”

* * *

When they moved off in the morning and passed the elephants' beach, all that remained of the visitors was the disturbed ground and a few heaps of dung.

The second day was much like the first. Flocks of grey parrots with their bright crimson tails screamed and whistled at them from the treetops.

“Do you see the
nkoko-kye-na-ko
?”

The man behind her grasped her bare shoulder and squeezed. She stiffened and turned. The man pointed out the great blue turacos which had taken possession of the leafy top of a tall tree. She looked up.
What beautiful birds
, she thought. They were blue and yellow, with a black crest and a red and yellow bill.
Free
, she thought,
free to fly where they will
. At last, the man removed his hand from her shoulder.

“It is
akoko-kye-na-ko
who taught us to drum,” the man told her.

In the clear sky above the river there hung a hooded vulture, its wings motionless, borne up by an unseen draft of hot air.

“Opéte,” the man told her quietly, gently squeezing the soft flesh of her upper arm as he pointed at the bird.

“Opéte,” he repeated, controlling his laughter and pointing now repeatedly at the leader of the expedition in the canoe ahead.

“Opéte, Opéte,” he repeated with a chuckle, pointing again at the bird and his master, relishing his own profound sense of humour and making sure that his joke had not been lost on Nandzi.

“Who is calling me?” Nana Koranten Péte half rose from his seat and turned to look at the following canoes.

The ornithologist dropped his head and concentrated on cleaning his fingernails.

I am going to have a problem with this man
, thought Nandzi.
He cannot keep his hands off me
.

She began to think of him as the ornithologist, the man who knows birds.

Nandzi's command of Asante was increasing rapidly. The ornithologist and his fellows were amused and flattered by her constant requests for the names of things. She would point to her head, her hair, her nose, her mouth, her teeth; and ask for the name of each. She would concentrate on committing the word to memory and then she would repeat it. They would laugh at her strange accent and coach her on the correct pronunciation and tone. Verbs and sentence structure were more difficult: though she had little concept of the meaning of grammar, she began to learn short sentences by heart, and in these she began to see patterns emerging.

A fellowship gradually developed amongst the paddlers and the passengers in each canoe. It transcended differences of language and culture and status. Conversations sprang up, often triggered by the sights and sounds of the river. A glimpse of an enormous python set the ornithologist telling the story of how Ananse had used flattery to persuade the king of serpents to allow himself to be measured.

“Ananse,” he told them, “persuaded Python to let himself be lashed to a fallen tree trunk. ‘Just to make sure,' the spider told the snake, ‘That unstraightened sinuosities will not result in an underestimation of your great length.'”

Everyone laughed at Ananse's cheek and at the ornithologist's verbal wizardry; but Nandzi identified with the victim and saw herself trussed up like the python.

They spoke in Asante and Dagomba and Hausa or in a mixture, whichever best served their need to communicate. They sang songs. When it came to her turn, Nandzi shyly sang a Lekpokpam lullaby that she knew from Tabitsha. It was the same song, she recalled, that she had been singing to Nowu when the Bedagbam had descended upon them.
Dear mother
, she thought as she sang,
I am singing your song to these strangers. I hope that you can hear me and that you haven't forgotten me, as I have not forgotten you.
Then she wondered whether, if she concentrated hard enough, she could somehow communicate with Tabitsha over all the distance which now separated them.

She had a sweet voice. None of her companions understood the words, but somehow she succeeded in conveying the message. When she finished, there was applause and a demand for an encore.

That night, sitting around the campfire, she had to repeat the performance before a larger audience.

This young woman is certainly an acquisition
, reflected Koranten Péte.
She will make an excellent gift for the Queen Mother.

CHAPTER 6

Nana Koranten Péte had business in Kpembe, important business, business of the King of Asante: kola business.

The kola ‘nut' is a pink seed about the length of a man's thumb. When chewed, it is reputed to stave off hunger and thirst. It is also a mild stimulant. Many Muslims, barred by their religion from the consumption of alcohol, are fond of chewing kola, which Islam does not forbid. When pressed, some will admit that their love of kola borders on excess, even addiction. Others will protest that kola is not only harmless but that it serves a useful function in lubricating social intercourse. This it achieves not only by its narcotic effect, but also by the value attached to its use as a customary gift.

Dangerous drug or harmless nibble, the demand for kola appeared to be insatiable.

Since its forests were the principal habitat of the kola tree, Asante had a virtual monopoly in the collection and processing of the fruit, which was its principal export to its northern neighbours. In order to preserve its monopoly, the Asante state kept the northern traders out of the kola producing areas.

Kafaba was the most important international market for kola. During the harvest season, the roads from the south were crowded with porters, slaves and free men alike, all carrying head loads of kola. On the bank of the Volta River the kola was discharged into enormous dugout canoes which ferried it across to Kafaba. Asante customs officers collected an export duty of two large nuts for every hundred exported.

Kafaba was a Gonja town; but Nana Kpembewura, King of all the Gonjas, resided not in sinful Kafaba but in the quiet backwater of Kpembe, which was his capital.

“I have important business in Kpembe,” Nana Koranten Péte said to his secretary, “kola business.”

* * *

Kafaba was a town of two parts.

The Upper Town, with its residential compounds and markets and mosques, lay above the reach of the waters of the Volta.

Each year, as the level of the river dropped slowly in the wake of the floods, a new suburb, the Lower Town, made its appearance above the receding water's edge. This was of necessity a makeshift sort of quarter. There the overflow of visiting traders, for whom there was no room in the inns and hostelries of the Upper Town, set up the depots and stockyards in which they kept their slaves and kola. Ramshackle buildings of bamboo and matting and thatch were interspersed with patches of corn and plantain, cassava and cocoyam, which would be ready to harvest before the next floods. Temporary property rights were established by rude fences which also served to protect the allotments from the depredations of the humped cattle and goats which grazed in the sweet green grass.

Through this confusion of allotments and temporary dwellings, one straight wide road was always left clear. Called the River Road, it ran from the canoe landing stage up to the principal market in the Upper Town.

Up this road, from dawn to dusk, porters with bulging calf and neck muscles jogged with their head loads of kola, returning in due course with empty baskets.

River Road was lined with small market stalls. In the morning Gonja women cooked and sold thick, sour, red-brown millet porridge; at noon and in the evening it might be grilled bream or catfish or succulent prawns in groundnut soup, served with rice, boiled yams or maize bread. Others offered spicy fried cakes of boiled beans, millet or rice. Young girls, daughters of the caterers, roamed the Lower Town with head trays of roasted groundnuts or foaming pots of honey beer.

After dark, River Road took on a different aspect. The porters, exhausted from the day's work, lay asleep wherever they could find a place to lie; but the food sellers were still there, their flickering oil lamps defining the edges of the road. Wealthy merchants from the Upper Town came out to stroll down to the river and to display, in the moonlight, their newest outfits and their youngest and prettiest wives. The men, meeting friends and associates, would bow deeply, shake hands and exchange infinitely protracted greetings and courtesies. A young wife, bathed and perfumed and dressed to show her husband's pride, her eyes expertly made up with lustrous silvery blue-white antimony, would shyly drop her left knee and touch the ground with her left hand. Then she would stand quietly by, waiting patiently for the end of the men's palaver, demurely aware of the admiration which the intricate embroidery on her wrapper and blouse and the style and colour of her headtie were attracting in the moonlight. And she would finger her gold earrings and neck chain, her bangles and her rings.

* * *

When they reached Kafaba, Koranten Péte found that Damba's caravan had not yet arrived.

He paid a brief courtesy call on the Gonja chief and placed Sharif Imhammed, who had accompanied him from Yendi, in the care of his colleague, the local Asante consul.

He left most of his party behind, in the charge of Akwasi Anoma, the ornithologist, to prepare a simple caravanserai, while they waited for Damba. Koranten Péte hastened on to Kumase with little more than a bodyguard and a party of hammock-bearers.

Akwasi Anoma staked out a site and gave orders for the slashing of the undergrowth and cutting of bamboo to make a fence. When he was satisfied that the work was in hand, he called Nandzi aside.

“Come,” he said. “Take my sleeping mat and my bundle. I will show you the Upper Town.”

One of the older Asante female slaves helped her to lift her burden to her head.

“Mind yourself,” she warned, “That man is an incorrigible womaniser.”

Nandzi trudged up the hill behind Akwasi Anoma, her feet bare, her body wrapped in her two cloths, the man's baggage on her head. Any stranger could guess their relationship. If the man ahead of her had been her father, Tigen, she would not have given the matter a second thought. If it had been Itsho, suddenly returned from the spirit world, she would have begged him to let her carry his possessions. But Akwasi Anoma was not her father and he was certainly not her freely chosen lover, dead or alive. Akwasi Anoma was a stranger to her. He was not even, so far as she knew, her owner.