The Tomorrow-Tamer (28 page)

On the other side, a Hausa man was hanging up his white and black wool mats and huge pointed hats and long embroidered robes which only men tall as the Hausas could wear. Sabina the cloth-seller snapped at a small boy who pissed beside her stall, complaining that he was spraying her second-best bolts, draped outside to catch the eye. The small boy's
mother threw a coconut husk which caught him on the ear, and he ran off, leaking and howling.

T'reepenny, who looked more ancient than the gods, creaked and trembled up to Mammii Ama's stall. Her hands, bony as tree roots and frail as grass, lugged along the bucket of gourd spoons, half of them broken. She had no stall. She had no money to rent one, so Mammii Ama allowed her to sit beside the calabash-and-pot stall with her bucket. She only said one word, ever. Maybe she only knew one. “T'reepenny”, she would quiver and quaver. “T'reepenny, t'reepenny”, over and over like a brainfever bird, as she held up the gourd spoons for all to admire. She was pleased if she got one penny. Only from white women, rich and gullible, had she ever received as much as three.

With the wares arranged, Mammii Ama was light in heart. Now she began to recall last night's rally. She had gone with the others in the Association of Market Women. They all wore new cloth, in the party's colours, red and white and green. What a thing it had been! Her well-fleshed hips remembered their jigglings and marvellous convolutions in the parade. Her shoulders and hearty arms remembered the touch of others' arms and shoulders as the market women marched. Four abreast, they entered the meeting-place like a charging army, like an army with spears of fire, with rifles fashioned of power and glory. And they all shouted together–loud as a thousand lorry horns, loud as the sea–“Free-Dom!”

And he had been there, the lovely boy they loved so well, the Show-Boy. He spoke to them of the day that was coming, the day of freedom. And they shouted with one voice, and they cheered with one voice. They were his women, his mothers and his brides.

“Hey, you Sabina!” Mammii Ama shouted. “Were you at the rally?”

“Naturally,” the shriek came back. “Didn't you see me, Mammii Ama? I was at the back, in between Mercy Mensah and that old Togo woman, whatever her name is.”

“I was at the front,” Mammii Ama said loudly, but with modesty.

“I was there, too,” Moki chipped in.

Everyone laughed.

“Wha-at? I never knew you were a market woman, Moki,” Mammii Ama bellowed.

“When you get to my age, it's all the same,” Moki replied evenly. “Man–woman–what does it matter? We all eat. We all die.”

An outburst of chitter-chatter. “Don't tell me that story, Moki!” “Maybe it's an old muzzle-loader, but I'll bet it still fires!” And so on.

“What did you think of it, Sabina, the rally?” Mammii Ama continued, when the gust of ribaldry faded.

Sabina shrugged. She was thin, and her mouth always turned down, as though she had just swallowed a piece of rotten fish.

“Well, it's a lot of talk, if you ask me,” she said. “Free-Dom. Independence. All right–the white men go. So, then? We'll still be haggling over tuppence at our stalls, my friends.”

Mammii Ama jumped to her feet and shook her head and both fists at Sabina.

“Ei! Somebody here is like a crocodile! Yes, somebody acts like the crocodile who crawls in the mud of the river. He lives in the river mud–and he, thinks the whole world is only river mud. Oh, blind! Blind!”

She appealed to the others.

“Free-Dom–it's like the sun,” she cried. “You have to crawl out of the river mud or you can't see it.”

Moki muttered and went on cleaning his eyes. Old T'reepenny nodded her head. She agreed in this way with everything Mammii Ama said. She didn't understand, but she agreed. Whatever Mammii Ama said must be right. The Hausa man stared–he spoke no Ga.

Sabina went on shrugging, and Mammii Ama grew so furious she rushed over to Sabina's stall and burst into fresh argument. She grew inspired. She no longer cared about Sabina. Around her, the market women gathered. They cried “Ha–ei!” when she paused for breath. They swayed and chanted to the rhythm of Mammii Ama.

“Go call all de market woman!” Mammii Ama cried, this time in pidgin, to captivate a wider audience. “Tell dem say ‘Free-Dom'! Go call all de market woman–say, you no go sell befoah five minute. You sell Free-Dom dis time. What dis t'ing, what dis Free-Dom? He be strong, he be fine too much. Ju-ju man he no got such t'ing, such power word. Dis Free-Dom he be sun t'ing, same sun he be shine. Hey, you market woman, you say ‘Money sweet–I be poor woman, nothing with, on'y one penny. I no 'gree dis Free-Dom, I no be fit for chop him.' Oh–oh–I t'ink you be bush woman, no got sense. I no 'gree for you. I tell you, dis Free-Dom he be sweet sweet t'ing. You wait small, you see I tell you true. Market woman all dey be queen mammy den.”

Moki stopped his eye-wiping and waved a piece of firewood, roaring encouragement to his friend Mammii Ama. The Hausa man uttered sombre cries in his own tongue–‘Allah knows it! Has not the Prophet himself said the same? It will be shown at the Last Day!' T'reepenny, carried away by excitement, grasped a gourd spoon in either hand and executed
a sort of dance, back bent and stiff-kneed, all by herself, until her unsteady breath gave out and she sank down beside her bucket once more, chirping her mournful word.

Sabina, feeling herself outnumbered, began to weep, begging them all not to forget her unfortunate past. If she seemed sour, she sobbed, they knew why.

Mammii Ama immediately grew sympathetic. She broke off and put an arm around Sabina's shoulder. A terrible thing it must have been, she agreed. Enough to mark a person for life.

Sabina had once had a wealthy lover–well, not wealthy, perhaps, but certainly nicely fixed. A clerk, he was, a man in a government office. He always seemed healthy, Sabina used to say. He seemed so strong, so full of life, so full of love. How that man would do it! Again and again–why, half a dozen times in a single night, that was nothing to him, Sabina said, simply nothing.

Then one night, his heart swelled and burst, and he died, just like that. He was with Sabina at the time. They had gone to sleep, still together. At least, she had gone to sleep. A little later, feeling cramped and trying to turn, she had wakened to find a dead man there. Dead as a gutted fish, and his eyes wide open. Sabina got a baby that night, it turned out, and she went around saying her child had been given her by a dead man. She was sure of it. She screeched and cried. A child begotten by a corpse–who could stand the thought? No one was surprised when the baby was born dead.

The women clucked softly. Mammii Ama, ashamed of her attack, soothed and soothed in her full mother-voice.

“There, my red lily. Cry, then. It is nothing. I am a fool; I have a head like a calabash, empty.”

Into the hush-hushing throng of women ran Comfort. Her face was frightened and excited.

“Mammii Ama! Mammii Ama! A white woman has come to your stall!”

And Mammii Ama looked amazed, dumbfounded, only partly in mockery of the child. Hastily she hitched her cloth up around her, and flew back.

“Ei–what a madness!”

She went running along like a girl, like a young girl at her first outdooring. She carried her weight lightly, and her breasts bounced as she bounded over gutter and path, over smouldering charcoal burner, over the sleeping babies with blackflies at their nostrils' edge.

“Who is the young virgin fleeing from her seducer?” Moki shouted, as she approached. “Oh oh Mammii Ama!”

The white woman was thin and tall. She had very little flesh on her, just yellow hide over bones, and her eyes were such a pale blue they seemed not to be there at all–only the jelly of the eyeball, nothing to see with. She was holding a brown earthen bowl in her hands.

Mammii Ama regained her breath.

“Madam–I greet you,” she said with hoarse cheerfulness.

The white woman smiled uncertainly and looked over her shoulder. Mammii Ama looked, too, and it was Ampadu standing there.

Ampadu was a clerk. He had a good job. One heard he had influence. He was a really educated man–he knew not only reading and writing, but also the work of account-books and typewriters. Mammii Ama, who could neither read nor write, and who kept her accounts in her head with never a mistake in twenty-four years, was greatly impressed with Ampadu's power over words and numbers. She did not tell him so–in fact, she constantly made fun of him. They were
distantly related, and Ampadu, who understood her unexpressed pride in this relationship, took her jibes in an easy-natured way.

She clapped him on the shoulder. He was neatly dressed in a white shirt and grey flannel trousers. How prosperous he looked. And his rimmed spectacles, how well they suited him.

“Ampadu! I greet you!” she cried in Ga. “How are you, great government man? Do they still say your pen is more active than your love-branch? Hey–you, Moki! Did you know this? When the old chief's young wife wanted a lover, she sent for Ampadu's pen!”

The clerk laughed, but not wholeheartedly. He patted his stomach in embarrassment. Mammii Ama, realizing Ampadu was accompanying the white woman, began to roll her eyes and pretended to stagger.

“What's this, Ampadu? What's this? What's all this about?”

Ampadu held up his hand, like a policeman stopping a lorry. “She wants to see the market,” he hissed. “She's the wife of my new boss. Mammii Ama, please be sensible, I implore you. She wants to buy a calabash, God knows why.”

The white woman was growing impatient.

“Ampadu–ask her what she'll take for this bowl, please.”

“Ten shilling,” Mammii Ama replied without hesitation.

“Ten shillings!” the white woman cried, and even Ampadu looked stunned.

Mammii Ama seized the bowl from her hands.

“See, madam–dis one, he be fine too much. No be bad one. Look–put you fingah heah–you feel? All fine–nevah broke, dis one. Ten shilling, madam.”

“How much is the usual price?” the white woman asked Ampadu.

Ampadu scuffed his shoes in the dust. Mammii Ama felt quite sorry for him, but she had to try hard not to laugh.

“Usual price?” Ampadu appeared to search his memory. “Let me see, what is the usual price? I am sorry, madam–I am afraid I don't really know. My wife, you see, buys all the cooking-pots–”

“Ten shilling!” shouted Mammii Ama in a huge voice. “All time, meka price he be ten shilling! I tell you true, madam. I no t'ief you.”

“Five shillings,” the white woman offered.

“Nine shilling sixpence–for you.”

They settled at length on six shillings, to Mammii Ama's well-disguised delight. The white woman then bought a black cooking-pot and two calabashes. Mammii Ama was amazed. What could such a woman want with cooking-pots and calabashes? Were Europeans living like poor Africans all of a sudden? Mammii Ama felt excited and confused. The order of things was turning upside down, but pleasurably, in a way that provided food for speculation and gossip.

When the white woman was gone, they all discussed it. Who could understand such a thing? Mammii Ama, dusting and re-arranging her stock of pots and bowls, began one of her speeches.

“Hey! Stranger woman, listen to me. Do you feed your man from a calabash you bought in the market? Does your man eat from a bowl made of river clay? Ei! The gourd-vine dances–he shakes his leaves with laughter. Ei! The river fish drown in their laughter. Your own dishes–are they not white as a silver shilling? They are white as the egret's feathers, when he
sleeps in the baobab tree. If the fine vessels displease you, give them to my grand-daughter. Yes! Give them to Comfort, the lovely and dear one–”

Mammii Ama turned the last bit into a song, and sang it all day. Some of the others joined the refrain, varying it from time to time for amusement.

 

“Yes! Give them to the woodseller,

Give them to Moki, the lovely one–”

 

Mammii Ama added a stanza in pidgin, so everyone around would know she was no longer cross at Sabina.

 

“Meka you dash dem for Sabina,

She fine too much, same been-to gal,

She like all fine t'ing–”

 

A week later, the white woman returned, this time alone. Mammii Ama greeted her like an old friend. The white woman bought a gourd spoon from T'reepenny, and haggled with Mammii Ama over the price of another bowl. Finally, Mammii Ama could restrain her curiosity no longer.

“Madam–why you buy African pot?”

The white woman smiled.

“I want to use them for ashtrays.”

“Ashtray! For dem cig'rette?” Mammii Ama could not believe her ears. “You no got fine one, madam?”

“Oh–I have lots of others,” the woman said, “but I like these. They're so beautifully shaped.”

Mammii Ama could not credit it.

“An' dem calabash? Madam chop
fu-fu
now?”

“I use the shallow ones to put groundnuts in,” the woman explained. “For small-chop with drinks. The big ones I'm using for plants.”

“Free-Dom time, meka all African get dem fine dish,” Mammii Ama mused. “I look-a dem na Kingsway store. Fine dish, shine too much.”

She stopped herself. It would not do, for business, to admit she would like to use fine white dishes. She even felt a little guilty at the thought. Were not her calabashes and bowls the best in the market? But still–

The white woman was looking at her oddly.

“You don't mean to tell me that you think you'll all be given–what did you say?–shiny dishes, when Independence comes?”

Mammii Ama did not know whether she believed it or not. But she grew stubborn.

“I tell you true!” Speaking the words, she became immediately convinced of their absolute truth. “Market woman, all dey be same queen mammy den.”