This Side Jordan (24 page)

He saw her eyes widen questioningly.

‘It’s just – well, that was my mother’s name.’

He felt embarrassed, saying it. But Miranda did not seem to think it odd.

‘Of course I won’t mind,’ she said. ‘It’s a good idea. I think your mother would have been pleased, Johnnie.’

Now it was his eyes that widened, with surprise. Then he understood and wanted to laugh. Of course. Miranda came from a world in which children were named after grandparents, a world in which grandparents danced delighted attendance upon children. Miranda thought the name was a sort of memorial to his mother.

He did not know exactly why he wanted to call his child by her name. Reasons could be dragged up, no doubt, like the roots of swamp weeds, but he did not want to see them. Only one thing he felt sure of – the name was given not for her sake but for his own. He did not think he could explain.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she would have been pleased.’

O
nce, at the prayer meeting, and again when the child was born, Nathaniel had felt a terrible longing to stay after all, to stay here in this city where you could feel tomorrow being reached for; where you could believe it might happen so, and to you.

But he was not a man of that tomorrow. He did not know how to act in it. He was a plain man, not cut out for battles of the spirit. Now, when he tried to think back over the whole thing, it only gave him a headache.

Jacob Abraham Mensah had just arrived back from Ashanti. There was no longer any excuse for delay. Nathaniel went to tell the headmaster he was leaving.

Mensah beamed and offered Nathaniel a cigarette. Confused, he took it.

‘Glad to see you, Amegbe,’ the big man said. ‘Good to be back. We shall all be glad to get back into harness, as they say, eh?’

His voice dropped to a loud whisper.

‘Oh, by the way, Amegbe, before I forget. We mentioned
some time ago that fine possibility to start – ah – an employment bureau here. What happened to those boys?’

Nathaniel fingered his glasses. He had not visualized being quizzed like this. The clown-giant still exerted an inexplicable power over him.

‘They were no good,’ he stumbled. ‘Mr. Kestoe didn’t give them a fair trial, it is true. But they were – unsuitable – anyway.’

Jacob Abraham’s eyes narrowed.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘How many did you send?’

‘Two.’

‘No more,’ Jacob Abraham asked, ‘when those two were not taken?’

‘No.’

‘Well, well, that won’t do, Amegbe. You must send plenty. Let him take his pick. We have plenty of fine boys. And we do not want to lose this contact with a European employer, do we? It might work up, you know, into something quite nice. Through Mr. Kestoe we might meet other Europeans. I do not think you have organized it very properly. On a business basis. It must be on a business basis. I trust you agree? We will discuss it, what each of us is to do. You need guidance. You will go and see your white friend once more –’

Mensah had it all planned out, then, how he could get a cut out of the whole thing. But even that did not matter any more. Mensah’s face became blurred to Nathaniel. He rose to his feet, gropingly, hardly knowing what he was doing.

‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No! I will never go to see him again! Never, all my life! He only made fun of me, he only mocked me. The boys were no good for anything. What could they do? They’d only been given dreams here, only dreams, do you hear? Don’t you know anything?’

Jacob Abraham sat back in his chair as though he had been struck. His deep hypnotic eyes rolled in fury and astonishment.

‘Are you mad?’ he roared. ‘Yes, that’s it. Mad! Crazy!’

‘No,’ Nathaniel said, and it was easier now, ‘no, I’m not mad. I’ve worked here long enough. You put your feet on your carpets and you forget a school needs books, teachers. What do you care? The place is no good, you hear? And I’m no good here. I wanted to do something. But I can’t. I don’t know – but I can’t, it doesn’t happen. My family keeps troubling me for money, and I haven’t got any money. They keep troubling me to go back to the village, and now I’ve had enough. I’m no good here. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to do something. I’m going back. That’s what I came to tell you.’

He sat down again, clumsily, and took off his glasses. He put his palms to his eyes and found the tears were running down his face. He had said it now. Now it was final. He had spoken the words.

– Oh, River, you are not Jordan for me. Not for me. And you, Forest of a thousand gods, a thousand eyes, I am coming back. I will offer red ‘eto’ to the gods, and scatter the sacred ‘summe’ leaves. And some day I may forget this pain.

‘My uncle is going to get me a job,’ Nathaniel said dully. ‘Clerk to a chief. It is in a town not far from my village.’

He could not look at Jacob Abraham. But the clown, now entirely giant, was silent, and in a few moments Nathaniel did look up.

Jacob Abraham was sitting perfectly still. His head seemed like the ebony heads the carvers sell to Europeans. It was heavy, solid, dead-looking. Nathaniel saw that the big man’s eyes were shut.

Finally Mensah sighed. Nathaniel peered at him intently.

‘You were the only one,’ Jacob Abraham said. ‘I thought you cared about Futura.’

Nathaniel could not understand. Then it occurred to him that the man was being genuine. Jacob Abraham really did care about the school. Underneath the cheating and the self-deception, he wanted it to be something.

‘No good, you say?’ Mensah went on in the same oddly tired voice. ‘I should be angry. But I always thought you were interested in the school –’

‘I was,’ Nathaniel said hopelessly. ‘But it’s no use –’

‘I suppose,’ Jacob Abraham said slowly, ‘I suppose that you are determined to go?’

Nathaniel stared at him.

‘Clerk to a chief, eh?’ Jacob Abraham mused.

Then the ebony head came alive. The eyes glinted once more with inborn shrewdness.

‘How much did he offer you?’ he asked abruptly.

Startled, Nathaniel told him.

‘Well, well,’ Mensah had regained his effusive manner, ‘if you stay, I’ll give you twenty pounds a year more than that.’

‘Why?’ Nathaniel cried. ‘You don’t want me to stay, after what I said? Why?’

Jacob Abraham leaned forward across the desk.

‘Shall I tell you?’ His voice was amiable. ‘Shall I tell you why I want you to stay? Because you are a sincere man, Amegbe. You have said hard things to me just now. And to my mind you are not as clever as you might be. But you are sincere and hard-working. That is not so easy to find. Yes, and you are honest.’

He gestured with one hand, and it became a gesture of helplessness. He frowned, and for a moment his face was puzzled.

‘You must realize,’ he said, ‘I have made up my mind – we are going to achieve government standard for this school. Yes, I have made up my mind on that. Only – I am not a young man, Amegbe. The ways of today are not – sometimes they are not so much known to me. Perhaps you young men – ways and means – you know about these things –’

His voice trailed off. He did not want to say it. He wanted Nathaniel to understand without having to hear it said.

And all at once Nathaniel did understand.

Jacob Abraham was a man of energy and persuasion, and he dreamed of glory. For him, glory was to see Futura Academy accepted in all the right circles, a respected institution, himself the head and founder. But things were being done in a new way these days. Perhaps he even realized at last that higher teaching standards might actually pay him in the long run. He needed someone to be an interpreter for him, a barometer by which he could gauge the changing weather of the spirit.

They looked at each other across the desk. Nathaniel felt tense, excited. Jacob Abraham needed an honest man. It was as simple as that.

All these years, Nathaniel had believed he was being kept on here only on sufferance. But it was not that way, not any more. Jacob Abraham needed him. Jacob Abraham needed an honest man.

What if things had gone wrong once? They need not again. Now he would have power here, power to change things. And he would change, himself. At heart he was an honest man.

It occurred to Nathaniel that if he returned the necklace and the shirts, it would buy back his honesty. That was what he would do. He would do it. And after this, he would not be foolish again, he would not make any more foolish mistakes.

He would be the man he had been before. He would come back to the school with new authority.

‘I will stay,’ Nathaniel said at last.

– Let the grey parrot scream from the ‘odum’ tree and let the strangler vines reach down to grasp at nothing. Forest, you will not have me yet. And let the River beat its brown waters on the banks. Let it mourn for its child that has shed its gills forever.

‘I will stay,’ he said again.

Jacob Abraham’s head bobbed up and down with pleasure.

‘Fine, fine, fine,’ he said smoothly. ‘We will work it out together. We will make people hear about Futura Academy. You will make suggestions, eh? You are in touch with these things. A new curriculum – yes, yes, that’s it. You are a sincere man, Amegbe. Not too clever, in some ways, perhaps, but a sincere man – that is the thing. You will be Futura’s “kra,” eh? How is that?’

He laughed uproariously at his joke.

Nathaniel tried to laugh, too, but the laughter stuck in his throat. He was to be its ‘kra’, then, its soul, seeking perfection? Its guide in a new land, its ferryman across Jordan. All that, when he did not know the way himself?

‘What does that leave you to be?’ he asked.

Jacob Abraham chortled appreciatively.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘just what you are thinking.’

By the same sacrilegious comparison, Jacob Abraham would be the ‘sunsum’ of the school. Its personality, filled with self greedy for life, but with an enormous vitality, an enormous will.

Perhaps the analogy was not so absurd after all. Nathaniel felt hope flowing back into him. They might just bring it off, the two of them. They might just manage it. They might, after
all, make something of this old grey wreck of a place, this chipped, battered, decayed and twisted shell that dreamed it was a pearl. They would blunder, and deceive themselves. But they might just do it.

‘We must have faith!’ Nathaniel cried, in impulsive joy. ‘We will do something, do something. It will be all right – you will see!’

On his way home, Nathaniel stopped in at his church. It was cool and quiet inside, away from the sun and heat. No one else was there. Nathaniel walked the length of the church to the niche where the ebony Madonna stood.

She was there, serene with love, the Mother of all men, her painted blue cloak around her black-gleaming shoulders. She looked at him from her calm eyes, and they became for him no longer wood.

He stood beside her, awkwardly, wanting to kneel but afraid someone might see him there in broad daylight and wonder what trouble he had that made him kneel here, now by himself.

– Mother, Mother – forgive me. I am staying here. Forgive me, but I cannot go back. Never in my life. Let them understand.

– I have a new chance and I have a new name and I live in a new land with a new name. And I cannot go back. Let them understand. If I do something or if I do nothing, I must stay. A man must belong somewhere. If it is right or if it is not right, I must stay. The new roots may not grow straight, but they have grown too strong to be cut away. It is the dead who must die. Let them understand.

– In my Father’s house are many mansions. A certain Drummer dwells in the House of Nyankopon, in that City of
Many Mansions. I know it now. It is there that he dwells, honoured, now and always. It may be that I shall never see him again. But let him dwell there in peace. Let him understand. No – he will never understand. Let me accept it and leave him in peace.

– I cannot have both gods and I cannot have neither. A man must belong somewhere. Mother of men, hear me –

– My God is the God of my own soul, and my own speech is in my mouth, and my home is here, here, here, my home is here at last.

– Let me wash my soul.

– And let the fear go far from me.

After he left the church, the mood of exaltation wore off and reality returned.

He had to send the money to Kwaale. He had to. There was no excuse now. And Adua was insisting on a celebration of the birth of the child. She had asked more than twenty people already and she promised to provide chop. That left him with the drink to buy, palm-wine and gin. How was he going to do it?

Nathaniel began thinking once more about Kumi and Awuletey.

Could honesty be bought back with a piece of gold and a piece of cloth? It was the way a man felt that mattered. If you resolved to do right, what did it matter what went before?

How could he return them, anyway? Kumi and Awuletey would not be impressed. They would only think he had gone crazy. They did not expect the gifts back. They had long ago shrugged it off – the luck of the draw. What would he say to them? He would be too embarrassed to say anything to them. They would think he had lost his mind.

He knew if the boys had got the jobs, he would never have considered returning the gifts. Why should he now? A gift was, after all, a gift. Besides, one of the shirts had been worn.

Nathaniel decided to put the whole thing from his mind. He turned his thoughts to the plans he had for next term. He whistled ‘Akpanga’ softly to himself.

And soon the uneasiness passed.

At mid-day, the Club bar was empty except for Kwaku, the old steward, who stood behind the counter, his shrunken shoulders hunched inside the white-drill jacket as he polished doggedly a battered champagne bucket. Johnnie wondered how many people drank champagne these days.

‘Use this one much, Kwaku?’

The old man shook his head.

‘No, sah. On’y small-small, dis time. Dis one, he too cost. Long time pas’, Eur’pean use dis one – oh, plenty-plenty.’

He chuckled softly, perhaps recalling those munificent years, and the ‘dash’ given by the drinkers of champagne to a young stewardboy, quick on his feet, strong, princely in white robe and turban and vivid cummerbund.

‘No big man now, sah,’ Kwaku said. ‘All dey gone.’

He fetched Johnnie’s beer. Then he picked up the yellow flannel and began polishing once more, polishing memories.

Johnnie paid for his drink and went out to the verandah. The branches of the giant niim tree waved slowly, hypnotically. This place was remote, cool, deceptive. The city, the shouting streets, the gabbling markets, the beggars and traders and clerks, the children like insects crawling and swarming, the clinging red dust, the heat of the sun – all seemed very far removed, but they were only a stone’s throw away.

Johnnie drank, and the cold brown taste washed the hot
morning from his mouth. He thought of the phone call he had received earlier. Cameron Sheppard had just arrived at the airport. He would be busy until noon, but he wanted Johnnie to meet him then.

Cameron would have to be told about the boys. And there was something else to be done as well. Johnnie wondered if anyone had ever before told Cameron Sheppard to go to hell.