This Side Jordan (9 page)

‘I’m beginning to think not.’

‘The last time was when the Thayers moved into the new bungalow. I – I guess that was partly my fault. Damn it, I did resent it – why not? They have no children, and here we are, with Kathie and Brian in that ghastly old wreck, and the scorpions underneath the stoep. Whenever he can’t cope, Bedford simply –’

She broke off.

‘He never used to be this way, you know, Johnnie. He’s had rotten luck, poor dear. It was fine in the war, but ever since – well, you can’t really blame him, I suppose.’

She put her palms to her eyes.

‘But why does he do it at the office?’ she cried. ‘We’ve got to get him out of there.’

‘Helen,’ Johnnie said patiently, ‘we can’t get him out, and you know it. What do you want me to do – conceal him in my briefcase? He only weighs about fifteen stone. I’ll do my best to keep James out of there. That’s all I can do, I’m afraid.’

‘I – I’m going back to his office, to be there. When you go home for lunch, will you ask Miranda if she’ll go over and put the children down for their rest? And tell Kwaku he’s not to leave the bungalow until I get back.’

He nodded. At the door, she turned.

‘I’m sorry to bother you with all this, Johnnie.’

He shrugged in embarrassment.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh – I know. But – you liked him, before.’

‘Don’t be daft. I still do. It doesn’t make any difference.’

‘You –’ she hesitated, ‘you respected him. He was pleased about that.’

‘I don’t expect anything of people,’ Johnnie said curtly. ‘It never comes as a surprise. So it makes no difference.’

But it did, of course. He had thought Bedford would be a strong and useful ally. And now it seemed that the massive knight was only a leaden soldier, weirdly dissolving in this fire.

That afternoon, the African reporter phoned. Johnnie had known that he would.

‘Ah, Mr. Kestoe,’ Victor Edusei’s voice flowed with oily ease out of the receiver, ‘we have just received an interesting press-release from your Firm. I suppose you know the one I mean?’

Johnnie grunted.

‘I have excellent informants in London, don’t you agree?’

‘I don’t want to discuss the matter with you,’ Johnnie said.

‘Wait, wait,’ Edusei said, ‘don’t hang up yet. Am I to understand, then, that you are not in favour of an Africanization policy?’

‘Go to hell,’ Johnnie said.

As he replaced the receiver, he heard what he had expected – the peal of hoarse exultant laughter from the black throat.

T
he presence of Aya’s aunt Akosua seemed to pacify Aya’s mother, for she said no more about a return to the village. Aya did not mention the hospital; Nathaniel’s sister Kwaale did not send another letter, and for a while Nathaniel almost convinced himself that his family had begun at last to accept his life here and the birth of his child in the city of strangers. But the lull meant only that another wave was accumulating its strength to pour upon him.

The mammy-wagons jounced and rattled from Ashanti down to the coast, bearing cocoa and bananas and people. And the day came when Nathaniel answered the knock at his door and saw his uncle Adjei. Nathaniel had not seen his uncle for six years, but the old man greeted him calmly, as though they had met yesterday, and stepped inside the house.

Adjei’s face was hard and deeply seamed like a cocoa pod. He was a small man, and his arms stuck out like crooked sticks from the folds of his cloth. But he bore himself well, sitting with stiff dignity on the edge of the chair, scorning to lean back. His cloth was dark purple and green, patterned with
long-legged cranes as lean of shank as himself. His sandals were shabby and the toe thongs were nearly worn through, but once they had been embossed with gold.

He looked around the room, his eyes dwelling on each object as though he were mentally listing everything. The dining table, the thin blue cotton curtains, the old wireless, the striped green and orange coco-matting on the floor, the pictorial calendar whose message ‘Happy New Year From Mandiram’s The Quality Shop’ was mysterious to him.

Then the old man looked at Nathaniel thoughtfully.

‘You have a fine house.’

‘I do my best,’ Nathaniel said awkwardly. ‘I do not have much money.’

The old man clicked his tongue unbelievingly.

‘You must be a wealthy man. All these things –’

‘I am not wealthy,’ Nathaniel said hopelessly.

‘Nathaniel –’

‘Uncle?’

The old man’s voice had a high silvery quality, like an ancient tinkling bell that has not quite lost its throat.

‘You are my sister’s son, and my heir,’ Adjei Boateng said. ‘I wish for your sake I were a wealthy man.’

Nathaniel involuntarily clenched his hands. Let it be only money that he asks. I cannot afford it, but let it be only money. Please, I beg you, not the other.

‘I know.’ Nathaniel tried not to sound impatient. ‘It is of no importance.’

‘We are not wealthy, our families,’ the old man continued slowly, ‘not like some men I could tell you about, who started with two pennyworth of gold. And now – ahhaa! House like the Asantehene’s palace – fine clothes – everything.
And how they made it, it is best not to enquire, for shame. You remember Mintah?’

‘Yes.’ Nathaniel felt his nerves cracking, but it was no use – like the seasons, Adjei took his own time.

‘He is a contractor now, a big man. A loyal member of the party of apes and strangers. That is how he gets his contracts. Some men would sell their own mothers into slavery.’

Nathaniel sighed. To his uncle, anyone not born in Ashanti was, now and forever, a stranger. No doubt he was right about Mintah. But politics was not a clean game.

‘I am not a boy,’ Nathaniel said, a trace of sharpness in his voice. ‘I know all this. What has it to do with me?’

‘Our two families are not like such men,’ Adjei went on solemnly. ‘We are poor people, but loyal to our own. That is the way you were brought up, Nathaniel.’

‘Uncle –’ he could stand it no longer, ‘I beg you – come to the point!’

‘The young –’ sighed the old man, with exaggerated sorrow, ‘have no respect. That is what happens.’

Nathaniel wanted to shout – I am not young; I am twenty-seven and I have a wife and an unborn son and very little money. Will I never be rid of the gentle plucking fingers, the soft whine of the old? Then he felt ashamed. You spit on your people, Nathaniel. He is an old man, and he loves you. You are his blood. When you are old, Nathaniel, your sisters’ sons will spit on you.

‘I am sorry,’ Nathaniel said humbly.

Adjei snorted suspiciously. But he decided to state his business.

‘Nathaniel, you remember Nana Kweku Afrisi?’

‘Of course.’

‘He needs a clerk,’ Adjei said. ‘He remembers you.’

Nathaniel stared at him.

‘You will come?’ Adjei said smoothly. ‘It is a big town, and near your village. He is a fine man. It is a wonderful chance, to be clerk to a chief.’

For a moment Nathaniel could not reply. The old man’s eyes looked confident, certain. Nathaniel reached up automatically to adjust his glasses, and his fingers slid along the brown plastic frames as though drawing strength.

‘I can’t go,’ he said finally.

Adjei Boateng looked at him without surprise, as though he had expected an initial struggle. Nathaniel squirmed in his chair.

– The drowning man would struggle for a little while and then he would be quiet, and the River would lap him around with its softness, the brown murky stillness of its womb.

‘I can’t go!’ Nathaniel repeated desperately.

– How many times have I cut the cord that fed me? How many times have I fought with the Mother to give me birth? How many times has the fish, feeling his gills aflutter with the stars, dragged himself from the womb of water, painfully to breathe?

‘You will come, I think,’ Adjei said. ‘It is your duty. I try to look after your sisters, my nieces. They live under my roof, and I do what I can for them. But I am an old man, and I have no sons. Your sisters need you. You are their children’s uncle, the man of the “abusua,” the blood-clan. They need the uncle’s guidance. It is your duty. The burden of the family has fallen on Kwaale. She is a fine woman, but her husband is dead and she has many troubles.’

‘I know,’ Nathaniel said heavily. ‘I know.’

‘How much do they pay you at the school?’

Ashamed, Nathaniel told him.

‘Is that all?’ Adjei said, not believing him. ‘Nana Kweku will pay you more than that.’

‘You do not understand.’

‘Then tell me.’

Nathaniel looked away.

‘I do not think I can explain.’

The old man nodded his head, and his eyes showed a flicker of amusement.

‘The young always think the old cannot understand them. Try. Perhaps my feeble mind can follow you.’

‘It is not that,’ Nathaniel said. ‘It is just – well, I have changed. I do not want to be a chief’s clerk.’

For the first time the old man looked confused.

‘It is an honour to work for a chief. Surely you see that it is an honour?’

‘Not to me,’ Nathaniel said clearly. ‘How can I tell you? You will not understand. The chiefs are dying out, uncle. I do not want to work for the dead. I mean no disrespect. Nana Kweku is a fine man, a good man. But I do not want to work for him.’

‘He is chief only over one town and a handful of villages,’ Adjei said bitterly, ‘is that it? Who are you, Nathaniel? Who do you want to work for – the Asantehene himself?’

‘It is not that at all. I knew you would not see it.’

The old man sighed gustily.

‘Are you well, Nathaniel?’

Nathaniel threw out his hands in despair.

‘Yes,’ he grated through his teeth, ‘quite well.’

The old man’s eyes gleamed cruelly.

‘I thought you must either be mad or very wise,’ he said. ‘Try me again, Nathaniel. You say Nana Kweku is a good man,
and yet you refuse to work for him. Why? I am perhaps a little deaf these past years. That part was not quite clear to me –’

‘Because I would end by hating him, if I worked for him,’ Nathaniel snapped. ‘Oh – many clerks of chiefs despise their masters, make no mistake about it! I’d have to watch him, every day, every day, not able to read or even write his own name, not knowing anything outside his little province, but still able to command, to move people this way and that. I don’t want to see it.’

The old man looked at him in astonishment.

‘Now I know you are mad. Your sisters will grieve. Certainly, they will grieve.’

Nathaniel looked at him helplessly, as though from a great distance.

‘Listen to me, uncle. Just once. I mean no disrespect. Can’t you believe me?’

Adjei’s eyelids lifted a little.

‘Wonderful,’ he murmured, ‘wonderful. You would strangle your brother, I suppose, telling him all the while that you meant no disrespect?’

‘I know,’ Nathaniel said, ‘I know it sounds like that. But it is not. I do not say anything against the chiefs. Only that their time is past.’

‘You think,’ the old man’s voice was a soft hiss, ‘that because we have fallen low, and are ruled by foreigners and apes from the coast, that it will always be so? I tell you, Nathaniel, there is a wind rising in Asante more scorching than the Harmattan. It speaks of fire and it speaks of blood. Asante will be again what it once was.’

His words rang out clearly, the thin-voiced silver bell gathering itself to toll.

‘I know – you believe that,’ Nathaniel said. ‘The nationalists are trying to break Asante away from the union, to get a separate independence, to establish the old kingdom again. But I do not want my people to be what they once were. I want them to be something more.’

‘And what is wrong with what we once were?’ Adjei demanded angrily. ‘Our people are not the apes and dogs of the coast, eating their filth and living godless in caves. We have borne kings, and their strength gave us strength and their life gave us life. And they are with us, and the strength of their spirits will be as the fire of the sun in our veins –’

The old man’s eyes burned, and Nathaniel felt himself being drawn into that fire, fire of the sun, fire of gold.

‘No – ’ he said, then, bringing his hand down hard on the table, ‘no! Old tales, all of it. Our souls are sick with the names of our ancestors. Osei Tutu, he who made the nation, and Okomfo Anoye the priest, he who gave the nation its soul, and Nana Prempeh exiled by the English – I know, I know them all. I respect them, although you do not believe it. I honour them. But they will not save us. They are dead, dead, dead, and we are alive. Our future does not lie with them, or with the living chiefs, or with Asante alone. Africa is a big place, uncle.’

‘That is like a young man,’ Adjei said. ‘You would throw it all away. You would let the souls of your ancestors die for want of tending, not seeing that you die with them.’

‘I do not want to throw it all away,’ Nathaniel said painfully, then his voice rose to a cry, ‘but how can you keep part without keeping all? Keep the chiefs, the linguists, the soul-bearers, the drummers, and you will keep the “sumankwafo,” dealers in fetish, and the “bayi komfo,” the witch-doctors. You
will keep the minds that made “atopere,” the dance of death, a man hacked slowly to pieces and made to dance until too much was butchered for him to move. That is what you will keep.’

“‘Atopere” has been forbidden for many years,’ Adjei said sternly, ‘and it is not fitting for you to speak of things you do not understand.’

‘All right,’ Nathaniel said. ‘So I do not understand it. I am a city man. I do not know about these things. I do not want to know about them. They do not interest me. Things are changing, uncle, changing more than you see. The wind that is rising is rising all over Africa, and it speaks of something new that has never been before.’

The old man’s expression told Nathaniel he had gone too far, had wounded more than could ever be excusable.

‘Adjei – I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I cannot help it. But I’m sorry.’

Adjei scuffed one sandal on the floor and stared down at it, avoiding Nathaniel’s eyes.

‘No,’ he said, and his voice was not quite steady, ‘I do not think you are sorry. Because you have forgotten your own land. That is a strange thing to do, Nathaniel.’

Nathaniel could not speak. The old man’s voice seemed to repeat the words over and over, buzzing in his head like the shrill voices of a thousand cicadas.

– You have forgotten your own land. You live in the city of strangers, and your god is the god of strangers, and strange speech is in your mouth, and you have no home.

– Oh, Nathaniel, how can a man forget? A man cannot forget. Deep, deep, there lies the image of what the eye has lost and the brain has lost to ready command.

– The forest grows in me, now, this year and the next, until I die. The forest grows in me. See, there are the high trees, the tall hardwoods, mahogany and ofram, and the iron-grey
cottonwoods buttressed from their roots like great forts, the cottonwoods with their high green umbrellas of leaves. From the half-rotted trunks of the oil palms the parasite ferns grow, clothing the old bodies of the trees with obscene frivolity, tickling them with their fronds, their green green plumes. The forest spills over with life and death. The trees are hairy with strangler vines, beautiful green-haired death. The jungle lilies and the flowers of the poinsettia are red as the fresh blood of a sacrificed cockerel. The small blue commelina clutches the soil, the flower we call ‘God will die before I do’. The forest floor is carpeted with ferns, and beneath the live green lies the rotting flesh of the plants’ last growth, and their death gives new life to the soil. The forest is rank and hot and swelling with its semen. Death and life meet and mate.

– The forest grows in me, rank, hot, terrible. The fern fronds spread like veins through my body.

‘I have not forgotten,’ Nathaniel said in a low voice.

His uncle glanced at him, the old eyes unblinking as a lizard’s.

‘You want to forget, then,’ Adjei said, ‘and that is just as bad.’

Did he? Did he want to forget? Nathaniel looked away.

– When I was a boy, on my father’s farm, the forest was peopled with a million ghosts, a million gods. Stone and tree and root, a million eyes. I was not brave. I was slight and small for my age, and my mother had protected me too much. I was not brave. Was anyone? I thought the other boys were, then, but now I am not so sure. Perhaps they were afraid, too. The forest was enclosed, shadowy, like a room filled with green shadows. It was my home. The voice of the forest was shrill all day – a million million bees, a million million cicadas, a million million screaming birds. And at night the silence of the snake.