Authors: Kwei Quartey
Wife of the Gods
Kwei Quartey
Wife of the Gods
Darko Dawson #1
2009, EN
Detective Inspector Darko Dawson, a good
family man and a remarkably intuitive sleuth, is sent to the
village of Ketanu – the site of his mother's disappearance many
years ago – to solve the murder of an accomplished young AIDS
worker.
While battling his own anger issues and concerns for
his ailing son, Darko explores the motivations and secrets of the
residents of Ketanu. It soon becomes clear that in addition to
solving a recent murder, he is about to unravel the shocking truth
about his mother's disappearance.
Kwei Quartey's sparkling debut novel introduces
readers to a rich cast of characters, including the Trokosi – young
women called Wives of the Gods – who, in order to bring good
fortune to their families, are sent to live with fetish priests.
Set in Ghana, with the action moving back and forth between the
capital city of Accra and a small village in the Volta Region, Wife
of the Gods brings the culture and beauty of its setting
brilliantly to life.
Table of contents
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Glossary
Because of the rich collection of Ghanaian names, expressions,
and locales in this work, a glossary is provided at the back of the
book to enhance the reader’s experience of the story.
Although it may seem a fanciful notion to many Western readers,
witchcraft still holds importance in Ghana, where belief in magical
powers coexists with acceptance of modern science and medicine. For
many people, concepts of ancestral influence and the spirit world
are important in everyday life.
This controversial custom is found in isolated areas of Ghana’s
Volta Region and in neighboring Togo, with strongly opposed views
on either side of the issue. Even the English translation of the
word is debated (wife of the gods, slave of the gods, child of a
divinity, and so on). Traditionalists, such as the Afrikania
organization in Accra, are in favor of the tradition and deny that
slavery is involved. The Ghanaian government and NGOs such as the
Christian organization International Needs decry the practice. Some
of these opposing views are presented in the novel.
Map of Ketanu and surroundings
T
he forest was
black and Darko was afraid to enter. The trees, covered from apex
to root with dry, sloughing scales, beckoned him with their
crackling, stunted branches. The forest floor erupted in a
charcoal-colored cloud of dust as the gnarled, ragged tree roots
burst from the earth and turned into massive, thrashing limbs.
Swaying, the trees began to lumber toward Darko. He wanted to
escape, but terror paralyzed him. He opened his mouth to scream but
no sound came
.
“Don’t be frightened, Darko
.”
He recognized his mother’s voice at once. Relief swept
through him and rendered him light and free. Joy swelled in his
chest and knotted in his throat as he saw Mama emerge from the
shadows. She walked toward him as if floating, her head held high
in the assurance that she would allow nothing to harm her
boy
.
She held out her hand. “Come along. It’s all right
.”
Her palm softly and completely cocooned his. He looked up.
She smiled down at him, her eyes deep and warm and liquid. She was
strong and beautiful. He loved the touch of her hand and the scent
of her skin
.
And she took him into the musty forest of putrefying trees
that walked. The forest floor was carpeted with ashen, lifeless
leaves and brittle twigs that snapped underfoot. For a moment, the
trees stopped moving and allowed Darko and his mother to pass
through silent as ghosts
.
“You see?” she said. “They can’t trouble us because we’re not
afraid of them
.”
One of the trees moaned loudly – a hoarse, wrenching sound
full of the pain of approaching death. Roots flailing, its bulbous
trunk took on the distorted likeness of a face, eyes cruel and
mouth bitter as quinine. Darko shied away, but Mama held him
fast
.
“No, Darko, you can’t go back now. I’ve led you here to find
the truth
.”
“I’m scared to go on, Mama
.”
“Why, Darko?
”
“What if the truth is more terrible than the forest?
”
At that very instant, his hand slipped from hers. She faded
away, and in the void she left, there was no answer. The tree with
the face, suddenly luminous in the darkness, floundered in the soil
as it lurched closer
.
“Mama?
”
His reaching hand touched empty space
.
“Mama, where are you?
”
Darko turned in circles, straining his eyes to see, but Mama
had vanished. The trees grunted, scrabbling at the ground to gain
traction as they closed in
.
Darko Dawson the boy cried out. “Mama!
”
♦
Darko Dawson the man cried out. Gasping, soaked in sweat, he sat
bolt upright in bed. “Mama?”
The room flooded with light and he cringed. He felt arms
wrapping around him and he tried to fight them off.
“The trees,” he said.
“No trees,” Christine said. “No trees. Just me. In the bedroom,
here with you.”
Dawson looked at his wife, startled for an instant before he
recognized her. He sighed deeply and let the tension go as he
leaned against her. She held him and wiped the sweat from his
brow.
“The dream was different from before,” he whispered.
“Was it?”
He nodded. “This time, Mama was in the forest with me. I think
she’s calling for me, Christine – no, I’m certain she is. She’s
ready for me now. She may have disappeared, but she isn’t gone, and
now she wants me to find her.”
I
nspector Max Fiti
had great significance in a place that had little. He was the head
of police in Ketanu, a small town in the Adaklu-Anyigbe District of
Ghana’s Volta Region. All he had was a small police station as
ragged as a stray dog, two constables, and an old police vehicle
that ran erratically, but when there was trouble, people turned to
Fiti.
Case in point: Charles Mensah, a fortyish man with a painfully
thin body and a bulbous head like a soldier termite, had just come
into his office this morning to report his sister missing.
“When did you last see Gladys?” Fiti asked.
“Yesterday afternoon, around three,” Charles said. “Just before
she left for Bedome.”
“She went to Bedome? To do what?”
“You know she’s a volunteer with the Ghana Health Service AIDS
outreach. She goes to different villages to teach and so on.”
“Aha, yes.”
The village of Bedome was east of Ketanu on the other side of
the forest.
“When she didn’t come back home yesterday evening,” Charles
continued, “I thought it was strange, so I rang her mobile and left
a message. She never called back and I started to get worried, so
then I rang Timothy Sowah, the director of the AIDS program, and he
said he too had been unable to reach her on the mobile.”
“Maybe she went to another village where the reception is poor?”
Fiti suggested.
“Mr. Sowah told me Bedome was the only place she was scheduled
to visit,” Charles replied.
“Are you sure she actually got to Bedome? I mean, not that I’m
saying something bad happened on the way, but – ”
“I understand what you mean, Inspector. I got up early this
morning – I couldn’t sleep anyway – and I went to Bedome to check.
Everyone told me yes, that Gladys had been there yesterday and she
had left some time before sunset to go back to Ketanu.”
True, less than twenty-four hours had passed, Fiti reflected,
but he agreed this was all very troubling. Gladys Mensah was a
serious girl – reliable, solid, and smart. And beautiful. Very,
very lovely indeed. So, yes, Fiti took this seriously. He jotted
some notes on a legal pad, sitting slightly sideways because his
rotund belly prevented him from pulling up close to his desk. Fiti
was approaching the half-century mark in age, and most of the
weight he had recently been gaining had gone to his midsection.
“Something else I want to tell you,” Charles said. “Maybe it’s
nothing, but while I was on my way to Bedome this morning, I spoke
to some farmers who have their plots near the forest. They told me
that while they were working yesterday evening, they saw Samuel
Boateng talking to Gladys as she was on her way back to
Ketanu.”
Inspector Fiti’s eyes narrowed. “Is that so?”
He didn’t like the Boateng family much. Samuel, the second
oldest boy, was a ruffian who had once stolen a packet of PK
chewing gum from a market stall.
“Have you asked Samuel or his father about it?” Fiti said.
“We don’t speak to the Boatengs,” Charles said tersely.
Fiti pressed his lips together. “Don’t worry, I’ll go and see
them myself.”
E
fia was a Trokosi,
which meant that she belonged to the gods. Eighteen years ago, her
uncle Kudzo beat a man to death with a branch from a baobab tree.
Over the next several months, bad things began to happen to the
family: crops failed because of drought, Efia’s mother had a
stroke, and a cousin drowned in a river. Everyone in the family
panicked. Even though Uncle Kudzo had been imprisoned for his
crime, it appeared the gods were punishing the family for what he
had done. This was the only reasonable explanation for the horrible
series of events that had been taking place, and who knew how many
more catastrophes were to be meted out by the gods?
The family elders went to the Bedome shrine to consult with
Togbe Adzima, chief and High Priest of the village. Adzima, who was
an intermediary between the physical world and the spirit world,
said yes, there was most certainly a way out of this predicament.
The family needed to bring a female child to serve at the shrine.
Efia, twelve at the time, was the perfect choice. She was handed
over to Adzima to learn “moral ways.” This would restore good
fortune to the family. As a trokosi, though, she officially
belonged to the gods and was to bear their children through Togbe
Adzima. He had three other trokosi and nineteen children among
them. The wives cooked for him, cleaned, made palm wine, and
harvested crops. Every penny from the sale of foodstuffs went to
him.
And there lay the heart of the matter. Whatever the supposed
reason for the women serving at the shrine, despite their being
sometimes loftily called “wives of the gods,” they were the source
of all Togbe’s plenty, and that made life very good for him.
Whenever Efia looked back on the day her new life as a trokosi
began, she flinched with the pain of the memory. She and the
extended family had walked about sixteen kilometers from their home
village to the shrine, bearing all kinds of gifts for Togbe. Efia
didn’t understand why she was being cleaved from her family. She
cried and cried and could not stop.
