This Side Jordan (3 page)

He could remember the fear now. Overseas Cambridge School Certificate – it was like a regal title, hated and coveted. Sometimes, in the state of mind he had had then, the words took on a peculiarly evil, feminine quality – repelling him, beckoning, repelling again. He had not honestly known whether he wanted to pass or fail. He had felt the unnerving desire to fail, as though it would be a penance.

The examination room had been still, only the scritch-scratch of pens, and the priest, white skin and white robe, absentmindedly tapping his great ebony cross on the desk. Nathaniel remembered his own dry mouth, how he could not make the saliva flow, for the dry taste of fear in his mouth. He kept wanting to urinate, and finally did not care about the examination paper, as long as he could leave the room for that purpose. But when he handed his paper in and went out to the bush, nothing came.

He had not thought about it for a long time. His mind drew away, like a hand instinctively withdrawing from a flame.

He had met Mensah three years after leaving mission school. Nathaniel could still hear the deep syrupy voice – ‘Failed School Certificate, eh? Never mind. These things happen. One could really say you have Secondary. You could teach History? I like to help young men. You realize, of course, that as far as salary is concerned –’ Jacob Abraham had taken him because he got him cheaply.

Six years ago. He could still go back and get his School Certificate, couldn’t he? But what would he and Aya live on while he studied? And he had no confidence, anyway, in his own ability. However small and grimy his niche, Nathaniel did not feel capable of leaving it now.

And yet his life here was growing insufferable. He was made to grovel apology for every insignificant remark that Mensah chose to interpret as insubordination. Nathaniel sometimes thought the headmaster kept him on only for his sport.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Nathaniel repeated, stammering a little. ‘I didn’t mean to be insolent. It was only that – that – Cobblah was one of the brighter ones.’

‘I am not running a charity organization,’ Mensah said.

‘I know.’

The big man became confiding.

‘You know your trouble, Amegbe? You are a dreamer, A dreamer. Unrealistic. Do you think in England a boy would be allowed to continue –? Of course not. Pay or go. Pay or go. That is the policy. But because this is the Gold Coast, we should be kind-hearted, eh? The new Ghana, eh? Well, let me tell you –’

He broke off and stared at Nathaniel.

‘By the way, Amegbe – Cobblah’s family comes from the same part of Asante as your own – is it so?’

Nathaniel looked at him steadily.

‘Yes. But it was not that way.’

At least he did not take bribes. Perhaps Jacob Abraham would respect him more if he did.

‘Naturally, naturally,’ Jacob Abraham’s voice was acid overlaid with oil. ‘I had forgotten. You’re our honest man, eh? Well, send him in to my office tomorrow, will you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The headmaster still hovered, like an absurd gigantic mud-wasp vacillating over the choice of nest.

‘Another thing –’ he said. ‘I am asking all the masters to make suggestions about Independence Day celebrations in the school. There will be some suitable service. People will expect it. I thought we might solicit among parents to get some lasting memorial.’

Nathaniel glanced around at the shabby classroom with its unswept earth floor, its straight wooden benches shredded at the edges by pocket-knives, termites and time. On the wall hung a torn map of the world. The blackboard at the front was ridiculously small and permanently dulled by chalk.

‘We need new benches,’ he murmured.

Jacob Abraham Mensah laughed merrily.

‘My dear chap,’ he said, ‘not that sort of memorial. No, no. I mean something that will make an impression. An Independence window, perhaps, or a brass plaque on the front of the building.’

The front of the building was plaster over mudbrick. The façade had been chipped by inhabitants fifty years before Futura Academy was born, stained and furrowed by rain, glued with paper bills proclaiming funeral rites or this week’s dances at Teshie and Labadi, chalk-scrawled, chicken-scratched, urinated against by humans and dung-splattered by goats.

A brass plaque, thought Nathaniel with a bleak inward grin, would look wonderful on the front of the building. ‘That is a fine idea,’ he said soberly.

Nathaniel took the bus home. He tried to stop thinking about his talk with Mensah, but it would not go away. What hope was there now of a rise in salary? None. Nathaniel felt vulnerable and without bargaining power.

His failure at the mission school was the thing that had set the course of his life. He had never told anyone what had made him unable to write the examinations properly. He would not even think of the details in anyone’s presence, as though he might blurt it all out in his anxiety not to do so.

He had been a fool to be afraid. But that was nine years ago. He was eighteen then. He had lived at mission schools since he was seven, only going back to his village in holidays. The stamp of the mission was deep on him.

His father. Kyerema, Drummer to a Chief. He who knew the speech of the Ntumpane and the Fontomfrom, the sacred talking drums. His father, with the proud face and cruel eyes of a warrior of Asante. His father, who prayed to Tano, god of the River, Lord of the Forest.

The Kyerema would not be acceptable to God. That had seemed very clear at the time. Had not the mission priests taught it? ‘I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me.’ The Drummer would walk among the howling hordes of hell to all eternity, his dark eyes as haughty and unyielding as they had been in life.

Damned. The Drummer, damned. That had seemed very clear at the time. (Oh, young Nathaniel, having eaten the
mission’s consecrated bread, year after year, having eaten faith and fear and the threat of fire.)

He, Nathaniel, had damned his father to that eternity. The father had been damned by his son’s belief.

Nathaniel had taken part in his father’s funeral rites with a fervour that surprised the uncles.

– He had not forgotten the ways of his people, they said.

He had feared, himself, that he might have forgotten. But then he knew there were some things a man never forgets, though they may lie untouched in the urn of his mind for years. The urn is unsealed and they are there, relics of another self, a dead world. Around Nathaniel’s head was bound the ‘asuani’ creeper, whose name means ‘tears’. The rust-hued mourning cloth, colour of Africa’s earth, was twisted around his body. And the lamentation, the ancient lamentation, had risen to his throat unbidden.

– Alas, father!

And the dirges came out of the unsealed urn. At the wake-keeping, the dirges came back as though he had heard them every day of his life.

The dirges that the women sang were as familiar to him as though he had heard them every day of his life. The keening
voices entered into him, became his voice, mourning for the dead Drummer.

His sister Kwaale, like a she-leopard caged, paced the room as she sang her mourning, arms clasped across her breast, sorrow distorting her handsome face, her strong face. She was the oldest child. She, not Nathaniel, should have been the son, for she was strong, strong, and the Kyerema had always known it.

And her plea for gifts from the dead, that was a plea for love:

The Drummer was also mourned by those of his own calling. The Drummer’s drum was silent, and the drums mourned. The drummers, sons of the Crocodile who drums in the River, mourned their brother:

The wake was a time of fasting. The drums were not still day or night. The dark air and the bright air, both were
hot and wet, the air was sweat, the air was the sweet over-ripeness of palm-wine. And Nathaniel fasted and drank palm-wine and listened to the funeral songs for the dead Drummer, his father.

Somewhere there was another god, not Nyame, not Nyankopon, not Tano, not Asaase Yaa, Mother of the Dead. Somewhere there was another – God.

But He was far away. The Latin words were far away, and the altar and the wine-blood and the wafer that was a broken body. They were far away, and Nathaniel had come home.

Then one of the uncles spoke to him.

‘They have not stolen your soul, Nathaniel, the white priests.’

– They have not stolen your soul.

In the compound, men were firing old Arab muzzle-loaders, a courtesy to the dead. Nathaniel could hear the now-wild voices of his sisters, wailing sorrow into the night. And the drums, the drums, the drums –

He knew then.

– I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God –

Nathaniel had looked at his father’s body. It was lying on its left side, dressed in the best cloth it had owned in life, a magnificent vari-coloured Kente. The ‘kra sika’, the soul money, was bound around its wrists, and the ears had been filled with gold dust. Beside it lay the food for the soul: eggs, mashed yam, roasted fowls, earthen pots of water. The Kyerema would not want on his journey.

Nathaniel’s heart was gripped by a terrible love, a terrible fear.

‘They have not stolen your soul,’ the uncles repeated, satisfied.

And the boy had agreed, his aching body sweating and trembling lest the lie should strangle him and lest his father’s gods should hear and slay him.

The noise of the drums was the howling of lunatics, and the palm-wine had the taste of death. Then he had drunk himself insensible.

On the third day, the Drummer’s body was taken to the ‘samanpow’, the thicket of ghosts, for burial. Again, the drums, the guns, the heat, men reeling from hunger and exhaustion and palm-wine, the stench of the living and the stench of the dead. And the Drummer’s only son, his voice more frenzied than the voice of the drums, shouted his confused despair into the ancient formula.

– Alas, father!

When he went back to the Mission, Nathaniel had gone alone to the chapel one night. He had stood before the statue of God’s crucified Son. And he had spat full in the Thing’s face, his heart raging to avenge his father. But it did not work. For he believed in the man-God with the bleeding hands, and he could not spew that out of himself. For a moment, before an altar that was both alien and as familiar as himself, his fear became panic. He waited, waited, and the night chapel was a coffin. But God was sleeping. Or He had punishments more subtle than lightning. Nothing happened, and after a while Nathaniel’s fear was only that one of the priests might discover him there and see the spittle on the plaster face.

It had occurred to him then that the Kyerema would only have laughed if he had seen. This was all his son could do – this secret slime at night. And there would have been bitterness in the Drummer’s laughter.

Shame swamped Nathaniel. He had never been brave enough to burn either Nyame’s Tree or the Nazarene’s Cross.

Nine years ago. He had been a fool. He could see it now. Now he was different. Both gods had fought over him, and both had lost. Now he no longer feared.

Except sometimes.

‘T
he sample bolts have arrived from London,’ Johnnie said. ‘Cooper thought you might want to know.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ James Thayer said eagerly. ‘I think I’ll just nip down and have a look. Care to come along? You might find it interesting.’

Together they walked down the iron-banistered stairway. It was going to be a busy morning on the textile floor. The swarms of women traders were already pattering up and down the narrow aisles, their bare or sandalled feet slapping softly on the grey splintered wood. They would buy cloth wholesale and resell it in the markets. A twelve-yard bolt made two robes, and many African women who did not have the money for the whole piece were willing to pay more per yard to obtain half a length from the market mammies.

The huge room had a dim, cool, cave quality about it, away from the sun and shriek of the street. The walls were thick, the windows small and high. The building dated from the days when whitemen in the tropics never ventured forth without solar topee and flannel spinepad, and in their dwelling-places barricaded themselves against the marauding sun.

But dark and dank as it was, Johnnie could almost understand James’ passion for the place. It was the Firm’s first building in the Gold Coast. Allkirk, Moore & Bright was an export-import firm which purchased cocoa and palm oil here, and sold soap, tradecloth, brass headpans, cheap enamelled pots and pans. There was a retail store in Accra and others in Kumasi and Koforidua. But the textile trade was the biggest branch of the business. Bolts of tradecloth had been piled on these low wooden platform-tables since the year of the last Ashanti War, more than half a century ago.

James and Johnnie crossed the textile floor and entered the stockroom. Pink-faced with exertion, Cooper and Freeman were helping the African counter-clerks to unload the new bolts. The Squire called them to one side.

‘Gentlemen – ’ James’ voice was quiet, but there was an unmistakable chill in it, ‘you are meant to be supervising these clerks – had you forgotten?’

The two boys – they could not be more than eighteen or nineteen – blushed profoundly. They were apprentices. Ultimately, they might become branch managers, if they could stand Africa that long. But the training course was not an easy one. Johnnie felt almost sorry for them now, as they tried nervously to marshal their forces and to bark at the Africans in an authoritative manner, painfully conscious of the Squire’s cold eyes on them. They looked pitifully similar, the two of them, both fair-haired and fresh scrubbed, both maidenly in their neatness and gaucherie, both miserable in their forced and feeble attempt to achieve the bellowvoice of the sahib.

The African clerks, understandably, were snickering, and James was annoyed.

‘We’re promoting young chaps far too fast these days,’ he said in a low voice to Johnnie. ‘Look at those two. It’ll be
ten years before they’re any use, but I’ll wager they’ll be whipped away to more responsible posts within a year or two. When I began in this country, it was a different matter.’

He chuckled – a dry, thin, spun-glass sound.

‘I worked with the Firm for fifteen years before I got my first promotion,’ James said. ‘Men were expected to prove themselves in those days.’

He went from pattern to pattern, examining, touching, clucking approval, like a master jeweller with a collection of rare stones. At last he raised his grey-fringed head and smiled.

‘Seems odd to you, doesn’t it? All this fuss about a few new bolts of tradecloth. Well, let me tell you something. The prestige and stability of the Firm depend to a very large extent on the right choice of patterns for tradecloth. If the Africans don’t like a pattern, or if it offends them for any reason, they don’t buy. And if you have more than one or two bad prints in a year, the word gets round that Allkirk, Moore & Bright are no good for mammy-cloth any more. You see?’

The two young men had gone back to the textile floor, and the African counter-clerks with them. James and Johnnie were alone now, with the gaudy bolts of new cloth.

The cold managerial stare was gone from James’ eyes. Johnnie was startled at the expression on the Squire’s face – an almost shy pride.

‘I think I can honestly claim,’ James said, ‘to know as much about tradecloth as any man alive.’

Then he seemed embarrassed. He turned away with a cough.

‘Well, all right, Johnnie, you’d better be getting back, I suppose. I want to look around here for a bit.’

Johnnie left him there, stooped in intense scrutiny over
the bolts of cloth, his fingers stroking lightly the black giraffe, the orange palm, the sea-monster and the serpent, the red appalling eye, the green and blue entangled grasses.

Bedford was reading
The Illustrated London News
and eating an apple. He held out the paper bag to Johnnie.

‘Have one. Six shillings a pound – “Saleh’s” received a barrel of ’em this morning. Horrid little shrivelled things, actually, but it’s refreshing to taste an apple that hasn’t come out of a tin. Don’t tell Helen. She worries incessantly. About the fruit, you know, not having been washed in pot. permang. When Helen breast-fed Kathie she used to scrub herself with potassium permanganate. Got blazing at me when I said her energy might be low but I hadn’t known she was quite at the vegetable level.’

Bedford rumbled with laughter, then his handsome florid face grew morose once more.

‘I asked the old blighter about the bungalow again this morning,’ he said. ‘Promised Helen I would. Not a bit of use, of course. Each time he simply says there isn’t another bungalow available. He won’t ask the London office for funds to build another one. Not he.’

‘What’s the matter with your bungalow?’

‘What isn’t the matter with it?’ Bedford replied peevishly. ‘It’s the oldest on the compound. Built about the year One. Everything’s falling to bits. Shutters blow off in every storm. Thousands of bats nesting in the roof. Helen can’t bear bats – she nearly passes out when she sees one, which is roughly a dozen times each evening. I tell you, Johnnie, it’s hell. I don’t mind the house myself. Matter of fact, I’m rather fond of the place. But Helen gets in such a flap about it –’

‘You should have had our bungalow. It’s practically new.’

‘Impossible. Too small. Your second bedroom wouldn’t accommodate our young. Helen, of course, thinks we ought to have been given the Thayers’ bungalow, as they haven’t children. But really, one can’t walk in to the Old Man’s office and say “Look here, you must give me your bungalow,” now can one? Women never appreciate the complexity of life. These things seem so simple to them.’

He sighed.

‘Well, never mind all that. What can I do for you, Johnnie?’

‘It’s about the clerks,’ Johnnie began, then hesitated.

Bedford Cunningham’s position was a little vague, but he appeared to be responsible for office supplies and for the hiring of most of the African staff – clerks, drivers and messengers.

Johnnie, as the new Accountant for the Textile Branch, wanted to replace some of his clerks, and he wanted to hire the new boys himself. He explained it to Bedford as tactfully as he could. To his surprise, the older man did not demur at all.

‘Go ahead,’ Bedford said, waving one enormous paw. ‘I wish you joy of them.’

‘I expect you think I’m a bit of a new broom,’ Johnnie said awkwardly. ‘I’ll try not to be –’

‘No,’ Bedford said. ‘Don’t try. It’ll happen by itself, quite soon enough.’

‘Somebody is waiting to see you, sir.’

Why was Attah smiling in that peculiar fashion? Johnnie looked sharply at his chief clerk, whose glance leapt away.

The African caller was sitting on one of the straight chairs just inside the door of the Accounts Office. He rose to
his feet so slowly and languorously that there was something almost insulting about the action. He stretched his arms lazily above his head and gave an open-mouthed yawn. It crossed Johnnie’s mind that the man might be after a job. But surely not even an African would try so deliberately to create a bad impression, nor present such a slovenly appearance. Crumpled khaki trousers, torn at one knee, sagged around the black man’s hips. His yellow cotton jersey was splattered with food and grime. He wore canvas tennis shoes with no socks, and his heavy-jawed face bore a day’s dark wiry growth.

‘Ah, Mr. Kestoe,’ the African said, ‘I trust I have not intruded at an inopportune moment. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Victor Edusei, a journalist with the “Free Ghana Citizen”. I promise you I will only take a few minutes of your valuable time.’

For an instant Johnnie could only look blank. He had expected pidgin English, or, at most, the heavily accented, stilted phraseology of the semi-educated African. But this man’s speech had in it more of Oxford than Accra.

A clerk tittered, and Johnnie jerked himself into alertness.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘in my office, then. But it’ll have to be brief.’

When they were seated, Johnnie looked at the African curiously.

‘Well, what is it?’

Edusei puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette for a moment. ‘It has come to our ears, Mr. Kestoe, that your Firm is considering a programme of top-level Africanization.’

‘Africanization?’

‘Yes. You know – the process by which Africans are reluctantly permitted to take over certain administrative posts hitherto held by Europeans only.’

‘Why ask me about it?’ Johnnie said. ‘Mr. Thayer is the Manager here, as I fancy you know quite well.’

‘Oh yes, I know. But you have only recently come from London, you see. You might perhaps have heard things there – talk around the office –’

Johnnie stiffened.

‘Mr. Edusei, do you seriously imagine I would tell you anything about the Firm’s policies, even if I knew?’

‘You Englishmen have such high principles.’ Edusei’s smile was a little more openly menacing than it had been. ‘Never mind – relax, Mr. Kestoe – I knew you would not talk about Africanization.’

‘What in hell are you doing here, then?’

The black man’s languor dropped like a snake’s sloughed-off skin. His powerfully built body seemed to coagulate, each loose limp muscle suddenly drawn together, tight and hard. He was on his feet, his face shoved close to Johnnie’s.

‘You visited the “Weekend In Wyoming” last Saturday, Mr. Kestoe. You remember the African girl you danced with?’

Johnnie drew back.

‘What of it?’

‘Nothing. Only – I watched you, and I didn’t like what I saw. I just wanted to let you know – that happens to be my girl. You understand me?’

Unreasoning fear jangled along Johnnie’s nerves; quieted; gave way to annoyance at the situation’s burlesque quality.

‘You’re insane,’ he said coldly. ‘Why, I wouldn’t even recognize her if I saw her again.’

The African’s muscles went slack again. He laughed and sat down.

‘Of course. I give you full marks, Mr. Kestoe. She was,
naturally, only another black girl to you. And I am a bloody fool. How neat.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Johnnie snapped. ‘You don’t need to worry, Mr. Edusei. I’m not interested in African women.’

As he said it, he could feel the wilful crimson staining his face. He turned away, as though to terminate the interview, but he knew the African had seen.

‘Indeed?’ Edusei drawled. ‘I suppose it is against your principles.’

‘It most certainly is. And now I’d like you to tell me why you gave me that line about Africanization.’

‘I thought it would do no harm to let you know that a story could always be printed – if the need arose – as having come from you. You might deny having made such a statement, but would your Firm ever feel really sure about you again?’

Johnnie stared at him.

‘Are you trying to threaten me?’

Edusei rose. Again he stretched, belly out, and yawned, flaunting coarseness.

‘What a suggestion, Mr. Kestoe! I would never threaten a whiteman. No, no – I am much too timid for that. I know my place. Well, this has been a pleasure, but I must be going now.’

At the door he turned.

‘Another reason – I really did hear the rumour about Africanization. I have many friends in London. It will be interesting to see if it is true, won’t it?’

He bent in a spasm of soundless laughter.

‘Goodbye, Mr. Accountant,’ he said.
Nathaniel first met Miranda and Johnnie Kestoe at the British Council building, where an exhibition of landscapes by African artists was being shown. She was trying to persuade her husband to buy a picture.

‘Johnnie – this one,’ she said. ‘I like it.’

‘Sand and palm trees and a mouldy old fishing boat. Really, Manda –’

‘It gets the atmosphere of the shore,’ she insisted, and turning to Nathaniel as the nearest spectator, ‘Don’t you agree?’

Startled, Nathaniel stared at her.

‘Pardon? Oh – the picture. Yes, yes, it is very fine.’

‘You see – someone agrees with me,’ she said to her husband.

‘Who’s going to disagree with you, Manda?’ he said sulkily. ‘You make people agree.’

Nathaniel felt awkward. He did not really like the picture. He had agreed only because he had been taken by surprise and could not think of anything else to say. He wondered now if the man thought he was one of those Africans who automatically agree with Europeans.

‘Oh no, sir, not at all,’ he said hastily. ‘I assure you – I thought the picture was very good. I thought so before this lady asked me.’

‘You would,’ the European said rudely.

Of course, Nathaniel realized, the European thought he liked the picture only because it had been painted by an African. Nathaniel burned inwardly. He turned to go, wanting to get away as quickly as possible from the whiteman’s keen scornful eyes. But the woman caught at his sleeve.

‘Please – don’t go. We’re Johnnie and Miranda Kestoe. Do you know the artist, by any chance?’

Nathaniel became agonizingly aware that his khaki slacks needed both washing and pressing, and that his blue shirt, although it had been clean that morning, was rumpled and transparent with sweat. He was conscious of his glasses, too. They were new, and had heavy horn rims. He had paid more for them than he could afford. He needed them – even with them, he wore the perpetual frown of myopia. But a lot of Africans wore spectacles only to give themselves dignity. Or, at least, that was what most whitemen believed. Nathaniel wondered if Johnnie Kestoe would think the glasses were an affectation. Then he became angry at himself for caring, for even bothering to think about it.