Ancestor Stones (22 page)

Mr Blue came back, his chin stubbled with white. Small Boy went to heat water and fetch the razor and brush, but Mr Blue waved him away. Instead he sat in front of the camp wireless with the headset on his ears for many hours into the night. Listening to the voices that floated on hissing, bubbling waves. The voices carried news of the strikes into the camp.

Later I heard people say those strikes were the beginning. First the strikes. Next the rebellion. Finally the end of the rule of chiefs. Maybe that's the way it was. I don't know. I only know what I saw.

The voices issued Mr Blue with instructions. Flying pickets. Wildcat strikes. Trade unionists. Troublemakers. Refuse access, they said. Mr Blue was to issue notice of an epidemic if necessary and use the excuse to seal the area.

Early the next morning Mr Blue went down to talk to the workers. Rows of faces, wiped clear of all expression, like sand after wind. The men listened to the lies spilling over Mr Blue's narrow lips: talk of quarantines and infection rates, instructions on how to avoid the spread of the pretend contagion. He gazed away above their heads at the tops of the trees as he assured them a doctor was on the way from Mile 47.

Too late! Between the wireless and the bush wire, the bush wire was the faster.

A man stepped forward and laid down his pickaxe. Others followed. A few anxious ones hopped from leg to leg, consulting the sky, not knowing what to do. But in the end they followed their brothers. Though some said: ‘Sorry, master,' as they laid down their tools. I hid behind some fencing and watched as, one by one, the men turned their backs on Mr Blue. Barely a word had been spoken. I had never seen such a thing. Mr Blue stared straight ahead, not moving, not speaking, not blinking even. Refusing to watch them walk away from him. All the time his lips were set in a strange smile. He looked like a
rongsho
risen from the grave.

They passed me, they did not notice me crouching there. Their
leader came first. I recognised him from the pits, he was one of the men sent to work there by the chief that first week. I remember him to this day: a tall man, with a beard like a Muslim. Well, that could have been any number of men. But he had a patch on his lower lip where the brown gave way to pink. Like a stain or a splash.

Later there was talk, scandalous talk. I was even told his name, though I don't remember it now. And I was too young then really to remember the events of which they spoke, because those things had happened years before and the man had gone away and since returned. Later, when for a short while, this man's name became known to all, people talked of some past disgrace. It concerned a woman, I know that much. A junior wife.

Morning and the sun rose over silence. The mine machines were stilled, their voices quiet. It seemed there had been no other sound for months. Now it was as if the birds and animals were shocked into a silence of their own. The silence crept outwards, out until it stifled everything, even the humming of the forest.

The silence is what I remember most. Because it was not the way we did things. The silence was something different. Before then silence was something I thought that I alone understood. I knew when not to speak, when not to let myself be heard. Silence was my friend, my twin, the other half of me. Silence was my weapon. Not a blustering gun, but an invisible spider's web.

The men did not report for work. Instead they marched to the gates of the compound. You could see the dust on the road as they came. Feel the thrumming of a hundred bare feet, like the beating of the earth's own heart. I remained out of sight, watching. A brass padlock dangled from the iron chain wrapped around the gateposts of the compound. Mr Blue stayed inside, alone, not counting Small Boy and me. The men waited without speaking. A thin, black line between the green of the trees and the red earth, like the colours of a flag.

I waited for Mr Blue to rouse himself and go down to them. Mr Blue waited by his silent radio.

Late in the afternoon the light thickened to the colour of rust.
The singing began. The men's voices carried into the compound, buoyed on the waves of silence, and poured in through the cracks around the windows of the room where Mr Blue stood. Some songs were known to me. Others were society songs I had heard but rarely. A short time passed and the men sang louder. The air began to tremble under the weight of their voices. It was as though they were calling to the thunder, which answered them, rumbling through the sky, bringing the rain.

I came and stood behind Mr Blue. The air inside his room was heavy, it stuck to the roof of my mouth, caught in my throat and muffled the sounds from outside. The rain began to come down. Needles of sound bounced off the tin roof. The windows vibrated. Mr Blue stood, hidden by the darkness, staring at the men outside who stood in ragged rows behind the man with the mark on his lip. A firm man would have gone out to talk to him, but Mr Blue was not that man. Water streamed down the glass, distorting the faces and bodies of the men beyond. Light seeped out of the day. Mr Blue and I stood and watched, until the figures merged with the darkness.

Much later I watched Mr Blue leave his room, quietly but not quiet enough. Down to the perimeter fence, where I saw him lay a trail of white powder on the inside, like a line of ash to ward off soldier ants.

The light came back and the men were there. As though they had never gone, but stood like sentinels through the night.

Mr Blue asked us to bring all the empty bottles and cans we could find. He sat on the floor filling them up with powder and nails and pieces of metal. In the afternoon he took to his camp bed with a fresh cold, rolling his aching head around on his pillow, coughing into a handkerchief. While he was asleep Small Boy slipped away and came back.

Mr Blue was a prisoner, although none of us behaved as though we knew this. Small Boy said the men were angry because now they had learned the value of the gold they were digging out of the river and up from the former rice fields. Some of the men had been panning for themselves, trading with the Syrian traders. But this was not allowed.

On top of that, across the land the tax had jumped up to twenty-five shillings. And now the authorities wanted to tax even more people. They wanted to tax the young men without wives or even homes, who already owed their labour to the chiefs, building their houses and working on their farms.

Small Boy told me the railwaymen were the ones who started with this kind of trouble. The very first time was right after the first war when the men who fought in Senegal came back to find a cup of rice that used to cost one penny now cost five pence. And bread was sixpence, but their wages were the same. That was the first time the railway stopped. Small Boy, who had then barely grown into his name let alone grown out of it, remembered the great, silent locomotives. How he followed his brothers, clambering over the roofs of the carriages, like birds on a basking hippopotamus.

In the city people accused the Syrians of hoarding food and looted the Syrian stores. By then the Syrians owned all the stores.

The next time the railways stopped it was because the black railwaymen were made to take tests but not the white ones. Governor Slater called it a ‘fight to the death' and called in the troops, who came with guns. And when the railwaymen went back to work some had lost their pensions, and others their jobs, and some their lives. And everyone earned even less than before. The Railway Workers' Union was banned. But the anger didn't die. Instead it changed shape and wore a new face, with an ingratiating smile. The railway workers said: ‘Yes, Sir. Yes, Missus,' and doffed their caps and punched holes in the first-class tickets of the administrators and their wives with a pointed pinkie nail.

So when the cost of a cup of rice doubled again because all the farmers turned their backs on their fields and headed east with their hoes to dig up diamonds instead of yams, the leaders of the new Artisans and Allied Workers' Union and the Transport and General Workers' Union asked for one shilling and sixpence more pay a day. The bosses offered them four pence. In the city they stoned the houses of the new African ministers, who should have supported them but didn't. Small Boy had seen the pictures in the
newspapers. They soon changed their minds after their windows were broken. And last year the railwaymen went on strike again.

‘Now everybody, he wants the same,' said Small Boy.

Head Office was closed. The bosses couldn't get inside. The strikers encircled the building like a noose. That was why nobody answered Mr Blue's calls on the radio. Small Boy said never mind. He had seen it all before. We only had to wait.

So we waited through that day and the next. Mr Blue lay in his bed and didn't ask for anything. I looked at him. I thought about these people who had to be carried over rivers, who fainted in the sun, drank only boiled water and slept under nets. Their skin tore like old cotton, their flesh was soft as a baby's. They were weak, but they were strong at the same time. We outnumbered them greatly and yet they ruled us.

The radio hissed and spat. Mr Blue sat bolt upright like a corpse struck by lightning.

In the empty compound Small Boy picked his teeth and hummed. Beyond the gates a centuries-old anger, pricked by a new pin, bubbled and burst.

Silence from outside. The singing had stopped. Then the blustering guns came and tore through the silence.

And that was that. Mr Blue told me he was being reassigned. He handed me my wages and five shillings' ‘loyalty bonus'. I gave him my thanks.

So I packed Mr Blue's belongings while Small Boy washed the pots and cooking things, folded the camp bed, the bed roll and the chairs. Packed them all up inside six wooden boxes. Into the boxes followed the tins of lunch tongue and sardines, jars of sandwich spread, bottles of grape juice, kerosene, matches. I heated the flat iron on the fire outside and pressed Mr Blue's shirts one by one. Inside the trunk a fly's corpse dangled from a web. Stains and rings of mildew patterned the bottom of the trunk. I laid the sheets and mosquito net on top of them. Then the newly ironed clothes. Shirts. Shorts. Socks. Then everything else. Belt. Brush. Boots. Gauntlets. Helmet. Helmet case.

Outside, Small Boy scraped the razor's edge up Mr Blue's neck, slicing the head off the ingrown hairs, leaving a trail of red spots welling in the white froth, reminding me of the splashes of red on the ground outside the fence. The rain had come and washed them into the ground. Small Boy had been right. We had only to be patient. Somehow news of the strike had reached the chief who sent his messenger to alert the District Commissioner. By the time the strikers arrived the next morning DC Silk was waiting in front of the compound with his soldiers, ready to arrest the ringleaders. A few were wounded in the scuffle. The leader was badly injured and might even die. Some were taken away — to jail, said Small Boy. The others would be fined. The chief had wanted them all put in stocks.

I set to work on the desk. Rolled the maps and dropped them into long cardboard tubes. The compass I placed inside its soft pouch. Underneath a bundle of papers lay the magnifying glass. I picked it up and held it out in front of me. A ring of shimmering light appeared, dancing upon the wall. I turned to it. Just as soon as I did it shifted to the ceiling. And next to the floor. For a few moments I fancied it was a spirit's shadow. Then I realised that the movements echoed mine. A cloud passed over the sun, and suddenly it was gone. I gasped with disappointment, but only for a moment. The sun reappeared and so did the shining, dancing creature.

I begged Mr Blue not to forget me. I begged him to send for me as soon as he could. Mr Blue murmured, of course he would. But Small Boy's face told me something different. I watched them leave. I went back into the hut and sat alone on the cold floor.

In the distance, like the humming of bees, I could hear the mine machinery. I wondered who the next master would be and whether he would be as good to me as Mr Blue. I decided to wait and see.

In the meantime I unwrapped the magnifying glass from the corner of my
lappa
and held it up high, where it caught the light and began to dance for me across the naked walls.

Well, there was this one white woman. I mean she was our teacher, she was married to the District Commissioner. I think she taught, you know, just to keep herself occupied. There wasn't much to do except run the house. A lot of those types did not bring their wives, or the wives didn't want to come, or if they did they lost their minds and had to be sent home. That happened.

Once when I was growing up a District Commissioner was invited to attend a
palava
of the chiefs. It was a grand affair, the chiefs travelled in from miles. Some important land matter was to be discussed that required the Commissioner's approval. This man decided to bring his wife along, as a diversion for her — she was recently arrived in the country. At that time I was a young initiate, and our dancing opened the proceedings.

The men talked for hours. You know how it goes. And while they did so, I watched the woman. She sat with her hands on her lap, head to one side. Her glance flew from face to face, settling on each for a moment, like a bird flitting through the trees. From her expression you would imagine she was paying a great deal of attention, though it must have been entirely unintelligible. Even the chiefs were using interpreters between themselves. The time passed slowly. But the woman's face did not redden in the heat. Rather it grew pale. She was swallowing, swallowing all the time, looking in her husband's direction. He had his back turned to her, listening closely to the words his Court Messenger was whispering in his ear. He couldn't see her. I saw her eyelids flutter like a
fledgling's wings, her eyeballs rolled back as though she was trying to see the inside of her own head.

Gbap! She fell off her chair.

Well, there was silence at that. Then the chiefs, the
pa'm'sum
, everybody hurried over. The chiefs began waving their fly swats around her. The woman lashed out at them. I could hear her screaming. The more they tried to help her, the more she sobbed and backed away, holding her handbag out in front of her. In the end her husband managed to calm her and lead her away, his arm around her shoulders. The whole
palava
had to be called off and reconvened at another time. Later the Court Messenger came to explain the woman was suffering from malaria. But those close enough to see what had happened said she had made up her mind that we were all cannibals. Every one of us. And that the chiefs, in their garbled tongue, were really discussing the best way to kill her.