Blonde Roots (17 page)
A shame to let that one go, I thought, because notwithstanding his violent temper, a man of such vigor would fetch a good price in New Ambossa.
No sooner had he been shut up than the yellow-haired females surrounding him started up a fuss too—like a gaggle of clacking, flapping ducks.
Tomashara-whatsit raised his stick and brought it down on the back of the youngest, a child with a profusion of matted, dirty-yellow curls who was having the most horrendous temper tantrum.
That did the trick. Silence.
I agreed to take all three yellow-heads. The two young ones had potential.
After selecting two hundred slaves I was beginning, I admit, to flag when I came to one who assumed a somewhat pompous demeanor—looking me directly in the eye as if we were equals!
I had just lifted a big wedge of loose fat from underneath his upper arm and was ready to move on when he too began to talk, and before I could stop him, Byakatonda again began to translate:
“Look here, dear chap, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. The name is Lord Perceval—of the Montagues. Perhaps you’ve heard of us? One of England’s oldest aristocratic families. Hark, sir, there’s been the most god-awful mix-up. I was negotiating the sale of a batch of prisoners to one of those new, rather brash, upstart traders, when he accuses me of trying to defraud him with low-quality goods and thereupon demands a fifty percent discount. A row ensues, I smite him, calling him a guttersnipe, whereupon he directs his hired brutes to put me in irons too! Moreover, I discover that these rogue middlemen have also been carting off my very own property, kidnapping the serfs who work my land, if you please.
“Now look here, I’m not a worsted-stocking’d knave or a scapegrace or a scoundrel like this lot. I’m not a slave, I own them.
“DO—YOU—UN—DER—STA-ND?
“I demand my immediate release, old fellow, and I shall see that the King of England looks favorably upon you. Trust me, I am one of the best-connected men in the realm. You are heretofore invited to spend a weekend as guest on my estate, if you so please, where we can discuss mutually beneficial business interests.
“Are you a hunting or fishing man yourself?”
“What a pompous idiot,” I remarked to Byakatonda, who replied, “Oh, I’ve heard it all before: But I’m a prince! But I’m an aristocrat. But I’m a landowner! Like we give a damn. He’s just another wigger to us. What do you think, can you use him?”
“I cannot use someone who has clearly never lifted a shovel in his life.”
“Then let’s move on.”
And we did.
By nightfall I had chosen my shipment, haggled for an agreed price and retired early for a well-deserved night’s sleep.
Except that the bliss of the subconscious eluded me because my conscience was in moral turpitude.
You will readily understand, Dear Reader, the dilemma I faced as one who was new to the Trade. Chief Ambikaka and I had agreed on the purchase of four hundred slaves. This would ensure they fitted snugly onto the platforms in the hold.
Bunk beds, I called them.
By my calculations, all going well, the financial profit from this cargo, when we finally returned to GA after depositing the cargo in New Ambossa, would be somewhere in the region of C£52,000, ten percent of which would be mine—C£5,200.
I calculated that should I add another 150 slaves, making a total of 550, the gross profit would rise to somewhere in the region of C£71,500—ten percent of which, C£7,150, would be mine.
If I withheld this additional cargo from my employer, however, and undertook a secret sale on my own account, I would accrue an extra C£19,500, plus the C£5,200, bringing my total profit to the tidy sum of C£24,700.
One would be quite rich indeed!
Yet, after much tossing and turning into the early hours, I came to the conclusion that I simply must do the decent thing because, if truth be told, I am not a treacherous man.
I would carry an extra 150 slaves and I would tell Chief Ambikaka, who would be as delighted with the resulting profit as his trustworthy captain.
I reasoned that some of them might not last the trip, but I calculated that even if fifty were to die at sea it would still be worth it.
With a personal profit in the region of C£7,150 I would be able to purchase a secondhand seagoing vessel and immediately begin to trade as my own boss.
WHEN DAWN BROKE, I awoke my host who was naturally delighted to be making more money out of me, and we embarked anew on the selection of slaves.
I even took that red-haired scallywag who had spent the night in the wooden contraption. Fret not thyself, Dear Reader, he was still alive and quietly repentant.
I took the pompous one too, although, truth be told, he was thrown in for free. They just wanted to get rid of him.
It was time to bid farewell to Byakatonda. An odd, unlikable fellow with whom one could, nonetheless, do business.
Dear Reader,
There is little reason to trouble you with the minutiae of the long and tiresome journey to New Ambossa. Suffice to say that running a slaver meant having to be responsible for the welfare of the cargo—rather as a parent for its children.
Nonetheless, they made such a noise in the dormitory belowdecks that I had little peace of mind the entire trip!
Many of them indulged in the Sulks; some even died from it. It was nature’s way of sorting out the wheat from the chaff, I suppose. A few managed to fling themselves overboard in some kind of ritualistic suicide pact, although my crew did everything in their power to stop them.
As forewarned—the smell of a slaver could carry five miles with the wind behind it.
I MUST NOW CONFESS, however, that alone at sea for months on end—what hot-blooded male would not long for female company?
Yes, the very idea was repugnant at first, but I was forced to give in to pressure from my Chief Mate who said it was “mighty unnatural, sir” (implying
what,
exactly?) for a captain to decline first pickings.
Salvaging my manly reputation, I was therefore obliged to survey the females as they danced on deck and decided, strangely, that one of the yellow-heads was the least offensive. She was perhaps a little thin and immature, but I was drawn to a certain grace and dreaminess about her—as if her body was there but her mind was somewhere else.
She went by the appellation of Sharon (SHAAA-RON), so I let her know pretty sharpish that she was to answer only to the name of Iffianachukwana.
I quickly broke her in and was only forced to put her under the thumbscrews just the once, after her first night in fact, when she had run around my cabin scratching her chest and arms like a lunatic and throwing my beautiful hand-painted porcelain washing bowl to the floor, where it smashed into smithereens.
(Hysteria, it seemed, ran in the family.)
After that little outburst she quietened down, wise, no doubt, that there would be plenty queuing to take her place in the spacious captain’s cabin with spectacular sea views.
Soon enough Iffianachukwana had picked up a smattering of the Ambossan language and spent her days carrying out her duties: she looked after my bedding, cleaned the cabin, polished up my jewelry collection and rubbed my feet, as and when required. She also served me dinner, as befits a man of my rank, on all fours, so that I could eat from the tray laid upon her back.
When the
Hope & Glory
finally sailed into the harbor at New Ambossa to a salute of cannons from the shore, I stood proudly on deck in my finest regalia. I wore a bronze headdress with two antelope horns, a bronze collar decorated with cowrie shells, ivory armlets, copper and brass bracelets, a beaded skirt and heavy brass anklets. (How one longed for the day when it would all be custom-made of gold.)
We unloaded from the hold:
400 pounds of beeswax
2,500 goatskin hides
20 tons of wheat
10 tons of lambswool
and last but not least
323 slaves
It will be readily understood, my Dear, Dear Reader, that those who had succumbed to Fate would not have been strong enough for plantation life. While those who lasted the course were testament to my ability to select stock with strong constitutions.
Luckily for me, the cargo exceeded expectations, as it was the heyday of this international migration of labor and a seller’s market. Notwithstanding the decrease in numbers for sale, I still walked away with a commission of C£7,700 and soon after purchased my first seagoing vessel.
After my second trip to Europa, I began to buy my own stock of slaves, and soon owned a modest plot of land in the central mountainous region of New Ambossa.
Upon completion of my tenth successful voyage for my employer, Chief Ambikaka, Captain Katamba was ready to go it alone and did so triumphantly.
Nevertheless, the hardships of life at sea eventually wore me down, and I desired to stretch my legs, raise them upon a stool, pour a tumbler of piña colada (or two) and sip the sweetness of my success.
Thus it was that in due course I joined the legion of absentee plantation owners who return to Great Ambossa to enjoy the delights of polite society in Mayfah.
My eldest son, Nonso, while still very young, was eventually dispatched to manage the estate, a task he undertakes admirably, being by nature an enthusiastic disciplinarian.
(Alas, the high hopes I had for my second boy, Bamwoze, were bamboozled when he tried to elope with his mulatto whore. It pains me to discuss this further.)
Every once in a while I return to audit the plantation.
Soon after disembarkation, Iffianachukwana grew heavy in the hips, her breasts swelled with milk, and she began to breed.
Pray, do not be shocked. Yes, they are half-breeds, but they are my half-breeds. The first child she bore me, Kolladao, is now a successful overseer.
It may surprise you to learn that long after my first voyage Iffianachukwana still remains my only plantation whore.
One has grown somewhat used to her.
AND THAT MODEST PLOT of land has grown into one of the largest plantations in West Japan—Home Sweet Home.
And it is.
The climate is perfect, my sugar yield expands yearly and my slaves, so long as they behave themselves, are always to be found happy and smiling.
Dear Reader,
Finally I must turn our attention to the delicate matter of that wretch Omorenomwara.
Let us examine the facts, Dear Reader, because, as I have proven time and again, the facts are all that matter.
Omorenomwara was residing on the West Japanese island of Little Londolo where she had been for some years the property of the well-connected Ghika family whom I knew of through great mutual friends, the Kensahs. She had been companion to their only daughter, Little Miracle, and had been taught, quite uniquely for a slave, to read and write.
Unfortunately the charming and by all accounts delightful Little Miracle died tragically when, not yet recovered from a bout of malaria, she slipped and fell into the river on their estate and drowned in the waterfall. Her parents never recovered, and the young slave served as a constant reminder to her owners of what they had lost. They sought to be rid of her forthwith. The Kensahs heard that I was seeking a maid of quality for my recently acquired second wife, Pleasure, and thenceforth sale and safe passage to Great Ambossa was speedily arranged.
When the young Omorenomwara was ushered into my office that first morning, I detected an air of rare intelligence. While it is true that the Caucasoinid genus is generally as thick as pig shit, there are to be found, I admit, exceptions.
Moreover, there was something familiar about this yellow-headed stalk of a girl, as if I recognized her somehow.
It was a tad disconcerting.
As she had spent years working for a good family her Ambossan was quite proficient.
“I have been told that my handwriting is exemplary, Massa.”
I chuckled to myself. Exemplary. Really.
Yet I had no cause to complain because she quickly became indispensable, although not, as she must have fancied, invincible. She proved herself loyal, discreet and competent, and I saw little reason not to trust her and treat her well.
Yes, I was blind, as I discovered to my cost.
When I returned home late that balmy Voodoomass evening, merry with alcohol, hoarse from singing along to festive songs, tired from dancing and my stomach bursting at the seams after a feast of broadbill soup, mashed cassava and peppered roast giraffe, I was told that she had disappeared without trace. I was so dumbstruch that I slumped onto a divan and had to be resuscitated with smelling salts.
When it became clear that she had indeed absconded, gossip spread around Mayfah like sewer rats.
When I went out for my early-morning constitutional the next day on Hy Da Plains, riding my favorite camel around the Serpentin Wadi, I was greeted with such smug smiles from my neighbors that I felt the urge to slice off their lips and grind them into the sand.