Eddie Signwriter (17 page)

Daylight is outside. Sounds and voices filter in, of workmen in the fields, a steel grinder, girls’ voices, children coming from a school.

It looks like a sugar in a plum. Tra-la-la
—that was it, what his nephew used to sing. Everyone knew the
tra-la-la
was stupid, old-fashioned, totally misplaced, but still he sang it, he liked that bit best, the voice inflected with irony.

The thought reminds Festus Ankrah how they used to sit, all three of them together at the beginning. Celeste and his nephew would talk, and it was talk of the small things, the words quick, overlapping sometimes, happy, he guessed. And when his nephew finished a point, or thought he’d got the better of Celeste, he would sing it, tapping the last refrain on the table with his fingers.

But his nephew had been at the house less and less, that was true. He and Celeste would eat together, mostly in silence, and the door would not open with the boy coming back from his work.

Though Festus Ankrah noticed it, he had not asked. His nephew was there, his nephew wasn’t there. That was the deal.

It looks like a sugar in a plum …

Were there other signs? Probably there were—something that might have been caught early—not by him, that he knows, but by somebody else, more—he looks for the words … connected to the lives of other people.

In Adabraka, in the days after his nephew disappeared, people
actually stopped outside Festus Ankrah’s house—two or three a morning, standing outside the gate, looking; he saw them as he came and went.

They said, “That is the house.”

They said, “It happened there, a boy who turned from his people lived there, and this is important, listen to this: It’s a terrible thing to lose a child, nothing more terrible. And there he goes, coming and going—the one who lost his child.”

And even the area boys stopped and stared, who drugged and swindled and stole, but still had cousins they sent through school, and old people they housed, and gave at the end of the month. No matter how tough, there was always some woman who’d brought them into the world who could beat them over the ear, and there was nothing to do but take it.

And he was the one who lost a child.

He wants to hate his nephew for it—for changing him into something defenseless and despised.

He tries but cannot.

And instead he hears the refrain in his head:
It looks like a sugar in a plum. Tra-la-la
—and what does that mean anyway, these words snatched away from somewhere into his living room? If he could only understand them, the little secrets to those passing, lost moments …

At half past six he sets out on the walk to his appointment, declining the waiting taxi parked outside. Still the mist is everywhere.

He walks for ten minutes through the field. The taxi passes him before he reaches the main road. Then he turns left toward the town. He crosses a bridge over a valley, the stream beneath hidden in deep vegetation. He passes a series of old bungalows on his left, weathered and bleached, doorways open, through which he can see right through to the open back doors, to a papaya plantation falling down the other side of the hill.

To his right a sign indicates the driveway to the school, though it’s more like a road, which disappears through a gate, down a hill and into the mist.

A group of children approach from the other direction.

“Is this the way to the school?” he asks them.

The children take him on a shortcut through the bush, that crosses a stream, and passes up the side of a hill. They arrive through a plantation of bananas at the main administrative building.

He is taken to the teacher’s office and is asked to wait. The window has a view of an expanse of grass, the open hall, and behind it the jungle climbing up the hill.

His trousers are wet up to the knees from the leaves brushing against him. His shirt has come up in patches of sweat. He puts down his briefcase, the handle of which has been digging uncomfortably into his hand, removes his jacket and goes to stand by the window so that the breeze will dry his shirt.

The teacher arrives at seven fifteen. He walks with the sharp, confident movement of small men, his arse like two ball-bearings at the top of his short legs.

They shake hands, exchange greetings, and sit.

The teacher says, “Although I am aware of what brings you here, as custom demands we must go over it again, to refresh our minds about those things that have already taken place.”

Festus Ankrah smiles, but not with his eyes. He has related the story of his nephew so many times he no longer needs to think as the words form on his lips.

As he talks the teacher is struck for the first of many times by his solid features—the block of his jaw folded firmly into his head, the massive face, fortress of a face, the careful eyes. He thinks:
So this is how a face can carry such a thing—
though what had he expected? he asks himself. A brand upon the forehead?

“On the first day we had reports of him at Tema station,” Festus Ankrah is saying now, “of taking a bus west. There is nothing more from there. I have been to Tokoradi myself, but there are so many cars on that route, and nobody remembers him there. He could have stopped anywhere on the way and changed direction. I do not know where my nephew has gone, or why. All I know is that he has gone.”

“And the girl?” the teacher asks. “It’s just that your nephew—he mentioned her, when he came to visit me. I thought …”

Festus Ankrah appears momentarily surprised. “They say she has gone to her family,” he says. “She could not continue where she was.”

“No,” the teacher says reflectively, “so,”—he seems to be clearing his mind—“anyway, it is good you are here.”

“Thank you for offering to help,” Festus Ankrah says without the least trace of gratitude in his voice, just a weariness that flattens his sentences into monotones. “Thank you for letting me come here.”

“No—it is not that I am letting you do anything. It is not up to me. When I heard your nephew had left—and then you called. There was too much to say for a telephone conversation, even a letter.”

Festus Ankrah’s eyes remain fixed, the expression of his face unreadable.

The teacher hesitates before he continues, is about to express his regret, to ask about the circumstances, but decides against it.

“It is thirteen days now since your nephew disappeared?” he asks.

“Yes,” Festus Ankrah replies.

“Then it was two days more before his disappearance that he visited here. It was a Monday. He came to talk with me. He did not tell you before … ?”

“No,” Festus Ankrah says, “I only learned from you, but now that I know I am not surprised. That Monday was not a good day for my nephew. After he came back his shop burnt down. All his work was lost, and his materials.”

“Do you think there is a connection?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

The teacher does not speak, but nods his head, as if deep in thought, as if he has forgotten the conversation, and the man before him with whom he has shared it.

“Mr. Bediako, it has not been a long journey here,” Festus Ankrah says eventually. “Still, it has been tiring.”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” the teacher says. “Well, it was brave of your nephew to come back here. I’ll say that. After what happened. It was a very short meeting. In one car, out on the next. He must have been back by midday.”

“What did he want?”

“To talk about the past, Mr. Ankrah. Except we didn’t. He lost his nerve and left.”

“Why did he lose his nerve?”

“I can only guess.”

“Then guess.”

The teacher smiles momentarily at Festus Ankrah’s curtness, but it’s not the right thing to have done. The face gives nothing back.

The teacher says, “I think he was ashamed.”

“Why?”

“For getting caught up in regrettable circumstances. For losing his way.”

Such talk angers Festus Ankrah.

“But I see you have your own views,” the teacher says.

“I hope my nephew had more sense than to feel responsible for the death of that woman,” Festus Ankrah replies, then moderating the harshness in his voice, “—Celeste’s aunt.”

“Celeste’s aunt, yes. She and I were friends,” the teacher says.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Festus Ankrah says, “it was a tragedy.”

“It was,” the teacher says.

“But it shouldn’t be my nephew’s tragedy.”

“No,” the teacher says.

“But people blame him. They blame him for his rebelliousness.”

“People say that,” the teacher responds softly, “but that wasn’t what it was. Rebellion takes anger. Your nephew wasn’t angry. Not then, at least. Maybe now he is.”

“What was he then?”

“What was he then … ? Thoughtless. He was … without thought.”

“And so you think he should feel ashamed,” Festus Ankrah says scornfully.

The teacher says, “No. And so I think he
is
ashamed.”

There is no response from Festus Ankrah.

“But your nephew was young,” the teacher adds. “I should have told him that when he came. He wasn’t in charge. But now he has left. So who knows, maybe now he is in charge.”

It is moments before Festus Ankrah feels the first flush of anger.
I am being played with
, he thinks. Just as, deep down, he knew to expect. Because everything that ruined his nephew started here, in this place; because it cannot be anything else; and because after fifteen days of nothing there cannot be more nothing.

“I must find my nephew …” he manages to say.

“Your nephew did not come here to leave directions, Mr. Ankrah,” the teacher says before Festus Ankrah speaks again. “If anything, he came here in order to be understood, if he knew it or not … That is how the young are, even today,” he says gently now, “—wanting our approval even as they defy us … See, your nephew and I had a friendship. I knew him well—I mean I took an interest in him—how well can one know a person, after all …”

Still nothing.

“Maybe all I did was to be here, to be a witness. You see? And witnesses are storehouses.
I
am a storehouse—for your nephew. A place to leave things. And people always must come back for the things that they’ve left—this is what I have thought.”

“I did not come here for my own pleasure,” Festus Ankrah says, raising his left hand. “All I ask is that you tell me what my nephew said and I will be gone. His family is suffering. We are all suffering. We want to find him. Help us if you can. If not …”

“How?” the teacher says. “How should I help you?”

Festus Ankrah is standing before he knows why, his chair scraped back, his hands on the table. “Where is my nephew?” he says. His voice is raised, just short of a shout. He is aware of the door opening behind him, then closing quickly.

“Mr. Ankrah,” the teacher replies calmly (but it is not the calm of self-possession; it is as much an instinct of defense as the other’s rage), “please, remember it is you that has lost your nephew, not I.”

And perhaps the teacher has started to say something else, but already Festus Ankrah is putting on his jacket. He feels the sweat rising to the surface of his body. He feels the panic pressing in around him, stifling him in his clothes. He feels his breath struggling in and out of him, his collar round his neck.

Now the teacher’s voice is saying something to him—no, it is not the teacher’s voice (Festus Ankrah is on the stairs now), it is the secretary following him with his briefcase, calling out his name.

And then he is outside again in the fresh air, his briefcase in his hand, standing on the gravel path leading to the main road, and he looks back: the school building, whitewashed, pristine, standing out against the hill.

He breathes deeply.

He stands and breathes and gathers himself.

A small child in a uniform, walking past, greets him, shoes polished like wet tar, head like an acorn.

“Wait,” he says, before he can stop himself, and stifles his voice in a cough as the child hesitates—wait, he wants to say, wait, but forgets what he wants to say.

WHEN FESTUS ANKRAH
returns to the hotel the proprietor is waiting for him. The guest book lies open on the desk. The proprietor makes a show of consulting it as Festus Ankrah enters the lobby, then addresses him without greeting.

“Do you really think you will find your nephew here?” he says coldly.

The hands of the clock behind him on the wall are broken, Festus Ankrah notices, the hour hand marooned between twelve and one.

“No,” he replies, and neither approaches the proprietor, nor retreats, but stands in the doorway where the voice had stopped him, until the proprietor turns into his office without further comment.

Only when he’s back in his room, standing beside his bed, does Festus Ankrah realize how unready he is to bring his nephew home. How a man cannot find what he does not know.

FESTUS ANKRAH
spends most of the afternoon in his room. He is afraid to go out. What a scandal his presence must be here. His own surname has been no disguise. Everyone knows who he is. Everyone wishes him ill.

Hunger, at last, makes action necessary.

He enters the village, passes the roadside stalls made of palm branches, and the brick and tin metalwork shops surrounded by their scrap, and then he is in the main road.

All along the heat is on him. He feels it on his neck. It pins his damp shirt to his back. His eyes scan about him as he passes the taxi rank, finding out the water sellers who crouch in the shade of a stone wall, tying water into plastic bags.

They look back impassively as their fingers work the knots, hidden by the lip of the blue buckets from which they draw water.

Festus Ankrah slows his pace but he does not stop. He would rather go thirsty than have to ask for anything.

In a restaurant overlooking the empty tables of a market he eats chicken and watches the children fetch water in buckets from the hand pump at the market gate.

The evening has begun to draw in when he steps out of the restaurant. The air is cool, the colours deepening. When he sees the teacher standing on the other side of the road waiting for him he feels no surprise.