Tefuga (16 page)

“That can be interpreted in two lights, Mrs Jackland. The motive you suggest is one, but if the stories are fabrications it would be well for the tale-bearers to set them at a distance where they cannot immediately be checked. Your boy's bush Kiti, though. Has he nothing to contribute?”

You know, I hadn't even asked Elongo since we got back about what Femora Feng had told me. That's what a loyal little wife I thought I'd been being! Elongo had got the thing down by now and was folding it neatly into a bundle. Mr de Lancey shouted at him to come over, which he did, carrying the thing. Mr de Lancey asked him in Hausa, speaking slowly and simply, if he knew of any wrong doings by Kama Boi. (Ted wouldn't dream of asking a native something like that. It's breaking all the rules.) Elongo looked at me. I nodded that he could tell, but he still looked desperately worried. He got down on his knees and grovelled in front of Mr de Lancey, Hausa-fashion. I hated that, but there was nothing I could do.

“I do not know,” he said.

“Elongo Sisefonge,” I said in Kiti, “Femora Feng told me the story of men burning a village and killing the men and taking the others away. The men were servants of a son of Kama Boi. Is the story true?”

“I must not tell.”

“But if things of this kind are done the White Man must be told. How else can he punish those who do them? The White Man is the protector of the Kitawa.”

“Kama Boi is the protector of the Kitawa, because of what was done at Tefuga when his father died. It is the sons and servants of Kama Boi who do wrong, and Kama Boi does not punish them. How will the White Man do this when Kama Boi does not? How will the White Man protect those who bring such stories to him? When they go home to their villages, will the White Man be by their side, night and day, to shield them from vengeance?”

I explained this to Mr de Lancey, who nodded.

“That's the problem with the native,” he said. “Their logic's different. I hadn't realized what a hold the old rogue's got on them. At least we shan't have that problem with his successor. It will only be a goat sacrifice at the ceremony, I imagine. That should weaken the juju. But the real problem's one of communication. We are not going to improve the situation until we have a bridge at Kiti, and proper roads so that the Kitawa begin to understand the real extent of our power. And we are not going to get the roads and bridges built while Kama Boi is Emir. Nor are we going to persuade the Kitawa to bring the necessary complaints to depose him until they understand that we can protect them. It is a vicious circle.”

“They don't even seem to blame it on Kama Boi. It's his sons and servants.”

“He is the root of the problem. We can't expect them to see that. Our only genuine hope is that we shall discover some serious financial peculation on his part.”

“Cheating over taxes, you mean?”

“We don't need natives to bring a complaint over that. It is an offence against ourselves. But to get Kaduna to act we would need to prove a major fraud over a period of years, and to judge by the files, though Kama Boi's accounts could hardly be said to be in order, your husband and his predecessors have kept too tight a rein on him to allow more than the odd casual attempt at peculation.”

“That's what Ted says, and he's terribly careful about that sort of thing. I don't know. I can't help feeling there's something going on. It's none of my business, though, is it, really?” He looked at me with his funny pale eyes.

“I suppose we'd better get on or the light will have changed,” he said. “It is typical that on the occasion when I am to have my angling prowess immortalized I should in fact catch nothing.”

He went back to his place and started to cast. My heart was hammering so I thought I wouldn't be able to keep my hand steady. I was terribly keyed up, tho' I'd made a bit of a mistake at the end, saying it was none of my business. Too obvious. But soon as I got painting I was alright—keyed up still, but somehow it went into the picture. Much more promising now. The tint of Mr de Lancey's shirt and trousers—pale, almost cream—was just right to set off the whole flat, empty, still river. I wasn't going to do him with any fuss, just blobs—a risk, but worth it. I actually had the colour mixed and on my brush when he hooked into something. The rod bent. It was all there in an instant and I whipped it in, his stance, his tension, the incredible curve of the rod, no line of course, but right at the focus of the picture one white fleck where the fish threshed, fighting to live. I got it in one (you have to!) and then I messed around for twenty minutes touching the details up while he landed his fish. It was a big one. He came over, carrying it, smiling like a cat. It jerked a bit in his hand, with its white needle fangs yawning.

“Well done,” I said. “It's a whopper. Just the right moment, too. Look.”

He took a long time, sometimes standing back and sometimes using his monocle to peer up close. I wasn't at all nervous. I knew it was alright and I knew he'd understand.

“Well, well,” he said at last. “Just the right moment, as you say. It's almost a pity in a way, because that's all most people are going to be able to see. They'll think the rest is mere background. That's a lovely passage along by the far bank. I shall be extremely pleased to own that. Would you like me to suggest a price?”

“Oh, no, I couldn't!”

“I see I shall have to do your haggling for you. You will ask me ten guineas, I shall offer two and we will settle for five. Later on, Mrs Jackland, if you decide to start selling, will you get in touch with me, because I know the ropes?”

I just stammered. I didn't know what to say. I felt I was blushing as tho' he'd tried to kiss me (as tho' I'd said yes! Nightmares!) I began to shuffle my sketches together and the Black Man/White Man cartoon fell out on the ground.

“Oh!” I squeaked. “Would you like this? As a present, I mean? Just to remember by? You could hang it in your … er …”

(I was sure he didn't say W.C. but I didn't know what.)

He made his snickery laugh and took it. We looked at each other.
That
was the moment, handing over that piece of paper, like a treaty. A secret treaty. We didn't say anything. Mr de Lancey shouted for his boy to come and collect his gear, and Elongo helped me pack up and I trudged up through the heat, back to our own dear house, to have breakfast with Ted. I showed him the picture but he was much more interested to hear about the fish, and a bit jealous.

After breakfast Mr de Lancey came up to say good-bye. He's going down river by boat to call on Mr Skarrett, the D.O. at Magundi. I walked down with him through the broiling heat towards the landing-stage, where Ted was making arrangements with the canoe men.

“You'll be sure to let me know if there's anything I can do for you, won't you, Mrs Jackland?” he said.

He was only pretending to be talking about painting. We both knew.

“All I want in the world is for Ted to be happy,” I said.

“That is in your gift, not mine, Mrs Jackland.”

Nine

T
he thatchers were still at work on the Old Palace porch, a simple but, as Betty Jackland had remarked, incongruous veranda-like structure spreading along a standard Hausa mud-wall frontage. Its function was obscure. Perhaps indeed it had none, other than to symbolize, consciously or unconsciously, the ancient symbiosis between the pagan Kitawa and the Muslim ancestors of Kama Boi. At any rate Jackland, with Miss Boyaba's help and a cash inducement, had persuaded the thatchers to revert for the day to the dress and methods of sixty years ago. Not many adjustments had been needed. The ladders and scaffolding were already stone-age lash-ups, with only the odd bit of nylon cording to be concealed or replaced. The dump truck—the letters KHP still blatant on its side—had been driven away. Piles of unused thatch concealed other modem intrusions. The old thatcher seemed delighted to renew lost authority by showing his sons how to manipulate primitive tools in the manner his father had taught him. The young men had been more reluctant to abandon trousers and T-shirts for loin-cloths (full nakedness being implausible in a supposedly Muslim citadel), and it may have been because of some such obscure resentment that one of them had chosen, between takes, to fetch his large digital wristwatch from his trouser pocket and strap it back on. The intrusion was not noticed until the procession—Miss Tressider, the actor playing Kama Boi, and half a dozen of Sarkin Elongo's own officials in ceremonial robes—was poised to pass in front of the now picturesquely primitive thatchers on their way to the palace door. Burn was the first to spot it.

Not given to tact at the best of times, and more than usually fretful so near the completion of his first big project, he yelled at the young man for a stupid bastard. The young man turned and began to descend his ladder. Then he must have realized that he would lose some of his advantage if he went out of camera shot, so he stopped half way down and yelled back in the vigorous local English. The line he took showed considerable political awareness, demonstrating that beneath the apparently stagnant conservatism of the Kitawa there moved, at least among the urbanized, strong radical currents. Burn—at home a proponent of a very British form of leftist insularism—found himself being described as a colonialist dog at the heels of Reagan.

It was by now well beyond mid-morning, the air heavy with steamy heat. Everybody was anxious to get on, to be done with hanging around and get into somewhere air-conditioned and have a drink. But despite the heat the filming had attracted a fairish audience, including the Sarkin, dressed slightly less formally than at The Warren in a light-coloured robe and turban and accompanied by his brolly-man who carried a modem lightweight parasol and an aluminium folding chair. The young man, now seeing the strength of his position and the size and quality of his audience, embarked on a full-flown political harangue. His theme, emphasized by gestures towards the new palace, was that in this supposed democracy the old power-wielders were still in office and still cheating the people in order to increase their own wealth. The accusation was of course a commonplace of Nigerian politics, but here there appeared to be a local term for it, namely “Elongism”, whose particular offence seemed to be failure to complete the bridge at Kiti rapids.

The Sarkin's reaction was unreadable behind his large sunglasses, but when his brolley-man began to shout in protest against this outrage to decency he stilled him with a gesture and led the way down towards the Old Palace and in under the shadow of the porch, thus moving out of the young thatcher's line of fire. In any case the harangue was cut short. The old thatcher had hitherto shown no understanding of English, but his son's gestures were unmistakable, and he had no doubt heard the same speech in Kiti or Hausa many times over the local equivalent of the breakfast table. Now, moving with the slow assurance of the craftsman, he swung himself across the scaffolding, and almost as if nudging a bundle of thatch into position, placed his foot in the middle of his son's back, and shoved. The young man fell sprawling. Someone helped him to his feet and led him away, too winded for oratory.

“Right!” shouted Burn. “We'll carry on without him. Ready, Fred? Trevor? God! Nigel, the Sarkin! Can you …?”

The Sarkin's move under the porch had brought him to the doorway through which the procession was due to pass. He seemed for the moment oblivious, apparently still trying to calm his brolley-man's outrage. Jackland strode down.

“Excuse me, Sarkin,” he said. “We're in the way. Do you mind? Quickest if we go inside.”

For a moment the Sarkin seemed about to refuse, but then he let himself be shepherded through the big doorway into what might once have been a fine ante-chamber, tall and cool, whitewashed walls lightly patterned with geometric designs. But the paint had peeled and the domed ceiling fallen away in one corner; the floor-space was used for the storage of various kinds of junk, much of it near-rubbish; and to judge by the smell something had laired or nested, and perhaps died here. The Sarkin led the way on through a similar room, less cluttered but just as derelict, and out into a courtyard. A single large-leaved tree spread its branches over one end; at the other the stump of what had been its twin stood bleached in the glare. All round the courtyard doorways led into the rooms where the lesser members of Kama Boi's household had lived or worked, but the roofs had mainly collapsed, their beams weakened by Africa's voracious chewers and borers. Unprotected from the yearly rains the walls had begun to lose definition, like chocolate left in the sun.

Now that he was out of sight of his people the Sarkin seemed to admit to weariness. His spine drooped slightly. His head went forward on his neck and he walked with an old man's half-shuffle to the shade of the big tree, where the brolly-man opened his chair for him. He sat slowly down and closed his eyes. It was a good minute before he seemed to remember Jackland's existence, and opened them again. Jackland, in fact, was out of sight, having given way to the European instinct to poke around among ruins. By the time he emerged and came strolling across the Sarkin had regathered his energies and was sitting bolt upright.

“I have been advised to turn all this into a tourist attraction,” he said. “What do you think, Mr Jackland?”

His tone, though calm, made it apparent that he was not specially interested in the question, but was carrying out the royal duty of getting a conversation going on minor matters, whatever else might be on his mind.

“As a romantic ruin, or a practical demonstration?” said Jackland.

“My consultants suggest complete restoration, with life-size models of the inhabitants. I have estimates in my office of the numbers of black tourists who possess the means and urge to investigate their own African-ness.”

“Plenty of money in it for the consultants, anyway.”

“Oh, yes. But also substantial grants from Central Government for capital projects likely to earn hard currency. Furthermore there is a high level of unemployment in Kiti.”

“But you're not going to do it.”

The Sarkin smiled.

“I am still considering. But what do you think? You have, after all, come to Kiti yourself in an effort to re-create your own past.”

“Only marginally mine, old boy. But I'd have thought, supposing you can get the tourists out this far in the first place, a reconstruction might be a success. Nostalgia seems to be an almost universal urge.”

“It is becoming so, but it is strange to me. Where I was born … It seems to me, Mr Jackland, that there are two kinds of peoples. The difference does not lie in colour or wealth or climate, but in what is expected of life. There are people who expect tomorrow to be the same as today. To them, all the past is the same. They have a myth of their own origin, but no history. Only when times are bad they have another myth, of a golden age.”

“Before the White Man came it seems to be, these days.”

“Not only these days. It was so when I was a child. I was born among just such a people, but I left them when I was a young man and found a different kind, people who expect tomorrow to be better than today, themselves richer, their lives easier, their power more. They expect to know things their fathers never knew, and to their own children they will soon seem fools. All over the world now, not only in Africa, these people are eating up the other sort. And all over the world at the same time they are searching for something they have lost in their own past. The richer and freer they are, the more the future holds for them, the more they search. This is what I find strange.”

There being no chair for Jackland he had settled unselfconsciously on to the ground, sitting cross-legged and looking up at the Sarkin with his habitual mask of interest, inquisitive but tolerant. Despite the good shade the Sarkin had not removed his sun-glasses, and his real feelings were equally unreadable.

“Where do you stand, Sarkin?” said Jackland. “After all, you were kind enough to help me get this film off the ground. I doubt if we'd have got the various permissions without you.”

“You would certainly not.”

“I'm very grateful. Much in your debt, in fact. But why did you bother if you don't share in the general nostalgia?”

“Because you are your mother's son.”

“Ah. There's something I've been wanting to ask you about her, Sarkin …”

Jackland paused, but there was no nod or grunt of permission from the Sarkin, who sat very still, apparently brooding at the leaning silvery pillar of the dead tree-stump.

“My mother kept a diary,” said Jackland. “Now …”

“I am an Elongist, it seems,” said the Sarkin.

“Rather a compliment in some ways,” said Jackland, not apparently put out by the deliberate rebuff. For several seconds it seemed as though the Sarkin did not wish to expand on this topic either. Voices rose from beyond the outer wall. Burn's squeak, exaggerated by tiredness, was the dominant note. Clearly there had been yet another interruption in the apparently simple process of filming six people walking across a patch of bare earth and disappearing through a door.

“I will tell you the history of this so-called Elongism. Tefuga … The Incident … The British understood some things, but not others. After the Incident they saw that our agreement with the family of Kama Boi was ended, but not why. They abolished the Emirate of Kiti, which meant nothing to us. They chose a young man, Yakali, from the family of Kama Boi to be District Head of Kiti Town, but so that the disgrace should not be too apparent they let him call himself Sarkin Kiti, as Kama Boi had called himself before the British made him Emir. Both town and province of Kiti they placed under the Emirate of Soko. All the Kitawa would now pay taxes, but because they were very poor the amounts would be nominal, and the British gave assurances that no extra taxes would be levied by the Native Administration, and no seizing of people in lieu of taxes would take place. It was, in British eyes, a tidy compromise. It did not seem to them to matter that the Emir of Soko was a Fulani, and an hereditary enemy of the family of Kama Boi, nor that his ancestors had been those who used to raid the Kitawa for slaves.

“In the eyes of the Kitawa the arrangement was also a compromise, but a different one. They had unmade the agreement with the family of Kama Boi and had made a new one with the White Man, but the agreement itself was almost identical. There was even, under this new agreement, an official who spoke for the Kitawa to the White Man. Indeed they continued to refer to him as the Bangwa Wangwa, though the White Man called him his Messenger. All this was ratified in their eyes not by the conference of elders which was called by your father after the Incident, but by the Incident itself, at which both the White Man and the new Bangwa Wangwa had been present. The payment of taxes was a disagreeable necessity.

“There was, however, one major difference, unforeseen by the Kitawa and of no obvious importance to the White Man. Kama Boi had ruled for over thirty years. Each White Man seldom stayed for as much as thirteen months. After your father died there was Mr O'Farrell, then Captain Roth, then Mr Smith Hampson, then Captain Roth again—I will not tell you all the names. In 1931 there were three different D.O.s at Kiti. The Messenger, however, remained. I was the Messenger.”

“You didn't go for promotion? I'd have thought …”

“I could not then read or write. I had no wish to leave Kiti. Elders listened when I spoke. So, soon, did my masters. New D.O.s would come with instructions from Kaduna to respect the Messenger's views on matters affecting the Kitawa. Moreover I had been on the hill at Tefuga that day. I was, in my own eyes, bound to the task.”

“You still are?”

“Yes.”

“Things have changed a lot since then.”

“In those days change seemed far off. The world was one where today was the same as yesterday. If your mother had come back to Kiti in 1945 she would have found very little difference. None at all out in the villages, apart from a few dirt roads and travelling health clinics.”

“De Lancey didn't get his bridge?”

The Sarkin shook his head, smiling with what seemed like nostalgic half-regret at this forgotten foible.

“Mr de Lancey and his bridge. I saw the plans. He contracted hepatitis and was invalided home. Soon with the world recession there was no money for such things. No bridge then, no bridge now.”

“How did that happen? I take it that your young admirer outside …”

“Oh no, Mr Jackland. He is, in a sense, right. It is part of the history of Elongism. Would you like me to go on? I was speaking of the war. Now, though nothing had changed, I could smell change in the air. White Man and Black Man might talk as though the British would still be here for a hundred years—the emirs especially talked like that—but in their hearts they did not believe it. Then in 1951 there was a new constitution. Political parties now permitted. Suddenly it became apparent to all thinking people that in a few years the British would be gone. They talked of limited self-rule, but we all knew this was nonsense. A ruler has authority over the ruled. It is not divisible. As soon as they take the smallest part of it back they have effectively taken it all.