The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel (10 page)

The Ashanti troops are engaged, in keeping with my stipulations, for at least fifteen years of service, and the vast majority for an indefinite period, which they believe to signify the
rest of their lives. I have deemed it judicious to abstain from
entering a note to this e fect in the agreement for reasons Your
Excellency will have no difficulty surmising.

The men recruited in Kumasi in my presence meet all your
requirements. More than half the men are of the stature of
our grenadiers, the majority being northern negroes, known
as Donko, well built, strong, good-natured, passionately loyal
to their leaders and utterly content—in the full sense of the
word—with their lot. Moreover there is no injustice in the
enlistments, for it is not possible, even if we would so wish, to
restore these people, some of whom come from so far afield as
the banks of the Niger, to their native lands; while the men
themselves firmly believe that if they were to return to their
homeland it would only be to have the worst form of slavery
thrust upon them once more.

Verveer’s shrewdness in adopting the term “advance payment” becomes painfully clear upon closer scrutiny of the contract, signed at the bottom with a blotchy cross by my father. The contract, like Verveer’s letter, is full of underlined words and phrases. Take the fourth clause, stating:

before such a slave or serf can be definitively enlisted into Dutch
service, he is issued by the Dutch Government the necessary
funds to purchase his liberty from his master or owner, and to
obtain it, such that he can and must be regarded, prior to his
enlistment, as a man in full possession of his liberty and thus
entitled to make his own decisions, in all things alike, such as
a free-born man might make.

Let me be quite clear on this point, for it is of the greatest importance to me that there be no doubt as to the nature of the transaction for which Kwame and I served as security. Since the recruits had bought their freedom from their former masters, they were, legally speaking, not slaves at the time of their enlistment. (The impositions on slavery at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 meant that recruitment of enslaved men was forbidden.) But to obtain the funds for the purchase of their freedom these unfortunate men had to sign a contract binding them to the Dutch Army, whereupon they were dispatched at once to Elmina. Their sole deed as free men consisted in surrendering their liberty to another master. Once they arrived in Elmina the “advance payment” was converted into a debt, which would take them very many years to repay given their meagre East Indies wages, the more so since the Dutch government even deducted expenses for the effort and investments involved in their “liberation.”

Many men lived their lives in a slavery that differed from the old slavery only in that it had no name and consequently escaped scrutiny. So it is hardly surprising to encounter certain telling slips of the pen in the commander of Elmina’s register of “Dutch soldiers” from Kumasi: when the word “slaves” crops up, it is crossed out in favour of “recruits.”

When we awoke Kwame and I missed our robes, which van Drunen had draped over the chair the evening before. They had been replaced by trousers, shirts and also a pair of jackets with tails, which the quartermaster had fashioned out of old uniforms. We had never worn trousers, let alone long underwear. We sent each other into spasms of laughter exploring all the ways of poking our heads out of the various openings. We were still stark naked when van Drunen came in, demanding to know what the noise was about. He was most indignant at the disappearance of our robes. It transpired that they had been thrown on the fire with the kitchen waste before dawn, which left us without a single memento of home.

It was a Sunday, and the date was 2 April. Sweltering and uncomfortable in our new clothes, we were taken into a brick building in the middle of the courtyard where we were put in the front row of benches, with our interpreter beside us. Behind us sat the officers and men. The whitewashed walls were bare, except for the numbers of the psalms. Van Drunen made us clasp our hands, pretending it was a game. This was our first church service, which the interpreter translated for us. This Sunday the minister chose psalm two to be sung, in honour of our presence on their hallowed ground:

Why do the heathen rage so furiously together,
And why do the people imagine a vain thing?
The kings of the earth stand up and take council together,
Against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying
Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

It didn’t sound half as jolly as our own songs.

That afternoon the sun above the fort was blotted out by plumes of smoke from the settlement. Once again Elmina was ablaze, and when the fire was finally put out towards nightfall, no fewer than sixty homes were in smouldering ruins.

Trouble had been brewing in Elmina for some time. The commander of the Dutch fort had apprehended a caboceer for sacrificing a slave girl in memory of his deceased sister. The man was given a life sentence of forced labour, whereupon his fetish priests threatened to kill all the slaves unless the caboceer were restored to liberty. Thereupon the commander, not eschewing violent means, freed the slaves and had the priests put behind bars. But the grudges continued to fester.

Over dinner that night the commander discussed the situation with Verveer. The latter proposed to make a virtue of the devastation. Why not take it a step further and demolish the remaining maze of alleys to allow for the construction of wide streets? Had not Napoleon done the same during his great campaigns? Verveer was in excellent spirits. Not only would the boulevards be easily patrolled by his troops, but also the local population would be grateful to him for embellishing their town.

The next day, Monday 3 April, we were taken to the great hall and placed on either side of the major-general, who was to receive a delegation from the town. To be aligned with white men put Kwame and myself in an awkward position. The protesters were advised to cooperate with the efforts being undertaken to improve their town. They refused. Kwame and I could not help noticing the dark looks the men of Elmina cast in our direction.

On Tuesday 4 April we were taken by the governor of Elmina and Major-General Verveer on our first stroll through the devastated compound, while the others, led by van Drunen and Tonneboeijer, looked for a suitable site for the construction of dwellings in orderly rows, street by street. The people were hostile.

On Wednesday 5 April, early in the morning, we returned to the clearing. Kwame and I helped to mark off the streets with bamboo stakes, which we found entertaining enough. But when the people comprehended the extent of the plans, they gathered together in a crowd and, headed by the women, gave vent to their anger. The assurances they were given of grand avenues running across their town did not appease them, and we were obliged to return to our quarters post-haste. We thought it was all part of an exciting game, until Kwame was badly hit by a flying stone. The governor would not allow us to go out again that day.

At night we heard an angry roar in the distance. Quite quickly, it grew louder. The drawbridges were raised, and from the tower we saw a mass of people advancing on the fort, throwing stones and waving branches they had set alight. They tore out the stakes we had driven into the ground that morning, and deposited them in a heap by the gate.

At midnight, forty men marched from the fort accompanied by two pieces of ordnance, with a view to forcing the native king and his rule into submission. General Verveer himself was at the ready on the parapet with several officers manning the cannons in case of trouble. We watched the troop movements from the battlements. At one point we actually helped when the battle array in which van Drunen was riding was targeted by a group of spearmen. We flailed our arms and jumped up and down and shouted so loudly that van Drunen’s attackers took to their heels.

By dawn the Hollanders returned to the fort without having fired a single shot. They brought with them eight dignitaries and the king. After that things quietened down and the marking stakes were replaced by the people themselves. The prisoners, however, were not set free.

The king of Elmina was by no means the first black sovereign that we had seen in captivity, but he was the first we saw being held in a dungeon by white men. This was unthinkable to us. That night we collected some fruits so that we might offer them to the Fanti king. Van Drunen, touched by our gesture, escorted us with the interpreter to the prison complex.

The stench inside was appalling, emanating for the most part from the pair of panthers that were being kept in the death cell. They sharpened their claws on the doorpost, which was carved with a skull and cross-bones. Next door, through the bars, we saw the king. He was sitting on a wooden block, and was shackled to the wall. Van Drunen opened the door of the cell and gave us a little push to go inside. The king looked at me steadily. I greeted him with the proper respect and tried to say with my eyes how deeply I regretted his treatment. Kwame took the dish of fruit from my hands and stepped forward. The king rose slowly, seemingly indifferent to his approach. When Kwame was standing right before him, he summoned up his last ounce of strength and gave the dish such a violent kick that the fruit was splattered against the vaulted ceiling. Kwame recoiled, and so did I, as the prisoner lunged at us as far as his shackles permitted. For an instant our eyes met. Then he spat in my face and launched into a tirade in Fanti, although he could see there were tears in my eyes. Van Drunen tried to pull us away from the enraged man, but we were transfixed.

“What is he saying?” I screamed at the interpreter. I was beside myself. “Tell me what he’s saying!” At that point a gob of spit landed in Kwame’s eye, whereupon van Drunen picked us up, one under each arm, and swooped us out of the king’s reach. “What is he saying?” I clamoured.

“A black king,” replied the interpreter with downcast eyes, “does not eat from white hands.” Meanwhile the king raved on. Kwame, horrified, held out his arms to him.

During the last three weeks of our stay in Elmina we did not venture out of the fort again. Our wish to eat in our room was granted. Van Drunen visited us there daily, and tried to cheer us up. He gave us lessons in the Dutch language and told us endless anecdotes about the Dutch people. The only times we left our room were to take a stroll up and down the pier jutting out from the fort into the sea, or when enjoined to do so for the religious services and, on one occasion, for the public flogging of a Dutch soldier.

The young soldier had absented himself from roll call for four days running. He had been found in a neighbouring village with his native sweetheart. During a public atonement he was shackled to the church wall, stripped and given twenty well-aimed strokes with a stick, causing deep wounds in his flesh. But his will seemed unbroken. Kwame was deeply impressed; that white men should treat each other so harshly took away his last vestiges of trust. “So no one,” he said, “is safe with them.”

That afternoon, we were lounging on the pier listening to the sea when Kwame shot to his feet. I followed his gaze. Up on the parapet, in an embrasure, stood the young soldier who had been beaten so viciously. His wounds were exposed, his face was swollen and streaked with tears. He staggered to the tower that rose out of the sea, clambered on to the crenellations and hoisted himself further up. When he reached the top he sat for a while with his head on his breast, getting his breath back. I do not know how long we stood there watching, but I remember that we did not speak. Not even when the lad scrambled to his feet, stepped to the edge and jumped.

He fell forty metres, landing on the sharp rocks flanking the pier. I was about to scramble down to him, when I noticed that Kwame was still staring up at the battlements, open-mouthed, as if he had seen a miracle. For the first time since we had left Kumasi there was a spark of vitality in his look. Then he turned to me and smiled, noted that his change of heart was pleasing to me, took a deep breath and mouthed the first words of Dutch that he had memorized during van Drunen’s lessons: “
Ja,
Mevrouw
!”
²

We ran along the pier to inspect the broken body. This was our first intimation of the power of love. The young soldier died of his injuries three days later.

On 26 April, a few hours before our embarkation, Kwame thought he saw his mother by the gate. He had never doubted she would come to his rescue. He ran out to meet her but soon saw she was a Fanti. She had come to sell snails. My friend was inconsolable, and I could do nothing to distract him. In the afternoon, accompanied by Verveer, van Drunen and the officers, we boarded the Governor MacLean, with Captain Freebody at the helm. The anchor was weighed and the sails hoisted. I was never to see Africa again.

JAVA 1900

Buitenzorg, 12 March

Ahim has been impossible for days, while I need all the concentration I can muster in order to reconstitute the events of my youth. I would do well to discharge him. He has taken it into his head that it is too tiring for me to spend all my time writing. He says I do not look well, which is a bit rich coming from a man with a hangdog look like his. If I do indeed have a tormented air at times it is only because he inspires it. He keeps disturbing me throughout the day—and now that I have been working late also during the night—with petty excuses.