The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel (13 page)

Compared to Fort Elmina and the barracks of Hellevoetsluis, where we disembarked in the late June of 1837 and stayed during the summer months, the van Moock boarding school and everything in it seemed overstuffed and smothered. The air was heavy with the smell of furniture wax, copper polish and blacking. Every inch of wood, metal and stone was hidden under a layer of textile: there were cloths covering the table, the settee and the birdcage, curtains in front of doors and bookcases. Drapes smothered the windows, cushions the windowsills. The walls were lined with orange baize. The profusion of fabrics made me long to crawl under a comforter, but van Drunen sat us down on soft poufs while Mrs. van Moock pattered down the corridor, letting out cries of excitement.

“To the drawing-room, Mr. van Moock! Annie, some chocolate! And wake up the boys, all of them! We are receiving high company in the drawing-room.” She rang a bell in the hall, at which the house came alive. Footsteps drummed on the floorboards overhead, voices rang out on the stairs and in the basement. Windows and doors flew open. A young lad popped up from behind the fender, others came running in their nightshirts, and very soon we were at the hub of a circle of boys. They had been told of our arrival, yet shrank from the sight of us. Then a remarkably smart looking youth appeared on the scene: not a stain on his shirt, not a wrinkle in his jacket, shoes polished to a bright sheen. He was dark-haired and muscular, his chin already shadowed. The other boys waited in suspense for his reaction. After a brief moment he extended his hand.

“Cornelius de Groot is the name!”

We looked at his outstretched arm, not knowing quite what to do. There was some sniggering. Although we had made the acquaintance of officers, seamen and diplomats representing the Ministry of Colonies, no one had actually shaken hands with us before. Cornelius gave me an encouraging look, and signalled with his eyes that I was to take his hand. I glanced at van Drunen. Then, to end our embarrassment, Cornelius grasped our hands in turn and shook them warmly.

“On behalf of the pupils,” he said pompously, “it is my privilege to welcome the princes of Ashanti to van Moock’s establishment.”

“I think you mean Mister van Moock!” a stern voice intoned. A gaunt figure stood in the doorway. Two boys who had been sitting down jumped to their feet. The headmaster had a long, bony face and large eyes, half hidden under enormous eyebrows, rather like the furniture under all that padding. Van Drunen made the introductions.

“Good heavens, Kwasi and Kwame . . .” said van Moock. “What extraordinary names. We ought to have been informed of this at the time of enrolment.”

His wife came in with a biscuit tin, followed by a servant girl hunched over a tray laden with beakers of milk. When the girl set eyes on us she could barely stifle a cry of alarm.

“Kwasi and Kwame . . .” said van Moock, shaking his head. “No, that won’t do, it won’t do at all.” He took two slates from the cupboard. On one he wrote, pronouncing each letter carefully in turn: A-Q-U-A-S-I, and handed it to me. On the other he wrote A-Q-U-A-M-E, slowly re-pronounced what he had written, erased the initial A and handed the slate to Kwame. Then he took a step back and savoured our new names from a distance.

His wife broke off a piece of gingerbread for us. The taste was appalling, but I smiled at her. She took our slates from us with a pleased look and returned them to her husband.

“Nobility resides in the heart, sir, not in spelling.”

That night we were taken to a room on the second floor, where van Drunen bade us farewell. Over our heads were slipped long nightshirts with ties at the neck and wrists. We had separate cots on which the bedclothes were stretched taut and securely tucked in at the corners. This was to prevent rumpling. The starched sheet pressed on my throat. I was afraid I would suffocate, but told myself that everyone in this house would be sleeping thus, presumably without coming to any harm. I would not let them get the better of me. My mind was made up. I resolved to keep my body still and imagined how pleased Mrs. van Moock would be when she came to liberate us at daybreak.

“Dratted cloth all over the place!” grumbled Kwame after a while. I could hear him wrestling with his covers. He wormed himself out of his cot, came over to mine, tugged at the bedclothes and freed me. I moved over to make room for him. He lay down next to me and folded his arms under his head. As he did not speak, I thought he had fallen asleep.

Nagging doubts about Kwame’s welfare had, lately, mingled with my private grief. It was hard to say where these doubts came from. He had not done anything out of the ordinary. We had both concealed our emotion for the duration of our voyage to Europe, each of us cheering the other up when we were close to tears. We never mentioned the cause of our unhappiness. But Kwame was always braver than I, which gave me a feeling of inadequacy, of giving him less support than he gave me.

I thanked the gods that we had each other. Lying in bed together I felt safe. I waited for Kwame’s breathing to fall together with mine, which normally happened of its own accord. But that night his chest shuddered as it rose and fell. To find out whether he was still awake I whispered: “Cho-co-late.”

“What?”

“It’s just as if everything sounds better. Grander: Bonbon.”

“The taste is the same, though,” he replied crossly. “A-quasi, Q-uame, Chu-cu-laht . . .” He was wide awake now, and in belligerent mood.

“Bonbon,” I said, tasting the sound. “Bon-bon.”

“
Fufu
,” he said. “That’s what I’d like—
fufu
.
Fu-fu
!” This was the first time either of us had referred so directly to something from home since we left, although I myself had been thinking for weeks about the taste of roast boar in hot sauce, which our slave Kofi used to cook for us during our wakes at the sanctuary.

The mattress was so soft that we kept rolling to the middle. To overcome this I turned on my right side and lay with my knees drawn up. I made Kwame take the same position. His nightshirt got twisted around his body, and he tugged at the ties to loosen them, ripped the shirt off and flung it into a corner. I did not follow suit.

“You’re keeping yours on?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. After a moment’s silence he blurted: “The whole night?”

“Yes.”

“And what if you have to pee?”

“No idea.”

He made a show of getting out of bed.

“Since you have no idea how to pee I’m going back to my own bed.”

“But I don’t have to pee,” I said.

“Don’t you? We’ll see about that.” He lunged at me and started to tickle me, knowing that I could not stand it. I struggled to free myself. The bed creaked as though on the brink of collapse. He did not stop. To muffle my shrieks I pressed my mouth into the pillow.

The next morning we explored the boarding school. It looked smaller, less awesome, in the stark light of day. Our room overlooked a canal. Through the narrow window we observed the busy scene across the water, with market folk and worshippers streaming into the Old Church. Carts laden with goods were being pushed over the cobbles. Barges jostled on the canal, the skippers praising their wares at the tops of their voices.

Our room was by far the best on our floor. It was also the only room with just two cots, the others being filled with six or seven each. The maids, Bertha and Annie, slept in the garret. Bertha, who was thin and too old for heavy chores, did the dusting and helped in the kitchen. Annie was not yet eighteen, and seemed slightly retarded. She was constantly ordered about by Bertha, who kept a sharp eye on her as if she were prey for a hungry pack of boyish wolves. The first floor was out of bounds. It smelled of almonds and benzine. The private quarters of the headmaster and his wife were located there, as well as a storeroom and the room of young Master van Moock, who was away at college studying for the ministry. Down in the entrance hall were four doors. One led to the drawing-room at the front of the house, where the boys received visits from their families, although such occasions were rare. Another, likewise at the front, led to the classroom, where the lower halves of the large windows overlooking the canal were screened. The other two doors gave on to the dining room and a small library cum study. Silence had to be observed there at all times, although the floorboards creaked every bit as loudly as our bed, which made such a racket that it felt as if the slightest movement would alarm everyone in the house.

Fifteen steps led down to the basement kitchen, from which rose the smell of cloves, coffee and candy sugar. Halfway down the steps was a small door to the courtyard, which was where the boys were drilled by the headmaster. It was a very draughty place.

“This country is so windy,” Kwame remarked, “that you wonder why they build all those windmills to make even more wind.”

There was a washroom with two privies, only one of which was for the pupils. This gave rise to considerable irritation every morning. The other privy was less cramped, and was reserved for the van Moocks and their private visitors. Sometimes, when the door was ajar, you could see that there were actually two holes in the wooden seat, one for number twos and the other for number ones. Next to each hole was a pail of water, ready-filled. Compared with our privy, which you had to flush with a bucket that you had to fill first at the pump—an arduous job in summer as in winter, and frequently skipped—the van Moock’s closet was palatial, and the boys would throw envious glances inside. But however long the queue in the courtyard, no one dared use it. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. van Moock ever mentioned the penalty, but it was obvious that anyone caught trespassing would be beaten.

We entered the classroom the first morning eager to hear what we were to learn in our lessons. Van Moock greeted us civilly enough, but he wore a stern expression. He had evidently decided that it would be beneficial to our education for us to be treated in exactly the same way as the other boys. But it was too late for that. Our classmates stared at us, open-mouthed. I was accustomed to standing before a crowd at home, but this was different. Just as the previous evening, there was some sniggering. We did not know what was expected of us, and when we were motioned to our desks, we hesitated. It was only a brief moment, but I felt that the boys had closed ranks, thereby claiming respect for their superior numbers. I thought I had better acknowledge their claim and lowered my eyes, the way I was accustomed to do in the past before the council of elders and the priest at the sanctuary. From the corner of my eye I could see Kwame holding his head up defiantly.

There was an atmosphere of intimidation in the room, the kind of menace you cannot see or hear, which has no name, and which I had only experienced in nature until then. When a group of animals masses together, be it in defence or in readiness for attack, a certain equanimity comes over it, a stolidness that I desperately wished for at that moment.

Let me put it this way: the atmosphere in the classroom made me feel the way I used to as I stood on the shore of the lake of Twi. I knew about the terrors under that quiet, mirror-like surface, and yet I craved to break the tension. To jump in. I stood there, imagining what it would be like to abandon myself to the forbidden watery deep, to look up and see the ripples fanning out overhead until the surface was a mirror once more. I never dared. My fear was always greater than my craving.

I kept my eyes fixed on the floor. Van Moock, although aware of the tension in the room, did not comprehend it, and said, somewhat irritably: “Come on then, hurry up. Or are you waiting for your shadow?”

Peals of laughter. “So may I request that you open your copies of Xenophon forthwith . . .”

We slid into the twin desk that had been assigned to us and aped the other boys. We raised the lid, took out one of the books, and opened it. We had no idea.

“Well now,” muttered van Moock, “never mind about the
stades
and
parasangs
covered by the army, can you tell me what happened next?” He waved his index finger in the air until he decided which boy to single out: a tow-haired lad on the other side of the aisle, who squirmed under his gaze. “Master Verheeck.”

“Sir?”

“I should like to hear from you how the Persians fared.”

The boy turned to the next page, then back a few pages, then forward again. He cleared his throat, hooked a finger under his collar, leaned towards his neighbour for moral support and shot us a quick glance.

“Is there something amiss or are you so moved by the words as to be unable to speak?”

Verheeck raised his eyes from the textbook in front of him and looked at us again. A grin spread across his face.

“Well sir, er, the thing is, the princes . . .”

“You mean Masters Boachi and Poku.”

“They’re holding their book upside-down.” There was more sniggering. Van Moock rapped on his desk with a ruler.

“In that case they may not have mastered the Greek language as yet. A good opportunity,” he said, “for you to be of assistance.”

“But sir,” said Verheeck, almost shouting to make himself heard over the buzz in the classroom, “they haven’t even got out their Xenophon—they’re looking at their Psalter!” Van Moock’s eyebrows shot up.

“Aquasi Boachi, take your pen and write your name in your copy-book. Come along now.”

I glanced around the room. The looks I was being given, scornful, triumphant, did not make me any the wiser. I flipped the pages the way I had seen Verheeck do, and heard him chuckle.