The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel (19 page)

“Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin,” I droned.

“And his daughter Dina,” Kwame added.

Verveer sighed. “I would rather spend a day in the saddle than keep still for half an hour.”

“We’ve only been sitting for fifteen minutes,” I said, piqued by his failure to praise me for my good memory.

“And not very still either!” said Kwame.

“
Touché
, Prince Quame!” said Raden Saleh. “The more you protest, Major-General, the longer it will all take.”

“But this is the umpteenth time, dammit.”

“I have spared you as much as I can until now. If it were just the two boys, I would not have needed you here. But now that I am working on your face . . . After all, it was you who wished to take the central position.”

Verveer took his irritation out on us. “Come now, Aquasi, give me the Plagues of Egypt!”

“Frogs, gnats, mosquitoes, cattle murrain, boils, hail, locusts, and thick darkness . . .”

“And?”

“And . . .”

At that moment there was a knock on the door, which was most unusual.

“Not now!” cried Raden Saleh, without looking up from his canvas. We were surprised to see the timid face of his servant peering round the door.

“Raden Saleh, you have a visitor.”

“I am busy. You know I am not to be disturbed.”

The servant slunk away, but instead of shutting the door behind him he flung it open to admit a formidable lady. A tower of chestnut hair crowned by a small white hat with an upturned brim made her seem even taller than she was. I could feel Verveer stiffen.

“Perhaps you would be so good as to make an exception for me?” The soft line of her Slavonic eyes somehow jarred with the stern, narrow lips. She had a nose like an arrow with nostrils like barbs, was about forty years old and seemed, unlike the other women I knew, entirely at ease in male company. Raden Saleh looked round, flustered, and shot upright, while the major-general shook off our hands and rose to salute. It was our crown princess: the Tsar’s daughter Anna Pavlovna.

“Oh dear,” she said and motioned for a chair to be brought. “Just look at them!” Her voice was as resonant as a man’s. It was also loud and halting. She was not used to speaking Dutch. Some of the consonants made little plosive sounds, as if they couldn’t get past her lips.

“We happened to be passing, and remembered the king’s recommendation that we make the acquaintance of the Ashanti princes. You are the object of His Majesty’s concern, you know,” she said, leaning over to inspect us. “Besides, he thought it would please the princess. Sophie? Sophie! Where is that girl? Sophie! She must have gone off exploring again. The young are so forward these days.”

The doors to the drawing-room were open, and we could hear the patter of shoes on parquet.

“It is a great honour, madam, to see you here . . .” stammered Raden Saleh when he finally regained his composure, but she took no notice of his civilities.

“Is that enormous canvas for them? But it is twice as large as the portrait you painted of us!” She affected indignation, and her eyes twinkled for the first time since her arrival.

“No canvas is large enough to represent your greatness.” Raden Saleh bowed, but Crown Princess Anna Pavlovna was not one to be taken in by flattery.

“I have the likenesses of my father and my two brothers. I wear them next to my heart. No more than an inch high,” she said, “but showing each of them just as they are. As they are!”

“Of course. But I did not mean to say . . .”

“Size is not all that matters, sir!”

Kwame could not suppress a smile. We had never seen Raden Saleh flustered. He bowed once more, sent his servant for refreshments and tried to change the subject by pointing out lines of perspective and vanishing points. The crown princess questioned the artist regarding brushwork and the composition of his paints. She seemed to be quite knowledgeable on the subject and suggested an improvement, which was politely acknowledged. Then she turned away from the canvas and approached us.

“Well, Major-General, so these are the jewels you have brought for our crown.” She had lowered her voice and I was happy to believe her compliment was sincere.

“At great personal risk,” Verveer said, “at the risk of my life.”

She looked him up and down with steely eyes and concluded: “A small stake for such gain, sir!”

The major-general gasped for air to protest, then thought better of it. The crown princess ran her finger along Kwame’s cheek and pressed our hands.

“Go on, say something, boys!” urged Verveer.

“How do you like it here,
mes petits princes
? Does Holland bear the remotest resemblance to home? My poor dears, have you become at all accustomed to us?”

Kwame and I exchanged looks. No one had ever asked us such a question before. I smiled faintly, hoping she would change the subject. Verveer slapped his hand on the back of his chair.

“Come now, boys, answer the question!”

I was about to say what I thought she wanted to hear, when Kwame blurted: “No, madam!” He did not even sound timid.

“What sort of answer is that?” snapped Verveer.

“An honest answer, Major-General.” Anna Pavlovna straightened her back. “Would you prefer it otherwise?”

“No no, of course not.”

“Grey skies and flat polderland, wind, water and aching muscles are not likely to make one forget the pleasures of home, I can assure you!”

At this point Princess Sophie came into the room. She was about fourteen, and carried a glass jar containing a specimen in preserving fluid. She stepped forward quickly, but carefully, to avoid jostling the contents of the jar.

“Come and look, Mamma, he’s got a skeleton next door, and things behind a curtain. And look at this, it’s got monsters in it, Mamma, look, look! It’s ghastly, all hairy and . . .” She held out the jar to her mother, and suddenly noticed our presence. Everything happened so quickly that I cannot say whether she was startled by the sight of us or by the lid slipping off and splintering on the floor. Alcohol splashed over her white frock, whereupon she jumped and dropped everything. Shards of glass flew in every direction.

“Sophie!”

There was a moment of silence, then Raden Saleh got up and said, drily: “A zoological specimen.” He wiped some murky liquid from his shoes and rang for a servant.

“I am so sorry,” said the girl. She wore her blonde hair brushed back from her forehead and hanging down on either side of her face in fine ringlets. They danced as she shook her head over her own clumsiness.

“It is nothing, Your Highness, nothing. Just some vermin in a formaldehyde solution. My servant will clean up the mess at once.” But Kwame had already crouched down to fish the dead insect from the floor, at which Sophie gave a little shriek.

“Mamma, Mamma, he’s picking it up with his bare hands!”

“It’s a spider,” I said.

Sophie took a step closer, shuddering. “A spider? As big as that?” she said, pulling a face.

Kwame held the creature under her nose and stroked the wet hairs with his finger. “It’s very soft. Go on, feel it.”

Sophie had to fight down her revulsion, she had to force herself to look, but she reached out and touched it. We told her we knew all about spiders, and she regarded us with such interest that we were encouraged to continue.

“Behind the mandible are the glands,” said Kwame. “Very useful. Two drops diluted with five gulps of water cures stomach aches.”

“How clever!” the girl cried. “Do you hear that, Mamma?”

“And under the legs are some other glands,” I added quickly, pointing them out to her. “There. Good for stiff joints.”

“Stiff joints?” her mother said, waving her hand to show she wanted a closer look. Kwame pressed one of the little sacs, and a tiny dab of colourless jelly squirted on his finger. Verveer stepped forward to intervene, but Sophie’s mother restrained him.

“Who knows,” she said. “It can’t do any harm.” She peeled off her gloves and rubbed a dot of jelly over her knuckles.

The summer of 1838 ended abruptly. In the early days of September the temperature dropped fifteen degrees in a single night. That same week it started to rain, and it did not stop until December. This was not the kind of rain we had known at home—a few heavy showers daily—nor the kind of rain that lasted for several days, as we had experienced during our first Dutch autumn. No, from one day to the next the entire country was swaddled in a cold, dripping blanket. The unusual weather conditions gave rise to all sorts of old wives’ tales. There had been the same heavy rains in the summer of 1818 and, just as twenty years earlier, prophets of doom arose all over the country, proclaiming that the sixth seal had been opened and the end of the world was upon us. Each Sunday in our room we heard an old man ringing a bell and shouting at the top of his voice about the spire of the great church in The Hague having been struck by lightning on account of the three Willems—king, crown prince and heir apparent—attending a concert of secular music in that sacred place.

Kwame laughed at all the superstition and said we should go to the park. We looked for a place where we would not be seen, took our clothes off and leaped about with our arms outstretched. We used to do this at home. We called such big raindrops “heaven’s fingertips.” There they were warm and fragrant, but here they ran down our bodies like cold tears. Kwame kept it up for a while, but I put on my wet clothes and ran home as fast as I could.

“The post has arrived!”

It was towards the end of November that Mrs. van Moock burst into the classroom and, in contravention of all the rules, interrupted me in my recital of Paul’s epistle to the Colossians.

“The post, sir. An envelope, a card. The finest parchment! Only two weeks from now! Oh my goodness gracious, and what shall they wear?”

I had prepared a little discourse on the subject of “the tolerance of the new life without idols and sins of the flesh,” but the headmaster was not listening. He tried to bundle his wife out of the room, but she stood firm. She pushed the embossed card into his hands, which he read while he shouldered her to the door.

“A royal invitation! I knew it. I said so right away. Didn’t I say so? Let no one contradict me. My own boys!”

Cornelius turned round slowly to face us. His expression was utterly blank.

Since the day that van Drunen had invited me into his carriage but had refused to take Cornelius, my wrestling partner had been very quiet. I wanted to resume our sparring matches, but he demurred. When we happened to find ourselves alone together he would take off at once, or call out to someone to join us, as though I were an embarrassment.

“He’s afraid of you,” said Kwame, who didn’t think much of the older boy. Nonsense, I thought. Cornelius would always be stronger than me, always the leader. I thought he might be upset because the headmaster made it a little too obvious that Cornelius was a mediocre pupil and I a quick learner. So for a while I tried hard to dissemble my progress. When that did not help to bring us back together, I concluded that our friendship was lost forever. Now there was nothing to stop me from getting the best marks, and I devoted myself to the only sport that contains within it its own reward.

In keeping with the Russian custom, Anna Pavlovna gave her relatives their gifts on the eve of their birthday. And as Sophie’s father, Crown Prince Willem Frederik, was born on 6 December, the festivities for his forty-seventh birthday commenced on the eve of St. Nicholas. His wife seized every opportunity for gathering her family around her. While the children were young she would do everything in her power to turn the feast of St. Nicholas into a grand, double celebration.

Mrs. van Moock had provided us with long-tailed morning coats and shirts with scratchy starched fronts. We looked ridiculous, but it was the height of fashion. A small carriage drawn by two horses was hired for us at considerable expense. That afternoon, in blustery weather, we rode to the dunes at Scheveningen, where we alighted in front of a low building. The windows of the two wings, hardly more than large rooms, were brightly lit. Smoke rose from both the chimneys. Music could be heard. The columns at the front were decorated with garlands of dried flowers, twigs of fir tree and small dried oranges. The wind tore at them.

The Queen’s Pavilion had been a gift from the king to his wife, Wilhelmina. After her death the year before, it had passed to her son Frederik, who generously allowed his niece, Princess Sophie, to use it whenever she pleased. She loved the seashore.

It was the first time since our arrival in this country that we saw the sea again, but never had we seen it so turbulent. As soon as the door of the pavilion opened we rushed inside, and found ourselves in the middle of a family celebration. The chatter of the company drowned out the pounding surf.

The young princess greeted us like old friends. We were somewhat embarrassed by her effusiveness. She would not let go of our hands and drew us into the drawing-room, made us sit by the fire, called for hot chocolate and pattered to and fro with ladies and their offspring in tow, to whom she introduced us as if we were bestowing a favour on them. No fewer than seven times did she repeat what little she knew about us, our origin and the object of our stay in this country, after which she seemed to tire and simply abbreviated her introduction to “the African princes I told you about.” In this way we made the acquaintance of her governess, Mademoiselle Chapuis, and her aunt Marianne, a small thin woman with a flushed round-cheeked face, who had come all the way from Berlin accompanied by her young son Albert for the celebrations. Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach was there with his daughter Amalia and sons Hermann and Gustav. The boys were our age, and they were good sportsmen. After I had wrestled Hermann down in the hall, Gustav invited Kwame to visit him at his home near The Hague for some fencing and riding.