The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel (42 page)

To his Excellency Mr. Schomerus,
Governor of Elmina,
dated March second 1854.

I have received your kind letter regarding my son Kwasi Boarchi
[sic]
, whom I sent to Engeland
[sic]
for schooling until his return
home. I have been informed and have understood from your letter
that he has declined to come home, and you suggest that I should
not be too saddened by this turn of events; but in truth his
absence is a great sadness to me, and since I long to see his face, I
will be most grateful if you would be so kind as to write to his
master requesting him to give my son leave to travel here to see
my face and then to return to his place of work. I beg you to
comply with my request only so that I may set eyes on him and
his nature once more, in order that he may return to his work
afterward.

Signed at Kumasi,

Kwaku Dua, Asantehene of Ashanti

Under these lines my father had not drawn a cross as he used to do in the old days, but had written his name in a childish scrawl.

No one had ever breathed a word to me about this plea from my father. I needed desperately to mull over the meaning of his message, but could not bring myself to reread it. The letters became blurred in the shimmer of the moonlight. My eyes were perhaps suffering from fatigue, but my blood remained restless. I decided to take a bath in the pool. I shed my clothes, which I folded carefully, hiding the crumpled letter deep among the folds of my trousers, at a safe distance from the water’s edge. The Asantehene had employed water-based ink, which is intolerant of moisture.

DUTCH EAST INDIES 1850–55

– Can what is foreign to us become our Fatherland?
– And the Fatherland has become strange to you.
– That is why my bleeding heart will not heal.

Goethe,
Iphigenie auf Tauris

Bits of straw, the sweet fragrance of timber and drifts of powdery red earth were carried aloft by the harmattan. I sat on deck in the Gulf of Guinea, two and a-half days’ sailing from Dakar. The dry wind blowing out to sea brought us land-birds, white with yellow combs, just as Kwame had described in his first letter from Elmina. Although I had braced myself for this part of my voyage, I was suddenly overcome. I fell silent in mid-conversation. Linse and Lebret, in whose company I was travelling to the Indies, guessed the reason for my melancholy. They replenished my glass of port and left me to my musings.

On that day the Sarah Lydia was heading for São Tomé to take on water. At Linse’s instigation the ship’s captain dropped anchor some distance from the harbour, to ensure that I would not be able to see the African coastline. I enquired after the latitude of our position several times, but no one would tell me when we would sail past Elmina. I did not press for further information.

I felt no desire to visit Kwame’s grave. It was the end of May, three months after his death. He had returned to my heart. (Death sometimes brings someone closer than life. You carry with you for ever what was dear to you. Never again can love fail. There is nothing left to lose. Nothing left to ruin. Thus Death secures for ever the very thing he takes from us.)

Linse and Lebret had completed their training in London, where they and three other students from Delft were monitored by Cornelius de Groot. It was therefore clear to all concerned why I had chosen to complete my degree in Freiberg rather than in London.

They attempted to distract my thoughts with questions concerning my studies in Germany and my knowledge of the minerals and mines, and the geological research I had undertaken. They were particularly interested to hear about my relations with the famous Professor Cotta, whose theories they had studied in London without ever having met the man. I was able to supply them with some noteworthy information regarding my mentor. But on the whole our experiences were not dissimilar, although the focus of my graduate studies had been more practical and theirs more academic. They conceded that the training I had received would be the more directly applicable in the Indies. For themselves they envisaged working in administrative positions. All three of us had entered the service of the Ministry of Colonies as candidate-engineers before sailing east.

“I have heard,” Lebret said, “that you have been given the designation ‘extraordinary’ following your title. ‘Candidateengineer extraordinary.’ ”

“Yes, that is what it says in my certificate of appointment.”

“And what does it mean?”

“I don’t know. I think . . .”

“What did you expect?” Linse interrupted. “That they would treat Aquasi the same way as ourselves?
You
are ordinary, Lebret. Utterly ordinary. I am slightly less so. But Aquasi . . . our Aquasi is extraordinary. Always has been. And always will be.” He meant to be kind.

“Nonsense,” I said shamefacedly.

“I was just wondering what exactly makes him different.”

“Royal blood,” Linse said impatiently, as if he had done enough explaining. He was already a little tipsy, but poured himself another drink. Lebret held out his glass, too.

“Or is it something to do with your degree? Aquasi, did you graduate with first class honours?”

“But I got a first too,” said Linse. “You aren’t going to deny that, are you? My first is as good as anyone else’s, make no mistake.”

“I was just wondering. The designation. What it means.”

“It didn’t occur to me to query it,” I replied. “I assumed that the same terms applied to us all.”

“Never mind.” Linse was getting bored with the conversation. “ ‘Extraordinary’ sounds pretty grand to my ears. Pretty grand.”

“Right you are. It sounds good, damned good.”

“And extraordinary service demands extraordinary remuneration. Be sure to remind them of that, Aquasi.”

Lebret in particular looked forward to life as a bachelor in colonial service. For the first few months, we fancied, we would have to familiarize ourselves with the civil administration at the colonial capital. Then we would have an opportunity for an extensive tour of the archipelago in connection with our independent field studies. We would be expected to publish our findings in scientific journals devoted to soil conditions and geology. We were eager to put our studies into practice. As we lounged on the deck of the
Sarah Lydia
we made wild plans and fantasized about our careers. Just once I mentioned, in passing, a shared memory of our student days in Delft, our last evening of fun in Kwame’s company, but Lebret almost imperceptibly turned the conversation to our future. My friends did their best to divert me for the duration of our passage along the West African coast.

Professor Bernhard Cotta had crowned my studies by inviting me to accompany him on a tour of inspection of several mines in the Tirol, which lasted the whole summer of 1849. After that there was little to occupy me in Freiberg other than my personal friendships. I was always welcome at the homes of Von Beust, Breithaupt, Gätschmann, Reich and all the others. Every Friday and Saturday we went out on the town with our drinking club, of which I was honorary member, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I was expected to put in an appearance at the young ladies’ Ashanti Circle. All these entertainments combined with my visits to Sophie in Weimar made me wish I could stay there for ever. But I could no longer decently defer my departure. Enclosed with my final monthly allowance I received a letter from Minister of Colonies Pahud recalling me to Delft. I lingered in Dresden for a few days, but was eventually obliged to take my leave of Freiberg, which I did with an aching heart. I exchanged silhouettes and locks of hair with my friends, and received many fond notes and declarations of amity, all of which I pasted into the handsome Friends’ Album given to me by Sophie and Carl Alexander. Having ordered an engraving of my likeness to be sent to my friends in due course, I started off on a visit to Weimar, to bid farewell to the future grand duke and duchess. They would not let me go and I spent a few final weeks as their guest at Ettersberg Castle.

At Ettersberg, whenever a letter arrived from Kwame it would be brought to my room. I would take it with me to the stone bench on the edge of the forest behind the castle, where the wide view over the valley always gave me a sense of detachment. I had to summon up courage to read my cousin’s letters.

“Any news from our dear friend?” Sophie enquired as usual when she saw me sitting there during her daily stroll. At first I told her Kwame was doing reasonably well, despite some setbacks. I did not wish to worry her, as she was still mourning her father’s death. But in the end I did read out a few passages. They were somewhat confused, and I had difficulty understanding their meaning. Sophie was shocked and asked if she might see the whole letter. I gave it to her. She read it from beginning to end and then reread it, after which she laid it aside, saying, “Promise me you will never follow him there.” She clasped my hand and did not release it until I had given her my word. After that we would read his letters together, trying to make out the state of his emotions at the time of writing. Occasionally Sophie would advise me as to what I should put in my letters to Kwame. She did not think I should try to cheer him up all the time, which seemed to me the most natural and indeed the easiest solution. No, I was to respond to each of his anxieties separately and at length, even if they struck me as unfounded. My show of empathy, she thought, would make him feel less forsaken.

On 1 October I sent a petition, at Sophie’s instigation and virtually in her words, to her brother Willem Alexander the new king. In it I stated that I had no desire to return to the Gold Coast. I drew his attention to the impasse in Kwame’s prospects and also mentioned the persecution of Christians at Kumasi, the unfavourable forecasts for mining in that region, the high number of casualties and the minimal yields of the Dabokrom undertaking. I wrote that the notion of returning to my native country was distasteful to me, and requested him to secure me a position, of any kind, that would keep me in Holland. When a satisfactory reply did not arrive, Sophie rose up in arms. Only the previous day a most disturbing letter had come from Elmina in which Kwame claimed to have met my aunt, his mother. Sophie thought it wise, in the circumstances, for me to refuse to return to Holland unless I received guarantees for my future as well as the king’s personal assurance that I would be permitted to reside there permanently. On 23 January 1850, I did as she had suggested.

One week later I received a missive granting my wishes. I wrote this happy news to Kwame at once, in the hope that it would please him and that it might make him realize that he too could come back to Europe if he chose. That his second fatherland would welcome him with open arms.

I had run out of reasons to postpone my return to Holland. Sophie took my arm, and we took a final walk in the Buchenwald which lasted several hours.

I arrived in Delft at the end of February. The news of Kwame’s death reached me earlier than his final letters. It was brought to me by courier on 6 March. I was racked with self-recrimination. I made frantic efforts to discover whether he had lived to read the last letters I had written, and if so whether my tidings had disheartened him. No one knew. None of my letters were found amongst his possessions. One of the sergeants who had been stationed in Elmina at the time gave me the following account. On the day before Kwame died he came across my cousin sitting on the battlement of the left tower in the fort. Next to him lay an open portfolio containing all his private papers, among which the sergeant noted his army commission, some certificates and a batch of personal correspondence. One by one he was throwing the sheets out to sea. When questioned as to his motives he merely said, “I am setting all the words free.”

“Why?” I asked the sergeant, an ingenuous young man, little more than a boy, “why was his irrational behaviour not taken as a warning that he needed surveillance and protection against himself?”

All the soldier said, his voice faltering, was, “Indeed, sir, but you see, the prince looked so utterly content.”

“The tree has fallen,” I wrote to Sophie, aching with regret at having ever left Weimar. The very night that I received the terrible news, my heart turned against Delft. After all the trouble I had taken to secure my permanent domicile in Holland, my soul was lacerated by thoughts of Kwame. I was lying in bed in our old room at the boarding school. Everything around me, even the squeak of the springs when I turned over in the night, reminded me of my dead friend. The mirrors had been draped with cloths. The curtains remained shut. And then there was Mrs. van Moock’s grief-stricken look in the morning, the stunned silence of her husband. The headmaster cancelled the lessons and sat by the fire all day, as pale as parchment. Bertha sobbed in the corridor from morning till night. As for me, I found refuge in church.

A memorial service was held in the Old Church, during which I sat alone in the front pew. Mrs. van Moock insisted on sitting further back with her husband, so that she could flee if the emotion became too much for her. Our former classmates were no longer living in Delft. A few pews behind me I glimpsed only the faces of local shopkeepers, whom I suspected of unwholesome curiosity.