This Side Jordan (10 page)

– The farms were hewed and hacked out of the bush. The matted brush closed in like a solid wall, and the bush paths were hacked out with machetes, until you had a tunnel through the undergrowth, a green tunnel where the ant-men scurried to and fro from their farms. The cocoa trees grew richly, with their pale brown-stained trunks and yellowing pods. The cassava grew, and the guinea corn, and the yams with leaves like elephants’ ears.

– It was not so bad, when I was young. I did not know I would ever leave, then. I did not know that soon the mission school would give me a new name and a new soul. It wasn’t so bad. At dusk we used to go back home, running through the green tunnels. We used to come out onto the road the white-men had forced through the forest, the great road. And there was excitement! It seemed then that the world walked on that road. The women trudged along with the baskets of bananas, plantains, cassava on their heads, the bundles of firewood on their heads. But we boys stopped to stare at the lorries that passed, or we loitered beside the palm shelters where palm-wine was sold in old beer bottles. Sometimes we saw strangers, men with shifty eyes, thieves or God knows what, or just travellers who couldn’t afford to ride a mammy-wagon. And sometimes we saw bands of northern desert men, dressed in their coarse blue and white tunics, driving their herds of long-horned cattle to the coast. It seemed the world must be passing by on that road.

– It wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t so bad. But I always wanted to know where that great road went, and what was at the other end.

Adjei Boateng was looking at him curiously. Nathaniel turned away. He did not want to see the pain in the old man’s eyes.

‘Do not forsake your own people,’ Adjei said gently, ‘or life will be a bitter leaf in your mouth.’

‘It will not happen so.’

‘You are young,’ his uncle said. ‘Some day you will know where you belong.’

Nathaniel grinned, and bitterness welled up in him.

‘I belong between yesterday and today.’

Adjei Boateng smiled also.

‘But that is nowhere.’

‘I know,’ Nathaniel replied. ‘Yes, I know.’

Adjei had friends whom he wanted to visit, so he refused Nathaniel’s invitation to stay. Nathaniel felt ashamed at his own sense of relief.

Aya and Akosua had stayed in the other room while Nathaniel talked to his uncle. Aya emerged now, but she did not ask him what the old man had said; she would certainly have listened and heard it all. Instead, she held up a length of new cloth for him to see.

‘My church,’ Aya said, ‘is going to have a parade.’

She always referred to it as ‘my church’. Nathaniel did not belong. He still attended the traditional church in which, as a boy at the mission school, he had been brought up. Sometimes the old anger stirred and he would not set foot in the church for months. Then, out of need or habit, he would return, never entirely believing, never entirely disbelieving, doubting heaven but fearing hell.

Aya went with him on Sunday mornings, but her real enthusiasm was for the evangelical church she attended with her women friends. She would arrive home from the sessions strangely exalted, and she did not seem to mind when Nathaniel made fun of her. Maddeningly, whenever he asked
her about it, she could never tell him, only that the singing had done her good. Nathaniel sometimes wondered how much of the teaching touched her at all. Jesus did. But Aya did not see Him as The Redeemer.

‘That Jesus,’ she would say, clucking her tongue in soft sympathy, ‘that poor boy.’

‘He grew up to be a man,’ Nathaniel would remind her.

But to Aya He remained a child-god. Men had brought Him gifts of gold, honouring his godhead, and then, envying his powers, they had slain Him. On Good Friday, she mourned Him like a mother.

‘It was a hard command God laid on Him,’ she said once.

And she was astounded when Nathaniel laughed. But Aya had said ‘hyebea’ for command, and for God, ‘Nyame’. Nathaniel had seen it, for a moment, through her eyes and had known by what beliefs she interpreted it. She thought of it in terms of the faith of her people. The ‘kra’, the soul, of some royal sinner, probably David the King, to whose house Jesus belonged, was reborn in that poor boy, that miraculous child, and told to come to earth and perfect itself. And the solemn command of Nyame to the ‘kra’ could not be evaded.

But when Nathaniel questioned her, Aya grew bored and restless, and denied thinking anything at all.

‘I suppose you think that Sunday was Jesus’ name-day,’ he teased her once, ‘and that He used to take part in the soul-washing ceremony then.’

And Aya had looked confused, knowing he was making fun of her, but not quite understanding how.

Now she draped the material around herself. It was deep blue, with a pattern of drift-tailed fishes and unnamed sea-creatures in swirling lines of yellow and orange.

‘We have all bought new cloth for the parade. How do you like it? No – do not say it is too expensive. It is my own money. Remember when I sewed for Mrs. Ansah?’

‘You should not go,’ he said. ‘Not – like that.’

Aya laughed.

‘How can it harm the baby? He does not have to do the walking.’

She would never change. Never. The country might go on, leaping century after century overnight. But Aya would remain the same.

‘Why do you want to go?’ he asked peevishly. ‘A bunch of women dancing highlife to the hymns – showing their foolishness from Christiansborg to High Street. It’s almost as stupid as the fetish priestess dancing with ashes on her breasts –’

She stood quite still for a moment, and her oil-dark eyes shone with anger.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she cried. ‘I must have nothing to do with the “abosom” and now I must not go to my church, either. What do you want me to do?’

What did he want her to do? Nathaniel knew. He wanted her to go to church on Sunday mornings only, unobtrusively, to his staid and respectable church.

‘I’m sorry,’ Nathaniel mumbled. ‘You will go with your friends. It is all right. And the cloth is a fine one.’

‘Why did you change?’ she asked bluntly. ‘What made you change like that?’

Nathaniel shrugged.

‘Truly, I do not want to tell you everything you must do,’ he said helplessly. ‘If you want to go, then go. If you think I am always telling you what to do, it is only because –’

Already she had grown tired of the talk, and was folding the cloth with practised hands.

He did not want to tell her what to do. It was not right. He knew it.

But why did she not learn?

It was that night that Ankrah the carver stabbed Yiamoo.

Nathaniel and Aya were wakened shortly after midnight. The compound had become a cage where anger roared and struck. They could hear Yiamoo’s deep thundering voice, cursing hotly in his own tongue. Then the carver’s voice, a snake-hiss of hatred, a high-pitched squeal as Yiamoo hit him. The wooden shutters of the house banged open, and anonymous voices cackled in the night. From the street, the noise of cars blurred the pattern of sounds in the compound.

‘Ankrah tried again today to get the stoep for his work,’ Aya whispered, ‘and Yiamoo spat in his face.’

They heard the scuffling of feet, then the strangled grunt of a wounded thing. A second’s terrifying silence, then the sound of feet, running, running, stumbling. Strangely, the wooden shutters of the house began to creak closed, one after another, quietly, as though upon an agreed signal. The next morning, if the police came, no one would have seen or heard anything.

‘Which one?’ Aya whispered, frightened.

‘I don’t know.’

But he did know. Nathaniel was not surprised when, a few minutes later, they heard the soft desperate voice of Yiamoo’s wife at their window.

‘Come –’ she said. ‘I beg you. Come quick.’

Nathaniel pulled on his trousers and went out. She was standing beside the window, shivering, her eyes wide with panic. He helped her drag Yiamoo into the house.

It was a shoulder wound, and the knife had pierced from
behind. It had not been meant for the shoulder. If Yiamoo had not been crouching, his wife said, already half-turned to find his slippery opponent, the knife would have slid up under the ribs and into the lungs.

Yiamoo’s wife moaned in a low voice as she washed and bound the wound. She produced, from among an untidy pile of earthen pots, a small bottle of cheap gin, and handed it to Nathaniel questioningly.

Nathaniel did not know what to do. He could not remember if it was a good or a bad thing to give spirits. Finally he poured a little of it into the tailor’s mouth.

Yiamoo was not unconscious, but he seemed to be dazed. His breath came in short gasps. He almost choked on the gin, then he drew a deeper breath and opened his eyes. When he saw Nathaniel, he put out one hand towards him.

‘Mek I go die?’

‘No,’ Nathaniel said. ‘You no go die. You rest. I go for doctor.’

Yiamoo made a violent gesture, then grimaced in pain.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No go for doctah. I no ’gree.’

Nathaniel shrugged. Yiamoo was a strong man. Maybe the wound would be all right without treatment. Maybe not. But he knew he could not persuade the tailor.

Yiamoo’s wife had thrown herself down at her husband’s feet. She was sobbing noisily, thankfully, as though she could hardly believe he was still alive. It was true that Yiamoo beat her, shouted at her, tried to take her market-earned money from her. But she had no life apart from him.

‘What he do?’ Nathaniel asked. ‘Why he cut you?’

He pieced together the story from Yiamoo’s halting pidgin phrases. After the day’s argument, Ankrah had gone off and Yiamoo – so he said – had forgotten about it. Tonight, as
he was walking out to the latrine, someone tripped him. In a rage, he had made for the man, not knowing who it was. When he saw it was the carver, Yiamoo’s temper had given way completely and he had fought in a blind anger. He had hit Ankrah once, then the carver had twisted away and come up behind him with a knife.

Nathaniel asked him if he would go to the police. Yiamoo shook his head.

‘Police palavah, he no be good,’ he replied. ‘I no got money. Ankrah, he no got pickin. He got money, I t’ink, small-small. He go dash plenty man, den dey say Yiamoo he mek trouble.’

It was true. But Nathaniel, if he chose, could give evidence for Yiamoo. He felt, angrily, that he would like to do it.

But they said no more about it. When Nathaniel left, Yiamoo’s wife pressed into his hand the only present she had to give, a bead necklace for Aya. Nathaniel took it, feeling once again that strange companionship that needed no blood allegiance as its base.

He was determined to go to the police on Yiamoo’s behalf.

At his own doorway, Nathaniel felt a hand on his arm. He swung around to see Ankrah standing there, his sharp face contorted with fear.

‘Is he dead?’

Nathaniel shook off the hand.

‘No,’ he said brusquely. ‘No thanks to you.’

The other began to whine.

‘I swear to you, I did not mean to hurt him. I tell you, it was an accident. Look – here’s what happened. I speak the truth, may Tano bear me witness. I tripped him, sure, as a joke – can’t a man take a thing like that without going mad? That’s what he did – he went mad. You should have seen him, like the
big ape he is, his arms going this way and that, trying to grab me. He would have broken my neck. It’s true. Well, I slipped under his arm, and I had to stop him, so I thought I’d just touch him with the knife, just to scare him, you know. But he lunged right against it. I couldn’t help it, I swear to you –’

‘I don’t want to hear,’ Nathaniel said.

‘Listen, Nathaniel,’ Ankrah pleaded, ‘you won’t tell the police?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

A semblance of dignity came over the carver. He looked straight into Nathaniel’s eyes.

‘Because we are of one people,’ he said. ‘Does a man betray his brother? Do you think the spirits of your ancestors would give you any rest, ever again, if you did a thing like that?’

‘There are more things –’

Nathaniel stopped. He had been going to say there were more things and more important things than being of one people. But he knew he could not explain.

‘You will not tell?’ Ankrah insisted.

Nathaniel looked at him, feeling sick.

– Oh, Nathaniel, would you spit on your people and have in turn your sons spit upon you?

– Nathaniel, Nathaniel, life is a bitter leaf in your mouth.

‘Speak,’ Ankrah said in agony. ‘What is the matter with you?’

– The ‘asamanfo’, the spirits of the dead, speak in every whisper of breeze through the niim branches. The voice of the Drummer. My son, my son. I was betrayed in your heart – must I now be betrayed again and again?

– Jesus said, love thy neighbour as thyself. Nathaniel, love thy neighbour Yiamoo as thyself. And Jesus said, one of you will betray Me.

– Choose. Must a man always betray one god or the other? Both gods have fought over me, and sometimes it seems that both have lost, sometimes that both have won and I am the unwilling bondsman of two masters.

– Does a man betray his brother?

‘Nathaniel,’ Ankrah was saying, ‘does a man betray his brother?’

Nathaniel turned away, his heart pounding.

‘I will not tell,’ he said in a low voice.

The carver’s eyes shone with triumph, and he sucked in a relieved breath.

‘I bless your name, my brother. I promise you –’

‘Go,’ Nathaniel said fiercely. ‘Go now before I hit you.’

With Adjei, with Kwaale, with Aya and Aya’s mother, even with Ankrah the carver, Nathaniel expected to have to fight the Forest and the part of himself that wanted to listen to the voice of the mother-pleading River. But not with Victor. He and Victor had always stood together, like brothers. Nathaniel was unprepared for the day when he and Victor seemed to stand opposed.

Victor clenched his powerful hands together, cracking the knuckles unpleasantly. He had not shaved all day, and the black hair stood like burnt spikes of spear-grass on his heavy jowl. A soiled green shirt was glued with sweat to his chest, and half his stomach swelled in a thick roll of fat over the top of low-slung shapeless corduroy trousers. He yawned and half-closed his eyes.