This Side Jordan

by Margaret Laurence

  ‘Let’s talk about something different,’ Cora said in her birdvoice. ‘The Africans – it’s always the Africans. I get so sick of them.’

  ‘All right,’ Bedford said, frowning in annoyance, ‘what shall it be? Art? The theatre? Horse-breeding? Name your subject.’

  But of course she could think of nothing, so they all sat without speaking. Johnnie wondered why any lemon-skinned woman would wear a urine-coloured dress. Cora had had too much tropical heat and too little sun for many years. Her hair was pale straw. Face, hair, dress – all were the same colour, the faint yellow of age, like a linen tablecloth tucked away in the bottom drawer of the sideboard for half a century. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that Miranda was having a baby. The childless women fared the worst here.

  The music tootled and jigged forth once more, a fanfaronade of drums and braggart horns.

  ‘Jaguar – Been-to –

  Jaguar – Fridgeful –’

  Several African boys were picking their way past the table. One of them – on impulse, or perhaps egged on by his friends – stopped beside Miranda’s chair. Obviously he had not realized she was well-advanced in pregnancy. When he saw, he drew back a step and hovered there, gauche and uncertain. But he recovered himself quickly. Turning to Cora, he bowed, then spoke to James.

  ‘May I ask your wife for this dance, please?’

  Cora’s face flushed damson-red. James fixed the young African with a steady unblinking stare.

  ‘You may not,’ he replied coolly. ‘Madam doesn’t wish to dance with you. Is that clear?’

  The boy’s hands clenched and unclenched. Then, astonishingly, he smiled.

  ‘Perfectly clear, sir,’ he said softly. ‘I thank you.’

  Johnnie felt himself bristle with resentment. The African had asked for that slap of rejection. He must have known it would happen. The boy had sought it out and courted it, merely for the gratification his own resulting hatred would give him.

  James was watching Johnnie’s face.

  ‘That’s precisely what I mean about the urban African,’ he said.

  ‘How could he think –?’ Cora cried. ‘As if I would –’

  Johnnie glanced at her and looked away immediately. Her cagebird eyes had grown bright and hot with a hatred beside which the boy’s seemed simple and uncomplicated. Johnnie knew it as the same he had felt with the brown girl – a disgust that beckoned almost as much as it repelled. He at least had recognized it in himself. She, plainly, did not.

  Then Miranda’s voice, outspoken, reassuring in its literalness and health.

  ‘I don’t see what was wrong. I thought he was very courteous.’

  The other four gasped at her, unable to believe that she was not being facetious.

  His heavy body slouched out full length, Victor Edusei watched the dancers. He watched Charity dancing with Johnnie Kestoe and he spat on the packed-earth floor.

  When she came back he ordered another drink for her. She was drunk already, her face vacant and relaxed. But she expected it, so Victor put the glass obligingly into her hand.

  ‘Did you enjoy it, dancing with one of our white brothers?’ Victor asked.

  He spoke in Twi, her language, and originally his. His eyes had a fire that made his square ugly face compelling despite itself. His voice was soft, but something in it made Charity look at him suspiciously.

  ‘He is all right,’ she said unsteadily. ‘He is a nice boy.’

  ‘A nice boy –’ Victor said. ‘Oh, good. Fine. I’m glad to know he is a nice boy. I wouldn’t have suspected it.’

  ‘You are jealous,’ she said, with a laugh. ‘He is not bad.’

  She reached one hand inside her blouse to scratch her breasts.

  ‘He is not rich,’ Victor said casually. ‘Be careful, Charity.’

  ‘Richer than you.’

  ‘That would not be difficult.’

  ‘He is a nice boy. You’re jealous, Victor.’

  ‘You have a kind opinion of him,’ Victor said brutally, ‘considering that he thinks you’re a whore.’

  Charity slapped at his hand.

  ‘He does not! How do you know?’

  ‘Because –’ He hesitated and then laughed. ‘Never mind. Enjoy your visit in the big city, Charity. Is this better than Koforidua?’

  ‘Even if he wants that,’ she said, leaning against him, ‘what do you want that’s so different? A mother, I suppose?’

  ‘My mother is like ten,’ Victor replied. ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘There. You see?’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ Victor was smiling, ‘and all because you and your husband can’t get a baby –’

  Charity drew herself up. Her light blue headscarf was crooked and her tight mauve skirt was creased around her hips. But in the soft drunken face there was pain and dignity.

  ‘Don’t speak of it,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I beg you.’

  ‘All right,’ Victor spoke gently. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t dance with any more whitemen, Charity, will you?’

  ‘Why not? I can look after myself.’

  ‘Said the bird as she flew into the crocodile’s mouth.’

  ‘All you know how to do is talk, talk, talk!’ she cried. ‘I’ll dance with him if I like.’

  She lurched to her feet.

  ‘See – I’m going now to dance with him again. I’ll let him take me home if I want to. And that’s not all I’ll let him do. He liked me –’

  ‘You’re stupid, Charity,’ he said in a low harsh voice, ‘do you know that? You’re really pleased, aren’t you, that he asked you to dance? I wish you knew what it was all about. Come on, I’m taking you home now.’

  ‘No!’ she shrilled. ‘No, Victor! I won’t go! I’m having a good time.’

  He dropped her wrist abruptly.

  ‘Have it without me, then,’ he said.

  He turned to go.

  ‘Victor –’

  He looked at her. Then, suddenly, he held her tightly, his broad hands biting into her shoulders.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘we’ll stay. What’s the difference? Come on – maybe another whiteman will ask you to dance, and you can tell all your friends at home. Will that make you happy? Or do you just want me to –’

  Her shoulders began to lift and her hips to sway with the rhythm of the highlife. Victor’s hands slid down close to her breasts.

  ‘Is that all you want, after all?’ he said. ‘Just highlife?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe not.’

  The tensions of Victor’s big body seemed to change. Normally, he moved with a caricatured slouch. But when he danced, his body possessed an easy grace. He kept his hands close to Charity’s breasts. Otherwise, their bodies hardly touched, yet they responded to each other.

  It was a calypso this time.

  ‘My aunt daughter Esther,

  Gal of dozen year old,

  Yet act like a woman-o –’

  When it was over, Victor half dragged her back to their table. Charity’s lipstick had worn off, and the pale powder she had daubed on her mahogany skin was channelled with sweat. Her blouse was stuck with sweat to her breasts. She hobbled a little, in the high heels she was unused to wearing. But her body, ripe and supple – nothing could change that but the years she had not yet lived.

  ‘You dance –’ she began in Twi, then switched to slurred pidgin, ‘fine too much.’

  He looked at her for a long moment, unsmiling, his eyes stony, and he leaned close to catch her body’s rank sweet smell that was almost obscured by the cheap perfume with which she had drenched herself.

  ‘That surprises you?’ he said at last. ‘I just didn’t feel like it before, that’s all. You happy now? You think I’m ugly, Charity?’

  She shook her head and giggled.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Most women do, until – never mind, you won’t think so tomorrow.’

  Her mind was too foggy to listen to him. She smiled at him prettily, in the way she had learned.
/>   ‘You still want to stay?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll go now. With you.’

  Both his scorn and his need showed in his eyes, but she did not see. He put one arm closely around her and bent his head to hers.

  ‘You were right, mister whiteman,’ he whispered softly in English, ‘but it’s not for you. No, sir. Not this time.’

  ‘What you say, Victor?’

  ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Only that I love you.’

  ‘Did you say that?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Sure.’

  TWO

  Not so long ago the building had been a tenement. Now it was a school. In the damp heat and corroding salt winds, it sagged, buckled, rotted and decayed a little more each year. Warped wooden shutters flapped brokenly at every window, and the discolorations of time oozed wetly from the walls. It was like an old unburied corpse. The sun and sea and wind would surely pick its bones clean one day, but the process of its decomposition was ugly and ill-smelling.

  The face of the cadaver wore, ironically, daubs of shiny paint. The sign above the door, letters scarlet, read:

  FUTURA ACADEMY

  – THE FUTURE IS YOURS! –

  And underneath, in sober, suitable, scholarly black:

  J. A. Mensah’s Secondary School

  In the inner courtyard, behind the main building, a few of the inheritors of this scarlet future squatted in the rusty dust playing ludo. The boys looked oddly childish in their khaki shorts, their brown limbs bony and hairless. They were absorbed utterly in their game. The dice rattled and rolled. The boys shouted, flexing their supple bodies in exaggerated attitudes of glee or disappointment.

  Around them scrawny chickens squawked and pecked, and a turkey, tethered by a vine, repeated untiringly its sad demented cry. The mud compound was littered with crumpled bits of paper, blackened banana peels, mango stones with shreds of fruit clinging dirtily to them.

  Residence and classroom buildings, which formed three sides of the compound square, were one-storey lean-tos built of mud and wattle. The lavatory was in the middle of the compound, four mud walls, shoulder-high and unroofed. Out of the doorway spilled scraps of newspaper, excreta-soiled. Beside the lavatory grew a tall frangipani tree whose tender scented blossoms fought a losing battle with the latrine stench.

  In the Fourth Form classroom, Nathaniel Amegbe, schoolmaster, sat at his rickety desk worrying. Nathaniel spent a good part of his day worrying. He would have been lost without this time-filling occupation.

  He was a short man, a little stooped despite his youth. Thickly built, he had surprising strength in his arms, and his squat neck was set bull-like on sturdy shoulders. But this strength was overshadowed by his permanent anxious frown, by the spectacles that made brown and white bulbs of his eyes, and by the way he had of opening and shutting his hands constantly when he was speaking with anyone.

  As usual, Nathaniel was worrying about money. He looked again at the letter. Kwaale was not literate, so the letter had been written by a semi-literate scribe. But under the garbled flowering phrases the shrewd personality of his eldest sister showed like thorns thrusting up through a cluster of sickly-sweet cactus blossoms.

  ‘It is with high respects that I beg advice to you, my dear Brother, of the Needful of our family. The case against Kofi Abaku is proceeding one and half Year so far to date and Mr. Cudjoe, Barrister, begs advice for Fee it must be pay for six month Prevously and soonest possible at our early Convenence. We are remembrance your Great Affection, and turusting your High Position as Schoolmaster –’

  A couple of machetes and six sacks of cocoa pods had been stolen. One of the machetes had turned up in Abaku’s hut. Two years and dozens of bribed witnesses later, the two families were still battling in court with unabated vigour and dwindling finances.

  Kwaale wanted money. Aya wanted money. Aya’s mother wanted money. The uncles wanted money. ‘Your High Position as Schoolmaster –’

  Nathaniel pushed his glasses up on his forehead and ran one hand across his eyes. This was his inheritance – a family. A family that grew and grew, increasing as their poverty increased and their land diminished.

  He saw them suddenly as the surf, wave after wave, a tumult of outstretched hands battering endlessly at one weak island.

  ‘You still here, man?’ The voice was cocky. ‘You better watch out for that sweet young wife of yours if you never go home to her.’

  It was Lamptey, who taught English. He snaked into Nathaniel’s classroom now, his shoulders jiggling to the tune he whistled under his breath. He was elegantly outfitted in a lavender silk shirt and fawn draped trousers.

  ‘Where you going,’ Nathaniel asked, ‘dressed up like that?’

  Lamptey was unmarried. He lived in the residence and was supposed to be responsible for the boys there.

  ‘Oh, just out,’ Lamptey grinned. ‘I and some of the fellows, you know.’

  ‘You shouldn’t,’ Nathaniel said half-heartedly.

  ‘Why not? They come here to be educated, don’t they?’

  Nathaniel laughed and shrugged. Lamptey clapped a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You live too quiet. You working now, Nathaniel?’

  ‘No. Just – thinking.’

  Lamptey clicked his tongue disapprovingly, and the handsome shallow face grimaced.

  ‘Never think, boy,’ he chirped. ‘If you think, you worry. And if you worry, you get bad luck. It’s true. If you worry, bad luck’ll land right on your shoulder like a cowbird on a cow. If anybody worries, it should be me. But do I? Not this man. And I tell you, Nathaniel, I’m broke tonight. Nothing with man – that’s me, true’s God.’

  ‘You’ll do all right,’ Nathaniel said.

  He could not keep an edge of bitterness out of his voice. Lamptey always did all right. He couldn’t buy silk shirts with the money Mensah paid him. His conducted tours weren’t cheap. Nathaniel wondered if Lamptey got a cut from the girls as well. Yes, of course he would.

  Nathaniel knew he was a fool not to work some game like Lamptey’s. New boys were always coming to Futura, fresh from the villages, eager to experience the city. Why not, then? He didn’t dare. That was the truth. Lamptey could carry it off, but he, Nathaniel, would be certain to be caught. Anyway, he wasn’t the type, not for Lamptey’s game. Nathaniel fingered his spectacles. He wondered if the girls would laugh at him. A rage against Lamptey took hold of him. Anger flowed into his hands. Sometimes he liked Lamptey, with his boldness, his jazzy irreverence. But sometimes it would have been pure joy to grip him by the throat until the frivolous lavender shirt became only a scarecrow’s rag.

  ‘I’m going to do some work now,’ Nathaniel said brusquely.

  Lamptey’s thin light-skinned face was a beaten copper mask with slitted eyes. Then he lifted his shoulders delicately.

  ‘All right, all right. I got to go now anyway. My students will be waiting, eh?’

  A slim hand flicked at the books on Nathaniel’s desk.

  ‘You really prepare your lectures, Nathaniel? You crazy, man?’

  ‘It’s a new course,’ Nathaniel said stiffly.

  Lamptey made him feel raw, a bush boy, a villager. Anger swelled again.

  ‘What’s so terrible about preparing a lecture, anyway?’ he snapped. ‘You ought to try it sometime.’

  ‘What’s the use?’ Lamptey said candidly. ‘The stuff I teach don’t make sense anyway. So I just tell them to memorize everything. Nobody do it, but that’s their business. You know what we took today, Nathaniel?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Wordsworth.’ Lamptey pulled a mock-earnest face. ‘“Stern Daughter of the Voice of God” – what kind of stuff is that? Some god – his voice can make a daughter? What you think of that? It’s crazy, man. I tell you, it got no sense.’

  Nathaniel laughed despite himself.

  ‘So what did you tell them?’

  ‘I told them this God is a very clever fellow, and they should memorize the p
oem and never mind what it means.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Kwesi said what could you expect – the whitemen don’t believe in having women, anyway.’

  ‘Kwesi will be a fine politician some day,’ Nathaniel said.

  ‘No, he won’t. He’s like you – too serious. You live too quiet, Nathaniel.’

  ‘I got a wife and no money, Highlife Boy, and the baby coming.’

  ‘How you make that pickin, Nathaniel?’ Lamptey said. ‘With your voice? Wha-at?’

  With a shriek of laughter, he was gone, green silk tie fluttering, fine fawn trousers hugging slender hips sensuous as a cat’s.

  At once Nathaniel was furious at himself for having yielded to Lamptey’s easy charm. That was Lamptey – you talked to him for a while, and he made you laugh, and you forgot to be on your guard. And then – was it unintentionally? – he would make you feel clumsy once more, a bush boy.

  What Lamptey thought of him didn’t matter. The Highlife Boy was no good as a teacher anyway. How had he ever managed to get his School Certificate?

  But the boys liked Lamptey. They attended his classes. Half the time they didn’t bother to attend Nathaniel’s. Jacob Abraham Mensah, the headmaster, conscious only of fees, was afraid to discipline the boys in case they left, and Nathaniel did not have the knack of making students want to attend his classes.