This Side Jordan

by Margaret Laurence

  Beside the road, the petty traders’ stalls sprouted, dozens of little ramshackle tables made of old boxes and piled high with lengths of cloth, packets of sugar, mirrors, sandals, sweets, pink plastic combs, a thousand thousand oddments. Women minded the stalls, or children. One small boy slept, his charge forgotten, the goods arrayed for thieves. At another stall, a woman reached down to turn the half-done plantains on the charcoal burner at her feet, then glanced at the baby she held in one arm, her tired eyes growing momentarily rested as she watched him drink her milk.

  The street was a tangle of people. Women in mammy-cloths of every colour, women straight as royal palms, balanced effortlessly the wide brass headpans. A girl breadseller carried on her head a screened box full of loaves and cakes. Coast men strolled in African cloth, the bright folds draped casually around them. Muslims from the north walked tall and haughty in the loose white trousers and embroidered robes of their kind. Hausa traders carried bundles tied up in white and black rough wool mats. A portly civil servant in khaki shorts wore with dignity an outdated pith helmet. And everywhere, there were children, goats and chickens. Vivid, noisy, chaotic, the life of the street flowed on.

  Nathaniel was part of them, and yet apart. He did not any longer live as these slum-dwellers lived, and yet he lived among them. He was educated, but he was not so much educated that he had left them far behind. Sometimes they were his fear expressed, and he wanted to shun them lest they pull him back into their river. And sometimes, more rarely, they were his hope.

  They lived in mud and thatch huts, but never mind. They sickened with damp and malaria and guinea worm and yaws and bilharzia, but never mind. They went to the ju-ju man to get charms for curing, but never mind. Most of them were illiterate, shrewd and naïve, suspicious and gullible. Any political shyster could move them with luxuriant promises. But never mind. They were strong.

  They would do something, do something –

  The tailor’s young son, leaping nimbly over the mangy goats that cropped dispiritedly at the weeds in the compound, ran up to greet Nathaniel. The tailor was one of the many inhabitants of the tenement. His sign was outside the main door.

  ‘YIAMOO TAILOR – All For Mod, Dad & Kid’

  Nathaniel sometimes wondered who had written the sign, but he never offered to correct it, for it was Yiamoo’s greatest pride. All day long the tailor sat on the stoep, his bare feet working the treadle of his old sewing machine. Strung on a line above his head were the cheap cotton shirts he made, magenta and blue and orange, flapping like flags.

  The compound was littered with the curious accumulations of many lives. The rusty shell of a car, stripped of tyres and engine, had been there for years. Under the mango tree stood a huge untidy pile of firewood and two smaller ones of sugarcane, belonging to a woman trader who lived in the house. An old upholstered rocking chair, its carved wooden swirls and roses white with mould and its springs protruding obscenely, rested beside a cage full of live pigeons and another of ‘cutting-grass’, the big bush rats. A weaver owned the cutting-grass and the birds. He claimed he bled them and used their blood in the making of dyes according to the ancient recipes. But Nathaniel always thought this was a story to impress European customers.

  Weed-flecked and unkempt, the compound had never been touched by hoe or machete. But beside the open reeking drains a patch of portulaca flaunted a purple-red defiance to the barren earth.

  Red, white and green, a Convention People’s Party flag had been erected near the house. The flagpole was a crooked bamboo, striped in the same colours, with the party’s red cockerel perched on top. Nearby, a dissenting tenant from Ashanti had put up a National Liberation Movement flag, green and yellow, with its cocoa-pod emblem.

  The house itself was a massive two-storey pile made of sandcrete blocks, of the standard pattern built by Syrians for renting. Inside, it was a warren of tiny rooms. Nathaniel and Aya were fortunate. They had two small rooms on the ground-floor, a side entrance of their own, and a stoep where Aya set the charcoal pots to do the cooking.

  As he had foreseen, Aya was cross at his lateness.

  ‘Does Mensah pay you so much,’ she demanded, ‘that you have to give him his money’s worth by staying until night?’

  Aya was twenty-four, but she did not seem to have changed at all from the sixteen-year-old he had married. Despite the heartbreak of two previous miscarriages and the years of pining for a child, her face was still smooth and round, unlined except by an occasional exaggerated frown when she was angry. Nathaniel was glad she had not grown older in appearance. But she had not grown older in mind, either. There had been less difference between them eight years ago than there was now.

  Nathaniel patted her shoulder. He found he did not want to mention his meeting with Miranda and Johnnie Kestoe.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ It was pleasant, after the daytime English, to speak again in Twi.

  Aya touched her swollen abdomen proudly. She had kept this child, when everyone had given up hope of her holding one to full-term.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Very well. He kicks all the time, now. I was thinking, Nathaniel –’

  ‘Yes?’ he looked at her suspiciously.

  ‘Why pay?’ Aya burst out. ‘Why, why? I don’t want to have the baby in hospital. All that money. And – I don’t want to, Nathaniel. My mother said –’

  ‘Your mother –’ he shrugged. ‘I know. She and her friends. They would do a fine job. It isn’t right, Aya. My son isn’t going to be delivered by old women with dirty hands. I know it isn’t right. Why do we become educated, if we do the same things as before?’

  ‘I was delivered that way,’ she said, ‘and so were you.’

  ‘It wasn’t any good,’ he snapped. ‘You must know that.’

  ‘What was wrong with it?’ she demanded. ‘Children came, just the same. I don’t understand you, Nathaniel. All this fuss.’

  Nathaniel had waited eight years. It was as important to him as to Aya. And it had become a symbol. More than a safe delivery was the thought that if a child was started in the new way, it would be a favourable omen. The child would not go back, then. Its very birth would set the course of its life.

  ‘You don’t see anything wrong?’ he cried. ‘The child delivered in the hut where the dirty clothes are washed? We know more than that now, Aya. And if the birth was difficult, they would beat you, those old women, to force the child out – would you like that? I know these things – I used to hear my sisters whispering. And after it was born, for the eight days it would be nothing – a wandering spirit. No one knows if it plans to stay or go, so they ignore it, put it to sleep on a dirty rag, give it water from a filthy old banana skin. So unless it’s very strong, it dies. Would you like that?’

  She looked at him, her face shocked.

  ‘You must not say it,’ she murmured. ‘You must not say those things.’

  But he could not stop.

  ‘And if it dies,’ he said brutally, ‘it is a disgrace. That small body, whipped because it died, and perhaps a finger cut off –’

  ‘Nathaniel,’ she whimpered, ‘if I lose it now, it will be because you said – you said the things that should not be spoken.’

  He stopped abruptly. He had upset her more than anyone had a right to do. For him, the mention of these things was a matter for anger. For her, it was terror.

  ‘Aya –’ he choked. ‘Aya – I’m sorry. I have no sense. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. It is just that those things must not happen – not to our child. They don’t need to happen. Please – understand. Please try.’

  She turned away.

  ‘I will go to hospital if you want it,’ she said resignedly.

  ‘You shouldn’t listen to your mother. How does she know? She’s never been in a hospital.’

  ‘My aunt has, and she says –’

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

  ‘But the money –’

  ‘I have the money,’ Nathaniel s
aid firmly.

  He would not send it to Kwaale. Not this money. Not this time.

  ‘So foolish,’ Aya said. ‘Would my mother charge for delivering me?’

  ‘Aya,’ he said, ‘you must learn.’

  Aya sighed.

  ‘The food has been ready for an hour,’ she said. ‘It will be ruined.’

  As they were sitting down to eat, Victor Edusei arrived. Nathaniel was pleased to see him, but he remembered, too, that Aya always said Victor arrived just at meal times.

  They had boiled yam and cocoyam leaves stew, the greens mixing fragrantly with the tomatoes, the smoked and salt fish, the rich yellow-red palm oil. Aya was a good cook. Her mother had taught her that, if nothing else. She heaped Victor’s plate and urged him courteously to take more. But Nathaniel knew her eyes were cold with resentment.

  Victor knew, too, and he did his best.

  ‘So your friend is here,’ he said pleasantly to her.

  ‘Which friend? I have more than one.’

  ‘Charity. Charity Donkor. From Koforidua.’

  ‘Yes, she is here. I did not know you knew her, Victor.’

  He grinned, his mouth open.

  ‘I know her all right.’

  Aya frowned.

  ‘She is married,’ she said primly.

  Victor looked at her curiously.

  ‘I wonder how well you know her, Aya?’

  ‘All my life.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t mean – never mind. You know why she is in Accra?’

  ‘Yes,’ Aya said. ‘I know.’

  They both glanced at Nathaniel, almost guiltily. Curiosity stirred in him.

  ‘Why is she here?’ he asked.

  Victor laughed.

  ‘You tell him, Aya,’ he said. ‘Sometime when he is in the right mood. He is shocked more easily than I.’

  After chop, Aya obligingly left them. Nathaniel thought about the Kestoes and wondered if he should tell Victor. Gloomily, he poured a beer for both of them. Victor would have known what to say to Johnnie Kestoe. He always had the right answers. Victor had a degree from the London School of Economics. He had, as well, studied both journalism and accountancy. He had spent six years in U.K. Nathaniel wondered if Victor knew how much he envied him. Probably. He was proud of Victor, as a brother would be, and grateful to him. He had learned more from Victor than he ever had at school. But yes, the evil thing was there, too.

  And yet, why should he envy him? Victor had never made use of his advantages. He was a journalist on a handset newspaper. He could have been an assistant professor at the university here, or at least a journalist on a more important newspaper. Victor’s paper was small, vituperative and – except for Victor’s copy – largely ungrammatical. Even Victor described it as ‘bush’. But he stayed. Nathaniel could never see why.

  Nathaniel decided he could not tell Victor about the Kestoes. He told him instead about Jacob Abraham and the brass plaque. It was almost a reality now. Mensah had drafted a flowery letter to the parents.

  ‘Fine,’ Victor said. ‘Up with the brass plaque, to show people how good we are. We all say it, so it must be true.’

  ‘The roof will fall in one of these days,’ Nathaniel said with a grin. ‘The ceiling in my classroom has a crack that a python could hide in.’

  ‘Who cares? As long as Mr. Mensah can sit on his fat ass behind his nice big “ofram” desk and see the nice big sign on the door that says “Headmaster”.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nathaniel said doubtfully. ‘I think he really wants to be the headmaster of a good school, a proper school. Maybe he wants it so much he convinces himself he’s got it.’

  Victor’s coarse face drew into a grimace and his eyes burned with a quick fury.

  ‘The old dream,’ he said. ‘We’re a race of dreamers. One of these days we’ll wake up and find that the trains have stopped running – no one could fix them. We just hoped they’d keep going by themselves. The farmers will still be using machete and hoe, while the people starve. And we will say in astonishment – “But it’s a rich country – where is the food?” The city will be piled six feet deep with the backwash from the sewers. The spitting cobra and the spider will be happily nesting in the Assembly buildings, and we will be sitting there gabbling about Ghana the Great –’

  ‘You depress me,’ Nathaniel said.

  ‘I depress everyone,’ Victor said cheerfully, ‘even my own mother. She told me today if I couldn’t talk about something pleasant, I’d better move out of her house.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I told her a very funny story. True. About a man at our paper, a typesetter who used to work for a European firm here. I had just pointed out about three hundred errors in a column. Do you know what he said? He said I was just as bad as his European boss, and he hadn’t expected that kind of treatment from a fellow African.’

  ‘Oh, fine,’ Nathaniel said. ‘And did your mother laugh?’

  ‘No. She said she wished she’d had a daughter instead of me.’

  Nathaniel’s mind went back to Futura Academy.

  ‘Victor – do you think I should leave? The school, I mean. Sometimes I’m scared that Mensah will give me the sack, and other times I think the school’s no good, and I’m no good there, and I should look for something else. The term ends next week. I could give notice as soon as the exams are over.’

  ‘He’s got to have somebody to teach in his sweatbox. It’s better that it should be someone like you, who actually does teach them something.’

  ‘I wonder – if I do.’

  Victor looked at him closely.

  ‘What’s happened now, to make you think that way?’

  And so Nathaniel told him, after all, about the Kestoes. Victor nodded.

  ‘Whatever you’d said, he would have twisted it to make you look like a fool. That is the trick such people use. But you shouldn’t worry about it. He did the same thing with me – yes, that very man – I didn’t tell you? But listen, Nathaniel, that whiteman is going to get a shock one of these days. You can say that for Ghana – these European firms won’t be allowed to carry the whiteman’s burden much longer. You’ll see. As for Mrs. Kestoe –’

  He shrugged.

  ‘She wants to get to know Africa. She likes Africans, I’ve heard. Isn’t that nice of her?’

  ‘She seemed – sincere,’ Nathaniel said grudgingly.

  ‘Oh, she’s sincere all right,’ Victor said. ‘These damn amateur anthropologists, they’re all sincere. You couldn’t insult them if you tried. Wait until one of them starts asking you about native customs, Nathaniel. You know, one of these ladies once asked me in what position Africans made love.’

  Nathaniel laughed.

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I told her we generally did it suspended on a rope tied firmly around the neck,’ Victor said. ‘I suggested she try it that way sometime.’

  After Nathaniel left the exhibition, Miranda turned on Johnnie.

  ‘Did you have to be quite so rude to him?’

  Johnnie laughed.

  ‘Did you have to agree with every single thing he said? You wouldn’t have, if he’d been white, would you?’

  ‘Did I do that?’ Miranda said in a low voice. ‘I suppose one does tend to agree too much, to prove sympathy. To me that’s the real meaning of whiteman’s burden – the accumulated guilt, something we’ve inherited –’

  Johnnie looked at her incredulously. Guilt – it was a word she used virginally, not really knowing its meaning. Miranda hated her inexperience, that was all. She had viewed almost all of life from the old-watercolour world of Branscombe Vicarage, but she burned to have been born dockside. Marrying him, he supposed, was the closest she had come to it so far. But now she had discovered another opportunity for vicarious strife.

  ‘Listen, Manda,’ he said patiently, ‘I was damned lucky to get this job, and I don’t want to risk it now. Do you want every European in the place to be talking about you?’

 
‘I don’t understand you,’ she said. ‘I would have thought that you, of all people, would want to do whatever you could, as far as Africans are concerned –’

  ‘Why the hell should I?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘A few people helped you – to go ahead.’

  ‘Did they? I don’t think so.’

  ‘What about that old man in the furniture store? Janowicz.’

  ‘You’re fascinated by him, aren’t you? I wish I’d never told you.’

  ‘You haven’t told me very much,’ Miranda said. ‘Only that you went to work for Janowicz when you were fourteen, toward the end of the war, and that he taught you a lot – gave you books, made you practise proper speech, started you off at night school –’

  ‘I don’t owe Jano anything – he’d be the first to admit it. Why, he was such an old soak, he was glad to find a kid willing to work for him. Anything he taught me, I’d have learned by myself, anyway.’

  ‘You have to feel that, don’t you?’

  Johnnie tensed.

  ‘That’s right, Manda – get everything tidily analysed, and then you can read me like a report. I may turn out to be really weird – is that what you want?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Miranda said humbly. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  ‘Hurt me?’ he cried. ‘Don’t talk bloody nonsense.’

  It was true, what he had told her. He owed Janowicz nothing, unless you counted the cockeyed advice that flowed out of Jano’s mouth as freely as the wine flowed in.

  ‘Play it smart, Johnnie –’ the Pole’s asiatic face would twist into an imitation of a film gangster, ‘play it smart, cockerel. I will tell you the secret of success – yes, I, Janowicz, seller of broken chairs, the man they say is as cracked as the china chamber-pots he sells. The greatest luxury in this life is not champagne or caviar, my friend, it is principles. Ideals. When you are really rich, you can afford them. Not before.’