This Side Jordan

by Margaret Laurence

  ‘No be so, madam,’ Whiskey cried. ‘You no savvy African family. My bruddah, my sistah, all time dey say – “Whiskey, why you no give we more money?” Trouble me too much, madam. Now my bruddah – he got some small case. Poor man no be fit for mek case, madam.’

  ‘What’s the case about?’ Miranda asked.

  ‘My family got land near Teshie. Mek farm long time. Den family come small-small. No got plenty man. No look-a de farm propra. Nuddah family, he go for my land, plant corn, plant cassava. My bruddah say “Go, you”. Nuddah man, he say “You no mek we go”. Too much palavah. Go for court. Madam – I beg you. You help me.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I no ask dash,’ Whiskey said. ‘I beg you, madam. You give me five pound advance on my pay.’

  ‘I guess that would be all right,’ Miranda said slowly.

  ‘I t’ank madam! You be fine too much!’

  ‘What will you do,’ she asked, ‘if you lose the case?’

  ‘If we no win,’ Whiskey said, with a croak of apologetic laughter, ‘I tell my bruddah we go for ju-ju man.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Mek some small ju-ju for mek nuddah family go somewhere.’

  ‘If it’s poison,’ Miranda said, ‘that’s murder. And if it isn’t – well – you don’t believe in that sort of thing, do you, Whiskey?’

  ‘I no fear ju-ju!’ Whiskey cried. ‘But nuddah family, he fear. I fear on’y small-small. Madam, I be Methodist!’

  Johnnie burst out laughing, and in the kitchen there was an offended silence. A quiet, sweltering, ordinary Monday, the clerks drowsing and the Europeans irritable and dyspeptic after the weekend. Nothing in the day’s beginning to indicate that it would be different from any other.

  But in the middle of the morning, Johnnie was summoned to the Manager’s office, and there James told him. Word had just been received from Head Office in London that the Firm’s Gold Coast branch was to adopt a speed-up policy of Africanization, in line with current social and political changes. In essence, the policy meant that as many Europeans as possible were to be replaced by Africans. Department managers were to begin training suitable African senior clerks at once, so they could take over the junior administrative jobs by the time of Independence, now only a few months away.

  Absurdly, Johnnie’s first thought was of Victor Edusei’s ugly smile. A caged and helpless rage speeded his heartbeat. How the African would laugh.

  ‘James – why?’

  ‘The Firm wants to keep on the right side of the Africans,’ James said wearily. ‘Don’t forget that ninety percent of our business is in selling to Africans. Oh – as a publicity gesture, it’s understandable.’

  His fingers drummed on the desk.

  ‘The only trouble with it,’ he went on, ‘is that it won’t work. I know Africans, Johnnie. Trustworthy, efficient men who can handle an administrative type of job – they just don’t exist.’

  All at once the Squire’s face became suffused with a dull red anger; his neckveins stood out like crimson-black ropes as though his fury were about to hang him.

  ‘Even if they did exist –’ the thin voice shook, ‘even if they did exist, by God, I wouldn’t have them! I’ve been here for over thirty years and I never thought I’d see the day when common bush Africans –’

  Johnnie gazed in reluctant fascination. The Squire was on his feet now, his pawhands gesticulating, capering in the air a weird ballet of rage, like something from a Punch-and-Judy show. His simian face wrinkled more and more until it seemed that one extra crease in the soft skin would accomplish the sad betrayal into tears.

  ‘Ruin it in a month – corruption – laziness – sheer ignorance. People don’t know how long it takes to build up a system that works. In London, they don’t know – they don’t understand –’

  He stopped abruptly and sat down.

  ‘I’m sorry, Johnnie. I shouldn’t have burst out like that. It’s just that this whole business has – upset me. I practically made this department, you know. You’d hardly believe how small it was when I came here. A few bolts of cloth – most of it striped, I recall. All but one, yellow and brown, patterned like leopardskin. D’you know, we still sell that pattern? We had only one clerk, and he could hardly write his own name. We used to administer a smart kick to his backside when he made mistakes – he learned pretty quickly, I can tell you. There was no nonsense in those days. An African did what he was told. And now – they want to run my department. Well, I won’t have it. I promise you that.’

  ‘You’re not going to start looking for an African accountant, then?’ Johnnie tried to make his voice sound casual.

  ‘I most assuredly am not,’ James said. ‘Nor for Africans to replace any of my officers.’

  Johnnie looked at him in surprise.

  ‘If it’s policy, how can you –?’

  James’ expression was oddly conspiratorial.

  ‘We simply won’t be able to find any suitable Africans, that’s all. We must just stick together in this business.’

  James had been here a long time, and he knew. There was no cause for alarm. But Johnnie could not entirely put from his mind the gesture of James’ hands when he burst into the tirade. In recollection, it seemed that not only anger but fear had been the puppetmaster.

  The clerks had all heard the news, of course, and they could scarcely conceal their jubilation. Nothing was openly spoken. But a snatch of highlife tune was whistled, and an answering snicker, soft as rain, pattered through the room.

  Johnnie sat at his desk, sweating heavily. He wondered if the Firm would ever see fit to instal ceiling fans. Probably he wouldn’t be here by that time. Someone like Attah would be sitting at his desk, smirking at the sign ‘Accountant.’

  Johnnie threw down his pen. No one could concentrate on work this morning. He gave it up and went in to see Bedford.

  ‘Come in and shut the blasted door,’ the massive knight growled.

  The small pink object, carefully shielded as a rare butterfly in the huge hand, turned out to be a paper cup such as children use for orange squash at birthday parties. Bedford fished another out of a drawer and poured it half full of scotch.

  ‘Here –’ he handed it to Johnnie, ‘we must toast the great event. You’ve heard, of course?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks, but I’m not sure I want this, Bedford – a bit early in the day.’

  ‘Nonsense! Never too early, when our black brethren are making history. Drink up. To Africanization, to the black keys and the white, old boy, to Ghana, to the star that is rising over Africa –’

  He set his glass down gently on the desk.

  ‘Isn’t it an absolute bugger?’ Bedford said.

  It was close to midday when Johnnie’s office door opened and Helen Cunningham walked in.

  She had been shopping, but she wore the same tired cotton skirt and blouse as she wore around home. But despite dust and perspiration, there was still a magnificence about her sunflower hair and her eyes. She looked straight ahead, utterly ignoring the clerks’ curious stares.

  The poise lasted only until she had closed the door of Johnnie’s inner office. She sat down on the edge of a chair and groped in her handbag for a cigarette. Johnnie offered her one of his, and she took it. She was shivering, like someone who has just awakened from a nightmare and still believes it real.

  ‘Helen – for God’s sake, what’s the trouble?’

  ‘Sorry. I’ll be all right in a moment. Shock, I guess.’

  ‘Oh – Bedford told you, then?’

  Her eyes opened wide in fresh alarm.

  ‘Told me what? What is it, Johnnie? What’s happened?’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing. It’s not important. Everything’s all right. But if he didn’t say anything, what –?’

  ‘Bedford’s in no condition to tell anybody anything,’ Helen said, ‘for the simple reason that he’s out cold.’

  ‘Oh Christ, what next? Wait, though, you don’t m
ean he’s sick?’

  She gave him a withering glance.

  ‘Don’t be a fool. Sick, yes, with an empty Johnnie Walker bottle beside him on the floor, and another in his desk.’

  She began to cry, gulpingly, and the sight of her wet distorted face sickened Johnnie. Then she stopped, blew her nose, and sat up, her face tight and hard.

  ‘James mustn’t see him,’ she said. ‘He simply mustn’t. He warned him the last time –’

  ‘It’s happened before?’

  ‘When I said – shock – did you think this was the first time? You don’t know us very well yet, do you?’

  ‘I’m beginning to think not.’

  ‘The last time was when the Thayers moved into the new bungalow. I – I guess that was partly my fault. Damn it, I did resent it – why not? They have no children, and here we are, with Kathie and Brian in that ghastly old wreck, and the scorpions underneath the stoep. Whenever he can’t cope, Bedford simply –’

  She broke off.

  ‘He never used to be this way, you know, Johnnie. He’s had rotten luck, poor dear. It was fine in the war, but ever since – well, you can’t really blame him, I suppose.’

  She put her palms to her eyes.

  ‘But why does he do it at the office?’ she cried. ‘We’ve got to get him out of there.’

  ‘Helen,’ Johnnie said patiently, ‘we can’t get him out, and you know it. What do you want me to do – conceal him in my briefcase? He only weighs about fifteen stone. I’ll do my best to keep James out of there. That’s all I can do, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I – I’m going back to his office, to be there. When you go home for lunch, will you ask Miranda if she’ll go over and put the children down for their rest? And tell Kwaku he’s not to leave the bungalow until I get back.’

  He nodded. At the door, she turned.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you with all this, Johnnie.’

  He shrugged in embarrassment.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Oh – I know. But – you liked him, before.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I still do. It doesn’t make any difference.’

  ‘You –’ she hesitated, ‘you respected him. He was pleased about that.’

  ‘I don’t expect anything of people,’ Johnnie said curtly. ‘It never comes as a surprise. So it makes no difference.’

  But it did, of course. He had thought Bedford would be a strong and useful ally. And now it seemed that the massive knight was only a leaden soldier, weirdly dissolving in this fire.

  That afternoon, the African reporter phoned. Johnnie had known that he would.

  ‘Ah, Mr. Kestoe,’ Victor Edusei’s voice flowed with oily ease out of the receiver, ‘we have just received an interesting press-release from your Firm. I suppose you know the one I mean?’

  Johnnie grunted.

  ‘I have excellent informants in London, don’t you agree?’

  ‘I don’t want to discuss the matter with you,’ Johnnie said.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ Edusei said, ‘don’t hang up yet. Am I to understand, then, that you are not in favour of an Africanization policy?’

  ‘Go to hell,’ Johnnie said.

  As he replaced the receiver, he heard what he had expected – the peal of hoarse exultant laughter from the black throat.

  SIX

  The presence of Aya’s aunt Akosua seemed to pacify Aya’s mother, for she said no more about a return to the village. Aya did not mention the hospital; Nathaniel’s sister Kwaale did not send another letter, and for a while Nathaniel almost convinced himself that his family had begun at last to accept his life here and the birth of his child in the city of strangers. But the lull meant only that another wave was accumulating its strength to pour upon him.

  The mammy-wagons jounced and rattled from Ashanti down to the coast, bearing cocoa and bananas and people. And the day came when Nathaniel answered the knock at his door and saw his uncle Adjei. Nathaniel had not seen his uncle for six years, but the old man greeted him calmly, as though they had met yesterday, and stepped inside the house.

  Adjei’s face was hard and deeply seamed like a cocoa pod. He was a small man, and his arms stuck out like crooked sticks from the folds of his cloth. But he bore himself well, sitting with stiff dignity on the edge of the chair, scorning to lean back. His cloth was dark purple and green, patterned with long-legged cranes as lean of shank as himself. His sandals were shabby and the toe thongs were nearly worn through, but once they had been embossed with gold.

  He looked around the room, his eyes dwelling on each object as though he were mentally listing everything. The dining table, the thin blue cotton curtains, the old wireless, the striped green and orange coco-matting on the floor, the pictorial calendar whose message ‘Happy New Year From Mandiram’s The Quality Shop’ was mysterious to him.

  Then the old man looked at Nathaniel thoughtfully.

  ‘You have a fine house.’

  ‘I do my best,’ Nathaniel said awkwardly. ‘I do not have much money.’

  The old man clicked his tongue unbelievingly.

  ‘You must be a wealthy man. All these things –’

  ‘I am not wealthy,’ Nathaniel said hopelessly.

  ‘Nathaniel –’

  ‘Uncle?’

  The old man’s voice had a high silvery quality, like an ancient tinkling bell that has not quite lost its throat.

  ‘You are my sister’s son, and my heir,’ Adjei Boateng said. ‘I wish for your sake I were a wealthy man.’

  Nathaniel involuntarily clenched his hands. Let it be only money that he asks. I cannot afford it, but let it be only money. Please, I beg you, not the other.

  ‘I know.’ Nathaniel tried not to sound impatient. ‘It is of no importance.’

  ‘We are not wealthy, our families,’ the old man continued slowly, ‘not like some men I could tell you about, who started with two pennyworth of gold. And now – ahhaa! House like the Asantehene’s palace – fine clothes – everything. And how they made it, it is best not to enquire, for shame. You remember Mintah?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nathaniel felt his nerves cracking, but it was no use – like the seasons, Adjei took his own time.

  ‘He is a contractor now, a big man. A loyal member of the party of apes and strangers. That is how he gets his contracts. Some men would sell their own mothers into slavery.’

  Nathaniel sighed. To his uncle, anyone not born in Ashanti was, now and forever, a stranger. No doubt he was right about Mintah. But politics was not a clean game.

  ‘I am not a boy,’ Nathaniel said, a trace of sharpness in his voice. ‘I know all this. What has it to do with me?’

  ‘Our two families are not like such men,’ Adjei went on solemnly. ‘We are poor people, but loyal to our own. That is the way you were brought up, Nathaniel.’

  ‘Uncle –’ he could stand it no longer, ‘I beg you – come to the point!’

  ‘The young –’ sighed the old man, with exaggerated sorrow, ‘have no respect. That is what happens.’

  Nathaniel wanted to shout – I am not young; I am twenty-seven and I have a wife and an unborn son and very little money. Will I never be rid of the gentle plucking fingers, the soft whine of the old? Then he felt ashamed. You spit on your people, Nathaniel. He is an old man, and he loves you. You are his blood. When you are old, Nathaniel, your sisters’ sons will spit on you.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Nathaniel said humbly.

  Adjei snorted suspiciously. But he decided to state his business.

  ‘Nathaniel, you remember Nana Kweku Afrisi?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He needs a clerk,’ Adjei said. ‘He remembers you.’

  Nathaniel stared at him.

  ‘You will come?’ Adjei said smoothly. ‘It is a big town, and near your village. He is a fine man. It is a wonderful chance, to be clerk to a chief.’

  For a moment Nathaniel could not reply. The old man’s eyes looked confident, certain. Nathaniel reached up automatically to adj
ust his glasses, and his fingers slid along the brown plastic frames as though drawing strength.

  ‘I can’t go,’ he said finally.

  Adjei Boateng looked at him without surprise, as though he had expected an initial struggle. Nathaniel squirmed in his chair.

  – The drowning man would struggle for a little while and then he would be quiet, and the River would lap him around with its softness, the brown murky stillness of its womb.

  ‘I can’t go!’ Nathaniel repeated desperately.

  – How many times have I cut the cord that fed me? How many times have I fought with the Mother to give me birth? How many times has the fish, feeling his gills aflutter with the stars, dragged himself from the womb of water, painfully to breathe?

  ‘You will come, I think,’ Adjei said. ‘It is your duty. I try to look after your sisters, my nieces. They live under my roof, and I do what I can for them. But I am an old man, and I have no sons. Your sisters need you. You are their children’s uncle, the man of the “abusua,” the blood-clan. They need the uncle’s guidance. It is your duty. The burden of the family has fallen on Kwaale. She is a fine woman, but her husband is dead and she has many troubles.’

  ‘I know,’ Nathaniel said heavily. ‘I know.’

  ‘How much do they pay you at the school?’

  Ashamed, Nathaniel told him.

  ‘Is that all?’ Adjei said, not believing him. ‘Nana Kweku will pay you more than that.’

  ‘You do not understand.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  Nathaniel looked away.

  ‘I do not think I can explain.’

  The old man nodded his head, and his eyes showed a flicker of amusement.

  ‘The young always think the old cannot understand them. Try. Perhaps my feeble mind can follow you.’

  ‘It is not that,’ Nathaniel said. ‘It is just – well, I have changed. I do not want to be a chief’s clerk.’

  For the first time the old man looked confused.

  ‘It is an honour to work for a chief. Surely you see that it is an honour?’

  ‘Not to me,’ Nathaniel said clearly. ‘How can I tell you? You will not understand. The chiefs are dying out, uncle. I do not want to work for the dead. I mean no disrespect. Nana Kweku is a fine man, a good man. But I do not want to work for him.’