This Side Jordan

by Margaret Laurence

  ‘He did not mean it the way it sounded to you, Mr. Kestoe,’ Nathaniel said stubbornly. ‘He is ambitious, that is all. What is the harm in that?’

  ‘Harm!’ Johnnie shouted. ‘I’ll tell you what the bloody harm is! I get youngsters in here every day, looking for an easy leg up. I’ve given some of them a try-out, and I know what they’re like. They sit on their fat behinds and read magazines all day, and feel hurt because they’re not branch managers in a month. I didn’t think you’d waste my time sending me that sort of boy, Mr. Amegbe.’

  ‘They are not like that,’ Nathaniel said slowly, tenaciously. ‘Kumi – he is not like that. It is just the way he talked –’

  ‘It’s the way they all talk. How you people can prattle about Independence –’

  Nathaniel stood silently, not daring to speak because if he did he would shout and shout and keep on shouting.

  He hated Johnnie Kestoe. He had never felt it so explicitly before. There were Europeans he had disliked or despised, and sometimes he had hated them in general. But now he hated this one, this individual. Nathaniel’s hatred numbed him like a narcotic. He felt almost drowsy with it, as though in a dream he could take a step forward and kill this man. But he did not move.

  ‘What about the other boy?’ he asked finally, his tongue thick and heavy.

  Johnnie had turned back to his desk. He gave Nathaniel a bored glance, and his voice was casual, but it was only a mask – the anger was still there and still close to the surface.

  ‘Oh – him. Biggish chap, pretty clueless. I nearly hired him.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I told him he could have a job,’ Johnnie Kestoe said, ‘as a messenger.’

  Nathaniel could hardly believe what he had heard.

  ‘A messenger –’

  ‘Yes. But when I told him what his work would be, he turned it down. Said it wouldn’t suit him. It wasn’t the sort of job he’d expected.’

  Big, easy-going Awuletey, with the quick grin and the loping walk. He was not brilliant, not even very clever, perhaps, but he was earnest and he worked hard. Nathaniel could see him in a messenger’s khaki, scarcely distinguishable from his school khaki, sitting outside this office, waiting for someone to give him an errand to run.

  After the dream, the bitter morning, and no further dreams to allay the craving.

  ‘Of course he turned it down –’ Nathaniel cried. ‘He didn’t want to be a messenger!’

  Johnnie Kestoe looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  ‘What else could he be?’

  For a moment, silence – even within Nathaniel’s mind. He wanted to protest, but he could not. He raised his head slightly, and what he saw in the whiteman’s eyes frightened him.

  ‘Mr. Amegbe,’ Johnnie said quietly, ‘what made you think I would hire boys who had failed their School Certificate? My wife must have told you that those particular posts might lead to advancement in the Firm. Did you really think I was as stupid as that?’

  Nathaniel could not sweat now, that was the terrible thing. His skin was parched and burning, like a man whose life is being shrivelled up in a fever’s fire. He rubbed his palms together. They were dry as charred grass.

  ‘I – I – I d-did not –’ his stammer had returned and his voice was like a hammer that never succeeded in driving a nail, ‘I did not think you were stupid. It was – not like that –’

  ‘Oh? What, then?’

  ‘They were – they wanted jobs – they needed – I thought –’

  He realized with nausea that he would not be able to explain. If he told Johnnie Kestoe that the boys were not really failures, that they had not been adequately taught, it would reveal the true quality of Futura Academy. And what would it seem to imply about Nathaniel Amegbe, schoolmaster?

  He was trapped. He could not say anything. His skin itched and burned with its fever.

  ‘They needed jobs –’ Johnnie Kestoe repeated. ‘Isn’t that nice? So you told them it could be arranged – at a price –’

  Nathaniel stared.

  ‘Yes,’ Johnnie Kestoe said, ‘they told me. They told me there must be some mistake. It had been arranged, they said, and they’d invested over twenty pounds between them to get the posts –’

  They had told him. They had told him. They were baffled and angry about the jobs, of course. And so they had told him, probably not even realizing how it would sound to him.

  After the dream, the sick dry-mouthed awakening. Nathaniel knew now that the dream addict had been himself.

  ‘No! I – I swear to you –’ he choked, ‘it was not like that – you do not understand –’

  ‘I understand quite enough. You accepted bribes to do something it was not in your power to do. You don’t even give value for money, do you?’

  Nathaniel could not reply. To speak would be like straining to make your voice heard across an ocean.

  – Among my people, when a man asks for another man’s time, or thought, or consideration, he does not come empty-handed. It is a custom.

  – ‘Mastah, I beg you, you go dash me one penny’. And the voice of the white priest echoed, scathing still, in his ears – ‘Beggars! Beggars! Shame on you!’ Never, never again had that boy begged dash from whitemen. Never. If you want to take dash, go do it from your own people. I suppose that makes it all right.

  He had no words that would rise beyond his throat.

  ‘I’m going to report the whole matter to the police,’ the whiteman said. ‘What do you think of that?’

  Then the sweat broke out on Nathaniel, fear made visible.

  ‘Please – please, sir,’ and through his panic he despised himself as much as if he had knelt, ‘please – if you would allow me to explain –’

  The whiteman leaned across the desk.

  ‘You couldn’t explain,’ he said softly, venomously. ‘Not to me. What a fool I was, to imagine –’

  Abruptly, he broke off and turned away. Without looking at Nathaniel, he jerked one hand in a short contemptuous gesture towards the door.

  ‘Get out of here. Go.’

  Stumbling, half sobbing, Nathaniel went, his briefcase clutched in his hand.

  Nathaniel walked.

  From his prison, he could not see the streets or the people who moved close beside him. Automatically, he put one foot down after the other, a short stolid figure, his wide face expressionless.

  The police. They would come, sure as death. African police, but they would believe the whiteman’s side of the story, not his. Kumi and Awuletey would give evidence. And that would settle it. For Nathaniel Amegbe, teacher of History, everything would be finished.

  When he returned to his village, he could throw away his spectacles. What was there to see in that place, anyway? He could throw away his books and his briefcase – he would not need them.

  The table, the chairs, the second-hand wireless, the bed with mosquito net – he would have to sell them. Strange, it was the thought of selling the big brass bed that bothered him most of all. Only somebody who was Somebody could sleep in a bed like that.

  Kwaale would not get the money for her case now. She would have to send him money for his. What a laugh.

  He could never explain, that was the worst. He could never explain to anyone. He could only walk away.

  So many desires. Kumi and Awuletey’s desire to have jobs that were big and important. Nathaniel’s desire to create a place of belonging for those who had no place. The desire to do something, be somebody. The desire to be God and the desire to wear a silk shirt.

  How could the whiteman know? He could not know. He had everything. For him, tomorrow was now. How could he know what it was to need a mouthful of the promised land’s sweetness now, now, while you still lived?

  Hatred ran like a fever in Nathaniel’s blood.

  – You whitemen. You Europeans. You Englishmen. You whom we used to call masters. You whom we do not call master any longer. You who say you come only to teach us. You would lik
e us to forget, wouldn’t you? You forget – it is easy for you. But we do not forget the cutting down of the plant, the burning of the plant, the tearing up by the roots.

  – How many centuries’ clotted blood lies between your people and mine?

  – I was there. I saw it – I was there. And the blood trembled in my heart.

  – Doom along the Niger and down to the sea. Doom along the Congo and down to the sea. Doom to all the ports of golden Guinea.

  – The slavers came. They came for gold and they came for men. They stirred the fires of tribal hate. They promised us help against our enemies. So we fought. Oh my children, we fought. We fought and we sold each other. We thought we were clever. We did not see it was only ourselves that we killed, only ourselves we sold into bondage. Tribe fought tribe and tribe fought tribe. And no one won but the slavers.

  – Our states broke. Our tribes broke. Each village turned in upon itself, like a man hugging his secret, afraid, afraid, afraid. Who trusted his neighbour? Who could trust even his brother? Oh my ancestors, my children, why did you not see whose face it was behind the mask Fear wore? Oh my people, innocent and evil, forging the links for your own chains.

  – And the slavers smiled. ‘These are not men, but animals, my brethren, have no remorse.’ They did not offend their God. Their God was happy at the haul of black ivory. Their sleep was calm, their gold unstained. They were bringers of mercy. In return for our lives, they were willing to share their God with us. What generosity! ‘How Sweet The Name Of Jesus Sounds’ – yes, how sweet it sounded to the man who wrote that hymn: a commander of a slave ship.

  – I saw Elmina Castle, with its great stone walls. Stone on stone up to the parapets where the cannon were mounted. Stone on stone down to the cells beneath the ground. In went the bodies, and all of them alive. But not next morning. Not all alive then. The stench of death is in our nostrils and the taste of death is in our mouths. We called on our gods and our gods did not reply. We screamed and tore at each other in our madness. But the slavers were contented, for were they not our souls’ salvation?

  – Then the black ivory market, deep in the castle, the market where the sea-captains bid for us. And the underground passage, out to the sea and the waiting ships. Many common men went that passage, and many princes. Many kings went that passage, and their sorrow was the sorrow of kings. Colour of the sun, colour of gold, colour of the king. And for gold, their emblem, the kings were sold and the sun, although it shone in the sky, had gone out.

  – Oh my ancestors, my children. Chained in pairs, in the ship’s bowels. Chained to typhoid and to blackwater. Chained to madness and to death. Chained and made to dance. Yes, even that. Hauled to the deck and made to dance. Nothing spared. Made to dance. My people, who dance in joy, who dance in sorrow.

  – Dance, black man, dance.

  – Hate is a fire. Hate is a fire. Hate is a fire that consumes my soul. Once long ago I heard my father beat upon the Fontomfrom the song of hate –

  ‘As we pass here, Hate!

  Hate would kill us if it could.

  As we go there, Hate!

  That Hate came forth long ago.

  Hate came from the Creator.

  He created all things.’

  – Did He create the whiteman, did He create the slavers? Yes, He created all things. Creator, what was the matter with Your mind on that day?

  – After the slavers, the soldiers. Our land – overnight, it seemed – became not ours. Oh, it was paid for. Do not say otherwise. We were paid a few bottles of gin for our land. What did you pay us for our souls?

  – We fought. Our kings were warriors, and our people. Oh yes, we fought. Year after year until it was over. We fought with spears. They fought with Maxim guns. Then it was over.

  – The graves of our kings were destroyed. Casually, as one might kindle a fire to drive away the black-flies. The graves of our kings were holy. The gold-joined bones of our kings, oiled with sweet oil – they were holy and their spirits cried out to be cared for. Our holy duty was to tend them, then and forever. Casually, lightly, they were shattered, as the jaws of the dog splinter bone.

  – And the whitemen tried to steal our soul. They tried to steal the Great Golden Stool, wherein lay the soul of Asante. But we were as fire then. It was enough. We said NO. We hid the nation’s soul. But many men could not hide their own souls so well.

  – ‘Take the gold from golden Guinea. Take the gold and bring them to the Lamb. Take the timber and let the light of Holiness shine upon them. Take the diamonds and be sure their souls are saved. Tut, tut, our black brethren, surely you do not want to lay up riches on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt?’

  – Nathaniel, it is not good to hate, for it corrodes a man’s own soul. My people wash their souls to keep them from harm, to keep them from hate. My people wash their souls to keep them whole. Wash your soul, Nathaniel, wash your soul.

  – I cannot. Hate is a fire.

  – Wash your soul, Nathaniel. Your King commands it. Why do you hate? Why do you blame? Because it absolves you from blame?

  – I cannot think of that. Not yet. Not for a while. Let me hate in peace.

  – Wash your soul, Nathaniel.

  – I cannot.

  Nathaniel discovered that in his blind walking his footsteps had turned towards Futura Academy. As though some deep-buried need had led him there, he was standing outside the dwelling of Highlife Boy Lamptey.

  Even during the holidays, Lamptey kept his room in the filthy tin-roof shacks known as the school residence. It was cheaper that way for him, and his own business demanded that he remain in Accra. In any event, he would never have returned to his home to visit. His village would have bored him to distraction within a day. He was a city man. The only life he knew and understood was here.

  Nathaniel entered. Lamptey had just wakened. He was perched naked on the edge of the narrow iron bed, his blankets a stale-smelling tangle around him. In his fingers he held chunks of cold kenkey, which he was chewing with distaste. He pointed towards two bottles of beer which stood among the litter of magazines and downflung clothes on the rickety table.

  ‘Can’t find the bottle opener,’ he cried, ‘and my teeth aren’t so strong any more. Gettin’ old, that’s it.’

  After a few tries, Nathaniel knocked the bottle tops off on the table-edge. Lamptey seized one bottle gratefully.

  ‘Ahaa! My friend! You take the other one. Here, I got some cigarettes somewhere – look in that shirt pocket. No? Let’s see –’

  Lamptey wriggled to his feet and wrapped a thin cotton blanket around his waist for decency’s sake. He pranced about the room, whistling softly to himself, his body looking weirdly thin and slight without its protective covering of gaudy loose-fitting shirt.

  ‘Here y’are, Wise-Boy. Only the best for a friend. Sit on the bed.’

  Nathaniel did not know how to begin, so he put it off.

  ‘I’m surprised to find you alone.’

  Lamptey’s shrill titter seemed to fill the room.

  ‘Hey, how d’you like that? Say, boy, whatever I do before I sleep, I go to sleep alone. What’s a woman, Nathaniel? Fine to play with, very terrible to sleep with. She never gets enough. She lies so close you both sweat like you’re sick to death. All the time she’s breathin’ in your ear and if you say “Move over, woman,” she’s mad as hell. Not for this boy, wha-at?’

  But Nathaniel’s laughter would not come, not this time. Lamptey looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘Why you come to see me, Nathaniel? What you doing here, eh?’

  Here it was. Nathaniel tried to look casual.

  ‘What about tonight, Lamptey? I said I’d go with you some night. Tonight all right?’

  ‘Sure! Tonight’s fine. We’ll go to “Weekend In Wyoming,” eh? Spider Badu’s band – that’s the Teshie Sandflies – they’re on tonight. Saturday today, eh? “Everybody Likes Saturday Night” – da da da da DUM da da daah – that was a fine highlife before the Europeans
decide they like it – man, no one play it now – at all. Yessir, tonight. You know Spider Badu?’

  Nathaniel shook his head.

  ‘He’s great, man, great.’ Lamptey broke off suddenly and gave Nathaniel an odd glance. ‘Say, you sure you want to go?’

  ‘Sure,’ Nathaniel said quickly. ‘Of course. Why?’

  ‘Well – ’ the Highlife Boy said, ‘you sure as hell don’t look happy, Nathaniel.’

  Nathaniel choked down the fear that rose like bile into his throat.

  ‘All I need is a few drinks, that’s it,’ he cried, ‘and I’ll be happy tonight – true as God, Lamptey, I’ll be happy tonight!’

  The bungalow was always hot; today it seemed insufferably so. Johnnie poured himself a beer and wondered who would live here next. Miranda would be sorry to leave this house. She even liked the plain, crude, locally made furniture, because it was solid mahogany. But most of the furniture in this country was mahogany – it was the cheapest wood. Miranda had outdone herself with the livingroom. On the floor, a Hausa rug, coarse wool, dirty white, patterned in black and a red the colour of dried blood. On the bookshelf, an ebony head, an ivory crocodile, a clutch of mauve and white seashells. For ashtrays, small brass bowls that Whiskey polished with lime juice. Miranda said the Braque prints on the walls harmonized with primitive art.

  ‘The sooner the better,’ he said aloud. ‘The next ’plane would suit me.’

  Miranda was standing in the doorway, sleek-haired, swollen, her eyes anxious.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Don’t you know why?’

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘He must have had better students than those. There must be some reason –’

  ‘There is. He selected them because they paid him well to do it. What do you think of that? I wanted to be certain before I told you. I’m certain now. I saw him today. Your black friend has been doing rather well on bribes.’