by Kwei Quartey
Inspector Fiti came into the room and looked in puzzlement from Dawson and Efia to Adzima and back again. “What’s happening?” he demanded.
The priest staggered to his feet, screaming, “He tried to kill me!” He pointed a shaky finger at Dawson.
“What do you mean he tried to kill you?” Fiti said.
“He did!” Adzima cried, indicating his throat. “Look, look. Do you see? He strangled me!”
Fiti, nonplussed, frowned and looked at Dawson. “What’s going on?”
“He was beating Efia up,” Dawson said tersely. “So I took him away from her.”
“But is it true you strangled him?”
“He did!” Adzima shouted again. He was now almost weeping.
“I think strangle is an exaggeration,” Dawson said.
“Come outside with me for a moment, please,” Fiti said, looking grim.
Dawson beckoned to Efia to come with him. He certainly was not going to leave her behind. She stood a discreet distance away as the two men faced each other.
“What are you doing?” Fiti asked Dawson.
“Someone saw me talking to Efia, and he reported it to Togbe,” Dawson said. “He was beating her up for that, so I came to her defense.”
“You hit Togbe?” Fiti asked in disbelief.
“Yes.”
“A man can beat his wife if he wants to, Inspector Dawson. Don’t you know that?”
“Togbe was beating her because she talked to me. I won’t allow that. She deserves our protection.”
“You could have stopped him without beating him up. He is the High Priest of Bedome!”
“There wasn’t any time to be nice about it.”
Fiti dropped his head and rubbed it as if nursing a headache.
“They insist on sending someone from Accra instead of our own man from Ho,” he said, almost to himself. “Our own man from Ho is no good. And so whom do they send? You. You. Beating up a priest of this shrine. I just can’t believe it.”
Fiti went over to Efia and had a few words with her. From where Dawson stood, the inspector at first seemed sympathetic to her, but when he waved her away, the gesture looked callous. She looked once at Dawson, and he could see she was crying.
Suddenly she came back and clasped his hands. “Please, Mr. Dawson, sir. Take my daughter away from here to live a good life. Please, I beg you.”
Then she turned and ran away.
Nunana noticed how silent and downcast Efia was as she scooped the pounded fufu into a pot.
“What’s wrong, Efia?”
Efia shook her head, but she didn’t say a word.
Nunana touched Efia’s left cheek, and she flinched. “He beat you?”
Efia nodded.
“Why?”
She shook her head.
“Come here,” Nunana said. “Come.”
She led Efia away so they could have some privacy.
“What happened?” Nunana pressed her. “You might as well tell me. I will find out in the end anyway. Why did he beat you?”
“Because I talked to the policeman from Accra.”
“About what?”
“Gladys.”
“But why did you do that?”
“I thought we were safe—but someone saw us and told Togbe.”
“Ao, Efia!” Nunana said. “Don’t you know you have to be careful? These people who come here from Accra just do their business and go home and never think of us again. You don’t know that? Don’t talk to them!”
Efia nodded, wiping tears away.
“What did he ask you?” Nunana said. “The policeman.”
“Just what I saw that day. You know—how I found Gladys. And what Togbe was doing that evening she came here and if they were quarreling, and if he went somewhere after she left.”
“And what else?”
“If I’ve seen a silver bracelet they say Gladys was wearing before she died and now it’s gone, and I told him I haven’t seen anything like that.”
Nunana’s blood ran cold, and at once she knew what had happened. After Efia had rushed back to Bedome to report Gladys’s death, Togbe had gone to the plantain grove to “see for himself.” He must have arrived there before anyone else, and when he saw that bracelet on dead Gladys’s wrist, he just could not resist taking it. Nunana’s lip curled. What kind of man steals jewelry off a dead body?
Just then she had another thought that took her breath away and left her matchstick legs unsteady. What if… what if Togbe had taken Gladys’s bracelet even before that? Say, at the time she was killed? In other words, what if Togbe had murdered Gladys?
NOT A GOOD DAY.
Inspector Fiti, in a state of high distress and agitation, had kicked Dawson out of Bedome. Like a chastened schoolboy, Dawson had obediently returned to Ketanu, which was bruising to his ego but probably the better part of valor.
He lay on the bed in the guesthouse and stared at the water spots on the ceiling. Now that adrenaline was no longer suffusing his brain, now that he was calm enough to think, he wondered exactly what had happened. He didn’t remember anything clearly beyond the point at which he’d entered Togbe Adzima’s house. After that it was a clouded memory, like a river laden with swirling silt. This wasn’t Dawson’s first such experience. It had been the same when he had beaten up the rapist for his disgusting comment about little girls. He didn’t recall striking him or how many times, but at the end of it all, someone’s face was a bloody mess and it wasn’t Dawson’s.
The eeriness of it was that he couldn’t physically feel anything while he was in attack mode. Was he outside himself watching his shell, or was he inside completely insulated from sensation? What was the explosion that went off inside him? Did he get it from his father?
Now he was annoyed that he was spending time and energy trying to figure himself out when he should have been contemplating the case.
His mobile rang, and he fumbled for it in his pocket.
“Hello?”
It was Christine. “Dark, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”
Dawson heard the tremor in her voice, and he sat up rigid.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Hosiah.”
Dawson’s heart stopped.
“He’s going to be okay, Dark, but he’s been hurt.”
“What happened?”
“Mama took him to Augustus Ayitey this morning.”
“Who?”
“Augustus Ayitey, the traditional healer she mentioned the other day.”
“Go on.”
“They were trying to make Hosiah go through some kind of cleansing ritual—don’t ask me what—but he was putting up a fight and while that was going on he hit his head against the tub or bowl or whatever it was and burst his scalp open.”
“But he’s all right?”
“Apart from being terrified and having to get stitches in his head, yes.”
“I’m coming home right now.”
“Please be careful driving. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Nothing will.”
It was just after dusk when Dawson got home. He had broken every possible speed record getting back to Accra. Hosiah burst into tears the moment his father walked in. Dawson scooped him up in his arms and sat down on the sofa next to Christine.
“Daddy’s home now,” Dawson said softly. “Daddy’s home.”
He rocked Hosiah back and forth for a while and then took a quick look at the scalp wound. It had been neatly closed up, but there was still a little dried blood around it.
“Eight stitches,” Christine said. “Mama took him to the University Hospital.”
“Does it hurt?” Dawson asked Hosiah.
“Yes,” he said, sniffing his tears away.
“You want Daddy to check it and see if it’s all right?”
“Okay.”
“Here, wipe your nose.”
Hosiah messily scrubbed at his face with a tissue Christine had ready. Dawson made an
elaborate show of peering at Hosiah’s scalp and turning his head this way and that.
“It’s almost all better already,” he said brightly. “Soon you won’t even know it’s there.”
“What does it look like, Daddy?”
“You want to see? I can show you if you like.”
Hosiah agreed, and Dawson took him to the bathroom, where he used a hand mirror and the mirror over the sink to show Hosiah a reflection of his injured scalp.
“Oh,” he said.
“See?” Dawson said. “It’s not that bad, is it? And when they take the little stitches out in a few days, everything will be healed up.”
“Why do they have to take the stitches out?” Hosiah asked in alarm.
“They can’t leave them inside your head, Hosiah. You know how Teddy Bear has sewing in his head?”
“Yah?”
“You want to have a head like Teddy Bear?”
Hosiah giggled. “No.”
“All right then, so that’s why they have to take them out.”
“But will it hurt?”
“It might a little bit, but not as much as it hurt today.”
Christine and Dawson gave their son a bedtime snack of warm, sweetened akasa and then took him to bed. Before Hosiah went to sleep, though, they had the painful task of explaining that Daddy would have to go away again in the morning and would not be there when Hosiah woke up. This caused more crying and clinging, and it took quite some time to get him to settle down for his bedtime story.
Unlike on an ordinary night, Hosiah wanted Daddy to stay with him for a while, so Dawson lay down next to his son until Hosiah’s breathing turned rhythmic and he was fast asleep. Dawson left a night-light on, went out to the sitting room, and sat down next to Christine. She was staring morosely at the floor.
“I don’t know what could have got into Mama,” she said.
“She gave you no clue at all she was going to do this?”
“None.”
Dawson leaned back with his eyes closed and rubbed his forehead, trying to work away the throbbing in his skull.
“She’s been phoning me all afternoon,” Christine said, “and she called again just now while you were with Hosiah.”
“To say what?”
“She’s in a state, a complete mess. Crying, saying she’s sorry again and again, begging me to let her come over. I told her we should postpone that for now.”
“I’d like to talk to her, though.”
Christine was surprised. “You would?”
“Yes, I would,” Dawson said.
He got up and slipped on a pair of tennis shoes from the rack by the door.
“Where’re you going?” Christine asked nervously.
“To see your mother.”
“Don’t you think we should wait until we’re a little calmer?”
“I am calm.”
“But I know how angry you are inside, Dark, and sometimes you snap and that’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “everything’s under control.”
“Dark, please.”
But he was already gone.
He knocked softly on Gifty’s door. She opened it and expressed no surprise that he was there.
“Come in,” she said resignedly. “Christine rang me to warn—to say you were coming.”
She was makeup-free now, although still wearing one of her many posh wigs. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. She asked Dawson if he would like to have a seat.
“No,” he said, “I won’t be staying long. I just want to know what happened.”
Gifty’s face creased with pain. “I would never want to hurt Hosiah, you know that. I just wanted the best for him. We’re all one big family, and I love him so much.”
“Why didn’t you tell Christine or me that you were planning to do this?”
“I wanted it to be a nice surprise, to please you, to help you out because I know it’s so hard to save the kind of money needed for that operation. And I wanted to help little Hosiah too.”
“No, none of what you’ve said is the reason. Shall I tell you the reason?”
Tears began to roll down her cheeks, and she turned away from him. “I don’t know. Do whatever you like.”
“Look at me, Gifty,” Dawson said sharply. “I’m not going to talk to your back.”
She turned around again but could not meet his gaze.
“I said, look at me,” he said.
Her gaze fluttered jerkily to his face, eyeballs twitching and bouncing.
“Here’s the true reason,” he said. “You want to compete with me. You never liked me that much, and you want to steal my son in revenge for taking your daughter.”
“No, it’s not that. You don’t understand.”
“I do understand. When you took Hosiah to the zoo, you knew I had been planning on it. You wanted him to think Granny is much better than Daddy because she took me to the zoo first. And now you wanted to be solely responsible for curing his heart disease so again he would look at you as his heroine and give you all the credit. Granny is better. I love Granny more.”
Face in her hands, Gifty began weeping uncontrollably. Dawson put his arms around her, and she flinched. “Don’t hurt me, please.”
“I’m not going to.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so very sorry.”
“You can’t compete with me for Hosiah,” Dawson said, squeezing her more tightly, “and as long as I’m alive, you will never steal him away no matter what you fantasize. Now, you won’t be seeing him at all for a while. Christine and I will let you know when you can.”
Her crying grew louder, and Dawson felt a stab of anger at her sniveling. She disgusted him. He held her even more firmly as he felt her trying to push away from him. His fist closed slowly over her wig, and he wrenched it off her head. She shrieked and made a grab for it, but Dawson easily moved it out of reach. Gifty’s real hair, which Dawson had never seen, was short, thick, and gray. She suddenly seemed vulnerable, weak, and much older. She made another unsuccessful dive for the wig, then tried to hide her head with her hands.
“Be yourself for a change, Gifty,” Dawson said. “Look in the mirror, see the real you, and stop hating yourself.”
He dropped the wig on the sofa and walked out.
When Dawson returned, Christine was reading in bed, or appearing to be.
“Hi,” he said.
She didn’t reply. Dawson began to get undressed and then sat on the edge of the bed next to her in his underwear. “For the record, I didn’t hit your mother, if that’s what you were worried about. I wouldn’t do that.”
She kept her eyes on the page.
“You’re ignoring me?” he said.
Still no answer.
He tried again. “You’re annoyed because you thought I should wait and I didn’t?”
She put the book down. “This is a family affair, Dark. She’s my mother, you’re my husband, and Hosiah is our son. This is the worst crisis we’ve ever had. To exclude me from a discussion between you and my mother is just wrong. It’s disrespectful and very, very upsetting. You’re supposed to be this modern, progressive man—equality of women and all that—but in the end it’s the same old male supremacy rearing its ugly head, isn’t it?”
He stared at the floor without seeing it. She went back to her pretence of reading.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t listen. I was angry.”
“I seem to remember saying something to that effect.”
“Yes. You did.”
Christine put her book down again. “I see you driven by anger so often, Dark. You can’t continue like this. It makes you so irrational, so … crazy … ”
“I get it from my father.”
“Oh, come on. You’re a better man than he is. So rise above it for God’s sake and stop blaming him.”
He nodded. “But what you said about male supremacy? I want you to know that it didn’t enter into this
. Anger, yes. Hardheadedness, yes. But not male supremacy. Please.”
“All right,” she said. “I accept that.”
Dawson stood up. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Okay.”
He kissed her on the cheek. “You know I love you, right?”
She sighed. “Yes. For better or worse, I know that.”
“You still love me?”
“No, not at all. Go away and have your shower.”
“Really? You really don’t love me?” He nuzzled her neck. “Not even a little bit?”
She was unbearably ticklish in that spot, and she squealed trying to hold her laughter back. When she attempted to get away, he followed her until they were stretched out on the bed together.
“You really don’t love me?” he said, kissing the top of her forehead. “Mm?”
He kissed between her eyes, and she closed them. He kissed the tip of her nose. When he got to her lips, she didn’t resist. She wrapped her arms around him.
DAWSON COULD NOT SLEEP that night. At two, he got out of bed and went to check on Hosiah. He was sleeping peacefully. Dawson went to the kitchen for a drink of water. He was aware of the battle within—seething over what Augustus Ayitey had done to Hosiah, but also trying to not let his anger “drive him,” as Christine had put it.
While she slept like a baby, Dawson silently put on some clothes and left the house. When he got into the car, he hesitated just an instant as an internal voice told him to do the right thing—go to the police as a regular citizen, report what happened to Hosiah, and let them handle it. But he didn’t want to do it that way. It was too passive. He turned the key in the ignition and started the engine up.
The sound of the car cut through the silence of the night, and the headlight beams slashed the dark as Dawson dodged Madina’s potholes. He knew eventually he would find Ayitey’s place just by cruising around, but he was lucky to spot a lone night watchman standing outside the locked gates of a house. In Accra, if you had some money and any semblance of a luxurious home, two vital accessories were a private watchman and decorative but functional bars on all the windows.
“Good evening, sir,” Dawson said.
