The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel

by Arthur Japin

  I pretended to be touched by his sentimental ramblings, and continued in a convivial tone.

  “Do you think it possible that my letters never reached Holland?”

  “First you accuse me of lying and then you ask my opinion. You were feverish again this afternoon, when you were resting. I heard you cry out. The watchman heard you too. You were babbling in your sleep. What are you afraid of?”

  Am I bound to answer my servant’s questions? I remained silent, but the shameless brute was undaunted.

  “Shall I look into the future?” he asked. “Or into the past?”

  “Those are heathen practices.”

  “And making heads roll isn’t?”

  I shrugged. “It is you and your constant harassment that make me think of such things in the first place.”

  Ahim responds to criticism like another man to a pat on the back. He just smiles and tilts his head like an old spinster. It gives him an infuriatingly condescending air.

  “Well, what shall it be, cards or tea leaves?”

  I was not in the mood for either.

  “I’ve had enough of the past,” I said. “More of it keeps coming.”

  “We are old,” said Ahim. “That’s what happens with age.”

  “My head has been pounding all day with the sound of the knives chopping down the coffee plants. Each blow triggers a memory.”

  “The plantation. Yes, it is sad. Now all we have left are paddy fields.”

  “Because you are too damn idle to work, that’s the trouble. Am I to be pestered with your visions of the future on top of everything else? Bring me some writing paper. And tell them to stop chopping for the day. I cannot abide it any longer.”

  Ahim shuffled to the writing desk, brought me a sheet of paper and demanded to know who was to be the happy recipient this time.

  I said nothing, and to mislead him I scrawled on the paper, muttering under my breath, “My very dear old friend . . .” But he interrupted me.

  “The grand duke of Saxe received a letter not long ago.”

  “How would you know? It is quite possible, probable even, that you mislaid it somewhere. Deliberately. Get out of my sight or I’ll have you flogged.”

  “And who do you suppose would cook for you tonight, tuan?”

  It was not, as it happens, my intention to write a letter. Since yesterday’s visit I have been tormented by the notion that, when the worthies of Buitenzorg dance the polonaise at my jubilee or on my grave, they will think of me as an endearing little old man with tightly curled grey hair they cannot resist tweaking. I am filled with the desire to confront Willem Gongrijp and his cronies with the man I once was. But I lack the strength. Realizing how feeble I have become made me wish to put some order into the thoughts that are still harboured in my soul. I set about arranging them into a speech, which I hoped would make my jubilee audience sit up and listen. So as soon as Ahim left I started off with the facts, as follows:

  I am Aquasi Boachi, born prince of the kingdom of Ashanti on the Gold Coast of Africa. I was educated at Delft, but have lived in Java for the past fifty years and at Suka Sari since 1888. The said estate, which I run, having an extent of 89 bahu or 630 hectares, is located in the residency of Batavia, section and district of Buitenzorg, east of the main road to Gadok, two and a-half posts south-east of Buitenzorg station at an altitude of 959 Rhineland feet. The owner is Mrs. M.C. van Zadelhof, née Tietz. She leases me her land for an annual sum of 21,800 guilders. The population living on the estate, which counted 804 souls upon my arrival, has more than doubled in the past twelve years: there are now 1963. They are content, which is no mean achievement considering that the profits have not increased during that time, indeed in some years they have decreased. I have had to desist from the cultivation of tea. My production nowadays consists of rice and, until recently, also co fee. Whereas in 1889 my co fee yield still amounted to 51 picul, two years later it was only 30 and, because of unseasonable rains and the poor quality of the soil, that figure has dropped to 1½ picul, being a mere 63 kilograms, for the whole of last year. Consequently I have been obliged to discontinue co fee planting altogether and consider expanding the area under paddy, which crop seems indestructible. It is not a rosy picture I paint, but I am proud to say that not a soul on my estate has su fered from these setbacks. Not a soul, I say, except myself. I find consolation in the love of my children. Of the five I have fathered, three survive. My son Quamin works on a tea estate in the Preanger. The two little ones, Aquasi junior and my daughter Quamina Aquasina, were born of women that live and work on my land.

  I had to stop there, for into my mind’s eye surged a bevy of ladies wearing party hats, smiling and hiding behind their fans. It cannot be helped; their celebrating my arrival in their midst half a century ago amounts to the same thing as celebrating the fact that, thanks to me, they have had something to gossip about all these years. I am not married. My children were born of gentle native women with whom I live in free love. They are much talked about in the parlours of Buitenzorg. Suddenly the prospect of addressing an audience made up of tattletales and vultures repelled me. I reflected that they might be less amused if I ventured to tell them how I once attempted to court a white woman in the theatre at Batavia, in the manner of their own Dutch men. After all, that manner permits young ladies first to pick their husbands and then their lovers, so they have nothing to complain about.

  It goes like this: a gentleman with a mind to love does not leave his hat in the cloakroom, but takes it inside and places it on the rim of the balcony in front of him. This is a signal to the ladies, whom he fixes with his opera glasses. He gestures how much he is prepared to disburse. If she raises her left hand to fan some air at her cheeks she is favourably inclined; waving the right hand means the bidding is too low or that a renewed advance should be made elsewhere.

  I made no headway myself. It cannot have been my hat that you found unappealing, Ladies, for you did not object to being seen next to less stylish models than mine. Thank God for the native women hovering around the tempeh stall by the stage door, where luckless men such as I could buy their favours for a cup of rice. But the love of Adi, Lasmi and Wayeng, the mothers of my heirs, has delivered me from seeking love among the rejects. I love them as they love me. I will leave to them all I possess, and I find more fulfilment in our children than I can ever explain to a Batavian audience in a few factual statements.

  So I tore up my first draft. It was correctly phrased, but how can a life be summed up in dates and figures? The crucial events do not follow one another in orderly fashion, like the staging posts along the Great Post Road to Surabaya. The tracks have been effaced. Why is it, when one shuts one’s eyes, that some people come to mind and not others?

  Ahim is right—quite contrary to his custom—when he says that I am plagued by dreams during my afternoon rest. Even if I do not sleep, as soon as I close my eyes the memories come thick and fast. But I rarely picture Java. The images that flood my memory are never of the people I encounter daily, nor of animals, nor even of the dense greenery that has been the setting of so much of my life. Judging by my memory, fifty years in the Indies have gone by in a flash, whereas a falcon hunt at Het Loo palace back in Holland has lasted forever. The archives of the mind are wanting in indexes—save for a few catchwords maybe. But perhaps these are all that is needed.

  Sometimes I imagine that God is interested only in the broad sweep. We leave our marks on the white canvas and we cannot make head or tail of the result. But He, a creative artist if ever there was one, takes a few steps back and sees what the smudges represent. If He manages to recognize me in the cautious daubings I have left behind, that is the best possible proof of His existence. I have always held that, for people like me, it is best to make one’s mark in the margins of existence, inconspicuously. But in retrospect I am struck by how much of the last fifty years is a blank. Is that cause for celebration?

  21 February

  All this talk of anniversaries re
minds me that it will be fifty years tomorrow since my cousin died. I think it was then that I lost the ability to be at one with my actions. If it is true to say, as I believe it is, that the merit of love is that it lends distinction to whosoever is loved—the one serving as a foil to the other—then we loved one another. I became distinct by virtue of the contrast between us.

  I know it is late. A man does not reach the stage of full recollection until his dying days. The year of my birth is supposedly 1827. I still live well, although my health is failing rapidly. The first debility is insomnia, which is hardly surprising as I have never been a sound sleeper. The nocturnal hour, when a man must part with consciousness, has always filled me with anguish. Simply closing my eyes gives free access to the demons and the dead, which clash with my strong desire to comprehend and control all that surrounds me.

  Nowadays the shades of the past have access day and night. A good night’s sleep might give me some temporary relief. But I have turned necessity into virtue, and have learned to love all my visitors. I catch myself looking forward to this or that person returning to me in my reveries. The pleasure it gives me to dwell on the past is nothing but a symptom of my old age. Daring to admit that you long to return—there is no more to dying than that.

  Taking leave of this life is one thing, taking leave of this century quite another. Little cause for celebration there. All the commotion makes me nervous.

  In September 1847 Kwame and I spent two days together, secluded in my student digs at Delft. It was fine weather on that Saturday and Sunday before Kwame’s embarkation and before I too made up my mind to leave Holland. We wanted to be alone with our thoughts. On the evening of the Friday I decided to absent myself from Professor Oudshoorn’s lecture the next Monday, as this would give me two full days in which to devote myself with all my heart to Kwame, my beloved cousin, my blood brother, the man once designated to be my king. Having the extra day meant that we could postpone our grief at parting until after the weekend.

  I am facing another departure. And there is to be a feast in my honour. The date is drawing near, and there are no more extra days to be won by playing truant. That is what the next century means for me.

  22 February

  Something irks me. In her torrent of words last week Adeline Renselaar said something that keeps nagging at the back of my mind. It took a while to sink in, but now I can think of nothing else. She had a conspiratorial air. Her husband had spoken to her of my a fair. My affair? Which affair? What kind of gossip is this?

  At daybreak this morning I called at Wayeng’s house. She was surprised to see me. I asked her if I might spend the morning with Aquasi. And so it happened that I took a walk with my son. He was very talkative, and all I did was listen. I realized how absurd my intention had been. How could a nine-year-old child be expected to listen to the misadventure of an African boy a lifetime ago? He grew tired and I carried him home in my arms with difficulty. My heart is not up to the strain. I was drenched in perspiration.

  No sooner was I back in my house than I opened my boxes again and spread out the contents on my desk: diplomas, certificates, van Drunen’s report on the Dutch expedition to Kumasi, his notes on our education, letters from all and sundry, paper cut-out silhouettes, my scrapbook with friends’ dedications. And although my physician tells me I should not drink, I resolved to get excessively drunk just one last time.

  23 February, 4 a.m.

  The best plant cuttings grow in dung—even a child knows that. I have just, in a moment of mischief, done the rest of my business in the garden as well. When I finished I broke off two branches from the kuma tree. That was not difficult to do, because, although the tree can withstand the most violent storms and changes colour with the seasons, it does not thrive on alien shores the way it thrives in Africa. I planted the branches in the earth, at some distance from each other. I shall instruct Ahim that, should one of them strike root, my grave is to be dug beside it. Give him a little diversion.

  WEST AFRICA 1836–37

  1

  I could not sleep. The air was filled with noise and the glow of countless fires tinged the sky. Kwame lay beside me, thrashing about. We were tired from our recent visit to the sanctuary of Twi. I ordered the doors and shutters to be closed. My bedroom, which I had shared with my cousin since the death of his father, was situated in the middle of the palace, far from the street, but there was so much commotion that the noise reached us in our private quarters. Although I tried to silence them the servants chattered in the forecourt.

  For weeks we had heard the drumbeats from Abonu announcing the slow approach of an immense trade delegation from the Castle of Elmina on the coast. The court was making ready to receive them. That was all we knew. I nudged Kwame again and again until at last he sat up, for at night and unable to sleep I always felt more lonely than during the day. We asked each other riddles and played word games, in which I lost the gilded collars of my guard dogs to Kwame, for he was always more adroit with words than I.

  When we had returned from the sanctuary of Twi, the roads to Kumasi were already thronged with people, and the capital itself was full of the splendour of Ashanti. The parasols of tribal chiefs were to be seen everywhere, rising high above the crowd. Commanders wearing silver breast-plates played dice with warriors in exotic costumes. They sat in the shade of gilded canopies erected by our goldsmiths around our royal mausoleum on the hill of Bantama. Packhorses and donkeys, as well as some camels and sacrificial goats, were tethered to the plane trees, which had grown from seeds donated by Portuguese pioneers. The animals produced a stream of excrement which trickled from the palace grounds towards the valley, where the food stalls were doing excellent business. Cooks with sweat pouring down their faces rushed about with fufu dumplings in hot sauce, which they distributed to weary mothers and whimpering children. Men sat on bales of straw treating their blisters with spittle and asses’ milk. The merchants who had joined the surge to the capital now flooded the market with goods from their homelands: scented oils, dates, figs, and viscous oriental confectionery of many colours. The usual trade in yam and manioc, banana, peanut and citrus was suspended to make room for local artists with their golden ornaments, insignia, drinking vessels and sceptres, their gilded headdresses and furniture plated with precious metals, for which Kumasi was renowned all over the world. Banks of saffron and red pepper lay spread out on palm leaves whose edges were trampled by the crowd. Broad fish from the River Volta with gaping jaws lay side by side with emery-skinned eels from the Tano and slippery giant snails; purple devils from the Pra estuary jostled with the muscular tails of the catfish that swim upstream, against the strong current of the Ofin and the Birim. Old women stooped to inspect varieties of gum and medicinal roots, amulets, little bundles of magical leather-craft, tanned red and patterned with black. Cloths were shaken out while weavers explained the meaning of the local symbols to those who were strangers to these parts. There were lengths of glossy black for funerals, but also the finest kente cloth made of a thousand bands of red and yellow, and, for the exclusive use of tribal chiefs, there were sandals with golden toe-studs.

  The crowd thickened as the day wore on. Men accompanied by veiled wives treated themselves to morsels of roast beef, monkey, wild boar or antelope at the meat stalls, gave a pittance to a band of street singers or mocked them and told them to make way for the people parading past: tall, shuffling men from the east, shaven-headed girls from across the river, slave traders’ wives from Mali who even veiled their eyes, naked huntsmen from the savannahs around Damongo.

  The Twi language was suddenly alive with accents from every corner of Ashanti: the sharp consonants from the north, which must make themselves heard over sandstorms, the lisp of the Volta fishermen, the nasal singsong of the forest-dwellers in the south. And there was the Twi that provoked laughter among the pure Ashanti, spoken by the conquered tribes across the river who had been taken by their masters to be sold as slaves in Kumasi. One could hear the drawl of the
Ga, the effeminate cheep of the Ewe, and the voices of the dwarfs from Talenso, defeated weaklings from Dagoma, Dagaba, Fra Fra and Kusasi, who were unable to pronounce the sound ouè .

  It was this cacophony that kept us awake all night. When Kwame and I grew tired of our games I drifted off, only to be rudely awakened by the bickering of a couple of drunk priests. My head ached and I cursed the language of my birth. Little did I know that I would have lost the ability to speak it a few years later. I put my fingers in my ears and buried my face between Kwame’s shoulders.

  Before dawn our servants came to clothe us, and in the gloom we were led outside to the city gates of Kumasi, where the forest path to Accra begins. We saw a great mass of people advancing over the hills. The moisture exuded by the tightly packed bodies hung like a mist around the city.

  My father, the Asantehene Kwaku Dua I, sat on his throne before the great crowd, shaded by parasols of gold brocade. Wearing a red cloak edged with silver, his arms and legs weighed down by ornaments, he stared into the distance. Next to my father, on an ivory seat encrusted with diamonds, sat Kwame’s mother, my aunt. She was the sister of the Asantehene and consequently the paramount woman.

  To her left sat the bejewelled members of her lineage: the oyoko, family members connected by the red female bloodline, which governs succession. Each mother and grandmother had gathered her yafunu around her, the “children from one belly.” To her right, sitting in a wide circle on gilded stools and richly worked carpets, were those who were related to our royal family by way of the ntoro, the male kinship, which was the white lineage of the seed whereby the soul is transmitted.