by Arthur Japin
Men and women seem to belong to different races. I cannot understand how they can abide each other. You can bring the two together, but they will never be one. You can use red and yellow yarn to weave a brown cloth, but even then the colours remain distinct; they intertwine but do not merge. And yet, Joa and his beloved seem to have attained true union. He from the north, she a Fanti. Moslem and heathen. Man and woman. This happy bond between dissimilar constituents ought to inspire hope in me, not anguish. Indeed I am glad for them, I really am, but still I fear for myself.
What is it that prevents us from forming lasting attachments? What sort of deficiency is this? I am afraid to look into my heart, Kwasi, for I know I shall find a great emptiness. Being ignorant of the love between man and woman myself, I imagine it to be boundless, reassuring like the affection of my mother, and yet as stimulating as friendship. Ah well, does it matter? You fell in love once, but then you were robbed of your happiness. Nothing can be woven from threads that are cut too close to the spool.
1 July 1849
At times I am perturbed by the shallowness of life here at the fort. The new regiment is made up of fine fellows, I must admit. But they strike me as so immature. They are only four or five years younger than I, and yet I regard their exuberance with the jaded eyes of a middle-aged gentleman. Surely that is not a good thing? My body is drawn to their pranks and debauchery of a Saturday night, but my heart cannot keep the pace.
Once again I have politely replied to a range of questions concerning my position and presence in Elmina. They tut-tutted, shook their heads, and drank to my speedy return to Kumasi. I dare say they were sincere, but their words fell by the wayside. I thanked them kindly, whereupon silence ensued. I can hardly expect from them what I myself do not give.
14 July 1849
There have been two more deaths in Dabokrom—from suffocation this time. That brings the number of Dutch survivors down to four. It is my duty to tell you, even if it means you will not come to these shores. In which case we will never meet again.
21 July 1849
The cloth I had hoped to wear upon my return to Kumasi was completed long ago. I left it on the loom for months, for no particular reason. Today I snipped the connecting threads and hemmed the edges. I washed my cloth and stored it among my possessions. I sent my loom back to Joa. He was speechless with gratitude. His wife has left him for a trader from a nearby settlement. A Fanti, like herself.
26 July 1849
What joy it is to receive your letters! Each time they make my heart race. Even the troops noticed my change of mood. “Aha, fallen in love at last have you?” one of the men joked at the wash-place, and when I protested that this was not so, the rascal called out to one of his fellows, “Peter, haven’t you noticed the smug look on our prince’s face, as if he’s hugging a secret.” I couldn’t help laughing, and went along with their joke. They are good lads, always trying to cheer me up.
Your description of the piano concerts in the Hof Gärtenerei sent me off into a reverie. You will not be surprised that I, unlike you, cannot see anything respectful about calling Liszt and his students “the Pasha and his Moors.” No matter. Those pages from the score of Löhengrin, which you wheedled the maestro into giving you after the dress rehearsal, are quite amazing, as are the accompanying legends upon which you say the opera is based. (Such a strong streak of animism! All those creatures crawling out of the muddy depths of the Rhine . . .) I’m afraid I cannot appreciate why Liszt is so impressed by the genius of Wagner, but I expect this is because I lack the ability to conjure up the music of such a complex score entirely in my head. Nevertheless I enjoy keeping abreast of new developments. Be so kind as to send me more. You cannot imagine what a wonderful distraction music is.
I spent the evening with Joa. I had not done so for a long while. He noticed my cheerful mood and took it to mean that a letter from you had arrived. He asked how you were, and when I told him about the great depths to which you descend nowadays in the Elisabeth mine, he was most impressed. We drank some wine while he reflected on what I had told him. Then he said he found it hard to imagine you and me being bosom friends.
“Why?” I fumed. He shrugged, as if the answer were perfectly obvious, and said, “One searches in the earth, the other in the clouds.”
14 August 1849
The time to whitewash the fort has come round again. The salt-laden sea air is so aggressive that no wash can withstand it as long as a year. It is an unpopular chore, and it takes many weeks of hard work. I have volunteered for the task. There are four of us. I have been assigned to the exterior of the south walls, a lonely place at the far end of the fort. I start work early in the morning, take a rest in the afternoon, and then return to benefit from the low sun sliding along the stones and picking out imperfections. At this rate I will be busy for two months. Concentrating my thoughts so intensely on the task before me has made me think in terms of square yards rather than hours or days. I am not in a hurry. The wall is patient.
I work my way from top to bottom, hanging from the end of a rope in a sort of truss, with my feet propped against the wall. I flex my knees to get close enough to brush the paint on the wall, and straighten them again to see how I am progressing. Then I adjust the length of my rope and set to work again further down.
It gives a simple sort of satisfaction. The whole world is reduced to the few square yards directly in front of me. The wall is weatherbeaten and flaky. My task is perfectly clear: continue painting until the whole wall is sparkling white. The result is inescapable. I have rendered service, and the fruits of my labour are there for all to see.
The effect of the sun striking the lime is magical. It clears the mind. It enables me to concentrate on the work in hand and at the same time to let my thoughts wander. Not even the smallest detail of my handiwork escapes attention, and yet I am able to take stock of my situation in a detached, level-headed way. Most agreeable. At the end of the day my body is weary, but my mind is wide awake. I wash the chalk off my skin and fall on to my cot. I have been sleeping well lately, untroubled by wild dreams. I do my dreaming in the dazzling light of day.
2 October 1849
A day runs its course. The position of the sun signals the distance covered since dawn. The moon follows a cycle, making women and farmers alert to periods of fertility. Since sun and moon always move in the same direction, everyone knows life goes on. After the rains come the floods, which in turn are followed by drought. That is as much notion of time as man needs.
Surely it sufficed us when we were boys? True, your father employed astrologers to calculate feast days and the paths described by the celestial bodies, but you and I had no part in such matters. In Delft, therefore, I was overwhelmed by the strict division into days and weeks, months, years and lifetimes.
Van Moock was quite emphatic: he who lives by the waxing and waning moon, by the seasons and by the day, is a prisoner of nature. To him the timelessness that gave us our seemingly carefree outlook signified the shackles of primitive man. Suddenly it was wrong to stretch a random thought to its extreme limits, or to compress an unpleasant afternoon to a mere sigh. Each heartbeat counted, had its exact value.
And so we were placed in time as in a landscape. With each step we took the panorama slipped by. The emptiness was vested with dimension, counting took on meaning. No longer was our existence stationary while the world filed past, we ourselves were set in motion, and overtook the march of time. Our gain was the consciousness of progress, but we were also suddenly aware that all the things we found on our way would have to be left behind, would be irretrievably lost. Even when we were silent and thoughtless we tramped staunchly ahead, leaving a growing wasteland behind us. We were astounded. We had always relied on the lengthening shadows to be our yardstick.
I have been following the shadows again today. They advance across my wall, the few square yards of chalk that constitute my universe. In the morning they tell me discreetly where there is unevenness, in the aft
ernoon they point up the old chisel marks left by the builders long ago, and at sundown they dramatize each protruding grain with long dark streaks.
But now I know what I have been missing. My hours need differentiation. There is nothing to measure them against. There is no scale. There is nothing to mark my time. So nowadays time stands still while I pass by.
12 October 1849
More and more images of the early years are coming back to me. The tedium of my immediate surroundings has made me look inwards. All I have left to cherish is stored within myself.
As I was working on my wall I suddenly remembered the occasion when it dawned on me how life in Europe is subjected to the tyranny of the clock. It was in the autumn. Mr. van Moock and his wife had taken us for a walk in the woods. The headmaster pointed out wild mushrooms and told us their Latin names. He commented on the manner of growth and medicinal value, if any, while his wife held forth on such species as were edible. She went into raptures over the delicious flavour a mushroom sauce gave to roast venison, or something to that effect. What with one thing and another we were feeling quite hungry by then, although it was not long since we had set out. Catching sight of an inn in the distance Mrs. van Moock addressed her husband in a hopeful tone of voice: “Simon my dear, how about it, are you feeling peckish?” At this van Moock extracted his watch from his waistcoat pocket. He raised the lid, which was engraved with a skull as a reminder of his mortality, and declared: “But it is not yet noon, madam!” That every one of us longed for a pancake was immaterial: he was a man for whom nature must be overruled by the clock.
Fortunately the two of us could see the comic side of this obsession with time. The chronological designations soon ceased to confound us, and together we echoed what the Hollanders said. They had certainly come up with an infinite variety of expressions to mark their time. When I said goodbye with the words “So long!,” you would ask “How long?”
“As long as it takes to recite the Lord’s Prayer thirty-eight times.”
“You mean when the cock has crowed thrice?”
“No, not until the cows come home.”
“Straight after the overture.”
“But during page thirteen I’ll be away.”
“This century?”
“I don’t mean Before Christ.”
“At the stroke of two.”
“In a second.”
“Since my illness.”
“Before losing my virginity.”
“Well, you can’t put the clock back.”
After which we collapsed into giggles and hurried to be on time for supper or roll call.
In those days, Kwasi, you were fascinated by everything to do with time. You pored over almanacs, climbed to the top of the church tower to watch the minute hand move to the next slot and plied van Moock with so many questions that he had to obtain a book on the differences between the Gregorian and Babylonian calendars. You practised foretelling the precise moment when the clock would strike, without looking at it. After a few weeks you were accurate not only on the whole hours, but also on the quarter hours. As for me, I went on dating my letters, including the formal ones, in relation to my own age. I would use headings as “in my twelfth year,” or, “at Delft, in the fourteenth year after my birth,” for I did not see the point of any other specification.
Thank goodness you would cheer me up by poking fun at the Hollanders’ absurd notions. Remember those people who claimed that madness could be cured by inscribing the name of the madman on the small hand of the church clock; and put their clocks forward twenty-four hours when it was predicted that a meteorite would fall on a certain day, in a desperate attempt to ward off catastrophe; who thought clock filings alleviated epilepsy, and a drink of the water previously used to wash a bell-clapper a remedy against pain in the gut?
As far as I am concerned, the notion of time flying is just another idle fancy, and consequently a superstition.
Life in Kumasi, when we were young, took its course in silence, sometimes in the mind alone. Birth, fertility, the lunar cycle, death—the occasions that gave rhythm and impulse to our lives were those that affected us personally and were therefore memorable. They were private.
In Holland one is constantly exposed to noisy reminders of the passing of one’s life—in public squares, on church towers, mantels and walls. With all those timepieces ticking away in their mechanical, unrelenting way, the Hollanders are merely exorcising their fear of the present and of their own finality. In the land of the Ashanti it is time that kills people. In Holland people kill time.
The fort is as bright as a new pin. My work is done—until nature undoes it again. I have already notified van der Eb that I will volunteer for another stint of whitewashing in six months’ time.
12 November 1849
Your letter of 7 October arrived safely. I respect your decision. How this news has affected me is impossible to describe. I do not bear a grudge. I have no doubt that the reports I have been sending you influenced your decision to decline the post of engineer in Dabokrom, and you were quite right to do so. What more can I say? The situation in the mines is as bad as ever. There was another casualty last week. Until now the total yield of the undertaking, in which twenty-one Hollanders and a greater number of natives have lost their lives, does not exceed four ounces of gold, which amounts to one hundred and fifty guilders’ worth.
The consternation at your decision is certainly remarkable. But what did you expect? They are stuck. Their hopes of being relieved of you as they were of me have been dashed. And your refusal to return to Holland from Freiberg until you had received official word of your status—no wonder the authorities are nervous! I know you are paying your own tuition fees, but the annual expenses of board and lodging are evidently considered to be excessive. And you tell me that your current allowance of two hundred guilders is not really sufficient for you to conduct yourself properly in Weimar society.
I know what we’ll do, some pen-pusher at the ministry must have thought, let’s appoint him to the post of mining engineer in Dabokrom. If he shines at his profession he will supply us with gold, and if he’s as feeble as the rest he won’t survive for very long.
But you turned them down. So they asked Professor Cotta for advice, did they? And he actually told them that you are so fully adjusted to life in Europe that your love of hearth and home has been snuffed out. Well I never. To think that they asked Dominee Molenkamp for his opinion (although why they had to ask I can’t imagine—he would have offered it anyhow), and that he blamed your “loss of nerve” on the flattery of the Weimar nobility who “spoiled” you and “undermined your religious sensibility,” no less! “Yet another example of a wasted education and dashed hopes” indeed.
The intrigues of metropolitan society hold very little interest for me at present, I am afraid. I need all the concentration I can muster to come to grips with this fresh sorrow.
It is past midnight now, and I have one more thing to say. I may as well tell you, for keeping silent will only add to the anguish in my heart, which is already labouring under the knowledge that I shall never see you again. It grieves me, Kwasi, that you told the minister you had no wish to return to Africa because that would mean “living among men whose morals, customs, ways and religion are not only strange to me, but also repellent.” Have you forgotten that I am here? Am I not like them? And are you not like me? Why tell me such things, if you know how they grieve me?
13 November 1849
Upon waking I was filled with thoughts of my father on his deathbed. I do not remember being sad. On the contrary. I loved him with all my heart and yet his passing left me feeling uncommonly elated. Something wonderful had happened.
There was an extraordinary force at work. How shall I put it? Do you remember entering the room where he lay in state? I did not dare at first, for I was gripped with fear at the proximity of death. But no sooner had I crossed the threshold than a great calmness descended. The dead body emanated energy. Thi
s was not a fancy—no, it was a veritable storm blowing straight in my direction. I flung out my arms and cupped my hands to catch as much of it as I could. It was like a jet of water splashing against my head and shoulders. When my body was sated I gave thanks to the gods for this gift and bade my father farewell. Upon leaving the room, however, I was overcome with desire to repeat the miraculous experience, and returned to my father’s side. The energy flowed as before. By the end of the day I had gone into the room six or seven times. I was in a trance. His love had become fluid.
“Thus I became acquainted with death on the lips of the one who gave me life,” René says somewhere. I have never heard anyone else speak in this vein, and yet I believe the experience of death is common to all men.
You must never forget, Kwasi my dear, how closely grief is linked with joy.
One last thing about my father: some time later I felt a sudden urge to visit his grave. I held out my hands flat above the ground and begged him wordlessly to bestow his miraculous strength on me once more. Nothing happened. No, a voice said within me, from now on you will have to marshall your own forces. In this way the dead can fortify the thoughts of the living. Is that the reason for our mortality, do you think? It sounds more practical to me than all those notions Dominee Molenkamp foisted on us. In any case I find it more appealing than the idea of resurrection.
