Ama (32 page)

At first she heard the words and learned to understand them. Then slowly, tentatively, she began to speak them herself. Though she was shy, she had no shame. Itsho had never used the words of love in her own language. There was no need. She assumed that the custom of the whites was different and, following Augusta's advice, she spoke as De Bruyn spoke in the privacy of his bedroom. Soon, she gained in confidence and the words began to run into sentences. He had only to teach her the words once for her to learn how, when she was ready, she could rouse him to a final frenzied movement within her by calling out, “Oh fuck me, Pieter, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!”

Of course Van Schalkwyk knew nothing of all this.

In the evening, when they had eaten, they would sit at the table with the candles flickering in their long silver candlesticks and Ama would rehearse her lessons for the next day, expecting De Bruyn to test and correct her work; but the Governor would soon grow bored and weary of the repetitive exercises which Van Schalkwyk had set her. The chaplain's teaching methods were little different from those he had suffered in his own school days and it did not occur to him to question them. He sat back, sucked his pipe contentedly and sipped his brandy. Then one evening, searching his small library for a book to read, he came across the children's story books which the Predikant had put aside, believing that Ama needed to master the alphabet before learning to read.

“Pamela, look at this,” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth.

Sitting down beside her, he put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her fondly on her cheek.

Then he put Goody Two-Shoes on the table and said, “Let's see if you can read this.”

Ama could recognise and recite all the letters of the alphabet, in both upper and lower case, but Van Schalkwyk's pedagogics had not yet conferred on her the ability to read a single word. She triumphantly picked out all the A's and B's she could find. To her disappointment, De Bruyn was not impressed.

“All right,” said De Bruyn, “One step at a time. I'll read the story to you and we'll see how much you understand.”

He read slowly in the candlelight. The story told of how Margery's father, Meanwell, was ruined by the wicked farmer Graspall and Sir Timothy Gripe, who turned him out of his home. Meanwell died from a violent fever and his wife from a broken heart a few days later, leaving Margery and her brother Tommy orphaned, living in barns and from what they could pick from hedges. A kind gentleman found Tommy a job as a sailor and the good Rev. Smith gave Margery a pair of shoes. Judging that Mr. Smith's goodness and wisdom arose from his great learning, Margery decided to learn to read. Known now as Goody Two-Shoes she was soon teaching other children. Eventually Tommy returned rich and Margery married Sir Charles Jones. After which they all lived happily ever after.

When he had read the last page of the little book, De Bruyn asked Ama, “Did you understand the story?”

Ama nodded enthusiastically.

“Then tell it to me in your own words.”

Ama hung her head in shame. Her affirmative had been a lie. Parish meetings, financial ruin, legal expenses, a proper settlement and hedges and barns meant nothing to her. She had really understood very little.

Van Schalkwyk had been teaching Pamela for weeks and there was little to show for it. De Bruyn wondered whether their experiment was doomed to failure. He decided to start from scratch.

“This girl is called Margery,” he said, pointing to the picture. “The story is about her. What is her name? Right, ‘Margery.' Now this is the word for Margery. See, M-A-R, mar, G-E, ger, R-Y, ree. Mar-ge-ry, Margery. It has a big M at the beginning because it is the girl's name. Spell it. Good. Now say it again. Excellent. Now see whether you can find the word ‘Margery' somewhere else in the story.”

Ama screwed up her face and searched. Triumphantly she put a finger on the next instance of ‘Margery' and raised her eyes to De Bruyn's.

“Excellent. Clever girl,” he said and rewarded her with a kiss. “Now find another ‘Margery.'”

At his first attempt, De Bruyn had, almost by accident, succeeded in conveying to Ama the idea that each printed word was a symbol for a spoken word. Soon she could read the first sentence. Within a week she could read the first page. From that point on there was no holding her. Comprehension was another matter, but even a strange concept such as
parish meeting
presented few problems when interpreted as a gathering of village elders.

De Bruyn had cut the pages of the English bible, Rev. Quaque's gift. He was reading a few chapters each evening. Sometimes he would read to himself, sometimes aloud, savouring the beauty of the language. Ama would listen, straining to understand, but her vocabulary was still too small and Mijn Heer read too fast for her. She heard the words flying past and struggled to catch one which she thought she recognised, but even as she did, the torrent of new words continued and the one which she had captured was also lost, carried away in the turbulent stream, without meaning, its context destroyed.

De Bruyn noticed her frustration and when she had mastered the children's stories, he started her on the first chapter of Genesis, a few verses each evening. He tried to explain to her the meaning of the words she could not understand. Some he could not understand himself, for though his English was good, he was not a native speaker of the language. Then he would make a search in Dr. Johnson's dictionary. Soon Ama learned how to use her knowledge of the order of the alphabet to find a difficult word in that marvellous book.

Ama's domestic tasks were as nothing to her. All her life she had worked. Work was part of her life. Even as a little girl, the games she had played were an imitation of her mother's work: carrying firewood or water on her head, hoeing in the groundnut farm, washing, cooking, carrying a baby on her back. And as she had grown up, the games had changed imperceptibly into the real thing. She had never given it a thought. Life was work. Men had their work and women had theirs. Tabitsha's example had taught her to work with joy. Now she danced and sang through the dusting and polishing of Mijn Heer's room and the washing and ironing of his clothes. She had no need to cook or wash dishes: for that the Governor had his own kitchen whose staff served him and his senior officers.

Soon Augusta needed to instruct her no more, but still she came most mornings, out of habit partly, but also because De Bruyn expected it. She, in turn, needed to retain her connection with her former husband. And the young slave girl exerted a strange fascination upon the older woman. Ama treated Augusta like a mother. She trusted her absolutely and had few secrets from her. She told her about her childhood, about her mother Tabitsha and her father, Tigen; about her small brother, Nowu; about their home and how they lived; about her capture; about Yendi and Kafaba and Kumase; but she did not tell her that she had worked in the Asantehene's palace and she invented a lie to explain why she had been sent to Elmina.

Of Itsho, too, she said nothing. She could not share her memory of him with anyone, not even with Augusta. She knew Itsho was dead. Had she not buried him herself? But she knew too that his spirit lived on in the place of the ancestors. Often, he appeared to her in her dreams. Almost always his spirit was kind and benevolent. But, in trying to rescue her, Itsho had died a sudden, brutal death and sometimes, especially when it was time for her period, she would see the hooves of Abdulai's horse rise in the air and come crashing down on Itsho's head, cracking his skull, scattering blood and brains. She would hear his last agonised scream and her own scream too, fading as she woke from the nightmare. De Bruyn, his sleep disturbed, would comfort her, but she would hardly notice his presence. How could she tell Augusta of all this?

The other subject which she could not bring herself to speak of to Augusta was Esi, her much loved friend. For she remembered that when she had asked Augusta to intercede with Mijn Heer on Esi's behalf, she had forgotten. Ama wondered where Esi was now. She felt guilty that she had been saved to live in comfort while Esi, whose only fault was that she had spoken up for Ama in Kumase, had been consigned to an unknown fate. Sometimes, her mind spoke in two voices, one telling her that there was no way in which she could have saved her friend, that both Augusta and Mijn Heer had been strangers to her at that time and that she had had no language then with which she might have communicated with the powerful white man. Yet still she felt guilty and could not bring herself to talk to either of them about her lost friend. The subject was too painful.

* * *

Van Schalkwyk was a methodical man. Ama could now recite her alphabet from A to Z and she could identify each letter, both lower case and upper, and the word in the primer which was the clue to its sound.

She could recite the Lord's Prayer by heart and he had started her memorising the Articles of Faith. As she made progress, so grew his ambition to save her soul for Jesus Christ.

Van Schalkwyk had forgotten his intention to start to teach her to read using the children's books; indeed, obsessed as he was with using education as a tool for spiritual progress, he had forgotten all about those books. He pictured himself demonstrating his success with her to Rev. Quaque. If he could succeed with Pamela, if he could make a Christian of her, perhaps he would open a school of his own for the little native girls of Edina.

The bible lay open where De Bruyn had left it the previous evening.

“Pamela,” said Van Schalkwyk, “This morning we are going to start reading. We will start at the beginning of the Holy Book, that is to say with Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 1. This is such an important event that I think we should say a prayer first. Let us pray together to mark the occasion and to ask the blessing of our Heavenly Father for our enterprise.”

Van Schalkwyk transferred his bulky frame stiffly from the chair to a kneeling position before the table. Ama had never seen him do this before and she watched bemused. He noticed that she was still sitting on her chair.

“Come, do as I do,” he said, pointing to the floor.

Ama complied. She watched him place his palms together and close his eyes.

“Our Father,” he began but when he reached “Heaven” he noticed that he was praying alone. He stopped and made her put her palms together and close her eyes.

“Now, together. One, two, three. Our Father . . .” and they recited the Lord's Prayer together.

When they had finished with “Amen”, the Minister struggled to get to his feet and Ama had to help him.
You are really very fat,
she thought.
I have never seen any one as fat as you. Though Augusta comes a close second.

Van Schalkwyk read the first verse, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” he intoned.

Then, pointing to the passage, he said, “Now you try.”

Ama was already familiar with the story of Creation. She repeated, with only an occasional stumble, the passage that Van Schalkwyk had just read to her.

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” he continued, reading one sentence at a time and letting her read it after him.

When she had read, “And the evening and the morning were the first day,” he motioned to her to continue, without waiting for him to read each sentence first.

The fat Predikant was astonished. This was far beyond his expectations. She was reading intelligibly from the Good Book at her first attempt, her very first attempt. It was a miracle. He hardly had to prompt her.

The first time Ama had read this with De Bruyn, she had tackled one word at a time, understanding some but not enough to extract more than the vaguest meaning from the passage. But by now she had read it so many times that she knew it practically by heart. Mijn Heer had patiently explained the meaning to her. Now she read quite fluently and appeared to Van Schalkwyk to understand what she was reading.

“A miracle, a miracle,” the Minister whispered to himself in Dutch as he listened, watching her with rapt attention.

Ama was wearing a simple calico cloth wrapped around her under her armpits with one end tucked in to hold it in position. It had come a little loose as she rose from her knees and now it threatened to unwrap itself, slipping down to expose the upper part of her breasts. She needed to stand up to rewrap the cloth but all her attention was concentrated on her reading and she merely tucked the loose end in as a temporary measure.

Van Schalkwyk watched her unobserved. He saw her profile, her round bare shoulders: he looked down the exposed cleavage between the swell of her breasts. He was moved. Astonished at her miraculous skill in reading, he felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the same time he was struck by the beauty of the girl's young body. He felt his penis come erect. He loved this black girl. He wanted to touch her, to stroke her, to hold her. Automatically he helped her over a word when she hesitated. Her concentration was intense. He looked down. She was sitting with her legs apart, her cloth hanging between them, outlining her thighs. Unable to control himself any longer, he placed his hand on the inside of her thigh near the crotch and squeezed.

Ama sprang to her feet in surprise. Her chair fell over backwards. The flesh had fled the Minister's hand, leaving it clutching a handful of cloth. The loose material unwrapped itself from Ama's body and fell to the ground, leaving her clad only in her beads. For a moment, Van Schalkwyk saw her naked body. It was a vision which would return to haunt his dreams. In an instant Ama had grabbed the cloth, wrapped it around her and tucked the end back in where it belonged. Her heart was thumping. She took a step back and stared at her teacher, old, ugly, obese and now contemptible. Van Schalkwyk stared back for a moment, hardly believing what he had done. Then he bowed his head, put his palms together in prayer and closed his eyes.
Oh, Father
, he whispered to himself in Dutch,
What have I done? Forgive me, forgive me this abominable sin
. A vision of the lake of fire and brimstone came to him.
What shall I do, what shall I say
? he prayed.