Ama (73 page)

“Hallelujah,” cried a Christian. “Praise the Lord,” and the reply came, “Amen.”

Olukoya called for order.

“I will not tell you how he died or by whose hand and I do not want you to ask me. The less each of us knows, the better for all of us.”

“As soon as we finish this meeting brother Josef will choose four men to dig a grave. This work is dangerous and those who are asked may refuse. No one will hold it against them. Indeed no one will know who they are.

“While this is going on the rest of us must prepare to leave this place. Go to your allotments and quickly harvest all the ripe crops which you can carry with you. If you have seed, bring that too. Collect together all your important possessions, all you can carry, and bundle them up. There is no need to wake your children, not until the last moment, when we are ready to go. Work in great haste. We must all be away from here well before dawn. I have one more thing to say, but before that: any questions?”

“Where are we going?”

“It would be unwise for me to tell you that. You will understand why in a moment.”

“What about the overseers?”

“They are safely tied up, locked up and under guard. None of them has been harmed. We have taken their guns and before we go we will take which ever of their possessions might come in useful to us.”

“Shouldn't we take them with us as hostages?”

“Good question. That hadn't occurred to me. But I don't think it would be a good idea. If we took them we might find ourselves having to deal with the army rather than just the militia. No more questions? Good, it seems that I made myself clear.

“Now there may be some of you who, for one reason or another, might be reluctant to join the rest of us. I understand that and I will ask you no questions. All I ask is that for our protection and for your own, you declare your intentions now. Then we will tie you up and lock you up like the overseers so that it will look as if you resisted us. That way there might be less trouble ahead for you; but that is something, of course, that I cannot guarantee.”

* * *

“Feed your children and yourselves as best you can,” Olukoya told them when they reached the clearing. “Then get some sleep. We are all tired out. It will take them some time to get organised so we will take a chance and post no guards until after we wake up. Remember just one thing as you fall asleep. We are no longer slaves. We have thrown off our chains. We are free men and women. May the ancestors watch over our sleep and wake us up well.”

“Mama,” yawned Kwame as he lay down, “what did Uncle Olu mean? Have we come here to pray to the ancestors?”

Ama searched for an answer but the boy, like his father beside him, was already fast asleep.

She searched Tomba's face, looking for a clue. He was relaxed, his breathing regular, seemingly at peace with the world. For twelve years they had lived together as man and wife. Yet last night she had discovered within him a festering wound whose existence she had never suspected.

She lay down.
I wonder whether Olukoya and Josef have been damaged in the same way
, she mused. She tried to sleep; but sleep would not come. Again and again scenes of the previous night's events passed before her. She summoned the spirit of Itsho; but either he refused to come or he lacked the power to suppress those awful visions.

When she awoke, Olukoya was returning from the shrine. All around, shaded from the midday sun, lay the sleeping forms of their companions.

“Where's Tomba?” Olukoya whispered.

She panicked and leaped to her feet, silently blaming herself: in his despair he must have run away.
He might do himself some damage
, she thought.
I should have stayed awake to watch over him.
But Olukoya had seen him. He beckoned to her and pointed: Tomba was sitting by the stream, fashioning a conical fish trap from reeds.

“Bra Tomba,” Olukoya greeted him.

Tomba looked up.

“I thought, ‘What are we all going to eat?'” he said and went back to his work.

Olukoya put his hand on Tomba's bare shoulder and squeezed.

“There is one thing I want you to know,” he said. “We are all in this together. What you did was long overdue.”

Tomba looked up at him but said nothing. He took another reed from the bundle beside him.
I wonder if he remembers anything
, Ama mused. She knelt by his side and hugged him. He turned and looked deep into her eye. Then, again, he went back to his work.
Twelve years we have lived together and now he has become an enigma to me
, she thought.

“It's time to wake up the others,” Olukoya said. “There is much to do. Tomba, I have an urgent task which will need your special knowledge; and I don't mean about making fish traps.”

Not for the first time Ama was lost in admiration for Olukoya's skill in dealing with people. He was trying to draw Tomba back into the web that held them all together, to make him feel that he was needed.
Is it a natural gift
, she wondered,
or something he learned during his training for the priesthood?

* * *

The altar site was an unsuitable location for a quilombo: it was true that it lay hidden deep in the forest and that it had water; but it was easily approachable on all four sides and there was no height from which a look-out might detect the approach of strangers.

Olukoya sent Tomba out with Josef. He wasn't optimistic. He had made the same search himself many years before and had found nothing suitable. But he thought that there was just a chance that Tomba's past experience might help him to locate a more defensible site.

While they were away he began to organise his people. He had them pool their scant supplies of food. The cooking would have to be done after dark: a plume of smoke would invite detection. They would certainly be pursued: of that he had no doubt; but the militia would have to find them first. He collected the arms which they had appropriated from the
casa grande
and the overseers' houses. Their powder might be spoiled at any time by a shower, so he had a pit excavated on higher ground, lined with leaves and covered with a roof of branches and leaves and soil. It was too early to think of building a more permanent armoury. If they were lucky Tomba would soon return and lead them to a sheltered hillside in some remote wooded valley. There, he told himself, without much conviction, there would be a cave which could serve as a store for their weapons and ammunition.

Olukoya had no illusions about their capacity to resist an attack by a force of any strength. But if they had sufficient warning of the approach of their pursuers, he thought, and if they planned well in advance, they might be able to disperse, to melt away into the forest, leaving the militia without a visible target. The trouble with this strategy was that the fugitives feared the forest, particularly at night. He would have to overcome that fear. He set a ring of day and night guards and sent out scouts.

After defence their most pressing problem was food. What they had brought would last them no more than a few days. Olukoya began to plan a raid on the Engenho de Cima, or on another
engenho
nearby, to steal a few sheep and some bags of grain.

Tomba and Josef returned to report failure. There was no option but to make the best of their present camp. Olukoya set everyone to work: he knew that if he allowed the soldiers in his little army to sit around and talk they would soon become despondent. He invented tasks to keep them fully occupied during all their waking hours. They told him that he was making them work harder than they had ever done as slaves. But they said it with a smile.

That night they all sat around a fire, all except those who stood as sentinels in the dark forest beyond and those who had been sent on an expedition to spy on their former home and steal what food they could find.

Ama had the Bible which Alexandre had stolen for her all those years before. She offered to read a story and the offer was accepted with acclamation. So she lay down on her stomach, with the book close to the fire, and, with her one weak eye, read to them from Exodus.

When she had read the passage in which Moses kills an Egyptian for beating one of his Israelite brothers, and buries the body, she paused and asked for water to wet her throat.

“That Egyptian was called Vasconcellos,” came a comment from the dark perimeter.

There was approving laughter.

“And who is our Moses then?” another responded.

“Enough of that,” Olukoya interrupted. “No one knows who killed Senhor Jesus. I warned you not to speculate on that matter. It is dangerous talk which could be our undoing. Ama please go on.”

She came to the episode where the Pharaoh punished the Israelites for Moses's insolent demands by increasing their
tarefa
, the daily quota of bricks each slave had to make. Again they saw the parallels between the story and their own history.

As Moses visited each of God's plagues upon the Egyptians there were cries of approbation and when he led the Israelites out of bondage Ama had to stop until the cheering subsided.

When she read of Pharaoh's pursuit with his soldiers and horses and chariots the murmurs were more muted. The Israelite fugitives displayed their lack of faith in their leader and their god and there was a cry of “Shame;” but the echo was half-hearted. Ama wondered whether she had selected the wrong story. Yet they cheered again when the Lord parted the waters and Moses led his flock out of Egypt and into the desert and freedom; and Ama's faith was restored.

By this time her eye was watering from the smoke of the fire and her throat was sore.

“I think that's enough for one night,” she told them. “If you like, I'll continue some other time.”

“Tomorrow,” demanded the children.

“Tomorrow,” she agreed with a smile.

But that tomorrow never came.

* * *

Olukoya assigned Josef, his most able and trusted lieutenant, to lead the raiders.

With great enthusiasm, Pedro, the alcoholic slave-driver, volunteered to join the party. Olukoya had some misgivings about including him. However, having finished off the garapa he had brought with him, Pedro had been sober for several days and had vowed that he was a reformed character. Moreover he would be leaving his wife and daughter behind in the camp and that was surely some sort of guarantee of good behaviour.

Josef and his men returned with the carcasses of two sheep and bad news. Under cover of dark, Pedro had absconded.

Josef woke Olukoya. Tomba and Ama woke too.

“One moment he was there, holding the sheep's head while I cut its throat. A moment later, when I called him to take the carcass on his shoulders, there was no answer. We had no choice but to beat a speedy retreat,” Josef reported morosely.

“It is my fault, not yours,” replied Olukoya. “I should have listened when the gods spoke to me. Pedro fooled me. The man is ruled by his thirst. He cannot live without the stuff. Are you quite sure that he didn't disappear just to search for a bottle? Perhaps he intended to rejoin you for the return journey?”

“It is possible. But consider my position. I couldn't risk it. He might have returned at any moment with a militiaman. We had to leave at once.”

“And as soon as he had laid hands on a bottle he would have been in no fit state to follow you. We have to work on the assumption that he would either give himself up or be captured. It might have happened already or it might happen in the morning. Either way I fear that Pedro would sell us all for a bottle of hooch.”

“If they caught him at once, before he had a chance to quench his thirst, they might already be following in our tracks.”

“I doubt it. Not at night. They would fear a trap. No, they won't set off until dawn at the earliest. That gives us a little time. We must prepare at once to disperse.”

Tomba had listened to all this in silence. Now he spoke.

“Bra Olu, it cannot work. I know. It is not easy to survive in the forest on your own, the more so when you are living in fear of your own shadow. Many of us will get lost. Many will die of hunger.”

“You may be right, but what are the alternatives? Stand and fight? Give ourselves up?”

“I will give myself up. I will leave at once, carrying a white flag. That way I will meet them perhaps even before they set off.”

“And what will you do when you meet them?”

“Senhor Williams will have arrived by this time. He is the god-father of our Kwame. I will ask to speak to him. I will undertake to reveal the identity of Vasconcellos' executioner, but on certain conditions. First I will tell them what went on at the
engenho
after the Senhor's death. Since I did not suffer Vasconcellos' cruelty myself, Williams might be less inclined to dismiss my testimony. Then I will insist that they promise that only the executioner be punished; and that only after a fair trial. If he agrees to that I will undertake to convince you all to return, but provided only that conditions are improved and that no one but the executioner is punished.”

“And if Williams is not there?”

“I will take my chance on that.”

“Let's assume that he were to agree. Are you suggesting that we should trust him?'

“What choice do we have? Stand and fight? Die of hunger in the forest? Think of the children, the next generation who are going to fight the battle for real freedom, the way you once told me when we were younger, in a concerted uprising over the whole country. We must be realistic, Bra Olu: Palmares days are over.”

“But why should they negotiate? Why not just send in the militia?”

“I can think of two reasons. The first is that this way they will suffer no losses themselves. The militiamen will go home to their wives and children, boasting of their victory without firing a shot. The second is that we are worth money to them. If the
engenho
is to be revived, every one of us who is killed would have to be replaced. Slaves cost them money.”