Read The Book of Secrets Online
Authors: M.G. Vassanji
The Book of Secrets (41 page)
In his letters to Gregory, Corbin shows the reserve we have come to expect of him; yet I wonder if behind the neutral language in a letter, almost exclusively about Mariamu, he hides any feeling for her. About the loss of the diary he appears almost indifferent; that he felt more strongly about it, at least later in his life, we learn from two of the many letters Anne Corbin wrote to Gregory.
Anne Corbin’s letters to Gregory are more spirited, and suggest a relationship of friendly intimacy that is somewhat reserved in the early years, becoming more open, admiring, and dependent towards the end. It was a relationship, one must conclude, whose nature is open to speculation by those interested in the intimate life of the poet.
October 23, 1946
Government House
Entebbe, Uganda
Dearest Richard —
How absolutely thrilling to meet again! Unfortunately our stay in Dar was brief — and sudden. Both factors beyond our control, I assure you. But to see you again!
Thank you so much for coming, as I assume it was for our sake — and yet I do recall that you rather enjoy such occasions once in a while, don’t you, if only to needle the officials and their wives.
What
did
you say to the two junior memsahibs that scandalized them so? Freddie came to your rescue, saying something about the temperament of the artist — but, may I say this, Richard, you were watched like an explosive device on the move with its fuse burning ever shorter!
It was nice to see you again and in your element. You seem happy in Dar, one day you must tell me about it. Please do write.
It is so strange returning to Uganda. There is a feeling of dêjà vu at seeing it all again, yet everything is decidedly different. Rumour has it soon it will be packing-up time for the Empire, which is why we are here. Freddie still has the trust of the old chiefs, who may be needed when the time comes. After that it’s retirement for us in good old England, though I wonder how we’ll adapt to the little island after a lifetime of exile in the tropics.
Freddie loves being back in E.A. He became quite nostalgic in Dar and asked for a tour of the Indian and African districts. I think he was looking for the store where his pen turned up. He must have found the store, but I didn’t ask him about it. He still has the pen — it has a special value for him.
Thank you again for the book. I am enthralled.
But now I must rush — the Girl Guides are expecting their badges and we mustn’t keep them waiting.
Love,
Anne
April 6, 1965
Sevenseas Manor
Burntoak
Surrey
Dearest Richard —
The seasons are still difficult to adjust to but spring is always welcome. The daffodils are out, masses of them, and other bulbs — hyacinths and anemones. It only remains for the sun to come out
to brighten the colours. Life is calm here, and not bustling and constraining like the Service. But Sevenseas is not exactly Government House, nor the residence of the British Representative on some lovely tropical beach.
Peerages were handed out to some former governors, though we were passed over. It came as a bitter blow, though he did not say much but sent a letter congratulating Sir Edward of Tanganyika. This was just the jolt he needed to get back to his memoirs and he is working hard at them. There are many photos and scrapbooks to sift through, some of them still in crates. They brought back a lot of memories. He missed that lost diary again. I wish I had it, he said, looking up sadly from the piles of snapshots and papers.
Fate works in mysterious ways, and the
strangest
coincidence happened to us recently. At a colonial “do” in London, a charming couple from Tanganyika was introduced to us. When Freddie mentioned that he had served in Moshi in 1920, the man said, why, he had lived in Moshi as a child at the same time. His name is Ali Akber Ali and he is rather pompous in a stiff sort of way. Freddie took to him. Where were you born? he asked, and Mr. Akber Ali said, “In a place that’s not on any map. I wonder if it existed at all.” Queer, wouldn’t you say? Try me, said Freddie in that way he has, and guess what our Indian replied: “Kikono!” Freddie met Mr. Akber Ali one or two times in the City after that, for old times’ sake, but I declined to go.
Do write, dear Richard, and write often. Poems and published books are welcome as always, but to this pedestrian soul a simple letter brings more joy.
With kindest thoughts and the warmest wishes from
Yours,
Anne
And so, Ali met privately with Alfred Corbin and did not tell Rita about it. Did Corbin tell Anne what they talked about? I see two men at a table in a spare yet exclusive club that would have befitted a former governor in the colonies, a knighted public servant. As he looked at the elderly Englishman, the mzungu, Ali must have thought: In the colonies he was king of kings, here simply a respected member of the establishment. Ali would remember him dimly from his childhood memories of Moshi; Pipa had told him much more about Corbin. Ali also remembered his wife, having helped her in her garden as a boy; she had not come, perhaps had not remembered him. But Sir Alfred had, and had suggested this meeting. What did he see in the younger man before him? — shades of Mariamu? And the urbanity, the polish, the acquired Englishness of the Indian — how much did they mock him, the real Englishman, bring to the fore the events of fifty years ago? When he had told the girl, Wherever you are, if you need me, don’t hesitate to call upon me.… It would be easy to find him, a colonial officer, in any part of the world. Now, in London, her son sipping an expensive wine, discussing the Labour government and its prospects, the Common Market, the Commonwealth.… With questions on the mind of one, answers on the other’s. What more was said; how many more times did they meet? Was the relationship between the two, whatever its precise nature, acknowledged …
Appendices
(1) “Many are the conditions of life we met that would sound unbelievable today, many customs we saw that have disappeared from the face of the earth. Today the word Empire is taboo and colonialism is discredited. We do not have subject races but underdeveloped nations. A chapter of world history has therewith been closed. We went with the best of intentions, to give of our best …”
From the conclusion of
Heart and Soul
(1966)
the memoirs of Sir Alfred Corbin,
KCMG, OBE
.
Correspondence
Cambridge, Mass
May 2, 1988
Mr. Fernandes:
… Sir Alfred Corbin died in his home in Surrey in July 1971.
He was at that time consulting with the
BBC
on a drama titled “The Barons of Uasin Gishu,” based on the lives of the white aristocratic settlers of Kenya. It appeared much later here on public television in 1982, on a show called “Sunday Night Theatre,” which every week brings (somewhat wistfully) Old England and the Empire to the American republic. Anne Corbin died in 1980. There are two sons and a daughter.
Good luck with your reconstruction — can I call it that? — I still have to see it — will I see it? I myself have come from a major battle regarding authenticity and authorship, at a conference in Toronto, where the big question was: Have our texts come to us interpolated by succeeding generations — a question of reconstruction of another sort, but with certain similarities to your efforts, don’t you think? Guess which side I was on.… An inconclusive battle, with much at stake. Watch out for future developments …
Regards,
Sona
Three months have passed since I last saw Rita, almost three months since I handed over to her Alfred Corbin’s diary as I had more or less promised. It was a brief meeting, at the airport lounge, prior to her departure. She took the diary gratefully from me, then pointedly asked, “And everything else?” “I will not disclose,” I said. And so we parted; she to return to London.
What I can never disclose, give to the world, is mine only in trust. The constant reminding presence of a world which I created, a history without the relief of an outlet, can only serve to oppress. And so I have decided to relinquish it. Only then can I begin to look towards the rest of my life and do the best with the new opportunity that has come my way.
In a short while, a man will call to pick up this package of material — notes and scribblings and research I have put together for Rita. It is, as she put it, “everything else,” everything I have written and compiled in relation to the diary — what I have come to think of as a new book of secrets. A book as incomplete as the old one was, incomplete as any book must be. A book of half
lives, partial truths, conjecture, interpretation, and perhaps even some mistakes. What better homage to the past than to acknowledge it thus, rescue it and recreate it, without presumption of judgement, and as honestly, though perhaps as incompletely as we know ourselves, as part of the life of which we all are a part? For Rita, then, all this. To do with as she will, to bury it if she must (and if it will allow her).
After I have surrendered this material, which overtook my life for these past months, I will go out and take a walk along Uhuru Street, and perhaps even stroll into the mnada, the bustling discount market where it all began, where Feroz, my former student, recognized me and stopped to give me a lift, and later put an Englishman’s diary into my hands. Some shopping may be in order, now. At the end of a recent letter, Sona invited me to visit Canada and the U.S.A., where he says many of my former students will be eager to see me. A fare has been offered, and I have gratefully accepted the invitation. A holiday abroad at this time will not go amiss.
When I return to Dar it will be to this same apartment, thanks to Feroz, and — more important — to a new position which, after much effort, he has finally found for me. It is that of a part-time teacher at a new private school that has emerged to meet the recent growing demands to reinstate the rigorous standards we had once in education. The headmaster of this school is from Kenya, and he has already given me a tour of the place. I must confess, rather unfairly I started comparing: the grounds of this school are not even a fifth of those of the old Boyschool. But it is a new generation of pupils I will teach, boys and girls of mixed race, bright, with fresh hopes and promise, whose up-to-date experiences and outlooks are bound to challenge and rejuvenate even this old teacher. I don’t know the full story behind the job, what strings were pulled, and I will not speculate at this point. I have told the headmaster I will take a month off, to go abroad, before
returning to take up my duties. The new job, I expect, will allow me to undertake some projects that I have recently promised myself to pursue.
But I must stop now, the man has arrived for the package.
Pius Fernandes
12 August, 1988
Dar es Salaam
The symbols
*
and
†
following definitions indicate Swahili and Indian words respectively. These words, especially the Swahili, may have origins in Arabic.
askari — a policeman, guard, or watchman
*
avatar — an incarnation
†
ayurvedic — herbal; using ancient Indian medicinal traditions and methods
†
baazi — a bean curry
*
bagala — a boat
*
bao — a board game
*
baraza — a public meeting
*
bhajan — a devotional hymn
†
bhang — a drug
†
biriyani — a rich, spicy Indian rice dish
†
buibui — a thin black veil for women
*
bunduki — gun
*
bwana — used as title, equivalent of “Mr.”; used to address someone, as in “sir”
*
carom — an Indian game for two or four, played on a square board, using black and white discs
†
channa — chickpea curry
†
dandia — a traditional stick-dance
†
dhol — a kind of drum
†
dhoti — loincloth
†
dhow — a lateen-rigged boat or small ship
djinn — a kind of spirit; a jinnee
†,*
dudu — insect
*
duka — a shop
*
Eid — a Muslim festival
eti — a word used to draw attention, as in “I say”
*
feldkompanie — German army unit
fisi — hyena
*
garba — a traditional Indian dance
†
gharry — hand-drawn tram
gopi — cow-girl lover(s) of the god Krishna, with the union being sexual-mystical
†
gyan — hymn
†
hadith — Muslim text relating Prophet Mohamed’s life and deeds
halud — a kind of scent
†,*
Hamisi — Thursday
*
heller — a unit of money introduced by the Germans
houri — a beautiful woman promised in the Muslim Paradise
hutu-tutu — a territorial game involving two teams, often played on picnics
†
Jambo — a greeting
*
jiv — a soul
†
jumba — a house; corruption of “nyumba”
*
Juma — Friday
†,*
kalima — the Muslim creed that begins “There is no God but Allah”
Kamba — an African people
kanzu — a cotton smock, frequently white
*
Kaunda suit — a kind of suit popularized by President Kaunda of Zambia
khanga — colourful printed cloth with a catchy line of text on it
*
kiboko — a whip
*
kikapu — a basket
*
kikoi — a kind of cloth, with a border
*
kofia — cloth cap, hand-embroidered
*
Kundalini — a spiritual force
†
Layl-tul-qadr — a Muslim festival
maago — a proposal of marriage
†
maalim — an exorcist; a learned man
†,†
maandazi — a sweet fried bread
*
maghrab — dusk
†
Maji-Maji uprising — a revolt by Africans against the Germans in 1905; from maji
*
, meaning “water”
mandap — a large ceremonial tent
†
Marhaba — a greeting
*
matata — a bother, fuss, or hubbub
*
mbuyu — baobab tree
*
Mfalme — King
mganga — healer; doctor
*
Mira Bai — a famous Indian female mystic of medieval times
†
mnada — market
*
mshairi — poet
*
mukhi — a spiritual and temporal leader of a Shamsi community, whose duties are performed voluntarily
†
Mwafrica
— (meaning “The African”); a Tanzanian progovernment newspaper of the 1960s and 1970s
mwalimu — a teacher; a respectful title for President Nyerere, a teacher by profession
*
mzee — old man; used as form of respectful address
*
mzungu — a white man
*
namasté — a greeting involving joining one’s hands in front
†
ngalawa — a dugout boat
*
nikaa — religious text read at a Muslim wedding
nyanyi — baboon
*
pachedi — a woman’s head-cover
†
paisa — an Indian unit of money, smaller than a rupee
†
pandit — a Hindu learned man
†
pilau — an Indian fried rice dish
†
pili-pili bizari — chillies and spice
*
pita-piti — a picnic game
†
pombé — an alcoholic drink
*
Ramadhan — a sacred month in the Muslim calendar; observed with fasting in daylight hours
rasa — an Indian folk dance similar to a garba
†
shaaytan — spirit
†
shamba period — a school period allocated for cultivation
shetani — spirits
*
Shikamoo — a greeting
*
simba — lion
†
sirdar — a person of high political or military rank
†
Sufi — Muslim mystical order or sect, or a person belonging to one
tabalchi — a tabla player
†
tabla — a drum
†
tambi — vermicelli
*
tawith — a charm containing Quran inscriptions
†
toto — servant boy; a corruption of mtoto
*
, meaning “child”
ugali — a preparation of maize flour, to eat with stew
*
vitumbua (pl.) — sweet fried bread
*
wazee (pl.) — elders
*