The Tomorrow-Tamer (20 page)

“You are the same,” Moses said, bewildered. “And yet–you are not quite the same.”

A tall, heavily built man slouched past, arranging his black and turquoise cloth casually over one shoulder. Godman called out to him in pidgin.

“Hey, you Kwaku! Meka you ready?”

“I ready one-time. Go 'long, man. I coming.”

Moses peered questioningly at Godman.

“Who's that?” he asked sharply. “Not another–? Not your–?”

“That one?” Godman said offhandedly. “Oh, that is only Kwaku. We do the oracle part together. These young men who pay to see us–they do not believe, you know, but we make them laugh. They like me–you would be surprised. It is not
such an easy thing, to find where the laughter is hidden, like gold in the rock. One has to be skilled for this work. The
pirafo
used to be fine jesters, and now, perhaps, again.”

He touched Moses lightly on the hand, and Moses, looking at the man, began to comprehend.

“You have done well,” Moses said. “At first I did not see it, but now I see it.”

Godman shrugged.

“I have known the worst and the worst and the worst,” he said, “and yet I live. I fear and fear, and yet I live.”

“No man,” Moses said gently, “can do otherwise.”

The band began to assemble. Two boys with the wide faces of coast fishermen, but now wearing pink striped shirts and fancy sombreros, grinned as they clambered onto the stage with their battered cornets. A lanky desert man, his ancient past burned onto his face in the long gashes that told his tribe, began to plink at a flower-painted guitar. The drummer set up the kettle drum and the bass drum, new and shiny, beside the graceful thonged drums and the carved wood drums born of the forest longer ago than anyone could tell. Shuffling feet, scraping chairs, as the crowd came in.

And Godman Pira waved to Moses and hopped up to take his place with the other performers on the broad and grimy stage.

 

A FETISH FOR LOVE

D
is my wife, madam,” Sunday said, standing to attention quite unnecessarily. “She name Love.”

Had the African woman been pocked as a sprig of coral, or ancient as a prophetess, Constance would still have been delighted with the name. But Love was young and had an agreeable appearance, so the name was even more of a treasure.

Surely Sunday would be less difficult now. He was a great deal older than Love, and the disparity seemed sad, but Constance did not want to consider even the possibility of more problems. Sunday, virtually major-domo in this house for the six years Brooke had lived here as a bachelor, had not taken easily to the presence of Brooke's wife. He was polite, always, but he was not friendly. Constance was friendly, and she saw no reason why other people should not be the same. Another thing–Sunday resented the slightest criticism. He constantly carped at Ofei, the steward-boy, but when Constance mentioned (quite quietly, suppressing her horror and indignation) that the kitchen store-room was a-flutter with the amber wings of cockroaches, Sunday marched in angrily
and saturated everything with D.D.T. spray, ruining an entire case of expensive imported potatoes. Sunday's wife had never lived here with him on the coast. She had stayed in her upcountry village, where he used to visit her occasionally on week-ends, cadging a lift with a lorry-driver he knew. When he suggested bringing his wife here, Constance had agreed at once. Of course. Why had they not thought of it sooner? He would be happier and therefore more reasonable.

Constance held out her hand, and the girl took it, but very lightly, touching only the fingertips.

“I greet madam.” The voice was a hushed whisper, only a shade removed from silence.

Sunday was strapping on his cook's apron once more. His ageing but still-handsome face now yielded a warm astonishing smile.

“She too fear, madam. Nevah she stay for Eur'pean house befoah dis time. She stay for bush. But I teach she, madam. She savvy some small pidgin.”

Small pidgin. No wonder she was so shy. Had “pidgin”, through some semantic maze, come from “pigeon”? Love herself was like some small pigeon, soft and plump, fine-feathered in cloth of a blue delicate as sky, printed with yellowing green leaves like ripe limes. She stood perfectly still, but uncertainly, as though her heart might any moment rise in panic and she herself fly away, as noiselessly as she had come.

“I'm glad you're here, Love,” Constance said, enunciating distinctly. “I do hope you'll be happy with us.”

Love looked at her blankly. Sunday translated, an angry spitting out of words in his own tongue, ending with an admonition in pidgin–“t'ank madam”.

“I t'ank madam,” Love said obediently.

Now a little parrot. Constance smiled at her own slight sense of irritation. Love would learn.

“She'll do the baby's wash, Sunday?”

“Yes, madam. I tell you so. She do all. You got some cloth for wash now?”

“She can start with the bucket of nappies. It's in the bathroom.”

“One-time, madam,” Sunday said. “I bring now.”

The girl waited, not understanding, the brown face expressionless as a bird's. Sunday started out of the kitchen, his gaunt body bent forward in his hurry. He paused beside his wife and muttered to her. She nodded, and now the composure in her face seemed a genuine calm, not merely a bulwark against fear. Constance felt reassured and hopeful.

That evening she told Brooke about the arrival.

“It was worth all the arrangements, to get her here. He'll be more settled. Probably he'll work better, too.”

“He worked all right before, I thought,” Brooke said.

“You didn't know. You weren't here all day. He was–well, not exactly sullen, but–”

“That's his nature, Con. You can't change it. But if he wants her here, there's no reason why she shouldn't be.”

“Wait till you see her. You'll understand what I mean. She's simply lovely. I hope you don't agree too heartily.”

“Don't be daft,” Brooke said, and Constance, laughing, sat down on a hassock beside his chair and leaned her head against his arm, for she could not truthfully imagine Brooke wanting anyone else. They had been married for a year and a half; and now they had Small Thomas, who was sleeping at the moment, pink and milky under his mosquito net, and Constance, who had taught too long at a girls' school in England, still felt surprise at this wealth so unexpectedly
acquired. Brooke continued to read the airmail edition of
The Times
, but he put a hand out and touched her hair.

“She did Small Thomas's washing today,” Constance continued, “and it was perfect.”

The baby's name now almost seemed to be Small as well as Thomas, because that was the way Sunday referred to him, so Constance and Brooke had picked up the expression as well. The Africans had a knack with names. Constance was fascinated by the titles painted on the jaunty and jouncing lorries, themselves descriptively termed “mammy-wagons”. Tiger Boy, King Kong, One-time Boy, Bless You, Freedom Man. The names of people were no less appealing. Imagine anyone called Sunday. When Constance had asked him about it, he said it was because his name was Kwesi, and she had sensed some mystery, rich and strange, until Brooke matter-of-factly told her Kwesi was the name given to the Sunday-born. Long ago Sunday had worked for some burning missionary, to whom African names meant darkness and damnation, so he had placatingly changed his name for the job's sake. Now Constance wondered about Love.

“How do you suppose she got the name, Brooke? At a mission school? I'll wager anything you like that it's from Saint Paul to the Corinthians. ‘Now abideth these three–Faith, Hope and–' Did you know that some churches substitute Love? Probably if she'd gone to a different one she'd have been called Charity, which would have been so cold, in comparison, wouldn't it?”

“Her village isn't far from Eburaso,” Brooke said absently, leafing through the paper to find the financial page. “I expect someone in her family worked for Opie, Grange & Love, that's all. Big ironmongers. Sell mainly those black iron cooking-pots the Africans use.”

“How dramatic you are.”

“Mm?” He looked up then, and smiled. “Sorry. Only–”

“What is it, Brooke?”

He put an arm around her.

“Be careful,” he said.

 

Constance had to admit after a few weeks that Love was something of a disappointment. Sunday remained unchanged, neither happier nor unhappier than before. Love herself was an enigma. She worked so quietly and moved so unobtrusively one hardly knew she was there. The features of her face seemed to denote a gentleness, yet she was no more friendly than Sunday. Her understanding of English had improved, and now she appeared to grasp nearly everything Constance said to her. But she replied only with a laconic “Yes, madam” or “No, madam”. Even to Sunday, Love spoke very little. When he shouted at her from the kitchen doorway, she would nod wordlessly and fetch wood for the stove. She worked with an easy physical grace, yet stolidly, with a phlegmatic quality that troubled Constance.

Sunday was a Christian who, unlike Brooke and Constance, went regularly to church. He would set off, dressed in his best khaki trousers and jacket, swinging his ebony cane with its mighty brass handle the size of a door-knob, shouting his haughty greeting to neighbouring cooks and stewards languidly enjoying a sabbath laziness in their own compounds. A few paces behind her husband Love would walk, softly splendid in her cloth of limes and sky.

“Does she want to go with him?” Constance peered thoughtfully out the window. “Does she not want to? Impossible to tell. Does she mind walking behind him in that way? I certainly would.”

“You're not her,” Brooke said. “Think we should take Small Thomas to the beach this morning, Con?”

On weekdays, while the bungalow was being cleaned by Ofei, Constance would put the baby in his pram and take him to the open front stoep. She would not leave him alone. Sometimes puff-adders were killed in the garden, and a scorpion was occasionally discovered on the bungalow's ochre walls, veiled by the moonflower vines. Constance stayed beside Small Thomas, talked to him, scrutinized his face to see if he had yet mastered the art of smiling. When he slept, sometimes Constance would read. More frequently, she merely meditated in the opium sunshine watching the hibiscus petals sleazily disarrayed like garish satin petticoats in the slight wind, or the mud-wasps hovering like miniature helicopters, or the sleek grey lizard perched on his grey and camouflaging rock, waiting to flick his lariat tongue around the incautious flies.

Since Love's arrival, Constance had a new occupation in the mornings. Concealed by the stoep pillar, she watched Love work. She was not trying to check on the girl's efficiency. She wanted, quite simply, to see Love's face when the girl believed herself to be alone.

Today Love was wearing her oldest cloth, a shabby salmon-pink, faded and hideously patterned in what appeared to be the keys for some giant prison door. Her bare broad feet, her least attractive feature, squelched in the damp earth of the garden as she carried the bucket to the flat stone beside the outdoor tap. She squatted and began to rub soap on Small Thomas's soiled clothing. Her arms moved rhythmically, and soon her body swayed and bent to the same beat. Then she began to sing. Her song was neither gay nor sad. It was a voice chanting, repetitive as rain, and that was all. Her face was no different from the one she always wore.

Love finished the washing and put the wet white pile in an enormous basin which she hoisted onto her head. She sauntered effortlessly over to the clothes-line as though the headpan had been weightless as a leaf. When everything was pegged on the line she returned, dumped the wash water, rinsed and cleaned the buckets. The soap frothed around her feet.

“Love!”

The girl's head came up. “Madam?”

“Would you stay with Small Thomas for a few minutes? I'm going next door. I shan't be long.”

With the unhurried calm which Constance had come to expect of her, Love walked over to the stoep and sat down beside the pram. Constance fussed a little over the baby, needlessly rearranging the coverlets. Then she walked briskly away, knowing her sense of momentary freedom was not a betrayal of her child, yet feeling it must be so.

When Constance returned, the garden boy was chopping with his machete at the coarse grass in the uncultivated half-acre at the side of the house. Constance had told Love she could use this land for a tomato patch, which was the thing Love seemed to want above all else. The garden boy was nasally intoning a highlife tune. The girl on the stoep sat with her back to Constance and did not hear her approach.

Love had Small Thomas in her arms. She was not crooning to him, or speaking. She made no sound at all. She was not even rocking him to and fro, as Constance herself might have done to stop his crying. Love was only holding him, lightly, almost loosely, and looking at him.

Startled at her own intensity, Constance felt she must see Love's face. She had to see it, to know what it contained now, this moment. She turned and walked around the other side of the bungalow, and when she approached again she walked
with particular care so that her shoes would not scuff betrayingly against stones. Then, hardly knowing what to expect, she looked at Love.

Nothing. Nothing to be seen. Perhaps a warning pebble had been dislodged after all, for everything had changed back, like the metamorphosis in a child's fairy tale–when the spell is broken, all things return to their own forms and no one can believe it was ever otherwise. Small Thomas was in his pram, dozing. Love sat beside the pram, her cloth in neat folds around her.

Constance felt cheated and at the same time disgusted at herself. She examined the baby's pram and turned crossly to Love.

“You picked him up, Love, didn't you?”