The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel (5 page)

Kwame could tell that I was not cheered by his information. Soon afterwards he came to see me again, and we took to playing together for a while each afternoon after his lessons.

Gradually, as we listened to each other’s hopes and fears, I felt my loneliness ebb away. Kwame, burdened by the high expectations the court had of him, found consolation and sustenance in our friendship. He developed into a promising heir apparent, and in due course our people were convinced that the future Asantehene would know no fear.

We became so inseparable that people said we were beginning to resemble one another. “As the dog-tamer resembles his dog,” Kwame said. When we finally asked if we might share the same room and the same bed, no one was surprised. My father was pleased with the positive turn our association was taking. So Kwame moved out of his room in the eastern wing and into mine, which was located outside the main building next to a spring where, by dint of an ingenious system of conical vessels, the water burbled into a small basin, even in the driest months of the year.

Soon afterwards Kwame assumed his manly duties to general approval. Although his mother continued to be the head of the family, it was Kwame who led the elaborate farewell ceremonies when his father, Adusei Kra, was on his deathbed. He behaved in the most dignified manner and did not flinch once while the Asantehene’s eyes were upon him. Now and then I gave him reassuring signals that only we understood. Under the scrutiny of the other children and wives of the dying man, Kwame and the fetish priest conducted the rites at his dying father’s bedside: a burning oil lamp passed three times around the face about to lose its expression, water sprinkled on the hands about to abdicate their power and on the feet that need travel no more, and three final splashes of water on the tongue.

An Ashanti does not fear his dying day. His death is merely the ultimate fulfilment of a promise made at birth. But the time of death is never without meaning. He who dies young is a curse to his nearest kin. A dead infant will be spat upon and mutilated by its parents, and must be buried in the place where the women relieve themselves in order that the child’s soul may be dissuaded from returning. An advanced age attests to good behaviour. Old men with white hair and manifold children are cosseted and covered in gold. But Adusei Kra’s death was untimely, and dying at his age was suspicious to say the least. The ancestors might be summoning him so soon because he had committed serious misdemeanours. It was left to Kwame to produce an explanation for the premature departure of his father’s soul. The two of us fancied that Adusei Kra had lost his life to a host of vengeful spirits. For such is the fate of the warrior from the very first day he begins to kill: the more bodies he claims from the enemy, the more numerous the spirits massing against him. It was just as well, I reassured Kwame, that Adusei Kra had been able to avert the worst misfortune that can befall an Ashanti: dying childless. No one could accuse him of being
kote krawa
. He was no “waxen prick.”

“The tree has fallen,” Kwame announced to the people. He assisted his mother in laying out the corpse; she used a large sponge to sprinkle water on Adusei Kra’s loins and cleanse them, just as she had done in the night when he had begotten his son. The slaves and private servants of the deceased were rounded up and sent to accompany their master with a single blow of the sword. In the meantime the ancestors had to be informed of the coming of the fresh soul. The heavy rhythm of sticks beating against the skin of elephants’ ears stretched taut over talking drums, the male and female
atumpan
, led the women and girls to begin a chant: they were glad the dead man had lived so well, glad the dead man had shared his life with them, glad he was setting out on his last journey, glad he was awaited, glad he would be there later to await them when their time came. Glad, glad, glad.

That night I lay against Kwame and held him tight until the sobbing stopped. He told me the last words spoken by his father, with which he had revealed the secret of victory: each attacking phalanx of Ashanti warriors is tailed by a horde of sword-wielding
afonasoato
, ready to kill their own fighters at the slightest hesitation or attempt to flee.

Kwame’s father had saved his final breath not to tell him he loved him, but to impress upon his son the Ashanti battle cry: “To advance is to die. To retreat is to die. Better then to advance and die in the jaws of battle.”

In keeping with tradition, the body of Adusei Kra was laid to rest in a room, where it stayed until the flesh dropped from the bones. Only then would he be buried—in silence—beside the ancestors. It was in this period of waiting that Kwame and I paid a final visit to the deceased. This was no mean feat. Upon opening the door we found the corpse covered in flies. We flailed our arms to drive them away. When we set eyes on the body we saw that it had lost its pigment. It had turned white. To us, white was the colour of death, of the spirit world, the colour of all that is drained of life.

In these hallowed months of mourning Kwame showed a growing interest in the rituals of maturity. Besides, there were new customs to be learned by us both, now that our budding manhood was visible when we were bathed. We were instructed by the fetish priest in the knowledge that is kept from boys until the pubic hair begins to grow. The gods, he assured us, looked kindly upon the promise of our bodies. Fertility prayers were to be recited in order to placate the spirits attending to adult functions of the flesh, which, far from being familiar, had seldom even entered our minds.

But all this did shed new light on the nights we spent together, in which we found a certain consolation, and a closeness that was addictive and deeply reassuring. I sensed that it would be prudent to keep silent about the intimacy between us, preferring to remain a child. I noticed that Kwame was equally reticent once the innocence, and with it the lightheartedness, of our games vanished. We felt that our intimacy arose more easily from a wrestling match than from an embrace, but never found the words to express it.

We enjoyed going to the sanctuary of Twi, not out of piety but because it was one of the few chances we had of getting away from our peers, who teased us for our taciturn ways and quiet friendship. Even when I publicly renounced my old beliefs, many years later, I still thought wistfully of the animistic pantheon at the lake of Twi. The story that goes with it is this.

When Osei Tutu drove the spirit named Twi off his land to make way for the city of Kumasi, Twi sought refuge in the lake nearby, where he leads a reclusive life in water that abounds in fish and has turned the colour of his blood. The spirit named Twi, who is said by some who have met him to resemble a human being, does not wish to be disturbed anew. This is why the local fishermen avoid rippling the surface, and move their craft carefully over his resting place using their hands as paddles. To make sure that Twi lacks nothing and has no reason to leave his refuge to seek what he needs in Kumasi, plentiful offerings must be made under the canopy of the rainforest, where all the gods are venerated with like devotion.

Our pilgrimages to Twi familiarized us with the cruelty and mercy of nature. These expeditions lasted three days, in the course of which we encountered strangling orchids, death trees, parasitic fungi, spitting cobras, acid-spraying insects and the poisonous milk secreted by the teated shrub. In the heart of the forest, where each living creature leeches on another, smothering and destroying in the constant battle for the scarce rays of sunlight, there are also mutually sustaining bonds. Looking closely one finds that, in the midst of all the violence, extraordinary alliances are sometimes formed, the better to survive the struggle for life. Never was I in closer contact with the divine than at those moments when nature revealed to me the root of friendship.

Under the guidance of the priest we learned that the natural world around us is no different from the nature within ourselves. Mutual dependence is the basis of alliance. This was instilled in our minds by means of a game, during which each of us was blindfolded in turn. The one who could see had to guide the other through the forest, stepping cautiously at first and then faster and faster, until both were running fast. Thus the seeing guide learnt responsibility, and the blindfolded follower learnt to rely on his comrade. Eventually we were both able to run at full tilt, blind and elated, without even holding out our hands protectively. Trust is one of the senses.

The morning after our final visit to Twi we waited outside the city gate for six hours until the trade delegation from Elmina arrived. Although there were occasional scuffles, the mood was on the whole dignified and proud. The storytellers were replaced by the troubadours, who whiled away the lazy midday hours with recitations as old as our people. Each rhyme corresponds to a particular
adinkra
, a traditional pattern that symbolizes an adage that is sung to the child from the moment it can recognize the lines in its mother’s carrying cloth. I remember this one:

The nkónsónkónsón says: there is a chain
In life
In death
A chain of one people
One blood
We form new links
At birth
At death
Whosoever we are

The
nkónsónkónsón
is a symbol made up of kidney-shaped links, like two slightly dented eggs joined together, two bodies rolled into one. There is a chain.

Looking back I fancy that it was the
nkónsónkónsón
that graced my ceremonial dress that day, and that I traced its golden lines with my finger as I listened to the song. But I have no memory of this.

What I do remember is that the sun was well past its zenith when an earsplitting, alien salvo in the forest made the birds take flight in terror and signalled that our patience was to be rewarded at last.

Amongst my most private documents, I treasure the report written by Deputy Commissioner van Drunen, officer of the Dutch expedition to the king of Ashanti.

They knew the negroes would not carry more than sixty or at
the most eighty pounds, yet orders were given for large palanquins to be constructed. And also the cases and chests, with a
very few exceptions, were far too heavy. Some weighed more
than four hundred pounds, so that the contents had to be
repacked. Still the slaves can only be compelled to carry them
by violent means and threats of harsh punishment. Not only
that: the palanquins are too unwieldy to be conveyed across
the dense jungle. The refusal of certain officers to accommodate themselves to the manner of travel most suited to the terrain has therefore necessitated clearing a path five foot wide
from Elmina all the way to Kumasi. Add to this the lack of
knowledge of the negro languages, and the immensity of the
difficulties faced by such an expedition to the heartlands of
Africa can easily be imagined.

On 13 September 1836 we embarked on the merchant ship
Princess Marianne.
The soldiers received instructions for the
voyage, but questions as to the task awaiting us in Africa were
left unanswered. Our mission remained strictly secret. After
two days Captain A. Plug weighed anchor and set sail for the
Dutch possessions on the West Coast of Africa. After calling
at Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife we proceeded without
impediment on our voyage until the 26th of the following
month, when we dropped anchor upon reaching the Fort of
St. Antonio at Axim on the coast of Guinea. Five days later
we sailed some little way eastward to the Fort of St. George
d’Elmina, which has been in Dutch hands since 1637. There
we disembarked and set foot on the Gold Coast.

Our embassy, headed by Royal Commissioner Major-General
Jan Verveer, was too numerous to be lodged in the fort. We officers
alone found accommodation in the Engineering Corps’ quarters.
The privates were directed to the vast storage cellars, which have
fallen into disuse since we are no longer licensed to send slaves to
our South American colony of Suriname. The men complained
about the lack of air, the stench and the chill in the clammy windowless dungeons, and were issued with two barrels of rum.

Fort Elmina has become run down since the ban on trade in
West Africans. The financial loss incurred by the ban remains
enormous. Although the minister of Colonies is at pains to recoup
the loss by recruiting West Africans to serve in the East Indian
army, in the first year no more than forty-four slaves were pressed
into service. The task of our embassy is to establish a permanent
recruitment depot for the provision of at least one thousand men
annually.

A few days after disembarking, one of the native assistants
was dispatched to the king of Ashanti to advise the sovereign of
the embassy’s arrival and to request permission to enter his
realm. By mid December both men had returned, accompanied
by a caboceer, a sort of mayor, four ensigns and a band of armed
men and slaves sent by the sovereign to serve as our escort. They
brought the most satisfactory tidings and reported that His
Highness hoped to see us in the following month.