The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel (9 page)

No less than three times did the king let it be known that he
had enjoyed the spectacle. Each time he asked whether the edifice
was now really his. The governor-general assured him that this
was so, but unfortunately, a few minutes after the show had
ended, a fearful storm arose, which blew the temple to pieces and
scattered the wooden wreckage all over Kumasi.

The evening was concluded with the presentation, by the
treasurer, of the gifts the Asantehene wished the Dutch embassy
to convey to King Willem I: a golden pipe-bowl, a golden rudder,
another silken shift, with the request that His Majesty wear it as
a sash, six tiger skins, two live panthers, two macaws and a
hawk.

The Asantehene then contributed two private gifts by way of
assurance to the Hollanders of his devotion and of his intention
to live up to the negotiated agreement: the gifts were his son
Kwasi and his nephew Kwame. He declared that the young
princes were to depart with us to Holland. He was sending his
nephew, the heir to the throne, to accompany his son, in order
that the two might find solace in each other during their stay in
that distant land. He requested us to take the best care of both
boys, with which entreaty we readily promised to comply.

When he sent for the boys to be presented to us they were not
to be found, which angered H.H. so greatly that he uttered some
apologies and terminated the festivities there and then.

Kwame and I had run off into the forest, to get as far away as possible from all the fuss and commotion. We whiled away the evening without finding the words to express our bewilderment at the unthinkable morrow that awaited us. We ran about, making a lot of noise with our laughter. We shouted louder and louder, until we found ourselves in the clearing with the newly erected temple. The place was deserted. We sank down among the wooden struts and fell asleep side by side.

We were woken up by a blast that seemed to signal the end of the world. The fireworks the Hollanders had placed all around seemed to have made an inferno of the temple along with the surrounding vegetation. The earth trembled. We were at the very centre of an explosion such as we had never seen before. There was nowhere to turn. We felt certain that we were about to die, and huddled close together under a sky ablaze with hellish red and lurid yellow. After a while some Dutch soldiers approached the temple to extinguish the smouldering fires with water. We had a few moments in which to compose ourselves, but another shock was upon us: hardly had we crawled out from behind the columns than the noise of the jungle, which had made itself heard again once the pandemonium had ceased, suddenly fell silent. The soldiers noticed this, too, but did not know what it signified. We did. We ran away as fast as we could. A moment later the air was filled with the roar of a tornado tearing through the forest. Branches snapped and were blown away. Trees were uprooted. The temple was blown apart by the storm, and with the flying debris at our heels we fled into the palace.

That night Kwame and I slept apart. Each of us spent the night in the arms of our inconsolable mothers. Clearer than my memory of my mother’s face is my memory of the cloth she was wearing, of my head buried in the patterned fabric covering her heaving bosom. I do not recall any words of farewell either, only the rhythm of a song, sung in a halting voice. This is how I picture the two of us: she is sitting cross-legged on the floor, I am resting drowsily in her arms, and all the while she singsongs the adinkra symbol of Anansi, the five-rayed sun:

Children of the spider Anansi are we
And the wide world is our web:
Love, lust or fate
Bring us to the furthest reaches.
Whichever way we turn in that world-web
There are threads to grasp
And threads to let go.

On the day of our departure we sat tall in the saddles of our Arabian stallions, apparently unmoved. While the Dutch officers received yet more gold and slaves, Kwame and I were ready, our faces inscrutable.

Close to van Drunen and the musicians, who struck up their “March for the King of Ashanti” as a last salute, we headed the long procession. As we filed past the palace my father stood outside in the gallery. He waved his hand.

We came across scattered debris from the temple. Where the path disappeared into the forest, we passed two pillars and fragments of the collapsed frieze. The relief had been painted in grisaille, portraying a scene of strong white warriors with curved breast-plates and banners clustered around a triumphant woman on a throne guarded by a lion rampant. She wore a helmet, and although she held a spear in one hand and a shield in the other, two infants suckled at her large white breasts.

We had left everything: parents, kinsmen, toys, beds and clothing, servants, beliefs and native soil, our past and our future. For two boys who had been severed from their roots so abruptly, Kwame and I were remarkably composed on our journey to the Dutch fort of Elmina. The past was still too close and the future unconscionable. I do not believe either of us shed a tear. We made up for that later.

Despite all the romantic notions about travelling, the truth is that it dulls the senses. The traveller is always one step ahead of his feelings. New impressions eclipse concern for what is left behind. While amassing experiences of the world outside, his inner being goes to waste. Such is his state of mind until the next destination.

On 1 April 1837, around noon, Kwame and I set eyes on the sea. We dismounted quickly and raced across the palm-studded beach. Then we stopped in our tracks, awed by the pounding surf. Never had we seen the waters of the lake of Twi as enraged as this. But when the soldiers and porters, tired of the long hot journey, tore off their clothes and plunged into the waves we overcame our fear and followed their example, albeit gingerly. We took a gulp of water to quench our thirst, but had to spit out the brine at once, much to the amusement of the Dutch soldiers. They cleaved the water like fish. Great white bodies circled around us. Now they were naked we saw their skin was covered in hairs, either fair or dark. We had only seen this on animals.

The Dutch red, white and blue could be seen flying from the fort that loomed in the hazy distance: Fort Elmina. A salty fog hung low in the sky, with swirls of black smoke. The latter disquieted Verveer. He wished to proceed at once to the fort, without observing the official ceremonies of arrival. There was not even time for the band to play the patriotic tune they had struck up at each village we encountered on our way to the coast. The drums were silent as, at a brisk pace, we made for the Fanti settlement at Elmina.

There was a smell of burning. Two whole neighbourhoods had burnt to the ground only recently. People fled when they saw us coming; even an old woman lying on the ground, badly burnt, was abandoned by her relatives. The Dutch soldiers laid her on a stretcher, after which we hurried through deserted streets to the harbour. We rode over two drawbridges into the fort. Verveer withdrew at once, followed by his adjutants Tonneboeijer and van Drunen, in order to be briefed by the commander.

Meanwhile the palanquins were unloaded. The fresh recruits were herded into the slave cellars. There was some confusion as to where to house the panthers. Kwame and I were at a loss in the midst of the commotion. Although the unfamiliar glare of the whitewashed walls made us uneasy, we hardly dared to move. So we just stood there waiting for someone to find us. The salty air deposited crystals on our cheeks. We ran our tongues over our upper lips and it tasted as if we had been crying.

Van Drunen reappeared at long last; he directed us to a small cubicle with one bed. It was situated in the officers’ quarters, high above the courtyard. That evening we were both assigned to sit at table with the major-general, who—it must be said—treated us properly as princes. He instructed his adjutant Tonneboeijer to satisfy all our wishes, while Peter Welzing, the mulatto interpreter, was charged with keeping us company so that we might learn about the situation in Elmina.

After supper van Drunen drew our attention to an elegant, sinuous pattern that had been worked into the railing of the balcony. It was the letter W, he explained, and it stood for the initial sound of the name of the king of Holland. He made us say the name again and again until we could pronounce it exactly as he did. After this he took a torch and guided us on our first tour down the dark passages of the fort.

The old castle dates from 1482. It was built by the Portuguese on a cliff sacred to the inhabitants of Elmina. To appease them, a small sanctuary for the heathen godhead was created in an alcove. Van Drunen showed us the altar and laid an offering there of coconut and yam. He did so without ceremony or untoward display, indeed as if he were accustomed to doing so.

When the Dutch seized the fortress from the Portuguese a hundred and fifty years later, they laboured diligently to turn Elmina into the most important slaving post on the west coast of Africa. They reinforced the walls and expanded the storage spaces. They constructed a landing-pier and invented more efficient means of regulating the traffic of goods to and from Elmina. The walls of the dark cellars were fitted with iron rings, to which the merchandise was tethered. Here the odds were stacked against the men and women whom my father and his father before him had procured against payment. Many of them died an early death from exhaustion, starvation or injuries; others took their own lives in the putrid, writhing mass.

Van Drunen pointed out a narrow slit in the wall, through which a man could only just wring his body. One by one the slaves wrenched themselves through the opening and stepped on to the landing-stage, where they were assessed and sorted, counted, branded and herded into the hold. In this way the whole of the Dutch colony of Guyana was supplied with slaves.

The gallery over the women’s depot offered escape to a select few. The officers would gather there, accompanied on feast days by men of lesser rank, who had been away from home for so long that they could no longer control their lust. From the gallery they looked down on the female slaves, who did not cower and hide, but rather drew attention to themselves. In their despair they even jostled for prominence. The Dutchmen would make their choice from among these women, whereupon a rope ladder was lowered from the gallery. There was a scuffle to climb the ropes, but those who succeeded were thrown back into the crowd. Only the women who had been singled out were taken up on to the gallery. Such a woman would be taken to bed by the soldier, and as soon as he was done she would be lowered back into that sea of misery.

Yet she was better off than the others. She had a glimmer of hope while she waited anxiously for the signs of pregnancy, for if she was with child her departure would be delayed until after the birth. If she was lucky enough to give birth to a half-caste, she would be freed and granted the use of a hut in the village and a little land. There she would live, among the Fante, together with her bastard child who was both her shame and her redemption. The child was baptized with the name of its father. This is why there are Africans in Elmina who go by Dutch names such as Bartels, Vanderpuye, Hensen, Bosman or Vroom.

Van Drunen led us to our cubicle. We took our clothes off. They were our only possessions. He draped the robes carefully over the back of a chair. After he left we tried to sleep the way we used to sleep in Kumasi, but were kept awake for a long time by the pounding of the surf against the battlements and the memory of our elongated shadows against the subterranean vaults. We thought we heard echoes from the depths of that labyrinth, footfalls on the steps, which led from nowhere to nothing.

That same night, 1 April, Major-General Jan Verveer wrote the following letter to the minister of Colonies:

It is with the greatest satisfaction that I give Your Excellency the
assurance that the reception accorded to me in Kumasi surpassed
the most lofty expectations and notably that the entire attitude of
the king of the Ashanti has been profoundly gratifying. The
Dutch flag has become that of the Ashanti, and will fly from
the king’s palace henceforth. It pleases the king to call himself
the subject of our honoured Sovereign. And the unconditional
manner in which he has committed his beloved son and his
nephew to the care of Your Majesty’s Government with a view to
their acquiring a Dutch education speaks volumes, in my humble
opinion. Enclosed please find the contract signed by myself and
by His Highness the Asantehene of Ashanti with a cross in lieu
of a signature. However, to ensure a sound understanding of the
situation and to eliminate all grounds for potential criticism I
wish to reiterate, in the present missive, the distinction between
the recruitment of these thousand men and the acquisition of
slaves in the past.

These recruits are to be issued an advance payment of their
wages in Kumasi, which they may use to buy their liberty from
their former masters. They leave the capital as free men on their
way to Elmina. Upon arrival there however they are charged for
the sum of their advance payment minus twenty guilders,
which are permitted to them as ready money. The remaining
sum, which they owe us, will be subtracted from their wages
in the East Indies. They are unfamiliar with our money and
raise no objections.