This Side Jordan

by Margaret Laurence

  More wine. Then Janowicz would fling himself into the heavy oak rocker at the back of the Anastasia Furniture Mart, and rock furiously to and fro, weeping and bellowing that he was the Devil’s Advocate, and how could Johnnie stand there and listen to him without argument.

  ‘For sweet Mary’s sake,’ Johnnie would say, laughing until he ached, ‘do you want to ruin the only decent piece of furniture you’ve got for sale?’

  Well, it had been the first good laughter he’d ever known, and they’d got drunk, the two of them, many a time, and cursed the world for its parsimony. But neither owed the other anything. For Johnnie, the shop had been a refuge from the grudging charity of Aunt Rose’s child-infested house. As for Janowicz, only through constant talk could he maintain the sacred belief that his failure was on a grand scale. Two-fingered hand that hoisted the sour crock of cheap red wine; prophetbeard bristling with shed food snippets; stale shirt and rancid armpit; all verses in an epic poem, like the fall of Lucifer. Johnnie had been an obliging listener. It had been a fair exchange.

  Johnnie and Miranda did not go out that night, and all evening there was a silence between them that neither tried to breach.

  They went to bed early and lay side by side for a long time, still and quiet in the sweat-drawing night.

  Johnnie’s body was tight and hard, and deep inside him his need throbbed, like the tickling tic of an anarchical nerve, like a misplaced heartbeat. That was the worst – the absurdity of it.

  ‘You asleep, Manda?’

  ‘No. I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Cigarette?’

  ‘All right.’

  In the distance, the drums sounded. They would keep on all night. These were not the drums of highlife, slicked-up, sophisticated. These were the old drums, played out under some frayed casuarina tree, or beside shanties of mudbrick and tin, in any open space, where the sun and feet of centuries had packed the red earth hard as stone. There would be dancing – the pumpkin hips of women swaying, the muscles of men perfectly controlled even in frenzy.

  ‘Blasted drums,’ Johnnie said irritably. ‘They never stop.’

  He crushed out his cigarette.

  ‘Turn over,’ he said, ‘with your back to me. Then at least you’ll look like my wife.’

  Almost meekly, she did so. But it was no use. He couldn’t forget, even momentarily, how she looked from the other side, belly swollen nearly to her breasts. Like a cow’s udder, blue-veined, heavy, drawn drum-tight with its contents.

  ‘I know it’s miserable for you,’ she said. ‘But – you could have kept on longer –’

  ‘We’ve talked over all this before,’ he said tiredly. ‘I couldn’t. I’m sorry. I can’t explain, but there it is.’

  ‘Johnnie – you do want this baby, don’t you?’

  ‘You were dead keen to have it,’ he said, ‘and you’re having it. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Perhaps I was wrong.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Of course you weren’t wrong. You needed it, I suppose. You can’t help the way you are, any more than I can. Now let’s get some sleep before it’s morning.’

  Johnnie lay limp as seaweed.

  In the limbo between reality and sleep, thoughts merged and melted and changed. Magic symbols – a rune, a spell, a charm – the thing that made him different from any other man on earth. His name. John Kestoe. What proved identity more than a name? If you had a name, you must exist. I am identified; therefore, I am. If they say ‘who are you?’, you know what to reply. It makes for convenience. It might as well be a number, but numbers are harder to remember.

  Kilburn, London N.W. The room was dark in day, cold as a corpse. The squeaking stairs wound, up and up and up, tiring the legs off you, and the bits of untacked lino were traps to trip the unwary. He remembered how scared he always was of running into that nameless man-tenant who used to finger him, cursing sweetly into his ear all the while with breath that stank of sugared violets. The hallways smelled of boiled swedes and shop-fried fish and the harsh soap that was the women’s last defence against chaos. The room was up so close to the top of the building that you knew the choking winter fog would still be with you after it had lifted from the street.

  That was the room his mother died in, while he sat by and watched. Strange, how dim kids are about things. The red stain spread and spread on the quilt, and it was quite a while before he realized it was her blood doing it. His father watched, too, sitting empty-faced while she cursed and prayed by turns. The Irish had good lungs – you could say that for them, those who didn’t have T.B. No feeble last gasps for them. People must have heard his mother dying all the way up Kilburn High Road.

  Most of what she screamed you couldn’t understand. The sacred and profane words tangled together in a raw hoarse cry. One phrase stood out stark – ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph, assist me in my last agony –’. In later years he realized that the words came from ‘A Prayer For A Happy Death’.

  His father, the halfman, gutless as always, kept repeating over and over to his son that they didn’t have money for a doctor, and he was afraid to call the priest because ‘she done it herself’. It was some weeks before Johnnie realized what it was that she had done, and why. His aunt Rose took pains to tell him his mother had been a sinful woman, and at first Johnnie had believed her sin to be suicide. It came as a surprise to him when he found out that she had not meant to kill herself but only the little blind humanworm in her.

  For a while, after he discovered the truth, he had felt himself in some way tainted. The thought of himself issuing from that body – it had made him sick with disgust, as though he could never be anything more than a clot of blood on a dirty quilt.

  At last, in desperation, Dennis Kestoe had shambled out to find the priest, leaving the boy to sit beside her in the evening-filled room, where the one weak ceiling bulb, far up and faint, only nibbled at the yellow-grey fog and the shadows.

  He had watched and watched, terrified lest she realize he was there and cry out to him, to him who had nothing to give her in her need, not even his love.

  So Mary Kestoe died, her black hair tumbling wild around her neck, her eyes open wide, as hard and bitter as they’d been in life, and staring her frantic fear of hell. And the high cold attic room grew silent at last.

  ‘Heart of Jesus, once in agony, pity the dying!’

  Father Duggan had hurried in, lisping, spraying spit through yellow teeth. The boy knew the prayer wasn’t right, but he left the priest to discover that the dying was now the dead.

  They questioned him, then, the priest and Aunt Rose, who, phone-summoned, had flurried in wielding a black umbrella as though Michael the holy standard-bearer had sent her in his stead.

  Had Mary Kestoe made an Act of Contrition? Think carefully, Johnnie – did she say these exact words? Did she say ‘O my God, I am sorry for having offended Thee, because I love Thee’? I don’t know – I don’t remember – she was yelling and yelling and then it was quiet. I don’t know.

  Think, now.

  ‘I think she said it,’ the boy whispered.

  No flaming sword descended to cut him down for the lie.

  He did not know if he had saved her from the deep pit and from the lion’s mouth, that hell engulf her not. He did not know how they had finally settled the argument. She lay in consecrated ground and how she got there he did not care.

  Because, chiefly, the words he remembered from the time alone with her were not words either of obscenity or prayer. From amid the shuddering sobs and the animal paingrunting had come suddenly the clear Irish girlvoice, surprised and frightened – ‘Oh God, my guts won’t stop bleeding – what am I going to do at all?’

  When he was a little boy, there was a night prayer he used to say, a prayer to the Mother of God. He never said that particular one again. But he dreamed it sometimes.

  ‘O Mary, my dear Mother, bless me, and guard me under thy mantle –’

  FOUR

  The sun sucked everything into itself. T
he circle of gold, Nyankopon’s image, which shot its arrows of life into man and leaf, now shrivelled the life it had made. The sun was everywhere, and men, dying miniature deaths before it, turned away and slept.

  Only a few challenged the Lord of Creation, dimly aware in their liquid-feeling bones that they did so, fighting off His drug of sleep, angry at the melting of their minds in the golden fire of noon.

  Nathaniel, sitting at his desk, fought to keep his eyes open and his attention from wandering. He looked at Jacob Abraham Mensah, scarcely seeing him. The big man, always slow-moving as a puff-adder, seemed unaffected by the noon lethargy. He stood huge in front of Nathaniel’s desk, like a giant whose dignity is half ridiculous or a clown whose absurdity is sometimes transformed into nobility.

  For the benefit of a wealthy but illiterate cocoa-farmer parent from Ashanti, Jacob Abraham was dressed today in an impressive Kente cloth. Normally he never wore African dress. But today he was all a man of the Ancient Land.

  ‘We are Africans,’ the headmaster was saying ponderously, as though he had just discovered the fact. ‘We are Africans, Amegbe. We must remember the greatness of the past. As I was saying to Mr. Amponsah, we must remember our responsibility to our past. The great kings – Osei Tutu, Opoku Ware, Mensah Bonsu, Prempeh the First –’

  Nathaniel wondered uneasily if this apparently pointless recital were to have a political twist. It would be like Mensah to bait him about his politics. Nathaniel imagined fleetingly a life in which he did not have to worry all the time about Mensah. He gazed at the big man dully, hating him.

  But Jacob Abraham was soaring above politics today.

  ‘We have a responsibility to this country,’ the clown-giant continued, ‘to turn out men who can govern it. States-men and professional men. On every side, we need education and more education.’

  Nathaniel nodded. Jacob Abraham was like Ananse, the Giant Spider, who, full of conceit and cunning, drew in the unsuspecting to his web. Nathaniel, who had harboured similar thoughts about responsibility, fought against agreement, trying to untangle the web and discover what the big man was really after.

  ‘I don’t see –’

  ‘What I mean,’ Jacob Abraham said, ‘is that the time is approaching for Futura Academy to take the next step.’

  Nathaniel looked at him blankly.

  ‘I refer, of course,’ the headmaster said, ‘to the application for government inspection, which, if we pass it, will put us on the list of accepted Secondary Schools.’

  Nathaniel gasped audibly.

  The headmaster fixed him with an angry glance.

  ‘Don’t you think we could pass inspection, Amegbe?’

  Nathaniel could not find the courage to reply. Did Mensah really believe that the school would pass muster? Mensah was capable of believing anything. To have government acceptance would mean financial aid. Mensah wanted that. But he did not seem to realize it would have to be earned and that it would not, in any event, be a personal gift to himself. Nathaniel waved his hands feebly, despising the weakness of the gesture.

  ‘There are certain things –’

  ‘What things?’ Jacob Abraham demanded.

  Nathaniel tried to judge how far he could go without giving offence. He wondered for a moment if Mensah had any real conception of how poor the school was.

  ‘Well,’ he said tentatively, ‘the syllabus – perhaps a standard one should be drawn up – you know – more in accordance with government schools, instead of leaving it to each teacher to do as he wants –’

  ‘Anything else?’ Mensah said icily.

  Nathaniel sweated.

  ‘I do not mean any disrespect,’ he stammered, ‘but – the attendance –’

  ‘It is up to you,’ Mensah said, ‘to hold their interest so that they attend your classes.’

  Nathaniel felt sick. He lowered his head and did not speak.

  ‘I thought you believed in Futura Academy,’ Mensah sounded almost hurt.

  ‘Oh, I do,’ Nathaniel breathed.

  He loathed himself, but he could not take back the words. He was afraid.

  Then Mensah did a surprising thing. He put his hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder, and when Nathaniel looked up, startled, he saw the other man’s eyes were pleading with him.

  ‘Maybe not next term, then,’ Mensah said, ‘but soon. Soon we will pass inspection. It will grow into a fine school, eh?’

  Mensah would not spend money on more teachers or equipment. He would not have the buildings repaired. He believed that Futura Academy would, of itself, grow and improve. Nathaniel remembered a saying of his people – ‘God is growing cocoa’. Not the people. God. One did not have to do anything except sit and wait for it to happen.

  And yet – something was there, apart from the simple desire for wealth. Looking at Mensah now, Nathaniel saw a man whose eyes were aflame with dreams.

  Nathaniel felt in himself, too, the terrible hunger to believe. Perhaps it would happen so. Perhaps the school would grow, slowly, into something fine.

  Nathaniel thought of the boys who would be writing their examinations next week. Most of them would fail School Certificate, not because they were stupid but because they wrongly believed that Futura Academy had adequately prepared them to sit the government examination.

  ‘I wonder,’ he said slowly, ‘what happens to the boys who fail?’

  Jacob Abraham pulled his cloth tightly around him.

  ‘How should I know?’ he snapped. ‘I am not running an employment agency. They take their place somewhere.’

  Nathaniel wondered where that place could possibly be, the place for the semi-educated, the boys who failed and did not know why they failed, the hopeful applicants for engineering and medical scholarships who did not realize they must be able to do more than simple arithmetic, and could not write a business letter without making a dozen mistakes.

  Because they had more education than the majority in this country, they wanted important and significant jobs, jobs for which they were not qualified. The past was dead for them, but the future could never be realized. Nathaniel felt a despairing kinship with them.

  On his way home that afternoon, Nathaniel met Lamptey. The Highlife Boy wore a haggard face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Nathaniel asked.

  Lamptey jerked up his draped trousers with a defiant tug on the embossed leather belt.

  ‘Everything go wrong, man,’ he said. ‘Can you lend me a quid, Nathaniel?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Nathaniel said coldly.

  Lamptey grinned.

  ‘Don’t be sorry, boy, I never thought you could. Some life, eh?’

  ‘Lamptey,’ Nathaniel said on impulse, ‘do you ever hear anything from any of the boys after they leave Futura?’

  ‘Hear from them?’ Lamptey shrilled. ‘You crazy, man?’

  ‘I mean –’ Nathaniel regretted having spoken of it, ‘what happens to them?’

  ‘What do I care what happens to them?’ Lamptey said irritably.

  Then the sharp face softened. Leaning back on his heels, he gave Nathaniel a sad smile.

  ‘I don’t worry about those boys,’ he said. ‘They got their education. Let ’em go. The ones I worry about, Nathaniel, are the boys who leave before they finish. It’s bad, man. It’s very bad.’

  Nathaniel was slightly taken aback at the other’s concern. But he nodded his agreement.

  ‘I was sorry when Cobblah had to go,’ he said. ‘He was a smart boy.’

  Lamptey snapped the fingers of both hands, lightly and delicately.

  ‘Oh, Cobblah –’ he sniffed. ‘He’s not the one I’m worried about. You know Lartey?’

  ‘I never thought he was much good.’

  Lartey skipped most of Nathaniel’s classes. He was a chunky, sullen boy of sixteen, utterly uninterested in education, and desperately homesick.

  Lamptey hugged his green and gold spotted shirt tightly around him.

  ‘No good,’ he moaned, ‘you said it, man. True as God.
You remember about a week ago, that night I took some of the fellows out? Well, that Lartey was one. That bush boy finally made up his mind he wants to see Accra. Jesus, he was a real fancy man! Dressed real fine, buying drinks for us all. I had it fixed with this girl – Comfort, her name is. You should see her – fine girl. And clean, too. I could guarantee he wouldn’t pick up a thing. Wha-at? Like a ripe paw-paw, she is, that’s the truth. Man couldn’t help biting her, she taste so sweet. Lartey say he’ll see me next day. That’s it. Finish.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Next morning he was gone,’ Lamptey said. ‘He planned to leave all the time and I didn’t know it. Hopped a mammy-lorry in the middle of the night. Went back to his village. Just like that. Twenty miles the other side of Koforidua.’

  Lamptey flung out both arms and flapped them disconsolately.

  ‘He just fly off like that, neat as a sparrow,’ he said, ‘and never a penny I get from him, the fancy bugger.’

  Nathaniel stared at the other schoolmaster, the Highlife Boy, the pimp. Then he threw back his head and laughed. And after an injured moment, Lamptey joined in. The two of them stood in the street howling with laughter, until they were weak, until they had almost forgotten why they laughed.

  Aya was resting on the bed when Nathaniel came in. He still could not see the bed without a glow of ownership, for it had been the first piece of furniture they had bought in Accra and it was still the most splendid. It was a big brass bed, with a heavy frame above it for curtains or a mosquito-net. At the four corners, large brass knobs gleamed like gold, and the railings at foot and head were embellished with metal flowers and bows. Into the centre rail at the head was set a small mirror, and all four posts, enamelled black up to the knob, were painted with blue and pink flowers. Nathaniel had slept in it for six years, but it had never ceased to surprise him that he actually owned its magnificence.

  Aya looked tired, and yet there was excitement in her eyes.