The Devil that Danced on the Water

by Aminatta Forna

  ‘Oh.’ He pondered a while. He didn't write anything down but continued to look at me. In turn I noticed he was quite young, younger than me by about ten years. ‘What do you want with these papers?’

  ‘I'm doing some research,’ I answered.

  ‘What kind of research?’

  ‘Just some personal research. It's a family matter.’

  The man looked at me, raised his hand and levelled his index finger. ‘What's your name?’

  ‘My name? Aminatta Forna.’

  He peered at me more closely, inspecting my hair, my western clothes and manner; shades of disbelief crossed his face. ‘Are you his wife?’

  ‘Whose wife?’ I asked. I was completely nonplussed.

  ‘The man whose case you are interested in.’

  ‘No, I am not,’ I said flatly, rudely.

  He seemed about to ask another question, then abandoned the idea. He folded his arms and laid his head down again. Just before he did so he remembered there had been a point to our conversation. ‘You must see Thomas Gordon. He will be here shortly.’ And he went back to sleep.

  We left and came back half an hour later. By then Thomas Gordon had been in and gone again, this time over to the court building, they said. Someone offered to telephone him there. In time Thomas Gordon himself appeared. He looked like an archetypal Creole civil servant, lacking only his bowler hat and cane. He wrote down our request on a piece of torn paper, and then began to search through some of the piles of documents on the floor at his feet, apparently at random. After a few minutes he appeared to give up and made a couple of telephone calls. Finally he told us to return the next day at the same time, when a copy of the proceedings would be made available to me. He told us there would be a charge.

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, that's up to you,’ he replied enigmatically, smiling, not moving to get up or to shake my hand. In the end we agreed a ten-thousand-leone ‘research’ fee. I counted the notes and remembered what the leone had been worth the day I offered to buy the British high commissioner's house, when I was six years old. It was then two leones to the pound. Now it was close to three thousand and the currency was recognised nowhere in the world except in Sierra Leone.

  I went back the next day, and the day after that – in fact I went back every day for a month. Sometimes I succeeded in seeing Thomas Gordon, sometimes I didn't. I was sent to the high court registrar in another building, where I filled out a form and waited two days, only to be told that what I needed to do was submit a letter to the head of department stating which documents I required, and the reasons why I wanted them. No one seemed to know where the documents were actually held or if they existed at all. If they did, they didn't seem inclined to share the information. There came a point when I realised the pursuit was futile, but by then I couldn't seem to extricate myself. I had become locked in a system where form existed without function: a labyrinthine procedure of no relevance to the final outcome which, anyway, seemed unimportant to everyone except me.

  Each time I went up to the court registrar's office I passed the burned-out shell of the law courts. They had been built by the British in the nineteenth century and the grand, white and blue, colonial facades were surprisingly intact. Crows had built their nests on the window ledges, untidy heaps of sticks around which the large black birds hopped and squabbled. But through the gaping windows there was just a great void: floors, ceilings, walls, whatever had once been there was reduced to a pile of rubble.

  38

  On the way back to the house later in the day I noticed the ruins of the old CID headquarters. It had been one of the first buildings razed by the rebels on January Sixth. Foday Sankoh, the RUF's leader, had been held there once and imprisoned at Pademba Road during the 1970s; in fact he had been in detention during the same period as my father. He was held in Wilberforce, while my father was in Clarkson. After Sankoh was released he had sworn revenge on the APC government and retreated to the bush to raise his merciless ragtag army of bandits and children. I had been told that Sankoh, who came from the north of the country, had on more than one occasion maintained he was related to our family. It was more than a remote possibility, given the size of most polygamous African households. In Sierra Leone, with its population of around four million, there are fewer degrees of separation than in most places. It was even said by some that this terrible war was in some way a revenge for our father's fate. Sankoh was not the first to try to lay claim to my father's legacy, but he was perhaps the least likely.

  As I watched a man stepped out from behind a ruined wall of the CID building, casually zipping his fly with one hand. I could see, through the empty doorway, other men facing the walls. It dawned on me that the place, so closely associated with the terrible events of the past, was now no more than a makeshift public toilet.

  Morlai told me his story of what happened when he was arrested and taken to the CID. I found him the next morning, sitting on a low wooden stool at the back steps watching the cook fry plantains for breakfast. Another pair of chickens had been delivered for Simon and me, a white cockerel and a small brown hen. I sat down next to him, still in my dressing gown.

  At daybreak on the morning after our father had been arrested Morlai returned to the CID carrying a tray of tea and bread for both our father and Ibrahim Taqi, who by then had also been arrested. He walked towards the main entrance, but there he was pushed back by the guard. Outside in the car park he protested. The guard struck him hard across the shoulders with the butt of his rifle, the tray toppled and the hot tea spilled on the earth. Morlai picked up the pieces and came home.

  When the CID came to search our house a few days later Mum had been in town. She was on her way home, driving down Kissy Road, when a Fulah man, who owned a stall selling sweets and cigarettes in front of the flat and store where Abu Kanu lived, hurried over to her car where she stopped in the traffic. The Fulah trader hissed through the car window: ‘Missus, den been cam na dis house, den been dae talk say den dae go na Doctor Forna een house.’ The CID had visited and said were on their way to our house next.

  Mum drove home as fast as she dared. She pulled up outside the house and ran up the back stairs calling for Morlai. She and Morlai were standing in the master bedroom when the officers entered. They asked who he was and demanded to know what he was doing there. Morlai replied that he was a servant, changing the sheets on the bed. A woman officer walked up and stood directly in front of him. She asked his name.

  ‘Morlai Sorie,’ Morlai answered, unwilling to give his real surname. Her eyes travelled to his breast pocket. She leaned forward and plucked out his college identity card. On the back it read: ‘Morlai Forna, c/o Mohamed Sorie Forna.’ The woman slapped him hard across both cheeks. When the search of the house was complete they pushed Morlai down the stairs and bundled him into the back of the Land-Rover.

  There Morlai paused in his story for a moment. Ola, my stepmother's young niece, appeared on her way to school. She bobbed a small curtsy towards each of us. Morlai and I nodded back and greeted her. She smiled shyly. Her hair was done up in tiny braids that reached from the edge of her scalp to the crown of her head, where the ends fanned out like pineapple leaves. Her oiled skin shone, dark and glossy as a tamarind seed. The evening before, Simon and I had driven down to the beach for a beer at sunset. We sat at a makeshift bar on the sand, watching a group of small boys playing in the sand. I had been charmed by their naked, abandoned play, until I realised what they were doing. They were belly-crawling across the sand, executing perfect military manoeuvres. The barman said they came from the rehabilitation centre for child soldiers a few miles away, what was once a luxury beach hotel. I let my eyes follow Ola as she went to say good morning to the other members of the household; her genteel manners seemed to belong to another age entirely, not a world in which children of her age were turned into blank-eyed killers.

  After she had gone Morlai resumed his story. He spoke, as ever, without a trace of self-pi
ty. Once or twice he even laughed in a wry sort of way: ‘People used to say there was a machine at CID,’ he told me. ‘That they used to flog the prisoners. It was supposed to be some sort of mechanical whipping machine. If they put you in that room, ah, you'd be calling on God to help you.’

  The room was dark and smelled of chemicals. Morlai guessed it was used as a dark room. He was left standing in the middle, turning his head this way and that, trying to make out shapes in the darkness. Then, without warning, came a whistling sound, and suddenly he was struck on the back of his legs, across his buttocks, across his chest. From all around him lashes cut through the air and into his body, striking him from every direction. He tried to jump, he held up his arms to protect his face. From the occasional shuffle and sound of breathing he guessed the blows were being dealt by men. Men who stood in each corner of the darkened room, armed with flexes. After a while he was dragged out.

  Later he was taken to be interrogated. Morlai pleaded he was a student who lived in his uncle's house. He knew nothing. Someone behind him was smoking a cigarette and touched the glowing end to the skin of Morlai's back. Just when Morlai thought he might faint, his interrogators gave up. He was pushed into a holding pen where twenty or so men lay listlessly on the floor. There was no food, no toilet, only a small amount of water. Through the bars he could see the comings and goings as more suspects arrived. He didn't see anyone he recognised. After two days they let him go.

  Two days, during which I was too ill to notice Morlai wasn't there. I remember how quiet the house was, though, as I drifted in and out of sleep. I thought little of it. I didn't realise we had become pariahs. No one came near us. The daily visitors, friends, the endless petitioners, the folk from up-country who came to pay their respects, the neighbours who stopped by and sat on the back veranda for hours playing draughts, slapping the wooden discs down on the outsize, handmade board – all had disappeared. The house had always rung with voices; now it was deserted. Mum, the most security conscious of individuals, even stopped bothering to lock the door when we all went out. If the CID turned up for an impromptu search at least they wouldn't break the locks. Even a thief wouldn't be caught dead near our house.

  Around that time Mum too was detained. It was Prince Ba who came for her. By then our father and Ibrahim Taqi had been moved into cells at Pademba Road Prison, where they were being held in solitary confinement and refused all visitors. Miss Dworzak had tried to see my father, insisting she was his lawyer and should have the right. They arrested her, too. By then the round-up had begun in earnest: hundreds of people were being brought into the CID every day and crammed into the filthy holding pen until there was barely room to sit.

  Women were brought in among the male suspects; many were wives of the men who had been arrested. One of the new intake was a heavily pregnant woman. Mum heard she later gave birth in Pademba Road. My stepmother was led to a narrow cell containing nothing but a chair. She could hear people protesting: someone's sister called out that she had only arrived in Freetown the day before for the Bundu initiation ceremony of her niece. The air was stifling. It stank of sweat and carried the sickly sweet odour of sewage. High up was a barred window, too high to see out. She sat on the chair and waited through the day. Nobody came.

  In the early evening the door was unlocked. It was Prince Ba again. He told her she was being taken to Pademba Road. Mum's heart was beating fast, but she forced herself to walk slowly to the Black Maria and climbed into the back. Prince Ba locked the doors and walked round to the passenger seat. The vehicle turned out of the CID compound for the short drive to the prison gates. They pulled up and Prince Ba ordered her out. My stepmother gazed up at the tall, painted doors and waited for him to lead her inside, but Prince Ba was no longer there. She glanced round and saw him climb back into the front seat of the Black Maria and drive away. She was left to make her way home.

  That autumn Memuna ran away from school. A neighbouring farmer brought her back, late one night. He had found her cornered by his dogs, hiding in a tree on the edge of his land. The next morning at breakfast the story was the talk among the pupils in the dining room. Before morning assembly I searched Memuna out, but my sister would not confide in me.

  As for me, I just turned wild. I hid behind the library building and flung a stone at Marius Georgiades, who had looked up my skirt while I swung from a rope in the playground. I turned out to be a better shot than I had anticipated. In the headmaster's office I stared at the blue and yellow egg on Georgiades's right temple with awe. I was placed on Daily Report, a sort of suspended sentence, which required my teachers to enter a written assessment of my behaviour at the end of each class. I had to carry around a small blue notebook for the purpose and I could be stopped at random by teachers and prefects and obliged to produce it. If I failed, I could be punished.

  At Halloween I sat outside the headmaster's study listening to the sounds of my friends as they bobbed for apples. I was not permitted to attend the party. There were only two pupils in the whole school who were on Daily Report. I was one, Robert Payne was the other. Robert Payne's reputation as a troublemaker was legendary and I was shocked to find myself in his company. We sat at opposite ends of the short corridor writing a composition on the story of the Willow Pattern. Robert Payne was taking the whole thing in his stride, urging me to join him and creep down the stairs to watch the party. But I felt desperately ashamed. I sat and wrote my essay out diligently, the blue and white patterns of the engraving in my textbook swimming through my tears.

  A month later I was Robert Payne's equal. I swore at the matron and had my mouth washed out with soap; I fought in the playground; I gave up listening in class and stared out of the window; once I sat at the back of a French lesson firing missiles at the rest of the class until I was thrown into the corridor. The teachers were appalled by my behaviour. So were my friends, who one by one drifted away from me. I spent more of my time alone. I was incapable of analysing my behaviour or controlling it and I swung from one misdeed to another.

  Towards the end of term an exhibition of antique Bibles was mounted in the school library. The headmaster made the announcement from the podium of the main hall. The books had been loaned by a private collector and the headmaster was evidently proud and pleased our school should be honoured and entrusted with the safekeeping of these priceless objects. A rota was to be drawn up so that over the weeks that followed everybody in the school would have the opportunity to see these rare and beautiful books.

  In due course it was the turn of my class. We walked over to the wooden library building and for forty minutes we gazed in silence. There were at least a dozen different Bibles from earlier centuries: pages of tiny brown script on paper that was transparent with age; blue-black letters boldly printed on rough-textured leaves; columns of italic letters on wide creamy pages. In the centre of the room was a Book of Hours, laid wide open on an empty table. I stared at the ornate lettering, the prayers, immaculately written by the hand of some long-dead monk, the gilded borders of the pages filled with the images of saints, their faces blank, their bodies intertwined with vines and flowers. On the next table was a tiny Bible, no more than an inch or two tall. Several of us gathered around it. Our teacher, glancing over our heads, told us it was almost certainly the smallest Bible in the world.

  One evening not long afterwards I walked past the library. It was during prep and I was alone. It was almost dark. On a whim I decided to try the library door. It was open. I entered the darkened room, illuminated only by the light of the rising moon, which glimmered through the high windows. I stood there alone, surrounded by Bibles. I peered at the Book of Hours and again at the miniature Bible. Dark bookshelves crowded around me. Above me, among the rafters of the vaulted ceiling, some creature or bird scratched. Once we had found an owl sitting fast asleep on the cross beam in the library. Another time it was a bat, hiding in the folds of the curtains. I heard the sound of the supper bell and the faraway clamour of voices that rose in resp
onse. I worried suddenly about being locked in, or being found there at all. We were only allowed in the library during supervised periods. I moved back towards the door and opened it slightly. I hovered there for a second. Then, on an impulse that came out of nowhere, I turned back, reached out my hand, grasped the miniature Bible, put it in my pocket and slipped out, pulling the door shut behind me.

  I joined the flow of pupils heading for supper. All through the meal I could feel the Bible lying in my pocket. At bed time I transferred it under my pillow and laid my head on top. I didn't think about what I was doing, I didn't pray or anything like that, although every now and again I slipped my hand underneath the pillow and held tightly onto the little book.

  In the morning I woke to the memory of what I had done. I pulled up the covers of my bed and sat on top of it, lingering there until most of the girls had dressed and left the dorm. Beverley alone waited to walk down with me. I hesitated, not knowing what to do. I decided to try to secrete the Bible back into my pocket, but I was made clumsy by nerves and as I reached under the pillow my fingers fumbled and I dropped the book onto the floor.

  Beverley's eyes went to it immediately. ‘It's the little Bible!’ she exclaimed. I could hear the surprise in her voice. I snatched it and shoved it into my pocket.

  ‘No it isn't. It's mine. It's not the Bible, just a little book.’ Beverley didn't argue with me. She didn't even ask to inspect the book I was claiming was my own. Who knows why? She must have realised what she had seen. An hour later, after morning assembly, I ran out ahead of the other children as we made our way to the classrooms for early registration. The library door was still unlocked. I exhaled. I went into the empty library and I put the tiny book back on the table.

  39

  I trekked up the rutted rack, abandoning the car with Dura the driver, to walk the last half mile or so to the houses. Along the way Morlai and I were joined by a young woman with a limp and a curled forearm. She spoke to me in English and told me her name was Aminatta. I remarked we had the same name.