Wife of the Gods

by Kwei Quartey

Ayitey held out his hand to Hosiah.

  “Greet Mr. Ayitey,” Gifty urged, giving him a gentle push.

  Hosiah shook hands the way he had always been taught, but he was staying very close to Granny.

  “And you say he has some heart trouble?” Ayitey asked her.

  “Well, the doctors at Korle-Bu say he has a hole in the heart.”

  “Eh-heh. I see. Come here, little boy.” He held his hand out.

  Hosiah looked up at Gifty.

  “It’s all right,” she said.

  He moved tentatively toward Ayitey.

  “He’s not going to hurt you, Hosiah,” Gifty said.

  Ayitey pulled Hosiah’s shirt up over his head and gave it to Gifty. He put his ear to Hosiah’s chest. She watched intently. The herbalist, her herbalist, turned Hosiah this way and that, listening to his chest and stomach, touching him all over, from head to limbs.

  “When he runs,” Ayitey asked Gifty, “he can’t breathe well?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Eh-heh. I see.” He flicked his fingertips along the bottom of his chin as if his skin was itching. “What trouble is in the family?”

  “His father’s mother disappeared many years ago—no one knows what happened to her. And the boy’s uncle is paralyzed.”

  “Do you know of any curse on the family?”

  “I am sure there’s no curse on my side, but as for his side, I don’t know.”

  Hosiah came gladly back to Gifty as she waited patiently for Ayitey to give his diagnosis.

  “No, it’s not any hole in his heart,” he said abruptly.

  “Is that so, Mr. Ayitey?” Gifty was thrilled. “I knew it!”

  “Evil spirits are disturbing the boy,” Ayitey went on. “They have entered his chest because that is a favorite place for them to stay. So when he is trying to run, they are taking his air.”

  “Ao, mercy!” Gifty exclaimed under her breath.

  “Also, the evil spirits like to go in and out of his heart; that’s why it is making some noises there and not beating well.”

  Gifty was nodding slowly. “Can you sack evil spirits from his body?”

  “Yes,” Ayitey said. “First thing is we wash the boy with water in which we have put abatasu leaves from the Shai Hills. That will take the disturbing spirits away.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “Then he will drink the ashes of the nereyu plant with hot water. That will repair the damage done to his heart.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ayitey, thank you.”

  He went out to get the treatments ready. A few minutes later, a young woman assistant brought a large metal pan of water wide enough for Hosiah to stand in. Ayitey came right behind her with a bunch of the dark green abatasu leaves in his hand. He dropped them in the water and stirred them around.

  “All right,” Ayitey said. “Now take off the rest of the boy’s clothes.”

  “Granny, what are they going to do?”

  “They’re just going to give you a bath with that special water,” Gifty said, starting to pull down his pants.

  He clutched at them and tried to stop her. “But I had a bath this morning, Granny,” he protested. “I don’t want another bath.”

  She took his face between her hands. “Sweetie, we have to do this because Mr. Ayitey knows it will make you better.”

  “No,” Hosiah said. “I don’t want to. Can we go home now, Granny?”

  “We have to hurry up a little bit, Madame Gifty,” Ayitey said, impatience creeping into his voice. He ordered the assistant to help.

  Gifty yanked Hosiah’s shorts down, and the assistant pulled them off completely. Hosiah began to cry.

  “Shh, shh, come on now,” Gifty said. “It’s just a little bath, Hosiah.”

  He pulled away from her. “No!”

  She swept him up in her arms, but he executed a trick that all children know, stretching his arms above his head and kicking his legs straight out so he became like a stiff board that slid out of her hands like butter. The instant his feet touched the ground, he backed away to make his escape, but Ayitey and the assistant were ready for him. He grabbed Hosiah by the arms, and she took his feet. He was screaming and kicking as they got him to the pan. For a moment, the assistant lost hold of his feet.

  “Hold him!” Ayitey yelled at her.

  She got him back.

  “Put him inside,” Ayitey grunted. “Inside.”

  They pushed him into the water in the pan, and Hosiah bucked and kicked. Ayitey pressed his head down and leaned on his shoulders.

  “Wash his body, wash his body, quick,” he shouted at the assistant.

  She struggled to rub him down with the water, but the wetter Hosiah’s skin became, the slicker it was. From where Gifty stood, the fight was a blur of small, flailing limbs.

  Hosiah came up coughing and choking. He took a deep, desperate breath that sounded like a whoop, and then he looked at Gifty standing by and his eyes asked her, Why don’t you help me?

  “Okay, okay,” Ayitey said desperately “We’ve washed him enough. Now we give him the nereyu.”

  They picked Hosiah up bodily. He was slippery and difficult to grasp as his legs kicked like little pistons. They brought him down to the mat.

  Ayitey looked appealingly at Gifty. “Madam, we need your help, please. Hold his legs.”

  Gifty’s stomach lurched. She knelt down and held on to her grandson’s ankles. She heard herself saying, “Mr. Ayitey, I want to stop. It’s enough, please.”

  Ayitey either ignored her or did not hear her. He told the assistant to proceed. She reached for a small calabash beside the mat, swirled it around a few times, and poured a dark grainy liquid into a spoon. She held Hosiah’s head tight in preparation to force-feed the medicine down his gullet. She suddenly snatched her hand away, and her eyes went wide as she saw blood in her palm.

  Gifty would always remember that moment. The world turned dark and cold as she realized what had happened. Sometime during the struggle, Hosiah had struck his head against the metal pan. Now she saw the gash in the soft skin of his scalp, and from it rivers of blood flowed down his face like bright red paint.

  WHEN DAWSON AND FITI got to Bedome, chairs were being set up in an open area, apparently in preparation for some kind of ceremony.

  “It may be there’s a durbar today,” Fiti said. “Or maybe a new trokosi is to be given to Togbe Adzima.”

  Bedome was a village indeed. The ground was uneven and reddish in color. The houses were really huts made out of mud brick and covered with thatched roofs. It intrigued Dawson that Bedome should be so far behind booming Ketanu, just on the other side of the forest.

  A few children were playing with one another, running about and rolling around while goats munched placidly on whatever it was they ate and chickens pecked at invisible nourishment on the ground.

  As they passed through the village, Dawson and Fiti greeted anyone who eyed them with curiosity. All the women seemed to be doing something—sweeping or carrying water in large bowls on their heads—but there was a good supply of men sitting languidly around doing nothing in the “life is boring” kind of way, not the “life is good.”

  But one of them redeemed himself and got up to approach Dawson and Fiti. He was thirtyish, with a broad, open face and huge eyes, dressed in a button-down teal shirt and dark trousers.

  “Ndo,” he said in greeting, but he switched to English. “Good morning, Inspector Fiti.”

  “Good morning, John.”

  They shook hands, and Dawson wondered how they knew each other.

  “Welcome, sir,” John said. “You have come to see Togbe?”

  “Yes. This is Detective Inspector Dawson from Accra.”

  “Oh, yes. Good morning, sir. You are welcome.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Please, come with me.”

  They followed John. He gestured ahead. “There is the house.”

  Though small, Togbe Adzima’s house was the only one in the
village made out of cement blocks. It was dirty brown with a single badly framed window.

  “Please, wait here for one moment,” John said. As he turned to go into the house, a rap tune sounded from his pocket and he fished out a mobile and flipped it open to his ear. Dawson blinked. A mobile phone in the middle of a village with no electricity or running water. Amazing.

  “Who is John?” he asked Inspector Fiti.

  “He does different things in Ketanu—odd jobs, carpentry, selling mobile phones, and so on, and he also acts as an assistant to Togbe.”

  “I see.” Enterprising man, obviously.

  John came back out. “Please, he says you should wait a little.”

  “Thank you.”

  John disappeared for a while and then returned with two women, one carrying a stool on her head and the other a large animal skin, probably that of a gazelle. They put the stool down and the animal skin in front of it. Evidently Togbe Adzima was to take his “throne” there. Two more women brought a wooden chair each for Dawson and Fiti to sit directly opposite the priest.

  A small, curious crowd had quickly gathered. The adults stared, and the children fidgeted and giggled. Unlike in a jaded big city like Accra, the smallest distraction was of intense interest in a village. Dawson had forgotten that. This public assembly wasn’t exactly what he had envisioned.

  “We won’t be able to question Togbe Adzima closely with this kind of audience,” he commented to Fiti.

  “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

  Adzima finally emerged, and Dawson realized he had been expecting a bigger, heartier man. In fact, the priest was quite average in stature. He was dressed in traditional cloth wrapped around the chest and thrown over one shoulder, and he wore an odd straw hat shaped like an upside-down tumbler.

  He took his seat on the stool and arranged himself and his cloth. Only then did he look up. He wasn’t in good shape. His eyes were bloodshot, and several teeth were missing or decaying behind slack, pendulous lips stained red with kola nut.

  John formally introduced Dawson and Fiti, taking much longer than an introduction needed to. Then he came over to Dawson, which was the cue to present the drinks. Dawson gave up the Beefeater first, and then the schnapps, and John chanted something in Ewe and raised each bottle skyward, presumably so God or the gods could take a good look, after which he stood the bottles on a small table to Adzima’s side. He opened the schnapps, poured a little out in a shot glass, and presented it to Adzima, who took a sip and handed it back. Now it was Fiti’s turn, and then Dawson’s, both taking a swig from the same glass. Dawson tried not to pull a face as the schnapps seared his mouth and sent a shot of fire down his throat. The stuff was ghastly. If only he had some Malta to wash it down.

  Still in Ewe, John asked them the standard question on Adzima’s behalf: “What is your mission here?”

  “We are investigating the death of Gladys Mensah,” Fiti said. “Detective Inspector Dawson here has come from Accra.”

  John recited this to Adzima, who rendered the reply back through John. “What is it that you want to know?”

  “Togbe Adzima,” Fiti began. “We understand Gladys Mensah used to visit Bedome on occasion.”

  Again through John and back.

  “Yes. Correct.”

  “And we understand she was here on the evening before she was found dead,” Dawson said.

  “Maybe so. I don’t know what evening that was.”

  “Friday.”

  “She was here many times.”

  “Do you remember speaking with her on Friday evening?”

  Adzima signaled John, who came over and held a whispered conversation with him. John nodded, turned, and abruptly asked the crowd to leave. They looked sullenly at him for a moment and then reluctantly straggled away. They had evidently been hoping to witness the entire exchange.

  Once everyone had left, Adzima beckoned Dawson and Fiti to come closer, and then he dispensed with the formality of speaking through John, although John stayed close by. This was where Dawson’s ability to speak Ewe came in handy, because he could address the priest without an interpreter and catch any subtle shades of meaning.

  “So back to my question,” Dawson said. “Did you have any kind of discussion or argument with Gladys on Friday evening?”

  Adzima shook his head. “Why should I argue with her?”

  His voice was like the warty, slimy surface of a toad’s back. Dawson was not enamored of toads.

  “Did you have any problems with her?” he asked.

  “What kinds of problems?”

  “She told you she didn’t like the way you treat your wives, isn’t that true?”

  Adzima shrugged. “And so? I paid no attention to her.”

  “She was against you and against the trokosi tradition.”

  “Yes, and that’s why she has died.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told her, I warned her—if you try to go against this tradition that has been in Ghana for so many thousands of years, if you try to stop it, the gods will take action against you. And you see now? Look at what has happened.” Adzima shook his finger at Dawson. “Don’t play, I say, don’t play with the words of a High Priest in his shrine. If I warn you about something, take heed.”

  “Did you tell Gladys that on Friday evening?”

  “Not just that evening, sir. Don’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you? I told her a hundred times! Every time she was here, I tried to warn her. I told her, look, the gods do not like this. Be careful. We have a peaceful life here, Inspector Dawson. We have no problems. We don’t need anyone to come and tell us how to live.”

  “Togbe Adzima, when Gladys left to go back to Ketanu, did you follow her?”

  Adzima looked genuinely surprised. “Follow her for what?”

  “Yes or no. Did you follow her back to Ketanu?”

  Adzima leaned back and began to laugh softly. “Oh, Mr. Detective Man all the way from Accra. You are funny. No, I didn’t follow her.”

  “Where were you around that time?”

  “I was inside,” Adzima said, gesturing to the house.

  Dawson looked at Inspector Fiti to see if he wanted to ask anything, but Fiti shook his head.

  “The girls who are brought to your shrine,” Dawson said, “do you think they’re happy to come here and be separated from their families?”

  He felt a poke in his side and from the corner of his eye saw Fiti glaring at him.

  “Aha!” Adzima said, smiling crookedly. “I knew you were going to ask me that, because it’s what you kind of people from Accra always do. You see, this is our tradition. In our religion, these girls come to the shrine to learn godly ways, and they are the blessed ones. That’s what you don’t understand. And these white people who come all the way from abrochi—Denmark or U.K. or somewhere—to tell us our customs are bad and the women at the shrine are slaves and all this kind of nonsense. What about white people too and their ugly ways? Men having unnatural relations with other men. What about that, eh? Kai, what nastiness!”

  Adzima spat a long stream of phlegm, and it landed on a rock with deadly accuracy.

  “Do you treat your wives well?” Dawson said.

  “Oh, yes!” Adzima said indignantly. “I treat them like queens. I have to. If I didn’t, do you think the gods would not have punished me by now?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the expert.”

  Adzima laughed. “True. I am the expert. Look, if you want, you can come and watch our trokosi ceremony today. I will get a new wife today.”

  He grinned his toothless, red, rubbery smile, and Dawson wanted to slap it off his face.

  “Thank you, Togbe Adzima,” Fiti said.

  “But we need to talk to the wife,” Dawson chimed in quickly, “the one who found Gladys.”

  “Efia?” Adzima said. “No problem. I can call her right now and she can tell you everything.”

  “In private,” Dawson said.

&n
bsp; “Eh?”

  “We need to talk to her in private. Alone.”

  “Oh, no.” Adzima shook his head adamantly and clicked his tongue. “She is not authorized to talk to you if I’m not also with her. She belongs to this shrine, and I am the High Priest of this shrine.”

  “But we are authorized to talk to her in private,” Dawson said evenly.

  “Authorized by whom?”

  “The attorney general of Ghana and every rank below him.”

  This did not impress Adzima, who shrugged his shoulders. “I’m telling you she won’t talk to you if I am not there with her.”

  Dawson felt another jab in his side, and Fiti said hurriedly, “Togbe Adzima, thank you for seeing us.”

  “You are welcome.” He stood up. “Just one thing, Detective Inspector Dawson.”

  “Yes?”

  “Never underestimate the striking hand of an angry god. No one can escape, not even you. I hope you will heed my words better than Gladys Mensah did.”

  THE TROKOSI CEREMONY WOULD not be for a couple of hours, so Dawson and Fiti killed some time by returning to Ketanu to get something to eat at a noisy, popular place called Light Up My Life Restaurant, where Dawson had spicy hot chicken and rice, and Fiti ordered banku and kontomire.

  “How are we going to talk to Efia alone?” Dawson asked Fiti. “Any ideas?”

  Fiti thought about it while munching on a mouthful of food. “While the ceremony is on and Togbe Adzima is occupied,” he said at length, “we will try to talk to her.”

  “I don’t want to get her in trouble,” Dawson said.

  “We’ll do our best to protect her.”

  It was a facile answer that didn’t make Dawson any more comfortable. Somehow he seriously doubted Adzima’s claim that he treated his wives like queens.

  When they returned to Bedome, the trokosi ceremony had begun. A large crowd had formed a wide circle, at the top of which three sweating, bare-chested men were pounding sogo and kidi drums. A group of women sang, clapped, and swayed in tight unison.

  Dawson and Fiti made their way to the front rows. Togbe Adzima, dressed conspicuously in white cloth, sat diametrically opposite the drummers with village elders on either side of him.