Ama

by Manu Herbstein

  Augusta was fond of talking, especially about herself.

  “I am best known for my cloth, but I also sell beads. Amber, crystal, coral, glass: I have them all. Jewellery too, earrings, chains, necklaces, bangles. And aggrey beads of course. I sell them all. You can find my store in the market in Edina. Just ask for Augusta. Everybody knows Augusta.”

  It struck her suddenly that she was talking to a slave woman, a chattel, without property, without money, but the thought gave her only slight pause. If Mijn Heer keeps her for a while, she thought, he is sure to want to buy her presents. And Mijn Heer pays cash, in unadulterated gold dust.

  All this time Ama had been standing respectfully before here. She had picked up the general trend of what Augusta had said but there were many words she did not understand.

  “Sit down, sit down,” said Augusta, indicating a chair. “I have something to tell you. Mijn Heer has asked me to talk to you.”

  “Tell me first, how long have you been with him? Oh, no need to answer,” she continued. “You were not here when I came on Saturday, so he must have taken you yesterday. Were you in the dungeon? It is not very pleasant, is it? So you are a very lucky girl to be selected by the Director-General. If you are clever, he might marry you. He might even set you free one day. But I must warn you. You are not the first slave girl he has taken. Sometimes they last only one night and he sends them back to the dungeon. A week later, perhaps, a ship will come and collect them away over the sea. Sometimes he keeps them for a week or a month. So you must behave well and you must be very careful to keep him happy. You are lucky he has asked me to advise you, because I know Director-General Pieter De Bruyn better than any black woman in this country, or any black man for that matter.”

  Ama listened to all this in amazement, straining to catch Augusta's meaning and to keep up with the torrent of words.

  “I am the best person to advise you, because I, Augusta, alias Efua Kakrabaa, was the first wife of your Mijn Heer.”

  Ama's eyes opened a little wider. Augusta noticed.

  “You do not believe me? It is true. You can ask anybody in Edina. Ask Mijn Heer himself.

  “Many years ago, when he was young and handsome (as white men go) and new to this castle, my father (of blessed memory) who was one of the leading caboceers in Edina, took a liking to him. So he sent me to serve him as his wife. I was young and beautiful then, like you. I was a virgin. Mijn Heer was my first man. It was he who gave me my name, Augusta. I stayed with him for two years but I failed to bring forth. A pity. I would have liked to have had a European child. But it was not my fault, I have had eight children since and five are still living. And Mijn Heer has had only one, and that one none of us has ever seen.

  “Then, when we had been married two years, the company transferred him to a distant place they call the Cape. I asked him to take me with him but he said it was too far, though it is also in this our Africa, not in Europe where the whites come from. In the Cape he married a white woman. Many years later, when he was already quite old, they sent him back to Elmina as Director-General and he brought this wife with him.”

  Ama was lost in the romance of Augusta's story. She loved a good story and this one was very different from those of her childhood and the Anansesem she had learnt in Kumase.

  “By the time he came back here, I had already born six children. I had buried my second husband and taken a third, but still De Bruyn had only one issue. To this day he has had only one, a son he left behind at the Cape.

  “His wife was called Elizabeth De Bruyn. She was a good-for-nothing woman. About your size but without colour. She was already sick when she came to Elmina Castle and she was sickly all the time she was here. She did nothing with her time but sleep and read books. Do you know what books are? No? Effibaa, bring me a book.”

  Effibaa was just then dusting the books in the glass-fronted cabinet. She brought a book. Augusta signed to her to give it to Ama. Ama took it.

  “Open it,” Augusta told her, holding her palms together and then opening them as if they were pages in a book. Ama did so. She could make nothing of the marks on the paper, but she found a picture of European men in wigs and ladies in hooped skirts and studied it with interest.

  “Can you imagine? The woman spent the whole day, every day, looking into books like that. Mijn Heer is the same but he does not waste as much time on it as she did. I cannot think what they make of all those little marks. I have asked Mijn Heer, but he always makes fun of me with his answer. He says that there are stories in those books. Can you believe that?”

  “Anyway, when Madam Elizabeth was not reading books she was lying on her bed and fanning herself or sitting at the window looking at the sea. The only time I ever saw her go out of these rooms all the time she stayed here, was when she went to chapel.”

  Augusta saw Ama's blank look.

  “Chapel. You don't know what chapel is? That is their room where they go to worship their gods. It is in the charge of the chaplain, who is like a fetish priest for them, an Okomfo you know, except that he does not know how to dance. When I was married to Mijn Heer, I had to go there with him every Sunday. Sometimes the chaplain tells them stories which he says comes out of a special book. That book is one of their main fetishes. Mijn Heer tried to tell me some of the stories when we were married. Some were not bad, but most were rubbish. I told him he should listen rather to our Ananse stories, they are much more entertaining and there is always a lesson to be learned from them.”

  Once she had started it was difficult to stop Augusta and while she watched constantly for the response of her captive audience, she gave little opportunity for questions or interjections. This suited Ama. Feeling her way in this relationship, she was too shy to attempt to turn the monologue into a discussion.

  “Now where was I? Oh, Madam Elizabeth. The lady, she complained all the time. Once Madam Blunt came to visit her. Madam Blunt was the wife of that Cape Coast Fanti man who is the priest of the English at Cape Coast Castle. But our Madam Elizabeth could speak no English and Madam Blunt (or Quaque, for that is her husband's name) could speak no Dutch. Moreover our Madam Elizabeth would not countenance the other white woman because she was married to a black man. So Madam Blunt never came to visit her again. That is the only time that I ever saw two white women together. And now they are both dead.

  “Oh, poor Madam Elizabeth. Either the weather was too hot or she didn't like the food; Mijn Heer didn't pay her enough attention; the European men were bush; there were no other respectable white women here for her to talk to: complaints, complaints, complaints. She wanted to go back to the Cape, she wanted to go to Holland on the next ship. She complained to me and she complained to her husband about me. She never knew that we had once been married. He could not tell her, and why should I? She was too lazy or sickly to supervise the domestic chores and Mijn Heer asked me to help. So I came every day to do the cleaning and washing. I saw the woman every day while she lived here, but I never got to understand her. I guess that white women are not like us. White men, I know them well. But the women?”

  She shook her head.

  “After one year Madam became very ill from fever. I nursed her day and night for a week. I sponged her, I fed her, I gave her herbs to drink. I slept here in this room on a mat on the floor. But in the end she died. I don't think Mijn Heer De Bruyn was too sad. He never complained, but I think that the woman had become a burden on him.

  “Mijn Heer asked me to continue with the work. That was five years ago and I have done it ever since. It is not for the money that I do it, you understand? He was my first husband and he is getting old now. He needs a woman to look after him. All men are children, you know.”

  Ama nodded her head sagely in agreement.

  “Now Miss Ama. You strike me as a sensible young woman. You have seen what it is like in the dungeons. I can tell you, from the stories we hear, it is many times worse on the ships. Mijn Heer is your life line. Treat him well and he may save you from an ea
rly return to the ancestors. Treat him always with respect. Humour him. Soothe him when he is tired or angry. Conquer your own desires. Be his servant always and you may have a small chance of escaping from being a slave. I know the business and it is a small chance, I tell you, but it is a chance. Tomorrow, if you are still here, I shall begin to teach you to do the work that this child has been doing this morning.”

  “Effibaa,” she called. The child had finished her work and made a bundle of Mijn Heer's laundry.

  “Let us go now,” she said as she drew her bulk laboriously up from the comfort of the armchair.

  “Maame Augusta,” Ama spoke quietly and with humility.

  “Yes my child,” the older woman replied.

  “Maame. I thank you for what you have told me.”

  Augusta nodded.

  “Maame, I beg you, my sister is in the dungeon. Already she has been raped once. They will kill her. Maame, I beg you to save her. Speak to Mijn Heer for me. Otherwise they will kill her.”

  For a moment, Augusta was taken aback by the girl’s presumption.

  “My child, you are a slave. You are nobody here. I have given you good advice and at once you show how headstrong you are. Never, never think of asking such a thing of Mijn Heer. This Castle belongs to a mighty European nation. Their nation is ruled by ten kings, each of them a giant. Mijn Heer is the master of this castle but he is the servant of the ten kings. Their business is to buy slaves from us. If Mijn Heer were to listen to every slave who says my sister this, my sister that, he would lose his job at once and maybe his head too. Ask him such a favour and you will join your sister back in the dungeon as quickly as you can blink your eye.”

  She turned to go. Ama was suddenly struck by the enormity of Esi’s danger and of her own. Her limbs seemed to lose their solidity. She collapsed on the floor like a heap of old bones and began to sob.

  Augusta bent down and grabbed her under the armpit.

  “Stand up. Stand up. And stop crying at once. If Mijn Heer were to walk in now, it would be the end of you.”

  She thought for a moment.

  “I like you, child,” she said, “and I admire your love for your sister. What I will do is this. I will tell Mijn Heer that you have told me of your sister and praised her so highly that I wish to buy her myself. What is your sister's name?”

  Ama stared at her, wide-eyed.

  “Oh, Maame, I thank you, I thank you. She is called Esi,” she said and sank down on her knees, embracing Augusta's own. “I thank you. I thank you. I thank you.”

  CHAPTER 15

  De Bruyn could not concentrate.

  Again and again his thoughts turned to Pamela. Sometimes he thought of her with a tenderness which was almost paternal, sometimes with pure carnal lust.

  “You’re crazy,” he told himself. “You are driving yourself silly over an ignorant, savage slave girl. Take a grip on yourself, Pieter De Bruyn. You are behaving like an adolescent boy in the first discovery of the other sex.”

  An image of Ama, naked, black, smooth, voluptuous, came into his mind. Self-indulgently, he considered it. He day-dreamed. He kissed her all over, her mouth, her nipples, her thighs. He was aware, not for the first time this morning, of his erection. He felt an ache in his balls.

  His reverie was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Jensen.

  “How was the girl?” he asked.

  “The girl? Oh, good, quite good,” De Bruyn replied. “I shall keep her for a while.”

  Then he changed the subject.

  Jensen, always on the lookout for something which might be of benefit to himself, was not entirely taken in.

  Now why did my question disturb the old bastard so? he wondered. De Bruyn's accident the previous afternoon was common knowledge amongst the officers and had been the occasion of much bawdy mirth in their mess. He put the senior man’s reaction down to embarrassment at the incident and stowed the thought away for future reference.

  They discussed the conduct of the afternoon’s business with the captain of the Dutch ship. The dungeons were full of slaves and, with the road to Kumase open, supplies were coming in more regularly than either of them could remember.

  “Our turnover will be so great this year,” said Jensen, “that we can afford to reduce our margins. Any more overcrowding of the accommodation and we might have an epidemic on our hands.”

  “Oh, Jensen,” called De Bruyn as the Chief Merchant was leaving the room. “I am feeling a little under the weather. I think I shall take the afternoon off. Be a good chap and hold the fort for me. Let me have a full report tomorrow morning on this afternoon’s palaver, will you?”

  Jensen stopped and turned.

  “I hope it’s nothing serious,” he said.

  You bloody hypocrite, thought De Bruyn. If I were afflicted with a mortal ailment your fondest hopes would be realised.

  “No, no, just a slight touch of fever,” he said aloud. “I shall try to sweat it off. Not to be disturbed, please,” he said, adding, as an afterthought, “but you might remind Van Schalkwyk to come in as usual in the evening.”

  * * *

  De Bruyn locked the door. He intended to devote the afternoon to the undisturbed fleshing out of his morning’s fantasies.

  He made Ama lie naked on the four-poster bed. Keeping his eyes averted, he covered her from head to toe with a clean white sheet, as if she were a corpse. Just as she was beginning to become concerned, he drew the top of the sheet back, exposing only her eyes and her small, broad, slightly upturned nose. He met her look of surprise with amusement. Guessing that this was some sort of game, she responded with a smile. He spoke to her quietly in Dutch, words of praise for her beauty and of his devotion to her, words that he would never have had the courage to speak if he had thought she understood him, words he had never spoken before, not to Augusta in their youth, never to holy Elizabeth. He devoured her with his eyes, her shaven head, her small ears with the modest gold earrings which Konadu Yaadom had allowed her to keep, the sweep of her dark eyebrows, the upward curve of her eyelashes. He bent to kiss her eyelashes, first one eye and then the other, gently, controlling his passion, suppressing the consciousness of the weathered naked body beneath the night-gown he had put on. He stroked her cheeks, tickling her with the hairs which grew luxuriantly on the back of his hand. All the time he spoke to her. He called her Princess Pamela; he repeated the name he had given her again and again; he would have sung to her if he had had any confidence in his croaky voice.

  He exposed one small part of her at a time, a shoulder, a hand, examining it, exploring it. He hardly touched her and when he did it was with the gentlest of contact, sometimes with his fingers, sometimes with his lips. Ama began to bask in his adoration, watching his eyes as they surveyed the contours of her body, meeting them with wonder as he returned from each excursion.

  When he uncovered a nipple, she moved, with instinctive modesty, to cover it. He took her hands away and kissed her palms. When he reached her most private parts, he did the same.

  Ama was astonished at this performance. No man had ever treated her like this before. Even Itsho, kind, gentle, passionate as he had been, had never worshipped her as this peculiar white man was doing. She was afraid.

  When De Bruyn had completed his mapping of her thighs, her legs, her feet and toes (hardened these, by a life time of walking barefooted), he rolled her over and began his exploration of the other hemisphere. He was completely possessed. His entire consciousness was concentrated on this fragile creature.

  Ama turned her head on the pillow to watch him. She felt desire rising in her. She was his slave, his property, but, for the moment, she had lost her will to be free. She wanted him to possess her.

  As he ran the surface of his finger nails down along her vertebrae, she spoke for the first time.

  “Mijn Heer, Mijn Heer,” she whispered.

  * * *

  When they had spent their passion, De Bruyn looked into her eyes again and they laughed together.


  He brought a basin and wiped their parts. Then he sponged the sweat from her body and wiped her with a clean towel. They lay naked together under the sheet, her head on his chest, and spoke to one another, neither understanding a word of the other’s language and laughing at their mutual incomprehension.

  When they awoke, he took her again, astonished at a capacity he thought he had long lost.

  The sun, setting far along the line of the coast, sent slivers of orange light through the jalousies, making patterns on the far wall. They bathed and dried one another. Ama replaced her beads and wrapped her cloth around her.

  De Bruyn dressed in a casual shirt and trousers. Then he went to the cabinet which held the books. Opening a drawer, took out a brass key. With it, he unlocked a wooden cabin trunk, elaborately carved with scenes of Dutch landscape.

  “Pamela, come,” he called her as he raised the lid. There was a smell of naphtha and a hint of stale perfume. He drew out a lady's dress in the European style, shook it, and held it up for her to see. Then he took her to the standing mirror which had been the scene of their battle the previous afternoon and, standing again behind her, held the dress up against her front. Ama recalled the picture she had seen in the book which Augusta had shown her. She was about to tell him and to fetch the book; but then she wondered how she would explain and whether Augusta had not perhaps exceeded her authority in showing her Mijn Heer’s possessions.

  “Try it on,” said De Bruyn.

  Ama feared the strange garment. But before could react, De Bruyn had lifted the skirt over her head. He pulled her arms through the sleeves. There was no turning back. She looked at the mirror and was flabbergasted at the transformation in her appearance. The hem fell almost to the floor and the skirt was wide enough to conceal her bare feet. The waist was a little loose, but otherwise the fit was perfect. She was still wearing her cloth underneath and it showed at the low cut neck.