Ama

by Manu Herbstein

  “Pamela, this is your very own book. See your name on it, P-A-M-E-L-A,” De Bruyn said to her.

  Ama looked at the book, understood nothing, and looked at De Bruyn for enlightenment; but his attention was already engaged in the prize which Van Schalkwyk had kept for last.

  “Look at this now: an English bible, The Authorised Version of King James the First it says on the frontispiece, bound in fine black leather and brand new by the look of it. See, the pages are still uncut. There is no charge for this: it is Quaque’s personal gift. He has a considerable stock of these.”

  “Oh, I’ll have that, if you please,” said De Bruyn. “It will be some time before Pamela is ready to tackle the Holy Book. In fact, you keep the primer and the copy book and leave the rest with me. Minister, I congratulate you on a task completed with a success beyond my expectations.”

  He stood up and formally shook Van Schalkwyk’s hand, while Ama looked on puzzled.

  “I shall send Rev. Quaque his gold dust tomorrow morning.”

  Miming the action of ringing a bell, he said, “Pamela, will you ring for dinner, please?”

  “What about the school at Cape Coast?” he asked,

  “It is a hardly a school, Director. Quaque has six mulatto children come to his own rooms each morning and there they learn the elements of reading and a little writing for a few hours. He drills them in the catechism of course, but, determined as he is, he is also deeply pessimistic about the prospects of introducing Christianity to the Fantis. I have to say that I agree with him. Their heathenish beliefs and customs are so deeply ingrained that they are not easily shifted.”

  * * *

  “Good morning, sir,” Ama greeted Augusta the following morning, practising the English which De Bruyn had been teaching her.

  “What do you say, child?” the older woman asked her in Fanti.

  “Ah yes,” she continued when Ama had explained, “Mijn Heer told me that he planned to teach you English. But you are wasting it on me. I hear enough Dutch, but as for English: at all. English is for Cape Coast people, not for Edinas. I do not understand the way these whites’ minds work. Why English, after all? He could tell you all you need to know with a few words of Dutch, surely?”

  She shook her head and eased herself into an armchair.

  “Sit,” she said, and indicated to Ama that she should take the leather footstool.

  “Young woman,” she said, “Mijn Heer has spoken to me about you. I have been thinking about what he said. You are nothing to me, a stranger, do you hear? But I like you. You have made a good impression on me. You are young and can have had little experience of men; and none of white men. You are far from your family and you have no mother to advise you. So I have decided to speak to you of what is in my mind. You may listen to what I have to say, or you may close your ears to it. I know, that is the way of the young. Each generation must learn by making its own mistakes. But you are in a perilous situation which you might not recognise and it would be wise for you to hear me out. Do you understand?”

  Attentive, but puzzled, Ama nodded her assent.

  “Mijn Heer is not a young man. He is old enough to be your father, or even your grandfather. To live to such an age is quite unusual for a white man in Africa. This our climate does not suit them well. Many of those who come here die within months, sometimes weeks. I have heard them call Africa the white man’s grave. It must be something in the air. Perhaps it is the fevers which they say rise from our swamps; or perhaps it is our gods and the spirits of our ancestors who strike them down. It is worse with their women and that is perhaps why they so seldom bring them to our country. Mijn Heer’s Elizabeth lasted just a year.”

  Ama watched Augusta attentively, concentrating on making sense of the Fanti words which were strange to her.

  “Be that as it may,” continued the older woman, “I must tell you, if you do not already know, that the man is in love with you.”

  Ama lowered her eyes.

  “Men are strange. Mijn Heer was like that with me too, many years ago. While their passion lasts, they are ruled by it; they will kill for it, even kill themselves.

  “But that is today only. In a few years Mijn Heer will be too old for this work. He will go back to his own country. What will happen to you then? He says that if you learn to read and write, and become a Christian, he might marry you. I doubt if he has given any thought to how it would be for him to take a black wife back to his country. Or how it would be for the woman, all alone in strange surroundings, with none of her own kind to turn to for comfort and support when the man turns sour. Moreover, I have never heard of a white man who took his black wife home with him. When the time comes, I do not believe that Mijn Heer would decide to take you with him. And even if he did, what would happen to you? Mijn Heer is old. When he dies, what would happen to you, I ask you again, left alone in the country of the Dutch? Who would look after you then? Do not imagine that you could return to Africa, all alone. Holland is many months’ journey across the sea.”

  Augusta paused. Ama’s mind was in a turmoil. Augusta had put into words the vague concerns which already lay there, confused and suppressed. She was in no way the mistress of her fate. Augusta had forced her to face up to reality. It was a comfort, at least, to have someone to talk to about her worries.

  “Maame Augusta, what should I do?” she asked in a low, troubled voice.

  “You are a slave, my child. You are his property. He can do with you as he pleases. The only hold you have on him is this love that has grown in him for you. If he tires of you, you are lost. You must nurture that love. First in the physical sense. You understand what I mean? Mijn Heer, forgive me, is a fool. You have not told me what your feelings are for him, but whatever they are, I can say that to you. That is my privilege. He was my husband once. I say, Mijn Heer is a fool. He imagines that he is young again. His love for you has made him think that. But he is no longer young. And when men get old they lose some of their powers, you understand?”

  Ama thought for a moment of her dead lover, Itsho, and of Satila, the dried out old man who was to have been her husband. Mijn Heer was much older even than Satila.

  “You must help him. You must hide his age from him. You must nurture his passion for you. You must pander to his every wish. You must flatter his male pride. You must be diligent in learning his language and his ways. You must never encourage the attention of any other man, especially a younger man. You must do all these things without revealing your motives. You may not love him, yet you must never let him doubt that you do. If you do grow to love him, which you may well do, for he is a kind and gentle man, if you do grow to love him, you must always keep something back. Never forget for one moment that he is a free man and you are his property, his slave. You must do all this to gain power over him, to make him feel that he cannot live without you. When you have achieved this, and only then, you must ask him to grant you your freedom. Manumission they call it. It is not enough for him to agree. He must make public announcements, in the castle and in the town, so that it is known to all. And he must give you the proper paper. This will be a dangerous time for you. Only you can judge the best time. You must not ask him too soon and you must not wait too long, until his passion for you begins to cool, or until another woman takes his fancy. He will want to know why you ask for your freedom. He will suspect that you want to leave him for another man. Somehow, you must reassure him.

  “Once you have achieved this, you will be free to make your own decision, whether to go with him to Holland if he asks you, or whether to stay behind. If you decide to stay behind, I will help you. I have finished. Have you anything to say?”

  Ama kneeled before Augusta and bowed her head.

  “Maame, I bend my knee to you. I thank you. I shall try to do as you advise.”

  “Get up my child. Now get on with your work,” replied the older woman.

  “Maame . . .” Ama paused.

  “Yes my child. Speak out.”

 
; Augusta felt suddenly tired.

  “Maame. If I do all these things; if Mijn Heer were to give me my freedom,” and she paused again.

  “Yes, yes?”

  Ama summoned the courage to speak what was in her heart.

  “Would I then be able to return to my own home and family, to my own mother?”

  Augusta laughed, but there was little joy in her laughter.

  “Young woman, you cannot cross a river until you have reached its bank. What is the point of searching for a canoe when you are still so far away? But I will answer you. You yourself, you know how far you have come to reach this place. Could you find your own way back to Kumase, or wherever else you come from? Through the forests, across the mighty rivers. Who would protect you? And, travelling without protection, what chance would you have of arriving without being captured and sold into slavery once more? In Edina, with Mijn Heer’s paper and my word, your freedom would be guaranteed. But even half a day’s journey from the sea, Mijn Heer’s writ is worthless. And my word too. You must wipe that dream from your mind. You will never see your mother again.

  “Don’t cry my child. I know my words are cruel, but when you think on them, you will realise that they are true. Act on my advice. I have set you a difficult task. Work at it. Do not waste your energy on dreaming idle dreams.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog,” said Van Schalkwyk, pointing to the picture in the primer.

  Ama looked at the picture. It was nonsense. Who ever heard of shooting frogs with a bow and arrow?

  “Say after me, ‘A was an Archer’,” he repeated.

  “A was an Archer,” said Ama.

  “Good. Now again. ‘A was an Archer’,” he demanded, pointing at the picture again.

  “A was an Archer,” said Ama again.

  “Now what is this?” he asked, pointing to the ‘A’.

  Ama looked at his face, searching for guidance in his narrow eyes.

  “A was an Archer,” she tried.

  She had already learned to recite the alphabet by heart, but she had no idea what the sounds meant.

  “No,” said the Predikant. “This is ‘A’ and that,” pointing to the picture, “is ‘Archer’ A. A. A. Archer. Archer. Archer. Now try again. What is this?”

  Again Ama looked at his face.

  “You will not find the answer in my face,” he said. “Look at the book. What is this?”

  Ama looked at his face again.

  “A?” she asked doubtfully.

  Augusta had told her that Van Schalkwyk would be teaching her to read. She had a vague and inchoate idea that he would in some unfathomable manner reveal to her the hidden mysteries of books, much as the elders had learned, she knew not how, to understand the arcane secrets of the spirits of the earth and of the ancestors. She thought the sounds she was being induced to make were some sort of magic incantation in the language of the whites, a prelude, perhaps, to future investiture into the priesthood of those privileged to interpret the enigmas of the papers that speak.

  “Again,” demanded Van Schalkwyk, pointing at the letter.

  Ama pondered. Here was a new sound, not far removed from the other two. What should she reply, ‘A’ or ‘Archer’ or ‘again’?

  “A,” she guessed.

  “Good girl. Good girl. You are beginning to get the hang of it,” said Van Schalkwyk. “Now again.”

  So the drill started and so it went on. A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog; B was a Blind-man, and led by a Dog; C was a Cut-purse, and liv’d in Disgrace; D was a Drunkard, and had a Red Face. Ama narrowed her eyes in concentration. First Van Schalkwyk drilled her on each letter and its picture. Then he chose each of the four letters consecutively, then one at a time at random. After an hour, they were both exhausted, but Ama had acquired a skill, somewhat akin to that of an ‘arithmetical’ dog at a Dutch fair, trained to respond by one or two or three or four barks when its owner pointed to a number on a blackboard.

  “That is enough of letters for the time being. Now we will proceed to more serious work,” said the Predikant. “We will start with the English version of the Lord’s Prayer. Now recite after me ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven.’”

  She felt her head would burst.

  * * *

  The following morning Ama had forgotten everything she had learned the previous day.

  The Predikant was disappointed but patient and she soon recovered the lost ground.

  Day in, day out, they laboured at it, teacher and pupil, until she had the whole alphabet fixed in her memory.

  De Bruyn would come into the room in the late afternoon and find her standing at one of the high windows looking out at the sun setting far beyond Edina town and practising her recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, of which she still understood not a single word.

  Ama was a constant source of amazement and joy to him. When she had finished, he would cry out “Amen,” take her in his arms and kiss her fiercely on the lips.

  He would misquote Goldsmith, “And still they gazed and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all she knew,” and then he would undress her and she would undress him and they would make love in the great four poster bed.

  The alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer of the daily lessons were still mystical incantations to Ama. She imbibed them with steadfast devotion to the goals which Augusta had set her. At the same time she was absorbing, from living with De Bruyn, a very different English vocabulary, more practical and down to earth. It began in bed. He asked her to call him Pieter, but only, he warned her, when they were alone together. She soon learned the names he gave to all their private parts: cunt and tits and nipples, prick and balls, arse. Such inhibitions as she had soon fell away before her indiscriminate eagerness to learn. Speaking to her in English, De Bruyn, too, felt liberated from the weight of Calvinist sin which each Dutch word seemed to carry. Soon too she learned: hair, skin, ears and nose, tongue and teeth, lips and cheeks and neck, hands and fingers and palms, thighs and knees and toes. The verbs: kiss, suck, lick, taste, smell, feel, stroke, caress, tickle, bite, want, need and love; piss and shit and fart; wash and dry and iron; dress and undress; sleep and dream; eat and drink; and the names of all they ate and drank. The adjectives: smooth, sweet, beautiful, ebony, young (and old), moist, dry, clever. And the pronouns: I, you, we. And inside and together and thank you.

  At first she heard the words and learned to understand them. Then slowly, tentatively, she began to speak them herself. Though she was shy, she had no shame. Itsho had never used the words of love in her own language. There was no need. She assumed that the custom of the whites was different and, following Augusta’s advice, she spoke as De Bruyn spoke in the privacy of his bedroom. Soon, she gained in confidence and the words began to run into sentences. He had only to teach her the words once for her to learn how, when she was ready, she could rouse him to a final frenzied movement within her by calling out, “Oh fuck me, Pieter, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!”

  Of course Van Schalkwyk knew nothing of all this.

  In the evening, when they had eaten, they would sit at the table with the candles flickering in their long silver candlesticks and Ama would rehearse her lessons for the next day, expecting De Bruyn to test and correct her work; but the Governor would soon grow bored and weary of the repetitive exercises which Van Schalkwyk had set her. The chaplain’s teaching methods were little different from those he had suffered in his own school days and it did not occur to him to question them. He sat back, sucked his pipe contentedly and sipped his brandy. Then one evening, searching his small library for a book to read, he came across the children’s story books which the Predikant had put aside, believing that Ama needed to master the alphabet before learning to read.

  “Pamela, look at this,” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth.

  Sitting down beside her, he put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her fondly on her cheek.

  Then he put Goody Two-Shoes on the t
able and said, “Let’s see if you can read this.”

  Ama could recognise and recite all the letters of the alphabet, in both upper and lower case, but Van Schalkwyk’s pedagogics had not yet conferred on her the ability to read a single word. She triumphantly picked out all the A’s and B’s she could find. To her disappointment, De Bruyn was not impressed.

  “All right,” said De Bruyn, “One step at a time. I'll read the story to you and we’ll see how much you understand.”

  He read slowly in the candlelight. The story told of how Margery’s father, Meanwell, was ruined by the wicked farmer Graspall and Sir Timothy Gripe, who turned him out of his home. Meanwell died from a violent fever and his wife from a broken heart a few days later, leaving Margery and her brother Tommy orphaned, living in barns and from what they could pick from hedges. A kind gentleman found Tommy a job as a sailor and the good Rev. Smith gave Margery a pair of shoes. Judging that Mr. Smith’s goodness and wisdom arose from his great learning, Margery decided to learn to read. Known now as Goody Two-Shoes she was soon teaching other children. Eventually Tommy returned rich and Margery married Sir Charles Jones. After which they all lived happily ever after.

  When he had read the last page of the little book, De Bruyn asked Ama, “Did you understand the story?”

  Ama nodded enthusiastically.

  “Then tell it to me in your own words.”

  Ama hung her head in shame. Her affirmative had been a lie. Parish meetings, financial ruin, legal expenses, a proper settlement and hedges and barns meant nothing to her. She had really understood very little.

  Van Schalkwyk had been teaching Pamela for weeks and there was little to show for it. De Bruyn wondered whether their experiment was doomed to failure. He decided to start from scratch.

  “This girl is called Margery,” he said, pointing to the picture. “The story is about her. What is her name? Right, ‘Margery.’ Now this is the word for Margery. See, M-A-R, mar, G-E, ger, R-Y, ree. Mar-ge-ry, Margery. It has a big M at the beginning because it is the girl’s name. Spell it. Good. Now say it again. Excellent. Now see whether you can find the word ‘Margery’ somewhere else in the story.”