Ama

by Manu Herbstein

  Butcher came out of the Captain’s cabin.

  “Come on,” he said.

  As he let her into the female hold, he told her, “We’ll start tomorrow.”

  Then, holding up his lantern, “Do you need a light? Will you find your way in the dark?”

  She ignored him and felt her way, step by step, across to her place on the platform.

  * * *

  Next morning it seemed that every woman wanted to greet Ama.

  As soon as they had settled in their places on the quarter-deck a formal delegation of Tomba’s party came to thank her. Ama stood up. Each woman made a little speech before shaking hands with her. The more eloquent of the brief orations earned shouts of approval. She could only guess at the meaning of their words. At last they brought the young girl whom Ama had saved from being raped by Knaggs. She alone was too shy to speak. Ama saw now how young she really was and felt a glow of satisfaction at what she had done.

  “Where is your mother?” was all she could think to say.

  The girl misunderstood and answered in her own language, “Yes.”

  Ama tried again.

  “Do you see how the bad man is being punished?” she asked, pointing to the front end of the ship, the part they called the forecastle.

  Knaggs sat there, shackled hand and foot and chained to an iron ring set in the deck, as if he, too, had become a slave. In that respect, at least, Ama thought, Williams has been true to his word. The girl smiled at her now and nodded. Then she allowed herself to be led away.

  At last Ama was left alone to think.

  If only I could get access to the Captain's cabin, she mused, or if he would leave me there alone for long enough to write a short letter to Quaque. Quaque, it is true, is little more than a black Englishman. The chances that he will do anything for me are slim. But I must try.

  A canoe came alongside with a consignment of new slaves. The captain was standing just below her watching idly while his cargo was discharged. She greeted him respectfully in Fanti.

  “This your work is very difficult,” she flattered him.

  “You speak the truth,” he replied, unmindful of the irony of discussing his trade with a slave woman. “The white man does not recognise it. It can be dangerous and it requires great strength and courage; yet the money they give us is a mere pittance.”

  “I can see the strength the work requires from the size of your muscles.”

  How easy it is to manipulate a man, she thought, as he held up his arm to display his biceps. He probably has grandchildren already. Yet he is as vain as a young man in his first heat.

  “My master,” she said to him, “do you by any chance know a man called Philip Quaque? I believe that he is something in the castle.”

  “What! Osofo Broni? Of course I know him. When we were small boys we used to swim together in this same sea here.”

  The last of his cargo was being hoisted up on to the deck. She would have to hurry.

  “Master, I beg you. Could you send him a message that I am here on this ship? Tell him the girl he met in Elmina Castle who speaks his language.”

  “You mean Fanti?” he asked as he cast off.

  “No,” she replied, “I mean English. The white man’s language.”

  He almost overbalanced as he turned to look back at her. It was if he was seeing her for the first time. The canoe was already several lengths away. He raised a hand and waved to her.

  “Good bye,” he shouted in English, demonstrating to his own great satisfaction that he had brains as well as brawn.

  * * *

  “Wot was you talkin bout?”

  The question was spoken in a stuttering voice that could only be that of an Englishman. She turned and recognised the young man with red hair and a red face. She had heard him called George. He was the one who said, “Please,” when he gave a slave an order. Ama dropped her eyes and said nothing. He didn’t seem to mind.

  “I seen how you dealt with Fred Knaggs,” he said. “E ad it comin to im, the bastard. I ony wish it ad bin me wot give im is cumuppance. You was very brave. Ain’t many a man on this ship wot’d tackle Fred Knaggs; an you on’y a girl an all.”

  He dropped the armload of tangled ropes he was carrying and sat down with his back against the gunwale, near Ama so that he could talk to her but not so near that his crew mates might notice and rag him.

  “It’s a hard life, ain it?”

  He took a knife and an iron marlin spike from his belt and laid them out beside him. Then he looked up and caught her eye. Ama averted her gaze.

  “Well you don’t ave to answer if you don’t want. I cin hunnerstan you might not want to old a friendly covversashun with one of your hopressors, like. I’d be the same if I was in your position. Not that mine is much different, mind you.”

  He looked up again; and again Ama dropped her eyes. He spoke with a broad twang and stuttered and she had to struggle to grasp his meaning.

  “I knows you hunnerstans me though, cos I ’eard you call out to Fred Knaggs, I did. ‘Fred Knaggs!’ you said, ‘Un’and that there girl at once, you villin.’ Jus like in a book . . . I cin read, d’you know?”

  He spoke the words with pride. Then he was struck by conscience. What he had said was not quite true.

  “Well,” he said, “a few words, at least. Me paw ad ter take me outer school fore I ad a chance to lern proper, see. But I cin figger good, that I can.

  “Why’d e take me outer school? You may well arsk. Twas poverty. Me paw explained it all to me, ’e did.

  “'George, me lad, ’e says, 'I'se goin to ave ter take ee outer school, me boy, an put ee to work. Otherwise ‘tis workhouse fer us all. See, me wages is jus nine shillins an tuppence. Yer mother brings ome another two shillins an yer sisters two shillins tween em. Makes thirteen shillins an tuppence. I reckons we be needin all of sixteen shillins if we’re not to go ungry. There’s rent an firewood an clothes an all. An a shillin a week fer yer school fees. An then there’s yer mother with child agin.’

  “So e taked me outer school, me dad, e did. Saved a shillin. An I earns two shillins feedin the pigs an cleanin out the sties.”

  “What’s your name,” Ama asked him.

  “George, miss, George Atcher,” he replied.

  He looked at her wide-eyed.

  “Cor, miss. You speaks like a real lady, you does.”

  He had untangled the bits of rope. Now he concentrated on arranging them before him on the deck.

  “A lady speaked to me once,” he said, turning the memory of it over in his mind.

  The only ladies Ama could place were Elizabeth, whose clothes Mijn Heer had given her to wear; and the mistress of her namesake Pamela, who was an old woman and died at beginning of the book. Surely this George could not be equating her with the likes of them? It was a puzzle.

  “How did you come to be working on this ship?” Ama asked.

  His sunburned face turned an even darker shade of red. He busied himself with his ropes.

  “I ave a sweet’eart, I ave,” he said at last. “Mary Rose er name an right pretty she are. Ony er ole man won low us ter marry. Cos o me family’s poverty, see. So I ups an eds fer Liverpool ter make me fortune, so’s I cin marry Mary Rose. I’d ten shillins saved, so I decides ter take the coach. Never took a coach before. That were me undoin. Coach were waylaid by seven ’ighwaymen in a wood. Guard kills three of em before me wery eyes, before e were killd isself. So when I arrives at Liverpool, I ad not a single penny ter me name.

  “There were this Irish landlady wot offered me bed an board whiles I looks fer employment. Er usband runs a pub. Fuller pretty girls wiv painted faces. They calls ’em ores. Give em a shillin an they’ll . . .”

  He blushed and giggled.

  “You know,” he said, assuming she would understand.

  “Well I didna ave no shillin, but the landlady she lent me one. Just ter ave a try, she said.”

  He giggled again. The memory had given him an erection and he bro
ught his knees up to his chest in case Ama should see the bulge under his thin cotton trousers.

  “Cum end of' the month an I still adna found no employment. Twas then that me landlady turns nasty, she does. Sez tis jail fer me less I pays up. I didna know which way ter turn. Then they brings this ere agent, they calls im, an e offers me this job. See the world, e says. Good pay, e tells me. Well, truth is, I didna ad no choice. They makes me sign me name on a paper. I couldna read it proper but they tells me if I die everyfing goes to the landlady, all me wages an all. So ere I am in Guinea. An me ole fokes an me sweet’eart never knows wot’s become o poor ole George.

  “It’s a hard life, it is an all.”

  * * *

  Butcher led the way to the hatch.

  “Bruce, Alsop,” he called.

  Bruce and Alsop knew the drill: it was their duty to ensure the surgeon’s safety during his daily inspection. They opened the scuttle and hooked the steps in position. Each had a cutlass securely attached to one wrist with a cord and a loaded pistol in the other hand.

  “Here, take the lanterns,” Butcher called down to them as he put a foot on the top step.

  “Come. Follow me,” he told Ama.

  He offered her a hand but she declined his help.

  “What did you say your name was?” he asked.

  “They call me Pamela,” she replied.

  “Well, Pamela,” said Butcher, “I will tell you what to say and you must explain it to them in their language.”

  “They speak many different languages,” said Ama.

  “Oh,” said Butcher.

  He paused.

  Then he asked, “How many?”

  “I don't know, but many.”

  “And how many languages do you speak?”

  “Six well and I can try in three or four more,” Ama lied, “but it will take me time to translate your words into all of them.”

  “Oh, no problem about that,” said Butcher, astonished at her linguistic claims.

  He hoped that this “Pamela” would help to bridge the gulf which lay between him and the male slaves. With the women he could sometimes achieve eye contact; with the men, never. He was disturbed by the suspicion that they didn’t regard him as a fellow human being.

  The men’s hold was worse than the females’. Ama was again reminded of Van Schalkwyk’s Christian hell. The room was full of men, black men, half naked, sitting, lying, reclining on their elbows, every pair of eyes staring at the whites, staring at her. Sweating. Like sinners suffering eternal torment. All that is missing is the lake of fire and brimstone and the unquenchable furnace. What sins could deserve such punishment?

  She saw Butcher put a hand over his nose. Yes, she thought, and we have only been in here a few minutes. Yet these poor souls spend all their days and nights immersed in this fetid witches brew of sweat and shit and foul breath. She swallowed hard and overcame a strong urge to vomit.

  There was silence, broken only by the gentle creaking of the ship’s timbers and the incontinent groans of an afflicted soul.

  “Agyei, agyei, agyei,” the man called over and over again. “Father, my pain.”

  Bruce and Alsop cleared a space for them to stand. The men rattled their shackles and chains in a united gesture of defiance.

  “What is it you want me to say?” Ama asked.

  “Tell them I am the ship’s doctor. They know me, they see me every day. It is my job to see that they keep well, that they receive enough food and water and that they keep clean and healthy. Start with that.”

  She cleared her throat. Then she spoke in her own language.

  “My fathers, my brothers,” she said, “my name is Ama. I hear the white man’s language and because of that he is using me as his tongue.”

  “Speak louder, we cannot hear you well,” came a voice from the dark depths of the hold.

  She repeated what she had said, raising her voice.

  “I am glad that someone has heard me,” she continued. “I must speak quickly or the man will be suspicious. Soon this ship in which we are imprisoned will leave our shores and sail out into the great ocean. I do not know where they will take us or what they will do with us. Some believe that when we reach their country they will kill us and feed our flesh to their wives and children.”

  There was a murmur. Clearly there were several Bekpokpam men. She hoped that they were of better metal than those whom Abdulai had captured.

  “We have all lost our families. We have to be family to one another. The women and children in the female hold are depending on you men. You must rise up against the white men and send the ship back to the shore so that we can escape. Now I see the white man is becoming anxious. I will speak to you again. Pray to our ancestors for help.”

  She paused.

  “That took you a long time,” said Butcher.

  “That is how our languages are,” replied Ama. “I have told them in one language but only a few understood, I think. Shall I try another?”

  “Yes, yes, go ahead. Take all day if you like. Tell them they must use the buckets to shit in at night. Anything to try to reduce the stench in here.”

  He pushed past Alsop and stood on the second step, hoping that there would be some fresh air near the hatch.

  Ama tried again, in Asante. This time she drew a greater response.

  From the darkness a deep voice chanted the Asante war cry, “Asante Kotoko; kum apem, apem beba! Asante porcupine; let them kill a thousand Asante warriors; a thousand more will replace them.”

  That raised a cheer. She thought: it was Asante that sent you here and yet you are still proud to call yourself Asante.

  Butcher sat down on a step in the square of light beneath the open hatch. He kept his hand over his nose. He looked pale.

  Ama called out the customary greetings in Dagomba and added a few stuttering words of apology that she could say no more. In Gonja she could manage even less. But in each case there were shouts of acknowledgement and encouragement.

  “Mister Butcher,” said Alsop.

  The surgeon opened his eyes.

  “Get me out of here,” he gasped. “This stench will kill me.”

  “Come, miss,” said the one called Bruce, taking Ama’s arm.

  * * *

  Bruce and Alsop brought the men up on deck for air and exercise.

  All the blacks looked the same to them, but they could pick out the overseers by their whips and the scraps of clothing they had been given. The first overseer led out his group of ten, in their manacled and leg-ironed pairs. On the quarter-deck, the barricade was manned by seamen with their guns primed and trained on the slaves. Butcher unlocked the irons of the first overseer and his fellow prisoner. He gave each man’s body a cursory examination. The overseer wore a battered cloth cap as his mark of office. He was a small muscular man with bulging eyes.

  “Ask him,” Butcher instructed Ama, “if he has any complaints.”

  Ama passed on the question in Asante. It was as if she had opened a flood gate. A torrent of anger and abuse poured forth.

  “Complaints? The white devil brands us with his iron, strips us of our cloth, imprisons us in that wooden coffin, without air, without water. He feeds us on food which I wouldn’t give to a pig. He makes us live like swine. Would you treat a dog the way he treats us? What have we done to him to deserve this? And he asks if we have any complaints.”

  “Father, I beg you, please be calm. We will not escape our fate through anger. We must watch and wait and take whatever opportunities present themselves. Our time will come.”

  “It would have been better,” the man told her sadly, “if I had been killed to water the grave of Osei Tutu. At least my spirit would have had some rest.”

  “What does he say?” asked Butcher.

  “He is very angry about the conditions in the hold,” said Ama.

  “Tell him that it is not in my power to do anything about that but that I will pass his message on to the captain. Tell him my job is only to kee
p him and his people well. Ask him if he or any of his group are suffering from any sickness.”

  “The white man asks if you are sick.”

  “Of course I am sick. What does he think? I am sick in my head, in my stomach and most of all I am sick in my heart.”

  Butcher saw him point to the parts of his anatomy as he named them. He smiled and went on to complete his examination of the last of the ten men.

  “Now tell them to dance,” he ordered.

  “Dance?” she asked him, uncertain whether she had heard him correctly.

  “That is what I said. Dance. They need exercise to keep them healthy.”

  “My father,” she addressed the overseer diffidently, “the white man says you must dance.”

  “Dance?” he asked her incredulously. “Dance? Is he the Asantehene and I his clown that he tells me to dance? Shall I dance adowa? Or would he prefer kète?”

  He turned his head and spat on the deck.

  “Tell him I will dance at his funeral.”

  Bruce, a tall, bony Scot, whose head was shaved just like the slaves’, produced a fiddle and struck up a vigorous Highland fling. He danced a few steps by way of illustration. The slaves stood silently and watched. The overseer shook his head in disbelief.

  “Is this what the white man calls dancing?” he asked Ama. “It must be the Dance of the Goats.”

  Those who understood Asante laughed. One youth sent out a great guffaw. He slapped his naked thighs. Then he stepped out a grotesque, obscene parody of Bruce’s performance. Tomba’s men joined in the merriment. They had few enough opportunities. Ama could not suppress a smile. Bruce stopped his fiddling and looked at the surgeon.

  Butcher was becoming impatient. He still had another ninety slaves to examine before he went ashore to inspect potential purchases. He called for reinforcements. They surrounded the slaves and began to flick their whips at their bare feet. The men danced.

  “Play, you Scottish bastard, play. And let them dance until they drop! No chop for them until they’ve had their exercise.”