Ama

by Manu Herbstein

  He jabbed his face repeatedly with his index finger, miming the dreaded smallpox.

  “You understand? So I prayed only for forgiveness for not honouring him this day, because of my own ignorance.”

  “And now I have one last duty to be done for which I need your help. Please take a bowl or calabash each, empty it onto the ground and follow me. We are not going far.”

  He led them into the knee deep river. Its bed was full of rounded stones, which the current lifted slightly and then put down again. The sun penetrated the forest canopy here, sparkled on the surface, and lit up the stones in the bed with a rippling light.

  “We have come to honour Yemoja, who lives in the Ogún river but also in all living waters. If you stand quite still, you will hear her speaking to you.”

  It was difficult to keep one’s balance: the bed was loose and irregular and the current swift. Ama almost fell. Then there was a splash behind her and a scream. One of the other women had fallen into the water. Those by her pulled her to her feet. Her cloth was dripping.

  “Yemoja has selected her favourite daughter from amongst us,” Olukoya told them when the laughing stopped.

  “Now bend and pick a stone or two and put it in your vessel. Be careful now. We want no more accidents. Then fill your vessel with water and go and put it under the roots of the fig tree.”

  * * *

  While the drummers and the dancers rested and refreshed themselves with maté, Ama, after asking permission, took up a drum.

  At home this was not woman’s work, but here things were different. She experimented. First something Itsho used to play for her. Then she tried her hand at adowa, which Esi had taught her to dance in Kumase. The drummers listened, at first amused by the thought of a woman invading their territory, then intrigued by a rhythm they had not heard before. Tentatively, quietly, they fell in with her beat. Ama was excited. She knew the music in her head. Now, without any training, she found that she could make the drum speak. After a fashion. Imperfectly. But well enough for someone to dance to.

  The dancers were drifting back. The third drummer came to reclaim his drum. He, too, took up the rhythm.

  “Show us,” he commanded with a nod of his head.

  Ama hesitated. The man had a strip of cloth wound around his forehead to keep the sweat from running into his eyes.

  “May I?” she asked him.

  Then, alone in the centre of the ring of watchers, she danced adowa, slightly bent at the waist, the cloth stretched taut to keep her hands a palm’s width apart, one hand above and then below the other, the movements of her feet controlled, deliberate, turning her head this way and that, looking first upwards and then down at her feet, stooping, bending at the knee, circling, straightening up, lost in the flowing beat. Then others came to join her, mimicking the elegance and refinement of her movements, as if to make fun of her, but learning. When the drummers stopped at last, the dancers clapped their hands for Ama and she, in turn, applauded them and then the drummers, too.

  Jacinta danced for Tempu in the centre of the circle. She started slowly but then a change seemed to come over her. Ama noticed her open stare: she saw nothing around her. Her eyes were blank, unfocussed, looking inwards. She seemed to be overtaken by some sort of ecstasy, beyond herself. The spirit of Tempu possessed her and she began to chant in a language none understood and none heard her speak on ordinary days. It seemed that she was Tempu’s vehicle, that he spoke through her. She seemed to have become Tempu. She was Tempu.

  Ama wondered whether she was mad. She had seen a similar performance several times in Kumase. The akomfo in their grass skirts and whitened faces also spoke in tongues. An assistant would translate for the benefit of those who did not understand the language of the spirit world.

  Behind her hand Esi had laughed.

  “Charlatans. Crooks. Confidence tricksters,” she had said. “They take your gold. If you pay them enough they will say anything you ask of them. But beware, if you persuade them to say something that offends the Asantehene, or his interests, and he comes to hear of it, he will deal with the offending okomfo summarily. Do you understand?”

  Esi had drawn a finger across her throat.

  Jacinta’s nose began to bleed. First a trickle. She paid no attention. Olukoya signalled to the drummers and they slowed their tempo. Now her nose was bleeding badly. She seemed unaware. The drumming stopped. Jacinta sank to the ground. Her eyes opened. Ama rushed to her with a cloth and squeezed her nostrils.

  “Breathe through your mouth,” she told her.

  * * *

  Olukoya brought his bowl and came to sit by her.

  “Well, sister Ama,” he asked, “How did you find it?”

  “I’m glad I came,” she answered. “Thank you for asking me.”

  “I am sorry we didn’t ask you earlier. We have to be careful, though. I think you understand that?”

  Lost in her own thoughts, she ignored his question.

  “I feel free,” she said. “It was as if I was carrying some great burden, like a hunchback’s hump upon my back. Now, suddenly, it’s gone.”

  He smiled.

  “That’s what this is all about.”

  “One day,” he continued, “this country will be ours. Orunmila tells me so and my own intelligence confirms it. We are many; they are few. In the course of time our numbers will tell. In the meantime, we must prepare. We must get to know one another, to build up trust amongst us. We must learn whatever there is to learn from the whites. I mean useful things, like reading and writing, making sugar, building ships. We must make plans. But above all, we must preserve ourselves, our own beliefs and customs. We must restore our self respect. If we begin to believe that Africans are natural slaves, the first battle will be lost and we might never recover. Do you understand what I am saying? What we do here is part of all this.

  “Our brothers and sisters in Salvador are the key. Salvador is like the hub of one of Bernardo’s cart wheels. Every engenho has links with the city. Those links are kept alive by the carters and the boatmen, by brothers like Josef. Here in the Recôncavo we have the numbers, but it is difficult for us to organise ourselves. It is the slaves in Salvador that must mobilise our Crioulo and mulatto brothers. It is they that must do the planning and give us the leadership. When they are ready and give the signal, every engenho in the Recôncavo will rise up. And when that happens, the country will be ours, just as Palmares was ours.

  “Our greatest enemy is not the whites. It is our own disunity. They know that, of course, and they encourage it. Their Christian religion is one the weapons they use to divide us. That, by the way, was why I was disturbed when you told me the book you were reading was their Bible.”

  “Bra Olukoya,” Ama interrupted, “I told you I am not a Christian. If I were to tell you the story of how I came to be here you would know that I will never become a Christian. But the Bible is a wonderful book all the same. It is full of marvellous stories. And it is the only book I have.”

  “I do not doubt your word,” he replied. “You must tell us some of these stories. Perhaps we can learn something useful from them. What I hate about the Christians is their arrogance. They tell us that we are pagans, that we worship many gods. They tell us that there is only one god, the one they worship; but they are hypocrites. They themselves have many gods. They worship Jesus and Mary and they have hundreds of saints whom they worship too. How does that differ from us, I ask you? We also have one supreme god, Olodumare. We worship him through the many orishas who are all his children..”

  They were silent for a while.

  “Bra Olukoya,” she said hesitantly, “there is one thing that worries me.”

  “What is that my sister?”

  “I felt the power of your gods today and of Tempu too. Our gods are not so strong. We ask them to bring us rain, good hunting and fishing and to preserve us from the winds that destroy our crops. And even in those small things they often fail. It is hardly surprising that they could
not save us from being captured and sold into slavery. But you yourself, you were serving the gods. How is it that they could allow you to be captured by your enemies?”

  “Sister Ama,” he laughed, “at home if you had asked such a question you might have had your head cut off. I must admit that it has troubled me too, though I have never spoken to anyone else about it before. All I can say is that I do not know the answer. The ways of the gods are inscrutable. Sometimes they come to our aid; sometimes it as if they have not heard us or even. . . .”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he replied, “just an idle unworthy thought which came unbidden into my head. Slavery does strange things to us, you know. I am not immune.”

  They were silent again.

  “Bra Olukoya, you mentioned Palmares. I have heard the name before. Bra Josef mentioned it when I first came here. He said that once I knew Portuguese I would hear the story.”

  “Good idea,” Olukoya replied. “We are all packed and ready to leave, but we mustn’t go too early or we might be seen arriving. We can fill the time telling of Palmares. Like the knowledge of our gods, it is something we must nurture and pass on from generation to generation. It is a story that even we, who have come from Africa only recently, can be proud of.”

  He rose to his feet.

  “Brothers and sisters. Please gather round. Sister Ama has asked for the story of Palmares. It can never be retold too often and it will fill the time until we are ready to return to the engenho.”

  * * *

  “How old is Esperança, do you think?”

  “Maybe eighty,” someone volunteered.

  “Let’s say she is eighty. This is a story of long ago. It started a hundred years before Esperança was born; and when it ended she was still not yet born.”

  “It has not ended,” said Olukoya.

  “My brother, you are right. It lives on in our memories. It is part of our present and of our future. One day we will honour the Palmarinos in public, not furtively, as we have to do today.”

  “The story, the story!”

  “All right, all right. The story! Let me begin at the beginning. Even the very first slaves whom the Portuguese brought to these shores from Africa ran away into the bush. They ran away even before they had learned the Portuguese language. . . .”

  And so he told the long story of the independent African state which flourished for a hundred years in the forests of Brazil, pausing only from time to time to wet his throat or to point a moral which the tale revealed.

  “Do you know what the worst thing was that we lost when we were taken into slavery? Of course you do. It was our families. Suddenly we had no grandparents, no fathers or mothers, no uncles or aunts, no brothers or sisters, husbands or wives, no children; no one to bury us with proper ceremony when we died, to send us to join our ancestors. Now, in Palmares, they began to build new families. The slaves regained some of their humanity and their children and grandchildren became complete human beings again.

  “But this was something that the whites could not accept. They did not go to all that trouble and risk to bring Africans across the ocean in order that we should be human beings, citizens, Brazilians, senhores even. No, they brought us here for one purpose and one purpose only: to work us to death making their accursed sugar, that useless rubbish. So they determined to crush Palmares.”

  He told them of the repeated attempts by the Portuguese and Dutch to conquer the twenty thousand Palmarinos and their king, the Ganga-zumba. He told them how the last Ganga-zumba negotiated secretly with the enemy and how his treachery was discovered and punished. He told them how the war continued under the leadership of their military commander, the Zumbi.

  When he came to the end he said, “I have finished my story for today, but the story is not yet finished.”

  “You have spoken well, my brother,” said Olukoya. “The struggle goes on even today. Soon after I was landed in Salvador, I heard about the heroic defence of the quilombo of Carlota in Matta Grosso and two years later news reached us that there was a war in progress in which an army of slaves had joined with our Tupi brothers to conquer a vast area in the state of San Jose de Maranhão.”

  “Bra Olukoya. . . .” asked Ama.

  “My sister?”

  “Why do we of the Engenho de Cima not plan and just slip away one dark night and find a place to set up a quilombo of our own? Even here?”

  “That’s a question I have often asked myself, my sister, ever since I first heard the Palmares story. I think the answer must be that times have changed. Over the years the Portuguese have destroyed more and more of the forest to open up land for sugar and tobacco. If you go to the top of next hill and then climb a tree, you can look out over a plain where there are only patches of forest with vast open spaces in between. Grassland that is good for cattle, but bad for quilombos. With their superior arms the militias would find us and wipe us out in days. There is no way we could hold out like the Palmarinos did. They are even growing sugar now on Palmares land.

  “No, if we want our freedom, if want to destroy slavery in this country, we will have to be more ambitious. We will all have to rise up together, those in Salvador and those of us in the Recôncavo. When the time comes, the smoke from the burning cane fields will be our signal. It will not be long now, but we still have much to do.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Josef returned from Salvador late one night.

  He brought the mail to the kitchen the next morning and Ama took it out to the Senhor with his breakfast tray.

  “Girl, what-is-your-name? Go and call Father Isaac and tell him that I want to speak to him,” he told her when he had read the first letter. “Father Isaac, the priest. Do you understand?”

  Ama said she understood.

  “Sit down, Father,” the Senhor said when the priest came. “Girl, pour the Father a cup of coffee.”

  “Father, do you know any English?”

  “English? No, Senhor. Latin, yes. A little Spanish, but no English. If I may ask, Senhor, why?”

  “Look at this. The English consul in Salvador wants to do me the honour of being my guest. The Governor has authorised the visit. There is no way I can refuse. Please draft a reply for me to sign. Tell them that he will be welcome but that there is no one here who understands the man’s language. If he does not speak Portuguese he will have to bring an interpreter with him.”

  Please Senhor, Ama imagined herself saying, there is no need. I know English well. I could act as the Consul’s interpreter if you would permit me to do so.

  “What does it say? When will he be arriving?” the Senhor asked.

  The English consul had come aboard The Love of Liberty. Ama tried to recall his face..

  “Next Friday, subject to your agreement,” Father Isaac replied.

  “Make a list. We’ll invite all our neighbours to a banquet on Saturday night. And their wives too. They can sleep over and attend Mass on Sunday. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

  He rubbed his hands together.

  “We’ll show this Englishman the meaning of Brazilian hospitality.”

  * * *

  There was a great hustle and bustle in the casa grande of the Engenho de Cima.

  Additional slaves were brought in to help with the preparations. The seamstresses worked long hours repairing the uniforms of those who would wait at table. The best plate and silver was washed and polished. Linen was aired and ironed. Bernardo made new beds. The excitement was felt even in the mill and in the cane fields. It was almost as if the expected visitor were Jesus Christ Himself, or at least the Governor of all Brazil.

  Ama was kept busy in the kitchen. She hadn’t seen so much food since Osei Kwadwo’s garden party at Breman. Wono was there too. And Josef would be serving at table.

  The Senhora was flustered.

  “We are short of one server,” she said. “Ama, do you think you could manage?”

  “Of course, Senhora. At least I shall do my best.”
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  “I hope the guests won’t be frightened by your bad eye; but there is no one else. Go to the seamstresses and get yourself fitted.”

  Wono took Ama’s hands and they did a little dance together.

  Ama was in the sewing room, trying on her new dress, when the English consul arrived. It was the fanciest garment she had worn since Mijn Heer’s death.

  * * *

  The dining room was ablaze with the light of a hundred candles and oil lamps.

  On the brilliant white table cloth the silver and plate and glassware glittered and gleamed. Around the walls stood sixteen bare footed slaves, the men in smart livery and the women in full petticoats. Two Crioulos played fiddle and guitar.

  The Senhor led in the beautiful young wife of a neighbouring senhor de engenho. She wore a dress of green damask and silk which took Ama’s breath away. Slaves stepped forward to pull their chairs.

  Ama turned to look at the next couple and suddenly felt faint. The Senhora was clutching the arm of none other than William Williams, the nephew of the captain of The Love of Liberty.

  Can it really be him? she wondered. He was deep in conversation with the Senhora, Portuguese conversation. Ignoring the slave whose duty it was, he pulled back the Senhora’s chair at the lower end of the table. Then Williams took his own seat, facing Ama, next to the beauty in green who sat in the place of honour beside the Senhor.

  The Senhor’s daughter Miranda came in last, on the arm of Father Isaac. She was wearing a modest white organdie dress which Ama had helped to make. The priest led her to her seat at her father’s left, where he could keep a watchful eye on her. This was the first time Miranda had been permitted to attend an adult function. She smiled nervously as Ama drew her chair for her.

  Father Isaac rose and said grace. When the guests had added their amens, the slaves stepped forward to serve them, one slave for each guest. The first course was a selection of local delicacies, spicy green pamonha, corn paste with coconut milk cooked in strips of banana leaves, efo, a pungent shrimp dish and acarajé, a tasty black bean cake.

  Ama poured red Portuguese wine into Miranda’s glass. As she did so, Williams noticed her. He was struck first by her missing eye. Then he took another look and at once he knew her. He sat back in his chair and stared. Ama put down the bottle and retired to her position behind her young mistress. She raised her head proudly, returning his stare, but giving no indication that she recognised him as anything other than just another visiting white man.