Ama

by Manu Herbstein

  Miranda looked up, speechless, and shook her head. Ama moved aside. The Senhora took her daughter’s hands.

  “There now. Surely it can’t be bad enough to make you cry like that?”

  Miranda burst into tears again.

  “Ama, what is it? Do you know?”

  Ama was silent.

  You should have kept your mouth shut you stupid slave. Now you are in real trouble, she thought.

  Miranda looked up and wiped her face with her hand. Her mother helped her with a handkerchief.

  “Tell her,” Miranda ordered Ama.

  “Senhorita, you promised.”

  “Tell her. I promise you on my honour that my father will not send you back to the cane fields.”

  “Well?” asked the Senhora, losing patience.

  There is nothing for it, I shall have to tell her, Ama thought.

  “Senhora, Senhor Williams, the Englishman . . .”

  “Yes? What about him? Speak girl, or I’ll have you given a good beating.”

  “He has asked the Senhor for permission to pay court to Senhorita Miranda.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Overcoming his misgivings, the Senhor gave his consent to Williams’ courtship of Miranda.

  For practical reasons, he sent his wife and daughter to take up residence in the town house in Salvador. Miranda begged her father to join them, but the Senhor was wedded to the engenho and too lazy to make a move.

  Ama had become the girl’s favourite companion. Miranda wanted to take her as her personal maid. Ama was thrilled at the prospect. But the Senhor vetoed the plan. There was no way he would permit himself to be made a laughing stock in Salvador. Employing a one-eyed maid to serve his daughter! He would be the butt of malicious jokes. He had convinced himself that Williams would be a good match and had no intention of allowing the Englishman to slip through his fingers by presenting him with a scandal as a pretext for second thoughts. So Miranda gave in and Ama stayed behind.

  Miranda had more success in persuading her father that Alexandre should go with them. The Senhor decided that it was time to send his mulatto son to the seminary in Salvador to prepare him to take holy orders.

  Weeks passed. Josef brought regular news. Williams had been received into the Catholic Church. He dined regularly with the Senhora and her daughter. He showered Miranda with exquisite gifts. He escorted them to Mass every Sunday. He took them out driving in his coach.

  It was still too early for him to make a formal proposal but the Senhora had sufficient confidence in his honourable intentions to start assembling her daughter’s trousseau. Orders were sent to Lisbon.

  Then the Engenho do Meio, the fogo morto which was the Senhor’s neighbour, was sold. The new owner came to call on the Senhor. He brought in many new slaves. Fifi was made a senior driver by virtue of his local knowledge. Josef and Wono rejoiced for him and his family. They had been living in the direst poverty. Now things might be a little better.

  Williams returned to the Engenho de Cima to make a formal proposal of marriage to the Senhor. He offered to forego his right to a dowry but the Senhor insisted. They compromised. The Senhor would make a generous settlement upon his daughter. A day in January was fixed for the wedding and Williams returned to Salvador. He bought a house in a quiet street in the Cidade Alta and his fiancée and prospective mother-in-law helped him to equip it.

  The Senhor’s two elder sons arrived at the Engenho de Cima, together with their wives and children, and began to make preparations for the wedding. The house was too small to accommodate all the guests who were expected. The neighbouring senhores de engenho would help, but tents would also be required; and a grand marquee for the reception. The sons arranged to borrow carriages and ox-carts and boats. They auditioned the slaves who could play musical instruments and sought out others in the neighbourhood. The Senhor decided to close down the mill for a month after Christmas. His sons needed the extra labour and it was not practical to keep the mill running with a skeleton staff. So a hundred slaves, men, women and children devoted all their energies for four weeks to the preparations for the festivities. There would be horse racing and cock fighting, hunting and cards to amuse the men. And eating and drinking, of course. On the night of the wedding there would be a great ball with an orchestra brought all the way from Salvador. The annual issue of clothes to the slaves was postponed until the eve of the wedding. Each male field hand would receive a pair of drawers that reached below the knee, a coarse homespun shirt and a bright head kerchief; each woman, a shift, a frock and an apron; and each child a shirt with long tails. And as a bonus, a new tin plate, a spoon and a mug.

  The Senhor was beginning to receive subtle intimations of his own mortality. He was determined that no effort or expense should be spared on what might well be the last manifestation of his power and prestige.

  * * *

  Miranda returned with her mother a week before the date set for the wedding.

  Williams came with them and immediately went to stay as the guest of the new owner of the Engenho do Meio. He brought an educated black Crioulo with him as his valet. Every morning he rode over to take breakfast with the Senhor. The valet followed on foot.

  This man was the subject of animated conversation amongst the slaves. He did not speak the pidgin Portuguese which was the lingua franca of both slaves and many of the whites; no, this one spoke with the accents of an educated man. Williams dressed him in the uniform of an English butler. He wore shoes, polished shoes, which was unheard of for a slave. It was rumoured that he had travelled to Portugal; someone said that he had also been to England. No, said another, he is English, a black Englishman, specially imported by the consul.

  Only the Senhor was not impressed.

  “A monkey dressed in silk is still a monkey,” Ama heard him tell the priest.

  As the big day approached the pace of work quickened. The glamour and excitement of it all affected the slaves, too. The Bishop arrived from Salvador, carried on a litter and surrounded by a retinue of his personal slaves. The slaves of the engenho lined up and watched the family and the guests kiss his ring. As each party of guests rode up the Senhor came out to welcome them formally. The yard was full of fine carriages, otherwise seldom used because of the condition of the roads. Strange horses raced up and down the paddocks. The estate was alive with strangers. They inspected the livestock and the mill. Some of them even toured the senzalas, poking their heads inside the cabins. The young men regarded the female slaves as fair game, squeezing breasts and pinching buttocks. Ama found her missing eye a valuable weapon. Assaulted in this way, she turned her remaining eye on the assailant with a fierce look and spat on the ground. Her victim warned his fellow rakes of her evil eye and they steered clear of her thereafter.

  The unmarried sisters of these young men were kept in virtual purdah in the Senhora’s quarters. Their time would come with the grand ball, an occasion to put their virtuous gifts on display for the benefit of prospective suitors.

  The slaves had their own guests to accommodate and entertain, for every white family brought with it a retinue of servants.

  “Maybe we can find you a husband, too, Ama,” teased Wono.

  * * *

  At ten o’clock precisely (more or less) on the big day, the bridegroom arrived.

  A great cheer rose from the assembled slaves and the guests on the veranda as his carriage approached. It was drawn by four magnificent white mares and escorted by a mounted retinue of the younger male guests.

  “Look,” said Ama, clutching Wono’s arm, “Fifi. Doesn’t he look grand?”

  “Who is that beside him?” Wono asked.

  Fifi, dressed in a red uniform with gold braid, held the reins. Beside him, bolt upright, sat a stranger in similar attire.

  “It must be one of the new slaves at Fifi’s place,” said Ama.

  “Fifi, Fifi,” cried Wono, as if it were he who was the centre of all this pomp, rather than his passenger.

  Ama looked again at
the new man.

  “Wono,” she said faintly, digging her nails into the flesh of her friend’s arm.

  “What?” asked Wono.

  “I know him. I am sure I know him. He was on the ship with me. The Love of Liberty. He is my malungo.”

  And then she fainted.

  * * *

  When Ama came to she was lying in the shade of a tree.

  Wono was kneeling by her side. They were surrounded by a crowd of anxious friends.

  “Move away, move away,” she heard Wono say. “Give her some air.”

  She opened her eye and blinked.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You fainted,” Wono replied. “Are you all right now? Can you sit up? You wicked girl, you gave me a quite a start. For a moment I thought you were . . .”

  “Dead? Me? Not yet, sister Wono.”

  “Ah, here they come,” said Wono.

  “Who?” asked Ama, sitting up.

  “Fifi and Josef. And Fifi’s friend, your malungo. I sent for them.”

  Ama felt her heart pumping. She struggled to get up but she was too weak.

  “Wono, help me,” she insisted.

  Josef asked, “Wono, what is the matter? The lad you sent sounded anxious.”

  Ama said, “It is nothing, Bra Josef. We just wanted to greet Fifi in his fine new clothes.”

  Fifi greeted Ama in Fanti, “Sister Ama, maakye. How are you?” and shook hands.

  When she had replied, he said, “As for these clothes, they dress us up like performing monkeys when it suits them. I would be happier in my working shirt, hot and itchy as it is. But I forget myself. I haven’t introduced our new brother. João, this is Wono, Josef’s wife. And this is Ama.”

  Wono was about to add, “Who is looking for a husband,” but her friend’s stern look shut her up.

  Ama turned and looked Tomba straight in the eye. She would never let him forget the open-mouthed astonishment with which he recognised her. Recovering quickly, he took both her hands in his.

  “Sister Ama and I,” he said to his new friends in Portuguese, “have met before.”

  * * *

  Ama and Tomba saw little of the wedding celebrations.

  There were so many other slaves on hand to serve the masters that it was easy for them to slip away unnoticed.

  They spent the time talking. They talked from dawn to dusk and half way through the night. At first they talked at random about what had happened to them since they had last been together at the slave auction in the Cidade Baixa. No slave caught up in the harsh reality of life in sugar Bahia was immune from bouts of self-pity; but it was not in the nature of either to dwell upon their troubles. As they talked they grew to know one another, confirming the impressions each had formed on board ship. They shared reminiscences of their journey across the Atlantic.

  Tomba reminded her how she had brought him water to drink soon after she had come on board.

  “What made you do that?”

  “Huh? I don’t know. I didn’t think. I just did it.”

  He took her hand.

  “I never had a chance to say thank you. You cannot imagine how that simple act of courage and compassion sustained me through that voyage.”

  Shyly, Ama changed the subject.

  She said, “We have one thing to thank our oppressors for.”

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “They have given us a common language.”

  “Do you think that we have to give them credit for that?”

  “Of course not. They are the masters; we are their slaves; it follows that we have to learn their language. But we arrived here speaking many different tongues. We didn’t know one another. Had you ever heard of a place called Angola? Now we know that we are all Africans.

  “Do you remember,” she asked, “after I unlocked your chains, I tried to lead you to the boys?”

  “Yes, but I knew that there were two of my own men in the sick-bay. They were stronger, in spite of their sickness. And there was another thing. I didn’t want to involve the youngsters in what was, to me, an unknown and risky enterprise. As it turned out, I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “What I wanted to do was to get the boy Kwaku, to use as an interpreter, so that I could brief you properly on the situation up on deck.”

  “That makes sense. I didn’t think of it. I was impatient, anxious to get on with what we had to do.”

  “A typical man,” she smiled.

  “If there is one thing that this country has taught me, apart from Portuguese, it is to force myself to allow time for thought before making important decisions. It has been hard. It is not in my nature.”

  “Do you remember, later, when we were standing together on the deck?”

  “Of course.”

  “I tried to tell you that I had locked the captain in his cabin. He was drunk. My plan was that you would take him hostage before tackling the guards.”

  “You had locked the captain in his cabin?”

  He slapped his forehead with an open palm.

  “I didn’t understand. If we had used the captain as a hostage we might just have succeeded in forcing the guards to leave at least one hatch cover long enough to let us unlock it. Oh, oh, oh. We were so close to success. If only I had understood and given more credit to that brilliant intelligence.”

  He pointed to her head.

  “Can you ever forgive me? We might have won. You would still have had both your eyes. And that boy I killed, the best of the lot he was, might have survived.”

  “George Hatcher he was called,” she mused. “He was a good lad, simple, not a scrap of malice in him.”

  She drew her thoughts together.

  “Can I forgive you? There is nothing to forgive, bra Tomba. We were the victims of a cruel trade. We still are. We did our best to escape, but we never really had much of a chance. Even if you had gained control of the ship, what could you have done? Could you have sailed it, even with the captain and the six guards under your control? Where would you have taken us?”

  “Some uninhabited stretch of the coast where we could have built a new society, where we could have lived in peace together,” he replied, but without the strong conviction that his words suggested.

  “A quilombo in Africa? Like Palmares. Have you been told the story of Palmares?”

  “Yes, I know the story and of other quilombos too. Even today there are some that survive.”

  “And have they made any difference to our condition as slaves? No, my brother, that is not the way. You must talk to Olukoya. If we have a leader at this engenho, it is Olukoya. Olukoya will ask you, ‘Is it not true that we are many and they are few?’“

  “That is true.”

  “Then how is it that they find it so easy to control us?”

  “It is because we are divided amongst ourselves. We are suspicious of one another, Akan of Angolan, Yoruba of Hausa.”

  “Ahaa! Yet there are some things that unite us all.”

  “That we are Africans; that we are black.”

  “More than that.”

  “That we are slaves, that we are treated as property to be bought and sold.”

  “Bra Tomba, you are a good pupil!”

  “Sister Ama,” he replied with a smile, “you are a good teacher. The more I listen to you the more I am astonished at the quality of your mind. It is unusual in a woman.”

  “You sound like a senhor de engenho talking about his slaves, all his slaves. Women can think as well as men if you would only give us half a chance. Anyway, you flatter me too much. It is true that these ideas were in my mind, but they were all mixed up, without proper form. It is Olukoya who has helped me to understand. Without his guidance I would still be confused.”

  “So what does this your Olukoya say we should do?”

  Ama wondered whether she detected a note of jealousy in his voice.

  “In one word, prepare.”

  “Prepare for what?”

  “To tak
e over this country; to make ourselves the masters. Or, rather, to do away with masters altogether.”

  “And how will we do that? It sounds wonderful but isn’t it as farfetched as the dream of another Palmares?”

  “Not if we do our work properly. Olukoya says we have two main tasks. One is to learn all the skills of the Portuguese that give them an advantage over us, particularly reading and writing, but also how to make sugar, since that is the life blood of this country.”

  “And the other?”

  “Olukoya says he can describe it best if you picture a spider’s web. The centre, where the spider sits, is Salvador. The points where the threads meet are engenhos like this one. The threads are messengers, men like our Josef, who travel in and out. When the web is complete, our people in Salvador will be able to reach every engenho, practically every slave in the country. When we are ready the messengers will spread the word and we will rise together, all at the same time. If we do that they can never defeat us.”

  “Hmm,” said Tomba. “Exciting things are happening in this place. I must meet this Olukoya.”

  * * *

  The sound of music floated up from the casa grande and the smoke from cooking fires rose in the still air.

  She had taken him to the rocky outcrop which was her reading place.

  “Did you know that the bridegroom was on the ship with us?” she asked him.

  “You are joking, surely? How?”

  “His name is William Williams.”

  “I know that. I talked to the man he calls his valet.”

  “The captain of our ship was called David Williams. This man is his nephew. He used to work for a white man at Anomabu, a man called Richard Brew. Brew died, the night of that first terrible storm, if you remember. Williams senior collected his nephew. He was going to take him (and us) to a place called Barbados, but then the second storm struck us and damaged the ship. That was how we came to Bahia. Williams (the uncle) never intended it. He must have left his nephew behind here when he returned to his country. Now the nephew is an important person, the ambassador of his king in Salvador.”

  “When I first saw him a few days ago,” Tomba replied, “I thought his face was vaguely familiar, but I put the thought aside. I find it difficult sometimes to distinguish between the faces of white men. Now that I come to think of it, he gave me a strange look when I opened the door of the carriage for him. It was the first time I had seen him at such close quarters.”