He paused. There was a comfortable silence between them, as if they had known one another all their lives. From the casa grande there came the sound of cheering and hand clapping.
“Ama, tell me,” he asked, “how do you know all these things? About the voyage, about the whites?”
“You don’t know much about me, do you? Nor I about you, for that matter.”
“Tell me, then,” he asked her, “tell me the story of your life. From your earliest memories. Your parents. How you lived. Tell me how you became a slave. Leave nothing out. Nothing. I want to know everything about you.”
“We will be here all night,” she warned him.
“Never mind,” he said.
He looked at her and she thought for a moment that he was going take her, but the moment passed and he lay back on the flat rock and closed his eyes.
“Well?” he asked, opening his eyes for a moment. “I am waiting.”
* * *
She told him all.
She told him about her happy childhood, when her name was still Nandzi; about her love for her mother Tabitsha; about Satila’s extended courtship of the little girl that she then was; she told him about Nowu.
When it was time to tell him about Itsho, she hesitated and he noticed.
“Some things are difficult to speak of,” he said. “I had no right to ask you. Tell me what you will. If there is anything you find too painful, pass over it. There will always be another time.”
She closed her one eye and tried to summon up Itsho’s spirit. To her surprise she saw his face before her almost at once. He was smiling. He moved his lips. No sounds came out but she knew what he was telling her.
“You have been faithful to me,” she heard him say. “All these difficult years you have been faithful to me. Even when you lived with Mijn Heer, you were faithful to me. There was never a time when you didn’t turn to me when you needed me. I shall watch over you until the end of your days on earth. This man Tomba loves you. Tell him everything.”
“I am sorry,” she told Tomba and wiped away a tear.
Then she told him about Itsho; about their long talks and their expeditions together; she told him about their love for one another; and about her fear of losing him when it was time for her to go to Satila.
She told him about that long ago morning when she had been left alone to look after Nowu.
“I saw a puff of dust on the horizon,” she told him. “I looked at it but paid no attention. My thoughts were elsewhere. If I had not been daydreaming, I would have had time to take Nowu and run and hide. They would never have found me.”
“And you would not be here today and I would never have met you.”
She smiled at him and took his hand. He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. She held him for a moment and then she pulled away.
“Not now,” she said. “There will be plenty of time.”
It was a strange experience. She had never told her own story before. She recalled the first day of the march from Kafaba to Kumase, when she had composed a dirge for herself and her fellow slaves, straight out of her head. That day she had felt as if her spirit had left her body, as if it were floating above her, watching her. Telling her own history now was much the same. It was as if she was telling a story about a stranger, a different person, someone else.
She told him about the rape. It was a long time since she had thought about that day, but as she told the story it all came back to her: the agonising pain in her womb and the humiliation, the degradation of it all. Tomba took her hand and held it in both of his, shaking his head at the terror of it.
“And then?” he pressed her.
She told him about the ride, loaded on Damba’s pack horse like a bundle of stolen goods; about the encounter with Itsho; about the failed rescue attempt. She told him about her discovery of Itsho’s mutilated body and about how Suba and Damba had helped her to bury him that day.
She told him about Yendi, about Kafaba and Kumase; about the Ya Na and Koranten Péte: and about Akwasi Anoma the drunken bird man who had also raped her. She told him about Minjendo and Esi who were her friends. She told him about the elephants they had met on the way down the Daka river and about her first encounter with the forest on the road to Kumase. She told him about musketeer Mensa and about the magnificence of Kumase and the Asante royals; about the death of Osei Kwadwo and about the coup d’etat which led to the enstoolment of Osei Kwame.
She told him everything but when it came to telling him about her part in the young king’s passage to manhood, she was too shy and so she said, “My throat is dry from all this talking and you must be getting bored. It will be dark soon. I think it’s time we went back down or Wono will be worried. I’ll continue tomorrow if you like.”
* * *
The wedding of Tomba and Ama was celebrated in a more modest fashion than Williams’ and Miranda’s.
Tomba ran from the Engenho do Meio to the Engenho de Cima after work on Saturday night just as he did several times a week. Ama had a basin of hot water ready for him to take his bath.
Josef took the part of Ama’s father and Olukoya spoke for Tomba. Josef poured libation, speaking to Ama’s ancestors, first in their own language, of which, at his own insistence, Ama had taught him a few words, and then in Fanti. Olukoya did the same, speaking in Portuguese so that all could understand. Josef called on the ancestors to bless the union of their daughter with the man she had chosen to be the father of her children. Olukoya had a more difficult task. He and Tomba had become close friends. Tomba had told him about his unusual childhood and about his ignorance as to who his forebears were. He had been brought up without any system of belief and religion played no part in his life. He had no family, except perhaps Ibrahima, and therefore no ancestors. So Olukoya addressed his words to the ancestors of all the African slaves. He spoke of Tomba’s struggle against the slave trade in his part of Africa and of his attempt, with Ama, to take control of The Love of Liberty. He spoke of his courage and he called on the ancestors to watch over him and his new family, not as a man of this or that nation, but as an African.
They passed the bowl of garapa round and each of the guests drank from it. Then the older women and those who had feigned illness so that they could spend the day cooking, brought in the wedding meal, which they had improvised from bush meat, trapped in the forest, a stolen sheep and the produce of the allotments.
Drums were beaten and there was singing and dancing around the fire.
Benedito came to them after Mass the following day and advised them both, for the sake of their eternal souls, to beg the priest to marry them in church. They promised to consider his advice. Ama asked the Senhora, who had returned to the Engenho de Cima after Miranda’s marriage, to speak to the Senhor on her behalf but her mistress thought it better that Ama make her request to the Senhor in person.
The Senhor was playing chess with Father Isaac on the veranda.
“Senhor, Father, I beg permission to make a request,” she told them.
“What is it?” grunted the Senhor.
“I want to get married, Senhor.”
“Who is the man?” asked the priest.
“His name is João, Senhor.”
“I have no slave of that name.”
“He belongs to the Engenho do Meio, Senhor.”
“Out of the question,” replied the Senhor. “Find yourself a man in this engenho.”
He turned to the priest.
“I won’t have my slaves marrying outsiders, Father,” he said. “It only causes trouble.”
“Senhor, I beg you. Would the Senhor not consider buying João from the senhor at the Engenho do Meio; or selling me to the senhor there?”
“I will think about it. Now clear these things away.”
“I don’t mind what the church says,” she heard him say as she went through the door, “marriage is not a proper institution for slaves.”
Unseen, she paused to hear the rest.
“Whe
n they get tired of their spouses, they have a tendency to poison them. Then the poor owner loses a slave through no fault of his own. What do you think, Father?”
“That is certainly a risk, Senhor. I have heard of such cases. The Church, need I say it, is in favour of marriage in principle. In practice the problem is that Africans are so lascivious that once they are married they regularly practice adultery; and that is an affront to the Church.”
* * *
Though his riding days had long since passed the Senhor could still get excited over the birth of a new foal.
He would raise himself from his rocking chair and waddle ponderously over to the paddock to caress the favourite mare which had so rewarded his loving care and attention. It was much the same with calves and lambs.
When it came to new peqeniños, as the Portuguese called black infants, he was less than enthusiastic. For one thing, there was the inevitable decline in the mother’s productivity during and after pregnancy. For another, there was the risk of the loss of an asset through the mother’s death in labour. And then if a child was born there was the cost of ten years’ food and clothing before the new worker could begin to do the simplest useful tasks. In the Senhor’s experience, moreover, there was a high probability that the child would not survive to that age. That would mean even more money down the drain. Taking everything into account it made economic sense to extract the maximum labour during the ten years, on average, of a slave’s useful working life and then to purchase a replacement, rather than to attempt to breed slaves as he bred livestock.
“A few survive some years beyond their productive period,” he had told Williams. “We may not kill them off, of course. We just have to grin and bear the cost of maintaining those survivors: it is just one of the unfortunate circumstances of our sugar economy. Wherever possible we allocate light tasks to the maimed or ill or prematurely aged. That helps to cover at least part of the cost of their upkeep.”
Fortunately for the Senhor his economic philosophy regarding peqeniños was supported by what appeared to be natural law. The fertility of the slave women was low. The reasons were not far to find, had the Senhor only chosen to look: poor food; long hours of exhausting work; the widespread incidence of venereal and other diseases; and the absence of any form of medical treatment beyond that which the other slave women could provide.
Many of the slave women, moreover, were themselves reluctant to have children. Despair led some to induce abortion as soon as they became pregnant; the others often miscarried anyway; some of those who went to term abandoned their new born babies in the cane fields or in the surrounding bush, leaving them to die in infancy rather than live their lives in bondage. Many of those infants who survived the first hours of life succumbed to what the Brazilians called the seven day illness, which resulted from the unhygienic conditions in which the umbilical cord was cut. Then there were the hazards of measles, whooping cough and diphtheria which forest herbs might or might not cure. Even a child who reached adolescence might be sold by a senhor de engenho temporarily strapped for cash. Why go through all the pain and suffering and heartache? the women reasoned.
This story was repeated all over sugar Bahia. The senhores de engenho argued, Why go to the trouble and expense of rearing your own stock, when Africa is so much more efficient and economical a slave farm?
Conditions for the female slaves in the casa grande were marginally better than for those in the cane fields and the mill. For one thing the work was not as hard and the diet, supplemented by left overs from the Senhor’s table and stolen food, was more nutritious. It is true that the hours were long but on the other hand there was often a chance to take a nap in the afternoon, during the Senhor and the Senhora’s own siesta.
But in the casa grande the women faced a new and different problem: the father of the unborn child was often white and the pregnancy the fruit of a relationship which invariably had an element of duress. Moreover the mother of a mulatto child might have to face the anger and contempt of the slave men whose potential wife, herself, had been appropriated by the Senhor or his overseers.
All these matters were discussed in depth and at great length when, a year after Tomba’s first appearance, Ama discovered that she was pregnant.
“I had a daughter once, a dearly beloved child,” Tomba told her. “She was taken from me suddenly and by force, she and her mother, who was the only woman I had loved until I met you. You know the story. I have told it to you before. That loss drove me mad. Who but a madman would have taken it upon himself to launch, single-handed, a campaign to destroy the slave trade? I don’t want to be driven mad again and I don’t want you to be driven mad either. Let us be content with one another. Take something, I beg you, to abort the pregnancy.”
“No, no, no,” she replied. “I want to have the child. You do not understand. A woman is not a woman until she has brought forth. Tomba, I beg you too, do not make me do this thing.”
This was their first serious quarrel. There was little else for them to quarrel about. They lived apart and though Tomba ran over after his work several times a week, there were no petty domestic issues to divide them. They were united in their hatred of slavery and in their determination to resist it in any way they could. They had the deepest respect for one another; and lying together on the bed Tomba had made for them, they were able to escape, briefly, from the humiliation and harshness of their daily lives.
Tomba’s unusual childhood had left him free of the gender prejudices which male dominated societies build into their offspring during their formative years. Of his mother he had no more than the dimmest of memories. Sometimes he wondered whether he really remembered her at all; perhaps he was just recalling what Ibrahima had told him of her. As for Sami, she had been like a beautiful pearl discovered in an oyster, a delicate object to be treasured, a source of constant amazement.
Ama had witnessed Tomba’s courage in the most difficult of circumstances and she had also seen how deeply those whom she had known on board as ‘Tomba’s people’ revered him. She loved him with a fierce passion but she also had a deep respect for him.
They resolved the quarrel by agreeing to accept Olukoya’s mediation. The babalorisá listened to them both. Then he closed his eyes and sat perfectly still, in silence, while they waited.
When he had finished his meditation, he said, “Tomba and Ama, my dear friends. I am sorry that I cannot accept this task. Please forgive me.”
“But why not?” they burst out simultaneously and then looked at one another and laughed.
Olukoya laughed too.
“May you always be of one mind,” he told them.
He continued, “My problem is that I made up my own mind on this issue long ago, even before Ama arrived here. Because of that I cannot be a fair arbitrator.”
“No matter,” Tomba told him. “We agreed before we came to see you that we would accept your advice whatever it might be.”
“Can you not guess what it would be?”
Tomba said, “No.”
Ama said, “I can guess.”
Olukoya said, “We need witnesses,” and sent his wife to summon Josef and Wono.
When they had all shaken hands, Olukoya explained the circumstances.
Then he said, “Josef, I beg you, pour libation for us. Summon the spirits of all our ancestors and ask them to let me speak with wisdom and compassion.”
Olukoya said, “Tomba, my brother, our brother. You have placed yourself in my hands. I thank you for the honour you do me. Ama, you too.
“Tomba, what I have to say might possibly cause you pain. If that is so, it will not be from any malicious intention, please believe me.”
Mystified, Tomba nodded.
“The five of us here, Ama, Josef and Wono, Ayodele and I, represent three different nations. Wono and Ayodele and I are all Yoruba. Josef is an Akan. Though Ama is well versed in the customs of the Akan, her own people are called Bekpokpam. I don’t have to tell you that.
�
�There is one thing that the five of us have in common. We all grew up in large families, mothers, sometimes several mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters. While we were growing up we witnessed both births and deaths within our families. We all share a belief in the continuity of the living, the dead and those yet to be born. We believe that when we die we go to join our ancestors.
“But in order for us to do so, for our spirits to rest in peace, custom must be performed. The performance of that custom is the work of our children.
“Because of your strange history, which you have shared with us, my brother, and from what you have told me, I know that these beliefs and customs have little meaning for you. That is the reason why I first declined to be your arbitrator. I am not a fair judge. Just look at us. Ayodele and I have two children. So do Josef and Wono.”
Tomba made as if to speak but Olukoya held up his hand.
“Wait please,” he said quietly, “I have not finished. There is another argument, concerning which there is no difference amongst us, all six of us, and which I believe will carry more weight with you. I know you, and not only by Ama’s account, as a man of unsurpassed courage. It would be uncharitable for me to taunt your fear of a repetition of a loss which, as you have told us, affected you so deeply, as a want of courage. We have talked long into the night together, you and I, about what we need to do to regain our freedom. I think we are in broad agreement. But I have to ask you, if we do not produce children, what is the purpose of our plans; and if our generation fails, who will there be to implement our dreams? The Portuguese bring shipload after shipload of our fellows from Africa. Each generation dies out leaving just a small residue of Crioulos and mulattos. Many of them think not like Africans but like their masters or their white fathers. In order to achieve our aims we must create a new generation who know both Africa and Brazil, who are committed to Africa and committed also to the overthrow of slavery and the creation of a new Africa here on this soil.”
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