Brave Music of a Distant Drum

by Manu Herbstein

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ama’s story

  The next year, you turned ten. Vasconcellos ordered you to join one of the field gangs.

  One day you returned after dark, as usual, so exhausted that you would have fallen asleep without eating if I had not forced you to stay awake. I had stopped delivering the produce of my allotment to the casa grande; the money was too small and there was always an argument about payment. Our meat allocation was so worm-ridden that I refused to use it; and Vasconcellos never let go of the keys to the kitchen store.

  Tomba brought us whatever he could spare from his own rations. It was this and the yield of his Sunday trapping and fishing that kept us going.

  I watched over you as you fell asleep. I covered you and rose to return to the casa grande to serve Senhor Jesus his evening meal.

  As I was leaving the cabin, head bowed, worrying about your future, I heard the cry, “Fire, fire.”

  Looking up, I saw a red glow in the sky above the cane fields. Then the work bell rang—the slaves were being summoned to fight the inferno. Undecided as to what to do, I went back into the cabin and looked at your sleeping form. It would be at least an hour before Tomba arrived.

  “Kwame, wake up!” I said.

  You resisted, pulling the blanket back over your head. I grabbed you under the armpits and pulled you to your feet.

  “Mama, what is it?” you asked.

  “Here, take your blanket. You are going to sleep in the cave tonight.”

  There is a small crevice in the rocks on the hillside where, in earlier days, I would go to read. You still loved to hide in it: it was your secret refuge, the only place you could call your own. I pushed you before me, threading a way past the field slaves as they came stumbling out of their cabins in the dark.

  Zacharias

  I started work when I was just ten? Why don’t I remember? But the cave—I seem to remember a cave. Not really a cave, just a small opening in the rocks with room for two or three small children to hide.

  “My Mother,” I ask, “is that cave still there?”

  “Of course,” she replies. “Where do you think it might have moved, to Salvador?”

  That is my mother’s sort of joke.

  “We passed it on our way to the allotment last Sunday. Remind me next time and I’ll point it out to you.”

  How will you do that, I wonder, if you can’t see; but I keep my silence.

  Ama’s story

  Maria Cabinda, the cook, was standing at the kitchen door, looking out at the glow in the dark sky.

  She was worried about her husband, who would be fighting the fire, and about her two young children. If the wind were to turn, the fire might cut the men off from the stream. Then they would be unable to stop the inferno sweeping in from the fields, through to the yard and the mill, and on to the senzalas.

  “Go and bring them up here,” I suggested, but Maria was afraid of Senhor Jesus’s wrath. She had done that once before when one of them had had a high fever. Finding them asleep in a corner of the kitchen had driven him into a frenzy of rage.

  I told her what I had done with you. Maria knew where the cave was.

  “If you like, take them there and let them sleep with Kwame. When Tomba comes, I’ll ask him to go up and spend the night with them. Don’t worry, I’ll cover for you. I’ll tell Jesus you have gone to help fight the fire. He could hardly complain about that. And I’ll finish the cooking.”

  The fire turned out to be less serious than the height of the flames had suggested. Only three fields were burnt.

  Vasconcellos trudged up to the casa grande, his face streaked with ash. I turned my head to hide my grin.

  “Rum!” he commanded.

  He didn’t even notice the absence of the cook. I served him his food. By the time he had finished the second course, the bottle was half empty. He started to mumble to himself. Returning from the kitchen with the third course, I saw him bang the heavy table with his fist. He turned and glared at me. I lowered my eye.

  When he had finished eating, I cleared the table. Then I went back to the dining room. He was still sitting there, staring at the empty bottle.

  “Will there be anything else, Senhor?” I asked quietly.

  He turned to stare at me. Then he drained the dregs of the rum from his glass.

  “Will there be anything else, Senhor?” he mimicked. “Yes, One-eye, there will be something else.”

  He rose and grabbed me at once by the shoulders, pulling me toward him. I struggled to free myself but he was too strong. He forced my lips apart and drove his tongue into my mouth. I tasted the foulness and the rum. Almost instinctively, I sank my teeth into his lower lip. He screamed in agony and pushed me so violently that I fell backwards. My head struck the stone floor. I lay there, stunned. He dropped onto me and ripped my cloth off. Then he was inside me, thrusting away his hatred and frustration.

  When he had finished with me, he stood over me where I lay sobbing on the floor. He said nothing. I turned over on my side, hiding my face in my hands. Then (I am using my imagination because I didn’t see this, only felt the result) he drew his right boot back and deliberately, with all his strength, kicked me.

  When I came to, he had gone. Slowly, painfully, I got to my knees. Taking hold of the edge of the table, I pulled myself to my feet. I stood still for a while, dizzy, afraid that I would faint again. Then, step by step, I crossed the open space to the nearest wall. I closed my eye and rested my weight against the door post. Step by step again, across the kitchen. I went out and, by force of long habit, took the key and locked the door. I met no one as I limped and stumbled to the senzalas. All was quiet; the exhausted fire fighters had trudged back to their hovels and quickly fallen asleep.

  Tomba came out of the cabin. He had just arrived. The moon had risen. I could see the sweat glistening on his bare torso.

  “Ama,” he asked as he saw me approaching, “where’s Kwame?”

  Then he saw that something was amiss.

  “Ama, what’s wrong?” he asked as he came to help me.

  “Senhor Jesus,” I replied. “He raped me.”

  “Vasconcellos raped you?”

  Rape happened so regularly, we women almost accepted it as part of the condition of our lives. But it had never before happened to Tomba’s Ama.

  “Tomba,” I asked him wearily, “bring me water, I beg you.”

  He ministered to my needs, wiped my face, blew up the embers of the fire and put a basin of water on it. I told him about the burning cane fields and what I had done with Kwame. Then I stretched out to try to sleep.

  “Have you got a knife?” he asked me.

  “Not here,” I replied without opening my eye. “In the kitchen.”

  “Where’s the key?” he asked.

  I sat up.

  “No, Tomba, no!”

  “Where’s the key?” he demanded.

  I felt the corner of my cloth.

  “I don’t have it. I must have left it in the door or dropped it on the way. Tomba, don’t do it. I beg you, Tomba. I beg you.”

  I was sobbing now.

  “Can you walk?” he asked me, gently but firmly forcing me to my feet.

  “Tomba, what will you achieve? You will bring tragedy down on all our heads. Think of Kwame. Let it be. You cannot reverse what has been done.”

  “Come,” he told me. “I might need your help.”

  Zacharias

  My Mother, My Mother. What you have been through in your life.

  “My Mother,” I say, “I am so sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago,” she says, “and Jesus Vasconcellos was punished for what he did to me.”

  “By my father?” I ask.

  “By your father,” she replies.

  I fear what is to come.

  �
�My Mother,” I say, “this has been a long session. I can see that you are exhausted. Let us leave it until tomorrow.”

  “No,” she says, “I must finish this part of the story now. If I don’t, I shall not be able to sleep tonight.

  “How much paper do you have left?” she asks.

  Ama’s story

  We didn’t find the key and it wasn’t in the kitchen door. Tomba whispered instructions to me.

  “For the last time, Tomba, I beg you. Remember what we did together on the ship.”

  “It is because of that, that I must do this,” he said. “Now, are you ready? Do what I say.”

  He banged on the jalousie shutters of Jesus’s bedroom. At first there was no answer and I hoped against hope that in his drunken state, the man had fallen asleep somewhere out of earshot. But then we heard his half-awake, slurred speech.

  “Who the hell is that making that confounded row?”

  “Senhor Jesus. It is I, Ama, One-eye.”

  “Go away. I’ll have you whipped to an inch of your life in the morning if you don’t stop that row.”

  “Senhor. The fire has started again. They have set the cane fields on fire.”

  That woke him up, drunk as he was. We heard him swear as he struggled to pull on his boots. We went round to the veranda. I stood a little way off, where he would see me in the moonlight as he opened the door. We heard him fumble with the key. The door opened and he stepped out. He was holding a musket at waist height, a finger on the trigger. Tomba, standing beside the door, felled him with a single blow.

  In a moment Tomba had dragged him back into the house.

  “Ama, come quickly. Bring the gun and close the door behind you. Now lock it. Do you have a candle? And some rope to tie him with?”

  He had already stuffed a cloth into the man’s mouth. Now he wound it round and round his head to secure the gag. Then he turned him face down and sat on him.

  I returned, not with a rope but with a pair of manacles and a pair of leg-irons.

  “The keys are in the locks,” I told him.

  “Excellent,” he replied. “Now a knife, the sharpest you can find.”

  “Tomba, I beg you. It is enough. They will torture you before they kill you.”

  “Never mind. Do as I say.”

  “What about Kwame? And me?”

  “I must do what I must do.”

  In the kitchen I sat down, sank my head upon the table, and tried to consider my options. I could run to Olukoya and Josef for help. But by the time they arrived, Tomba would already have found a weapon and done his worst. Then I would have to live out my years with the knowledge that I had failed him. And what could Olukoya and Josef do but give him up to the militia?

  “Well?”

  Tomba was standing in the doorway. I pointed to the drawer where the knives were kept. He turned the contents out onto the table.

  “Tomba, for the last time.”

  I put my arm on his naked back and caressed him. He shook me off and continued to examine each of the knives in turn.

  I went to the doorway and lay down on the floor, face down, with my head toward him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I am prostrating myself before you, as the Yorubas do before their gods. Kill me, rather.”

  He stepped over me. I rose and followed him.

  He turned the man over and sat down on his stomach. Jesus’s manacled hands were behind his back, under him. Tomba put the instruments down beside him. Then he removed the gag.

  “You may say your last prayers,” he told the manager of the Engenho de Cima.

  “Who are you?” Vasconcellos demanded. “I warn you. Release me at once or it will go hard with you.”

  “It will go hard with me anyway, shit-face. Make your confession and beg for absolution before I cut out your tongue.”

  I was shocked. I had never heard Tomba use foul language before. I hugged myself and rocked from foot to foot. Closing my eye, I tried to summon up a vision of Itsho. But all I could see was a dark void.

  “Right, Senhor Jesus,” said Tomba, “you’ve had your chance. No prayers.”

  He forced the man’s mouth open and wedged a wooden spoon between his teeth. Then he seized Vasconcellos’s tongue with a pair of tongs and pulled it out of his mouth and sliced it off. Blood spurted over him. As he rose to his feet, I caught a glimpse of the terror in his victim’s eyes. Then I threw up.

  When I rose to my feet, Tomba had pulled the man’s pants down. Now he ripped off his blood-soaked shirt as well. The manager lay naked. Tomba took a cushion from a chair and put it under the man’s head.

  “I want you to have a good view of this,” he told Vasconcellos.

  Using his knees, he forced the man’s legs apart. He waved the blood-stained knife before the man’s eyes.

  “Tomba, no, no!”

  I tried to pull him away but he shrugged me off. I ran to the door, turned the key, and in a moment was running down to the senzalas.

  Zacharias

  I lie awake, listening to my mother’s regular breathing.

  The picture of the terrible punishment which my father inflicted on the Portuguese man will not leave my mind. My father had no right to do what he did. He should have left the rapist to the judgment of God. I fear that he must be burning in the eternal flames of hell.

  My mother has been carrying this burden of memory all these years. Now, with its telling, she is at peace. I can hear it from her relaxed breathing. She has passed the burden on to me. I must bear it now. For her, “it was a long time ago,” but for me, it is as if it happened today.

  Kneeling, I pray, “Dear God, my father acted in passion. Please forgive him, please forgive him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ama

  Tabitsha my mother is here, and Itsho, and Tomba.

  “Tomba,” I say, “I have told him. I have told Kwame the whole story. All that remains is the difficult task of telling him how you died, but I will manage that. Tomorrow I will tell him that. And then it will be finished and I can rest.”

  They all nod. They have heard me but they say nothing.

  Suddenly, out of a clear sky, lightning strikes. It strikes me.

  “Kwame, Kwame,” I call out.

  “My Mother, what is it?” I hear his reply.

  The pain in my head is unbearable; it is as if the lightning has ripped my skull apart. I try to sit up but I cannot move. My right side is without feeling. I am dying. Death waited until I had finished my story. Now he has come for me. Soon it will be all over. I cry out for Tabitsha my mother, and Itsho, and Tomba, but they are no longer there. At least the pain is less. I am falling, falling ...

  Zacharias

  Our sleeping mats are stretched out side by side on the floor of my mother’s cabin. I lie on my back, unable to sleep, listening to her steady breathing and turning her terrible story over in my mind.

  Suddenly she cries out.

  “Kwame, Kwame,” she calls.

  “My Mother, what is it?” I ask, but there is no answer.

  It is dark inside my mother’s cabin. I open the door to let in some light and then I go to her. At first I fear that she is dead, but I can hear her breathing, fitful, no longer regular as it was before. I panic. I need help. I run to Josef and Wono’s cabin. Wono says Josef arrived from Salvador after dark. He was tired and has just fallen asleep. She wakes him and he follows us with an oil lamp.

  “My Mother, can you hear me?” I ask, but again there is no response.

  “I think it is a stroke,” I say. “The old Senhora had a stroke. She could not move her arm and her leg on her right side and when she spoke, it was impossible to understand what she was trying to say. She lived like that for a year before she died. Josef, do you remember?”

  “Wono, what
shall we do?” Josef asks.

  “Let us lift her onto the bed,” Wono says. “Then bring my mat. I will keep watch. There is nothing we can do until morning.”

  I go with Josef.

  “Kwame, I am sorry,” he says. “This has happened at the wrong time.”

  Any time to have a stroke is the wrong time, I think.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “I brought a message from Salvador. You are to return at once. I am to take you first thing in the morning.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  He looks at me. Then he covers his face with the palms of his hands. He stands like that, silent, for a few moments. He looks exhausted.

  “I’ll tell you later,” he says, dropping his hands. “Here, take Wono’s mat. Go and be with your mother. I must get some sleep.”

  The sky is blue, the sea calm, the sun not yet as hot as it will be later in the day. A light breeze fills our sail, propelling us across the Bay of All the Saints to Salvador. Josef has put me in control of the rudder.

  He says, “What could Senhor Fonseca do, after all? He takes his orders from Senhor Gavin. You must ask Senhora Miranda to let you come straight back with me. In the meantime, Wono and Ayo will take good care of your mother. She seemed to be a little better this morning. What do you think?”

  I don’t really believe it but I nod all the same.

  “Did she finish telling you her story?” he asks, tapping the leather bag which he uses to keep the letters dry, the letters he carries between Salvador and the Engenho. My mother’s manuscript is in that satchel.

  “Almost,” I reply. “She told me what my father did ...”

  “Ah, Senhor Jesus,” says Josef. “He got what he deserved.” He pauses as he pulls the sail around to make a change in course. “Do you want to hear the end of the story?” he asks.

  Fearing more unpleasant surprises, I pause before I nod and mouth my silent consent.

  “Ama called us, Olukoya, Wono, and me. When we got to the casa grande, Vasconcellos was dead. Your father was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, covered in blood, the blood of Senhor Jesus.

  “It was already midnight. We met in the kitchen and quickly decided to leave the Engenho and head for the forest. Olukoya got us organized. By dawn we were well on our way. The few who refused to join us, we tied them up to clear them of guilt.