The Tomorrow-Tamer

by Margaret Laurence

  “Do you pay regular wages for such a small man?” Mercy laughed.

  Moses did not reply.

  When he returned after taking Mercy Ansah home, Moses found Godman still awake and waiting for him.

  “What a fine woman she is! What a splendid choice! Is her father rich? You will marry her? She has a good heart–in her voice and her eyes, it was plain. She is gentle. You must marry a gentle woman, not one of those shrewish ones who nag and yelp. What a pair you will make! And oh, my master, what children you will have!”

  Moses sat down tiredly.

  “Godman, listen to me. I cannot afford to have a servant, and anyway, I do not want one. Somehow I had not seen until tonight–it happened so gradually–the work you do–”

  “Do I not work well? Are you displeased with me? The groundnut stew–oh, I prepared it carefully, carefully, I swear it–”

  “Yes, yes, it was a fine stew,” Moses said impatiently. “Only–you do not know some things about living as a man. A man–a man has to work and be paid for it. I cannot pay you, Godman.”

  “Sometimes you speak so strangely. It grieves me when I do not know what you mean. Pay? You do pay me. You protect me. What could I do alone? Without you, I am nameless, a toad that the boys stone. Oh, I bless your strength–have I not said so? Where is there a man like my master?”

  “Stop it!” Moses shouted. “You must not call me that. You are not my servant.”

  “I have called you master before, many times,” Godman said reproachfully, “and you never became angry. Why are you so angry now?”

  Moses stared. “Before? You said it before? And I did not even–”

  “Anyway, what does it matter?” Godman continued. “It is all foolishness, this talk. Why should I not call you master? You are my master–and more–”

  Then he capered like a dusty night-moth.

  “Oh, I see it now!” he cried. “Of course you are angry. I am stupid, stupid! My head is the head of an earthworm, small and blind. Every servant says ‘master’ and what does he mean by it? Nothing. But for me, it was not that. Did you not know–can you not have realized what I meant?”

  “What are you trying to say? Say it.”

  “You are my priest,” Godman said. “What else?”

  Moses could not speak. Godman’s priest, the soul-master, he who owned a man. Had Godman only moved from the simple bondage of the amber-eyed Faru to another bondage? And as for Moses himself–what became of a deliverer who had led with such assurance out of the old and obvious night, only to falter into a subtler darkness, where new-carved idols bore the known face, his own? Horrified, Moses wondered how much he had come to depend on Godman’s praise.

  “Godman, try–try to understand. That is a word you must not speak. Not to me. Never, never to me.”

  Godman looked puzzled.

  “You saved me,” he said. “You cannot deny that you saved me. I would have died if I had stayed there much longer. You lifted the lid of the box and let me out. It was no other man. You were the one. Who else, then, should protect me? Who else should I serve? Who else’s name should I forever bless? You freed me. I am yours.”

  Moses put his head down onto his hands.

  “There is more to freedom,” he said, “than not living in a box.”

  Godman fixed ancient eyes upon Moses.

  “You would not think so if you had ever lived in a box.”

  Moses raised his head and forced himself to look at the dwarf. He and Godman were bound together with a cord more delicate, more difficult to see, than any spun by the children of Ananse. Yet it was a cord which could strangle.

  “You have been here too long,” Moses said dully. “The time has come for you to go.”

  The little man, seeing from Moses’ face that he was in earnest, began to moan and mourn, hugging his arms around himself and swaying to and fro in an anguish that was both ridiculous and terrible.

  “Why, why, why? What have I done? How have I offended you? Why do you forsake me? Oh, I did not know you had such a sickness in your heart. And I am not ready to go–I am not ready yet–I will die, certainly–”

  Moses felt a saving anger.

  “No one is ever ready,” he said. “And you will not die.”

  But later, after the arguments and the explanations he knew to be useless, when at last he locked his door and turned off his lamp and could hear only the sound of his own breathing, Moses no longer felt certain. All that night he lay awake in case there should be a faint rustling at his door. But none came.

  In the next few weeks, Moses worried a good deal and asked himself unanswerable questions and sometimes saw in dreams the oracle as he had appeared in that first glimpse–a fragment of damp and flaccid skin, a twist of rag on the festering straw. Then Moses would waken, sweating and listening, and would smoke one cigarette after another until he was able to push the picture from his mind. But after a while he thought of Godman less and less, and finally he thought of him scarcely at all.

  One evening, about a year later, when he returned after work to the whitewashed bungalow that was his home now, his wife Mercy handed him that day’s newspaper.

  “Look, Moses–”

  It was a large advertisement for a travelling troupe of jugglers, snake-charmers and sleight-of-hand magicians. In one corner was a photograph of a very small man, a man not three feet tall, a toy-sized man dressed in an embroidered robe and a turban. Moses read the words under the picture.

  Half god Half man

  SEE REAL LIVE ORACLE

  Hundreds of years old

  Smallest man alive

  –Foretells future–

  Moses put down the paper. “An oracle–it was the only thing he knew how to be. Half man–did you see? A halfman.”

  “Moses–don’t blame yourself.”

  Moses turned on her. “Who else? I should have known no one would hire him for any proper work.”

  “He really couldn’t have stayed,” Mercy said primly. “It was all very well when you were a single man. But I could not have stood it for long–to have him running around the house like a weird child, wrinkled and old–”

  “That is not why I made him go,” Moses snapped. “It was–something else.”

  “I know,” Mercy said at once. “Yes, I know. You told me.”

  It was true that he had told her. But she did not know. No one knew, least of all Godman himself.

  “I thought I was doing what had to be done,” Moses said. “But now–I wonder who owns him this time?”

  “Will you go there?” Mercy asked.

  “No,” Moses said fiercely. “I don’t want to see him.”

  But of course he did go. The show was in a great grey flapping tent at the edge of town. Moses pushed and elbowed his way through the crowd that waited to be admitted, shouting young men and their gay-talking girls. Inside the tent was a long stage, and there sat Godman, flamboyant as a canna lily in scarlet turban and green robe. When the little man saw Moses, he jumped down and ran towards him.

  “Mister Adu! It is my old friend! I never thought to see your face again. Here–come and sit down behind this curtain. We can talk until the people come in.”

  “How are you, Godman?” Moses asked uncertainly. “Do they treat you well?”

  “Oh yes. They give me money, you know, and the food is plentiful. Moving around all the time, I find it is hard on my lungs–different air in each place, so the lungs have trouble sometimes. My old cough comes back in the rainy season. But I cannot really complain. Do you like my robe? I have four, all different colours, and a silk turban to go with each.”

  “You are still an oracle,” Moses said tonelessly. “You have not changed much.”

  The little man looked at him in surprise.

  “What did you expect?” he said haughtily. “Did you think I would turn into a giant? Lucky for me I am alive at all, after the way you treated me. Oh, I don’t hold it against you now, but you must admit it was cruel, almost as crue
l as Faru, whose eye still burns at me when I sleep. I stayed under the niim tree outside your house that night–you never knew I was there. I could not move my legs. They were dead with fear, two pillars of stone. But in the morning I crawled away, and oh, the things that have happened since that day–it would take me a year and more than a year to tell you. For I ate cat, and slept cold, and trapped cutting-grass, and shrivelled in the sun like a seed. And I drank palm wine with a blind beggar, and pimped for a painted girl, and sang like a bird with a mission band for the white man’s god. And I rode a blue mammy-lorry with a laughing driver who feared the night voices, and I walked the forest with a leper who taught me to speak pidgin, and I caught a parrot and tamed it and put into its mouth the words ‘money sweet’ and we begged together until I tired of it and sold it to an old woman who had no daughters. And–the rest I forget.”

  “You are the same,” Moses said, bewildered. “And yet–you are not quite the same.”

  A tall, heavily built man slouched past, arranging his black and turquoise cloth casually over one shoulder. Godman called out to him in pidgin.

  “Hey, you Kwaku! Meka you ready?”

  “I ready one-time. Go ’long, man. I coming.”

  Moses peered questioningly at Godman.

  “Who’s that?” he asked sharply. “Not another–? Not your–?”

  “That one?” Godman said offhandedly. “Oh, that is only Kwaku. We do the oracle part together. These young men who pay to see us–they do not believe, you know, but we make them laugh. They like me–you would be surprised. It is not such an easy thing, to find where the laughter is hidden, like gold in the rock. One has to be skilled for this work. The pirafo used to be fine jesters, and now, perhaps, again.”

  He touched Moses lightly on the hand, and Moses, looking at the man, began to comprehend.

  “You have done well,” Moses said. “At first I did not see it, but now I see it.”

  Godman shrugged.

  “I have known the worst and the worst and the worst,” he said, “and yet I live. I fear and fear, and yet I live.”

  “No man,” Moses said gently, “can do otherwise.”

  The band began to assemble. Two boys with the wide faces of coast fishermen, but now wearing pink striped shirts and fancy sombreros, grinned as they clambered onto the stage with their battered cornets. A lanky desert man, his ancient past burned onto his face in the long gashes that told his tribe, began to plink at a flower-painted guitar. The drummer set up the kettle drum and the bass drum, new and shiny, beside the graceful thonged drums and the carved wood drums born of the forest longer ago than anyone could tell. Shuffling feet, scraping chairs, as the crowd came in.

  And Godman Pira waved to Moses and hopped up to take his place with the other performers on the broad and grimy stage.

  A FETISH FOR LOVE

  Dis my wife, madam,” Sunday said, standing to attention quite unnecessarily. “She name Love.”

  Had the African woman been pocked as a sprig of coral, or ancient as a prophetess, Constance would still have been delighted with the name. But Love was young and had an agreeable appearance, so the name was even more of a treasure.

  Surely Sunday would be less difficult now. He was a great deal older than Love, and the disparity seemed sad, but Constance did not want to consider even the possibility of more problems. Sunday, virtually major-domo in this house for the six years Brooke had lived here as a bachelor, had not taken easily to the presence of Brooke’s wife. He was polite, always, but he was not friendly. Constance was friendly, and she saw no reason why other people should not be the same. Another thing–Sunday resented the slightest criticism. He constantly carped at Ofei, the steward-boy, but when Constance mentioned (quite quietly, suppressing her horror and indignation) that the kitchen store-room was a-flutter with the amber wings of cockroaches, Sunday marched in angrily and saturated everything with D.D.T. spray, ruining an entire case of expensive imported potatoes. Sunday’s wife had never lived here with him on the coast. She had stayed in her upcountry village, where he used to visit her occasionally on week-ends, cadging a lift with a lorry-driver he knew. When he suggested bringing his wife here, Constance had agreed at once. Of course. Why had they not thought of it sooner? He would be happier and therefore more reasonable.

  Constance held out her hand, and the girl took it, but very lightly, touching only the fingertips.

  “I greet madam.” The voice was a hushed whisper, only a shade removed from silence.

  Sunday was strapping on his cook’s apron once more. His ageing but still-handsome face now yielded a warm astonishing smile.

  “She too fear, madam. Nevah she stay for Eur’pean house befoah dis time. She stay for bush. But I teach she, madam. She savvy some small pidgin.”

  Small pidgin. No wonder she was so shy. Had “pidgin”, through some semantic maze, come from “pigeon”? Love herself was like some small pigeon, soft and plump, fine-feathered in cloth of a blue delicate as sky, printed with yellowing green leaves like ripe limes. She stood perfectly still, but uncertainly, as though her heart might any moment rise in panic and she herself fly away, as noiselessly as she had come.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Love,” Constance said, enunciating distinctly. “I do hope you’ll be happy with us.”

  Love looked at her blankly. Sunday translated, an angry spitting out of words in his own tongue, ending with an admonition in pidgin–“t’ank madam”.

  “I t’ank madam,” Love said obediently.

  Now a little parrot. Constance smiled at her own slight sense of irritation. Love would learn.

  “She’ll do the baby’s wash, Sunday?”

  “Yes, madam. I tell you so. She do all. You got some cloth for wash now?”

  “She can start with the bucket of nappies. It’s in the bathroom.”

  “One-time, madam,” Sunday said. “I bring now.”

  The girl waited, not understanding, the brown face expressionless as a bird’s. Sunday started out of the kitchen, his gaunt body bent forward in his hurry. He paused beside his wife and muttered to her. She nodded, and now the composure in her face seemed a genuine calm, not merely a bulwark against fear. Constance felt reassured and hopeful.

  That evening she told Brooke about the arrival.

  “It was worth all the arrangements, to get her here. He’ll be more settled. Probably he’ll work better, too.”

  “He worked all right before, I thought,” Brooke said.

  “You didn’t know. You weren’t here all day. He was–well, not exactly sullen, but–”

  “That’s his nature, Con. You can’t change it. But if he wants her here, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t be.”

  “Wait till you see her. You’ll understand what I mean. She’s simply lovely. I hope you don’t agree too heartily.”

  “Don’t be daft,” Brooke said, and Constance, laughing, sat down on a hassock beside his chair and leaned her head against his arm, for she could not truthfully imagine Brooke wanting anyone else. They had been married for a year and a half; and now they had Small Thomas, who was sleeping at the moment, pink and milky under his mosquito net, and Constance, who had taught too long at a girls’ school in England, still felt surprise at this wealth so unexpectedly acquired. Brooke continued to read the airmail edition of The Times, but he put a hand out and touched her hair.

  “She did Small Thomas’s washing today,” Constance continued, “and it was perfect.”

  The baby’s name now almost seemed to be Small as well as Thomas, because that was the way Sunday referred to him, so Constance and Brooke had picked up the expression as well. The Africans had a knack with names. Constance was fascinated by the titles painted on the jaunty and jouncing lorries, themselves descriptively termed “mammy-wagons”. Tiger Boy, King Kong, One-time Boy, Bless You, Freedom Man. The names of people were no less appealing. Imagine anyone called Sunday. When Constance had asked him about it, he said it was because his name was Kwesi, and she had sen
sed some mystery, rich and strange, until Brooke matter-of-factly told her Kwesi was the name given to the Sunday-born. Long ago Sunday had worked for some burning missionary, to whom African names meant darkness and damnation, so he had placatingly changed his name for the job’s sake. Now Constance wondered about Love.

  “How do you suppose she got the name, Brooke? At a mission school? I’ll wager anything you like that it’s from Saint Paul to the Corinthians. ‘Now abideth these three–Faith, Hope and–’ Did you know that some churches substitute Love? Probably if she’d gone to a different one she’d have been called Charity, which would have been so cold, in comparison, wouldn’t it?”

  “Her village isn’t far from Eburaso,” Brooke said absently, leafing through the paper to find the financial page. “I expect someone in her family worked for Opie, Grange & Love, that’s all. Big ironmongers. Sell mainly those black iron cooking-pots the Africans use.”

  “How dramatic you are.”

  “Mm?” He looked up then, and smiled. “Sorry. Only–”

  “What is it, Brooke?”

  He put an arm around her.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  Constance had to admit after a few weeks that Love was something of a disappointment. Sunday remained unchanged, neither happier nor unhappier than before. Love herself was an enigma. She worked so quietly and moved so unobtrusively one hardly knew she was there. The features of her face seemed to denote a gentleness, yet she was no more friendly than Sunday. Her understanding of English had improved, and now she appeared to grasp nearly everything Constance said to her. But she replied only with a laconic “Yes, madam” or “No, madam”. Even to Sunday, Love spoke very little. When he shouted at her from the kitchen doorway, she would nod wordlessly and fetch wood for the stove. She worked with an easy physical grace, yet stolidly, with a phlegmatic quality that troubled Constance.

  Sunday was a Christian who, unlike Brooke and Constance, went regularly to church. He would set off, dressed in his best khaki trousers and jacket, swinging his ebony cane with its mighty brass handle the size of a door-knob, shouting his haughty greeting to neighbouring cooks and stewards languidly enjoying a sabbath laziness in their own compounds. A few paces behind her husband Love would walk, softly splendid in her cloth of limes and sky.