Eddie Signwriter

by Adam Schwartzman

  Then, in the late afternoons, preparations would begin for the meals. Ingredients would be delivered, and the chopping would start, the tables were laid, and the smells of the spices and the sound of pounding and frying, and the gossiping and laughter of the cooks would drift over the empty balcony.

  Guests started coming at six p.m. Often there were tourists. They came in busloads, with their foreign currency and their taste for soft drinks and local beer, which Nana Oforiwaa overpriced scandalously and became relatively rich by.

  But most of the clientele were from the towns around, in which there were many prominent people with interests, and retired teachers, and civil servants with pensions. Or else—especially on the weekends—from Accra: the pleasure seekers escaping the heat, who came to visit the garden, stay in the hotels, drink the palm wine, and see the waterfalls and streams that were all around the region, and often would stay at the restaurant until after closing time, when Nana Oforiwaa had them pile up their dishes in the sinks out back as they left, leaving the rest for the lizards and birds.

  And so the visits to the rest house were not for Celeste alone, but also for the world that she came from. The gardens. The verandah. The rest house, with its low eaves, and its polished concrete floors, the vines on the pillars and the cool afternoon breezes flowing down into the valley. The restaurant in the evening—watching from the pantry as the cooks prepared the meals, the clientele from Accra in their finery, the prominent citizens of the town, quiet and elegant, speaking in hushed tones, and the private table on the side where the four of them—Nana Oforiwaa, the teacher, he and Celeste—took their meals.

  And also—he’d admit it freely—for the infectiousness of Nana Oforiwaa’s humour and confidence and her unashamed selfishness—the way she charged into the world and ordered it about, how she hustled it and cajoled until it did exactly as she pleased. It gave him confidence to stand behind such a person, to pass through the world in her wake.

  Later, as the months drew on, he would begin to travel to Aburi on his own, without the teacher. Nana Oforiwaa had mentioned that he had only to arrange the time with her driver. Any time would be fine with her and Celeste, she said, he was to come over whenever he wanted. And that is what he increasingly did, letting Celeste know in advance, and planning an hour or so in which they could be together, before they’d join Nana Oforiwaa.

  Celeste never said no. Whatever he proposed they’d always do. Walking through the gardens. Doing homework together in the back of the rest house. And even in those days, traveling a little further afield—to another village by taxi, or by paths that she knew through the bush.

  Sometimes he thought she was afraid. Not of him exactly, but of the mechanics of closeness. Of the claim that being wanted made on her. Not that he did anything wrong. Him she liked well enough. That he cared for her. That he made her laugh. That he was kind and respectful and listened to her and let her know the things she thought and said were important. And the fact of having a boy—that she liked too, in a childish, vain sort of way, which he didn’t mind. It only made him laugh and want her more. But being willful, desiring, wanting—these were not things that came easily out of her. Nor were they things he could easily draw out himself.

  They were in Aburi town once, out and about walking on a Saturday afternoon. It was hot and the taxi ranks were crowded and the stalls were selling fast, and they came to a table where a man was trading in food—pineapples, bananas still on the branch, bush meat, dried fish, a sack of grain, and such things. The trader was young and shirtless, and he hated the trader immediately for his loud, commanding voice, and his obvious, brilliant strength. He wished Celeste would want to pass straight by. But she stopped at one corner of the trader’s table where oranges were piled up, and she turned to the boy and asked if he had money.

  “Why don’t you just take it?” he said.

  She rolled her eyes at him girlishly.

  “Do you have money?” she repeated.

  He didn’t have to look, since he knew he had nothing.

  “Take it,” he replied.

  She did what he said and slipped the orange into the pocket of her dress.

  Afterwards they went back to the gardens and they ate that orange together at the back near the workers’ cottages, where the land slopes down into the forest, not saying a word, as the tall grass blew around them and protected them from view.

  They were there a while, though he finished his half almost immediately. But she ate slowly, separating each segment, and stripping off the threads of rind. He knew there were thoughts working through her head, and so he sat quietly and let her be. When she finished her orange she put the rind by her side and folded her hands over her lap. He was sitting a little ahead of her, looking down on the forest.

  Nana Oforiwaa had been talking about him, she said.

  “What does she say?” he asked.

  “That she likes you,” Celeste said, and that she thought he was smart and well-behaved.

  He was glad, he told her, he liked her aunt too, even if, without his knowing why, it made him uneasy to say it.

  Yes, Celeste said again, her aunt liked him, she would ask about him, and she laughed—so many things—not so many things, but—again she laughed and had to stop momentarily because she was talking out of nervousness really and needed to stop for air—but some things.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Yes,” Celeste said. And then she starting telling him how she’d come back from the school—this was not long after the first time he’d visited with the head teacher—and Nana Oforiwaa was sitting in her chair on the verandah, even though it was still hot. Which was unusual, Celeste said, because normally Nana Oforiwaa would be sleeping at that time, and would only get up as the evening cooled and it was time for the guests to come to the restaurant. But there she was sitting in the sun, dressed up, shooing gnats away from her with the newspaper, which was how Celeste knew something was wrong.

  So she asked Nana Oforiwaa why she was there, Celeste told him, and what the matter was. But Nana Oforiwaa said that nothing was the matter, and that she was fine, except that Celeste could get her some lemonade if she wanted to, which Celeste did get for her aunt.

  Then Celeste settled down at a table in the back to do her homework, while Nana Oforiwaa continued to sit there in the sun, the dampness creeping up the back of her dress, the empty glass at her feet in the grass.

  Celeste called out to her aunt a few times. “Did Nana not want to come in to the shade?” she asked. But Nana Oforiwaa said no, and the second time that Celeste asked, Nana Oforiwaa got cross, and said that she did not need to be told if she was hot, and so Celeste didn’t ask her again.

  None of this seemed like anything to the boy; it seemed like talk. Still, to be in any conversation with Celeste was pleasure, and so he asked her if these things with her aunt were normal.

  He needed to know her aunt, Celeste said. He would see himself.

  Later that evening, Celeste continued, after the customers had gone, the two of them were sorting the knives and forks. That was when Nana Oforiwaa started asking about him. About what he was like, and such questions as that.

  He was surprised to hear this. Celeste saw it in his reaction and she retreated. She said she probably ought not to be telling him this. That it was all strange and she didn’t want to talk about it.

  He pushed her. Not that he really wanted to know, or really suspected that she might say anything interesting, but rather to make something of there being a secret. For the drama of withholding and asking.

  But now Celeste did not want to talk anymore of this, and tried to change the subject. Halfheartedly he continued asking, until he realized that his persistence was upsetting her. When he saw this, that she was not far from crying, he stopped. He said, “Celeste, it’s fine,” and that she needn’t say anything. That it didn’t matter. That all that mattered was her—kind words, comforting words, words knocking up against the limits of what was possible the
n between them.

  But a little later he could see again that still she wanted to tell him, from the way she kept glancing at him, then looking down, and falling silent, only waiting for him to ask. And so he did. He asked her, “What?” he said gently, but also laughing.

  And then she said that her aunt had asked her questions that didn’t feel right. She asked if she and he were doing anything private, the two of them alone, and that she thought it was all right if they were.

  “Ah,” he said—a breath escaping him before he could stop it.

  “I know,” she said, and she too was embarrassed, for him and for the situation, and for seeing him so much at a loss, and she said she was sorry.

  “But I didn’t say anything,” he started to explain, his throat dry. “I didn’t say I wanted that.”

  “Yes,” Celeste said, “I know,” laughing, and he laughed too, though still neither of them could look at the other.

  “But do you?” Celeste asked.

  And then he did look at her.

  Celeste was sixteen then, and didn’t properly know what it was her aunt was expecting of her, what she’d be required to want, though for that moment all that was required was a kiss, and that—for then—was what there was.

  ONE SUNDAY MORNING a few weeks later, when the rest of the school was gathered in the hall for prayer, he slipped away. He wanted to be alone. He climbed down the embankment behind the administrative buildings. A blossom tree was leaning over the path shedding purple flowers across the gravel. He made his way through a grove of ceiba trees with their branches spilling into the air like river deltas. Across the path ants flowed in streams thick as overhead power cables.

  Then he came through the cover of the vegetation and was standing on the road.

  Why, he wondered, when he had most in the world to feel happy about, did he feel so alone? And why, when he was most alone, did he most want to be apart from people?

  For some minutes the sound of the bells of the valley churches had been coming through the mist.

  A bead of condensation trickled down his forehead, gathered pace in the concavity between eye socket and cheekbone, then curled around the jaw.

  He closed his eyes, breathed deeply. There was the smell of the grass, the smell of the soil.

  He buried his hands in his pockets and walked toward the town.

  The first structures, hugging the outskirts, were derelict, set away from the road, but still they were inhabited, the owners moved downstairs, leaving the top floors to unfasten themselves, the roofs to thin like blankets, the bricks to melt like mud.

  Further on, neat, new houses were set out down the hills, with flat concrete roofs and green mesh window frames.

  The town itself was almost empty, the shops and houses closed for church. Only an old woman sweeping a doorway with twigs to observe him.

  No people, he thought, but the buildings themselves, the buildings were alive—the paint on the old bungalows decomposing on the walls, breaking into elements, the pale olive and blue and yellow of oxidation. Damp grew through the plaster, that blistered as if with bacteria.

  Above some of the better-kept shopfronts, second stories had been built of wood, which resembled barns raised into the air. Their walls were packed tight with thin planks and their shutters, made of irregular slats, were fastened inwards or outwards or hung in the gentle breeze. He read the dates in plaster above the doorways. He read the names: “Hawkins Chambers,” “Methodist House.”

  Has anything here ever been painted more than once? he wondered. Or was it the weather that turned everything into history instantly?

  There was nowhere to get food. A single taxi stood at the taxi rank. Its driver eyed him suspiciously, but made no attempt to tout for business.

  He passed through the other side of the town, heard music through the mist and singing. There were more people now on the road, families dressed in Sunday clothes, walking quietly against him back toward the town.

  The music brought him to a stone church set on the hill below the road. Its walls were made of rocks the shape and size of loaves of bread. Passersby had stopped on the road, some children in torn clothes, a man with a floral shirt and a Bible.

  He stood to one side and looked through the window.

  Inside there was a wedding. Closest to the window was a band and choir, the material of the cassocks catching with silver in the lights from the bulbs strung across the roof. A surface of light glossed the walls. It covered the people and spilled out of the church into the somber morning.

  The people continued to pass him on the road. Families, groups of middle-aged women in hats, teachers leading rows of children, scrubbed and quiet, hand in hand.

  Inside the church there was hardly room to move. The tom-tom player, tucked between the organ and the wall, peered casually over his dark glasses as he set the rhythm, that started out in his jumping hands and spilled into the matter of everything. The choir and band swayed and jumped in small movements from side to side as they led the wedding song.

  The bridal couple danced in the middle of the room, pressed tightly by the congregation that flowed around them right to the back of the church. The congregation hopped and skipped, but the couple danced in half-time, one beat to every two, swaying together, hand to elbow.

  Observing the scene, he put his head against the window frame.

  He sensed the presence beside him before he heard the voice.

  “I’m sure you’re not where you should be,” Nana Oforiwaa said. She had a look on her face of mock reproach. Or possibly just reproach.

  He was momentarily surprised, but not alarmed, though he might have been. Something told him she would not turn him in for sneaking out of the school.

  He said, “Good morning, Nana Oforiwaa,” and that he expected he was not.

  She didn’t say anything.

  He asked her what brought her there.

  “Me? I’m free to come and go as I please. No morning church unless I want, no ten a.m. homework, for instance.”

  “That is true,” he said. “I should go back,” turning and looking toward the town.

  “Not because of me,” she said.

  He said, “All the same.”

  “I can take you in my car,” she said. “My driver is parked at the Methodist church.”

  “All right. Thank you,” he told her.

  “It is my pleasure, Edward,” she said as they started to walk up the hill to the church. “Tell me where you want to go.”

  TO GET CELESTE took patience.

  Just like Nana Oforiwaa said it would.

  “Anyone can learn to wait,” she said. “The courage you must find yourself.” This was her idea. The story that protected him and Nana Oforiwaa—that she would teach him how to wait; everything else he’d do himself.

  “You have to be brave,” she said.

  He knew, he said, and that he’d try.

  She said, “Right now in your life you only have to want things badly enough to get them.”

  These were snatched conversations, exchanges that happened in between—between other conversations, between other people coming and leaving, in brief moments of privacy—at least at first.

  She told him, “The things you want are easy. Everyone gets them in the end, even if it doesn’t seem that way to you.

  “You’ll see,” she said, and that probably he needed to get some of the things in life that were easy before he learned to want the things he couldn’t have.

  “Maybe,” he said, “maybe that’s right,” because he felt she wanted him to agree with her, that she had a need for that. But really he wondered what she meant by this, because it seemed to him that Nana Oforiwaa generally did get what she wanted, and if she wanted that he’d have Celeste, then that is what he’d have.

  Which in the end is how it was.

  As well as for what Nana Oforiwaa wanted on her own account. The time she asked he spend with her. Keeping her informed, she said. That was how it starte
d. As a condition for her help. Not the details at first. Although later, the details too. About where he went with her niece, and what he was doing, and what it was like, and where he might be at such and such a time.

  And later other things, for which he didn’t readily have proper words, and felt less easy sharing. But Nana Oforiwaa said she could always ask her niece. Which in fact was what she ought to do, she said, that she had a responsibility. Women spoke together of such things. And he knew that would mean telling—about what she already knew, and how; and about what he gave Nana Oforiwaa—and not unwillingly, Nana Oforiwaa reminded him, he was not unwilling in these things, and he had to agree.

  No, it wouldn’t be necessary to tell Celeste, he said to her, it wasn’t necessary that Celeste know anything. In addition to which Nana Oforiwaa had a way of putting him at ease. Through her approval of him, through her affection. She inspired trust, confidence. And he was grateful to her.

  As Nana Oforiwaa was grateful for him too. He was her consolation, she would say.

  For what?

  She wouldn’t elaborate, would just repeat herself and smile sadly.

  Some things Nana Oforiwaa hinted at, the least important things.

  “She is so much like her mother,” Nana Oforiwaa would say bitterly of her niece in unguarded moments.

  “How?” he tried to discover.

  But it was not a topic she would broach.

  “No, Edward,” she said, “we do not talk about that. We do not.”

  Celeste herself knew nothing of her mother that was not from Nana Oforiwaa. Her mother had died in childbirth.

  And Celeste’s father, Nana Oforiwaa once told him, confidingly, but in a way that forbade the prospect of any further discussion, “her father died afterwards of grief.”

  From what Nana Oforiwaa said, he could see that she felt she’d lost a lot in her life. In the first place, because of her brother. But more recently, because of Celeste.

  This she never said aloud. But he knew. He’d observed Nana Oforiwaa long enough to understand.