The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel (Vintage International)

by Arthur Japin

  A game of blind man’s buff was played in the garden. I did my best to be caught, and soon it was my turn to be blindfolded. I stumbled about with clawed fingers, at which all the children took flight. I sniffed the air like a predator. Sophie’s petticoats had been treated with lavender-scented starch. Within a few seconds I caught my prey. I let out a cry of triumph, and made her stand still, demanding a kiss for ransom. Not an unreasonable exchange under the circumstances, I felt, but to my shock her body stiffened. Then she tried to wrench herself free and even dug her nails into my flesh to make me relax my hold. I tore the blindfold off and saw she had turned very pale, that her lip trembled and that there were tears in her eyes. The children watched open-mouthed.

  “Oh Aquasi!” her lips signalled, but there was no sound this time.

  The arrival of Crown Prince Willem Alexander with a party of friends created an awkward interlude. He was accompanied by his drinking partner Jules van der Capellen and the Javanese artist Raden Saleh, and he made his entrance with a young lady on his arm: la Miranda. She was a leading actress with the Italian Commedia, one of the many drama companies that had taken to including The Hague on their tours now that the king provided funding for theatres and concert halls. Raden Saleh was painting la Miranda’s portrait, at Willem Alexander’s expense. The crown princess reacted with admirable aloofness: she merely offered the actress a little basket of sweetmeats, after which the conversation was gradually resumed.

  The artist came to greet us. He was waylaid by the Prussian ambassador’s wife: “I hear that your portrait of the Ashanti princes is a masterpiece.”

  “Too much honour, dear lady,” said Raden Saleh, with a slight bow, “for a canvas that has been consigned to the bushmen in Africa.”

  Mrs. van Moock snatched her hand away from his arm. He listened impassively to the Prussian lady’s efforts to persuade him to paint her portrait, then excused himself hastily and made off.

  “What an opinionated fellow!” huffed the ambassador’s wife. “He seems to think his name is still on everyone’s lips.”

  “That look, so inscrutable!” said Mrs. van Moock, shuddering. It always made her nervous when other people had uncharitable thoughts. “I fear he is all too aware of the waning of his celebrity.”

  “Tastes change,” the other lady declared. “Even the most exotic dish, if served day in day out, loses its appeal after a while. Well, what do you think, would it be convenient for you to visit next Saturday? With the two princes of Ashanti, of course.”

  Crown Prince Willem Alexander circulated among the guests with Wiwill on his arm. He was tipsy and made a great show of throwing the child up in the air and almost failing to catch him. His wife’s cries of alarm made him laugh uproariously. She tried to take the child from him, but was obliged to witness how the proud father sat with all the prettiest ladies in turn, demanding praise for the fruit of his loins. She eventually succeeded in having the child taken to bed, but that did not stop Willem Alexander from showing off his son.

  He drew a leather receptacle from his waistcoat pocket. It contained a silver-backed disc framing a portrait of little Wiwill surrounded by his toys. It was a remarkably accurate likeness, but was neither drawn nor painted. The shiny image, which was protected by glass, was handed round for the guests to admire, while the crown prince delighted in the incredulity shown by some. The King merely shrugged: “Queen Anna received one of these from Saint Petersburg recently, a portrait of her brother, and now she wants all our portraits to be fabricated in this manner. It is a new invention.”

  “The image is obtained by using a method devised by Monsieur Daguerre. I saw this trick being performed in Paris recently,” Raden Saleh said disdainfully. “It is a good likeness, yes. That is all it is. But is it art?”

  “My good man, what good is art if it is not a good likeness?” Willem Alexander said testily.

  “With all due respect, Your Highness,” Raden Saleh continued, “there is surely more art in a canvas entailing weeks or months of dedicated labour than in a silver-coated copper plate that has been soaked in dangerous chemicals for a few moments.”

  “All I want from art,” the crown prince rebutted, “is a good picture. You will never achieve such a convincing resemblance, Raden Saleh, not even if you spend the rest of your days perfecting a single face.”

  The Prussian lady concurred a little too warmly for the crown prince’s liking, and he turned away brusquely to show the daguerreotype to us. It was indeed most remarkable. As though you were looking into a mirror that reflected someone else. I was eager to know more about the technique involved, but the crown prince was unable to supply me with details.

  “We are to have a portrait of ourselves made soon. Why don’t you come along? Then you can fire your questions at the fellow making it.”

  “A portrait like this?” I asked. “Of us all?”

  “Certainly. I insist. Do it for Sophie’s sake,” Willem Alexander said, “so she can take you with her to Weimar.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw his sister nudge him to be silent. But the crown prince was only egged on by her admonition. “I dare say it’s still a secret, my dear, but Mamma is set upon having such portraits made of us all. By way of a gift. For you. So now if Quame and Aquasi would be so kind . . .” Kwame certainly did not wish any more portraits to be made of him, he said, but Willem Alexander was unperturbed, for once he was holding forth he became deaf to all others. “The number of portraits is of no consequence. As our artist from Java quite rightly stated, it takes only a few minutes. And so, ma petite, you can take all of us with you, and shall have no reason to pine while you are away.”

  Sophie kept silent, and renewed her attempts to hush her brother. The look in her eyes told me that everything was about to change.

  “The cure for heartache!” Willem Alexander exclaimed, whereupon an awkward silence descended. He paused, sensing that he had let the cat out of the bag. I was unable to speak. I had no desire to question him as to his meaning, for I feared that I would see everything in sharp focus at any moment, and tried to prolong the blur as long as possible. It was Kwame who spoke first.

  “But Sophie, are you leaving us?” he asked, in a low voice.

  Sophie nodded.

  “Didn’t she tell you?” grinned Willem Alexander. “That is most unusual. She talks of nothing else.”

  “Guillot, je vous en prie!” Her anger had made her break her silence at last.

  “All right all right, I won’t say another word,” he said, and held his tongue for two seconds, until he burst out with: “our little grand duchess!”

  “Grand duchess?” asked Kwame. Willem Alexander put his finger to his lips.

  The Prussian lady gasped. “Does this mean that we are to believe the rumours from Weimar?”

  I had inadvertently lowered my guard, and sustained a shattering blow. For several seconds I was frozen in shock. Mrs. van Moock patted me on the back and then quickly drew her new friend away from me. Kwame took my hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze. He meant well, but his gesture was awkward, not intimate as in the old days, and made me feel even more desolate. The sense of being entirely alone brought me back to my senses. No one would speak on my behalf. I had to speak for myself.

  “Carl Alexander is an excellent match.” Trying to sound unmoved made my words come out a fraction too loud. “Mes félicitations!”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Sophie, but did not meet my eyes.

  “The titular grand duke is exceedingly handsome, Sophie tells us. Well read and romantic, too, it seems.”

  Willem Alexander’s jocular tone roused Sophie to defend her fiancé: “Herr von Goethe was his tutor.”

  He slapped his knee like a street comedian. “So that’s why she keeps on quoting Torquato Tasso!”

  Sophie stood up and turned her back on him.

  “I am sorry, Aquasi,” she said, and then spun round to confront her brother, furiously: “I wanted to be the one to tell him!” She rushe
d out of the room, leaving Willem Alexander behind with us.

  He was still chuckling. “That young lady acts as if she had promised her hand to you!” This notion, too, seemed to tickle him. “I say, that would be something, just think of it!”

  “Indeed,” I said, “the very idea!”

  If you have never seen the horizon, you do not know there is a limit to your field of vision. In the dense forests surrounding Kumasi you cannot see further than a few yards ahead. Tell this to a Dutchman and he will feel uneasy: he wishes to survey his surroundings and look where he is going. An obstructed view makes him feel shut in.

  But this is a mistake. The sight of bushes screening ever denser thickets is not at all oppressive, for it kindles the desire to look farther afield, to set about hacking a path through the forest and exploring what lies beyond. The glint of the chopping knife sharpens the eye, for the more cluttered the view the greater the desire to look beyond.

  Indeed, it took Kwame and me a long time to accustom ourselves to the sheer expanse of Dutch views. The skyline in the lowlands held no secrets, and so our interest in venturing farther afield was not aroused. There was nothing to be explored.

  At home our eyes were not used to looking into the distance, and in those days we thought we would be able to see everything in the world if it weren’t for the trees screening our view. In Holland we discovered the horizon. We walked towards it, but never arrived. It kept retreating as we advanced, shrinking from our chopping knives. From now on our view was no longer limited by greenery, but by the limited power of our own vision.

  An obstructed view suggests infinity, whereas a vast panorama is necessarily finite.

  Perhaps that is why the Dutch look inwards. Into themselves and others. They do not draw their curtains; they will discuss their ideas, motives and problems in all openness until satisfied that the listener has gained insight into the workings of their mind. The splinters of their hearts, however, are kept in the closet, and they are never to be seen rending their garments in grief.

  The life of the Ashanti takes place in the open. His hut is windowless. When his soul is in anguish he storms out into the wild, where he can express his feelings without shame in the shelter of the forest. Europeans take this to mean that Ashanti man is close to nature and driven by simple motives. But the truth is that the Ashanti keeps his thoughts to himself. He would rather plunge into the depths of the unknown than fathom his thoughts. Ultimately, looking inward is as limited as looking outward.

  The Dutchman thinks he is showing his feelings, but in reality he is presenting his turn of thought. The Ashanti shows his emotions, but racks his wits in private. Each keeps something hidden: the Dutchman his heart, the Ashanti his mind. This confused me greatly when I first arrived in Holland, and at times prevented me from understanding the motives of those around me. What I took to be disclosures of emotions were merely presentations of facts. The Dutch have even pumped away the sea to uncover what lies underneath.

  Standing in the middle of flat polderland I always felt drained of hope, a stranger on alien ground. An unobstructed view on all sides, but nothing to see. I was painfully aware that in these surroundings there would not be anywhere for me to hide. I was as lost in the landscape as amid the Hollanders’ emotions. Nothing in my sights but myself.

  It was during that same Easter that I told van Moock of my intention to study mining engineering at the Academy. To his question as to the motives of my choice, I replied: “The least a man can do is dig.”

  A few days later Sophie of Orange and Carl Alexander, the future duke of Saxe-Weimar, were betrothed. I was not present at the festivities. A severe bout of bronchitis kept me in bed, but three days later I was in attendance at a military parade in The Hague. Princess Sophie and her mother were watching from an open calèche as the lancers and dragoons presented arms, when the princess noticed me on the grandstand. She waved cheerfully. I waved back and both of us broke into a smile when there was a sudden salute of gunfire. Afterwards there was a reception, during which she introduced me to her cousin. Her feelings of friendship seemed unchanged. She took my arm, giving me assurances of her pleasure at my presence.

  It must be said that her future husband was most charming. Carl Alexander was tall and had sad eyes, which he fixed on me so steadily that I felt obliged to say something jolly. Sophie had evidently told him about us, for he was aware of the political situation in the Gold Coast and the reasons for our presence in Holland. Having travelled widely himself, he was interested to learn how we had adapted to life in Europe, and invited us to visit Weimar at the earliest opportunity. Sophie was clearly relieved: she watched our animated conversation with a beatific smile. I could not understand how people could have such a high opinion of love if it did not spare you being deceived by appearances. I was glad I still had my little pornographic collection, which was my only solace during those days and nights. The women in the pictures did not dissemble, they were acting according to their nature. Sophie’s wedding took place on 8 October in the newly built royal gallery of paintings.

  The following week we were invited to ride in the royal cortège. Waiving court etiquette, Prince Hendrik insisted Kwame and I share his carriage. He showered us with pleasantries, confectionery and so much solicitude that I could tell Sophie had confided in her favourite brother and had asked him to be kind to me.

  The afternoon dragged on. Sophie was finding it hard to bid farewell to her parents. Her father, acting with the clumsiness of a child, pressed upon her a posy of chamomile flowers he had picked in the garden himself. Then the elderly burgomaster of The Hague personally escorted the slow-moving courtly progress up to the city limits. In each subsequent borough there was a pause for a speech and a brass band. Upon arrival at the Navy headquarters in Rotterdam the royal party was given a warm welcome and a speech by the burgomaster. The steamship Ludwig, festooned with hundreds of little flags of Holland and Saxe-Weimar, was waiting at the quayside. A canopy had been erected on deck, under which dainty refreshments, prepared by Hendrik’s navy chef, were served during a final gathering. It was a lingering farewell. At one point I was overcome with emotion, and withdrew without attracting notice. I went to the bows to look out over the water.

  The steam engines burst into a roar. The steel deck reverberated under my feet. The signal for departure had been given, and I was watching Willem Alexander climb into his carriage when the new hereditary grand duchess of Saxe-Weimar came to my side for some last words. She gripped the railing, stretched her arms and took a deep breath of salty air.

  “Promise me that you will visit soon. I have also asked Prince Quame. You can come together.”

  “We have travelled so far already.”

  The Navy cruiser Pegasus came alongside, and Sophie nodded amiably to the crew standing at attention. As she remained silent, I told her how the vastness of the landscape took away all my desire for travelling. She looked at me in surprise.

  “Are you serious? To me each new horizon is an invitation. One you can’t refuse. You’ll see how different everything looks upriver. Once you are in Germany the Rhine becomes narrower. First it flows between gentle slopes covered in vineyards, then winds its way around rocky cliffs. With each bend the panorama changes. You’ll love it, I’m sure. That’s where you’ll find the unspoiled nature we used to read about in all those wonderful books. I want you to see it for yourself. Oh do say yes, promise me you’ll come.”

  Before I could reply we were deafened by salvos of cannon from the Pegasus, which gave us such a fright that Sophie had a tantrum the likes of which I had never seen in a woman. She flung the bouquet she had been given by the Naval commander into the water, stamped her feet on the steel deck and excoriated the crew at the top of her voice. Her words were drowned out by the cannon and the sailors simply smiled, persuaded no doubt that their beloved princess was singing the Dutch national anthem.

  4

  One evening, in September 1843, I was assaulted. I had been a
student at the Royal Academy for several weeks. Kwame was not yet enrolled; he had to spend another year at school to catch up on his lessons. I still had my room at the boarding school, which I had rented for the duration of my studies.

  Hardly had I left the building when two fellows pounced on me and put a potato sack over my head. There were about twenty-five of us, all trussed in the same way. We were herded together in the market square, where we were forced to sit on the cold ground. Passers-by stopped to scoff and spit at us while we were loaded on to farm wagons and driven away. We were packed closely together. The lad next to me felt sick and sank on to the evil-smelling planks. The lurching of the wagon did the rest. I could hear him retching. Although my hands were tied, I managed to pull the sack off his head and thus to give him some air. He thanked me and made to do the same for me, which earned him a smart blow from one of our captors. Our journey ended in a large barn, where our hands were untied and the sacks removed from our heads. We were forced to undress, and left naked, with no food or water and only an oil lamp for warmth.

  For a while all of us remained quietly where we were. Then someone launched into song, and the rest of us joined in one by one. As my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I recognized some of my fellow students. Alphons Wenckebach was the first to throw me a pained smile, shrugging off the humiliation. Hendrik Linse tried to force one of the small shutters high up on the wall, but they were all securely bolted. Cornelius de Groot sat in a pig’s trough. Necessity being the mother of invention, he covered himself with a blanket of straw. A tall, thin lad was the first to take a few steps in the barn, holding his hands fearfully over his groin. He came to thank me for the kindness I had shown him on the way. He introduced himself as Jacobus Lebret, but hesitated before extending his hand to shake mine. We discussed strategies of escape, somewhat sheepishly. Within half an hour we were all huddled together in small groups, in an attempt to keep warm. Evidently the comradeship that would arise from our shared predicament was the object of our abduction. It was a rite of initiation.