by Arthur Japin
“Yes sir,” I said, groaning with mortification, “yes sir, yes sir.”
At that point the huge fellow sitting in front of me turned round. The class fell silent. It was the oldest boy, Cornelius de Groot. He gave me a little wink without the others noticing, took my pen from the desk, dipped it in the inkwell, wrapped my fingers around it, taking care to position my index finger properly, and opened my copy-book. I stared at him. Unseen by the others, he wrote in the air with his hand. I rested the nib of my pen on the paper and imitated his movements. For a moment it was quiet in the classroom, but then Verheeck guffawed so loudly I thought he would explode. Cornelius’s reaction was swift and violent. I was startled. Reaching out from his seat he grabbed Verheeck by the scruff of the neck and twisted his collar until the little pest was red in the face.
“D’you know their language, then?” he hissed, and did not let go until the tow-haired lad shook his head. Van Moock gave Cornelius a token reprimand, but was unable to hide his approval. All around us the boys reluctantly bowed their heads over their books again. Cornelius’s action had altered our status. We were still outsiders, but no longer unprotected. I gulped a few times from sheer relief and glanced at Kwame, shocked to see the rage in his eyes. He was gripping our seat so hard that a tremor passed through it, as though he might break it in two.
“Right, your turn Master de Groot,” van Moock resumed in a sarcastic tone. “I am most eager to hear your rendering of Artaxerxes’ reply.”
I laid my hand on Kwame’s arm so as to make him relax his grip of the bench. Years later I could still identify the marks he had scratched in the wood with his nails.
Only gradually did van Moock realize the extent of our ignorance regarding school subjects. After lessons on that first day, he summoned us to dine with him in his private quarters, forgetting that our absence at the boys’ table would give rise to ill feeling. Mrs. van Moock had dressed for the occasion, and did not conceal her delight at the company of princes. Bertha, not knowing our taste in food, had prepared a meal without spices, although she had placed some savouries along the edge of our plates. She could not resist coming to the door and looking in from time to time, while Annie served the meal from the sideboard. She peered round the corner, and stood there open-mouthed until she was dismissed. Kwame tasted every dish, but in the end all he ate was mashed potato sprinkled with pepper, which reminded him of the yams we ate at home. I ate everything I was served.
Van Moock asked us to tell him about Africa, which we were not eager to do. Fortunately he interrupted us every few minutes with queries ranging from topography, history and science to chemical compounds and political, social and legal matters. I had never imagined that there could be so many questions Kwame and I would be unable to answer. The flush of excitement on van Moock’s face reminded his wife of what she had found so attractive about him long ago.
“Goodness me, my dear Simon,” she said warmly, “what a great and responsible task lies ahead of you! Well I never! So challenging, too!” Mr. van Moock reached out for her hand and agreed. Instead of being daunted by his great responsibility, he seemed elated. He sent for a bottle of port and raised his glass to the two rough diamonds that had come his way.
After dinner he led us to the library, where he pulled out one book after another, indicating the treasures he would soon bestow on us. His pleasure at this prospect was contagious. I was grateful for his enthusiasm, and resolved not to disappoint him. He gave us our first extra lesson that evening. With gusto.
Words
We had already set about learning a little Dutch before we arrived in Holland. As soon as we left the shores of Africa we had to forgo the services of an interpreter to express our wishes. Being young, we were quick to adapt to new sounds, and it was not long before we had mastered the pronunciation of the more guttural consonants of the Dutch language. It was like the twittering of birds: you don’t understand what they’re saying but go on talking to them regardless, and after a while you think you can make some sense of their song. In bed at night we would try imitating the sounds we had heard during the day, we practised them together and had a good laugh while we were at it, and before we knew it we could get our tongues round them quite easily.
The limited range of Dutch words and phrases we had picked up by the time we disembarked at Hellevoetsluis expanded rapidly during our stay at the barracks. We were soon able to make ourselves understood, not that our meaning always came across as intended. There are attractions to being a stranger in a new country. The newcomer can fend for himself after a fashion, but is still deaf to all the nuances, hints, inside jokes and asides. He finds himself in a sort of limbo, which makes him oblivious to verbal offence, allowing him to savour each word before he has become attuned to taste and aftertaste. The newcomer is given the benefit of the doubt, he is indulged and little is expected of him in return.
Simon van Moock did not follow a preconceived plan in the lessons he gave us. It was simply his task to pass on knowledge, of which he took a broad view. Sometimes he would stop in the middle of a mathematics lesson to discuss an item in the newspaper and place it in a wider, historical perspective. On occasion he would put off an oral test for which we had been studying hard merely because the weather was exceptionally good, and collecting sea shells on the beach was no less salutary than comprehending the use of the Aorist in Homer.
“My knowledge is like that of Montaigne,” he said, sounding rather pleased with himself. “In the French manner I know a little about a lot, and a lot about little. ‘The seeker of true scholarship should go out into the world and find it.’ ”
One of his many fields of interest was nourished by his correspondence with one Dr. Wallace Evelyn, fellow member of the Wesleyan Society in London. Dr. Evelyn had been on friendly terms with Jean-François Champollion until the latter’s death in 1832, and had over the years kept van Moock abreast of the French scholar’s progress in the decipherment of hieroglyphics. As the Rosetta Stone gradually disclosed its secrets, thereby rendering an ancient tongue accessible, van Moock experienced a vicarious thrill at witnessing the birth of language itself. In later years, he assiduously collected transcriptions of all subsequently discovered tablets, on which subject he went on to philosophize with Baron van Westreenen and other amateurs. He welcomed the unique opportunity to indulge his hobby by instructing Kwame and myself in the basics of grammar and script. Although our classmates showed little enthusiasm for the history of writing and the origins of the alphabet, van Moock devoted many days if not weeks to this subject in class. His efforts had little effect initially, apart from the fact that we learned to draw cranes and scarab beetles and exchanged greetings morning and night with “Hail Ptolemy, Saviour of Egypt!”
Until then our lives had been shaped by the art of memory. In the Ashanti perception, all knowledge of the arts and of the world itself is stored in the memory of each individual and in the collective memory of the people. There can be no communication among men, no interaction and no shared belief without this pool of inherited knowledge, nor indeed can there be any poem, craftsmanship, healing, or understanding of the self. The memory is exercised continually, and those blessed with a talent for cultural expression are cherished and honoured. Europeans have a different way of storing knowledge. Van Moock’s explanation was that the list of great deeds and achievements had grown so long over the centuries that people had taken to writing them down many ages ago.
He gave a resounding exposé of how the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, already in use for over two and a half thousand years, enabled every word or conceit, regardless of the language it arose from, to be recorded and reproduced. He claimed that man owed his rise from savagery into a civilized state exclusively to the invention of writing. However, when Kwame asked how all this reflected on us, his tone became less strident.
Van Moock never wavered in his conviction that the ability to write was infinitely more valuable than the ability to remember. He set great sto
re by the possibility of putting one’s thoughts on paper so that the sheet might be folded and sent by post to be read on the other side of the world. But Kwame insisted that knowledge can only be kept alive inside the man, the particular form in which it is preserved varying from one man to the next. Keeping words on paper holds them captive, separate from the man so that they become distanced from the lifeblood of the people. Once a story has been written down it is lifeless. Besides, said Kwame, it is easier for a man than for a piece of paper to travel the world. In the end the only advantage of the written message over the human messenger is that the former allows itself to be folded in two or four.
Kwame’s protestations were short-lived. We practised writing our names.
“But my name doesn’t look like me at all,” Kwame said, much to everyone’s amusement. “Where are my arms and legs?”
Kwame and I were taken aback by the speed with which an abstract concept could be translated into words. The shock of putting down our thoughts and dreams on paper gave rise to a certain unease, as if our most private feelings were suddenly exposed for all the world to see.
I remember a distinct turning-point. I was strolling down an alley in the town—I can still picture it clearly—when a pigeon landed at my feet. I have always felt a special bond with that species, for we had pigeons in Kumasi, too, although they were of a less grey variety. I had some lumps of candy-sugar in my pocket, so I crouched down and offered them to the bird. Suddenly I was bowled over by the realization that this bird had a totally different name in the Twi language, and yet both words denoted the same creature. I was dumbfounded. It sounds absurd, I know, but I actually had to steady myself against the wall before I was composed enough to take in what this signified. The pigeon was so alarmed that it refused to be fed any more tidbits.
It was not that I had believed, previously, that each particular sound represented a particular object—of course not—it was just that I had never thought about these things. But the sudden understanding that this bird could be named and identified no less satisfactorily in my new language filled me with a double-edged emotion. On the one hand it signified the loss of yet another bond with Kumasi, on the other I was thrilled by my growing vocabulary. I decided to apply myself to learning all I could of my new language.
In the same period of transition Kwame experienced a different, albeit related moment of discovery. Although this event, too, may seem inconsequential to an outsider, his shock was greater and more harrowing than mine. This is what happened. In due course Kwame had to acknowledge that, while the singers of Kumasi memorized their heroic epics in verse form so that they might summon them at will, a valuable alternative would be to record the events in writing for posterity, given that the history had grown too lengthy to be entrusted to the memory of a few men. One afternoon, when van Moock with his usual enthusiasm instructed us to take out our copies of the Anabasis, he waxed quite lyrical on the subject of Artaxerxes’ written exhortation to his mercenaries to launch an attack on his brother’s army. Van Moock gave an impassioned account of the ensuing battle during which countless lives were lost, illustrating his words by groaning dramatically and clasping his chest as he received a deadly thrust from an imaginary javelin. Kwame’s agitation at this passage was hard to comprehend. He felt ill, left the classroom and, although he was told to stay in bed for the rest of the day, he apparently ran all the way out of town and spent the next few hours rushing around the meadows, to the stupefaction of the farmers. It was not the command to kill that distressed him, for such orders can be given by word of mouth equally well—it was that such a decision could be put in writing, thereby making it immutable, incontrovertible. Once dispatched, the command distances itself from the commander, who in turn distances himself from the dire consequences of his words. His victims do not die by his hand, nor by his direct will, but by means of lifeless signs on a piece of paper. To Kwame, this simple fact gave a haunting sense of cruelty to the words he was learning to write. He realized that it was not only possible to record the past and the present, but also to anticipate such deeds as would be done in the future. So the letters of the alphabet were fraught with danger. However, it was not long before we were so proficient at writing that we took it entirely for granted and Kwame forgot his misgivings.
Kwame’s revelation, which might strike some as negligible, risible even, was a flash of insight that lasted no longer than my own experience with the pigeon in the alley, and the effect was the same for both of us: we resolved to master our new language as perfectly as possible. What I enjoyed most was being able to read about things the others knew already. As for Kwame, he was driven by the desire to make the words bend to his will.
After a while, all the attention that was lavished on us started to irritate the other boys. It was not long before Karel Verheeck declared quite openly that the reason we were behind in our lessons was that we were savages. He even read out an essay he had written on the theme: “In the beginning was the Word, and the word was God.” He launched into a hardly inspiring enumeration of all the peoples, even the most backward ones, as he put it, that had devised ways of writing that word. Cadmus taught the alphabet to the Phoenicians, the Ten Commandments were penned by Jehovah himself, and Brahma copied the holy Vedas on to a leaf of gold for the benefit of the Hindus. Ogmios, the Gallic Hermes, gave the Irish the skill of writing, as Odin had given the runes to the northern tribes. Nebo passed his inscriptions on to the Assyrians, and Thoth to the Egyptians (at this point in his discourse the boy threw van Moock a solemn look). But also the amulets of Abyssinia and the prayer wheels of Nepal, he went on, and even the carved skirts of the priestesses of the Little Death expressed the secret sign for God, while unlettered mountain folk wore little leather pouches round their necks containing scraps from the Koran inscribed with that name. The illiterate men of Palermo wore the name of the Madonna carved on their chests, and even in the backwaters of Holland there were those who sought to cure the sick by fanning them with the pages of the Book of Psalms. That we, princes of Ashanti, had been deprived of the ability to write the name of God spoke volumes about the backwardness of our people.
Of course this was not true. We had our symbols just the same, but the dreadful thing was—and my anguish was too great for me ever to admit this to Kwame or anyone else—that I believed Verheeck.
Much later, when we were in our last year with the van Moocks, by which time Kwame had learned to study independently, it was his turn to read out his essay in class. He gave a brilliant exposé of the use of signs among primitive peoples, and set out to show that they were not inferior to the letters of the alphabet. His final proof, he read triumphantly, lay “in the practice of the West African Ardah to tie knots in thin cords: a skill of such sophistication as to make each knotted strand tell a story. As with the common alphabet, the message is in a code that is understood in the same way by sender and receiver.”
He also reminded us of the power of memory, which he still held in higher esteem than the written word. (Here he was making a mistake, of course, for he owed his entire argument to his ability to consult books in his search for evidence!) He quoted Thomas Aquinas, who apparently took memory to be one of the four most important virtues. The churches of Europe, Kwame concluded, were covered in ideographs (not in words, like mosques): “The invention of the alphabet did not deter painters and sculptors in their quest for a means of depiction that would evoke the universe in a single image. The written word was evidently not considered adequate to express the might of God and nature. Even in God’s own house His word calls forth enhancement in painted allegories, images that appeal to a shared knowledge. For the path of virtue is not determined exclusively by the Holy Scriptures, but also by past misdeeds, both individual and collective, whose memory is transmitted from one generation to the next in the form of an innate sense of good and evil.”
Verheeck had already left school by this time, more’s the pity. By this time, too, Kwame and I were drifting
apart, and I was too alienated from his way of thinking to hear the anger in his heartfelt discourse. What I remember most clearly is his relief at having successfully risen to this challenge: he was as cheerful and lively as he had been in the old days at Kumasi. A few weeks later, though, his moodiness returned. It was around the same time that we realized our African heritage was steadily being eroded by our new language. We found we had forgotten most of our Twi.
goat, soap, dog, wood, rose,
wheel, cock, beech, dove, shed
We were quick to learn. We snapped up everything that came our way, indiscriminately, but to exemplary effect. To van Moock’s profound satisfaction, we caught up with the others in a few months. He boasted about our progress to his friends at the Wesleyan Society. It happened sometimes that after he had dispatched a letter to London in the morning he was so impressed by our afternoon’s achievements that he would dash off a second epistle after class—sometimes followed by a postscript—and send the maid with it to the postmaster so that it might catch the same mail coach. His pride gratified me immensely, but Kwame found it annoying. While I rejoiced in showing off how much I had learned, Kwame would answer questions briefly, woodenly, almost reluctantly. He did not enjoy being praised for his effort. He never volunteered to reveal all he knew about a subject, whereas when we tested each other in our room he was at least as quick and clever as I. He actually seemed to take offence at van Moock’s amazement and admiration. I, on the other hand, was eager for compliments, and made sure always to have a little surprise in store for my master. It was better to be commended for each nugget of acquired knowledge, I thought, than for the whole treasure at once.
It was not that I was vain—quite to the contrary. I needed acknowledgment as I needed my daily bread. I was obsessed with the idea that the other boys knew things I knew nothing about, and my fear of exposure gave me nightmares. Each night I would be alone and blindfolded, on enemy ground. I knew I would have to arm myself as sturdily as possible before the inevitable battle would begin. Each snippet of knowledge from which I was excluded turned into a faceless evil spirit. Tens of thousands of these spirits rose up before me, and I struggled hard to get rid of as many as I could, only to find their ranks replenished with new ones from day to day. The need to conquer these enemies was all-consuming, and I had to summon all my strength to unmask them, after which I gave them names and places, and befriended them.