‘You came at the right time, Mr Coker,’ he said to my father. ‘They’re all here for the conference.’
I could tell that my father was puzzled, but he nodded and smiled with an expression of respectful attention, and Makonnen carried on telling him about the conference which he said would be historic. A historic landmark, he said, and I remember the word because it was the first time I’d heard it. My father nodded and frowned as if he understood what it was all about, but I knew he didn’t, and that was the first sign I had of the problem that would defeat such men as Osageyfo in the end. Because he was, in that respect at least, very much like Makonnen. They would talk and talk in their perfect English, outlining plans and strategies and demonstrating how the logic of history supported their actions, and they assumed that the approval of their audiences was the same as agreement. Most of the time, I suspect, they knew that wasn’t true, but it was also true that they believed winning the argument was enough. With a man like my father it was easy to win an argument, but that would never be the end of the matter. Osageyfo and the men around him, men like Padmore, never altogether understood that. Padmore, in particular, had learnt his lack of compromise from Stalin, even though he was one of his bitterest enemies.
That night in the restaurant my father gave no indication of his real opinion, which was that when it came to African affairs Makonnen and his friends were close to dangerous fanatics. Instead he fingered the leaflets and the journal about Pan African events which Mak gave him with the same grave attention.
‘The boy will read them,’ he said.
We were eating lamb stew and semolina when it happened – Makonnen himself had recommended the dish before we sat down. Later on I understood that there were only two kinds of food to be had there. One was for the black American servicemen who still thronged the city in 1945 – fried chicken, pork, sweet potatoes, black-eye peas. The other kind was for the African visitors or seamen off the boats – lamb stews, ground rice, yams, semolina, cous-cous, and hot peppers. Then there were vegetables like okra, which the sailors brought him direct from the African coast. In those days Makonnen’s restaurants were the only places in Europe where you could get such food. The room was quiet apart from the voices of the Americans and the screeching of their women, but they were just part of the background which we heard without hearing. In those days the Americans, with their loud voices and their jitterbug, their money and their cars, impressed no one except women. Slaves in their own country, they chose every opportunity when abroad to play the big man among poor people. So we heard them without hearing until there was a mighty shouting which, we realised when we looked up, was coming from Makonnen: Bwana macouba, bwana macouba. It was a joyous bellow which I could not imagine coming from that quietly spoken gentleman, before I saw him with his mouth open and his arms apart facing the door. From the street came an answer, a deep huge laugh, over and over, and in through the door came one of the biggest men I’d ever seen, bigger than my father. Behind him was a crowd of people and all of a sudden the room was full. There were only half a dozen of them, five Africans and a white woman, but there was something about them all which seemed to fill the place with a sparkling vitality, an aura within which they seemed to glow. That is how I remember them at that time anyway, like a group of heroes glowing with life and purpose.
Makonnen embraced them one by one, talking all the time, and over the hubbub of voices I could hear the huge booming laugh of the tall man, who, as it happens, was the only one I had really looked at so far.
‘That is Mr Kenyatta,’ my father muttered.
Everyone in the restaurant was staring at these people, but they seemed not to mind, looking around them with friendly smiles and nodding as if they knew themselves to be the sort of people who would attract admiration wherever they went. Makonnen bustled back and forth, shoving three tables together to make a big one for his guests, pulling out the chairs and snapping his fingers for bottles from the bar.
For my part I was so gripped by the show that I had forgotten to eat, and it was the white lady who first noticed me. She was worth looking at, as I remember. When she died she was a decrepit old bag lady who they had to haul from a stinking room in Bayswater, but at that time she still looked like what she was, a bold and beautiful aristocrat who didn’t give a damn. I hadn’t seen many white people until then, and they all looked strange to me, but I knew I had never seen a woman, black or white, like her, sitting at her ease, arguing and interrupting these big men. I suppose I was drinking her in with my eyes because she smiled at me and nudged the man next to her.
‘Take a look at him, George,’ she said, in a clear voice which didn’t seem too loud but which could be heard all round the room. ‘That is what you have to convince if you’re going to make it happen.’
Suddenly the room was quiet, and everyone was staring at me. I ducked my head in shame, too self-conscious to eat, and I heard Kenyatta’s booming chuckle start up again.
‘Mr Coker,’ I heard Makonnen’s voice call out. ‘Come here. Allow me to introduce you.’
My father poked me in the arm and I got up, my eyes averted, and walked the few steps over to their table.
‘This is Mr Coker,’ Makonnen announced. ‘He’s a stoker who just got in yesterday from the coast, and this is his son Kofi. Also a stoker.’
Each of them shook hands formally with my father. Each one said his name. I didn’t catch them all at the time, but I remember the faces as if it was yesterday. The Bwana macouba, Kenyatta, was first, his long arm reaching out across the table from a sitting position. Then Dr Nkrumah. I seem to remember that was how he introduced himself, although nowadays when I think of him I always call him Osageyfo. Then George Padmore. He was the quiet one. His face had a cynical twist and he smiled his crooked smile as if he knew how confused I was. Then there was Peter Abrahams. He was younger than the rest by twenty years, and there was something kindly about his face which gave me a feeling that he might be my friend, especially when he looked back at me and winked. Finally, the woman who bent her head sideways so that she could look full into my face with her big light eyes. Nancy Cunard, she said.
Osageyfo was looking at me seriously, with a slight frown as if weighing me up, but there was something else about his look that I remember. It was as if he knew me and cared about me. I looked up and met his eyes, and from that moment I was desperate to please him.
‘How old are you, boy?’ Osageyfo asked me.
I told him I was sixteen.
‘When we’re running things,’ he said to my father, ‘boys like this will be making a life for themselves and building our country instead of crossing the sea locked up like rats in an iron cage.’
My father nodded without answering, but I felt hurt for him. He couldn’t argue with anything Osageyfo said, because we knew from his looks and from the way he spoke that he was a big man of our tribe, an educated man, one who would have the power of an elder and more. On the other hand, my father had paid a substantial bribe to secure this job for me, and to hear it described in this way by such a man must have been painful.
‘Give the boy a chance,’ Kenyatta said jovially. ‘We won’t all be doctors and lawyers. At his age I had killed a lion and had three wives.’
A burst of laughter greeted this statement. I wasn’t sure whether this was because it was a lie or simply a familiar boast. Osageyfo waited quietly for the interruption to end, leaning back in his chair. He was like that, completely focused on whatever it was he wanted. My eyes were looking at the ground as was appropriate, but I could feel his gaze and when I looked up I saw him staring intently at me.
‘In your opinion, Kofi,’ he asked, ‘what does our country need most at this moment?’
‘He’s not a voter yet,’ Padmore remarked in his mocking voice. I wasn’t distracted. I knew the answer to the question, having heard it often enough from my father, and I came out with it quickly before anyone else could speak.
‘Education, sir.’
He smiled for the first time.
‘Education is good,’ he said, ‘but what we really need is independence. Freedom from the imperialists and freedom to manage our own affairs.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I replied, and I meant it because I knew that whatever he said must be right.
‘Mr Coker,’ Osageyfo said, addressing my father. ‘Are you here in Manchester for a couple of weeks?’
‘Yes, sir,’ my father mumbled.
‘We need someone to do some work, run errands and help us get ready for the conference. Give me Kofi for a few days.’
‘Take him, Mr Nkrumah,’ my father said.
Osageyfo smiled at me again.
‘I like this boy,’ he said.
That was how my apprenticeship began. I didn’t know then that it would take me to Moscow in the autumn of 1956, but that was the beginning of that part of my life. To remember that time, and those people and the way my life changed is both sad and happy; and sometimes I don’t know which one it is that I’m feeling.
London
September 1999
NINE
At half past nine in the morning Kofi Coker was sitting in a café near Ladbroke Grove, sipping coffee and reading a newspaper article about the IMF. He had dressed with special care because he was meeting his son Joseph. He wasn’t sure why he’d taken so much trouble, but perhaps it was something to do with the note of urgency in Joseph’s voice when he had telephoned just before midnight. Perhaps he wanted advice, or perhaps he wanted some piece of information about his mother. It couldn’t be money, Kofi thought, an involuntary smile twisting his lips, because Joseph earnt more money than his father had ever done.
That might have been one of the reasons he had arranged their meeting in the café, and why he was wearing his second best dark-blue suit. In the last year he had spent more time with Joseph than ever before, mainly because he’d been helping him to find the subjects for his film and using what influence he had to cajole them into sitting in front of the camera. Of course, he knew that most of the old fools were lying their heads off, repeating stories they’d been told as if they were their own, and enlarging their deeds into monstrous epics. At the same time Joseph had been so pleased, and their narratives seemed so convincing that Kofi had never had the heart to contradict even those accounts he knew for certain to be completely invented. At the same time, the more intimate he was with his son, the more it seemed that Joseph’s manners were unnecessarily direct, and sometimes even rude. It was not his intention, Kofi knew, but sometimes the way Joseph behaved, coming from anyone else, would have seemed insulting. For instance, the last time he visited Kofi’s flat, he had refused to eat even a sandwich, claiming that he was not hungry. Just before leaving he had glanced round, his eyes resting on the battered sofa and the scarred kitchen table. ‘You like living here, Dad?’ he had murmured in his flat English voice. Kofi had shrugged without replying. Of course I like living here, he thought, but even while the words ran through his head, he was conscious that his son pitied him for being trapped, at the end of his years, in these two small ugly rooms. As it happened he couldn’t find it in himself to resent Joseph’s patronising thoughtlessness because he imagined he understood where it came from. Joseph’s mother had been the daughter of a doctor, and her family was prosperous. ‘Comfortable’ was the word they used, and as a qualified teacher, then a writer of books for children, she had always had enough money to live in comfort. When she died of cancer, a few days after her fiftieth birthday, she had left Joseph the house which her father had bought in North London between the wars. He still lived there, and he still possessed, almost untouched, a portfolio of investments she had gathered as a result of the family legacies and gifts which had come to her over the years. She would have been a little surprised to be described as a rich woman, but the fact was that the house which had been suitable for the small family of a professional man when she was born, had become a major asset by the time she died. Her income had been Kofi’s means of support when they lived together, and the riches she called her ‘savings’ had underlined his dependence, a canker in the mind and a barrier between them. Equally, he sometimes felt, it had separated him from Joseph. His son was a stranger to need, and it often seemed to Kofi that they existed on two sides of an immense gulf in understanding about the world and its nature.
He was still reading the article when Joseph came in through the door, and he folded the paper with a feeling of disappointment at not being able to finish it immediately, but as he stood up to embrace his son he experienced a distinct feeling of pride. There was something impressive about Joseph, so tall and cleancut, which made him want people to know that the boy was his flesh and blood.
‘How are you, Dad?’ Joseph asked, but the glum look on his face and the stiffness of his body put Kofi on the alert immediately.
It was an oddity to which he had never become accustomed. In his days as a young man like Joseph, whenever confronting his elders he had been used to maintaining a strict control over his features. An air of respectful attention or perhaps a friendly smile was the face he would have presented to his own father on almost every occasion. By contrast, Joseph seemed to have no inhibition about displaying his anger and frustration, no matter what the circumstances were. Kofi had long ago come to terms with his son’s disrespectful manners, because it was simply the style of the English, the mode in which he had been reared. On the other hand, whenever his son’s behaviour embarrassed Kofi, he felt a swelling tide of resentment against his former wife. During his childhood he had never heard his own mother say a bad word about his absent father. In comparison Joseph was accustomed to hearing his father spoken of in the most abusive and insulting terms. It was no wonder, Kofi thought, that he had never been able to teach the boy how to show respect in the company of his elders. Greeting him now, for instance, Joseph could hardly be bothered to conceal the fact that he was angry or disturbed about something, and Kofi sensed that he was unlikely to trouble himself with a period of sociable conversation before broaching whatever was on his mind. Ignoring the danger signals, he ordered more coffee and asked whether Joseph had enjoyed the festival.
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘The festival? The film was a success?’
‘I suppose so,’ Joseph replied. ‘But I didn’t mean the festival. A guy came to my hotel in Prague and said he was my brother.’
‘A black man?’
Kofi smiled, thinking that some stray student must have been trying to con Joseph by claiming the brotherhood of blackness.
‘He showed me a picture,’ Joseph said, ‘of you and a woman, his mother. Katya, he said her name was.’
The sound of her name, coming out of the blue from Joseph, gave Kofi a shock, and for a few minutes he listened without hearing, as if he already knew what his son was telling him. In his mind he was trying to summon up a picture of her face. He had begun to recall immediately and without effort moments when they were together – watching her enter the classroom on his first day of tuition, or following her through the market on Tsvetnoy Bulvar where a toothless old man had stopped him and shook his hand. This was the first time it had happened to him, and when the man got in his way he had tried to step aside, until Katya lifted her eyebrows at him and said, ‘He wants to welcome you.’ Another time, at the beginning of a thaw, walking on the packed snow along the embankment at Kotelnichskaya, he had slipped and when he clutched at her to save himself they had both fallen on to their backs. The sky was empty, pale and grey. Then he saw her face as she rolled over and crouched above him on her hands and knees, her eyes smiling, strands of her long hair plastered on her wet cheek, while he lay kicking his legs and laughing helplessly. These images ran through his head, as it were, involuntarily, but when he tried to see her face the details eluded him. While writing his journal he had tried to remember such matters as the colour of her eyes, and now it occurred to him that his memory of everything had been selective, and
riddled with guesswork. Something like a spasm crossed his face, and he rested his fingers on his cheek to stop himself twitching. A child, he thought, a child, testing his emotions, but all he felt was bewilderment at the idea that somewhere in the world there was this person, a mixture of himself and Katya. The pain he felt when he thought of her had ended long ago, he didn’t know when, but he retained a memory of it which was almost physical, like an ugly wrenching ache in the guts, and he felt now a shadow of that agony, looking at Joseph’s expectant frown, and picturing the man, his son, whom he had never seen or touched. The image that came was of himself, forty years younger, looking through a porthole at the vanishing landscape. This had been a moment in which he seemed to feel his heart bleeding inside his chest. Thinking back on it, a wave of anger crested in his mind and he seemed to see his child, helpless and alone, adrift in a formless ocean. If he had known, he thought, he would never have accepted their disappearance. It was true that he had waited, but if he had known he would have found them somehow, even if it meant grubbing in the deepest Siberian swamp.
‘What did he look like?’ he asked.
His heart was racing and his voice croaked.
The question seemed to irritate Joseph. He put his hand in the pocket of his jacket and took out the envelope George had given him.
‘They said he looked like me,’ he said curtly, putting the envelope down in front of Kofi. ‘This is the letter she sent you. See for yourself.’
Kofi fumbled at the letter, reading the writing on the front of it, then eventually picking it up and trying to open it, but his hands shook so badly that it defeated all his efforts. At last Joseph reached out and took it from him, but as he did so Kofi slumped back in his seat, his skin suddenly grey, his mouth open and gasping. His head was suddenly light, as if filled with air, but he didn’t experience the momentary collapse as pain or weakness. Instead he felt as if the rage inside him had sucked the energy from his body to feed itself, leaving him nerveless and empty.
A Shadow of Myself Page 14