by Zakes Mda
That was before Acol. Before she existed in the flesh and then became a memory. She has been a memory for months already. A memory of the flesh, because the process and the product of recollection act upon Em-Pee in visible ways. That’s what memories do in a world that involves Acol. They do not live only in the mind and end their existence there; they are projected as images that have an external presence in the present. They act from the inside to the outside of the one who remembers, eating him alive, lashing him till he bleeds. Or caressing his body, creating pleasant sensations, evoking tingling joy. It is the way of the Jieng that he learned from her, while at the same time forcing her body to learn how to remember. Memory acts on you in the same manner the source of that memory did. Acol disappeared months ago, but her memory continues to make demands on him. It continues to confer benefits on him too. Flights of euphoria.
The passing carnival may keep Acol at bay for a while today. An essential distraction. How strong it will be, Em-Pee has no idea. Yesterday could have signalled that he should find a distraction much more enduring than a passing carnival. He was drifting around the brownstone mansions as he is wont to do whenever memory assails him. Confronted by the silence that has become a visible feature of Monsieur Duval’s home. Until yesterday, when the silence was broken. Wagon after wagon loading furniture from the house and transporting it to auction houses. Em-Pee lends a hand, for it brings him closer to the action and the gossip. Workmen hammering up signs that the mansion itself will be auctioned on a specific date. Folks gathering to watch, for the demise of one neighbour is entertainment for another. Neighbours, mostly the servitude class, wondering what could have happened. Duval had gone insane.The previous night he grabbed his shimmering Remington Model 1890 revolver and blew his head off. Em-Pee wonders if this could be the long-awaited jok’s revenge. But how does the jok avenge her ward in her absence? How does the jok establish her own regime in the absence of the body over which she is guardian? Where is the jok’s ward?
The neighbours do not hear these questions, for they are in Em-Pee’s head. But the neighbours answer them still: they say the man sent the Black girl to a mental asylum in the state of Ohio. In a small college town called Athens. There she is confined, and most likely there her grave will be. World without end. Amen.
Carnivals are another way of remembering.
Millie is at the window. She seems to spend a lot of time at the window the older a maid she becomes. He waves and blows her a kiss. They have learned to live with each other. Each in her or his prescribed box. She steps out and offers him a mug of coffee if he’s not in too much of a hurry. They stand at the door while he drinks the coffee. They complain how no one wants to do anything to clean up the rookery.
The passing carnival is on the Bowery. He was not invited. He is not one of the revellers. Not one of the official revellers, that is. But he will revel all the same. When Samson told him about it, he decided to attend. He is a veteran too, whether The Great Farini likes it or not. He may not march with the other stars of the carnival, or sit on a flower-bedecked wagon, but he was part of the history-making epoch and will be there. They will see him, all dressed up impeccably, an elegant New Yorker in a well-tailored tweed suit, brown like his skin, custom-made, and a brown bowler hat, not a cap – a bowler hat like the gentleman he is.
A brass band leads, and everyone else follows. The Great Farini is celebrating his veterans. Stars who have attracted spectators over the years, some of whom have had such longevity that they are still drawcards. And many others who live only in memory. He wonders if he will see his old mates among the honoured, those who returned to Farini after the Genu-Wine Zulus and all its incarnations crashed, but also those Farini sold to other acts but continue to be on good terms with him.
Em-Pee has kept contact with Samson, only because he has continued to live at the old Mulberry Street bordello where he has been a useful point man for some of his colleagues in need of carnal relief.
He casts his eyes on the floats, and on the marchers, and wonders if Slaw will be anywhere in sight. The last time he saw him was when he left him squirming in his tenement, after the incident with the meat. When Em-Pee returned, Slaw had trashed his tenement and left.
A man is waving. Em-Pee looks around to make sure it is for him the wave is meant. He waves back. The big smile and big teeth that fill the mouth tell him at once that it is Mkano, known by one and all as Zulu Charley. He never worked with him but made his acquaintance when he was part of the exhibit at Bunnell’s Museum on Broadway and 9th Street. One thing that distinguished him from most of the Zulus he knew was that Zulu Charley was a genuine Zulu from the occupied territory of Natal. Em-Pee used to relish speaking isiZulu with him, to the mystification of all the other Zulus and sundry spectators at the museum.
Zulu Charley waves frenziedly, laughing his cares away. Em-Pee waves back, also returning the laughter. His chortles get louder when he remembers how irrepressible Zulu Charley used to be. He also remembers an incident one December ten years ago when Mkano was in the news for assaulting an actor with a three-foot pole. Apparently the actor had called him all sorts of insulting names, and even raised his hand to him. That was when Mkano flipped his lid and hit the man. Everyone thought he would be locked up for a long time. As a Negro, you didn’t hit a White man and get away with it. But many witnesses spoke of Zulu Charley’s patience, how he tried to ignore the actor’s taunts, and even walked away to another part of the room; how the bully followed him and continued with his insolence, and how Mkano lost it only when the actor raised his hand to him.
People didn’t toy with Zulu Charley after that.
As Em-Pee marches on the sidelines, watching Zulu Charley’s wave that has now turned into a dance, he wonders what could have happened to Anita, Zulu Charley’s wife. Everything about Zulu Charley was sensational. So was his marriage to Anita, an Italian girl he met when she came to watch the re-enactment of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, another Anglo-Zulu engagement that was popular because the British Red Coats were able to defend a fort against a Zulu force much superior in numbers. The Italian girl was attracted to the Zulu warrior. Their engagement caused some sensation, with Anita’s parents threatening to disown her. Newspapers wrote of this romance in terms of a Shakespearean tragedy, Zulu Charley being Othello, Anita Desdemona and her father Brabantio. The last time Em-Pee heard of the couple, their marriage had had its ups and downs, with Anita leaving him at one point, and then rumoured to have returned it was much like the highs and lows of his own union with Aoife, although his was never in the papers, and the final low never became a high again.
Em-Pee recognises the horsemen as well. They are the American Indians who raced with the Zulus at some of the events. And there is the two-headed woman on one of the floats. He remembers her as two women. Conjoined twins, dressed to appear as one person. They are chit-chatting with another woman. Princess Amadaga! Farini’s sensational surprise of the eighties at the height of King Cetshwayo’s fame. Princess Amadaga, Cetshwayo’s own daughter. Em-Pee remembers how graceful she was when she was first introduced at Bunnell’s, and how the audiences went berserk, pushing and shoving just to get a glimpse of her. This was one of The Great Farini’s greatest coups. And now here she is, sitting on a flower-bedecked wagon with divers human oddities.
Em-Pee waves at Princess Amadaga. She does not wave back. Perhaps she does not remember him. They met only once, when Em-Pee felt it would be remiss if he did not pay his respects to the daughter of his king. He didn’t expect to recognise her; the king had many daughters from many different wives. But he was hoping that, in their conversation, they would have some people in common. Maybe even Nomalanga. The princess might know what had finally happened to her, the torrid woman who sparked his escape from the kingdom.
After negotiating and bribing his way to the back rooms of the museum where exhibits and performers awaited their turn to appear on stage, he was finally in the presence of the princess. She was sitting on
a wooden crate, trying to sing a Mulatto baby in her arms to sleep. He could not understand the words, but they were in a language with which he was not familiar. No one had mentioned that Princess Amadaga had a baby.
‘Sawubona we Nkosazana!’ he greeted in isiZulu, bowing before her. ‘We see you, Your Royal Highness!’
She seemed mystified. She obviously did not understand what he was saying.
She was brown. But it was the brownness of the islands.
He did not understand why he was disappointed as he left the museum. After all, everyone is an African prince or princess when they come to America. He himself was once a prince too, but in England. He gave up the title after he came to America and found the country overrun with African royalty of all sizes, shapes and hues.
* * *
The passing carnival takes him across Brooklyn Bridge. It is no longer Farini’s. It’s only Em-Pee and some brethren he was introduced to by Mkano at one of the stations. The carriage that carries them belongs to missionaries and proclaims that fact in bold red and white paint on its exterior. The brethren speak isiZulu in cadences that should variously be echoed by the deep uKhahlamba Mountains, the Valley of a Thousand Hills where the uMngeni and uMsunduzi rivers meet, and the white sands of the southern coast.
The one whose opinion they seem to listen to is older and has a gentle tone but gets excitable when he narrates events of import to himself or the others. His face is smooth and unfurrowed by memory, in contrast to Em-Pee’s own, which is marred by gullies of remembering. The man is yet to build storage places of memory in his body. The lumps and knots that Em-Pee can feel in his own body have not accumulated in any of these brethren.
They are students from amakholwa families, the Christian converts of kwaZulu, newly arrived in America, hence the tour of New York City. The tour guide is Freddy Coomerlow, a graduate of the Hampton Institute, Virginia, where he specialised in blacksmithing and wheelwrighting. The fresh-faced brethren are en route to the same institution, some to study the same subjects, others carpentry and agriculture.
Coomerlow is entertaining them with stories of fauxZulus in New York, a phenomenon that amazes them, angers some and bewilders others. All disguise their true feelings with incredulous chuckles. Em-Pee squirms; he is part of the industry they are discussing, though he doubts if any one of them knows that. Unless Coomerlow took note when Mkano introduced him as a former colleague.
‘It is true,’ says Coomerlow, as if they are questioning his integrity. ‘I have encountered enough fake Zulus in the streets of New York to last me a lifetime.’
From his leather train case he takes out an old copy of Atlantic Monthly and reads aloud for them: The idea that the Dimes Museum Zulus are manufactured to order is false.There have been Zulus. These are not, as some of the journalists have wickedly insinuated, Irish immigrants cunningly painted and made up like savages. They are genuine Zulus; and though we need not believe the lecturer’s statement that they fought under Cetewayo at Isandhwayo, and displayed prodigies of valor in order to free their country from British rule, there is no doubt that they would prove terrible enemies in battle.
‘Guess what?’ says Coomerlow after his dramatic reading. ‘They were indeed Irish immigrants painted brown!’
The laughter only stops when the passing carnival arrives at the home of John Langalibalele Dube in Brooklyn. He is introduced to Em-Pee and the students as a man of letters, a newspaper editor and publisher. He is the one who has arranged for these students, through the Congregationalist American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to come to America to study.
‘Surely, you are a little bit too mature to be one of the students,’ says Dube, looking at Em-Pee benevolently.
‘He is a mfowethu from Ondini we met at a carnival in Manhattan,’ says Coomerlow. ‘He said he was free, so I invited him to meet his brothers from home.’
As they sit at the meal of uphuthu made of very rough corn meal, meat and vegetables, Dube regales them with his experiences in America where he has lived for three years, some of which were spent at Oberlin College in Ohio. This is his final year and he is looking forward to returning home, where there is a lot of work to be done.
After hearing Em-Pee’s story, that he came as a dancer via England, the men encourage him to also try to find his way home, because there is work to be done.
Coomerlow is sceptical, though. ‘The man is paid in America to dance. At home you cannot eat the dance,’ he says.
‘The man can learn a trade. He can learn agriculture and return home to work for the self-sufficiency of his people,’ says Dube.
‘Or he can go to Oberlin College and then to the Chicago Medical College and become a doctor like Nembula,’ says Coomerlow testily.
Dube is irritated, but for the sake of the visitors he controls himself. Obviously Coomerlow is challenging him, and this must be an ongoing debate that neither Em-Pee nor the students know anything about.
‘You talk as if I don’t want amaZulu to be doctors. I arranged for Dr Nembula to come here and study medicine.’
It is a question of focus, Coomerlow says. Though he has benefited from industrial training, he objects to the fact that the American missionaries are focusing on that to the exclusion of liberal education – what he calls book education. Dube argues that training in the trades is what amaZulu need at this point for self-sufficiency from the oppressive system of White domination. That is why he is working very hard to establish trade schools in his country, patterned along the Hampton-Tuskegee model.
‘I do not see the self-sufficiency, sir,’ says Coomerlow.
He does not believe the training he received will give him freedom from the White man once he returns home. He has been trained for a subordinate role, to serve the White man more efficiently.
‘So, in your mind, Freddy, we’ll be slaves forever? All these efforts to fight for freedom will come to naught?’
‘What good is trade training going to do for everyone else?’ asks Coomerlow. ‘I know it’s going to make me a good worker for the White man who owns the wagon factory. But is it going to make me own the wagon factory?’
‘The law won’t allow you to own it now. But when we are free you’ll own it,’ pipes up one of the students.
Dube smiles approvingly, looking at Coomerlow and shaking his head as if to say ‘look at you, even a greenhorn student sees the light better than you do’.
‘Maybe they should send you to Oberlin, Ohio, where you’ll learn things that are above your station in life, so that you can use your brains on books instead of using your hands on hammering wrought iron into shape.’ Coomerlow is addressing the student. No one is sure whether or not he is being sarcastic.
Em-Pee detects some acrimony that has spoiled the erstwhile gentle tone. He is sorry that his dancing started this debate. These are issues he will think about one day. Not now. The mention of Ohio has left him unsettled.
In Ohio a jok lives, guarding a purple-coloured woman in a mental asylum.
11
Athens, Ohio – May 1893
Searching for the Atoc Bird
Psychiatrists, from the time the word was coined by Professor Johann Christian Reil in 1808, if not from earlier, have been at odds with the gods. They reduce prophetic voices to faulty perceptions and dismiss divine flight as withdrawal from reality. The age-old battle continues in Acol’s ward at the Athens Lunatic Asylum. She says it is her jok, a personal divinity gone unruly; they say it is syphilis gone to her head.
They let her roam the woods, a privilege they do not grant any of the other female inmates, who are here for a variety of maladies ranging from melancholia to such forms of madness as irregular menstruation, uterus problems and female hysteria – women whose madness is womanhood.
She is not from here; the only place she can escape to is here. She is at home here. She thinks of no other home. Wishes for no other home. Is at peace with herself and her life. As long as she can wander in the woods searching for
things to photograph, and as long as the rolls of film and emulsion that Maria-Magdalena made certain she packed in her boxes last. Thanks to an anonymous benefactor, who Acol suspects is the same Maria-Magdalena, she has since upgraded from the ancient Scovill to the new Kodak camera first introduced five years ago.
They give her the leeway with pleasure, including the use of a broom closet as a darkroom. It benefits them to have a resident photographer among the inmates. When they catch her in a good mood, she even agrees to photograph their babies and their pets.
Em-Pee discovers her sitting at the pond, drawing invisible pictures on the water with her finger. She breaks into a smile immediately she sees him. Tranquillity shines in her eyes.
‘Who are you today?’ Em-Pee asks. ‘Don’t tell me. You are Acol Adheng.’
‘How do you know?’ she asks, smiling and nodding in the affirmative.
‘Your owner is dead,’ says Em-Pee, ignoring her question. ‘Shot himself.’
She does not look surprised at all. It is as if she knows already.
‘No, he did not.’
‘I went there and talked with the neighbours. They say he shot himself with a brand-new gun which he bought especially for that purpose.’
‘My hand did it,’ she says, waving her hand dismissively.
‘You were already here when it happened,’ says Em-Pee cautiously, not wanting to agitate her by seeming to suggest she is a liar. ‘Weren’t you?’
‘It’s my hand that held the Remington, not his,’ she says indifferently. ‘He screamed for mercy. Just as I screamed when they did all those things to me. But there was no one to hear him. Maria-Magdalena was gallivanting with her Slaw. It was just me and him. And my hand had no mercy in it. He screamed, and my hand pulled the trigger.’