A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa (15 page)

· 18 ·

Lost

W
OLE
W
OLE
W
OLE.
Henry was reminded of a cry he sometimes heard as a young man when Indian women collected their dead. It had thrilled him in a terrible way, going to his loins. Now an acidic taste came into his mouth, watching two of the porters take off after Jacob. He took a last draw on the cigarette, leaned over, mashed the end of it with the tip of his boot, examined the butt to be certain it was out, returned it to a leather pouch, and pressed the pouch into his pocket. Here was Emma.

“You haven’t paid for the pineapple,” he said. “The woman behind you is upset.”

His wife turned around and gave the pineapple to the woman, who flogged her with some discourse.

“How could he be missing?” she said.

Henry didn’t know. Kidnapping was less common than it had been even five years back. Still, someone might have followed them from the river and snatched the child. “I’m going after them,” he said. He called to one of the porters. “Get that chair unhitched from the hammock. Set it under a tree.” He put his hands to her shoulders. “We won’t be gone long. I’ll take two of the king’s guards and leave two here. Duro is with you.” It must be muffled thunder he heard in the distance.

“I need the boy,” she said, “the scallop.”

It took him a moment to understand. He glanced up at the company. Men swatted at flies, and he thought how lazy they were. Then his thinking turned like a switchback in a road.
It’s your own fault. You should have put the boy on the horse. Now you’re going to squander half a day at least in searching. And how will you feel if the child is lost? Your wife will not easily forget.
Henry’s failures shuddered through him: his misspent youth, his lack of converts, Sarah’s death.

Emma pressed her temples. He guided her to her seat.

“I will find him,” he said.

The boy was too young to be traveling with them. But Jacob had shown up with the lad, describing him as orphaned and a relation, a cousin, but here more like a brother; what was he to do? Henry ran his fingers through his hair and touched the nicked lobe of his ear. When would God figure he was paid up? He looked at Emma, her skin dark in the shade so she looked almost Spanish. Calling the guards to follow, he mounted Caesar and started down the path, the frothed mud glistening like a multitude of mirrors now the sun was out.

From a quarter mile’s distance Henry saw Jacob sitting in full sun at the broad landing of the river’s edge, his head in his hands. He could make out the porters squatted in the shade. The horse neighed and Jacob jumped up.

“Any sign?” Henry said, dismounting.

Jacob pulled Emma’s letter opener out of his pocket.

“I only found this carving, midway on the road.” The man stood with a hand on his hip, pained-looking and hunched, so you would have thought a horse had kicked him.

“That was in my wife’s box. Well done. The child can’t have gotten far.” Henry was gladdened by the object that had followed them from home. But the moment it was in his hand, he knew it might signify the worst: The boy had fallen back and someone had grabbed him. The box had seemed worth taking but not an ordinary African carving.

Jacob turned in a circle. Surely the man was remembering how he was seized as a boy. It made Henry dead cold. He pulled the rifle from the scabbard.

“Have you talked to the ferrymen there?”

“They have seen nothing. Nothing.”

“We’ll look about.” Henry motioned to the others. “A boy doesn’t just disappear,” he said, knowing the lie of it. But looking into Jacob’s eyes, he saw a sorrow so dangerous he believed he would sooner have a dagger in his chest than bear with the man if the child didn’t show. He wandered to the edge of the landing, feeling almost sick, rested the rifle butt on the ground, and braced himself against a tree, his back to them. The impotence of the carving angered him and he started to toss it into the bush, but a sharp pain filled his side.
Good God
, he said to himself, feeling for his liver and spleen. Henry thought he had a fair knowledge of demons: clawing fingers, spiked heads, razor-sharp tails, hairy arses. There was no armor against them. He slipped the letter opener into an inner pocket of his coat. As he turned back around, he saw the depression in the grass; it hadn’t been visible from where he had stood before. But it was clear as day to him now, twenty yards from the river’s edge, such a path as could be made by dragging a canoe. “Ho. Jacob. Men,” he said. As soon as he pointed, Jacob took off.

The others held back. “Don’t tell me about ghosts,” he said. “If it’s an ambush, better hold together than stand apart.” He raised the rifle and they all took off at a trot down the ribbon of earth. They came out to a creek. The swerve of the water had created a sand bar and just there, Henry discovered Emma’s basket. A damp dress lay gently on the grass, one of her caps set at the neck. He had the queerest feeling, as if perhaps she had been subject to rapture and left her gown behind. For a moment he saw her naked, ascending into the clouds, her white legs, that secret place of hers sewn up into holiness. Jacob knelt before the dress.

“What are you doing? Be up!” Henry swatted his hat at the back of the man’s head. He felt a skirmish in his chest as if his heart were running away, and he wondered if he was shaking. “Look around, men,” he commanded the others. “What do you think we’re here for?”

Farther up the sand bar, one of the guards found the writing box and the canvas that had covered it. How queer, Henry thought, squatting, setting the rifle down. The box was open, and in it was Emma’s red diary. Beside the box were arranged a pot of ink, four quill pens, and the prism. Another object was more difficult to discern. It appeared like a large mound of pounded yam laid on a green leaf. The entire panorama had the peculiar charm of a set of instruments set out for display in a classroom when the docent has not yet learned their true meaning and they take on, therefore, a splendid individual quality. The boy was not immediately visible, though his footprints were all about.

Henry tried to take in the scene. Suddenly it hit him that he had left Emma alone with their cook and a nursemaid and two guards. Could someone have taken the boy to lure him away from her? What sort of ritual was this? He imagined a galloping lot of masquerades—men in masks—circling his wife. Suddenly the very earth shook. He reached for the rifle. But it was Jacob on his knees, pounding the ground with his fists. “Wole!” he demanded. “Wole!”

Then it seemed to Henry a slender brown tree stepped from the shade and became the boy. Jacob rushed to him, raising his arms, threatening, forgetful of his good English, “Ah, ah, I go flog you now. Look dis trouble!”

Henry slapped his hands against his thighs to cover the shaking. “God help my disbelief,” he whispered. He pushed Jacob aside, but studiously, as he might a limb that seemed very like a snake. “The boy is frightened out of his wits,” he said.

It took some time for Jacob to coax the story from Wole, who told it in spurts of crying and talking. He had had difficulty keeping up after the crossing and in passing over a stump he lost his load into the mud, the box slipping out of its covering and popping open. He was afraid the white
iya
would be angry, so he went back to the river to wash her goods. Then he was frightened of the river and found the creek instead. He had laid everything out to dry before he realized he was now too far behind to catch the caravan.

The child’s story was told as much by pointing and rubbing and even hitting his legs as by narrating.

Henry set Wole on the horse, but within the first quarter mile the child was falling asleep. So Jacob carried him in his arms. Henry carried the writing box, as well restored as possible, while one of the porters balanced the basket with Emma’s damp clothing on his head. The other porter and the guards had nothing to haul. When they reached that part of the path where Wole had fallen and Jacob had discovered the letter opener, the man stopped. “Master, Jesus has saved us,” he said.

The sun was now directly overhead. Henry lifted his canteen from the saddle, took a drink, and handed the refreshment around. The others poured the liquid into their hands to partake, and one chose to splash his face. When they glimpsed the caravan, Henry pressed forward, looking for his wife.

· 19 ·

The Door of Her Heart

“T
HEY’RE BACK. THEY’RE
here. Abike! Duro! Oh heaven be praised,” Emma said, relief pouring through her. She stood, and her dress caught in a fold of the chair. “Oh, look here.” She fumbled with the cloth. Exasperated, she stood, trailing the chair until it shook loose. She ran toward Henry, and her hat flew off.

The boy was all in one piece, his feet tilted, toes in, nestled in Jacob’s arms. At her voice, he opened his eyes but closed them again and seemed to wrench himself away from her. She felt a stab of unbelonging. But here was Henry with her writing box. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt.

“Has something gotten into your eyes?” she said, squinting at him.

“I’m happy to see you,” he said, and she thought it was the tenderest thing she had ever heard.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” she said, feeling like a girl again. “But what has happened?”

“The boy took a spill in the mud. He was worried about displeasing you. Took everything back to the river to wash. He had the sense not to wash your journal. The box is in good shape.” Henry tapped it. “Though he did rinse out some pages—a letter you had started perhaps; you’ll have to recommence.” Her husband smiled. “The boy smashed them into a mound to dry.”

Emma recalled her worry about her husband’s illness, the pages she had recorded. A sense of foreboding passed over her like a dark cloud. But then she trained her eyes on Jacob as he made his way toward the group. A woman in an orange wrap came out, hips swinging, to take in the boy. There was Abike, standing with her arms relaxed at her sides, looking as if something had just been achieved in her favor. The dark cloud moved away. Emma pulled herself back to Henry. Her record of his bouts, her almost mathematical figurings. Gone now; perhaps a blessing. She sighed deeply, letting her breath out through her mouth.

“Watch there,” Henry said, pointing to a mud puddle. He followed Jacob, and she clipped after them.

The heat had caught up with them and Henry recommended they rest. Emma took the red journal, blew away bits of sand, and paged through. She looked over where Wole was sleeping and pressed her book against her chest. In a moment, she set the journal on her knee and took up her pen.
Grace seldom comes when we demand it but rather appears unexpected. Will I ever learn?
She was suddenly very tired and leaned her head back against the chair. In her dream, she was trying to catch pages of her writing in a stream, but they disintegrated and fell through her fingers as if her hands were a sieve, and the black words she had written washed away independent of the paper and the fish ate them like crickets.

In the afternoon, a wind came through, and the air turned light and clear. Great flocks of green parrots appeared, their throaty songs coming from every direction. As the caravan lumbered along, a batch would rise in a swarm from the choke of trees and dart down the path in front of them, only to settle again. Emma had the writing box in her lap and she kept patting it, as one would a child one wished to keep in slumber. As they gained the top of a hill, their eyes were greeted by an expanse of undulating prairie, scattered with groves, and bound in the distance by blue hills.

In their tent that evening, Emma slipped out of her dress, took her hair down, set aside her pins, and lay in her underclothes. She could still smell her husband’s tobacco and hear him greeting someone occasionally. She cupped her breasts in her hands. When she heard Henry stir up the fire, she knew she would be falling asleep alone.

Oh God in heaven
—she began her prayer—
Maker of heaven and earth, of the stars in all their glory and the small yellow flower of the field, look upon Your servant.
She had in mind her husband first, sitting outside there in his breeches and suspenders with his shirt collar open. Then she thought of herself in the tent in her underdress.
Let it be with us as You see fit and if it pleases You, make straight our path in this wilderness, bring some dwelling comfort into our hearts, keep us steady and joined in love.
She remembered something Henry had once said—“Love is the source of all true happiness”—and she was impatient in her prayer, for he showed it so fitfully. Returning with the boy he had been so kind; now she was alone. She prayed again.
Give me new fervor for Your work, let me not be troubled by my own heart but be moved for these thousands of Your lost children who are orphaned in this country without the true Savior.
She called to mind the picture of Jesus in her Greensboro church, the one in which he was adorned with dark locks about his head and his eyes were filled with longing and he held out his hand to her.
Love me yet, dear Father in heaven, as I learn to love those you have sent me to love.
Wole had already slipped through the door of her heart. Abike was at the threshold. Jacob was too large for such passage.

* * *

T
HE LIGHT WAS
pink as they lumbered out of the woods and came to a crossroads. A right turn brought them into view of cleared fields and farms. The land sloped, and Emma thought she could tell where the brooks ran. She sat forward. A number of walkers seemed to join them, women bearing loads of wood. It was Sunday afternoon and she was reminded that these were heathen who had no idea of the Sabbath. She pulled a shawl around her head, hoping not to be observed. Suddenly the carriers hoisted her upward.

“Please mah, we have arrived,” one of them said. The movement gave her stomach a turn.

“Is it Ogbomoso?”

The man laughed. “Yes mah.”

They rounded a copse and she could see the town itself, pitched upon the hills and hemmed by a mighty-looking wall. Two pillars announced the town gates. Narrowing her eyelids, she spotted Henry, his white linen shirt shining in the odd light so that it looked golden. He would see to the tariffs and send word ahead to the king. Now they stopped. The porters were talking to one another in Yoruba, too fast for her to understand, though she imagined they were anxious for rest and eating and no doubt dipping into the palm wine. The wait was tedious. She counted to four hundred.

“Lands sakes,” she said. Her legs ached from sitting so long, but she could not dismount. Henry had cautioned her about a likely commotion over the arrival of the first white woman. Sure enough, when she let her shawl slip, a passing woman glanced once, bent her knees, cried out, and scooted forward. Soon she would be telling a hundred others.

“Don’t worry mah, that woman is ignorant,” one of the porters said. He spoke like a man who has sailed the world. Emma turned around.

“Thank you,” she said. Facing forward again, she caught Abike staring at her.

“Are you frightened?” she said.

“Yes mah.”

“Don’t be afraid. We’ll soon have a place for the night.”

“The others,” Abike said. “They will leave us.”

“The others?”

“Yes mah.”

Perhaps the girl was afraid of being left alone with her, without the women of the caravan. “I see,” she said. “But we’ll have Duro and Jacob and the boy.”

This assurance seemed to ease the girl. “Yes mah,” she said.

Emma looked up, and here came a crowd. “Goodness,” she said. “Can’t we move forward? Porter. Can’t we move forward?”

Suddenly she imagined the hammock toppling. Her neck would break. The porters started up just as she was resigning herself to martyrdom. They swept across a good-sized moat and through the gate before she had a chance to locate Henry. Smoke wafted into her nostrils. Women sat at low tables with items for sale. Down an alley, boys tossed something back and forth. Three large birds took flight from a tree. A stout man with a walking stick stepped out of the crowd.

“
Oyinbo de
,” he said. “The white man is come.”

There were whoops of disbelief. One woman leaned over and pounded her skirt. Mothers collected children and deposited them at house fronts. Boys trotted beside Emma’s hammock. But a few adults called, “
Alafia
,” peace. Emma felt oddly as if she were coming home. She took the shawl from her head and waved. “
Alafia
,” she said. The women’s cloth was blue and more blue, from the indigo pots. It seemed they traversed several miles getting to the center of town. At last Emma heard Jacob calling her porters, and they pushed through the crowd to the front of the caravan where she saw Henry, standing by the horse. Here was an archway and a gate and it seemed to Emma they had happened upon something close to civilization.

“This must be the palace,” she said to Abike. But the girl’s face was in shadow and she said nothing. A horn sounded and four men materialized, taking positions like posts in a palisade. Then Emma saw the king advancing, taking his time, pushing his legs out—like Uncle Eli! He was piled up in white cloth, his hands hidden somewhere in the folds. Henry came to help her disembark, but just as she reached out to him, he lost his footing. He lurched before recovering himself, so she stepped down alone and then wove her hand through his arm, to steady them both.

There were the usual, everlasting salutations. Seated inside the king’s compound, they were offered drinks. A kola nut ceremony began—always for men only. Emma let her eyes wander.

“Emma,” Henry said.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh!” The king was offering her the first bite. The bitter taste filled her mouth and shot backward into her throat. It was proper to chew so she tried, though she felt her neck muscles straining with the effort. When the king looked away, she swallowed and continued an imitation of chewing. Henry produced his flask and offered it to the king. A communion, she thought, with a kind of hilarity. The flask was actually meant for her, and fortunately the king had the good sense to pass it along. She took a large swallow of whiskey, never more glad for it. Henry held the kola nut and sank his white teeth into it.

Emma tried to follow the conversation, but there was yet much commotion, everyone straining to get a glimpse of them.

Finally they could take their leave. Outside the king’s grounds, their group was waiting, the traders and Kunrumi’s guards having gone their own direction for the night.

“I take our accommodation to be half a mile’s distance,” Henry said, “still well within the city walls. Do you want to ride?”

“I’ll walk,” Emma said. Off they went, following the king’s men: Henry leading the horse, she walking beside, Abike, Duro, Jacob and Wole, the porters with the empty hammock, and a band of onlookers following. Drums started up somewhere.

“We’ve been given an entire compound,” Henry said; he appeared all proud and happy now. “The place belongs to the king’s brother, but the man’s gone off to the ancestral home for some months with his wives. From what I can make out, there’s a creek close by.”

“Ah,” she said.

“The king is called the
Baale
here,
baa-lay
,” he said.

“
Baa-lay
,” she practiced.

They found the place by last light. Jacob directed traffic for placing the furnishings. Wole walked about importantly, giving little pushes to unloaded objects, as if he were taking ownership of them. Henry and Jacob settled up with the porters, and finally only Emma’s carriers were left. She had kept back extra cowry strings for each and handed these around, looking fiercely in Henry’s direction, lest he say anything.

“Thank you. I will pray for you,” she said. The men were formal and grave, and Emma was sorry to see them go. Her heart seemed full of love, and she thought her prayer of the night before was being answered.

“Are you coming?” Henry said, holding out a lantern.

What Emma took to be the front door to the house turned into a dusky, narrow passageway, about ten feet long. So it was one of those houses with rooms that faced inward, opening onto a courtyard. The center was rectangular, with a view of the sky, and the moon was up. Half an hour later, she and Henry were sitting on a mattress on the piazza, drinking tea while Duro boiled eggs.

“So, Mrs. Bowman, we have set up housekeeping in Ogbomoso,” her husband said. Duro brought the eggs and Henry began to peel them and then they prayed. She swallowed a bite, taking sips of hot tea. When she leaned back onto the mattress and closed her eyes, she felt herself falling, as if through clouds, layer after layer. At some point she imagined she heard Henry ask if she wished the mattress to be moved into a room. She turned on her side. A soft wind whisked her cheek and dimly she knew he had billowed a sheet over her.

The next morning, she woke before daybreak. Henry slept, his snore mild, like a young boy learning to whistle. She pulled on her housedress, borrowed his boots, slid her feet across the dirt yard, and headed toward the passageway, darker than night. She pressed her fingers against the wall to guide herself. In an American house, she would have been coming down a hallway to the front door. There was something like a Dutch door here, and she pushed open the bottom. She stepped into the outer compound and pinned up stray locks of hair. A fire shone to her left. She headed toward it and might have tripped over Duro’s legs, but he spoke.

“Good morning mah.
E kaaro.
” He had the kettle on the coals for coffee. He stood.

“I want to look about,” she said.

The dark seemed to settle enough for her to see that the kitchen was right there, a three-walled room with a single table. “We’ll need another table,” she said.

“Yes mah.”

“Thank you for coming with us, Duro.”

“Yes mah.” He tipped his head. “You are welcome.” He said it in English, and she reflected briefly on how much she had depended on him when she first arrived in Ijaye and could speak with almost no one.

Another degree of light and she cut straight across the yard until she reached a low wall, the perimeter of the property. She hadn’t put on her corset, and she felt the air through her housedress swathing her chest. This and the sweet communion of her feet in Henry’s boots and she felt a thrill of holiness. “I’ll be,” she whispered.

She kept to the wall, making the rectangular circuit of the compound. At one turn she looked back to see that the house she had slept in rested a little uphill. A knot of trees were clarified in the early sun. Roosters had been crowing since she woke, but now they ceased and a bird’s melody filled the air. She wondered if Henry would wake and find his boots missing. The earth continued its downward slope as she walked along so that she came to an African meeting room made of bamboo poles and a thatched roof. A few wooden benches. Such “rooms” appeared in every village, in every family compound. They might seat twenty. Some such Africa rooms had roofs made of climbing vine, and in the right season they blossomed with flowers. This one, she mused, would do temporarily for a schoolhouse and church. Just then someone from the street called out good morning, and Emma nearly collided with a small edifice. “The shrine house,” she said, speaking low, and then remembering the coffee, she veered toward the kitchen. The sun broke just as she was about to enter the passageway, illuminating a room she had missed before. Unlike the others, it opened to the outer yard. She felt an urge to take a peek, but Duro had poured the coffee into a bowl and it was hot against her hands.