A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa (28 page)

For no reason at all Emma opened the wardrobe and looked at her husband’s clothes, his white shirts with the high collars, suspenders and belts, the coat he had worn in their marriage ceremony. She could not stop herself from leaning into his things. The cool sturdy cuffs reminded her of his past strength and how she had loved him.

Emma sat on the bed beside her husband. Then she lay down and curled into herself like an infant, her hand across her mouth to hold her groaning. Oh, she had wanted Jacob to hold her, to pull her in, had wanted his breath on her face, all of that muscled greatness of his desiring her. Let her give in to that smile, his brow above her strong and demanding.

She dozed, and when she woke a sheet of fear swept her back. Her misery came back fourfold. She stood again, moving heavily in the dark toward the rocking chair. “Criminal,” she spewed in a loud whisper at herself, “a base sinner.” She was sundered to think on the baby and herself full of tortured longing. What a poor witness she was, a horror, and she had thought herself worthy, special, an instrument of God. She laughed in self-loathing. She almost wished Henry dead. She would fling herself on Jacob. Oh! She had thought herself a white bird, had seen herself in Africa gloved and fine, living clean and beautiful. Now look at the country of her mind.

The next day Henry asked for corn cakes, and she served him in bed.

“Your eyes are swollen. Have you been troubled?” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“I hope there have been no more tricks with witches dressed like girls,” he said. Emma felt a chill up her spine. Why couldn’t he lay it aside? He said it was the sun. That could account for the delusion.
Because he thinks he actually saw something.

“Do you remember in Ijaye?” he said.

No please no.

“An old witch came to frighten Rev. Moore.”

He was right about the old woman, her skin grayed with chalk, she bearing some large instrument with the most egregiously carved bird biting a snake.

“We haven’t had any visitors, husband,” she said. He must stop pitching onward this way. She could not bear it. “You dreamed.”

“With my eyes open?” He hit at the bedcovers. “I have to admit she frightened me.”

“Who frightened you?”

“Whoever came in here dressed like the crushed girl. Ask Jacob. He saw it.”

“There was no girl,” she said.

Disappointment came into Henry’s eyes. They sat some time, the sun sending crosses of light into the room.

“I need to trim my nails,” he said finally. “Could you bring my pocketknife? I looked for it earlier.”

She had not suspected he had been up, searching things out. For a moment she forgot her wretchedness. “Your clasp knife,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Where was it last?” she dissembled.

“In my pocket,” he said.

“Washed,” she said. “It would have been taken out when we washed. I’ll bring scissors.”

“Soon we’ll get back to the garden,” he said when she returned.

“Henry, you’ve been very ill.”

“I suppose so,” he said, looking downcast.

She helped him with his nails and slipped the scissors back into her pocket. Wole’s letter was there. She had forgotten. “Look,” she said, “The boy has written to you.”

She pulled her skirts around, the whoosh of them somehow reviving her.

Henry unfolded the page and she looked on.

Pastor
, it read.
You are welcome. The thatch is hold. New chicken come. This day the Lord Is Made. Jesu Christi Amen. Wole Ladejo.

Henry closed the letter and laid it on his lap, his hand on it. He opened it and read it again. “We have not failed,” he said, looking out the window.

* * *

H
ENRY ASKED FOR
his papers. She brought a selection. “For an hour and you must rest.”

“Four thousand five hundred,” he said when she returned.

“What?”

“Words. We have four thousand five hundred words for the Yoruba vocabulary.”

Henry kept asking for his papers. She brought them and would find him later, arms at his sides, slouched in the bed, pages smeared across the sheet.

“I can’t find it.”

“What are you looking for?”

“I can’t remember. I am unwell and no help to you nor anyone, least of all God. I believe my personality is diseased.”

Don’t say that. No no. You must be well. You must care for me. Show me your nobility. Bring me back into loving you. Forgive me my trespasses.
“What do you mean? You’ve been ill with overwork in the heat. If you could wake in England, the cool weather alone would cure you. Here it takes time.”

“My fevers are at least half my own doing, don’t you think?” He stopped and rubbed his fingers. “There never was a witch.”

“No, husband.”

“I’m back to my visions, great monsters rushing upon me.”

She sidestepped. “How do you feel today?”

“Aggravated,” he said, then softened it. “But better.”

“What can I bring you?”

“A month of cheerfulness,” he said, and smiled and touched his earlobe, the one with the nick. It seemed a sign he would not give up on himself. A little wave came into Emma, of hope that she might yet love him.

She had to speak with Jacob, but he maneuvered at every turn to avoid her. The depths of Henry’s illness had put them in a new world. They had to make everything up now; every step was a crossroads.

Forgive me.
She folded the slip and carried it to Duro. “Give this to Jacob when you see him,” she said. “It’s something I need him to do.”

It had been six days and still no word from Hathaway. Emma wondered if she should send another letter, but she needed first to hear from Jacob.

The next morning she found half a head of cowry strings pushed into a basket and forgotten—how had she missed it in the move? The discovery eased her mind. God always provided enough. She put on a clean dress. She and Henry dined on chicken and he went back to bed. As she helped Duro with the dishes, he told her the local chief would call again after the next market day.

“My husband is just recovering,” she said.

“Master is well by now,” he said, and she remembered he did not know how ill Henry had been.

“He’s on the mend, but we must be patient,” she said. And did not say:
I must get a man here to represent my husband.
She meant a white man, another missionary. She would even take a Catholic. What was the date? Failing to keep her journal, she hardly knew. March 20, 1855, the first day of spring in some other world—where she had married two years ago.

“Can you remind me when the next market day is?”

“By Thursday,” he said.

This was Tuesday. Duro was telling her the chief wanted to call on Friday.

She had to wait for Jacob to return from town. When she saw him in the yard, she flew straight out the door. “The chief wants to call again,” she said, her eyes looking just to the right of his face.

“Duro has told me. One of his men hails from a village where children died after the explorer Richard Lander passed through several years back. The problem lies with him. He is inciting the others over the girl who was killed.” He said all of this in a kindly detached way, as if she were a slow learner.

“I wish there were something we could do for the mother,” Emma said.

“The husband will not allow you to come.”

“You mean unless we do what he wants.”

“Yes.”

For the first time, Emma didn’t think she saw that hidden smile in Jacob’s face.
Bring it back
, she wanted to say. “What will we do?” she said, meaning everything.

“Let me think,” he said. He moved past her and away.

I will never read him
, she thought.

She rubbed her freckled hands. She ought to turn to Henry, tell him about the chief, ask his opinion. But he would pull himself up, ignoring his fragile state. If she cautioned him, he would only push harder. She almost wished the chief had called when Henry was ill. It might have kindled sympathy.

In the morning her writing box was oddly placed on the dining table. She opened it cautiously, thinking somehow a snake might be curled in it. On top of her journal lay a mite of packing paper. She lifted the note.

We call on the Baale.

Jacob. He had come in while she was occupied elsewhere and opened her box. She closed her hands lightly around the note like she might hold a butterfly. She walked about the house, tapping her chin with her fingers. It would be necessary to keep Henry in bed. Otherwise he would insist on going himself. What if she slipped just a few drops of laudanum in his morning tea? She would have to use a lot of sugar to hide the taste. It wasn’t as though she would be harming him.

She put her hair up in the way Henry liked, using her favorite combs and more than she had need of. They were three inches wide and four inches long with a pattern of waves across the top. She prepared Henry’s breakfast herself.

“How can I be so sleepy?” Henry said, finishing his meal. “I’ve slept for days. You look beautiful this morning, Emma. Have you done something differently? Your cheeks are flushed. It must be the life of the infant flowing through you. Why have I ever lost my temper when I am blessed with such a wife?”

He had never spoken to her in such flowery language, and Emma felt the sting of it. But she had no choice.

“Don’t be sad,” Henry said, his eyes beginning to drift. “Try to hope. Things will change. God’s Providence begins in our calamities but ends in restoration.” He pushed his chair back. “If you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I’ll take a brief rest. I shouldn’t have eaten so well.”

When he slept, she slipped out the back door.

“What of master?” Jacob said when she met him in the yard.

“He’s resting.”

She took off. In a moment, Jacob stepped in front of her. They came to the Laka River where they used to draw water, fullish with new rain. Planks had been laid across where it narrowed. Children splashed and called
oyinbo
. Emma had never taken this route, not having been to the palace since the move. They passed some women at their indigo pots. Here was a section of town where tanners and blacksmiths operated their businesses. They had to cross several more ditches, walking on slender planks.

“Please. Be careful,” Jacob said, and she felt bright in his concern for her. Though when she looked at him, she had the sense he had built a wall around himself.

At the palace, Emma was offered a leather stool of tolerable height. Seated, she checked her hair. The Baale entered the room and she stood. He waved her back down. Suddenly she felt sure she was overstepping some boundary, coming without Henry. A small girl, just toddling, passed by the king’s open door. Emma pulled herself to the tallest sitting she could manage. “Your royal highness,” she said. “
E kaaro
—good morning. I hope your family is well.” The man waved his fan again. She took in a deep breath. “My husband, your friend, is momentarily ill,” she said, “but he sends greetings.” It was somewhat true. In general, her husband wished the king well.

“You are welcome,” the Baale said. “You are looking very well. I am sorry for your reverend husband’s illness. I have heard.”

Oh, she thought, recalling how nothing here was secret. “Please,” she said. “I have brought gifts.” She pulled the combs from her hair so that it fell down her back in a long braid. “They are for your wives. My husband tells me they might like them.”

“Ah,” the Baale said. “Ah, ah!” He sent a boy across the room to collect them. “Thank you,” he said, leaning from his waist and clapping his hands in front of his legs as if she had given him a pet, something that might respond to encouragement. “It is good.” He looked to Jacob as if he would understand what women liked.

She took another deep breath, for strength, one she would take before a burst of running. “I have come to ask for your understanding.” She felt oddly free with her hair down.

The king was still smiling, his eyes moving from Emma to his toes, which he flexed back and forth in some royal morning exercise.

“Not long ago my husband held services on our new compound.” Emma waited for him to look back at her. “Many of your people came to worship and sing. They are very curious to learn more about God.”

“The people like to pray,” the king said.

“Yes, well,” she said, not sure he took her point. “Later we were told that a young girl was trod to death by long-horned cattle near the place where we worshipped. One of your chiefs accuses our prayer service of causing this sad event. He claims we dishonored the baobab tree. Your Majesty, we have cashew trees around the house. Furthermore, my husband tells me your cattle do not behave in this manner unless they are sick. If they are sick, the herd should be destroyed. But the chief has set his mind on taxing us. We can make a gift of love to the mother of the child, but we cannot offer sacrifices to a tree.”

She looked at Jacob. His jaw was set. She thought perhaps she had sounded too unbending in her message to the king.

The Baale coughed to clear his throat. He pressed his legs out in front of him and brought his hands into his lap. Emma felt her heart beating in her ears.

“I have heard of the problem,” he said. “The chief tells me his ancestor is disturbing him over Pastor’s meeting. You tell me your husband is ill. Therefore,” he said, raising his hands and looking at them as if they represented the people he spoke of, “therefore, two men are unhappy.”

Emma let out a puff of air. This wasn’t so bad.

Now the king seemed to use his tongue to check on the status of a tooth. “The cattle has passed on to Ibadan by now,” he said, waving his hand. “It cannot trouble us.” He laughed gently, as if he were humored that a rival town might be receiving ill cows.

“I see,” she said. “But the chief.”

“Invite the chief for a feast on your compound. It will be enough.” The king motioned to a lad, who brought a kola nut. The king rolled it in his palm, the deep red nut. He smelled it. Then he took a bite.

Jacob seemed to motion to her, as if the interview were complete. Wasn’t there something else? Yes. She remembered. “But the family of the girl. They demand recompense. The husband wants a new piazza.”