Ama (40 page)

“To my first wife, Augusta, trader, of Edina town, I give five ounces of gold dust.

“To my good friend Hendrik Van Schalkwyk, chaplain et cetera, et cetera, I give my decanters and glassware, my chess set from Batavia, all my Dutch books, all my clothing, for distribution as he thinks appropriate to Company employees and others, and ten ounces of gold dust.”

Van Schalkwyk looked up but De Bruyn cut his interruption short.

“To my only son Isaak De Bruyn, resident at Cape Town, I leave the residue of my estate . . . ”

He was suddenly overcome by a paroxysm of retching and vomiting. At the same time his nose and gums began to bleed. Ama rushed to help him. Van Schalkwyk was glad to retire.

“I shall prepare the draft and read to it to you as soon as you are a little better,” he told De Bruyn as he left the room.

In the evening Augusta brought Edina's leading priest. He had already slaughtered six cockerels and a sheep supplied by Augusta. Now he poured libation to invoke the help of the spirits of the ancestors and the seventy seven gods of the town in saving De Bruyn's life. That done he strapped a leather amulet on each of the patient's wrists and made him sip a herbal remedy.

“You should have called me earlier,” he told Augusta as he took his leave.

The patient spent a fitful, restless night.

Since De Bruyn's return Ama had not had more than an hour's continuous sleep. When Van Schalkwyk came in the morning, she was exhausted.

Van Schalkwyk read the will to De Bruyn and helped him to scrawl his signature at the bottom. Then he signed as witness. Ama wrote “Pamela”, as he instructed her, in the place provided for a second witness. Then Van Schalkwyk left, taking the will with him.

* * *

Pieter De Bruyn fell into a coma four days after his return to Elmina from Axim.

Ama and Augusta kept a vigil by his bedside but both were so exhausted that they fell asleep. When they awoke at first light, the Governor was dead.

Augusta started wailing an improvised lament, “Mijn Heer, why have you left us. Mijn Heer, why did you die? You have left your wives widows . . .”

Ama put her hand on Augusta's shoulder and interrupted her, “Sister Augusta, Mijn Heer was a white man and a Christian. Let the Dutch bury him after their own fashion.”

She felt a guilty sense of relief that it was all over. She had fought for his life but she had known from the first day that it would be a miracle if he survived. Whites had little resistance to Africa's diseases. She wondered how it was that Mijn Heer had lived so many years.

The visiting surgeon came and signed a death certificate. Van Schalkwyk came and prayed. They left Augusta and Ama to prepare the body for burial. When they had washed the corpse, they dressed it in De Bruyn's best uniform. That task finished, they bathed and dressed themselves in the new red and black funeral cloth which Augusta had sent for. Then they sat and waited. Early in the afternoon, castle slaves carried in the coffin the carpenters had made. They lifted the body into it and tacked the lid down.

In the courtyard the coffin was opened and for an hour the company staff filed by to pay their silent respects.

* * *

As they wound their way back from the Dutch cemetery, the sound of musketry still ringing in their ears, Augusta asked Ama, “Sister Ama, what will you do now?”

“Maame, I am too tired to think of that. I told you that Mijn Heer made a will before he died. I heard Van Schalkwyk read it to him before he signed it, but it was in Dutch and I couldn't understand much. The Minister told me that in his will he granted me my freedom. I hope that that is true. But as to what I will do, I need to sleep before I can think of it.”

At the front gate of the castle, Ama shook hands with Augusta and with the King of Edina and his delegation. She declined their invitation to join them in a funeral celebration, pleading exhaustion. While she was talking to them, she saw Jensen and his Rose, now visibly pregnant, enter the portal. She felt a slight sense of unease, but she was too tired to attempt to identify its cause.

Van Schalkwyk passed by and stopped to talk to her. Beyond Edina, the sun was a red ball, lighting up the western sky.

“I will go and see Jensen to fix a time to read the will,” he said and patted his waist coat. “I have kept it here for safe custody.”

When Ama reached the top floor she was surprised to see that the door of De Bruyn's room was open. Her apprehension increased as she went in. Jensen and Rose were surveying the candle-lit room and its contents with a proprietorial air.

“What do you want?” Jensen snapped at her.

“Please, sir, I am very tired. I had little sleep while I was nursing Mijn Heer. I thought . . .”

“Never mind what you thought. I am the ‘Mijn Heer' here now. You will sleep tonight where you came from and where you belong.”

There was a discreet knock on the open door. It was Van Schalkwyk.

“Ah, Jensen,” he said, “I have been searching all over for you. They told me I would find you here.”

“Mijn Heer Jensen, if you please. I act as Director-General until the Company Directors rule otherwise. What do you want?”

Van Schalkwyk blanched at the snub.

“Mijn Heer Jensen. Director-General De Bruyn made a will before he died. I have it here. He appointed me his sole executor.”

He drew the document from his waist coat.

“I wondered if we might fix a time for it to be read to the officers.”

“Let me see that,” demanded Jensen.

Van Schalkwyk handed it over. Jensen took it to the escritoire, where there was a candle. He read the document.

“This is a forgery. I know De Bruyn's signature. He did not sign this. I recognise your handwriting Van Schalkwyk. I will have you arrested and charged with forgery.”

As he spoke, he waved the will around and, by accident or design, the flame of the candle set the paper alight. He held it by one corner and let it burn.

“Oh, what a pity,” he said. “An unfortunate accident. But fortunate for you. No evidence. Now it will not be possible to charge you. However, I can inform you right now that you will receive a formal letter giving you your notice tomorrow morning. Writing it will be my first official task.

“Do you think,” he continued in triumph, “that I do not know the contents of the reports regarding me that you sent to the Classis? That was most unwise of you. It was your doing to land me with this whining baggage, this excuse for a wife. Now you will have your reward. You will take the first ship bound for Amsterdam.”

“You can't do this,” blustered Van Schalkwyk.

“I can do whatever I like. By virtue of the Company's rules I am automatically invested with all the powers of the Director-General; and in this establishment the Director-General is second only to God. Now get out.”

As Van Schalkwyk beat a crest-fallen retreat, Jensen called for a guard.

“Take this slave to the female dungeon,” he ordered, indicating Ama.

“Wait,” Ama cried, as the guard came towards her. “Mijn Heer gave me my freedom before he died.”

“Oh, he did, did he? Well then where is the evidence? Where is the completed form of manumission?”

“He ordered the Minister to write it in his will. I heard the Minister read it to him and saw Mijn Heer sign it, weak as he was.”

“And where is this will, pray?”

“You have just burnt it,” said Ama.

The enormity of her predicament suddenly dawned upon her. After two years of faithful service to Mijn Heer as his wife, she was to be hurled unceremoniously back into the dungeon.

Jensen was obviously enjoying her discomfort. She saw the cruel smile on his handsome face.

“You shit. You shit-arse. You rapist. You bastard. You pig. You filthy pig,” she exploded.

A cloud passed over Jensen's face.

“Out!” he instructed the waiting guard.

“Lock the door,” he ordered Rose.

“A pig, am I? A shit-arse? Is that what that stupid fool De Bruyn taught you English for? To abuse your betters? Now we'll shall see who is the pig, who is the shit-arse.”

He grabbed her. She felt at once his overpowering physical strength. In a moment he had stripped her mourning cloth from her and then her beads. He threw her face down over the bed. She felt his trousers slip to the floor and heard him kick them aside.

“Itsho! Itsho! Help me,” she cried, then, “Rose, Rose.”

“Rose you come and watch this performance,” commanded Jensen.

Then he entered her, not her vagina but her anus.

“Shit-arse, eh? Pig, eh?” he said again and again keeping time with his driving.

When he had finished he rested in her for a moment.

“Rose, my darling,” he commanded his wife, “fetch me something to wipe my shit-arse prick with.”

Rose opened a drawer and found there Ama's oldest cloth, her only painful memento of home.

Jensen withdrew and without waiting to clean his organ, threw Ama to the floor.

Ama had been raped before, twice, but never had she been so humiliated. She wanted to die.

“Who's a pig, now, shit-arse?” he demanded.

He pulled up his trousers. Then he kicked her in her naked ribs. She screamed in pain.

“Speak.”

He threw the cloth at her and went to look at his dim candle-lit image in the mirror.

“Rose, shut your fucking mouth.”

The girl was whimpering. Jensen washed his hands.

“Unlock the fucking door,” he commanded.

She ran to do his bidding.

THE LOVE OF LIBERTY

African slaves were sold in Lisbon as early as 1441. The European discovery and colonisation of the Americas set the scene for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which lasted from early in the sixteenth century until the second half of the nineteenth. The slaves were all African. So too were many of those who sold them. The buyers and shippers were almost all Europeans. In the course of three hundred years, upwards of ten million black men, women and children arrived in the Americas as unwilling migrants. Millions more died on the journey to the Atlantic coast, and at sea.

CHAPTER 23

The Holy War in the mountains of the Futa Jalon lasted fifty years.

From time immemorial the Jalonke had been the owners of these upland areas: that is why their Susu brothers called them
Jalon-ke
. Descended from the rulers of the old Mali empire, they were aristocrats, soldiers, traders; and not too fond of physical labour.

When the wandering Fula cattle herders drifted in, the Jalonke gave them land to graze their livestock. In return they expected their tenants to pay a tax on every animal they slaughtered.

In the years before the war started, the Fula and the Jalonke lived together in amity. The Fula worked iron and wove cotton cloth and the Jalonke took these goods to the coast and exchanged them for salt. Sometimes the Jalonke made war on their Limba and Kisi neighbours and sold their captives to the merchants who lived near the mouths of the many rivers that discharge into the ocean along that coast.

The Fula worked hard and prospered. In the course of time they came to resent the taxes which their Jalonke landlords imposed on them.

Then the famous Fula scholar Karamoko Alfa returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca, inspired with religious zeal. Travelling across the great desert, suffering terrible thirst and in danger of losing his life to brigands, he promised Allah that if He permitted him to return to his home in safety, he would undertake to convert all the infidels in the Futa Jalon to Islam. The jihad was the fulfilment of his promise. The instrument he chose was his cousin, Ibrahima Suri, who had already proved himself a capable general. United by their faith, the Fula forces overcame their erstwhile patrons.

Many Jalonke fled to the coast. Others accepted the new religion but found it difficult to accept that those who had once been their tenants were now their landlords. They, too, fled. There were some, however, prosperous merchants and owners of cattle, who were more accommodating. The Fula were not ungenerous to converts who were prepared to co-operate. They appointed some of these men to rule the villages in which their brothers were kept in bondage. They even encouraged them to send their children to school, where they learned to read and write Arabic and to commit passages of the Koran to memory.

One day Karamoko came to open a new mosque. Testing the Koranic knowledge of the local Jalonke boys, he was so impressed with one youngster that he honoured his diligence by honouring him with a new name, that of the patriarch Ibrahima.

Allah bestowed many blessings on the young Ibrahima. It seemed that he could do no wrong. As he grew up, he prospered. He fought in many battles. By the time he was thirty he owned great herds of cattle, a veritable army of slaves, the maximum permitted quota of four wives (one of them a Fula woman), and an ever increasing number of children.

The Fula took to arms again and Ibrahima, now a general, joined their army, along with his slaves. But the slaves of the Futa Jalon were restive and as one great battle reached its climax, they began to desert, first in ones, then in tens and finally in droves. In the end their masters were left to fight on alone. Ibrahima was captured. Denied the customary opportunity to pay a ransom in exchange for his freedom he was marched off to the coast, fettered and manacled.

Chained he might be, but the first thing he did whenever the caravan stopped to rest, was to perform the
salat
. He prayed, too, all day long as they marched, carrying on a conversation with Allah, reciting passages from the Koran in an undertone, searching for a sign to explain his predicament.

“Allah knows best,” he consoled himself. “Perhaps He is testing me. Perhaps He is punishing me for my pride and complacency. Now I perceive that all my wealth was as nothing in His eyes.”

From Ibrahima's devout soul-searching there emerged in him a determination not to accept his bondage. He had learned the lesson of his humiliation. He believed that Allah now wished him to be free.