Blonde Roots (26 page)

My eyes watered, but I wasn’t sure if it was safe to shift them down.

“As it happens, I would have made use of you up here earlier. Why waste such expertise? It’s just that the pompous old SOB was emphatic that you should, in his words, ‘be made to undertake an honest day’s work in the fields.’

“I spared you that for a while, did I not? Then my grunt Rotimi goes and gets his favorite whore up the duff and comes groveling to me about lightening her workload.”

He leaned closer.

“Why not think of me as your invisible benefactor. Mnn?”

Was he going to kiss me?

Letting go of my chin, he brushed his fingers down my throat, stopping short of my clavicle.

Then he swept an affected, world-weary arm over at the room.

“Look at the mess Djenaba left this room in. But what do you do when your bookkeeper is an arsehole? Oh well, to the business at hand.
Your
job is to make
my
losses appear as profit. Understood? We call it creative accounting, don’t we? When the pompous old git enters the plantation on his fiery steed, you will go back to the fields. Fear not, if you do a satisfactory job, as I am sure you will, as soon as he’s gone, your new place of work will be this offce.
Bamweasel
won’t mind once I get him on my side. Easy enough when I let him install in the compound whatever tasty half-breed bitch he takes on as mistress.

“As for our losses, I have to sell off some of the stock, which is my only available option. A discreet planter from the Amarikas is already lined up, as it happens. There’s always a market for healthy young males of the species, who won’t be noticed as missing by Kaga the Omnipotent when he does his round of inspection.

“Naturally, the dutiful son will lay on the mother of all welcome-home parties. Everyone will attend—neighbors, dignitaries and all the workers, who will look ecstatically happy because Rotters will make damned sure of it. Festivities will last for three days and three nights with the slaughter and roasting of many heifers and hogs, endless barrels of rum, tobacco and plenty of grub. There will be much merry dancing to the fiddle and bagpipes and much jovial singing of the usual round of imbecilic native songs, like, oh you know the one—‘She be comin round de mountin, she be drivin six white horsey, she be wearin red pajamas, she will hav to sleep wid granma’—or somesuch piffle.

“As for those depressing ‘I wanna go home’ spirituals, they will be
banned,
I say. Banned!

“After three days of drunken hedonism, all those mealy-mouthed gossips and green-eyed planters will have to swallow their malicious tongues and concede that business is booming on the biggest, the baddest and the best plantation on the island. Yay!”

Nonso punched his fist in victory and let out a whoop, baring a set of teeth as yet undamaged by rum. Not a single one was chipped, stained, rotten or missing. I’d not seen that in a long time. They were strong, white, beautiful.

“In the meantime, here’s the list of those who will disappear.”

He pulled out a scroll that had been rammed down the back of his wrappa, probably lodged in his crack. Lovely.

“Make them unborn or dead by disease or missing by escape some time ago or he’ll get it in his head to chase after them. Whatever. However. Just make them go away. And do it yesterday. My client will collect the boys from a prearranged location the day after the father arrives so they must be hidden when he gets here. King Shaka will see to that. He docks in approximately two days. We must not delay.

“Hail, Yemonja. I need a fucking drink!”

His crocodile-skin sandals scuffed down the passageway with the walk of an old man on his last legs, not a young Ambossan male in his first years of manhood.

He called out for service, barely raising his voice, yet a flurry of female feet squeaked over the floorboards as if they had read his mind.

Yao, son of Ye Memé = C£300

Dingiswayo, son of Ye Memé = C£500

I PUSHED MY BACK against the clammy mud wall and slid down.

A shock started in my guts and charged around my body as if lightning had struck and was desperate for the exit point it could not locate.

It kept charging through me.

On and on until I opened my eyes and released it.

HOURS LATER I’D TIDIED up the office and got going on the accounts ledgers. First of all, I had to help Yao and Dingiswayo, or I’d never live with myself. Second, I had to work out how to stitch Nonso up, without paying a price. Unused to spending my days cooped up inside, I longed for some air, but I hadn’t been given permission to go anywhere. Eventually recklessness propelled me down the corridor toward the room that branched off to the left. I found myself in the immense oasis of a sunlit drawing room, which, to my surprise, was just like the Ghika residence I’d lived in all those years ago.

SOME PLANTERS KEPT THEIR homes minimalist—bamboo, wood, silver, reed, linen. Others were stuffed with objects to silence (they hoped) their toffee-nosed critics who declared them devoid of refinement and culture. Still others needed to fill up the lonely empty spaces of living on a remote island, neighbors few and far between and always fearful, like Nonso, that the seething masses were on the brink of insurrection.

They couldn’t afford self-examination so they fortified themselves with things.

Furniture as therapy. Objects as friends. Furnishings as arsenal.

How novel.

IN NONSO’S SHOWROOM A vermilion armoire decorated with golden butterflies stood next to a rosewood cabinet that in turn nudged shoulders with another cabinet inlaid with tortoiseshell marquetry. Next to this hung a six-foot teak mask of the god Shangira, and next to that a red-lacquered cupboard whose doors were painted with oversized camels amid palm trees and pyramids.

A key had been left in the cupboard door, so in my reckless mood I opened it and found myself on a trip into Nonso’s mind.

Self-help books were stacked on shelves, loads of them:

Hidden away at the bottom, spines turned inward:
Inheritance Tax for Dummies
and
Curing VD the Natural Way.

Not a single book had a creased spine.

I had to laugh.

Scattered around the room were several “thrones”—swanshaped armrests and seats upholstered in damask embroidered with gold and silver thread—and there was a divan in the shape of an elongated tiger with a giraffe’s pelt thrown over it.

Ormolu mirrors with carved bellflowers, scrolls and swags stretched from ceiling to floor, yet the woman I saw in them was so dark I barely recognized her. Where her complexion once had been flawless, now it was webbed with fine lines. Her oval jaw-line had slackened and her thinning, shoulder-length hair was bleached white-blonde or, perish the thought, had it begun to gray? She had bulked up too, with hefty, scarred shoulders and arms that looked like they could deliver a mean right hook. Her breasts remained lifeless, stretch-marked sacks.

Above all, the unhurried, otherworldly eyes that looked back at me were no longer a crisp morning blue, mocking, ready to quip, but spoke of a sun-frazzled landscape of hills and fields and mud and hoes and infinite skies.

God! I looked so rough and so
rural…

Tearing myself away, I wandered through the room, sliding my hands over the cool, sensual curves of statuettes made from bronze, jade, ivory, and life-sized sculptures of men, women and children, as well as tiny figurines of the gods—all in pure gold.

A real lovebird hung in a cage.

A low, rectangular coffee table with ball-and-claw foot pads displayed several glossy coffee table books, all of which had been well thumbed:

I stepped onto rugs from the Chinas and the Indias so delicate and silken I wanted to roll myself up in them, and when I craned my neck upward, it was to look into the dome of a ceiling depicting a sun bursting through a cloudy sky.

Unable to resist, I found myself drawn to the open paneled doors that led out onto the lawns, where I could see a little girl playing on the grass, a tubby little Ambossan girl wearing a pretty turquoise beaded flap. She had velvety dark-chocolate skin and lovely pinchable cheeks. Her hair was done up in plaited hoops into which yellow ribbons had been sewn, and she was pretending to breastfeed one of those Aphrikan Queen dolls.

A perfect child.

Just like Little Miracle.

Then she looked up and shot me such a filthy scowl it extinguished all her loveliness.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

(Boy, those kids learned fast, especially with Bwana in their genes.)

I took a step back inside the drawing room.

“Miss Omo! What yu doin here?”

King Shaka appeared at my side and waved at the girl.

“Greetin, Missa Dalila. Carry on wid yu playin, chile. Everyting all rite here. Dis Omorenomwara, come to wurk in de house, dats all.”

At the sight of King Shaka, she looked relieved and waved back with a beatific smile, a little brown angel again.

He pulled me inside the room, closed the door, grabbed my arm so hard it pinched, and pressed his lips to my earlobes, his breath steamy, garlicky.

“Dat one Massa Nonso yungez. Steer clear of his pikney becorze dem mek trubel fe dose slave dem nyot like. Nastee likkle vermin tell any ole lie to git yu arse wipped. Massa Nonso too forkin weak to control dem an so stoopid he beleeve every damn ting dey say. As fe der mudder? Madama Salmé? She no betta. Spend all day in bed bawlin becorze she huzban forcin hisself on most of de slave gyal. She tek it out on viktim instead of de purpatrata. Nuff gyal got licks from Madama Salmé wid bunch of hickory-sticks she have speshally seasan in de fire.”

Had I heard right? Uncle Tom dissing his masters? Surely not?

I followed him out of the room, down the vanilla-scented corridors again, through the various yards at the back of the compound where skilled craftsmen were going about their daily work at a much more leisurely pace than we field and factory workers. A carpenter filed down the legs of a wooden bench, a woman dipped cloth in a boiling vat of indigo, her forearms stained dark blue, a baker plaited dough while his assistant fired up the clay oven.

“Spect yu want fe eat. Food betta up here, git leftova. Nonso hav five pikney an one wife but cook must prepare feast fe five thousand every day so Nonso feel like him big chief wid monee to burn. Skwandara, dat’s what he iz.”

We entered a cool, shaded area where food was bubbling away in a copper pot over a fire. Several of the domestic slaves were gathered.

King Shaka brought me a bowl of pepper-pot and turtle soup and led me to a spot underneath a breadfruit tree.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked, still trying to work him out.

“Becorze yu in de lion den now, honee.”

He lay down on the mat, untied the headband from around his forehead, dropped it over his face, crossed his arms to cradle his head, and folded his legs at the ankle.

“One more ting,” he said, blowing air through the cloth. “Don’t eva repeet anyting mi say. Yu heer?”

He was soon snuffing like a contented horse.

I LOOKED AROUND AT THE OTHERS:
three men were sucking the meat off a plateful of fried chicken legs, several people were sleeping, opposite me two youngish women, maids probably, sat cross-legged on mats listening to a big hootchie-mama character holding court in the shade of a cherry tree in full blossom.

She was so pale it was obvious she didn’t work in the fields.

Her thighs and buttocks spilled over from a tiny three-legged stool that just about managed to keep from toppling.

Her wrappa and headscarf were of a creamy, frothy taffeta.

Her face, arms and breasts were nipped with swirls of decorative cicatrices.

Her jewelry was all gold—Nefertiti earrings, chunky nose rings, a flowered neck pendant, coiling snake armbands and anklets, bangles, precious-stone finger rings, and her talons were painted with pastel-blue glitter polish.

What slave went around dripping in gold?

She had noticed me and was, I felt, speaking loudly for my benefit.

“Wonder what mi Bwana bring fe mi dis time? Furz ting he do is com see his Miss Iffe. Him cyant resist. Like ritooal. Last time I did aks fe fashanabal lace fabrik from Londolo, but spect to git gole jewallree too. Gole, gole, gole, him always bring mi gole, neva dat silva rubbish.”

What a ridiculous, obnoxious cow, I thought. It had to be that Iffianachukwana.

Young Olunfunlayaro entered the cooking area heading straight for me, grinning as she approached.

“Mi did heer!” she said in her light, excitable voice, dropping next to me, hugging her knees.

“Ye Memé well-vexed parantly dat yu neva did tell her who yu waz. Everybawdee talking about yu, Miss Omo.”

Before I could defend myself, the super-hootchie interrupted us with a booming voice, clearly perturbed that Olunfunlayaro had distracted her target audience.

“An mite one aks who dat dere? What straynja com hitha to we uptown communitee? Frend or foe, declare thyself, becorze we heer yu iz a comman-a-gardan feeld wurkaaaarr!!!!”

She gathered up her shaking stomach and held it in her hands as she and her fellow coven-members exploded with coarse laughter.

Olunfunlayaro leapt up.

“Com, mi hintroduce yu to Miss Iffe. Don’t pay her no neva mind. Bark wurz dan bite. She alrite. Show off, dat’s all. An bored. All she do iz natta, natta, natta.”