The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel (15 page)

Of course this was not true. We had our symbols just the same, but the dreadful thing was—and my anguish was too great for me ever to admit this to Kwame or anyone else—that I believed Verheeck.

Much later, when we were in our last year with the van Moocks, by which time Kwame had learned to study independently, it was his turn to read out his essay in class. He gave a brilliant exposé of the use of signs among primitive peoples, and set out to show that they were not inferior to the letters of the alphabet. His final proof, he read triumphantly, lay “in the practice of the West African Ardah to tie knots in thin cords: a skill of such sophistication as to make each knotted strand tell a story. As with the common alphabet, the message is in a code that is understood in the same way by sender and receiver.”

He also reminded us of the power of memory, which he still held in higher esteem than the written word. (Here he was making a mistake, of course, for he owed his entire argument to his ability to consult books in his search for evidence!) He quoted Thomas Aquinas, who apparently took memory to be one of the four most important virtues. The churches of Europe, Kwame concluded, were covered in ideographs (not in words, like mosques): “The invention of the alphabet did not deter painters and sculptors in their quest for a means of depiction that would evoke the universe in a single image. The written word was evidently not considered adequate to express the might of God and nature. Even in God’s own house His word calls forth enhancement in painted allegories, images that appeal to a shared knowledge. For the path of virtue is not determined exclusively by the Holy Scriptures, but also by past misdeeds, both individual and collective, whose memory is transmitted from one generation to the next in the form of an innate sense of good and evil.”

Verheeck had already left school by this time, more’s the pity. By this time, too, Kwame and I were drifting apart, and I was too alienated from his way of thinking to hear the anger in his heartfelt discourse. What I remember most clearly is his relief at having successfully risen to this challenge: he was as cheerful and lively as he had been in the old days at Kumasi. A few weeks later, though, his moodiness returned. It was around the same time that we realized our African heritage was steadily being eroded by our new language. We found we had forgotten most of our Twi.

goat, soap, dog, wood, rose,
wheel, cock, beech, dove, shed

We were quick to learn. We snapped up everything that came our way, indiscriminately, but to exemplary effect. To van Moock’s profound satisfaction, we caught up with the others in a few months. He boasted about our progress to his friends at the Wesleyan Society. It happened sometimes that after he had dispatched a letter to London in the morning he was so impressed by our afternoon’s achievements that he would dash off a second epistle after class—sometimes followed by a postscript—and send the maid with it to the postmaster so that it might catch the same mail coach. His pride gratified me immensely, but Kwame found it annoying. While I rejoiced in showing off how much I had learned, Kwame would answer questions briefly, woodenly, almost reluctantly. He did not enjoy being praised for his effort. He never volunteered to reveal all he knew about a subject, whereas when we tested each other in our room he was at least as quick and clever as I. He actually seemed to take offence at van Moock’s amazement and admiration. I, on the other hand, was eager for compliments, and made sure always to have a little surprise in store for my master. It was better to be commended for each nugget of acquired knowledge, I thought, than for the whole treasure at once.

It was not that I was vain—quite to the contrary. I needed acknowledgment as I needed my daily bread. I was obsessed with the idea that the other boys knew things I knew nothing about, and my fear of exposure gave me nightmares. Each night I would be alone and blindfolded, on enemy ground. I knew I would have to arm myself as sturdily as possible before the inevitable battle would begin. Each snippet of knowledge from which I was excluded turned into a faceless evil spirit. Tens of thousands of these spirits rose up before me, and I struggled hard to get rid of as many as I could, only to find their ranks replenished with new ones from day to day. The need to conquer these enemies was all-consuming, and I had to summon all my strength to unmask them, after which I gave them names and places, and befriended them.

Van Moock made it quite clear that we were doing very well in all subjects. As he kept repeating this I was inclined to believe him. Still, I was constantly aware of the danger of a sudden hiatus that could strike at any time during a conversation; there would be a faltering of the voice followed by a complete blank, and all eyes would be fixed on me. For a long time I was plagued by this fear, and it made me shy. Later on in life I overcame my timidity, but the fear of exposure never went away. It is still with me. Day in day out.

We did not get on quite as well outside the classroom. The boys seldom addressed us in a casual, friendly manner. They tended to club together, forming a silent, forbidding front. Time and again we had no choice but to stand up for ourselves. During dinner, for instance. Each day we would find our plates laid a little further down the long wooden table, until one afternoon we were obliged to sit at the very end, where there was a permanent draught. We took our plates, squared our shoulders, and made for the head of the table where we squeezed in among the other boys. They made room for us grudgingly and pretended not to notice our presence. The next day we arrived in the dining room to find our pewter plates arranged on an old chest by the door. Everyone stared at us. I sat down, but Kwame pulled me to my feet again. He swept his plate from the chest. I did not dare follow suit, and motioned for him to put it back. There was some stifled giggling. I prayed desperately for them all to start eating, but no one did. I did not dare look, but in the end I heard someone getting to his feet. It was Cornelius. He took up his plate from the table, strode to the chest and sank down on the floor beside it. Two other boys followed his example, and then a third, until the six of us were sitting in a small circle by the door. From that day on we were at liberty to sit wherever we liked.

One hundred B.C.: arrival of the Batavian tribe.

Each day started with drill in the courtyard at six-thirty, unless van Moock took us for a walk or swim. Now and then, when he was angling for a financial grant or other privilege from the local council, he would order us to sweep the market square, or else the street in front of some dignitary’s house. There was a strict pecking order among the band of pupils during these exertions. The older, bigger boys, Cornelius, Verheeck, van Woensel and Termeeren, shirked their duties whenever they could. They had no qualms about letting the others do their work for them, and would even make the youngest boys like Mus, van Wersch and Tonnie Voorst take their places three times out of four. Sometimes, when we were exercising in the open air, the older boys would vanish altogether, without van Moock flying into a rage. I used to think he did not notice. Now I can see that their absence came as a relief to him after the constant exertion of discipline.

To be honest, the unfairness did not bother me at first as much as Kwame. We were both afraid of the leaders, but I could not help admiring their boldness, in which I was sorely lacking. And though I would have died rather than disobey van Moock, I fantasized secretly that I was one of them, that they would suffer me to swim in the lake in their company, after which we would all clamber, dripping, on to the bank together, and that we would run off into the fields with our bare bottoms, scaring the daylights out of the farm girls.

Of course the leader is just as separate from the group as the outcast, each being on the fringe, albeit at opposite ends. They are two sides of the same coin, and this lonely recognition draws them to each other as much as it keeps them apart. It enables them to see the masses for what they are, to put a face to the crowd. In that respect I have always recognized a hint of myself in Cornelius.

Even though I am only a boy,
Holland is my greatest joy,
My kind masters give me food and drink
They teach me to cipher and to think.
I vow that once I am a man,
I will serve my land as best I can.

The other boys were allowed to leave the premises every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, and sometimes also on Sunday morning after church and Bible reading. We were allowed to accompany them on these unsupervised outings, but we had no wish to. The first months we watched the others go, but the idea of following them did not occur to us. We had begun to feel at home in the school building, and the world we saw from the windows looked bleak, angular and stony. We simply did not see the town with its streets and squares as a place where games could be played the way we used to play in the forest at home. So we saw no reason to venture outside the grounds, until Mrs. van Moock turned up in the classroom one day when Kwame and I were having an extra lesson while the other boys had the afternoon off. She addressed her husband sternly, saying: “Simon, here is some money and I declare there is more to learning than books, and so, and so”—she rushed forward and pressed some coins into our palms—“and so, what I mean is I want you boys to buy me two loaves, and a bag of sweets as well—and don’t you try to stop them, sir, for my mind is made up.”

Van Moock slammed shut his copy of the
Metamorphoses,
from which he had been reading to us. “Now boys, you heard Mrs. van Moock: two loaves and a bag of sweets. Off you go.” Mrs. van Moock held the door open for us. As we went past she handed us our caps and scarves, then lingered on the doorstep until her husband bundled her inside. “My dear Mrs. van Moock, that was a very good deed you just did,” he said, whereupon he shut the front door.

The autumn of 1837 had given way, without any warning, to a cold spell such as we had never experienced before. You would have thought the Dutch were weaklings the way everyone complained bitterly about the sudden change in the weather. I myself quite liked the cold. It made the skin on my face tingle and feel taut. In Holland even the wind reminds you of the nature of your skin.

People preferred to stay indoors during winter. They peered out from behind their curtains. An inquisitive face appeared at the window of a house across the canal. Further down, a sweeper brushed some rubbish into the water to join the rest of the market debris on its way to the sluice. We were standing by the front door, and would have been quite happy to stay there for some time had not a carriage come thundering past, making us jump out of the way. The coachman swore at us. This did not upset me, because he would have sworn at anyone under the circumstances. I took Kwame’s hand.

It made no difference whether people pointed and stared or made an effort to dissemble their surprise—the one reaction was no less noticeable than the other. A lady and a gentleman whose path we crossed stopped in their tracks, nudged each other and stared at us open-mouthed until we had passed by. Then they turned round and followed us, at a little distance so as not to attract attention. If we took five steps they took five steps too, if we paused, so did they. Kwame and I exchanged a look of complicity: we would lead the couple a dance. We crossed the street quickly and recrossed it several times, dawdled a little way, then raced ahead again, until we ducked into an alley to spy on our shadows as they came hurrying past, pretending they were taking a perfectly normal everyday stroll.

At the other end of the alley we found ourselves in a neighbourhood with dwellings made of wattle and daub and with straw roofs. There were children running about on the unpaved sandy ground, and they were barefoot in spite of the cold. A knot of women huddled around a fire, on which they were boiling a pot of cabbage leaves. They offered us a taste. Kwame declined, but I took a sip from the ladle and when I raised my eyes I saw that Kwame had taken off his shoes and stockings and was racing around in the sand. I tried to calm him down, but he was so excited he did not even hear me.

I walked away, leaving him behind. He soon caught up with me, but when we turned into a street paved with cobbles his shoes were still dangling from his hand, and I hissed that he should put them on at once. It was not the cold that I was worried about.

We went into a small bakery. Our presence was attracting rather a lot of attention from passers-by, who followed us inside and made a purchase simply to get a closer look. The baker was pleased with the extra custom, and gave us each some goodies with the request to stay around for a while. Kwame was unwilling, but I was glad to do the man a favour . . . Well, at any rate I did not want to offend him. I sent Kwame home with the loaves for Mrs. van Moock.

When I finally went out into the street again with a gift of two steaming apple fritters, I was loath to surrender my new-found freedom, and instead of going straight home I clambered up the old rampart behind the bakery and decided to take a stroll around the town. From my elevated position I had a view of the layout of the streets and also of the countryside on the other side.

The first thing people tend to do when they claim a piece of land is mark it off with straight lines, as if to cross out the work of nature itself. The flat grassland of Holland offers no such solace.

I recognized the road our carriage must have taken when we arrived in Delft. I could see several roads converging on the town from different directions, and I wondered which one we would take when we left again. All those roads, where did they go? I shut my eyes and spun round a few times until I felt dizzy. Then I opened them wide, taking my time to let the entire panorama sink in. I spotted a windmill, which I knew from an engraving in the school corridor. There was a scattering of farms, with workers in the fields and low dunes in the distance. Close by I could see the rectangular meadows and the little boathouse in the bend of the River Schie, where van Moock had taken us swimming in the summer . . .