Sacred Hunger Read online

  He rang a small brass handbell that had been lying on the table before him. An African in white tunic and drawers appeared instantly and was told to fetch Mr Saunders, for whom they waited some minutes in a silence made rather uneasy by Thurso’s audible breathing and the Governor’s total immobility. There was no sound at all now from the courtyard below, but it seemed to Paris that he could hear a faint but steady sound of hammering from some more distant source. The Governor kept his nose and mouth buried in his handkerchief, though he freed them once to ask the surgeon his opinion of the efficacy of watered spirits in preventing disease. “The Company doctor here recommended a glass of red wine with the juice of half a lemon and a little sugar as a good defence against contagion,” he said, “but he died of fever a month ago, leaving me in some doubt of his remedy.”

  The surgeon was seeking to reply to this when there was a knock at the door and Saunders entered. He was youngish, perhaps not more than thirty or so, but sunken-eyed and haggard. With him as their guide they returned to ground level and thence through stone-floored passages towards what Paris thought might be the rear of the fort, the side facing away from the sea. But the corridors twisted and turned and after a while he had lost all sense of direction.

  As they proceeded he began to feel a sort of remote terror, the anxiety that comes sometimes in dreams of labyrinths, when each turning threatens to confront us with something intolerable and we struggle to wake before we reach it.

  What he might meet he did not know. No one can keep account of damage done to himself. We imagine we have absorbed the shock, the harm, but we have merely caged it, and not in a strong cage either. It waits within the bars for a signal. And however long the wait may be, the leap is always unerring; a man can after twenty years be struck by a horror he thought he had forgotten and it will be green and fresh as ever.

  Often the pounce comes before the mind knows the signal, as it came to Paris now with the smell of the dank stone, the smell of degradation somewhere ahead of him, a horror almost incredulous that he was lost here, in this place, that he, who had prided himself on his vigilant clarity of mind and ruined himself for it, could have been his own self-deceiver, could have made his own despair a reason for compounding the misery of the world, and that he could have called this monstrous egotism self-abnegation and offered it to a dead woman as a proof of love. The dead could only be mourned.

  Love is for the living, he thought suddenly, and the thought dispelled his fear.

  A final turn brought them to the slave-dungeons, set side by side like cells, with barred fronts and stone walls and high barred windows, through which the afternoon sun was falling now in straight rays; he had been right, they were at the rear of the fort, against the outside walls. Three of the dungeons were occupied now, two with men handcuffed together in pairs and one with unshackled girls and women. Sunlight for this hour was caged there with them.

  Motes of dust moved with gauzy flies through the bright air. The bodies of the slaves were flecked and stippled and the straw that covered the earth floors was luminous gold. The smells of excrement and trodden straw seemed like a release of this flooding warmth of sunshine. Through the barred embrasures in the walls, Paris heard the hammering again, much closer now, a double-stroke, impatient and swift, metal on wood. Then he saw that one of the women had come forward and was standing pressed against the bars in a shaft of sunlight. She was looking directly at him—he saw the gleam of her eyes. But her face was shadowed. Sunlight fell on her from the window behind, her face and head were edged with fire. She was naked but he took in little of her form beyond that she was slender and straight-shouldered.

  She was somehow protected from closer scrutiny by her stillness, which struck him suddenly as sacramental, and by the edging of fire around her. He looked at her steadily but she did not look away. He had a moment of slight dizziness, as if he had made some too precipitate movement.

  “Thirty-six in all,” Saunders said.

  “We are expecting a batch from up country.”

  In this stronger light Paris saw that the factor was younger than he had at first supposed, perhaps not much more than twenty, though much wasted by some recent fever.

  “What is that persistent hammering?”’ he asked.

  “There has been an outbreak of jail fever among the garrison troops,” Saunders said.

  “There are two more dead of it since yesterday. The carpenters are making coffins for the dead. It has not touched the slaves, I am glad to say.”

  “Shall we get to business?”’ Thurso said.

  “We have had enough talking round the matter.” Away from the oppression of the drawing-room and the governor’s presence, he was himself again, in his proper element, with the penned creatures and the bargaining. “Those are never Wika people, those men there,” he said, pointing towards a group of tall, very robust negroes. “See those heads, Mr Paris? Look at the limbs of those men, see how they stare back at us. Those are Corymantee negroes, Mr Saunders. What are they doing so far west?”’

  “There is a story to that,” Saunders said, a little uneasily as it seemed.

  “I warrant there is.”

  ‘They were taken from a Dutch slaver returning from Elmina.”

  “Taken? How do you mean? Are you saying the Dutchman was already slaved and they were taken off her?”’

  “She wasn’t fully slaved, she was still trading. She had about twenty Gold Coast negroes aboard and some ivory and gold dust. She was boarded by natives from King George Town. I don’t know the details. I believe there were not more than four or five able-bodied crew on the ship at the time—some were down with dysentery and some away trading upriver. The blacks came in boats at night and got aboard her. They overpowered the people on deck and carried off the slaves.”

  “And brought ‘em here,” Thurso said, with a peculiar intonation.

  “Yes. That is, they found their way here. As I say, I am not familiar with the details.”

  “I dare say not. Well, I am not concerned to enquire too closely. In this business it is he who possesses the merchandise that has best title to it. And they are fine fellows. Intractable though,” he added quickly. ‘Devilish proud. There are those who will not bid for Corymantee negroes on any terms. Too much trouble, you know. Still, I will take ‘em off your hands, subject to our doctor here casting an eye over ‘em. Fifty-eight bars is the price I have been trading at, up on the Sherbro. I will make it sixty for those Gold Coast men, for the sake of avoiding argument.”

  “The price here is seventy-five bars,”

  Saunders said. “For all male slaves in prime condition, independent of where they hail from. And sixty-eight for women.”

  Expressions of outrage Paris had seen before on the captain’s face; but the present one surpassed them all. “Seventy-five bars?”’ The words came in a harsh, incredulous whisper. He turned his body stiffly round towards Paris, his only ally now, however uncongenial. “Did you hear that, Mr Paris? That is near twenty-five guineas in coin of the realm. The prices cannot have jumped so high.

  When Mr Gordon was Company Agent here there was not this difference; he kept to prices prevailing on the coast.”

  “You had best speak to the Governor about it, not to me.” Saunders looked suddenly very young, despite his emaciation, and distinctly unhappy.

  “No one else has any say. The Company sent me out as factor but I have no more scope than a dog here - and it is a dog’s life altogether, sir. So you would do best to enquire of the Governor.”

  “I will, be sure of it,” Thurso said grimly. “Come, Mr Paris, there is nothing to be done here for the moment.”

  However he had no opportunity at supper, where he found himself seated at some distance from the Governor, below the commander of the garrison, a Major Donlevy, and the Company Treasurer, whose name was Eager, with a young man named Delblanc, described as an artist, on his other side, and Paris opposite with two silent Swedes beside him, whose names the captain hadn
’t caught. There were no women at table.

  Thurso had already tucked his napkin under his chin and dipped his spoon into his soup when a tall negro in a dark suit and a clerical neckband, who had been introduced as the Reverend Kalabanda, rose to his feet, closed his eyes in the hush and intoned in a voice of considerable resonance: “O Most Merciful Father, we give thee humble thanks for this thy special bounty, beseeching thee to continue thy loving-kindness unto us, that our land may yield us her fruits of increase, to thy glory and our comfort, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  He resumed his seat in the midst of murmured amens, and addressed himself gravely to his soup.

  “Your English is extremely good, Mr Kalabanda,” Paris said, speaking across the table.

  “I congratulate you on it.”

  The vicar smiled at Paris’s compliments and the small scars high on his cheeks, which Paris thought might be due to ceremonial cuts, stretched with his smile. He was stout and muscular, his arms and shoulders straining his clerical coat. His eyes were coal black and lustrous and the skin of his face shone with health. “I have spent many years in England,” he said. “Most of my life. I was at school and at theological college there.”

  “This man is a credit to his family, Mr Paris,” the Governor said, in his expiring tones.

  “He is a living demonstration of what the African is capable of, given sobriety and good governance.”

  “Aye, dammit, that is the key to the business,” the major said loudly, and Paris saw now that he was drunk and must have been well on the way to it when he arrived among them. The surgeon caught Delblanc’s eye across the table and smiled a little and saw the young man’s face break into an answering smile of great warmth and humour, though there was a degree of satire in it too, which he seemed careless to conceal.

  “Your people taught me language,” the chaplain said. “A great gift indeed. And I have profited from it to bless the name of God and that country where of all others his laws are respected, which I never cease from doing day or night. Language, Captain, what a great gift. The word. The Logos. God said, “Let there be light.” Said, sir.”

  For some reason he had fastened on Thurso for audience. The captain’s great square cage of a face gave little away, but his eyes had retreated as far as possible back into his head.

  “I do not allow my wife’s vile language to be spoken in my hearing, Captain,” the chaplain said. ‘I do not permit my children to use it. They speak only English.”

  In an attempt to shake off the Reverend Kalabanda’s gaze, Thurso addressed himself to the major, whose face was lowered over his roast duck and sweet potatoes: “There has been a fort here for a fair time now, one way or another, sir.”

  The major raised his head in the abrupt way of the drunken. He gave the impression of being held in place in his chair only by the stiff brocade of his uniform. “Centuries, sir,” he said. “The Portuguese built this fort and held it for a hundred years. Then the Dutch took it off ‘em.

  Then we took it off the Dutch. Then the Danes had a try for it, but naturally they could not prevail against us.” He reached for his wine with deliberate care. “The French came into it somewhere, too,” he said. “I cannot recall exactly where.” He looked with dazed eyes down the table. ‘Confusion to the French,” he said, raising his glass.

  From the head of the table the Governor was still singing the praises of his chaplain. “He has come back here to preach the Gospel in his ancestral lands. His father is Chief Peachy Kalabanda, who is a highly respected figure in these parts.”

  “Yes,” the vicar said, “I have returned to my homeland. I used to run about here as a little child. My father brought me here when he came with slaves to sell.

  That was in the days of the old company. I used to look up at this great monument, this big white fort. My father used to tell me this was the home of the 3’g Great White King.” Kalabanda smiled and shook his head at the memory. ‘I little thought that one day I would find myself sitting at this table, an ordained priest of the Church of England.”

  “And so it is his home,” the governor said.

  He raised a napkin to dab at his pale lips as if to remove pollutant traces. “Wherever the flag is planted, there is his home.”

  “I hope he ain’t going about baptizing among the slaves,” Thurso muttered hoarsely in Paris’s ear. “It makes ‘em uppish. You persuade a negro he has a soul to be saved and he will be a source of trouble for ever afterwards, to himself and to his owner.”

  It is possible that the chaplain’s ears were keen enough to hear something of this, for he smiled again and said, “I minister among the troops here and among my free brethren. That there are those who are not free helps me in my ministry. The mind is constituted to accept the god of the more powerful. This we must accept as human nature—and our human nature is given to us by God, so God himself has endowed us with this respect for the powerful. If you have to choose between the god of the slave owner and the god of the enslaved, naturally you will chose the former. All history teaches us that lesson.”

  ‘It does not teach me that lesson, sir, for one,” Delblanc said, rather carelessly but with no trace of a smile. “Christ spoke to the wretched and powerless as one of them, did he not? I have always understood that the Christian religion was spread among slaves.”

  The Reverend Kalabanda leaned forward and Paris saw his nostrils distend slightly. “A few ragged-trouser fellows talking in cellars,” he said with contempt. “It was the Roman rulers who spread the faith, governors of provinces like this our governor here, officers of garrisons like our good major, the treasurers and keepers of-“

  “Excuse me, please.” One of the Scandinavians had come to sudden and unexpected life. He laid down knife and fork and looked with large vague eyes at the eloquent chaplain.

  “A new word we have now, and a new mission. Our mission now is to learn from Africa.”

  His colleague nodded. “Your efforts, excuse me, they are going in a wrong direction; it is from Africa to Europe that the spirit is flowing and we must open ourselves to receive it. The Church of the West is corrupted, God has declared a last judgement on it. Now is the time of the Fourth Church. We are forerunners, we go in advance to found his Celestial City.”

  “Open ourselves to receive it?”’ A broad smile had overspread Kalabanda’s face. “The Celestial City?”’ he said. “Out there in the bush? Excuse me if I laugh. Haw-haw. Have I been ordained into the Anglican Rite and subscribed after much self-questioning to the Thirty-Nine Articles only to come back here and open myself to receive the spirit flowing from people living in mud huts and talking in obscure languages?”’

  With the mildness of the utterly convinced, the first of the two missionaries began again to speak of God’s plans for Africa. God had promised that the New Jerusalem would be founded among the heathen, and the Africans of the interior had been chosen because they, among the heathen peoples, were the most spiritual…

  Under cover of this, Delblanc leaned forward and said in low tones to Paris, “I don’t know which is the madder, do you? What are you doing in this Bedlam, may I ask?”’

  “I believe it was mentioned to you that I am the ship’s surgeon?”’ Paris spoke rather coldly.

  It was clear to him that Delblanc was a man of birth and education; but his own provincial and rather narrow upbringing had accustomed him to more circumspect modes of address and the lack of ceremony jarred a little on him, his pride suspected there might be some disparagement in it. But the expression of the other’s face was humorous and friendly and his brown eyes were alert with the interest of his question.

  “Well, of course I know that,” Delblanc said, with a hint of impatience—he was quick and open in all expression of feeling, as Paris was to learn.

  “That doesn’t explain anything. You do not seem to me to be typical, that is why I asked.”

  Something extremely youthful, innocent almost, in the confidence of this pronouncement
amused Paris suddenly and took the stiffness out of him. Delblanc, who like many enthusiastic 3T9 persons often amused without intending to, saw the long, patient face opposite him break into a smile of singular sweetness.

  “I have not had time to become typical,” the surgeon said. “I suppose it takes time, doesn’t it? This is my first voyage.”

  “Ah, that is it then.”

  The note of disappointment in this, as at some promising line of enquiry frustrated, made Paris smile again. “What are you doing here, for that matter?”’ he asked, borrowing the other’s directness. “I believe you are an artist?”’

  “I do not know if I would so dignify it,”

  Delblanc said. “I can paint a good likeness.

  Or so I thought.” A shadow had come to his face.

  He appeared to reflect a moment or two, then said, half to himself, ‘It occurs to me… I wonder if your captain would agree to take me as a passenger.”

  Before Paris had time to answer this, the Governor had risen to his feet, a signal for everyone else at the table to do the same, and remain so until he had left the room, the major by this time relying heavily on the back of his chair for support, and the treasurer, who had said nothing during the meal, also visibly befuddled.

  “Mr Paris,” Delblanc said quickly, “I know we have not been long acquainted, but there is a matter I would dearly like your advice on. I suppose you are staying here tonight? I would be most grateful… I have some rather good brandy in my room.”

  Paris hesitated briefly. He had been looking forward to the solitude of his own quarters. But there had been a quality of appeal in Delblanc’s tone, as there was in the clear, ingenuous eyes that now regarded him. ‘Very well,” he said, “but I had better make sure first that Captain Thurso has no further need of me.”