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  As Kofi Loww went round a corner near the post office, he saw his father standing before him with folded arms. ‘Ah, I knew I would hear your footsteps here! Let’s move on quickly: it’s dangerous to stand in one place with two beards!’ Erzuah said with a laugh. ‘And what I need you for requires the support of the back sitting down: it is serious, it is heavy.’ Old Erzuah had the gift of giving each of his features a different mood or meaning, as he spoke: his eyes darted impatiently around his son’s face so that his words looked unreasonably breathless; his nose waited calmly for any answer that he could immediately refute; and his mouth reflected the irony he felt in finding his own son with that strange disposition that was both so serious and so aimless. Their strides shared Accra as they walked along in silence; they covered the city in hair of different grades. Then suddenly Kofi Loww could not see Erzuah at all. He stood near Glamour Stores vaguely, looking for his father, even for signs of his absence. He thought he could faintly smell the old tobacco smoke, but he saw nothing. He was going to resume his slow walking when Erzuah bounced back beside him, almost knocking him over. ‘But what are you …’ Loww began, ‘No no no, don’t talk. I prefer your silence in this case. You see, I had to secretly go for a quick gin. After all I need a little fortification, old as I am,’ the old man interrupted, ‘I’ve told you that what I’m going to tell you needs support! And as you know, these days I do this drinking small-small. And if anything controls my mouth at all, it’s my pipe.’ ‘But who is with Ahomka now?’ Kofi Loww asked of his son, whom his father looked after, and looked after so well. ‘I will tell you soon, soon. It’s a pity that you feel you must climb so many mountains to reach such a small anthill of life. After all what do you want to know yourself better for? What is there to know? I think you have read too many books. How many young Africans like yourself have you seen chasing their own shadow? None! They are all busy getting what should be due them.’ ‘I will get what I want when I know what I want,’ Loww said with surprising force. ‘We’ve said all this before, and we’re even saying it in the middle of the street now.’ Then he lapsed back into his customary silence. ‘If only you could make your silence roar!’ Erzuah shouted. ‘Apart from your diploma, the only sensible thing you’ve done is to have a child. Of course I agree that you can’t marry Ahomka’s mother. For her, her noise is as dangerous as your silence! Hahaha. Don’t mind your old father, I’m talking now from the heart in my throat. But I think that Adwoa will be good for you. Only be careful you don’t lose her!’ Loww smiled with the front of his mouth, heightening the hair there, raising the convictions there. Children in the streets of Mamprobi would point to Kofi Loww as the man who walked with the sky in his eyes. Tall trees dusted the sky, and so would he. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want to tell me now, Papaa?’ Loww asked his father with the mildest hint of impatience. Kofi Loww’s legs were bow and long, had an almost sideways shift that met the world as if it had all been walked before. And his soul was the same … walking, and putting its strength right where others had left their weaknesses long ago. And his eyes: it was said they contained so much that was unclear that there had to be more than one human being wearing them … true some dissatisfied ancestor used the same eyes in this double world of seeing. Erzuah ignored his son’s question, and added another warning: ‘If you keep on living the same way, someone can easily take over your spirit!’

  The silence was filled with other people’s words, other people’s cars. Kofi Loww walked his father rather quickly to the Community Centre where they sat down at different heights. ‘It looks as if my words have to climb up a bit to reach you … but let me finish this tatale first,’ Erzuah said absentmindedly, handing Loww some of the brilliantly fresh tatale. They ate different thoughts. ‘Now both my back and my belly have support! Look, young man, I’m going to tell you something strange. But you are made for strange things, so it shouldn’t surprise you. I was sitting playing with Ahomka, answering his questions and fooling his fooling – he likes no one to beat him at his own tricks, Hmmm! – when this white man came to the door and asked for you. I said to myself: good, at long last my son is moving towards the riches of Europe; his friends are whitening! If you want direction, move away from Accra and go to the villages, if that doesn’t work then leave these wonderful shores, leave these mighty forests, these endless savannas. Go to the white lands where it was believed that people went to the toilet but once a year! Hmmm. As I was saying before the akpeteshie spoke, this white man said he knew you through one Ebo, and that he had come with a visitor, a woman, an old woman, who wanted to see you. I then realised that it was your own friend Ebo. He went back to his car and produced, yes produced this woman: and this woman was Maame, your mother!’

  There was suddenly a great confusion in Loww’s eyes. He rose and stared at the sun, his chest beat a different drum. Then he added with an evenness that he did not feel, ‘After all these years what does she want? Is she the one looking after Ahomka?’ Erzuah paused to light his pipe, but when he coughed, the foreboding did not leave his throat. ‘I haven’t even asked her her mission yet, so don’t panic. I am still thinking you have more appetite for the unexpected than I have. But true, Kofi, true, she looks like an old witch; she’s become so thin too! Was Yaw Brago not able to look after her? Her eyes don’t look like yours anymore,’ Erzuah said all in one breath. He looked as if he were trying to avoid his son’s eyes, and Loww felt an anger that he could not explain. He stared at Erzuah, as if the old man should receive this anger: ‘But why should you leave Ahomka with her? You know, you know that it’s really me that you have left behind with her. How could you leave me behind like that? Do you think she will leave me behind this time too? Papa, she has come to take me away through Ahomka; she knows I’m Ahomka … the only difference is a few years and different bodies. She wants the years back. Her regret is the same! She wants to use her bitterness! Let’s go before it’s too late, Papa Erzuah, let’s go!’ Kofi Loww had been shouting while he spoke. The sweat could have been misplaced tears. Erzuah looked at him curiously, and said, ‘I don’t understand all this you are saying. Surely you are not Ahomka … what are you saying?’ Loww replied, racing off, ‘So all these years you haven’t realised that she can sometimes think and speak through me? Let’s go to the house.’ Breathless, Erzuah was saying, ‘But the white man was there, the white man was there!’ The panic he warned against in his son had now gone into his own chest; in the taxi, his body was travelling far faster than this Datsun. Distance had lengthened, his body was stretched, his eyes looked in one direction. Loww finally said, not making much difference to the silence in the taxi, ‘Once Dr Pinn knows she’s Ahomka’s grandmother, he won’t stop her from going out to the street, from taking him away.’ Erzuah just shook his head vigorously. As if to say that when you shook your head, you shook the world away too. After all, the truth could be in the shock-absorbers, which shook even more.

  The house looked desperately quiet when they finally reached Mamprobi. Erzuah was out first, like lightning. As they both entered the two rooms they heard an angry shout outside: the taxi driver was shouting for his money, which they had forgotten to pay. ‘Owula, sorry!’ Loww said hastily as he threw the money into the car without looking at the driver. Then there was a quiet knock at the door. Father and son both rushed to it. But there was nowhere to put the rush: it was only Dr Pinn standing there holding his chin. There was an ordinary calm in his eyes – blue for nothing, blue for nothing, Loww felt himself think irrationally, as his son’s absence filled his mind – which was an affront to the agitation filling the two men. Loww spoke first, without greeting: ‘Dr Pinn, where has the old woman taken my son? Where did they go?’ ‘Good afternoon,’ Dr Pinn began, determined to keep to the civilities, in spite of being taken aback by the heat of the questions. Erzuah’s mouth was shut but his eyes asked just as many questions. ‘The old lady said she was going round the corner to buy her grandson some sweets … but Mr Loww, is she not your mother? Is there so
mething I don’t know?’ Dr Pinn continued, ‘And you know, I have never seen you like this … not even when you stayed with Ebo at my house for a few days. Anyway I myself had something to tell you: the rumour is that the security people are after you. But more of that later…’ Dr Pinn’s face had taken on that earnestness that forcibly stopped itself from drifting into an ironic frown. He was being rushed. He added as an afterthought, ‘Of course if your father had left me any instructions…’ ‘Yes, it’s my fault! Wherever they are it’s my fault. I should have known that old witch of old! She has stolen the child as a final revenge. And what is this about the security people?’ Kofi Loww pushed his father down into a chair without thinking, and said, ‘Rest.’ The room smelled of crushed red ants, and old Erzuah’s eyes looked just like an anthill would look with the sun just moving off it. ‘Take it easy both of you. A little boy with his grandmother is nothing to get hysterical about … I’ll go and return later with Ebo if you don’t come to my house first. We’ll all look for them if they haven’t come back by then. But of course you know her house?’ ‘That is part of the problem, you see. We have had no contact with her for years,’ Erzuah replied, his eyes still reddening, ‘apart from the evil messages she sometimes sends demanding money which she never gets; not from me.’

  Kofi Loww thanked Dr Pinn and saw him off. As soon as he returned to the room there was another knock at the door. ‘Agooo!’ It was Maame’s voice. The two men sprang up. ‘Dada, look at my chewing-gum! I’ve made it from the alasa that grandmother bought me. She likes me, paaa. Look, isn’t she nice? Papa Erzuah said she is a witch, but I don’t think so. Ha! Watch me blow a bubble. Have you seen a bubble blown from alasa chewing-gum?’ said Ahomka all in one breath, holding his grandmother’s hand. ‘Yes,’ Kofi Loww said to his son, ‘I mean No, I haven’t seen this trick before, but let me see it later.’ Then he pulled Ahomka away from his grandmother. Maame laughed without mirth, then looked at her son with a full directness, as if she were looking back twenty years. Then something rushed into her eyes: tears; and rushed back out again. She looked with fear and longing. Then just as quickly she calmed herself down. ‘No chair for me?’ She asked Erzuah with a new combination of sarcasm and timidity. ‘There is no chair strong enough to contain you here, Maame. But let me give you this one … no one sits on it except the angels or the devils.’ Erzuah’s features had become so sharp, so intensely outlined that they looked as if they would take off from his face. He had a terrible feeling of vindication and anger, a vindication that stretched back more than two decades, and had now ended up in the open with the visit of this woman. She thanked him for the chair and sat looking down. Kofi Loww, getting up, looked at his father and shrugged off a feeling of involvement.

  ‘Don’t go!’ Erzuah said a little too loudly, ‘Help me to ask her what her mission is. As for water she won’t want any. And maybe the water in this house is poisoned. If, on the other hand, she has come here to collect some dead hearts … hahahaha!’ Erzuah’s laughter dropped on the chair with him as he sat down opposite Maame. She looked at him with a sudden assertiveness, then withdrew again, saying nothing. ‘Mother, what’s your mission?’ Kofi Loww asked almost inaudibly, himself surprised at the growing indifference in his heart; and he did not yet know whether this feeling was real or merely protective. Maame hesitated, her eyes full of a barely concealed pain. ‘I don’t come with anything bad. I just wanted to see my grandson. I know my own son hates me. As for his father he’s sorry I’m alive …’ Loww gave her a piercing look, and asked her, ‘Yaw Brago is dead isn’t he? He’s dead!’ She looked down even more deeply, shaking her head. Her faded cloth wanted no sympathy, and she did not get any. The silence would explode if any one of the three of them cared enough. ‘He’s not alive,’ Maame said finally. ‘O, not alive, eh? As for today I’m learning! It’s not that a person is dead, it’s just that he’s not alive! Ewurade! So have you come here to see your grandson or to display your tears for your dead lover? And who told you you have a grandson? He’s been in this world for the last eight years, and you are now coming to … to see him for what? Ei! If I could see Ahomka’s mother now – God forgive me – I would try and push the little boy back into the womb, so that you would have the joy of seeing your own grandson being born again! God help me! What is your real mission, Maame? Is it not money? Your Yaw is no longer around to push the gold at you! And don’t fool me with your faded cloth … you have put it on deliberately. Now you must have property! What do you want money for?’ Erzuah finally stopped speaking, and took out his pipe. He had decided to store his talking in it. ‘I know what you have really come here for, Maame. You want us to go with you to the house that you have at last inherited from Yaw Brago. You want us to live with you,’ Loww said with a strange low voice. ‘You see, she has no shame!’ Erzuah said, biting her with words.

  Maame turned her face to the ceiling and produced silent tears from points in past time that were both clear and hidden to all of them. She spoke through her tears: ‘The past was as much your father’s fault as mine,’ she said appealing to Kofi Loww. Loww got up and went out of the room. Erzuah looked at her with a complete lack of pity, and said, ‘We have our different lives now. Don’t come and disturb us! All these years that you were living in wealth, we were struggling. You disgraced us. I know my faults, but what you did almost broke Kofi and me.’ Then he stored his words again. Kofi Loww came back in and met the silence. Maame’s eyes were dry, dryer than sand, and she had a change of mouth: ‘Ei, Kofi, have you no love left for an old woman like me? Won’t you visit me, with my little grandson?’ she asked, her face brittle with self-protection. ‘But Maame, where are your other children? I mean your children with Yaw Brago …’ ‘We had none,’ she said curtly. ‘Ah, did I not tell you? Did I not tell you!’ Erzuah broke in, his face shining with the second layer of vindication. But there was a sadness in the shine. ‘I loved your mother once,’ he began, looking at Kofi Loww, ‘out of all the women that loved the words in my mouth, and the hair on my chin, I chose her. I admit my drinking, but did that give her the right to shake her buttocks at someone else? She didn’t even think about her only child. You Kofi, you …’

  Loww looked away. He felt a sudden weight on his chest. He said to his mother, ‘Maame, go in peace. One day Ahomka and myself, we’ll come and see where you are … I don’t think Papa Erzuah will stop us …’ Then Ahomka rushed in with his most adult look, inspected all the faces, saw the sadness, saw the defiance, saw the growing pity, and said. ‘You big people! you are so serious! Should I start preparing the evening meal, since you are all so busy? And have you all decided whether grandmother is a good woman or a bad woman? Tell me! Papa Erzuah never hides anything from me. I’m his friend. And now that I have been listening to you, I would like to give her alasa back. But she would cry. So I think we should forgive her … I mean not now. We should hoot at her now, then forgive her later when we visit her. Papa Erzuah, my old friend, do you agree? You big, big people. OK, I’m going to begin the cooking. I love snails, so tonight it will be snails!’ Loww took his son out before he could say more. ‘I wish I could give the little rascal my beard, and he needs a slap on the wrist,’ Erzuah said to himself as he saw Maame off. He did not look at her, he did not speak to her. She disappeared into the silence, into the distance.

  ‘Maame-oooo, Maaaame! It’s me Baidoo. If you don’t want Erzuah now, why don’t you try me? We can lie down together, and whisper our skins to each other!’ Ben Baidoo shouted in a high-pitched voice to Maame, who just stood and stared. When she realised who it was, she went on, quickening her steps, trying as hard as possible to wave Baidoo out of her life. ‘Maame, don’t go, my bed is made. I’ve never forgotten the story about the way you bared yourself to Erzuah. They say your back flesh is the same colour as my face, and beautiful! Ei! Didn’t I warn you about old Erzuah years ago? Be careful and don’t go looking for revenge, leave them alone. Your lives together are now past-ooooo. Your thinness equals my bones, we
can knock ourselves together, like old drums better with age! You are now old and left alone. I can comfort you-oooooo. At least one of my buttocks is fresh, I don’t use it for this donkey … half a buttock is long life to man and animal … O, don’t go. I wish I could see half your heart … the other half is crushed between Erzuah and Yaw Brago. Maaameeeee-O, don’t dream of revenge!’