Sankofa(78)

A ferry passed below us. Smoke streamed from its funnel. Passengers crowded the deck, sinking the left side of the hull a few inches deeper than the right. I looked down at the same moment a young girl looked up. She waved. I waved back and a fluttering of palms responded, the gesture widening like a ripple.

“That is the country I created,” Kofi said, when they were out of sight. “I am not proud of every single action I have taken in my life, but I created this country and there is much to be proud of. Come. Let’s go.”

“Wait. I want to sketch you.”

“Pardon?”

“I want to paint you, but first I’d like to make a sketch. Stand still, please.”

“You mentioned you were an artist.”

“Yes. Don’t move. The light.”

I withdrew my sketchbook from my bag and braced myself against the car. It was hot. The sun seeped through the metal and into my skin. I reproduced Kofi in short, quick strokes. He stood like someone used to having his portrait taken, shoulders erect, head thrown back.

“Relax,” I said. “Like you were a moment ago.”

“I can’t relax around you. I never know what accusation you’re going to throw at me.”

But he held himself less stiffly, more conversationally. He was not afraid of our eyes meeting. Despite all he had done, Kofi’s gaze was open, almost innocent. My pencil traced the curve of his lips, the depression of his sockets, the wrinkles like a fine mesh thrown over his face.

“Hurry. We still have far to go.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For this. This trip.”

“I wanted to show off something I had built. Something Francis the visionary had built, but even this does not meet with your approval. It is the obroni way—to always find African attempts wanting. You said something earlier, that you are not my daughter in the way Afua is my daughter. What did you mean by that?”

“I didn’t know you as a child. I’m not afraid of you.”

“My children are not afraid of me.”

“Are they not?”

He smiled. “Always stirring up trouble. You should have been a revolutionary.”

“In London I’m a nobody.”

“I find that hard to believe. A woman bold enough to fly all this way to meet me, to stay on alone at the request of a stranger, to challenge me at every turn.”

“Sometimes I can go a week without speaking to anyone.”

“It is lonely over there?”

“Yes.”

“I can understand that. Before I befriended Thomas, I was very lonely in London.”

“I’m done,” I said.

“Let me see.”

He came and stood beside me.

“It’s a good likeness. Too many wrinkles but a good likeness. You have talent.”

He placed his hand over mine briefly and then walked across to the driver’s side.

We drove until late afternoon without stopping. Kofi put on music, a jazz hybrid with piano, double bass, and African drums.

“Will you tell me about the Kinnakro Five?” Despite my earlier resolution, I could not leave it alone. It was no longer about the boys. I just wanted Kofi to confide in me, to glimpse a secret part of him as I had glimpsed many secret parts of Francis Aggrey.

“Thomas Becket,” he said.

“Who?”

“Archbishop of Canterbury, saint of the Anglican and Catholic Church. You didn’t study him in your school history of the British Isles?”

“Yes, but I don’t understand.”

“His is the story of the Kinnakro Five. When one is in power, one must be careful with one’s words, even those spoken in jest. There will always be those who rush to fulfill your whims out of a perverse understanding of loyalty. ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ As I remember, Henry the Second regretted his words also.”

“But what—”

“It is enough, Anna. We must move forward.”

It was not enough, but it would have to do. None of his other children, not even Afua, could have gotten as much. He turned up the volume and I fell asleep to the offbeat rhythm, each stroke arriving unexpectedly.

When I woke, the car had stopped. We were outside a bungalow built in the same colonial style as Kofi’s show home. We were not in the bush. There were distant buildings on either side of us, but it felt isolated. The house was the lone structure on a large plot of land surrounded by trees and tall grasses. It was growing dim. No lights were on inside.

“Where are we?”

“We’ve come to see an old friend.”

Kofi opened his door and got down. He had stiffened during the drive.

“Who is this old friend?”

“Come. You have trusted me this far.”

I got down. He knocked on the front door and pushed it open. I followed into a living room with chairs upholstered in velvet, faded antimacassars draped over their headrests. There were photographs on the walls, portraits of long-dead people. I glimpsed a young man in a morning suit and top hat, holding a pipe and silver cane, his fine possessions on display for the lens. Kofi crossed the room to a doorway with no door. A rectangle of blue fabric covered the opening. The breeze blew through, swelling the fabric like a sail.