Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [103]
Some days later his editor had called him in. Janneh’s boss was a good man, a widower with three daughters whom he loved. Janneh noticed his editor kept glancing at the framed photograph on his desk, how he never looked Janneh in the eye. He told Janneh he was working too hard, gave him a six-month sabbatical. Janneh cleared his desk, he knew he would never be able to go back.
‘Thank you, that was very good indeed.’ Janneh lay down his knife and fork and smiled at me. ‘We need people, you know,’ he continued, this time switching his gaze to Ambrose. ‘Educated people, but most of all good people.’
I carried the empty plates into the kitchen and set them in the sink. I heard Ambrose offer Janneh another beer. Janneh declined, he continued talking: ‘People who understand the world. People with experience. People who know what needs to be done.’
The pineapple I had bought two days before was ripe. I found a knife, sliced off the ends, then I cut diagonally into the skin. The pineapples in England were so small, I often wondered where they came from. Ambrose still hadn’t spoken.
‘Well, what do you say?’ Janneh again, addressing him directly this time. I waited for Ambrose to say something. Something that would tell Janneh he was a person who knew how to do what was right.
‘So what are you saying? I mean how exactly do you plan to go about this? Are you going to take over the Government?’ Ambrose was using questions to answer questions. It was something he did to avoid giving a reply, I knew. He did it whenever we had a disagreement, especially when he knew I was right. It was a lawyer’s trick. Round and round, I scored deeply into the pineapple’s flesh.
‘Of course not,’ Janneh laughed lightly, grew serious again. ‘But we need to draw the people’s attention to what is happening. These guys are lining their pockets, man. Grabbing what they can while they’re in office. And it’s our money. Yours. Mine. Everybody’s.’
‘And you think they’re just going to stop because you say so?’ Ambrose was refusing to budge.
‘Not because I say so. Listen, we have to get out there and inform the people. Once they know what’s going on, that their future is being stolen … The newspaper is just the beginning. We can’t take this lying down.’
I glanced up, I could just see Ambrose leaning back in his chair, Janneh was hunched over the table. Ambrose had his hands clasped across his chest. Janneh seemed to be worrying at an imaginary spot on the table surface. Ambrose was shaking his head in mock weariness. Oh, how I wanted to run over and seize him by the shoulders. To yell at him, for God’s sake! I raised the knife and cut the pineapple into slices.
‘Janneh, dear fellow, I don’t want to disappoint you but the trouble with the black man is that he just isn’t ready to govern himself yet. He hasn’t learned how. And frankly, I’m not sure he’s up to the job. The same thing is happening everywhere.’
‘Precisely!’ said Janneh, pointing his finger in the air. ‘The very reason we must act now.’
Ambrose let his chair tip forward. ‘Open your eyes, my friend. Look around you!’ he said. ‘Just name me one country, one country on that whole damned continent that has made a success of itself since the white man left and I’ll join you tomorrow. But you can’t, can you? And do you want me to tell you why? Because none of them have!’
And with that he leaned back again, as though the discussion was over.
All the time Ambrose was speaking I grew more and more ashamed. Dismissing Janneh as though he were a teenage hothead. I admit, I used to be impressed by his lawyerly language, the way he could handle anybody with his clever words. I carried through the pineapple, three plates and three forks. Ambrose was smiling, not showing his teeth but with the ends of his mouth turned up, still swollen