Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [73]
Later I heard people say those strikes were the beginning. First the strikes. Next the rebellion. Finally the end of the rule of chiefs. Maybe that’s the way it was. I don’t know. I only know what I saw.
The voices issued Mr Blue with instructions. Flying pickets. Wildcat strikes. Trade unionists. Troublemakers. Refuse access, they said. Mr Blue was to issue notice of an epidemic if necessary and use the excuse to seal the area.
Early the next morning Mr Blue went down to talk to the workers. Rows of faces, wiped clear of all expression, like sand after wind. The men listened to the lies spilling over Mr Blue’s narrow lips: talk of quarantines and infection rates, instructions on how to avoid the spread of the pretend contagion. He gazed away above their heads at the tops of the trees as he assured them a doctor was on the way from Mile 47.
Too late! Between the wireless and the bush wire, the bush wire was the faster.
A man stepped forward and laid down his pickaxe. Others followed. A few anxious ones hopped from leg to leg, consulting the sky, not knowing what to do. But in the end they followed their brothers. Though some said: ‘Sorry, master,’ as they laid down their tools. I hid behind some fencing and watched as, one by one, the men turned their backs on Mr Blue. Barely a word had been spoken. I had never seen such a thing. Mr Blue stared straight ahead, not moving, not speaking, not blinking even. Refusing to watch them walk away from him. All the time his lips were set in a strange smile. He looked like a rongsho risen from the grave.
They passed me, they did not notice me crouching there. Their leader came first. I recognised him from the pits, he was one of the men sent to work there by the chief that first week. I remember him to this day: a tall man, with a beard like a Muslim. Well, that could have been any number of men. But he had a patch on his lower lip where the brown gave way to pink. Like a stain or a splash.
Later there was talk, scandalous talk. I was even told his name, though I don’t remember it now. And I was too young then really to remember the events of which they spoke, because those things had happened years before and the man had gone away and since returned. Later, when for a short while, this man’s name became known to all, people talked of some past disgrace. It concerned a woman, I know that much. A junior wife.
Morning and the sun rose over silence. The mine machines were stilled, their voices quiet. It seemed there had been no other sound for months. Now it was as if the birds and animals were shocked into a silence of their own. The silence crept outwards, out until it stifled everything, even the humming of the forest.
The silence is what I remember most. Because it was not the way we did things. The silence was something different. Before then silence was something I thought that I alone understood. I knew when not to speak, when not to let myself be heard. Silence was my friend, my twin, the other half of me. Silence was my weapon. Not a blustering gun, but an invisible spider’s web.
The men did not report for work. Instead they marched to the gates of the compound. You could see the dust on the road as they came. Feel the thrumming of a hundred bare feet, like the beating of the earth’s own heart. I remained out of sight, watching. A brass padlock dangled from the iron chain wrapped around the gateposts of the compound. Mr Blue stayed inside, alone, not counting Small Boy and me. The men waited without speaking. A thin, black line between the green of the trees and the red earth, like the colours of a flag.
I waited for Mr Blue to rouse himself and go down to them. Mr Blue waited by his silent radio.
Late in the afternoon the light thickened to the colour of rust. The singing began. The men’s voices carried into the compound, buoyed on the waves of silence, and poured in through the cracks around the windows of the room where Mr Blue stood. Some songs were known to me. Others were