Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [152]
‘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 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