A Short Story
White Magic
By John E.S. de Graft-Hayford
The story so far: Mrs Tate widowed European owner of a well-stocked Pharmacy in Accra has been drinking as a consequence of her loneliness in a city of blacks. The sexual solace from her Northern houseboy, Yaro, could not even help to ameliorate her feeling of isolation. Meanwhile, trouble was brewing in her backyard -out house where Mr Danso's (pharmacist) amorous advances to Muriel, a girl friend to Captain Choboe was threatening to ruin the uneasy peace in the Tate household. Yaro has been assigned to avert this... Now read on.Danso had a split personality. As a European-trained African he aped all things European which to him were the apex of perfection in business and society. So when he was in white society he was a white blackman; but when he was in African society he stepped down from his lofty pedestal and tried, unsuccessfully in many cases, to be a superior type of educated African or just a member of the African family system. He had three sets of English language for all three situations and it was not surprising that he made as many mistakes as favourable impressions.
So in wooing Mrs Tate he was desirous of getting the best of both social and business worlds; he used phrases and methods of approach which were not - as a friend sarcastically remarked - 'conducive to intimate association'.
To Mrs Tate his efforts were welcome but lacked warmth and purposeful action. She did admit that mixing business with pleasure was a dicy matter. One could not have a clock ticking away in the brain when all the pointers were to sensuous action. Transition could be difficult, if one's partner was stilted!
Mrs Tate tried to be natural - at least to her way of thinking.
"Come on Albert, let's discuss these staff matters in my bedroom," she might suggest quietly without putting on airs and graces. And dear Albert would say: "Certainly, Mrs et um - Joyce, but should we not first study the family tree in the office and decide on the chain of command before deciding on the qualities of staff..." and there the thing would drop - or flop.
If again, either white or black friends were present, became bawdy and unintelligible or too conversation high and "falluting" to lead to any feelings "conducive to intimate association."
It was frustrating on both sides. Danso had put Joyce on a white pedestal in his mind while admitting to himself the need to "know her" in the biblical sense to clinch the deal. Joyce made no bones about her fleshly requirements.
"I like you Danso; but you must let your hair down. Let me help you to do it." And the answer: "Certainly, but I will have to do it myself." Easier said than done. With a black woman it would be different. All this preliminary chit-chat, fencing with words, gentlemanliness, touching of finger- tips, carefully chosen drinks, low lights and soft music, would have been short-circuited.
Then there was the problem of the much-circuited availability of Muriel. So much simpler. Instead of a sophisticated, calculated method of approach with possibly condescending submission, he was usually ensured of full-blooded enthusiastic collaboration. How he loved her!
This led him to wonder why he had not seen Muriel for a week.
On their last amorous occasion she had said she was going a-shopping at Kingsway stores although what she words hoped to find there, God only knew. He had given her a hundred cedis, the credit card being useless, so that she could alternatively do her shopping in the ruins of the Makola market which had sprung back to life with teeming marketwomen and black moneylenders.
It was a cold evening during the Harmattan season, with white specks of stars in the clear dark blue sky. On such evenings one needed company not woollen blankets. Danso looked up at the brightly lit window of Joyce Tate's bedroom. Should he or should he not try again? He shrugged his shoulders and decided to take the plunge at least this once. He spat out the rest of the bitter-sweet cola nut that had stimulated him, and tried to remember the lines of endearment he had read in the book 'Hot Lips.' He knew he would be welcomed.
Purposely he climbed the front stairs. "All cats are black in the dark" he muttered comfortingly. He must not disappoint her or fail in this supreme trial of what? He promised himself he would behave naturally confound this Anglicisation!
The following days passed uneventfully. Business was brisk at the Pharmacy, especialy in drugs for heart diseases of which there seemed to be an 'epidemic'. Old fashioned quinine was replaced by disopyramid, and patients had to be warned that it was dangerous to mix them. Malaria, the scourge and Saviour of West Africa, was now curable by successors to quinine: malarex (aptly named) and the quins - novaquin, chloroquin, totaquin (formerly used for horses) and mepacrin which dyed white men yellow and confused the Japs during the last war! Some customers swallowed, in addition, aspirin derivatives such as aspros (nothing to do with professionals), paracetemol, "drastic" not really or codeine. Wonderful were spoken of these medicaments by the debauched chieftaincy and the ailing over civilised elite.
But in the villages the simple folk preferred the berries and leaves and barks of trees and shrubs and many of their chiefs lived longer than their colleagues who patronised Mrs Tate's drug house. And those chiefs and their offspring who swallowed the concoctions of both worlds had a miscellaneous medical career. Some even incontinently died!
Yaro Fulani, the faithful stewardboy, was in one of these villages with a supply of drugs to supplement the 'natural' ones being used to nurse back to health a pale, petit, mulatto teenage beauty suffering from a very strange illness. Muriel (for such she was) lay on a soft rafia mat surrounded by anxious father, mother and close relatives. She did not know what was wrong with her. Her face was pale and drawn and she could only say that she had a heavy feeling on her chest - above the wishbone. The local herbalist had promptly diagnosed indigestion and ministered accordingly the usual herbs. The pain remained and breathing became more laboured.
The fetish high priest - the 'tsofatse' dressed in a flowing green gown, bangles on naked arms and feet, face daubed with white clay, had taken over. The room was fumigated with incense which rose in swirling yellow clouds; a small clay altar was placed in a corner of the room and a chicken ceremoniously slaughtered, its blood being sprinkled, to a low incantation and jumbled words. Muriel's wrists were nicked with a sharp knife, black powder rubbed into them, and a wrought iron ring placed on one of her fingers. She forced herself to sing the dirge-like ditty which was supposed to lift her spirits and remove the curse which was said to have been placed on her by some person or persons unknown.
Muriel's father was a pragmatist. Who were these persons, he wanted to know from the high priest? And when the priest shook his head mysteriously, he enquired whether another hundred cedis would help him to find out.
"If I knew I would tell you" said the man, "and I would put a curse on whoever it was thus compelling him to come to Muriel's aid and cancel out his own curse. If Muriel could tell me of anyone who hates her, I would have a clue and my spiritual powers would do the rest; but she says nobody hates her, so I have to try other means. Muriel - do you hear me, you have nothing to fear: get better, get better..."
The rumbling sound of small tom-toms filled the room. A melancholy refrain came wailing from the girl votaries. The shadows lengthened as the flickering candles ran down and spluttered out. Soon there was nobody in the hut except Muriel's father and his Holy Bible.
The next day the ambulance came for her.
Yaro Fulani also left the village with what was left of the drugs he had carried. He had had access to Muriel, and that was enough. He tore up the note he had shown to Muriel, and threw the bits away.
The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital was built by Sir Gordon Guggisberg in the 1930's and had boasted of up to date medical amenities. Notwithstanding the ailing economy its equipment, standards, and staff were of a high order Medical inspections were regularly spaced: charts showed patients' physical condition and improvement, if any. Muriel was placed in a special ward, airy and immaculately furnished. Specialists looked after her.
But neither Muriel nor the two men who faced each other across the bed into which she had been so neatly tucked, cared for these matters: Muriel because her illness had made her more haggard and yellower than ever; Danso and Choboe because they hated each other's guts and were angry and afraid.
"I suppose you know nothing about her getting ill," snarled Captain Choboe "seeing she was last seen with you."
"I could say the same thing about you," retorted Danso. "Your meeting with her in Kingsway stores and…"
That was an open meeting - which cannot be said of the meetings you have been having with her…”
"Gentlemen, please." The nursing sister came in "Visiting time is up." I am afraid I must ask you to leave her in quietness."
Muriel opened her eyes and smiled wanly. What did these men care about her condition? Did they really care about anything other than themselves and their bodily pleasures? Why should she worry in any case? She felt so weak and the two men like black shadows in the distance... what were they competing for? Soon they might have nothing to compete for. She felt that bad... She heard the sister say: "There will be no visiting tomorrow, as the patient will be undergoing a series of tests in the theatre. Her parents have been informed, whom you may consult for further visits.
After a further exchange of angry words, Danso and Choboe went their respective ways. Each suspected the other of having had something to do with the condition of the girl; but if they had been asked they could not have defined exactly what. It was all so mysterious: a perfectly healthy and high spirited girl now... a withering scarecrow… would she ever become the satisfying buxom beauty again?
Choboe thought bitterly of the drugs to which Danso had access and in whose dispensation he was reputed to be a pastmaster; but the captain doubted whether he would do her harm to spite him. Why cut his nose to spite his face? In any case the captain felt that his known long-term plans to marry Muriel would oust Danso when it 'came to the crunch'. Danso, on his part, could not see Choboe harming Muriel in spite of her 'illicit' liaisons, in which she must have engaged a lot in postprandial sessions. Danso also had ultimate marriage lined up for Muriel, but he had not made promises — as he felt that first things must come first: namely, taking over the pharmacy business of Mrs Tate, during which process he had of necessity to be most concerned with her personal welfare and pleasures, mentally and particularly bodily, so that he might obtain the best financial gains from the arrangement, even if that meant temporarily shelving Muriel - a thing he must already have been doing to allow the detestable Choboe to gain so much of her attention and affections..
TO BE CONTINUED
