Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

Her face had had none of the accusation he’d expected. Only the look of some ancient fire finally dying out, the resignation of defeat. He’d finally outdone her. And the openness of her hurt was like some last appeal to his intimacy. Five weeks earlier it might have worked. Now he simply concluded he’d have to watch what he told Ray. Samuel regretted that she’d had to hear it from that woman, but what of it? It was done. He’d been saved the effort of having to explain himself.

That night, Maud waited for Samuel in bed. Despite its plastic cover, the mattress gave off an acrid smell at the least pressure. It was the smell of fevers and old age, and was probably the most telling relic of Jacob’s last years. Still, Samuel and Maud slept on it, and if it bothered them, neither admitted. In all truth, the idea had at first been so repulsive to Samuel that he’d ransacked the house for a replacement and, finding nothing, almost bribed the girls for their cots. But he was granted a moment of lucidity. The bed was his legacy, the only one he had. It allowed Samuel to surround himself with the last of Jacob’s physical presence. And Jacob had not died in this room, so there was no need to fear it. Besides, Samuel had spent most of his savings on the move and on setting up shop, so only a rare dollar was left over for anything else.

As soon as he saw Maud he began to apologize. He lacked all passion, and digressed when the words seemed to have no effect on her. By the end even he was waiting for himself to finish.

“Very eloquent, Samuel,” said Maud, “and your timing is, as usual, endearing. But I was only going to ask how your hands were.”

Samuel paused, humiliated. “Fine,” he said.

She turned out the light.

In the darkness, they listened to the wailing weathervane. Samuel moistened his lips and was about to speak, when Maud said, “Just go to sleep, all right?”

Samuel exhaled. “I barely knew either my father or my uncle. I’d only seen Jacob once before he came and offered to give up his chieftancy for me.” At Maud’s silence, he continued. “He did not speak of it, but it was family knowledge that he owed a great debt to my father’s memory. I never discovered what it was — the whole time I knew Jacob, sth , nothing. And I was too young to remember egya . You know, I do not even know how he died, whether it was cancer, heart attack — you know Gold Coast. But I was young, so growing up I heard nothing but the highest praise for him. But I now know there was something , and Jacob would not tell me. Of course, there were rumours, myths. Some said the betrayal was over something as simple as love — that they’d competed for a village girl who played them against each other. Others said that Jacob had always felt himself the lesser brother, that my grandfather favoured egya , so that Jacob did everything he could to thwart my father’s success. That, ultimately, he was responsible for my father’s death, because in egya’s times of sickness, Jacob taunted him to keep working. Some even went so far as to say my father wasn’t sick at all, that something else — but that is tomfoolery. In the end, they were very close. They had slept in the same bed as boys, and once egya died Jacob began to sleep in that bed again. He accepted all egya’s duties, reared me like his own son. And even if he forgot it, I never did. I never did.” His voice sounded vacant. “I know they both expected great things of me.”

Taking her silence as indifference, Samuel turned over in bed. He felt a cold hand between his shoulder blades, then the motion of Maud rolling over. It was a fleeting, impersonal touch, but he felt all the emotion it was meant to convey. Frowning, he looked out the window.

In a three-day bout of work in which sleep became a hopeless goal, Samuel stocked his shop with all the tools of his trade. Scanning new catalogues with a thick-tipped pen, he’d noted the names of even newer catalogues he wanted to send away for. Possessed of a confidence shadowed by a fear it would leave him, Samuel laid the groundwork for his business in astute, genius (he considered) manoeuvres. A lesser man might have sought the paperwork, bought the equipment locally and left himself guessing in the hands of God. Not Samuel. For nights now a single pure slogan had obsessed him: Go global . He didn’t know if he’d heard it somewhere, or if it was his own, but for a man of his background in this mechanized world it seemed the appropriate motto on which to build his business. And so he sent requests to Taiwan and Germany for equipment catalogues, and made an inner note to send them business cards once he’d had them printed. He drove so often to Edmonton that Maud complained he’d wear the car to scrap iron. He used his old government contacts to convince potential clients of his deftness as an oil analyst, and received what he thought was a promising response. He brought back his hordes by night, and soon the shop was clotted with all that his craft demanded: fuse testers, transmitters, soldering irons, circuit boards, power supplies and, that apple of his eye, the oil-analysis machine, with its talent for measuring nitrogen, hydrogen and nitrate levels. The shop was soon so full he could barely fit his workbench. By the end he thought the dog’s hours would cripple him. But nothing could match the satisfaction of having done the work by his own hand. A lesser man might have begged for help. Not Samuel. He’d gotten twelve hours of sleep in a three-day period, but his elation kept him lucid and agile. Another slogan came back to him, this one from his school years, and in his exhaustion it made him laugh a full ten minutes: Dream it. Live it . It had taken him half a lifetime, but he’d done it. Some, he ruminated, don’t give themselves the chance to try.

The week before his opening, Samuel invited his family down to see the fruits of his labours. Grudgingly, Maud rounded up the girls, and the five of them drove to Glover Street in a tense silence.

So nervous it took him two minutes to find the proper key, Samuel unlocked the shop and let them wander inside. Under their scrutiny, he began to notice things he hadn’t seen before. The ceiling leaked in one corner. Shadows like obstinate crows refused to scatter when touched by light. He looked hesitantly at the children and was pained by the pitying look Ama gave him. When they’d finished the tour, Maud paused, resting her arms on the counter.

“Well, Samuel,” she said, “a greater man wouldn’t have done any worse.”

She herded the girls back to the car and, afterwards, mentioned the shop as little as possible.

After two weeks, Samuel’s spirits dampened. He no longer felt the grandeur of first ownership, and was given to watching the silent film of passersby on their lunch hours. Otherwise, people were a rare sight, and when one entered his shop he felt a sort of sick joy and mixed up his words in an impolitic move to make the quick sell. He began to pine after and dread customers, for before he opened his mouth he knew he had lost the sale. The shop became prone to deadbeats who came in to idle Samuel’s time away with stories of the ridiculous. Felix, one such man, only left by threat of police. When the equipment Samuel ordered from abroad finally came, he found he had no money to pay the distributors and had to ask Maud’s permission to dip into their shared savings.

“The self-made man condescends to ask me something,” she said. “I thought you did as you pleased and paid no mind to anyone.”

Nevertheless, she told him to take the money. He paid his bills and resolved never to admit he spent most of his day alone.