Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

Mrs. Tyne spoke of being her mother’s only daughter, but one of twenty-three of her father’s, talked of her schoolgirl friends and of the flock of chickens she’d tended, who, as soon as they saw her coming over the hill would rush en masse to meet her. Each had such a distinct personality, she claimed, that she’d named them and groomed them according to their various tastes. She’d even organized a system to be followed in her absence, the robust ones carrying the burden of the tubercular, to trick her father from distinguishing the sick from the fit. But he still killed them.

“We couldn’t go hungry,” said Maud, “so that was the end of that.”

And so it was, on that strange afternoon, that Ama and Maud began to truly like each other.

Samuel was the kind of scholar who learned best through elusion. School had taught only complicated problems, until lessons of common sense seemed insignificant. What distinguished genius was not only talent, but an ability to strike at the heart of a given thing, to see with the prophet’s eye what has eluded others. In his Gold Coast years, Samuel earned the reputation of a savant. No one who spoke to him outside of class could reconcile this doting, shy boy to the computing genius of the classroom. Some were so skeptical that they made the long walk to the university to watch. On these days, his spiteful teacher couldn’t help but relish his prodigy’s talents, throwing the most difficult equations at Samuel and smirking as though responsible for the boy’s brilliance. No one could keep up with Samuel, and when asked about the roots of his genius, Samuel would reply in a way that made people feel they were being made fun of: “I think of the simplest, most likely way to do something, and I then perform its opposite.” He could solve no problems except those of intense difficulty; the easiest ones eluded him. Only when he was befuddled, almost painfully inundated, would the answer come to him like a slap, and he’d reel at the clarity of it. It was as though once he was humbled by his human limitations, God relented and gave him the answer. And so study abroad, seen as a great blessing since only the most rigorous school could challenge him, was also viewed as treachery, for once again what was best about the nation was being plundered.

Now, his youth over, feeling old, Samuel sat in his shop struggling with an oil meter and was struck by the magnitude of his failure. Sure, he had accomplished more than thought possible for a black man of his class, had even, in terms of his background, lived beyond his supposed potential, but he had always hated social constraints that told men what they could and could not do, and wondered now what had happened to his resolve. He hadn’t worked on his rudimentary computer in days, low on confidence, unable even to look at it. He’d always fancied himself a modern Charles Babbage, the man who would put an autonomous, free-thinking machine in every home. Computers had already proved themselves useful: had the Allies not just won a war through technical accuracy? Computers had cracked codes in enemy communications, decrypting what passed between the Germans and the Japanese. Radar intercepted enemy aircraft. Guns were calibrated more accurately. And all of it made possible through the descendants of the Industrial Revolution.

What had happened to Samuel’s ambitions? His desire to free people from tedious tasks, to leave their minds open for higher pursuits? Samuel suspected he knew what had happened: family. Maud thought so little of his idea, and made such fun of him, that he’d begun to despise it himself. He set the prototype aside and turned his eye to more practical matters: his correspondence course with the National Radio Institute.

So it seemed absurd when the next unit in his course was Computer-Building Basics. Over an agitated two nights, Samuel crafted a prototype of vacuum tubes and binary switches with the slow, methodical logic of a grandfather. For twenty-three hours he wrenched and rewired, singed his cuffs and toiled himself sick building a tiny bouquet of wires. Despite fingertips blistered with unhealed burns and the acrid taste of solder on his tongue, Samuel laboured well into dawn, only rising from the stool to tamp himself with a towel before turning the shop open. Maud complained about his health, that he was again neglecting his girls, but he knew she nagged from habit, and actually relished sleeping alone.

The computer worked. Screenless, an encased maze of wires, it read data through binary lights. He went through several test runs, and each time the accuracy of its readings surprised him. With shaking hands, he put his cracked soldering iron on the workbench. Not since establishing his shop had he been so convinced of the Great Work inside him. Perhaps his early success hadn’t been arbitrary; perhaps this heralded greater things to come. He sat on his stool, staring in disbelief at his singed fingertips.

It took him a few days to raise the idea with Ray Frank, but when Samuel did, on one of their morning walks, Ray seemed surprised.

“You never cease to amaze me,” he said. “A thinking machine. What an accomplishment that would be. But, let’s be realistic, Samuel, you—”

“The machine does not actually do its own thinking. But imagine, if enough …”

“Now, now,” said Ray, waving his hand, a vague smile on his face. “I take your point — eventually we’ll have more machines in our lives, doing this, doing that, making life simpler, helping me, Jarvis and Porter do our supercrop. But the kind of thing you’re talking about …” When Ray shook his head, his glasses slipped to the end of his nose. He walked through the wheat to rest his heavy hands on Samuel’s shoulders. Smiling with all the knowledge of an elder, his eyes listed just above Samuel’s head. Samuel was conscious of the rotting smell of Ray’s mouth, the filth on his palms. “I don’t want to play hard man with you, Sam, because you know I respect you. You’re a smart, smart man — you’ve done so well for yourself it puts lesser men to shame. You’re a real example. But there are limits. I say this as your elder, as your friend.”

Samuel fidgeted under Ray’s hands. Sure, Ray saw himself as a kind of mentor in Samuel’s life, but this rude take on Samuel’s capabilities was too much. Not that Samuel felt surprised; somewhere inside he had always suspected his role in the friendship was to put up with condescending suggestions while giving Ray good ones. Now he knew even those suggestions had been taken with a grain of salt.

Samuel said, “Is it because I am an average man or because I am an average black man that you give me such advice?”

Ray shook his head. “There’s no need to misread my intentions, Sam. That disappoints me. I only mean to warn you off what seems like an unreal venture. But forget I ever said a thing about it. It’s not for me to interfere in a man’s dreams.”

His emphasis on the last word angered Samuel. They drove back to the town in silence.

Once home, Samuel seized his keys from his study desk and drove straight to the bank. Who was Ray, an unschooled farmer, to tell him what he could and couldn’t do in life? Ray, whose own goals had been reached long ago because they’d been so easy; Ray, who made his living off what had merely been handed to him? A lowly member of a lowlier town council. A man content to loaf if his wife weren’t there to coax him every step of the way. What right had such a man to judge?

Samuel sat, hands gripping the wheel, watching two schoolboys, obviously related, lift the gates of the bank. He brooded without seeing them, but his gaze was so fixed they hesitated under his eyes. Somehow, he couldn’t do it. Not yet. He couldn’t bring himself that morning to stake his small but solid savings on something still intangible. Though he knew, intuitively and without a doubt, that the return would be tenfold, this was no simple risk. Too huge a loss would be catastrophic. His anger passed, and he drove to open his shop for the day.