Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

How mad you made me — eh?! Blowing on that whistle that you kept hung on a piece of string around your neck. What became of that whistle, dear Brother? What became of you? Why did they take you from me? So suddenly? Where did you go to? Where did they carry you?

Ah, no — no. Too painful!

Let me just fill my glass and toast you, Brother-mine. Let me fill…

Your health, Brother! Long life, Brother! God save you!

Eh? What’s that you say? My hearing’s not… Eh?!

How am I, you ask? Me? Edo? How’s Edo? Edo’s fine! Edo’s always fine, Bro’. I told you my story last year, did I not? The year before… Remember?

Nothing changes, see? Nothing ever changes here. The sky is still grey. The grass is still green. My wife is still gone. My heart is still sore (but not for her. Ha! Don’t make me laugh! You know me better than that, dear Blood!).

I must confess that it pains me sometimes when I think of the old times… Does your heart ever pain you? My memory is still bad. I try not to think about things from the past. I try not to…

Although sometimes I think about my journey to The Gambia. Sometimes I think about my escape from The Helmsman (the tight ship he steered! A ship now sunk!), and all the wicked things he made me do. Sometimes I think about those stinking beaches at Banjul.

Oh ho! Good times, Bro’! Good times! Me, in my tiny swimming trunks and my scuffed old panama hat. With my lean, muscled body and my ready smile. Quite the catch, I was!

And at night? Out on the town! In my pink, wide-collared shirt, my flared brown pants… I was irresistible! They called me ‘The Congolese’. Women would ask for me by name! And why not?! I was all the talk in the European hotels.

How happy I was back then! If only I had known it! I should have stayed. I should have taken a stake in that beach-side bar. I should have swallowed my pride and smoked fish for a livelihood — sold it on the market.

There was a special girl who worked there, Bro’. She covered her head with a polka-dot cloth. A modest girl. I broke her heart. But that was my profession, Brother dear, or, at least, that was one of them. There were others…

These habits are hard to break, eh? Remember — always remember, Bro’; scratch it deep into the bark of your heart — one brief show of weakness and all is lost! No room for tenderness! No room for compassion! Pain is quicker, eh?! Easier to control. Start off small — a mouthful of ice, a slight adjustment to the balance of a chair (an inch off the front legs, Bro’, that’s all, nothing more!) — then gradually, over time, augment, expand, increase…

Never flinch. Never waver. Be consistent. Be unyielding. Let them know, up front, to expect the worst. It’s always kinder that way in the end, eh? Eh?!

Oh, Brother, sweet Brother-mine! Whoever would have guessed it? Whoever could have imagined that Edo — shy Edo, bookish Edo, the boy who always led the procession to mass — should have developed such a cruel and deadly skill as this? It’s always the unlikely ones, they say — the cold ones, the quiet ones — who end up embracing a course most vehemently. But me? Me?! Edo? A child of God? I was always the gentle one! I was always the peacemaker!

What happened, Bro’? What happened to poor Edo? Did Edo get taken too, Bro’? Did Edo become you, Bro’?

No. No. No…

In the end, it was only fate that drew me. And insolence. I never took pleasure in hurting others, but I needed to find out. I needed to know. And there was a hunger in me, Bro’, once you were gone. There was an appetite that could not be satisfied. There was an anger and a recklessness and a lethal arrogance.

The Guide saw it in me. He sensed it in me. He could read people like that. It was my curse — his genius.

But let’s not get caught up in all these details, now. It is done. It is over. It is long forgotten.

Other news, you say? What?! Stop kicking out your feet! Why all this fidgeting? Do you tire of me already?

Well… okay… (impatient boy! Impertinent boy!) I have started carving again (I say ‘again’, although you were always the better carver, were you not? Always fighting! Always whistling! Always spitting! Always whittling).

Well, now I am the carver, Bro’. It happened quite suddenly. My dear friend, Tilly — my new Guide, my sweet, English apothecary — has brought out this hidden urge in me. There is something about her… She is different from the others. She is more transparent. Cleaner. Like fresh rainwater caught in an old enamel cup. She is wilder. She resembles the Blue Gum: skin white like the trunk, eyes blue-grey like the leaves.

We work together, in silence. It is a great relief to me. There is no need to talk.

She has a sister. The sister is fierce — powerful. Strong as an ox. There was an old pastor, lately retired, who the sister admired (a vengeful man, full of bile, like Brother Francis — remember Brother Francis, who beat us so? After you were taken and I joined the Force Publique I had him dispatched. The act of a moment. Strange, really, to think about it now…).

Well, this pastor, a man called Horwood, came to the kitchen where I was carving last week — a figure on a cross, a nkondi. He asked me if he could look at it. He admired it for a while. It pleased him. I told him that I had yet to finish it — to pierce the chest with nails (because how else might the fetish work otherwise?).

‘The chest?! Surely just the hands?’ he said, winking. I merely laughed.

He asked if he could have it.

‘Take it, Pastor,’ I said, ‘and pray for me.’ He nodded. He took it away with him. The next thing I know he’s hung it up in the church. In the front portal — the fool! — for all the village to gawp at!

The new pastor — Reverend Paul — comes to pay me a visit in my home. He wants to confer with me about the nkondi.

‘Would it offend you terribly,’ he asks, ‘if I took it down?’

‘Mortally,’ I say, with a ferocious scowl. Then I laugh. He laughs with me, nervously, the way the English do.

(What do I care, Bro’? Eh?)

‘It’s just that Reverend Horwood hung it up without consulting me,’ he says. ‘Members of the congregation have been complaining. It’s not that they don’t like it, as such. But the church is Anglican — there are certain, unspoken rules about decoration… We tend to prefer the plain cross over the crucifix—’

‘Crucifix?’ I interrupt him, smiling. ‘But it isn’t a crucifix, Reverend Paul. It’s a nkondi.’

He stares at me, blankly.

‘A fetish,’ I say. ‘It’s the figure of a man I tortured, a man I hung on a cross. He comes to me in my dreams and he haunts me, so I made the nkondi to frighten him away, that’s all.’

‘What happened to this man?’ the priest demands.

‘Was he killed? Did he die?’

‘Oh no,’ I shrug, ‘he was cleverer than that. He confessed.’

Then I laugh again. After a long moment the pastor laughs with me. There are beads of sweat on his lip — on his brow.

‘It’s all right.’ I grin, and slap him on the shoulder. ‘Just a joke!’ I say, then I offer him a drink. To my surprise he accepts one. A whisky.

As he sits and drinks it he ponders something for a while and then he says, ‘Jesus was just a man, a mortal man, like you and me, hung and tortured on a cross…’