A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa by Orr Elaine Neil

Author:Orr, Elaine Neil [Orr, Elaine Neil]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Alphabet

JACOB SAT ON the piazza in front of his room, sharpening a saw. He had turned to the work after Mrs. Bowman’s outburst. Since their visit with the Iyalode, he had thought the woman was learning. She appeared to respect him. Now this morning she tried to turn him into a boy. She was too proud. He calmed himself through the task, waiting for Tunji, a friend from the caravan and omo Ogbomoso, born in Ogbomoso. Tunji was one of the porters who had run with him in search of Wole. That night they had sat up by the fire. Jacob had told how he discovered the child on his return to Yoruba land. Telling that story had required telling of his own slavery, and he was grateful the next day when the man did not reject him. The mark of slavery was viewed as a personal flaw by Jacob’s countrymen, or, worse yet, a contagion.

He worked the file against the beveled edge, turning it between the teeth until he captured a shiny edge. Wole lay on his stomach nearby, his legs, from the knees up, swaying apart and back together. He was copying letters onto a chalkboard from a set of alphabet cards.

On a routine job carrying loads for British agents between Ijaye and Ibadan, Jacob came upon his small relation. The caravan had stopped in a village close to his former home. Someone had spoken his father’s sister’s name. He inquired, thinking it still possible someone from the family may have survived. When he described his auntie’s long neck and the way her voice carried higher and higher into the trees as she talked, an old woman declared that such a woman had escaped into the town, wearing only a scarf, and round-bellied. She had died in the next dry season but left a son, who was cared for by a grandmother of the town. There was no mistake; the boy was of his lineage.

Jacob lived in the village with Wole for a season before taking him to Ijaye. He told the boy stories of the family. The child seemed to hear everything as a drama. “Do I look like Baba?” he would say in his Yoruba, meaning Jacob’s father, or, “Who has had my head?” Whose character is like my own? The stories brought the past back to Jacob so intensely he sometimes felt he would disappear. The boy, however, seemed content, as if he lived at one remove from the world of ordinary people and Jacob understood why it was a commonplace to believe the son is the father returned.

One day in the market he heard of the opportunity with Rev. Bowman. But then the child disappeared on the road. It was enough to finish him. Once he had the boy back, he didn’t care if the reverend sacked him, but the missionary was too happy with Wole’s safety to suck anger.

He looked down to see that Wole had managed H but was stuck on J.

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