Black Power by Richard Wright

Author:Richard Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1954-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Forty-Three

I cast my accounts and found that I was near the end of my pounds. Since the 4th of June I’d been reacting to the reality of Gold Coast life every waking hour.

Through a travel agency I booked passage for Liverpool for the 2nd of September, which gave a few days’ breathing spell and allowed me time to visit the forts and castles on the way back to the port of Takoradi.

In response to an advertisement I had inserted in a local newspaper asking to buy an out-of-print book, R. S. Rattray’s Ashanti, I received a neatly written reply informing me that the book was to be had; and, at once, I set about locating the gentleman who held the book I so urgently wanted. His address was in care of an educational institution; but, when I applied there, I was told that:

“This gentleman comes here for his mail sometimes, but we don’t know him.”

“You receive his mail and don’t know him?”

“We do that for many people, sir,” a mild black man told me. “You see, many people have no fixed place of abode.”

“But I thought that that only applied to juvenile delinquents—”

“Oh, no, sir. Many respectable people have no work and, consequently, no home.”

“How can I locate a man with no fixed place of abode?”

“You can’t, sir. You’ll have to wait. He’ll show up.”

“But I need him urgently.”

“Why do you need him urgently?”

“He has a rare book for sale. I want to buy that book.”

“Oh, just a book, sir?” he asked, surprised.

“Yes.”

“Well, I can’t help you, sir,” he said.

I left my address, which was a post-office box number, with the official and told him to tell the man possessing the book that I wanted to see him at once. A few days later I got a note asking me to telephone a certain number; I did. It was my man with the rare book. I instructed him to meet me in a bar.

He came wearing a dirty native cloth, holding an oblong, flat package wrapped in frayed newspaper under his arm. It was the rare book. I’d thought that maybe a thin, hungry-looking professor would have come; I hadn’t expected this rather rough-looking fellow…. I bought the book, then asked him:

“Haven’t you got an address?”

“No, sar.”

“Where do you sleep at night?”

“I got a big family, sar.”

“Where does your family live?”

“All along the coast, sar.”

“Your family, your clan, or your tribe?”

“My family, sar. I’ve many brothers—”

“Blood brothers?”

“Yes, sar.”

“Are these brothers sons of your mother?”

“Not quite, sar, you see…. But men are brothers to me, sar, blood brothers.”

“What’s your tribe?”

“Ashanti, sar.”

“And your blood brothers are Ashanti men?”

“Yes, sar. We know and help each other, sar.”

“But, why?”

“Because we are brothers, sar.”

“But how did you get to be brothers?”

“We grew up together, sar.”

The men with whom he had shared life were his brothers; men of the same generation were brothers. They knew a look and feel of the world that other men of other generations did not know. I watched him stuff the money somewhere under his dirty cloth, pull on his battered hat, and walk out.

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