The Viceroy of Ouidah

Author:Bruce Chatwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

FOUR

HE LANDED AT Ouidah between two and three of a murky May afternoon smelling of mangrove and dead fish. A band of foam stretched as far as the eye could reach. Inland, there were tall grey trees which, at a distance of three miles, anyone might mistake for waterspouts. He was the only passenger in the canoe: the crew knew better than to set foot in the Kingdom of Dahomey.

At the start of the voyage he had gazed at the new element with the innocent awe of the landsman. He saw boobies. He saw fleets of medusas, ribbons of sea-wrack, the prismatic colours on the backs of bonitos and albacores and the pale fire of phosphorescence streaming into the night.

Then, as the ship sailed into the horse-latitudes, the sails hung slack, shark fins swirled on an oily sea, everyone lost their tempers, and the mate smashed a sailor’s teeth in with a marlinspike.

A shower of red rain spattered the deck the day they sighted the African coast, and a locust got caught in the rigging. On his last night aboard, Francisco Manoel woke up covered in his own vomit: the ship had narrowly missed the tornado that covered the shore with dead fish.

He brushed aside the krumen who helped him from the canoe. He refused to ‘dash’ the outstretched hand of the fetish-man. He refused to let the porters carry him across the lagoon, and with black ooze coating his thighs he strode up the track to the Captains’ Tree.

Waiting in the shade of this decrepit ficus were some underlings of the Yovogan, the Dahomean Minister for the Slave Trade. Decanters of claret, madeira, rum and distilled palm-wine were laid out on a card table missing most of its baize.

He drank their toasts and soldiers fired their muskets in the air. A royal eunuch with silver horns on his temples tilted his head, asked what presents he had brought from Brazil, and gasped when the answer was ‘None!’

A palaver followed, and everyone seemed quite friendly, but when he reached the Fort he found the place in ruins.

The flagstaff was broken, the Royal Arms defaced. Walls were roofless and smoke-blackened. The shutters were wrenched off their hinges and the cannon had come adrift of their emplacements and were sinking through the swish walls.

Turkey buzzards flapped off as he stepped into the yard. A pig was teasing the rind off a jackfruit. A dog pissed against a tree and started howling.

Through the door of the chapel came a gangling poxpitted figure in a drum major’s shako and the remains of a Turkish rug. He blinked at the newcomer; then, curling his lips back over a set of loose yellow teeth, whooped, ‘Mother of Jesus Christ and All the Saints be praised!’ and bounded over to paw the apparition and make sure it was real.

Taparica the Tambour was the only survivor of the garrison.

A Yoruba freeman who had joined the 1st Regiment of Black Militia, he told his sad story in the lilting

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.