‘Serpents alone, was it?’
‘Oh no, no. Deary me, no. Elephants and shrew-mice, bats, birds, giant scorpions too: but serpents first, and when I showed him Kroo python, three fathom long, coiled round her eggs, he gave me seven shillings, he was so pleased – seven shillings and a bright red wool hat.’
‘I hope he wrote a book. Oh how I hope he wrote a book. Square, will you tell me his name now, the worthy gentleman?’
‘Mr Klopstock, sir,’ said Square, shaking his head. ‘No book.’
‘No book at all?’
Square shook his head again. ‘Mr Klopstock, he dead.’ Poised on the back of a moderate roller he assumed a shrunken appearance, trembled convulsively and made the gesture of one vomiting in the last stages of yellow fever, all perfectly convincing and all within the seconds needed for the wave to curl, run bellowing up the shore and set the canoe down on the sand. Square stepped out, barely wetting his feet, gave Stephen a hand and hauled the canoe above the highwatermark, calling to a little Krooboy to mind it and the paddle in his singularly precise English. The Krooboy could make nothing of his words, however, and he was obliged to repeat them in the local dialect.
‘So no book, sir,’ said Square gravely as they walked up the strand. ‘But he was a very good man, and kind to me. He taught me English, London English.’
‘I believe you said he was a Dutchman.’
‘Yes, sir; but he spoke English well, and he was happy to come here because he thought we spoke English too. London
H
English. But he showed me prints of cobras, pangolins and shrew-mice, or drew them himself, telling me their names in London English. So I got used to his way of talking: like missionary. Now, sir, where would you like to go?’
‘I should like to see the town a little, passing the Governor’s house, the fort and the market. Then I should like to see Mr Houmouzios, the money-changer.’
It was a wide, spreading town, with most houses lying well apart in the enclosures of their own, often with palms rising high above their walls. They met few people as they walked along, and John Square, seeing that Stephen was willing to
talk, went on ‘And I knew another naturalist, sir, when I was a boy: Mr Afzelius, a Swedish; and he spoke right careful London English too. He was a botany. No book, either, though he was here for years.’
‘No book, alas?’
‘No book, sir. When the French took the town in ninety-four they burnt his house with the rest, and all his papers and his specimens. It humbugged his heart so cruelly, he never wrote his book.’
They both shook their heads, walking in silence for a while, until indeed they reached the market: and as they turned the corner they entered another world, crowded, busy, talkative, cheerful, full of colour – stalls with fruit and vegetables of every kind, brilliant in the mounting sun: plantains, bananas, papaws, guavas, oranges, limes, melons, pineapples, pigeonpeas, ockra, cream-fruit, sweet-sops, coco-nuts; and closewoven baskets full of rice, maize, millet, grains of Paradise, as well as yams and cassava and some sugar-cane. Fish in gleaming plenty: tarpon, cavallies, mullets, snappers, yellowtails, old-maids, ten-pounders (thought rather coarse, said Square, though nourishing), and of course great heaps of oysters. There were grave Arabs walking about, swathed in white, and a few redcoats from the fort, and most stalls had a resident dog or cat; but the world in general was black. There were however varying degrees of darkness, from the Krooman’s shining ebony to milk-chocolate brown. ‘There is a Zandi from Welle, right down in the Congo,’ said Square, nodding discreetly to just such a person, bargaining in passionate Sierra Leone English for a ten-pounder that did not, she claimed, weigh more than eight: ‘Niminy-piminy, nutting at all,’ she cried. ‘And there are some Yoruba. Agbosomi you can always tell by their tattoo: they speak Ewe, same like Attakpami. See the Kondo tribal cuts on those cheeks: quite like the Grebo. There is a Kpwesi from here talking to a Mahi from Dahomey.’ He pointed out many more, and said
‘All the nations that were ever sold on the Coast or round even to Mozambique live here: and there, sir, are some Nova Scotia blacks. But you know all about Nova Scotia, sir.’
‘I do not,’ said Stephen.
‘Well, sir, they were slaves in America that fought on the King’s side; and when the King’s men were beat, they were moved to Nova Scotia: then after about twenty years those that were still alive after all that snow were brought here. Some had learnt Gaelic in those parts.’
‘God be with them,’ said Stephen. ‘Now I should like to see Mr Houmouzios, if you please.’
‘Aye aye, sir: right away,’ said Square. ‘His station is at the far corner there, under the canopy, or awning, as they say.’
Mr Houmouzios was a Greek from some far African diaspora: he sat under his awning at a table covered with saucers holding a great variety of coins, from minute copper objects to Portuguese joes worth four pounds apiece, together with delicate scales and an abacus. To his left sat a small blackboy, to his right a bald dog so huge that it might have belonged to another race, a dog that took no notice of anyone at all, except those who might offer to touch the table.
‘Monsieur Houmouzios,’ said Stephen in French, as it had been agreed long since,
‘Good day. I have a letter of change for you.’
Houmouzios gazed at him mildly over his spectacles, and replying in a curiously old-fashioned but perfectly fluent Levantine version of the same language bade him
welcome to Sierra Leone, looked at the document, said that he never brought such sums into the market and, in the local English, told the boy to fetch Socrates, an aged clerk. As soon as he arrived Houmouzios led Stephen to a singularly beautiful Arab house with fretted shutters and a fountain in the courtyard, and begging him to sit on a raised carpet observedthat in these particular transactions a degree of identification was called for: the Doctor would forgive him for respecting this unnecessary form, but it was a superstition with people of his calling.
Stephen smiled, said ‘Oh, of course,’ and felt in his pocket for some coins. He found none, and was obliged to borrow six English pennies: these he arranged in two lines and then altered the position of three so that they, always being in contact with two others, formed a circle with the third movement.
‘Very good,’ said Houmouzios. He drew a purse from under
his shirt, told out fifty guineas, and said ‘I have heard from my chief that I may have the honour of receiving messages for you from time to time. Be assured that they too will rest in my bosom.’
‘There is another small point,’ said Stephen. ‘Can you recommend any merchant in Freetown with correspondents in Brazil or Buenos Aires?’
‘Now that the trade is illegal there is not much intercourse; but I do carry on a certain amount of banking business with export firms in Bahia – bark, rubber, chocolate, vanilla and the like.’
‘Coca-leaves?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Then please be so good as to order me an arroba of the best upland Peruvian small-leaf. Here are five guineas as earnest-money.’
‘By all means. I shall send at the first opportunity, and it should be here within a month or six weeks.’
‘You are very good, sir,’ said Stephen, and having drunk a cup of coffee he took his leave, pleased with the contact. So often these arrangements, these letter-boxes, had a more than squalid side to them: on occasion an intelligence-agent’s life was very dangerous indeed, but what was in a way more wearing was that it almost always brought him into touch with dubious, often semi-criminal characters whose goodfellowship and conniving smiles were profoundly disagreeable. Yet arrangements of this kind, which so often had the air of shady financial deals or adulterous correspondence, were essential: even in a well-regulated embassy or legation or consulate loose talk was so usual that a parallel means of communication was an absolutely necessary evil; and Maturin was certainly not going to endanger the success of the present expedition (which he rated very high) by entrusting the enterprising Governor or his staff with anything in the least confidential.
He found Square sitting on a stone outside, and as they walked back to the strand he said, ‘John Square, if you are not engaged for the next few weeks I should like you to sail with me and show me what plants, birds and animals you can whenever we go ashore. I will give you an able seaman’s wages and ask Captain Pullings to enter you as a supernumerary.’
‘Happy, sir, very happy,’ said Square, and they shook hands upon it. After another hundred yards and some thought Dr Maturin said ‘There seemed to be an elegant swamp