Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips Page A

preparations to depart for Africa. His subsequent letters to Edward, though brief, had remained polite. Through them, Edward was able to discover that Madison had settled in Monrovia and was eking out a living as a small trader selling palm oil, rice, camwood, and animal skins to passing European and American ships. As this short voyage unfolded, Edward arrived at the uncomfortable conclusion that, perhaps because of the warmth of their first encounters, or perhaps this and the additional fact that the passage of time had served to sever Edward’s links with many of his other former charges, Madison had now become the only person in Africa whom he felt he could trust. Indeed, it had been to Madison that he had immediately turned when faced with the unpleasant details of Nash’s abrupt and final message. He would now have little choice but to place his entire confidence in this man.
    Edward’s first sighting of Monrovia came at dawn, but it certainly did not occasion his heart to leap with joy. In fact, Edward felt himself suddenly overcome with an ill-feeling of foreboding. The morning sea was beautiful and calm, and held in her embrace a number of small offshore islands. Beyond these rushed the boiling surf, where the low waves bit at the shore and foamed white, but thereafter was misery. Edward stared at the gathering of low, square huts, seemingly built of sticks and mud, walls leaning drunkenly to the north or south of vertical, clumsily thatched and adorned with grass, or a flattering crown of corrugated iron. Behind these dwellings he could see only a forested horizon which appeared to mask a huge, roaming jungle in which nothing stirred, and whose only sound was a mournful roar of silence. As Edward clutched the rail and watched, it would have been impossible for any onlooker to have guessed to what depths of loneliness he had now sunk. He looked up into the sky and saw rain clouds beginning to form and flow through the sky like huge ships, although by now he had come to understand that, in this zone, rain was little more than a precursor of the heat to follow. Back on land there was neither a whisper, nor a sign of movement from the ragged cluster of abodes which lined the shore. A despondent Edward leaned forward and set his face towards the bottomless ocean.
    Within the hour the ship had anchored off the African port of Monrovia, and the passengers and freight were being gingerly reunited with terra firma by means of a fleet of small launches. As his ill-made craft picked its leaky way through the surf, Edward noticed the fishing boats, their nets suspended from tall poles and drying in the sun before being once more thrown to the deep, and he reached the conclusion that these vessels of commerce seemed far better equipped for sea-faring than his present mode of transportation. Fortunately, the low wind merely ruffled the surface of the ocean, otherwise he was sure that both he and his boxes would have succumbed to a watery end. Once on shore, Edward clasped a handkerchief to his mouth and nose to ward off the fetid African air, but the sudden mist of mosquitoes could be combated only by his swatting them against his skin, until his forearm was decorated with a series of red blotches. Suddenly, natives and colored Americans were everywhere, anxious to greet the arrival of this new ship, and in their wake they created a veritable din. Edward examined them, particularly the natives, their semi-clad bodies ensnared by large corded muscles, but amongst their numbers he was unable to recognize any who had about them a demeanor which suggested that they might have been sent by Madison to greet him. And then the weather, being predictable in this region only in its excesses, suddenly, and without warning, changed, and the rain teemed from the skies. At moments such as this it was customary for a Christian gentleman to acknowledge that such a downpour, whilst causing inconvenience to the human being, inevitably bestowed