The Slave's Promise: A Minifiction Series: Chapter 3 (Last Chapter)

The story they told me begins with a shipwreck on the coast of Kochi. The ship was full of slaves from Africa brought to labour in the naval yard of the Dutch-controlled port. They were starving, battered by dysentery and skin diseases from the long voyage, crammed inside the ship’s basement, and close to death’s door when they arrived. The shipwreck was near the shore and many passengers swam and survived. They were all scattered and one young black slave was rescued by an old fisherman living alone, a couple of miles away from the port.  

The fisherman knew he was a slave but kept it a secret. He had an idea of what travails awaited a slave on these shores and the kind and innocent eyes of the slave roused a fatherly affection in him. His remote house was isolated and he had little connection with the community. He nurtured the boy back to health and taught him his language and his ways. A few months went by. The boy knew that desertion would bring severe punishment to him. He realised that his skin colour and appearance would give him away eventually and hence he went and surrendered to the authorities. He convinced them he was ill and unconscious in the days he went missing. The Dutch officer took him back and employed him in the docking station to lift the goods to ships and unload them.

Secretly, whenever he could, the boy visited the fisherman with whom he had developed a bond similar to one between a father and a son. This is where my great-grandfather, employed at the post office in the port, enters the story. 

The black young man wanted to send a letter to his family in Sudan. He saw the post office on the way to the fisherman’s hut and went in hesitantly. After listening to him about the cruel way he was captured and taken away from his family and homeland by the Arab merchants and sold to the Dutch later, my grandfather took pity on him. He tried to locate the place in Sudan where his family was stationed and came up with a possible address. He sent a letter which was never replied. Still, the young man felt indebted to him and began to bring him small gifts like tobacco and French bread from a shop near the port. Slowly, he became a frequent visitor to the postmaster’s family. 

In that house, he met the postmaster’s daughter, my great-aunt. They became friends and much more but he did not dare admit his love for her. Their friendship was sincere and enduring, his entire happiness focused on the few minutes he could spend in her company. She was studying in the only girls’ high school in the town. She taught him to read and write. 

On a fateful night, a valuable gem went missing from the Dutch officer’s ornament box. Our young man was accused of stealing it as he was the only one who entered the house with a letter that a ship’s captain had sent to the officer. He was jailed and a swift justice was served after a hoax of a trial. The slaves were thought to be less human than all others and to make an example of him, they buried him alive inside a wall by building and closing the wall around him. 

Hearing the news, my great-aunt ran crying and pleading to the wall. She spent the entire night there confessing his love to him and no one could take her away from the wall. My great-grandfather shifted to our village the next morning forcefully taking her with him. He quit his job and never returned. My great-aunt was married off to a remote city in North India from the southern tip where we lived. She never returned to the south and after a few years, relocated to Sri Lanka, with her husband and two kids. 

My father was not even born when all this happened. I remember him telling this story with an unbelieving grin as he thought it was a figment of the imagination of great Grandpa’s creative mind. Great Grandpa used to tell my father stories about the djinns who wandered in the early dawn in forlorn paths bordering the paddy fields of our village and the spirits of our ancestors who became bats and came to live inside our rooftop attic. “He was full of such wonderful nonsense,” Father would say. 

I went back to Uncle Freddy and asked about the story. He confirmed that his father had told him the story and I got the impression that Uncle believed every bit of that fascinating myth, an urban legend. He told me that after his death, the black slave wandered the streets in the night in a dark coat and a Fedora. The only instance when the slave wore that attire was on rent for a day in London, when he was painted by a street artist who drew portraits for a living. Briefly, the slave had worked in England as a stable boy in a rich white man’s castle. He had taken a half day off from work, rented a coat and a Fedora and sat patiently before the artist with a quiet excitement simmering inside him. The dignity of wearing a coat and Fedora might have caught his imagination beyond death.

I could hear myself having all these thoughts, which a few days before I could have laughed off as bullshit but I could not do that anymore. Uncle Freddy told me that when the spirit of the Black man walked the streets at dawn, people walking close by would smell the acute fragrance of tobacco. They might even see his shadow in the mist with a smoking pipe in his hand. The ghost never harmed anyone but people were afraid anyway. The poor boy seemingly had developed a taste for smoking in secret and might have stolen a few puffs from his European owners’ pipes.

One day a mysterious tourist arrived and he put a stone under the Banyan tree at the end of the street, lit a lamp there, and people saw him praying to the slave there. This mysterious man called the slave, ‘Kappiri Muthappan”, the black grandpa in his prayers. The man stayed for a few months and disappeared but the practice of worship he began was carried forward. The locals would light lamps and pray to Muthappan to fulfil their small wishes in their insignificant lives. The fame of Muthappan and the belief in his power to grant wishes and to protect those who believed, grew. 

The night spread its cloak upon the ocean like making a bed slow and neat. I began to feel a mysterious longing to see the slave again. I knew there was no resisting this strange emotion. Yet, my rational mind told me I must end this mystery now whatever risks I had to take. I informed Uncle Freddy that I was going for a walk and reassured him that I could handle myself. He seemed to have resigned himself to the inevitability of certain things. He did not object but said, “He is a good soul. Try to talk to him.”

Alone, I entered the walled street. A soft mist hung on it. When I touched the wall, a cold shiver shook my entire body. I put my face against the wall and listened. I thought I could hear a feeble breathing. “You must leave me alone,” I began. “I am not my great-aunt. I know I look like her and that you loved her and she loved you back but your time is gone. I want to live a different life and you must not pull me into a past, where I have no stake.”  

Suddenly I felt someone watching me and turned my head back. At the street’s end, I saw him. This time, there was no mist. His form was lean and his skin had a soft glow of perfect black. His eyes were kind, the first thing I noticed about them. He dropped something on the pavement.

I walked with quick steps towards him. He turned to go and I shouted, “Wait”. The next moment, he disappeared, just faded away like vapour. I squatted on the pavement where he stood as an intense sense of loss choked me and I wept. When the rush of sudden emotion slowly melted away, I searched for the thing I saw him drop to the ground. On the exact spot where he stood, on the pavement, I found a small piece of an iron chain, which I took in my hands.

It was cold and smelled of tobacco. When I held it, a strange fragrance engulfed me as some scented wildflower had bloomed in the forest. I almost felt like I was inside a green forest with thick vegetation, the mist warming to become water drops dripping from the broad leaves, wines hanging, and strange and loud birds singing luxuriantly. I saw as if in a dream, his black skin glowing in morning sunlight against the green of the woods. He was walking away from me into the dense foliage, parting the tall wild Taros in a swamp where they crowded covering the entire forest floor. They were as tall as a human. He disappeared inside them and the scent alone lingered. Slowly, as if in a dream, I walked back to Uncle Freddy’s house.   

I stayed one week in Kochi, after which, I accompanied Uncle Freddy to our village. I never saw Kappiri Muthappan again. On moonlit nights, I would look out my window and hope to see a shadow of him but there was nothing. I would tell myself that I would go to Kochi when I am old and dying, to be held once again in his comforting arms and find peace though I am almost sure his spirit has gone back to his homeland in Africa as I saw in my last vision of him.  (End) 

Read the first two chapters here:

https://www.brokenbangles.com/2024/11/the-slaves-promise-minifiction-series.html

https://www.brokenbangles.com/2024/10/the-slaves-promise-mini-fiction-series.html