Ayi Kwei Armah

A railway freight clerk in Ghana attempts to hold out against the pressures that impel him toward corruption in both his family and his country.

The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born

Marion

The reproach of loved ones comes kindly when it comes in silence. Even when this silence is filled with the consciousnes of resentmnent there is always the hope that they understand whatever vague little wishes there are to understand, as if one could forever keep up the pretense that the diference between the failures and the hard heroes of the dream is only a matter of time.

There is something so terrible in watching a black man trying at all points to be the dark ghost of a European, and that was what we were seeing in those days. Men who had risen to lead the hungry came in clothes they might have been hoping to use at Governors' Balls on the birthday of the white people's queen, carrying cuff links that shone insultingly in the faces of men who had stolen pennies from their friends. They came late and spoke to their servants in the legal English they had spent their lives struggling to imitate, talking of con- stitutions and offering us unseen ghosts of words and paper held holy by Europeans, and they asked us to be faithful and to trust in them. They spoke to us in the knowledge that they were Our magicians, people with some secret power behind them. They were not able in the end to understand the peoples unbelief. How could they understand that even those who have not been anywhere know that the black man who had spent he’s life fleeing from himself into whiteness has no power if the white master gives him none.

 The man, when he shook hands, was again amazed at the flabby softness of the hand. Ideological hands, the hands of revolutionaries leading their people into bold sacrifices, should these hands not have become even tougher than they were when their owner was hauling loads along the wharf? And yet these were the socialists of Africa, fat, perfumed, soft with the ancestral softness of chiefs who had sold their people and are celestially happy with the fruits of the trade.

 The wood underneath would win and win til the end of time Of that there was no doubt possible, only the pain of hope perennially doomed to disappointment. It was so clear. Of course it was in the nature of the wood to rot with age. The polish, it was supposed, would catch the rot. But of course in the end it was the rot which imprisoned everything in its effortless embrace. It did not really bave to fight. Being was enough. In the natural course of things it would always take the newness of the different kinds of polish and the vaunted cleansing power of the chemicals in them, and it would convert all to victorious filth, awaiting yet more polish again and again and again. And the wood was not alone.

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