EIGHT

DIARY OF DESIRE

The life and times of Kofi George Coker
Moscow 1956

What I remember best is the wind. Moscow is a flat place. In those days, coming from the airport you could probably see all the way up Leninsky Prospekt into the heart of the city if your eyes were good enough. There was nothing in the way, and nothing to stop the wind. I don’t know where it came from, but it blew without stopping during those months in the autumn of 1956 when I first arrived. It blew like knives flying, like something that circled and searched, trying to suck the heart out of your chest and the flesh off your bones, and all the time the sky got darker and greyer with every day that brought the first snows closer.

In those first days, sitting around in the big downstairs room in the hostel at Noviye Cheryomushki where all the students were sent to learn the language (so they said), we talked about it. Whatever other topics of conversation we were pursuing the wind would always come up sooner or later. One of the boys, a Zanzibari named Hussein, said once that this was why all the old churches and other prominent buildings were topped by the round onion-shaped domes, because it was the only shape that would withstand the wind. If they had those needle-shaped Gothic spires you see in the rest of Europe, he said, the whole damn thing would go flying off.

Those were the very first days when we talked without suspicion or purpose. There were boys from everywhere, mostly British colonies, although there were some from French-speaking Africa too, but English was the language we spoke among ourselves, even the Somalis and Ethiopians. Russian boys lived there too, although one or two would always correct you if you called them Russian, because they were from the Soviet Republics, not from Russia itself. My roommate Valery was one of them, a Ukrainian. He was training to be an engineer, and thirty years later when I heard about Chernobyl a picture of him came back to me immediately, flashing past me over the snow-covered slope on Leninsky Gory, or huddling on his bed, the book open over his blanket-covered knees, that funny little smile on his face. He came from the marshes and forests to the north of Kiev, he had said, and knowing how clever and ambitious he was I was certain that if there had been a major engineering project like that happening in his home country he’d have been there. That night I sat up until dawn, drinking Scotch whisky and remembering those times. I always trusted Valery, and I still believe I was right, even though, towards the end, it seemed that he had betrayed my trust. But it was his country, he had to live with the consequences, and he did what he had to do.

As far as we knew then, Valery had come by the same route as most of the other boys: a scholarship to study in Russia awarded by the local party. Nowadays when I talk about shaking hands with Khrushchev or Mikoyan or even about arriving in Moscow in 1956, people look at me as if I had suddenly grown two heads. Sometimes this makes me laugh, but sometimes I can see a certain look in their eyes and I can tell from the sound of their voices that they’re humouring me, as if I was a foolish old man telling crazy stories. Ignorance. They forget, or mostly they don’t know about those days just before the decade of independence, when higher education was something that happened abroad at the LSE or Oxford. Russia was only two steps away. It was true that having to learn a new language was piling difficulty on top of the strangeness, but many of us already spoke two languages, English being the official language of the courts and the administration, while we spoke something else in the villages, Twi or Fanti or Swahili. We had heard all the stories about what barbarians the Russians were, but that was at the same time that we had discovered that the British and their friends were liars who described the world in terms which would keep us quiet. Most of the boys had open minds and a dream inside them about going back as engineers or scientists to build the bridges and dams and turbines which would power their independence and abolish the poverty from which they had come.

There was only one thing different about me. I already knew, or thought I did, what would become of me. I had not been recruited by a local party boss. In fact, up to that time I’d had very little to do with the Communists. My references came straight from the top, from Osageyfo. This was a coin with two sides, but at the time I believed that my future was made, which turned out to be true, but not in the way I expected.

None of it would have happened anyway if it hadn’t been for that crazy old man Ras Makonnen. That was in Manchester, of course. I was sixteen, and it was my first trip with my father. I had lied about my age, but I was big, and just as capable of the work as any other stoker on the ship. After fifty years I can remember very little about the journey, except standing beside my father in the engine room, shovelling and sweating. At night on deck, watching the sparkling trail behind us, or bunked down in the clanking dark of the galley, he would tell me stories about the place to which we were going. Education, he said repeatedly, education would make me a man who could live in the new world that was coming. He was tall, bigger than I ever became. Paul Robeson, someone would always say when we went into the pub near the custom house in Cardiff, but he was even bigger than Robeson.

Liverpool was the city in which we landed that first time. It was 1945 and the big war had only just ended. I thought the city was still buzzing with the joy of it, but my father said this was how it always was. He got me a room at the mission house, then he left, taking most of my pay, leaving me enough for food. Don’t go with any of these women on the street, he told me before he went. They will take all your money and get you in trouble. The warning wasn’t necessary, not because I was frightened of women. In Accra I had already been with women, but they had seemed nothing like the white ladies who smiled boldly and spoke in their strange accents as we walked down Upper Parliament Street. Their red lips, their perfume and pale skins were exciting and revolting at the same time, and I had no idea how to speak to them or where to begin. My attitude had changed by the time of my second trip, but that first time I merely stayed in the mission with the minister, a man from Sierra Leone, who gave me a cup of tea, played the piano, sang, asked me about my mother and talked gently about the Gold Coast.

It was the next day that my father took me to Manchester. He said it was a reward for how well I had worked, but later on it occurred to me that he wanted me out of Liverpool that first time because he didn’t want me bumping into his other family, and he was successful in this for all the time he was alive. I’d heard rumours, of course, but it wasn’t until years later that I came across my three half-sisters, with their mother, a fat Irish woman with greying red hair who said she was his wife. It was a shock but no surprise, although in those early days I had no inkling that my father had another, different life. So I was all innocence that day, going to Manchester. It was my second day in England and the first time I travelled on a train. Below my feet was a wave of warm air, while outside the window the sun shone over the fields. But I was not yet accustomed to the chill that came with this sunshine, and feeling the cold air on my skin as it rushed through the window was strange and dislocating, almost as if what I was seeing was an illusion placed there to persuade me that I was still in the same world where I had grown up.

On the way my father told me about the man we would see in Manchester. Ras Makonnen, he called him, but then he said that the man was not an Ethiopian in spite of his name. It was all something to do with his politics. There were men there, according to my father, who, in one colony or the other, had been trade union leaders or Communists, and in order to escape the authorities used two or three names. Mak must have been one of them and he was no fool, because he had become a rich man in England. Even in this country, my father said, he was more powerful than many whites. In Manchester he owned restaurants, clubs and houses. No one could tell how much he owned. But you had to be careful of such men, my father said, lowering his voice, because although he had done many good things, no one knew where he came from or who his people were, and no one knew what he had done to gain these possessions.

It was clear that he meant all this as a warning, but at my age it was a story which almost made me choke with excitement, behind which was the desperate longing to learn and understand the secrets of this hero, a feeling which grew stronger and stronger during that night at Mak’s restaurant.

It was in Oxford Road. We walked there from the station through the broad thoroughfare which ran from one square to the next, and past the huge stone palace which was St Peter’s. As we walked among the rows of shops and stores, richer than anything I had ever seen, I could feel curiosity inside me swelling and pounding like a pulse. What kind of African, I kept asking myself, owned one of these places in a city like this?

It was called The Cosmopolitan. An old brick house, four storeys high, with long rectangular windows. The ground floor was a big square room with a bar along one wall. On the other side a staircase which led up to the next floor, and under it was a door leading to the kitchens. The floor was polished wood which squeaked a little when you walked on it, and there were about twelve tables covered in white cloths. High on the back wall, where everyone could see it, was a large picture of the Emperor Haile Selassie in uniform, his sorrowful eyes surveying the room. All around the walls and disappearing up the stairs were huge paintings, murals of men from every nation, some of them half naked, some in the dress of their nation, others in uniform. There were Chinese, Indians, Africans and white men and women, all of them marching or running, straining towards some object, the muscles and sinews of their necks and limbs standing out, their bodies tensed as if about to leap from the walls, their eyes raised towards the heavens. I had never seen anything like it, and as we entered I stood still, almost transfixed by the sights around me.

It was early in the evening and the place was only half full. Most of the customers seemed to be black Americans in uniform and white women from the town. I had an impression of khaki and shiny black hair, smooth like wet tar, next to curly yellow hair and pale skins, but I didn’t look at them as carefully as I wanted to, because I knew that when you saw big men out with their women it was dangerous to stare.

Makonnen was standing at the bar talking to the white woman behind it. When we came in he looked up and greeted my father by name. At the time this didn’t seem strange. Later on I realised that he knew every seaman who came in by name. The funny thing was that he looked like an Ethiopian, with the thin features and delicate frame that marked out people who came from the Horn. He was wearing a black suit, though, like a minister, with a shirt so clean and white that the collar gleamed in the dim light of the room. When he spoke, also, his English was perfect, with an accent like an Englishman. To listen to him was like reading a book.

‘You came at the right time, Mr Coker,’ he said to my father. ‘They’re all here for the conference.’

I could tell that my father was puzzled, but he nodded and smiled with an expression of respectful attention, and Makonnen carried on telling him about the conference which he said would be historic. A historic landmark, he said, and I remember the word because it was the first time I’d heard it. My father nodded and frowned as if he understood what it was all about, but I knew he didn’t, and that was the first sign I had of the problem that would defeat such men as Osageyfo in the end. Because he was, in that respect at least, very much like Makonnen. They would talk and talk in their perfect English, outlining plans and strategies and demonstrating how the logic of history supported their actions, and they assumed that the approval of their audiences was the same as agreement. Most of the time, I suspect, they knew that wasn’t true, but it was also true that they believed winning the argument was enough. With a man like my father it was easy to win an argument, but that would never be the end of the matter. Osageyfo and the men around him, men like Padmore, never altogether understood that. Padmore, in particular, had learnt his lack of compromise from Stalin, even though he was one of his bitterest enemies.

That night in the restaurant my father gave no indication of his real opinion, which was that when it came to African affairs Makonnen and his friends were close to dangerous fanatics. Instead he fingered the leaflets and the journal about Pan African events which Mak gave him with the same grave attention.

‘The boy will read them,’ he said.

We were eating lamb stew and semolina when it happened – Makonnen himself had recommended the dish before we sat down. Later on I understood that there were only two kinds of food to be had there. One was for the black American servicemen who still thronged the city in 1945 – fried chicken, pork, sweet potatoes, black-eye peas. The other kind was for the African visitors or seamen off the boats – lamb stews, ground rice, yams, semolina, cous-cous, and hot peppers. Then there were vegetables like okra, which the sailors brought him direct from the African coast. In those days Makonnen’s restaurants were the only places in Europe where you could get such food. The room was quiet apart from the voices of the Americans and the screeching of their women, but they were just part of the background which we heard without hearing. In those days the Americans, with their loud voices and their jitterbug, their money and their cars, impressed no one except women. Slaves in their own country, they chose every opportunity when abroad to play the big man among poor people. So we heard them without hearing until there was a mighty shouting which, we realised when we looked up, was coming from Makonnen: Bwana macouba, bwana macouba. It was a joyous bellow which I could not imagine coming from that quietly spoken gentleman, before I saw him with his mouth open and his arms apart facing the door. From the street came an answer, a deep huge laugh, over and over, and in through the door came one of the biggest men I’d ever seen, bigger than my father. Behind him was a crowd of people and all of a sudden the room was full. There were only half a dozen of them, five Africans and a white woman, but there was something about them all which seemed to fill the place with a sparkling vitality, an aura within which they seemed to glow. That is how I remember them at that time anyway, like a group of heroes glowing with life and purpose.

Makonnen embraced them one by one, talking all the time, and over the hubbub of voices I could hear the huge booming laugh of the tall man, who, as it happens, was the only one I had really looked at so far.

‘That is Mr Kenyatta,’ my father muttered.

Everyone in the restaurant was staring at these people, but they seemed not to mind, looking around them with friendly smiles and nodding as if they knew themselves to be the sort of people who would attract admiration wherever they went. Makonnen bustled back and forth, shoving three tables together to make a big one for his guests, pulling out the chairs and snapping his fingers for bottles from the bar.

For my part I was so gripped by the show that I had forgotten to eat, and it was the white lady who first noticed me. She was worth looking at, as I remember. When she died she was a decrepit old bag lady who they had to haul from a stinking room in Bayswater, but at that time she still looked like what she was, a bold and beautiful aristocrat who didn’t give a damn. I hadn’t seen many white people until then, and they all looked strange to me, but I knew I had never seen a woman, black or white, like her, sitting at her ease, arguing and interrupting these big men. I suppose I was drinking her in with my eyes because she smiled at me and nudged the man next to her.

‘Take a look at him, George,’ she said, in a clear voice which didn’t seem too loud but which could be heard all round the room. ‘That is what you have to convince if you’re going to make it happen.’

Suddenly the room was quiet, and everyone was staring at me. I ducked my head in shame, too self-conscious to eat, and I heard Kenyatta’s booming chuckle start up again.

‘Mr Coker,’ I heard Makonnen’s voice call out. ‘Come here. Allow me to introduce you.’

My father poked me in the arm and I got up, my eyes averted, and walked the few steps over to their table.

‘This is Mr Coker,’ Makonnen announced. ‘He’s a stoker who just got in yesterday from the coast, and this is his son Kofi. Also a stoker.’

Each of them shook hands formally with my father. Each one said his name. I didn’t catch them all at the time, but I remember the faces as if it was yesterday. The Bwana macouba, Kenyatta, was first, his long arm reaching out across the table from a sitting position. Then Dr Nkrumah. I seem to remember that was how he introduced himself, although nowadays when I think of him I always call him Osageyfo. Then George Padmore. He was the quiet one. His face had a cynical twist and he smiled his crooked smile as if he knew how confused I was. Then there was Peter Abrahams. He was younger than the rest by twenty years, and there was something kindly about his face which gave me a feeling that he might be my friend, especially when he looked back at me and winked. Finally, the woman who bent her head sideways so that she could look full into my face with her big light eyes. Nancy Cunard, she said.

Osageyfo was looking at me seriously, with a slight frown as if weighing me up, but there was something else about his look that I remember. It was as if he knew me and cared about me. I looked up and met his eyes, and from that moment I was desperate to please him.

‘How old are you, boy?’ Osageyfo asked me.

I told him I was sixteen.

‘When we’re running things,’ he said to my father, ‘boys like this will be making a life for themselves and building our country instead of crossing the sea locked up like rats in an iron cage.’

My father nodded without answering, but I felt hurt for him. He couldn’t argue with anything Osageyfo said, because we knew from his looks and from the way he spoke that he was a big man of our tribe, an educated man, one who would have the power of an elder and more. On the other hand, my father had paid a substantial bribe to secure this job for me, and to hear it described in this way by such a man must have been painful.

‘Give the boy a chance,’ Kenyatta said jovially. ‘We won’t all be doctors and lawyers. At his age I had killed a lion and had three wives.’

A burst of laughter greeted this statement. I wasn’t sure whether this was because it was a lie or simply a familiar boast. Osageyfo waited quietly for the interruption to end, leaning back in his chair. He was like that, completely focused on whatever it was he wanted. My eyes were looking at the ground as was appropriate, but I could feel his gaze and when I looked up I saw him staring intently at me.

‘In your opinion, Kofi,’ he asked, ‘what does our country need most at this moment?’

‘He’s not a voter yet,’ Padmore remarked in his mocking voice. I wasn’t distracted. I knew the answer to the question, having heard it often enough from my father, and I came out with it quickly before anyone else could speak.

‘Education, sir.’

He smiled for the first time.

‘Education is good,’ he said, ‘but what we really need is independence. Freedom from the imperialists and freedom to manage our own affairs.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied, and I meant it because I knew that whatever he said must be right.

‘Mr Coker,’ Osageyfo said, addressing my father. ‘Are you here in Manchester for a couple of weeks?’

‘Yes, sir,’ my father mumbled.

‘We need someone to do some work, run errands and help us get ready for the conference. Give me Kofi for a few days.’

‘Take him, Mr Nkrumah,’ my father said.

Osageyfo smiled at me again.

‘I like this boy,’ he said.

That was how my apprenticeship began. I didn’t know then that it would take me to Moscow in the autumn of 1956, but that was the beginning of that part of my life. To remember that time, and those people and the way my life changed is both sad and happy; and sometimes I don’t know which one it is that I’m feeling.