She knows that most will never come back. She needs no songs to tell her that. The fishers of men are predators, with their shining lure of salvation. The truth is they come like the harmattan, the acrid wind that blows every year, stripping the land of its moisture and filling the mouth with a sour red dust. Nothing grows while the harmattan blows, except for the dreams of foolish boys and their even more foolish mothers, who send them off with the traffickers – all dressed in their church clothes, in case the patrols spot them and smell their desperation – each with a thick slice of cold maize porridge, lovingly wrapped up in a fold of banana leaf and tied with a piece of red string, for luck.
Money changes hands – not much, not even the price of a sackful of grain, but the baby needs a mosquito net, and the older one some medicine, and she isn’t selling her children, Maleki’s mother tells herself; she is sending them to the Promised Land. Adjale will look after them. Adjale, who every year brings news of her sons and tells her: Maybe next year they will send a card, a letter, even a photograph—
But something inside her still protests, and once again she asks herself whether she did the right thing. And every year Adjale smiles and says to her: Trust me. I know what I’m doing. And though it’s very hard for her to see him only once a year, she knows that he is doing well, helping children along the road, and he has promised to send for her – one day, very soon, he says. Just as soon as the children are grown. Four years, maybe five, that’s all.
And Maleki’s mother believes him. He has been very good to her. But Maleki does not trust him. She has never trusted him. But what can one girl do alone? She cannot stop them any more than she could stop the harmattan with its yearly harvest of red dust. What can I do? she asks the road. What can I do to fight them?
The answer comes to her that night, as she stands alone by the side of the road. The moon is high in the sky, and yet the road is still warm, like an animal; and it smells of dust and petrol, and of the sweat of the many bare feet that pound its surface daily. And maybe the road answers her prayer, or maybe another god is listening; but tonight, only to Maleki, it tells another story: it sings a song of loneliness; of sadness and betrayal. It sings of sick children left to die along the road to Nigeria; of girls sold into prostitution; of thwarted hopes and violence and sickness and starvation and AIDS. It sings of disappointment; and of two boys with the scars of Kassena cut into their cheeks, their bodies covered in sour red dust, coming home up the Great North Road. The boys are penniless, starving and sick after two long years in Nigeria, working the fields fourteen hours a day, sold for the price of a bicycle. But still alive, Maleki thinks; still alive and coming home; and the pounding beat of this new song joins the beat of Maleki’s heart as she stands by the road at Kassena, and her feet begin to move in the dust; and her body begins to lilt and sway; and in that moment she hears them all; all those vanished children; all of them joining the voice of the road in a song that will not be ignored.
And now she understands what to do to fight the fishers of children. It isn’t much, but it is a start; it’s the seed that grows into a tree; the tree that becomes a forest; the forest that forms a windbreak that may even stop the harmattan—
Not today. Not this year. But maybe in her lifetime—
Now that would be a thing to see.
Walking home that night past the fires; as Maleki walks past the Chief’s hut; past the maize field; past the rows of potbellied henhouses; as she washes her face at the water-pump; as she drinks from a hollowed-out gourd and eats the slice of cold maize porridge her mother has left on the table for her; as she lays out her old school uniform, the white blouse and khaki skirt and the battered old football boots that she has not yet outgrown; as she lies down on her mattress and listens to the sounds of the night, Maleki thinks about other roads; the paths we have to make for ourselves.
Tomorrow, she thinks, will be different. Tomorrow, instead of watching the road, instead of going to market, she will walk up to the schoolhouse wearing her khaki uniform; swinging her boots by the laces in time to the song only she can hear. Her mother will try to stop her, perhaps; but only with a half of her heart. And when her brothers come home at last, she will tell them: Why did you leave? The Promised Land was always here. Inside me. Inside you. And maybe, in time, she will make them hear this song she hears so clearly; and maybe their children will hear it too, and understand her when she says: If the road doesn’t take you where you want, then you must make your own road—
There are so many gods here in this land of Togo. River gods; road gods; all of them, maybe, false gods. But the real power lies in the human heart; its courage; its resilience. This, too, is the song of the road, and through the voices of children it endures, and grows more powerful every day; sinking its roots deep into the soil, sending out its seeds of change wherever the wind will take them.
Acknowledgements
I owe a debt of gratitude to all the people around the world who have inspired these tales of mine: to children rescued from traffickers; children riding the rapids; actors who took time to chat at Stage Door; random encounters on the Tube; taxi drivers with stories to tell; book-group members in signing queues; elderly ladies with total recall of events that happened sixty years ago. To Twitterers; chocolatiers; people waiting in station cafés; bakers who send me cake through the post; young lovers on park benches. Also to those people who work so hard alongside me, especially Louise Page-Lund, my publicist; Anne Riley, my PA; Mark Richards, who maintains my website; my editor, Marianne Velmans and all my colleagues at Transworld, including: Larry Finlay; Kate Samano; Deborah Adams; Claire Ward; Suzanne Riley; plus all the reps, proofers, copy-editors and booksellers who continue to keep my books on the shelves – and, of course, to you, the readers, whose appetite for stories has kept the dream machine working for so long. And to Kevin and Anouchka, without whom there would be no dream machine at all.
About the Author
Joanne Harris is the author of Chocolat (made into an Oscar-nominated film in 2000, with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp), and ten more bestselling novels. Her work is published in over fifty countries and has sold an estimated 30 million copies worldwide. Born in Barnsley, of an English father and a French mother, she studied Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge and spent fifteen years as a teacher before (somewhat reluctantly) becoming a full-time writer. She lives in Yorkshire with her family, plays bass in a band first formed when she was sixteen, works in a shed in her garden, likes musical theatre and old sci-fi, drinks rather too much caffeine, spends far too much time online and occasionally dreams of faking her own death and going to live in Hawaii.
Also by Joanne Harris
THE EVIL SEED
SLEEP, PALE SISTER
CHOCOLAT
BLACKBERRY WINE
FIVE QUARTERS OF THE ORANGE
COASTLINERS
HOLY FOOLS
JIGS & REELS
GENTLEMEN & PLAYERS
THE LOLLIPOP SHOES
BLUEEYEDBOY
RUNEMARKS
RUNELIGHT
PEACHES FOR MONSIEUR LE CURÉ
With Fran Warde
THE FRENCH KITCHEN: A COOKBOOK
THE FRENCH MARKET:
MORE RECIPES FROM A FRENCH KITCHEN
For more information on Joanne Harris and her books, see her website at www.joanne-harris.co.uk or follow @joannechocolat on Twitter
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A CAT, A HAT AND A PIECE OF STRING
DOUBLEDAY: 9780857521194 (hb)
9780857521200 (tpb)
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448126897
First published in Great Britain
in 2012 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
This collection copyright © Frogspawn Ltd 2012
‘Faith and Hope Fly South’ first app
eared in the PiggybankKids anthology Journey to the Sea, published by Ebury Press, 2005; ‘There’s No Such Place as Bedford Falls’ in the Sunday Telegraph supplement ‘Seven’ on 23 December 2007; ‘Would You Like to Reconnect?’ was broadcast on Radio 4; ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’ appeared in My Weekly magazine on 26 April 2008; ‘Harry Stone and the 24-Hour Church of Elvis’ in the PiggybankKids anthology Mums: A Celebration of Motherhood, published by Ebury Press, 2007; ‘The Ghosts of Christmas Present’ in Harpers & Queen, December 2005; ‘Wildfire in Manhattan’ in Stories – All-New Tales, ed. Neil Garman and Al Sarrantonio, published by Headline Review, 2010; ‘Road Song’ in Plan UK’s anthology Because I’m a Girl, published by Vintage, 2010.
Joanne Harris has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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Joanne Harris, A Cat, a Hat, and a Piece of String
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