I had assumed I would never see him again.
I do not say that sadly. It was only an observation. When you are a boy like me, good things come in small, short bursts, like a coin in a cup. A stool. A smile from a teacher. A plate of rice and a pair of grey eyes. You hold them very tightly, and you don't expect them to come twice.
So when the school bell rang the next morning and Mrs. Anani, our head teacher, stood on the front step with her hands clasped and her face the colour of an uncooked egg, I thought nothing of it.
I was in the middle of the assembly line, third row from the back, with a stomach full of nothing and a head full of rice. I was thinking about the kind of stew that has two kinds of meat in it. I was not thinking about officials.
"Children," said Mrs. Anani, in a thin, trembling, ceremonial voice. "We have a very important visit this morning. Two representatives from the Regional Planning Office, who are here to inspect our school as part of the Wilson Group's county development assessment. They are very senior. They will be observing lessons and facilities. I expect you to be at your best."
A whisper ran down the line.
"Wilson Group?" muttered a boy behind me. "That's the biggest company in the whole country."
"No, that's the second. The first is the government."
"The government doesn't own hotels."
"It owns the hotel of every—"
"Quiet!" hissed Mrs. Anani. She had taken out a handkerchief and was patting her forehead with it. "Straighten your ties. Straighten your ties. Elvis, take your hand out of your pocket."
I stood on tiptoe to see over the heads in front.
Two men were crossing the schoolyard.
One was tall and square and broad-shouldered, in a plain white shirt, with a pair of dark glasses on his forehead and his hands behind his back. The other was thin and young and fidgety, in a worn grey shirt that did not fit him.
I ducked.
* * *
I want to be honest. I did not hide because I was ashamed. I hid because I had spent the whole of the previous night turning the day over in my head, and every time I reached the end of it, I came to the same strange place. The rice. The grey eyes. The way the tall man had gone still when I said my father's name.
Why would a stranger go quiet over a name?
I had no answer. I had only a feeling, a small, cold, curious feeling, like the first drop before a big rain. And I thought: If he sees me, it might start.
"JJ," whispered Danny, at my elbow. He had his tooth-gap whistling very softly. "Why are you on the floor?"
"I dropped something."
"What?"
"My dignity."
"It's not down there. I checked. It's in the bushes." He peered at the two men across the yard. "Do you see their shoes?"
"What about them?"
"Look."
I looked.
They were walking across the gravel in plain brown trousers and plain dark socks. But on their feet, Danny's cousin could have told you at once, were shoes that cost more than our whole street. They were long, smooth, narrow, glossy, in a dark, soft leather that gave back the morning like a pond. They did not make a sound on the gravel. They looked like shoes that were used to being carried.
"Italian," said Danny, with reverent horror.
"How do you know?"
"My uncle has a pair. He only wears them on Easter." He gripped my arm. "JJ, those aren't civil servants. Civil servants buy their shoes at the market."
"Maybe they're lost."
"Maybe they're spies."
"On a primary school?"
"For Elvis's dad." He stared. "Oh, no. Maybe they're here to buy the school."
"Danny."
"It could happen."
"It could not."
"A very rich man could do it."
"What would a rich man want with a school?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Danny. "Chairs?"
* * *
They began their tour with Mrs. Anani's office, then the staff room, then the new water tank, which was still a source of local pride, though it had been leaking since Easter. They visited three classrooms. They looked at the library, which consisted of one shelf and a very old atlas. They were polite and patient and asked many questions, and Mrs. Anani answered every one with a smile like a scar.
I spent most of it behind the water tank.
I would have stayed there all morning. But about an hour before break, Mr. Attah came round the corner, found me crouched among the pipes, and said, in the flat voice of a man who is too busy to ask questions, "Janah. Main hall. Now."
"What for, sir?"
"You are going to be shown to the inspectors."
I stopped breathing.
"Why?"
"Because of the cabinet," said Mr. Attah. He sounded almost angry, and also, I thought, a little proud. "They asked who made the crafts. I told them. I'm afraid it can't be helped."
* * *
The main hall was long and cool and smelled of floor polish. At the far end stood the glass cabinet, a tall old wooden thing with a cracked pane and a brass lock. Behind the glass, on three shelves, sat the entire history of my lateness.
I had not seen it all together before. I had only ever put one thing in at a time, on a Monday, and stepped away. But now, with the morning light slanting through the high windows, I saw it as a stranger would.
There was a little wooden boat, with a mast made from a toothpick and a sail from a handkerchief. There was a well, no bigger than a thimble, with a real bucket on a real string that you could lower. There was a lamp with a paper shade, a pair of tiny shoes, a miniature water-wheel that actually turned, a bridge with a hinge, a windmill, a wheelbarrow with a wheel that rolled. There was a church the size of my hand. There was a market, with stalls.
There were forty-one objects. I knew, because I had counted.
And in front of the cabinet, with his back to me and his hands behind him, stood the tall man in the plain white shirt.
He did not turn round.
"Mr. Attah," he said. His voice was level and mild. "Who made these?"
"Janah Jackson, sir." Mr. Attah cleared his throat. "He's a pupil here. Our most consistent latecomer."
"I see."
"I did not realise, sir, until yesterday, that he made them himself. I thought—" Mr. Attah faltered. "I thought he bought them."
"From where?"
"The market."
"Then the market," said the tall man, "is a very remarkable place."
Somebody laughed. It was Steven, a short, startled yelp, which he turned at once into a cough.
The tall man turned.
He did not look surprised to see me. He did not look as if he were hiding anything. He simply let his eyes rest on me, calm and grey and level, as if I were one more fact he had expected to find in the room.
"Good morning," he said. "JJ, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
"I believe we have met."
I felt every eye in the hall swing toward me. Mrs. Anani's mouth had come open. Mr. Attah looked as if he might faint. At the back of the group, two or three pupils had started to whisper, and I did not need to turn my head to know that one of them was Elvis.
"Yes, sir," I said. "Yesterday. I returned your wallet."
"And I bought you lunch."
"Yes, sir."
"It was very good lunch."
"It was an excellent lunch, sir. I'm told the chicken was a record."
He smiled, a very small one, almost private. Then he turned to the cabinet and put out one big finger and touched, ever so lightly, the glass in front of the tiny stone well.
"Did you make this?" he said.
"Yes, sir."
"How?"
"I used a bottle cap, sir. And three bamboo splinters. And the bucket is a thimble that I—" I stopped. "It isn't important."
"It is," said the tall man, "to me."
I did not know what to say. I stood there in my torn shirt and my bare feet, in the middle of the main hall, and watched a stranger look at my life's work with the careful attention of a man reading a letter from home.
He asked the headmistress to open the cabinet.
She did it with shaking hands. He lifted out the little house, the one I'd handed Mr. Attah only the day before, and he held it in his big, steady palm, and turned it, once, slowly, in the light. He opened the shutter. He lifted the roof. He looked, for a long time, through the tiny window at the tiny table.
Then he said, in a very quiet voice, so quiet that only I could hear it:
"What does it want?"
I frowned. "Sir?"
"The house." He did not look up. "You said something to yourself yesterday, when you gave it to your teacher. I didn't hear it. But I saw your lips. What did you say?"
I blinked.
I had said something. I remembered it, a small, silly, private thing, the kind of habit you pick up when nobody talks to you. I said it every time I made something. I had never told it to anyone, not even Danny.
"I said, stand up properly," I whispered.
"To the house?"
"To all of them. I always say it. Things want to stand. You can feel it. If you put a stick the wrong way, it complains. If you put it right, it just—" I searched for the word. "It settles. Like a person who's found the right chair."
"And you know where the right way is."
"Mostly," I said. "I don't know how. I just do."
The hall had gone quiet. The tall man was still looking at the house in his hand, but I knew he had stopped seeing it. I could see the line of his jaw tighten, very slightly, as though he were holding something back.
"Thank you, JJ," he said at last, and put the house back in the cabinet, very gently, as if it might break.
He turned to Mrs. Anani, who was swaying slightly.
"Madam headmistress," he said, in his ordinary, courteous, official voice. "I have only one recommendation for the inspection report."
"Yes, sir?"
"This cabinet is the best thing in County A. I should like it to be kept, and moved, and lit properly, and put somewhere that every child in this school can see it each morning."
"Of course, sir. Of course."
"And I would like," said the tall man, "the late list in future to be called a reading list."
Nobody understood what he meant. Not Mrs. Anani, not Mr. Attah, not Steven.
I did.
I looked at the floor. I did not trust my face. But for the first time in my entire life, I felt something small and bright and impossible start to grow behind my ribs, a thing with no name and no weight, and so tender I was afraid to look at it directly in case it went away.