‘Yes. I hear they are going to make it the chief song at the funeral this afternoon. It is most fitting that they should do that. After all, when the group was formed, Auntie Araba’s bread song was the first one they turned into a Bosoë song and danced to.’

Yes, it was a familiar song in those days. Indeed it had been heard around here for over twenty years. First in Auntie Araba’s own voice with its delicate thin sweetness that clung like asawa berry on the tongue: which later, much later, had roughened a little. Then all of a sudden, it changed again, completely. Yes, it still was a woman’s voice. But it was deeper and this time, like good honey, was rough and heavy, its sweetness within itself.

‘Are you talking of when Mansa took over the hawking of the bread?’

Yes. That is how, in fact, that whole little quarter came to be known as Bosohwe. Very often, Auntie Araba did not have to carry the bread. The moment the aroma burst out of the oven, children began tugging at their parents’ clothes for pennies and threepences. Certainly, the first batch was nearly always in those penny rows. Dozens of them. Of course, the children always caught the aroma before their mothers did.

‘Were we not among them?’

We were, my sister. We remember that on market days and other holidays, Auntie Araba’s ovenside became a little market-place all by itself. And then there was Auntie Araba herself. She always was a beautiful woman. Even three months ago when they were saying that all her life was gone, I thought she looked better than some of us who claim to be in our prime. If she was a young woman at this time when they are selling beauty to our big men in the towns, she would have made something for herself.

‘Though it is a crying shame that young girls should be doing that. As for our big men! Hmm, let me shut my trouble-seeking mouth up. But our big men are something else too. You know, indeed, these our educated big men have never been up to much good.’

Like you know, my sister. After all, was it not a lawyer-or-a-doctor-or-something-like-that who was at the bottom of all Auntie Araba’s troubles?

I did not know that, my sister.

Yes, my sister. One speaks of it only in whispers. Let me turn my head and look behind me. . . . And don’t go standing in the river telling people. Or if you do, you better not say that you heard it from me.

‘How could I do that? Am I a baby?’