From Africa: New Francophone Stories

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Author: Adele King

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From Africa

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From Africa n e w f ra n c o p h o n e st o ri es e d i t e d by a d e l e k i n g [-3], (3)

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University of Nebraska Press lincoln and london

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Publication of this book was assisted by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Cet ouvrage, publié dans le cadre d’un programme d’aide à la publication, bénéficie du soutien du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères et du Service Culturel de l’Ambassade de France aux États-Unis. This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support

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from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States. © 2004 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States

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of America ⬁ 䡬

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data From Africa: new francophone stories / edited by Adele King. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. isbn 0-8032-2758-2 (cloth: alk. paper) — isbn 0-8032-7810-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Short stories, African (French) — Translations into English. I. King, Adele. pq3985.5.e5f76 2004 843'.0108096—dc22 2003053347

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For Bruce King and in memory of Nicole King

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Contents Introduction

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Adele King pa r t 1 . n e w m y t h s A Woman and a Half

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Abdourahman A. Waberi The Legend of Abla Pokou, Queen of the Baoulé People

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Véronique Tadjo

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A Fistful of Groundnuts

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Tierno Monénembo My Father’s Lamp

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Nimrod pa r t 3 . m o d e r n p e r s p e c t i v e s The Spider’s Fart

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Kangni Alem Babyface

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Koffi Kwahulé The Labors of Ariana Caya Makhélé

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contents

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pa r t 4. p o l i t i c s The Ballad of a Shipwreck Michèle Rakotoson

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Fahavalo Jean-Luc Raharimanana

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Our Neighborhood Fool Patrice Nganang

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A Hunting Scene as Observed by a Sentimental Photographer Kossi Efoui Dead Girl Walking Benjamin Sehene

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The Milka Cow Bessora

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Bibliographical Essay

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Contributors

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Translators

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Source Acknowledgments

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Bessombè: Between Homeland and Exile Nathalie Etoké

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adele king

Introduction

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Lines: 0 to 29 Before there was a written literature in French West Africa there were oral tales in indigenous languages. After colonization, African authors often wrote down tales from their cultures, which have been published in Africa and in France for many years. Tales continue to be an important genre of African literature and sell well in Europe. They frequently teach a moral lesson and usually involve an element of the supernatural. They normally are precolonial in theme, describing life in traditional society before the coming of outside influences. Among the predecessors of contemporary short-story writers is Birago Diop, whose Tales of Amadou Koumba, while often literary transcriptions of folktales, can be seen as within the tradition of the short story broadly defined. Whereas early African short stories were often influenced by the oral tale, modern stories are usually realistic, although occasionally the supernatural, or at least characters who believe in the supernatural, can be found. Political or social themes dominate; short stories are about contemporary society. At first authors often wrote for a metropolitan audience and explained to these readers the customs of African societies. Later stories contained criticism, sometimes of traditional Africa, increasingly of colonialism. After independence, writers wrote about their disillusion as independence failed to bring ix

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Introduction

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democracy and economic progress to many countries. In the generations after Birago Diop, authors perhaps better known for their novels—such as Henri Lopes, Bernard Dadié, and Sembène Ousmane—wrote stories, often with political themes and with little relation to folktales. 1 The style and perspectives of African literature have gradually changed. The focus of stories has changed from “we” to “me”; the main character is an individual, not a representative of his or her society. Attacks on either colonialism or neocolonialism are less prevalent than in the 1950s and 1960s. When political themes dominate, it is usually the postcolonial government that is criticized. Increasingly writers like to pun, play with form, or make use of self-reflecting fiction techniques. Negritude is no longer discussed, since it is not possible to speak of African literature as if it represented a single-voiced historical moment responding to colonialism or imperialism. Putting together all writers whose origins were African, including black Americans and West Indians, as Lilyan Kesteloot did in her early study La littérature négro-africaine (1960), is no longer seen as a useful grouping. Even the concept of “African” literature has been challenged. The authors in this anthology have differing views of how to classify what they write. Abdourahman A. Waberi has challenged the idea of “African” writing, stating that he is a writer first and only secondarily African. Kossi Efoui has expressed a similar view. 2 Koffi Kwahulé has said, “We cannot explain the work of a writer by his or her origins, but at the same time it is difficult in the case of African writers to dissociate them from their origins. For we have a particular history and a particular relationship to culture since we express ourselves within another culture.” He added that like many of his contemporaries he was an exile in Africa as well as in France because of his dual culture. 3 According to Nimrod, the label “African literature,” like the label “Latin American literature,” is a result of colonization. It is not yet possible, however, to speak of national African literatures, for these literatures are still too young. To have national literatures, Nimrod adds, they would need to be read in the country. (He realizes almost no one in Chad will read his work.) 4 The short story is a popular form in Africa, perhaps because it is closer to traditional African oral literature than is the novel. Stories are often used for x

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Introduction

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school textbooks. In some countries, such as Madagascar, many stories are broadcast on the radio, thus reaching a larger, sometimes semiliterate audience. Economic conditions, however, have made publication of literature in most of Africa difficult. In spite of this, several publishers now exist, and a new system of distribution ensures that more books published in Africa will be available in Europe. 5 Among short-story writers popular in Africa, but less known in Europe or America, is Isaïe Biton Koulibaly, who has published many volumes of short stories, popular fiction aimed at a large market. One of his volumes, Ah! Les femmes (1987) was in its fourth edition by 1995 and had sold more than fifteen thousand copies. This is a remarkable achievement since, as one African critic has said, “for the vast majority of our populations, books are not a priority and literary creation is often considered a futile occupation.” 6 Koulibaly’s stories have a simple style and popular themes. Like the folktale, they often convey a moral message. They differ considerably in tone and style from the stories in this anthology. This collection is among the first anthologies of French African short stories in translation and the first to focus on writers who live abroad. 7 The writers whose stories appear here represent several recent generations; their views are formed by their early experiences in Africa, tempered by years spent as immigrants to Europe, often for education or a career, but in some cases at least partly as a result of political exile. While the birth dates of these authors range from 1947 to 1977, most were born in the 1950s and 1960s; all have lived in Europe for a large part of their adult lives. They are part of a diaspora, in a contemporary world where the immigrant is a central figure of modern life and for many people there are no familiar codes. Most of the writers represented in this anthology realize that they write primarily for the European market, since the economic situation in much of Africa makes books published in France too expensive. Many are also skeptical about the possibility of writing for an international “francophone” market. The concept of francophony is somewhat nebulous and does not result in a large number of sales. Often the French government’s support of francophony is seen as a new form of neocolonialism. One author, Benjamin Sehene, refers to it as “Franco-phony.” He thinks that “French” is not a language but an ideology. xi

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Introduction

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The French market for short stories is limited. One reason is that, as I was told several times during talks with publishers in France and with writers, “the French don’t read short stories.” The form has not been as being as important in the development of writing in French as the novel, the play, or even the essay. Thinking of French writers known for their stories, contemporary writers cite Maupassant and Flaubert. Writers represented in this anthology, when asked what short-story writers they read, cited few French writers beyond these two. Rather, they mentioned Katherine Mansfield, Heinrich Böll, Jorge Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, Dylan Thomas, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Raymond Carver, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Stefan Zweig. A few writers mentioned other Africans—Bessie Head, Ben Okri, Tchicaya U Tam’si, Abdourahman A. Waberi, Jean-Luc Raharimanana. Though interest in the short-story form may be much more evident in Africa, from the standpoint of writers represented here, who live abroad, publishing in France is still the goal. But collections of African short stories, either anthologies or the work of single authors, are relatively rare in France. Among periodicals, the few that have published writers of African origin often specialize in the Third World. Since 1947 there has been Présence Africaine; more recent magazines include La Revue Noire, Nouvelles Congolaises, and Amina. Preuves, which did not specialize in Africa, established a prize for an African short story in 1963. (The magazine ceased publication in 1975.) Among earlier magazines aimed at the African market were ParisDakar and Bingo, which had a competition for the best story of the month. From 1973 to 1993 Radio France Internationale, with support from twenty-six national radio stations, organized a competition and each year published a volume of the best short stories by francophone authors. Prizes were given in three categories: writers from countries where French was not a language, from countries where it was an official language, and from countries where it was a language normally used. After 1991 there was a prize of ten thousand francs. Each year two candidates who were under twenty years old were invited to France. Two writers represented in this anthology, Kossi Efoui and Jean-Luc Raharimanana, came to France through a Radio France competition. Caya Makhélé’s story “The Labors of Ariana” won the Radio France Internationale prize for a previously unpublished story in 1996. xii

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Introduction

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Le Serpent à Plumes, now a major publisher of French and foreign fiction, began as a magazine devoted to short fiction. The editor of Serpent à Plumes, Pierre Astier, commented later that there was a dearth of good stories by French writers, which led him to his choice of foreign and francophone authors. The magazine was published from autumn 1988 to spring 1996. It was discontinued, primarily for financial reasons, in spite of having produced a number of excellent issues and published many distinguished writers, both well known and almost unknown until they appeared in the magazine. Africa was the theme of issue 10 in 1991, where a story by Tierno Monénembo, another author included here, was published. Other authors from this anthology who appeared in this prestigious magazine include Abdourahman A. Waberi and Jean-Luc Raharimanana. More recently the group Étonnants Voyageurs, which has organized meetings of writers in various cities, including Sarajevo and Dublin, met in Bamako in Mali, and it published a collection of stories from this meeting. Half of the eighteen writers represented live in Africa and half live abroad. Michel Le Bris, who edited the collection Nouvelles voix d’Afrique, commented that writing from the “margins” was now enriching French literature. Despite the lack of a large literary market for the short story in France, several of the authors represented here have been primarily writers of short fiction. Although he has published in other genres, Jean-Luc Raharimanana is best known for his stories. Abdourahman A. Waberi says, “I am a shortstory writer and poet. I believe more in rapid strokes and in concision, not seven-hundred-page novels with well-depicted characters.” 8 While Kangni Alem also writes plays and has published his first novel, he says he has chosen the story form deliberately for its power to compress. “The story is the form par excellence for a poetic apnea: holding your breath as long as possible, then letting it go, just at the moment when you are about to digress, thus suffocating. My master in this is Roald Dahl.” Véronique Tadjo is a poet and novelist but has said that “the short story is the literary genre that manages to bind together poetry and prose. Because of its condensed form—you have to tell the story in very few words—it is suited to poetic prose. I don’t like to tell the reader everything. I don’t like giving explanations for everything that happens in the story. I prefer to suggest rather xiii

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than to state, giving the reader room for interpretation. What I like about the short story is that it is autonomous, self-contained.” Benjamin Sehene adds, “The short story is the condensation of all the other literary genres.” Authors who have stories here but are better known for their work in other genres include the dramatists Koffi Kwahulé and Caya Makhélé. Nimrod is a poet; Tierno Monénembo is a novelist, as is Bessora. Michèle Rakotoson and Kossi Efoui write both plays and novels. Most of the stories in this anthology were written for publication either in magazines or as parts of collections of stories. Two, those by Bessora and Etoke, were written especially for this anthology. Nganang’s story was published in German. Sehene’s story was previously unpublished. One became part of a novel. Kossi Efoui’s story was written for a project of the Bibliothèque Elsa Triolet at Bobigny, “Carte blanche pour lettres noires” in 1999. (The library wanted to reach the large population of African origin in Bobigny and to go beyond folktales.) Efoui then incorporated this story into his novel La fabrique des cérémonies. Stories in this collection are organized by themes. While the writers live outside Africa, most still set their stories in their native countries. The first two stories here are myths, either new or rewritten. Abdourahman A. Waberi, whose “A Woman and a Half ” opens this anthology, began writing, he has said, to describe his country accurately, to counter the exotic images of Djibouti in literature by French writers. His Djibouti, described realistically, is a country where a harsh physical landscape produces hard, often cruel men. “A Woman and a Half,” set in a traditional Djiboutian society, includes a woman who fights for freedom and a “feminist” myth, invented by Waberi. Waberi has commented that “it is women who keep Africa standing.” 9 Unlike Waberi’s invention of a myth, Véronique Tadjo’s “The Legend of Abla Pokou, Queen of the Baoulé People” is based more directly on a legend of the Baoulé ethnic group in Côte d’Ivoire (where she grew up). Tadjo has said that she changed the myth a bit, adding her own ending and the recurrent theme of the baby being thrown into the water. “I was interested in the idea of sacrifice and modernized the theme.” Several stories are memories of childhood, a common topic for writers in exile. Tierno Monénembo’s story “A Fistful of Groundnuts” is a gentle xiv

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picture in its evocation of childhood, before the era of Sékou Touré and the tyranny that caused Monénembo to go into exile. Similarly, Nimrod describes a peaceful childhood in Chad, before the civil war in which he was injured. “My Father’s Lamp” is the work of a poet, in which images and colors are of primary importance. Increasingly, stories concern modern Africa or the relation of fragments of traditional African culture to modern life. Kangni Alem’s “The Spider’s Fart” is a story of life in modern Togo, where soccer is perversely mixed with traditional superstitions. A “spider’s fart” refers to the fermentation and thickening of a sauce overnight. In certain tales it has magical virtues. Alem treats such beliefs with detached irony. The stories of both Koffi Kwahulé and Caya Makhélé concern the relations between men and women in modern Africa and are based on European rather than African myths. Koffi Kwahulé’s story was written for Le marchand de fables est repassé, a book of contemporary rewritings of fables by a group of francophone authors from the Caribbean, Belgium, Canada, and Africa. “Babyface” is his version of La Fontaine’s “The Crow and the Fox.” Caya Makhélé’s “Labors of Ariana,” a monologue by Ariana, was later made into a play. Although the story seems to take place in Africa, the play, with references to the French fnac stores and to a Portuguese maid, might be set in France. Makhélé said, “I don’t write to prove my ‘Africanity.”’ He has set one of his plays in a “no-man’sland.” Perhaps because of its history, politics have been a particularly important theme in writing from Madagascar. The island was subject to violent repression by the French after an aborted revolution in 1947. Jean-Luc Raharimanana’s “Fahavalo” returns to this rebellion, a subject of much of his work so far. Since independence in 1960, there have often been corrupt dictatorships in the island. In “The Ballad of a Shipwreck” Michèle Rakotoson writes of the suffering of victims of a corrupt and ineffective government in the 1980s. She has commented that all her life has been influenced by politics and that the situation described in her story continues today. Patrice Nganang’s “Our Neighborhood Fool” is also based on a rebellion, not against a colonial power but against a corrupt Cameroonian dictatorship. In Kossi Efoui’s “A Hunting Scene as Observed by a Sentimental Photographer,” the photographer goes with a tour group looking xv

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for excitement and violence to an unnamed country that resembles Togo. Nganang and Efoui, in different styles, express their disillusion with postindependence West Africa. Born in Rwanda, an exile with his family in Uganda after earlier massacres of the Tutsi, Benjamin Sehene returned to his native country after the 1994 genocide. His story “Dead Girl Walking” is based partly on his own experience. He now lives in Paris. Two stories are set outside Africa. Nathalie Etoké says that the central character of her story “Besoumbè” is without a name or a personal history because “his existence is marked by his uncertainty about what will happen tomorrow.” He represents “the voice of any young African exiled in France for economic reasons, who has an ambivalent relationship with both his own country and France.” Bessora’s story, by contrast, leaves politics aside for a fantasy voyage of “The Milka Cow.” With a Gabonese father and a Swiss mother, Bessora says she has learned many kinds of French. She loves to play with language and invents words for her story. The “Milka Cow” refers to the Swiss chocolate bar with a light purple wrapper, now available in many countries.

Notes

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1. Birago Diop’s work includes Les contes d’Amadou Kouba (Paris: Fasquelle, 1947; Présence Africaine, 1960); Nouveaux contes d’Amadou Koumba (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1958); and Contes et lavanes (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1963). A selection of these tales is available in English translation as Tales of Amadou Koumba, trans. Dorothy S. Blair (London: Oxford University Press, 1966). Other single-author volumes of stories are listed in the bibliography. 2. Kossi Efoui, in Boniface Mongo-Mboussa, Désir d’Afrique (Paris: Gallimard, 2002). 3. Round-table discussion, “Africanity and Contemporary Creation,” University of Rennes 2, January 13, 1999. 4. The comments from writers are from my interviews and from letters and e-mail messages to me. 5. Nouvelles Éditions Africaines in Dakar, Nouvelles Éditions Ivoiriennes in Abidjan, cle (Centre de Littérature Évangelique) in Yaoundé, Éditions Haho in Togo,

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Éditions du Flamboyant, Éditions Ruisseaux d’Afrique and Éditions des Diasporas in Benin, and Le Figuier and Éditions Jamana in Mali. A Web site has been developed to list the catalogs of most of these publishers (www.afrilivres.com). 6. Eyram S. K. Amela, “La nouvelle africaine noire francophone: Genèse et spécificités,” Diplôme d’Études Approfondies, Université de Paris IV, 1999, p. 60. 7. The bibliographical essay lists selected volumes of French African stories in French and anthologies in English that contain some stories translated from French. 8. Tirthankar Chanda, “Entretien avec Abdourahman A. Waberi,” Notre Librairie 135 (September—December 1998): 64. 9. Chanda, “Entretien,” p. 65

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From Africa

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part 1

New Myths

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abdourahman a. waberi

A Woman and a Half Our women are beautiful; we must show them. Does one veil roses? Kateb Yacine

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Lines: 19 to 4 Marwo, young and weary of life in the shantytown, is running away from a large remnant of humanity living with sewage and rustic boredom. Marwo flees from a father who humiliates her by wanting to marry her off to a toothless old man. She flees from the hatefulness of this old goat. She runs from the assaults of Chireh, her older brother, henchman of the political police, conquistador of raw violence, who takes pleasure in the marcescent bodies of victims and knows the art of torture. Marwo is running from the complicity of her father with his serene senility, sure of his rights, and from her brother, ruler and apish satyr. She escapes from the indifference of the shantytown, from the mothers who call upon her to bow down in the face of patriarchal will. She flees from a destiny as bitter as wormwood.

The author notes that the title, “Une femme et demie,” refers to a Somalian proverb: “When one wants to denote a man’s worthiness, courage, generosity, etc., one says he is a man and a half. And I wanted to turn this expression around and make a feminist equivalent.”

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waberi

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She arose before daybreak, well before the muezzin had blown his mezzo saxophone and while the light was still germinating in the workings of the night. This dawn is full of hope. Where to go? She fidgets with impatience. “I’m going to go to the old askari,” 1 she says to herself while getting ready for this nocturnal encounter. I leave the broken shantytown as it splits apart. I leave the dumping ground of life’s scraps, of shadowy silhouettes, the mob of killers coughing over bone-skinny prostitutes, the tribe of dozing people who litter garbage-can alleys. I leave the cool peace of the night staggering away as the sun advances. I leave the night with its massive dark roots as daylight punches through it. To whom will I go? To seek refuge with Haybé, the old askari, my uncle living in the bush, always searching for the full meaning of words. I will look for a new life, as one aborted from life, and separate the waters of my freedom. Haybé will take me under his wing, cherish and bless me like a newborn. Haybé, a silent eagle, who symbolizes the rock-hard meaning of life, along with the beauty of a rediscovered faith, Haybé, a sorcerer with lively speech. Marwo is a tall woman, with firm, angular hips and swelling bosom; she is an excellent walker, a marathoner from before Olympia. She crossed the desert, then the shriveled oasis, then the savannah with its teeming anthills. She traveled some of the way with smugglers, camel drivers who have been making these trips for centuries, Sindbads of the sand with winged soles, travelers who wear out even the earth, the mirages, and the stars. Horizon seekers. Straight-backed silhouettes like an I, with their proud, loose-jointed camels foaming at the mouth. And the hodgepodge of merchandise: rolls of cloth, bars of salt, sticks of incense, packages of food, tobacco, boxes of ammunition. . . . 1. Askari: soldier of the colonial armies in East Africa.

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They stopped to eat under a tree, an acacia, a tree for the poor. They swallowed some steamed rice and a handful of dates. One incessant talker was a chain smoker and annoyed Marwo with his stock of questions: “Town flower, where are you going like that?” She responded with silence. “Ebony eyes, the bush is not made for people like you. You will leave bits of your flesh here, shreds of cloth, I swear it as a camel driver! It will harden your tender heart. Before the first rains of Jilal, 2 you will return to the tinseltown people, I swear it as a camel driver!” “I did well to leave the swarming flies.” She wanted to add that she had also done well to leave her detestable father, but she refrained from speaking because she knew the camel driver could denounce her without the slightest trace of remorse. For a pack of cigarettes, he would surely take her back, feet and wrists bound, into the den of her father. He would not hesitate a single second, for he was convinced of the male birthright that came with his balls. For a camel, he would kill her without batting an eyelash. For the camel is everything. Everything that is not of the herd is elsewhere, the faraway unknown, the limbo of nothingness. The camel is the gold standard, the animal with a thousand names, the heart of life and the seat of taboos. The female camel is currency, and the price for killing a woman is fifty head of livestock, that is, half as much as for a male! Would Marwo begin a nomadic life in contrast to her stagnant existence in the rubble of the shantytown? Haybé smiles perceptibly, offering Marwo the sight of his missing teeth and receding gums. Haybé had formulated an original hypothesis that would explain the inequality of the sexes in yesterday’s and today’s society. According to Haybé,

2. Jilal: rainy season.

5

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one must go back to the original myth and to what he calls “the first negotiation.” “What is it about, uncle?” asks Marwo, who can’t sit still, like the lid of a saucepan on the fire. “Such is the myth to which I have added my own little twist: besides, my hypothesis makes good sense. . . . Voilà: when waaq, the preIslamic god of the Somalis, our great creator, gave the Ancestor the camel, animal of life in the desert, waaq asked the Ancestor to sacrifice to him whatever he considered most dear. And the ancestor responded solemnly: ‘I will sacrifice to you an eldest son every seven moons.’ “And waaq agreed and disappeared. “Upon returning to the encampment, the Ancestor gathered together the assembly of elders under the tutelary tree and informed the conclave of the pact with waaq. But the meeting was stormy and went on for eight days and as many nights. Not everyone agreed to the terms, and of course there were no women among the elders. “Can you guess what decision they came to, my little Marwo?” “I don’t know; you’re the one who tells stories in such detail, aren’t you?” “The men in their folly had taken the risk of lying to waaq, and instead of offering in sacrifice the eldest son of the Ancestor, they gave up the youngest daughter, a child one would have thought a figurine, with her head no bigger than a thumb.” “I haven’t heard any of this before today.” “That doesn’t surprise me at all; for a long time now, men have sealed the female openings: mouth and sex sewn shut. However, without their mothers, daughters, or wives, men are dwarf palm trees in a dying oasis; men are clouds of dust while women are the humus of the earth.” Marwo knows her uncle, with his quest for the right word, his taste for parables, with the excellence of a moral strictness that is sometimes strangely pagan. Doesn’t Haybé live by his fancy, with the beggarwoman of nameless streets? 6

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A Woman and a Half

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She had fled the broken people of the shantytown where her father’s authority reigns along with her brother’s army rabble. She had chosen the reverse of the bedouins’ path, for whom the city’s appeal was like that of a precious gem. She had left the flatness of the shantytown. She had found refuge with her uncle, purveyor of meaning, a master who clears the way — as he says — for the silk-spun future of children to come. translated by cynthia hahn

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véronique tadjo

The Legend of Abla Pokou, Queen of the Baoulé People

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Lines: 11 According to legend, Queen Pokou had to sacrifice her child to save her people. Sacrifice her child to save her people. The child had to die. The woman tore out her own insides, closed her belly back up again, wiped out her maternal difference, and hardened her heart for good. She became the queen of a great people but a beggar of that strongest of loves. The waters parted, it is said. After they had swallowed up the child, tossed it to and fro, brutalized and devoured it, they parted so that the column of refugees could continue its exodus. That’s how the queen’s exile began. An exile to the deepest part of her broken, shattered soul. She was empty, filled with the void left by the child, even as everything still reminded her of that birth. The stretch marks on her belly, grotesque welts where the skin had cracked, a cloth pulled too tight. And her breasts, swollen with milk, that now weighed too heavy under her regal robe. She knew she would carry this absence with her from that day forward to the very end: nothing, not power, not honors, could ever erase it. 8

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Abla Pokou

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“Ba-ou-lé”: “The child is dead!” The name of a kingdom built upon the death of a child. The childking whose body, in the end, rose up to the surface, a ripe fruit exploded, disfigured by the weight of the water. Or maybe it was his limbs that the men and women discovered, tossed up on the shore after the crocodiles and crabs had had their feast. The prince whose blood turned the waters red to save the future from certain disaster. And the people, what did they say? “Ba-ou-lé”: “The child is dead!” To what god did they make such a sacrifice? To what divinity did [9], (9) they offer up the death of a child? The oracles had stood before the barrier of water that blocked their advance. They had gathered together Lines: 134 to and spoken at length, observing the signs and trying to understand the ——— direction destiny was taking. 14.0pt PgV The night was powerful. The moon, buried under the vault of the ——— sky, made the darkness weigh all the heavier on the shoulders of the Normal Page people, who were on their knees and trembling with fear. Behind them, * PgEnds: Eject deep in the forest, the enemy army advanced, burning, pillaging, and destroying everything in its path. [9], (9) The queen held her child in her arms, pulling him close against her chest, murmuring sweet words and humming little melodies to calm the pain of such a long march. When they saw that queen, weaker and more fragile than the most ordinary of women, didn’t the oracles want to show the impatient and cruel gods that they too knew how to speak their language? When the dull light of the morning had settled in, they went to Abla Pokou to inform her of the unthinkable, the unimaginable cruelty of their decision. And the queen let out a long wail that woke the sun with a start and brought down an intense heat upon them. And when she looked at her son, curled up in his bed of fresh grasses, she understood that she was condemned. It didn’t matter how many 9

tadjo

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days, moons, or seasons would come, she would remain shut away in her immense solitude, walled up for the rest of her life. But is the story true? Did the waters of the Comoé River open to let the fleeing people pass through? Legend says their flight was slow and exhausting. The trees in the forest turned into monstrous genies who grabbed the legs of those who were fleeing and, with their vines, strangled the most vulnerable among them. From all sides, beasts came out of their lairs to circle around them, smelling their fear and the blood of the wounded, which stained the rich humus of the forest. Elephants made the ground tremble with their mass and shook their ears, loud claps in the wind, with their trunks held high. Snakes followed noiselessly on the carpet of dead leaves, their skin shining with deadly glimmers. Monkeys snickered as they passed by. The air was damp, the atmosphere suffocating. The men’s foreheads burned, dripping with sweat. The children were feverish with malaria, the women’s backs broken by suffering. Everything combined to bring about their loss. A vanquished people fleeing a fratricidal war that nothing could stop. Did the waters really open to let the people pass through? Abla Pokou, a beauty among the beautiful with her black and velvety skin, her eyes sweet like indigo, and the feline rhythm of her hips. Abla Pokou, princess of Koumassi, niece of Osséi Toutou, the powerful and awesome king of the Ashanti, the great conqueror, master of gold and kola. Daughter of Nyakou Kosiamoa and sister of Dakon, who succeeded Opokou Waré. Dakon, the ill-fated monarch who was assassinated, whose mother was stabbed, the royal family massacred, and whose whole court was destroyed. Abla Pokou, miraculously spared so that she could lead the faithful in a painful exodus across the forest. Abla Pokou, smiled upon by destiny; who ought to have lived until the end of her days, adorned with the jewels and honor due her rank. 10

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Abla Pokou

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Now she knew the smell of death, that stench of earth and blood, of the mixture of liquids and rotting flesh. She had seen the cadavers strewn on the palace floor: familiar faces disfigured by their death throes; the people she loved, destroyed. And in her hiding place she had cried, hearing the din of weapons and the dull thud of falling bodies. The cries, groans, and pleading. Last words stamped out in the dust. Children crying for their raped and disemboweled mothers. Fire everywhere, burning, lighting up the sky, turning bodies into coals. The smoke rose, charged with violence. Soldiers — drunk with hatred and lust, intoxicated by the sight of gold and precious objects — spread terror and horror. In the wee hours of the morning, in the white mourning of the day, piles of bodies rose up in the four corners of the vanquished kingdom. Abla Pokou, the fallen queen, crept out of her hiding place like a solitary thief. She set about her duty, hastily organizing the flight of the faithful, who were afraid, worn out, wounded and close to despair, but still determined to live. In the desert of their defeat, with their bodies covered in ashes and their faces painted white, that chalky color of mourning and suffering, wearing nothing but rags, they advanced in one long unbroken column. Abla Pokou’s feet trudged on in the dust. Abla Pokou had survived by the force of her memory alone. Images of a carefree and golden childhood, when she ran free as a gazelle, when it seemed to her that she was neither girl nor boy nor, above all, princess. Alas, time had proved to her that she was a woman, mother-to-be, heiress of a royal line. The power of her belly was greater than that of the most fearsome warrior. From her flesh would come a king who would inherit the golden throne, the gift given to the Ashanti kingdom by the gods. Abla Pokou, keeper of the bloodline, the one chosen for an exceptional fate. Abla Pokou, mighty with the blessing of the ancestors. Abla Pokou, who had one day been presented to the sacred totems. 11

[11], (11)



tadjo

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Abla Pokou, who had grown into a true beauty. Abla Pokou, admired for her intelligence. Abla Pokou, who knew how to honor the dead and to find the right words to please them. Abla Pokou, whose courage helped her to hold her head high in the most difficult of times. The child was her most precious belonging. The child meant that the specter of a solitary death was kept at bay and that someone would preside at her final parting. She would not return to the earth like some wet and cast-off wood. The memory of the ancestors would not be profaned. The whole dynasty would not come to an end. Pokou, straight as a baobab, with a forehead so proud, so humble. Pokou, the woman with a will of iron and steel, looked at the child she held in her arms. She thought of the man, his father, the warrior who had freed her from the anguish of the barren woman. She had loved him with a love that seemed impossible after all the unions that had remained childless and withered away. She remembered still the awakening of her body, the bliss of her senses, the honey he had made run in her veins, and the creamy milk that wet the insides of her thighs. Abla Pokou, the seductress, in love like a little girl as she rounded the corner of womanhood! She looked at the infant prince, the miraculous son, the love child. Overwhelmed, her soul began to spin, upside down and around in the troubled sky, and then to rebel, crashing against the tall trees of the forest and collapsing, only finally to bound up again and reach that place where no hope exists and where pain, once again, becomes a despotic master. So she lifted the baby toward the sky to present him to the gods. Then, giving them her greatest gift, she threw him into the turbulent waters of the river. 12

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Abla Pokou

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She saw the little body sink deeper as whirlpools wrapped all around him. Suddenly the surface of the river became quite calm, so still that one would have said it was a pool of oil in the reddening dawn. From the mouth of the queen herself came the words of the legend that, for generation upon generation, the griots would sing and the mothers pass along to their children so they could tell it anew. “Ba-ou-lé”: “The child is dead!” The people got down on their knees and sang: Abla Pokou, O mother sublime Your strength is our victory Your strength wipes away our fears Abla Pokou, O mother sublime The waves have parted To let us pass through Our enemies tremble with rage While we tremble with joy Abla Pokou, O mother sublime You will found a powerful kingdom! But is the legend true? Did the waters really part so that the fleeing people could pass? Why is it that women must always send their sons off? Why isn’t their love strong enough to stop war and keep death at bay? Maybe it was just another ritual sacrifice, an example of that witchcraft so common in the old Akan kingdom? Human sacrifices to calm the anger of the gods, to ask for the impossible or to ensure a good harvest. Abla Pokou remembered the cruelty of their customs. Adulterous women were beheaded, and those who were insolent, severely punished. The wives of the deceased king were buried with him to keep him company in the other world. His concubines, slaves, and porters too. 13

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And his enemies. Whether as prisoners offered in sacrifice or as skulls used to decorate the monarch’s secret abode. Abla Pokou’s life was made up of violence and sweetness. Cruelty and love. Before the barrier of the waters, Pokou, who had been so fulfilled as a mother, looked at her child one last time. She kissed him softly and then, with her arms stretched out, she lifted him over her head and threw him into the river. She wanted to die too, to let herself be swallowed up, to go to the end of her love and her pain. Her heart beat like a drum, sounding out wails of despair that no one heard. She — the ambitious one, Pokou of the queenly stature, the fertile, courageous one — she would have abandoned her kingdom for just one second more of her child’s love. And the power offered up to her then was too heavy for her fallen soul to bear. Yes, this fratricidal war was damned, a thousand times damned. How had they ever come to this? How had a fight over succession turned into a long exodus across the country, through the forest in that steamy heat, amid the endless buzzing of insects? Abla Pokou saw in her mind the death of her beloved, the warrior, father of her child. The river blocked their path, making all hope of survival impossible. River with a fatal bite, frenzied currents, waters of untamable fury: the anger of the gods that only a great sacrifice could calm. Abla Pokou walked to the river’s edge and held up her child’s body. Then she stretched out her arms and let him fall into the waters. “Ba-ou-lé”: “The child is dead!” And the waves suddenly went calm. Hippos surfaced. Side by side they formed an immense bridge from one shore to the other, a living bridge that the people crossed, safe and sound. When Abla Pokou arrived in the new land, with her heart burst in her chest and her spirit paralyzed by the irreparableness of her sacrifice, all the people, crying, bowed down at her feet. And behind them, the waters came together again forever as the river returned to its fury. 14

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Abla Pokou

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The wise men, the diviners, the oracles raised their heads. And in a solemn voice one of them said, “Ba-ou-lé: The child is dead! We shall evermore be called the Baoulé in memory of your sacrifice. We will sing of your strength. We will never forget that you offered up the very flesh of your flesh to found our kingdom.” But now that the waters had closed over the child, Abla Pokou herself fell to her knees. She wanted to go no farther. She cried out: “No kingdom is worth the sacrifice of a child!” She wept. Finally she threw herself on the ground and began rolling left and right, her head in her hands. All of a sudden she tore off her robe, revealing her blinding nudity. She tore at her hair, scratched her skin. Blood beaded up and [15], (15) mixed with sweat and earth. Unable to move, the people watched her. After a long while, she slowly got up. Then, suddenly moved by a Lines: 286 to great force, she ran toward the river and, before anyone could hold her ——— back, dived into the tumultuous waves. * 56.0pt PgV The horrified people knew then that they had lost their queen for the ——— love of a child. Normal Page Abla Pokou dived into the river’s water, an extraordinary dive that * PgEnds: PageB took her straight to the bottom. Looking for her son she swam, and when she saw his little body floating with the current, she took him in [15], (15) her arms and held him tight. She swam to the river’s mouth and out to join the high sea. Days, months, and years later, she succeeded in conquering a kingdom even greater than the one she had been promised: now, half woman, half fish, she is the unchallenged goddess of the underwater universe, mother of the waters, queen of the oceans. The belly of the sea is a vast womb. translated by amy reid

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part 2

Nostalgia for Childhood


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tierno monénembo

A Fistful of Groundnuts The child without memory will never have solid crap. Peuhl proverb

[19], (3) In vain do I crisscross cities, fade into the dark night; the hut is always tracking me, austere and disheveled in its dress of rusty straw, like an old ghost worn down by resentment. . . . That’s good; for the first time in a quarter century, I’m going to open my eyes, look straight at it, and reply, “Yes, it’s really me.” No, I’m not going to try to sidestep the issue or try to run away as in the past. I must lower my guard, learn again how to go toward it, without omitting the misfortune, or repressing anything. Now I know I’m destined for this — in spite of the ravages of time, destined to be ensnared by it again like the ill-favored Idja Bomboli, who ran for seven years to elude her jailers and was caught by the nose as soon as, unwitting, she turned around to look. Behind, over there, the hut! It’s surly, unsettling, domineering, and spectral, and not even as plump as I used to think. Actually more like a strange play of lights and shadows that makes the islands swirl and stuns the memory. I can clearly see the bamboo fence and the low wall of banco 1 hurriedly whitewashed with lime, but no matter what I do, they are crowded in between an anthill from the Sahel and a long Arizona 1. Banco: a material made from a type of clay and used to build walls.

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mon e´ nembo

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canyon. Farther away is the white line of fog that moves forward and dissolves everything: the quetzals and the dreams, the hammadas 2 of the Chech 3 as well as the ancient screes of the Forez. 4 The first true image — perhaps even the last one — the only one in any case that is not affected by the chaos, that defies the giddiness so that it appears to me like a new birth, is of me, handsome and warm. Me, as a young man, having just reached the age of rebellion, the age when we think our legs are two royal scepters. I’m seated on the okoume wood stool. In front of me, Néné Mbo. She is spinning and muttering trivial words, bittersweet words spouted in one breath that characterize grandmothers more accurately than wrinkles do. So there I am seated on the okoume wood stool, but I’m not listening to her. I’m cracking my toes while my eyes are turned toward the jar, the prayer rug, the arabesques of the little earthen bed, the boards of the loft floor smeared with soot. Then, just like that, I tell her, “This time, that’s it, I’m going to see the world.” And she goes on spinning, not answering, maybe because she didn’t hear me. One day after I had forgotten all about it, she spoke as if addressing someone else: “The monkey may try to leap, but he’ll never be rid of the tree.” Confident as any twenty-year-old, with a wave of the hand, I filed this proverb away with the hundreds she had recited to me, in the time it takes to chew a kola nut, just for the flavor of the fruit I thought, or simply to tease her, bitter words being so dear to our clan. Since then, without my noticing it, a lot of water has flowed under bridges while I was scraping my kneecaps on railroad ties. Where was my head? Only now do I understand what the proverb meant, this pedagogical shortcut typical of our part of the country, that was supposed to instruct me on 2. Hammadas: Saharan desert. 3. Chech: region in the Sahara. 4. Forez: region in central France.

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the spot. . . . In any case, we’ll always have to deal with the slyness of the ancients. Oh, well, that’ll teach us for coming into the world in a place where everything is settled ahead of time and where — or may my tongue cut you! — we must live as it has been said: moving heaven and earth to feed the legend. . . . Tierno habha, Allah djinga! Well, take a good look at your hut! . . . And already, I’m not the one speaking. . . . Tierno habha, Allah djinga, fruitful is your hut: the pregnant curve and the whole mystery of the egg! . . . That’s what Farba told me the day of my circumcision during the first light of my adolescence. That had taken place in the lougan, 5 under the mango tree from which, long before conceiving me, Trypano had fallen and broken his thighbone. He had told me about that also. And he had predicted to me the providential dawn with its harvest of stars, the soft north wind heading toward the eastern summits, the clear horizon, so purple on that day that it would bring me luck. That is why this dawn, and absolutely none other, had been picked to offer my foreskin to the birds of prey, in other words to make a man of me, a neatly trimmed stick of wood, ready to burn with pleasure and with shame. . . . Tierno habha, Allah djinga, look away from hardship and toward your hut! . . . Of course I obeyed, not realizing that that was the very moment the old master of ceremonies chose to take out his knife. I jumped at the pain and understood the lesson: each day give a little of your body to that creditor, Death, and you will live longer than expected. But that was not all; the trick used to reveal this to me had another effect on my person. Still today I associate my hut with the pelvis of a woman. Exile, which dislocates everything, has been powerless against this. It is during my heated moments that I can better imagine the roundness of the cradle. Tierno habha, Allah djinga, a single nut in the purse does not make a man’s pride, and the pearl, however splendid it is said to be, does not alone make 5. Lougan: probably the local name for the place where circumcisions are done.

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the rosary shine. Tierno habha, Allah djinga, listen so you’ll hear: you’re now old enough to pray and to scorn misery. . . . Because, I must say, it was not the hut of some outlaw, lost in sin and in the solitude of the underbrush. It was sketched along with the others, under the watchful eye of the Unique One so there would be a ring of straw huts, whose center is adorned by the old palaver kola tree. I believe that during two hundred years of peril the courtyard has not changed; it is still strewn with ocher gravel, clusters of basil, bunches of yucca and citronella. Only the roofing was replaced, and once or twice during the winter, the position of the aviaries changed. Otherwise there were still the same adobe turrets serving as vestibules (one of them opening onto the road toward Mamou, the other toward the east wind and, so it is said, used to shelter the horses before the epidemic).

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Lines: 70 There were six huts, and I was born mainly so that I could be told about them by Farba picking his single-chord guitar or by Néné Mbo, frequently wiping a tear. Trypano, when he was present, would pull out his notes. I learned with what enthusiasm Baba Gallé’s father had built the one where I was born; in what eclipse year the father of the one who had come out of the ground had built the one across the way. And the dwarf one hidden away under the orange tree, right near the fonio silo, 6 we owe it to Alpha Mawdo the Nervous, the one who tore out his eye one day when a joker dared to insinuate that his cap didn’t look good on him. And then there is the oldest one built by the ancestor of us all who had come from the north or maybe the east, thinking he was passing through, but founded the village. Near the mosque, there is the one that harbored a Moor from Egypt, a certain Abdallay — in reality René Caillé 7 — who said he was from Kakandy on his way to Timbuktu and whose scurvy and scabies had been treated there with aloe, sorrel 6. Fonio: sorghumlike grain used to make gruel. 7. René Caillé: Nineteenth-century French explorer who reached Timbuktu dressed as an Arab; the first Frenchman to enter the city.

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fonio, and cactus juice. Near the well was the most beautiful of them all, the one reserved for guests like the Sarakillé when he would return from Nioro 8 or the griot Farba when he was not speaking to his wives. The place where I was born owes nothing to the trowel. The hackneyed word, and none other, intertwined its links and engendered the villages. From one end of the country to the other, the same ritual, the same contempt, the same predilection for martyrdom, the same concessions taking on the airs of mounds turned into monuments by the very strength of clay. We’d sacrifice cattle in the east, under the soursop tree, way over there, against the live hedge. We’d eat with the right hand, but for conquest and survival, we wore our weapons on the left. There would be family feuds lasting for ages over a piece of straw, over a basket, over a hello not appropriately said. We knew how to keep our tongues in our mouths, shelter our flocks, and watch over our fortunes, turning to God for matters with the wife. We’d proudly spit high and forcefully while maligning others, and we greeted strangers without displaying embarrassment. My world was a world of muffled steps, coughs and whispers, dedicated entirely to the natural order of things: the orange on the orange tree, the pestle in the mortar. Fame for the liar, gruel for the toothless. Old bones for the imbecile, a good whipping for the scoundrel. Friday to praise the prophet and Sunday, market day. . . . We had to get up early, eat up our fonio without showing our gluttony; nothing of what regales the stomach could equal nobility, that inexhaustible food that one should never cook. Only then could we — and of course we were expected to know our sura like the name of our mother — run back to the bôwal 9 so that everyone could recite the name of the proud smarty who’d be the first one to detect the arrival of the handsome trucks from Mamou. The bold ones would climb onto the roof of Eskadi’s store. The shrewd ones would cleave their way through 8. Nioro: region in northeast Guinea, near Mali. 9. Bôwal: high grassy plateaus.

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the grass to Timbobé’s buse. 10 Some would be perched atop the goalposts on the soccer field that once a week was used as a cattle market. We’d listen carefully so we could catch the distinct sounds of the motors amid the hubbub of the humans and the rumbles of thunder. During that time, we could play with our slingshots and scratch around our waists to kill lice, all the while betting on the make of the vehicle and on the village where it probably still was. We’d recognize Bouba Kégnéko’s Peugeot t46 grinding in first gear as it climbed the Tounkan hill. That whirring reaching us above the tamarind trees, that had to be Dian Fello’s Citroën on the muddy plain of Tanta. A fight could break out anytime one of us dared contest that. Usually we’d first notice Bah Almalani’s diesel-powered Henschel, the only one that could deliver oranges in the Casamance 11 valley and go load up with kola nuts in N’Zérékoré before the muezzin had finished calling the faithful to prayer. We’d see it enter the intersection of the Water and Forestry Board, and we’d run to wait for it in front of the sharpshooter’s shop. We’d follow it all the way to the kehri tree, 12 using boubous as covers for our heads, vibrating our lips to imitate the sound of the engine. To make a few coins, we’d load some néré 13 for Lasidan, some wax for the fat Lebanese. When Whites came, we’d let them photograph us after having duly — I’ll never know why — smeared ourselves with perfume. [...] Most probably I contracted mumps and whooping cough, scurvy, malaria, and many other unrecorded illnesses like that Cornwall pirate I met in some adventure novel when I was about ten. Trypano would send the medicine in packages. But as soon as Néné Mbo’s back was

10. Buse: a shaft allowing smoke to escape from a house. 11. Casamance: region in West Africa and a river. 12. Kehri: a tree whose wood is used to make hoes. 13. Néré: a tree whose leaves are edible and whose seeds and roots are used in traditional medicine.

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turned, I’d toss the cod-liver oil and the Vosges syrup, the quinine and the Aspro down the well. I owe my survival to my griot Farba, who had taken the time to ward off fate the first time he saw me: “Who can really say what can be strong? Take for example the wrestler and the fart. One can bring down a man, but the other can put an assembly to flight.” But that was not enough to reassure Néné Mbo. Granted, it was a true night of fright, plowed with lightning, haunted by giant shadows and strange little noises. Without telling anyone, Mamine had threaded her way under the veranda between the firewood and the chicken cages. I let out a weak cry when she brought me into the world, and by herself she cut, maybe with a blade, the cord that joined us, the only thing to have ever attested to her really being my mother. So it was I who woke the neighbors and the aunts, and this poor Baba Gallé also, so feared while he was alive that his sleep impressed not only the frogs but the roosters as well. Néné Mbo had rushed over with black soap and an old storm lantern to look me over and to reprimand Mamine: “It’s only because God provided! You, all alone, barely fifteen, among the firewood no less and without avoiding the droppings. . . . It was God who provided! Girl, you knew I was barely asleep and yet, tell me, you really woke me. . . . Oh, child, I should be angry, I should hold it against you for one or two seasons, but come here my girl, you should rest. . . . Soon it’ll be daytime; it’s good that God provided. . . .” At first light, her eyes were red with sorrow when she came to teach Mamine how to rock me and breast-feed me. “Goodness me, my grandson! The son of my son, so red, so tiny, veins showing, come see! He looks like a little morsel of heart. He could fit in the palm of my hand. I had been wishing for a grandson, and what do I get? A fistful of groundnuts. Oh, God, help him make it to the next winter season!” On the seventh day, for my baptism, Baba Gallé fired his rifle. He slit 25

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the throat of twenty-four cows. He died the third month, but the legend had already been born in Farba’s mouth. . . . Tierno habha, Allah djinga, he’s a lion come to earth to devour his grandfather. It is thus with the lineage of those who are never afraid. Tierno habha, Allah djinga! You, Néné Mbo, daughter of the sun and the Lord, watch your tongue! Words don’t just speak, they also proclaim the future. Where did you get that name for him, a fistful of groundnuts? Tierno habha, Allah djinga, when Tierno is threatened, God will come to his aid! . . . Trypano was on rounds deep in the bush with a team of “WhiteNeedles” in the area to track down epidemics. Upon his return, he searched in his bag and pulled out syringes, cotton, and compresses. He drew my blood and examined my orifices. He wrapped me like a necrosis, laid me on the camp bed, and stood watch so that no one would touch me. According to Néné Mbo, he was no more moved than if he had seen a sea urchin. He shook my arms and legs for a long time and said only one thing: “Hey! But this child’s cross-eyed, he’s blinking. He’s got nyctalopia. Night blindness!” A season followed. The Sarakollé arrived from Nioro to trade tamarinds and dates for shea butter and palm oil. He took out some white thread and poured some honey at my grandmother’s feet. “So, you’re still alive, happy Peuhl woman. Don’t worry about your baby. He’s tiny and quiet but he has strong talons in his soul and his heart is all biceps. He should not be touched while he sleeps; no one must do that. His sign is the panther, the feline that never sleeps, sly as a stonechat. The gourds have spoken, the cowries have not denied it; I see gold, piety, and courage. Save your worries for others; you and your baby will go far.” Néné Mbo shook her head and said, “I fear it might be too late. The devil has sullied the vessel of their lineage. Baba Gallé is dead, the others will have to go too, following the example of the horses. The wind will scatter the ones 26

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who’ll survive the disaster. Here, there will be nothing left standing, not even the old kola tree.” Mamou — Trypano had been assigned there soon after my birth — was the setting that hosted all my first images; first, under the tall silkcotton tree the house with the red tiles and the front stoop on the street perpendicular to Kimbéli hill. My ears still echo with the rhymes of the little gossi 14 merchants who came from La Poudrière with their bowls shielded by baskets and their long wooden spoons. Mamine would carry me to the front steps and would call them one by one and then would taste the dishes as she expressed her opinion. She’d buy one or two cupfuls. We’d eat some of it while playing under the kapok tree and throw the rest in the ditch where the ducks were frolicking. When we’d go to the market, I loved the smell of smoked fish and powdered shrimp and the stunning green color of pomelos and avocados, of parsley bunches and boro-boro. 15 We’d cross Avenue du Commerce to visit the Lebanese shops and laugh at the little Whites dozing in their prams. We’d have fun for a while at Mounir’s, the photographer who kept a slide projector on the sidewalk where Mamine would show me pictures of Paris and Egypt. I’d open my mouth and grab hold of the door. I’d have to be dragged away from there. To stop my tears, she’d bring me in front of the movie theater and would let me touch the posters depicting cowboys and circuses. We’d climb back up the slope to the bungalow; she said she was going to give me to the crazies if I didn’t dry my tears this instant. The park’s arbor faced the hospital. We’d eat one or two mangoes while waiting for Trypano. He’d emerge from an exit with his rimmed glasses and his frightening smock. Sometimes we’d see him walking about in the courtyard amid a group of mountain men sprawled on the pavement, 14. Gossi: rice gruel. 15. Boro-boro: spinach leaves.

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with red marks on their arms or their shoulder blades. “Who’s that over there? Eh, who’s that you see? Are you going to stop crying or do you want your father to give you a shot?” “Oh! So that’s his father?” a passerby would ask. “Wow! He’s something, that kid, to have a father like that!” We’d proudly go back down Rue des Flamboyants that led to the station, and we’d walk along the rails to watch for the arrival of the Micheline engine.

Trypano was tall as a bamboo pole. I could see him going in or out, stooping to make it through the door. He was often busy at the hospital or else he was on rounds in some faraway province threatened by either [28], (12 leprosy or sleeping sickness. Mamine would choose that time to invite her female neighbors and a slightly mad woman who sang the old Peuhl tunes while beating on a gourd with her fingers full of rings. When Lines: 14 Trypano would appear everyone would scatter through the backyard ——— where the kitchens were. He often came with friends, and among them * 166.80 was a skinny White who, every July 14, would give me noisemakers. ——— He’d turn on the gramophone, hold me tight against his chest, and twirl Normal P to the rhythm of a waltz. Then Mamine would serve them beer and they * PgEnds: P would play cards, shouting into the night. t r a n s l a t e d b y m o n i q u e f. n a g e m

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nimrod

My Father’s Lamp

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Lines: 152 to In the rainy season, twilight goes through infinite metamorphoses. Depending on the day, it indifferently grinds blue with mauve, always against an indigo background, even when the mixing involves another shade of blue; for to accurately transcribe the stars’ flight into the budding night’s heart, or the unparalleled luxury of the “boreal” blaze, there is nothing like the theater of an azure curtain. In itself the sky relocates as if bowing to itself, and a flame—as big as that—puts any familiarity at a distance. Watching this performance, even when you’re not twenty anymore, sometimes, like a late-blooming lover, you would like to send yourself a postcard cut from the same fabric. Time passes, the horizon glimmers. So, even when night has fallen, you will have embraced the minute of a very vast presence. As day wanes life frees itself from the sweltering heat. Simple gestures are yours once again: exchanging a word, as ordinary as possible, yawning, smiling; once again contemplating, without feeling your eyes burn, the charms of far-off places. Because day is weakening, there is, in the gaze of the one who beholds it, a luminous balance. You will have relaxed at the entrance to your father’s house. 29

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The strangeness of a man who knew how to prolong twilight among us, thanks to his lamp. It was big, the biggest to be found in the shops, made in Germany. For us it was simply elegantly designed enamel called “Hand Feuer.” Once signs of shadows would appear, my father would remove it from the shelf where it was kept: next to it are the thick Hausalanguage Bible and my father’s thick glasses that decode the holy book’s print. On the same shelf, you can see a nice row of laundry and hand soaps, a gentleman’s comb, a lady’s comb, a pocket mirror, a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, and sometimes tins of Norwegian fish, cans of condensed milk. To the left of the corner cupboard and at the foot of the only window that opens to the outside, my father’s bed, always made: a Helvetian bedspread with green, gold, and red stitching and another one, probably of French design, made of satin with silver edging, dark blue and purple crosspieces, that dresses it up. At the foot of the bed and facing the door, a jug containing the oil: it feeds a burner that is worn more by time than by rust. It is the red hour of the setting sun, and the Hand Feuer has been taken down to be cleaned. Armed with clean rags, my father explores its metal framework, caresses the lamp with its globe removed, stopping along the enamel’s texture. His fingers enjoy such repetitions because, truthfully, this is where the rebellious motes of dust stick. They rub it lovingly. Just when they abandon it to look after the globe, twilight appears. In fact, this phenomenon saturates the evening’s beauty, the one that is found centered upon the space where his fingers operate. At the far end of the mat where the Hand Feuer’s skeleton lies, the setting sun’s gold casts a fateful shadow across my father’s work. It is because the color blue tones up the enamel, unlike the variations of the setting sun’s rays. But this conflict lasts only two minutes at the most. Then comes the purification. The evening becomes lighter; a soft clamor invades our 30

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various rooms; the streets reverberate within with the weight of their contentment. This is the second when all is revealed, when my father’s gestures displace the corpuscles with the slowness and the insistence that support the images’ designs. The movements of his body become the feature called to strengthen the sun’s trace before the assault of the shadows. And my father has finished wiping the glass that finally finds its place. Striking a match, he causes the moment of its ashes to be reborn. The walls sparkle. Stars ricochet on the metal’s glaze. The lamp shines, then it is the evening that increases the illusion of its rebirth, that, forgetful of its identity, simulates the morning’s brilliance! When the thickness of the day merges with objects, my father leaves the house. He goes to the river to bathe. As tonight, his drawing away is all it takes for the day to fill up the space. Nonetheless, in the morning it is another story: the door opens as he passes, and the room fills with so much light that you would think you were witnessing a visitation. On the sheets saturated with the night’s dampness there floats the mark of a fairy. But when it is time for vespers, the irresistible certainty of light that bewitches the waking hours is lacking. As my father moves away, I hear the echo of his strong enjoinder: “You will light the lamp, be sure the wick is the right length.”

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How could you not think that the shine of this lamp came simply from regulating its incandescence? In the small courtyard where it shines, elevated about twenty centimeters off the ground on a tiny stool, a barely blue gleam lights the space where the mats cross. My father’s forehead stands out in this place, which, in return, underscores his dark and shining complexion. He stands in the light like the portrait of the shepherd of I don’t know what secret. Touching are the halos of his eyeglasses: they isolate, by accentuation, the diameter of his eyes. The house intensely dozes; my mother stays back from the light whose guardian I am. Raised to its most vivid point, and halfway to the point of smoking, the Hand Feuer’s wick sets off the darkness of the night. 31

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Beyond the odor of the burning oil (it seems that since the simplicity of light has been strengthened, nothing more could trouble it, not even the crystals bursting in its heart, arousing its radiance), it reminds me of those fishing trips when, in between, my father would light the fire. His hand would gather the mimosa twigs, which, though extremely brittle, would become flexible owing to the darkness and the turbid proximity of the river. He would conscientiously poke at the pair of tilapias. Once they were finally cooked, he would solemnly offer them to me. Then, without a word, he would turn away, because he would never take a bite of this meal.

[32], (16 In the family, every evening, a light spreads out between a man, a woman, and a child. Not that the days were uninteresting or that life, with the shadows, found a reason for its fickleness. Ordinarily, day scatters us whereas night brings us back together. The Hand Feuer becomes our campground. Around it, we keep an eye on each other, as if it were a matter of making each other out, of helping each other, through just a gaze, to leave his glass bubble to come into the light where, little by little, the glimpsed land becomes sharper—another glass bubble. Because of the lighting that balances our feelings, isn’t it the pressure of the world within us when the azure, dark and terrifying, comes to knock on the door of our senses like someone asking to be let in? What my father would never say, and what is like the beginning of a walk through the neighborhood of happiness, this lamp, a new Pentecostal “tongue of fire,” would stand for as it burned the oil and the wick from within. We have never been able to converse with one another, and we never will. Three people, skinned alive, going out of their way every evening to shield themselves from one another around a German lamp. To tolerate the rigors of this coexistence, we had made a gift of our tongues of flesh to the tongue of fire. No cloister was more strict and 32

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no vow of silence more respected than ours. In this way we bridled a violence that was due neither to wickedness nor to a deliberate desire not to communicate, but rather to the fear of scratching one another— in other words, of skinning oneself. In this way there always had to be an emptiness among us, a blue emptiness pierced here and there by the most courteous words, words trembling with love and fear—in short, the terror concealed by mysteries. It was the territory of Father’s noble works. But our country, my mother’s and mine, is on this side, and steadfastly so; moreover, we have many jobs here. Mother takes care of the laundry, the house, prepares the meals; as for me, I look after this lamp; in its light, the open Bible’s letters increase our solitude. We are [33], (17) waiting for another world to be allowed us and, even when I shed tears on my mother’s breast while hers flow onto my hair, it never occurs to us to break the pane where the hint of a dialogue carries on. In a certain Lines: 201 to way, we are mutes condemned to contemplate the twilight, because ——— the one who is moved by lamps and books readily lets his gaze—and * 182.0pt Pg sometimes his tears—speak, but he makes no words because, born from ——— books, they come back to him and God, in the thick of this little game, Normal Page is very jealous. * PgEnds: PageB translated by dawn m. cornelio

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part 3

Modern Perspectives


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kangni alem

The Spider’s Fart Pick up a circle, caress it, and it’ll become vicious! Ionesco, The Bald Soprano

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Lines: 19 to 4 The man pushed open the door without a sound then quietly went over and sat down on the wobbly wicker chair in the corner of the office. A middle-aged man with the fine features of a Peuhl shepherd, a pointed chin, a bushy mustache that would have made an old Latin prof eat his heart out with jealousy, gray hair combed back. I had stopped speaking to watch him come in. “Keep going,” said the cop who was interrogating me. I started talking again. “Well, I was saying that first she let a fart slip. A big fart that made the cashier shout out disgustedly: ‘Auntie Françoise, watch your backside!’ Then, slowly but surely, her body slumped over and her head rested on my knees. Lightning struck the power pole out in front of the Three Kilos. The whole sector was plunged into blackness, and she started vomiting on my pants while I caressed her hair and her neck in the dark. Near the bar’s entrance, the zem 1 waited stoically for the downpour

1. Zem: motorcycle-taxi driver.

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to end so he could take us back to the hotel. It was about one in the morning.” “Zem, zem!” I had shouted. That was before the storm had burst. He had stopped his motorcycle in front of the bar, brakes screeching. I got him to agree to hang around until the waitress could finish cleaning up. “Where are we going, boss?” he asked. “To Tranza I,” I answered. “Near the Mathieu Bouké school.” It rained for two hours. A huge storm typical of the tropics spiced with sinister grumblings and thunderclaps that made us all jump there in the bar every time they cracked. Françoise had fallen asleep on my knees. Serenely, I deeply massaged her breasts. “Did you know her before?” “I barely knew her. I had gone into the Three Kilos to have a drink with Ibrahim. I thought she was pretty, I tried to hook up, and it worked. “Three days in town without touching a woman’s body! That evening, I had said to Ibrahim who was working as the guide for our soccer team: ‘How about looking for something to warm our beds up a little?’ “So we crisscrossed the city, without headlights, in the March heat. Ibrahim’s car wasn’t Ibrahim’s car. Although his boss was out of town, he had eyes everywhere, so we had to be careful. As we passed the bar, I suggested having a beer. When I saw Françoise, I got the hots for her, because she was tall and had a nice smile. A little later, Ibrahim left. I bought a round for Françoise, for the boss, for the cashier. She didn’t like beer, but I made her drink. The result, so drunk it would’ve made her mother weep. To make a long story short, when the rain stopped, the zem first took me back to the hotel, then went back to get her. We spent the night together, then early in the morning I took her out to the road. She got on a motorcycle taxi while I was there; I’m sure I saw her leave. And now you tell me that she’s dead.” . . . “She’s dead, all right. What time was it when you went out to the road with her?” 38

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“About three or four, maybe.” “Three thirteen exactly. Just like you, I saw her get on the motorcycle. You’re right about that.” It was the man who had been so quiet. That man with graying hair. Beautiful gospel music tenor voice, with a hint of mystery back there in his throat. We looked at each other, and he smiled at me for some reason. The other cop, the one questioning me, also smiled before introducing him. “This is Divisional Commissioner Idriss, known as Péché Mignon.” 2 “Retired, to be precise,” the gospel singer corrected him. “We found you thanks to him. He lives close to your hotel. He’s the one who saw you this morning with Malika, I mean Françoise — not her real name.” I ought to have suspected it. Here we are in Muslim territory, and out of snobbishness or some complex girls take on Christian names. Bérou, the woman who sold tapioca pudding across from the high school, made people call her Nathalie, and what’s more, for her nephew Mohamed she had come up with the very unusual name of Respice. “Why not Rigoberta Clap?” I had suggested to her, “or Little Fish?” J. C. D., my coach, had proposed. And old J. C. D. had just come into the office with his brow wrinkled and a mean look in his eyes, just as darkness too invaded the office. “Brownout again!” somebody shouted. Péché Mignon went over and opened the window. Suddenly it got hotter. The ceiling fan gave up the ghost, out of juice. Just a flickering glow in the dark, J. C. D.’s cigarette, and then some light from the hurricane lantern a cop carried over and put before me like a medieval fruitcake. “And to think they have an enlightened leader in this country who

2. Péché mignon: “harmless little sin.” It often connotes gluttony, perhaps the most harmless of the seven deadly sins.

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can’t even give his people electricity twenty-four hours a day but still always wins elections with 99 percent of the vote!” Nobody followed up on J. C. D.’s rotten commentary. A foreigner can allow himself certain words, especially if those involved think they’re not far off the mark. Since we got to town, there had been no end of blackouts. A thirty-hour blackout the day before, and I made love to Malika/Françoise/Woman in the dark. Here people say they are cutting the current, just like cutting a hole in your pockets, like cutting you out of a will. Apparently the reservoir behind the big regional dam has dried up, but as J. C. D. would say, that’s no excuse for leading a country into darkness. “Good evening, sir. Looking for somebody?” “I’ve come to take this idiot where he should be right now, on the soccer field! What kind of mess has he got mixed up in this time?” “In a mess with a head and no body. He spends the night with a girl, a whole girl, body and head, and then next morning there’s only the head. If he displays as many complications to his opponents on the soccer field, Mister . . .” “J. C. D.” “ . . . you can be sure that you’ve got yourself an extraordinary player. What position does he play?” “Left wing. But wait, what kind of joke is this?” “A joke, you say? A morbid farce that commissioner Péché Mignon fully expects to clear up.” “I should hope so, Inspector Yara, I hope so, if our friend here is technically willing to cooperate with the police.” The magnificent commissioner mastered adverbs particularly well. All the trouble in the world to keep myself from pulling out that forest of fibers that’s eating up his mouth. And he couldn’t be more polite, Mr. Apollo! “Might you have seen, my dear friend, some important detail of the victim’s anatomy that could spark an interest in the people who cut her up? You see, if the head had been missing, we could have easily drawn up 40

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a list of suspects. But that eliminates the band that’s currently recruiting head hunters over the Internet for that Colombian lab specializing in shrinking heads for interior decorators according to old Inca traditions. And then there’s the list of everyone for whom a nicely cleaned out human head could have another use besides decoration: all sorts of ritualists, fire eaters, drinkers of tête de feu, 3 one-legged men suffering from a lack . . . of love.” “I can’t think of anything. Except maybe a little intimate personal tattoo, nothing significant like you say, just all the normal attributes of a mammal.” “Tell us about the tattoo!” “A python drawn with india ink, just a . . .” “A python. Did she have any pearls around her hips? “Yes.” “What color pearls?” “Red and yellow. Three or four white beads.” “Mostly red, then? Great.” “Does red give you a lead?” J. C. D. was visibly amused. Suddenly the light again invaded the room, showing the eternal condescending smile on Péché Mignon’s face. “Gentlemen, you’re free to leave. When is the match against the Dragons?” “Three days from now,” said my coach. “Good luck. Inspector Yara, I think we can release our friend, if he has nothing more to add.” Outside, the team bus of L’Étoile was waiting. The driver had dozed off sitting behind the steering wheel. He woke up and grumpily got out to raise the hood and putter around with the motor. It coughed and finally started, on its last legs. I played like a klutz during the practice 3. Tête de feu: a mixture of corn beer, boiled iron nails, and stewed cola nuts, a ritual drink used to salute the new lunar year, which begins in September among local ethnic groups, both Muslims and animists (the suspect’s mental note). [Author’s note]

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session, and all night long I had nightmares, pursued by Yara, who was ridden by Péché Mignon disguised as a python. The next day at breakfast, retired provisional commissioner Idriss, known as Péché Mignon, was waiting for me, calmly seated before a platter of rice with a smile and his pipe between his teeth. After his polite invitation, I joined him at his table. “Good morning, my friend,” he declared, like a radio talk show host. “I didn’t dare to wake you up, knowing that soccer is concretely fatiguing. How are you this morning?” I was not at all in a good mood. I concentrated on keeping at bay the migraine headache exploding in my head, nodding my head like a lizard, saying, “not bad, not bad.” He sucked on his burned-out pipe, looked me straight in the eye, and suddenly started talking. “Primary symbol of the python’s mysteries, the sun. The animal coils itself up it when it molts. The sun turns green when the python changes skins. My dear friend, think for a moment. Did Françoise have another tattoo somewhere on her body? That’s where the key to the mystery lies.” “Listen, commissioner. This business is beyond me. A murder so . . . , it’s hard for me to imagine that there were no witnesses to such a horrible crime. You don’t just chop a girl built like her in two. Have you found the motorcycle taxi?” “No reason to look, because that’s a dead end.” “How do you know that?” “A deduction based on my long experience with zems. They might rob a client, that’s true, but they rarely kill him.” “What was all that about the python and the sun? Did she belong to some sect?” “Possibly.” “I didn’t notice anything else.” “Pity. By the way, what intimate body part were you talking about yesterday? Had she got the python tattooed so close to her . . . ?” I laughed in spite of myself, and the effort made my eyelids blink with 42

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pain. He wasn’t laughing. He had dug his fork into the rice sprinkled with manioc flour and mixed it all together, stirring in circles vigorously with his fork. The rice turned brown, sticky with sauce, and slices of meat emerged from the depths of the platter. “My favorite dish. Do you want some? The mamma who runs the hotel, you know, she cooked the rice for her school kids. She knows how much I love rice with meat sauce, so she had some carried over while I was waiting for you to wake up. You know what makes the meat sauce so good? The spider. They say that it pays a visit to the sauce during the night, and in any case, in the morning, the sauce becomes sweet and unctuous, beautifully thickened by the lovely spider fart. A natural leaven, is the spider’s fart. Join me!” “No thanks.” And there was his smile spread over his lips all brown with sauce! Dumb looking because he kept it so long. I emptied my cup of instant coffee and said good-bye, I had errands to run. “Oh, sure. You know, I live right next door. If you happen to remember anything . . . that business about a python . . . usually the animal protects its servants, so how could it be that . . . ? I sinned against the ancestor, goes the song; the python doesn’t bite, python-ancestor bit me, I’m done for, woe is me! Have a good day.” I went back up to have a shower. When I came back down, he was gone. On the table stood proudly what was left of his hearty breakfast, and all around it flies were tracing complicated arabesques. Free time this morning, no bus, no guide. I walked to the post office and bought some postcards and La Nation. The paper provided some information about the death of the waitress from the Three Kilos. According to the article, there were suspicions about a near-by village whose chief died the same day as the waitress. Their funeral practices called for the chief to be buried along with a guide who could hold a torch before him along the shadowy roads that led down toward the banks of death. The villagers didn’t deny it, so the rumor was gathering strength. A guide without a body? Shoot. Worse than a dead goat going 43

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to a masquerade party. I pinched the cheeks of the beggarwoman who was on my heels and headed toward the market — its smells, its colors, its beautiful market women with their commercial smiles, its sellers of electronic equipment “made in China” fabricated in a clandestine shop in Nigeria, its women walking around selling goat cheese, always up on the latest news, always looking for paradoxes. “Apparently they’ve taken the head to the morgue until they find the body.” “Hey, sister, they’ll never find that body, Djémila’s mother’s already eaten it, that old witch, the cops have searched her house, they found some human bones under her bed.” “To think that I saw the poor girl just the day before she died. She had come to see her daughter who lives with her ex. He lives in my neighborhood.” “Maybe he got revenge? Men, you know.” This city is really small. As I walked down a market alley, I came face to face with Inspector Yara and two of his men. A man in handcuffs followed them, a seller in the fetish market, and the crowd spit on him. “A seller of human organs,” the inspector murmured to me, shaking my hand; “we’re making real progress in the case.” The suspect’s shirt was wet with sweat. Quarter till twelve. I took a zem toward La Douane, a restaurant famous for its spicy agouti dishes. The whole team was already there eating, everyone except J. C. D., who was off somewhere in the city totally abandoned at that time of day to the heat and to gossip. L’Étoile beat the Dragons 7 to 0. “Anyhow, I hate the Dragons. Bravo, fellows, what a game! And you, my man, what mastery with the ball! Captain, the word fits you like a glove.” Péché Mignon was crowing like an Italian soccer fan. He’d had it in for the Dragons ever since that match the police team had lost 37 to 3. Péché Mignon had been in goal. 44

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“Magic,” he said. “Instead of a soccer ball, I saw fireballs shooting toward me. Standing up to the flames would have been running useless risks, since it was only a friendly match, but they didn’t see things that way. 7 to 0, fellows. They had no idea what was going on!” We go back to the hotel to shower and rest, ’cause we’ll leave the city at midnight, the coach said; it’s a long road back, and it’s better to travel at night to avoid the day’s heavy heat. Péché Mignon had climbed into the bus with us, he was seated between J. C. D. and me. He had really gotten into his fan role and had forgotten to talk about his investigation. The bus driver started the song “We’ll Go and Return in the Name of the Lord,” and the tired, happy players joined in. I was wrong; Péché Mignon had leaned over toward me. “Second symbol of the python’s mysteries, the ring of unchangeableness. Would you believe me if I told you, my friend, that when the python molts, the twelfth ring from the head is the only one that stays intact? Strange, isn’t it? I think the same thing as you. Coach, can I smoke in the bus? Oh, it bothers the players, of course, sorry. I saw the victim’s mother before the game. She was devastated, the poor woman, devastated but happy, because she can finally give proper burial to her daughter’s mutilated body. The body was found this morning by Inspector Yara’s men. A sorcerer from the fetish market let drop the information that one of his colleagues had recently sold him some fresh human organs. He hadn’t asked any questions; it was nothing new. They arrested the seller, but he was unable to say where the body came from because he had bought it from strangers. He kept the body in the freezer and sold pieces from it in the market as needed. So there’s the chain, gentlemen, but at the end, only strangers. I don’t blame you for not saying anything. It’s a sad, dirty affair.” The bus stopped in front of the hotel. “Have a good rest, men. If I don’t see you again, have a good trip home. For me the case is closed, and life goes on.” He shook hands with the whole team and walked off toward the road. I watched him walk away; now and then he kicked a stone in the 45

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path like a kid who’s learning how to play soccer. Still in his prime, he was, and hard to figure out. He’d surely make a good twelfth man, but then . . . J. C. D. moved up the team’s departure time; there was no electricity at the hotel, and the air conditioners remained desperately lifeless. “We Are the Champions,” 4 sang the owner of the hotel to bid us good-bye, nostalgic for the queen and permanently stuck here with his fat black wife, expert in meat sauces and mother of his five magnificent mulatto kids. The bus lumbered off into the pitch-black night. J. C. D. was already snoring when the bus left the city and got on the state highway. The calm of a man who had fulfilled his duty. L’Étoile was his passion, gave his life meaning. He had promised to take us to the most inaccessible peaks of our sport, and we rallied around him like a true team — me at least. Keen insight, unshakeable determination. I’m reminded of our arrival in the city of the Dragons. That same evening he had picked out that girl in the Three Kilos. A quarrel between her and the cashier, and the cashier had alluded to the girl’s twelve toes. Twelve toes at birth, that’s rare; eleven’s much more common. Just what was needed for the team’s victories. The dream of every coach: put twelve men on the field, eleven visible and the twelfth invisible. “Like the fellow who scored King Pelé’s goals,” he would often say to me jokingly. An operation planned after a night of reflection, we needed the waitress’s twelve toes. He had organized everything, had J. C. D. All I had to do was pour the drug into the beer I bought for the waitress. It was strong enough to cloud her senses and to turn her into a zombie for at least twenty-four hours. The fake zem was a hireling of the sorcerer in charge of preparing the fetish. None of us had foreseen the murder, it was understood that they would just cut off her toes and then drop her off in the hospital emergency room. Tempted by easy money? Morbidity normal in the profession? When we learned about the murder, we were speechless. 4. “We Are the Champions”: In English in the original.

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The day before the match, he delivered to J. C. D. a jar containing the twelfth player’s mummified toes, with no further explanation. I was settling back in my seat to grab some shut-eye when I saw the lights of the police car. The bus was slowing down at the checkpoint. I nudged J. C. D. with my elbow, and he jerked awake. He was trying to hide the jar holding the twelfth player when we saw Péché Mignon climb into the bus. translated by lauren yoder

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koffi kwahulé

Babyface If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:2

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for zouzou

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Babyface today met; Akici was right. Me in Abidjan. Saw him in Abidjan. But he’ll come back. It’s a beautiful story I’m living, nurses said. But one I suspect. Vulgar, her eyes always made up, you’d think a toutou. 1 Waiting for the tip of my baby’s nose to swipe him from me. Looking for me. Because he’ll come back. From a vulture on its back blind. And red neck. I don’t want anybody to hurt my baby.

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f r o m : Mouss Lakamé, Paris

t o : Mozâti N’Dri, Abidjan

Mozâti my sweetheart, I kiss you. I received the money order you sent me. I kiss your mouth. The money was of great help to me; I used it to pay three months’ rent in advance. I’m settled until March. I kiss you in your mouth with my tongue.

1. Toutou: prostitute.

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Babyface

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Here the humdrum routine has started with my studies. Winter has shown up, too. You can’t imagine, my dear Mozâti, my sweetheart, my everything, my love, just how sad winter without snow is. Snow is winter’s flower, it’s what makes the city happy, sunny in a certain way. Even dirty snow, muddy, dirty snow, is a celebration in itself, in spite of the cold. Paris is sad, Mozâti my love. For once again, like love without an orgasm, winter without snow has swooped down onto Paris. Paris is sad, Mozâti my sweetheart, and for three days without stopping, Paris has been crying a fine, soft, gray rain. So I think of the sun at home, Abidjan’s sun, your sun, the sun that you are. I think about you, about the radiant future that I’m preparing for us, about the life of a queen that I’ll soon make for you, once I have my diploma in hand. I can’t stop thinking about all the details of our marriage. About our wedding night, the voluptuous pleasures I’ll surround you with and about all the delights you alone know so well how to bury me in, Mozâti, my only love. I think of our future children. I think about all of this and I see the eyes of Paris light up through her endless soft tears. Paris will welcome us on our honeymoon. It’ll be in August when the Parisians will have deserted the city, for Paris is even more beautiful without the Parisians. Paris for the two of us. We’ll stay at the Ritz. You’ll see, Paris is beyond everything you can imagine, my little robin. Paris-light. Paris-champagne. Paris-paradise. Paris-Paris. Paris will always be Paris. Paname. 2 OK, I have to go now; I suddenly realize that you’re far away from me, and I feel the tears welling up like geysers from the bottom of my soul. Sometimes I wonder how I manage to hang on, so far away from you, without going crazy. I miss you. I feel like nothing without you. I love you, I love you, I love you. . . . That’s it, I’m crying. Who cares. I’m not ashamed to cry over you. I’m ready to cry all the tears in my body in order to deserve your love.

2. Paname: slang for Paris.

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Don’t forget, my goddess, to send me the money orders you’d promised me in Abidjan. Sure, I’ve already taken care of the rent until March, but I still have, my breath of life, books to buy, big books, big and complicated, that obviously are really, really, really expensive, not to mention the little expenses that go with everyday life. So I’m waiting for the next money order. I kiss you. I love you very much. Babyface, your baby. P.S. Excuse me for the condition of this letter; those are my tears that fell onto the paper. I read all of the letters, I wrote all of them. I was there when everything started between Mozâti and Babyface. Mozâti and I, we’re friends. Since we were really little. We went to school together. Until seventh grade. Lycée Sainte-Marie. It’s in seventh grade that the paths of school and Mozâti separated. Me, I continued. Today I’m an engineer, an agricultural engineer. My name is Akici.

The letters I can write myself. But there’d be too many mistakes in them; there’d be so many mistakes of all kinds that no one would understand anything. What good is it to write a letter that the other, he doesn’t get anything about? No good. And then what is Babyface going to think of me? Not much. He’ll say Mozâti, is she a bushwoman or what? And I don’t want to lose Babyface. Why, I don’t want to make a fool of myself. That’s why I always ask Akici to write them for me. She’s my friend. We don’t hide anything from each other. So.

These letters, Mozâti can read them herself, but she’s determined that I share her happiness to be loved by a lover as exceptional as Babyface. She wants me to realize through these letters, even the most intimate ones, especially the most intimate ones, to what point her love life is a 50

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Babyface

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smashing revenge on her academic failure. A secret revenge on me, too. Aren’t I, according to the standard by which she measures academic success, the very symbol of social success? In a certain way, she’s made me the spectator of her happiness. All of that without animosity, without any sourness. The writing and reading of these letters is a muted game, a friendly game that she’s set up between the two of us.

To Akici. She’s the one who saw everything. Since the beginning she saw everything. How he wouldn’t stop looking at me and everything. Anyway my head, my body, and my soul are too deep in it to be able to tell about it. Leave it to Akici. And anyway, when Akici speaks, it is classy.

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Lines: 317 to They met during vacation in July at a party at Pamela’s.

How else has Pamela smeared me? That girl will say anything about anyone. A friend of ours. Pamela abandoned her job as a tax inspector to take care of two children — born of the first marriage of her husband, a politician who is often gone on missions, and whom, in the end, she rarely sees. So she multiplies the parties to kill her boredom.

People are going to say again that Mozâti is a spendthrift. But when I see something that isn’t right I have to say something. Because me, I say that her husband’s missions are too much. Ah! What mission never ends? One two three trips, one two three trips, one two three. . . . Some mission, if there’s not a woman behind that mission, my name’s not Mozâti. Akici says not to get mixed up in it, that it’s not our business, 51

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that it won’t make Pamela happier. But I say that truth makes your eyes red but it doesn’t break them and that we have to sit Pamela down and tell her the truth eye to eye. Because either Pamela has had the doodoo pulled over her eyes or she’s a real gawa, 3 if she doesn’t understand what’s going on right under her nose.

I didn’t know how long he’d been there, leaning against that mango tree, looking toward. . . . I followed the direction of his gaze that pierced the whole garden straight to Mozâti. To tell the truth, I immediately found him handsome but not more than that; in any case not enough to climb the palm trees or tear off your panties at noon on market day. Yet he had a little something, not something more but something other than the boys of Abidjan: something else that stood out from the movements of rebellious muscles, both smooth and chiseled, from the cunning smiles that they know are irresistible and from the laughter, brilliant like blades in the sun, of the boys of Abidjan. Leaning against the tree he seemed far from the general agitation, not in an arrogant way, not haughty, but different, standing back, clumsy, quaint, and the something else begged for him to be taken into the arms of someone who would give him a kiss on the forehead, as if he were a child; the something else begged, with all of its fibers, like a wail, that somebody love him. And then there was something else, too, that I hadn’t noticed at first. In his look. In that look that followed Mozâti everywhere in Pamela’s garden, an archaic, primitive, slightly brutal light pierced through. Like a hunter. He was not looking at Mozâti; he was tracking her the way a hunter would track an already wounded animal, calmly, until the end. Me, I’m sitting innocently watching my girlfriends dance, turning their bodies like tops at the same time that they rock their butts like this like 3. Gawa: bushwoman, country bumpkin.

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Babyface

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that like this in front of the tight bulging flies of the boys caressing the lawn with their shoes and who don’t notice or pretend not to notice the whole act the women are putting on to get a glance from them, busy as they are admiring their own jumping steps on the grass like lion cubs and there and there and there with their smiles that they know are irresistible, stuck at the corners of their mouth, and as soon as a blade of grass falls on their latest-style shoes they take out their handkerchiefs and lean down gently nodding their heads like that like that like that to clean off with a dry, precise gesture their polished, polished, polished shoes; you’d think they were mirrors and sometimes even if there isn’t grass on their shoes they take out their handkerchiefs anyway nodding their heads like that, like that, like that before they clean off the tips of their shoes because that’s how you dance Kofi Olomide’s last hit, which is in fact an old tune by Franco et le Tout-Puissant. O.K. Jazz that he’s arranged for our time. It’s when I hear him asking Jérôme for permission to talk with me that I realize that Kofi Olomide is already over and that now we’re listening to the dance hit It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World, remixed a little bit like rap, like James Brown, alias the Sex Machine. What makes me at first unable to resist, and I’ll say that right away, is his shyness. He is so shy! You know he’s shy right away when you see him. His arms are crossed in front of him like this, like a schoolboy. He greets us and then he asks Jérôme, calling him sir, if he’ll give his permission to dance with his wife. He thinks I’m married to Jérôme. Jérôme tells him that he should just ask me himself. So he turns toward me, uncrossing his arms, then crossing them in back of him, like this, then he asks me, Madam, will you have this dance with me? like a child excusing himself because he’s done something wrong. Jérôme smiles.

Jérôme? Mozâti doesn’t want us to talk about him anymore. The girlfriends, in particular Pamela and Karidja, never miss a chance to mock her about Jérôme. Pamela says, among other things, because of Jérôme’s 53

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age, that “Mozâti has set up house with her grandfather, Jérôme What’shis-name of the Pigsty.”

De la Péronnière! Jérôme-Alexandre Dutaillis de la Péronnière! La Péron-niè-re! Jérôme-Alexandre Dutaillis de la Péronnière! After all, it’s not any more complicated than Pamela Agbodjamaofê, is it!

A gentleman. Jérôme left his native France more than thirty years ago. Since then he has never set foot again in what he calls “a dump full of [54], (20 weirdos eating their own shit off of porcelain plates and on silk tablecloths as they congratulate themselves on being the navel of the world.” The rare moments when Jérôme permits himself bad language are when Lines: 36 he mentions France, which “is not a country but an asylum.” Why such ——— animosity? Jérôme has never explained it. Not in my presence, at any -1.0pt rate, and Mozâti has told me that on this subject he remains as silent as ——— the grave. Custom P Jérôme . . . de la. . . . Anyway, Jérôme is without a doubt the most * PgEnds: E affable and the most cultivated person that I’ve ever met. Naturalized seven years after his arrival here, he managed to build himself a solid [54], (20 fortune thanks to the cultivation of rubber trees and pineapples. His relationship with Mozâti still remains for all of us a true mystery. Mozâti is definitely a beautiful girl, especially since her third plastic surgery, with a certain natural class, but we still don’t understand how this old, refined man was able “to fall under the spell of a gawa who can’t even tell i from o,” to quote Pamela. Jérôme offered her two villas, cash. One in Cocody, above Blokos, and another sumptuous one, in Angré. Plus a Rover, a 200, in red. For Pamela, “It’s no mystery. Mozâti has gbassé the old white man is all. 4 He has his rubber trees and whatever he wants, plantations, and 4. Gbassé: hexed.

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Mozâti, she’s woven her web around the only worthwhile plantation: Jérôme What’s-his-name of I don’t know anymore what himself.”

Let Pamela take care of her own ass! Do I get mixed up in her ugly little deputy’s romances when he says he’s going on so-called missions and everyone knows that he’s going to go get himself felt up by his dirty little djantras? 5 When all of our girlfriends are making fun of her, do I also put in my two cents? So she can leave my reputation alone! If I want to give my ass to my great-great-great-grandfather I’ll give my ass to my great-great-great-grandfather! My ass, it isn’t someone else’s ass! It’s all jealousy. Pamela, she would have been very happy to be in my place. Because of Jérôme’s money. Because me, I already have two villas and a Rover 200. That’s why they’re all jealous of me. Even telltale Akici makes fun of me behind my back like the others. Because they’ve learned kilometers of White Man’s paper, all the way to the university, but in the end, they’re left with so-so lives. It’s not with her ugly little rotten deputy there that Pamela’s going to have a villa in Cocody and another in Angré, with a Rover on top of it. Me, I don’t stuff myself with pills because my husband has abandoned me to go on a so-called mission. And Razor Blade! She’s another girlfriend, her name’s Karidja. Pamela nicknamed her Razor Blade because her tongue hurts like a razor blade when she makes fun of you. She’s an administrative assistant, but she doesn’t administrate anything in her life. Never been able to hold onto a man. Gets dumped every week by a boy. Or gets him stolen by a girlfriend. Never succeeded in keeping one. But she tells everyone that she dropped him. That makes everybody laugh behind her back. In any case, the guys don’t want her anymore, they say she’s served too much everywhere everywhere everywhere not to be a sack of AIDS. And when your name is mud in the mouths of the Abidjan boys, your name is really mud. 5. Djantras: sluts.

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Akici, Madame Advice. . . . That’s me who nicknamed her that because she likes too much to give advice to everyone. She married a soft soft soft guy, you’d think he was kabatô, 6 who calls himself a writer. A writer my ass! Akici says he writes poems; you’d think he was Senghor, poems so pretty that you’d sing them. But no one’s ever seen one of his books in the bookstore. In any case, what I see is a guy who doesn’t do a damned thing all day long. And while Akici works her butt off at work, what does this little asshole do? Poetry between Mô Flô’s thighs, Akici’s own little sister. And what’s more, in their bed. Everybody knows that. Even Akici knows it, but the day she tried to ask him why he does that with her little sister Mô Flô, the way he slapped her, she almost went deaf. Since then Akici acts as if she knows nothing. So what good is it to have studied White Man’s paper all the way to the university when you can’t even take a dishonest guy to court who’s doing a lube job on your little sister and who beats you up afterward? Your own husband with your own little sister in your own bed! Opko! 7 Mozâti, don’t waste any more of your breath on girls like that. So, while I’m dancing with him I’m waiting for him to let his fingers slide down my spine all the way to my crack, like Abidjan boys do. But nothing, he does nothing. So I wait for him to at least sweet talk me, try to pick me up, but no, nothing. He shuts up, he doesn’t say anything. Plus he doesn’t squeeze me tight, tight, tight. Because when it’s a slow dance and they turn out the lights, the boys don’t even dance, they merely squeeze you as they put their hands between your buns and slide their tongue into your ear. It’s not that it’s unpleasant, but there’s some who really go too far. Hey! Abidjan boys! One day there was a boy who squeezed me so hard that my bra ripped open. He stays really classy. And he dances. And he dances well, he really dances well. Since he says nothing, since he does nothing but dance, I ask him his name. Just like that. You know, to say something. He 6. Kabatô: a sort of cornmeal mush. 7. Opko: an exclamation expressing spite.

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Babyface

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says Mouss Lakamé, but my friends call me Babyface. I ask, What? He repeats, Babyface, with the voice of a child expecting to be punished, and for the second time I crack, I melt. Babyface! It’s like a powder puff caressing the inside of your thighs high up. Babyface! How can you not love a guy who’s called Babyface?

Is there for vacation. Comes from Paris. Student. Economics. Finishing his studies the following year. Then will return to Abidjan to work in a bank. Almost certain to be at the head of one of the banks on the square. Twenty-three years old.

Only twenty-three years old! While the James Brown is finishing he tells me he’d like to see me again. I answer I don’t want to. So he says tomorrow I’ll wait for you in front of the museum at three o’clock. I say I won’t come. But still calm, with a voice that hopes for nothing, he says, that doesn’t matter, I’ll be there anyway. I’ll wait for you until you remember that someone is waiting for you, and that this someone loves you more than it’s possible to love anyone since the day when he walked into a garden party because he had nothing else to do and he saw you. Henceforth he is yours, body and soul. Do with him what you want, let him dry up and wither away in front of that museum if that’s what you want to do, but don’t forget that no one will ever love you as I love you.

So, for the third time since the young man leaning against the mango tree asked her with his diffident and placating voice if she would please give him this dance, Mozâti cracked. But this time for good. When she 57

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joined Jérôme and me again, she was in tears. Because, she says, of the young man who was disappearing into the night to the first notes of Pimper’s Paradise by Bob Marley. He’d said unpleasant things to her, had treated her no better than dirt, with words below the belt, words that hurt a woman, simply because she refused his advances. Jérôme took her in his arms and tried to console her: “It’s over, my sweet, it’s over.” I was flabbergasted. Never, since the age of eleven, when Mozâti had known her first boy, had anyone succeeded in making her cry. Even Karidja, whose tongue is reputed to be as sharp as a razor, had not succeeded in pulling the beginning of the beginning of a tear out of her when she mocked her the most intensively about her “old white man, Jérôme What’s-his-name of I don’t know what anymore.” In spite of the “It’s over, my sweet, it’s over” said more and more languorously and that returned like a leitmotiv, Mozâti was inconsolable. Nevertheless, even though her face was ravaged by tears, strangely enough it reflected something radiant, and her eyes were filled with light, like rainfall shining in the sun.

I cry for Jérôme too. I don’t want him to feel hurt. He’s given me everything. Given me so much. I don’t want him to see that I’m pouring out tears of happiness for someone else. But I’m so happy! Forgive me Jérôme, but in my heart, far behind the tears, joy is dancing and singing at the top of her voice. I am. Like a crazy woman. I. Finally. Float. I. Fly. Woman. I am. The next day, obviously, I go to my rendezvous. Late. Just like that. To see. Babyface is there, holding a red rose, like a child waiting for his picture to be taken. My God, a boy waiting for you with a red rose! That is classy, classy, classy. Even Jérôme who is white, older and refined, has never given me flowers. Anyway, nobody has ever given me any.

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men, and while she was at it, financially stable ones; she has never known anything else other than the life of a little, delicate, fragile thing for whom everything is permitted, but with whom everything can be permitted. On her part, she never loved any of these men. Except for Jérôme. In truth, respect more than love. Because of his age. Also because he “has class.” For the first time somebody younger than her . . . oh, not by much, but younger all the same, loved her. Someone who had nothing else than his love to give her and whom she loved so much she could have gone crazy. Within a few days, the one she henceforth called my baby had become the central nervous system of her life. Where is Babyface? What’s my baby doing? Will Babyface like this dress? I’d like my baby to be here to see that! I have to speak to Babyface about it first. You know what Babyface told me? Babyface doesn’t think so. Babyface thinks so. Babyface doesn’t know. Last night I dreamed about Babyface again. I won’t be able to because my baby hates places with too many people. . . .

Before Babyface I thought I was incapable of loving, that I was frigid, I mean emotionally; I thought even that other women were faking it when they talked about the love of their life. And here you are, thanks to Babyface, it’s happening to me too. When Babyface is far away from me my body itches; it itches everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. It seems like he has replaced the air that soothes my lungs, the blood that flows in my veins, the flame that lights my eyes; it seems like I was dead before him. He is in me. He possesses me, he fills me and I’m happy that he possesses and fills me. What a mere look from him is capable of doing to me in my flesh is . . . How can I say it? . . . Oh, I can’t find the word . . . For my baby I can swim across the lagoon. If he asks me to jump from the roof of the Ivory Hotel, I won’t hesitate a second, I’ll jump; if he asks me to drop Jérôme, I’ll do it, in the wink of an eye, at that very moment, I’ll drop Jérôme. 59

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But she didn’t have to do that.

Jérôme-Alexandre Dutaillis de la Péronnière died on August 11 at 1:49 p.m. Heart attack in his bathtub. He was cremated, and his ashes were thrown into the lagoon as he had always wished. He didn’t forget me in his will. Babyface here, Babyface there. Babyface had become the Maggi cube of Mozâti’s life. 8 She didn’t know which way to turn. From here on out, it was she who gave presents. Presents, it must be said, that Babyface always refused with his little boy’s voice expecting a spanking. Except for one. Three days before he left for Paris, Mozâti promised to send him, at the end of each month, a money order to help him with his studies. As was his habit, Babyface refused the offer. Mozâti insisted; she finds no enjoyment in her money except when she uses it for her baby. Anyway, the money will soon belong to Babyface, since they’re marrying next vacation. So Babyface gave in. Mozâti said thank you, “because it’s the first time that he’s accepting something from me.”

December. November. October. September. August. July . . . July. August. September. October. November. December. Then January. Then February. Then March. April. May. June. Then July. And finally August. And then this and that and this. ▲▲▲▲

8. Maggi cube: a flavored bouillon cube that all good cooks are thought to have in their kitchens. It is supposed to give “taste” to Mozâti’s food . . . and life.

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Today I saw Babyface. What? I just saw Babyface. Who? Babyface. My baby? Yes. You saw my baby? Yes. In a dream? No, for real. Where? In Abidjan. Yes, but where? In Marcory. Marcory? Marcory. Where in Marcory? At a red light. So if I understand correctly, a few moments ago in Marcory you saw Babyface happily eating an ice cream cone, leaning against a red light? He isn’t leaning against a red light and he isn’t eating an ice cream cone, he’s waiting for the light to turn green. Oh yeah? Was he in a car? On a motorcycle. On a motorcycle? A motorcycle. What was he doing on a motorcycle? He’s waiting for the green light. Oh yeah, you already told me that. He’s all dressed in leather with black sunglasses. My baby in leather with black sunglasses? That’s what I said. Oh yeah? He’s smoking. My baby never smokes. I know, but there he’s smoking. Oh? So if I’ve understood correctly, today in Marcory, at an intersection, you saw Babyface on a motorcycle, all dressed in leather, tinted lenses, a cigarette in his beak. . . . Was he at least wearing a helmet? He’s with a girl . . . a mulatto. . . . The girl is wearing red tennis shoes, a yellow pair of jeans with blue stripes, and a sleeveless top, I think it’s green. Maybe purple. The sleeve is too big and it’s floating down to the bottom of her right shoulder. She doesn’t have a bra. . . . A pointed piercing in her lower lip seems to be guarding the opening of her mouth. . . . Did he see you? He sees me; our eyes meet as he’s pulling away, laughing, from a never-ending kiss on his neck. My baby? Yes, Babyface. Did he recognize you? I’m sure he did. Because he’s looking at me. How? For a long time. How long? Long enough so the girl pushes her mirrored lenses up onto her forehead and also looks at me; she has green eyes. They were contacts. What? Your girl, her eyes, they were contact lenses; all those girls wear colored contacts now. Probably. In any case her eyes are green. . . . . Did you talk to him? No. I can’t seem to realize that it’s really him, and for his part he looks at me like my two breasts are in the middle of my forehead. The mulatto girl is the only one talking. What’d she say? I don’t know, she’s speaking in English. In English? In English. Did he also answer in English? No, he’s just looking at me. Besides, the light changes to 61

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green, but Babyface doesn’t take off again; he doesn’t notice until after the horn concert from the other drivers. Well, I’ll say! If I understand you correctly, Akici, you’re telling me that Babyface isn’t in Paris? All I’m saying is that I just saw him in Abidjan. Akici, I have to have a serious talk with you. My happiness has always bothered all of you as if because I was bad in school I had no right to be happy. Already when I was with Jérôme the criticizing behind my back didn’t stop. Even you. . . . Let me finish! Let me finish! . . . Even you talked about me behind my back. Jérôme is too old. It’s like she’s going to bed with her grandfather. Mozâti is only with the old white guy because of his money. She’s hexed him. He’s her cacao. 9 And so on and so on and so on. But I said nothing, [62], (28 I let all of you talk. Until Babyface arrived. And the jealousy began all over. Babyface is too young for her. It’s like she’s going to bed with her little brother. What is a future bank director going to do with a Lines: 48 gawa? It’s just a game, that’s all. The kid is there for her money. She’s his ——— cacao. Their thing won’t last a week. But it’s lasted and it’s still lasting. -3.0pt Because there’s a thing that you’ll never experience and that you’ll never ——— understand in spite of all your big university degrees: love. We love each Normal P other. It seems really stupid but that’s everything. Babyface loves me * PgEnds: E and I love Babyface. And there’s nothing else to it. Maybe today you saw a guy in Marcory who looked like Babyface with a kind of mulatto [62], (28 whore with supposedly green eyes hanging onto his ass. But that isn’t my baby. My baby, he is in Paname. He’s so much in Paname that he just wrote to me. Here’s the letter. Here. Go ahead, read it! I received it yesterday from Paris. “ . . . a big sacrifice that I’m asking you for, my love, but. . . .” Twenty million? Well yeah, twenty million. For what? Well, for what’s written there! “ . . . have to go to Houston, to the States, in order to complete my degree with a master’s. Can you imagine, my darling, an American master’s plus my French degree! It’ll cement my career profile. Really cement, cement, cement. . . . I won’t stay a bank director forever, I’m planning on high politics, high up, higher than high. . . . You see what I 9. Cacao: sugar daddy.

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mean? I want you to be proud of me . . . a stay in the States costs a lot . . . absolutely a powerful computer for my studies . . . can’t do anything today without the Internet, so I’m counting on . . . found out about the week in the Ritz that I’d talked to you about . . . reserved . . . where Lady Diana spent her last night . . . for a magnificent Yves Saint-Laurent wedding dress . . . precious stones. The most beautiful girl in the world . . . the most beautiful marriage in the world!” Well, I say my dear, I see we’re having fun. And why wouldn’t we? Where are you going to come up with all that money? That’s my business. “Provence a beautiful country house for our vacation. I promised you the life of a queen, you’ll have the life of a queen. Hey, while I’m thinking of it, in three weeks . . . You could come and meet me in Paris. . . . the dress yourself . . . visit Paris, the capital of capitals, and Provence. To return to the subject . . . to the last cent, for about twenty-five million, but I’ll manage to take care of everything with twenty million . . . to bargain tightly. Having said that, and I’m determined to remind you of this, even if you can’t send me that amount, the most important thing is our love. Thank God, real love doesn’t need . . . Come and join me anyway in three weeks. I’ll see you soon, I hope. I kiss you. I kiss you everywhere, even there, and especially there. Your baby. P.S. I’m also planning on finally installing a telephone and even getting a cellular phone so we can regularly do, long distance, what you’re thinking of and what I’m thinking; my sheets will be witnesses, they who. . . .” Will you go? Well of course! And what about the money? I said that’s my business. As of yesterday I took out what Jérôme left me in his will, and I already sent it to him. Right now I don’t know what to do about the rest of the money. But I’ll figure it out. That all seems to me a bit hasty, and in your place, I wouldn’t do anything in a hurry, I’d get some advice, I’d wait. . . . Wait for what? Don’t you see that Babyface is testing me, putting my love to the test? He’s offering me an unhoped-for chance to prove my love to him. Because I know he loves me, I feel his love every day, I feel it in me, it fills me. Now it’s up to me to prove to him that I love him more than he loves me. I’ll get the money. And I won’t send him just twenty million, I’ll send him the twenty-five million. 63

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In a few days, Mozâti managed to sell off her two villas and her Rover. She’s found the money. ▲▲▲▲

I ended up meeting him too. In Abidjan. Akici was right. But I don’t want anyone to hurt my baby. He’ll come back. For sure he’ll come back. On the back of the Blind One. I met him. Akici was right. But he’ll come back. He promised me, he’ll come back. On the back of the Blind One. I don’t want anyone to hurt my baby. Tell that. Not easy. Don’t remember anymore. Not very well. What I felt yes. That yes but that that and that and the details no. Remember yes what I felt. But the rest where when what how no that no. Hard enough it is to tell what I felt! Just what I felt. Because how to say that words can’t. But have to tell that. So just that.

The city is bathed in the light of Genesis and the sky is a mineral blue. Mozâti is nervous; the taxi that she’s taken to the airport is stuck in a traffic jam that seems to recede as it advances centimeter by centimeter. More than fifteen minutes and she’ll miss the plane she is taking to meet Babyface in Paris. Since the General de Gaulle Bridge, a flock of vultures has been following the procession. Thirteen vultures. Thirteen vultures as big and powerful as buffalo. The thirteenth, the biggest and the most powerful, the one leading the birds of prey, has a red neck. Mozâti nicknames him the Blind One because his eyes are always shut. The shadow of the vultures isolates the taxi from the rest of the traffic jam. No one is walking on the sidewalk. Just as in the entire city. Mozâti says to herself the sun has made them flee. Yet she can’t help wondering out loud why the city is deserted. Then the taxi driver turns toward her. 64

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It’s Babyface. Yet Mozâti isn’t surprised to see him there rather than in Paris. So joyful is she to have found her baby again that she even forgets why she took this taxi, and suddenly the traffic seems to her to be moving along reasonably well. Babyface has a smile, which he knows is irresistible, stuck at the corners of his lips. “The city hasn’t been deserted. Look out the window.” And here is what Mozâti sees out of the left car door. Outside the Rover 200 that they’re in, all of the other vehicles are in fact forming a pack of wild animals: elephants, agoutis, lions, centipedes, panthers, trap-door spiders, rats, snakes, hyenas, antelopes, wild dogs, crocodiles, zebras, ostriches, scaly anteaters . . . and still the thirteen vultures that seem weightless above the car. And here is what Mozâti sees from the right car door. A nude black woman and a nude white man on the sidewalk. The white man could have been Jérôme, only much younger. The black woman’s face resembles Pamela’s. But Pamela is as delicate and slender as she is short and stocky. Furthermore, unlike Pamela, she is left-handed. In her left hand the black woman is holding a razor. With her right hand she is dragging the white man by his sex. Each time the man resists her, the woman forces him to advance by slicing him with the razor blade. Thus the man’s body is running with blood. Having arrived alongside the Rover, the black woman, looking straight into Mozâti’s eyes, lifts up the razor blade and with a precise stroke cuts off the white man’s sex, which she stuffs into her own mouth. Babyface immediately bursts out laughing. And his laugh shines like the blade that the woman brandishes in the sun. Her lips bloody, the black woman chews the white man’s sex as she carries out a lascivious and vulgar dance. Babyface floors the accelerator, since the lane is now freed up, both in front and in back, the beasts having all withdrawn to the other lane. “My name isn’t Babyface or Mouss Lakamé. I’m not a student. I’ve never set foot in Paris, I’ve never even felt the itch to. My business is girls like you. I offer them the man they don’t even dare dream of. With you I was the young, polite, shy man who stays out of the way. With 65

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another girl it would have been a whole other act. I’m neither shy nor polite. I’m not the opposite either. I’m nothing. Nothing other than what you girls create of me. Do you really believe that I saw you for the very first time at Pamela’s place in July? I’d been following you for weeks, studying you. That’s my job.” He laughs as he speaks, sometimes letting go of the steering wheel so he can emphasize his words with big gestures, both smooth and sharp. On the now free lane the red car is speeding along toward nowhere, like a track of blood on the asphalt, in the overwhelming heat. The thirteen vultures are following them. “How did I do it? Dead easy! Dead easy! Dead easy! Mouss Lakamé really does exist, but I repeat, it isn’t me. You could find him in Paris, New York, Milan, Tokyo, or Brussels, according to the business at hand. Like me, he speaks several languages. I’m not even sure that his name is Mouss Lakamé, but as long as that works. . . . Like me he’s a monk without God or a terrorist without a cause. Like me he’s ready to do anything, to do the worst, for nothing, just for the game. He’s not trying to either change the world or destroy it; all he aspires to is constructing it by adding his portion of rottenness to the world’s putrefaction. Neither less nor more than the next guy. Just his portion of rottenness. Like me. He’s a man of his time.” Finally Babyface lights the cigarette that he’s been automatically pulling from his lips for the last few moments before each sentence. “Dead easy. I write you from Abidjan. I send the letter to Mouss’s address in Paris. Mouss puts the letter in a new envelope, puts a stamp on it, and sends it back to Abidjan with your name. Obviously he faxed me all your letters so I could prepare all of my answers. Dead easy. As for the money orders, he took out a third and then sent me the rest. It was a done deal. And Colombo himself won’t be able to figure it out.” Babyface slams on the brakes. The car tires screech, and it zigzags for almost a kilometer before coming to a complete stop in the shadow of the vultures, a few meters away from a mirage in the middle of the road. “Love you? What do you want me to do with you now that you’re 66

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ruined? Only your money gave me a hard on. For the game it offered me. Even your pretty little ass did nothing for me. And I mean nothing. My cries of pleasure when I was in your arms were part of the circus act: that was the job. And yet your pretty little ass, not only do you know how to use it, but on top of that you keep it clean You can believe me about that, because I’ve visited some holes! And when I think of all the pits where I’ve often had to soak my poor little piece of meat, I say to myself, this game, it really has to excite me to the max. In any case, you, I liked you. You’re even the one I have liked the best, and I was counting on spending some time with you, no joking. A year and a half . . . two years. . . . Unfortunately, the old white guy lowered his guard with death at the wrong round. Yes, your Jérôme, What’s-hisname thingamajig. Because in the end he was the gold mine. So voilà, our love story ends here. Whatever you might think of me, never forget that it’s with me that you’ll have been the most happy.” Then he gets out of the car and moves away a few steps, to the middle of the mirage born of the reflection of the heat on the asphalt. More than ever, his movements are smooth and forceful. He lifts up his head and signals to the vultures. Then twelve of the birds of prey let themselves drop down like stones onto the Rover as Babyface dissolves into the mirage. Only the blind vulture with the red neck stays in the sky like a flying sentry. The birds of prey break the car windows and with their beaks and claws tear Mozâti’s clothes into pieces before pulling her naked out of the car. They take her with them into the skies where the Blind One is waiting for them. And here is what Mozâti sees in the sky. The twelve vultures lay out Mozâti, her arms and legs spread apart in front of the Blind One, like a sacrificial victim in the fire of the sky. The bird of prey digs, digs, and digs his blind head into Mozâti’s offered thighs. And Mozâti sees in herself a light as huge as the sun. Little by little, as the red neck opens up her sex, Mozâti feels the horrible torture run through all of her blood at the same time as the light flees and shrinks, farther and farther away. 67

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The red neck sinks, sinks, sinks blindly all the way to Mozâti’s heart so that his beak can pluck it out. The light, now a spark, vacillates like a firefly without wings. The Blind One pulls out his head with Mozâti’s heart in the tip of his beak, and he disappears. Only then, as if the withdrawal of the Blind One had been a signal, do the twelve vultures plant their beaks and claws into Mozâti’s flesh, open it up all over and fight over it all the way to the last shred of flesh. From the now rumbling sky, two drops splatter onto Mozâti’s forehead. It is not her blood. The storm. The vultures abandon the white cleaned bones, which drop onto the roof of the Rover and break. Just before the light in her is forever snuffed out, Mozâti thinks, so that’s what it is, and suddenly a night of Apocalypse swoops down onto the city.

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Lines: 54 Yesterday vulgar nurse with her eyes made up you’d think a toutou who is waiting for my baby to return brought me my pills to steal him from me. She smiled at me. Not for real what she’s plotting I see. I slapped her. She spit in my face. Grabbed onto her braids and hit her and clawed her and bit her. Her face afterward! You would have thought a Picasso painting. Jérôme adores. That guy, Picasso, Jérôme adores him. After that they all yelled out. Everywhere. All over the building they cried out: “It’s her again! It’s the crazy woman in cell 23 again!” The male nurses jumped on me. Strapped me to the bed. The doctor came. Send the nurse away, I ordered. But the doctor gave me a shot. When I awoke Akici Pamela Karidja. Came to visit me. Every Saturday. For three months. Nobody they say haven’t seen Babyface anymore since. He’ll come back. On the back of the blind vulture he’ll come back. I know it. Akici is right. But not the police. Take off your clothes and smack smack slaps and kicks on your head and put out their cigarettes on your breasts and caress you there where you don’t want just anyone to caress you and then afterward put their pistol on your temple laughing 68

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loudly while the others push their night stick or something else up your butt and then you have to admit everything they want even what you don’t know and I don’t want them to do that to my baby. Assholes, there aren’t any other words, they’re assholes. Will hurt him. Whereas understand nothing about our story. The nurses a beautiful story you’re living there, they say. A beautiful story. They’re right. At least that I lived. Knew that. At least that. And that’s everything. Everybody says he disappeared, didn’t leave a trace; but with each new moon Babyface appears to me on the rump of the dusk’s red clouds, smiles at me. But nobody sees that.

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c aya m a k h é l é

The Labors of Ariana

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Lines: 56 End of the day. She’s about thirty years old and bends under the weight of two large baskets overflowing with plastic bags of all colors. The week’s groceries. She throws them carelessly across the room. Takes off her shoes with one hand, and with the other places two glasses in front of herself. Opens a bottle of champagne that flows noisily from having been shaken too much. Fills the two glasses right to the brim. Gulps them straight down one after the other, then immediately pours herself a new round. Inadvertently, with a nervous, clumsy movement, knocks over the bottle, which spins around on its side. For a long time she watches the champagne flowing out in little eruptive spurts. Takes the empty bottle and hugs it against her chest as she lightly rocks herself. A barely audible lullaby filters through her lips: “Cracked Coco, broken baby, ripped doll, you who are busying yourself at the river, tell mother to have no regrets. You who are busying yourself at the river, please tell mother to have no regrets. Tell mother to watch over the baby, over my cracked Coco, Orisha, broken baby, ripped doll, cracked Coco. Broken Coco.” One year. It’s been a year already since Orisha no longer exists. Orisha, 70

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my beloved albino. Each day, after I return from the office, I shut myself in so I can unlearn, forget the noises of the street, the kowtowing of the cousins, nephews, uncles, and aunts who congregate around my meager salary. Refuse the demands of a Saturday embalmed with music and curl in on myself. She pulls up a chair. Settles in with her knees against her chest. Stays silent for an instant. Her eyes go from the baskets to the plastic bags her purchases are spilling out of. Eat nothing, listen to nothing, look at nothing. Maybe observe deep inside of myself. Démokoussé cleared out when Orisha was born. Yet she was a wished-for child, not a lost ball like you see all over the neighborhood. How could I have had the hots for such a cowardly man? Our little girl was albino. To think that I carried her in my belly for nine months without knowing it. For a moment I felt a disgust in my throat when I saw her. Then I squeezed her hard, very hard, in my arms. She was so fragile. That night, the rain that had been falling for a week on Punta Negra had stopped, and since dawn, my daughter’s life had been hanging on the will of a disjointed couple. Her destiny and my curse were engraved in the colorless sky. I heard her breathe, eager for this new life. Démokoussé saw her twice. At her birth and at her death. “Here,” he said, “is a daughter that I’ll have trouble marrying off and who is going to poison my existence. This child cannot be mine.” Orisha was sleeping in her cradle. That’s what I called her. Orisha, like a fallen Yoruba god. Her diaphanous skin was a mirror spotted with a multitude of droplets, dark tears from her innermost depths. Upon seeing these blotches, my heart went cold. Nothing could warm me again. I imagined that she would be an isolated little girl, not playing ndzango, 1 obediently living through teenage, then an adult, a curvaceous woman 1. Ndzango: a game played by girls in Congo.

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rejected by everyone, giving herself to anybody who happens by so she can feel she exists: taken, thrown away and despised because she is different. The ground had dried up. The dirty rain blocking the horizon having drowned in a pale sky just a while before. I am alone with Orisha. I show her the horizon in the direction of the wild coast, there where the Atlantic is incredibly violent. Suddenly everything is red violet. She sees nothing. Albinos always have weak eyesight. Stagnant waters cover the lawns and sidewalks, the trees reach out their arms to the sun, the women square their shoulders like statues that no albino baby would ever disturb. A little albino girl riding her bicycle around the trees crosses a muddy pond, the tire marks trace her distress. One day Démokoussé returned, his arms full of presents. He was as nervous as a hot pepper frying in oil and was chain smoking. The cigarette butts were piling up at breathtaking speed. He took me by force. I hardly resisted. I let him do it. Anyway, I was hard up. We had an encore. Then I went and took a shower, washed off the filth he had once again poured into me. He stayed alone with our little girl for an instant. When I returned, Orisha was dead. Seeing Démokoussé’s derisive and self-satisfied smile, and the pillow put carelessly on the baby’s head, I understood what had happened. I screamed. Impassive, he said to me, “It was the only solution. You surely didn’t want us to become the laughingstock of the whole city. Now that she’s dead we can live together again.” I screamed again. I wasn’t strong enough to smash in his face. I grabbed a knife. Démokoussé ran away. I didn’t see him again. Never again until tonight. She gets off of her chair and takes a few steps. Haggard. Gets undressed and puts on a bathrobe. I would like to have had a sex that speaks. And that says what it thinks of the male who visits it. Gnaws it. I’ve never liked this way boys have of thinking that it’s enough to put their hand between your legs for you to be in paradise. In my dreams there’s always a coast without the sea and 72

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a sea without shores. Like a hairless sex. Infinite and coarsely childish. Then long arid stretches. She grabs a blue plastic bag and looks inside. Sticks in her nose sniffing loudly. I don’t like palm oil, too fatty, men’s little sexes, soft. Big empty stupid eyes. What interests me in a man is the smell, the smell of hot peanut butter. Perspiration. Sour sweat. Sweat that sticks to the skin like wax. She takes a papaya out of the bag, caresses it for a long time, cuts it up, removes the seeds and begins to eat it greedily. I don’t like women’s huge breasts that hang, big and limp, out of their bras. Why, I am hungry. I discovered avarice with Démokoussé. And since then I can’t stomach tight-fisted guys, penny pinchers who skimp on a tip for one hundred cfa francs, 2 who look for hours at the prices in the restaurant, the price of each dish. Who give presents they bought on sale. Losers. I don’t like men with women’s asses and bodies as soft as rubber. That can be practical. But I don’t like practical men or men with little eyes. Minuscule eyes that don’t open onto the world. I hate men who don’t respect, in a certain way, a shared game of sexual identity. They’re men with overrated and colorless women. Women who trail along naked in their head and that everything slides off. Smooth. She takes a head of wilted lettuce out of a basket. Slowly pulls off the leaves as she sings softly. Cracked Coco, broken doll. . . . Old lettuce, like Démokoussé’s mother. Since then, I hate the odor of old people. An old person smells particularly like what’s old. How can that smell be described? A very pungent 2. cfa: Communauté Financière Africaine, “Africain financial community.” cfa francs are the unit of currency used in certain African states.

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odor — from the past — that is always present. An odor that permeates clothes, furniture, saucepans, dishes, that throws the past in the face of every pregnant woman. A stagnant odor that each old person carries along behind him suspended in the air, with its weight of existence. She begins emptying the contents of the basket. Stops a moment. Looks around her. I don’t like television and that image of myself they send me by satellite, my image that is prefabricated in Paris, without asking my opinion, whereas I’m here with my chair. I didn’t ask for anything. I don’t like video games or technology; it’s brought me nothing. I hate this bewitchment. Technology is the witchcraft of our time. It creates a community of thought. I don’t want to think like everyone else.

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She violently pushes back the chair. Goes to fetch a suitcase. Heavy. Opens it. Empties it, throwing the clothes out of it one by one. I hate the myth of the equipped kitchen, homogeneity in a house. Order. I have the feeling that it’s not alive. A well-ordered, too-clean house scares me. And these breeze-block walls that crack during every dry season, like a human face, give me the feeling of a cursed place. I’m always afraid. And I survey these cracks with my eyes. I believe in spirits. When I was very little, at night I would hear the wild cats growl in my grandfather’s village. Countless demons stealthily wandering around, ready to devour my naked body. And today when I make love, I sense these demons lurking under my bed, ready to grab my breasts with their whole hands, to suck out my body, my sex, like an ice cream cone, a trickle of sugar which the greedy tongue of a famished child would fervently snatch. Then I come again and again. The men all imagine they’re making me come. They say triumphantly: “Admit that with me it’s great!” 74

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They’ll never know which demons moisten my body with this aphrodisiacal drool. When I make love, I hate being constantly asked what I want to have done to me. And do you like that? To be given orders. Turn over, lift your right leg, look at me, tell me that you. . . . I would like to have had my back lacerated by the claws of a big black wild cat. Each and every night. A lion the color of wood charcoal. Keep his marks on my back sewn up with scars. But my Démokoussé was no more than a dwarf with a sticky body like palm oil and meowing left and right. Suddenly she sees a cockroach, puts her shoes back on, runs up to it and smashes it. [75], (41) I’ve often dreamed of smashing Démokoussé in this way, and of hearing his sordid meow die out at the bottom of his throat. I’ve always had men who cried out like cats as they came. I hate cats that leave their hair everywhere, that rub themselves against your feet. And yet I grew up among cats, mosquitoes, spiders, cockroaches, and rats too. A perfect bush woman. At night, the forest used to let us hear all the sounds of a wildlife that felt free at nightfall. Curled up in grandfather’s arms, I fell asleep reassured by the warmth of his hand on my belly and by his deep, slow voice. Today I wage war on household creepy crawlies. They don’t belong in a house. I don’t like goldfish in a bowl. It’s really stupid. Idiotic. Those poor fish have nothing better to do than go around in twenty centimeter circles. It’s completely degrading. Goldfish are martyrs. She looks into one of the baskets again. Hunts as she scatters her purchases on the ground. Seizes a roll of toilet paper, holds her nose as she picks up the cockroach and puts it into an empty sack that she then knots several times over. Then she wipes her hands with another piece of toilet paper. I forgot to buy paper napkins again. That cockroach smelled like mustard. I don’t like mustard, its consistency, its smell; it’s gelatinous, it 75



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really wants to make you puke. Like that lover I kept for half an hour. He had half-rotted teeth, blackened from tobacco, and very big feet with toes spread far apart, dirty toenails curled in on themselves, ingrown. His mouth and his feet smelled like mustard. I accepted his advances in order to scare myself. I need to feel fear in love. But there was also some sort of self-punishment. I didn’t take any precautions. I brought home all sorts of losers. Each night spent in the arms of a member of my crowd greatly increased the fear that defying this octopus, aids, inexorably made me feel. An octopus that would have both punished me and set me free. That night my mustard lover planted himself in front of my library and looked at all my books one by one. I hated him at once. I told him that he came to see me, not my books. It’s true I have a lot of books. So what? That’s not a reason to look at them one by one. I’m not a bookstore. I immediately threw the mustard man out. After Orisha’s burial, I looked for myself in many books. Some of them remained completely foreign to me. I felt good in rather distant universes. In fears from elsewhere. During that period I read numerous books by a certain Lopenri, because I heartily detested him for understanding women so well. He intrigued me. For me, no man could get so far inside a woman’s skin, feel like her, fuck like her. My friends think I’m bitter, because I always take on my serious air with the little beggars in the street who inspire feelings of rebellion and pity in me. I don’t like to feel pity. And then this feeling that you have to do everything for them. This insidious conviction that you owe them everything. I don’t owe anyone anything. Especially not the one who made love to me the first time. I hated how fast it happened and the funk I was in. I was afraid of getting pregnant, of becoming a pre-mamma. Anyway, I didn’t hurt. There wasn’t any blood. There’s never any blood with me. After I’d finished that first time, I went and took a shower right away. Now I hate guys who do that, who rush into a shower as if they were dirty. I hate living with a man, sharing with him the daily routine that establishes itself, the routine hurried by things, and he just passes over my body without really staying there. The transformation 76

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of feelings makes me say that love means giving what one doesn’t have to someone who doesn’t want it. It’s Lacan who claimed that. That’s all I retained from my long years at the university. I’m becoming scornful, demanding. I’ve stopped feeling consideration for others. It’s hateful. I wasn’t averse to cheating on Démokoussé. That allowed me to still see him as a flirt and to show him the same sexual intensity as when we were lovers. Faithfulness means always wanting to make love as strongly, as intensely, as the first time. She opens another bottle of champagne. Pours herself another two glassfuls. This time she drinks them slowly, looking attentively into each glass for a long time. She begins playing at transferring the contents of one glass to another. I hate moths. They literally terrorize me. They embody flying death. I have the feeling they’re rushing at me, dragging their big velvety wings, their clumsy bodies. At any cost they mustn’t touch me, it’s horrible. When I was little, I liked animals a lot; now I don’t give a shit about them. On the other hand, I hate humans who sexually ration them. In the name of what? By what right? And what if nature wants these animals to accomplish their sexual cycle in this way? I like human beings better than animals, so I will always consider human suffering more important than animal suffering. Last night I dreamed again about a man who went off to hunt snails. They were snails with paws. The man was running after the snails, and when he was just about to catch them, hup, the snails leaped up. The man succeeded in catching just one. He wanted to make a méchoui 3 out of it, but it wasn’t possible. In each of my dreams, this man goes on snail hunting, and each time he catches only one. The same one. I’m convinced that this man is more unhappy than the poor snail. When I was little, I don’t know what I hated the most. Maybe the fact of being little and forced to take cold showers. 3. Méchoui: barbecue of a whole sheep.

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Children are too demanding, you always have to be available. As for my parents, I hated mistakes in French, faulty liaisons. I was convinced that my father would have preferred another woman to my mother. I don’t like the fact that I never caught them making love. My parents kissed discreetly. I have the feeling that it stunted my sexual education. Now I miss their delicious innocence. I hate it when water is cold. I don’t like the cold. I like the sun on my body, the taste of salt, I was deprived of salt when I was little. I hate dark furniture in a house, elaborate wallpaper, everything cumbersome, I like white, little furniture, an almost empty house. She goes to look for a can of paint. Puts the chair on sheets of newspaper and tries to repaint it. I hate squat toilets, narrow, filthy bathrooms without windows. Orisha would have hated them too. I have to have windows everywhere. Even in a kitchen. I spend very little time there. Cooking doesn’t interest me that much. At night, I hate car lights, the noise of mopeds. What hellish machines! I don’t like it when somebody has to absolutely prove something to me. I like things to happen allusively. The last lover I brought here insisted that he was a guy who didn’t want to make anyone suffer. Men are all cowards in love. He had a mistress and a wife, and on the pretense of not making anyone suffer, he made both of them suffer. By giving himself good reasons to believe that he was very generous: “Me, I’m a sensitive man who is thoughtful of others, I don’t want to make my wife suffer; I’m fucking you anyway, but I don’t want to make the mother of my kids suffer.” Why is the woman who suffers always the one who allows herself to be hurriedly fucked? I’ve often been eaten that way. I’ve met quite a few married men. It’s a way for me to tell myself no more live-in men. None of them will ever ask for my hand in marriage. I haven’t forgotten a single one of them. It’s damned hard to forget someone. Anyway, you don’t forget him, you make him part of you. Of your life. He becomes 78

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a component of your personality. A stage of your life. How many stages have I had in my life? I don’t know, several. My childhood, very good, everything went very well. I was happy, I had a brother I loved, I was cute. How ugly you become as you get older! My adolescence, a dreadful pile of shit. I tortured my parents. I was against their narrowmindedness, their lack of understanding. I didn’t rebel because others were doing it around me. No. My transgression has stayed the same as today. Unappeased. Afterward it was the age when I wanted to be a woman, trying to find my place in a society that didn’t leave me anything better than the worst. All in all, a jump seat. It’s the moment when you say to yourself that you’ll never be able to feel anything again. That you’ll never again be able to do anything for a man. The ones who snore, the ones who sleep while I’m not sleeping, the ones who don’t hug me so I’ll fall asleep. Whenever I turned over in my bed, I wanted to be able to feel a body against mine. To open my eyes and see that he hadn’t taken advantage of my sleep in order to change the way his face looked. Love is a word that gains in extension what it loses in understanding. I never handed over Démokoussé to the police. Why? Is it because I kept hope — quickly dashed, by the way — for repentance and a spontaneous confession? The police had concluded that the death was caused by heart failure. Sudden infant death remains inexplicable. No medicine can prevent it. I’d been required to spend several hours at the hospital waiting for Orisha’s autopsy. I hate hospitals, especially the smell, that smell that’s supposed to be sterilized, then that feeling of death, and all those sick people. It’s a concentration camp universe where you can find all the sick people, and all the people doing OK outside ignore them. So to distract myself I imagined trips I might take. There are so many countries that I don’t know. I would like to have traveled across the world. To Guatemala or to Tibet. Listen to foreign languages. They sound beautiful when you don’t understand them. During Orisha’s funeral mass, I closed my eyes and fell asleep. I dreamed. All I have to do is close my eyes to dream. . . . A woman is walking on the paving stones leading toward the large room of the crypt. She enters. A light 79

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coming out of a half-collapsed wall greets her. A ray of sun caresses a portrait on a stretch of wall. The portrait represents a man. A bishop, for certain. The woman is standing in front of the portrait. Suddenly a hand touches her shoulder. She turns around. The man facing her is the one in the portrait. She shrinks back against the wall. The painting comes off the wall and falls on her head. The bishop moves toward her. Frightened, she opens her bag and takes out a knife. She stabs him. The prelate collapses on top of his portrait. The woman flees. Passes by a door. A hand covered in blood holds her back by her arm. It’s the bishop’s hand. The woman manages to escape. The wall opens up wide, and one sees a banquet. A bearded man is laughing heartily. The woman moves forward. The bearded man is at the table with his wife. She’s wearing a blond wig. The woman is invited to sit down. The wife offers her a plate full of maggots. The man continues to laugh. The man seizes the woman’s breasts. Kisses them, then starts to chew on them like chewing gum. His wife gets up, takes off her wig. She places it on her man’s head and gouges out his eyes. I woke up screaming. My friends and family thought I was overwhelmed by pain. She steps back to admire her work. Walks around the half-painted chair. Puts down her paintbrush and drinks a glassful of champagne. She picks up a disjointed doll that seems to have been hanging around the room for ages. Today I saw Démokoussé again. He was dressed to the nines and happy to see me. His words were still just as saccharine, and he had the memory of a hen. He showed off, telling me I couldn’t live without him. Without his sexual prowess. That he’d heard I was selling my ass. That he didn’t give a damn because I was the woman of his life. That he’d hexed me. He was kissing me, drooling on my face, saying he’d never leave me again, that he was going to take me to his place by taxi and make love to me like he’d never done to anyone else. Like a good souse he’d soaked himself. Adulterated rum. He dragged me away by force. I 80

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didn’t resist. Why? I felt a premonition, tucked into the hollow of my abdomen that had contracted out of disgust. He hailed a taxi, sank into it. He’d hardly gotten into the car when he opened the door on the other side and got out again, pulling me toward him. I resisted. He fell onto the pavement, looked around him, saw the taxi driver and said: “That was nice to have brought me home so quickly. How much is the ride?” Then he collapsed. I let the taxi go and dragged Démokoussé into a small, badly lit alley. There I understood what I was going to do. I knew full well that the premonition gnawing at my guts was finally going to come true. I understood then why I hadn’t handed Démokoussé over to the police. For a long time afterward the street lit up, illuminated by Orisha’s face.

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Lines: 695 to She pours champagne onto the floor before serving herself again. Emp——— ties one glass after another and continues to drink straight out of the * 56.0pt PgV bottle. Several times. Suddenly she bursts out laughing. ——— Normal Page For the ancestors. It’s painful, but an anniversary is for celebrating. * PgEnds: PageB Today, Saturday, I killed Démokoussé. I smothered him with my sex. In the dark alley. I sat on his face. I pulled up my skirt. I let myself fall on his [81], (47) mouth, eager for my flesh not long ago. A man went by muttering that there were lucky devils who knew how to enjoy life. I stayed sitting for hours until his fetid breath was no longer attacking my skin. I was both weary and happy. Then I pissed slowly, for a long time. In his mouth. He swallowed with a last convulsive movement. And no longer moved. She yells, “Orisha!” translated by melissa marcus

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part 4

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michèle rakotoson

The Ballad of a Shipwreck

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——— That rooster. . . . If he could catch it, he would turn it into soup, evis14.0pt PgV ——— cerate it, slit its throat . . . Normal Page It seems that sleep is the poor man’s only good fortune. * PgEnds: Eject And now, thanks to that rooster . . . But there were also the ducks, the chickens, the geese, the . . . [85], (3) . . . OK, fine, they weren’t going to leave them behind, but that was still no reason to bother everyone. They could have perhaps left them outside. But when he had proposed that, they answered in a sour tone: “And the thieves.” Oh yes, and then there were also the thieves. He had almost forgotten about them. In Ambohitrimanjaka, the inhabitants had refused to join the refugee camps. They had stayed on the dam. They had far too many farm animals, it seems. Since then the journalists, followed by the photographers, had come to talk about them. It seems that if the dam gave way under the weight of the water . . . 85

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But others said they should open the dams, that the floods had been caused by the failure to let out enough water. Well, in any case, his own house was certainly standing in the water. . . . Yesterday Razafy, his wife, had returned from there in tears. “Visitors” had been there; they had looted everything and vandalized the rest. Why was she crying? They had to expect that. The house, or what that was left of it, had been empty for a month, and they had left the furniture inside. But where could they have put it? Rakoto turned over and over again in his bed, or rather what served as a bed. He felt tired, numb all over. He had slept miserably once again. How can four hundred people sleep in a church? . . . Oh, how exasperating that child could be when it cried like that! It had cried all night. Another one who was perhaps about to die. That would make the third one in a week. The children couldn’t stand sleeping directly on the ground, even with the tile floor. If only they had found some mattresses; the mats they had were far too thin. They must have caught cold, started coughing, coughing, then they grew thinner, spit up blood and. . . . But this time it was different. They had all had a fever, were burning up, coughing, then they had diarrhea, a very black diarrhea, and in a day or two . . . Four hundred people in this church hall. . . . For a month. . . . The doctors had come by and given out aspirin and quinine. In the dispensary they also distributed aspirin. They say that in the pharmacies there was no medicine left and what they did have was terribly expensive. . . . Other children were surely going to cry like this one did. But the children don’t even have room to play, that’s another reason that . . . . . . One month they had been there, one month of putting up with 86

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each other, the screams, the children crying, the promiscuity, the illnesses. How do you tell about life in a refugee camp? . . . They had thought they would only have to leave their homes for ten days, but the rain hadn’t stopped, and the water hadn’t subsided. . . . One month. . . . Razafy told him the thieves had taken away the sheet metal from the roof and the doors. Where would he find any now? On the black market, a piece of sheet metal sold for 10,000 francs before the flood, so now. . . . Rakoto sighed. These days the fatigue never left him. Why had he been dealt this nasty blow now? He had been a good mason. He had earned good money once. But now people weren’t building anymore. And he was sixty-two years old. Oh, He didn’t look it; he was still strong, but still . . . sixty-two years old, ten children, well, eight now that the oldest two were married. The oldest two will help me for sure, he said to reassure himself. . . . But where would he find work so that he could restore his house? But he shouldn’t despair. He had been a good mason; he was still well known. The houses he built were solid, quite beautiful, and they were still there, they had withstood everything. His old bosses would help him; he’d find work. Maybe they would even give him some materials. He went walking once in a while to see them, his houses, when Razafy yelled too loudly. He remembered standing there one day in front of one of them for almost an hour. The lights sparkled, there was a beautiful garden, a garage. The owner didn’t recognize him. How could he have anyway, since he never left his car? He gave a commanding blast of the horn, and a maid in a white apron ran out to open the gate. Rakoto, for his part, didn’t dare get any closer. . . . How much did a maid earn? 87

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. . . No, it was better for the children to go to school. He was still strong, he would find work. Razafy would certainly help him. A sudden itching interrupted his thoughts. Those fleas were so annoying . . . he knew their little game well: a tiny, light touch meant the movement of the vermin that crawled along without biting, then an abrupt itching. . . . That was the moment when you had to catch them. A finger wet with saliva in the right place, and the flea swollen with blood follows on its own accord. And the child who kept coughing, coughing. But why didn’t they take it to the hospital? He had to admit they had [88], (6) never seen the other child again, or his family, for that matter. The nurses had come to get them; they were in quarantine, it seems. They would Lines: 10 have to close the church, they had added. But where would they go? ——— That’s what Rakoto was thinking early that morning. He let his mind 14.0pt wander, thinking about life, the life he led, his problems, the future that ——— awaited him and his children. Normal P He didn’t feel very cheerful, and yet it was the moment of the day he * PgEnds: E liked best. The bed was still warm, and he let himself lie there drowsily while [88], (6) Razafy came and went in the house. He used to get up early, silently getting ready for work, and often Razafy came and helped him. How many times hadn’t she done manual labor? But now there wasn’t much work, and Rakoto could give himself ten more minutes before taking on the day. A cry made him jump up. It was Rafara, who once again had slapped her daughter. He found this young woman difficult to bear. Her cries and her constant slaps were exasperating. Why had she had a child if she hated it so much? But Rafara was very young. She had always lived in the city, she had gone to school, she had wanted to work in a government office. . . . And the baby girl was born and since then . . . And girls today are different, less patient. You had to see them wear88


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ing pants. Even in the country, they started cutting their hair; and we wonder that nothing is as it should be. Rakoto managed a small, resigned smile. That’s how the world is; everything changes. You have to accept it and accept the result of the change. Perhaps this misfortune happened to them as a result of the change. Who knows? But even so, why didn’t Rafara calm down? Communal living was already so difficult, why didn’t she accept her bad luck patiently, why didn’t she try to adapt? They had tried everything; they had made partitions, created a place of their own for each family, but it was practically impossible. If everyone revolted, started screaming like she did, how would they end up? The other evening they had already had to intervene in a domestic squabble. Ranaivo was beating his wife, and he would have injured her. Quarrels were daily events in the center, but in that case, they had to admit that Ranaivo had gone too far. Rakoto sighed. When would he be able to return home to rest and have some peace? . . . If at least they came to see the refugees. If those who came actually talked with them, they would be able to tell them, to speak of their misfortune. Maybe then the higher-ups in the government would end up knowing. But the others came, gave their big speeches, and left; no one let the refugees speak. So of course, how could they make themselves heard? He felt tired. If he could sleep, everything would certainly be better. But that seemed impossible. It seems that sleep is the one good fortune that we share with the rich. But the ancestors couldn’t have foreseen the floods and the refugee camps. The rich slept high up on the hill; they never came by here, or if so, only on Sunday, when they arrived with their families and exclaimed over the dam. But in the fancy neighborhoods? Who dared go out there? And yet among them, there had to be some government representatives, some higher-ups; what if he went up to them, if he spoke with them? And Rakoto dreamed: he would have bowed low to the ground, 89

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and very politely would have presented his excuses for disturbing the gentleman, and the other, touched, would have listened. He would tell of the anguish, of the single candle for the entire center, the provisions that never arrived, the shortages, the sick children, the fear of the future. He would know how to be very eloquent, so they would learn of their misfortune and people would come and help and. . . . The “Ray amandreny” 1 are always good, they always help their children. And he was a good son, a good citizen. It was the go-betweens who distorted reality, those who want to fill their pockets and say anything and steal the donations. He dreamed that he was even speaking to the president, who would listen to him, who . . . Oh! It would be very different from all of those official speeches where certain people spoke but said nothing, and where the peasants agreed to everything, their minds wandering, not listening. There, it would be a real dialogue like they used to have, and they would understand each other, and . . . . . . The women were almost all awake and lighted their fires as they talked together. Razafy was already sitting and trying to pick over the rice, her glasses on her nose. She was so proud of her glasses. They were a gift of the sisters of the parish, and since then, they never left her, perched on her nose when she sewed, or when she picked over the rice, etc. Ah! Razafy, Razafy. She was very quiet today, quiet and sad. She must be thinking of the future too. He sighed. Why did fate set itself against them like this? Had someone been cursed? But what was the point of yielding to despair? If the water level subsided a bit, he could save part of his harvest. The rice would be bitter and black, but it was better than not having any. Ranaivo, his neighbor, 1. “Ray aman-dreny”: the elders, and by extension those who have authority in a family or community.

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had been lucky. His harvest was almost ripe when his rice paddy was flooded. His sons knew how to swim. They dived. That would give them three months of reserves. Would he have the same luck? But why did he keep going over and over these ideas? What was the point? The day had already begun. Soon they would smell the coffee brewing. Those who had some would drink a hot cup of coffee before leaving; the others . . . a cup of hot water doesn’t replace the coffee, but at least it helped the empty stomach a little. Provisions were becoming scarce. They had received a kilo of rice at the beginning of the week and then . . . [91], (9)

If only he could find work. Or Razafy . . . The children had to go to school. They mustn’t have the same life that they’d had. But how could they? The oldest ones already lived from one day to the next, and the others could not keep up at school. What kind * of future could they give them? . . . Razafy must have been thinking the same thing because she got up sighing. She furtively wiped a tear as she poured a little rice in the water. So then they would have a good broth. Fortunately she was there. She was a bit too talkative and given to squabbling, but usually he only had to hit her once for her to be quiet. But now she was quiet. She must be thinking of the children, of the future. In other centers the refugees pooled their food, and the children ate together. But here. . . . Fortunately his younger ones were with the oldest. His daughter-in-law didn’t seem too happy about it, but that’s what children are for. And what was she complaining about? They hadn’t all moved in, they had stayed here. He had to admit they would have had trouble finding a place to sleep, rooms were so tiny nowadays, and when one lives in a single room . . . But people were becoming selfish. 91



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No one respected the “Fihavanana.” 2 No one helped anyone else. No wonder there’s so much misery. And for there to have been such a rain, the ancestors had to be angry. They said that Lake Mandroseza had turned all red last year, and the queen’s palace was hidden for three days by a gray cloud. These were signs. Why didn’t anyone do something? But no one believed in all that any longer. We don’t even believe in God anymore; the churches are emptier and emptier. And after . . . “Here you go, your rice is hot,” Razafy said to him, “I didn’t add sugar because there isn’t any; actually, there isn’t any more rice, either. [92], (10 I am going to try and ask for a little from Vao. Who knows if she’ll be willing to give us any? Rajosefa has been out of work for two months — the company closed down. Lines: 18 She squatted on the ground, her skirt gathered under her legs, and ——— began playing with her fingers. She seemed really exhausted. * 45.0pt A ray of sunshine filtered through the windowpane. That ray of light ——— brightened up part of the house. It was going to be nice today. The fish Normal P would be biting. Rakoto got up and checked his poles. He would have * PgEnds: P to hurry or he might not find a spot in the rice fields. If he could catch a few fish, he could sell them to buy rice. With a [92], (10 little luck, he might find some rice on the black market if there wasn’t enough to be had locally. Then they would be able to manage for another two or three days. And after that . . . translated by sara steinert borella

2. Fihavanana: a philosophical idea that governs Malagasy social relationships. In order to have good social relations, you must act as if the people you deal with are like family and show that they can expect you to treat them as such.

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jean-luc raharimanana

Fahavalo

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February 1994 Water’s covering the whole shoreline, spreading on out beyond the dunes. There’s a dead dog floating. You can see a deep wound under its rough fur. It all stinks to high heaven. Tin roofs drift by, and huge palm fronds. Off in the distance the tanks are scorching everything. Here it’s so nice looking out over the horizon. So nice. A Letter Ripped from the Clouds I recall, my love, an old man weeping on these shores devastated by the hurricane, invaded by the waters. He was dragging his misery along right there as the rains poured out their fury. He was shouting, beaten down by the gushing rain, and nobody I asked would tell me what was making him act that way. How old was he? Seventy? Eighty? I don’t know. His skin looked like old palm fronds frayed by sun and rain. Tattered in places, and dry, already looking like dust. author’s note: Fahavalo means enemy. The word was used by the French colonists between 1896 and 1948 to designate Malagasy insurgents.

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I remember the old man stoning a dead dog washing up on shore. It pained me to see him gesticulating so madly. I thought I should help him away from there, but a kind hand prevented me. A companion, a friend, a local fellow. Let me tell you, he said, that man’s story. Let me tell you the history of this place. I’ll pass this story on to you, my love. To read with no hate in our soul. Not so we feel sorry for ourselves and wallow forever in our misfortunes, but so we don’t forget what shaped us yesterday, made us what we are today. November 1947 The conquerors swooped down out of the night, panicking everyone in the village. Tracking down the rebels, the Fahavalos, and the sorcerers. Everybody line up! Men. Women. Children. Dogs barking. Purebred dogs. Huge. Obeying only the black colonial soldiers. Men, women, children, my friend, all lined up. Some were still naked, torn from their sleep. The conquerors asked about the Fahavalos. Nobody could answer. The conquerors shot ten men, then three others, five more . . . That man knew where the Fahavalos had gone. One night as they fled the seashore, one night in fear of the ocean’s spirits. . . . They had cut through the waves and swum toward the false islands in the lagoon. The man kept silent. Friend, they say that though silence sometimes does calm the soul, the tongue naturally hates its weight. 94

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The conquerors set up camp in the village and chased off its inhabitants. There lay the corpses, broiling in the sun. And so the days went by. A few times the villagers returned to claim their dead and bury them. Fuck off, dirty niggers! These corpses for Fahavalos! The conquerors screamed, foreheads sweaty, hands trembling. The man kept silent. The stench was overwhelming. The dogs were getting irritable. The black colonial soldiers found it harder and harder to hold them back. [95], (13) Still the man kept silent. And then, friend, the skies opened and dumped rain in torrents. The water fell on the rotting bodies, pounding them furiously. The dogs were loosed. They leaped on the corpses and devoured them in no time. The man screamed. There he was, all that time, sitting, or rather squatting, against one of the corner posts of a hut. There he was screaming, his feet in the mud, then falling to his knees. The native soldiers fled at the sight. Nobody ever knew what happened to them. Perhaps they were massacred by the villagers, perhaps they became evil spirits doomed to wander through these parts. . . . The conquerors decided to slaughter the dogs and leave. The Fahavalos came back to the mainland and tried to thank the man, but all they found was a soulless shell of a man who stood cursing in the rain, no longer able to bear the sight of even a single dog. That’s why, in that village, dogs are outlawed. Friend, think about that story and don’t tell me I’ve lied just to rehabilitate on old man whose reason has fled. True, it’s unusual for a grown 95



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man to act that way, but the man drove away his own existence the day he tried to preserve the lives of others. There’s the story of that man, the history of that place. A Letter, a Breath Torn from the Wind The island is flooded. The island is burning. A haze of terror. Of water and flames. Above it, soaring. Taking refuge in my heavy bottomless dreams and moving no more. Moving no more. . . . Waiting for being to explode.

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pa t r i c e n g a n a n g

Our Neighborhood Fool

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Lines: 325 to People are saying that Kamga the Fool is dead. The rumor is getting stronger and stronger, and all around me whispers are turning into loudly repeated statements of fact. They say that his body was found in a gutter, half eaten by maggots and rats, lying in his own shit — a pile of rotting meat. In my mind I see him: about forty years old, with the shoulders of a mason and the quick temper of a taxi driver. How could someone who was so totally bantu 1 in his demeanor, in his reflexes, turn into a soup of meat, mud, and crap there in a gutter? No, it just can’t be Kamga — I swear it. And those who knew our neighborhood fool will swear right along with me, even on their fathers’ names. But, then, who didn’t know him? I remember his explosive appearance one morning in the streets of our little neighborhood. No one knew where he came from. He was just 1. Bantu: a linguistic family found from central to southern Africa, including several ethnic groups in Cameroon, such as the Fang-Beti and the Bamileke.

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there, like Adam without a fig leaf, naked as a jaybird and dirty as a dog. The well-defined muscles of his solid flesh, rippled like a washboard and covered in a thick forest of body hair and mud, drew the eye down to a remarkably long penis. A man made for that bedside sport but forever sidelined by society. A lunatic — clearly on the run from some asylum somewhere. Or someone with a ring from one of those secret societies. “That man isn’t crazy,” some woman said. Hearing her, all the men burst into laughter. But not one of those men would have been comfortable seeing him approach his woman. Who knows? For a lot of us, he was a sort of sympathetic character, just because he was covered in mud. But because he was crazy, we didn’t pay him much mind, given all the serious things that took up our days. Because he was crazy, he didn’t really count for us. We all laughed at him — the kids especially. They just wouldn’t leave him alone. A lot of the young people, though, those of my generation, will admit that seeing him, seeing that fool, was the first time they had ever seen a specimen of naked manhood like you see in biology books. Of course, that was before television.

Whenever he passed by, the women would all turn away. If you could read the secrets of their erotic dreams, though, many would have preferred to find him in their bed instead of the pot-bellied guy who snored away every night at their side — at least if he were a little cleaner, that is. But those are the types of things you just don’t say out loud. So, out of modesty, the women all hid their faces whenever he passed by. But Kamga was a talker. A real loudspeaker. No one knew where he came from, but wherever it was, he had come a bit too soon for us. Much too soon, really. A lot of the men would have liked to hide their faces too, to retreat back into their underwear, when they heard what our neighborhood fool had to say. At that time, you know, it was still a good idea to claim afterward that you had plugged your ears. This guy here pretended not to listen, and that one 98

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there hurried on his way whenever the fool’s voice took over the street. Couldn’t somebody just shut that fool up? His tenor voice echoed in our silence. In the silence of the whole neighborhood. At that time, remember, you just weren’t supposed to speak. There were signs that made every one of us understand that there was a total ban on speech. A sort of verbal blackout, if you will. If each of us had a mouth, well, it could be put to other uses — eating, for example, or kissing your neighbor’s wife . . . whatever. You could do anything you wanted with your mouth — except, of course, speak. We had all heard about those who, because they had said something, simply disappeared from circulation. But who would want to abandon his wife and kids that way? You would really have to be a fool to give up all your belongings, the fruit of your sweat, and leave them for your brothers, those lazy louts who would like nothing better. No, everyone knew it was better just to keep quiet, or at least to use your lips only for those things that helped keep you alive. The survival instinct — it’s only human, right? You know, I bet you could even trace that expression we hear so often in our streets nowadays back to that time: “Your mouth is gonna kill you one of these days.” Yes, it was a question of survival. Kamga — well, he couldn’t be bothered with all those social niceties, which meant about as much to him as they would to a wild animal. Everything that came out of his mouth turned into acid, and he spoke without wiping the spit from his mouth. He gave every one of our officials a nickname. One minister became “the Guy with Tuberculosis,” another dignitary, “Pot-Belly,” and the senior administrator who had thrown away the people’s money on some woman’s ass became “the Deflowered One.” Did he have a whole list of titles, or what? Practically a whole “who’s who” full — and each one as sharp as a knife. Every now and again you could catch a glimpse of a smile on the face of someone passing by, because everybody of course knew what he was 99

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talking about. Those ears that pretended not to hear were really hanging on every word. For in the end, wasn’t he just speaking the truth? We all breathed in the air of his speeches, sympathizing with the movement of the words and ready to agree to all of his rhetorical questions. But was there anyone else who could stand there like him and hold forth, stark naked in the noonday sun? You had to be a fool to do something like that then — a real fool. “That man’s no fool,” hissed someone passing by. “He’s a spy.” That was enough to thin out the already sparse crowd formed around him. Not that it seemed to matter much to the fool. But the powers that be have a lot of tricks to isolate the tree they want to cut down, don’t they? And we all believed it, that’s for sure. I could already see myself labeled, in a file with my name, picture, and all my particulars on it, down in the cellars where they keep the records of the secret police, just for having heard the words of a fool. I could already see myself dying in some anonymous prison cell for having listened to that fool — and I had no excuse because, unlike him, I had all my marbles. I could already see myself cut down cold by that all-seeing eye we all saw around us. But if he’s a spy, why is he out there in the open buck naked? It’s not like the powers are short on tricks. And anyway, the age of spies — masters of silence and the dark — that’s just a thing for the movies now. Here, at any rate, informers certainly don’t hide. Their photo is right there smiling at you in every government office. They’re the neighbors who come to have a drink with you every evening and who tell you all about it — quite openly, just to give themselves a bit of status. In short, they’re the ones who spread all the rumors and who know everything that goes on in the upper circles of government. So why shouldn’t this fool who stands there exposing himself to little kids and insulting the president be one too? No, it just couldn’t be. I could still hear the words of that fool echoing in my head. It would just be altogether too much. Still, the thought that 100

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the secret service had gone so far as to start provoking things — well . . . It made me furious. Back in my room I shook with rage, clenched my fists, and gnashed my teeth. It just couldn’t be! The fool’s words rang all the louder in my head, like warning bells. Was he just trying to put one over on us? In those dark days I had seen some guys who had decided to go crazy just to avoid paying taxes. But fools in the pay of the man — that was new to me. I was spitting mad. Brewing up my first act of rebellion against the sly hands of the power that was silently killing us. But would my first act as a man be to kill some old fool? Because if the next day I were to jump him and try to tear off his mask — did he have another face underneath he was trying to protect? If I were to strip him bare — had he ever even tried to hide his dick from me? If I were to knock him to the ground — well, you might as well try to knock down one of those baobabs in our tropical forests. And then, if you try to fight with a fool, you just become a fool yourself. It made me furious that there was nothing I could do. I was beaten before I even had a chance to fight, backed into a coward’s corner by a fool. That man is no fool, I thought bitterly. And to think that now he’s dead? I just can’t believe it. How could it be? Even yesterday people saw him walking down our street. It seems just the other day that I saw him lying there on that corner that we all knew was his. Get in a taxi and ask to be taken to the “fool’s corner” — they’ll take you right there. But I guess because we got used to seeing him there every day on the same corner, he had almost become part of the background — like those fallen trees, the garbage cans that litter the street, or all the condemned houses marked with a red cross. But was he really anything other than a scab there on our dusty streets in the dry season? Yes, wasn’t he just some sort of cockroach that scurries around after you, just to shit on your jacket? Wasn’t he one of those swamp mosquitoes that bites and buzzes in the hollow of your ear? 101

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And then came that unforgettable day, ten years after Kamga had first appeared in our neighborhood, the day of our march for democracy. Ten years after he had started talking, while we all kept quiet. Ten years after he had stripped himself bare in public and shown us his crusty, mudcovered body, while we were all still clothed in the naïveté of our own shortsightedness. Ten years after he had started telling the truth there in the street. We were going up the main road of the neighborhood. I was thinking about all those moments of my cowardly youth to give myself courage. I was thinking of all our guilty silences and of our neighborhood fool, who still made us laugh, when we arrived at the “fool’s corner.” There he was, standing up in his typical naked glory to join us. With sweat dripping from clumps of hair that just didn’t want to fall out, covered in mud that formed rows of scars on his flesh, and escorted by a serious swarm of flies. There he was getting up out of his tumbleweed of a bed like some awful ghost, like some big dog turd in the middle of the road, ready to lead the demonstration. There were some in the crowd who complained. We weren’t really going to be led by some fool, were we? Just imagine the headlines. The movement was fragile enough as it was, it really didn’t need that kind of insult. And then can you imagine the photographs there on the front page the next day? Have you even thought about the pictures? With his prehistoric dreadlocks and his dick hanging out there in the sun, he was all they would need to take away our last remaining bits of respectability. Certain political leaders just gave up on the march right then and there, to avoid being compromised by some fool, to avoid not being taken seriously themselves when the moment came. I don’t know why, but I had the impression that his entrance onto the stage at just that moment was a blessing, that it was his right to march at the head of our movement. And besides, you’d really have to be a Kamga to do it anyway. Was there anyone else who was our neighborhood fool? Anyone else who had the courage to proclaim himself 102

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our neighborhood fool in the middle of this pack of men so proud and proper that they kept their suit jackets on even in the midday sun? And sure enough, the police were right there, as if on cue. The battle lines were drawn. My stomach, my heart, my head — everything began to spin. The moment of truth had come. In front of us stood the blue line of order and all those gun barrels, like grass snakes, lying in wait to spit out death. The air was thick and still. And in that silent, fateful moment, Kamga the Fool kept moving straight ahead, while all the rest of us weighed each centimeter like another step toward the brink, toward death. He put himself right into that suicide space that had been cleared between the police and us, into that decisive void like a soccer ball between the penalty kicker and the goalkeeper. And he began to sing: “Freedom, freedom, soon we will be free. . . .” I knew that rough voice so well, having heard him speak in the streets of our neighborhood all through my youth — he was, in a way, our town crier. But I had never heard him sing. I never would have imagined that he could sing with as much conviction as when he spoke. That he could sing with just as much heart and soul. Or that his voice, broken by all of the insults he screamed day in and day out, up and down the street, could make an entire crowd break into song. Standing there in the middle of that silent space, in his proud and naked humanity, he sang with all of his muscles, with all of his body. He sang with his mud and his flies. He swung his arms like scissors, and his penis rose up in anger. He sang, and soon we were all singing with him. I was sure I saw tears run down his face. But maybe it was just the sweat that was pouring out of his body, soaking him from head to toe. Really, that man was not crazy. And as for me, never before had I sung with so much force. I had never been so caught up in the song that right then and there wrapped us up and took control of us. Never before had I felt so at one with each of the words I sang, with the rhythm that the 103

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fool marked out so violently, in front of us and in front of the police; the police, who at that point, perhaps, still found the whole thing funny. No, I had never believed so entirely in my song. I was singing and crying all at once. Suddenly a cloud of white smoke billowed out around Kamga, who kept on singing as loud as ever. Bursts of tear gas sprouted up on both sides of the street. My eyes burned, filled with salty tears — I had no idea what was going on. I knew I had to protect myself. To rinse my face. To back down before the advance of the forces of order. But Kamga didn’t back down. He kept on marking the beat, even as his voice started to crack and slowly die out in a cough that racked [104], (2 his chest. It seems that he even wanted the police who were carting us off to join in the song. I could still hear his voice that kept right on singing, rising above all the gun blasts and the sound of stomping Lines: 41 boots, even though his body had disappeared in the thick smoke that ——— filled the street, amid the throng of policemen who had come to put an * 84.0pt end to our march for democracy. ——— Normal P Even today, as I lie here in my hospital bed, I can still hear his rough * PgEnds: P voice, like an echo coming in from the open window. And you tell me that he is dead? No, I just don’t believe it. I know there is no way he [104], (2 could simply die like that. Because if he could, he would have died long ago; for sure, I would have killed him myself in that fight that never took place, ten years ago, when we thought he was a spy. And so it doesn’t matter what anyone tells me. I know that a man like Kamga the Fool just doesn’t die. . . . translated by amy reid

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kossi efoui

A Hunting Scene as Observed by a Sentimental Photographer

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Lines: 432 to A quick silhouette sprang up at the end of the street parallel to Malaria Street. The way he poked his head out trying to orient himself, you would have said he was an ant gone astray, separated from the colony, panicking with its antennae pointing, sending out a wary challenge to the gentle wind, hoping to catch a whiff of a familiar odor that would guide it once again. Poking his head out like the person lost in the desert who knows that the sky holds yet another mirage, but who still wants to believe that the glittering above comes from a star that truly accompanies the cardinal points. The small silhouette shrouded in a halo of the yellow dust that hasn’t left the city . . . for how long? For how long has this dust been diffused into the heat of the air in a diffracted flight of pollen given off by the giant hibiscus that a sorry wind slapped by mistake and caused to lose its flowers at that very instant? And the wind would have remained there, embarrassed, trying to squeeze itself against the tree, the electric poles, the barred windows of the buildings, the bases of the statues, pushing the dead leaves, the cigarette butts, the newspapers and the pieces of 105

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grass, looking to caress perhaps, but succeeding only in scraping the dirt, picking up this yellow dust with the step of a lovely waltz. Another lovely waltz, the turning of the silhouette, the tense jerking in three-four time and barely a half-turn when the body is already caught in the double-edged glare of bright headlights. A jeep appeared in the far corner of the street and crossed the length of the square to block the silhouette’s way: it’s a young boy whom we can now see in the halo of the light, and he starts running in staccato fits and starts, the hops of the doe threatened by the panther’s languorous paces. The doe pushes off from her slender hooves and first pretends to turn. And getting tighter and tighter with each turn, the panther, the vastness of his own stride forcing him to make an unnecessary detour, uses the sloping ground as reinforcement for his perilous jumps. They both trace the line of the same invisible cord that shortens the concentric shapes of a swirling trap with each breath, a column of air stirred with the dust and the gyrating shine of blinded eyes. And a thousand, another thousand centrifugal turns that end up reducing the small animal to a long and difficult exhale, as if too much air is compressed in her chest. And the large beast only has to inhale. Sniffing, licking, caressing, blowing his burning breath inflamed by his growing appetite, surrounding his victim, who is nearly reduced to nothing, in this snakelike movement of tranquil brooding. The young boy stops, bent double, his hands resting on his knees. Ha! If you had seen those ten men like I saw them get down half running from their jeep, saying ha! and ho! And for him they scream as close as possible to his face, “Maybe you know what we are going to do to you, maybe you know?!!?” At the same moment I raise my camera to the height of my left eye, and my index finger is resting on the shutter release when something unexpected happens: my finger remains there, immobile, on the shutter 106

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release and I can’t make up my mind. Press the button and take advantage without further ado of this strategic position where we can see the young boy facing us, in spite of the confusion of the men-panthers who have surrounded him. And my finger remains there, immobile, on the shutter release. I can’t make up my mind to complete the movement of the single click, a gesture associated with my job that I learned to distinguish from all other movements of the same finger, from all similar pressures on the index finger that serve only to train the muscles of the phalanx, their flexibility, and their ability to answer the brain’s commands. Example: the application of the index finger to the end of a ball-point pen. Another example: the light, regular tapping on the inverted bowl of a pipe, or the angry crushing of a cigarette filter in the center of the ashtray, or repeatedly sticking a finger in your plugged-up ear, or the pressure of the thumb and the index finger followed by the rubbing that goes with it — all of these gestures are fine-tuned by habit, free of the effort of concentration inevitably required by the gestures related to the job. Of all these gestures, only one calls for the same attention and the same state of mind each time it is performed. The same attention and the same state of mind that presided over the finger’s apprenticeship, the simple delight probably associated with this sentiment of precision that we feel the first time we’ve succeeded, that is understood, when we have grasped what the finishing touches really mean in all their glory, not completion, but the completed study of all the components of this gesture for a new impulse. I pressed the button and — an all too brief burst of the flash — for the first time I didn’t feel anything like that. The first and only time was enough to understand that I had lost my touch, that losing your touch is not a long process of ossification, a slow abandoning of your reflexes, an ominous atrophying of the flesh, but rather a brutal and definitive failure. I pressed the button and — brutal, completed failure — I didn’t 107

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photograph what my eye saw through the thick dust, sliding sometimes like ball bearings, sometimes spreading out and then gathering itself back up, describing regular curves, shadows projected from invisible orbs, this dust whose grating is the only one of all the noises of the city to remain familiar, accompanying each step, each swipe of the sweaty hand on the sweaty forehead, showing every little caress, between the cloth and the skin, between the nail and the skin. And the yellow of this dust envelops all forms, moving or not, in the trail of a predatory aura, something at the birth of panic, an omen from the desert, fascinating because it so easily espouses the resignation of men in this city where we no longer sweep and no longer dust, where once in a while we run a finger along the windowsill or over the furniture to hear the only grating — the only noise, the only one that remains natural. Maybe you know what we are going to do. . . . I did not photograph what I saw, a silhouette more like a doe than a young boy bent double, his hands resting on his knees, and the man-panther who holds in one hand a car tire, and the man-panther who holds the tire over the head of the young boy, the man-panther who has his hand in his pocket, who takes his hand out of his pocket, who has a lighter between two fingers. Changing his pose, the man-panther leaning over the gas can, his fingers bent around the cap and maybe you know what we are going to do. . . . And the young boy with the murderous collar around his neck: a tire covered in gas and ten men-panthers who know how to hunt, with the imperturbable mask of their tranquil brooding. At the moment when I thought I pressed the shutter release, I first hit the wrong button and instead zoomed in on the image, and the face of the young boy suddenly grew larger, in the same movement he got closer to me as if he were magnetized, grew wider, sucked in my face, my eye pressing against his from across the square of glass. And I still see him there but it’s as if you see your own head concealed in the mirror, and this mirror reflects all the scenes that escape my lens, which 108

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is entirely taken up by this child’s face and his expression bordering on a smile but in which no facial muscles seem to be taking part. A sort of half-grimace that neither a clown nor a baby would have ever been able to produce in play. “Let’s go.” I looked at my guide as if he were a stranger who had tapped me on the back. “Let’s go.” And me, pressing foolishly on the shutter release without seeing anything else. Without feeling anything else. In this exact moment, I know that the range of feelings is just a ruse that lets us believe that we are close to things. In this exact moment, I know that there is no inner response suitable for the way the world works.

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Lines: 475 to And there, with my finger repeatedly touching the shutter release, I ——— know that I am far from things, feeling nothing, with the desire to * 70.0pt PgV return to the hotel, or to never have left any room, anywhere, any ——— copulation, to find myself there, having come back from everything so Normal Page quickly, and getting along so well after all. “Let’s get out of here, let’s * PgEnds: PageB go,” my guide says again, pressing my arm with that energy you would have to use to restrain a man who has thrown himself toward a house [109], (27) on fire. And there, with my finger repeatedly touching the shutter release (repeatedly performing the gesture of crushing a fly, or scratching a tiny wound), I do not wish to feel anything. I am too afraid that I will feel the “good fortune of still being alive.” translated by sara steinert borella

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benjamin sehene

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Lines: 49 1 In Kigali they call the hundred thousands of genocide survivors Bafuye bahagaze, the walking dead, because they suffer from behavior problems. At first glance they seem completely normal — friendly and pleasant. They welcome you warmly, chat, get into answering questions, until some detail reveals the flaw. For example, I remember the woman in Nyamirambo who could no longer tolerate physical contact with another person, even a simple handshake, because it made her systematically recall the cold blade of the machete. Or the young survivor who was always looking for his little brother. Anna, “Afande Anna” (Commander Anna) to her friends, a young widow, belonged to this new category of Rwandan “single mothers, like it or not.” All by herself, she was very courageously raising her three children and an orphan. When the fpr invaded Rwanda in 1990, Anna, who was from Kigali, was arrested with her husband. They were penned up in a stadium in the capital before being transferred to the infamous prison in Ruhengeri, like ten thousand other Tutsis. They managed to escape to Uganda via Goma and then to Zaire, where their 110

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children joined them. Anna’s husband enlisted in the fpr and was killed in combat. 1 Warm and social by nature, Anna entertained a lot. She didn’t send specific invitations, because her daily life was a sort of ongoing social event. Anna was not a rich woman: she was not employed and had no aid from the government. Her impromptu evening gatherings served as her address book. In this way she occasionally managed to land a contract with one of her guests, like, for example, the official representative of an international body who later hired her to install curtains in a dozen villas or plan a cocktail party. To Anna’s parties everyone brought his bottle of Waragi, the Ugandan rum, or a few bottles of Primus, a Rwandan beer. As for Anna, she provided the place and especially the conversation. And since her home saw constant coming and going all day long, our hostess had no private life except when a young fpr officer retired with that lady of the house for a few hours of intimacy that were rigorously defended by his uniformed escort. In the sitting room with its broken windows and caved-in roof, Anna’s children sat at the table in pajamas, rubbing elbows with carefree partygoers of every social class, seated next to each other on an odd assortment of stools, sofas, and armchairs. Time went by, spent on conversation, laughter, and drink. People gathered there in the evening to flee the stress of a traumatized society in the process of trying to rebuild and also to listen to Anna talk about what was really going on. She prided herself on having more than one regime dignitary as a lover, and she knew all the Kigali and Kampala rumors, past and present. The juicy, salacious stories that filled her conversation were as much a refuge for me as alcohol was for others. I also took notes for the travel narrative I was preparing. Anna had turned her gossip into an allegorical art form worthy of La Fontaine. There was almost always a moral to the story. Like, for example, the diplomatic incident that the former Rwandan head of 1. fpr: the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a Tutsi force that invaded Rwanda to combat the Hutu government, which had begun the genocide of the Tutsis.

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state almost provoked when he was visiting in Asia: shortly after taking power, General Habyarimana was invited to an official dinner by an eastern country. Once the guests were seated, they were offered the traditional warm, rolled napkin, which the very gourmand Habyarimana attacked with his knife and fork. Hierarchy has its obligations, so his wife and the entire presidential entourage followed the example of the republic’s new leader. The Asian hosts, transfixed by this cultural misunderstanding, did not dare unroll their napkins to freshen up, for fear of offending their guest of honor. “Yemwe, ko bikomeye gukata da!” (My word, how hard this is to cut!) exclaimed Habyarimana, who kept juggling his silverware, passing it from right hand to left, to no avail. At first, his hosts just watched, flabbergasted by the spectacle served up by their Ubu guest. But when they saw him chewing his first mouthful of linen, they followed suit in order to ward off a diplomatic incident. Moral: one must always warn one’s guests of the possibility of the unexpected. 2 Wrapped up in pajamas that were too big for her, the little girl was having dinner with Anna’s three children. “Wabonye akana keeza karokotswe disi we?” (Have you seen the pretty little survivor?), the hostess asked me. Her name was Mbabazi, and she was the sole survivor in her family. All by herself, by the simple force of her name, Mbabazi, meaning “pity,” this child symbolized postgenocide Rwanda. She was barely five, the age of the civil war that ravaged the country from 1990 to 1994. Blessed with a fluting voice, Mbabazi appeared lively and mischievous. But at times a shadow crossed her little face, and one could see a veil of sadness in her eyes, which were as round and protuberant as two boiled eggs. She expressed herself haltingly in an adult Kinyarwanda that was vulgar and interspersed with curses, the way the peasant Hutus speak it. Once the meal was over, the children began to play a macabre game that consisted of designating one of them to be “Gahutu” (mythical 112

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ancestor of the Hutus), who had to catch the others so as to eliminate them from the game. “Do you know who Gahutu was?” I asked them. “A Hutu!” exclaimed Junior, the youngest. “I know that,” I retorted, “but which one?” “Bene Sebahinzi” (son of the farmers’ father), said Marie, the oldest. I couldn’t believe it! Bene Sebahinzi is a poetic-political allegory of the legend of the mythical ancestor of the Hutus, the “farmer’s son.” Language generally constitutes the soul of a people and the word the memory of a nation. From now on the Kinyarwanda language will be marked by hatred and genocide. This language shared by three ethnic groups makes Rwandans out of Hutus, Tutsis, and Twas and distinguishes them from their neighbors with whom they sometimes live in Uganda, Congo-Kinshasa, and even Burundi, the other country divided into Hutu/Tutsi groups. Like slang, genocidal language is coded expression adopted by a social group turned in on itself with the intent of concealing activities that are either illicit or perceived as such by the rest of society. It was the same for the Nazis, who distorted the meaning of words to serve their destructive cause, or a bit differently today, for example, when dealers in a Western metropolis use a complicitous vocabulary among themselves. Semantic concealment reveals both a will for self-protection, a curtain drawn between us and the others, and a refusal, a negation of the crime, of the unspeakable act yet to be committed, in process, or already carried out. And so the Kinyarwanda language was perverted and transformed little by little to serve a genocidal regime. As the ethnic rhetoric intensified, there was movement from the old slogan “rubanda nyamwinshi” (literally, “the majority group”) to seemingly innocuous expressions that were actually code words, disguises, double meanings. For example, “work” and “cleansing” were used to incite people to murder Tutsis, who were baptized “Inyenzi” (cockroach) or “snake,” a cunning technique for dehumanizing them and engendering scorn. The nation’s soul was perverted by the genocide, with the result that 113

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contemporary Rwanda is now a land cut in two by an invisible but insurmountable dividing line. The Hutus and the Tutsis may inhabit the same hills, the same cities and neighborhoods, and speak the same language, but they remain partitioned, victims and executioners, into two zones opposed and demarcated by a semantic boundary. They have adopted two states of mind governed by a logic of reciprocal exclusion that is manifest even in the terminology used by children: the bad exterminators on one side, the nice victims on the other. 3 “I’m going to tell you the story of Gahutu and his two brothers,” I said to the children, resolved to rectify things through catharsis. I then told the founding legend of Rwanda. They all listened with their mouths open. After about ten minutes, however, Mbabazi’s attention wandered, and she lost the thread of the story. She wandered back and forth between a chair and a drum that was serving as a low table. “So, Mbabazi, now do you know who Gahutu was?” She hesitated a moment, suddenly perplexed. “Gahutu?” she repeated, as if she were stalling for time. She looked lost. “Yes, I am Gahutu!” said Junior, helpfully. “Ah, Gahutu!” said Mbabazi, as if suddenly enlightened. I went back to the legend of Gihanga, that of the primordial challenge posed by the father of Rwanda at the time of his succession. To each of his three sons, Gahutu, Gatutsi, and Gatwa, he entrusted an earthenware jar of milk. Gatutsi alone succeeded in keeping it intact, thus earning the esteem of his father, who entrusted him with the management of his flocks, the foundation of Rwandan civilization. But there was nothing to be done: for Mbabazi, Gahutu was Junior. I continued my narration, but in a few minutes Mbabazi tuned out again. Her memory was incapable of functioning more than a few minutes. After ten sentences or so, she no longer remembered the beginning of the story, and she was unable to concentrate for long. She seemed 114

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to be unconsciously repressing her memories, both past and present, as if to protect herself. In the total privation that was rampant at that time, Mbabazi was not receiving regular medical care. It became my obsession to succeed in telling her this legend in a way that would make her remember it. Every day I improvised a new technique for recall — a drawing book or a stuffed animal, a headless doll or a pencil. In vain: she didn’t even succeed in remembering my first name. As soon as I spoke a word, however, Mbabazi recognized my voice. If I could get her to recall my name, I could succeed in making her remember the legend. One evening, the girl met me at the door. “Who rang?” someone asked her. “It’s him.” “Him who?” I insisted. “I have a name.” Suddenly inspired by her too-large pajamas, I tried a new technique: “Think of pajamas every time you see me: Benjamin Pajamas.” Whenever she saw me in the next few days, she shouted joyfully: “Wait — I know you — you’re Benjamin Pajamas!” Encouraged by my pajamas victory, I tried twice as hard to dramatize the legend of Gihanga for Mbabazi. One evening, I made Anna’s three children sit across from me at the dining room table. I picked Junior for the role of Gahutu, the Hutu ancestor, Marie played Gatutsi, ancestor of the Tutsis, and Jean ended up as Gatwa, forebear of the Twas. Then I handed each one a glass of water to represent the earthenware jar of milk that Gihanga entrusted to his three sons on the ancestral night. I put out the lights to signify the coming of darkness. In the morning, Gahutu found himself disqualified because he had gotten thirsty and drunk his water. In the dark, Gatwa had fallen asleep and spilled his, so only Gatutsi had managed to keep his tumbler of water intact. Thus far I had succeeded in keeping Mbabazi’s attention, and she commented on the outcome of the primordial challenge, using her usual wording. “Genda, wa gisambo kyumuhutu we, uzitcwa ninda” (You lousy Hutu glutton, your belly will be your undoing!) she said, full of the joy of recognition, having discovered the origin of her habitual curse 115

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words. She called Gahutu “igismbo” (glutton) and Gatutsi “infura” (elegant). These stereotypes came to her with such ease that I began to think that in the end I would be able to get some testimony from the little survivor. 4 Isabelle, Mbabazi’s aunt (and now her adoptive mother since the girl was the only surviving member of a large family) was a languorous, graceful, bandy-legged woman. A native of Butare in the south, she now lived in Brussels, where she had found work. “I was getting ready to bring my mother to Belgium when they launched the genocide,” she told me in a sad tone of voice. “The night of the president’s death, Mother called me, in fact: Butare was still calm, and yet it was then that I learned about the death of my sister and other members of my family in Kigali. By telephone I was already aware of the massacres in the capital, and I knew they would spread to Butare. For several days that university city did in fact remain calm, because the prefect, Jean-Baptiste Habyarimana, a Tutsi with no family relation to the late president in spite of the identical name, was opposed to violence. The situation in that city changed on April 19, 1994, when the interim president, Theodore Sindikubwbo, gave an inflammatory speech that was broadcast on the radio. That same day they arrested the high official, who disappeared and was replaced by a military man, Colonel Alphonse Ntezilyayo. The massacres began immediately. “My mother certainly tried to hide, but we never found her body,” concluded Isabelle in a trembling voice. Of her entire family, only Mbabazi, her sister’s daughter, and Stephan, her brother’s little boy, age eleven, had survived. One afternoon in April 1994, the child was in the outhouse in the back of the garden when a group of militia burst into his parents’ house in Butare. Hearing screams, Stephan remained crouched in the hut until the assailants left. When night fell, he left his improvised hiding place and saw that his whole family was dead. He 116

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managed to find his way to a neighbor, who handed him over to the International Red Cross. Then he was included in a convoy of Tutsi child survivors escorted to Burundi. Mbabazi lived with Isabelle, in the midst of the domestic anarchy that reigned at Anna’s house. Every Sunday, however, as if out of duty, Isabelle took the girl to see the family of a Hutu neighbor in whose care her parents had left her before their disappearance. This Sunday pilgrimage began early in the morning. One weekend I accompanied them, curious to meet this good Samaritan: until then I had never met a Hutu who had sheltered persecuted Tutsis. The man in question is called Kanaka. Short, about forty, with a slight paunch, he lived in the Muhima section. A sorry villa with a very minimal garden in front, his house looked unfinished because of its cement block walls. Madame Kanaka, displaying an impressive pregnancy, spoke to her husband only in the third person, which made me stupidly answer her, since I thought she was talking to me. “Welcome. Sit down,” Kanaka invited, as he got us settled outside under the avocado tree growing behind the house, as in all Rwandan gardens. President Habyarimana had required that every Rwandan household plant this tree in the context of “communal labor,” both to combat erosion and to benefit from balanced nutrition. In Kigali, certain wide avenues are completely lined with avocado trees, and all city restaurants have avocado on the menu. Mbabazi, still restless in spite of her Sunday clothes, was already climbing in the avocado tree at her parents’ former house. Swarming around her were the children of the Tutsi family from Burundi that was squatting illegally on the property. After ten minutes, Kanaka left to send the servant to buy beer for us in a nearby eating place. “Did you notice the painting hanging in the sitting room?” whispered Isabelle. “The portrait of the young woman above the glassed-in armoire?” I asked, in the same conspiratorial tone. “Y-y-yes . . . it belonged to my sister!” 117

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“What?” “Yes, it was a gift I made her for her wedding,” she confided, with a knowing look. “Really! — you painted it?” I asked, surprised. “Shh-h! I don’t want him to know — but we have to find out how he got it.” “You’re right.” “Perhaps you could question him more easily than I,” she concluded. “I can try.” “Hey — tactfully, please,” Isabelle whispered as we heard Kanaka’s footsteps coming toward us. “I’ve heard a lot about your heroic conduct during the genocide.” That’s how I approached Kanaka. “Let’s not exaggerate. I only did my Christian duty,” stated our host. “But what exactly were the circumstances when Mbabazi’s parents entrusted their daughter to you?” “Everyone understood right away that we were about to witness wide-scale massacres of the Tutsis. People had been fearing that for a long time, so many couples likely to be in danger took their little ones to their Hutu friends,” asserted Kanaka. “I think it was the mother, Odetta, who brought the little girl to us the day after the president’s death,” he continued. When the servant returned, Kanaka touched the beer bottles to check their temperature. “You idiot, this beer is warm, . . .” our host said, amazed. “But there weren’t any cold ones!” the servant answered. “Too bad — take them back!” insisted Kanaka. “It makes no difference to me,” I offered, trying to save the situation. “No, no there’s no reason to drink warm beer because of this half-wit. She’s going back over there,” the man replied, irritated. “No, I assure you, it’s not important.” Terrorized by the crushing, authoritarian presence of her master, the servant poured our beer while Kanaka barked an order to the children 118

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to chase down one of the chickens that were calmly pecking away in the squalid garden. A cloud of dust flew behind the little troop chasing the bird to the back door of the house. Bursts of shrill screams mixed with the clinking of utensils marked their passage from one room to another. Then the bird flew away through a window, before landing at our feet. Kanaka jumped on it, grabbing it with astonishing agility. Then our host rolled up his sleeves, asked the maid for a knife, and went to a corner of the garden. He gathered the two wings in a fist before crushing them with his left foot, wedging the feet under his right one. He grabbed the bird’s neck and began to pluck it clean. Suddenly the man’s face took on a strange expression, one that was diligent and conscientious: his forehead wrinkled into a multitude of furrows, and he bit his lower lip. There was something ritualistic in his concentration and in the way the children had gathered in a semicircle around him, as if for a sacrifice. A primitive household ritual expurgated from modern life, with packaged chicken from the supermarket. Isabelle looked away in horror when Kanaka cut off the animal’s head with a single blow, to the applause of the children. In the confusion that followed, the bird, headless but still alive, escaped from Kanaka. Provoking panic in the children and Isabelle, the hen flapped its wings every which way, while its headless neck sprayed blood everywhere it went. 5 The noon meal was served in the cluttered sitting room, with the background noise of the metal roof crackling beneath the merciless heat of midafternoon. Before sitting down, I walked around the room and stopped for a long time in front of the famous painting. It was a classic watercolor: the portrait dominated two-thirds of its height on the whiteness of the paper, which constituted a neutral background. The face, drawn in a single stroke with a tapered brush, accentuated the subject’s lively expression. The painter had captured the essence of that 119

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face: a long nose, a full, sensual mouth, and an arrested gesture revealing the surprise of a woman caught in reflection. “So she looks like you in this portrait?” I asked Isabelle. “Huh?” Isabelle answered vaguely, as Madame Kanaka made one of her rare appearances from the kitchen. She offered curried chicken to Isabelle, who refused, no doubt shuddering at the idea that this was the same headless bird whose blood she had seen spurting in the garden. Isabelle did not answer my question, and to my disappointment we said no more about the painting. The chicken curry was served accompanied by sweet potatoes and plantains. “You must get your sister’s house back,” Kanaka advised Isabelle, briskly. “The rent could pay for the girl’s education.” A big blue fly was buzzing against the invisible wall of a pane of glass in the door, and a shower of dust particles was falling slowly across a ray of sunshine. “I would never dare to turn out the family that’s there now,” Isabelle objected. “You don’t have to — police headquarters will take care of it.” “Really?” I asked, amazed. “Yes, the owner simply has to request an eviction at the prefecture,” our host insisted. “I was going to request it, but when I went to see the house, I changed my mind when I saw their mob of kids. Where would they go?” said Isabelle. The big blue fly came and put its hairy feet on the edge of my glass. It rubbed its head, smoothed its transparent wings before flying off, and then reappeared on my plate. During the rest of our visit, I kept thinking about how I was going to reveal the source of the watercolor to Kanaka without seeming accusatory. In postgenocide Rwanda, generalization and blending were de rigueur. The slightest doubt about someone could incriminate him. “Do you know that it was Isabelle who gave that painting to her 120

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sister?” I was taking advantage of the momentary absence of the former to put that question to Kanaka. “Oh really! Is that true?” said Kanaka, sounding surprised. The awkwardness of the revelation pushed him to compassion. “But listen, then I’m going to give it back to her.” And he took down the painting, which he had the servant quickly wrap in newspaper, without even getting Isabelle’s consent. “You should have told me that the picture belonged to Odetta,” he complained to the young woman when she had rejoined us in the room. “I didn’t dare!” she replied. “I don’t even remember how it got here,” remarked our host, before [121], (39) adding: “I think it was one of the children who brought it here after the massacres.” On the way home, Mbabazi took the paper covering it off the frame Lines: 666 to that was lying beside her on the backseat of the car. ——— “Do you remember that picture?” I asked her. * 84.0pt PgV “Yes, that’s the picture that Kanaka took when he brought the militia ——— men [Interahamwe] to the house.” There was no ambiguity in the little Normal Page girl’s answer. Isabelle and I looked at each other but remained silent, be- * PgEnds: PageB cause the enormity of what we had perceived went beyond our capacity to express it. [121], (39) “What are you going to do?” “With what she just said?” Isabelle asked. “Yes.” “Nothing! After all, who’s going to believe the testimony of a little amnesiac?” translated by toni wulff

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part 5

Outside Africa

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nathalie etoké

Bessombè Between Homeland and Exile

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Lines: 19 to 3 A sweet, deep sleep. I was in Douala. The rainy season had just begun. It was summer vacation. The boys were playing soccer on the corner. Tactical discussion was flying fast and furious: “Wèkè to Elamè hey pass me the ball you’re dribbling too long. Fake-out here, footwork there, but too much is ugly brother. We have to play together daddy. Together!” screamed a young man annoyed by his teammate’s selfishness. The bar across the way was playing Congolese music. My dear compatriots were tying one on with a few bottles of beer and trying a few steps of ndombolo, getting with the beat of this popular pastime. A woman selling fritters was attracting a crowd of passers-by: “bbh, fritters, corn brew, beans. 1 Only 100 francs. It’ll fill you up until tomorrow night. In these times of eco-crisis this is the meal you need. I’m not kidding either. It’ll fill you up nicely without costing much. Come on, come and taste Madame Danielle’s fritters (that’s ‘Mama Dada’ to

1. bbh: “beignets, bouillie, haricot,” or “fritters, corn brew, and beans.” The corn brew (unknown in the United States) is particularly popular with the fritters.

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close friends and the faithful). Hey, hey, over here, over here, ladies and gentlemen.” Girls with round, enticing rumps were sporting alluring décolleté with equally alluring miniskirts. They all adopted a rolling, lascivious gait as they took off on their high heels for the hunt near the big hotels on the square. Offering one’s charms to pot-bellied, senile white jerks who are decrepit but loaded with francs, that’s just part of daily life in a society with its back to the wall. What can I say? One has to survive. My lively spirit was roving through the little streets of Bonamouti, 2 my childhood neighborhood. I recalled these scenes of daily life. Suddenly my alarm went off, returning me to sad, daily reality. It was 5:30 in the morning. Brutally ousted from a liberating sleep, I realized that I was in France. Empty sardine cans, cigarette butts, used condoms, old newspapers, clothes, pictures of me in front of the Eiffel Tower, fragments of a wall in advanced disintegration, all these odd items coexisted peacefully in my unheated maid’s room. The chaotic space that served as my refuge in the Goutte d’Or, the Paris quarter where the Third World has found shelter. Curled up in fetal position, I took my head in my hands. Tears beaded up on my face. Césaire dreamed of returning to the Native Land; my friends and I dreamed of New York, Paris, London, Madrid, Rome, Amsterdam — Berlin, at the very least. I thought about my beloved country. About all those Africans who want to leave and do not hesitate to sacrifice their lives on the altar of a salvation fantasy. Remember YAGUINE KOITA and FODE TOUNKARA, 3 martyrs of sacrificed youth You left Africa to escape destitution, to move to a better place To flee war, famine, disease To seek beneath new skies a happiness unobtainable in your homeland. 2. Bonamouti: a poor section of Douala. 3. Yaguine Koita and Fode Tounkara: two teenage boys from Guinea who stowed away in the wheel well of a Sabena jet bound for Europe. Their bodies were discovered on August 2, 1999, along with a letter focused on the distress of African children.

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Oh YAGUINE! Oh FODE! You wanted only an ounce of hope To believe in the promise of days to come. The image of those two adolescents obsessed me. The memory of their tragic fate revolted me. The West was definitely the promised land of a generation in search of a less uncertain future. Convinced that life in France would give the best possible results, many young people opted for the big adventure. With or without papers. By plane, on foot, by boat, or just swimming in the water. I was one of those who managed to slip through the net, thanks to a miracle of providence. My arrival several years ago in our dear land of liberty, equality, and fraternity altered my view of the world. Once the brief joy of the first days had disappeared, disenchantment and discouragement took over. Paperwork, worrywork, anxiety. Residency permit card, student id card, social security card, orange card, blue card. Tough ends of months. Labyrinthine university layout. Small jobs. Losing at love. Melancholy. Nostalgia. Cyclothymia. Neurasthenia. When I was blue, some of my friends would say to me: “Wake up, guy. Poverty is less painful here, man. There’s always a way to do something about it. It’s not like at home, where you just die slowly but surely.” I had trouble understanding them. Most of them worked on the black market. They were treated like dogs. Like subhumans. And yet they stubbornly maintained that in France their life was happier than in Africa. What good was an illusory economic happiness if they were increasingly miserable inside? At age twenty-five I look to the future with lassitude and worry. Relegated to the secret dungeons of an evanescent memory, my youthful dreams have become the gaping wounds of a soul bruised by the vicissitudes of life. Wanderings. Journey without return. Despair. Yes, I live in France. And lacking a better alternative, I plan to stay here. No one openly reproaches me for my ebony skin. I notice only 127

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some perfidious mimicking and some cryptic comments that mask a controlled racism. Le Pen, Maigret, Pasqua, and the others make life rough for me. Economically exiled and a refugee from destitution, my heart is in Africa. Why did I leave Africa? Why did I come to settle in a foreign land? Because I had no work. I was becoming a zombie. I had had my fill of death-dealing idleness and lethargy. I was tired of watching my life go by. The situation was only getting worse. Contrary to the statements of the president of the republic, I could not see the end of the tunnel. I could no longer wait for the hypothetical changes promised us by the politicians, hungry for power and money. Presidential elections rigged (with our beloved France’s blessing), demonstrators imprisoned, young people assassinated, aids victims at death’s door, a criminal government. I had had enough of conjugating the verb “to suffer”:

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Since I’ve been in the land of our ancestors, the Gauls, I’ve been getting by. Coins are not falling from the skies. I barely have a life. I work endlessly. During the day I sweep the Paris subway. At night I am a security guard at the Cocotier, an African nightclub. Every drop of sweat that springs from my face is worth its weight in African francs. My family is happy that I send money at the end of every month, but I always have a lump in my throat because I know I will never go back to live in Cameroon. From now on I belong to the generation of young Africans struggling along in the West, aware that its future will be forever prisoner of the mysteries of poverty and survival. In my moments of solitude and despair, I think of the heroes who nurtured my adolescence: Ruben Um Nyobé, Amilcar Cabral, Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara. The hour of disillusion is here. I see the Africa of tomorrow dying by inches: the child soldiers of Sierra Leone, 128

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Rwanda’s orphans, the street kids of Abidjan or Johannesburg, Single mothers barely out of adolescence who spend their time playing mother to fatherless tots. Local urchins who have abandoned school desks for the street. Some of them fall into delinquency, others decide to take on the challenge of daily life. These are the ones I admire. They are walking merchants who sell everything, anything. Shine your shoes for a dime. Courageously, these little atypical Sisyphuses kill themselves all day long, with very little profit. Victims of the founding fathers, heroic and deliquescent, distressed and lonely, Africa’s youth bends under the burden of a dark future. I would so have loved to live in my own land. I would so have loved to [129], (7) participate in the birth of a prosperous Africa. But I am tired. Exhausted from the endless struggle that has transformed my beloved Mother Africa into a child killer. I took fright. I left. Adopted by France, my Lines: 94 to 1 dear stepmother, who gives me the warmth of her bosom, however ——— reluctantly, I cry from joy and sadness. I who have such need for love, * 210.0pt Pg comfort, and hope. ——— translated by toni wulff Normal Page * PgEnds: PageB [129], (7)

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Lines: 10 A Boeing 747 is resting in the courtyard of my hut. What a surprise I got as I was getting ready to go feed my goats. It must have fallen during the night, right in the middle of the sleeping hens. A silent crash, so as not to disturb my alarm clock roosters. Imagine roosters that would no longer crow to announce the sunrise, but rather to foretell falling planes. It’s an Air Afrique Boeing. Its fall was so delicate that it is hardly damaged. Careful and cautious, I walk around the aerovessel. After going around it four times, I call to my dancers who are still practicing in the exercise room, in the basement of our shack; they’re working on the choreography for our next show. Armed with pink and mauve tutus, sandpaper, brushes, gold paint, and stepladders, we launch the attack. The aeroplane door opens without difficulty. No one inside. The aeroplane is fixed up like a suite in a thirteen-star hotel: a billiard table, a pool, a double-door refrigerator, and red velvet from floor to ceiling. There is even an exercise room full of mirrors and orange mattresses: this is where we’ll rehearse our ballets. 130

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Three dancers in mauve tutus offer to clean off the logo: they rub it with the sandpaper, and little by little “Air Afrique” disappears. Two dancers in pink tutus then paint gold curlicues where the defunct logo had been. Soon the new name of our airline sparkles in the light of the rising sun: Lili’s Girls Airways. The painting work is finished off with a hair dryer. Babyliss. 1,600 watts. Immediate boarding. My pink and mauve dancers leap into the blue pool where a few halfpeeled oranges are floating. I make my way to the cockpit because I’m the captain. A bunch of bananas, solidly buckled into its seat, will be my copilot. Destination Yaoundé. I turn an old monkey wrench in the ignition of my plane and contact is made. I’m rolling, I run over one hen, I run over two hens, I spare one rooster, and here I am flying while the sun — which has just barely risen — goes back to bed already because it suffers from hypersomnia. In the pool, les Girls pop champagne corks and shout that I’m really fantastic. I’m fantastic all right. They finish peeling the oranges. My copilot tells me about a goat hung up on the landing gear. Having just barely set, the sun rises again because it suffers from insomnia. I land. So does the goat. But I made a mistake in the itinerary: the bunch of bananas led me into error in our flight path. We are not in Yaoundé; I’m rolling down a highway, in the left lane. It’s snowing: we’ve made our way to a hemisphere north of the equator. Good gravy! Good grief! Good God! Goddamn copilot in gardening gear! Soon a sign tells me that Geneva is only fifty-seven kilometers away. Soon again, a black bmw lets me know that I’m heading the wrong way. Another few minutes and I come upon a beetle, a ladybug. It invites me to pass the guardrail by nicely flashing its lights at me. 131

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I steer right, I steer left, I lose one wheel, I lose two wheels, but I can’t manage to get back on the right side of the roadway. With my wheels lost, I’m now sliding along on my belly, right along the asphalt. My aeroplane is scraping along and giving off a huge cloud of smoke and sparks. It looks like fireworks. I’m sliding along, I run over one Mercedes, I run over two Mercedes, I spare a Ferrari, and now the sun is done with its insomnia and heads back to bed. In the pool, les Girls are playing billiards and shouting that I’m fantastic, but they have no more oranges left to peel. I toss bananas at them. I’m fantastic, all right. A blue sign tells me that the next exit from the highway will be at Nyon. I’m on it. My wounded plane leaves the highway. It’s bleeding from its scraped belly. Luckily I come upon a nurse who was waiting for me, just for me, not the bananas, at a deserted intersection. A strip of gauze here, a bandage there, without forgetting the Mercurochrome, and we’re off again. Beforehand, the nurse points out the way to Yaoundé. “How can I get to Yaoundé?” He suggests going through Zermatt. “You go past a cow from Freibourg, a cow from Vaud, a Milka cow, and you’re there.” I tip my hat. In the pool, the bananas are howling about how painful it is to be peeled alive, without anesthesia, without analgesics, without an epidural. My dancers sing them the praises of old-fashioned peeling, the dangers of anesthesia, analgesics, and epidurals. Here I am in the mountain pasture in the midst of its green meadows and its black-and-white cows from Freibourg. There is even a brownand-white cow from Vaud. There is also a purple-and-white Milka cow. I run over a chalet, I run over two chalets, I spare a hotel, and finally there’s Yaoundé. Everyone gets off: me, my girls, the pool, the billiard table, and 132

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the double-door fridge. The banana skins float in the swimming pool, bloody with orange juice. We come across a winemaker shearing a sheep. He joins us because he has always dreamed of being a cabaret dancer. He brings along white wine, ingredients for Chinese fondue, and his white sheep’s merino wool. We come across a Mamiwatta along the hillside: the mermaid is milking a cow in no one’s field. We invite her to join us because, truthfully, we are really lacking in fish, and we need protein to balance our diet. The fish-woman refuses: she once took part in a luncheon on the grass and, to tell the truth, she’s not too interested in a repeat performance. “There are certain experiences one should not repeat,” she says. I argue. She resists. I argue. Finally she abandons her milk at the cow’s udder and the cow in no one’s field because, deep down, she has always dreamed of feeding dancers. Here we are in Kribi. We come across a crazy man, clairvoyant but invisible. He’s catching a shrimp and smoking two or three pipes. We stay there, looking at him. “What are you looking at me for?” he asks us. We tell him, here we are, every last one of us. Yep, we’re here to look at him whether he likes it or not. We’ll stay as long as we want. He replies that we don’t have the right. No, really, we don’t have the right, especially because as we don’t have a visa or a residency card in order to watch him catch his shrimp and smoke his two or three pipes. We say that it’s true, that we don’t have a residency card, but that we will stay here whether he likes it or not, and if he doesn’t agree, we’ll even go on a hunger strike. That way he can keep his shrimp all to himself over there. We look at him. We look at him. He begs us to leave. 133

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We agree, but only if he joins us in our clandestine nomadism. We need a clairvoyant, invisible crazy man to swell the ranks of our ballet troupe. He says that he would like to because, in reality, he has always dreamed of dancing, but he doesn’t know anything about the ndombolo or the entrechat. And, he assures us, he is not a girl. It doesn’t matter, we reply, we take boys. But if he really insists, we can get rid of his testicles for him and replace them with ovaries. He says he’ll think about it. He abandons his shrimp, keeps his two or three pipes and joins us. We go. We go. We go. There were eight of us when we left, but with quick reinforcements, there were 500 of us when we arrived at Port-Gentil. There two barefoot men, one a clubfoot, are seated on a bench in front of Saint-Louis’s Church. They invite us to pass the time with them, apologizing for not wearing shoes and for having one clubfoot out of four. We excuse them all the better since we can understand them: Mamiwatta has no feet, the winemaker removed his boots, the crazy man is wearing cheap sandals, my dancers and I are sporting pink and mauve ballet slippers. Répéto brand. Size 7. The two men with four feet, one a clubfoot, tell us how they escaped from a psychiatric hospital that doesn’t really exist. Within the walls of this imaginary institution, they were shoemakers; but after manufacturing so many pumps, mules, espadrilles, and other Turkish slippers, it turned out that they could no longer stand shoes. They decided to bare their four feet, including the clubfoot, and wander the halls of their asylum shoeless. “Kind of like your pool table and your fridge,” they state. One day they decided to escape from the asylum. They stole some belled Turkish slippers from the shoemaker’s shop and fled, hoping not to be noticed since they were wearing shoes. Twelve kilometers and as many blisters later, they took off their slippers because their feet hurt. They went on without shoes. The cement burned the soles of their feet, and drops of hot tar sometimes attacked their ankles. They walked to 134

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Saint Louis’s Church, where, ever since, they’ve been praying to the Lord to send them shoes. But God sent them 500 dancers instead. “Join us and there will be 502 of us in the dance,” I propose to them. They enroll in our formation because they too have always dreamed of dancing in cabarets. We head off toward Yaoundé where our plane awaits us. Suddenly it appears and we witness — live — its strange disappearance: the winemaker’s sheep and Mamiwatta’s cow take over the aerovessel’s controls; the Boeing 747 takes off for the magma at the center of the earth. As if it weren’t hot enough already. translated by dawn m. cornelio

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Lines: 0 to 16 Several anthologies of African short fiction, although primarily devoted to work written in English, include stories translated from French. Charles Larson’s first, Opaque Shadows (Washington dc: Inscape, 1975), includes two Francophone stories, both by authors of an earlier generation — Ousmane Sembène and Camara Laye. The second, Under African Skies (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992), includes these two authors and also Véronique Tadjo. African Short Stories (1985) and Contemporary African Short Stories (1992), both edited by Chinua Achebe and C. L. Innes, are published by Heinemann, London, a major English-language publisher of African fiction. The second volume includes a story by Emmanuel Dongala, a writer from Congo-Brazzaville. A more recent collection, The Picador Book of African Stories, edited by Stephen Gray (London: Macmillan, 2000), has a broader scope, containing stories originally written in several languages, including those by seven writers from francophone Africa, among them Abdourahman A. Waberi and Michèle Rakotoson. In French an early anthology is Anthologie africaine d’expression française, 137

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volume 1, Le roman et la nouvelle, edited by Jacques Chevrier (Paris: Hatier, 1981), which, as the title indicates, includes excerpts from novels as well as short stories by several authors born before 1940 — Francis Bebey, Henri Lopes, Guillaume Oyono-Mbia, and Ousmane Sembène. More recent anthologies include Nouvelles voix d’Afrique, edited by Michel Le Bris (Paris: Hoëbeke, 2002). This volume contains stories by Kossi Efoui, Jean-Luc Raharimanana, and Abdourahman A. Waberi. An interesting collection of stories about childhood, Une enfance outremer, by authors from various regions of the francophone world, edited by Leïla Sebbar (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2001), includes stories by Kossi Efoui, Jean-Luc Raharimanana, Véronique Tadjo, and Abdourahman A. Waberi. Volumes of short stories by single authors in French include writers of earlier generations. One of the first was Ousmane Socé’s Contes et légendes d’Afrique noire (Dakar: Éditions Gensul et Garcin, 1935), a collection of tales and legends rather than modern short stories. Perhaps the best writer of African tales is Birago Diop, whose Contes d’Amadou Koumba (Paris: Fasquelle, 1957) has been translated into English by Dorothy Blair as Tales of Amadou Koumba (London: Oxford University Press, 1966). Bernard Dadié, the most influential writer from Côte d’Ivoire, better known for his plays and semiautobiographical novels, published a number of early collections that are often close to folktales, including Légendes africaines (Paris: Seghers, 1954), Le pagne noir: Contes africains (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1955), and Les jambes du fils de Dieu (Abidjan: ceda-Hatier, 1980). Francis Bebey, from Cameroon, published Embarras et cie: Nouvelles et poèmes in Yaoundé with Éditions cle (1968). cle, a publishing house affiliated with Christian missionaries in Cameroon, has published several volumes of stories, among them Tribaliques by Henri Lopes, a Congolese writer who later became well known as a novelist. The Senegalese writer Ousmane Sembène, now best known as a filmmaker, published several volumes of stories with Présence Africaine, including Voltaïque (1962) and Vehi-Ciosane, ou 138

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Blanche Genèse, suivi du Mandat (1965). Emmanuel Dongala’s Jazz et vin de palme et autres nouvelles (Paris: Hatier, 1982) is an excellent collection. Several writers represented in this anthology have also published volumes of stories. In Michèle Rakotoson’s Dadabé (Paris: Karthala, 1984) the title story is a novella, followed by shorter pieces. Kangni Alem’s La gazelle s’agenouille pour pleurer (Paris: Éditions Acoria, 2000) contains a varied group of stories. Jean-Luc Raharimanana has had two collections of stories published by Serpent à Plumes, Lucarne (1995) and Rêves sous le linceul (1998). Abdourahman A. Waberi has also published two collections with Serpent à Plumes: Pays sans ombre (1994) and Cahier nomade (1996). [139], (3) Among the few studies of the African short story are Fidelis Odun Balogun, Tradition and Modernity in the African Short Story: An Introduction to a Literature in Search of Critics (Westport ct: Greenwood Press, Lines: 20 to 2 1991), and Guy Ossito and Mathis D. Dossou, La nouvelle d’expression ——— française en Afrique noire (Paris: Harmattan, 1999). * 235.28pt P ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: PageB [139], (3)

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Lines: 0 to 22 kangni alem, born in 1966 in Togo, held a fellowship at the University of Iowa in 1995 and now lives and teaches in France. One of his plays received a Prix Tchicaya U Tam’si. La gazelle s’agenouille pour pleurer (Paris: Éditions Acoria, 2000) is his first collection of short stories. His first novel is Cola Cola Jazz (Paris: Dapper, 2002). bessora, born in 1968 in Belgium to a Swiss mother and a Gabonese father and now studying in France, has published three novels with Serpent à Plumes: 53 cm (1999), Les taches d’encre (2000; awarded the Prix Fenéon), and Deux bébés et l’addition (2002). kossi efoui, born in 1962 in Togo, came to France in 1990 after one of his plays won a Radio France Internationale competition. He has published several plays as well as two novels, Polka (1998) and La fabrique de cérémonies (2001), with Éditions du Seuil. nathalie etoké, born in 1977 in Paris to Cameroonian parents, grew up in Cameroon and came to Paris to study. She has published 141

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one novel, Un amour sans papiers (Paris: Cultures Croisées, 1999). She is now a student at Northwestern University in the United States. koffi kwahulé, born in 1956 in Côte d’Ivoire, has published many plays, which have been performed in Africa and in France. Cette vieille magie noire (Carnières-Morlanwelz, Belgium: Éditions Lansman, 1993) won the Prix Tchicaya U Tam’si in 1992. It was performed in English translation by the Ubu Repertory Theatre in New York. Another play, Bintou (Carnières-Morlanwelz, Belgium: Éditions Lansman, 1993), was performed in translation by the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2000. Kwahulé is a member for Creative Writing on the International Artistic Commission of unesco. caya makhélé, born in 1952 in the Congo, is a writer, producer of plays, and director of Acoria Publications in France. He has published many plays, novels, and poetry. La fable du cloître des cimitières (Villeneuve Lez Avignon: La Chartreuse, 1991) won a Prix Tchicaya U Tam’si in 1993. “Les Travaux d’Ariane” won the Grand Prix de la Nouvelle Francophone in 1994. He has since written a version of the story for the stage.

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[142], (2 tierno monénembo, born in 1947 in Guinea and exiled in France since 1969, has published seven novels with Éditions du Seuil. His most recent novel, L’aîné des orphelins (2000), based on the Rwanda genocide, was awarded the Prix Tropiques in 2001. It has been published in English by the University of Nebraska Press, translated by Monique Nagem as The Oldest Orphan. patrice nganang, born in 1970 in Yaoundé, Cameroon, studied in Cameroon and Germany and now teaches at Shippensburg University in the United States. He has published a collection of poetry and two novels in France. His most recent novel, Temps de chien (Paris: Serpent 142

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à Plumes, 2001), was awarded the Prix Marguerite Yourcenar and also the Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique Noire. nimrod, born in Chad in 1959, now lives in Paris and edits a magazine, Aleph, Beth. He has published two volumes of poetry, both of which won prizes. His first novel, Les jambes d’Alice was published in 2001 by Actes Sud and was awarded the Thyde Monnier Prize by the Société des Gens de Lettres. jean-luc raharimanana, born in 1967 in Madagascar, won a prize from Radio France Internationale in 1990 for his play Le prophète et le président. He has published two collections of short stories and a novel with Serpent à Plumes. He now lives and teaches in Paris. michèle rakotoson, born in Madagascar in 1948, came to France in 1983 and works for Radio France Internationale. She has published several plays in French and in Malagasy as well as novels and a collection of short fiction, Dadabé (Paris: Karthala, 1984). Her most recent novel is Henoÿ, fragments d’écorce (Avin/Hannut, Belgium: Éditions Luce Wilquin, 1998). benjamin sehene, born in Kigali in 1959, left Rwanda as a child and was educated in Uganda and Canada. His book Le piège ethnique (Paris: Éditions Dagorno, 1999) combines autobiography with a study of the Rwandan genocide. He now lives in Paris. véronique tadjo, born in 1955 to a French mother and an Ivoirian father, was raised in Côte d’Ivoire. She won a prize for Latérite (Paris: Hatier, 1984), her first volume of poetry. She has published novels, volumes of poetry, and books for children. She is also a painter. Her novel, A` vol d’oiseau (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992), appeared in English translation as As the Crow Flies (London: Heinemann, 2001). Her most recent publication is L’ombre d’Imana (Paris: Actes Sud, 2000), based 143

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on her travels to Rwanda after the genocide. It has been published in English translation as The Shadow of Imana (London: Heinemann, 2002). She is currently based in South Africa. abdourahman a. waberi is the major contemporary author from Djibouti, where he was born in 1965. He has published three collections of short stories and a novel with Serpent à Plumes and a book of short texts and a novel with Gallimard. Cahier nomade won the Grand Prix de l’Afrique Noire in 1996. One of his stories, translated in Xcités (London: Flamingo, 2000), was the only story from francophone Africa to be shortlisted for the Caine Prize in Short Fiction, given in London in 2000. He now lives in France. adele king, the editor, professor emerita of French, Ball State University, taught at three universities in Nigeria. Her publications include Camus, Proust, Paul Nizan: écrivain, The Writings of Camara Laye, and French Women Novelists: Defining a Female Style. Her Rereading Camara Laye was published by the University of Nebraska Press (2002). She lives in Paris.

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Lines: 0 to 18 sara steinert borella is associate professor of French at Pacific University. Her research interests include travel writing and the literature of sub-Saharan Africa. She recently translated Anne Dériaz’s Chère Ella and is working on a critical study of Ella Maillart’s travelogues. dawn m. cornelio completed a Ph.D. in French studies at the University of Connecticut. She is an assistant professor at the University of Guelph, Canada. She has published more than twenty translations of articles, essays, poetry, and excerpts of novels in Sites: The Journal of 20th Century Contemporary French Studies. The first chapter of her translation of Une histoire de bleu appeared in the October — November 2001 issue of Poetry Magazine. cynthia hahn is associate professor of French and associate dean of the faculty at Lake Forest College. She is also secretary of the Chicago Area Translators and Interpreters Association. She has published translations of two novels: Wounding Words: A Woman’s Journal in 145

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Tunisia by Evelyne Accad and The Lost Song of a Rediscovered Country by Noureddine Aba, as well as translations of poetry. melissa marcus is associate professor of French at Northern Arizona University. Her translations of Algerian women writers have appeared in Transition and Callaloo and have been published by the University Press of Virginia (Of Dreams and Assassins, by Malika Mokeddem), the University of Nebraska Press (Forbidden Women, by Malika Mokeddem), and Station Hill Press (Forbidden Vision, by Nina Bouraoui). monique nagem, professor of modern languages at McNeese State University, has published many translations of novels, poems, and short stories, including work by African, Belgian, and French writers. Her most recent translation is Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris, for the University of Nebraska Press. She has also translated a novel by Tierno Monénembo, L’aîné des orphelins (The Oldest Orphan). amy reid is associate professor of French at New College of Florida. Her teaching includes francophone works from Quebec, the Antilles, and Africa. She has published on the Goncourts, Huysmans, and Anne Hébert. She has done commercial translations for Yale University Press and translations of essays in Yale French Studies. She is currently working on a translation of Patrice Nganang’s Temps de chien. toni wulff is associate professor of French and dean of faculty at Mount Mary College, Milwaukee, where she teaches French and intercultural communication. Her current research and translation activities focus on French women writers of Africa and the Caribbean. lauren yoder is James Sprunt Professor of French and chair of the Davidson College French Department. He has been a Fulbright 146

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professor in France and in Gabon and has also lived in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has translated a collection of tales (Tales, volume 1) and a collection of poetry (Wind Whispering Soul) by Kama Kamanda.

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Lines: 0 to 27 “A Woman and a Half ” was previously published as “Une femme et demie” in Abdourahman A. Waberi’s Le pays sans ombre (Paris: Serpent à Plumes, 1994), (c) 1994 Le Serpent à Plumes. Translated by permission of Le Serpent à Plumes. “The Legend of Abla Pokou, Queen of the Baoulé People,” by Véronique Tadjo, was previously published as “La légende d’Abla Pokou, reine Baoulé” in La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 553, May 2000. Translated by permission of the author. “A Fistful of Groundnuts,” by Tierno Monénembo, was previously published as “Une poignée d’arachides” in La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 554, June 2000. Translated by permission of the author. “My Father’s Lamp,” by Nimrod, was previously published as “La lampe de mon père” in Poésie, no. 89, 1999. Translated by permission of the author. 149

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“The Spider’s Fart” was previously published as “Le pet d’araignée” in Kangni Alem’s La gazelle s’agenouille pour pleurer (Paris: Acoria, 2000). Translated by permission of Éditions Acoria and the author. “Babyface,” by Koffi Kwahulé, was previously published in Le marchand de fables (Brussels: Édition Luc Pire, 2000). Translated by permission of the author. “The Labors of Ariana,” by Caya Makhélé, was previously published as “Les travaux d’Ariane” in Inédits de RFI-ACCT (Paris: Sépia, 1994). Translated by permission of the author. “The Ballad of a Shipwreck” was previously published as “La complainte d’un naufrage,” in Michèle Rakotoson’s Dadabé (Paris: Karthala, 1984). Translated by permission of the author. “Fahavalo” was previously published in Jean-Luc Raharimanana’s Rêves sous le linceul (Paris: Serpent à Plumes, 1998), (c) 1998 Le Serpent à Plumes. Translated by permission of Le Serpent à Plumes. “Our Neighborhood Fool,” by Patrice Nganang, was previously published in German translation in a literary magazine, Welfengarten: Jahrbuch für Essayismus 9:11–17 (Leo Kreutzer, editor, Hanover: Revonnah, 1998). Translated from the French original by permission of the author. “A Hunting Scene as Observed by a Sentimental Photographer” was previously published in Kossi Efoui’s La fabrique des cérémonies (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2001). La fabrique des cérémonies by Kossi Efoui (c) Éditions du Seuil, 2001. Translated by permission of Éditions du Seuil and the author.

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