‘So she is ten years old now. But why can you not make a birth certificate for her?
‘What is she going to do with it when her life starts in her mother’s hut and ends in a man’s compound? We make birth certificates only for boys.’
‘So you say that school is not good for Fatti? You say that she died and resurrected?’
‘Look, Mr. Father, I came here to put my son in school. If you do not want him, tell me and I will take him back with me to my compound.’ Temkeu lifted his finger to the priest’s face. ‘My wife told me a long time ago that you were saying things to her that Fatti did not die. Our gods sent Fatti back from the land of the ancestors, and you come to tell me that Fatti did not die? Look, Mr. Father, I came here to put my son in school and not to talk about my family. If you do not want my son in your school tell me and I will take him back to Santa.’
‘No, Pa Fopou I ...’ Fr. Max started but never finished.
Temkeu walked on right into his compound without having looked back once. His wives, some of the boys, Fatti and a few neighbours formed the crowd gathered under the mango tree in the middle of his compound.
‘Neighbours in my compound again? What is the problem this time? And why is Fatti not on the farm? What are her mothers still doing in the compound?’ The questions gushed out of his mouth. He took a few agitated steps towards the crowd and found Makam at the hub of the activity. Bread here, matches there, dress here, milk there, sugar here, exercise books there, Makam was dishing out manna from his shop of a polyester carrier bag.
The women showered him with good wishes to supplement their ‘thank you’: ‘Makam, may your shadow never grow less; may the gods fill that bag which you have emptied into our hands; may…’ ‘So that is what it is all about! If only every crowd gathered in my compound could be made up of such cheerful faces. But where is Mefo?’
That night the crowd carried its cheerful face into Mefo’s hut for a rare evening at the Fopou compound. In the presence of one father, one grandmother, three mothers, some children and grandchildren, the Fopou family bonded like it had not in a long time. Some on stools others on the bed, their strewn figures painted overlying silhouettes on the walls of Mefo’s lit hut. The family formed two groups: those who opened their mouths and those who opened their ears – Mefo and the men against the mothers and children. Contrary to expectation, Temkeu kept his lips glued and his eyes on Fatti. Makam thus became the main orator, his travels supplementing his manhood. Between mouthfuls of roasted corn, he talked about life in a military uniform, about round tubes which had the light of the sun in them and made the night shine like day and about cars which moved on water. The audience laughed and taunted and disagreed. Reliving fond memories and creating new ones to sustain them in times of separation – that is what the Fopou family was doing.
When the pot of fresh groundnuts came down from the fire, the humans became rats. Cracking and chewing, swallowing and reaching for more, they ate as though their stomachs had been deprived of food for days. The children were the only ones who ate like people accustomed to eating groundnuts, and the reason was simple: Mefo had declared that their last swallow was to coincide with their departure to bed. Unlike most days, when they retired by 8.00 p.m. to be up and running by 6.00 a.m., the adults chatted on unconscious of the passage of time. It was only when Makam switched on his pocket radio to catch up on the ten o’clock news that they realised they had drifted further into the night than intended. The looks on the faces of the three Fopou wives said, ‘We wished we could remain seated’. But mindful of the duties that awaited them at dawn, they got up, relit their lamps – which they had put out to save kerosene – and walked past the door. They parted with their husband’s name on their lips, one praising the fact that he had for once allowed others to speak, another condemning his failure to share useful experiences with his children, still another claiming that all his attention had been on Fatti. All three turned to stare at Fatti who was carrying one of the little children to his mother’s hut.
When the rest of the group finally left, Fatti picked up the broom to gather the groundnut shells strewn all about. After two strokes, she immediately dropped the broom but not fast enough to have escaped Mefo’s vigilant eyes.
She pulled out her pipe from her mouth and yelled, ‘How many times will I tell you not to sweep at night? Do you want to wake up devils? I have told you many times that the night is time for devils. If you hear your name at night when you do not know who is calling, do not answer because it is the devil. If you want to talk to someone, go near the person. Do not shout out any person’s name at night because the devil will hear and come and repeat it. Have you heard?’
‘Yes, Mefo.’ Fatti could not sweep but she could glean groundnuts on the floor and give her teeth the satisfaction of the action denied her hands.
Morning came and with it the departure of the august guest. But when Makam took off for Yaoundé, he left something behind, something which Fatti discovered and which she hid under Mefo’s mattress.
Temkeu shoved the blanket from his body, jumped out of bed and fastened his loincloth. Yawning and stretching, inching and groping, he unlatched the door and flung it open. Outside, he traced the familiar path to the back of his hut. Standing with his face to the bush, he emptied his bladder of the overnight load. He walked to a cypress tree and brutally attacked a small branch, not letting go of it until it let go of its hold on the stem. After peeling off the bark, he thrust the branch into his mouth and attacked it with his kola nut-stained teeth. He was walking back to his hut when he ran into Nkem on her way from the latrine located out of eyeshot and earshot from the compound.
‘Has day come, Mbeh?’
‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, Mbeh,’ she answered and then added ‘You are up very early. It seems you want to go out. Should I heat up the fufu corn and njama njama so that you eat before you go?’
‘You know that it is too early for me to eat. I will go and come back before I push down the morning spittle.’
‘As you say, Mbeh.’ She hesitated and then added, ‘Since you may return when I have already gone to the farm, I will tell Fatti to stay back and give you food before she joins me.’
‘I am going far and will surely return very late in the afternoon or early in the evening; so do not worry about food for me.’ He was walking away when he turned and asked, ‘You did not go to greet your white man God this morning?’ He chuckled. ‘Has He travelled? Or maybe you are angry that He has kept Fatti out of your bed for so long. Maybe He is the one who is angry because you go to bed with His name and get up with His name, blaming Him for everything bad, even that which comes from the evil spirits.’ Temkeu laughed as he made for his hut. ‘I warned you people about that white man and his God but you refused to listen to me.’
Back indoors he examined the items of clothing hanging from nails on a lath stuck to the wall and selected one of his pairs of jumpers. In front of his slab, he picked up a comb, passed its teeth through his greying hairs and then covered them with a black twine cap. Finally, he put on Achum’s gift of a leather watch, though it no longer ticked with the passage of time. Before stepping out, he stopped in front of his skulls. ‘Keeper of our people, right hands of our gods –’ Temkeu stared hard at the two skulls ‘– I offer you the mission of this morning. Bless my feet so that I hit no bad stone on the road and put the right words into my mouth. I beg you today that you reveal to me that which will bring peace back into my heart.’
Temkeu closed the door behind him and set out. He did not need to lock the door. Though access into his hut was open to anyone, respect kept everyone out, even a stranger who came