How foolish to have affixed my own heart to his.
It is finished, it has happened, and here is my heart,
Burning me, piercing me, crumpling up inside my belly;
What shall I do with a heart that has run aground in my belly?
Huge commotion! A man comes out of the guestroom. Grand Pa Helly comes out of his bedroom dressed for one of his great journeys, his ceremonial machete in its sheath tied to his hip, his crossbow and arrows on his back, a rattan bag and his Mbock cane in hand.
When he sees Grand Madja weeping, Grand Pa Helly stops for a moment and closes his eyes. He takes a very deep breath and then says in his nighttime voice: “If nothing else I’ll bring you his body, but I swear that I’ll bring him back to you.”
And he goes off without another word.
I don’t recall his ever before being absent for such a long time. Grand Pa Helly was a husband who was present, not some draft of air perpetually gallivanting around like my mother Naja’s husband or Aunt Roz’s husband Ratez. They always had to run after those two, inquire after their whereabouts, use a weathervane to investigate where the wind had blown them. You also had to protect yourself against these drafts of air when they came home, or they could cause mumps or a stiff neck. Those two husbands were truly rough!
Even when absent, our husband was always there. We’d wait for him serenely, and he always came back, equally warm and considerate.
This time, the wait was not as serene as usual. At night, my namesake, I saw you getting up with a start, taut as a bow, and you waited, holding your breath. You stayed awake until daybreak. Sometimes you prayed out loud—you who always told me that God is like the elephant who hears silences and whispers more clearly than words uttered out loud. You really were much too anxious, and I still don’t know why because you didn’t tell me anything.
Soon I understood that my father had committed yet another one of his transgressions. All along, on any given day, someone might arrive to tell a tale, which meant agony for you and my mother, anger for Grand Pa Helly and Aunt Roz, and incomprehension for my sisters and me. Nobody explained anything to us, but through sentence we snatched and laments heard we learned that he’d taken another man’s wife, fought with some chief, or abducted someone’s daughter. Sometimes he himself returned with the booty of his raids. Aunt Roz and Grand Pa Helly would bawl him out relentlessly, while my mother fought with her new rivals, ripping their clothes to shreds, throwing the contents of their suitcases in the latrine, and always coming up with new insults and new tricks until she won him over. You, my namesake, you bewailed your heart.
But this time around, I knew it really must be very serious.
Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez left after Grand Pa Helly. My mother collected her things and departed, saying she wouldn’t come back anymore. But it wasn’t the first time she had done this.
She’d always come back, ranting and raving ever more loudly, as she did when my father had gone to kidnap my youngest sister from her. She arrived with a delegation of uncles and cousins armed with machetes and arrows. It took three days of negotiating, three slaughtered sheep, a large pig, and several chickens loaded inside mintets, woven palm leaves used to wrap provisions. Then the armed men turned around and, after accompanying them to the end of the road, my mother came back on her husband’s arm, both of them laughing uproariously. They immediately went into their hut, forgetting that we were all waiting for them before we would start eating.
Yes, she often came back on his arm, laughing wildly, her belly rounded with a next sister that my father always managed to deposit surreptitiously in her womb when, tired of his newest conquest, he would go off to get her back again. So for her it wasn’t serious; my father would undoubtedly take her back as soon as he returned from his latest adventure.
What was worrisome, however, was the long absence of our husband, magnified by that of Aunt Roz. Even more worrisome was the return of her husband Ratez, who came back for three large rams. Then I learned that the Pygmies had demanded them as a sacrifice to snatch my father from the hands of death. More on edge than usual, you, Grand Madja, waited like an impatient fiancée.
Tonight my youngest sister and I linger very unobtrusively in the back of Great-Aunt Kèl Lam’s courtyard, where she repeats her newest epic, singing the praises of our ultra-powerful father who, they say, is coming back soon. My namesake gave Great-Aunt Kèl Lam nine chickens so she will sing and dance the Nding and pay homage to the ancestors if her son comes home safe and sound, and if her husband and daughter come back with him. She sings and repeats certain refrains.
He has returned,
He has become,
Njokè has become more of a Lôs than Dimalè.
Mere mortals have always been told
That the noncompliant one does not die,
But will see the consequences of his deeds.
Now, the ultra-powerful needs these experiences;
He will not become fire except by burning,
Will not become a genie except by drowning,
He has returned,
He has become,
Njokè has become more of a Lôs than Dimalè.
Njokè had the audacity to confront Dimalè,
An ultra-powerful man they call “Catastrophe”;
To surpass the Master of catastrophes,
One has to find greater power than that of fate itself.
One goes off to deride the unspeakably famous Dimalè where he lives,
Abduct his eighth wife, the most beautiful of them all,
And not bring her back until she’s birthed a little girl that
Is her spit and image,
And strut about with her at the market of Mbébè Libông,
The very kingdom of Dimalè!
He has returned,
He has become,
Njokè has become more powerful than Dimalè.
Thereupon Dimalè saw red;
He ordered his men to destroy Njokè
And to never let the name Njokè be heard again.
But Njokè fought back, sent all the market men running,
Splitting hairy hides with dried salt cod,
Slashing faces with splintered bottles,
Gashing backs, arms, and calves with his machete.
Did he not become more of a Lôs than Dimalè himself?
So sang the women at the market of Mbébè Libông.
He has returned,
He has become,
Njokè has become more famous than Dimalè.
Then Dimalè grew doubly enraged,