“Some of these heroes stand out because of the power of their mountainous muscles and the strength of their steely nerves, like Bitchokè. Others because of the tenacity of their desire, the strength of their conviction and will, the wealth of their dreams and aspirations, like Dimalè,” you concluded, Father.
In contrast to Dimalè, you, Father, were tall and physically strong. You were handsome, and people were inclined to approach rather than withdraw from you. The Lôs, however, should always have something a bit repulsive about him, and you had nothing of the sort. You could permit yourself to unite strength and charm, and alternate between them as you wished. Why, then, did you create that need for those fits of brutality, which terrorized women and senselessly humiliated men? No doubt you were already trying to figure out how you might surpass Bitchokè, whom they called a ferocious animal, and in so doing you practiced to gain power by means of the absurd. If your father had ever dreamed you’d be a Lôs, the way Dimalè’s father surely had foreseen, he would have named you “Absurd,” instead of giving you a name as ordinary as Njokè, “The Elephant.”
What can I say today about your life as a Lôs? Did you slow down or accelerate the evolution of the world? Did you suspend or erase time? I’d give anything to hear your own perception of yourself, you whom I never heard express regret about anything at all—not about the worst of your blunders, or about any sorrow you may have endured. I wonder if you ever experienced remorse.
I could convince future storytellers, Father, that what guided you was the desire for beauty and greatness, a thirst for the absolute. It doesn’t really matter where it leads us; we all decide what we want to keep in our bag, rags or riches. The truth is not always pretty or merciful.
• • •
The new woman preceded you like ground hot pepper cast to the wind of a whirling harmattan, making one weep, sneeze, and cough: You came back with a White woman snatched from her husband. She owned cars, and so she had to have a paved road at least twenty-five kilometers long to go from the district’s central town to our village. Everyone knew that now the problems would really begin. Some decided to go and visit their maternal families where, in our tradition, one would be safe. But when you arrived you brought them back by force, and didn’t stop at whipping and recruiting their maternal uncles, a violation of the taboo that had never before been committed. From then on, no one anywhere would be safe.
You emptied out the fields and schools; you compelled women and children to clear the earth. And so Aunt Roz, my mother Naja, my sisters, and I found ourselves building a road to accommodate the arrival of your White wife and her vehicles. Your parents were the only ones who didn’t come to the construction site, but at least you didn’t have the nerve to beat them. They sat down on the ground in front of their house, legs stretched out in front of them, and they covered themselves with ashes as a sign of mourning. They kept a semi-fast for as long as the work went on, neglecting their own labor so they could devote themselves to prayer.
Once again I was infinitely lucky, since I was grooming myself to be like a White woman but had never seen one in the flesh. I wanted the road to be finished soon so that I could become enlightened. As a result I was the only one who, of my own free will, worked on the road with enthusiasm and zeal in order to attain my goal, and therefore I was the only one who actually enjoyed working there. For everyone else it was forced labor, slavery, and pure hell. They suffered insults and were whipped, felt humiliation, anger, hate, and ill will.
That is why all of them endorsed Mpôdôl when he stood up in the National Assembly meeting that was to consecrate our country as an Overseas Department of France, and said: “Down with colonization, down with the colonizers and their collaborators, down with forced labor and exploitation, long live liberty and our rights, long live ‘Independence!’” It was broadcast live on the Telefunken radio. Everyone stopped to listen because you had raised the volume, impatiently waiting for the moment that would make you a French citizen and break the barrier you’d been feeling between your White wife’s fellow citizens and yourself. It was a dreadful shock to you, who didn’t understand “that a Negro could stand up right there in the Assembly full of White men and question the already established rule.” You rose and declared that Mpôdôl was an outlaw and should be thrown in prison for the rest of his life—and at that very moment the voice from the Telefunken box repeated the same words, as if you’d crawled in to possess it the way a bissimè spirit possesses a woman in a trance.
We heard a huge hubbub inside the box.
“Where did he go? How come he’s ‘disappeared’? He’s not some spirit, after all! Get him back and bring him here dead or alive, even if that damned Elephant Forest has to be combed in its entirety!”
A loud noise followed, and then the box fell silent. You gave it a terrible kick, and it cracked open into a dozen pieces. All the people in the crowd took to their heels, scattered in different directions toward the forest, including my mother and Aunt Roz, while you, the “ultra-powerful” one, were unable to follow sixty adults taking off in sixty different directions at the same time, like the rays of a black sun. Only the children stayed, frozen, overcome by the sudden speed of the events. Time seemed to have set out on a madly accelerated course toward an unknown destination, where a trophy that should not be missed stood waiting.
How disarming you could be, Father! You didn’t seem concerned; you picked up the smallest children, one on your back, one on your shoulders, one by the right hand and one by the left. They clung to you like little monkeys. “It’s all over, children, we’re going home,” you said softly. All the other children followed your lead. You dropped each of them off in front of her or his parental home, and only my sisters and I were left, right behind you, when you arrived before your parents, who were in prayer and covered in ashes. We stood in front of them for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, Grand Pa Helly raised his eyes and seemed to recognize something. You calmly told him: “It’s war, father, I have to leave. But don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.”
You went to get a bag from your bedroom and then departed from the village. A silent tear etched a path of its own through the ashes on Grand Madja’s right cheek.
You were the only one, Father, who used the word war. Nevertheless, a huge massacre followed, and cost the lives of more than a hundred thousand Bassa and Bamileke men, women, and children. Entire villages were burned and pillaged, women were raped, entire populations deported and confined to what they called “relocation camps,” where they were subjected to brainwashing sessions meant to convince them that Mpôdôl was their personal enemy, the enemy of their own evolution and global development—in short, the enemy of their happiness. A large part of the Elephant Forest was cleared and ravaged. None of this appears in official discourse or history books, which occasionally and only vaguely allude to “the events of independence.” Sooner or later, however, all of us had to count our dead and try to describe what had happened at home. Here is my account.
The first event, in Massébè, our village: We hear a car motor. People come running because there is no passable road here, so how could a car come through? All the same, a motor revs up, a blast of hot air blows between the legs of the assembled people, the grass flattens, but we see no car.
Having reached us over your passable road, Father, the phantom car leaves tire tracks! Everyone is yelling in bewilderment and fear. Now every villager is following the tracks of an invisible car, in a frenzy of motors and voices, as far as the thirteenth kilometer, which is where the roadwork had come to a halt twelve days before.
The motor stops. A woman in a trance says that she sees a red car driven by a skeleton. The car is filled with all kinds of scythes and forks covered in blood, but only she can see them. Even the Mbombocks, Grand Pa Helly and Tonyè Nuk, don’t see the red car. What is certain, though, is that everyone has seen the tire tracks and everyone has heard the motor cut off.
The men begin to berate the invisible car: “You won’t come through here again,