The Mbombocks Grand Pa Helly and Tonyè Nuk use their flyswatters, drenched in rapidly prepared potions, to sprinkle the place where the red car was supposedly parked. The motor suddenly starts up again and revs very loudly, flattening the grass and people with hot air. Did the car take off? The motor’s noise moves up into the sky like that of an airplane! Making an effort to be first, people stand up in baffled silence and go home single file.
• • •
Second event: A Sunday morning with everyone already in their Sunday best, as is proper, some for the Catholic mass and others for the Protestant service. In Massébè it is one or the other, just about half and half. Of course, everyone is animist as well; they have already been purified by the medicine man’s Lilan Liliaceae, a plant in the lily family, and have made offerings to the ancestors. You never know. . . .
After breakfast, just when everyone is ready to leave the house, we hear a loud noise coming from the north. We go out and move in that direction, but when we reach a neighbor’s house, the noise seems to be coming from further away. Again everyone arrives at the thirteenth kilometer, right where your road stops, Father. Now the noise is coming from the South. We retrace our steps, following the sound, and walk until the day is half gone. Now the noise is coming from the north!
We all sit down and wait for this sorcerers’ meeting in bright daylight to come to an end. It lasts until sundown. The same woman in a trance claims she hears a meeting where the end of our world is under debate. According to her, the ancestors are pleading on behalf of Massébè, sketching out some visions of its evolution and renewal. But the spirits don’t want to hear any more; there are too many sorcerers striving to make time stop.
“In the name of heaven and earth,” the woman shouts, “stop obstructing the course of life.” And she collapses in a faint. She is so heavy now that it takes four men to move her. Again we go home single file, unable to resist, as if each of us felt the need to fall into line.
• • •
Third event: This time the news arrives like a thunderbolt, and terrifies everyone: The Whites have decided to comb the Elephant Forest to flush out Mpôdôl, known as the Great Resistance Fighter.
But all the roads that lead there have become very dangerous because the majority of the inhabitants of the villages bordering the terrible forest have joined the resistance, and in effect form a guerrilla force that prevents the army from reaching the Great Resistance Fighter. The Whites consider burning the whole forest down with napalm, but a few “converted nationalists” implore them to consider the environment, and suggest that they find more accessible paths. They see the village of Massébè as an ally, because of you, Father, the friend and brother-in-law of the Whites. They call you in as a consultant, and you reassure them: Indeed, if they spare the mythical forest of your ancestors, you yourself will guide them in, going through your village, where you are sure nobody will resist.
Yes, indeed, the news comes like a thunderbolt, proving to the men of Massébè that you are bragging about having emasculated them all. If they were to let you through, it would be the only thing History would remember!
The reason why people submitted to your will doesn’t matter: It might have been out of respect for your father, compassion for your mother who had already shed so many tears, love for your sister or your wife, or perhaps out of fear of you and the myth of the Lôs you had created for yourself. However, the men of our village decided that the Whites were not going to penetrate the Elephant Forest via Massébè, except over their dead bodies. It would never be said that Massébè was the gate through which Mpôdôl—the eyes and the mouthpiece of every Bassa—had been handed over to die, thereby transforming an entire people into deaf-mutes!
They hold a meeting in front of your parents, and ask them to talk you out of it—or else to urge you to come with all the battalions of the White army stationed in the land of the Bassa and the surrounding regions, if you could. But you should be prepared to face the fact that you and your friends wouldn’t pass through Massébè without first slaughtering its entire population, including the women and children. And even so, the spirit of the land had made up its mind that you would not pass through.
Grand Madja decides she’d go and catch her son herself and hold him down until he either trounces her first or else gives up. As she doesn’t know exactly where he is, she goes to lay siege at the gate of the headquarters in the district’s main town, positive that they’d pass by there. Alas! At the advice of Aunt Roz, Grand Madja’s three illegitimate “daughters-in-law” leave with their children to find refuge among their own tribes. With her most recently born little girl in her arms, and once again almost at term, my mother leaves for her people in the city: If everyone in Massébè was going to be massacred then at least these few would survive.
Aunt Roz announces she is ready to bar the road to the Whites, even if she has to do so with her teeth! She lends your old hunting rifle to the men, Father, but unfortunately there is only one cartridge of bullets left, meant for hunting partridge. Never mind—it is decided that this one cartridge would be shot only as a last resort at the commander of the Whites himself.
“Who other than Njokè knows how to use this rifle? Nobody!”
“What do you mean, nobody? Of course there’s someone! Minkéng Mi Ndjé, an uncle, asserts that he once used this same kind of rifle to kill a buffalo on a hunting trip.”
Aunt Roz expresses her surprise, never having heard this story, and all the more skeptical because her cousin is extremely myopic. He protests vehemently and demands that Aunt Roz prove him wrong. The rifle with its single cartridge has to be entrusted to him.
Many other suggestions are made: setting elephant traps on the road to prevent the Whites from advancing; capturing some of them and diverting others; bringing in some Ngangan Sunkan with their magic powers to have them place poisoned warrior ants and prepare lightning, and so on. While they are putting the finishing touches on their thousand defense strategies, we hear a nkou-drum announcing your arrival, Father, accompanied by a commando unit of some fifty soldiers.
Now, there are barely thirty people in attendance at the strategy meeting. The rest of the village population has not yet been alerted. What should be done?
“Go on the attack right away,” Uncle Mingkeng orders, and the fearful herd follows its nearsighted and panic-stricken leader into the bush.
Grand Pa Helly puts on his Mbock dress and rushes into the bush as well, but in a direction that was his alone. I never did know his intentions. I am now in the house by myself, in charge of all the homes—those of my parents, my grandparents, those of the three mothers, and of Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez, who always manages not to be present when problems arise, like a cat when death approaches. In addition to this, I am responsible for my little sister.
I lock all the doors, and bring the cooking pots and the food to my grandparents’ house where we lock ourselves up.
The sound of an explosion awakens me. My little sister was sleeping quietly. I go to take a look outside—nobody. I gather up my courage and venture as far as my father’s rear courtyard. Not a leaf stirring; there isn’t a bit of air—all of nature is holding its breath, as am I.
Suddenly everything moves—wind, shouting, people running. Aunt Roz comes out of my grandparents’ house with my little sister in her arms and, after motioning me with her head, is swallowed up in the bush. I follow on her heels.
Aunt Roz should have been a man, she is so fearless, always ready to take the initiative, avoiding obstacles but never deviating from her goals. While the others flee from danger, she returns to it. She hides behind a shrub, and we can see the battalion of White men buzzing excitedly. One of them is lying on a kind of bag, his left shoulder bleeding profusely. My father is busy with him, holding a knife that from time to time he’d run through some flames. Water boiled on a blue-tinged fire that came from a kind of bronze-colored stove. I later learn it was a camping stove. A team of White men return, holding