So it is that both your wives and almost all your children are together in the regional stronghold of Bitchokè, as if tied hand and foot and at the mercy of fate.
• • •
Father, you introduce me to my new mother and instantly leave us alone, without bothering to find out how we’ll get along. It doesn’t much matter to you that I’m with a new mother Naja, without knowing what to call her to distinguish her from my own mother, whose name is Naja, too.
“Hello, ‘Mam’ Naja,” I say shyly.
She doesn’t answer, but scrutinizes me thoroughly from top to toe and back again, several times, as if to latch on to some details that will allow her to recognize me among the hordes of children she sees at the hospital every day. Her eyes show no hate, no love, no kindness, no malevolence—just a kind of absent-minded curiosity. In the fifteen minutes of our first encounter she asks my name two or three different times, and then she warns me that I will have a lot of work to do, won’t have any time to be bored or do anything foolish. Matching action to her words, she shows me laundry in an enormous bucket that apparently, judging by the fetid smell of rotting soap it emits, has been sitting there soaking for several days. It’s going to take much thorough rinsing to get rid of the stench. Thinking that she’s done with me, Mam Naja picks up her bag. Where is she off to? Undoubtedly to her hospital. At barely one o’clock in the afternoon: What an eager beaver, I tell myself.
Who could ever explain what made me follow her? Perhaps the sudden fear of being left all alone in this unfamiliar house and neighborhood made me feel like a stranger. Or perhaps I was already complying with fate. Today all I can do is go along with the second hypothesis, for in my mind nothing else could explain my behavior that day.
She walks the way others dance. A very rolling dance, very rhythmical, with highly pronounced rotations. I copy her rhythm and entertain myself by exaggerating the rolling of my already well-defined hips.
As a result, of course, I hadn’t been paying attention to the road we were taking or to the passing time. Out of the blue, she turns around and looks carefully behind her, before she dives surreptitiously into a courtyard. She glances over me without recognition, for she certainly would not have expected me there. In a panic, I quickly hide behind an old parked car and then notice a large intersection I hadn’t seen before. I wonder what direction I came from. How do I go home? At this hour of blistering heat, there’s no one in the streets who can give me any information. I stay crouched behind the car until my legs cramp up. Whatever is Mam Naja doing inside there? Perhaps I should take a closer look. But then I have to get back to my hiding place very quickly: My own mother Naja and her oldest sister Tata Roz are standing at the door and questioning an old guard. The desired information must be extremely important, for it seems to literally propel them forward, all excited, with lots of silly giggling, and without even saying goodbye to the dumbfounded old man as they jabber away without listening to each other. They pass by me on the other side of the car at such close range that they would certainly have seen me had they not been so self-absorbed. I have often wondered what would have happened then. Our fate would undoubtedly have been different. But the die was cast.
Paddle your own canoe, Halla, keep paddling;
What matters is to paddle your canoe of Love.
Paddling the canoe of Love grants intelligence;
Paddling the canoe of Love grants strength and elation,
Justifies life and all its tribulations.
Paddle your canoe of Love, little Madja Halla.
You’ll be done with despair;
You’ll relinquish pride and impatience;
Paddling will turn into love and nonviolence.
No matter if you do not reach the other shore;
Your promised one will meet you on the waves one day
And bring you to a new world.
Paddle your own canoe, little Halla;
Paddle your canoe of Love.
The age-old lullaby comes bubbling into my head, a lullaby of my old namesake Grand Madja Halla, sung to me at an age when I was the only one to enjoy the luxury of her full attention, before all the other sisters were born.
There is always that recourse to past happiness, and always the miracle of recreating and updating it. Confronted with my present deadlock, with my mother Naja and her sister hiding in a street watching Mam Naja, who is taking another road, I have no other choice but to go in the opposite direction, the road of the unknown. And I want that road to be happy. That is why Grand Madja’s lullaby springs up from the depths of my memory and bursts forth over my senses, infusing them with its sweet hues, sounds, and vibrations. I want to flee from what I see of my mothers Naja: the pettiness that Grand Madja so frowns upon. Until now I’ve managed to keep myself far away from that, and I fully count on continuing to do so. I’m already happy. I walk along humming the lullaby, which now finds support from some drums. Yes, indeed, drums are calling me, and I start running; I run, singing, toward the drums. They lie at some distance, but my rapid forest-girl’s stride gets me there quickly. There is a crowd in a square. I squirm through the legs of the spectators who are blocking me from getting closer. Finally I’m in the middle of the circle! Tiny men and women are playing and dancing in the square.
Because my question escapes from me out loud, a mature lady explains: “It’s the Pygmies! The ‘authorities’ have extricated them from the resistance fighters. They won’t be allowed to work as guides for the resistance anymore, and, killing two birds with one stone, they’ll make this an opportunity to educate, civilize, and integrate them. In the meantime, the government says they must dance in the square before every important event.”
“That’s right; and there’s going to be a great event right now,” a supposedly well-informed gentleman adds. “The ultra-powerful Bitchokè has decapitated one of the last and closest collaborators of the Mpôdôl and will be escorted by the French military to display his head throughout the weekend. Everyone has to understand that the events will come to an end the moment that Mpôdôl’s head is nailed to that same ‘bill board’; those intractable types should stop doing the foolish things that so needlessly prolong these stupid events.”
A full squad of White soldiers comes out of a black car and gets busy around a black box, which I later find out is a hearse. The drums have fallen silent. So have the dancers and spectators. You can hear the green flies’ wings. The soldiers climb back into their car, and the crowd slowly moves forward toward the center of the circle. A head is impaled, like a pumpkin, on the top of a fork stuck in the ground. Only this pumpkin’s eyes are rolling backward; the dangling tongue is covered with a swarm of green flies, whose buzzing now seems as unbearable to me as the helicopters’ engines on that cursed day in Massébè. My whole belly shudders, and my stomach explodes into a bright yellow surge of bile in my throat. I clutch the fork without knowing why. My body is clearly functioning beyond my control today.
A thick hand comes down on my head and yanks me off the ground by my ears. My feet are fluttering in the air pathetically. Suddenly my eyes are at the level of an enormous male face that in a wild and frightening way is quite beautiful: His teeth are oddly white and prominent, and his almost golden eyes flash with many flamelike sparks. As if arising from a cave, a deep voice wells up from this massive whole: “You know him, don’t you? Is he your father, your uncle, or your brother?”