Grand Pa is also respected because he is the only one here who is unimpressed by money. The only thing that impresses him in other people is any know-how that he does not possess himself. For instance, when he sees furniture in the La Redoute catalogue made by others that he considers more beautiful than his own, he swoons with admiration and won’t rest until he has created something at least as stunning.
Obviously, Father, during the times of your absence I couldn’t have been better placed to learn how to weave rattan as finely as lace and to create handsome frames. It seems that a long time has gone by since you sent the last photograph, and I’m beginning to fear I’m losing interest in my weaving, too. What’s happening to you and when will you be back?
And then one day, Father, like an apparition, a miracle, you arrive, and in your white shirt and midnight blue pants you are so much more handsome in real life than in the pictures. You are the only Black man among all those White men, who are with you for reasons I’ll never really know. They are all wearing various kinds of gray or greenish khaki that accentuates the washed-out look of their skin—as if lately they had been ill fed.
And you, the Black man, you are luminous, dazzling, striking. You get busy with a pot of boiling water that Grand Madja brings out, and drop large needles and some strange-looking tubes into it. You break small glass bottles filled with water and suck it all up into another glass tube, to which you then attach a thick needle. You go into a bedroom with grandfather, followed by a great-uncle, another one, and yet another. They all come back out holding one buttock, trying to hide their grimace. What can you possibly have done with your uncles’ buttocks? How can an old man be made to show his behind to his nephew in secret? And who do you think you are, father, to dare force yourself upon your fathers with needles and hurt their buttocks? And what is the role in all this of the White men? (Years later I was to learn that at the time of the great epidemics, your White people had provided you with medications for distribution in several villages, and that you arrived to allocate these as a preventive measure. But at the time, none of this made any sense to me at all.)
No one ever thinks of explaining things to children, who just see people coming and going, and events unfold. Like ants, they are threatened and sometimes crushed by the indifference of the violent and inexplicable actions of giants, and no one ever explains a thing. But since children are more garrulous than ants, they have a tendency to ask embarrassing questions. Then they are sent packing with a “Oh, do be quiet! Don’t you see your father is talking?”
And I pretend to be silent. Inside my deepest self, though, at that moment I am more talkative than ever. I do believe I actually asked every one of life’s questions in that single day: questions on beauty and ugliness. Yes, indeed, there were human beings who were beautiful and terrifying, with eyes as green as the forest and as blue as the sky. There were nasty ones with fingers and noses as crooked as fish hooks. I had questions about skin and its colors, white like fresh peanuts with reddish capillaries, or red like copper as in the ceremonial bracelets of Aunt Roz and Great-Aunt Kèl Lam. Skins as black as polished ebony like those of my mother, Naja, or Grand Madja Halla, or else the brick red of russet gazelles like those of my father and all his daughters, who came from one and the same mold. Then I also had questions about the course of life and the deportment of men. Where were they going, some gangly like wading birds, some scampering like goats, or heavily dragging their feet like the giants in legends, their thoughts concealed from the outside world? Who was the true creator of all this, what were his goals and afterthoughts—why, how? Many answers entered my mind as well, some of which have stayed with me until the present time. That day I understood that, in the end, happiness comes from the ability each of us has to come up with convincing responses to our own questions.
After chattering like rain that rushes down the rocks during a tornado, the White men were all slumped beneath the large mandarin tree in the courtyard, drinking foamy beverages they had taken from their bags. Aunt Roz, who’d been busy in the kitchen, had served them golden chicken and fried plantains. While they enjoyed their meal they started talking faster. I figured that with such fine food and their big appetite they would soon regain some color and not want to go back home at all. My father would certainly be happy to keep his friends around a little longer.
Throughout the day all the men of the village came parading by. You, Father, scribbled on a piece of paper signs like the ones on the backs of the photographs, but they kept me too far away so that I couldn’t tell whether there were any I already knew. Finally you came and joined the White men, drank the same thing as they did, and spoke with them as if they were part of your family. They took out a Telefunken radio like the one Grand Pa had, only smaller. While you were listening, you all kept on talking more than the radio did. Grand Madja asked you what you were so worked up about. You said that the Arabs were refusing to hand Palestine over to the Jews and that horrible things were happening in Israel.
I was barely able to stifle a cry of surprise, because Grand Madja opened her mouth wider than mine and exclaimed: “This box tells you things that are going on in Palestine, in Israel, in heaven where God and his angels dwell?” You laughed, laughed so hard that my mouth closed in shame over the whole mountain of questions I was about to ask, which in your eyes might seem even more stupid. And then all of you left again, with bags on your back the same way we carry our little rattan baskets, only yours were made of fabric.
In the evening, sick and tired of my questions, Aunt Roz told me that my father had been responsible for preventing an epidemic. She might as well have said nothing: Not one of her words made any sense to me yet. What I did understand was that you, Father, would be gone for a long time. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel sad, just impatient for you to return, convinced that it would bring new and exciting experiences. Oh yes, I loved you so much.
I became unhappy about not being a man. A man is free. He shows up, makes decisions, gives orders, and women and children obey. The women stay, and the men leave. And like you, Father, I wanted to leave, to leave with you.
Our oldest brother went away with Grand Pa Helly to be treated by the Pygmies. When they brought him back they said he was better, although we didn’t know what had ailed him. It occurred to me that it might have been a trick to teach the boys all sorts of different things and let the girls stupidly slave away in the kitchen without even allowing them to eat what they felt like eating. Men could eat snakes, turtles, crocodiles, even cats, while the women had to make do with leaves and manioc tubers. It’s no surprise, then, that they’re not smart enough to deserve going elsewhere.
It did, indeed, seem to me that my brother had become smarter than my sisters and myself—since he was back from the Pygmies he knew an awful lot! First of all, he now had a room all to himself in our aunt’s house. He had widened a hole in the wall between his bedroom and that of Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez. He invited us in, my little sister and me, supposedly to tell us about his Pygmy adventures. But in reality he wanted us to help him with his newest activity. Trembling, he would look through the hole, then put his ear right on it and with his mouth reproduce the noises we could hear—it was a kind of swallowing sound made by a mouth holding too much saliva. Then he asked us to play flood barrier—pulling up our dresses and standing with our legs apart, rolling our behinds around—while he reproduced the same sound.
I would have never dreamed up such a game by myself. It’s certainly very clever, but I don’t care for it. No matter how much I rack my brains, I can’t associate that horrible sound with anything I know. It must be something my brother saw at the Pygmies, something that only boys can see, since he refuses to let us have even a glance. True, I’m not a boy, but I swear I’ll take a look through that hole some day when my brother is not there to make us foolishly roll our behinds around with our pagnes bunched up while he makes mysterious sounds with his mouth.
Unfortunately, he is always there when the noise begins. “When will I become a boy?” I ask Grand Pa Helly. He just laughs.