The Laughing Cry, page 13
The familiar faces of the dignitaries and their wives were now all present. A number of Uncles too. Big traders, bankers and development officials, together with an impressive contingent of doctors and professors.
The buffets were laid according to my instructions. Turkeys in aspic, big salmon heightening the reflections of the silver platters in which they lay, mounds of pâté de foie gras, piles of prawns and lobsters, pyramids of cakes built as high as a boy and crowned with marzipan all encrusted with crystallised fruit. Bottles of choice vintages were being uncorked by the waiters, under the direction of white maîtres brought in especially for the occasion, but all under my authority. Golden wines in long-necked flasks, blood-red wines in bottles lightly coated with dust, pale whiskeys, champagne in heron’s-beak goblets, cooling in basins full of ice.
The bands, after their initial chords, played one after the other, offering conga rhythms, accompanied by lyrics in praise of the Chief, all sung with an obsessive intensity. These rhythms gave the illusion of immortal verses and some of the whites, feeling the fire of the percussion in the pits of their stomachs, sketched a few steps, in the attitude of waltzers.
Suddenly the rhythm changed and everyone recognised the famous signature tune: “When Daddy came down from on high.” All eyes turned in the same direction and a voice cried:
“The President Bwakamabé Na Sakkadé, wollé, wollé?”
“Woï! Woï!”
Three times.
Daddy, preceded by his Head of Protocol, advanced triumphantly, with a seductive smile, acknowledging with his lion’s tail the applause orchestrated by the Director of Protocol and taken up by the guests, running like a wave from one end of the garden to the other.
“Wollé, wollé?”
Woï, woï!”
Attired all in white, from cap to mocassins, he came forward with Ma Mireille on his arm, also radiant as an actress, playing her role of princess with a natural brilliance. I heard one old Uncle compare her to Elizabeth Taylor. The men looked at her with scarcely-veiled admiration. She looked at me and I felt wounded afresh by her severe and angry expression, like a recall to order. Daddy murmured to her and she replied with a lovely smile in which one read an indescribable affection. It made me boil. Behind them came a clutch of people, including bodyguards, members of the presidential family and some of the best-known figures in the political life of the country. Daddy stopped to shake hands with an acquaintance, doubtless someone he knew before his accession to supreme power, and to whom he wanted to prove his simplicity. All the guests then began elbowing their way forward, so as to be able, each one . . . And when they reached their goal, they would present themselves to Madame and attempt to open a conversation, try to distinguish themselves or obtain the promise of an audience.
The young compatriot Cabinet Secretary was standing somewhat apart.
“Don’t you want to eat something?”
He pulled a slight face, as if he were feeling sick.
“A drink?”
It was just at this moment, I think, that I heard a dry crackling sound repeatedly breaking the air.
“It must be the fireworks beginning,” said someone nearby.
“Fireworks in broad daylight?”
“Another trick of Daddy’s. A mock attack, no doubt. He’s playing again the trick of Lake Lamartine.”
Whistling sounds were slicing the air across our heads. Bursts of fire from machine guns followed one another, punctuated by loud explosions from heavy weapons which shook the ground. Ah! a bit beyond a joke, this. The smiles of those who had expected a farce were frozen and I looked in vain for any sign of encouragement around me.
“If this is a stunt, it’s in very bad taste,” remarked a European diplomat, sententiously.
The nervous stuttering of small-arms was increasing. Suddenly, a guest who was standing by a corner of the buffet fell forward into a plate of sandwiches, spraying it with his blood and sending it flying. Eh? Eh? Does this look like a joke? An elderly man, as if taken ill, sank abruptly onto the edge of the fountain, clutching his ankle and smiling horribly.
“Oh! but I’m wounded!”
At the same instant, I feel a warm liquid between my neck and the collar of my shirt. I put my finger there. It comes back red. Mam’hé! But these fellows are really playing the fool. Blood? God is great, it can’t be mine! Well, my brother, the joke is over. I remember the convoy I had passed just before arriving at the party. In the name of God, bilai, it’s a coup d’état! The beginning of a revolution. The intellectuals like the young compatriot Cabinet Secretary? But where has he vanished to? I don’t see him. The forebodings of Elengui were well-founded. I should have listened to her. Oh, where can I run to?
Here we are, all caught up in this unexpected disaster. But it’s as if I were alone. My throat is dry. An invisible hand squeezes all the guts in my belly. I’m sweating like a white man. Alone. I feel alone. No one now knows who is his neighbour. Vanished in the flick of an eyelid, vanished all those courtesies that had perfumed the reception a few minutes ago. The bullets are whizzing past and ricocheting against the walls, smashing windows and plasterwork. My brother, if you ever want to see Elengui again, you had better quit this open esplanade. In any case it’s already empty. Here and there, corpses lie on the pavement, each in the midst of a growing pool of blood. I manage to reach the kitchens and begin to look for cover. They are crammed. But people are pressing towards the threshold, looking outwards, as if just taking shelter from a passing shower. In the rear kitchen, a group of servants, some in white jackets and others in chef’s hats and aprons, are kneeling and jabbering the prayers of I-don’t-know-what-religion.
This room is lit by a sort of skylight in clear glass. One of the waiters goes to smash it. I take a quick look outside: bodies piled against the foot of the boundary wall. In the name of God, I have never seen the like. Mam’hé, Mam’hé! Their skirts and trousers are all soaked with blood. Elengui, my dreams, ayay’hé! An official who is standing beside me — I know him well, he lives in my quarter — also takes a look through the skylight.
“Yes, yes, yes, there they are! They’re coming! They’re breaking in!”
At that moment, some ten, fifteen or twenty helmeted soldiers, all in camouflage jackets coloured like dry-season foliage, are rushing through the main entrance. All carry an armband coloured blood-red. Bent over their guns, they are firing ahead of them at random. By now, they must have reached the threshold of the Palace. While the bulk of the troop deploys itself in a swarm, two soldiers detach from the group and appear in the opening of the kitchen doorway.
“Hands up! Everybody out!”
They have the voices of maddened beasts.
I am one of the first out, pushed by the great wave of guests who rush in disorder towards the arcaded wall which closes the esplanade on the side of the hills. The boys and cooks being a bit slow in following us, one of the soldiers throws a grenade into the pack. Ay! I hear the explosion, but don’t dare to look. The women, close to hysteria, utter cries which rise like bells.
One boy, his nerves on a razor-edge, throws himself on his knees.
“Not me, not me. I’m innocent. Not me, I beg-o. Pardon, chief, pardon, wo. I’ve got kids.”
“Shut your mouth, you slavey! Filthy black shit! Some boys you are, fit for nothing better. At every meal, at every banquet, you steal something. Whole legs of lamb, into your bags. You’re part of the system, so pay up!”
The soldiers make a half-turn. Some of them stop suddenly in front of a buffet still laden with barely-touched remnants of the feast. Their eyes are blood-shot.
“Bastards! You’ve been stuffing yourselves like hogs!”
The one who shouted now points his gun at us.
“Now you’ll pay!”
Trembling like a malaria patient, he pulls the cloth towards him, overturns the trestles with blows of his rifle-butt, and sends the whole mass of food crashing to the ground, together with the flowers we had spent days and nights patiently arranging. He tramples on the lot, amidst a great shattering of plates and glasses. The soldiers fire and fire, emptying whole magazines, blind with rage. One old man is begging for mercy, trailing on the ground and hugging the legs of a soldier.
“I’m wounded in the thigh . . . I didn’t want to come here . . . Spare me, my children . . .”
“You could have stayed at home!”
And without giving him time even to reopen his mouth, he beats him across the head with all his strength. The old man falls back, his skull split apart. The soldier wipes the butt of his gun. His eyes look like those of a wee-smoker.
Chased here and there by some thirty soldiers, the crowd, hands in the air, veers sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, like a flock of frightened animals pursued by wild beasts. One man tries to talk with a soldier: he is shot down in a burst of bullets at point-blank range. Another, who has been ordered to raise both arms, tries to indicate that he cannot, because one arm has been amputated. He is mown down in his turn. Professor Lourd, going to the aid of a wounded man, is violently ordered to stop. He reaches toward his pocket, doubtless to pull out his doctor’s card, and is promptly laid out on the ground by another burst of gunshots. Who, then, has given orders to kill even Uncles? My throat closes up again and my limbs are completely paralysed with fear.
Dragged along, shoved, caught up in the crowd, I find myself in my turn pushed against the arcaded wall facing the hills. Why not try to escape that way? The forest up there offers me all the branches of its trees. If I could just get there . . . I know every path. As a Boy Scout, I was the best in field-craft. But it’s a nightmare from which I’ll never awake.
A little way off, sacks of meat, lying shapeless and inert. We are surrounded. Animals caught in the hunters’ net. Everything has been devised against us. Is this another nightmare? This time, there will be no awakening. No one can escape alive from this killing game. A song comes back to me from childhood.
Here comes the night,
Why didn’t I stay at home
To cut wood?
Here comes the night . . .
And all this in broad daylight, without anyone lifting a finger to prevent it.
Only wee-smokers could act like this. They go on shooting blindly for no other reason than the sheer pleasure of killing: a man who wants to protect his wife; another who couldn’t answer in the same dialect; one who was too well-dressed; one who looked too arrogant; another who looked too frightened. What frightful juju-man is pulling the strings of this mass frenzy?
Step by step, the soldiers approach us. The expression of these eyes grows still more strange.
“Get out, all of you, you maggots! Clear the place! Get out! You stink! You’ve grown fat enough on the sweat of the people. Go on, get out!”
They are pushing us, with their rifles crossed, towards the entrance gate. We pass the threshold, trampling on a dozen corpses. But nothing matters now. In a minute, it will be our turn. The last survivors on the ground will clutch at our knees.
Outside, the scenes of massacre are even worse. The few guards who dared to resist have been shot down and their bodies, black rubber dummies, are stretched out here, in the wildest poses, silent and amazed. Seeing them like that, without feeling any greater fright, gives me the sense of being ready to receive death without any more terror than those who had accepted it according to the ethic of their profession. Wherever I look, the flowerbeds, the lawns and the paths are jammed with corpses or with those dying in agony. A vision even more atrocious than my nightmares.
“Go on, go on, move, you bastards.”
A line of military trucks is standing before us. The very same that I passed before getting to the party. Some are already filled with civilians, packed in like animals.
“Go on, you swine, get in!”
I have great difficulty in hoisting myself up on the vehicle. I can imagine the pitiful clumsiness of my gestures. So where is the great sportsman, champion of the 110-metre hurdle, the pride of Raymond de Penyafort College? What’s become of that great dancer of the beguine, the pachanga and the high-life? Rifle-butts in the ribs accompany my fall. We are packed like a cargo of slaves for the Atlantic crossing. I recognise right against me the face of the Minister of Justice. He seems transported by thoughts of another world. They can’t have recognised him, or else . . . We are so packed we can’t breathe properly. What do they want with us? Where are they taking us? I have a terrible struggle in my anguish to control my nerves, which advise me to break out, to rebel, to make a last appeal to the mercy of the soldiers. To explain that I’m just a man of the people. A boy. A victim. At the mercy of Daddy’s caprices. But what is this new strength? Yes, sure enough, I’m afraid to die. But at least try to be brave. Just try to seem so. The slightest foolish move on your part could bring on the death of our whole truck load.
“Name of God, keep your hands up, you there, or I’ll run you through, bastard!”
Under the sway of my fatigue, I must, without realising it, have let my arms fall. I quickly raise them again. God, how heavy they are! Like when the schoolmaster used to make us hold them up crossed, while standing in the corner. Ah! Let them finish us off!
The soldiers who are playing with our fate have now formed up in two files, on either side of the trucks. I look attentively, as if through a zoom lense, at that young man there, just level with my eyes. He’s pointing a gun at my breast. Like all the others, he’s wearing a blood-red armband. Less than two yards separate us. We are nothing but strangers to each other. To kill me will demand nothing of him but a flick of the trigger finger. I have no more place in his heart than his training-targets. But why, then, does he hate me? I feel his pupil roll towards me with such an intensity of malice that you’d think he joined in this operation simply in order to settle a score with me. Face of a very young man. Almost a boy. By the two scars forming an equal-sign beside his eyes, I know his tribe. Djassikini. His gaze is of an intolerable fixity. His pupils are dilated. A little foam flecks the corners of his mouth. His gestures are like bushgrass tossing in a tornado. The safety-catch of the gun is off and the bullet is doubtless in place. A mere nothing would bring it on. I had thought it was the smell of powder and blood which made these soldiers haggard. No, they had all been drugged. No doubt about it. Wee. So nothing will hold them back. Hallucinated creatures, whose leaders have told them to give no quarter . . .
“Don’t look at me like that! Drop your eyes, or I’ll shoot!”
When I peer through my lids again, the young soldier is still marking me like a footballer. And always that horrible fixed gaze. Another soldier is beside him. They chuckle. He looks at me again, with that mixture of moral outrage and brutality.
“You there, get down!”
“How can I get out of this . . . ?”
“Eh, half-witted bastard, don’t play dumb!”
“Stop there! Get back in the truck. You’ll get the same as the others.”
One of the survivors tells me that, in the jeep escorting us, they had taken care to load some shovels. I noticed nothing like that, but these men were capable of anything.
Getting back into the truck is, at this stage, a thousand times harder than balancing on a tightrope over a ravine. I will never do it. They are going to beat me. The dream. Elengui. Better accept my fate with dignity. If . . . if possible. They hit me. I have no more reaction. At last, a hand stretches from the truck and pulls me up. It drags me in on my belly. I feel what’s left of my dinner-jacket splitting.
“Thanks. I owe you . . .”
“Shut up or I’ll fire! And put your hands up!”
Ayay’hé! Let them shoot once and for all, and be done with it. But the truck is shaking. I recognise the route. Curious eyes watch us pass and wonder at the meaning of this procession. I glimpse a waiter from the Relais. One of my old colleagues. With his arm, he makes me an interrogative sign, but I remain impassive. Any response, any sign on my part, would serve as pretext for the junkie guarding us.
Now we are taking a road which I recognise as the one to Prytanée. Here we are, a few minutes later, right in front of the Lamy Military Training School. It’s almost deserted.
“Everybody out! Get on with it!”
They push us towards the cells.
“Go on, take off ties, belts and shoes. The party’s over, you fuckers.”
The cells are too small and too few to hold all of us. A mouse runs across the room and disappears. With three other hostages, I am taken to an office and thrown inside without ceremony. A soldier wrenches out the telephone cord.
“And let no one think of farting about!”
The door slams behind us. The shutters are closed. I go up to the window and make out, between the louvres, a soldier armed to the teeth.
After a few moments, we dare to speak. What on earth is going on? Who’s organising the coup? Why are we the victims?
“Silence in there!”
The supervision is even stricter than we thought. So we must be quiet. And with silence, we feel the return of all the anguish that had begun to lessen. Outside, the sentries are talking in low voices. Too low for us to catch anything. We glue our ears to the door. No good. The guards turn on a transistor radio. My neighbour whispers.
“I can repair the telephone. I used to work for that department.”
Too risky. They can return at any moment, open the door and surprise us. I agree nonetheless to keep watch at the shutters. The man, having repaired the broken cord and pushed the bare ends into the contacts, seems satisfied with his work. He whispers something to another of us captives, who rises and drags a chair noisily across the floor. The repairman takes the chance to dial a number on the phone. Who is he talking to? His voice is very faint, but I can see by the movement of his lips that he isn’t talking French. All this happens very quickly. In the twinkle of an eye.
