The Laughing Cry, page 18
“Nobody wants to understand me! We are in the age of Concorde and of personal diplomacy. Anyone would think I travel the world for the sake of tourism. Whereas, all this travelling exhausts me, it breaks my back . . . I’m no longer the right age for it . . . If it wasn’t for the prestige of the country . . .”
And his gaze seemed to lose itself in rich, secret, Eden-like horizons of which he was deprived by public affairs and the spirit of sacrifice.
“Not to mention that I risk my life every time.”
“Your precious life.”
“Thank you, my boy, thank you, thank you, thank you. May God bless you.”
And he brandished his lion’s tail above his obliging colleague’s head.
“Whenever one embarks in those machines . . .”
And he plunged into long and knowing digressions.
The people of Moundié had their own vision of this politics of travel. When Daddy was in the capital, they loved to make fun of it.
“Eh! my brother, have you heard the latest? Daddy is on an official visit to our country!”
I went with him on a tour through the Libotama Province. A week beforehand, the specialists in Monsieur Gourdain’s service, reinforced by a diviner, had left to reconnoitre. They sounded opinions, inspected the rooms in the houses where the Chief was to stay, distributed handfuls of notes stamped with his effigy, made lists of the most appetizing virgins and drove off all evil spirits, in a thousand senses of the term. Suddenly, more agents of the Fifth Column were unmasked than one would have dreamed existed. The greatest haul was made among rivals, creditors and certain leaders high up in the hierarchy of the Party of National Resurrection. Once the initial moment of astonishment was past, everyone set his memory to work; shaking it a bit; even giving it a few knocks to make up for false contacts, when it wasn’t quick enough off the mark; pointedly remembering such a gesture, such a remark, such a look, bizarre enough certainly, but to which one hadn’t paid much attention at the time. Certain consciences, somewhat hesitant in the midst of this general movement, were, after a brief agitation, pacified quickly enough by one means or another. When all was accomplished, reports were sped to the capital announcing that the mission was completed, the way prepared, and that the Grand Priest could now advance into the jungle. These were the exact words employed in the coded messages. I’ve been told as much by the young compatriot Cabinet Secretary.
At Libotama, the Prefect, clad in the white uniform of a colonial administrator, was awaiting us on a landing strip camouflaged by a green carpet of grass, calf-high. He was flanked by his Sub-Prefect and by a Deputy for the region, a crow in his black jacket set off by a red-spotted necktie. The ceremony was much like that for a visiting president in the capital: bouquets of flowers, handclaps, reviewing the guard of honour . . .
“Gre-a-t G-o-d!” thundered Daddy. “What’s the meaning of this?”
Smiles froze on lips. The entourage and the regional officials began asking themselves if this was a joke, or the beginnings of Chiefly fury.
“What does it mean?”
His eyes were balls charged with lightning. Always the Guinarou.
“Gourdain!”
The man addressed stuck out his chest and tossed up his chin, showing off his Adam’s apple to advantage.
“Gourdain, seize this man!”
He pointed his lion’s tail at the Prefect’s chest.
“Gre-a-t G-o-d! Are there no more prisoners in Libotama?”
He didn’t catch the word that oozed from the Medusa-struck visage of the Prefect.
“Can’t reply, eh? Blockhead, get out! No more prisoners?”
“Y-yes, Mr President.”
“All right, call them all out at once. You hear? And a machete apiece. This evening . . .” He looked them right in the eye and shook his head at the sky. “. . . I don’t want a single blade of grass on this airfield. Good God! As for that one . . .”
He pointed his tail straight at the Prefect.
“Let him join the others. I want them to bring all the cut grass to him and make him eat it, you hear? Let them stuff him but good!”
“At your command, Mr President!”
“And keep me informed.”
Daddy turned towards the crowd of Libotamas and blessed them with the lion’s tail.
“Wollé, wollé?”
“Woï, woï!”
“Wollé, wollé?”
“Woï, woï!”
“You there!”
The Sub-Prefect, squinting blackly, watched the lion’s tail advance dangerously, like a spear, towards his nose.
“Take command!”
The President and his close companions-in-arms mounted into the few Land Rovers possessed by the Prefecture. The entourage jumped sportively into a truck and followed the cortege in a hooting onslaught. At the entrance to the Prefecture, the whole convoy halted. The President descended from his vehicle. The traditional chiefs came to kneel before him. One by one, they offered the handfuls of earth they were carrying, then passed under his right foot, which he lifted slightly at each passage. He acknowledged their homage by blessing them with his lion’s tail, thus indicating his acceptance of them under his protection and the offer of his aid and counsel. The drums sounded and the dancers wheeled around the Chief of chiefs, whom the crowd watched as he climbed into a sort of sedan chair, draped in the colours of the national flag. And the whole procession, blazing with songs and dances, advanced towards the main square — the Hannibal-Ideloy Bwakamabé Na Sakkadé Square. A ballet, coloured with the thousand choreographic riches of the land, intoxicated the senses. Officials and schoolchildren lining the route waved placards and banners, accompanying this warm tumult with movements of their feet or their torsoes. Daddy read all the inscriptions, rich in their philosophy and singular in their originality: “Long Live the Supreme Strategist”; and a thousand others of the same ilk, not forgetting a vigorous denunciation of the Fifth Column, insults against Haraka and against the gentlemen ending in -ist.
From the height of his chair, with a debonair smile on his lips, Daddy blessed all these woolly heads with his lion’s tail. Joyous gunfire crackled in the air. The cortege halted again before the Prefect’s residence. Before allowing the President to enter, a man dressed as a traditional warrior knelt before him and offered him a kola nut. By the way in which Daddy broke it, the crowd recognised a son of Libotama.
“Wollé, wollé?”
“Woï, woï!”
“Wollé, wollé?”
“Woï, woï!”
Excited by the cries of the crowd, the warrior began to dance jerkily around the Chief, shaking his head ceaselessly as he moved. Daddy looked on for a moment with interest and visible sympathy. Then, suddenly, carried away by the power of the rhythm, he joined in the final steps of the warrior’s dance. Despite his Quai d’Orsay suit, he rediscovered the cadence of communal festivities in the days of his youth. The crowd, entranced, swallowed up the Chief with its applause and raised a long clamour.
With the movements of one possessed, but still under the penetrating orders of the drum, the warrior cut the throats of a white and then a black cock, spurting the blood onto the steps of the Residence. Daddy mounted them, taking care that his feet should tread through the scarlet stains.
The Prefect’s family had evacuated the huge house, inherited from the Commandants of the colonial era, leaving it to the sole disposition of their great guest. The only people admitted to the reception room were the close companions-in-arms and the Acting Prefect. A young college girl recruited for the occasion, curtseyed before Daddy.
“Ek . . . (she cleared her throat) . . . Excellency, what shall I bring you?”
“Chivas!”
The girl, more and more ill at ease, stooped towards the President.
“’Scuse . . . ’scuse me, I didn’t quite understand, Mr President.”
Paternally, the Chief took her by the shoulders and scrutinised her like a connoisseur while the entourage struggled with its embarrassment, but managed to display relaxed smiles.
“Excuse us, Excellency,” intervened the Sub-Prefect, now acting for his senior, “the other fellow didn’t think of that. If it had been myself . . .”
“We have brought it along ourselves,” the Chief of Protocol intervened. “Just a question of getting it from the plane, if you will permit . . .”
“Yes. Good. Just plain whiskey, then. That Johnny Walker . . . with ice.”
Feeling the look of her beloved President fastened on her, the young girl moved off clumsily, her forehead pearled with sweat. Not daring to move her eyes, she nevertheless felt the Chief’s powerful glance pierce her neck and insinuate itself around her shoulder. The Sub-Prefect approached her.
“Well, is there some ice?”
His voice was irritated.
“Some . . . some pieces, yes.”
Relieved, he returned to his place near the great guest, who was at that moment launching into a long, scientific explanation: he really loved whiskey, Daddy. Like all military men, strong drink made him feel good. No better medicine. He held out his now empty glass for a refill. All serious doctors would confirm this.
“And then, if alcohol kills slowly . . .” He smiled and completed the quip.
The whole group burst out laughing, with the sound of a sackful of palm-fruit tumbling down a staircase. Except Monsieur Gourdain. Daddy continued his lecture: this Chivas contained a certain product, what was it called, now? Ah! He looked towards his doctor, who raised his eyebrows in silent embarrassment. In any case, resumed Daddy, the name of the product had been given him by Professor Bouvier of the Medical Faculty at Montpelier, and it was a product in Chivas which permitted concentration of the vital faculties and cleaned out the kidneys. Yes, yes, there were even theses on this subject. The young girl brought the pale, tobacco-coloured liquid.
“That’s a shot for a footslogger!”
The Acting Prefect launched, no, fired, or rather discharged a lightning bolt at the unhappy girl. More and more awkwardly, she came back to double the dose.
“It’s like palm-wine,” observed a member of the delegation, turning the discussion back to Chivas. “Doctor Malvoisier, who spent nearly ten years in Libotama, has proved that it contains certain vitamins.”
“Oh, yes?”
“I assure you. Even, that it never makes you drunk. It sometimes turns the head, but it isn’t truly . . . (he made a face) drunkeness, not that.”
“Really? Really? I never knew.”
“I’m telling you. It’s good for the health.”
“We must do some research into it.”
Daddy pointed towards the young compatriot Cabinet Secretary.
“It’s for you, the intellectuals, to discover all these things for us.”
“Ah!” (A toss of the head backwards) “But our intellectuals here only want to play politics.”
“True enough.”
“All full of ambition.”
“You said it. As if those Pasteurs and those Einsteins of theirs wanted to spend their time politicking!”
Daddy shook his lion’s tall several times with a concentrated air.
“Good. Very good reply. Very good, my boy.”
“However, those are wise men. Real wise men. There you are, then! They let their elders do the governing.”
“As for themselves, they stay in their laboratories. You won’t ever find one of them trying to give lessons in politics.”
“Everyone to his own work, eh?”
“But here, our intellectuals only know how to stir up opposition, or else stay back in France.”
“And among all those -ist fellows, to top it all.”
“Oh yes, fooling with -ist in Paris. In the Pigalle district. But they’re afraid to go to the -ist countries, those clowns.”
“Ah, let them be. But you’re right.”
And glasses met mouths, and second shots were poured and voices raised, and one laughed and was proud of oneself.
Like a man freshly clad in mourning, I no longer hunger for the atmosphere of dance halls, where not long ago I would discover life’s sweetest pleasures. It was only to satisfy Boubeu that I let him take me last night to the Hibiscus, a fashionable discotheque beside the sea.
The bandy-legged company, three girls and five men, presaged an extremely boring evening. I only danced once. The politeness of a cavalier towards the plainest one, who never stopped beating the rhythm with her head or her feet, while her husband, an industrial tax official, developed some learned theory or other to Boubeu.
From the terrace where we were sitting, I looked down critically at the grotesque movements of the dancers, enclosed in that aquarium, shot through with beams of light flashing in time to the syrupy tones of the music. The ideas of our mediocre philosopher afflicted me and pushed me deeper into silence.
After each piece, the dancers came in small clusters, happy or romantic, to take their seats or enjoy the breeze on the terrace. Without restraint, my gaze followed a white woman in clinging white slacks. Her clothes highlighted the curves of her figure which, despite hips a little too emphatic, I found seductive. Her breast rose and fell slowly, like that of a sportswoman after exercise. One would have thought she wanted to fill her nostrils and her whole body with each draught of the sea air, with each patch of sky, with each element of the night.
In the half-light, the face looked familiar to me, without my being able to put a name to it. Some picture in a magazine? The curves of some celebrity whose identity escaped me? Or else the realization of some strange dream? I no longer heard the analyses of the executive, nor the small-talk of the table.
The DJ had put on a “slow” that was all the rage. Fernando, I think it was. A melody that twisted itself around your body. She began moving her shoulders, like a chilly bird fluffing out its wings. Turning quickly, as if coming to a decision after a pause for concentration, she came towards our group. She was making for us, for me, I knew it, I felt it. No, she ignored me. I saw her stoop and without warning, kiss the startled Boubeu on the neck. Her flattered friend laughed, recognised her in a sweep of his arms to the sides and, with great warmth, put his arm round her waist and abandoned the official in order to plunge onto the dance floor with her.
I quickly swallowed my whiskey, lit a cigarette and made my way, coughing, to the bar to settle our bill discreetly. Boubeu and the unknown woman whose face was gnawing at my memory were dancing on the spot, in the middle of the floor, eyes closed, in a posture of intimate affection which stirred in me an absurd resentment. I ordered a second round for the company and settled the whole bill at once.
At the end of the dance, Boubeu presented her to us, with the gestures of a milord. I didn’t get her name clearly. When we shook hands, I thought I felt a hesitant squeeze, but she scarcely looked at me, while smiling already towards my neighbour. She rejoined her friends, who must have been inside awaiting her.
I made an exhibition of myself to a rock number from the ’fifties with one of the girls from our table, glancing from the corner of my eye to see whether the woman in the white slacks was paying me any attention.
When we were leaving the Hibiscus, I saw her dancing with a tall man whose hair curled over his neck. With her cheek against his chest, she was clasping that neck with her arms.
Boubeu and the rest wanted to end the evening at La Maquina Loca.
“There are fewer toubabs in that place and the music’s better.”
I knew I would sleep badly, but I nevertheless insisted on taking leave of them. They uttered the protesting cries of a group in party mood, reinforcing their polite wish for my company, but I resolutely entered a taxi cruising in front of the club.
“I must talk to you.”
Boubeu gave me an affectionate tap on the shoulder.
Everything was ready for the meeting in Hannibal-Ideloy Bwakamabé Na Sakkadé Square. First came the obligatory wollé, wollé, woï, woï, like welcoming bouquets of flowers. Then the provincial Chief of Protocol announced that the Acting Prefect would open the proceedings by giving “a great toast to the happy arrival”. And told him to do so. An unconscious copy of the welcomes given by Daddy when receiving one of his peers on an official visit. Everyone clapped and the Scouts sang, conducted by a chorus master who bent forwards and designed arabesques with his fingertips:
Go,
Scout of France
With your staff in your hand . . .
When Daddy rose, the drums rolled and the wollé, wollé, woï, woï were even more prolonged and slower to die than before. He blessed the crowd with his lion’s tail. And he talked. He said thanks, thanks, thanks, really great thanks. And he gave the opening formula for a tale and the crowd happily capped it with the reply. And he repeated it and the crowd responded. And he repeated it once more, on a more piercing note than the first two times, and the crowd replied more strongly. But that didn’t satisfy him. And he asked if he should talk. And the crowd said yes. And he asked if he should reveal all and the excited crowd replied that he must. And he asked if he should get to the very bottom of things and the rapturous crowd cried that he must get to the very bottom. It was then that he claimed the joy of a father in rediscovering his children and the crowd interrupted him, singing and clapping:
