The Laughing Cry, page 28
“Listen, if you sign without obliging us to bring out the Grand Slam, we’ll put it in your report and he’ll leave you your life, that Daddy . . . Eh? what do you say?”
“Life saved, have you thought of that? Even imprisonment is better than death. Sooner or later, the day will come for your amnesty and you’ll rejoin your people. While death . . . ” He raised his eyebrows and made a movement of his head and lips. “Go on, be reasonable, all your family need you. Especially your children. Because your wife, if you die, O.K., she’ll cry a bit, sure . . . Even though she won’t be obliged to, because there won’t be a wake for a shit like you. Good, let’s even admit that she wears mourning. Supposing she’s courageous enough, because to wear mourning for a traitor . . .” He wrung his fingers and whistled. “But soon enough, and even before taking off the mourning, she won’t be able to restrain herself, poor dear. The thing will be itching too much.”
He guffawed richly, then lowered his voice, as though explaining a lesson.
“. . . she’ll need a good thick meat injection to calm her down. Natural, no? If you were in her place, you’d do the same, no? The way you’re made, you bastard, you can’t go two days without getting your rocks off. That’s life! Come on, Captain, think it over. Give us a hand.”
Yabaka remained walled in his silence. Though seated, he looked down as if from a height at the man standing before him. He passed a whole night upright, arms raised and hands stuck against the wall, watched over by shifts of soldiers with their weapons ready. At the slightest movement, at the least hint of relaxation, blows rained upon him. Then it was the regime of suspension, the Mount Cameroon, relieved only by loss of consciousness.
Next day, he was presented with people he didn’t know, or only by sight, but every one of whom “swore” that the Captain had come to them to propose that they get ready for action. Passers-by who recited by heart with a grotesque pleasure a quickly learned lesson, accidentally changing a phrase here and there, or stumbling over a word strange to their everyday speech.
The security boys saw in this charade the most irrefutable and crushing evidence, which they piled up so as to outflank the blabbermouths of those Amnesty International cunts, who wouldn’t fail to come whimpering here soon.
Only one witness digressed from his tale: the diviner, according to whom the Captain had brought to him a white lamb to be buried alive and a photo of the Chief. (They showed it to him, all pierced with the point of a knitting needle.)
The following night, they forced a bottle up his anus, commenting with obscene sarcasms, then they filled his mouth with water embittered with a soapy liquid. Frequent swoons helped the Captain to preserve his silence. But, that night, they had great difficulty in bringing him back to his senses. They had to call in a male nurse, one of those Djabotama militants who were used to render such services to the police.
But man, even if a hero, has his limits. It was in coming out of one of his comas, while he was still reeling in the swamps of delirium, that they succeeded in tearing a signature out of him. When, little by little, he managed to understand what he had done, he tried to retract it. But Daddy had the confession in his hands.
Since leaving the country, I have stopped dreaming. Even less do I dream of blue hours and skies. My nights are invaded by a host surging up from the vaults of the earth. Harpies with streaming hair, devils in tights with incandescent cloaks, Djassikini masks, zombies, fetuses with ancient faces tickle me, spin me this way and that, beat me, torture me. When I wake up, one or more faces from this museum of horrors is still watching me, silent and still, forcing me to cry out and lift myself, amazed and sweat-soaked, into a sitting position, struggling to awaken properly. My companions for the night hear my shouts and, seized with fear, flee my room at the first glimmer of dawn. Doctors, pills and diviners alike have been unable to subdue these spirits and bring them to heel like dogs.
Now, this last night, Soukali came to me, long and slender, in a park on the borders of a lake which resembled the gardens of Daddy’s Geneva villa. By the appeal of her eyes and her smile, she drew me away from the fête to show me the mountaintops green with pines. Lifting her head towards my neck, she tried to kiss me. Her head was tied in a madras scarf like Marianne on the money. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt whose slogan I was unable to decipher. Her movements, like those of a young startled animal, disturbed the rhythm of my breathing and blew up the embers of desire. Soukali was promising me a confidence, a secret. I saw it in her eyes. A smile promised me yesterday. She squeezed my hand and pointed towards the blue heights. That smile again. I wanted to squeeze her breasts. Ah! too brusquely. I awoke, frustrated as a spectator at the cinema when the film breaks.
My beauty of the night will not return.
Yabaka was only a mango fallen in the first rains. Since then, other storms have struck even the soundest of our plants.
Drums are beating to summon the secret societies. Everyone will wear his mask and dip his arrow in poison. Our wives, with heavy eyelids, are already handing us our weapons. They have greased and loaded them for us. The young girls don’t even take that trouble. Who, then, has taught them how to manage these commands? They show us, for example, the pathways where the grass has begun to grow again.
I am no hero, but, come what may, I am a man, and circumcised.
A pressure of the hand, a smile, a beating heart, are more powerful than the call of a banner.
It is time to go.
She smiled, scattering like a water-spirit these nightly monsters.
The hour has come to leave forever these memories, to mingle with the grasses of the bush.
Soukali, I am coming to you.
Three days after the confession, Daddy felt that the inquiries were dragging on too long. They must be finished with. Examinations, examinations and more examinations — all these legal niceties were fine enough, but the facts were there, established and fixed. It was a case of being caught in the act, quite ordinary. As for the laws (the Uncles’ laws, colonial laws, some of them at least a century old), they were certainly venerable enough, but the policy of National Cultural Resurrection mustn’t become a dead letter. This was the time, now or never, to apply it. As if our ancestors didn’t know how to deal with affairs of this kind! One had simply to chuck away all this tissue of precaution, only invented to protect criminals. Let them just hand over to him all these coup-making bastards and he’d show that bunch of legalistic oafs (who didn’t know how to revenge their Chief with dignity) how to deal with the lot of ’em. From time immemorial, loyal subjects themselves had carried out the sentences against traitors of this stamp, and accounted for them only after the act. Society worked better in those days. One couldn’t joke with power. No child’s-play, with cries of “Truce! I’m not playing any more!”, nor a sex party either, where everyone stroked each other like women or pederasts. Ah! but all that . . . Anyway, what could be more inhuman than to let a man rot in prison when he was convinced of his crime and knew himself that the society had to finish him off? All these delays led to the day when one had to chop off his head in cold blood, and by then the criminal no longer knew what was happening to him, my friend. It was just a poor bastard one was polishing off. Enough of this legalistic nonsense. Daddy didn’t want anyone wasting his time over it. Enough dawdling. Go on, go on, and make a good job of it. A decent execution, while the criminal was still bathed in the heat of his own offence. Got it? Dismissed!
And, commented the Minister of Customary Affairs, a statement or opinion of the president, in a modern and well-organised state, is a decree.
At that time, there were still no African lawyers in the country. They were all Uncles. Yabaka and his companions chose some who excused themselves. Not that they were afraid of never getting their fees. They were not so miserly, or so odious. But they didn’t want to get mixed up in the internal politics of an independent country. And it seemed they had been reminded of this, just in case they forgot. To save appearances, Daddy nominated two Djabotama court clerks to act as lawyers.
The meeting of the Tribunal took place at night. Scarcely a few hours after the nomination of the lawyers. Everything was done behind closed doors, so effectively that very little leaked out. One knew only that those appointed to defend had complained that they had very little time to study the dossiers of their clients. The President of the Tribunal replied drily that this was a Court of Exception and that no interruptions would be tolerated. The tone of this rebuke and the atmosphere in the courtroom didn’t invite dialogue. In Moundié, the names of the judges were quoted, but it was difficult to accept these rumours without reserve, because it was known that the members of the court met with their faces hooded. One thing, however, seemed certain: many of the accused got cold feet and appealed to the mercy of the judges, protesting their love for Daddy and putting all the blame on Yabaka. He, pleading not guilty, exposed all these inconsistencies as if in a seminar.
They introduced some witnesses, fabricated for the occasion. The same ones as in the torture chamber, like a certain Lieutenant Talaba, whose evidence was the only one published, for obvious reasons, in the local press. He went right back to the fusillade at the garden party and claimed that at the time the Captain seemed to him to be the organiser of the massacre and that, feeling the wind turn in his favour, he had decided to play the saviour and get all his accomplices executed.
Yabaka and a dozen of his companions were shot at dawn, immediately after the trial. The lawyers had gone to get some sleep and had, theoretically, an appointment with Bwakamabé at eight in the morning, still hoping for an opportunity to present their pleas for mercy. When they presented themselves at the Palace gates, the protocol office informed them that the President of the Republic was sleeping and mustn’t be disturbed. They were given an appointment for that afternoon.
But since five o’clock that morning, the bodies of Yabaka and his comrades had been lying in a common grave. This detail is often accompanied by a wry smile on the part of those recounting it.
Many stories are told of the last hours of the Captain. I will confine myself here to two versions, those most frequently circulated by radio grapevine.
According to the first, Bwakamabé attended the execution in person, and insisted upon being accompanied by all the members of the Council of National Resurrection and all the ministers. They began by killing a first batch, while the Captain and five of his comrades, without blindfolds, were obliged to watch the spectacle of what awaited them. Then it was their turn. Bwakamabé, with a machine-pistol, joined the ranks of the firing squad, all of them Djabotama.
The Captain was tied to a post in the form of a cross, with arms outstretched, his eyes exposed. The orders were to kill with single shots.
At the first command, they must shoot to one side, very close but without hitting him.
A pause.
At the second command, aim at the bottom of his legs.
A pause.
At the third command, aim for his thighs.
Another pause.
At the fourth command, shoot at his arms.
Pause.
At the fifth command, fire at will. Aim at his vital parts, to box him up well. The head, the chest, the belly. The soldiers, stuffed to the gills with wee, emptied their magazines with great delight.
“Cease fire, han! Ground arms, han!”
Having confirmed that his orders had been properly executed, General Bwakamabé, at the Captain’s side, drew his Colt and gave him the coup de grâce with a theatrical flourish. He pulled a mirror from his pocket. The spots were still sprouting all over his face. Many members of the Council of National Resurrection and of the government couldn’t endure the violence of the spectacle and swooned away. They were victims of the next reshuffle, which took place that very evening. This last point is easy to verify.
So much for the first version.
According to the second, Yabaka’s fellow victims were shot to death at the first salvo. As for the Captain, he raised himself three times. Not a drop of blood on his body. The bullets only buffeted him, at worst throwing him to the ground. Three times, he got to his feet, saying:
“Didn’t I warn you, you Libotama? Ah, you are filthy. Filthy. Too filthy to have the strength to kill me. Never, you hear me, never will you be able to guide the people of this land. As for me, I am innocent. I can’t even feel hatred for you. You are too foul.”
The mist of the dry season was only just rising.
Drops of sweat ran through Daddy’s hair, over his brow and his cheeks. The men of the firing-squad trembled like the string of a bow just released. Bwakamabé hurled a torrent of incomprehensible oaths at them.
The Captain had, after each of the first two salvoes, risen silently to his feet. After the third he began to laugh. A weird and icy laugh, as if the curse of the gods had suddenly electrified his reason.
“Ehéééé!”
A long, mocking ehéééé, difficult to describe. A long, mocking ehéééé, with his head on one side and his hand at his mouth.
“Ehéééé! You are really feeble . . . Go on, now. I give you permission . . . you can shoot . . . I authorise you to kill me . . . go on. But I shall haunt you over and over in your dreams.”
He opened his arms wide and gazed towards the heavens.
“When you are sleeping, I will come to watch at the head of your bed . . .”
It happened in a little valley, where the children of the neighbouring village amused themselves, when the air was still, by listening to the echo of their cries, thrown into space like stones ricocheting upon water.
But this dawn, the echo didn’t send back the last salvo of the squad, as if the spirits of the nearby forests had swallowed it up.
The echo contented itself with repeating:
“I shall come to you again and again in your dreams.”
Two, three, many times. More and more faintly, but in a piercing tone.
Daddy took a mirror from his pocket and examined his face.
Several new spots had puckered.
These are the two versions of the death of Captain Yabaka and his companions.
Strangers who come to Moundié and want to hear them from actual witnesses, or from the mouths of the griots, don’t insist too much. This play is performed only to closed houses.
No lawyer. No forensic witness. Bands of madwomen had ravished the senses of the soldiers in the platoon of death. Quite recently, these men could be seen running through the streets of the Plateau, their pricks in the wind, giggling and forever repeating, “. . . come to you again and again . . . your dreams of swine . . .”
Daddy had them all shut up in an asylum. No, you won’t hear these two versions. Perhaps you will recognise the tune, but the words will remain a mystery to you. Unless an interpreter kindly consents to translate the last phrase.
A man can root out a mango tree, or even a plantation of mangoes, but never the species.
It is a story told only in scrupulously closed venues, or on certain evenings of a wake where those gathered in mourning are quite homogeneous. It’s like those songs of which no one knows the composer, but which everyone learns without a false note, from generation to generation, from century to century. Soundiata Keïta, Almamy Touré, Chaka, Bouéta Bongo, Mabiala Maganga, Roland at Roncevalles, the Emir Abd-el-Kader . . . and others, many others.
Daddy goes several times a year to have his spots treated by a Swiss specialist of worldwide reputation. There, they virtually disappear. Two days after his return home, they come out again.
It’s a question of blood.
WHEN SOUKALI CLIMBS THROUGH THE WINDOW OF THE NOVEL OR (IF YOU WILL) REALITY
Bandit,
Learn not to forget your briefcase at the homes of the women whom you permit yourself to pester with your favours in the absence of their husbands. My darling, I have read every word from beginning to end, some passages several times.
Conspirator!
With your absent-minded air, at once irritating and enticing, I should have suspected that you were stewing up a fine dish for us.
But will you dare to publish, as it stands, this intimate vision of all the comedy we perform every day, without being aware of it? You, you are there with us at the party, not as a dancer, but as a spy.
Despite a few transpositions, your friends will have no difficulty in recognising every one of the actors under their masks. Daddy is obviously the celebrated prefect of a certain province, which was inhabited for three years by a young heart specialist, then fresh from university in Europe, to whom I now entrust the care of my health. I easily recognise him, even if he defends himself by taking the precaution (while remaining grossly obvious) of shuffling the cards, borrowing a trait here and there from one of his relatives, not maître d’hôtel at the Relais Aériens, but bouncer at a fashionable nightclub.
The traitor hands me over to the public exactly as I innocently offer myself to his expert hands in the examining room, from which, however (hasn’t he promised as much in the Hippocratic Oath?), no secret should filter out.
I will tear your face!
Just imagine Adolphe discovering that he is “Monsieur the Inspector”!
I just hope my students don’t recognize Soukali.
The presentation you make of her moves me deeply and utterly confuses me. I fear falling into the sin of Narcissism in confessing how attractive I find her. I would have preferred however, that she stayed as at the beginning of the story, that young coquette, fluttering and full of life, with whom even a woman would fall in love. The metamorphosis in the last pages is not to my taste. Isn’t there here some echo of the Latin American scene (Régis Debray throwback), which has nothing to do with the Africa of today?
And besides . . .
If the names of people and places sound strange to our ears, even though you leave here and there in the text the words of an imaginary dialect of your own invention, the most myopic of moles would recognise “the country”.
