Memoirs of a Porcupine (7 page)

How Mama Kibandi joined Papa Kibandi in the other world

it was strange to see my young master grinding roots with his incisors, sharper than those of an ordinary human, I even wondered if he was going to spend his entire adolescence eating nothing but bulbs, but in the end he accepted the death of his father, living here in Séképembé broadened their horizons, the distance between them and the north helped them put the past behind them, and with it the memory of how the people of Mossaka, aided by the sorcerer, Tembé-Essouka, had wiped out Papa Kibandi, it was clear that Mama Kibandi and my master now hoped to start a new life, it seems only yesterday they moved here, the locals welcomed them as they would any outsider, inviting them in, they moved into a hut made of gaboon planks, with a straw roof, which admittedly was on the edge of the village, but only because there was no land left in the heart of Séképembé, the next question was work, my master became apprentice carpenter to an old man to whom Mama Kibandi paid a modest sum, the old carpenter became almost like a father to Kibandi, who called him ‘Papa', he never dared use his real name, Mationgo, this man reminded him of his real father, probably because of his stooping posture, his chameleon-like gait, ‘Papa' Mationgo recognised my master as an intelligent, inquisitive young man, Kibandi quickly mastered the subtler points of carpentry, there was no need for the old man to
repeat things endlessly, though he did begin to have his doubts about the young apprentice, who, although he followed his instructions to the letter, never failed to amaze him, by updating ‘Papa' Mationgo's outmoded work methods, climbing up on to roofs with unusual ease, the old man was dumbfounded when one day, feeling ill, he put my master in charge of making the wooden roof structure for a farm, young Kibandi managed to make the ties, the laterals, the ridgepoles, the cross ridges, the boarding, the beams for the ridge, croup and semi-croup, which was not within the grasp of your average apprentice, and my master even showed the old man how to put up a metal roof frame, before that ‘Papa' Mationgo had only ever dealt with wooden frames, in fact everything was just going perfectly between the two humans, I was the one, really, who aroused ‘Papa' Mationgo's suspicions, and I know the old man died quite convinced that there was something odd about his apprentice, one day I went for a little wander round the back of the workshop, my master was busy sawing a plank, I heard ‘Papa' Mationgo's hesitant tread, he undid his trousers, began pissing against the workshop wall, and when he turned round his eyes met mine, he picked up a large stone lying at his feet, and almost brought me down, the stone landed only a few centimetres away, but the days of his youth were gone, he had lost his aim, I took off in the direction of the river and a few moments later he told my master he believed the porcupines of Séképembé had lost their fear of mankind, that there were too many of them, that the hunters needed to deal with them, that one of these days he might well kill one himself, and eat it with a few green bananas, he swore he would make a trap, Kibandi stopped sawing his wood at that, and answered calmly, ‘Papa Mationgo, the porcupine you saw wasn't from Séképembé, believe
me', and the old man faltered and gave him a long look, then said in a resigned voice, ‘I see, I see, Kibandi, my son, I see, I suspected as much, I must say, but I won't say a word, in any case, I'm just an old wreck myself, a bit of old scrap, I don't want any trouble with people before I leave this world, because I'm going to die any day now'

a few years later, before taking his final leave of this life, ‘Papa' Mationgo handed over his work tools to my master, Kibandi felt as though his own father had just died all over again, at that time he was seventeen years old, and in spite of his youth, he had learned everything there was to know about roofing, he had more work than any other artisan in the neighbourhood, most of the new huts in Séképembé had roof frames made by him, and when necessary, he would go to the cemetery and stand in silence before the tomb of ‘Papa' Mationgo, I would see him sobbing as though at the graveside of his own parent, I was only a few hundred metres away from the cemetery, I knew too, that the noise behind me was coming from my master's other self, I didn't turn round for fearing of meeting the eye of the creature with no mouth, the other self was getting more and more agitated, he slept in the workshop, wandered dewy-eyed along the river bank, climbed trees, I sometimes wondered how he managed to eat, since he had no mouth, and, since I had never seen him snacking, I had to conclude that either it was my master who ate for him, or that the other self must eat by means of a different orifice, I'll leave you to guess which, my dear Baobab

for twelve years, poor Mama Kibandi had woven mats which she sold to the locals, she did quite good business, and whenever it was market day in one of the neighbouring villages, Louboulou, Kimandou, Kinkosso or Batalébé, mother and son would go with their wares, Kibandi would spend his holidays in these remote little places, with Mama Kibandi's friends, who were traders like her, leaving me alone with his other self, I didn't much like it when he went away, I felt it upset the harmony between us, I didn't come out of my hiding place, I ate only the supplies my master's other self brought me, thus nights passed, and days passed, my thoughts turned to Kibandi, not that there was any cause for worry, I knew exactly what he was doing during these absences, which lasted only a few weeks, the other self kept nothing from me, I knew, for example, that my master had had his first sexual experience in Kinkosso, with the famous Biscouri, a woman twice his age, a most curvaceous widow, with a cumbersome behind and a rather excessive appetite for virgin boys, the moment she set eyes on one, she'd bound up to him, and pester him, she was well known for it in Kinkosso, she'd hang around after him, talk sweetly to him, prepare food for him, some parents even encouraged her, but widow Biscouri didn't
like actually to be offered a virgin boy, she liked to be able to choose her stallion herself, even if he was skinny as a rake, like my master, she had her own technique for snaring innocents, first of all she'd set up a conversation, along the lines of ‘I know your mother, boy, she's a fine woman', and then she'd wrap her arms around him and suddenly thrust her hand between his legs, grabbing his intimate parts and then cry ‘my god, you've got something there, boy, you're set up for life with that thing' and she'd laugh, and hastily explain ‘it's ok, I was only joking, my boy, come on, follow me, I'll make you our finest local dish, the
ngul'mu mako
', but people still felt that Biscouri was the least catastrophic solution to the problem of introducing a boy to sex, now my master did not enjoy this experience, he always felt that Biscouri's excessive ardour had paralysed him, so that he had remained completely passive, as though he were being raped, from then on he began seeing local prostitutes, having got the idea that a woman would only perform the sexual act gently if she was being paid for it, and when he went on holiday to surrounding villages, he would break into his savings and go to the roughest areas, find a different partner every evening, get drunk with a working girl, then return to Séképembé with empty pockets, now Mama Kibandi was no fool, she had a good idea that my master had started seeing women, and she was confident that one day her son would present her with a future daughter-in-law, or people would come knocking at their door with a pregnant daughter

 

 

I remember, too, the day Mama Kibandi came across my master sitting in front of the hut reading the Bible, someone had given it
to him in Kinkosso, a religious person who wanted to persuade him to take up the way of the Lord because he'd seen him in the prostitutes' area, a sign that my master was a lost sheep, a sinner who must be guided away from the path to hell, before this servant of the Lord had had time to discover that he was in fact illiterate, Kibandi had taken the book and vanished, and the man in the cassock never realised what a favour he had done my master, for the first few weeks he didn't open the book, he left it lying by his bed until it was covered with a layer of dust, and one evening, unable to sleep, he finally picked it up, opened it up in the middle, brought it up close to his eyes, drew a long breath, smelled the pleasant smell of the page, and when he opened his eyes the light of the storm lantern fell across the words, and stripped them of their mystery, forming a kind of halo around each letter, and each phrase began to move, flowing like a river, he never knew when exactly his lips began to move, to read, he didn't even know he was turning the pages fast, that his eyes were flicking from left to right without his feeling any giddiness, the words were suddenly alive, representing reality, and he imagined God, and that mysterious vagabond, Jesus, he would never stop reading, and for the next few days he did not sleep, he'd fall on the book the minute he got in from the workshop he'd built behind their hut, Mama Kibandi couldn't hide her astonishment, she was amused by her son's behaviour, she wondered why the young man was so concerned to conceal his ignorance, after all, just because you had a book in your hands didn't mean you were educated, and she treated it as a joke, considering my master had never set foot inside a school, so he couldn't read, and another day, infuriated by my master's new activity, she glanced at the book he was going through, as
though she too could devour it, her son seemed very focussed, he murmured phrases, traced the lines on the page with the index finger of his right hand, it must have been that day, surely, that she realised Kibandi had to have a double and that his father must have made him drink the
mayamvumbi
in Mossaka

from then on my master just had to be reading, he brought all sorts of books back to the house, books he'd bought in neighbouring villages, he placed them in a corner of his workshop, there were some in the bedroom too, most of the books had lost their covers, he spent hours in the library of the church of St Jospeh in the village of Kimondou, and when he wasn't in the workshop or working on site in a neighbouring village, he would spend the entire day reading, it was around this time that I too began to pick out letters among the thoughts passing through my mind, whole words even, it was fun identifying the letters, knowing that somewhere among them there must be a word, before long I could recite what my master read, several times I caught myself muttering aloud to myself, and then I reached the conclusion that for once men really did have a head start on us animals, because they could set down their thoughts, their imaginings on paper, and it was around the same time that curiosity drove me from my hiding place, I went into my master's workshop while he was out with his mother at the market in Séképembé, fell upon the pile of books, I wanted to be sure that I could really recognise the words floating round in my mind like little silver-winged dragonflies, my master had put the Bible by his work tools, as
though to consecrate them, I took it and opened it at random, I read several chapters, I discovered some extraordinary stories, like the ones I told you about at the beginning of my confession, I also found some other books, I didn't need to read them all, my master would do that for me, I scuttled off before nightfall, in case Kibandi and his mother found me there, I don't know what would have happened then

I need to find the right words, to explain to you about Mama Kibandi's weak heart, she had always tried to conceal her illness from her son, my master only discovered it when they were living at Séképembé, it got much worse after our twelfth year here, she was at death's door with every crisis, she'd lie still as a corpse for hours, then suddenly, just when you thought she must surely have given up the ghost, she'd breathe in, hold it, then breathe out sharply, murmur something like ‘I won't let this cursed illness get me, oh no, I'm a healthy woman, my ancestors are protecting me, every night, every day, I call their names, dear Kong-Dia-Mama, Moukila-Massengo, Kengé-Moukila, Mam'Soko, Nzambi Ya Mpungu, Tata Nzambi, they'll give me a new heart, a heart that beats faster than this old wreck smouldering away beneath my ribs', but what could the ancestors do for a heart that slithered and rumbled and faltered, what could they do for a vital muscle that had contracted, and only supplied blood to half the body, there was nothing to be done, dear Baobab, perhaps they could have seen off a fever, a bladder burn, bilharzia, a flesh wound, a headache, but the heart was something else, Mama Kibandi knew it, the slightest effort tired her out, she hadn't gone out selling her mats for a year now, my master gave up working too,
and when I went into the workshop I noticed spiders' webs, dusty books, work tools stowed away in a corner, Kibandi hadn't been up on the roof of a house for months, Mama Kibandi kept telling him to get back to work, my master hardly listened, he stopped visiting the prostitutes in Kinkosso, he watched over his mother, gave her mixtures to drink that turned her lips bright red, he stopped leaving the house, till the day Mama Kibandi went to join Papa Kibandi in the other world, now several weeks before this, as though she had known exactly the hour and date of her departure, and probably because she was taken aback by her son's strange behaviour, suddenly becoming an avid reader, a man of letters, you might say, she again told my master he must not disobey her, must not go down the same path as the late Papa Kibandi, or he might end up the same way, and the young man promised, swore three times on the name of his ancestors, it was a great big lie, it would probably have been better to tell her the truth, because the instant he swore on the blood of his ancestors, a fart of incredible fruitiness issued from his butt, and the two of them, he and the dying woman, had to pinch their nostrils, the smell of rotting corpse got so bad in the room they had to leave the door and windows open for thirty days and thirty nights, it only cleared the day the old lady died, a grey Monday, a Monday when even the flies couldn't get off the ground, Séképembé seemed empty, the sky so low a human could almost have plucked a cluster of clouds without even raising his arm, and then, just on the stroke of eleven in the morning, a flock of skeletal sheep appeared from nowhere, trooped around my master's workshop, stopped in front of the hut, covered the courtyard in diarrhoeal excrement, then made off in single file towards the river, while the oldest of them let out a cry like that
of an animal being slaughtered in the abattoir, Kibandi rushed into his mother's bedroom, found her lifeless, her face a rictus, her right hand laid upon her left breast, she had probably been counting her final heart beats, before her eyes closed forever, my master went running all round Séképembé like a madman, telling everyone, Mama Kibandi was buried in a place set aside for strangers, a few people came to the funeral, but not enough, because the villagers still considered her and her son ‘outsiders, come from the belly of the mountain', even if they'd been living there for aeons, and, my dear Baobab, the way I see it, confidence between humans comes from a shared knowledge of the past, it's not like in our world, a long established group of animals might view the arrival of an unknown beast with suspicion, animals are organised too, I know that from experience, they have their territory, their governor, their rivers, their trees, their paths, it's not only elephants have graveyards, all animals are attached to their own world, but with the monkey cousins it's strange, there's an emptiness, a shadow, an ambiguity about the past which breeds suspicion, even, sometimes, rejection, and that's why not many locals came to Mama Kibandi's burial, after her body had lain for three days and three nights, under a shelter of palm leaves made by my master in his workshop