Memoirs of a Porcupine (8 page)

 

 

dear Baobab, I should like you to think of Mama Kibandi as a brave woman, at least, a woman who loved her child, a humble woman who lived in this village, and loved it, who spent her days weaving mats, a woman who maybe won't find rest in the world hereafter, because my master failed to keep his word, from that point on Kibandi lived here alone, he decided to take
up carpentry again, I'd hang around outside his workshop, I'd hear him banging away furiously with his tools, sawing away at the wood, I'd see him set off for the next village, work there, come back in the evening, lie down on his bed, open a book and in that silent hut, where Mama Kibandi's shade could still be felt, especially when a cat meowed late in the night or a fruit splashed into the river, my master's other self visited me more and more often, always with his back to me, all I saw was a sad, lost looking shape, I knew now that we were close, very close to the start of our activities, we could begin, now Mama Kibandi's death had relieved my master of the last of his scruples

how last Friday became black Friday

let me tell you about the day Kibandi came back from his mother's grave, the day when towards the stroke of ten in the evening, I decided to go and sniff around his hut, all afternoon my master's other self had been hanging about, I heard his footsteps, running everywhere, rustling in the undergrowth, plunging into the river, vanishing one moment, popping up again half an hour later, I knew the other self had a message for me, the time for our first mission had come, I grew restless in my lair, I couldn't keep still, Kibandi wanted to see me, smell me, so, at dead of night I went to the workshop, it was so dark I could scarcely see beyond the end of my snout, there was no light in the hut, usually my master read till the early hours, I also noticed that the door was half open, I slid quietly through and found Kibandi stretched out on the last mat his mother had made before she died, it was only half finished, he loved that mat more than anything, I started nibbling his nails, his heels too, he appreciated these signs of affection and woke up, got to his feet, I saw him dress, turning his back so I wouldn't see his genitals, and as I crossed what served as the living room, I stumbled over his other self, stretched out on the ground, we left the hut, while the other self went and lay down on the last mat woven by Mama Kibandi,
I tripped along behind my master, who was walking with his eyes half closed, like a blind man, and we arrived at a place a few hundred metres from the house of Papa Louboto, the brick maker, my master sat down under a mango tree, I could see he was trembling, talking to himself, touching his belly, as though he had a pain there, ‘go on then, it's your call' he said to me, pointing towards the hut at the far end of the concession, and seeing me hesitate he repeated his order in a sterner tone, I did as I was told, and round the back of the hut I found a gaping hole, the work, presumably, of some local rodents, I pushed straight through it and found myself in the bedroom of Papa Louboto's daughter, young Kiminou, a light-skinned girl, an adolescent, with a round face, said to be the prettiest girl in Séképembé, four young men had already asked her father for her hand in marriage, and were just waiting for Papa Louboto's decision, due next year, when the girl came of age, here was young Kiminou now, I stopped to admire her beauty for a moment, the pagne scarcely covering her thighs, her breasts within reach, I felt a violent lurch of desire, I was shocked by my own genitals, I who had never done anything improper with a female, not even one of my own species, I swear, I'd never even once felt the itch, it never crossed my mind, unlike certain members of our group at that time, who stooped to such things the moment the old governor's back was turned, they were older than me, these comrades, and then all at once, the day of my first mission, I got this curious bulge between my hind legs, my sex was growing hard, I'd always thought it was only for pissing, just as my rectum was only for defecating, I was suddenly ashamed, and I swear I couldn't tell you to this day what I would do if I found myself face to face with a porcupine of the opposite sex coming
on to me, or giving me the come hither, perhaps I'm still a virgin because of being a double, whenever I saw the other members of our community knocking around with females it felt like I was watching something indecent, it was all very hard work, but they got there in the end, they squealed, groaned, clutched at their partner's quills, I always wondered what they were feeling when they waved their paws around as though they were having an epileptic fit and let me tell you something else, the noise of their quills rubbing together really irritated me, anyway, my comrades seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly, then suddenly they'd groan and fall into a state of semi-consciousness, even a babe that piddles in his cradle could have caught them bare-handed, then, the day of my first assignment, I discovered that even though my sex was quite indifferent to the attractions of a female porcupine, it immediately reacted to the sight of a naked human of the feminine sex, still my mission was not to try to get it on with this girl, so after a moment's hesitation I set these thoughts aside, and told myself such things were not for me, they were things to be done between members of the same species, and to rid my mind completely of such ideas I tried to think about something completely different, I wondered what had made my master take against the lovely Kiminou, her perfectly formed body perhaps, and once again I brushed aside such considerations with the back of my paw, not wanting to weaken just as I was about to go into action, but deep down, even if I was deliberately making my mind go blank, I couldn't help wondering, and I remembered that Kibandi was one of the four marriage candidates, which had made the whole village laugh, and he wished he'd never asked, I'd seen him two or three times in discussion with Papa Louboto near the market place, one day
they drank a glass of palm wine together, the man had spoken with warmth of Mama Kibandi, he said ‘she was a really good woman, she'll be remembered many years in this village, believe me, you can be proud of her, and I know she is watching over you', his voice was totally insincere, and Kibandi remembered that Papa Louboto hadn't turned up at his mother's funeral, so he was pretending to be nice to my master in the hope of receiving his gifts as a suitor to his daughter, only to reject him when the moment came, then, when all the candidates had finished talking with the potential father-in-law, each of them went away convinced he was the right man for the job, he was the one Papa Louboto would give his daughter to blindly, now my master wasn't falling for that, he knew he didn't stand a chance, but even so, he gave that swindler everything he owned, everything his mother had given him, special celebration mats, baskets of palm nuts, all his work savings, he remade the man's roof free of charge, you could see in Papa Louboto's eyes a kind of inexhaustible expectation, he went round the village boasting, saying Kibandi was bug ugly, thin as the tack in a photo frame, adding that a woman worthy of the name would never accept Kibandi, but let him dream on, he'd ruin him, take everything off him, down to his underpants, his vests, his rubber sandals, I expect it was frustration and fury drove my master to take on this family, because, let me make it quite clear, dear Baobab, for one human being to eat another you need concrete reasons, jealousy, anger, envy, humiliation, lack of respect, I swear we never once ate someone just for the pleasure of eating, and so, on that memorable night, while young Kiminou slept like an angel, her arms crossed over her chest, I drew a deep breath, took one of my strongest quills, and threw it straight at her right temple,
before she could realise what was happening, then a second, she shuddered, in vain she struggled, she was paralysed, I went up to her, heard her muttering nonsense, I started licking the blood as it oozed down her temple, I saw the hole left by my two quills vanish as though by magic, you'd have needed four eyes to see any sign of what had happened, I went into the next room, where the young girl's parents lay sleeping, the father snoring like a clapped out car, the mother with her left arm dangling over the side of the bed, it was not part of my mission to deal with them, so I pushed aside the voice that whispered in my ear, telling me to shoot a couple of quills into Kimouni's parents' temples

 

 

the next day, the whole of Séképembé was in shock, Kiminou was dead, and though it was generally agreed she had been eaten, it was assumed to be the result of rivalry between the mother's and father's lines, there was some dispute between the two, out came the scythes, the spears, the axes, the chief of Séképembé managed to calm the two camps, he proposed a trial on the day of the funeral, where the corpse picks out the criminal, Kibandi was half expecting it, dear Baobab, so he was prepared, Papa Kibandi had taught him to get round these things, my master had stuck a palm nut up his rectum just as his progenitor had, back when he was trying to catch out the sorcerer Tembé-Essouka, and the corpse of young Kiminou picked out one of the other marriage candidates instead, and the poor innocent was buried alive with the deceased, with no further trial, because that's how things were done
my dear Baobab, the universally dreaded trial by corpse, where the corpse picks out its aggressor, is widely used in these parts, whenever someone dies, the villagers rush to do it, to their minds there's no such thing as a natural death, only the dead can tell the living who caused their death, I expect you'd like to know how it's done, well, four strong men carry the coffin on their shoulders, a sorcerer chosen by the village chief picks up a piece of wood, knocks three times on the casket, and says to the corpse, ‘tell us who ate you, show us where the wrongdoer lives, you can't just disappear into the other world without vengeance, come on now, stir yourself, run, fly, cross the mountains, the plains, and if the wrongdoer lives across the Ocean, if he lives up in the stars, we'll seek him out and make him pay for what he has done you and your family', the coffin suddenly starts to move, the four strong bearers get dragged into a devilish sort of dance, they no longer feel the weight of the corpse, they run left and right, often the casket drags them way off into the bush, then brings them hurtling back into the village at breakneck speed, and though they walk on thorns, on shards, they feel no pain, they are not harmed, they plunge into water, but do not drown, they pass through bush fires and are not burned, and once White men came here to watch this practice, so they could put it in a book, they said they were ethnologists, they had difficulty explaining to some of Séképembé's less sophisticated inhabitants quite what an ethnologist was for, I had a good laugh myself, because I could just have speeded things along by saying an ethnologist was someone who discusses other people's customs, which strike them as strange when compared to their own culture, no more no less, but one of the Whites made so bold as to explain to the poor lost souls of this village that the
word ‘ethnology' came from the Greek word
ethnos
, meaning ‘people', therefore what ethnologists study is people, societies, customs, ways of thinking, ways of living, anyone who was bothered by the word ‘ethnologist' could simply say ‘social anthropologist' , which created still more confusion and most people just went on thinking they were people who were out of work in their own countries or who had come to put satellite dishes in the village so as to watch people, so anyway, there they were, these ethnologists or social anthropologists, they'd been waiting for someone to die, and luckily for them an individual had been eaten here, not by my master, by another guy whose double was a shrew, the ethnologists all cheered ‘fantastic, we've got our stiff, he's at the other end of the village, the burial's tomorrow, at last we'll be able to finish that darned book', and they asked if they might carry the coffin themselves, on their shoulders, because they were convinced there was something not quite right about this whole business, that it was really the men who carried the coffin who shook it about so as to get people falsely accused, but the question of whether or not the White men could take part in the ritual divided the village, some sorcerers were opposed to foreigners meddling in Séképembé's affairs, in the end the village chief played diplomat and swore that the rites of the ancestors would still work, even in the presence of the Whites, because the village ancestors are stronger than the Whites, and he convinced everyone that it was a good thing these outsiders would be present during the rite, what's more, they'd mention Séképembé in their book, the village would become world famous, people from many other countries would be inspired by our customs, to the greater glory of the ancestors, and that put an end to the discontent, which
transformed into a collective sense of pride, another row almost blew up when it came to choosing one out of the twelve village sorcerers to supervise the ritual, they all wanted to work with the Whites now, when only a few hours earlier such a thing would have been inconceivable, and all the sorcerers began bragging about their family tree, but only one of them was needed, the village chief took twelve cowries, marked one of them with a little cross, put them in a basket, shook them and asked each sorcerer to close his eyes and put his hand inside and take one cowrie at random, the one who drew out the marked cowrie would have the honour of directing the ritual, the suspense lasted until the eleventh cowrie, when one of the sorcerers, who had kept on putting off his turn drew it out, before the envious gaze of all the others, and so, once all these negotiations were complete, the ethnologists or social anthropologists finally lifted the coffin, amid laughter from all the villagers, who seemed not to be concerned that their hilarity might bring shame upon the corpse, and the sorcerer, who was also fighting back guffaws, gave three sharp knocks with his bit of stick, struggled to find words with which to ask the corpse to point out the person who had harmed him, but the deceased understood what was expected of him, as well he might, because in his remarks the sorcerer added, ‘be careful not to bring shame on us in front of these White men who have come from afar and think our customs are just one big joke', the corpse didn't need to be asked twice, a light rain began to fall, and when the coffin started jolting forwards, hopping like a baby kangaroo, the ethnologists at the back shouted ‘come on now, comrades, stop shaking the damn' coffin, let it move on its own if it's really gonna move' and the other ethnologists replied, ‘stop assing
around guys, you're the one who's moving it', the corpse started dancing around, speeded up its rhythm, dragged the ethnologists off into a lantana field, then brought them back to the village, pushed them down as far as the river, brought them back up to the village again and the whole mad chase finally came to a halt in front of old Mouboungoulo's hut, with a huge thrust, the coffin broke down the door of the guilty man's hut, drove into his home, an old shrew that stank like a skunk slipped out of the house, circled in the courtyard, then shot off down to the river, the coffin caught it at the first thicket of trees, came down on top of it, and that is how old Mouboungoulou met his death, dear Baobab, and apparently the Whites wrote a long book about the incident, over 900 pages, I don't know whether the village of Séképembé has become world famous, what I do know is that other Whites have turned up since, just to check what the first ones wrote in their book, several of them left empty handed because the locals with harmful doubles were wary of them, and suddenly it seemed like no one ever died when the whites were around, a few corpses refused to go along with the ritual, refused to play the game, or sometimes the villagers would instruct their families, in the event of their death, not to allow their corpses to take part in the ritual in the presence of Whites, who might then go and sully their global reputation, so now, you see, the ritual is practised only with great caution, but the most convincing reason, let me tell you, dear Baobab, came from a guy called Amédée, and the reason I speak of him in the past tense is because he has passed on to the next world, may his soul rest in peace, he was what humans called an educated man, a cultivated man, who had studied for many years, he was respected for it, added to which he had
travelled widely, he had been up in a plane several times, one of those noisy birds that rip the sky in two, every time you think it's going to take your head off, apparently Amédée was the most intelligent men in the entire south, not to say in the whole country, but that didn't stop us, we still ate him, as you will soon learn, he claimed that the book written by the first Whites on this question had been published in Europe and translated into several languages, he asserted that it had become a key work of reference for ethnologists and Amédée, who had read it, was harsh in his criticism, saying ‘I have never read such a trumped up work, what else can I say, it's a disgraceful book, a book which seeks to humiliate Africans, a tissue of lies by a group of Europeans in search of exoticism, who would like nothing better than for Negroes to continue dressing in leopard skins and living up trees'