Читать книгу Blessing - Florence Ndiyah - Страница 8

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Thieves love the night because it protects them. What protects the night when it decides to steal? What gives it permission to act with such impunity? How could it steal so easily and pass so undetected? How could it mock them so? Why had it decided to make such a fool of them, drowning them in sleep while it operated silently? How could it have so betrayed the trust they had in it? The family wished they could understand just why the night had resolved to stealing so much from them. They wished it could explain why it had decided to sink the wick into the candle wax, condemning it to everlasting darkness. They wanted to know what could have made it decide to transform a few hours of rest for the body into a trip for a soul. Certainly not the slight fever the child had gone to bed with. What could the night have done to her to make her close her eyes to the approaching light of day? What could it have promised her to make her follow it to the place where it goes? The child had gone with the night. She had followed it to the place where it goes. She had accompanied it on the journey, conscious it will return the following evening without her. Like the trail of smoke rising and fading from a blown candle flame, her soul had risen to follow the night.

The family woke only to realize the child had followed the night to the place where it goes. They could almost see her disappearing with the last traces of night. They thought of giving chase but how could they? Daylight was approaching too fast, concealing the traces of the fading darkness. Standing in the yard, looking over the hills, they watched helplessly as part of them vanished. They knew they could not get back what the night had stolen from them. They yelled. They yelled at the night for being so cruel and heartless. They grieved at the loss of part of them. Scattered about the compound, their eyes cast skyward, arms akimbo, they mourned. The men sighed. The women wailed. Powerless, helpless, they grieved. Soon the neighbours joined in. Soon the whole village was grieving.

When the village grieved, the village grieved. Not one compound, not one soul was exempted. It was the job of the village crier to make sure the news got to every inhabitant of the village. A wooden baton in hand, he went around the village, beating the two iron cones of a gong, ‘Dong Ding Dong. Dong Ding Dong.’ The domineering sound of the church bells calling Catholic converts to morning Mass only urged him to beat harder and louder. The village crier marched around Mumba quarter beating his gong to the tune of death, the death of a child. ‘Dong Ding Dong. Dong Ding Dong.’ The rhythm of the beating gave out the simple message: ‘Another skull lost forever’.

The very early risers, already on the way to their farms, dropped their hoes and stared after the bearer of the shocking message. Children did not die. Death was a thing experienced only by the old. It was a privilege, a reward for a long life. Only after a successful life on earth was a person raised to the rank of ancestor. Children just did not die. They lived. A child who died was a child who chose not to live.

Disbelief followed the village crier as he made the round of the village. His efforts were soon visible in the growing crowd that slowly assembled in the Fopou compound. Many came with questions: why had a child died? Others came with sympathy. The women. The mothers. Some wailed openly. Some cuddled other wailing women.

Some shook their heads so hard and so often their lightly knotted headscarves dropped to the ground in protest. Some just sat still, staring at the disbelief all around, immobilized by its intensity. The stronger women quickly pushed aside the grief and went from one kitchen to the other, seeing to the cooking arrangements.

The men hung about in small groups of two, threes and fives, preoccupied with village customs and beliefs about the dead. The head of an ‘ancestrally departed’ was left in the grave only long enough for it to get rid of its flesh, after which it was exhumed, restored to life and handed over to the deceased’s successor. The spirit of the deceased, embodied in the skull, then acted as a mediator – springing the people’s petitions to the gods and showering the gods’ blessings and curses on the people. While one school of thought held that it was forbidden to restore life to children’s skulls because their premature departure was evidence of their dislike for the land, another countered that children were not wise enough to intervene on behalf of grown-ups, insisting that poor comprehension was not a good trait for a broker, especially one whose job was to mediate between two worlds, between two kinds of entities, between the gods and men.

Had it been the death of an adult, everyone would have agreed that the customs were being respected: the women seeing to the food and the men, discussing culture and related issues in small groups. Yet this was the death of a child. Such preparations and discussions were permitted only after the burial, which had to take place within the hour following death. However, the little girl had been dead for close to two hours and she still had not been buried. Her body was still stretched out on the hay mattress, wrapped in her mother’s best cloth. Such was the last sign of honour to a child who will never grow old enough to know elegance.

‘I have spoken, Temkeu. This child has gone to visit the ancestors, and you know that she is not coming back. We will never see her again. We will never see her skull.’ Mefo stood at one corner of the circular thatched hut. She appeared shorter without her headscarf. Of all women, a Mefo always had to cover her hair. This Mefo was a renowned traditionalist. This Mefo was also the child’s grandmother. ‘Temkeu, we need to put the child into her new home.’

It seemed as if there were several Temkeus in the hut, and that Temkeu Fopou, the child’s father and Mefo’s son was certainly not the one being addressed; he just sat at the corner of the hut, staring at the wall with blank eyes.

Tired of trying to reason with him, Mefo accused her son of betraying his manhood by disrespecting the gods’ decree to immediately unite departed children with the earth. ‘The people came to help you carry your pain’ she said ‘but you are driving them back to their farms. You sit there making as if you are the first to hold or taste pain. What pain even?’ As she spoke, she picked up her headscarf from the floor and twisted and knotted it over her head. ‘You will fool me only after you have fooled every person in this village!’ Mefo stared at her son with a stabbing expression. ‘You think I do not know why you are clinging to that body? I know, Temkeu! I know. I like the way our people put it. They say that when a river starts swallowing a man, the man hangs on to anything, even grass which is being carried away by the same river.’

The picture she gave was one of an old woman who loved the sound of her voice. She was about start another round of monologuising when one of the elderly women walked into the hut, caught Mefo’s wrist in her fist and started towing her away. ‘You know you suffer from chronic headache attacks, Mefo. If you talk too much your sickness may start again.’

Mefo would not leave without a final warning: ‘If I come back and find that body still lying there,’ she said to Temkeu, ‘one of us, you or me, is going to take its place in that hole. One disaster is enough! I will not sit here and allow you to call the anger of the gods on this village. I will not allow you make the gods blacken another day with death. No! One disaster is enough!’

A sixty-seven-year-old woman, Mefo bore the title of Queen Mother more gracefully than most youths, the future. The royal title was conferred on a chosen female member of the Fon’s family, and it came with privileges usually not accorded to other women, especially not to single women. When Mefo approached, women bowed, men threw greetings. In a land where women needed permission to speak even among their gender, Mefo had a voice, a voice louder than that of most men. Elders and titleholders often sought her opinion.

Though many relatives and friends secretly discussed her obvious disgust for her only child, few wanted to walk about with the heavy weight of the legendary feud; fewer wanted to burn their fingers, not when the adopted enemy was to be Temkeu Fopou, a man who had proved he could challenge Mefo. Whether for the glory of proving he was tough or in retaliation to Mefo’s hostility towards him or for some other reason, no one really could tell.

Temkeu watched his mother walked out of his hut. He often described himself as the head of three women, pocket of thirteen children, proprietor of a compound with five huts, owner of two skulls and a belated titleholder. Yet he allowed a woman to talk down to him. How his mother had come to have so much authority over him was a mystery. Her influence had reached the point where people at times described him as a fifty-two-year-old man who lived under the shadow of a woman. Even on such a day when he had refused to fight, she had still come after him, openly describing him as a problem too big for any solution. She challenged him. She put him on the same scale as boys who owned neither compounds nor skulls. Just how could he prevent her imposing presence from making him feel like a prisoner within his own bricks?

Temkeu got up from the stool where he had been sitting and walked towards the window. From the window to the door, from the three-stone fireplace to the built-in slab, he roamed about his empty hut with his hands folded across his chest. Almost two hours had gone by since the child’s death. Those who had still been handing around, hoping he would return to reason, had left one after the other. Those who were still hanging around were not about to get any satisfaction, for burial was the last thing on Temkeu’s mind. First, he wanted to understand why death had visited his compound.

‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘What did I do?’ he asked his uncle and grandfather, or what remained of them. Their skulls sat on the slab built into the wall opposite his bed. A skull was a symbol of honour. He who lived with skulls lived with the blessings of the ancestors. He was a man among men. ‘Why me?’ Temkeu repeated. The only reply he got was the echoing sound of silence. That was all which emerged from the skeletal brain cases with deep eardrums, empty sockets and clenched teeth.

Like one who had received insight that the reply would come by action rather than words, Temkeu rushed to the bed and nudged the child slightly. She did not stir. He stared hard at her, and then as though for want of something better to do, sat down next to the body on the bed. He carried his chin in his right hand and closed his eyes. One hour went by before he opened his eyes again, this time to stare at his third wife, Nkem Fopou, the child’s mother.

‘Do you not think it is time to let her go?’ she said. ‘I have spent the last hour putting oil on the palms of family members. Yes, they have eaten the meat I put on their palms, washed their hands, and now they are again threatening to return to their compounds and farms.’

As Temkeu looked up, the two relatives who had followed Nkem into the hut shushed each other to silence. They watched his every move and waited anxiously for his next word. However, Temkeu had no word for them. He ran his eyes over them and about the empty stools and then to his daughter’s body. After a few minutes of futile waiting, Nkem beckoned her companions to follow her out of the hut. The women were already by the door when Temkeu let out, ‘You can take her.’

The compound had been waiting for this moment. For almost three hours close family members, unable to walk away like most of the villagers, had waited for this moment when Temkeu would relinquish his grip on the body. Nkem stopped, turned around to face her husband but made no further effort to prove she had heard him.

‘I have said that you should take her!’ Temkeu barked. ‘Take her from my eyes since that is what you want.’

While the two women rushed out to the yard to spread the news, Nkem walked towards the bed where her husband was still sitting. She stopped in front of it and looked down at her child. As she lifted her hand to touch her daughter’s face one last time, Temkeu caught her wrist and spat out, ‘You can take her from my eyes but you will never take her from my heart.’

Temkeu got up from the bed and surged past the door as though stung out of the hut. In the yard, he welcomed a soothing pat on his back and a few kind words from Angu Matamo, who assured him that the gods knew better.

‘My calabash shattered before I was even able to drink from it,’ was all Temkeu said.

‘Our land is fertile but our women are more fertile, Angu said. ‘If it means that we hack our way through, we will uncover that road which leads to a compound of fertile women, and we will pluck another ripe fruit for you. You will have another daughter, Temkeu. I will not sleep until it happens.’

Temkeu gave Angu a slight nod and dashed off before his friend could say more. He had hardly reached the middle of the square compound fenced with five circular earth huts when people began thronging in from every shortcut. Elderly men limped in on staffs and women dashed in from nearby farms with heaps of earth on their hoes. Everyone had only one desire: to witness the longest burial ever. Some followed the corpse bearer into the hut, while others squashed around the gravediggers and the rectangular hole behind Temkeu’s hut. A child, like any other woman who left the world without taking on a new surname or multiplying the village wealth in people, was always buried behind the compound, behind her father’s hut. The sight of people eager to see his daughter lowered into the earth seemed unbearable to Temkeu. He held his heart as though it were a battlefield of two equally ferocious opponents – manhood taking it out on fatherhood. His feet changed direction. They were no longer facing the path out of his compound. They were looking towards the door of his hut. Temkeu slowly edged towards the crowd gathered at the door of his hut. He moved about on the fringe of the crowd for a while, and before anyone knew what he was up to, he was diving into the crowd.

‘Wait! Wait,’ he cried. Wading through the sea of people, he got into the hut to find the body already wrapped in white cloth and bound for the grave. ‘Just one last time,’ he pleaded. ‘I beg to see her just one last time.’ As he pushed forward those around the bed stepped aside, evidently too shocked to be upset. Even the corpse bearer made way for Temkeu, who responded by elevating his plea to another level: ‘I need some minutes alone with my daughter.’

Everyone looked at him but no one complied.

‘Well, it is just that I am a father, and I beg you to give me this last chance to pin my daughter’s face on my heart. It will take just the same time it takes for you to walk out and close the door.’

His imploring eyes sent the crowd streaming outside. The corpse bearer, who had just given in to yet another request to free the child’s face and torso from the confining burial cloth, trailed the queue.

Once silence took control over the hut, Temkeu pulled a stool and placed it near the head of the bamboo bed. He sat on the stool and stared at his daughter’s still body. ‘I waited forty-three long years to have you,’ he said. ‘By the time you arrived I was already an old man. I came here before you. Why are you going away before me?’ He sighed. ‘I had plans for you. I thought that through you I was going to taste things that have already become like water to my friends. I thought that through you I was going to become a father-in-law to a man. So why have you gone and left me here, alone and hungry?’

Temkeu was silent for a few minutes, but it seemed the silence only reminded him of the reality. ‘One woman, then a second woman and finally a third woman. I had to get three women before I could have you. I had to get three women and eight sons before I could walk about with the pride of a man who raises hens behind his compound. Each time I went out, I was happy because I knew I would come back and find you here. And as you grew I waited. I waited eagerly for the day when men would start marching in and out of my compound. Popular hunters, productive farmers, successors and princes – I waited for them! But now you have gone.’ He paused for a while. ‘Now you have gone. That means I will not even know that satisfaction which comes from chasing away silent cocks who think they can measure up to my hen. I was already dreaming of the techniques to use to chase away such cocks which cannot even crow!’ His mouth twisted in a cynical smile, a short-lived smile. ‘Now that you have gone, I have been reduced to a spectator. I will be forced to sit and watch the noisy cocks pass my compound to go to the next. No man is going to come here to ask for the hand of my daughter! No man is going to turn me into a father-in-law to a man!’

After another long pause, Temkeu let out a heavy sigh. ‘I was a fool, a very big fool. I should have accepted the bride price offered to tie your hand when you were five years old. I should not have tried to play big. At least, I would have had something to show I fathered a girl, that a girl had lived in this compound.’

At the sound of fidgeting behind the closed door, Temkeu slowly closed his eyes. His time was up. He knew the next time he looked at the world would be the last time he saw his precious daughter. There was no rushing that final view. He captured in a good quantity of air, imprisoned it for a while and then let it out reluctantly, as a man forced to part with a treasured item. As the air escaped from his lung, his chest sank, his heart shrunk. Beaten, he finally opened his eyes to acknowledge the victory of his invisible opponent.

‘Hey!’ he exclaimed. He swung his head towards the slab bearing the skulls of his ancestors and then back to the child’s body lying on his bed. The bewildered old man of a few moments ago had been replaced by a strong, active man, one with eyes fixed on the child’s body like a hungry man staring at a woman. He spread his lips as wide apart as possible. One word dropped out, two times: ‘Mefo! Mefo!’

Limbs almost came apart as people rushed into the hut. Mefo was not among them, but that did not stop Temkeu from rambling on about how the body, rather the child, had stirred.

The compound had again become a meeting spot. Those who could not find space inside the hut poked their heads through the window and door. The Fopou compound was renowned for making a public show of its problems. Several times those who had dared to talk peace had proposed that a village council be convoked so that Mefo and Temkeu exchange the peace plant, but several times the idea had died under suspicious circumstances – those who loved a spectacle knew where to get one.

‘Mefo, she is not dead,’ Temkeu again cried out.

‘Yes, Mbeh, we have heard you.’ It was a female voice but not Mefo’s. ‘You know that the only time a child belongs to one mother is when it is still in the womb.’ Achile Fopou, Temkeu’s first wife, edged closer to her husband and the bed. ‘It means that this child is also my own. My pain is as deep as the pain that you and Nkem carry. But please, Mbeh, also see reason. A child who died three hours ago cannot move. Just look at how stiff she is. I beg you, my husband, because if you do not wake up, our worry would be for you instead.’

‘Shut up, woman,’ Temkeu lashed out. ‘I know what my eyes saw. I saw this child move.’ As he spoke he tore away the burial cloth still covering the lower part of the child’s body. ‘If you had given me just one daughter then ...’ He hesitated and said instead, ‘Just stand here. I am sure she will move again soon. Stand here and you will see for yourself.’

The command intended for Achile Fopou transcended the boundaries of marital authority. Silence fell on the hut as all eyes turned to the child’s body, some daring her to move, others imploring the gods to do something, some just enjoying the free entertainment of a rare spectacle. The silence was still settling in when a loud shriek cut through with such intensity it distracted all but Temkeu. Towards the door, they all flocked. When their curious glances found Mefo lying on the ground, they briefly forgot about the child.

‘You people come and see.’ At the sound of Temkeu’s declaration, the two men who had been helping Mefo to her feet let her drop like a leaf and swarmed into the hut with the others – the sight of a child come back to life was plainly more alluring than that of an unstable old woman. However, once in the hut they realised the child was immobile. The only person blinking and unblinking was Temkeu, not the child as he had asserted. Attempts to justify his claim only increased the hostility of the stares punching him. Even with the entire village against him, Temkeu did not back down ‘Do not try to tell me I am building a house up in my head. With my two feet on the ground, I tell you that this child has life in her,’ he reiterated.

‘Yes, the tiger ate the man who took pity on it.’ It was Mefo who had risen from the ground to walk tall. ‘If you had died at her age I would have put you deep inside the earth without blinking.’ Her face beamed with pride at being the only one capable of hammering square words into Temkeu’s square head. But the satisfaction faded fast, replaced by anger at the humiliation in which he had soaked her. Dishing out commands like a man, Mefo ordered the child’s body to be wrapped up and carried outside. ‘You there –’ she turned to a young man by the bed ‘– cut up the rest of the cloth into bands. I do not want to see any wrist without the white band in five minutes. That body should be covered with earth in five minutes!’

‘Anyone who wants to see his teeth in his hands should be the first to come near this bed. Everybody should leave my hut. Now!’

The sympathizers-turned-spectators looked at Mefo and then at Temkeu. A few left but most simply rubbed their feet on the ground.

‘Where is that cutlass?’ As Temkeu dashed for the farming tool, the villagers ran for their lives. Only Mefo remain unmoved. Just then Nkem dashed into the hut. Trembling, she requested that her husband deny or confirm what the grapevine had carried faster and further than the village crier had the initial news of the death.

‘Nkem,’ Temkeu said, ‘I married you many many years ago.’ He paused as if to allow the message to sink. ‘Today’ he continued ‘I tell you that this child has life in her. I tell you that she is not dead. I saw her with these my two eyes. She shook three times. Three times!’

Nkem opened her mouth but closed it without letting out a single word.

‘Follow your mother-in-law if you like, but I am the head of this compound, and I have made my decision. This child has life in her. I will stay with her until life fully takes control of her body.’

‘Maybe I should,’ Nkem ventured shyly. ‘Maybe I should go to the Mission and call Father?’ God can—’

‘Shut up, woman. The day you call that your God again inside my hut will be the day you carry your things back to your father’s compound. You hear me?’

‘Yes, Mbeh.’ Nkem sealed her surrender with a bow.

‘When you keep your head in the sky how can you know what is happening on the ground?’ Mefo sighed at her son and turned and ordered his speechless wife to meet her in the yard. There, she told Nkem to dispatch one message with news to the palace and another to fetch the diviner. ‘Even if the cock forgets to crow, we will still get out of bed.’

‘Mefo, I know you are a woman who bathes with wisdom,’ Nkem said. ‘But I have already lost my daughter; I do not want to lose my husband’s mind too.’

‘Speak like a person who has something to say.’

‘What I mean to say is that I am sure truth has a place in what my husband is saying.’

‘Get out of my sight, you stupid woman. I could not stand that man as a child. Now I understand why you can stand him as the head of your compound.’ Mefo turned to two young men and repeated the same commands in the same authoritative voice: ‘You, go fetch Tchafo. You, go straight to the palace and send a nchinda to inform the Fon of the abomination living here.’

From inside the hut Temkeu whispered, ‘Either you women talk like respectful children visiting a palace or you carry your noise with you elsewhere,’ He was tiptoeing back to the bed when he stopped and rushed back to the window, shouting, ‘Shout! Kill the deep sleep chaining my treasure to that bed. Call all the women in Mumba to come here and start shouting. Shout!’ He walked back to the bamboo bed still repeating the word. Face to face with his daughter, he bid her to open her eyes. ‘Wake up so that we prove to them that your father is the one talking sense in this place.’

Ten minutes later Temkeu was again shouting out claims to no one in particular. ‘Believe me when I tell you that her heart moved like this—’ Temkeu exhaled and inhaled, his hand rising and falling in rhythm with his throbbing chest.

Nkem, who was walking aimlessly around the compound, rushed in to catch her husband rambling about how the child had again stirred. ‘Nkem, Nkem’ Temkeu stressed, ‘I tell you that this child moved.’

Nkem took one glance at the immobile child and then settled her raised brows on her husband.

‘Am I the only normal person in this village? This child is alive! Do not move. Just stand here and soon you will see for yourself.’

Nkem remained glued to the spot. The minutes moved past. All was still but for the sound of their drumming hearts.

‘Look, Nkem, you see that? Do not move your eyes from her heart. You see what I see? You see?’

‘Hm,’ Nkem mumbled.

‘Yes, my daughter, make the effort. Take a deep one. Try!’ Temkeu lifted his hand and wiped the child’s brow. ‘See! See! Did you see that?’ He looked up at his wife to make sure she was watching the child but found her questioning eyes resting on him. ‘I tell you to look at the child but you keep your eyes on me? You women are all the same. Get out of my sight. Go! And let me not catch you rejoicing when this child finally defeats death.’

Nkem wept.

Temkeu reassumed vigilance.

Mefo paced the yard, waiting for the arrival of elderly wisdom and the embodiment of the gods.

The cowry necklace as long as his neck to his stomach, the ntamp cap stuffing in his wisdom, the ndop cloth embroidered and sewn to the form of a long, overflowing garment – everyone usually gave way when such traditional regalia appeared on one person. To denote his rank, the Elder embellished his cap with a single sickle red feather.

When he stepped out of his sacred dwelling, men bowed and women stepped indoors. When he thundered his opinion, all others clung to the safety of their bearers’ minds. He was the diviner, hardly ever without his raffia bag slung over his shoulder, never without the leopard spots of the gods dotted over his face and chest.

One dined with the Fon and the other anointed skulls and invoked spirits. The pair arrived at the Fopou compound with an inquisitive mob trailing them from a distance.

‘Where is the head of this compound?’ the Elder called out.

A baffled Temkeu stepped out into the yard towards the direction of the inquiring voice. As soon as his eyes met the red plume and the leopard stokes, he scuttled forward. Hand contact forbidden, he clapped three times and prostrated. ‘Come good, elder of our land; come good, eye of the gods.’ Pre-empting the question and apologising all the while, Temkeu dove into a narration of how the child was just some minutes away from full consciousness.

‘Where is the body?’ Without waiting for an answer, the Elder and his silent companion stomped into Temkeu’s hut. Temkeu hesitated at the door. The village crammed into every nook and cranny in the Fopou homestead.

‘There is just one child here,’ the diviner said after examining the body, ‘and she dwells with the living. I can feel her heartbeat. Did anyone check for a heartbeat after Temkeu started claiming the child was alive?’

‘No!’ Temkeu exclaimed. ‘No. It was easier for them to conclude that I was crazy.’

‘You people have all heard,’ the Elder declared after a few moments ‘that the child is alive.’

The Elder had proclaimed that Fatti Fopou was alive. Fatti Fopou was alive. Had the family indeed succeeded in stealing back from the night what it had stolen from them? Perhaps the night had not stolen her after all. Perhaps it had just taken her for a short visit to the place. Perhaps she had escaped from its grip and somehow managed to find her way back. Or perhaps the night had taken pity on the family and decided to shed some light on their faces. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. The fact was that Fatti Fopou was alive! Those at the window exclaimed it to those further out. Those in the yard shouted it to those in neighbouring compounds. So the news travelled to the village, with bits and pieces added and subtracted along the way.

Back in the hut Temkeu, who had sprinted inside at the Elder’s confirmation, lowered himself onto the hay mattress. He enfolded Fatti’s feeble hand in his. ‘Fatti, it is your father.’ He shook the words into the child, who had again closed her eyes to the world. ‘Fatti. Fatti.’ He nudged her but she was as immobile as she had been all morning.

The diviner shoved Temkeu aside, bent over Fatti and ran his hands over her body. Temkeu tapped his feet. In a matter of seconds, his status had changed from dreamer to victor. The Elder’s declaration had proved to the village that he was not insane. Yet, if Fatti did not keep cooperating, if she did not stay alive, then everyone knew what was going to follow: someone was voluntarily going to compose a song which the children were eagerly going to adopt, singing after him wherever he went. ‘This child should not do this to me. The shame will be too much,’ Temkeu whispered to himself. ‘I refuse to imagine that I may lose my victory before I have had time to gain more respect and win influential friends through it. I refuse to imagine that I would lose a second chance of being a father-in-law, and why not to an important man.’

Only one thing could give Temkeu the fame he desired and only one thing could help him keep his head up: the Elders decision. Was he going to give the child more time or was he going to order her seemingly lifeless body to be buried?

‘I do not plan to send this child back to the land of the ancestors,’ the Elder stated after the diviner’s words to his ears about the child’s health. ‘I will not send back a child who decides to stay with us. But let us remember that if she chose to go in the first place, it was because she did not like it here in the land of the living. Let us not forget that he who tries the patience of the ancestors calls the anger of the gods.’

This remark was greeted with chilling silence. Everyone was waiting for what was still to follow. Looking directly at Temkeu the Elder declared, ‘Thirty minutes. If the ancestors want to convey a message to us through this incident, I am sure they will do it in the next thirty minutes. If she has not fully returned by then, we will bury her.

‘Thirty minutes,’ Temkeu said under his breath. ‘Thirty minutes.’ As if to take his mind off the child and the drama surrounding her, he took to attending to his august guests. ‘Bring a stool for our Elder,’ he said but then leaped to a corner of his hut from where he pulled out a special wooden stool carved in repeated patterns of a spider, the symbol of wisdom. ‘Bring some palm wine too.’

While the Elder accepted the cow horn transformed into a drinking vessel, Temkeu’s best, the diviner plunged his hand into his raffia bag and brought it back with a similar horn. Stooping in front of his guests, a gourd of palm wine in his hands, Temkeu filled both horns. The Elder lifted it to his mouth, wrapped his lips around it and gulped. He nodded several times.

As they drank and waited, Temkeu swerved the conversation to the activities to follow. Once a hole had been dug with the intention of feeding it with a body, it could not be refilled without the promised meal. His voice louder than permitted, he singled out the self-declared corpse bearer to dig out a plantain stalk and bury it as a symbolic gift to the crater. Temkeu continued preaching until it hit him that he had spoken too fast on two accounts: his daughter had not been officially welcomed among the living and he was no longer head of a compound but host to an Elder and a diviner. What saved him from any repercussion was his daughter.

‘Water,’ a feeble voice said. ‘I want water,’ Fatti moaned from the bed.

‘Bring water. Fatti wants water.’ Gourds changed hands and soon the diviner stood over Fatti, supporting her head and urging her to drink.

Outside, the decision had been made: Fatti had returned and returned to stay.

‘No more cry die. Let us celebrate life,’ one of the women intoned.

‘No more cry die,’ the crowd repeated the incantation, obviously happy for a child sent back to life and happier that instead of gathering in the evening to eat in remembrance of the ‘ancestrally departed’, they would be communing to celebrate life.

‘Let us thank the ancestors for the gift of life,’ the woman again intoned and the women, joined by others on the way back from their farms, transformed the compound into a festive ground as they clapped and gyrated in a circle around the mango tree in the middle of the compound. They danced to the admiration of the men, who had just snuffed out life from a goat – compensation to the ancestors for Fatti’s life – and were chopping off and cleaning out the head, feet and entrails. In a couple of hours, their palms would all be stained with palm oil as the meat was shared around.

At that moment the compound had two faces. While those outside were thinking, talking and acting in the light, those inside Temkeu’s hut were still battling with the night. It had shown its face again. However, its coming out in the daylight could either brighten the light or deepen the imminent darkness. Fatti had regained full consciousness and recounted what she remembered of the past three hours. Her statement was simple: her great-grandfather had sent her back to life with a message for Saha Tpune.

An ancestor had sent the child back from the land of the ancestors after three hours. Those in the hut did not try to understand how that could be possible. Humans did not understand the power or actions of the gods. An ancestor had sent the child to Saha Tpune. Who was Saha Tpune? That was the preoccupation of the men.

‘I do not know of any person in the Fopou clan with that name,’ Temkeu declared.

‘For my part,’ Tchafo said ‘I was born here and grew up here.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I have lived in this village all my life. I know the names of almost all children in all compounds in Mumba quarter, and I know almost every family in the entire Nchumuluh village.’ Tchafo stressed. ‘But this man, who is he? Where is he from?’ Tchafo, even with his umbilical cord tied to the gods, could not put a face to the name. ‘Are you sure you do not know him, Temkeu? Your father never mentioned any man by that name?’

‘Saha Tpune. Saha Tpune’ Temkeu repeated the names. ‘Saha Tpune. Wait, I think I remember something.’ The Elder and diviner tilted towards him. ‘It seems my father had a friend who often visited from neighbouring Kombou village. I was a small boy and so I cannot remember much, but I remember a name like Saha.’

‘You are right. Saha is a Kombou name,’ Tchafo stated.

‘So that should be it.’ The decision maker had been quiet for too long. ‘I will inform the Fon and first thing tomorrow morning, some nchindas will be wiping the dew off the grass on the way to Kombou.’

‘See, I told you people.’ Typical of his profession Tchafo boasted. ‘I see far, very far. I saw it and I told you that the man could not be of this village. By the way, Temkeu, I hope you have not forgotten that you need to give thanks to your ancestors for sending the child back to life.’ As he spoke, his eyes roamed over the skulls on Temkeu’s slab. ‘I will be waiting for the hen and palm oil to perform the sacrifices. I—’

Temkeu cut off Tchafo’s words and smile with a little piece of news: ‘That man, Saha Tpune, died before I was old enough to run after a goat.’

The Elder shook his head and voiced his concern: ‘What can a man who died when you, Temkeu, were still a child have in common with a child like Fatti? Again, why would your grandfather send Fatti from the land of the ancestors to deliver a message to someone who dwells with him in that land? Does it mean that your grandfather has sent the child to a dead man? Hm! If we do not put out the fire consuming one house, the whole village might become part of the fire.’

All three turned and stared at Fatti, elegant in her mother’s best loincloth. Her eyes closed, her breath soft, she seemed so peaceful.