Читать книгу The Amputated Memory - Marjolijn de Jager - Страница 15

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It was twenty years ago,

And maybe more, but it seems like yesterday,

That you departed, Father, falling by the wayside, alone, disowned, exhausted,

And I, who was not present at your funeral,

Must see to it that, liberated and forgiven, you shall sleep in peace.

For if not I, who would think of offering you compassion, to

You who aroused so many troubled passions:

Jealousy, desire, hate, and admiration.

Can we bestow compassion on those we deem to be superior?

Can we feel compassion for the suffering of a Lôs?

And besides, does anyone suffer who is “ultra-powerful”? Does he have a heart, a skin like all the rest? Is it really blood that’s running through his veins?

• • •

In those days we would hear people talk of two Lôs, two ultra-powerful beings. Nothing like this had ever been seen before in a single sector. It seemed that in earlier times they might anticipate one per century, certainly no more. In addition, the coming of a Lôs was not necessarily a good thing. Everything depended on the actions of the tribe—the arrival of a Lôs could be either a blessing or a disaster.

And here it happened that of the three ultra-powerful men the country knew in a single generation, two were located in the sector of Nyong and Kellé, and both were persistently referred to as legendarily bloodthirsty: Bitchokè and Dimalè! As soon as you committed a slightly unusual act, Father, you were told that you were taking yourself for Dimalè or Bitchokè. You found this intolerable and unacceptable, for you merely wanted to be your own unique benchmark, to be compared only to yourself, Njokè. What had the others done that they should be talked about constantly? Were they, too, not born of a woman? Or did their mothers feed them something of which yours had deprived you? You decided to go and find them, to pierce their secret. Soon you would be the third ultra-powerful one, the greatest Lôs in the district. And if that was too much, so be it! It would be what the Bassa people deserved.

One evening you came back in the company of a little bit of a man with a very dark skin and a tiny, smiling face, but with fearsome eyes—small slits from which darted looks as quick and lively as the motions of a serpent’s tongue. You introduced him to Grand Pa Helly in the presence of the entire household.

“Father, this is my friend Pier Dimalè. . . .”

The name dropped like a knife in spite of the word friend—or more likely because of it—and was followed by a long and pregnant silence that seemed to last forever. Was this the ultra-powerful one of whom the whole country spoke? The one who lay down his law and personal will upon entire populations, even though he was not a wise man or chief, not strong or handsome, and had not been mandated by any moral or spiritual authority? Was this really he? Where could he possibly have acquired the power that inflicted his will upon the land?

He smiled. He stood up and warmly extended his hand to a few people, but when he reached Grand Pa Helly, he couldn’t extend his hand—oh, mystery! Grand Pa scrutinized him coldly from head to toe, and then cried out to you, Father: “This is so reckless, my son. Is it mere foolishness, or could it be a bad omen? You arrive in a region somewhere and find a man whose own parents named him ‘Catastrophe,’ you bring him with you, and claim to have turned him into a friend? Can you be friends with catastrophe? Is that not a mystery?”

“Power begins with mystery, Father,” you answered before rising and turning your back on us.

When you were about to leave, Grand Pa Helly shouted at you once more.

“Catastrophe is bad luck, and your power won’t turn it into anything else.”

I’m desperately trying to remember what happened next, but it’s impossible. It is as if time froze every movement.

Your friend and you turned to Grand Pa; you were tense and open-mouthed, but not a sound came out.

We—Grand Madja, Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez, my mother, my sisters, and I—were riveted to our stools, sitting as if our necks were nailed to our shoulder blades, looking at you, the Lôs whose nature it is to defy laws and destiny—for that is the way they are.

How many days or weeks went by? Or did time actually stand still? I hear a long scream and rush over. Aunt Roz and my mother are bustling about around Grand Madja, who has collapsed. She is weeping quietly, small monotonous moans that grate upon your heart like the sound of a saw. . . .

Where shall I now place my heart,

My heart; what shall I do with my heart?

What have you done now, my son? You’ve forgotten my heart.

The earth has already swallowed eight of my sons, has broken my heart;

The earth has left me with only one son, and he has no heart.

How foolish to have affixed my own heart to his.

It is finished, it has happened, and here is my heart,

Burning me, piercing me, crumpling up inside my belly;

What shall I do with a heart that has run aground in my belly?

Huge commotion! A man comes out of the guestroom. Grand Pa Helly comes out of his bedroom dressed for one of his great journeys, his ceremonial machete in its sheath tied to his hip, his crossbow and arrows on his back, a rattan bag and his Mbock cane in hand.

When he sees Grand Madja weeping, Grand Pa Helly stops for a moment and closes his eyes. He takes a very deep breath and then says in his nighttime voice: “If nothing else I’ll bring you his body, but I swear that I’ll bring him back to you.”

And he goes off without another word.

I don’t recall his ever before being absent for such a long time. Grand Pa Helly was a husband who was present, not some draft of air perpetually gallivanting around like my mother Naja’s husband or Aunt Roz’s husband Ratez. They always had to run after those two, inquire after their whereabouts, use a weathervane to investigate where the wind had blown them. You also had to protect yourself against these drafts of air when they came home, or they could cause mumps or a stiff neck. Those two husbands were truly rough!

Even when absent, our husband was always there. We’d wait for him serenely, and he always came back, equally warm and considerate.

This time, the wait was not as serene as usual. At night, my namesake, I saw you getting up with a start, taut as a bow, and you waited, holding your breath. You stayed awake until daybreak. Sometimes you prayed out loud—you who always told me that God is like the elephant who hears silences and whispers more clearly than words uttered out loud. You really were much too anxious, and I still don’t know why because you didn’t tell me anything.

Soon I understood that my father had committed yet another one of his transgressions. All along, on any given day, someone might arrive to tell a tale, which meant agony for you and my mother, anger for Grand Pa Helly and Aunt Roz, and incomprehension for my sisters and me. Nobody explained anything to us, but through sentence we snatched and laments heard we learned that he’d taken another man’s wife, fought with some chief, or abducted someone’s daughter. Sometimes he himself returned with the booty of his raids. Aunt Roz and Grand Pa Helly would bawl him out relentlessly, while my mother fought with her new rivals, ripping their clothes to shreds, throwing the contents of their suitcases in the latrine, and always coming up with new insults and new tricks until she won him over. You, my namesake, you bewailed your heart.

But this time around, I knew it really must be very serious.

Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez left after Grand Pa Helly. My mother collected her things and departed, saying she wouldn’t come back anymore. But it wasn’t the first time she had done this.

She’d always come back, ranting and raving ever more loudly, as she did when my father had gone to kidnap my youngest sister from her. She arrived with a delegation of uncles and cousins armed with machetes and arrows. It took three days of negotiating, three slaughtered sheep, a large pig, and several chickens loaded inside mintets, woven palm leaves used to wrap provisions. Then the armed men turned around and, after accompanying them to the end of the road, my mother came back on her husband’s arm, both of them laughing uproariously. They immediately went into their hut, forgetting that we were all waiting for them before we would start eating.

Yes, she often came back on his arm, laughing wildly, her belly rounded with a next sister that my father always managed to deposit surreptitiously in her womb when, tired of his newest conquest, he would go off to get her back again. So for her it wasn’t serious; my father would undoubtedly take her back as soon as he returned from his latest adventure.

What was worrisome, however, was the long absence of our husband, magnified by that of Aunt Roz. Even more worrisome was the return of her husband Ratez, who came back for three large rams. Then I learned that the Pygmies had demanded them as a sacrifice to snatch my father from the hands of death. More on edge than usual, you, Grand Madja, waited like an impatient fiancée.