Читать книгу The Amputated Memory - Marjolijn de Jager - Страница 18

7

The first event, in Massébè, our village: We hear a car motor. People come running because there is no passable road here, so how could a car come through? All the same, a motor revs up, a blast of hot air blows between the legs of the assembled people, the grass flattens, but we see no car.

Having reached us over your passable road, Father, the phantom car leaves tire tracks! Everyone is yelling in bewilderment and fear. Now every villager is following the tracks of an invisible car, in a frenzy of motors and voices, as far as the thirteenth kilometer, which is where the roadwork had come to a halt twelve days before.

The motor stops. A woman in a trance says that she sees a red car driven by a skeleton. The car is filled with all kinds of scythes and forks covered in blood, but only she can see them. Even the Mbombocks, Grand Pa Helly and Tonyè Nuk, don’t see the red car. What is certain, though, is that everyone has seen the tire tracks and everyone has heard the motor cut off.

The men begin to berate the invisible car: “You won’t come through here again, whoever you are, not without showing and introducing yourself! We order you to explain yourself! Or else you’ll be sorry you were ever born! You’re on the soil of free men, and if you want to hang on to your own freedom, you’d better be on your way and never come back!”

The Mbombocks Grand Pa Helly and Tonyè Nuk use their flyswatters, drenched in rapidly prepared potions, to sprinkle the place where the red car was supposedly parked. The motor suddenly starts up again and revs very loudly, flattening the grass and people with hot air. Did the car take off? The motor’s noise moves up into the sky like that of an airplane! Making an effort to be first, people stand up in baffled silence and go home single file.

• • •

Second event: A Sunday morning with everyone already in their Sunday best, as is proper, some for the Catholic mass and others for the Protestant service. In Massébè it is one or the other, just about half and half. Of course, everyone is animist as well; they have already been purified by the medicine man’s Lilan Liliaceae, a plant in the lily family, and have made offerings to the ancestors. You never know. . . .

After breakfast, just when everyone is ready to leave the house, we hear a loud noise coming from the north. We go out and move in that direction, but when we reach a neighbor’s house, the noise seems to be coming from further away. Again everyone arrives at the thirteenth kilometer, right where your road stops, Father. Now the noise is coming from the South. We retrace our steps, following the sound, and walk until the day is half gone. Now the noise is coming from the north!

We all sit down and wait for this sorcerers’ meeting in bright daylight to come to an end. It lasts until sundown. The same woman in a trance claims she hears a meeting where the end of our world is under debate. According to her, the ancestors are pleading on behalf of Massébè, sketching out some visions of its evolution and renewal. But the spirits don’t want to hear any more; there are too many sorcerers striving to make time stop.

“In the name of heaven and earth,” the woman shouts, “stop obstructing the course of life.” And she collapses in a faint. She is so heavy now that it takes four men to move her. Again we go home single file, unable to resist, as if each of us felt the need to fall into line.

• • •

Third event: This time the news arrives like a thunderbolt, and terrifies everyone: The Whites have decided to comb the Elephant Forest to flush out Mpôdôl, known as the Great Resistance Fighter.

But all the roads that lead there have become very dangerous because the majority of the inhabitants of the villages bordering the terrible forest have joined the resistance, and in effect form a guerrilla force that prevents the army from reaching the Great Resistance Fighter. The Whites consider burning the whole forest down with napalm, but a few “converted nationalists” implore them to consider the environment, and suggest that they find more accessible paths. They see the village of Massébè as an ally, because of you, Father, the friend and brother-in-law of the Whites. They call you in as a consultant, and you reassure them: Indeed, if they spare the mythical forest of your ancestors, you yourself will guide them in, going through your village, where you are sure nobody will resist.

Yes, indeed, the news comes like a thunderbolt, proving to the men of Massébè that you are bragging about having emasculated them all. If they were to let you through, it would be the only thing History would remember!

The reason why people submitted to your will doesn’t matter: It might have been out of respect for your father, compassion for your mother who had already shed so many tears, love for your sister or your wife, or perhaps out of fear of you and the myth of the Lôs you had created for yourself. However, the men of our village decided that the Whites were not going to penetrate the Elephant Forest via Massébè, except over their dead bodies. It would never be said that Massébè was the gate through which Mpôdôl—the eyes and the mouthpiece of every Bassa—had been handed over to die, thereby transforming an entire people into deaf-mutes!

They hold a meeting in front of your parents, and ask them to talk you out of it—or else to urge you to come with all the battalions of the White army stationed in the land of the Bassa and the surrounding regions, if you could. But you should be prepared to face the fact that you and your friends wouldn’t pass through Massébè without first slaughtering its entire population, including the women and children. And even so, the spirit of the land had made up its mind that you would not pass through.

Grand Madja decides she’d go and catch her son herself and hold him down until he either trounces her first or else gives up. As she doesn’t know exactly where he is, she goes to lay siege at the gate of the headquarters in the district’s main town, positive that they’d pass by there. Alas! At the advice of Aunt Roz, Grand Madja’s three illegitimate “daughters-in-law” leave with their children to find refuge among their own tribes. With her most recently born little girl in her arms, and once again almost at term, my mother leaves for her people in the city: If everyone in Massébè was going to be massacred then at least these few would survive.

Aunt Roz announces she is ready to bar the road to the Whites, even if she has to do so with her teeth! She lends your old hunting rifle to the men, Father, but unfortunately there is only one cartridge of bullets left, meant for hunting partridge. Never mind—it is decided that this one cartridge would be shot only as a last resort at the commander of the Whites himself.

“Who other than Njokè knows how to use this rifle? Nobody!”

“What do you mean, nobody? Of course there’s someone! Minkéng Mi Ndjé, an uncle, asserts that he once used this same kind of rifle to kill a buffalo on a hunting trip.”

Aunt Roz expresses her surprise, never having heard this story, and all the more skeptical because her cousin is extremely myopic. He protests vehemently and demands that Aunt Roz prove him wrong. The rifle with its single cartridge has to be entrusted to him.

Many other suggestions are made: setting elephant traps on the road to prevent the Whites from advancing; capturing some of them and diverting others; bringing in some Ngangan Sunkan with their magic powers to have them place poisoned warrior ants and prepare lightning, and so on. While they are putting the finishing touches on their thousand defense strategies, we hear a nkou-drum announcing your arrival, Father, accompanied by a commando unit of some fifty soldiers.

Now, there are barely thirty people in attendance at the strategy meeting. The rest of the village population has not yet been alerted. What should be done?

“Go on the attack right away,” Uncle Mingkeng orders, and the fearful herd follows its nearsighted and panic-stricken leader into the bush.

Grand Pa Helly puts on his Mbock dress and rushes into the bush as well, but in a direction that was his alone. I never did know his intentions. I am now in the house by myself, in charge of all the homes—those of my parents, my grandparents, those of the three mothers, and of Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez, who always manages not to be present when problems arise, like a cat when death approaches. In addition to this, I am responsible for my little sister.

I lock all the doors, and bring the cooking pots and the food to my grandparents’ house where we lock ourselves up.

The sound of an explosion awakens me. My little sister was sleeping quietly. I go to take a look outside—nobody. I gather up my courage and venture as far as my father’s rear courtyard. Not a leaf stirring; there isn’t a bit of air—all of nature is holding its breath, as am I.

Suddenly everything moves—wind, shouting, people running. Aunt Roz comes out of my grandparents’ house with my little sister in her arms and, after motioning me with her head, is swallowed up in the bush. I follow on her heels.

Aunt Roz should have been a man, she is so fearless, always ready to take the initiative, avoiding obstacles but never deviating from her goals. While the others flee from danger, she returns to it. She hides behind a shrub, and we can see the battalion of White men buzzing excitedly. One of them is lying on a kind of bag, his left shoulder bleeding profusely. My father is busy with him, holding a knife that from time to time he’d run through some flames. Water boiled on a blue-tinged fire that came from a kind of bronze-colored stove. I later learn it was a camping stove. A team of White men return, holding on to five of my uncles, all tied to one another.

My father pretends not to know them, shaking his head in denial at every question, as my uncles did, too. Unfortunately, I can’t understand the questions.

Another group of White men come back, holding Grand Madja, Great-Aunt Kèl Lam, and another dozen women, fastened to a rope. One of the Whites brutally strike my great-aunt, but she doesn’t flinch. The soldier pushes her even more violently so that she falls, pulling all the other women to the ground with her.

Aunt Roz holds her breath, her body rigid as a tree trunk. Her ears are as red and transparent as those of Grand Pa Helly during his rare moments of rage. Although my sister and I are just as rigid, ours came from complete lack of understanding.

A different group of White men arrive, followed by at least twenty of my uncles. How had five small White men been able to tie up twenty of my very solid uncles? Oh yes, they had rifles. . . . But when I saw about twenty of my cousins, children like me, bound up and whipped, I almost let out a scream. Holding me in a vicelike grip, Aunt Roz puts her hand over my mouth. Our eyes are bulging like a snail’s antennas.

A whole crowd of people, all tied together with rope, is now standing around the White man on the ground, who’d been temporarily forgotten. Now he is wrapped up in white bandages and placed on a makeshift stretcher. A few of my uncles are forced to carry him. They hoist the four handles of the stretcher up on their shoulders, and the procession moves toward our village. Aunt Roz waits until they are gone and then we turn back, using a shortcut to get to the house before they do.

Aunt Roz acts as if we were returning from the fields, mud-stained and carrying hoes and baskets with vegetables. We’d seen and heard nothing; we know nothing. We even wait to see them appear before we begin to unload. Right away about ten of the White men surround us and rip away our baskets and Aunt Roz’s machete. She begins to yell and confront her brother, asking him what is going on—in Bassa, as if she doesn’t understand French, thereby making it possible for all of us to follow my father’s explanations.

“Resistance fighters fired at Captain Râteau. They’re wrong if they think they can stop the battalion from entering the Elephant Forest and catching that outlaw who claims to be Mpôdôl! Furthermore, they must know there’ll be retaliation: If the captain dies, sixty men from Massébè will be shot. You’d better pray that he doesn’t die, for then only twelve will be shot.”

Shrieking comes from every side. Many other people arrive to hear the news, and are all arrested, bound, and pushed to the ground after being hit with rifle butts or machetes.

My father had stated that the men from Massébè would never shoot at White people—first, because they all respected White authority, and second, because they didn’t own any rifles or ammunition. He had been willing to swear to this, because he knew them so well. Now he urges every man to attest to this himself, loud and clear, so that he can intervene and convince the White men to search elsewhere. But no one utters a word.

The White man in white bandages is placed in my father’s bed. A team that returns from the neighboring village announces that the Ndog Béa have dug trenches barring the evacuation of the captain by that route. They’d have to cope here for the time being, and figure out what to do next. The Whites make a radio call and arrange for a helicopter to evacuate the injured man.

“While we wait,” my father tells the villagers, “we have to feed the whole battalion. Therefore I’m asking everyone to contribute poultry, pigs, sheep, so we can feed the fifty White mouths that are now here, as well as those who are with them.”

That is when Grand Pa Helly, whom no one saw approaching, very calmly says: “There’s enough here to feed all these mouths for nine days without depriving the people; they’ve been through enough already. Let’s hope the White men won’t stay any longer than that. Tell them to set our young people free so they can slaughter the animals, and the women, too, so they can prepare the food.”

The three slaughtered pigs are more than enough to feed the whole battalion. These gentlemen decide that everyone has to be tied up again before going to sleep. More than sixty men and several hundred women and children are bound together, one arm attached to the person in front and the other arm to the person behind. This way we form one very long line that soon changes into a spiral, and so we spend the night, like an enormous snail of prisoners. Some people, like Aunt Roz and her cousins, don’t sleep a wink.

In the morning two helicopters unload a veritable medical team, and enough equipment for an entire clinic. They listened to the captain’s chest and declare that my father has done a good job. Just imagine, a single cartridge meant to hunt a bird, a miserable bit of lead, had lodged in a shoulder, and my father had extracted it with ease. The captain’s life was never in danger, and that same evening he had eaten lustily of the pork cooked in tree bark, asking for more at breakfast time. No matter! They brought in an alternate captain ordered to carry out the promised retaliation and continue the mission to the Elephant Forest. They deem it wise to send my father back to the capital. He disappears into one of the helicopters.

The snail of prisoners slowly unwinds and the long line is taken to the bush. Five very flushed and confused young White men are assigned to kill twelve Black men whose wives had cooked the pork in tree bark that was to be their last meal. One of the young men, the puniest of the five, named Private Marteau comes to a halt in front of me. Our eyes lock for what seemed like an eternity to me. A voice thundered: “Come on, Private Marteau!”

He jumps, and puts his gun to the head of my Uncle Ngan Njock, whose arm is tied to my right arm. One side of his head explodes, the blood spurting out. My uncle slumps to the ground, as did Private Marteau, who started to vomit violently. I tried to stay upright, but the weight of my uncle forced me to bend over in two. I see several other uncles of mine fall not far from me, and the ones who collapse pulled the rest of us to the ground with them. Nobody screams or cries.

It seemed as if death had immobilized everyone. Soon the buzzing of fat green flies is heard and, little by little, like the throbbing of a motor, a whole swarm latch onto my Uncle Ngan’s head.

Even after the battalion had been gone for several hours, we remain still on the ground, some in their eternal sleep and others drugged by exhaustion, fear, or despair. Still others with their eyes open, obstinate in their determination to look death right in the face. As for me, I can’t keep my eyes off the swarm of flies laying tiny white maggots on my uncle’s head.

Even today, I still wonder why an entire village population, alive and welded in death, lay motionless for hours. Perhaps we thought there were a few White men left, watching us to see if one of us might budge, and ready to blow his head off. Or perhaps we preferred to die together, and not be one of those who would some day have to describe something this grotesque. Undoubtedly, that was the reason why the event wasn’t spoken of again for another five years, and even then only in half-whispers, under breath and in veiled terms, like a distant nightmare. It took five years of waiting for the deported inhabitants of Massébè to come back to their land and for a purification ceremony to take place.

On a tourist trip to France, we visited Oradour, a small village in the Limousin, whose population had been slaughtered by German soldiers during the Second World War. Although they had already lost the war, they still locked innocent women and children in a church, burned them alive, and in the name of their glorious fatherland shot unarmed men like pheasants. While visiting such places, where signs provided many details, the memory of the Massébè massacre brutally invaded my consciousness. I wondered if a soldier named Marteau had visited there the way I was visiting here, and had then remembered his own actions. Recalling the scene in his mind, did he tell himself he’d served his country, as these mad officers had done? But then, France was not at war with the land of the Bassa! There had never been any war, proved by the fact that there is no record of it anywhere. Private Marteau must have been wholly convinced he was achieving his mission of civilization and salvation.

In some way, for the man whose life is a perpetual path of initiation, he would be right. As my father used to say, catastrophe is a sign that life is evolving, and this is salvation. But for Massébè’s ordinary women and children, it was a sordid and unspeakable massacre, a catastrophe that even someone like Dimalè would not have unleashed.

As night fell, Grand Pa Helly, who certainly had the skill of vanishing and reappearing, seemed to emerge from nowhere in the company of the Mbombock Ton Nuk and Great-Uncle Mbon Minyèm. Silently they untied everyone’s arms. Completely numb, the people painfully rose. Twelve bodies remained on the ground for all eternity. Women undid their pagnes to cover the dead.

Great-Uncle Mbon told us that every hut was burned down, and that the three of them had spent the day following the battalion’s trail, trying to salvage what could be salvaged after it departed. They wanted everyone to recognize they’d never see their village again the way it once was, and they’d never again own anything at all.

“Yes, we do! Now we own combativeness and a vastly increased determination,” Aunt Roz said. “They won’t enter the Elephant Forest via Massébè. The blood spilt here must stop them. So, everyone stand up!”

And everyone remained upright throughout the years that the repression lasted. The healthy men and women joined the resistance. The rest of the population was deported to a kind of concentration camp they called the Relocation Camp of Bondjock. Grand Madja and Aunt Roz went there at Grand Pa Helly’s insistence. But Aunt Roz was the link with the resistance fighters, collecting half of the dried cod, the chocolate, sugar, and milk they gave us and depositing them in the shrubbery. She always managed to convince some young military guardsmen to let her look for traditional medicines for her aged father or fruit for her children. Her accomplices then passed the provisions to the fighters through the camp’s fence—to the enormous disapproval of her mother, who dreaded another retaliation, another massacre, if her daughter were caught red-handed as a supporter of the resistance. But nothing could stop Aunt Roz. She always answered that it was her duty to try to put right the ills her brother had created.

She was the main resistance organizer in the region. Her husband Ratez had settled in the district’s main town, where he had found a job as an assistant to the local commander, and so she had free rein. She had made the food supply and rationing service completely subservient to her by becoming its director’s mistress. She could therefore collect all the leftovers from the officers’ mess and have the women make them into meals again before she deposited them outside the camp for the resistance fighters to pick up. Indeed, for three years the battalion of Bondjock unwittingly provided the resistance with sugar, milk, smoked fish, beef, and vitally needed medications. Aunt Roz figured it was the least she could do. She also organized small teams to sabotage the machinery intended for opening the road to the Elephant Forest. The children would pour a bit of sauce in the motor oil, a bit of salt in the carburetors, in tiny quantities—just enough to slow down the work, but keep anyone from figuring out the reason.

The road never went beyond Massébè.

And elsewhere, nobody knows the name of the village that today has a hundred inhabitants at best. Better that it remain anonymous than it enter the history books under the name “gate of the death for every future.”