Читать книгу Cruel City - Mongo Beti - Страница 12

“I’m the most miserable girl of them all. Think about it, Banda. Women mock me relentlessly in their songs. The old folks pity me. When I walk by, the young can barely turn away; they can hardly keep from laughing. But I’m not holding any of this against you. I still need to know why you did this to me. Why didn’t you want me? All I need is an explanation.”

Fearing this discussion yet anticipating it, Banda cast a melancholy gaze on his girlfriend: he examined her face with a combination of annoyance and pity. He was visibly perplexed. His whole body, particularly his mouth, expressed the distaste of the generous spirit in the face of life’s demands.

He turned his gaze away just as languidly as he had looked in her direction and buried his head in the filthy yellowing pillow as if it held the answer. He remained stretched out on the bed among the filthy sheets. His long lean body evoked those gigantic black snakes suffering from indigestion that one occasionally crosses in the fields.

In the nearby brush, a few straggling partridges continued to call each other from place to place. A clear, noisy, and turbulent morning forced its way in through the roof and the cracks in the door. Outside, roosters began to stir, crowed at the top of their lungs, and mumbled a few gallant phrases. Banda closed his eyes as if he wanted to ignore it all, wanted to forget.

In a tired, halting, yet undeterred voice, she resumed her interrogation.

“Tell me why you refuse to marry me. How could you prefer a kid who will never know how to cook? I, on the other hand . . . and besides, you’d never have to pay for a thing.”

“You’re annoying me,” Banda blurted out suddenly. It was a cry of despair rather than anger. She sat at the very edge of the bed. Both unsettled and curious, she examined this overgrown boy, this man who suddenly appeared to her in a completely new light. Yes, men were all cruel and insensitive. A stifling and pregnant silence followed. Then Banda spoke.

“What exactly were you thinking? That I had to marry you because you feed me beef—and I wonder where you get it, though again, I’d rather not know . . . and because you let me between your sheets? So, am I to understand that this is a transaction? Why didn’t you say so immediately?”

Just as quickly he was silent again, then he sighed. Perhaps he already regretted the outburst, that it went too far. Perhaps he was just relieved, realizing suddenly that he had just ended their relationship and that this was one less thing to worry about.

She broke the silence in a voice that remained hesitant but determined.

“I’m no longer asking you to marry me; simply tell me why you’re abandoning me. How can you have forgotten the time we spent together, the things you said to me, that I was beautiful, that I was the only woman in the world with whom you were truly at ease? Did I do something that made me undesirable? Did . . . Tell me, I need to understand . . . “

Banda said nothing. After a short pause, he imprudently blurted out:

“My mother!”

“What about your mother?”

“Yes, my mother. She feared that you’d become sterile. Rumor had it that you slept with so many men . . . “

He avoided her gaze, which he could feel lashing his face.

“Banda,” she whispered, softly pursing her lips, “you should be ashamed! Your mother said that and you just accepted it? Will you always be a child? Your mother will soon be dead; can’t you see that?”

Deep down she was ecstatic. What the young man’s confession also revealed was that the “kid” wouldn’t be a significant obstacle. But Banda’s piercing gaze put an end to any such hope.

“You see,” he confided, as if half regretting it, “for me, my mother is . . . Oh! What good is it; you couldn’t possibly understand. As you know, I barely remember my father.”

Lying on his back, he stared obstinately at the smoke-blackened thatch of the roof. His sentences were interspersed with heavy pauses.

“I only had my mother,” he continued.

“And the others?” she snapped.

“What others?”

“Other boys your age . . .”

“What about them?”

“Few of them got to know their fathers. They only had their mothers. That doesn’t mean they worship them as if they’d invented the world. Am I right?”

Banda exhaled deeply. Was he going tell her everything? He was overwhelmed by weariness, as he was whenever he faced an impossible task.

“No, it’s not the same thing,” he said, looking at her pleadingly. “Listen carefully.”

He had turned toward her; while he spoke, bracing himself on one elbow, he gesticulated wildly with his free hand, as if to give his explanation more plausibility. In the face of her dark and ardent stare, he soon realized that she would never understand. He therefore promptly rolled onto his back, stretching out full length, losing his gaze in the thatch. One would have thought that he was now speaking for himself, or at least an invisible audience.

“I love my mother. Aiiii! I love her in a way you couldn’t possibly understand. Have you ever loved someone? When my father died, I was only a couple of years old. My mother took on the task of raising me; she gave this responsibility all her attention. She did absolutely everything for me, you hear? She stuffed me with food. Good food. She administered a colonic once a week. Every night she put me into an enormous kettle of warm water and scrubbed my entire body. Three times a week she sent me off to the catechist . . . I was better dressed than those kids my age who had fathers. We slept on bamboo cots on either side of a fire that my mother stoked continuously while she told me stories, or spoke of my father, or of her own childhood, or of the country where she was born, or of my grandmother who died shortly before I was born. On some nights we would hear an owl hoot or a chimpanzee howl; I would curl up in my bed and my mother, laughing all the while, would say, ‘Don’t be scared, son. He’s not going to come get you while I’m here . . .’ On other nights, the rain drummed on the roof while violent gusts of wind swept through the courtyard, shaking the trees outside the village; then my mother would say: ‘My God! Listen to the mangoes fall. Aren’t you going to be happy tomorrow? Am I right?’ Oh, she punished me often and without mercy, all right. But the memory of those whippings makes her all the more precious.

“Everything she was became clear to me the first time I suffered. My mother had registered me at the city school. From then on I was away from her five days a week. That day, I cried in a way I’ll never cry again.” He leaned over and spat on the floor. “I finally got used to this new existence: but in the beginning it was very difficult; because of my mother’s jealousy I wasn’t used to being around other children. At school, I was stubborn, gloomy, timid, always close to tears. This always annoyed my playmates and led to frequent punishment . . .

“Every Saturday, my mother came to the city. On Sunday, she’d take me to mass, where I’d just yawn. She would leave at the end of the day, but not without a few tender words, that she loved me, that she constantly thought of me, and that she prayed God that nothing bad would happen. Nevertheless, without my knowing it, I was growing up, getting tougher. I was becoming a man. I had already begun to think less frequently about my mother. I had other worries. Her visits, her words, her piety, began to embarrass me. She was fully aware of the changes happening in me. But, precisely because of my age, her sense of propriety prevented her from criticizing me for certain things. How she must have suffered! I only figured this out much later.

“I had been laboring away for eight years in their school, planting, harvesting potatoes, never doing what one normally does at school. Finally, they decided that I was too old and they kicked me out, without a diploma of course.

“Because my mother had stopped visiting, I hadn’t seen her in a while. Once I was reunited with her, I could barely recognize her. She was already ill with the strange sickness that continues to drain the life out of her. She had sacrificed too much in raising me. And I had given her so little thought! If she remained in this hostile country among my father’s half-brothers, people who despised her because they knew she didn’t have any respect for them, it was for me.” Once more, he leaned over and spat on the floor. “To think that she could have returned to her native country where she had relatives. But no, my father wanted me to take up the family land in Bamila. She didn’t have the right to leave, to deprive me of my own land. Frankly, I was wracked with remorse. Thinking back, I imagine her bent over in the baking sun, resolutely scratching the earth with a miniature hoe or going to the market loaded down with a basket of vegetables; all this for me, and I had forgotten her so quickly . . .

“I wanted to redeem myself. I started arguments with those I thought had made her life difficult since my father’s death. I was strong . . . The result? Everyone in the village hates me now, and I’m glad. Nothing is greater than the love of a mother for her child. Perhaps I’m exaggerating; but my mother loved me too much for me to think otherwise.”

He paused at length. His chest suddenly expanded more than usual and he let out a violent breath. Seated at the very edge of the bed she continued to observe him with the same curiosity tinged with reserve.

“It’s true. My mother will soon be dead. When that happens I’ll simply go to the city. It isn’t that I want my mother to die. No, that’s not what I want. Still, she’ll be dead soon. And then I won’t be able to continue living here; there won’t be any reason for it. I’ll leave the country, the village, and I’ll go try my luck in town.”

“What will you do in the city?”

“I’ll try to work. But don’t be misled; it goes without saying that I won’t marry you. I won’t disobey my mother even if she’s dead. The dead walk among us. It’s true that I haven’t been a model son, but at least in that respect. . . .”

“And the kid? Does your mother like her?”

“Well, she came to the house, my mother took a look at her; all she said was, ‘She’s a beautiful woman.’ That’s it. She doesn’t particularly like her.”

She was panting a little, as if she’d run to catch up with Banda, who she sensed was irrevocably escaping her grasp. The same person she always thought of as a big baby was now crushing her. Their eyes locked. She commented without much conviction:

“Would you really pay that much for that miserable waif?”

His stare was almost severe, almost condescending as he answered her.

“The fact is that I like her . . . Don’t you get it, my child? It’s because of my mother. She wants me to wed before she dies. It will be her dying joy. I can’t deny her that pleasure. And since this is the only woman that my mother hasn’t explicitly rejected . . . “

Outside, the morning was already bright with sunshine and blue sky. Banda was suddenly ready to leave . . .

“Tomorrow,” he announced, “I’m going to the city to sell my cocoa to the Greeks. I hope those sons of thieves will give me enough money for the business I have in mind. On the off chance that you needed something . . . “

Without really knowing how, she understood that it was finally over. She didn’t express any particular need.

Now alone, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for herself. That brat really wasn’t the woman he needed.