Guards stood behind the king looking stubborn. The king, pensive and vaguely severe, stared at length at N’Zo Nikiema. The prince had the impression that the king was looking at another person behind him, and he felt ill at ease. With great difficulty, he suppressed his desire to turn around. He knew: royal etiquette forbade him from looking around. It was the first thing that old Mansare had taught him: “You are a prince, N’Zo Nikiema—you must not shout or stamp or look left and right.” As if, in Nimba, in order to govern, it was first important to show that one could stand still for as long as possible. N’Zo Nikiema could not understand either why a father who had not seen his son for nine years had to receive him as an outsider. He regretted having stayed away from his family for so long. In his little two-cylinder car, he could cover the distance in less than seven hours, even if he stopped occasionally to rest the engine. He promised himself that he would explain to his father, when they were alone, that it was not easy to leave Cogemin to come see him. It was not his fault. Castaneda could attest to that. His father had a soft spot for Pierre. Or maybe the old man was punishing him for not having returned for his mother’s funeral. He stood there, everybody watching him silently, and he felt guilty. He felt guilty without knowing why. He also had to admit he was their princely heir and he felt ashamed of them. What had happened over the last several years that made him feel he was no longer at home among his people? He did not know that his life, day by day, had slyly slipped away from him. He dared to look for Castaneda’s eyes and saw that he avoided his gaze.
His father finally motioned for him to come forward. When he approached, the king asked Pierre Castaneda to do the same. All of it had only lasted a few minutes but to him it felt like an eternity.
The griot was supposed to scrupulously repeat the king’s words, but sometimes he adorned them with little historical facts or a dash of humor. N’Zo Nikiema, who could hear both his father and the griot, was struck by the griot’s political sensitivity. The king especially spoke of the old friendship between Pierre Castaneda and Prince N’Zo Nikiema.
“You are,” he said, “blood brothers. You two are blood brothers, and even Fomba, the Ancestor of Ancestors, has come to accept that.”
The dignitaries shook their heads and chins, and the two friends guessed that this enigmatic remark had not been made by chance.
Over the course of a few seconds, Prince Nikiema and Castaneda became more and more enthralled. Basically, the Ancestor of Ancestors had been testing them for a long time. He had seen that the hearts of the two men were free of hatred for each other. But Fomba was not someone who relied on appearances. Upon the foreigners’ arrival, Fomba was convinced that the Evil Forces had sent him to Prince Nikiema to enable the loss of the kingdom. He had searched again and again among the stars of the night, the wind of dawn, and the ocean floor, and had seen nothing wrong.
“For several years,” the king said, “Fomba has followed you, watched you, set traps for you. He has heard every word you’ve said, and has even heard your most secret thoughts.”
He then asked Nikiema to translate for Castaneda all that had been said. As he spoke in a clear voice and with fluency in the foreigners’ language, the prince read an expression of immense pride on his father’s face. He almost got up, although like any monarch he was forbidden such indulgences in the presence of his subjects. It really seemed as if his heart might explode with joy at any point. The words sang and danced as they came out of the mouth of N’Zo Nikiema, who maintained complete self-control. The mere fact that his son was capable of such prodigious acts seemed to forever legitimize the power of the old king over the people of Nimba. In spite of this, N’Zo Nikiema felt somewhat embarrassed. In his own eyes, this discomfort remained a mystery. After all, he had always carried himself well around foreigners without any qualms.
When N’Zo Nikiema had finished translating the king’s words, Castaneda said, “Then . . . ?”
“That’s all,” replied N’Zo Nikiema.
“Are you kidding me?”
“I’m serious.”
“Your Ancestor discovered that you and I are blood brothers. OK. And what else has the Ancestor decided?”
“Maybe the old man will us tell later.”
“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”
“It’s just a way of speaking. I know he has an important revelation to share with us. Please Pierre, let’s not make a scene.” N’Zo Nikiema was becoming increasingly irritated by Pierre Castaneda’s rude behavior, and Castaneda noticed that.
Nikiema’s father summoned them at dinnertime. When they arrived, they immediately noticed the king, whose appearance was entirely different. He was sitting on the floor on a simple mat. A pagne made of faso danfani fabric covered half his torso and he had on a gray and brown hat, tilted to the right. The room he was in was large and pleasantly cool. Nikiema’s father was still smoking his pipe, and the smell of the tobacco brought Nikiema back again to his childhood. Without his ostrich feathers and rows of pearls around his neck, his father looked somewhat ordinary and even a little lost. Nikiema regretted having come to Nimba with Castaneda. No matter what he did, he saw his own father through Castaneda’s eyes: skinny, with hollow cheeks and wrinkled skin, and eyes reddened by palm wine. And even his hat, tilted to the right, made him look like a clown. He was an insignificant man. Nikiema’s father was the king of Nimba and it meant nothing.
He wondered why this trip had caused him so many little pangs of anguish that he hadn’t felt before. If he’d been asked to sum up in one word his feelings and thoughts from the previous few days, it would definitely have been this: defeat. It was a terrible feeling and he saw how much defeat had infected their souls and destroyed everything in its path. Yet he could not tell—any more than the people of Nimba—when and where the war had actually taken place. It was strange. They had been defeated and yet they had never realized that there had been a war.
He saw in the king’s eager eyes—just like those of the dignitaries—that he was watching for the moment when they would bring him, according to the unchanging ritual, gifts from Pierre Castaneda: crates of whiskey and cans of sardines. And also boxes of popcorn. The king loved popcorn. He loved cracking handfuls of it between his old teeth with childish delight, a bit of drool flowing from his lips down to his chin. N’Zo Nikiema thought that this time he could not endure such a spectacle. Castaneda probably sensed his shame, because he gave the king some money and promised that the gifts would be delivered in kind later.
In Nimba, too, cattle had been slaughtered in honor of the two travelers. But their stomachs were tired and they were happy to have some millet porridge with green tamarind sauce.
When they retired to their rooms, Pierre Castaneda said to N’Zo Nikiema, “So?”
Nikiema looked at him quizzically. “What are you talking about?”
“What did the Ancestor say?” Castaneda looked very worried. N’Zo Nikiema finally understood that he was especially worried about Cogemin. The company was benefiting from a concession to extract gold in Ndunga and marble in Masella, a little further southeast. Having a rational mind, Castaneda had always thought it was a little too good to be true. He anticipated difficulties at any time. For him, it was inevitable that the people of Nimba would eventually begin to grumble, “Why do you come from so far away to make money with the riches in our subsoil?” And he knew that they would say that Fomba, the Ancestor of Ancestors, didn’t like that very much because all those foreigners turning over Nimba’s bowels were disturbing his rest below the ground. Castaneda had no intention of letting it go but he knew that such a story could make things terribly complicated.
“It’s good news,” N’Zo Nikiema offered, almost despite himself. “Father senses his end coming. He’s decided that we will both be the sacred kings of Nimba. A throne for you and for me. It’s great, right?”
“You don’t look too happy, young man.”
N’Zo Nikiema was suddenly overcome with a deep weariness. He re
mained silent. For his part, Castaneda would have liked to know what this story of him and N’Zo Nikiema being crowned kings of Nimba meant in practice. But he didn’t ask any questions. He could clearly see that Nikiema was not in the mood to answer him.
One day, after the first rains of the winter season, we found him sitting on a stone at the entrance to the cave.
We believed that the traveler was trying, without fearing for his life, to slip into the depths of the earth. This required courage which only the Gods can give us. But he came from the cities of the West. And people in the West, as we know, do not know fear. Over the centuries—or so it was at least claimed, though there is no need to provide proof—thousands had been swallowed by the abyss. And it always happened the same way: sitting, their heads bowed, where they had found the foreigner, they awaited dusk, their favorite time, to go to that place where darkness was perpetual. And the shadow hovering around them would slowly envelop them. No one was surprised not to see them return. We knew that there was a labyrinth that spanned the underground and about the things that happened there, and the horrors had reached the point where it was impossible to bring them back even if you weren’t particularly hard-hearted.
But the man we saw toward the end of the day at the entrance to the cave was not getting ready to go in. Instead he was coming out. When people realized that, there was an outcry. The news spread throughout the entire Kingdom of Nimba.
The foreigner stood there, frozen, and the first sons of Nimba to arrive on the scene told senseless stories about a clay statue. After we’d circled the man cautiously, we approached him.
He was alive and well.
“Who are you?” someone asked him.
He did not answer, and the question was repeated with all kinds of gestures. He remained silent and, obviously annoyed by our insistence, waved us away.
When they began to back away slowly, worried and confused, he uttered the name of the Ancestor of Ancestors three times and pointed to the entrance to the underground.
It was only then that we recognized his voice. He threw off the coat that was hiding his whole body, and his goatee and blue eyes erased any remaining doubts we had.
For a moment, the silence was total. Everyone looked at each other without saying a word. Each of us could see that over time, dressed in his rags and zigzagging backward like an old drunk, he had lost his mind.
Then I saw the crowd make way for an old, noble man to pass: Mansare. He said, “I, Mansare, come from beyond, and I am telling you, stop your foolish lying.” His face was hard, as it had been long ago, in the days of my childhood.
I said to him, “You, old Mansare, my former Master, I cannot shed your blood. Go away. I beg you. Master, go away. Leave us among ourselves—we are like dogs howling at twilight and you have never been part of this world.”
And Mansare answered, “I’ll remain here, I came from elsewhere without having even moved my feet. Here is where my roots are and my place of exile. Fomba’s earth is gone.”
The foreigner stood up. We heard cries of anger: “To death! To death!” A shot rang out. More and more shots spat out from the mouths of old rifles. The foreigner, frightened, stopped sticking out his chest and took refuge behind a recess of the cave. From there, he started looking around for somebody.
Me.
I felt dizzy in this moment of absolute power. I held his fate in my hands. I could have crushed him like a bug on the black rocks of Mount Nimba. All I had to do was want it.
Everyone waited for the signal to turn the foreigner into an ephemeral bloodstain.
At that exact moment, the future was handed to us on the blade of a knife. We could have cut the stranger’s throat. I said, “Let’s make a place for him in our hearts.” In truth, we had a choice. We would never have been able to pretend otherwise. We cannot accuse destiny of having imposed this foreigner on us. And you, my father, shame on you, who for a little whiskey put lies into Fomba’s mouth—Fomba, the Ancestor of Ancestors.
Does the foreigner now remember the moment when I held him at my mercy? Does he remember when he screamed insanities against me, holed up in his palace, and asked the Lil Boys to bring him my head on a bayonet?
I am not telling you about what our friendship was like before, when he was like an older brother to me. No, I am talking about the throne of Nimba. Fomba gave it to him willingly. I am talking precisely about the moment when he was already almost dead, when the crowd, led by Mansare, although still silent, was in the grip of a massive rage, was ready to disown Fomba and my father, and I went over and rose up in the middle of the circle and said in a strong and clear voice, “No one is going to hurt this man.”
A young man yelled, “But we know who he is—he’s the head of Cogemin! He treats our people like slaves there. He’s a dog!”
This was the type of guy who had a picture of Prieto da Souza in his bedroom. I knew who he was. He wore sunglasses and had a small limp.
I said firmly, “No one is going to hurt this man. The Ancestor of Ancestors has split his heart between him and me.”
They began to recede.
The foreigner came out of his hiding place and came to stand by my side. He was still pale with fear and trembling slightly.
We took the road to Nimba together. Everyone followed us. I made a gesture and everyone started to sing and dance.
Those fools.
Fools.
Mumbi Awele, in my solitude, I yell out again: Fools!
Do you hear me, Mumbi?
So quick to dance to the beat of the drum, they get screwed without even realizing it.
When they do understand, it’s one or two centuries later. Later? Too late? I don’t know.
And I: infamous for generations, long before Fomba’s time. I was not their hopeful prince. I was the chief accountant at Cogemin. What a great promotion. Hey, who’s the crazy one, Fomba? I even had a little two-cylinder car.
After a few days, we started seeing bodies floating near the shores of the Kartani. The bodies of those who had fired the shots. The bodies of those who, at dusk, had treated the foreigner like a dog. Among them, the young man with the limp and the sunglasses. He did not even have time to remove them before he was beheaded. A head without a body, with sunglasses on.
They deserved it. The audacity to challenge Fomba’s lies!
Late yesterday afternoon, after reading the thick file on Pierre Castaneda’s induction into Nimba, I found myself muttering, “Well, here’s a coronation that hasn’t gone unnoticed . . .” It was a straight-up global event.
This is how I started to go a little insane. How can I keep a clear head with the kind of situation I am in? I am starting to feel the effects of my confinement in this cramped place, in the company of this corpse—now completely dried and almost presentable—of the man who for so long has been, after God and along with Castaneda, the master of our destinies. My own death lurks all around me because I don’t see how I will be able to escape unharmed. Aside from all of that, the documents I am unearthing every day are so fascinating, it’s intoxicating. All our history of the last seventy years is right here. Of course, we need to go even further back.
A line from N’Zo Nikiema—or, less often, Mumbi Awele—is sometimes enough to take my mind on a ride to the moment when, for our people, Time began.
But I get back to reality soon enough.
In 1955, there were a thousand and one things happening in the world that were infinitely more important than those I’m going to tell you about. There were wars, masterpieces of world literature were published, and surely many great scientific discoveries were made. I’m just assuming this since it is impossible for me—as each of you will see—to find traces of these events in the archives.
It is therefore understood: that year, the world didn’t suddenly start to revolve around Nimba.
Yet, judging by the press clippings, Castaneda’s coronation did pique the interest of some major newspapers at the time. Some of them had sent speci
al envoys to the kingdom’s capital. I have in front of me a piece of photojournalism expressing the shock felt by a Japanese magazine on this occasion. If I had to create a single image from all the articles I read yesterday, it would look something like this: “Pierre Castaneda, a white colonial, becomes a black king.” Incidentally, this same sentence appears, with slight variations, in many other texts. It shows that the whole issue appeared in a style meant to entertain the readers. In fact, only the unusual side of it was highlighted. I must say that throughout my present solitude, I’ve often enjoyed this style of writing, full of light irony and almost dancelike. There were, of course, several mistakes. It was inevitable: in Europe in the mid-fifties, few people pretended to believe in equality between races and nations. Thanks to these articles, I learned the names of a certain Joseph Conrad, and because of Gaétan—Castaneda’s son—Rudyard Kipling. Castaneda was being compared to Mowgli, the jungle boy. He had also been introduced as a “hero of our time” who made the choice, completely crazy but wise nonetheless, to “leave our civilization and return to the sweet ardor of the primitive world.” This lyricism had a knack for infuriating one columnist renowned for his bad character. I read remarks in his writing that seemed to me, even for the time, somewhat excessive. He claimed he had no desire to go “screeching through the trees together with the savage baboons.”
In hindsight, all of this just makes you smile in an amused, almost tender way. You ask yourself how all these supposedly educated people are so stupid.
Ethnologists had also made the trip. They questioned all the residents of Nimba, who had received orders not to talk with the foreigners or else be severely punished. Just like the reporters, the ethnologists eventually fell back on N’Zo Nikiema and Pierre Castaneda.
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