Kaveena

by Boubacar Boris Diop

  As for you, Mumbi, your little friends from the art community do not like you very much, it seems. They jabber away in the bars without knowing whom they are talking to. You should be careful, if I can give you a little advice here. The gossip we picked up about you! The colonel gave me the list—very thin at the time—of your exhibitions and some articles from so-called art critics. One of those wackos presents you as one of the greatest painters of our time. Nothing less! Bravo.

  But Colonel Kroma did not find what would interest me the most: a political opinion or something that resembled it. You are not what I believe is called an engaged artist. In the National, you had been very clear at the time: “I am only interested in the beautiful things in life. Politics is too ugly.”

  Precious words, especially from the mother of Kaveena. I was reassured by them.

  I was the only one who knew the truth at the time. If Castaneda and the colonel had guessed even just a little bit, it would have put the whole republic in a stir. And let me tell you once again: you would no longer be in this world.

  Nikiema’s bleached-out skeleton now seems quite banal to me. I almost want to say it looks attractive, but it is just that I don’t find it repulsive anymore. I often observe it in silence, without feeling anything. Little by little, it has begun to take on the quality of ancient human remains exhibited in the glass boxes of museums, indifferent to the visitors’ eyes. I have to admit that though I am not inclined toward mysticism, I find it absurd that N’Zo Nikiema just lies there, resting peacefully in his grave, as if for eternity. It feels logical to think that his body and soul are, in some way, waiting. I am convinced that N’Zo Nikiema’s body will be discovered in the weeks to come and that something will finally happen. I imagine, for instance, an angry mob of people walking his skull and bones through the streets of Maren, chanting with hatred. Maybe Pierre Castaneda will make arrangements for a grand national funeral to further his political interests. One way or another, Nikiema will be buried in Nimba, then wept for, insulted, and forgotten. No different from anyone else really. The rest, meaning the matter of N’Zo Nikiema’s second life in the hereafter, will be between him and his God. It isn’t my problem. I find it hard to come to terms with the fact that the individual story of N’Zo Nikiema has ended forever, and almost by accident. And that he is just asleep in his room with his eyes closed, waiting there until Judgment Day. It doesn’t make any sense. There are so many religions on our vast planet of men, and none of them has ever claimed that such a thing is conceivable.

  He drifts through the air like a subtle fragrance. And this waiting, filled with anguish and uncertainty, has a name: Mumbi Awele. Which is why I wasn’t surprised to see her in the studio one afternoon.

  That day, I had stayed a little longer than usual in the basement. Incidentally, the air had become more breathable since N’Zo Nikiema’s feces had become like cow dung exposed to the air for a few days: although they once had been expelled from his presidential bowels, they were now dry, dark pellets, somehow small and trivial. Around four in the afternoon, I went back up to the living room. Someone was singing and listening to music. I could also smell tobacco. I realized immediately that Mumbi Awele was back: if the door had been pried open, I would have heard the noise downstairs.

  Mumbi was busy tidying up the studio. A mop lay by a small puddle on the floor and a broom leaned against the wall. I stood in the doorway not knowing whether I should make a sound or wait until she turned toward me. She continued to wash the dishes, singing along to the music in a voice that sounded vaguely absent to me. I thought, this is the dancer from the Congressional Palace. I was now the only person in the world who knew about her relationship with N’Zo Nikiema. She may have sensed my presence but she did not let it show. She was barefoot and wore jeans that stopped at her calves and hugged her ample bottom, which was too wide for the rest of her body. The tap squirted water on her face now and then. She kept arching back to avoid getting wet and seemed to take a sort of childish pleasure in the whole thing.

  There should have been something intimidating about this whole encounter. This was, after all, someone I had been on the verge of eliminating when I was head of the secret services. Perhaps she knew it. I could imagine Nikiema telling her, “Castaneda and Colonel Asante Kroma had planned on liquidating you. I stopped them in the nick of time.” Judging from his letters, the former president was like a small puppy bouncing on Mumbi’s lap. No doubt she was a very strong woman. Anyone in my situation would have liked to know her better. I knew two or three small things about her, but they didn’t matter. Prostitute. Failed artist. Irrelevant. If that was all she had been, I would have known what to do with her. But it was clear that her real life was elsewhere. Her real life was not even in this small house.

  To reach the forks on the round table, she had to turn to her left and show me her profile. In that moment, I knew she had seen me. I coughed discreetly. She quietly gestured that she was coming back, but then she apparently decided to wipe her hands first.

  Finally, she walked toward me. Her white shirt, tied at her navel, was wide open and showed her firm, gleaming breasts. Her whole upper body seemed to project itself forward and gave all her movements a small arc. I was in front of her for a few seconds and had not yet looked at her face. All I saw was her body, and the drops of water on her breasts. I felt like she had emerged from the sea, and this bothered me. Yes, I have to confess: for some inexplicable reason, I only saw her body. She noticed this and made it known to me with a subtle and quick movement of her lips. It was something like, “Pull yourself together, my friend . . .” Suddenly a little embarrassed, I found myself wondering what she was going to think of me. It was a bad move, and everyone in Maren will tell you that I am not the sort of the guy to lust after women. Colonel Asante Kroma? You’re kidding. We always wonder who fathered his children! Such spiteful rumors sometimes made their way back to me. The logic was simple: people were afraid of me because I was not interested in money or sex. It’s just my nature. Or maybe the result of being raised by a very strict father. I am not going to talk about this now because it’s irrelevant to this story. It is this mastery over my mind that has helped me climb the ladder. In my profession, sobriety in all its forms is the only advantage. One of my younger colleagues saw his promising career cut short: he used to accuse pretty women of conspiracy so he could rape them in the Satellite cellars on the pretext of duty to the state. That’s all he did for years, and everyone got sick of it in the end. We arranged for a little accident just before he was due to get married. Poor old Timbo. Rest in peace, anyway.

  Mumbi Awele held out her hand to me and said, “Hello, Colonel.”

  I replied with the same ease, though I felt a slight tremor in my voice.

  “Don’t be surprised that I recognized you,” she said. “There’s no mystery. I was there when you came to see my father in Kisito.”

  “Ah?” It was not something I wanted to remember. I had gone to see old N’Fumbang with a suitcase full of banknotes. The mission had been miserably thwarted. My professional reflex quickly regained the upper hand. “So then you . . . you were there?”

  “Yes. My father spoke well of you after you left.”

  I tried to hide my embarrassment. “He should have chased me out with a stick. I was trying to buy his silence with a few million.”

  “He was a fair man. If he’d thought it was the right thing to do, he would have killed you and then turned himself in to the police.”

  Odd family, I thought.

  I immediately had the impression that the portrait of Mumbi in N’Zo Nikiema’s letters did not correspond to reality. I was expecting to meet a young woman who was belligerent, arrogant, depraved, though still a misfit in our miserable little real world. I also assumed that she might be marked by a long-lasting grief, ever since the death of her daughter, Kaveena. An almost eternal pain that might show on her face and in her every move. On the contrary, she had a singing voice that made her especially
charming, and I also felt that she was acting a little; she didn’t want to appear defensive in front of me at any time. Of course, we hadn’t said much.

  But I believe that the first moment of contact between people is important, especially in situations that are somewhat strained or abnormal. This is also something my job has taught me. Every time I’ve had to interrogate a tough guy, and what I mean by that is a mentally tough guy, it all played out within the first quarter of a second. I could always tell the moment our eyes met if the prisoner was going to talk, or if he would choose to crack under our hands. Obviously, this is not how it’s going to go with Mumbi. She has nothing to confess, and I am certainly not going to be the one asking questions. I just want to say that, contrary to all expectations, she seemed to be a totally normal person who was pleasant to be with.

  “I’m here for several more days,” I said, “just to test the waters.”

  “Several days . . . several weeks, I don’t care. Anyway, you have nowhere else to go.”

  “I will be forced to leave at some point.”

  She took a pack of Dunhills from a bowl and said, “Can I?”

  I nodded. She lit a cigarette, inhaled the smoke, let it out of her nostrils, and looking searchingly into my eyes said, “I didn’t offer you one because I know your reputation. The colonel doesn’t smoke, the colonel doesn’t drink, et cetera. They just say ‘colonel’ as if there were only one in the whole country.”

  “In my earlier posting, yes, I was the only one.”

  “With your striped cap. A legend.”

  I smiled, somewhat touched. “Right. There was all this fuss, but it was just a cap.”

  “People still talk about it.”

  I shrugged. Mumbi seemed to be mocking me with every word. I felt that she had a cynical attitude toward everyone, or she was convinced of her superiority to the rest of the world.

  “What’s the news outside?”

  She chose not to answer directly. “The most important thing,” she said, changing her tone, “is to not let them find you. They’re looking for you everywhere, and they’ve burned down your house.”

  “My family is already far away.”

  “That’s fortunate. Pierre has only one goal in life: to destroy you both.” She made a slight, almost contemptuous gesture toward Nikiema’s body.

  I started. “Excuse me?”

  “Yes. He is convinced that you are building a liberation army.”

  “It’s not that, madam. It seemed to me that . . . Castaneda . . . you called him . . . Pierre?” Without intending to, I had spoken in an icy, suspicious tone. It was exactly the same tone I used to use when I suddenly had the feeling I’d finally cornered a tough guy.

  Mumbi smiled. I was especially struck by the harshness of her expression when she said, “Well, get this: I am sleeping with Pierre Castaneda.” She paused studiedly, and without giving me time to react, added, “Take it any way you want, but don’t make a big deal of it, please.”

  In situations like this, I never say anything. I am like an animal being chased by the pack, looking all around to see where the danger may be coming from.

  What Mumbi had just told me was not only likely—certain even—but absolutely stupefying. All of a sudden, too many things were coming out at once: N’Zo Nikiema’s corpse, right there under our noses, little Kaveena, her father refusing tens of millions, my guys who never managed to nab her, and now her story with Pierre Castaneda. All this for just one person? Of course, I was dying to know how long she had been with Castaneda. I knew very well that I had no right to ask questions. Take it any way you want, but don’t make a big deal of it, please. It was infuriating for me to think that this woman might have been hopping around from Nikiema’s bed to Castaneda’s while I, supposedly a detective, was on her trail. I don’t know about her relationship with Castaneda but I can attest to the fact that she never felt anything for the wretched Nikiema. With them, it was mere sex, just sex, nothing but sex, sex night and day, morning and night, like a couple of addicts. I allude to it rather discreetly later in this account, but to tell you the truth, the notes and letters from N’Zo Nikiema are filled with vile obscenities. He talks to Mumbi about her splendidly spread-out legs, describing the young woman’s private parts with striking realism. And just like my agent, Mike, he says stuff like, “Your pussy’s on fire.” Literally. Such are the crude terms he uses to address her. I didn’t really want to reveal this aspect of N’Zo Nikiema’s character. It’s not good for him or for our country: when a man his age speaks like that, you cannot repeat his every word. Especially if he has embodied, for better or worse, the ideals of our great nation.

  “Listen,” I said, “I don’t want to get involved in your private life. I’ve seen it all, as you can well imagine. But after what you just told me—”

  She interrupted me. “I thought about that. Don’t worry about your security. I can assure you of one thing: if you stay here, you will be under my protection.” She spoke with incredible authority, and in a tone that tolerated no argument.

  “OK,” I said, not knowing if I really agreed.

  She relaxed a little. “You cannot imagine the torment they have in store for you and the other one.”

  There was silence. Both of us were thinking of N’Zo Nikiema. His skeleton was right behind us on the living room couch.

  Mumbi said, “I’m going to tidy up the house a bit. I’ve started with the studio because I am preparing this exhibit.”

  I thought that the best solution was to buy myself some time in order to see things more clearly. I said very casually, “I’ll give you a hand.”

  I expected her to protest. She accepted. “Fine.”

  We did the housework without making too much noise. Mumbi informed me that she liked to work with music on, excused herself, and promised not to disturb me.

  She didn’t live exclusively in the small house. Sometimes she stayed for several days in the city. When she returned, she would bring me fruit and newspapers and prepare food for both of us. We almost never spoke. She liked that: to do her own thing without involving anyone. I understood and I lived happily with it. I was never very chatty myself either.

  Little memory exercises, more to relieve him from his ennui than out of necessity, allowed N’Zo Nikiema to remember the number of days of temporary calm: thirteen, and not one more. He muttered, “Oh, thirteen days though . . .” It came to him, too, that it was an early Wednesday morning that he had seen the last line of tanks move toward Jinkoré. The last battle, people everywhere were saying, was in sight. After they had passed, thick black smoke darkened the sky for a while, making the city even sadder and the air more suffocating than usual. He thought that the tanks would come back at some point during the day, at dusk perhaps, and that the fighting would be particularly violent around the palace.

  But there was nothing.

  From his window that day, he saw some dull but unusual sights. The residents of his neighborhood, the chicest in the city, could not decide whether or not to flee before Castaneda’s troops arrived. Some men, clearly the fathers of families, went out first and looked around as they talked among themselves. He could tell from the sound of their voices that they were afraid. Then they all went back into their houses. They were going to have to leave. They cursed Nikiema and hoped he would have to leave as well.

  He held on to his power. And yet he knew very well that he would be defeated.

  An egg, beaten against a stone!

  How conceited!

  Yes, but he already had Mother of the Nation secured, and their children. . . .

  Those kids are foreigners. Surely they feel better where they are. The president’s children!

  Each of their luxurious residences cost hundreds of millions. They had finally left, although by force. When you think of the number of people who don’t want to make war, N’Zo Nikiema thought, you are always amazed that war is happening anyway, and so often, just about everywhere in the world. He wondered if the
people who were fleeing knew where they were going. Most likely not. Still, they were lucky: they could save their skins by doling out bank bills, Indian hemp, or cans of beer to Castaneda’s Lil Boys. This way, they would manage to reach the border town of Dombe down south. With each passing day, Dombe found itself to be at the center of greed. The rest of the country was ransacked. Armed factions with eccentric names, under the command of cruel and at times demented leaders, shot anyone who crossed their path and then slashed them with machetes.

  Tap-tap.

  Rat-a-tat.

  Tap.

  Little clicks and popping noises in the light of the morning.

  He approached the window and slowly, with pressure ever so slight from his right index finger, moved the curtain that lined the bay window. The street below was calm, deserted. Exactly as he had expected.

  He could make out a vague dark figure zigzagging toward the balcony of the palace. Then a young man appeared at the end of Blériot Avenue. He must have been between eighteen and twenty years old and was dancing around alone on the ridge, his eyes and Kalash pointed up at the sky. He shot several bursts in the air then watched the bullets form a curve above the blaze. It was as if he was trying to get drunk off of the odor of the powder. His weapon made a small brief clicking noise:

  Tap-tap.

  Rat-a-tat.

  Tap.

  The young man was wearing a white or yellow bandanna under a cap and his shirt was ripped up to his chest. Alone in his refuge, N’Zo Nikiema particularly remembered the guy’s sneakers. They were what made him seem like an adolescent tap dancing or playing roulette. It didn’t seem to be a scene from a country at war. He could have abandoned himself to the same little dance in a semideserted street in Marseille or Zurich holding a bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand instead of a Kalashnikov. But on this wide avenue, on those days when the outcome of the war was being decided, there were no fast food restaurants serving cold drinks and hot dogs; instead there were carcasses of charred cars and corpses that no one thought anymore about coming to pick up.