I’m not telling you this to make up for my own past misdeeds, but I remember well having been sickened reading the narrative about Kaveena’s death a few years ago. It was horrible. At the time I wondered which of my men had been able to do it. At first I didn’t think of Pierre Castaneda. But by the following day I’d forgotten about the case. And then it suddenly came back as a top story. And can you believe it was Pierre Castaneda who warned me first, in an almost mocking tone, “Be careful, Niko. The higher-ups claim to not understand anything about this story. I know its all bullshit. They say you should stop with your excesses.”
I said to him, “My excesses? Are you fucking joking, Pierre?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know why, but this little Kaveena story means a lot to them.”
I tried to remember. Your daughter’s name didn’t ring any bells for me. So I said to him, “Listen, Pierre, we all have a lot on our minds. So it’s normal that we forget sometimes. What’s this about? Who is this Kaveena, as you say?”
He jogged my memory about the case and concluded in a willfully false tone, “I know it’s not your fault . . .” That meant, don’t worry about it, we’ll manage this together, I’ve always been there to clean up your messes. No one had yet spoken about the famous video.
I remember I was very clear: “Listen to me, Pierre. I’m as bloodthirsty as can be, but I’m not into killing little girls knowing neither why nor where nor when. Agreed?”
He sneered and I sensed a mix of disgust and skepticism. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it at all. It was a fight. It started slowly. That day, I asked Pierre Castaneda, “So, then, where exactly are these higher-ups . . . ?” He smiled as if to say, “Stop acting so naive.”
As I expected, at the first opportunity they brought up your daughter’s murder to me again. A journal benefited from a review of the year’s politics—it was the end of December—so in between two pontificating analyses they could slip in a discreet allusion to the “unexplained crimes of the republic.” Among them was Kaveena’s murder, “particularly shocking,” they wrote, “to human consciousness”: “What seemed at first to be a sordid news item could be, if certain information is confirmed, a real time bomb.” Such an expression in such a newspaper was the equivalent of a death sentence for me. Only Pierre Castaneda could be the instigator of that article. All I could do was prepare myself for the storm. It would be terribly violent.
Why did I decide to give free rein to all my memories? I really have no idea. Maybe the Lil Boy I saw yesterday from the balcony of my palace tap dancing on Blériot Avenue has something to do with these lies and confessions. Or is it simply the fact of being where I am at this moment?
In the small house, there isn’t a single mirror. You could never stand mirrors. Clocks either, for that matter.
One day, I wanted to understand why. According to your laconic, irritated explanations, there was nothing to understand. I let it go. It wasn’t worth a fight.
A car passed over the bridge. A truck. Or maybe one of those new Volvo buses from the national transportation company. Only they were capable of making the walls of the basement tremble. In the beginning, those noises—even muffled—hammered in his head. But rather quickly, he came to miss them. He used to go up to the living room and wait to see the yellow-and-green buses through the thin cracks of the window. Their tires would lift up the ocher dust at the end of the avenue. He couldn’t even see the passengers’ faces through the bus windows. He imagined their dreams and their frustrations. Some of them cursed him in silence. Others denigrated him openly.
That man dared call himself the Sun Giant of Mount Nimba!
He was mad!
So where is he now? I say, where is the man who filled our husbands’ hearts with fear?
I’m asking you, sister! Tell us!
Only God’s greatness is eternal!
Wherever he is, I don’t envy him, that man who did so much evil to us!
I say, only God’s greatness is eternal!
Wallaay!
Each day, new desires. It could be anything. To bite into the pink acidic flesh of a guava fruit and feel the brief crunching of its seeds between his teeth. But there weren’t any guavas in his hideout. We always forget something. It made him a little sad.
Luckily, his hikes with Mansare at the foot of Mount Nimba came back to him. He was the heir to the throne and the old man was naming the world for him.
“That bird, as small as it may be, still has a sacred significance. It’s a hummingbird. People tell a story about him.”
Coming from afar, Mansare’s voice resonated discreetly through the silence of the house.
“One day, my prince, oh so long ago, this entire forest you see was engulfed in flames. Such a fire, along with such furious winds, no one on our earth had ever seen anything like it. So all the animals, frightened, fled far from the blaze. The lion, the hippopotamus, the warthog, the leopard, the jackal, the big and the small animals, all of them took shelter. All of them, or almost all. . . . Because the hummingbird decided to fight the fire. With his tiny beak, he drew water from the Nemeni River and threw it on the flames that were so high they were turning the sky red. He did that several times, then, exhausted, he decided to rest a little. Then the other animals lashed out at him.
“‘Conceited little fool, go on!’ said the rhinoceros.
“‘Ha! Ha! Keep going,’ the hyena giggled in his nasal voice. ‘A hero never tires!’
“They took turns mocking him this way, all of them laughing heartily. The hummingbird let them laugh as much as they wanted and then he said to them, ‘You’re right. All alone, I’ll never be able to put out this giant blaze. I know it myself. But remember this: at least I am doing what I can.’”
At that point in his story, Mansare stopped. Had it ended? That was impossible. Breathless, the prince waited for him to continue the story. He wanted Mansare to say that the rhinoceros and hyena and all the other animals in the forest were ashamed after hearing the hummingbird’s words. That’s what was good about Mansare’s stories: when someone was misbehaving, sooner or later he made them die a painful death.
Nikiema asked hopefully, “Old Mansare, what happened to the other animals? Were all of them devoured by the fire?”
The old man smiled and simply shrugged his shoulders. Since Prince Nikiema was insisting, he said to him, “Noble Prince N’Zo Nikiema, one day you will be our king, and when that happens, for the good of Nimba, do not forget what your ears are going to hear now: the stories I’m telling you now sometimes have an ending much later.” He paused, then added, “. . . Or too late. Don’t ever forget that either, Noble Prince.”
Remembering this, the fugitive shook his head.
He’d been a lively, happy, and mischievous child. This was surprising even to him when he thought back on it, since so much of his adult life had been full of sadness and bitterness.
He decided to get clean.
When he’d arrived at the small house two months earlier, he had no self-doubt. The cold yellowish water flowing from the faucet disgusted him. He preferred to stay dirty, as if driven by a subconscious desire for punishment.
But this morning, he wanted to shave and take a nice shower. He wanted to feel his pores breathe like they did after a massage at the hammam. He poured five bottles of mineral water into a blue plastic bucket and picked up the olive oil soap coated in a mesh cloth. White foam formed and he scrubbed his body for almost an hour, with fierce diligence. As he dried himself off, he pretended not to see the stains—thick black filth—on the white towel. Incidentally, that was what discouraged him from splashing some cologne on himself. He feared not being able to tolerate the mix of odors: excrement and urine in the toilet and eau de cologne on his clothes. Better to start over again. Kill time one way or another. He went back into the bathroom and scrubbed his whole body again, taking his own sweet time. He rubbed the mesh cloth again and again over every millimeter of his skin, except on his face.
He didn’t know why there was so much filth on his arms and legs, especially on the inner sides of them. He didn’t stop until he was sure he was really clean. The filth, now slimy from the olive oil soap, had accumulated again in the bathtub. He contemplated it with slight disgust and made it disappear down the kitchen sink. It had been a long time since he’d felt so good in his skin. He even felt some sort of cheerfulness coming on.
He made himself coffee. From Kitalé, his favorite. He was amused to read what was written on the package: “Fine and lightly spiced. 100 percent Arabica. From the mountain plantations in the region of Kitalé, near Mount Elgon, this Arabica owes the magic of its aroma and finesse to the richest volcanic soils of Africa.” As he sipped it, he started putting his papers in order. Since his arrival at the small house, he had left things lying around almost everywhere. In his utter confusion, he thought he had little time to live.
He placed the album on his knees.
He had always gotten an ambiguous pleasure from ripping up the photos and letters of certain people he’d forgotten about. Going through his calendar and throwing addresses and telephone numbers into the fire made him feel like he was bursting boils on his body one by one. Almost a way of killing people he’d thought he liked and whom he’d ended up hating with all his might. He hesitated when he came to his honeymoon photos. Mother of the Nation. Or “Ma Nation,” as the poor used to say to mock her. They had never been happy together, not even the day when, young, radiant, rich, envied by all, they rushed onto the stage of the open-air theater to start their wedding reception. At least that was clear. The rest, a mystery. No use stopping there. Good old Ma. . . . All your photos in the hole. Couldn’t give a damn, he lashed out silently with a little smile loaded with violence. Besides, one day Mumbi had said to him. “Doesn’t this Mother of the Nation have a real name?”
She certainly hadn’t asked the question out of sympathy for the president’s wife. She’d always despised her. And he had thought, without really believing it, that she was jealous. To humor her, he’d replied, “Oh! That one. . . . Always talking about the good Lord. She’s a visionary.”
“Not even,” Mumbi then said meanly. “She stuffs her pockets, yes.”
Nikiema had preferred to stay quiet. He didn’t know where she was trying to go with that. They weren’t in the habit of talking about his family life.
She went further: “Much too young for you. And you know she’s not virtuous.”
It was his fault too. He wanted a wife who looked good on TV. For his political career. She was always talking about the good Lord but she had the devil in her.
Other images.
He and Castaneda are standing on top of a mountain. It’s winter. They look really young. They’re wearing yellow coats with thick collars and he, with his hands in his pockets, seems to be shivering. He’s always been very sensitive to the cold. Are they in Haute-Savoie or somewhere else in Castaneda’s country?
They were the best friends in the world. Nothing would make him believe that Castaneda had calculated everything from the beginning. Of course, Nikiema had been called to reign over Nimba, a region exploited by Cogemin. It had been more prudent to count on him and Castaneda had done that. And afterward? That wasn’t all there was between them. Castaneda had brought him to spend a vacation with him in his native village. A peaceful little town. He saw himself again sitting on a stone bench facing the lake. People walking had been passing in front of him since the beginning of the afternoon. They’re in no rush, walking. From time to time he focuses his attention on a runner in a jogging suit or on a cyclist. He follows them with his eyes until they disappear into the distance. He turns to look at the lake once again. All the beauty of life, all the sweetness of the world is on its smooth surface. Ducks glide noiselessly from one bank to the other. People throw the white parts of bread to them, or some other food, and they grab it with their beaks almost without moving, agile and elegant. For a moment, he imagines himself shooting at them. Lake reddened with blood. What a commotion! The inhabitants of the little town would talk about it for a long time. Don’t you remember? The year their son Castaneda brought this Negro here and he killed all our ducks. They’re not like us, they don’t like animals, those people. You all are young, but you’ve got to admit, it isn’t the first time those Castanedas started showing us their true colors.
He remembers something he read in his youth. An American thriller. The story of a student who was a serial killer. Every week, they would find a corpse hanging from a tree. His victims were the campus squirrels and he would rip out their eyes before killing them. The plot thickened through the pages—some screamed their anger and others said OK, and what about the Indians, what did we do to them, better not exaggerate, dirty hypocrites.
On the other bank, we can make out the contours of a small town through the fog, known for its whale station and casinos frequented by billionaire princes from the east. He’s alone because he’s waiting for a girl. It’s his very first date ever. In the beginning, he was terribly intimidated by Nicole. For several days, Pierre hadn’t stopped pushing him: go on, Niko, don’t be an idiot, a girl so screwed up, they’re hot around here, she’s crazy about you, my man Niko, I’m telling you. Pierre made people’s enjoyment a point of honor in his little town there.
All that was a long time ago, Nikiema said to himself suddenly, with a hint of melancholy.
If someone were to ask him what his idea of happiness was, he’d know what to answer. A deserted street in the morning, in a little town. Over there, of course. Like that day an eternity ago, sitting with a young girl who was a little shy on the terrace of a café, watching two garbage collectors dressed in yellow suits with wide green bands rolling some garbage cans to their truck. Nicole Lombard. Suddenly disturbed, he remembered the man seated in front of them opening his newspaper, a look of ennui on his face. Just that had upset him so many years afterward.
It was time to go to bed.
As he was turning off the lights, he noticed an unfinished portrait of Kaveena leaning against one of the chairs. And even that couldn’t spoil his budding happiness.
He thought, oh! Mumbi. . . Let her refuse to believe me if she wants. I’m not going to drag that out all the time. I’ve finally had enough, my little bitch. And besides: We are innocent or we are not.
Then, out loud, in a semisarcastic, semiangry tone: “We know them well, the murderers of little girls, eh!”
My God, how he hated Pierre Castaneda!
Mumbi Awele is an amazing young woman. She’s the center of everything but she builds a wall of absolute silence around herself. What can she be doing with Castaneda? I’ve never heard her utter her daughter Kaveena’s name, or N’Zo Nikiema’s. She spends each day in front of the mortal remains of the latter, seemingly without even paying any attention to him. I’ve learned to read faces. Hers signals very clearly, “I don’t have anything to say about that man or about anyone else.”
As for me, I sometimes forget that I am, as was N’Zo Nikiema a short while ago, a fugitive. A few days ago, I suddenly understood: I’m also waiting. In this small house, Mumbi is the only master of her destiny and perhaps even of ours. N’Zo Nikiema is waiting for a burial and I am waiting for death. Or exile. Or the truth. I don’t even know the meaning of the last word. I believe I hold a part of this truth and I want to say to Mumbi, “Your hate is blinding you. N’Zo Nikiema did not kill your daughter.” May the former president’s enemies pardon me: I want to testify to his innocence. It’s understood: Pierre Castaneda and N’Zo Nikiema, each is as vile as the other. I know it because I’ve worked for each of them. But if there’s a case I followed closely, it’s that of little Kaveena’s murder. And I must say this: Castaneda managed to commit this crime all by himself. And also to make a complete mess of it.
Each time Mumbi comes back from town, I think, this will be a good time. We’re finally going to talk about what happened. In fact, I’m not expecting her to take the initiative. I simply hope that
I’m finally going to dare to lead our conversation to that topic. Nothing ever happens. She comes and goes for days, takes care of me with kindness—as if I were one of her family members who was convalescing in her home—then leaves again without saying when she’s planning to come back. The rare times we speak, it’s about really trivial things. Like the discussions we’ve had for a long time about some soccer match between our country and Cameroon. It’s true we came close to a riot with that game.
I don’t understand Mumbi Awele’s stubborn silences—which in a way quiver with a thousand secret words.
This morning, after being absent for several days, she comes back much earlier than usual. It’s not yet nine o’clock. I say to myself as I watch her head toward her studio, Today I will not let her leave without trying something.
“I stopped by Donka’s,” she says as she lays out some cakes on a small rectangular Venn wood plate.
I admit to her, as I serve myself half a chocolate croissant, that I’d wanted a solid breakfast. Then I go make coffee for both of us. From the kitchen, I hear the sound of crackling and a succession of voices. It’s one of the first things Mumbi does when she arrives in the small house: play with the dial on the transistor radio and look for the music she likes.
“I brought you the daily press,” she says, still fiddling with the radio dial.
That, too, had quickly become a ritual. I get a selection of dailies: the National . . . Hope . . . Echoes. . . . I scan them very quickly at first, as if to let myself get intoxicated by the odors of the city of Maren by the perfume of its gossip and its scheming of the highest order. I love that. The printer’s ink, in the morning, is like good warm bread. I like those newspapers right when I open them up. They provide me with a great fleeting pleasure. I have the impression that the world is coming to life before my eyes and that each day their titles bring me a brand new future. Later, after my nap, I will read them attentively. They will have already lost their secret magic. In fact, I’m going to decode them. A thousand and one pressure groups are milling around scheming in the little articles destined to pass unnoticed. If you’d been the first cop in a country, you would no longer believe in anyone’s innocence. Neither in yours nor others’.
Kaveena Page 21
