Kaveena

by Boubacar Boris Diop

  I tease Mumbi at breakfast: “You’re right to have no interest in politics.”

  “It tires me. People always say, ‘The situation is explosive, the regime is going to crumble.’”

  “Yes, it’s funny. And nothing ever happens.”

  “Do you know what people are saying about your disappearance, by the way?”

  “What?”

  “More of their nonsense, Colonel.” Her tone is complicit, even a little affectionate. Clearly, she makes me uneasy. That’s pretty new in my life. It seems to me that I’ve always provoked fear or hatred in people and never really friendship.

  I ask her, “When do you plan to go back into town?”

  By the quick, furtive look in Mumbi’s eyes, I see she’s noted my change of tone. “Today’s Thursday. Maybe Monday. . . . Or maybe Tuesday.” I expect her to add, “Why do you ask?” She doesn’t say anything. I think, this woman is definitely strong.

  Then I charge forward without warning: “We have to find a minute to talk, Mumbi.”

  Sounding almost sorry and at the same time firm, she replies, “I’m going to be frank with you, Colonel. Since I’ve returned, you’re waiting for some explanations from me and I’m amazed about this because I don’t have anything to say.”

  I hang onto the end of that sentence to set things in motion in a way. Such an opportunity won’t present itself again for quite a while. “You might have also wondered what I’m doing here,” I say. “Do you know why I spend the majority of my days decoding all these documents and drinking coffee?”

  She looks a little surprised by my remark and ends up stating, almost to herself, “It’s true that you’re supposed to be hiding but you don’t seem very worried about it.”

  “It’s very simple, Mumbi: I have the right to know the truth.”

  I sense her suddenly closing up again, becoming harder on the inside. “Let’s drop it, please.”

  Instead of letting it go, I appeal to her common sense. “Do you really see me staying here doing nothing, face to face with the corpse of our former president? I’m going to leave; I know how to cross the border. It won’t be easy, but I’m going to try. I’d just like to know the truth before I leave.”

  She agrees to leave it like this: “We’ll chat one of these days.” I see her hesitate. What she wants to add is important for her. One can sense that sort of thing. She says, “I’ll bring the body down to the basement.”

  I’d like to believe that she wants to do that out of respect for the dead, but there’s such contempt in her voice that it curdles my blood. I want to reply to her, “We’ll bring it together.” It would be quite normal to say such a thing in this moment. I don’t dare open my mouth, though. Given the state of mind Mumbi Awele seems to be in, each word can mean its opposite. I decide to keep quiet, to let the events play themselves out and bring me in the end wherever they may. I must admit it: I’ve never felt so powerless. The passage in one of N’Zo Nikiema’s last letters comes back to me. In it he was praising my loyalty and my investigative talents and was saying more or less this: Colonel Asante Kroma knows everything, he can do everything. Well, that’s not true. I am completely lost.

  Two days later, Mumbi comes to find me. “The body is downstairs.”

  I tell her in a neutral tone that I’d realized that.

  She’d arranged for a transfer of the mortal remains at some point without my knowledge. I had seen that the divan in the salon was empty, dented in the middle by Nikiema’s body. Some skeletal remains were scattered on the carpet and on the bed itself. I’d then imagined her pulling Nikiema’s body by herself to the underground.

  After a pause, she says, “Don’t be shocked, Colonel, by what I’m going to say, but you’re the one who talks all the time, actually. Well, here’s what I did: I, Mumbi Awele, put the remains of this man in a bag and I threw them into the trash can.”

  I think I keep my head down. There you have it: Mumbi picked up N’Zo Nikiema’s remains, like the pieces of a broken canary, and threw them onto a heap of garbage.

  She goes on: “That’s what I did and I wanted you to know.”

  As I listen to Mumbi talking, I detect a kind of fear—or sadness? or shame?—that has been totally unknown to me. It’s strange: it’s especially my fingers that refuse to stay still. It’s the first time they tremble like that. I cross my arms to appear as natural as possible. My throat is a little knotted. “Mumbi, you’re wrong. He didn’t kill your daughter.”

  I don’t dare utter N’Zo Nikiema’s name. He has become “He.” He’s not only dead. He never existed. Someone we remember in our dreams.

  A shadow falls over Mumbi’s face and I say to myself that she is going to burst into tears or let her rage explode. To the contrary she says, detached, “I saw the film, Colonel. Your famous video. . . . I saw it at Castaneda’s place, if you want to know. I saw what that man did to my child.”

  I think back to the last time N’Zo Nikiema and Castaneda had met. The latter had shouted out to him in the guise of a final goodbye, “You’ll have to manage to win the war.”

  To which the former president had retorted, “Of course. The little girl’s murderer is the only loser.”

  N’Zo Nikiema didn’t know how right he was.

  Mumbi Awele had been cheated and he had to accept that. It wasn’t worth trying to repair the damage. Although, thinking of N’Zo Nikiema’s distressing letters, I can’t keep myself from finding it all dreadful, almost unbearable.

  He didn’t even need to hide his face. His beggar’s rags were enough to let him pass undetected. Besides, he was already someone else after more than three months in the small house. As he pushed open the door to the courtyard, he blinked and tipped his cone-shaped straw hat forward a little more.

  He started by pretending to pull up the weeds near the fence as he surveyed the surroundings. A kid passed through the alley with a pile of newspapers under his left arm. “The Independent! The National! Progress!” he yelled, turning his head all around.

  Seeing Nikiema following him with his eyes, he slowed down. Nikiema called out to him, “Do you have Hope, little guy?”

  The kid searched quickly through the package of newspapers and handed him one. Hope was the only title to have continued to appear during the war. A pretty well-done newspaper but paid for by Castaneda. Pierre Castaneda’s photo, black-and-white and a little blurred, took up the middle of the first page. The editorial questioned “the end of the state of grace,” and the headline read, “A New Challenge for the Country’s Strongman.” Stories like: he brought down the tyrant, but will he also be able to win the war for peace? Pierre Castaneda had gotten a little thinner since their famous last-ditch meeting at Cogemin. With his left hand pressed to his temples, he seemed absorbed in deep meditation. His eyes were heavy and he looked serenely serious, which suited him well. Nikiema gave the paper back to the seller and the boy showed his irritation by slamming the gate. He expected to be treated like an old skinflint, but the kid didn’t linger around.

  Times were tough.

  Almost all the newspapers he’d quickly scanned in the pile were talking about the war. To think, it hadn’t really ended. Military patrols continued to actually crisscross the southern part of Jinkoré. They crossed the neighborhood at great speed, and the soldiers, relaxed and sure of themselves, put on airs of being liberators. Passersby sometimes waved at them and they responded by throwing their red berets up in the air. Nikiema listened to what was being said in the streets. Fortunately, there was some bad news: “Agar has been surrounded for three days. The rebels have taken several notables hostage there.”

  But Agar was a small town to the extreme north, a little over six hundred miles from the capital. Nobody could take it seriously. He personally knew very well who was at fault: a little war chief who wanted a position in the government. Castaneda would arrange that very quickly. All in all, this bit of bad news was a sham.

  In the street, people gave him alms. Small change. Crack
ers and even a candle. They said to him, “You whose voice God likes to hear, pray for me and my family.”

  And an old lady: “Man of God, pray for this miserable country.”

  The traveling stallholders congregated around cars, which honked to make them move and then took off suddenly; the reckless drivers hurled coarse remarks in each other’s faces. He felt safe, lost in this chaos. Who would pay attention to him? Leaning on his walking stick, his body almost folded in two, he limped like a real beggar. He even allowed himself to act crazy; he shouted at strangers who treated him a little harshly for having crossed their paths. He yelled at one of them, “Get out, you nasty fellow, with a hard heart like the basalt from Tindou—may Our Lord make you burn in the flames of hell!” But he knew that he shouldn’t be talking so much. With all the speeches he’d delivered over the years, someone could recognize his voice. Some people were too clever.

  Leaning on a little iron city wall, he watched the crowd head toward the east of the city where the big market was. Once there, many were going to wonder what they went there for. They’d return to where they came from because it was so good to be part of the crowd. Others were lying in wait for a dirty trick and everyone was trying to get their bearings again after the war. Independence Avenue was in a bizarre configuration, almost in staggered rows. He could only see people from behind. A compact mass of caps, straw hats, heads-carves, boubous, and shirts in every color. It was hard to say whether the crowd was pacing up and down the street. It was more like it was hit by a train or even forcefully sucked up by Maren’s entrails.

  The traces of fighting were still visible everywhere. The lights at the intersections didn’t work anymore: they were covered in rust, and their electric wires, no longer functioning, were hanging out of their deep black dug-out eyes. Really young beggars, less numerous than in the past, had made those lights their meeting point. What became of the others? Many got killed and some were probably hesitant to disarm themselves. The UN was giving $723 to those who agreed to be demobilized. There was a whole campaign for that, with big blue posters everywhere.

  For a few minutes, on Dostom Avenue, he had the opportunity to watch a very distracting scene that showed him to what extent times had changed. Three workers in gray suits and red caps were trying to stick a giant color portrait of President Mwanke onto the Satellite’s bullet-riddled walls. In it, Mwanke stood in his office in front of a library, a medal around his neck, his right hand on the Constitution, staring at nothing. The photographer had explained to him what to do so that in the image he had the look of a visionary in his eyes. But even in the photo, President Mwanke seemed to be apologizing: “Please, don’t pay attention to me, I am not here, someone is there before your eyes but there is no one.” Mwanke didn’t want any issues, after what happened between Castaneda and Nikiema. The latter thought, impressed, good old Pierre! You’re really too much, my man. Nikiema smiled. Mwanke reminded him of his father: the king of Nimba too was colored, sparkling, and pathetic like a Christmas toy. And for the first time in his life, a bizarre question suddenly came to his mind: So who is Castaneda’s father? I basically never knew anything about that man. . . . Even when I went over there, he didn’t talk to me about his father.

  As the minutes passed, the crowd around him grew more and more dense. It seemed to Nikiema that no one dared to pass in front of the photo without stopping, especially because of the quasi-historical moment of this display. As a result, the workers felt more important. That day in their life was out of the ordinary: they weren’t putting up an advertisement for some bubbly drink or some pomade. The presidential poster was so huge—about eight feet by six and a half feet—that they needed a ladder on each side to hold each of its edges in place against the wall. A third worker, perched halfway up on one of the ladders, was holding the poster level at its middle. It wasn’t an easy task and the spectators were under the impression that they were at the circus, admiring acrobats jumping on a bed of nails suspended in the air. When the image was finally in place, sustained applause burst out from everywhere. The crowd saluted the technical exploits of the workers. President Mwanke, looking so pleased with himself, was already of no interest to anyone. In any case, everyone knew that he was a useless moron. On top of it, right near Nikiema, someone insulted the president in a low voice and he thought with bitter satisfaction, turns out people aren’t as stupid as we politicians thought.

  He distanced himself. As he continued holding his hand out to the passersby, he was careful not to be seen several times in the same place. It would even have been dangerous for him to stay somewhere for too long.

  The walls downtown were covered with other posters, white ones. Under UNICEF’s logo, they showed lifeless bodies and lame children. Written in thick black letters was, “Don’t cripple the future of our nation. Never again in this beautiful country.”

  The city was again red and white. It almost disappeared under the dense smoke of mopeds and public buses but also under the dust that rose from the rutted streets.

  He must have overdone things somewhat, because he started to feel tired. Almost out of breath, he let himself fall onto a bench in the corridor of a vacant shopping complex, near the fish market. In fact, it was a succession of stores, stalls, and workshops. One was sure to find almost anything here. Glasses or shoe repairmen, tailors, import-export boutiques, and dispensaries. At the end of the hallway, in front of a wax and lagos store, a young man in a black hat offered books displayed right on the ground.

  Below the market was a huge garage for mopeds. There were dozens of them, most of them blue. Inside the garage were carcasses of cars, green-and-white taxis, mopeds. Pools of motor oil and dirty water in several places.

  A tall man, about forty, skinny and already graying, came out of a container with Italian writing on it: “Via Mentana 85 Perugia.” The way he swept the place with his squinting eyes, you had an inkling that he was the master of the place. He undoubtedly sensed the presence of a foreign body in his territory.

  He hobbled around, and each time he moved between his engines, his body was slightly curved forward and bent to the left. When he straightened up, his whole body tightened up at once and he stayed in that position for a few seconds, as if he were looking to detect someone in the distance. Was it because of his state of mind as a hunted fugitive? At first glance, the garage owner made a strong impression on Nikiema. That happened to him often in his life, seeing someone for the first time and knowing he would never be able to forget him. Just like that, truly for no reason. No reason he knew of, anyway. It could be anyone, for example a person disappearing at the corner of a street.

  This garage owner, he guessed, was among those beings for whom life was a serious affair. He must have managed well during the war. If he had to kill, he had definitely done so without the least regret. And he profited from it too, to run his little blue-moped business.

  He reminded Nikiema of Mumbi Awele. Like her, that man definitely knew the art of surviving the madness of men. The stranger also brought him back, without his knowing how, to his own triviality. At a time when his name alone had wreaked terror in the country, he had sometimes come across beings with a quasi-untenable force inside of them. Their eyes met then, and without them even giving each other challenging looks, the man lowered his head. Just like that. He was wearing a white undergarment covered with large grease stains. His biceps were knobby and skinny and his khaki pants were a little too wide for him. His red eyes took N’Zo Nikiema to some depths unknown to him. Were his eyes reddened by alcohol, drugs, or sleeplessness? He couldn’t say. One thing was sure: he had stolen most of the mopeds that he was repairing and selling.

  Nikiema repeated mentally what he could have said to Mumbi about it in his letters: When I am dead and you’ve finished reading these words, go take a tour around the mechanic’s place. His garage is practically on top of the building said to be owned by the Tapestry Makers. You pass in front of a dingy building pompously baptized the Business Center,
you go down another 100 to 130 feet, and on your left you’ll see a forest of blue mopeds. Try to talk to that man. Perhaps you will discover the secret of his power.

  “I want one of those,” he said, indicating the blue mopeds.

  Instead of answering, the garage owner turned around, stared at him for a minute, and signaled to one of his apprentices to take care of him. He went back to his work as if Nikiema had never been there. The kid approached him, looking distrustful. He had ashen black skin. His Cabral hat covered his temples despite the heat and he was wearing an immaculate red knitted shirt. What struck Nikiema the most was the single white ring in his right ear. Despite his effeminate look, the child reminded him of a young feline ready to pounce.

  Under this blazing sun, in a den of iniquity with its odors of oil and gasoline, its metallic sounds, its little drug addicts, and its grumpy and cynical proletarians, he had the impression that he had failed. Nikiema especially realized that when it came down to it, he didn’t know anything about the city of Maren. A real dump, it must be said.

  The kid in charge of taking care of him was rather overwhelmed by his task. He got tied up in his lies. “Japanese mopeds. Oh! The Yamahas, Pops! The Peugeots aren’t bad either. And then the South Koreans are rather up-and-coming. Did you know that, Pops?”