Kaveena

by Boubacar Boris Diop

  As for water, he fortunately had enough to see him through what might come: at least three hundred liter-and-a-half bottles of Marwa and Mont Nimba. There were still several unopened cases. Nevertheless, Nikiema was still monitoring how fast the little blocks of ice were melting in the fridge. He collected the cold liquid in a bowl and used it in part to wash his body, and drank the rest. The feeling of well-being was short-lived but it was better than nothing.

  At the beginning of his imprisonment he thought he had, so to speak, managed to tame the darkness. He knew the bunker so well that he could move around with no fear of stumbling over the chairs or the TV. His brain had learned to convert the objects and animals around him into locatable movements. Eventually the cockroaches under his eyes were no longer the insects we all know—brown and somewhat mysterious things, always on alert with their quivering antennae—but rather a succession of dark and stealthy motions.

  Only a mouse would persistently break this beautiful harmony. Very restless, it disturbed Nikiema’s rest night and day. With dull anguish, he would feel it grazing between his feet and then it would disappear with a short, sharp cry. Maybe it wanted to play with Nikiema? But Nikiema, unfamiliar with the habits of animals, wasn’t quite sure. Thus it was out of the question to let it live. I understand that it is terrible to have to kill an animal which only wants to be your friend. But for Nikiema, it was simply a big misunderstanding between the creatures of God: to doubt the mouse’s intentions, whether peaceful or violent, would not be of much use to him. It had to die. Nikiema’s inordinate mind began to blame Science. In a sudden fit of rage he thought, the only thing these people know how to do is to go to Mars and then brag about it on Earth. We cannot rely on them to know what the mouse wants. Does it want to play with me or poke my eyes out in my sleep? And besides, Nikiema had no evidence of whether he was dealing with only one mouse. As far as he could remember, these mustachioed, squealing, and gluttonous rodents ran rampant in packs.

  He decided to take action without further delay. He cut a piece of Camembert cheese, placed it under his boots, and stayed on guard with his foot slightly lifted. He was starting to get discouraged until the mouse appeared down the hallway. He saw it scampering and doing small jumps to the side and it approached the bait little by little without appearing to do so. It stopped for a few seconds and N’Zo Nikiema could see clearly that it was trying to weigh the pros and cons. Barely breathing, with his eyes half-closed, he managed to stay completely still. The beast leapt, muzzle forward, onto the cheese, and it didn’t have a chance. He crushed it in one stroke and well after it was dead, he continued to trample on it with hideous grunts and grimaces and kept his legs screwed to the floor. On that day, he realized with astonishment not only that he had the urge to kill but also that he felt the necessity, almost absolute in this particular situation, to inflict the worst possible suffering on the animal. He later must have become aware of an even deeper desire: to remove all traces of the mouse, to make a porridge out of its flesh and to leave the blood to be sucked in by the cement under his boots to ensure that it had never existed.

  He was also pleased to see that his legs were still strong and his eyes in good condition.

  This relief was short-lived. Indeed, pretty soon he felt cockroaches and ants stirring over his naked and sweaty body. He could not even see them anymore. They walked along his neck and on his chest and back. He hunted them with his hand and they went away and left him in peace for a moment. But as soon as he fell asleep, they returned to attack. N’Zo Nikiema realized gradually, with terror, that he was alone and helpless in a deeply hostile environment. All these insects seemed to him to be working willfully, in a conscious and concerted way, toward his death. They remained in the shadows, watching his every move and sniffing around. He didn’t believe they were flying around him by accident as they went along their path. No, this was deliberate: they were simmering the poison at the ends of their antennae, infecting him, and watching the movements of his eyes to gauge the best moment to return for assault. He remembered what had happened to Abel Murigande’s grandmother. It was a terrible story. She was asleep on a mat and a worm entered her ear. While it unhurriedly ate her brain, the old woman beat her head against the wall, shouting that her head itched and calling for the help of Fomba, the Ancestor of Ancestors. This atrocious death had an effect on young Abel Murigande and he had often recounted it to N’Zo Nikiema. The latter could not bear the thought of something like this happening to him. More than anything, he was scared of being eaten from the inside, like a biscuit nibbled by a caterpillar or a centipede. So he began to stuff his ears and nose with cotton and began wearing thick clothing despite the heat. The basement turned into a veritable furnace for him. He fanned himself with newspapers to cool his face. This did not prevent him from being bathed in his own sweat all day long.

  Furthermore, because of mixing all sorts of foods together, his intestines wouldn’t stop making noise. This didn’t bother him. In fact, he found it more and more fun to triumphantly pass gas. After contracting his abdomen for a long time, he would let out the sound with great force into the basement and it would burst upon his ears like little trumpets of victory.

  He heard footsteps on the floor again. Nikiema looked up at the ceiling. I’m sure it’s the same soldiers who came yesterday with the colonel, he thought. He felt increasingly delighted to be listening to them without their knowledge. What could they possibly report back, these little slaves of Castaneda?

  Funnily, he didn’t hear any voices.

  “Mumbi . . . ,” he then whispered. Yes, it was her. She had definitely returned. A great panic immediately seized him. Sure, he had repeatedly dreamed of seeing Mumbi Awele before he died, but he didn’t want her to carry an image of him in such decay.

  But I don’t want to leave the slightest doubt in the reader’s mind: N’Zo Nikiema was wrong that day. The unexpected visitor was not Mumbi Awele. It was me.

  I remember it very well. Ndumbe—he was killed soon after—and one of my men had come to tell me, “Boss, we were in the small house in Jinkoré . . .”

  “And then . . . ?”

  “We felt something was going on there . . .”

  For one reason or another, I was not in a good mood, and I didn’t let them continue. “You’re not being asked about your feelings, you hear me, yes or no? You’ve been asked to find someone called N’Zo Nikiema. OK? You think he’s crazy enough to hang out near Siriman Konté’s garage after what happened to him there? Look for him in the suburbs, work with your guys at the border!”

  Ndumbe and his colleague were not sure of their discovery, to tell you the truth, and they did not insist. They also blamed each other for the blunder. But then, two days after that conversation, I said to myself, it would be good to make a round of Jinkoré . . .

  During this first visit, I took my time. It seemed to me that it was one of those Rastaman types of artists who owned the house. He would have to have been gone for quite some time already. A thick layer of dust had settled everywhere, on furniture, on the occasional utensil hanging on the walls of the kitchen or placed on the shelves. I tried in vain to figure out where the odor of excrement, which the house reeked of, was coming from. The living room made me think of a badly lit art gallery. There were little sculptures and paintings everywhere. One of the paintings, done in dull yellow tones, was called The Little Butterfly Girl. A little girl in a white dress was trying to catch butterflies with her net. In the studio, several other canvases—showing another girl—were incomplete. After a few hours of inspection, I decided to drop it. I hadn’t seen anything interesting.

  It was only two days later, when I thought I had forgotten about the small house, that an idea began to germinate in my head. The work had to have been done inside, without my knowledge, as often happens to supercops whose intuition we praise. Suddenly I was certain that N’Zo Nikiema had at least stayed in this place and that the unfinished paintings were those of the Artist. I whispered, �
�The dancer from the Congressional Palace . . .”

  I returned to the small house in Jinkoré the next day. Perhaps the reader will remember: the moment I crossed the threshold, N’Zo Nikiema handed over his soul. And so it is from this scene that the story begins. You remember also that I found Nikiema laid out in the living room and not in the basement. This detail is important. It means that the fugitive was not in hiding anymore, somehow. After all, people were frequenting his refuge more and more. The decision to abandon the bunker may seem absurd but I believe it was deliberate. Why? God only knows. I was reduced to all kinds of hypotheses. Perhaps N’Zo Nikiema wasn’t able to breathe anymore in the basement. Maybe he didn’t want to end his life in this rotten atmosphere and have his corpse immediately attacked and devoured by hateful creatures. This was something I could understand: even I was terrified during my first visit to the basement. Nikiema had stored large quantities of food there. These contingency measures had fallen apart due to a simple failure of electricity. Rotten food and N’Zo Nikiema’s feces overflowing from the toilet gave off a foul stench. I frightened off a swarm of flies by moving my flashlight around on the shelves. They dispersed in a big buzz. There was no doubt that reptiles and rodents infested the place. There were many issues that prevented N’Zo Nikiema from closing his eyes at night as well as during the day. I suppose that with the intensity of these vigils, he felt reality slip away from him, little by little. He must have then said, “Since this is the end, I’d rather not die like a sick old dog in this swamp.” N’Zo Nikiema had been the president of this country. If you have lived for nearly thirty years in luxury and in the glow of power, there are things you simply cannot accept.

  I also recall that N’Zo Nikiema did not want Mumbi Awele to see him in the state that he was in. It’s easy enough to understand but there’s no need to dwell on it.

  It had taken him much longer than usual to return to the living room. He’d had to sit on the stairs two or three times to catch his breath. Once in the open air, he had been almost blinded by the light. After the long days spent underground, he still had a little trouble breathing. Yet he had found the strength to shut the entrance to the bunker.

  He had then stood against the edge of the big table for a few minutes and looked around the apartment. The soldiers who had passed through the house five or six days earlier had not touched anything. But he found nothing about the person who had come all alone the day before. At first, Nikiema had thought it was Mumbi. But then he had changed his mind: “No, Mumbi’s steps would have been sharper and more confident. The visitor didn’t know what he wanted. He was going in circles. The place was unfamiliar.” And then the first thing Mumbi would usually do when she arrived was put on some music. “The Girl from Ipanema.” Or something by Tupac Shakur. She liked him a lot too.

  That said, he had been eager for it all to be finished.

  It took him at least two hours to freshen up. He filled an entire basin with Mount Nimba, congratulating himself yet again on at least having enough mineral water in the small house. When his body was clean and dry, he splashed himself with deodorant. While trying to choose clothes in the wardrobe, he realized that his eyes couldn’t see very well and his hands shook with a slight tremor. He wore the faso danfani for the first time. He couldn’t help thinking that it would also most certainly be the last time.

  Standing at the kitchen sink, he began to unhurriedly run satin-wood toothpicks in all the corners of his mouth. This quickly became a game: he found the smallest deposits of food with his tongue and then got rid of them with vigorous rubbing. Every time he passed the toothpick, a salty liquid slowly amassed in his mouth: blood expelled from his gums. He spit in the sink and resumed the operation, pacing up and down the room. Sometimes he stopped to inspect the tip of the toothpick. The end was covered with traces of whitish patches and was often slightly red. He brought the toothpick to his nose, sniffed it, and then rinsed it with a little water before returning it to work in his mouth. There was no hurry. He could not be in one anyway. He continued to suck and spit out the blood, determined to purge every last drop from his gums. When the spittle became milky white, he considered himself finally satisfied. After brushing his teeth with toothpaste, an invigorating and enjoyably cooling sensation spread through his mouth.

  Shaving was less easy. For some inexplicable reason, Mumbi had decided that no mirror could come into the small house. Thinking back on the whims of the artist, Nikiema told himself that he could not blame her. He didn’t claim to judge. But he had to admit that, for all practical reasons, it was best to shave in front of a mirror. The operation loses much of its charm when it has to be done blindly. You cannot even afford to occasionally wink and make faces at your image. Every few minutes, he ran his left hand over his chin and cheeks. And each time, he felt frustrated by the few rebellious hairs poking the palm of his hand. He persisted, changing the blade twice till the skin of his face was soft and smooth.

  Nikiema slipped a revolver under his pillow and sat on the living room couch to cut his nails. Just as he finished with the left thumb, he saw his childhood in Nimba before his eyes. It was crazy how the image of Mansare had haunted him for some time. The old man had told 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.”

  Then there was a long silence. The words returned to echo in Nikiema’s heart—Mansare had added, “. . . Or too late. Don’t ever forget that either, Noble Prince.” Master of the Word, Mansare? “You were much better than that,” Nikiema murmured. “You were the Master of Word Games.” This was, in any case, a peculiar epilogue to the story of the hummingbird. The magnificent Mansare, he was so serene and so sure of himself. . . . Next to such nobility, his father was—he had to admit—a sort of solemn clown. But his father, not Mansare, was the king of Nimba. So, was this the real problem of his people? The one who in the end made the decisions for everyone was often, like his father or Mwanke, a moron, a popcorn-and-whiskey amateur. And he—had he not been the docile face of the same foreigners, anxious to save his power under any circumstances and at any price? Words formed in his head: End. Dog. Repudiation. He said aloud, his heart filled with bitterness, “I repudiated you, Master. Mansare, my memory is a tomb of your wisdom. But it should have really been its orchard. Now here I am, lost forever.” The fact that he had called out to Mansare in this way made his eyes burn. Was he going to cry now? It was up to him. It was indeed one of those moments when, overwhelmed by an overly strong and almost unbearable emotion, he could still claim to have one-thousandth of a second to willingly decide whether he was going to burst into tears or hold them back. N’Zo Nikiema stood firm.

  Old Mansare had a good technique for cutting fingernails: he skipped a finger each time and then returned to it. Nikiema was to learn later that this was how one carried out funeral preparations in Nimba. Through this technique, Mansare was trying to mystify death, to make death believe that young prince N’Zo Nikiema was no longer alive and that in killing him, death had a case of mistaken identity. A grave error, liable, unless under extenuating circumstances, for the death penalty. Good old Mansare! Funny too!

  N’Zo Nikiema smiled at this final souvenir, stretched himself out on the divan, and hiked up the heavy woven pagne to his waist.

  “We won’t be able to get it in—the door is too narrow.”

  This is perhaps the fourth time that we’ve tried to move the living room couch to the courtyard. Mumbi persists despite common sense: “Come on, Colonel, one last try.”

  This time, we go in gently, switching sides. Nothing we can do: a piece of tree trunk stuck in the wall is hindering the maneuver. It is actually a giant phallus carved out of wood and beautifully decorated with colorful beads and necklaces. I suppose Mumbi wears the same beads since they don’t stop rattling around her waist as she leaves and enters the house. A visi
tor’s eye cannot escape this phallus, which greets you, aggressive and ridiculous, at the entrance of the living room. But until now, I’ve avoided making even the slightest allusions. Because of modesty? Without a doubt. I should also say that these allegedly artistic provocations annoy me. If I’m saying this now, it is to correct my mistake. I recognize that I should not let myself be overwhelmed by personal feelings. A detail of this kind is invaluable. It’s the little touches on the portrait that say the most about us, and, in this case, about the troubled personality of Mumbi Awele.

  After the tussle with the couch, my body is bruised. “I’m no longer a young man,” I say to Mumbi as I massage my shoulders and biceps.

  “Well, we’re going to have to dismantle the bed,” she finally says. Apparently the idea is not particularly delightful to her. She also seems to doubt my goodwill. Anyway, she has often jokingly accused me of being a good-for-nothing.

  Mumbi is wearing a pink T-shirt and faded jeans that are frayed around the thighs. The date of her exhibit is approaching and she has had to make herself look more Rasta—a childhood friend had suggested that to her, she told me. A red polka-dotted scarf protects her hair from water and dust. Since her return from the city two days ago, the small house has been turned upside down. Everything started, as it so often does, with empty chatter. She threw these ideas at me while I did the crossword in a very old issue of Tomorrow’s Times.

  “This place is rotten, Colonel.”

  Given the situation, there were not too many ways to interpret this little sentence. I was happy to nod vaguely in reply—and I must admit, a little embarrassed.

  But Mumbi is focused on one thing. She got right to it yesterday and continues to clean with a lot of water. When she sees a little hole in the studio or the living room, she imagines thousands of insects swarming inside it and pours bleach and disinfectant on it. When a stain resists, she transforms it into a single-combat operation and doesn’t stop rubbing until the surface is smooth and clean. This determination to destroy evil creatures makes me think, in spite of myself, about those moments of agony when, alone in the bunker, N’Zo Nikiema almost went insane.