I was certainly shocked to discover a part of Castaneda’s body in Mumbi’s studio. But I haven’t thought about it much since. Should I take the risk of shocking some of you? Truth be told, the memory of this scene has not disturbed my sleep even once. It has not even turned into fleeting images for me, either. Funnily, Castaneda’s thick face seemed more elongated than it had in his lifetime. He had turned blue or green, I don’t know anymore. In a sense, Nikiema didn’t exist anymore. The cracked teeth and the two dark holes for eyes were not enough to make a skull. I remember being especially struck by the geometric patterns—diamonds, circles, triangles, etc., all black-and-white—which decorated Mumbi Awele’s calabash. She had placed a small garbage bin, multicolored pebbles, and seashells on a mat. I remember Mumbi unleashing the words with icy contempt: With these, I’ll make an installation for Bastos II. This I cannot forget. In a way, N’Zo Nikiema and Pierre Castaneda did not count. They were each a simple detail in the composition, which was no doubt part of Mumbi Awele’s vast design.
Mumbi stood in the back, her arms crossed. She looked at me while looking at her work.
When she left for town after stuffing everything into a bag, I took a little walk in Jinkoré. Maybe I needed to clear out all the emotions from this night at all costs. Or simply savor, without further ado, my newfound freedom? I made my way, without any fear, between ruined buildings, between concrete mixers, bags of cement, and ladders. A site watchman shone his flashlight at me and looked at me suspiciously. I said hello and he growled in response before leaning back against the wall. Bats rustled in the foliage of a mango tree and I got some dew on my face.
On the way back, I got a little lost. Luckily, I soon recognized the tall grass around the small house. Mumbi returned after an hour. We were going to go sit on the floor near the living room poufs when she said, “Let’s go into the courtyard.”
I thought that this was a better idea too. It must have been five in the morning. I looked up at the horizon. The sky was dark, but toward the south one could see the faint white lights dancing next to Blériot Avenue. It was as if the moon were playing with the clouds over there. In fact, this light was coming from the presidential palace and its grounds. This wealthy neighborhood is the only place in Maren where the public lights still function in the early hours of the morning.
Afraid of catching a cold, Mumbi had gone back to the room to get a gray turtleneck sweater. It took only two minutes of her absence for me to decide that I was not going to ask too many questions. Throughout my life, I’ve interrogated strangers, and often in a rude way, as one knows. And after coming in contact with Mumbi Awele, I realized I didn’t even know how to listen anymore.
First she spoke about old N’Fumbang. “This morning, I’m a happy woman. I feel like my father will be reborn. I had stopped living on the day of Kaveena’s death. After what I’ve just done, I feel worthy of him.”
The old man had often said to her, “You must not forgive, Mumbi. We must avenge our little Kaveena.” It was an obsession for him.
“When he felt his end approaching, he had doubts. He said to himself, no, these people are too powerful; Mumbi will not be able to face them alone. He also called them a serpent with two heads. He often tested me: ‘Mumbi, is it not better to forget Kaveena? God will punish her killers.’ He spoke this way, but the idea that the killers would not pay for their crime made him furious: ‘Our girl has suffered so much. They narrated the story of the murder a thousand times in the newspapers, and each time it was harder for us.’”
Mumbi broke off momentarily, then added in a deep, absolutely unique and unforgettable voice, “My father was a man.”
She then told me that she would often talk to him at Kisito Cemetery. “I’ll be back there Thursday. I’ll tell him how Kaveena’s murderers ended up.”
I think I understood then that Mumbi had done all this for Kaveena as much as she had for her own father.
I said to her, “And me, Mumbi? You know very well which side I’m on and what I’ve done in my life. You could have gotten rid of me but you did not. You don’t even hate me.”
Mumbi was expecting this—or at least she had thought about this at some point—and she replied in a voice that was both quiet and tense, “What do you want me to say? I’m not the mother of all the girls in this country. I wanted to avenge my own. I wanted to avenge Kaveena. Just her. If I had acted for a cause, I would have ended up not even knowing who to strike with all this gossip. I would have said, ‘I will give the flesh and blood of my daughter so that tomorrow things are better in this country.’ All these big words, you know. And over time, my pain would have subsided. But it would have been a lie. I didn’t give Kaveena to anyone. One afternoon, we walked by the Bastos II intersection and strangers tore her away from me. They then took her to the Gindal Forest to be raped and cut into small pieces. So for me, Colonel, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or even later in the life of this nation, I’ll tell you what I think: it’s not my problem. You understand that, Colonel?”
This was, without a doubt, the last time Mumbi would have to talk about Kaveena. She knew that and maybe it allowed the hate and the rage she had repressed over the years to come to the surface.
She lit a Dunhill, took a long drag, and threw the matchstick on the ground. Together we watched the small flame smolder on the wet sand in the courtyard. I took advantage of this pause to ask if she had, at least once, envisioned the worst.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“It could have ended badly.”
“Ah . . . of course! But you know, Colonel, he always told me the story of the little bird . . .”
“The hummingbird . . .”
“Mansare’s beautiful old fable.”
“Yes. The forest is on fire and the hummingbird fights against the fire all alone and then says to the other animals, ‘At least I am doing what I can.’”
“That’s right, Colonel. This fable was my nourishment. Each one must do what they can. I had to at least try for my daughter Kaveena. This Mansare, he was sublime. My father and he would have gotten along very well, I think.”
We continued this way for several long minutes. She apologized to me for lying about the video. “I could never have watched it. I didn’t trust you, that’s all.”
Mumbi burned through cigarette after cigarette. Her smoking these Dunhills began to bother me but I didn’t say anything. And without really thinking, I said, “I don’t want us to part on a misunderstanding, Mumbi. You hated N’Zo Nikiema. I didn’t. Often, I even thought that you were unfair to him.”
She shrugged, then said with a little smile that revealed some compassion for my naïveté, “I know. I saw you take the letter, notes, and everything you could in the house, tear them up, and throw them into the fire. Well, tell yourself this, Colonel: almost everything you’ve seen or read in Jinkoré is false. Even from the other world, this man continued to lie to us.”
She looked up at me and I saw that she was expecting a response. I remained silent because I didn’t know what to say.
A little before six o’clock, we heard screams. At first they seemed to be isolated and almost like an echo, but after a few minutes they seemed to rise over all the houses in Maren, creating a great clamor. You would have thought that some brave people were trying to track down a criminal. Mumbi and I knew that this was not the case. We secretly kept listening to these distant cries for quite a while. Their meaning couldn’t escape us. In the Bastos II district, Mumbi’s installation had been discovered. Rumors began to rise in a matter of minutes. Several groups of young men, probably from the neighboring construction sites, ran past the house. The rapid honking of cars began to drown out the other sounds of the city.
This excitement was predictable. Pierre Castaneda wasn’t a nobody. In fact, there was a wave of panic when the circumstances of his death were discovered. I remember fearing real trouble at the time and maybe even a new civil war. No such thing happened. Castaneda’s head,
a little ravaged by the stray dogs, was repatriated to Haute-Savoie with a rather strange ceremony. The rest of his body was just written off. And that was all. I still cannot explain why the old strongman of this country was so quickly forgotten.
These politicians should be more modest.
Of course, instantly—and for several months—there was a devil of a racket. What’s surprising about this? More than the murder itself, it was the staging, at once refined and barbaric, which scared and confused our citizens. People lamented, “Oh no! The secrecy, this cruel treasure hunt, it’s the opposite of our traditional African criminals.” The snobs sneered, “Hell, modernity! This thing, it’s our real entrance ticket to the next century!” A woman from the university spoke about some sort of an aesthetic of nothingness. I think it sounds good in a way. That is, if the Castaneda case had been widely discussed. The smallest detail deserves special attention. But I think these different stories, although often contradictory and fanciful, eventually combine into one, coherent and credible.
Thus, there are dozens of well-known versions of the discovery of Pierre Castaneda’s skull. Listening to the authors, I have often wondered if they’re reporting on the same facts. The bias and the bad faith of those within us is manifest. Others don’t end up being caught up in their lies. At first I found it amusing. Today, with the serenity of the two years that provided me with hindsight, I see in these derivations a necessary evil. I know what I owe to these precious false testimonies. None of their excesses seem to me, if I may say so, too much. Thanks to them, I can tell you what exactly happened that morning in that precise place in our capital.
Well, here it is.
It is six o’clock in the morning. The city of Maren is still asleep. A young artisan baker—let’s call him B. N.—is returning home after a night of work. On approaching the Bastos II roundabout, he sees some stray dogs circling an object. Initially it doesn’t catch B. N.’s attention. He knows these abandoned animals well. Dirty, aggressive but fearful, they are always looking for a meager pittance around the garbage. The residents of Bastos II, who do not know what attracts these mangy beasts to the neighborhood, often complain about their chorus of barking at night. In fact, at some meetings, outraged citizens have banged their fists on the table, shouting, “Enough is enough, Mr. Mayor!”
But the mayor is incompetent and corrupt. The slanderers say that they are all alike, these government people who don’t govern. Besides, he doesn’t live in the neighborhood. So when the outraged citizens scream and bang their fists on the tables, he is laughing quietly. Sometimes he asks the policemen to exterminate the mangy dogs of Bastos II. In the middle of the night, the brave parents hear shots and it warms their heart. Love of animals is OK but we still need our rest. Except that the stray dogs always return to Bastos II, even more of them, hungry and repulsive as ever.
For the young baker who is used to passing by this intersection every morning, these animals are, so to speak, part of the landscape. Over the years, a sort of ritual has been established between them and him. When they hear the spitting of his old moped, they stand as one to greet B. N. While circling the roundabout, he senses their anxious and perplexed glances at him. He even thinks that they are his guardian angels. If he’s in a teasing mood, he makes a little gesture of friendship or shouts out at them before disappearing into the nearby corner.
But this morning is not like the others. They seem too nervous and quarrelsome to him. Young B. N. has never heard such growling. He makes a half circle with his Piaggio. As for what he sees in that precise second, B. N. has not stopped recounting the detailed story since. Radios and foreign TV channels have handed him the microphone several times. In fact, he has always said the same thing: “At dawn, I saw stray dogs fight over a human skull covered in blood that they would roll over to the side and then corner once again with their drooling jaws.” Often harassed by suspicious reporters, he has also claimed—in a tone far less assured—that he had glimpsed a second skull, a dried-up one, which seemed to have been forgotten on an old mat.
This is what remains today from the gossip we heard everywhere about this, if you will, foundational episode.
The inhabitants of Bastos II later declared that they were awakened by a long howl which seemed absolutely inhuman to them. Almost seized with dementia at that very moment, B. N. had gone around their neighborhood shouting that the end of the world was coming and calling all the gods to help him. He ran from one house to another: “Beware of them! Hey! Hey! These are not stray dogs but consumers of human flesh! I saw them! Hey! Hey! God is my witness about everything I’ve seen!”
Within a few minutes, thousands of people came out of their homes. Most of them were in pajamas but some had pagnes around their waists. They were all carrying clubs and flashlights. Some even waved their flashlights and the look in their eyes was a reminiscent of very ancient times. No one recognized their boss from Cogemin right away. And no one ever knew that N’Zo Nikiema and Pierre Castaneda had been reunited, in the dust and despite themselves, the dynamic duo of their glory years.
Subsequently, much was said about the calabash with black-and-white geometric patterns found on the scene. I don’t feel like dwelling on it. I’ll also let the reader speculate endlessly on the garbage bin and the little pebbles and shells mauled by the stray dogs of Bastos II and trampled on by the crowd.
After all, it was a work of art, an “installation,” in the words of Mumbi herself. Everyone is free to interpret it the way they want.
Sometime before noon, we tried to rest a little. Maybe Mumbi managed to sleep. I could not. At five o’clock, we were both up. There wasn’t much in the kitchen and we made ourselves a salad and a sandwich with butter and cheese. It was a rather frugal farewell lunch. There wasn’t too much effusiveness either when it was time for my departure.
I then helped Mumbi bring the furniture back in from the yard. The only thing left was to close the entrance to the basement. I knew she would do it methodically, without haste. She was determined to have no trace of Pierre Castaneda’s and N’Zo Nikiema’s passage on earth. For her, it was normal enough: Kaveena didn’t have a tomb, her killers shouldn’t have one either.
Toward dusk, I left the small house. I didn’t know where to go and I didn’t want to think about it. Either way, it didn’t matter. With the madness in Maren, not a single inhabitant was thinking about closing their eyes on this historic night. Across the country, millions of people took to the streets chanting, “Freedom! Freedom!”
From Jinkoré, I walked straight ahead and let myself be carried by the movements of the crowd. I think I have never seen such a mess in my entire life. Young folks were slaughtering chickens and throwing them up in the air, urging their friends to grill them. A bespectacled man with gray hair, typical of a lifetime member of the party, passed by me shouting that the workers at Cogemin had launched an indefinite strike. After he disappeared, someone else confirmed the news. He even added that groups of armed patriots were headed toward Ndunga to confront all foreign intervention. Dancers on stilts were playing trumpets, women clapped their hands as they sang old tunes, and thousands of children were literally running around. A truck slowly cut through the crowd. Standing on a platform, its occupants waved small flags, and one of them, drenched in sweat, bawled into a megaphone, “Martyr Abel Murigande, do you hear us? Martyr Prieto da Souza, do you hear us?” The crowd roared in chorus: “Long live Abel Murigande! Long live Prieto da Souza!” This guy was a clever type, a real pro. I tried to guess who he was driving for. The simple reflex of a cop. When the populace screamed in joy this way, it was because people had paid a price. We usually never see them. They sit in their living rooms and they wait. When the party is over, they make a clean sweep and start all over.
I also saw hilarious onlookers force a dignitary from Mwanke’s regime to dance topless. The man—I prefer not to say his name—complied, shaking with fear. It was clear that he would have done anything to save his life. Our eyes met an
d I was sure that he was shocked to recognize me. He was finally allowed to go. Pranksters pretended to kick his behind and he left the scene amid the crowds roaring with laughter, like a theater clown.
Alone in her house, what was Mumbi Awele thinking about all this popular joy? Maybe she felt a baffled shame, just like me. There was something unhealthy about this crowd’s joy, though it was certainly legitimate. But I’m not the best person to judge.
I didn’t feel it had anything to do with me anymore.
I could not forget the small, lonely house. Mumbi Awele’s last words continued to haunt me. They had managed to sow doubts in my mind. Well, tell yourself this, Colonel: almost everything you’ve seen or read in Jinkoré is false. Even from the other world, this man continued to lie to us. Anyone in my place would have been disturbed. I wanted to go over this whole story again from the start. I still needed to know which. I mean: which beginning? And maybe even, which story?
Tunis, An Nasr
September 2005
Ayo A. Coly is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and African Studies at Dartmouth College, and author of The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone African Literatures (2010).
Boubacar Boris Diop is author of six novels including Murambi, The Book of Bones (IUP, 2006), The Knight and His Shadow, and several others. He is currently writing and teaching in Senegal.
Sara C. Hanaburgh is an independent scholar of African literature and cinema and translator of Angèle Rawiri’s Fureurs et cris de femmes (The Fury and Cries of Women).
Bhakti Shringarpure is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She is also cofounder and editor in chief of Warscapes magazine, which publishes art and literature about contemporary conflicts.
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