Memoirs of a Porcupine

by Alain Mabanckou

  once it becomes the harmful double of a human being, an animal has to leave its natural milieu, its family, so my separation from the members of our group occurred down in Mossaka, but considering that porcupines are reputed to be solitary animals, we were fortunate to live in a community, and every evening the old governor held a meeting, made a few general remarks, I could tell he was covertly talking about me, saying no one was irreplaceable in the forest, that he’d known a few jumped up porcupines in his time, he knew how to put them back in their place, and when I didn’t react, he became more pointed, muttering things about ‘the fish that proudly dallies in the feeder stream one day ends up salted on a slab in the market’, he hastened to remind us that I was an orphan, without him I wouldn’t have been a live porcupine at all, he said my procreators were as stubborn as me, that they left this earth shortly after my arrival, I was scarcely three weeks old, our governor boasted of how he had taken me in, along with his female mate, now deceased, and he went into how I used to defecate the whole day long, I was a lazy good for nothing, scared of baby lizards, and the others all laughed loudly, and it was from him I learned about the ways of my parents, it seemed they liked to mingle with the human race, they’d disappear by night and go wandering among the humans in Mossaka, returning at dawn the following day, tired out, with red eyes, muddy paws, and spend the whole day sleeping like dormice, the governor couldn’t understand it, I had begun to piece their lives together bit by bit, I no longer doubted it, they were harmful doubles, I reached this conclusion the day I felt the call of young Kibandi myself, I accepted the idea that I was descended from a line of porcupines whose destiny was to serve humans beings, not for better, but for worse, for the very worst, and each time I heard the governor talking about the death of my parents it made me angry, he claimed to have tried to spy on them one night, to find to where they went in such a hurry, but they’d given him the slip between two clumps of trees because the old guy already had trouble with his eyes, even back then, a week went by, they heard nothing, then came the dark day, the eighth day since their disappearance, the fateful day when an owl with an injured claw, crushed in a man-made trap, flew over our patch, come, so it seemed, to announce to the governor the sad news already on the lips of most of the animals in our region, he told him that a hunter had killed my parents not far from Mossaka, the whole herd had to move on in a hurry, and find a new patch, a few kilometres away

  even so, I ignored what had happened to my parents, since I’d never known them, I let the old governor say what he wanted to the others, I went with my own instincts, and vanished from the bush more and more often, I left no gaps between trips now, and for the first time I disappeared for four days and nights running, I just kept on going straight, it was an overpowering urge, and my comrades started panicking, they looked everywhere for me, they searched the groves round where we often drank, while one of us watched out for hunters lying in ambush round about, but I wasn’t there, and finally, in desperation, they made enquiries of the other members of our kind, but they couldn’t think of any porcupine that matched their description, some said that when I moved I had a way of sniffing every square centimetre of ground, others added that I usually hid behind trees as though always on the look out for danger, and on that day the governor specified that I moved like a porcupine whose paw has been crushed in a trap of the kind laid by a little chap still sucking his mother’s breast, according to him I limped, I hobbled, and several of my comrades shouted him down, as this was a whopping great lie, and they went on looking, because they were fond of me, and as I had always liked to burrow into the hollow of trees, especially trees like you, they first went to look inside baobab trunks, then inside the palm trees nearby, and in so doing invaded the privacy of some squirrels who were quick to chuck palm nuts at their heads, followed by a string of insults in their own tongue, and meanwhile, I was somewhere near Mossaka, trying to absorb the child whose double I was going to become, I had a vague idea of what he was like because he’d appear to me in dreams at dead of night, and from somewhere would come this vibration inside of me, only known to animals predisposed to fuse with a human being, I wanted to be sure not to get the wrong kid, I didn’t imagine for a moment I’d be hanging around indefinitely in Mossaka, that I’d be leaving my comrades for ever

  in fact, dear Baobab, when I left our territory I had not intended to leave for ever, I swear I liked communal life, I was convinced that I could lead a double life, one at night, and the other by day, that I could both stay close to my master and continue to hang out with my comrades, which turned out, alas, to be incompatible with the reality of being a double, and it was when I made the trip to Mossaka that I first felt the influence of the liquid Kibandi had just been made to drink, and I began to vomit, my head started swimming, my vision blurred, my quills grew heavy, I could only keep my eyes fixed straight ahead, rather as though the child was calling for my help, he needed me, I ought to be there, or something dire might happen to him, his life was in my paws, when I breathed I was breathing for him, I was him, and he was me, I had to get to him as fast as possible or something dreadful would happen, my heart was fit to burst, I’d forgotten who I was, where I was, and why I was going to Mossaka, I just had to move forward, walk, advance, follow the path before me, I had kilometres and kilometres to go, of course I couldn’t get there that day, but I needed to make a start, and as it was raining that day, once I got halfway there I was obliged to shelter for the night in a cave, till the next day, I should say that I don’t like rain much, a number of my fellows have been swept away into the Niari waterfalls and drowned, and inside I found nothing but toads and small mice, whom I was able to intimidate, I got to the outskirts of Mossaka the next day at sunset, and when I finally reached the gates of the village, exhausted, dribbling at the mouth, barely able to keep my eyes open, I went to sleep at the back of a house not far from a river which I had not seen till now, it was a branch of the Niari which cuts the region in two, and there I rested, thinking I would take my time staking out the Kibandi house the next morning, because by night there’d be the risk of hunters or Batéké dogs, and in the middle of the night I felt a strong draught of air, dead leaves were rising upwards, then a strange noise as though something was coming towards me, ‘for porcupine’s sake, it’s a man, it’s a man, he’s seen me and he’s going to kill me, I must flee’, I said to myself, panicking suddenly, I was determined to leave my hiding place as quickly as possible, and save my skin, but alas I was paralysed, I couldn’t move any of my feet, as though I’d been put to sleep, I was wrong in fact, it was the noise of an animal moving about, so I put up my quills without first identifying the animal, which was coming closer and closer, I hoped he’d be stupider than me, that he’d be scared of quills, I was ready to throw them if necessary because unlike most of my kind I know how to, but I didn’t have to go that far, the cake wasn’t worth the candle, I took a deep breath, and was reassured when I finally saw the animal before me, I almost burst out laughing, almost proved the governor right when he said that during the first few months of my life I would panic even if I saw a baby lizard, there was no need to freak out that day, it was just a lousy rat that looked as though he’d taken a wrong turning and found himself face to face with me, I took pity on him, maybe he wanted directions, I couldn’t help him, I didn’t know the place myself, and then I thought better of it, the rat seemed pretty strange, he moved at a slug’s pace, a sign of age, perhaps, which had robbed him of the use of his back legs, this was not a rat like other rats, he was there for a reason, perhaps to kill me, stop me getting to the Kibandi child, he was challenging me now, with his protruding eyes, he drew back his lips, I stayed still as marble, so he would see I was not frightened of a mere rat from Mossaka, that I’d seen far scarier ones than him in my time, and he circled round me, sniffed my sex, licked it, then vanished through a hole in a shack about a hundred metres away, and I finally realised that this was the shack I was looking for, the old rat was the harm
ful double of Papa Kibandi, he had come to make sure of my status as double to his son, this was the end of the transmission process which had started with the absorption of the initiatory drink, and that’s how transmission takes place, first between the humans, from initiator to initiate, with the absorption of the mayamvumbi, then between the animals, the animal double of the initiator must lick the sex of the animal double of his young initiate, in fact the double of Papa Kibandi had wanted to make sure that the animal who would live with his son was courageous, an animal who could keep his cool when faced with danger, if I’d had shown the slightest sign of panic, if I’d tried to make a run for it he’d have wiped me out, not a moment’s hesitation, and things had turned out well for him, dear Baobab

  it was now four days and four nights since I left the bush for Mossaka, and the news spread among the animals in our neck of the woods, then a rumour went round about a dead porcupine under a palm tree, my colleagues rushed to find it, returning several times to the body, which had been half eaten by red ants, but they decided this porcupine didn’t look anything like me, it had a something wrong with its face, they gave up trying to convince themselves, they weren’t going to spend their entire lives looking for me, they must just face the facts and accept them, they trooped off into the bush, in single file, I could see the governor already informing my peers of my death, telling them I must have been caught in the traps set by the kids of Mossaka, he’d probably told them I was stubborn by nature, proud, like humans, talked too much, brought down by my own arrogance, preferring life as a tame animal to the freedom of the bush, I imagined him launching into the usual sermon, no doubt giving me a good kick when I was down, like the idiot creature in the story, known to humans as the ‘ass’, it was a tale he loved to tell, a tale intended as food for thought, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, he probably told them how one day the Town Mouse invited the Country Mouse for a meal, and the two of them were busy eating in the house of some humans when they heard the master of the house returning, whereupon they swiftly scarpered and when the noise stopped and the danger seemed to have passed, the town mouse suggested to his country cousin that they go back and finish their meal, but the country mouse declined, and reminded the town mouse that in the bush, no one would interrupt you while you were having your bite to eat, and then, dear Baobab, I expect our aged governor would have probably have summed up the moral of this story in one withering phrase, since the majority of my peers would have failed yet once more to grasp it, despite my numerous attempts to explain it to them quietly while the old chap was summing up, with a detached air, ‘away with feasts, however great, that may be spoiled by fear’, adding in a murmur, no doubt, ‘fine food’s worth zilch’, thereby proving once and for all that a fate such as mine might befall any animal tempted to stray into the world of men, ‘thus ended the life of a foolhardy creature, I saw him enter this world a mewling babe, I took him in when he was orphaned, even then he was scared to death of lizards, shitting everywhere, a little guy who never counted for anything, since nature decreed we’d be stuck with these quills, men made drums from deerskins, now let that be a lesson to you’, he probably concluded, and I expect it was a sad day for my fellow creatures, but the aged porcupine didn’t let that stop him, because in his voluble way, he liked to illustrate his remarks with at least two or three fables, stories his grandparents had told him, I expect he would have referred to my comrades’ favourite tale, The Swallow and the Little Birds, it seems there was once a Swallow who had travelled far and wide and had seen many things, learned and remembered many things, to the point where she could even warn the sailors of a coming storm, and the Swallow in question, who was knowledgeable and experienced in matters of migration, spoke to the little birds one day, warning them to beware the sowing season, the sowing of the seed could mean disaster for them, said the Swallow, they must take care to destroy the seeds, eat them, one by one, or they would be sure to end up in cage, or in a pot, not one of the little birds listened to the wise Swallow, they covered their ears to block out the reasonings of their feathered friend, who, in their opinion, had spent too much time wandering around the world aimlessly, and lost all judgement, and when her prediction came to pass, much to the surprise of the little birds, several of them were captured, and made slaves, and I expect at this point the governor would have wound up his story, saying, ‘we only believe evil when it is upon us’, and no doubt he ventured several other allegories while he was on the subject, which, in my absence, went undeciphered, since, as I said before, I was always the one who tried to reveal to the others the hidden sense of the aged porcupine’s parables and symbols, and when he’d finished showing off his wisdom with his telling of The Swallow and the Little Birds, he’d announce, with the solemn air he liked to affect, ‘I am that Swallow, and you are the little heedless birds, these, my words of wisdom and you my uncomprehending listeners’, and if my fellows were still puzzled, our aged friend would have treated them to an even more withering remark along the lines of ‘none of you understands all this, when the cricket ejaculates, only the old sage hears,’ but this time he probably said, in a more serious tone of voice, ‘and now let’s talk of other things, no one in the bush is irreplaceable, he was a deer calf who acted like a human, it’s his own funeral’

  as you see, my disappearance caused a lot of grief, especially among those who liked to listen to my tales about humans while the old man’s back was turned, pretending to enter a state of deep meditation, he’d bid us leave him to his patriarchal contemplations, go up to the top of a tree, close his eyes, stumble through his prayers, it really was like listening to the genuine first cousin of the monkey, the groaning and mutterings of the porcupine are remarkably similar to human utterance, but to this day, I’m proud to say, I’m pretty sure some of my fellows never gave up hope that one day they’d see me again, I was too careful to get myself captured by the kids of Mossaka like some naive booby, they must have remembered I’d warned them a thousand times about the little traps we liked to sneer at, they admired my lucidity, flair, intelligence, speed, cunning, they knew I could outwit them with one flick of the paw, so it could be my fellows had already begun to imagine the day I’d come back, a great day, they’d laugh in the face of the governor, tell him his sermonising was pure eyewash, ask a thousand questions about my disappearance, my incursion into the world of the first cousins of the monkeys, let’s be honest, the first question they asked would have been about the human condition, about how men relate to animals, my fellows had always wondered whether the first cousins of the monkey believed we were capable of thought, of conceiving an idea, pursuing it logically, always wondered if men were conscious of the harm they do to animals, if they realise how arrogant they are, with their self-proclaimed superiority, many of them, in fact, knew nothing of humans beyond the prejudices spouted by the governor, they’d never set paws in a village, they only saw men from a distance, they laughed at the thought of these poor creatures who only used their lower limbs to get from a to b, using only their feet for walking, just to show other species how superior they are, my fellows listened with interest to the caricature presented by our governor, Man he declared, was indefensible, deserved no absolution, was the wickedest of all creatures on earth, attenuating circumstances there were none, and since humans give us animals such a hard time, since they are hostile and deaf to our calls for peaceful co-existence, since they are the ones who come into the bush to hunt us, since they only grasp the need for harmony once they’ve been decimated by a long battle which is indelibly printed on their memory, well then, we should do likewise, and strike out at their children, even the newborn, because ‘the tiger’s young are born with ready claws’, so spoke our governor, and you see, my dear Baobab, that he had no sympathy for humankind