Memoirs of a Porcupine

by Alain Mabanckou

  It’s getting late, dear Baobab, the moon has just disappeared, I feel my eyelids growing heavy, my limbs giving way, my sight misting over, could this be death, folding its arms about me, I can’t hold out much longer, I’m slipping away, I’m tired now, oh yes, I’m very tired

  how this porcupine isn’t finished yet

  day has just broken, I’m surprised to find life still going on around me, the birds have come to perch on the branches of the trees, the river tumbles along, it’s reassuring, all this movement, another small victory, I think I must take it as such, time seems to have flown by since yesterday, I was happy to talk to you till my eyelids began to droop, in the end you didn’t once interrupt me, I still don’t know what you think of this story, well, whatever, I feel better now I’ve got it off my chest, there may be a few things I’ve haven’t told you, my name, for instance, which was given to me by my master, he called me Ngoumba, in our language that means porcupine, Kibandi perhaps rather liked the idea that I was not just a porcupine, an ordinary everyday porcupine, well he would wouldn’t he, he was a human being, and since I didn’t like this ugly sounding name, I pretended I hadn’t heard him when he called me by it, but he would insist, so now you see why I didn’t tell you my name right at the start

  just now I was stretching out and I discovered some provisions just behind the foot of your trunk, I wonder if there isn’t someone else living here, but I haven’t seen a single animal go by since yesterday and logically speaking, they must belong to me now, I daren’t begin to think they might have been left here by my master’s other self, I would have heard him coming like when he used to appear, he vanished too, the day the little monsters, those kids tossed him about like a marionette

  I’ve only one regret, which is, I can’t hear your voice, dear Baobab, and if you could talk like me, I’d feel less alone, but what really counts at this point is your presence, it calms my fears, and if I see danger approaching, believe me, I’ll climb up into the crook of one of your branches, you’d never deliver me into the hands of death, surely, I apologise in advance for doing my business here, I’m still afraid to leave, I might do something stupid, I’d miss your protection, I don’t know how long this state of alert’s going to last, I know you’re not wild about me defecating underneath you, though men do say excrement makes your fruits and leaves grow so in a sense I’m contributing to your eventual longevity, it’s all I can offer in exchange for your hospitality

  in fact, try as I might, I’m just not hungry, but I really must eat, these palm nuts don’t taste like they used to though, I pass them from paw to paw, I sniff them, I try to cram a few into my mouth, they taste bitter, I don’t have the strength to chew them, I know it comes from my general state of panic and fear these last few days, I must try to chill out, to relax, you can’t eat when your heart’s beating fast, I feel I would like to eat, just to reassure myself, and maybe so I won’t die of hunger, and since last Friday I think I’ve lost weight, my tongue feels all mushy, my tail hangs low, my eyes are red, my limbs feel heavy and when I cough, because I’ve been coughing a lot just in the last few hours I feel as though I’m going to vomit up my own lungs, I can go a long time yet without eating, I don’t care because my belly doesn’t feel empty, and if I must die, I’d much rather die of hunger

  it’s a sunny Monday and I feel I’d like to make some long term resolutions, take an optimistic view of the future, have no care for tomorrow, a voice inside me says I’m not going to die tomorrow, nor the day after tomorrow either, that there must be a explanation for all this, it’s not up to me to go out and find it, whoever created the universe probably realises I was only the victim of the traditions of the people of this country, my survival is one in the eye for anyone thinking in future of transmitting a harmful double to their children, how much longer can I expect to live now, eh, I’ve no idea, dear Baobab, ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’ our old governor would have said, despite everything he did have some influence on my behaviour, deep down I admire him, there’ve been times when I’ve missed the old sour-face, I’d have liked to hear one of his little lectures again, one of his really brilliant ones, like the day when he spoke to us about matter, of the three most usual states and how they change, the liquid state, the gaseous state and the solid state, he could see we weren’t convinced and wanted concrete examples, so tried to explain, as best he could, the meaning of fusion, sublimation, becoming solid, becoming liquid, or vaporisation, poor old guy, he was a porcupine worthy of the name, he must be dead for years now, as must the others of my generation, I’m sure

  I never asked to survive, no more than I will ever ask to die, I’m content to go on breathing, see what use I can be of in the future, I’ve got two ideas I’d like to follow up, first I’d like to wage a merciless campaign against all the harmful doubles in this country, I know that’s a big undertaking, but I’d like to hunt them down, one after the other, by way of atonement, to wipe out my share of responsibility for the misfortune suffered by this and many other villages, and second, dear Baobab, I’d simply like to go back and live in our old territory because spending so much time with men has made me nostalgic, it’s a feeling you might call territory-sickness, men would say homesickness, a longing for their country, I cling to my memories as the elephant clings to his tusks, distant images, vanished shades, far off noises which stop me doing something irreparable, oh yes, irreparable, I do think of that too, of taking my own life, but it’s the most cowardly of all acts, and just as human beings believe their existence comes from a supreme being, I have come to believe it too, since last Friday, the reason I’m still alive, for porcupine’s sake, must be because some higher will than mine has decreed it, and if so, I must have one last mission to carry out here below

  I’ve got some other projects in mind, dear Baobab, for example, I’d like to meet a nice female, not just for some basic copulation to procreate like other animals, but for pleasure, first of all, my partner’s pleasure and my own, and then, of course to make babies with, if we found we had things in common, and then, once I was a father, I would tell my offspring the story of my life, and about the ways of men, I’d warn my offspring against a calling anything like my own, and, dear Baobab, you’re going to think me unreasonable, ambitious, above all, unrealistic, considering I’m 42 years old, but you know, age doesn’t worry me, for porcupine’s sake, I’ve read in the big book of God that humans used to live for hundreds and hundreds of years, their patriarch, whose name was Methuselah even lived to be 969, what I mean is, I’m not a washed-up old porcupine yet, I’d like to be the Methuselah of the animal kind, I’ve got some stamina yet, some life in me, what matters is to dedicate the time I have left to doing good, and only good, perhaps transform myself into a peaceful double

  yes, I’ve still some stamina left, and I’m sure my powers are intact, aha, I see you’re waving your branches in disbelief, you think I’ve lost all my powers, is that it, you want me to give you proof here and now, well let’s have a go, I’ll just get to my feet, I’ll just roll up in a ball, just concentrate for a moment, and bim, bam, boom, bless my quills, did you see that, I let fly three of my quills, what’s more, they came to rest a few hundred metres off, further even than when I was working for my master, what further proof do you need, I’m clearly far from finished yet

  Appendix

  Letter from the Stubborn Snail concerning the origin of the manuscript Memoirs of a Porcupine

  Monsieur Stubborn Snail

  Literary executor of Broken Glass

  Bar owner of Credit Gone West

  To Editions du Seuil

  27, Rue Jacob

  75006 Paris – France

  Subject: Submission of manuscript Memoirs of a Porcupine, posthumous text by my friend Broken Glass

  Madame, Monsieur,

  I am writing to you in my capacity as literary executor to my lifelong friend, the late Broken Glass. I should like this letter to be published at the end of his book Memoirs of a
Porcupine, to inform the readers of certain details regarding the origin of the text.

  Last year, just after his death, I sent you, by registered post, what I believed to be his one and only manuscript, since it was I who had commissioned it, with a view to immortalising my bar, Credit gone West. You published this first text several months later under the title of Broken Glass, despite my having formally expressed a wish that it be called Credit Gone West. You appear to have decided – in the interests of the book – to take no account of this…

  Be that as it may, the purpose of this letter is not to enter into a polemic on that subject. On the contrary, it gives me great pleasure to enclose this second manuscript, which one of my employees, the bartender, Mompéro, found in a thicket down by the river Tchinouka, where the body of the lamented Broken Glass was fished out. The original document – an old school folder filled with loose papers – was in such a deplorable state that great care had to be taken to put the pages together in order and number them. To this end, whenever the bar was not too busy, my two bartenders and I would sit round the table where Broken Glass usually sat. We would decipher the passages smudged with dust, rain and dew. We argued between ourselves, to avoid any temptation to ascribe to the deceased words which he had not in fact written. Our discussions, I confess, were often bitter and heated, which exasperated a number of my clients. Several of them, including the Pampers guy and Robinette, continue to deny certain scenes attributed to them in the novel Broken Glass. As a result, they were most displeased to hear of the existence of a second notebook, thinking, wrongly, as it happens, that Memoirs of a Porcupine was simply a sequel to Broken Glass! In fact they were worried that once again they would find themselves caricatured by the man they continue to regard as an outright traitor who stole whole sections of their lives before going to join his mother in the murky waters of the river Tchinouka

  But let us return to the new manuscript!

  Once the difficult task of piecing the work together was done, I personally engaged a student at the Technical Lycee of Kengué-Pauline to type up Memoirs of a Porcupine. She invoiced me, believe it or not, to the tune of 2000 CFA per page, that is to say, the cost of a bottle of good red wine in my bar! She justified the high cost per page of typing by saying that Broken Glass’s handwriting was indecipherable, and the poor girl sometimes had to read the same line twice or three times over, all because of the author’s determination to use only commas by way of punctuation.

  These difficulties, dear Monsieur, dear Madame, account for the late arrival of this manuscript, and it is with great relief that I enclose it herewith, along with the original document, in order that you may, should it prove necessary, check certain of our reconstructions, particularly in the last two sections, entitled respectively ‘on how last Friday became black Friday’ and ‘how this porcupine isn’t finished yet’. These sections were the most damaged of the entire document.

  Broken Glass is absent from the text, featuring neither as omnipresent narrator nor as a character in the story. Deep down he was convinced that the books we really remember are those which reinvent the world, revisit our childhood, pose questions about the origin of all things, examine our obsessions and question our beliefs. Accordingly, in this final tale entitled Memoirs of a Porcupine – and I sincerely hope that this time you will not change the book’s title – Broken Glass was providing an allegorical version of his own last wishes. As he sees it, the world is just an approximate version of a fable which we will never understand as long as we continue to take account only of the material representation of things.

  I must confess that I was quite carried away by this tale of the fortunes and misfortunes of this singular porcupine, so likeable, chatty and restless, with his deep knowledge of human nature and his way, even up to the final page, of wielding digression like a weapon, his aim being to draw a portrait of us human beings, and often, indeed, to blame us. And reading it has changed my view of animals. After all, which is really the beast, man or animal? A huge question!

  I look forward to collaborating with you once again, and offer you, Madame, Monsieur, my most respectful greetings,

  Stubborn Snail

  Literary executor to Broken Glass

  Bar owner, Credit Gone West

  Copyright © Alain Mabanckou 2012

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  eISBN : 978-1-593-76480-7

  Soft Skull Press

  An imprint of Counterpoint

  1919 Fifth Street

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.softskull.com

  Distributed by Publishers Group West