“And why this generosity?” I asked.
“What generosity?” he replied.
He urged me not to stay on the margins of the group, so far from the campfires. At night a fire would attract moths and other annoying insects, but it would keep away snakes and predators. I joined him and his companions around their campfire. They were welcoming and friendly. He offered me some water, as well as a piece of bread with sardines. Another person offered me a banana. I accepted. And then they all began talking about their flight, their sufferings, the horrors they’d seen or experienced, the atrocities committed by the two warring factions.
When someone mentioned the lack of news about what was happening in the capital, I suddenly remembered that I had a radio. It was too late to get the reports on the international stations, so we tuned in to the local station.
The leader of the faction currently in power, President Dabanga, was speaking:
“Congratulations to our brave fighters! They have routed the traitors who dragged our fair country down into the depths of anarchy, chaos, and senseless violence. We have taken power in order to reestablish peace and democracy. I have therefore instructed the troops charged with maintaining order to continue their occupation of the districts they have pacified. My fellow citizens, our country is too precious to be left in the hands of those genocidal villains, many of whom have fled into the forest. We will give them no respite! We will hunt them down! We will flush them out, village by village, and exterminate them, even if those villages lie in the depths of the jungle. I . . .”
Someone asked me to turn it off. There was an odd silence, broken only by the throbbing sounds of the forest. I was a genocidal villain, and would be hunted down even if I fled to the farthest depths of the jungle. We settled down for the night with those menacing words in our heads.
Before going to sleep, I borrowed a flashlight and went off by myself into the darkness—not too far, though, for fear of meeting up with a panther, a boa constrictor, or some other dangerous animal. I changed my sanitary pad and buried the one I took off. I had no choice but to put my stained panties back on. Even though my cramps had subsided a bit, I took two acetaminophen before retiring.
It gets cold at night in the rain forest—I never knew that. Using my leather bag as a pillow, I curled up tightly, so that as little of my body as possible would be exposed to the air. I slept poorly. First of all, there were mosquitoes and gnats constantly buzzing in your ears; and then there were crawling insects, such as the ants, that suddenly bit you with their chelicerae. And there were strange noises and gruntings—quite alarming, since we were in a region inhabited by gorillas. I’d been afraid of gorillas ever since I’d heard that a woman at a banana plantation in the forest had had her baby snatched by one while her back was turned. Last but not least, I thought for a long time about Mama, weeping silently. I got up at dawn, with the first mocking laughter of the monkeys, and before the earliest birdsongs were drowned in the cacophony of the myriad species flourishing in that vast woodland aviary.
We broke camp fairly quickly. The coolness of the night had left the leaves and grass heavy with dew, so that my sneakers and the legs of my pants were soon soaked. We walked and walked and walked. We floundered through swamps. When there was no path, as was often the case, we cut our way through thick vines and underbrush with a machete. We ducked under low-hanging branches and clambered over the trunks of enormous trees felled by lightning or storm winds. From time to time, we were afforded a glimpse of the misty sky through a hole in the canopy that had been left by one of those fallen giants. My body was so weary that I no longer felt my weariness; I put one foot in front of the other, mechanically. When at last we rounded a bend in the path and caught sight of a village up ahead, I felt as though I’d seen the gates of Paradise.
The village was on a road, one of those thoroughfares that loggers had cut through the woods for their trucks. I never knew there was logging so deep in the rain forest. We arrived in the early afternoon. The men had returned from the hunt, and we came upon them as they were skinning a gorilla. They were surprised to see those forty-odd human animals emerge from the underbrush, and I got the impression they were briefly frightened when they caught sight of the first members of our group, for they hastily tried to conceal their prey. But the fact that we had women and children among us reassured them. Our leader explained who we were, why we were fleeing, and where we were going. He asked them if we could rest for a while in their village before continuing on our way, since the women and children were tired. They began laughing and confessed that they had just been poaching in the nature preserve, where they were forbidden to hunt even though the area was teeming with elephants, buffalo, and gorillas. Until they’d noticed the women and children, they’d taken us for game wardens.
The headman welcomed us and showed us to a large, opensided, thatched-roof hut located in the center of the village. This was where the inhabitants always met to conduct their business. The women gave us water to drink, and a man brought us a demijohn of palm wine.
Sitting on a woven mat, I let my exhausted body relax. To see the sunshine again, after all that time in the chiaroscuro of the forest, lifted my spirits. I hadn’t known I was so fond of the sun and its light. I drank only water, but the others—women as well as men—indulged in the palm wine. I stretched out on my mat, overcome with fatigue, and before I knew it I was asleep.
Someone woke me up. The villagers were inviting us to share their meal, which consisted largely of gorilla meat. The women had cooked it into a stew, and it smelled good. Since nothing proved they had actually killed the ape, rather than finding it already dead, I declined to eat any of it—avoided even touching the bowls they served it in. I didn’t want to risk catching the Ebola virus. To explain my refusal and avoid offending the villagers, I came up with a clever fib: I told them that in my father’s clan, women who had not yet borne children were forbidden to eat gorilla meat. I almost said “women who were still virgins,” but I decided this would sound too implausible. They believed the lie, and, continuing their display of generosity, a woman brought me a plate of maboké, a freshwater fish (catfish, I think) which had been seasoned with pepper, wrapped in banana leaves, and baked. It was delicious, and I ate every bit of it—even crunched on the bones. It was the first good meal I’d had in a very long time.
As the saying goes, newcomers bring the news. Our group told the villagers all about the latest events in the city—the fighting, the massacres, the horrors. They didn’t understand in the least. “Well, we have our disagreements, too—but we don’t kill each other!” declared one of the village elders, whose hair was completely white. I guess he was too old to comprehend the modern world, political matters, and the way politicians worked.
After the meal, to my great surprise, our guide thanked our hosts and said we had to take advantage of the three or four hours of daylight that remained in order to make progress before nightfall, since we were traveling far and needed to move on. With contributions from the group, he put together a gift consisting of four one-kilo bags of cane sugar, two 250-gram packets of salt, a large box of powdered milk, two small envelopes of ground coffee, and four large bars of soap. He himself added two packets of aspirin, and presented the entire collection to the chieftain as an expression of our gratitude. Sugar, salt, coffee—the villagers were delighted.
Our caravan prepared to set out, but my body refused to stand up, refused to leave. My brain as well. I couldn’t see myself starting all over again—hunching and stumbling my way through the forest, tripping over roots, cutting myself on razor-sharp leaves, keeping a nervous eye out for poisonous snakes . . . No. The leader of our group tried to persuade me. He had brought me out of the city and felt responsible for guiding me to his village. I wasn’t safe here, for this village was on a road. I told him he needn’t worry—he shouldn’t feel responsible for me at all, because I alone had made the decision to follow him and I alone had decided not to make the entire t
rek to his village—I was at the end of my strength. The others added their voices to his, urging me to come with them. But when I persisted, one of the women said: “Oh, let her do as she likes! Young people today, especially kids born in the city, never listen to their elders anymore. They’ve become so stubborn! Well, so much the worse for her.” She was irritated. She attached her baby firmly to her back, placed her bundle on her head, and marched off into the forest.
So they left. I alone stayed behind in that unfamiliar village, whose name I didn’t even know. I had no idea how long I would remain there—a week, perhaps—hoping that peace would be reestablished in the meantime. Since we were on a road that was more or less driveable, a truck would eventually pass by and take me back to the city.
The warm welcome extended to us by the villagers had prevented me from noticing how poor they were. I watched as they divided up what the group had given them—they treated the items as precious commodities, picking up a crumb of sugar that had fallen to the ground, counting and recounting the spoonfuls of salt to make sure the distribution was fair, trying to cut a large bar of soap into eight equal pieces. Since there was no way all of them could have a bit of everything, some chose to have salt rather than sugar, or two little cubes of soap rather than four large spoonfuls of ground coffee.
A few scrawny chickens were roaming around, and two or three equally scrawny goats were grazing untethered just outside the village. Otherwise, there wasn’t much. A field of cassava and some banana trees over here, patches of groundnuts and yams over there. With the exception of cassava leaves, which were available all year long, the villagers must certainly have known periods of scarcity between the growing seasons, for each crop has its season. And they certainly didn’t feast on gorilla meat every day. It goes without saying that there was a shortage of medicines—the village didn’t even have a clinic. You could die from just about anything there, even the slightest injury or ailment.
I didn’t remain by myself very long. After the distribution of the sugar, salt, milk, coffee, and soap, a woman offered to take me into her home. She lived only with her daughter, whose sleeping mat I could share. Village people were like that—generous and hospitable. Things were different in the city.
We walked over to her house. I helped her carry her share of the gifts. Her daughter, who was sweeping the front yard, gave me a warm welcome. Since the house was one of the largest in the village, with walls of brick and a tile roof, I wondered whether it wasn’t the headman’s house. When I asked my hostess this question, she looked at me as if she hadn’t understood, and replied, “Why?”
“Because it’s the biggest house in the village, and maybe the handsomest,” I said.
With an expression that implied I was making no sense, she asked me in turn: “Why must the headman have the biggest house in the village? And,” she said with a smile, “the most beautiful wife?”
Why indeed? I didn’t know how to answer.
Her daughter asked me to sit in the living room, and disappeared into one of the bedrooms. I heard her rummaging about, moving things around, then sprinkling and sweeping the floor. At last she came out and, with great pleasure, showed me the bed that we would share. It wasn’t a mat, as her mother had said, but a fine foam mattress large enough for two and a half people. Her mother asked if I needed anything. Water to wash with, I immediately replied—I hadn’t washed for two days.
“That’s not good for a woman,” she said. “A woman should bathe every day. And she should tend to her intimate hygiene every evening before going to bed, and every morning when she gets up.” She was already speaking as if I were her own daughter. “Asjha will take you to the river.”
Asjha was her daughter, the young woman who had welcomed me. I told Asjha that I would like to bathe, and also to wash the few clothes I had. She asked, in turn, if I would help her fetch water to the house. With a yellow plastic jug on my head, I followed her. The river wasn’t very far from the village—half a kilometer, at most. We went upstream, to the spot reserved for the women. I took my clothes off, and then got rid of my sanitary pad. My panties—my only pair—were stained with blood despite the pad, probably because of all the arduous walking I’d done. The good news was that my period was over with. Asjha handed me the little cube of soap that she’d received as her share. I washed my panties, my bra, which was filthy with the sweat that had poured from my armpits, and the T-shirt I’d been wearing constantly for several days.
Then I turned my attention to my body. I poured water all over myself, rubbed my skin with the lavender-scented soap that Asjha had brought, and plunged into the cool, fresh water. Asjha disrobed as well, and, after soaping up, she joined me in the river. The water wasn’t deep—it scarcely came up to my pubic hair, and came only up to Asjha’s waist, since she was shorter than me. We paddled around in the water like happy ducks. Asjha splashed me in the face and ran away; I chased her, and caught her around the waist just as she was emerging onto the shore. The two of us fell. Trying to disengage herself, she turned to face me, and in a fit of high spirits we rolled over and over in the sand, one on top of the other, tangled in each other’s arms, nude, her breasts and thighs pressed against mine. We were laughing like little kids. When we finally got to our feet, gasping for breath, she looked in frank admiration at my womanly breasts, the color of jujube fruit. To tease her, I turned my face to show my profile and struck a fashion pose: one hand behind my head, the other on my jauntily thrust-out rear, and one knee slightly canted forward. I arched out my bust and pulled in my stomach. A sudden breeze wafted over us. I felt good; I felt beautiful. Asjha laughed with delight. She came up to me and touched my firm breasts.
“How did you get such pretty ones?”
“You’ll have them, too, when you’re my age.”
“How old are you?”
I lied, to impress her, and said I was older than I really was. “I’m eighteen and a bit.”
I looked at her breasts, the two little buds of a girl just on the verge of puberty. I pinched them, and she trembled.
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
I was scarcely sixteen.
“You’re going to have very beautiful breasts—you’ll see,” I assured her. “And just as many pubic hairs as me,” I added, stroking the black hairs between my legs. She plucked one of the hairs with her fingers, stretched it out, and marveled at how long it was. We continued to compare and admire our bodies as the sun set, bathing us in its rosy light.
In contrast to the birds, which were returning to the forest in great noisy, disordered flocks, a swarm of butterflies emerged from the brush in silent procession. I didn’t know what kind they were—all I knew was that they were magnificent. They had large blue wings edged with velvety black. They flew in a haphazard way, darting here and there, letting themselves fall briefly and then bounding upward again with a little jump, as if taking off from an invisible trampoline. It seemed that, just like Asjha and me, they were intoxicated with the sounds and scents floating on the evening air. One of them came to rest on Asjha’s hair. She stood perfectly still, smiling with joy—and the butterfly, too, remained still, slowly fanning its azure wings like someone drawing breath, taking heart. A magical moment.
“Asjha, I crown you Queen of the Republic of Butterflies!”
She laughed gaily, a laugh full of starlight, and the butterfly flew away. The two of us ran to the river and plunged in, wading about, chasing each other, splashing each other—two young women, naked and happy in the soft tropical twilight.
“Big sister, it’s time to go.”
Asjha had never even asked my name. I was her big sister, and that was enough. I put my jeans back on without any panties, and to cover my breasts I took the pagne she’d given me and tied it around my ribs like a bodice. We walked upriver, passing the spot where the men went to wash, and came to a little cove where there was a spring with drinkable water—a clear, cool stream that welled up from the ground and flowe
d out over the sand and the fine white gravel. We filled our containers. I helped to balance hers on the cushion she’d placed on her head. Then I took up the plastic jug and we started back to the village.
Chapter Twenty-four
Johnny, Known as Mad Dog
Islept until noon. And I would have slept even longer if gunshots hadn’t erupted near my window. God, what a night! We’d danced our legs off and downed whole pots of cham-cham, a liquor you extracted from raffia palms, then boiled and drank while it was hot. Not a cocktail for ladies—it went straight to your head and messed up the circuits in your brain. We’d started off dancing to rap, makossa, and funk, then moved on to rhumba, Franco, Papa Wemba, and Wenge Musica. Finally, carried away by the cham-cham, we’d taken our spears and assegais in hand, so that the rhythmic swaying of our bare torsos would harmonize better with the traditional rhythms of the tom-toms and tribal war chants. Every so often we’d picked up our machine guns and fired into the air, to enliven the festivities.
When I’d seen Abissélékou’s tits bobbing free and unconstrained beneath her sheer blouse, I couldn’t resist. Being a wily old veteran, I first checked to see that she was alone, or (if she wasn’t) that her companion was unarmed—it’s always wise to take precautions before approaching a chick. There didn’t seem to be anybody hanging around her, so I asked her to dance. She didn’t say no. From the way she was laughing and carrying on, I could tell she was already pretty far gone on cham-cham. I brought her over to my table and offered her some Chivas Regal, which she drank greedily, and a few minutes later we were behind the hut that usually served as the bar. At the moment, fortunately, it was deserted—everyone was gathered in the district’s main square a few blocks away, celebrating the military victory.
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