When the Plums Are Ripe

by Patrice Nganang

  “Sita!” said one voice.

  “Sita-o!”

  Hebga’s heart was beating like crazy.

  “Help!”

  Soon a woman came toward him, holding her breasts as she ran. He stopped her, grabbed her by the shoulders, and looked deeply into her eyes, which reflected only fear.

  “H … h … help!” she stuttered.

  Her whole body was trembling.

  “H … h … help!” she repeated, as if possessed. “Help!”

  “What’s going on?” Hebga demanded. “Tell me!”

  “Help!”

  Hebga didn’t wait to hear anything else. Holding his ax aloft, he rushed into the bushes. He jumped over farming tools that were scattered in the grass. He didn’t even see the blood spilled across the path. He was wholly focused on the desperate voices of the women around him. And most of all, of that one cry:

  “Sita-o!”

  All the women were pointing toward the bushes. He dived in, unable to think.

  “Sita-o!”

  “Sita-o!” said the women with one voice.

  “Sita!”

  “Sita-o!”

  “Sita-o!”

  Hebga had lost all feeling in his body. He was an animal, a lion, an eagle … what else? His mother’s name echoing through the bush had taken hold of his spirit, his body, his feet, his hands. He had recognized her voice, her voice calling him: “Hebga, help me!” That frantic cry for help, he would hear it for the rest of his life, the unending sob that would wrest him from sleep in the middle of the night—his childlike call, “Mama!” making his friends laugh—and leave him trembling and covered in sweat. He burst into a clearing, searching for the source of the cries, its hiding spot. He looked around, all around, but the cries had stopped. There on the ground he saw a splash of blood, and then an arm. Yes, an arm.

  “Mama!” he screamed.

  There was no answer.

  “Mama!”

  The forest fell into a conspiratorial, criminal silence. The trees were spinning overhead. The light shattered them into a thousand shards. The wind, the wind alone stirred the branches. The birds that usually filled them with their lively songs had all fallen silent.

  “Mama!” cried Hebga, and he heard a voice.

  A voice saying, “My son!”

  He rushed toward it and found himself in front of Ngo Bikaï. She was standing there, naked, in the middle of the bush, her body lacerated and covered with blood. With her arms held like an upside-down cross over her chest, she clasped her breasts and shook her head from left to right, right to left. When she noticed him, she suddenly lost the balance that had held her upright till then. She didn’t even hear the question posed by his frantic gestures. Slowly, quietly, she collapsed into his arms. Ah, how Hebga would have preferred that this was all a dream!

  “Mama!” he screamed, but there was no one to answer his cry.

  In the depth of the forest, he heard a groan.

  15

  One Dream Too Many

  “Show your face!” he shouted, stepping into an empty clearing, “show your face, schouain!”

  He ran right and left, slashing at grass, branches, and trees with huge swings of his ax.

  “Son of a cockroach! Scoundrel!”

  Silence was his only answer.

  “Show your face!”

  The invisible opponent was hidden in the infinite expanse of bushes. It drove Hebga mad.

  “If you have any courage, show your face!”

  He held the ax out at eye level, challenging the sky, the trees, the spirits, everything all around.

  “Come show me what you’re made of!”

  That wasn’t all.

  “If you are a man!”

  Ah, but that wasn’t enough.

  “If you have any balls!”

  Silence alone responded. He swung his ax all around in big strokes. He hit and hit. He hit and cursed. He cursed and hit. Soon he had created a clearing, a gigantic clearing the size of a ring set for the match of the century. The last bush he struck down revealed the nightmare that he, in his darkest despair, had refused to imagine: a foot, which was connected to a leg, and then the splayed body of his mother. He jumped back, then quickly gained control of himself and fell down on his knees. Wracked as much by nausea as horror, he crawled toward what had been spread out there: our Sita had been cut to pieces by her invisible opponent and left there. One leg was missing, her belly slashed open, her intestines spilling out on the grass. Her arm had been torn from her shoulder. Only her face was untouched.

  She almost appeared to be living, to be smiling still.

  “Mama!” cried the son.

  He covered her body with his own, then got up and shook her head, before realizing he was only breaking her apart even more.

  “Mama!” he cried again. “Mama!”

  He had thrown his ax, now so useless, down on the ground. Never had he felt so completely possessed by the cry—his cry—that shook the trees. He gathered up his mother in his arms, hugged her tight to his chest. His eyes looked all around, scanning the trees, the sky, the universe, asking if this forest had been abandoned by God. But all he saw was the empty void of the clearing he had created with his ax, the silence of the trees that watched him, and soon the cries of the women who burst through the bushes.

  “Sita!”

  “Sita-o!”

  “The coward!” he roared.

  He clasped his mother even more tightly in his arms.

  “Mama!”

  But his mother didn’t answer him.

  “The coward!”

  This time Hebga had been beaten in a battle he hadn’t even waged. He kissed his mother and whispered in her ear, “The coward!” Silence alone set the rhythm of his gestures. “The coward!” He repeated the word as he crossed back through the forest, bearing Sita’s body. He believed she was still alive, because her face, even in its silence, remained as it had been. The women ran after him, their voices rousing the bush, the villages, the whole region, letting them know about the drama that had played out in the heart of the forest.

  “The coward!” Hebga said. “The coward!”

  “Sita-o!” called the women.

  “Feigling!” he repeated, now in German.

  “Sita-o!”

  “Woyo-o!”

  “Woyo-o!”

  Holding his mother in his arms, Hebga crossed through the market leading the whole town behind him. At Mininga’s Bar, he tore Philothée away from the courtyard, where he was eating plantains and drinking beer, even at that early hour of the morning, and of course Pouka, who for once was speechless. Then he went to Father Jean’s church, as the catechumens filed out noisily. A hundred, no, a thousand arms reached out to help carry our Sita. The whole population of Edéa rushed headlong into its distress—woyo-o!—feeding on the son’s strength—but why did he need to be strong?—and giving voice to the forest’s great sob. Everyone there wanted to believe, as did her son, that our Sita was still alive. Everyone wanted to see her stamping her feet. Wanted her restored to the height of her virile grandeur, so familiar to all. No one could think of anything but “coward” to call out whoever had done this—a coward who had destroyed such a majestic woman! He had attacked from behind, whoever it was who had cut her down—there’s no other way it could have happened. He had caught her off guard, the coward, because this woman—who led all the other women in the town, who was the queen of the marketplace, who had gotten a woodcutter to adapt to her rhythm, who had made her son sit down when he was told and a poet fall silent—only a snake could have cut through the spine of this woman.

  “A snake?”

  “It was the panther!” M’bangue declared when Hebga laid down his mother’s body in his courtyard. “Nearby, but invisible!”

  Everyone looked at each other.

  “Woyo-o!”

  “Just who is this panther?”

  The question spread through the crowd. Pouka would later ask his father the same ques
tion several more times, once the cry of the forest had been transformed into tears and a funeral procession. But M’bangue would always reply that the two fighters of the century had taken their duel with them into the far-off distance.

  “Just what man could have dared?” people wondered. “What man did this?”

  Pouka realized quite suddenly how brutal Edéa actually was. He knew that this panther wasn’t, could not be, an animal. No, an animal wouldn’t have done this. It was a man—he stressed the word. Yet M’bangue wouldn’t answer. That’s because the night before, instead of dreaming of that evil man, of that sorcercer—instead of warning his own sister—Edéa’s most respected seer had again dreamed of Hitler’s suicide. He didn’t need Pouka to tell him that his Hitlerian dreams had crossed a line. This was the sixth time—one time too many.

  16

  Big Things Happen to the Little Guys

  Death is fundamentally unjust. The loss of one’s mother is no trivial matter. Still, the chaos unleashed in Edéa when our Sita’s cadaver was carried through the town’s courtyards dissipated quite quickly as history marched on. Not long after the burial of the Mother of the Market, the village was shaken up by the noise of a British plane—a Westland Lysander—cutting across the sky. The noise and confusion brought everyone into the streets. This wasn’t the first time they’d seen a plane fly by. But this time, the machine seemed to fly just overhead. The villagers started running right and left, in total chaos, bumping into each other. Some shouted orders, but no one was listening. Panicked mothers cried out for their children, like hens under a scavenger’s shadow. Kids shouted and pointed at the sky. In their excitement they jumped, trampling on the clouds of leaflets that fell like rain at their feet. “We are coming to your defense,” some read, while others announced, “We are coming with supplies for you!” or “Join us and liberate France!” “Cameroon declares its political and economic independence!” “Long live a Free Cameroon!” All were signed by General de Gaulle.

  By September 1, 1940, news of General de Gaulle had already arrived in Edéa’s forest, but not because of his military exploits. What we’d heard was that he’d been condemned to death by Pétain, the President of the French Republic, who had allied himself with the Germans. News like that traveled fast. “The whites are attacking each other,” people said, adding, “They’re gonna eat each other alive.” Could you believe it was no longer Um Nyobè who was talking? It was impossible to silence the old folks who’d lived through the era of German colonization, and for whom the score on the French occupation was far from settled. Some, eyes opened wide in horror, cautioned against pro-German sentiment. Others, over the course of years and with the growing record of atrocities committed by the French, had transformed the pain and humiliations of the past into a measure of the grandeur of their former torturers. They had borne witness to Teutonic power, even if it had kicked them in the balls. Many of the youths sympathized with the pro-German point of view, and they really didn’t want to see the French defeat as treason. They had never lived through a war, it must be said, and so had no point of comparison. They had firsthand experience only of French colonization, and they detested it. Passionate hatred bolstered their sarcastic arguments.

  “Just imagine,” one young boy said, “imagine giving your sister to the one who killed your brother.”

  “Right, your brother’s assassin is balling your sister,” another translated, before concluding: “You just let it happen.”

  Everyone burst out laughing—it was so obviously absurd.

  “Who could take that?”

  “Who?”

  “Cowards!”

  “But France gave up the fight.”

  “If someone is stronger than you,” one voice piped up, “carry his bag.”

  “What bag?” another asked.

  “The bag of cowardice!”

  For some there, Germany was avenging those who had suffered twenty-five years of French colonization. For others, all that was old news. Their basic argument was that if you had to choose between the French and the Germans, there was no good choice.

  “White men’s business, my brother.”

  “Might as well choose between piss and poop.”

  That was Hebga’s thought.

  “But still, if you have to choose…?” someone shouted.

  And it was on that question of choice that lines were drawn. Emotions started to rise, buoyed up by healthy shots of arki. Germany for some; France for others. The Second World War was playing out in bars and in family living rooms. There was no need to hide—there was no risk in supporting Germany, especially since the colonial authority in Yaoundé, and everywhere else in the French Empire, was now under Pétain’s orders. And right there in Yaoundé, July fourteenth had provided an occasion to introduce the new regime publicly, although Commissioner Brunot’s parade was met by hecklers shouting “Fascist!” and “Nazi!” In short, the Bastille Day celebration in the capital had been pretty much a failure. Still, the ears of many colonists—always ready to don the mantle of paternalistic authoritarianism whatever its source—were receptive to the proclamations of a Leader who was cited as often as possible by the partisans of the new order based in Vichy. Things went differently in Douala, however. With the support of Dio’s soldiers, as of August 29, Leclerc put the administration under his orders, and therefore under those of General de Gaulle. When he was in Yaoundé, Pouka had caught his bosses practicing the Nazi salute. Douala, on the other hand, was turning into Free France’s first victory. In the depths of the forest, the differences between these two cities had consequences that the French perhaps did not imagine.

  “Forget the French,” someone said in Mininga’s Bar. “Germany is colonizing us now, whether we like it or not.”

  With those words the big talker, his eyes red with arki, summarized the scale of the changes upending the French colonial world, from Dakar to Brazzaville.

  “It’s recolonizing us.”

  For Cameroon, that distinction was significant.

  “Except it’s also colonizing France.”

  That was met with laughter.

  “It’s occupying France. Slight difference.”

  And the debate was on. And not just at Mininga’s.

  “Regardless, we have never been a French colony,” said a man with a bald spot a kilometer wide.

  “Cameroon is occupied,” someone interjected. “Let’s be precise.”

  “What does that mean: occupied?”

  “France has occupied Cameroon since 1916.”

  “Being occupied means being colonized.”

  “Even if France has always treated us as its colony, my brother, we are a protectorate, not a colony.”

  “An occupied territory.”

  “Like France.”

  “By France.”

  “Cameroon has never been a French colony.”

  “Never.”

  Those who claimed that Cameroon was nobody’s colony and that, besides, it had ceased to be a colony in 1915 easily won the war of words. They had passion and youth on their side. They were the ones who wrote—and always will—Cameroon with a K, German-style: Kamerun. Fritz was the most loquacious of that group. And many of the discussions took place in his living room. They were lively evenings, it must be said. Yet no one, not even him, could ignore the revelations being made in Edéa’s forest about Hitler.

  17

  The Chiasmatic Enchantments of History

  Let’s leave Hitler alone—that’s what everyone there would have said. The one who mattered was Leclerc. Not just because of his name. History books wax eloquently about the captain’s rapid promotion, their amazement certainly heightened by these brief words from General de Gaulle: “As if by enchantment,” Leclerc had himself named colonel upon his arrival in Cameroon, de Gaulle writes in his Mémoires de guerre (on page 324). History books describe this famous ceremony of self-promotion as taking place in a pirogue off the coast near Douala. Pleven, who along with Boislamb
ert had accompanied the captain, tore the buttons off his own shirt to fashion military stripes for him. And thus this bit of “enchantment” was woven into the great legend that is the history of the Resistance and the Free French. Ah, these books so full of words, why do they forget that the status of Cameroon—a territory under mandate—was what de Gaulle found so enchanting? Because it meant there were few French forces there, unlike Senegal, Gabon, and Côte d’Ivoire, where there were well-established military bases. What’s more, the very long border between Cameroon and Nigeria—1,690 kilometers in all—left the territory open to the British Empire, and created a second, parallel transit route toward Chad.

  “Cameroon is the weak link and the heart of the French Empire in Central Africa,” de Gaulle declared, “its Achilles’ heel and its right arm.”

  Why, then, do these books forget that it was Staff Captain, then Colonel, soon to become General, and then posthumously Marshal Leclerc who turned Cameroon from a territory under mandate into a French colony when, on August 29, 1940, as if by enchantment, he proclaimed himself governor, taking the place of the high commissioner, which had been until then the title of the head of the French authorities? That, as if by enchantment, Cameroon ceased right then to be a protectorate and, with the same move, was placed under a state of siege? That therefore, as if by enchantment, the country was put under lock and chain on the very day that it sent the first of its sons with Leclerc to liberate France, then on her knees? That, as if by enchantment, we Cameroonians became slaves the day we took up arms to go to the assistance of France in her moment of defeat? Ah, let’s read Colonel Leclerc’s own words, shall we, for they talk about us: “I have seen natives sincerely determined to collaborate with us,” he wrote. “We should allow them to reap all possible benefits of French civilization. I have seen others already more aware of their rights than of their duty; they must be firmly put back in their place. We are not afraid of them.” Words from 1940. But this, clearly, is a chiasmus of history; in time it will be dealt with by Fritz, or maybe Um Nyobè.