When the Plums Are Ripe

by Patrice Nganang

  The writer could do nothing but stare and keep silent. He stood behind his boss, who held in his hand the “alarming letter from an officer who had met Leclerc’s forces in Douala.” Pouka had delivered it to its Vichyist addressee in Yaoundé. The letter had in fact been dictated by the colonel; in it he detailed the fall of Douala, exaggerating the number of his own troops, that is to say, de Gaulle’s, as well as the weaponry at his disposal. He mentioned twenty assault tanks that had come down from Fort-Lamy via the Nigerian corridor, a dozen cannons, hundreds of troops, and, to make it sound authentic, he referred to Félix Éboué by the epithet regularly used for the governor of Chad by the colonists: “That dirty nigger!”

  “You can never trust them,” he concluded.

  The letter stunned Commissioner Brunot. He had always read about history in books and in dispatches. Now, when it came knocking on his office door, he was suddenly speechless. He would have liked to ask Pouka’s boss, “What should I do?”

  “As long as Yaoundé is still breathing,” the man facing him replied, “Cameroon is alive.”

  Who was he trying to reassure? The commissioner had trembled as he read the letter delivered to him by his “patriotic” administrator, but quickly regained control of himself, all too aware that there was a black man in the room. No, he wasn’t thinking about Brutus—“Tu quoque?”—when Pouka’s boss told him the writer had delivered the missive.

  “You were in Douala?” he simply asked.

  That was the first time the territory’s supreme authority had ever addressed Pouka directly.

  “No…” Pouka began. “Yes, boss.”

  Ah, Pouka! One day you will crow about this; so tell me now if you ever imagined that your poetic vacation in Edéa would take such a dramatic turn! Leclerc had asked Pouka to say, if necessary, that he had been to Douala himself, although he added that he didn’t have to lie. In the colonies, the truth, when spoken by a native, is really a lie. Yes, Pouka could always say that he had met Leclerc, that the colonel only had “so many soldiers,” “so many tanks,” “cannons,” whatever; the commissioner wouldn’t have believed him, for how could he have met Leclerc, that living legend? Be serious! The telephone rang. Commissioner Brunot answered. He wondered if either of the men saw his face fall.

  “What?” he asked. “Where are they?”

  Leclerc’s forces had reached the neighborhood of Mvog-Mbi, on the outskirts of the city. What should he do, the man on the other end of the line asked, and specifically, should he call the capital’s defense forces to arms? Should he sound the alarm and declare a state of war?

  “No,” the commissioner replied. “It’s too late.”

  The voice on the line had mentioned three H39 tanks, one cannon, a handful of whites, and about thirty tirailleurs. Commissioner Brunot deduced that this was just a vanguard. He hadn’t forgotten the details of the letter that was still in his hand. He imagined an army as soon as he heard “squadron,” and in the word “attack” he saw an invasion. The announcement that Chad and Congo had already gone over to the Allies didn’t help, it’s true; nor had de Gaulle’s speech assuring listeners that French Equatorial Africa had been won over to his cause. The incidents of July 14 had shown him that not all members of the French community were sympathetic to the Vichy authorities. It was impossible to call the citizens to arms. Feeling totally isolated, the man cracked.

  Yaoundé fell like a ripe plum. Pouka was in the best position to witness the twists and turns of its fall, for he had been instrumental in its capture! Not one shot was fired. How could anyone imagine that this was because those who had just added another piece to the grand puzzle of France’s liberation really didn’t have any bullets to spare? If this story was about a boxing match, I would have said that the writer was right at center ring when news of Leclerc’s arrival spread across the capital—when the first blow was struck! But Cameroonian literature has opted to recall, rather, that he was standing in the courtyard of the commissioner’s palace when the first coup d’état in the history of our country took place—the first in all of Africa!—right there in Ongola!

  24

  Ongola! Ongola! Ongola!

  In Ongola, the heart of the city of Yaoundé, one isolated building stands like a sly wink to history: the Central Post Office. Built for the speeches of heroes, with a platform right in front, rising above a wide boulevard adorned with a roundabout, it is the centerpiece of la Place de la Victoire—although some call it la Place de la Révolution, and others la Place de la République—in a city that up till now has known nothing but defeat. It is where the dream of this country triumphs over its past and its present oppression. It’s where we celebrate the liberation of a city that still breathes the air of tyranny. Ah! The roundabout in front of the Central Post Office is where the slumbering history of Cameroon is really on display—like the beauty in the tale we all know—the history of a people still waiting for its hero to arrive. Only then will the people rise up and open the floodgates of liberty. Yes, this public square has watched the heroes of history’s liberation movements pass by. To think that it has in fact written the history of the liberation of the damned! Leclerc! De Gaulle! Um Nyobè! Ouandié! Pouka! Hebga! Who can top that? Secretly this public space was renamed Ahmadou Ahidjo Square, giving it the name of a tyrant.

  Yet whoever is mindful, as I am, of the history of the liberation of Paris will understand that Leclerc’s entry into the newly liberated Yaoundé represents the flip side of that story. Here, too, history’s chiasmus imposed its implacable rule. For the colonel didn’t arrive in Ongola leading entirely white troops, but rather at the head of proud columns of tirailleurs from Cameroon and Chad, led by a few white officers: Boislambert, Massu, and Dio. He himself stood atop his assault tank, waving at the crowds pressed into two tight rows that guided him along toward the city center. He looked at this unfamiliar city and suddenly she was his own. A woman in the distance blew him a kiss. A man tossed him his hat. The French had all come out of their homes, bonding in the jubilation with the black populations.

  “Hurrah!”

  People coming together in jubilation create an unending legend, a symphony of the future. Blacks and whites shared kisses in public, for a moment were brothers and sisters, lovers and spouses. Sometimes a woman broke free from the crowds on the sidewalk and threw herself into the rows of soldiers, into the arms of the tirailleurs who, thankfully, had received firm orders before entering the city: they were military men and needed to behave accordingly, that is to say, to maintain order, not destroy it. The man who’d received the woman’s kiss struggled against her savage embrace, but managed to keep his place in line. Sometimes children imitated the soldiers, marching in step alongside them for a good distance down the road.

  The victorious procession stopped in front of the Central Post Office. A thunderous round of applause was heard as Leclerc began to climb down from his tank.

  “Hurrah!” shouted the crowd.

  There were thousands of voices. The whole city was celebrating its new commander. Hundreds of hands moved as one to embrace him. It took all his soldiers’ agility to hold them back. Yaoundé had met her new leader and was offering up her joy to him. She was showing him her biggest and brightest smile. That’s because in the shadow of this collective celebration a sordid process of purification had already begun. Those who were known to support Vichy were pummeled, insulted, and manhandled in front of their servants. Impotent before the vindictive crowds, they didn’t defend themselves. Sometimes their own servants thrashed them. Flags were thrown on the ground and trampled. The photo of Marshal Pétain was torn up, soon to be replaced in the administrative offices by a photo of de Gaulle. For the moment, however, the face of the victorious general could only be seen on the leaflets that had been distributed before the soldiers entered the city: they showed a calm man, one apparently far removed from the line of fire. This is the photo that will adorn offices and homes for quite a long time.

  When the flag bearing
the Cross of Lorraine was raised, the crowd cheered once again: “Hurrah!”

  At the same time there came a call for “Silence!”

  Colonel Leclerc wanted to speak.

  “Silence!”

  The crowd didn’t quiet down until he climbed up onto the platform in front of the post office and lifted his cane up to the sky. Once silence had fallen, he cleared his throat. “Yaoundé! Yaoundé offended!” he said. “Yaoundé soiled!”

  Those words were engraved in the city’s memory. It saw in the celebration with which newly liberated Paris greeted de Gaulle in August 1944, a perfect copy of the joy that took over the belly of its own streets when it heard those words. Leclerc’s flattery hit home, lighting up the city’s sky from the Central Post Office in Ongola to the poor neighborhoods. Burning bright, his words shook Yaoundé to her very depths. But Leclerc didn’t stop there.

  “Yaoundé liberated! Yaoundé, who came out to welcome France, the one and only true France! Eternal France!”

  The rounds of applause were followed by hurrahs. The colonel continued as the crowd went wild; he was caught up in the generalized excitement, in the city’s jubilation.

  “Courageous Yaoundé, my intention is to allow you, to allow Cameroon, to fight under the orders of General de Gaulle for the liberation of the homeland and the empire.”

  The name “de Gaulle” unleashed a chorus that echoed throughout the crowd: “Vive de Gaulle!”

  “Vive de Gaulle!”

  “Fighting doesn’t mean throwing oneself headlong against an imaginary opponent,” Leclerc continued, once his raised cane had again imposed silence. “Fighting means giving your all to the general struggle of the civilized universe against the barbarians. For the officers and all the mobilized soldiers, it means immediately organizing the defense of the country. This process is well on its way, and I thank all who are working tirelessly for this cause. It means building our military force as rapidly as possible. This has already begun, first with the opening of the office of European recruitment, and then with the creation of the Free French Volunteers of Cameroon.”

  He took the time to look over and patiently assess each one of the young men before him; they seemed ready to throw themselves into the flames of battle right then.

  “Finally”—here he wiped his mouth—“I expect as soon as next week to begin recruiting natives.”

  From there, the excitement was spread through a series of announcements from the administrative palace. The colonel accepted the resignation of the disgraced Commissioner Brunot, as well as those of his assistants and many other civil servants. He personally oversaw the removal of the portrait of Marshal Pétain from the wall behind the desk where he, as the new governor—a title he bestowed upon himself in the exhilaration of the day—sat to sign several decrees, effective immediately. The first one designated Douala as the capital of the territory, a move that would certainly have astonished the crowd of Yaoundéans still caught up in the jubilation; the second transformed the city that he had just finished praising into a simple administrative center; the third declared a state of siege. The capital’s memory has preserved this betrayal in its archives. To see a statue of Leclerc, you’d have to go to Douala. Despite the sting of the insult, Yaoundé did dedicate to him its largest high school, where the elite of Cameroon are still educated.

  No, Yaoundé made no mistake. This city that was never rewarded for burnishing Paris’s glory still hasn’t erected a statue in front of the Central Post Office; she has built no monument there. For her history, like that of Cameroon itself, remains to be written. She knows that Cameroonian grandeur will not come by proxy. Ongola doesn’t have an arc de triomphe because it is still waiting for the generation that will liberate Cameroon. The city center has no statue because it hasn’t yet found the hero of our generation. Ah, citizens of Cameroon, each and every time that you pass through the city center, each and every time you cut across Ongola, ask yourself why this public square where all the main avenues of the city intersect and where millions of stories cross paths; why this square from which departed those who liberated France and remade the world; why this square—Ongola! Ongola! Ongola!—which, like other similar places in other countries, is one of the world’s nerve centers, is adorned with neither monument nor statue. Well, it’s because she is still awaiting her heroes; it’s because Cameroon’s history is waiting for you; it’s because since that fourth of September, 1940, Cameroon has been lying fallow.

  25

  The Poor Neighborhoods of the French Empire

  For Hebga, the arrival of Leclerc’s troops in Yaoundé was the fulfillment of one of his wildest dreams. Yes, it’s a familiar old story, really. “Yaoundé!”—I’m sure that’s what he said—“The Yaoundé of my dreams!” He imagined many different scenarios, using his lucky numbers he drummed up visions of rivers of gold; but never had he imagined the city of his dreams falling down at his conqueror’s feet. How many girls kissed him? How many whites shook his hand? On that unimaginable day, he thought of his mother, our Sita. She should have been there to see his triumph! She should have seen him at the Central Post Office! Then she would have discovered the capital and experienced that sublime moment, both at the same time.

  Hebga was just as amazed by the collective jubilation as by the buildings. For the first time he saw houses with more than one story, lampposts. And the road he walked down was paved! The city revealed its face on that very special day. A historic day, no doubt about it! The tirailleur puffed out his chest and marched in step; he was the master of the city of his dreams. Ah, how he would have liked to move away from his troop, to dive into this crowd that held its arms open to him, to kiss the crowd and tell her how deep was the love that had always bound him to her. He thought of Pouka and Um Nyobè.

  Their separation had been abrupt, but he held on to the hope that somewhere in this huge city he would find his cousin. He didn’t know Um Nyobè well, having only met him at the sessions at Mininga’s. But the other Bassa in the regiment warmed his heart. He didn’t feel alone, no. Bilong was marching behind him and he knew that Aloga was there at the other end of the squadron—beardless now, yes, but there all the same. Bringing up the rear was Philothée. In the evening, they’d be together, forming a little group in the midst of all these soldiers from Chad—these Saras whose skin was all of the same dark black, whose language they didn’t understand, who used gestures to communicate with them and who, come nightfall, were almost invisible, except for their teeth. Hebga understood from their smiles and gesticulations that their first concern was getting laid. They’d hit their chest with a closed fist, then poke a finger into the fist, again and again, and then finally suck on the finger.

  “Cameroon women,” they said, “gnoxe-gnoxe.”

  And they gave a big thumbs-up.

  Alas, these men had no words to describe the funny twists and turns of their travels down from Fort-Lamy to Douala, or those of their whoring excursions in the port city. It was those Saras who dragged the fellows from Edéa into Yaoundé’s poor neighborhoods as soon as they got their first furlough.

  “Briqueterie,” they said, asking everyone they met how to get there. “Briqueterie.”

  Not Ongola, not the Central Post Office. For them Briqueterie was paradise, the quintessence of the best that Yaoundé had to offer on that very special day. The Hausa quarter, whose fame had spread across the country and captivated tirailleurs from as far away as Chad. Hebga was struck by the two long lines of bars along the road leading up to the Great Mosque. Compared with such a display of luxury, Mininga’s Bar seemed like just a little shack in the bush. On the street, girls gestured to them, big smiles on their lips. They were just as joyful as when they had greeted him upon his triumphant arrival in Ongola several days before. The spirited revelry of the liberation seemed to live on in Briqueterie. Each day was an endless celebration with soldiers from distant fields.

  “Sweetie,” one woman said, “sweetie, come here.”

  �
�Champ,” said another, “let me give you some honey.”

  Hebga imagined how Edéa would react if one of these lasciviously dressed girls had walked in strutting her stuff. In a few minutes the band was swallowed up by these obliging ladies; he himself fell prey to two plump beauties, each one grabbed hold of one of his arms and wrapped her body around him. That night he wanted to burst out laughing right there in the middle of the street, he wanted to say the words that came to mind to his Bassa friends, words in Bassa. But he realized that his friends had already been spirited away by the flowers of the poor neighborhood, gone without even a wave in his direction!

  “Come on, sweetie,” said the girl on his right, “I live over there, just up ahead.”

  “Champ,” said the other on his left, “this is where I live.”

  Ah, Hebga will never forget the Brique girl who dragged him away; in his ecstasy, he dubbed her the Marshal. Nor will he ever forget the question she asked him, “From Chad? From Chad?”

  He said no and she stared at him in disbelief. Was she basing her guess on the woodcutter’s muscles or maybe the shape of his head?

  “From Senegal? Senegal?”

  In short, there in the lady’s perfumed room, the Cameroonian tirailleur realized it was best not to say he was Bassa. The woman was from the same ethnic group as Mininga, an Ewondo, and he could have kept up the conversation in her language; but he preferred to let her assume he was from Senegal, just to make her happy—in the end, what difference did it make to him?

  “Grab here,” she said with a smile, and she showed him the luscious flesh between her legs. “Grab here.”

  This woman was truly an extraordinary slut! She sent him to the heavens twice, and when, the third time, he began to show signs of fatigue, she took his penis between her polished fingers.