“And what about my father,” he would have snapped back, “didn’t he inherit as well?”
Obviously, people were polite enough to not remind him that his father had drawn a salary as an askari during the German colonization. Hard work was the principle on which he based his life, the pedestal of his freedom, as he put it. Sons received inheritances because their parents had done backbreaking work. So what! Fritz still kept working, and just as hard. Every month he went to Douala, where he delivered produce from Edéa’s fields to the Congo market—cocoyams and plantains, mostly, as well as plums, of course. Yes, his father had left him a pickup truck, but he had bought two more after that. Yes, a dozen men worked for his father, but Fritz had three times as many working for him. The war had slowed down his business. A number of his sansanboys, as he called them, had signed up as tirailleurs.
At the last harvest, Fritz had counted up the young men who had appeared in his courtyard; since then, one question kept haunting him: Where had all the men in the village gone?
Edéa wasn’t an exception: the carnivorous war’s favorite food was young men. She had also swallowed down the burly guys who loaded his trucks. She had stolen the woodcutter, Hebga, who had been his unofficial foreman. That’s why he saw this war as yet another instance of forced labor gangs gathering up all the men, as they had in the past, leaving the courtyards empty. The only difference was that France wasn’t forcing these men to sign up. And yet for Fritz it wasn’t really any different … just more of the same thing.
“No one forced Bilong to go,” Ngo Bikaï remarked.
That was true. After she had quarreled with her little brother—a quarrel provoked by that fuss about Nguet—Bilong announced he had signed up as a tirailleur.
“You are trying to kill Mama.” That was the only thing Ngo Bikaï had found to say, but then she didn’t stop there. She didn’t understand how breaking up with a whore—for to her, Nguet was nothing but a whore—could push him to want to kill their mother.
“I haven’t killed anyone,” Bilong replied.
“Aha, and just what do you think tirailleurs do?”
That’s when Ngo Bikaï said the word that hadn’t stopped haunting Bilong since: “Assassin!” He had left without saying goodbye, not to his sister or his mother. Only to Nguet, who had opened her legs to him that whole night long and then tearfully said goodbye; she had wanted to teach him about love and was devastated that he had chosen war.
Without Bilong even noticing, the war had taken over Edéa and upended his life. Its violence had solidified the position of the Mother of the Market, meaning Ngo Bikaï had more power than our Sita ever had. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say she had practically become the village chief—although no one would have said that out loud. She now took her place in front of a stand in the market, and woman after woman came to her—one asking what work still needed to be done, another to complain about some ruffian who was making her life difficult, and a third to announce the birth of a child in her family or to complain about an unbearable husband. Sitting there in the midst of the papayas, mangoes, oranges, pineapples, lemons—all the hundreds of fruits that spread out around her—she listened to all those stories, the lives these women told her, although she wasn’t even yet thirty years old!
She was Christian, Ngo Bikaï, having converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, unlike her husband, who was still “pagan,” as she put it. Her status as one of the first members of Father Jean’s church had made it easier for her to take control of the market, even if her religious convictions, as well as her own past, often put her at odds with Mininga. An unavoidable conflict. War had also transformed Mininga’s Bar, especially since the arrival of all those soldiers in Edéa. First they had brought in electric lights—one bulb hanging from the ceiling and another outside made it clear that the lady was overjoyed with the new order of things. Then came the gramophone and all that music. As a result, this war was proving very lucrative for Mininga, an impression solidified when, much to the village’s surprise, the recruits—new recruits!—posted a sign over the bar’s door: LA SEIGNEURIALE—a title that inscribed Mininga’s noble reputation.
Soon we’d see her serving girls walking by on the arms of white soldiers, as well as black ones, and then the rumor circulated that one of them had been spotted driving a French soldier’s motorcycle. She’d been naked and laughing; the soldier was taking pictures. The gossiping woman added, “Since when do Mininga’s women know how to drive motorcycles?” All the gossip produced a cacophony of contradictions: whereas before women whispered that Mininga was prostituting her serving girls, now everyone was surprised to see them wearing new outfits.
“A uniform for whores,” Ngo Bikaï declared.
Mininga, ever malicious, spread the word around Edéa that Ngo Bikaï was “just living with Fritz, pretending they were married.” And added, “She thinks she’s better than me, but she’s really just a whore.”
Mininga even found words to mock Ngo Bikaï’s new Catholic faith.
“Instead of asking her sweetie when they’re lying in bed to put a ring on her finger, the imbecile just goes to church and prays!”
Before long Ngo Bikaï caught wind of the slander—her women reported it to her faithfully. “A real hyena, that Mininga,” the Mother of the Market cursed, nervously tightening the scarf around her head. “The worst of all the animals.”
Sometimes Ngo Bikaï tried to tell herself that it was good for a woman to show some initiative, that her squabbles with Mininga were just a minor distraction. But then the next day the Christian within her would reappear and she’d be back on the warpath, planning ways to raise an army of Furies to charge at the door of Mininga’s Bar. What held her back was all the soldiers—white ones, even—who hung out in the bar. They were the ones who kept the party going night and day, as if the war everyone kept talking about were just something cooked up by the black recruits Ngo Bikaï would see sitting in the courtyard, their heads shaved, wearing the tirailleur’s uniform, with bare feet.
“What else did you think it was?” Fritz would say to her. “The recolonization of Cameroon started with that de Gaulle.”
The Mother of the Market let her husband talk—her mind was on her little brother.
4
Beyond the Privilege of Age
As for Yaoundé, things had changed there, too. There, the war was diluted by the chattering, the debates, the verbal jousting, the shifting of personnel. At least, that is, for those who hadn’t signed up. It was the stuff of living room conversations, you might say; and speaking of living rooms, it was Martha, Um Noybè’s wife, who finally opened the door after Pouka had knocked twice. She started with surprise, but then kissed him roundly on the cheeks.
“Um Noybè is going to be shocked,” she said. “Come in.”
She apologized as he tripped over the bags and baskets of fruit piled up against the wall. “My merchandise,” she noted. Bulging watermelons and baskets of oranges. She headed to the living room, where her husband was holding a meeting.
“Look who’s here.”
“Pouka!” Um Nyobè shouted as he rose to his feet.
He was the only one who called out Pouka’s name like that—it made him happy. Um Nyobè came across the living room to greet his friend, his arms held wide open and a smile lighting up his face, giving him a hug and then shaking his hand.
“You’re not interrupting at all, quite the contrary,” he reassured Pouka, who was embarrassed at intruding on the gathering.
He introduced him to the group in the living room. Although Pouka recognized one or two writers, most faces were unfamiliar.
“This is my brother,” Um Noybè said. “He works for Deroudhille.”
The men began to sneer, as if that were proof of an undeniable betrayal.
“In the palace,” Pouka corrected, “since the events.”
The sneers were replaced by looks of astonishment.
“It’s a long story,” the
poet continued, although he opted not to tell it.
“The events,” that was how he referred to Leclerc’s arrival in the capital, the onset of the Second World War. Then Um Nyobè’s wife asked for news of “Bikaï”—whom she called just that, instead of “my sister Ngo Bikaï.”
“I heard she’s become the Mother of the Market.”
“Yes, that was after the events,” Pouka explained. “I was already in Yaoundé.”
Um Noybè was agitated, his eyelids flickering rapidly. He didn’t make his usual jokes about birthrights. He was no longer the same man that the poet had seen back in Edéa, but who among them hadn’t changed? Yes, was there anyone who hadn’t changed? The war had given Pouka a new job. And he wasn’t the only one. Four men were gathered there in the living room—Um Nyobè introduced them one after the other. They were all caught up in a lively debate, whereas before the events they’d only gotten together to talk of this and that. First there was Jérémie, a man so black he was almost blue, like someone from Sudan; Etoundi, who had a rather elegant Ewondo profile and who smoked cigarettes nonstop; Ouandié, with a broad forehead, a generous face, happy eyes, and an easy smile; and finally a heavyset man with a mustache—he looked like a well-fed child who’d gotten caught up body and soul in an unending argument.
“Go on, Marc,” Um Nyobè told him.
Marc didn’t even wait till Pouka had finished shaking everyone’s hand and taken a seat.
“It’s simple, really,” he continued, holding up his hand to count as he spoke. “There are four important things.”
It was plain to see, the mention of the number four irritated everyone there: Was it some sort of formula Marc used to keep the floor when everyone else wanted a chance to speak? Or was it because it sounded like Marc was launching into a lecture? Pouka had the impression no one there had the patience to listen to the “four important things.”
“Only four?” Ouandié asked with a smile.
“First,” Marc began, with a serious voice, “we need to define who we are talking about.”
“That’s done,” Etoundi cut in. “We’re not talking about single women here.”
That made everyone laugh, and lightened the mood.
Marc continued unperturbed. “We’re talking about the soldiers France is recruiting under false pretenses.”
He said the words with great emphasis, weighing carefully how each man reacted to them. Apparently this was the continuation of a discussion that Pouka hadn’t been part of, and of which he was only catching bits and pieces. Someone, wanting to make a joke, added, “Well, that still needs to be proven.”
It was Jérémie who’d spoken. His Bamiléké accent enlivened his words with surprising rhythms and intonations. Clearly, he was the adversary Marc was looking for.
“Let’s not forget that during the Great War,” he continued, staring Jérémie straight in the eyes, “Germany recruited crowds of soldiers who were then just left to their fate.”
“Well, France certainly didn’t owe them anything!”
That was Jérémie again.
“Precisely, that’s the point,” Etoundi interjected, self-assured and looking all around as if he were in a classroom. “France was given a mandate over Cameroon, one that clearly stipulated that she was responsible for the administration of the defeated colony, which means—”
They didn’t let him finish.
“Have you read that mandate?”
“No,” Etoundi conceded, “but—”
“I haven’t finished,” Marc said, cutting through the boisterous voices that had risen in response to Etoundi.
He turned left and right, striking the theatrical pose of reclaimed authority. He looked like a general signing an armistice. But you could see the impatience written on Um Nyobè’s brow as he sat next to Marc, and in the frustrated gestures of his hands; it looked like he was trying to moderate a debate that was spiraling out of control or to find a phrase that had just escaped him. He waved at Pouka. In the midst of this verbal chaos was he looking for a foothold, a point of departure—an ally?
“I forgot to ask,” Um Nyobè said, “what are you drinking?”
Um Nyobè called to his wife in the back of the house: “Martha!” He whispered in her ear the drink his friend had requested. Soon Martha reappeared with bottles that replaced the first round, now empty, standing here and there among the plates that were still full.
“Eat,” she said to the talkative men. “You’re not even eating.”
It was true, the rapid exchange of words had kept the men from emptying their plates. Ouandié asked for another beer.
“Don’t you like my cooking?”
“Of course we do!” the men protested.
And how! It was bush meat, smoked and served with cocoyam. Some offered compliments, all had second helpings. Pouka took a mouthful. He complimented Martha and licked his fingers clean, one after the other.
“Your wife is spoiling you,” he said to Um Nyobè.
“Let Marc finish what he was saying,” their host declared, taking advantage of the pause left by the eating. “The four things?”
Like a hummingbird caught mid-flight, Marc’s entire body had been hanging there suspended, ready to dive back into the unending argument.
“One, the group,” he said, hurrying this time to get the better part of his argument, at least, off his lips. “Two, their interests. Three, our goal. Four, our plan of action. That’s it.”
The full mouths around him didn’t reply. It was a victory without a battle, like a boxer who still had uppercuts left in his fists, or the landing of a flexible gymnast in the sand. Yet Marc looked pleased, the victor of a challenge that had yet to be formulated. Pouka wanted to take the floor, but held back. It wasn’t yet clear to him just what had Um Nyobè’s friends so riled up. He still needed to figure out the sides and, more important, how to tell one camp from the other.
Clearly, these men spoke to each other like old friends. Pouka saw them as verbal athletes reduced to making useless gestures with their hands in a living room. Keep talking, just keep talking, he thought, while others are putting their lives on the line. He almost told them the story of the letter he had given his boss, and how that had changed the course of history, but he was stopped when Marc again took the floor.
Marc thought that the interests of the Cameroonian soldiers who signed up to serve France should be clearly laid out before they left for the front. The errors of the past must not be repeated, specifically, how colonial Germany had never compensated those who had fought on her behalf. France and England, he explained, shouldn’t be able to take advantage of the defenseless Cameroonian soldiers, as they clearly wanted to do, or else “they’ll just be used as cannon fodder.” He stared at each one in turn to assess the indignation provoked by these words. Clearly defining their interests in advance was the only way to ensure that these Cameroonian soldiers would be treated like human beings. Once again, he paused to assess the impact of his words.
The French soldiers, Marc continued, are protected by the laws of their country and by international conventions that remain in force, regardless of the outcome of the conflict, regardless of the situation in which they find themselves, whereas the fate of the tirailleurs is contingent on the goodwill of France alone. That’s how, after the Great War, France had been able to treat the askaris—the Cameroonian soldiers, like his father, recruited by Germany—as if they were enemies. The question was simple, really. He paused before articulating it.
“Who will defend the interests of the Cameroonian soldiers?”
He smiled, crossed his arms, uncrossed them, then put his left hand to his chin pensively. A silence fell. After a moment Um Nyobè said tersely: “That is the real question.”
Now Marc was the center of attention, which was what he always wanted, Pouka said to himself. He was a speechifier. He smiled as he realized that when Martha had come into the room, she’d allowed Marc to take the floor, something he hadn’t quite man
aged on his own. He was a politician, Pouka declared silently to himself. The allusion to his father had given Marc an unassailable position: the fortress of emotion. Someone mentioned the League of Nations, and everyone burst out laughing, except for the one who had spoken—Jérémie. He still had his mouth full and couldn’t defend himself well. But what really could he have said?
“Only Cameroonians themselves can defend the interests of the Cameroonian people,” Ouandié cut in, in a tone that was above contradiction.
A deep silence followed his phrase.
“Only black men can defend the interests of black men,” Marc added.
A phrase came to Pouka’s mind: “Black, that’s the color of my clothes.” But he didn’t say anything, he didn’t want to become the enemy this group had just invented of common accord, and which they defined as “the French.”
5
The Idea of Perfection
And so, Pouka refrained from speaking that night in Um Nyobè’s living room. He was the first to leave his friend’s house.
“He lives in Madagascar,” Um Nyobè said, in response to the surprised reaction of all the others.
A reasonable explanation: Madagascar was on the outskirts of Yaoundé. Pouka needed to make his way back there on foot and it was already quite late. As he left, he was able to take Um Nyobè aside and ask the question that had led him there in the first place.
“Hebga?” Um Nyobè began. “He left a long time ago.”
“Left?”
“They were the first ones mobilized.”
Um Nyobè had gone to see him in the camp before he left, and once he’d even taken Martha, who had insisted she needed to say goodbye in person. He was holding up well, but who knows what the future holds for any of us? He had always asked about his “little cousin.”
“I went to where you work to let you know,” Um Nyobè added, “but no one knew where you were.”
When the Plums Are Ripe Page 13
