When the Plums Are Ripe

by Patrice Nganang

  “If you don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  The women of Edéa were holding hammers, shovels, and machetes, while the serving girls had only pots, spoons, table knives, and plates. The morning was too beautiful to end in a brawl, and so some of the serving girls finally just emptied out their own rooms. They grumbled as they worked, but they did it nonetheless. Everyone watched as they disappeared into the forest, their meager belongings piled on their heads. None listened to Mininga begging them not to give up, ordering them to stay and stand up to the women of Edéa. The mutiny of La Seigeuriale’s women almost turned into a family fight when Mininga refused to pay the departing serving girls their last wages.

  “If you stay,” Mininga told them, “I’ll pay you later.”

  “No.” Nguet was categorical. “Pay me now if you want me to stay.”

  Mininga paid her on the spot.

  “Pay us, too,” the others said. “Then we’ll leave.”

  “Too much is too much.”

  Things almost erupted into an all-out brawl because the serving girls threatened to tear off Mininga’s underwear right there in front of everyone. Knowing she wouldn’t be defended by the local women who were taking her bar apart piece by piece, Mininga realized her reign of glory had come to an end. Soon all that remained of La Seigneuriale were four wall posts and one woman whose anger had turned into tears.

  “You don’t know who you’re dealing with!” she cried, standing alone in the middle of her courtyard and brandishing a fist.

  The women of Edéa didn’t even answer her anymore. Everything was quiet, except for the sounds of the village waking up. Then the women who had demolished her bar suddenly turned back into simple market women; they walked back across her courtyard, greeting her politely and expressing surprise that her bar had disappeared.

  “Oh my!” one woman exclaimed, her hand on her mouth. “Where did your bar go?”

  “Leave me alone!” Mininga cried.

  A bit farther off, an animated group exchanged gossip.

  “You don’t know who I am!” Mininga snarled. “Minalmi!”

  She shook her fist at the women who whispered as they headed off. There was no way to explain to her that it wasn’t personal—they just hated how she did business!

  Later, when the first French soldiers came into La Seigneuriale’s courtyard and found Mininga sitting on what remained of her establishment, she greeted them with the words she had been chewing all morning: “I hate you!” They quickly understood that she hated everyone, that she hated life itself, that she even hated death. In the end, a military vehicle took Mininga, her anger still glowing like an incandescent ball, to Yaoundé. Martha later swore that she’d seen her there in a bar just like the one in Edéa, a bar she opened up in Briqueterie called the Circuit, where, perhaps in the spirit of the day but also to cover her tracks, she went by the name of the Marshal.

  27

  The Angel of the Desert

  The Battle of Kufra lasted precisely one month. On February 27, 1941, when the noonday sun burned the brightest and the desert its hottest, all of a sudden, instead of gun blasts, the clanging of cymbals was heard coming from the Italian fort. Then came the sounds of trumpets and other instruments. An orchestral rhapsody soon enchanted the desert. Baffled, the soldiers of Free France looked questioningly at each other. Their enemy had surprised them many a time, but this was more than they could believe.

  “They’re playing around,” whispered Colonel Leclerc.

  Soon the doors of the fort opened, and a form emerged.

  “Don’t shoot!” snapped the French commander.

  It was hard to tell just what was going on. The extreme heat played tricks on your eyes, turned everything into a mirage, the whole universe into an unfathomable dance. The music coming from the fort added to the confusion. It was impossible to say just what was moving slowly toward them: an animal, a man, or a spirit? It was dressed in white, and in the shadow behind it floated something like a flag or wings.

  “The Angel of the Desert,” Massu said.

  The French burst out laughing and were soon joined by the tirailleurs. They were all nervous and kept their rifles aimed at the advancing figure. It certainly was in no hurry! Finally, after a long moment that seemed to stretch out into an hour, but that was probably only about fifteen minutes, the silhouette of a child emerged.

  “Don’t shoot!” Leclerc repeated.

  Nine or maybe ten years old, the child was dressed in a loose robe of white cotton that floated in the breeze. He was holding two flags. His legs were swathed in billowing trousers and his feet were bare. His face, of an exceptional beauty, was a mixture of black and white features, for he had black skin, but smooth hair and a delicately pointed nose. A broad grin could be seen on his plump lips, which contrasted with the look of fear in his eyes and the perfect naïveté of his demeanor.

  “My God,” Dio whispered, “my God!”

  He thought he’d already seen everything in this war! No one could tell if he was captivated by the beauty of this apparition or by the scandal of this child’s presence on the battlefront.

  “Non sparate!” said the kid.

  Everyone understood.

  “No shoot!” he repeated, this time in French.

  Shooting a bullet into his head would have been an insult to his beauty. There were hundreds of rifles with bayonets pointing at him, so many promises to interrupt his fragile existence.

  “Don’t shoot!” Leclerc ordered, holding his cane aloft.

  He, too, seemed mesmerized by this ghostly vision emerging from the desert.

  “Me, Eritrean,” said the child, again speaking in French.

  “An Italian colony,” Dio explained.

  The kid’s cap made it clear he belonged to the Italian army.

  “It’s a little askari,” Massu added.

  “Don’t shoot!” the kid begged. “Non sparate!”

  A child soldier? The two white flags framed him, turned him into the Angel of the Desert every man dreamed of. He was walking softly across the sand, carefully stepping down on one bare foot and then quickly lifting the other.

  “Message from the commander,” he said.

  “Stop!” ordered Leclerc.

  The kid froze. He must have been used to obeying military rules, since he stood bolt upright, his hands forming a triangle over his head, crowned now by the fluttering white flags. Two tirailleurs went to search his clothes, fearing another Italian trick. One of them came back to the French commander carrying the letter the kid had tucked into the folds of his robe, while the other dragged the little soldier along by his ears, quickly turning him back into the kid he’d been all along.

  “The Italians are offering to surrender,” Leclerc announced after reading the message.

  “It’s high time,” said Massu.

  “They’re done for,” added Dio.

  The soldiers surrounded the little askari, curious about his presence there on the battlefield. Swathed in the commentaries of the soldiers—who were unwilling to believe that his slender hands might have held the rifle that had killed one of their comrades, or that they were now bearing news of their own delivery from hell—he still looked divine.

  28

  Endgame

  The next day, the commander of the Italian forces sent one of his askaris, a young man this time, to deliver a letter in which he repeated his offer to surrender, adding that he had only one request: that he not be turned over to the tirailleurs. Colonel Leclerc’s reply was straight and to the point: his goal was not some desert outpost, but Strasbourg. And for his officers, it was Paris. Regardless, now wasn’t the time to debate larger goals. The Italian noncommissioned officer in charge of Kufra wasn’t surprised by this, for he, too, detested the fort that ought to have been a source of protection—as he’d been promised—but had become his battalion’s tomb.

  He would have given anything to be anywhere else than shut up in that shithole of a fort. One by one, sta
rting with the child soldiers, he had his men come out into the desert, their hands in the air. Defeat is always ugly. There were several incidents—some tirailleurs tried to slap some of the surrendering men or to spit in their faces—but relatively few, since Leclerc had given specific orders on how to treat the prisoners. Two hundred seventy-three askaris threw down their weapons at Colonel Leclerc’s feet and lined up in front of his tirailleurs. The dozen or so Italian soldiers commanding them sat down with the French officers to negotiate the terms. It took only a few hours.

  Abandoning the bulk of their material—all except one truck for the commanding officers of the defeated army—the Italians disappeared into the endless expanse of the Sahara. Their weapons were immediately distributed to the tirailleurs who still had none. That’s how Hebga and so many others, who had been armed only with machetes, were given rifles. The woodcutter no longer clasped on to his ax. The nighttime battle had shown him its limitations, and he swore to himself that he’d learn how to shoot properly. It is certainly fair to say that the Battle of Kufra had transformed the tirailleurs who had survived, for the joy that spread out over the dunes that day was that of men who, for the first time, felt themselves to be soldiers.

  Now, for them, the war could finally begin.

  And the war was also beginning for de Gaulle, who announced this victory to Churchill in person. Churchill set his cigar down on the table and shook his hand. Nothing else was needed; the news spread out across French Equatorial Africa. Radio Cameroon dedicated several special broadcasts to it, featuring French officials as guests. The governor spoke of Kufra as if he had been there himself and stressed that Free French victories like this one shortened the distance between Yaoundé and Paris. He organized a reception at the palace. Pouka wasn’t invited. But what did that matter? The word “Kufra” entered the writer’s world through another doorway. In fact, it was Martha who told him, after the French army made an announcement in Edéa, of the death of “Ngo Bikaï’s little brother.”

  “Charles?” Pouka asked.

  “That’s what you call him, too?”

  “What does it matter now,” said the poet, “since he’s dead?”

  “Yes, in Kufra.”

  Truly, the details hardly matter at all.

  THE DUNES OF THE FEZZAN, 1942

  1

  What Fritz Had Understood

  “Listen carefully to what I’m saying. We will pay dearly for being the first in Africa to volunteer for the liberation of France. In fact, the recolonization of Cameroon began back in 1940 with de Gaulle. I know you saw him in Yaoundé. But me, I saw him speak in Douala. Are you listening? De Gaulle isn’t a colonist like those we’ve seen here before—not like the Portuguese, the Germans, or even the English, because I’ve dealt with the English, too. You know, I’ve gone to Nigeria to sell my goods. You don’t believe me? Ah, it was back when I was still trying to build up my name, and I thought I could buy merchandise there and sell it here cheaply. It was before my father died. But, where was I? Yes, the recolonization of our country that began with de Gaulle is different from what happened before. Do you hear what I’m saying? Good, it didn’t start with explorers armed with contracts, like with Livingston. Forget about them, they belonged to colonization’s Precambrian era, back when it was about moving into a country, starting a war, killing off the inhabitants, taking over the land, organizing raids, forced labor, njokmassi. De Gaulle hasn’t killed any Cameroonians, no. He has asked them to contribute tirailleurs to go kill other whites. To go kill whites. Do you hear me? And those tirailleurs are all volunteers. Members of the Resistance. That’s a new model right there, and it means we have to totally shift our perspective. The first thing de Gaulle did was colonize our vocabulary. Colonization by means of the French language, you see, that’s really important. First, the war that France lost becomes just a battle. The collaborators, like that Douala chief, you know who I mean, what was his name? Ah, I’ve forgotten his name. Help me out here. You know, I heard him speak last year. Recent events have me all mixed up, I’m sorry. I know, we can’t let this break our spirit. What was I saying? Yes, the French language. Very important. Look. Collaboration becomes resistance. Even the vocabulary shifts, you see? The Douala chiefs who are collaborating with de Gaulle, now they’re part of the Resistance, what an idea! In Africa, de Gaulle needs men he can count on, allies. And the man he can count on is a black man. Where have you seen that before? Éboué, the governor of Chad, now he’s the hero of the black world! It’s a whole scheme, that’s what I’m telling you. You think I’m exaggerating? Just let that idea sit for a while and you’ll see. I only hope you remember what I’m telling you today, for the very first time, here in Edéa, in your brother’s house. The role of his allies is very simple. They have to put French Africa behind de Gaulle, provide him with soldiers, riches. Not in the service of France. No, there is still a whole lot of France that isn’t behind de Gaulle. People talk about Pétain, but what about Giraud? Yet for de Gaulle, whoever’s not with him is against him. I was talking about his allies? Let me tell you. Before long, de Gaulle will start looking at Africans to figure out who will represent him in Africa. I think he’ll prefer military men. Or civilians who will obey orders as if they were in the military. Straw men, you know. He’ll give them responsibilities and then he’ll be able to say he’s giving responsibilities to Africans. The tirailleurs he recruits, they’re the greenhouse where he grows his allies. I understand him. He is, above all, a military man. A tactician. He needs soldiers, generals. For the war and for peacetime, too. For peacetime, his main ally in Africa is Éboué. For war, it’s Leclerc. The previous waves of colonization were strategic; his is tactical. He doesn’t give a shit about skin color. But tactics, that’s different. De Gaulle is a cancer in our history. As far as he’s concerned, the tirailleurs are just pawns, ways to spread cancer. Don’t ever forget it. For de Gaulle, the tirailleurs can never be criminals because they’re members of the Resistance. For example, say you, Um Nyobè, if you stood up against him, then you wouldn’t be part of the Resistance. You would be a criminal. It’s just a question of perspective. His colonization is built on the Resistance. With networks, military bases. Like the camp in Edéa. With circuits. Ah! The circuits—whorehouses, really! You don’t believe me? Listen carefully: They’re all points in a network. Intersections of infamy. De Gaulle doesn’t even talk about Cameroon anymore but about the FEA—French Equatorial Africa. The FEA, it’s just a zone, a zone that is part of a field, a field that is bigger than any one country. The field, it’s a space in the battle that de Gaulle is waging against England. I’m telling you. De Gaulle’s real adversary, it’s not Hitler, no. It’s Churchill. If you want to understand de Gaulle, you need to know that England is no more than a tactical ally for him. Germany and France are strategic allies in Europe’s broad continental network, even if for the moment they’re on opposites sides of a circumstantial war. De Gaulle knows that England is nothing more than a collection of islands, while France is the gateway to a continent. England will need France more in peacetime than France needs her in times of war. No war goes on forever. France has lost the war, but de Gaulle wants her to win the peace. Peace, that’s the war he’s really waging. He knows that when peace comes, Churchill will have his eyes set on France. Because France will be in charge of the European network if Germany is defeated. For de Gaulle, the real threat is the English. For him, war is an opportunity, but peace is about trade. Africa is a zone on his new global chessboard. There’s no more Cameroon. Except as a point in the French zone. The liberation of France can only be bought at the cost of African enslavement. But this enslavement has to be sold to the Africans as their liberation. Those who support this enslavement call themselves “liberators.” “Members of the Resistance.” Peace, war, battle, resistance, zone, field, networks—as you can see, everything starts with vocabulary. But it’s all a scheme. It’s de Gaulle who turned the commissioner of the mandate into a governor, you remember? He was the one w
ho named Leclerc, a military officer, Cameroon’s first governor, and step by step, he’s setting up the most virulent sort of colonization, because it’s the most hypocritical. He’s giving us chains that we attach to our own feet, all by ourselves. But what he’s forgetting is that Cameroon is nobody’s colony. Nobody’s.”

  Um Nyobè let Fritz speak without interrupting. They were sitting on the porch of Fritz’s house, and his friend seemed possessed by a virulent fever, like he was arguing before a tribunal of spirits. Edéa stretched out before them, calm and somber.

  2

  Hebga’s Parisian Dream

  Peaceful and somber, Edéa stretched out before them. Peaceful and somber. Elsewhere, a young man was also sharing confidences; he told his dream to Philothée without interruption. Philothée was an ear, nothing more. Sometimes he made small grunts like an animal, too lazy, I’m sure, to make the effort to form a complete syllable. At first Hebga told himself it was because he was stupid, because he really didn’t know the boy who, after the deaths of their two friends, was linked to him by nothing more than the memory of Edéa. He quickly realized that, stupid or not, there were advantages to his grunting silence. And besides, Philothée could understand the dream that pursued him, because he, too, had lived through the twists and turns of their march north from Yaoundé. That’s how the woodcutter came to tell him the dream that was invading his nights. It was a Parisian dream. Sometimes he dreamed half of it one night and the rest the following. A very stubborn dream, really, that followed him night after night, especially when his day had been challenging, whether because of the long march through the sand or the endless training sessions he was put through.