When the Plums Are Ripe

by Patrice Nganang

  It was a false alarm. A Heinkel adorned with an iron cross and flying at low altitude had revealed to these soldiers for the very first time, after three long years spent crossing forest, plain, and desert, the face of their enemy. Colonel Leclerc’s cane rose up, pointing straight at the sky.

  “Don’t shoot,” it ordered.

  The order was passed back, echoing through the ranks.

  “Don’t shoot!”

  “Don’t shoot!”

  The desert itself found its voice in the wavering echo of those words. But could anything erase the anxiety visible there on those death-worn faces? Who could stop those sand men, their rifles glued to their cheeks, who kept their eyes peeled, as much out of curiosity as out of fear, on the lookout for any sign of the silhouette of those who had brought them there? Philothée recalled how the sight of that first airplane had caused such excitement back in Edéa. A machine scattering leaflets signed by de Gaulle.

  Then the Heinkel disappeared into the sandy mist. It was just flying reconnaissance, but what was there to find?

  The tirailleurs-balayeurs had swept their traces off the desert, leaving nothing behind but the barren sky’s own furtive shadow that slid across the night like a zombie, and that hid away during the day in the valley’s recesses. But was it that easy to erase one’s past? Today it was a German plane flying recon. The next day something else would interrupt the two friends’ conversation. Fouret’s entrance into Philothée’s orbit had pushed Hebga back into the shadows. Yet Hebga saw how Philothée had been taken under wing by the white man; he smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He thought about his relationship with his cousin Pouka, who grew up admiring Hebga’s feats and hard work, and then had become a man on his own terms. Of course, he would have preferred their friendship not fade away in the silence that grew between them, but life is made up of infinite possibilities, no? Once he asked Philothée to introduce him to his new friend, and the boy happily did so right away. But Fouret, usually so loquacious, had nothing to say to Hebga. It seemed the woodcutter’s presence plunged him into the deepest of silences.

  “You what company?” Hebga asked.

  A banal question.

  “I’m in the motorized company number five.”

  “Me, Cameroon mounted company.”

  Hebga noted that Fouret was the only one who didn’t speak to him in simplified French. But they spoke about nothing more than the weather and their respective units. Later the woodcutter happened upon Fouret lost in a deep conversation with Philothée, and the mystery of their relationship was suddenly quite clear to him.

  You try to figure out what’s behind a friendship. Me, I think—and these are just my personal thoughts on the matter—that given a choice between heavy-muscled morality and a deep, speechless silence, Fouret preferred the promises inferred by things. Rather than clear-cut facts, he preferred infinite possibilities. I understand Fouret’s doubts, and have the distance to explain the reasons for his choice.

  The soldiers had a long path ahead of them! A long and unchanging path—which meant they soon fell into a routine. The conversations between the two friends were a routine. Were it not for the war and the ever-present threat of an attack, the routine would have been their day-to-day. If death hadn’t been nipping at their heels, that day-to-day would have been life itself.

  Until then, for Leclerc’s troops, life was no more than the path ahead.

  16

  Night March

  While the column advanced through the night, Leclerc had finally been given seven planes, and had borrowed one more, a Blenheim. Yes, the English had made good on their promise to provide support. There were five hundred vehicles in total, including all-terrain trucks. The numbers of men kept growing, too; there were now five thousand tirailleurs, including many Libyan goumiers who had joined Massu’s company of meharists, as well as nomads, mostly from Tibesti, whose camels served as scouts for the column’s advance.

  During the day, the planes scouted the path ahead. They took off before the morning mists rose, and you could hear their violent roar in the distance. They had taken the war on their wings and shifted the battlefield to the clouds. Sometimes an enemy plane seeking revenge veered away from the battle and dived down toward the company. Everyone needed to take cover, and fast. The plane scanned the desert, but the tirailleurs-balayeurs always did their job perfectly. The enemy would disappear in the distance, its bombs and bullets still safely in its belly. The soldiers shouted with joy!

  “Daniels!” the tirailleurs cried. “Daniels lost!”

  Once an Italian plane attacked the fort that Leclerc’s company had already abandoned. At a safe distance and sheltered by the dunes, the soldiers watched this spectacle of war with the satisfaction of knowing that all the living had left the fort. The Italians pounded it for an hour, then disappeared in the distance, happy, no doubt, thinking they had forced the French to retreat; soon they’d be surprised to see the threatening shadow of those very troops advancing toward them. Even Colonel Leclerc couldn’t keep from laughing. Right there in front of him was proof of his own military genius.

  At nightfall, his column fell into formation, a straight line across the desert. Comprised of men from all nations, indistinct in their common humanity, they advanced in an orderly way, a line of uncertain shadows, different silhouettes, stretched out over kilometers. The desert opened up its belly to them. The sky didn’t reveal the men’s faces; the desert loaned them the chill of its winds, the damp of its sand.

  Sometimes, to keep their spirits high, they sang silently to themselves—they couldn’t risk awakening the Sahara. All along the convoy’s trail, the detritus of war piled up, remains of the battles waged from above: burned-out carcasses of trucks, twisted bits of metal, abandoned remains of encampments, and soldiers transformed into fugitives. The Italian army was in retreat. It employed a scorched-earth strategy when it could, but most of the time it was no match for the force of Leclerc’s rage falling from the sky.

  When the sun rose, the desert showed it could also be the cemetery of ambition, burying under a blanket of sand and silence the most expansive of dreams. Its endless back revealed spaces where battles no longer needed to be waged. Night turned men into shadows who, with the rising of the sun, discovered the diverse faces of their own companies. Although separated—with Hebga at the back with the Cameroon mounted company and Philothée in the first infantry batallion—they each discovered the ever-growing solitude of a tested army marching on toward victory.

  Leclerc spoke to the gathered troops of the dream that was emerging at the end of the days and nights of their march across the desert.

  “Before us,” he said, “lies the sea!”

  He struck the sand with his cane and stared into the soldiers’ eyes.

  “Just as blue as in Marseille! Before us lies Tunisia!”

  He paused.

  “But our goal,” he continued, “is Strasbourg! Remember that! Our column will not stop until the whole of France is free! From Brittany to Alsace! From Paris to Lille!”

  The soldiers applauded and cheered, “Vive de Gaulle!” and “Vive la France!” The refrain of “La Marseillaise” rose up. But more than the far-off image of life in Paris—for what did Strasbourg or Paris really mean to Philothée?—what roused Philothée were cries coming from behind a rock.

  First the soldiers raced down the dune, rifles pointed. The sand filled in their steps. Then they slowed down, walking carefully, nervously. Philothée made his way around the rock and found an Italian soldier sitting there, his face lifted up to the moon. One of his arms was missing, he was covered in blood. His amputated hand was lying in front of him, amid the detritus. A missile had disfigured his body, but his eyes told of a different battle. He lifted his remaining arm, imploring death, asking for the merciful release of a bullet. Tears flowed down his sand-covered cheeks. He’d been abandoned by his comrades, for all around him were the footprints of many camels.

  “Commander Branchiet
ti,” he said, “Branchietti!”

  His voice was drowned out by the chaos all around him. Some wanted to run him through with their bayonet, others to cut off his head. When Philothée began to vomit, his comrades’ violent urges were suspended.

  “Stop!” shouted a voice.

  It was Captain Dio.

  “Stop, you can’t kill him!”

  The company of tirailleurs moved back, holding in their frustrated rage but still shouting out their rancor.

  “He’s a war prisoner!” Captain Dio continued. “Don’t touch him!”

  So Leclerc’s column just left him there in the desert. The Sahara’s evil song drowned out the insult—“Figlio di puttana”—that he spat out at the back of the hero of Free France as he raised up to the sky the one arm he had left.

  17

  Kinderlieder

  In Edéa, Fritz was packing his bags. It was night. It was raining. The only sounds heard in his bedroom were of water hitting metal rooftops and the wind’s song whistling through the trees. Determined to get everyone to Douala, he didn’t want his family to miss the morning bus. This was a challenging moment, because he really didn’t know what to leave behind. There are objects that you have dragged along with you all through life and that, when the time has come to move, suddenly seem to be of no real significance. Then there are others that you suddenly discover among your old things. There in open boxes, overturned crates, or outdated bags, buried treasures surface suddenly from memory’s depths. Mostly it was his father’s things that troubled him, relics from his life as an askari in the German colonial army, the traces of his life as a veteran.

  “Old memories,” said Fritz.

  That era was before his time; his father had rarely talked about it even with his friends, and never directly with Fritz. He wanted to forget all about it: he had been forced to repress it by the French administration, which had kept making problems for him because it suspected he harbored pro-German sentiments. Becoming a farmer and starting to grow macabo had sheltered him from the suspicion that his military know-how had earned him. As his father’s heir, Fritz had taken possession of bags of his belongings, old papers and a few books, some utensils—in short, the ordinary things that make up the story of a life, a life Fritz hadn’t known much about.

  In the middle of all this bric-a-brac, he found a little book with colored pictures. The title Unser Liederbuch—Our Songbook—was written on the cover in strange letters, along with pictures of three children, one who must have been the same age as his eldest son. He first thought of calling Ngo Bikaï to show her his find—the two didn’t share a bedroom—or maybe his children, but he thought better of it. He opened the book’s dusty pages.

  “Kinderlieder,” he read, although with a French accent, placing the stress on the second syllable, der, then he clicked his tongue in surprise, “1902!”

  He carefully leafed through the book, pausing on a familiar song, “O Tannenbaum,” page 46. He started to whistle and then softly, almost silently, began to sing:

  O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!

  Wie treu sind deine Blätter!

  Du grünst nicht nur

  Zur Sommerzeit!

  It was in fact December, he thought. There were two piles at his feet. On one side he’d put everything he wanted to throw out, mostly a lot of his father’s things, and then on the other, things, primarily his, that he wanted to take to Douala. That book was added to the Douala pile; he smiled for a moment and picked it back up. He went to church so rarely!

  “This will surprise Ngo Bikaï,” he said out loud.

  Or maybe the children. He called the older one. The kid didn’t reply. He went toward his wife’s room, because that was where the children slept. He opened the door and came into the darkness.

  “Shhhh,” he heard from the shadows.

  He paused for a moment and then went back out.

  “She’s always putting the kids to bed,” he grumbled, pulling the door closed behind him.

  He stopped in the living room, because the rain coming in had left a serpentine path across the floor.

  18

  The Separation of a Loving Couple

  It rained all night long. The next day, Fritz came into his wife’s room, happy and eager to share his news.

  “Do you know what I found yesterday?”

  Then, suddenly, he fell silent, lost his voice. Her room was just as it had been the day before. Ngo Bikaï hadn’t packed anything, hadn’t filled any of the empty boxes he’d put together for her. Even her purse was still hanging on the wall, in its usual spot.

  “I … I don’t understand,” he mumbled.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Do you want me to help?”

  “No,” she said calmly. “You’ll be going to Douala alone.”

  Ngo Bikaï’s voice invited no debate. He knew her determination, even if there were times when he had been able to get her to change her mind. But doing so always took a lot of time.

  “Okay,” he began diplomatically, “we’ll take the next bus.”

  If they were going to pack Ngo Bikaï’s things, they’d miss the bus on which he’d reserved space for the family. Before long the driver was going to come into their yard, beeping his horn. He’d ask him to come back later and give him a little something to convince him. What he didn’t understand was why his wife was just sitting there on the bed she hadn’t made—or taken apart, yes, apart—with their younger child still dozing in her arms, and staring at him as if he were speaking some unknown language.

  “Let’s calm down,” he said.

  “Precisely, you calm down,” she said. “The baby is still sleeping.”

  The baby! he thought. It’s always the baby! He wanted to say something, one word, two or three, but then he stumbled, and went back out of the room. He wanted to slam the door behind him, but merely shut it. The baby! he thought. Always the baby!

  He stomped nervously around the living room for a moment, then went outside to check on the basins he’d placed under the eaves the night before. They were full. No wonder the water had run into the living room. He grabbed a towel hanging there and began to mop up the floor with his foot.

  “Okay,” he said, when he saw Ngo Bikaï come out of her room. “You have to explain to me what the problem is.”

  “I’ve told you already, I’m not going to Douala.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “What is there to understand, Fritz? There are two possibilities: either I’m going to Douala or I’m not. There’s not a third option, right?”

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Well, then,” she went on calmly, “I’ve given it some thought, as you have, no doubt, and I’ve decided I’ll stay in Edéa.”

  “Because of your women?”

  Ah, Fritz! There were so many things he could have said, why did he bring up Ngo Bikaï’s women? He had always supported her work. I can say there had never been a husband more supportive of women’s rights than he was, because he saw it as part of the broader struggle for freedom—that the woman question was in fact its most burning metaphor. He and his friends, Um Nyobè, Pouka, and the others, had discussed it time and time again, and he had always maintained that women were the very image of oppression. First, they were oppressed by men in the home, and then in public life by the colonial system. In fact, he had wanted his married life to be the living example of the importance of this freedom.

  Yes, Fritz was a feminist. He had put off celebrating his marriage to Ngo Bikaï in the Catholic church, which she had joined only later in life, because he saw Catholicism as part of the French colonial system that needed to be challenged; whereas the traditional marriage that had joined them together for so long sanctified a union they had both entered into freely, and with the support of their community. He had clearly supported his wife’s rise to a position of authority among the market women, and he had even done what he could to make it possible, since he’d given her the
funds to set up her business. Ah! So why did he bring up his wife’s women now? Did Fritz feel guilty because if he hadn’t gotten her pregnant years ago, maybe she would have become the first woman to work for the colonial administration? Or a writer like Um Nyobè and Pouka?

  It was Fritz who had built his wife’s stand in the market, wasn’t it? That he now turned against the women he had encouraged Ngo Bikaï to join, “with his own hands” (he could still see himself wielding the hammer, holding nails between his lips, as he built the shed for her); yes, that Fritz now turned against Ngo Bikaï’s women, after he’d been the one to take her to our Sita’s house and introduce her—well, that just showed that something had gone seriously wrong. Fritz could see it still: he’d knocked on our Sita’s door and, when Hebga answered, he’d asked the question. He remembered as if it had happened yesterday:

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “She’s gone out.”

  Ngo Bikaï had wanted to go home, but he, yes, he had insisted.

  “We’ll wait, then.”

  So Hebga had found them chairs and then they waited, Fritz and Ngo Bikaï, whom he introduced to the Mother of the Market as “my fiancée.” You see, Ngo Bikaï’s belly was already showing the bump that would become their first child.

  “Because of my women? Why?” Ngo Bikaï echoed his words.

  She knew it was over. Over. In her mind she kept hearing the song the women sang when they’d put the captain as a crown on her head, marking her as the Mother of the Market, and signaling the ecstasy of the universe. She clearly remembered her sister Martha pulling the fish out of the river, the captain that had given its blessing to her ascension and reinscribed on her body her strength as a woman. She had given birth to their first child in the market, and the women had carried her in their arms; they’d supported her, cut the umbilical cord, and then placed back in her arms the son that they hadn’t named, because she knew that was Fritz’s prerogative.