by Maryse Conde
I was sure he was crying crocodile tears.
“Louis?” he said, in response to my questions. “Dioclétien appointed him ambassador to South Africa, to Pretoria,” he boasted. “He wouldn’t have been able to take on the job, what with all his children, if his wife hadn’t come back.”
“His wife came back?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes!” he assured me. “They’re back together again.”
Thereupon he launched into a long diatribe against women’s venality and their obsession with money and prestigious appointments. Once again, I was convinced he was lying.
During the weeks that followed I endeavored relentlessly to decipher the truth. I had the feeling I was victim to a conspiracy. The Zourous had taken my child and kidnapped Azélia who, I was sure, was alive. As a result, I thought I recognized her wherever I went. I ran after strangers who either swore at me or gave me enticing smiles. Whenever my quest proved fruitless, I would return home exhausted. Jérôme begged me, “Come to your senses! You’re not the first man whose hopes have been dashed. Look at me. Haven’t I started a new life?”
At night, my mother was even more categorical.
“Turn the page!” she commanded. “I can see happiness blossoming again, back there, back there, at the end of a long drive. In another environment.”
I didn’t listen to anyone. I was prepared to go to great lengths. I only had to hear the name of a soothsayer in order to make up my mind to go and consult him. Consequently, charlatans extorted from me chickens, goats, heifers with spotless coats, and meters of white percale as the price for their divinations. When someone mentioned the infallible oracle at Oro Chuku who read the lessons of the past and untangled the threads of the future, I attempted to travel to Nigeria. But once the embassy discovered that I had been prisoner at Toh Boh Nel, they refused me a visa. I did things that could have proved dangerous. One day, for example, I went back to Toh Boh Nel, now emptied of its political prisoners, and which now housed only common-law inmates. The massive ugliness of the place appalled me. How could I have spent almost a year of my life there? It was proof that man is truly a tough animal. The prison guards poked fun at me.
“Hi, Northerner! You miss us so much you couldn’t wait to come back and see us?”
I told them the reason for my visit.
“It doesn’t make sense,” one of them exclaimed. “It’s true we have a common grave but it’s used for prisoners who die of AIDS, tuberculosis, dysentery, and other diseases in cases where the family doesn’t claim the body, which is rare.”
Since I insisted, one of the men went to fetch the register of deaths. However hard we leafed through it from Emile Adiaffi to Zakariah Zukpo we could find no trace of Azélia Zourou.
Every setback made me even more determined. I went back to my former neighborhood. What was I hoping for? I couldn’t say. The Patriots and the militia were still there and looked at me arrogantly.
“I used to live here. Do you remember me?” I pleaded. “I’m looking for my wife, a slender young woman, very shy. Have you seen her?”
Nobody had seen her. Did they remember I had once lived in their neighborhood? They had forgotten me, that’s for sure. The militia, however, were much friendlier. They had me sit down and offered me some Lipton tea. They remembered Azélia very well. One of them told me in his poor French that shortly after I had disappeared, one very rainy day, he had helped the driver of a removal van. Since the van had gotten stuck in the mud, everyone helped push it, except for Azélia, whom he remembered looked terribly haggard and very pregnant.
“Where did this van go?” I stammered.
He had no idea. Once the van finally drove off, followed by a taxi marked Tempe-Eburnéa on the side, it had turned left as if to follow the avenue Général de Gaulle. The villa had remained unoccupied until a family of squatters moved in.
I can’t describe the effect this conversation had on me. What had they done with my wife? What had become of my child? Gripped by a greater feeling of despair than usual, while looking for a taxi I came face to face with a police squad. They were stopping cars and savagely shoving passersby back on the sidewalk. A procession of Mercedes Benzes drove by. People were applauding and shouting while clapping their hands.
“Long live Dioclétien! Long live Hassan! Bravo! Hurray!”
Yet it was evident their enthusiasm was pretense and was merely a way of getting noticed by the police. In the first Mercedes I thought I caught a glimpse of Hassan leaning back against the cushions. It was then I got the idea of asking him for an appointment to explain my situation. Otherwise, what was the point of having been one of his friends?
I therefore made my way to the presidential palace, a real blockhouse guarded by the military. To my surprise, they didn’t even look at my papers and let me through. Once inside, the situation was very different. The government agents made me fill out a string of forms and treated me like a ping-pong ball. This went on for weeks.
“Come back Thursday.”
“Come back Monday.”
I would come back on the day they said but it was obvious they were making a mockery out of me. Finally, to their surprise, the vice president agreed to see me.
I found Hassan dressed in the uniform of the Resistance Forces. He had put on weight and, strangely enough, wore the same mask as Dioclétien, as if power reshapes a man. He bore the outrageously benevolent expression of a pope or an apostolic nuncio. I looked for the remains of our former friendship the way you pick over ashes with a poker and was surprised to see a shower of burning sparks.
“You look terrible!” he said, staring at me in commiseration.
“On the contrary, you’re in great shape. What are you going to do now that you’re virtually at the head of the country?”
“Whatever I want,” he dreamed.
He then put on an unctuous air and began dishing out a lesson he had learned by rote.
“I’m going to work with Dioclétien …”
“Is that possible?” I interrupted him. “They say he’s ignorant, practically illiterate, narrow-minded, and cruel.”
“That’s not true,” he assured me. “We get along very well together. We agree on almost everything. We are going to make Africa great again, restore equality and justice in this country and make it tolerant. No more Northerners and Southerners. No more so-called foreigners either. We are all Africans. We must work together for the good of our continent and the rest of the world.”
It sounded like a homily from the United Nations, that temple of pious hopes. I kept my skepticism to myself and told him my problem. He listened to me carefully, taking down notes. When I had finished, he declared wistfully, “The Zourous are Dioclétien’s henchmen, it’s a well-known fact. They do all the dirty work. But why would they lie to you about your wife? Why do you still refuse to believe them?”
“I know, I can feel it, she’s alive. She’s waiting for me somewhere. I don’t know where. My child is waiting for me too.”
“A lover’s dream, which won’t accept reality,” he said shrugging his shoulders.
There was a silence, then he continued.
“You can count on me. I’ll order an inquiry. As soon as I hear something, I’ll let you know.”
I understood the conversation was over and got up. He accompanied me to the front door, where our hearts throbbed with the remains of our affection. He clasped me in his arms. I kissed him violently, then burst into tears and ran off, ashamed.
I returned to Bassora.
Tired of living off Jérôme, I accepted a job shortly afterwards as obstetrician in a maternity ward. I rediscovered the atmosphere I had once begun to take a liking to. I joined a small team of doctors who were all foreigners—Lithuanians, Czechs, Romanians—fleeing the extreme paucity of their wages in their home countries. We worked our fingers to the bone under extremely precariou
s conditions. I became friends with Valdas, a Lithuanian, who while we jogged together endeavored in his atrocious French to make me feel sorry for his agonizing love of a young girl whose family hated toubabs. What a nightmare this life of ours! Some don’t like toubabs. Others don’t like Blacks. Some don’t like Northerners. Others don’t like Southerners.
I was the only one in the ward to speak one of the country’s languages. which meant I was the only one able to communicate directly with the patients; the other doctors had to use interpreters. Babies came in twos and even threes, one of the ways fate loves to gratify the destitute. Poverty is a rich and fertile breeding ground.
One evening, while my frenzied imagination and impatience prevented me from going to sleep, Jérôme banged on my door.
“Get up!” he ordered. “Come quickly!”
Together we dashed onto the balcony. Beyond the somber undulations of the palm trees, Eburnéa was burning like during the worst hours of the civil war. Flames were flickering wildly in the sky. We stood there anxiously, not saying a word. What was going on now?
Around four in the morning, after fiddling with the knobs on the radio, we were informed that another coup d’état had taken place. Dioclétien had been assassinated. A commando of masked men riding motorbikes had blown up the villa of his pet mistress, a Brazilian mixed-blood, where, like every Friday, Dioclétien was eating his favorite dish of feijoada. Not only his mistress was killed but also her three baby girls from her ex-husband, their devoted nurse, Dioclétien’s chauffeur, a Rwandan who had fled his country for fear of genocide—proof, if proof is needed, that death catches up with you wherever you are—and his bodyguards, as well as countless visitors, scroungers, and servants. A real massacre! Although it was obvious to everyone he was responsible for this butchery, Hassan appeared on television faking deep emotion. No longer dressed in military uniform but wearing a dark, double-breasted presidential-like suit, he delivered a four-hour, Fidel-like speech. He denounced such an abominable crime, paid tribute to the deceased, and ordered seven days of mourning to conclude with an ecumenical state funeral in the basilica at Gamayel. I don’t think I have ever suffered so much, except when my mother died; my friend, my brother, my alter ego had turned into an assassin. Why? What had driven him to do it? Was it because he wanted to outdo his ancestor, the empire builder? For me, everything was falling apart. The walls of Segu, tainted with blood by a criminal, began to crack. That’s what your fanatical pride in your origins and making Africa great again has led to. Moreover, recalling his unctuous and moralizing airs, I was filled with rage and humiliation. He had made a fool out of me. Oh yes, he had made me into a laughing stock. Jérôme’s predictions were of no comfort.
“Sooner or later they’ll get him,” he repeated. “You’ll see, a Southerner will do him in.”
Curiosity kept us glued to the television for hours watching the ceremony of the state funeral. It had been called “ecumenical” because it assembled not only the presidents and government ministers from neighboring countries but also religious dignitaries of various confessions. There was a large contingent of Congolese Catholics whose archbishop from Goma had left his flock alone for a few days to kill each other. Then there were the imams from the great mosques of North Africa and even one from Slovenia. But the highlight of the ceremony was an albino oil magnate from Nigeria who had created a foundation in order to recuperate and raise the newborn albinos who had escaped the sacrificial knife. He was accompanied by twenty or so kids, all albinos of course, who sang in chorus with their angelic voices. He was the one who climbed up to the pulpit and delivered the homily:
The days of obscurantism and intolerance are over. We are entering an era of peace, love, and brotherhood for the development of the common good.
In the following months, despite these reassuring words, the country underwent a wave of repression, whose horrors we discovered upon reading the foreign press that Jérôme managed to procure, not without difficulty. Southerners continued to be relieved of their duties, either thrown into prison or obliged to go into exile. Southern ambassadors were recalled and accused of treason. One day I read that Louis Zourou had been replaced by a Northerner in Pretoria. This man held the key to the mystery I was struggling with. I had to see him at all costs.
In the time it took to untangle the imbroglio of rumors, giving Louis up for dead, assassinated with his entire family, or having fled abroad, weeks went by.
During this horrible period, the only positive act by the new president concerned the cleaning up of Eburnéa. Early-morning, unpaid workers recruited by force from the North swept streets and sidewalks and repaired and repainted public buildings and monuments, while other crews chased after stray dogs, gathered them up, and took them to the incinerators placed at every crossroads. The stench was appalling.
It was then I received a message from the President in a thin envelope. Sensing the premonition of a calamity, I turned it over and over before opening it. The President informed me that Case 007, Babakar Traoré versus the Zourou family, had been closed without further action. The envelope also contained the death certificate of Azélia Zourou, who had died of meningitis one year earlier at the hospital in Tembe.
“That’s impossible,” I yelled. “Her father claimed she had been killed by the prison guards at Toh Boh Nel.”
Something snapped inside me and I collapsed on the floor.
When I regained consciousness, over a month had passed. I had been delirious and seized with a burning fever. I had been at death’s door. Now that the danger had passed, I was no stronger than a small child.
“They’re lying! They’re all lying!” I persisted in shouting as soon as I had regained consciousness and prepared to resume my futile combat.
It was then that my mother intervened with an air of authority.
“You must leave this country. If you stay in Eburnéa, you’ll go crazy,” she declared.
“Some people already think I’m crazy,” I joked. “Where do you expect me to go?”
There was silence.
“To my country,” she resumed. “I want you to go home to my place.”
I thought I had misheard. “You must be joking.”
She shook her head and declared, “I have never been more serious.”
I gave up trying to understand. “You’ve always said that your country was not a country!”
“It’s an overseas department, it’s not a country. But that’s exactly what you need in the state you’re in. No civil war, no bloody dictator, no coups d’état. They go on never-ending strikes for the price of gas or eggs. They draw up lists of basic necessities and demand discounts. But Nature is so magnificent that not even the property developers manage to disfigure it. Do you remember what the romantic poet said?
When everything all around you changes, Nature stays the same.
Immerse yourself in her breast which will always be open to you.
“My island is divided into two parts, not separated by language or religion as you have just experienced at your own expense, but by virtue of beauty. One part is dry and burned by the sun, the realm of white sandy beaches and sugarcane fields as flat as your hand, bristling with calabash trees; the other is humid and misty, home to mountains and sulfur-yellow pools.”
“What would I do there? Do you want me to go on excursions and take photos like a tourist?”
“Why not?” she laughed. “Our world is a world of voyeurs. Do like all the rest. I forgot to say that my island is a Club Med paradise.”
Thécla continued in a more serious tone of voice. “You will pursue your vocation, one of the best in the world. As usual, you won’t bother about earning money, but doing good. It’s a cast of mind that’s gradually disappearing.”
Was she poking fun? Her proposition didn’t appeal to me. But where could I go? And then, I’ve never been able to say no to my mother.
&n
bsp; The last days spent in a town resemble those that bring an end to one of life’s episodes. A stream of images and memories pass through one’s mind. I saw myself as a little boy in Tiguiri, overjoyed for no reason at all at being a child and holding my beloved mother’s hand. Then at Segu in the company of my dear, venerable grandparents. I recalled my arrival at Eburnéa when only my friendship with Hassan was on my mind and I didn’t imagine for one moment that our lives would inexorably go in such different directions: Hassan attaining the pinnacle of power and me remaining an anonymous citizen. How much longer could he stay in power? At the price of how many crimes? He had already proved he would stop at nothing. To what end would he go?
I thought of Ali, poor Ali, the very opposite of Hassan. Perhaps I was mistaken and he was still alive. Where could he be now? Had he managed to achieve his dream and get to France?
I also relived those long months in Danembe, then the prison of Toh Boh Nel, and I was filled with the strange impression that all of that had been lived by someone else, someone who had been mistaken for me. Above all, I thought of Azélia. She had been the victim of a massacre that was beyond our control. Both Northerners and Southerners shared responsibility. Women stand on the sidelines of History. Taken to Pretoria by Louis Zourou, who treated her like a slave, Azélia had returned to Eburnéa when he had been recalled as ambassador, thrown into jail with him, and was perhaps executed along with him by Hassan’s men. To sum up, it would be safe to say that my brother, my alter ego had helped destroy that which I cherished most in this world. Why hadn’t I escaped with Azélia to a country where you are free to love and live as you please? But do such countries exist and, if so, where are they?
I came here to obey my mother. I have to confess I didn’t fall in love with the place as she would have liked. For me Nature is nothing but a camouflage. The fact that people are embittered, miserable, and frustrated, that’s what concerns me. And here, people are not happy because they are subordinated.
But the unexpected happiness that has befallen me is that I believe I have found my child again. My daughter. I was therefore going to put an end to my roaming and settle down. It was then that you, Movar, convinced me I am wrong to deprive Anaïs of her country and her origins. My mother had always implied that a place of birth is purely a matter of chance, and one’s origins the fruit of coincidence.
