by David Diop
My father’s speech didn’t please Abdou Thiam one bit—he was very, very angry, but he didn’t show it. Abdou Thiam didn’t like it that my father said he was a bad chief. Abdou Thiam didn’t like it one bit that someone had mentioned his shop. So, the last thing in the world that Abdou Thiam would have wanted was for his daughter Fary to get together with one of Bassirou Coumba Ndiaye’s sons. Fary Thiam gave herself to me in the small ebony forest before I left for war in France. Fary loved me more than the honor of her father, who had none.
XX
THE THIRD THING I DREW for Doctor François was my seven hands. I drew them so that I could really see them, the way they were when I cut them off. I was curious to find out how the shadow and light, the paper and pencil, would allow me to reproduce them, if they would come to life before my eyes as fully as my mother’s head, or Mademba’s. The result surpassed my expectations. God’s truth, when I saw them I could have believed that they’d just now been greasing, loading, firing the rifles that they held before my machete separated them from the arms of the men I tortured in no-man’s-land. I drew them one next to the other on the big white page that Mademoiselle François had given me. God’s truth, I even took care to draw each hair on their backs, their black nails, the more or less successful cuts across their wrists.
I was very pleased with myself. I should say that I was no longer in possession of my seven hands. God’s truth, I’d thought it more reasonable to get rid of them. And by then Doctor François had already begun to wash the filth of war from inside my head. My seven hands were fury, were vengeance, were the madness of war. I no longer wanted to see the fury and the madness of war, the same way my captain could no longer tolerate seeing my seven hands in the trench. So one evening I decided to bury them. God’s truth, I waited for the night of a full moon to do it. I know, I understand that I shouldn’t have buried them on the night of a full moon. I know, I understand that they could have spotted me from the west wing of our sanctuary while I was digging in the dirt to bury them. But I thought that I owed a burial under a full moon to the men I’d tortured in no-man’s-land. I had killed them with the complicity of the moon. The moon hid itself in order to conceal me from their eyes. They died in the shadows of no-man’s-land. They deserved a bit of light.
I know, I understand that I shouldn’t have, because once I’d finished burying them, neatly arranged in a box sealed with my mystical padlock, as I returned to the sanctuary, I thought I saw a shadow slipping behind one of the big windows in the west wing. I know, I understand that someone from the sanctuary must have discovered my secret. It’s why I waited a few days before drawing my hands. I waited to see if someone would report me. But nobody said anything. So, to cleanse the insides of my head with big buckets of mystical water, I drew my seven hands. I had to show them to Doctor François so that they would leave the inside of my head.
My seven hands spoke, they confessed all to my judges. God’s truth, I know, I understand that my drawings denounced me. After seeing them, Doctor François no longer smiled at me like before.
XXI
WHERE AM I? It feels like I’ve returned from far away. Who am I? I don’t know anymore. Shadows surround me, I can’t see anything, but I begin to sense a warmth lending me life. I try to open eyes that aren’t mine, to move hands that don’t belong to me, but that will belong to me soon, I can tell. My legs are there … Strange, I feel something beneath my dream of a body. There, where I’m returning from, I swear to you, all is immobile. There where I’ve come from, there is no body. But, now, I who was nowhere, I sense myself living. I sense myself becoming incarnate. I sense flesh, bathed in red-hot blood, enclose me. I sense against my belly, against my soon-to-be chest, another body moving, infusing mine with heat. I feel it warming my skin. Where I’ve come from, there is no heat. Where I’ve come from, I swear, nobody has a name. I’m going to open my eyes that are no longer mine. I don’t know who I am. My name escapes me still, but I’ll remember it soon. Strange, the body beneath mine isn’t moving anymore. Strange, I sense its immobile heat beneath me. Strange, I sense, suddenly, hands pressing on my back, a back that doesn’t entirely belong to me yet, thighs that are not yet mine, a neck that doesn’t belong to me but that I absorb, that I accept as mine, thanks to the soft hands touching me. Strange, the hands are suddenly pummeling my back, my thighs, scratching at my neck. Beneath their scratching, this body that wasn’t yet mine became mine. I swear to you, it’s pleasant to leave nothingness. I swear to you that I was there without being there.
And now it’s done: I have my body. For the first time I have come inside a woman. I swear to you, it’s the first time. I swear to you that it’s very, very good. Before now I had never come in the insides of a woman because I didn’t have a body. A voice from very, very far away said to me, “It’s much better than with your hand!” This voice from far away whispers in my head, “It’s as loud as the first shell exploding on a silent morning, it wrenches your guts.” It’s the voice from far away that tells me again, “There’s nothing better in the world.” I know, I understand that it’s this voice from far away that will give me a name. I know, I understand, the voice will soon baptize me.
The woman who has given me this bodily pleasure is beneath me. She is immobile, her eyes closed. I swear to you that I don’t know her, I’ve never seen her. In fact, she’s the one who gave me eyes to see by offering herself to my view. I swear to you that I see with eyes that aren’t mine, that I touch with hands that don’t belong to me. It’s incredible, but I swear to you that it’s the truth. My inside-outside, as the voice from far away calls it, is now in an unknown woman’s body. I can feel the interior heat of this woman’s body, surrounding it from top to bottom. I swear to you that I feel as if I’m inhabiting my own body now that I’ve inhabited the body of the unknown woman. She lies beneath me, she isn’t moving, her eyes are closed, I don’t know who she is. I swear to you that I don’t know why she agreed to welcome my inside-outside into her interior. It’s unusual to find yourself lying on top of an unknown woman. It’s unusual to have the impression of being a stranger in your own body.
Even my hands I’m seeing for the first time. I shake them, I move them across both sides of the head of this woman I am lying on top of. Her eyes are closed. I am leaning on my elbows. I sense her breasts brushing against my chest. I observe my two hands trembling near her head. I didn’t think they’d be so big. I swear to you that I thought I had smaller hands, thinner fingers. I don’t know why, but here I am with very, very large hands. It’s strange, but when I bend my fingers, when I clench and unclench my fists, I can tell that I have the hands of a wrestler. I swear to you that where I come from I didn’t seem to have a wrestler’s hands. The little voice from far away is what told me that from now on I would possess a wrestler’s hands. This is a surprise. I have to find out if the rest of my body is the body of a wrestler. I have to verify the state of this body that is mine without being mine. I have to detach my body from the unknown woman who lies beneath me. She seems to be sleeping. It’s strange that I don’t look at her very much, although she’s beautiful—I get the sense that I like beautiful women. But first I have to look again at my body to find out if it resembles a wrestler’s body, as the voice from far away claims.
I detach myself from this beautiful woman with her eyes closed who is lying beneath me. It’s strange to hear the sound of our two bodies detaching. I want to laugh. It makes a small moist sound like that of a child pulling his thumb out of his mouth quickly because his mother has forbidden him to suck on it. This image that comes from far away makes me laugh inside my head. It’s also strange to find myself lying next to an unknown woman. Not to mention that it’s strange to feel my heart beating so fast in my excitement to find out if the rest of my body is like my hands. I lift my arms toward the ceiling of the white bedroom. My two arms: I swear to you, they’re like two old mango tree trunks. I rest my arms alongside my body. I lift my two legs straight at the ceiling of th
e white room: I swear to you, you would say they look like two baobab tree trunks. I stretch my two legs out again on the bed and I say to myself that it’s strange to find oneself in the body of a wrestler. It’s strange to arrive in the world in such good physical condition. It’s strange to discover that you have such strength. I swear to you that I don’t have any fear of the unknown, I fear nothing, just like a real wrestler, but it’s still strange to be born in a beautiful wrestler’s body next to a beautiful woman instead of in the body of a weakling lying next to an ugly one.
I am not afraid of the unknown. I swear to you. I’m not even afraid not to know my own name. My body tells me that I’m a wrestler and that’s enough. No need to know my name, my body is enough. No need to know where I am, my body is enough. No need for anything from now on except to explore the power of my new body. Once again, I lift my arms, thick as mature mango tree trunks, toward the ceiling of the white room. My hands seem farther from my shoulders than I expected. I clench my fists, then I unclench them, I clench and unclench them again. It’s strange to see the muscles in my arms dance beneath my skin. My arms are heavier than I expected, they’re full of a suppressed power that feels like it could explode at any moment. But I’m not afraid of the unknown.
XXII
THANK YOU, MADEMOISELLE FRANÇOIS! God’s truth, I am not mistaken. Even if I don’t speak French, I know, I understand the meaning of Mademoiselle François’s eyes sweeping across the middle of my body. Mademoiselle François is unsurpassed when it comes to speaking with her eyes. Her eyes told me very clearly that I should appear in her room the evening of the day they swept across the middle of my body.
Her bedroom was at the end of a corridor painted in a white so bright that it gleamed in the fiery moonlight behind each of the windows I silently passed. It was absolutely necessary that Doctor François not know that I was going to visit his daughter. It was also absolutely necessary that the guard from the west wing of the sanctuary not see me. The door to her room was open. When I entered, Mademoiselle François was asleep. I lay down next to her. Mademoiselle François woke up and she cried out because she didn’t know that I was me. I placed my left hand on Mademoiselle François’s mouth, which fought and fought. But, as the captain said, I am a force of nature. I waited to make sure Mademoiselle François was no longer moving before I lifted my hand from her mouth. Mademoiselle François smiled at me. So I smiled at her too. Thank you, Mademoiselle François, for opening your little notch, so close to your guts. God’s truth, vive la guerre! God’s truth, I plunged into her the way one plunges into the powerful current of a river one wants to cross, swimming furiously. God’s truth, I thrust into her womb as if to disembowel her. God’s truth, I tasted blood in my mouth, all of a sudden. God’s truth, I didn’t understand why.
XXIII
THEY ASK ME MY NAME, but I’m waiting for them to reveal it to me. I swear to you that I no longer know who I am. I can only tell them what I feel. I believe from looking at my arms like mango trees and my legs like baobabs that I am a great destroyer of life. I swear to you that I get the sense nothing can resist me, that I am immortal, that I could pulverize boulders just by squeezing them in my arms. I swear to you that what I’m feeling can’t be said simply: the words with which I could say it are insufficient. So I resort to words that might seem foreign to what I want to say because at least, by chance, despite what they ordinarily signify, they might translate what it is I feel. For the moment I am only what my body feels. My body is trying to speak through my mouth. I don’t know who I am, but I think I know what my body would say about me. The thickness of my body, its excessive power, can only bring combat to the minds of others, can only bring battle, war, violence, and death. My body accuses my body. But why is it that my body’s bulk and its excessive power can’t also mean peace, tranquility, and calm?
A small voice from very, very far away tells me that my body is the body of a wrestler. I swear to you that I only knew one wrestler in the world before. I don’t remember his name. This big body that I’ve found myself in without knowing who I am is his, possibly. Possibly, he abandoned it to let me take his place, out of friendship, out of compassion. This is what’s whispered to me by the small distant voice in my head.
XXIV
“I AM THE SHADOW THAT DEVOURS ROCKS, mountains, forests, and rivers, the flesh of beasts and of men. I slice skin, I empty skulls and bodies. I cut off arms, legs, and hands. I smash bones and I suck out their marrow. But I am also the red moon that rises over the river, I am the evening air that rustles the tender acacia trees. I am the wasp and the flower. I am as much the wriggling fish as the still canoe, as much the net as the fisherman. I am the prisoner and his guard. I am the tree and the seed that grew into it. I am father and son. I am assassin and judge. I am the sowing and the harvest. I am mother and daughter. I am night and day. I am fire and the wood it devours. I am innocent and guilty. I am the beginning and the end. I am the creator and the destroyer. I am double.”
To translate is never simple. To translate is to betray at the borders, it’s to cheat, it’s to trade one sentence for another. To translate is one of the only human activities in which one is required to lie about the details to convey the truth at large. To translate is to risk understanding better than others that the truth about a word is not single, but double, even triple, quadruple, or quintuple. To translate is to distance oneself from God’s truth, which, as everyone knows or believes, is single.
“What did he say?” everyone asked. “This is not the response we expected. The response we expected wouldn’t be more than two words, possibly three. Everyone has a last name and a first name, two first names at most.”
The translator hesitated, intimidated by the angry, worried looks being shot his way. He cleared his throat and answered the uniforms in a small, nearly inaudible voice:
“He said that he is both death and life.”
XXV
SINCE THEN, I BELIEVE I KNOW who I am. I swear to you, God’s truth, that the little voice entering my head from very, very far away helped me to guess. The little voice knew that my body couldn’t reveal everything about me to me. God’s truth, the little voice understood that my body was ambivalent about me. I swear to you that my body without scars is a strange body. Wrestlers, warriors have scars. I swear to you, God’s truth, that the body of a wrestler without scars is not a normal body. That means that my body can’t tell my story. It also means that my body, and it’s the little voice from very, very far away that says so, is the body of a dëmm. The body of a devourer of souls has a good chance of being free of scars.
Everyone knows the story of the prince who came from nowhere to marry the fickle daughter of a vain king. The little voice that comes to my head from very, very far away recalls it. The fickle daughter of the vain king wanted a man without scars. She wanted a man without history.
The prince who came out of the brush to marry her didn’t bear a single scar. This prince was terribly beautiful and the fickle princess liked him, but the princess’s nurse did not. The princess’s nurse knew, understood at first glance, that the terribly beautiful prince was a sorcerer. She knew it, she understood it precisely because he didn’t have a single scar. Princes, like wrestlers, always have scars. It’s their scars that tell their story. Princes, like wrestlers, must have at least one scar so that they can be turned into stories by their people. No scar, no epic. No scar, no great name. No scar, no renown. That’s why the little voice in my head had to take matters in hand. That’s why the little voice helped me guess my name. Because the body that I’m in, the body that was bequeathed to me, doesn’t bear a single scar.
The fickle princess’s nurse knew, she understood that the prince without scars was unnameable. The nurse warned the fickle princess of the nameless danger. But in vain. The fickle princess wanted her man without scars, she wanted her man without a story. So the nurse gave the fickle princess three talismans, saying, “Here is an egg, here is a bit of wood, and here is
a pebble. When the day comes that you will be pursued by a great danger, throw them one after the other over your left shoulder. They will save you.”
After her marriage to the terribly beautiful prince who’d come straight from the brush, it was time for her to leave for her bridegroom’s kingdom. But her bridegroom’s kingdom was distant and unknown. The farther the fickle princess went from her village, the more the prince’s entourage dwindled, as if absorbed into the brush. As they vanished, each reverted to its true appearance, one a hare, one an elephant, one a hyena, one a peacock, one a black or green snake, one a crowned crane, one a dung beetle. But the prince, her terribly beautiful spouse, was a sorcerer, as the nurse had guessed. A lion-sorcerer who enslaved her for a long time in a forsaken cave in the brush.
The fickle princess bitterly regretted not having listened to the voice of her nurse, the voice of wisdom, the voice of warning. The fickle princess found herself in the middle of nowhere. She was in a place without a name, where the sand only looked like sand, where shrubs resembled shrubs, the sky, sky; a place where everything confused itself for everything else, a place where the ground too bore no scars, a place where the ground had no story.
So, as soon as she could, the fickle princess fled, but the lion-sorcerer took off after her in hot pursuit. The lion-sorcerer knew that if he lost the princess he would lose his only story, he would lose his meaning, he would lose even his name, that of lion-sorcerer. With the princess gone, his land became no-man’s-land again, for it was the princess who had enlivened it with her fancies. His land would never resuscitate itself unless the fickle princess returned to his cave-kingdom. Even the life of the lion-sorcerer himself depended on the fickle princess’s eyes, ears, and mouth. Without her, his scarless beauty would remain invisible, without her presence his roars would be inaudible, without her voice his cave-kingdom would be erased from the world.
