Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?: A Fantastical Tale

Ivory Coast: 1901–1906

1

This was not the first time the Reverend Father Huchard, a long-standing member of the African Missionary Society in Lyons, had landed on these shores. He was an old-timer and had already spread the word of God among the natives of Dahomey as well as those in the Lower Congo. So it was of no surprise to him that the land was so flat, the forest beyond so impenetrable, that the rain over his head never let up and the sun up there, way up there, was so hazy. His eye was fixed on one of his flock of six: an oblate who answered to the name of Celanire. Celanire Pinceau. A most unusual name! The priest’s gaze, however, did not betray any covetous look. It was simply the fact she stood out from the others. She hardly spoke. She did not seem curious or excited like her traveling companions, who were eager to begin their missionary work. What’s more, her color set her apart, that dark skin that clothed her like a garment of deep mourning. Her features were not strictly black — rather, a hybrid of goodness knows how many races. She did not wear religious garb, since she had not yet taken her vows, but wore a somber gray dress and a scarf around her neck tied with a ribbon from which hung a heavy gold cross. Winter come summer, morning, noon, and night, this tightly knotted scarf never left her and matched the color of her clothes. Where did she come from? From Guadeloupe or Martinique. Well, from one of those colonies that are only French by name, where the natives have been baptized yet still run wild, swear like heathens, beat the drum, and drink strong liquor. She was an orphan raised by the Sisters of Charity in Paris whose desire to do missionary work in Africa had made her join the nuns of Our Lady of the Apostles in Lyons the previous year. Reverend Father Huchard, who had kept his eye on her throughout the voyage, was no wiser now than he had been when the Jean-Bart first sailed out of the Gironde estuary in a great swirl of muddy water. The fact was that whenever he regaled his audience with stories about the natives, and he had seen some in his time, she had a way of staring at him that made him ill at ease and reduced him to silence. But there was nothing serious to report. She wasn’t insolent. She wasn’t disobedient. Even so, Reverend Father Huchard didn’t trust her and believed she was capable of anything.

The flotilla of small boats bobbed toward the old freighter, braving the wall of waves, jostled each other on reaching its side, and the passengers began to descend, the women standing in large metal baskets, clasping their skirts around their legs, the men gingerly clinging to the rope ladders. As they gradually boarded the boats, the smell of unwashed body parts wafted up.

It was the long rainy season, the one that stretches from April to July. The sun’s beacon cast a reluctant glare over the immensity of the ocean’s swell. The land remained at a safe distance behind the line of rollers, a land devoid of life and houses dotted among the greenery. It was a grayish, spongy land, in places eaten away by the mangrove swamps, in others wrapped in a shroud of vegetation. The sky was low, smeared by streaks of clouds. The silhouettes of the African porters could be seen fending off the torrential rain as best they could on the wharf while the European officials huddled under black umbrellas as voluminous as church bells.

At the time when this story begins (but is it the beginning? Where in fact does it begin? That’s anyone’s guess!) they had barely finished burying the dead at Grand-Bassam. An epidemic of yellow fever had laid to rest all that remained of the Europeans in the vicinity, resulting in the decision by the governor, Roberdeau d’Entremont, to transfer the capital to a more salubrious spot, a few miles distant, on the plateau of Adjame-Santey. In response to the barrage of objections regarding the cost of the upheaval, he pointed out that the many springs located beneath the plateau would provide an ample supply of water, which was not the case with the present capital.

Despite its misfortunes, Grand-Bassam proved to be a pleasant surprise. Forty years earlier it had been a stew of fresh and salt water trickling into the bush, emitting deadly miasmas. Now a neat little town had emerged from the sand, white as snow. There were not only the houses in the French district. A grove of coconut palms added a touch of green beside the Governor’s Palace and the offices of the Western Telegraph Company. The Governor’s Palace, built entirely of prefabricated material shipped from Bordeaux, was a rich example of French technology. Along the banks of the river Comoé stretched the Essante district, or District of the Converted. It was thought the souls of the newly baptized could be saved by herding them into huts made of palm fronds and branches. Life was returning to normal following the latest epidemic. The warehouses piled high with casks of palm oil were reopening. The priests had started working again with a vengeance, setting up outlying missionary stations along the shore like confetti. Since the church was one of the few buildings spared by the fire that had been set to check the epidemic, the apostolic nuncio had declared a miracle. Leading his flock, Father Huchard headed for the mission. Gone was the time when mass was said in the only priest’s one-room hut, which had been used as a makeshift place of worship, bedroom, dining room, storehouse, and shop. The mission now numbered three priests bursting with health and two buildings made of bamboo, one of which was the school for thirty-two children. A group of African women catechists, with unflattering gray canvas head scarves pulled tight over their foreheads and blouses of the same color flattening their breasts, had set up a table in the courtyard and heartily served a frugal meal of rice, fried fish, and slices of pineapple.

Unperturbed, Celanire jotted down everything she saw in a notebook. She had already used up two thick ones on board the Jean-Bart. The majority of the Sisters of Charity and those of Our Lady of the Apostles disliked this habit of keeping a diary and thought it a sin of pride. But some of the more indulgent among them recalled that Thérèse Martin, in line for canonization, had written her autobiography. The five nuns from Our Lady of the Apostles were destined for a hospital recently opened in Man, way out in the bush. Only Celanire had been appointed to teach at the Home for Half-Castes some thirty miles away in Adjame-Santey. All because of those vows that Celanire had not taken! Since the nuns couldn’t very well stop her from wanting to serve in Africa, they were, nevertheless, adamant she would not be allowed to experience the real hardships of Christian work.

Around midday an army of rudimentarily dressed porters turned up carrying tipoyes, signaling the farewell ceremony. Father Huchard blessed everyone, repeating his last words of advice:

“Be careful what you eat, what you drink, and what you breathe. Beware of the water, the air, and especially the heathens. Those fiends can kill you with their magic.”

He was going straight back to France on the same Jean-Bart. He would pray for them. Celanire bade farewell to her traveling companions as politely and coolly as she had behaved toward them during the voyage. She had never shared their petty enthusiasm, their elation, or their fears. When they told each other secrets, she would cover her ears. Likewise, when they removed their cornets and veils to soap themselves, revealing their pallid skins, she would lower her eyelids out of nausea.

As soon as her tipoye left Grand-Bassam, it was sucked into the sticky armpit of the forest. The trees stood like pachyderms. The penumbra of a cathedral, where the strains of Bach’s Magnificat would not have been out of place, replaced the rain and dismal, murky daylight. Yet all that could be heard was the squelch of the porters’ bare feet treading the humus as they raced along. Their load was no heavier than a child, and then they wanted to arrive at Adjame-Santey before dark. At night, too many evil spirits roamed at liberty. From time to time they turned their heads and tried to figure out this odd creature, black of skin but speaking the language of white men, living among them, and dressed like them.

Suddenly, the silence was broken by a cacophony of sounds. Monkeys, bats, and all kinds of invisible insects called and responded to each other amid the tangle of branches. Celanire was not listening and not even looking at this strange landscape. She had not come to Africa to be a tourist and was lost in her daydreams. What was in store for her in the days to come? She went back over the years gone by. She had not liked Lyons, where her color signaled her presence like a beacon wherever she went, and she had constantly to be on her guard. She missed Paris. The convent of the Sisters of Charity was situated right on the rue de Vaugirard. Once she had closed behind her the heavy door studded with a cross, she found herself bang in the middle of the jungle of a big city — free to do whatever she liked. At night the cars roared and blinded passersby with their lights. Blacks in tuxedos lounged in piano bars. She had never revealed her secret escapades, and she became the Mother Superior’s favorite. She never raised her voice, quarreled, or said a wrong word. By no means meek, she abided by the rules. Once the classes in theology and general instruction were over, she took the nuns by surprise. They were expecting her to return straightaway to Guadeloupe. Instead of which she was going to take her time: revenge is a dish best eaten cold. She was sharpening her pretty pointed teeth one against the other.

Briefly passing through the light of a clearing, they plunged back into thick undergrowth. The trees were different. Gone were the ironwoods, the silk cotton kapok and rubber trees. You could sense the heavy hand of man on nature. Rows upon rows of oil palms followed one after the other, as rigid as soldiers marching. At the foot of the trees the carefully weeded soil was bleeding from its wounds. Then the sky reappeared, pricked with stars, and the porters began to run along a rough track.

Lights appeared in the distance, the sight of which seemed to put wings on their heels, and Adjame-Santey came into view. The tipoye began to jolt as if buffeted by the ocean’s waves. Indifferent to all this, Celanire sank into a semi-slumber until a commotion of excited voices awoke her. A troop of askaris, a comical sight with their legs swathed in strips of cotton fleece and tar-booshes askew, had almost collided with the porters. They were running in the opposite direction to announce some terrible news to the authorities in Grand-Bassam. Monsieur Desrussie, the director of the Home for Half-Castes, the very person Celanire had come to assist, had just passed from this life to the next. And how! He was about to make love to his new sixteen-year-old mistress when a giant spider hidden in the bedsheets had bitten him on his penis.

He had died on the spot!

People couldn’t get over it. Only the day before he had been roaming the streets of Adjame-Santey, leering at the teenage girls, his cane under his arm as was his habit. There was no doubt his wife, Rose, had had a hand in the matter, and was tired of wearing the horns. She must have finally found a good witch doctor. For there is no such thing as a natural death. Everything is the work of malicious spirits whom the artful know how to subjugate to their own advantage.

Celanire could not understand a word of what was going on around her. Yet she guessed that her destiny had just been given its first nudge in the right direction. She poured out her thanks to her Master.

Karamanlis the Greek was stunned. No later than yesterday morning he had sold three boxes of matches to Monsieur Desrussie. The latter had come in to shelter from the rain, in actual fact to complain about everything as he usually did, and Karamanlis had had to put up with yet another diatribe about the laziness of the Ebriés and their drunken habits.

He was about to mount his bicycle when he saw the porters come charging into town. Everyone knew who they were carrying and who was coming to live in Adjame-Santey. An oblate. In other words, a nun who was not quite a nun and had no right to be called “sister.” He craned his neck to get a glimpse of her and had this vision of a lovely face resting against a pillow of black silky hair. An emotion that he had not felt since leaving Athens stung his breast. It was as if the spider that had finished Monsieur Desrussie off had also attacked his heart. Pedaling awkwardly, he left what went by the name of town center, with its shops, the huts of the administrative services, the school, the church, and the bamboo buildings of the mission. He himself lived in a poto-poto neighborhood where cowpats looked as though they had been kneaded into huts. He had arrived in the Ivory Coast a few years earlier, drawn by stories of making a quick fortune from ivory and palm kernels that had replaced the slave traffic. Little did he know that the administration reserved its favors for the French companies, and there was no room for foreigners who massacred the language of Descartes. So he had done just about everything, even panning for gold in the kingdom of Assinie. In Adjame-Santey he made do with a small grocery store trading in dark leaf tobacco, loose sugar, sea salt, rock salt, and paraffin. He led a celibate life, since he did not have the means to contract a colonial marriage, lodging in his two rooms a friend who was even more destitute than he was, despite his attribution of “Mr. Philosophizer.” Jean Seydou, a monitor of native instruction at the mission, had forbidden any mention of the name Jean and, out of loathing for the French, claimed to be Muslim and renamed himself Hakim. He was very handsome, with his curly hair, the offspring of a Toukolor princess and a high-ranking white administrator of the colonies. One morning his father had left him in a home for half-castes before sailing back to Perigord. Such an act was especially cruel, since Jean, who was not yet Hakim, had accompanied him everywhere for eleven years, following him from post to post in every nook and cranny from Upper Senegal to Niger. Despite this cruel abandonment, Hakim managed to pass the native examination for elementary studies and was hired as a primary-school teacher by the mission in Bamako.

Karamanlis found him lounging on his bed, buried in a magazine on India. The news did not interest him one bit. Monsieur Desrussie was dead? Good riddance! One bastard less! The oblate? She was lovely, was she? He was not attracted to women, in love with and secretly troubled by the bodies of his students and all those boys colonization had produced: kitchen boys, laundry boys, and tailor’s apprentices.

Only once had he crossed the line. He had been a student in his last year at a home for half-castes. Bokar was also the son of a senior administrator and a Toukolor, Awa Tall. His father had left for France before he was born. His mother, remarried to a traditional chief, visited him from time to time, carrying on her head a calabash of pastels or a jar of lakh that sweetened the dull routine at the home. She always brought her other children, all perfectly black, who cast pitying looks at their illegitimate half-brother. Hakim’s and Bokar’s beds were next to each other. The inevitable had to happen. There followed months of wild, passionate happiness. Then the love nest was discovered. Either they gave the game away, or else the boys in the dormitory guessed something was going on. Hakim was dispatched to the recently pacified territory of Ivory Coast, while Bokar was left to languish in a school way out in the bush on the edge of the desert. It was here he was to commit suicide several years later. Hakim received the news of his death like a slap in the face. Ever since, there had never been a lack of opportunities — mainly French civil servants come to bury their youth under the sun in the colonies. But Hakim had never given in. He knew he would bring death to those who got too close. He cut short Karamanlis’s shallow chatter by suggesting they go and listen to some music at the compound of King Koffi Ndizi.

Under the terms of a treaty signed two years earlier, the French had paid King Koffi Ndizi one hundred rolls of assorted fabrics, one hundred barrels of gunpowder, one hundred shotguns, two sacks of tobacco, six two-hundred-liter casks of brandy, five hats, a mirror, an organ, four cases of liqueurs, and three skeins of coral. In exchange for all that, they whittled down his power. Fortunately for Koffi Ndizi, his fetish continued to strike awe in his subjects, who, among other things, made him offerings of concubines, oxen, sheep, and fowl. His compound was a maze of courtyards and huts into which at least one hundred and fifty people were squeezed. Of an evening, his slaves served roast meat and carp fried in palm oil to almost a thousand admirers while his griots delighted the ear with music from koras and balaphons. On this particular evening nobody was in a mood to listen to them. Nor even badmouth the French, which was normally their favorite occupation. Two subjects dominated the conversation: the sudden death of Monsieur Desrussie and the arrival of the oblate. On the surface, the two events were unconnected. However, on second thought, who gained to profit from this death? Wasn’t it the oblate who very likely would be appointed director of the Home? A woman, director of the Home, and a black woman into the bargain? Come now!

Exasperated, Hakim pushed his way to the royal dais. Koffi Ndizi was overweight, susceptible to inexplicable bouts of suffocation that alarmed him a lot. Like Hakim, he was in no mood to listen to the nonsense from his entourage. Three nights in a row, Zokpou, his senior fetish priest, had had dreams of ill-omen. The first night he had seen vultures swooping down on an impala and devouring it raw. On the second night an anthill over fifteen feet tall had suddenly crumbled into dust. On the third night the Ebrié lagoon was dyed red with blood. Zokpou had concluded that a succession of moons, portents of strange events, would be seen in the kingdom. But what would happen, he did not know. He did know, however, that for once it would not be the fault of the French. Besides, what more could they do? They had already turned Koffi Ndizi into a toothless, maneless lion.

Koffi Ndizi motioned to Hakim to approach. He liked the schoolteacher, always ready to run down his enemies, the French. He was well familiar with his tendencies, but was easygoing, having groped a good many boys in his youth. Together with incest, sodomy is a king’s privilege. For two years he had been plotting unsuccessfully to overthrow Thomas de Brabant, the governor’s deputy, a poker-faced individual who had two obsessions: building roads and railways. Next to the Romans, de Brabant would say, the French were the people who best realized the importance of roads. He was responsible for countless fathers being snatched from their homes to break stones under the sun. Koffi Ndizi and Hakim had tried to hide a mamba in a drawer of his desk and bribe his cook to poison his meals. Once they had buried a doll in his image in the entrails of a black cat. Nothing doing!

Hakim sat down on a corner of the mat he was offered and recounted his latest readings, for the king, however much a king, could neither read nor write. In India, the British did not attack the traditional authorities. They formed alliances and governed hand in hand with the local powers.

Why did the French have to put everything to the fire and the sword?

2

Alix Pol-Roger, the governor, had gone to negotiate a site for installing a French presence in the northern territories, and Thomas de Brabant had replaced him. Given his character, this suited him perfectly. He had the power to decide, resolve, and take the law into his own hands. Cases were no longer referred to the native courts. Thomas meddled in the most sordid family affairs and poked his nose into the most tangled legal issues of land ownership. That very morning he was struggling with a problem. What a piece of bad luck! Monsieur Desrussie was dead! He was an unsavory character. But useful. Who was going to look after the children in the Home now? The officials who had not yet taken their place in the graveyard were overloaded with work. Recruit a director from the metropole? Out of the question! The ministry refused to spend a cent on the new colony. He thought he ought to walk over to the Home and settle any remaining business. He donned his pith helmet, grabbed his umbrella, striped in the colors of his country’s flag, and headed out.

Thomas de Brabant had been appointed to the Ivory Coast three years ago. Like the bulk of the administration, he had been transferred from Grand-Bassam to Adjame-Santey and missed the ocean breeze and the smell of salt of the former capital. The Ivory Coast had been his first posting on graduating third from the school for senior officials for France’s overseas territories. Aged twenty-nine, he was married, but had had to leave his wife behind. The colonies, which are already hard on men, are lethal for women. The females of the species become dried, parched, and finally wilt. Charlotte, then, had remained on the fourth floor of a handsome building on the avenue Henri-Martin in Paris, the Brabant family being extremely well-to-do. During his annual leave, Thomas had returned to perform his conjugal duty, and ever since, with the faraway Charlotte and little Ludivine in his thoughts, he never forgot to take his quinine. His high position prevented him, so he thought, from having affairs with African women. As a result, he slept alone, eaten up with all kinds of desires, for the very women who were off-limits had a certain troubling effect on him.

It had been raining, of course, since morning. At four in the afternoon the sky skimmed so low, it was almost dark. A scarlet stream surged down the middle of the winding track, and Thomas had not walked more than a few yards before his high leather boots were covered in mud. A soaked flag wrapped around a bamboo mast signaled the school next to the church. Despite this patriotic rag, Thomas knew full well what was going on behind the hedge of seccos. His spies had informed him of what Hakim was teaching his older pupils, and the entire mission had him under surveillance. As soon as they had collected enough evidence against him, he would be shooed out! In one clean sweep! Never mind he was an administrator’s bastard! At that very moment Hakim emerged from the school, surrounded by a group of young boys. With his jute bag folded into a hood over his head and his crumpled clothes, he looked anything but a scholar with a particular appreciation for the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment. Thomas and Hakim avoided each other’s gaze and continued on their way, one toward the Home, the other walking down to the lagoon and the king’s compound.

The Home for Half-Castes on the plateau of Adjame-Santey was a one-story building in a sorry condition. Yet it had been built according to the plans of the famous architect Sebastien Depelchin, who had set an example by abandoning there a dozen of his café-au-lait offspring. Behind the main building stood the house of the late director and his widow, one of the few converted Ebriés. The living room, transformed into a mortuary, was deserted except for a group of officials’ wives feigning affliction. The widow was sobbing noisily on the breast of a young stranger who was very black of skin and whose hair was not crinkled but straight, brushed into a chignon and twisted into a long braid as thick as your arm. Dressed in the European manner, a black silk polka-dot scarf was wrapped around her neck. Her full lips were painted mauve, her eyelids blue. Yet all this makeup was too garish, as if it had been smeared on by the hand of a novice. Thomas was wondering who she could be when she introduced herself: Celanire Pinceau, arrived the day before. He wasn’t expecting anything like this. The oblate, who was the talk of Adjame-Santey, looked like a hetaera. She simpered in a French, perfumed here and there with an exotic accent and punctuated with unusual expressions. Anybody would have been struck by her color. For she came from a remote French colony, Guadeloupe. She had lost both her parents, maman and papa, when she was small. So she had been taken in by the Sisters of Charity and raised under their care in Paris. She owed her entire education to them: certificate of higher education; diploma for general and religious instruction. And so on. And so on. She had always been at a loss to understand why for three centuries the missionaries had passed Africa by, sailing around the continent, hardly stopping, on their way to the Indies, China, and Japan. Fortunately, the African Missionary Society had been founded and set up a women’s branch. She had thus been able to fulfill her dream: to spread the Holy Name of God on this destitute continent. Thomas, doubting by nature, wondered immediately what she could be hiding behind this inane speech. Her eyes, which were burning into him, contradicted the platitudes coming out of her mouth. She couldn’t care less about Africa, evangelism, and her vocation! She had everything she needed to obtain whatever she wanted. Her voice turned beseeching: what was to become of her, now that her director had passed on so unfortunately? Was she going to be sent back to Paris? No, of course not, no, no, Thomas hastened to add. She would take over from Monsieur Desrussie. His mind was made up. He had not seen her references, but apparently they were impeccable. He would speak to the governor as soon as he got back. She could put her mind to rest!

Meanwhile, summoned by the king, Hakim was entering Koffi Ndizi’s compound. Locked away in his private quarters, the latter was conversing through an interpreter with a man draped in a burnoose, a dress seldom seen in this coastal region: Diamagaram, a Muslim fetish priest, come down from Kong. When Hakim entered, Koffi Ndizi dismissed the interpreter, since the schoolteacher spoke perfect Malinke. Seated with the Holy Book open in front of him, Diamagaram had also made a cabalistic drawing in a tray filled with sand and was deep in concentration. He could see that evil spirits had recently set foot in Adjame-Santey, terribly malevolent spirits who had crossed over from the other side of the ocean. This was particularly surprising, since spirits never travel over water. They are frightened by this moving expanse inhabited by cold-blooded creatures, and you can hear their roars of anger and helplessness from the shore as they watch their prey escaping them. If they had set foot in Adjame-Santey, this meant they had mounted a “horse.” That’s the word for a human who obeys their every wish and who can be recognized by a sign. The aim therefore is to discover this sign, to find this “horse” and stop it from causing any harm, not an easy task. Diamagaram confessed that he had chased a “horse” in Bondoukou for months bearing a tiny sign on the body: two toes joined together. Getting the better of a “horse” requires extraordinary sacrifices. Not your ordinary chickens. Neither sheep nor even oxen. No, we’re talking albinos. Children born with a caul. Twins. Prepubescent girls. Koffi Ndizi made it known he would do anything. He stared at the fetish priest, visibly impressed by his gift of the gab, his heavy string of beads, and his thick Koran.

At that moment Kwame Aniedo, the heir to the throne, a magnificent sixteen-year-old specimen, crawled in on all fours, as was the custom. He begged forgiveness from his father for daring to disturb him. But this too was an urgent matter. Three royal concubines, one leaving behind her an infant still at her breast, had left the compound without the queen mother’s permission. They had refused to say where they had spent the afternoon. How many whiplashes should they be given?

At six in the morning, before the sun had opened its lazy eyes, before the women had lit the wood fires and heated the water for the men to wash, a piece of news was flying from mouth to mouth. The oblate, whom Thomas de Brabant had just appointed director of the Home for Half-Castes while awaiting the governor’s approval, was recruiting. There was nothing extraordinary about recruiting! The French never stopped. They recruited to build roads, bridges over rivers, railways, wharfs, sawmills, brick factories, and lighthouses. The surprising fact about this new case was that she was recruiting only girls, and what’s more, she was paying them. She handed each of them a small sum of money on the spot — enough to buy wrappers and head ties at the CFAO company store, soap, perfume, and talcum powder at Karamanlis’s.

There was a rush to the Home.

Standing in the middle of the garden, Celanire was examining each candidate as if she were back in a slave market. From their teeth to the soles of their feet. Then, with the help of Desrussie’s widow, turned interpreter, she switched to the interrogation. Did the candidate have a husband? A betrothed? Did she have any children? Girls? Boys? How many? At the end of the inspection, which lasted a full day, she recruited about fifteen girls whom she assembled under the mango trees together with the little half-castes. A nursery, she explained, would be set up for the under-threes, who would now no longer be left to dribble and poop, like they used to be. The one-class school would be enlarged. Pupils would wear khaki cotton uniforms on weekdays and white ones on Sundays. Girls old enough to hold a needle would learn sewing, but this would not constitute the basis of their education. They would learn the same subjects as the boys. However, on Thursdays and Saturdays the boys would clear the wasteland around the Home to make it into palm groves. They would also plant a kitchen garden and grow tomatoes, eggplants, and cabbages. Together with the chickens and sheep they would raise, the Home should be self-sufficient in a year or two at the most. Is that understood? Dismiss!

At day’s end Celanire confided in her newfound friend, the widow Desrussie. She had never got over losing her darling little papa, and he was constantly in her thoughts. He was a splendid half-caste, a mulatto as they were called in the Caribbean, as good as he was handsome. A man of duty whose only passion was science. He conducted experiments on animals and had led a lone crusade against the ravages of opium introduced into the island by Chinese laborers. She described Guadeloupe as a paradise perfumed with the scent of vanilla and cinnamon. Despite her naïveté and her love for a good story, the widow Desrussie, like Thomas de Brabant, guessed that Celanire was not telling the truth. This woman was hiding something. They suspected she was more dangerous than a mamba. Her plans for the Home were troubling, for the land around it did in fact belong to someone. It belonged to the Ebriés.

If Karamanlis had not insisted, Hakim would never in his life have accepted Celanire’s invitation. The Home for Half-Castes had too many bad memories for him. They spewed up a whole chapter of his childhood. But ever since the Greek had caught sight of the oblate in the depths of her tipoye, he raved about her to anyone who entered his store. He who was so miserly would give back the wrong change and could no longer sleep a wink at night. In short, he begged Hakim to strike up an acquaintance with the object of his desire so that he could get closer to her later on. For he knew that as a common trader, and a foreigner into the bargain, he would never be invited to the Home. Hakim therefore brilliantined his hair and slipped on a white caftan.

Within a few weeks the Home had been changed out of all recognition. The wind sang through the branches of a budding bamboo grove. Pink cassias, magnolias, and bushes of croton grew in profusion. In the drawing room downstairs, where a host of oil lamps cast broad daylight over everything, a rather formal reception was in full swing, and Hakim found himself ill dressed for the occasion. Even if nobody was dancing, a phonograph was playing the latest tangos and paso dobles from Paris. Every senior civil servant and factory manager whom Adjame-

Santey could muster was present — not forgetting a handful of officers on leave. These men, starved of women, devoured with their eyes the pretty young African girls serving red wine and beer. Celanire, extravagant in her makeup and wearing her eternal choker around her neck, was keeping watch over the occasion. She wore a silk dress whose plunging neckline was in danger of pushing her breasts out into full view. The last straw for Hakim was the way Thomas de Brabant behaved as the perfect host. He was wearing his ceremonial dress of white cotton trousers and a jacket of the same color, adorned with epaulettes and sleeves embroidered with gold facing on a black background. The sheath of his saber swung against his hips. His thick hair was brushed back away from the forehead, and he was drawing on a Havana as he hugged Celanire to his side. What was going on between those two? Hakim knew that, by order of the interim governor, land belonging to Koffi Ndizi had been confiscated for the benefit of the Home. But he had never had the opportunity of seeing Thomas and Celanire side by side. It was crystal clear: they were lovers and sleeping together. Thomas had finally unearthed the black woman educated in the ways of the West who would allow him to satisfy his desires. Hakim, stunned by his discovery, suddenly found himself face-to-face with the woman filling his thoughts. With a smile Celanire offered him a glass of beer, which he refused with such an abrupt gesture that he sent it crashing to the floor. By no means offended, she offered him another glass while her eyes, roughly smeared with kohl, gave him such an urgent, inviting look that poor Hakim’s blood froze. He was a Muslim, he stammered, and never drank alcohol. A Muslim, really? She burst out laughing as if she had heard a good joke. Then she went on to interrogate him. He was a schoolteacher, wasn’t he? How many pupils were there at the mission? Hakim managed to regain a semblance of voice. About a dozen, all sons of local chiefs. It was the aim of the administration and its acolytes, the priests, to make hostages out of the dignitaries’ children. Hostages? At the word, she laughed again, apparently amused by his barb. Fortunately, Thomas de Brabant came to put an end to this tête-à-tête. Hakim rushed outside. The warm rain and familiar din of the night insects calmed him down. What exactly was he afraid of? This was not the first time a woman had made known her intentions toward him. The life of a homosexual is strewn with these pitfalls. While he was trying to reason with himself, three couples emerged from the drawing room. One of the girls was propping up her escort, who kissed her greedily at the base of her neck. The others were pawing each other unashamedly. They disappeared under the arcaded veranda, reappeared, and mounted the monumental staircase, which enlaced two frangipani trees between its ramps.

Where were they going?

A crazy suspicion burgeoned in Hakim’s mind. He dashed up the steps as fast as he could. The staircase came out onto a landing that disappeared into a corridor, plunged into darkness at this hour. The couples had vanished into the night. He opened a door haphazardly, and the inimitable smell of childhood wafted out: a dormitory. That was not what he was looking for. He closed the door behind him, walked around and around on the landing looking foolish, and then went back down to the drawing room. Nobody now was intimidated by the tango and paso doble. The African girls were dancing, following the lead of their escorts and laughing at the outrageous music. The only other place of this kind was at Jacqueville, where an African by the name of Latta Ahui had built a hut for dancing. Only those familiar with the white man’s amusements were admitted. The others could watch. Celanire and Thomas were whispering cheek to cheek on a sofa. Thomas’s hand was impatiently creeping up the oblate’s thighs. Panic-stricken once again, Hakim dashed outside and ran home as fast as he could.

Karamanlis refused to believe a word. A bordello? And what next? Just a few embraces and kisses stolen from girls who were generally easygoing. You can think what you like about Thomas de Brabant, the colony knew he was the very model of virtue. As for Celanire, she was merely an oblate. Not a nun. She was entitled to use makeup and rig herself out as she thought fit. In the end Karamanlis became angry, forbidding Hakim to insult the woman he loved.

From that day on, it was nothing but quarrels and insults.

Within a few days, relations between Hakim and Karamanlis had grown so bitter that one afternoon, coming home from school, Hakim found his belongings thrown out under the rain. He gathered them up under the amused look of the houseboy and the neighbors. Where would he go now? The miserable wages of a schoolteacher were not enough to pay for lodgings. After hesitating, he set off for his only refuge: Koffi Ndizi’s compound.

The compound was in a state of pandemonium.

Koffi Ndizi had been in a meeting since morning with the queen mother and the counsel of elders. The three royal concubines had not put up with their thrashing by a cat-o’-nine-tails. Refusing to be treated for their wounds, they had fled, once again leaving behind them their young infants. They had not gone back to their families, as abused women usually do. Where in fact had they gone? To the Home for Half-Castes, where the director immediately recruited them. For it was rumored around, in a confused sort of way like all rumors, that the Home was a paradise for women. Up there, it seemed, you didn’t wait for happiness in vain. You grabbed armfuls of it. No more smoke from the green wood stinging your eyes! No more fetching water! No more foutou to pound! Hakim knew the way they treated women in Koffi Ndizi’s compound. Beasts of burden and fodder for pleasure! Only the princesses had the right to remain independent, to choose their husbands and replace them if they were so inclined. So in a way he could understand their escape. Yet he was afraid of what lay in store for the fugitives up at the Home if his intuition were right.

Since he was unable to approach the king, he walked over to Kwame Aniedo’s hut. The crown prince was amusing himself with a slave girl, but, good prince that he was, he interrupted his lovemaking and told Hakim he could sleep as many nights as he wanted in his entrance hall.

Kwame Aniedo was not only a handsome specimen. At school he ranked among the most gifted children, and Hakim had tried to persuade his father that he would have no difficulty mastering the secrets of the white man. To no end! The king wouldn’t hear of it. School, he believed, was a waste of time. He had removed his son at the age of thirteen so as to keep his prestige as crown prince intact. As a result, for three years Kwame Aniedo had been doing absolutely nothing except eat to his heart’s content, yawn at his musicians playing, and terrorize the girls who refused to go to bed with him. He hated the French who had humiliated his father and lent a sympathetic ear to Hakim’s anticolonialist diatribes, without realizing that the latter was only interested in keeping him company while Kwame slipped out of his clothes and dived naked into the lagoon.

In the early evening, the usual crowd of brothers and cousins, idle royal princes, streamed into Kwame Aniedo’s hut. The evening was spent downing vast quantities of palm wine while palavering over the fate of the royal concubines. The general opinion was that they should be brought back by force and inflicted a punishment which would serve as an example. The cat-o’-nine-tails was not enough. Rather a few days locked up without food or water. It was late when Hakim finally fell asleep and he was still snoring when a messenger came to wake him: Koffi Ndizi was asking for him. His earthenware pipe wedged between his teeth, the king was pacing up and down. He had not slept a wink all night and had been in constant consultation with the queen mother and the elders. They had finally come to a decision. Since the wretched oblate was the protégée of the French, they had to tread lightly. Hakim would write a polite letter on behalf of the king begging her to return the three concubines. He would explain they belonged to the royal family. To keep them would be a serious breach of tradition, an offense. Hakim therefore went back to look for some paper and a pen and wrote down everything they had asked of him.

After two weeks it was obvious that Celanire couldn’t care less about the letter Koffi Ndizi had sent her. This was another pretext for deliberation and consultation. The queen mother was outraged. The elders lost their saliva. Some of them called for a punitive raid on the Home, just like in the good old days. But how would they go about it? Nobody knew. As for the fetish priests, they advised on caution as they could not understand who this oblate was. In order to clarify matters, shouldn’t they get her to undergo a trial by ordeal? If she passed the test and came out unscathed, they would know she was a normal person with nothing on her conscience. Okay, but how could they approach her?

Finally, Koffi Ndizi entrusted Hakim with a mission that was to be a last resort. This time he would go in person to the Home and plead on behalf of the kingdom. Hakim obeyed, with heavy heart.

When he arrived at the Home, Celanire was teaching in her classroom. Madame Desrussie showed him into an office on the second floor. The view was magical. Beneath the balcony the garden stretched away like a priceless carpet embellished with freshly planted Madagascar periwinkles, coral hibiscus, and oleander already in full bloom. The long rainy season was drawing to a close. The sky was losing its leaden color. If the place was in fact a bordello, it hid it well under its aspect of a Garden of Eden. When Celanire appeared, Hakim did not recognize her. She was wearing a dress of tiny blue-and-yellow squares, buttoned from top to bottom, with a buttercup-yellow neckerchief. Her hair had been braided into two plaits. Without makeup she looked eighteen at the most. She was no longer the sensual vamp, but poetically poignant. While they drank mint tea, she talked of her passion for Africa. In her opinion there was only one dark side to the beauty of its civilization: the treatment of women. Was he aware that the Africans mutilated the female genitals? They excised the clitoris and the labia. Then they sewed up the folds, leaving a narrow passage for the urine and the menstrual blood. Hakim’s imagination had seldom ventured into such places. Ill at ease, he stammered that this practice was the equivalent of male circumcision. But it was an intolerable aggression, she exclaimed indignantly, perpetrated against women in order to control their sexuality. Then she changed the subject and began to describe the great solitude of her life. She had never known her true parents and was nothing but a foster child. Oh, she had nothing against her foster parents, especially her papa. But it was tough not knowing the sperm that fathered her or the womb that carried her. At Adjame-Santey, she felt an outsider. Thomas de Brabant possessed her body but not her heart. Stunned by her candor, Hakim was rendered speechless. She then turned to interrogate him, and he heard himself confiding and revealing all his childhood troubles. He too felt an outsider in Adjame-Santey. Moreover, he had always felt an outsider in Africa. In short, one hour later, furious with himself, he was back on the path taking him home. Not only had he not breathed a word about the mission Koffi Ndizi had entrusted him with, but he had promised Celanire he would pay her many more visits.

Had she bewitched him?

3

The rains had let up now for two weeks. The hedges of croton bordering the houses of the Europeans could finally lift their heads. The clumps of guinea grass sprouted green along the embankments. Behind the fences of secco the animals frolicked for joy. Only Koffi Ndizi’s compound remained unaffected by this springlike revival. One night Tanella, a concubine of Mawourou, the king’s uncle on his mother’s side, had stuck a knife in his heart while he was asleep. Once the deed was done, she had fled.

Two years earlier Tanella had been one of the gifts, together with the fowl, dried fish, and richly woven wrappers, the village of Attonblan had offered Koffi Ndizi. She had never been much to his liking, and he had left her to Kwame Aniedo, who for a time had used her for his pleasure. One day, while she was pounding plantains in one of the courtyards, Mawourou had caught sight of her fifteen-year-old breasts. Mawourou had fathered a dozen sons, already fathers to sons themselves; but he was still so troubled by the desires of the flesh that he employed an army of fetish priests to concoct his aphrodisiacs. Tanella’s crime was only discovered the next morning when the blood that had trickled out under the doors of Mawourou’s hut coagulated into a red crust in the very middle of the courtyard. Murder was so rare an occurrence in the region that people first attributed the gaping hole in the old man’s heart to a fit of anger by the spirits. Then the truth became obvious. The evil deed had been caused by a human hand. Some women who had got up early recalled having seen Tanella running away in blood-soaked clothes and remembered she had complained of Mawourou on many occasions. His breath was fetid. He had trouble getting a hard-on; he beat her. They searched for her throughout the compound, in the vicinity of the lagoon, and even as far as the forest. A few men ran along the road to the village of Attonblan but came back empty-handed. Nobody had seen Tanella. At day’s end the rumor spread that she had found refuge at the Home for Half-Castes. So the widows, the children, and the friends of Mawourou, all those who had known him while he was alive and all those who had nothing better to do, assembled into a crowd and marched off to fetch her back from the Home.

The procession slowly wound its way through Adjame-Santey, where the population, struck with horror, commented on the terrible turn of events. Karamanlis watched from his store as he saw Hakim and his pupils bringing up the rear of the cortege. He eyed him scornfully. So there he was a “liberated” young man taking the side of a lascivious old man, abuser of young girls, who after all had only reaped what he sowed. On reaching the Palace of Justice (a fine name for a clay hut), the procession swelled with all the idle bystanders and onlookers who happened to be around. On the outskirts of Adjame-Santey the crowd quickened its pace without really knowing why, perhaps because night was approaching. The sky was growing dark. Soon the spirits would be on the prowl. In fact, much of the crowd did not really want Tanella to be put to death, the punishment for such a crime. They were marching with the others to demonstrate quite simply that it was time, high time, the French and their henchmen, governors, priests and oblates, left them to their customs and went home. Even the women who, deep in their hearts, were sympathetic toward Tanella, understandably tired of surrendering her youth night after night to the fantasies of an old man, were convinced that a shadowy past in its death throes was preferable to the future these foreigners had in store for them. When the crowd came in sight of the Home, they were surprised to find rows of militia from a neighboring camp pointing their guns at them. Why? The crowd hesitated and began to retreat in disorder. The fearful fled, predicting disaster. The more courageous began to throw rocks and stood their ground. With hackles up, the head of the militia barked a number of syllables that nobody could understand. He barked again. Then his men obeyed. And opened fire.

After the shots rang out, three bodies lay on the ground, including two of Hakim’s pupils, the ten-year-olds Senanou and Dabla. Plus a dozen wounded.

Thomas de Brabant reread the official telegram he had just received.

On learning of the grave events at Adjame-Santey, the indiscriminate use of force, the high number of casualties, Governor Alix Pol-Roger was cutting short his mission to the north and returning home as quickly as possible. Having offered refuge to a murderer, the oblate Celanire Pinceau, who was the cause of the troubles, must appear before him immediately. The tone of the telegram left no doubt in his mind. Celanire’s appointment as director of the Home would not be ratified. As for Thomas, he risked a reprimand or even a demotion. The hypocrisy of these senior colonial officials made him sick. Hundreds of “voluntary workers” were dying of hunger and ill treatment along the railroad. Nobody breathed a word about them, whereas the three wretched corpses of Adjame-Santey would be the talk of all French West Africa. In fact, the administration was mainly concerned about the two school pupils, Senanou and Dabla. As luck would have it, they were the sons of Betti Bouah, one of the richest merchants of the region, of royal blood, related to Koffi Ndizi, but who had the intelligence to be sympathetic to the French. It was now feared he would switch sides. A paltry excuse! What rules was Thomas expected to obey? Perhaps they would have preferred he let the fanatics sack the Home, stone Tanella to death, and beat Celanire and her assistants black and blue. That sort of tragedy was exactly what his firmness had avoided that evening, and law and order had been restored. Celanire had no intention of shielding Tanella from justice. She only meant to protect her from her compatriots. After having kept her overnight at the Home and calmed her down as best she could, she herself had handed her over to the askaris who had taken her to the jail at Grand-Bassam. From there she was to leave on the first ship for Dakar and appear before the supreme court that met twice a year. Thomas’s legitimate anger at his superiors was mingled with an insidious terror of their discovering something else, too shameful to mention. He no longer understood what madness had let him be convinced by Celanire and made him approve of her plans. It was as if his mistress had bewitched him. At her side, he was powerless and could no longer distinguish right from wrong. It was a fact they only entertained high-ranking officials at the Home. No subalterns, secretaries, or pencil pushers! Even so, they were at the mercy of a tongue loosened by too much drink.

Incapable of staying still, he donned his pith helmet and mounted his bicycle, since the track was now passable again. He wisely made a detour to avoid the house where the wake for Senanou and Dabla was being held. The place had become a rallying point for fanatics making anti-French remarks where, he had been told, Hakim was in his element.

At the end of the year, Adjame-Santey was to be renamed Bingerville at an official ceremony in honor of the colony’s first governor. The administrative buildings, however, were far from finished. The governor’s palace had scarcely poked its head out from the building site that had once been the cemetery. As Thomas rode around the mission, he saw a cortege approaching. Flanked by the remainder of his guards, sheltering under an umbrella, preceded by his gold-cane bearer, King Koffi Ndizi, tripping on his sandals, was going to pay his final respects to his cousin’s children. The procession took up the entire width of the path, for Koffi Ndizi was surrounded by a good dozen sycophants, including the inevitable Hakim. In a flash, Thomas summed up the situation. Either he kept pedaling straight ahead and rode right into the oncoming procession, knocking over two or three, or else he got off his bicycle and stood like a country yokel in the guinea grass on the embankment. Despite his arrogance, he did not think twice. Adjame-Santey had been through enough confrontations in such a short time. He dismounted. The king walked by without turning his head in his direction, joining both hands level with his mouth in an African greeting, while the looks of his entourage cut him like flint stones. He even thought he heard snickers of laughter.

At present the Home was looking so good it would have been the pride of Dakar. Under the late Desrussie, an epidemic of yaws would follow an epidemic of yellow fever. It was better not to count the number of dead. Once they had buried thirty in a single month. Under Celanire’s radiating care the children glowed with health and cleanliness. A group of small children under the charge of two assistants was sitting in a circle on the lawn singing “Frère Jacques” in their delightful little voices. Some of the older boys were marching off in manly fashion to the fields, hoe in hand. The bamboo grove, the young palm trees, and the budding orchard were another treat for the eyes. Celanire had taken advantage of the dry season to have the facade repainted in a very pale eggshell tint edged with dark red. Her choice of unusual colors was evidence of her exquisite taste, which made her so precious to Thomas. It was obvious the meager allowance attributed to running the Home couldn’t possibly have been enough to cover all these improvements, and going over the colony’s accounts with a fine-toothed comb would have turned up quite a few surprises.

Celanire was resting in a boudoir, draped in a kimono of black silk, a color she seemed to like, embroidered with red roses and buttercups. If it hadn’t been for her wide, somewhat triangular nose and her very full lips, she could have been mistaken for an Indian from the French trading posts of Pondicherry, Kana Kal, and Manahe. Thomas smothered her with kisses, then got control of himself and pulled the telegram out of his pocket. Celanire shrugged her shoulders and vaguely asked a few questions. Where exactly was Governor Pol-Roger? Thomas explained he was in Felkessekaha among the Niarafolo Senufo natives. As if this was of no interest to her, she changed the subject. She was thinking of going to the wake for Senanou and Dabla as a way of expressing her condolences to the family. What did he think of the idea? Thomas uttered a shrill cry: Was she out of her mind? The Africans hated her. She would be stoned to death.

In fact hostilities had been declared for some time now between Celanire and the Africans. Celanire had proclaimed loud and clear she had no intention of letting the girls in her care be sexually mutilated. Going by what she said, the very fact that the mothers let their offspring be placed in the Home for Half-Castes by their French papas meant they renounced de facto all their rights, and the children became the sole responsibility of the French administration. Obviously, such quibbling had not made the slightest impression. While the innocent six-year-old Marie-Angélique was spending the weekend with her family, they had grabbed the opportunity to put her under the excision knife. She had almost died from a hemorrhage. In a fit of anger, Celanire forbade her boarders to leave the Home from that moment on and only allowed family visits once every three months. Although some families were not bothered by these rules, others, as you can imagine, raised a hue and cry. Half-caste or not, some mothers were fond of their little darlings and accused Celanire of sequestering them. They camped outside the Home in tears. The courts were bombarded with complaints, and Thomas had great trouble getting the fact accepted that his mistress was within her rights.

Thomas had already noticed that Celanire was a stubborn woman who did just what she liked. Without paying the slightest heed to his objections, she drew him close to her.

Making love to Celanire was a delight Thomas could never have imagined even in his wildest dreams. Deep down he called her “my little panther” because he never knew whether her embrace would make him moan with pain or pleasure. When his strength gave out, she asked for more. At the very end she left him exhausted, worn out, deliciously dead.

Betti Bouah’s house made the Africans proud and left the Europeans stunned. It had been built by Appolonian workers from Cape Coast in the Gold Coast and comprised an upper floor that was reached by a dual staircase mounted with open fretwork wooden balustrades. The living room where the children’s bodies lay was richly furnished in the European style with rugs, sofas, and armchairs. Low tables were covered in crocheted doilies. There were no less than five clocks and four music boxes fixed to the wall, plus portraits of Napoleon at Arcole, Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor, Treich-Laplène, Binger, Queen Victoria, and gilt-framed round mirrors surmounted by an imperial spread eagle. The showpiece was a sideboard with a display of blue-stemmed crystal glasses. Like all rich merchants, Betti Bouah had collected every gift he had received from his European customers in the same room. Owing to his status in society, people had come from the surrounding villages and even as far away as the Alladian shores, draped in their mourning robes. According to custom, the assembly was divided strictly in two. Inside the house, the women, mothers, stepmothers, and aunts of the little victims. Outside on the verandas, the men. The latter were frantically interrogating Hakim on how to rid themselves of the French. But contrary to what Thomas had been told, Hakim had absolutely nothing to offer and stammered out a series of platitudes. So the more the evening dragged on, the angrier they felt in their helplessness and the faster the calabashes of palm wine were passed around. The fact that Tanella had been handed over to the French authorities did not calm them down. The French had no business meddling in this affair. It was a matter for the native courts. Betti Bouah had consulted with his lawyer in Bordeaux, who advised him to lodge a complaint with the governor-general of French West Africa. And he had got nowhere with Koffi Ndizi, who did not understand a thing about “white men’s business,” as he liked to say.

When around ten o’clock in the evening Celanire made her entrance, the buzz of conversation abruptly stopped. Those who had a cutlass handy thought of using it. But she had such a gentle look about her, they had second thoughts. She avoided making any sign of the cross or genuflection that might shock these heathens and remained standing, head lowered, in front of the children’s bodies. Then, using the widow Desrussie as interpreter, she asked to go and join the women. To do so she had to walk past Koffi Ndizi, spilling out of his armchair, and she nodded her head in respect while the king, seeing her for the first time, stared, openmouthed. Hakim was the only one who believed Celanire had come to thumb her nose at them and see how good she was at getting them to change their minds. For those who had quickly badmouthed her behind her back now retracted and spoke highly of her beauty. Koffi Ndizi even declared that the fetish priests had been wrong and such a lovely individual could never be the “horse” of the aawabo, the evil spirits. Some daydreamed out loud and wondered whether she would agree to marry an African. After all, she was as black as they were! However hard a group of elders recalled that a woman’s beauty is a man’s misfortune, nobody paid attention to these sayings of another age. When Celanire emerged from the women’s quarters, Koffi Ndizi ordered Hakim to accompany her home, seeing how late it was.

The night crackled with the cries of insects. The moon had hidden her face behind a crepe of clouds. In the darkness Celanire laid her hand on Hakim’s arm, which immediately became burning hot from her touch. It was as if he were standing next to a fire. She spoke to him in a mellow voice: That wake reminded her of Guadeloupe. There too, death was highly respected. At All Saints the flames of the candles stretched over the graves like a diamond necklace. Oh, sometimes she felt like ditching everything and going back home. But did she have a home? A home is a maman and a papa waiting for you with open arms. Those who had adopted her now slept in the shade of the casuarinas. And then seven years, seven long years, had elapsed since leaving Guadeloupe. When you’re separated from a place for such a long time, you lose it forever: everything changes, nothing is the same. Listening to her sugary words, Hakim thought it was a good thing Governor Alix Pol-Roger was coming back soon. If he had any sense, neither Thomas de Brabant nor Celanire would be welcome much longer in Adjame-Santey.

Back at Betti Bouah’s, the racket had grown louder. According to tradition, the wake had to continue for the remainder of the night and part of the following day. When they finally got around to thinking of the burial, Thomas de Brabant’s guards rushed in. Governor Alix Pol-Roger was dead!

Dead? From what? How?

On his way back to Adjame-Santey he had stopped at the encampment of Tentona. It was well known for its abundant water supply and cool air, since it was situated on an escarpment fed by two rivers. While he was eating lunch, under the very eyes of his escort, he had been attacked by man-eating lions, those thick-maned black lions from Mourga, the very ones described by Amadou Hampate Ba. They had burst into the camp and without looking left or right had pounced straight on him, knocked him over, trampled and devoured him, leaving nothing behind but a pool of blood, a few bones, and a pair of legs still standing in tall, brown leather boots.

These unfortunate events brought together two men who up till then had had little contact with each other: Betti Bouah and Hakim. Betti Bouah was the opposite of his cousin Koffi Ndizi, as athletic and muscular as the other was potbellied. He spoke French to perfection and could read and write fluently. He was always prepared to discuss the eighteenth-century philosophers, especially Diderot, his favorite. In spite of the saying that the white man’s leader is the Englishman, Betti Bouah had sided with the French. He had lent them his support on every occasion; he had lodged Binger under his roof during his 1889 expedition. He hadn’t done all that only to have two of his sons mowed down by militia in the pay of the French. Following these dramatic events, he began to think twice about colonization and came to the conclusion that the Africans should join forces to kick the French out as quickly as possible and take their place. During his games of chess with Hakim, he laid out his plans. Since Hakim lent his fervent support, he offered him a job in his factories. The wages he proposed were three times higher than the mission’s. Hakim couldn’t believe his ears. To be rid of that mud-brick school, suffocating during the dry season, flooded during the rainy season! Of his dim-witted, fingers-all-thumbs pupils! Say good-bye to those hypocritical and finicky missionaries. Moreover, his cohabitation with Kwame Aniedo was becoming unbearable. He could no longer put up with hearing the prince noisily take his pleasure with his mistresses or bumping into him, quite naked, his pipe stuffed with Bahia tobacco wedged between his teeth. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Koffi Ndizi seemed to have lapsed into second childhood. Ever since he had set eyes on her at the wake for Senanou and Dabla, he had become infatuated with Celanire. He now only had one idea in his head: to invite her to his house. But when he looked around, he was ashamed at what he saw. He would never dare entertain someone so sophisticated in such a place. So he endeavored to imitate Betti Bouah and ordered armchairs, beds, dishes, glasses, and even a set of kitchen utensils from Grand-Bassam. Since Hakim had spoken highly of the Muslim art of living, he had rugs and wall coverings shipped from Tiassalé. Oh, how he would have liked to speak French, a language that up till then had always stuck in his throat! One afternoon, Hakim paid Koffi Ndizi a visit. The king had just received four crates of dishes from Grand-Bassam. He was inspecting plates and blue-stemmed glasses identical to his cousin’s, and frantically inquired of his visitor, What did he think? Would Celanire be impressed? At a time when the atmosphere in the colony was loaded with tension, such fickleness exasperated Hakim. He ran to Kwame Aniedo’s, collected his meager belongings, and took his leave without saying good-bye to anyone.

4

Hakim’s new life gradually settled into place.

Betti Bouah was in the business of palm oil. He bought it from the Akouri and Alladian villages or even farther afield. His men filled the casks supplied by the companies in Bordeaux and Nantes, and transported them along the Ebrié lagoon with a fleet of dugout canoes. They then rolled them overland and loaded them onto whaling boats that set out for the ships lying offshore behind the line of breakers. He also sold timber for dyes, ivory and skins that he purchased on the markets in the interior in exchange for gunpowder, guns, spirits, leaf tobacco from Virginia, cutlery, and knives. In short, he seemed a treasure trove for anyone who wanted to do business with him. Under his orders, Hakim no longer had time even to think about eating his bellyful. Up before sunrise, the noise of his little outboard would frighten the caymans wallowing lazily in the mud. Standing under the glare of the midday sun, he would quickly swallow a meatball of akassan reddened with palm oil. He dashed from one plantation to another, overseeing the loading. At first he did everything possible in the evening to keep up appearances. Once he had shaved and cologned, he went up and joined his host, who as a rule was sitting in a European-style armchair. Betti Bouah was very fond of chocolate and drank it by the cupful. While sipping this newly discovered drink, the two men would comment on what the French called “pacification” and what they themselves called quite simply “the war.” There seemed to be no end to the bloody massacres in the northern territories. How many dead had they already buried? How many more were they going to bury? Yes, Africa had got off to a bad start, and the white man’s sun illuminated nothing but misfortune. Sometimes, though, their conversation turned to a lighter side. They talked about women. Betti Bouah explained he had not been impressed by Celanire. A real bag of bones! He preferred full-bodied women, like a good Bordeaux wine. Just look at his wives. And then that ribbon tied around her neck terrified him like a small child. No doubt about it, that’s where she hid the mark that indicated she was the “horse” of dangerous aawabo. He had once known a “horse” with the distinguishing mark of a wart on his chin. It had taken years to find him out. In the meantime, he had killed off a whole village. Deep down, without daring to contradict him, Hakim scoffed at these superstitions, okay for Africans, but which his father’s European education had rid him of.

It wasn’t long, however, before he ached all over, and in the evening he would throw himself on his bed, fall fast asleep, and snore until morning. This extreme exhaustion naturally gave cause for thought. In fact, what had he gained by leaving the mission school? He was still a subaltern. He no longer had time to open a book. His hair was no longer combed or brilliantined. The people he kept company with were crude, the banknotes he handled were filthy, and he was no longer Mr. Philosophizer, phrasemonger of French French. It was that very moment Kwame Aniedo chose to ask Hakim to help him pass the colonial administration examination. Kwame Aniedo could no longer put up with the life of idleness dictated by Koffi Ndizi, and he could no longer bear to see him lapse into a second childhood because of his ridiculous passion for Celanire. So he had decided to leave the royal compound, which he considered a lost cause. He was prepared to leave the country for Dakar, the city where nobody ever dies. Apparently, the French were recruiting and paying for all sorts of clerks in their offices and administration. Kwame Aniedo could already see himself as a messenger in khaki uniform with gilt epaulettes pedaling his Motobécane. Hakim, never forgetting that Kwame had offered him a roof over his head when he needed one, saw himself obliged to calculate the square of the hypotenuse while in a state of exhaustion. What was worse, Kwame Aniedo’s presence still produced the same effect on him and upset him deep down: that smell of sweat and shea butter of his, that way he had of sucking greedily on his wooden penholder, that childlike expression of his whenever he no longer understood his lesson. Hakim despondently predicted that one day he would be unable to control himself and would throw himself on Kwame Aniedo. And that would be catastrophic. For the horrified Kwame would take out his Sheffield steel switchblade deep within the folds of his wrapper and stab him a fatal blow. Thus Bokar would get his revenge.

On that particular day Hakim had been called to the Home to buy the harvest of palm kernels. As a precaution he had kept out of Celanire’s way since the day of the burial for Dabla and Senanou. The new palm groves were curling their hair over several acres plucked from the forest. A mountain of kernels was waiting under the trees. Celanire could be grateful: thanks to the Ebriés’ free labor and the work of the senior pupils, the harvest was rich, and it took over three hours to weigh it and load it into jute sacks that the porters lugged on their backs to the factory. Once the transaction was finally over, Hakim was about to turn on his heels when the widow Desrussie held him back. Celanire was asking for him. However hard he insisted he was in his work clothes and had been sweating since morning, the widow was so adamant, he felt obliged to follow her.

Once he left the shade of the palm grove, the heat fell on his neck like a sharp blade. The sun was high in the sky, cooking the tall obelisks of the anthills. With persiennes lowered, the Home was taking its siesta. It had become a real jewel, nestling in its setting of trees and riot of flowers. Celanire had laid out flower beds and introduced heavy-scented roses together with tulips and carnations she had shipped from France. In an aviary dozed papilios, giant butterflies with yellow velvety wings striped black and blue. For Hakim, such serenity was deceiving. He imagined the Home to be like the castle of a Sleeping Beauty, waiting for the night to begin its life of debauchery. He crossed the bamboo grove, his feet sinking into the thick carpet of lawn. The widow Desrussie showed him into a boudoir where everything seemed unreal. In the penumbra, the murky eyes of the mirrors gazed back at him. The chimeras on the screens opened wide their jaws to swallow him, swinging their heavy ringed tails in every direction. He was about to beat a retreat when he caught sight of Celanire watching him, lying on a sofa. She was draped in a silk kimono, encrusted with the same chimeras. A kerchief dripped red around her neck. She motioned to him to sit down close to her, and he was overcome with nausea at the pervading smell of female. He managed to pull himself together, however, while she explained her circumstances in a mournful voice. She had been bedridden for days with a bout of fever, and she truly thought she wouldn’t make it alive. He asked her unimaginatively if she had forgotten to take her quinine, and she shrugged her shoulders. Quinine? She didn’t believe in those miracle remedies for whites. In Guadeloupe, her papa taught her the virtues of poultices and herbs. Zèb à Fè. Koklaya. Té simen kontran. Africa had the same pharmacopeia. That’s how she had taken care of herself. Why is she always talking about her papa, Hakim thought irritatedly, especially if he’s not her real papa? Hakim had not kept his promise, Celanire complained, and had never come to see her. He apologized. He was overworked at Betti Bouah’s and spent his time dashing from one village to another. He was endeavoring to embellish his new life with a set of adventures when she cut him short. Did he like that kind of work? He remained speechless. This woman could read him like an open book.

She laid her hand on his knee, burning it like a firebrand, and then lectured him. You must always like what you do. She had a mission: transform this humble Home for Half-Castes into a monument that would go down in people’s memories. For the first time in the history of the colony, her school was entering four girls for the native diploma of elementary studies. The Africans subjugated and mutilated their women. The French taught them merely how to thread a needle and use a pair of scissors. Now they were going to see something else. She did not hide the fact that she had ambitious plans. She had given a lot of thought to the reasons why relations between Africans and the French came up against a stumbling block. Because the colonizers, being men, could only think in terms of men. It was the men they invited to share in their projects. It never occurred to them to ask the women. Whereas in Africa, more than anywhere else, the women welcomed change, which could only be to their advantage. They were tired of working themselves to death, tired of being treated as subalterns, tired of being humiliated, beaten, and abused. Only the women could hold colonization in check for one very good reason. Once the colonizer had clasped a black woman in his arms, could he ever be the same again? No, no, and no! Ever since Thomas de Brabant had found happiness with her, he had become another man. He saw Africa through different eyes. He who was once so contemptuous, so convinced that the continent knew nothing of art and civilization, she had persuaded him to open a museum, and he had started collecting those very same masks he used to swear he would burn in an auto-da-fé. The Home for Half-Castes would be that meeting place that was sorely lacking, a privileged place where love between the races would fructify, grow, and multiply. That was its vocation. She proposed he work for her and teach the senior pupils. She would take care of the juniors. The girls she had trained would look after the tots. Hakim hesitated, looking for an answer that would not be taken as an insult, when her little paw, drawing a trail of fire, began to crawl up the inside of his leg. He sat petrified while she reached her objective. They looked at each other straight in the eyes, she visibly surprised by his lack of response. She stroked harder. In vain. Ashamed, he stood up, adjusted his clothing, and ran for the exit. Outside, the light brought him back to earth. He sensed that Celanire would never forgive him such an affront. When he got back home, overcome with nausea, he washed and soaped himself from head to toe. Then he slipped on a pair of shorts and a freshly starched cotton drill shirt and went upstairs to join Betti Bouah. The latter frowned on seeing him home so early, but managed to hide his feelings and told him the latest gossip. Thomas de Brabant had just had his appointment confirmed as governor of the colony, and consequently the lucky fellow was going to be the first to occupy the new palace. A grandiose building. The juicy bit was that his wife, Charlotte, was arriving from France with their daughter. Everybody was wondering what would become of his affair with Celanire, for it was an open secret they slept together. He was so besotted with her, he blindly obeyed her every wish. He had recently authorized her to make the Home a refuge for girls running away from husbands and suitors. What next would she do? Lovesick, Karamanlis the Greek had tried to drown himself in the lagoon on several occasions. Every time they had dragged him back to the shore alive. As for Koffi Ndizi, he had repudiated his thirty-nine wives and concubines, keeping only his first love, Queen Tadjo, provided she too “converted.” He was taking catechism classes and was preparing to become a Christian, to the great joy of the mission, since conversions by a chief were exceptionally rare. The Church only attracted wretches lured by a pair of shorts and an undershirt that the priests gave to the baptized. What did Koffi Ndizi expect from such a foolish act?

The following morning Hakim was scarcely awake when the widow Desrussie, bundled up in a wrapper against the cool morning mist, brought him a letter from Celanire. It was written on pretty yellow stationery, well phrased and sober given the circumstances. Celanire apologized for having betrayed a fondness for him that he obviously did not share. As for her job offer, it still stood. She was especially keen on having him, as she knew he could work miracles. Wasn’t he preparing that good-for-nothing Kwame Aniedo to compete for the French administration examination? Likewise, he would know how to transform the Africans into responsible men of their times. As for the love angle, he could sleep safe and sound, she would no longer bother him. The trivial adventure was over! Hakim retained only one thing from this epistle. It was no coincidence that Celanire had mentioned the name of Kwame Aniedo. She had seen right through him. She knew about his feelings for the prince. In actual fact, this apparently innocuous letter constituted a threat.

In a state of frenzy, he set out for the landing stage on the other side of Bingerville. A mob of small traders carrying calabashes and makeshift basins brimming with unrefined palm oil was already laying siege to the warehouse. The smell of grease mingled with that of the decomposing mud and humus. All around, the banks appeared strewn with bones, in actual fact dead tree trunks bleached by the sun and the brine. Hakim seated himself in the outboard. Bordered by dense foliage, the blackish waters of the lagoon lapped threateningly against the landing stage. He had always been scared of water. As a child, after his papa had left him, he had only to close his eyes to imagine himself slipping slowly into a bottomless lake and drowning. He shivered. Celanire was like the lagoon, cunning and dangerous.

But the day turned out to be so busy, he completely forgot about the oblate.

The day before, the vessel Alexandrie had fired a cannon shot, indicating that it was ready to trade. While maneuvering along its side, one of Betti Bouah’s boats had overturned. Four men had been sucked under the waves and their bodies kept for good by the ocean. Hakim had had to smooth out the accusations and greed of the families and negotiate compensation. The Europeans had introduced a new system. Everything had been calculated. A man who left behind small children was worth so much. A man who left a betrothed, so much. Several wives, so much. It was nighttime before he returned to Bingerville. An invitation was waiting for him. The following Sunday Koffi Ndizi was going to be baptized, and as a token of their former friendship, he was inviting him to the ceremony.

Hakim had never taken Koffi Ndizi’s amorous transports very seriously. Like those of Karamanlis, he got the impression they were sheer lunacy that would heal by itself. But when he saw him standing at the foot of the altar, his hands piously crossed over a thick candle, his braids shaved, and his belly cramped into a white chasuble, he realized his mistake. To go to such extremes, he really had to be smitten. Queen Tadjo, sitting in the front row, seemed to be in agony. He had given her three months to become a Christian. Otherwise, despite all her line-age, he would repudiate her as well.

The church, which dated back to the early days of the colony, was a reminder that the missionaries had followed in the steps of the traders. The altar and the pews had been carved out of ironwood. A local artist had sculpted in clay the fourteen stations of the cross. On that particular day there was the usual lot of “converted” natives and French religious crackpots. In addition, a crowd of Africans was bent on seeing with their own two eyes the extraordinary sight of a king turning his back on the traditions of his ancestors. Those who could speak French fervently sang:

Je crois en Toi, mon Dieu,

Je crois en Toi,

L’ombre voile mes yeux,

Mais j’ai la foi.

The others listened, intimidated by the sonority tumbling from their mouths. The father superior, a Knight Templar, was an ascetic, nothing more than skin and bones, once a great friend of Thomas de Brabant, who often used him as an interpreter. For Koffi Ndizi, baptized Felix, he delivered a long homily, stressing his rebirth and his duties as a Christian. Adopting an inspired look, he prosaically exulted in a conversion that compensated for the defection of his former friend Thomas, up to his neck in adultery with a Negress. The new Felix fittingly received the water on his forehead and solemnly ate the salt. After the ceremony the guests gathered at the royal compound where the free-of-charge domestics who had replaced the slaves served lukewarm lemonade in the famous blue-stemmed glasses. Hakim’s eyes filled with tears as he found himself back in that place, that theater of so many sweet moments: drinking bouts, never-ending palavers, and anti-French dreams. Now that the Father Templar had asked the learned assembly of sébékos and fetish priests to vacate the compound, their courtyard was deserted. The only witnesses to the past were the queen mother, stripped of half of her suite, and a few elders who had nowhere else to go. Poor Kwame Aniedo! His father had ordered him to convert, swearing he would disinherit him if he refused, for his mentors had forbidden him to bequeath his estate to a heathen.

As a consequence, Kwame Aniedo had not attended the ceremony and was locked up in his hut, amusing himself as best he could playing awalé with his favorite concubine. At the very moment the cookies and white wine were brought out, Thomas de Brabant arrived in full uniform and delivered a grand-sounding speech. Noblesse oblige! The king’s conversion to the True God was an event of paramount importance with promising consequences for the future as well as a productive collaboration for prospective relations between Africa and Europe. It was almost as if Celanire had dictated the words to him, they were so close to her ideas. Exasperated, Hakim was about to take his leave when Celanire herself arrived, accompanied by her inseparable widow Desrussie. Felix Koffi, the new Christian, who could now put together a few words of French, rushed toward her: “Ça wa ben? Ça wa ben?”

It was pathetic!

Celanire was decked all in white — dress, shoes, and hat — as if it had been her baptism. Around her neck, a choker of white velvet embroidered with tiny multicolored flowers. She thus appeared the most virginal of virgins. She gave a discreet nod to Hakim as if, a few days earlier, her hand had not groped around inside his trousers, and lavished Felix Koffi with smiles. What were her plans for the fat lump? What was she hoping to fleece him of?

Hakim did not have to wait long for an answer.

Three days later, Betti Bouah informed him that Felix Koffi had made a gift of his land neighboring the Ebrié lagoon to the Home for Half-Castes — a good dozen acres in all. The gift was especially shocking as the tribe’s land did not actually belong to the king. He was merely the guardian on behalf of the community. Which counsel of elders had he consulted for permission? Betti Bouah worked himself into a frenzy and even considered disinheriting his cousin. There was no longer any justice. The native courts under the thumb of Thomas de Brabant did everything the French dictated.

Surprise! Surprise! Kwame Aniedo proved he was a true Akan and had no intention of turning his back on the gods of his ancestors. Refusing to convert, he left the royal compound. Betti Bouah took him in, gave him a room next to Hakim’s, and offered him a job. But Kwame Aniedo had no intention of working himself to death, he who already saw himself in a white-collar job in Dakar, and as an excuse said he needed all his time to prepare for his examination. As a result, Hakim’s torture started up all over again. Every day he came face-to-face with Kwame Aniedo. He would even come home to find Kwame lying on his bed, leafing through his books and smoking his Virginia tobacco, wearing the bathrobe he had bought at the CFAO company store with his savings. For the prince had no notion of private property and helped himself to anything he pleased. The real torture, however, was to hear him again night after night groaning with pleasure with his female conquests, who were still just as numerous.

5

The year was drawing to a close, and the short rainy season, the one that lasts from October to November, had just begun when the inhabitants of Bingerville debated a subject of conversation of the utmost importance. Charlotte, the wife of Thomas de Brabant, had arrived with her daughter. So the question was who was the loveliest — Celanire or her? Celanire had no particular reason to be jealous of her white rival. Some even dared to prefer her, being of the opinion that Charlotte was melancholic and did not smile enough. Whereas Celanire, vivacious and gracious, was exquisitely polite on the rare occasions they met her in person. The Africans considered that both of them needed filling out, but conceded that Celanire concealed a little more in the places where it was needed. The general opinion was that Charlotte dressed better in the Paris fashion. But Celanire sometimes wore dresses and head ties in the Akan fashion, which the Africans appreciated. In short, opinions differed.

Sitting in her palace, inaugurated the previous month with great pomp, Charlotte had lost all interest in life. In other words, she wanted to lie down and die. She had never experienced anything so depressing as Africa or imagined a place so frightful as Bingerville. Terrified of snakes and red ants, she spent the best part of her time locked in her apartments. There, with persiennes lowered, she struggled against the heat as best she could. Half naked, she showered four to six times a day, much to the anger of the houseboys, who complained she used up all the water in the tank. She fanned herself with large woven osier fans. Sometimes, in her dressing gown, she would walk out onto the balcony and weep as she looked at the encircling shrubs and trees, so different from the chestnut trees on her avenue Henri-Martin. Every day, at four in the afternoon, a house girl brought her Ludivine, her three-year-old daughter. Ludivine would fidget and push her away, now used to the caresses and pidgin of her housemaid. Charlotte did not recognize her either, now that her hair was decorated with cowries and she reeked of shea butter.

Africa therefore had taken away everything she had. Her child. Her husband, whom she virtually never saw. He told her he was working himself to death for France, whereas she knew he was working himself to death making love to a black girl. When he lay down beside her at night, her nostrils were offended by his smell. Why had he made her come to Africa? She loathed the guests he invited to dinner — senior officials drained by diarrhea and preoccupied by their bowel movements, priests never tired of naming the name of God and martyrizing the Africans in the name of the same God. They never had anything interesting to say, since they never opened a book and never listened to Bach or Handel. They drank too much, and gossiped maliciously. Charlotte no longer had the strength to keep up her diary, where since the age of sixteen she had jotted down her innocent adventures as a young girl. She was at a loss for news to send to her maman. In any case, letters took months and months to arrive. When they did, the paper smelled all musty.

That particular afternoon, she felt even hotter than usual. However hard she fanned herself, beads of sweat trickled down her back and formed a pool smelling like urine on the bedsheet. Charlotte was propped up against her pillows, obsessed with the idea of whether a black woman can be beautiful. She had never seen her rival, since the woman never came to church (Father Rascasse went up to celebrate mass in the chapel at the Home). She was never to be seen at any dinner, cocktail, or reception, since she kept the third Friday of every month for her own parties. She never paid anyone a visit. In short, she stayed at home like a flesh-eating spider spinning her web. What did she look like? This question tormented Charlotte. Her dreams had become nightmares, her nights torture. She could no longer bear it and got up. At that time of day, everyone was taking their siesta. She ran down the main staircase, dashed across the garden, avoiding the servants’ quarters, and cautiously pushed open the south gate of the palace. No tarbooshed guard in sight. She had seldom ventured outside alone and almost asked her way from a passerby. Then she remembered who she was. The governor’s wife. Don’t talk to anyone. Avoid getting herself noticed by Thomas’s spies.

The rain had stopped. Not for long. Clouds black with thunder scudded across the sky skimming the earth. In the little daylight that was left, the wretched faces of the neighborhood shacks stretched out in a line. In which direction was the Home? It must be this way. A path scarred with ruts unrolled beneath her feet. Left and right, the huts got fewer and finally disappeared; the forest, always ready to run riot, rolled greedily on. After less than a mile Charlotte stumbled up against a metal fence hidden behind thick foliage. She was looking for a way in when suddenly an opening gaped onto a driveway lined with dwarf coconut palms. She went in, crossed a bamboo grove, and suddenly the Home loomed up in all its elegance. Nothing had prepared her for such a picture of harmony. At Bingerville the administrative buildings were massive and devoid of grace. Who was the inspired architect who had designed this marvel? What gardener had laid out these flower beds, pruned these bushes, and grafted these trees? At the same time she had the feeling that a thousand pairs of eyes hidden in the nooks and crannies of the doors and windows were watching her. She thought she saw a window open on the second floor. A shape leaned out. A hand motioned to her to come closer. It was her, it was her! Galvanized into action, she ran to the front door and vigorously rang the bell. After a very long wait, the door finally opened.

A search party was organized to look for Charlotte.

In the night soaked with water, torches were lit by the soldiers, the militia, and the askaris. Some searched the length and breadth of the treacherous lagoon that had swallowed up so many human lives. Others marched down to the slime of the mangrove and the swamps, stubbing their feet on the mangrove trees and twisting their ankles against the buttress roots. Another group roamed the villages around the lagoon, flattening the huts with their rifle butts, terrifying the inhabitants, who imagined the slave trade had started up again. Some hacked a path through the forest with axes and cutlasses, only to face the sea. Others searched deep into the pale green savanna rippling to infinity.

Racked by remorse, Thomas directed the search operations. His sweet, gentle Charlotte! Why had he neglected her in such a fashion? It was beyond understanding; as if Celanire had bewitched him. The feelings he felt in his heart for his wife were not to blame. It was his body, that wretched shroud of flesh, that had betrayed him.

His eyes brimming with tears, he recalled how they had got carried away dancing to the “Blue Danube” that summer they had first met; how, strolling through the English garden, he had described to her his life in Africa. She was not impressed: she would have preferred a senator or a banker for a husband, somebody more reassuring. But love had won the day, and they got married at the church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule.

The search lasted for four days and four nights. Despondency had gripped every heart. At the mission, Charlotte was given up for a case of suicide. Africa can give you a nervous breakdown! Especially for women like her who cannot find comfort in God. She was never to be seen at confession or at communion. But in his grief and guilty conscience Thomas refused to give up, fretted and fumed, ran in all directions and gave contradictory orders left and right.

In the end they found Charlotte’s body in the semidarkness of the forest not far from the village of Tiegaba. Straight and smooth, a Bassam mahogany tree was watching over her. One wondered how she had managed to travel so many miles without guide or tipoye in this impenetrable, stifling vegetation inhabited by monkeys, leopards, and wildcats. Twice she must have crossed rivers infested with caymans and crocodiles, without stepping-stones, bridge, or ferry. The guards who made the macabre discovery backed away to vomit in the mud. The sight was horrible. It was as if wild beasts, eaters of human flesh and drinkers of fresh blood, had done her in. All around the body the earth had been clawed into ruts. Yet no lion had been reported in the region. They covered Charlotte with branches. They loaded her onto a makeshift stretcher, and the cortege set off for Bingerville. Spontaneously, mourners from Tiegaba now switched their tears and vociferations from the deceased scepter bearer, Adueli Kabanlan, and made a terrible din all the way back to the palace. Exhausted, the governor, who had not slept a wink for three nights, was taking an afternoon nap. He emerged in his shirt-sleeves and almost fainted, seeing what was left of his beloved. But his grief made the entire colony shrug its shoulders. What? A cheat, a liar, and an adulterer making all this racket! Keeping to his bed as if he were in agony! Ordering a first-class funeral. Strewing the coffin with natural and artificial flowers. Ordering all flags to be flown at half staff, as if it were a national mourning or the death of a senior French official!

For the second time in a few months Hakim set foot inside the church. Because of Charlotte. He had met her one day, escorted by her askari, while she was shopping at the SOCOPAO company store. She had not yet that zombie look peculiar to the whites in Africa, and she stared him straight in the eye. To think that all her vitality was now reduced to a heap of pummeled flesh at the bottom of a wooden box! The church was filled with a French congregation who had never seen either the front or the back of Charlotte, but were grief-stricken even so. The newspapers in France had given the tragic event wide coverage, as had the Courrier de l’Ouest Africain, whose head offices were in Dakar. Standing to the left of her papa, Ludivine was crying because her maid had told her, calamity of calamities, she would never see her maman again. Her head ached from all these flowers piled onto the coffin. On behalf of the Home, Celanire had sent an enormous wreath of assorted dahlias, roses, and lilies. But neither she nor her good friend, Madame Desrussie, had come in person to the mortuary at the governor’s palace. Those who love a bit of scandal were highly disappointed. For the general opinion held her responsible. How come? Although the Europeans did their best not to give in to superstition, the Africans had no such qualms. There was no doubt about it — Celanire was a “horse.” The number of mysterious deaths around her was beginning to mount up. Monsieur Desrussie: one. Alix Pol-Roger: two. Now, Charlotte de Brabant. Who would be the next victim?

The wreaths had not yet wilted on his wife’s tomb when Thomas set off again for the Home. Blacks and whites alike saw it coming. Even so, they were shocked. Should a defenseless child be handed over to her maman’s murderer?

They say you cannot remember anything before the age of five.

However young she was at the time, Ludivine was never to forget the first time she met Celanire.

She had left the governor’s palace midmorning. Her papa had explained to her he worshipped her like the apple of his eye. But a father cannot take care of his little girl all on his own. He was placing her therefore in the care of a lady who was as good as she was beautiful, who would take charge of her education. She would not live all alone in the palace, lost in a huge mansion. She would have lots of little playmates her own age. He made her say farewell to Ana, her beloved maid. Then they had left. The weather was terrible, of course. To protect her from the rain Ana had dressed her in boots and yellow oilskin, which made her feel too hot. The path up to the Home seemed a difficult climb, pitted with potholes filled with rotten leaves and muddy water. Thinking of Ana, she could not help whining and sobbing, even though her papa kept repeating, somewhat irritatedly; “Stop crying, for goodness sake!”

The Home made her think of a prison with its fence overgrown with thick vegetation barring the sky. As for the garden, the Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens in Paris, where her maid used to take her to play, were far nicer.

Doing her best to keep her head up, she entered the nursery, a huge tiled room, the only adornment being a crucifix nailed to a wall. Here a dozen children of her age — Papa had been right — ranging in skin color from yellowish brown to off-white, boys and girls, all closely cropped, dressed in steel gray smocks, were grouped around a piano. As clean as new pins, even chubby in some cases, they nevertheless had the look of society’s rejects, a nobody-wants-

me-on-this-earth expression. They were singing with a long face:

Baa-baa black sheep

Have you any wool?

Yes sir! Yes sir!

Three bags full!

This was the music class, which she taught herself, explained the young woman seated at the piano. After giving Thomas a tender kiss, she clapped her hands to indicate class was over and stood up. The children surged to the back of the room, where a group of African women rigged out in blue veils and long white nurse’s aprons was waiting for them.

The stranger approached with a smile.

“So you’re Ludivine? My name is Celanire. Something tells me we’re going to do great things together.”

Ludivine was no fool, unlike Thomas, who was staring at Celanire, besotted. This smile clinging lopsided to a set of cruel ivory teeth hung like a piece of frippery on a carnival puppet. It wobbled from side to side. Even so, she was impressed by her beauty. Here too her papa had been right. Not a classical beauty, which Charlotte had bequeathed her — an aquiline nose, a domed forehead, a finely drawn mouth. No, Celanire possessed the beauty of the devil! A thick black braid snaked down her back, as if it had a life of its own. You could not take your eyes off a wide blue ribbon studded with a tiny golden heart wound tight around her throat. What did it conceal underneath? You sensed some terrible, terrifying secret.

“She looks like her mother,” Celanire remarked with a semblance of emotion.

Thomas seemed surprised. How could she know? She had never met Charlotte. Celanire was not disconcerted. She explained in a mysterious tone of voice that she had visions and premonitions. In her dreams she could see people who were going to die. Or even those already dead. The day Charlotte disappeared, she thought she saw her standing under her window in the flower beds of dahlias, busy admiring the Home. She was dark, wasn’t she? Like an Italian with green eyes. She was wearing a pastel-colored dress, and since she had lost so much weight in Africa, she wore her wedding ring on her middle finger.

Thomas was stunned by the accuracy of her description.

Ludivine went and joined the other children at the back of the room. They made way for her as she approached, then closed in around her, as if to signify they had adopted her. They began halfheartedly to play with modeling clay. The supervising nurses paid scant attention to their charge, talking earnestly among themselves, and never stopped giggling. They were watching Thomas and Celanire, who, shoulder to shoulder, were playing a piece for four hands. For Celanire was an accomplished musician. She sang like a nightingale and was capable of playing Beethoven sonatas to perfection as well as enchanting the listener with her recorder. The nurses seemed to find the sight hilarious. Thomas finally took leave of Celanire, standing to attention and clicking his heels in military fashion before kissing her hand most civilly. Then he lightly brushed his daughter’s forehead with his lips and drew the sign of the cross. Ludivine swallowed back her tears, for her papa’s was the last familiar face she was to see. When he had disappeared, Celanire signaled to one of the nurses to take her by the hand up to a room on the second floor. A dormitory — rows of identical twin beds tightly stretched with bedspreads in yellow and green African cloth. Beside each bed stood a yellow wardrobe painted with a green number. On the wall, a crucifix like the one on the ground floor.

The nurse assigned her bed and wardrobe number 16. She removed her white chiffon dress and slipped on a smock. Then, armed with a pair of scissors, she began snipping one by one the curls of her mop of black hair until her head was completely shaved. When they went back down, the nurse led her to a table in a refectory as austere as the classroom and the dormitory. Children and adults alike stood, head lowered, in front of their place. On a platform Celanire was saying grace.

Despite the prayers that tumbled out of her mouth, she looked the very picture of sin. She was so hot she could have set a church font ablaze. Ludivine swallowed back her tears. One of the nurses placed a ball of yam foutou on her plate and sprinkled it with chicken kedjenou. She realized she was very hungry, and the sight of the chicken kedjenou made her mouth water.

Ana had gotten her used to such food, and now she had a natural liking for these spicy dishes and their rough, barbaric taste.

6

In the end Bingerville recovered in next to no time from the death of Charlotte. Too many major events followed the tragedy, one after the other. On the French side, Karamanlis finally managed to commit suicide, by drowning. The Father Templar died from a heart attack. Their beloved Father Rascasse left for the colony of Oubangui-Chari. No sooner had it been built than it was announced that Bingerville was going to lose its rank as capital of the colony to Abidjan-Santey. What had been the point of so much trouble and effort? For the Africans, their concerns were all too clear: corvée and taxes had been increased, and then there was the news that Tanella, Mawourou’s murderer, had been acquitted by the court in Dakar and was returning to the Ivory Coast. Acquitted! The jury had decided she had acted in self-defense. No doubt about it, the white man’s world was walking on its head! In short, it wasn’t long before everyone had something else to think about. In the markets, the gin bars, the factories, the trading houses, and the offices, in the residential districts as well as the poto-poto neighborhoods, conversation turned to other things.

One morning, a messenger brought Hakim another letter from Celanire. She apologized for harping on the subject. What must he think of her? But she had learned — nothing was a secret in Bingerville — that he had fallen out with Betti Bouah. Under the circumstances, wouldn’t he like to reconsider her offer, to which, in fact, he had never replied? Sadly enough, Celanire was speaking the truth. Betti Bouah and Hakim could no longer bear the sight of each other. Betti Bouah realized that Hakim was a very different person from what he had imagined. When it was a question of badmouthing the French, Hakim was only too ready. But when it came to working as hard as they did, he was nowhere to be seen. He had demanded a five-day workweek, plus weekends off as was the custom in England and the colonies of the Crown. He insisted on being paid a commission on his sales. And that he was entitled to two days off for the feast of Tabaski, since he had declared himself Muslim. Naturally, Betti Bouah had not given in to any of his demands, and Hakim had sent him a stinging letter, calling him an exploiter. Betti Bouah had got a laugh out of that. Exploiter! Here was a new word! Apparently the traditional chiefs were just as much exploiters as the whites. Ever since, the two men had ignored each other and limited any contact to the business of palm oil. No more hot chocolate at four in the afternoon, no more discussions on “pacification,” no more exchange of books. Hakim thought of writing a letter, this time a letter of resignation. What held him back was that once his pride had been satisfied by this act of bravado, there would be nothing or nobody to help him fill his belly. The mission would no longer want him as Mr. Philosophizer. So he would have to return to Soudan, and in order not to starve to death, he would have to live off his grandfather or one of his uncles on his mother’s side.

He therefore plucked up his courage. To accept Celanire’s offer was the last thing he wanted, but it was the only thing preventing him from descending into destitution.

With his mind made up, he set off for the Home one Sunday. Mass had just finished. The pupils, in freshly starched white uniforms edged in green, were filing out of the chapel, chaperoned by their monitors, now rid of their nurses’ garb and dressed in identical wrappers with identical motifs, for apparently Celanire liked her surroundings to be symmetrical. Hakim took the arm she offered him. What a chatterbox! She never stopped for one minute. Without waiting to get her breath back, she told him how she had trained a choir to sing the Beatus Vir and the Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera by Vivaldi, her favorite composer. The choir had been invited to Grand-Bassam in a month’s time for the inception of the new bishop. Considering her four pupils, one of whom was a girl, had passed the native certificate for elementary studies and were preparing to become grade-five office clerks, she had every reason to be proud. Hakim remained silent. In Bingerville gossip had begun to circulate openly about the true nature of the Home. Some of the nurses whispered that once the children had been put to bed, they were paired off with those nice, gentle white officers and soldiers who gave them all sorts of presents and caresses. No comparison with those rough, lascivious Africans. Never an unkind word, a clout, or a thrashing! The first French words they learned therefore, were “cherí” or “mon amour.”

Celanire and Hakim entered a drawing room furnished in exquisite taste. There she whirled around to show off her costume. For she was dressed in a fashion he had never seen before. A full gown of rich, dark red silk was gathered at the waist over a white lace petticoat with three flounces. Her neck was encased in a collaret of frilled lawn similar to the ruffs portrayed in old engravings. Her hair was frizzed out, rolled into coquette bobs over her ears. She swamped him with explanations in her self-satisfaction. This Guadeloupean costume was called a matador gown. She had given it a personal touch by adding the collaret and leaving out the madras head tie. The traditional jewelry was also missing — the gold-bead choker and the earrings. Suddenly she stopped her hollow talk, and her face took on an expression of reproach. He had put off accepting her offer, and now Betti Bouah had let him down. Didn’t he realize that once the Africans had hoisted themselves up level with the whites, they would prove to be even more wicked? Envious, that’s what they were, only set on taking their masters’ place. Colonization would be followed by worse events, and the name neocolonialism would be invented to describe them. Hakim said his mea culpa. He now wanted to turn the page and start working for her as quickly as possible. What would she like him to do? At that moment he bravely turned to face her.

Celanire stared at him like a cat about to devour a mouse or a python about to swallow its prey, before uncoiling itself to digest it in voluptuous pleasure. She stretched out her arm and stroked his neck, winding a lock of his hair around one of her fingers. Hakim stammered out the terms of her letter as a reminder. She had promised him: no love, no sex. She laughed, revealing her white teeth and blue-black gums. And he had believed her? Only a fool would trust the words of a woman, especially if she were in love! She edged closer to him and whispered in his ear. She knew of his preferences, his desire for Kwame Aniedo. Nothing shocking about that. Everyone does what he likes with his body. She herself swung both ways, as the popular saying goes. But let her show him how she could get him to like other things than boys. Thereupon she grabbed his shirt and unbuttoned it. It was this offhand manner, this way of hers of treating him like a sex object, that infuriated Hakim. He shoved her away brutally and hammered her breasts. They rolled over on the floor. As agile as an eel, she climbed on top of him and pressed her mouth against his. Disgusted, he felt sucked in by this dank cavern. He reversed the situation, nailed her under him, and in his rage, grabbed her by the neck as if he wanted to strangle her. His fingers got caught in her collaret, ripped it off, and threw it away. She uttered a shriek and clasped her hands to her throat while her eyes dimmed, like a dampened firebrand. He remained speechless, stunned by what he had uncovered.

A monstrous scar.

A purplish, rubberlike tourniquet, thick as a roll of flesh, repoussé, stitched and pockmarked, wound around her neck. It was as if her neck had been slashed on both sides, then patched up and the flesh pulled together by force, oozing lumps all the way around.

While Celanire’s eyes sprang back to life and glowed wickedly, Hakim ran for the door without further ado. The recreation yard was deserted, since the pupils were back in the refectory and the garden.

For the remainder of the day Hakim stayed holed up in his room. So the superstition was true. Celanire was a “horse,” and her mark was hidden on her neck. It was this extraordinary scar he had seen with his own two eyes. Consequently, he was to be the next victim: his death was foretold. Would he too be stung by a mysterious spider? Devoured by man-eating lions? How would it happen? How? He sweated and shook with fright all over. When night fell, he could not stand its darkness. He imagined the circle of trees around the house to be the lair of mysterious creatures. He could hear them hiss, murmur, and shriek. He ran to Njiri’s, where they served palm wine and akpetseshie smuggled in from the Gold Coast. But nothing could deaden memory and conscience like the white man’s liquor: gin, brandy, and absinthe.

The following morning he was stumbling out of bed in a daze when the widow Desrussie knocked on his door again. A third letter from Celanire. The woman certainly had no sense of shame; once more she apologized. Could he really be angry with her? Wasn’t he flattered that a woman desired him so violently? But that wasn’t the point of her letter. He had discovered her painful secret. Her slashed throat. She begged him to come so that she could explain. Hakim thought he smelled a rat. Celanire was cajoling him the better to smother him. He tore the letter up into a thousand pieces and did not trouble to reply.

From that day on he lived on borrowed time. The yelp of a dog, the howl of a monkey, or the scurry of a rat would make him jump. At night, the rustle of an insect or a bat beating its wings as it tangled in the straw of the roof made him go crazy. On the surface it was the same routine. Every morning he watched the same sun rise above the greenery of Bingerville. Three days out of five he climbed into the same outboard, made the rounds of the same suppliers of palm oil and kernels, and loaded his booty onto the same dugouts. The remainder of the week was spent in one of the warehouses where the oil was extracted and poured into casks to be shipped to Grand-Bassam. When he returned home of an evening, he had to help Kwame Aniedo as well as overcome his fatigue and his nagging sexual desire. Yet these routine gestures were transformed by the fear that had wormed its way inside him, that had crept into every corner of his being and tainted every second of his life. The young man who once mocked superstition now seriously considered consulting a fetish priest. After the death of their sworn enemy, the Father Templar, Diamagaram and the others had reoccupied Felix Koffi’s compound as if nothing had happened. They continued to work against the French but could not prevent the king from giving the Home more land. Celanire had turned it into an experimental garden where she intended planting coffee and cacao, those new plants of which the French had great expectations.

Hakim was convinced that nothing nor nobody could save him from Celanire.

And that’s why he took to drink.

And that’s why he became a regular at Njiri’s bar.

Only there did he feel safe. After having downed half a bottle of gin or absinthe, he began to reason with himself. How could he, a liberated young man, ex-philosophizer who had read the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, take at face value a load of superstitions good for ignoramuses? Okay, Celanire was a nutcase! Okay, she had the hots for him. But that was all. As for her scar, she was probably operated on for a goiter or some sort of hypertrophy of the thyroid.

After a few months his liking for alcohol had utterly consumed him. His regular evening visits to Njiri’s bar no longer satisfied him. He discovered a dive at Grand-Bassam, just steps from the sea, named the Fisherman’s Rendezvous. From early morning, mingling with the boozers of all sorts and chronic alcoholics, you could meet landlocked hunters of tuna, grouper, and whales who no longer set off to sea. Hakim liked the spot not because of its setting, which was somewhat sordid; not because of its alcohol, which was somewhat ordinary; but because of the conversation. The regulars never tired, in fact, of poking fun at the way the French spoke, dressed, and behaved. They would enumerate the girls who had lost their virginity to the district commissioners, the number of little boys abused by the priests. They ridiculed the orders of the governor, Thomas de Brabant, and the feats of the soldiers on campaign. And, what’s more, they could name the name of every senior civil servant, every high-ranking officer, who, before embarking at Grand-Bassam for his annual leave, stopped over at the Home, and could count up the number of nights he had spent there. According to them, two officers from Upper Senegal — Niger had almost renounced their career and become orderlies to the nurses at the Home. The Home was well and truly a bordello, and Celanire its madam. Once the treasure trove had been discovered, it would be like a volcano erupting. Just wait and see!

People noticed, however, that Hakim had changed. Those who worked under his orders were the first to smell his breath. The French merchants were horrified by his slurred voice and the mistakes in his syntax, which had once been so refined. His sudden change of look for the worse was a shock. He had never been a dandy, preferring a Muslim caftan and slippers to French-style jackets and boots. But he had always been washed, clean-shaven, and his hair oiled. At present his mop of hair was as thick and tangled as a fetish doll’s, and he bundled himself up in dubious-looking wrappers like an Ebrié laborer.

Kwame Aniedo was worried. The date of his examination was fast approaching. Alas, evening after evening, Hakim was too drunk to think about dictations, multiplication tables, and math calculations. All he could do was sigh and gaze longingly at his student with languishing eyes. He would stammer incoherently. On other occasions he cried like a child. Kwame Aniedo arrived at the conclusion therefore that someone wanted to harm Hakim. Out of respect for Hakim, who had made a “man of letters” out of him by teaching him his alphabet, he got into the habit of joining him at Njiri’s. Once alcohol had done its damage and Hakim was too far gone, he would prop him up to prevent him from collapsing into a heap and bring him home. There he would splash his face with water, then help him lie down on his straw mattress.

On that particular evening, many of the regulars could testify that Kwame Aniedo and Hakim had left the bar arm in arm well before ten. Hakim was sober and walking straight. A full moon was sailing in the sky. The buffalo frogs were croaking. Kwame Aniedo was counting on Hakim to teach him more about civics, which was his weak point. Instead of this, the schoolmaster started confiding in him. Once again Kwame Aniedo had to put up with hearing the old story of the great white colonial papa, the Tukolor princess maman, and the snubs Hakim had suffered as an illegitimate child. And yet, protested Hakim, the mixed bloods are the future of the world, which is in a state of miscegenation. Yes, multiculturalism would conquer all. Exasperated, Kwame Aniedo was about to withdraw to his room when Hakim started on a new chapter — the one about how he had been propositioned by Celanire. Kwame Aniedo couldn’t believe his ears. He had every reason to hate the oblate who had been the cause of the quarrel with his father. But no man normally equipped could reject such a creature. He plied Hakim with questions. What had he seen exactly?

“Go on, describe her dovelike breasts, the palace of her navel, the garden of her pubis, and the fountain of her delights. Did you drink your fill?”

Crimes between Africans arouse little interest. Genocide, pogroms, tribal warfare, ethnic cleansing — those people kill themselves and nobody says a word.

But this murder was an exception, for Hakim was of mixed blood, the illegitimate son of a distinguished colonial administrator who had served with distinction in Upper Senegal. The press had little trouble tracing the father: Robert Delafalaise, author of a remarkable anthropological study, the first of its kind in any case, Les Bambara de Ségou et du Kaarta. The incident was hotly debated. For those who opposed France’s colonial endeavors — and there were quite a few, to tell the truth — it was proof, one more, of the crimes committed by the “gods of the bush,” as the governors-general, governors, and district commissioners were called. When they were on a tour of inspection, they showed no respect for the local chiefs and demanded a droit du seigneur over the local beauties. If they got them pregnant, they would heartlessly pack their offspring off to a Home for Half-Castes. Hakim was a victim, nothing but a victim. For the defenders of colonization, however, this crime illustrated the dangers of crossbreeding, the savagery of those half-castes capable of exterminating both the African and the European race, if you didn’t watch out.

What exactly had happened that evening?

Only the mabouyat lizards clinging to the beams, the bats hanging upside down in the straw on the roof, and the toad squatting as usual on the threshold would, if they could talk, have been able to describe the approaching cortege of death. Kwame Aniedo had nothing to say, and for good reason. The dead are never asked to speak. Betti Bouah testified that after having reread a few pages of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, he had gone to bed early. Around midnight he had been woken by the noise of a violent quarrel. He was on the point of putting an end to the din when his third wife, who had just been importuned by a nightmare and was sharing his bed that very night, prevented him from doing so. There would be enough time in the morning to tell Hakim what he thought of him. He had therefore gone back to bed. Not for long. Half an hour later, the shriek of an animal having its throat slashed put the house in pandemonium. Terrified, the infants who were sleeping in their mother’s beds began to scream in unison. He had mustered four servants and, armed with a flintlock gun, had gone downstairs. The door to Hakim’s room was wide open. On the ground Kwame Aniedo was lying in a pool of blood, a Sheffield switchblade stuck in his belly. Stunned, Hakim was sitting on the bed, soaked in blood. Betti Bouah and the servants had grabbed him without meeting any resistance and called the militia.

After having rotted for two months in the jail at Grand-Bassam, Hakim was transferred to the prison in Dakar, where in a state of stupefaction he was unable to reason his defense. He merely repeated he was a harbinger of death. Mr. Rozier, the astute young attorney who had been requisitioned for the case, guessed his sexual orientation. Unable to get any information out of Hakim, he came to his own conclusion. Overexcited at the idea of Celanire’s nudity, Kwame Aniedo had probably got closer to Hakim and demanded a better description. Worked up by his proximity, his smell, and an excess of alcohol, Hakim had lost his head and hurled himself onto Kwame Aniedo. Horrified, the latter had drawn his Sheffield switchblade to ward off his advances. During the struggle Hakim had grabbed the knife and defended himself.

But given the date these events occurred — we are somewhere around 1903—Mr. Rozier did not dare pronounce the word homosexuality, as we would have done today. At that time homosexuality was considered a repulsive vice. He was afraid of alienating once and for all the jury composed of narrow-minded Frenchmen, minor civil servants, and tradesmen. He launched into a petty argument. Hakim was left-handed and would have been unable to deal such a blow. Everyone in Bingerville could vouch for the affection he had for Kwame Aniedo, who even called him “Papa.” On the fateful night fifty pairs of eyes had seen them leave Njiri’s bar the best of friends. The prosecution claimed a drunken brawl had broken out between the two. The prosecutor presumed. He was incapable of producing evidence, of showing why Hakim had suddenly turned on Kwame Aniedo and stabbed him over twenty times. That was the weak point in the case: the motive for the crime! It was more likely that one of those criminal types who thrived at Bingerville had followed the two men home, broken in, tried to rob them, and, surprised by Kwame Aniedo, had butchered him. This clumsy fabrication convinced nobody, and rightly so. Nevertheless, in spite of the inexperience of his defense attorney, Hakim would have been sentenced to only a few years in a colonial jail — the man he had killed, though an Akan crown prince, counted for little in the eyes of the colonial authorities — if Thomas de Brabant, governor of the Ivory Coast, had not intervened in person. He sent a confidential memo to his superior, the governor-general of French West Africa, informing him of the real personality of Jean Seydou, alias Hakim. In his classes at Bingerville he had denigrated France’s civilizing mission. He was a ringleader, a hot-head, a formidable agitator, a son worthy of El-Hadj Omar Saïdou Tall, his ancestor on his mother’s side. Those very words scared the life out of everyone. Our unfortunate hero got the maximum sentence and was banished to the penal colony in French Guiana.

7

Hakim could smell the sweet baked-bread scent of the ocean.

Straining his ears, he could even hear its commotion and, depending on the day, assess its humor — ever so gentle or ever so angry. But his eyes could not see it. The prison where he was kept was housed in the ruins of a fortified residence whose back faced the island of Gorée. Long ago slaves from all over Africa were stored there awaiting shipment to the little island offshore. The prison was a round chamber where three hundred men and women once stood chained by the neck to the wooden supports bolted to the ground. At present, the only inmates were a handful of poor wretches who had not paid their taxes or refused to carry out their corvée. At noon, three Sisters of Charity, who treated their dysentery and their fevers, brought them a dish of fish with rice. In the evening the old Serer warden waddled in on his crooked legs and served them soup. Hakim was given preferential treatment — salad, fruit, papayas, and mangoes. He was the only prisoner they had ever seen sentenced to hard labor in a penal colony, and they were impressed. He was waiting for his transfer to Serouane, a small town on the coast of Algeria, where he would embark on a ship that would take him halfway around the world to French Guiana. For months he had remained in a cell, twelve feet by twelve, up against the side of the main building. He relieved himself in a hole dug into the ground. His youth and curly hair broke the heart of the Sisters of Charity. They knew he was a Muslim, therefore damned in advance. Even so they could not help reciting dozens of rosaries, just in case — God is great — they could save his soul.

The only window in the cell looked out onto a wall. All day long, the sun used it like a palette to mix its colors. It began with a milky white, followed by a light yellow. Then a deeper yellow, which grew paler and paler, finally turning white again, unbearably white. His eyes were dazzled by the glare, hurt, and made him blink. The heat shimmered. And then the white began to fade. It took on every degree of blue, changed to violet, and turned an ever darker shade of gray. Finally turning to black. Jet black.

As long as there was daylight, Hakim stood in front of this window. He never tired of gazing at this wall, for him a symbol of his life. At age twenty-four his hopes had been dashed. A penal colony. What could it look like? Like a fortress. Surrounded by stone walls. Rather than think about it, however, he filled his head with all sorts of imaginings. Better not look into the past. Bamako. Bokar. Bingerville. Celanire. The Home. Kwame Aniedo. All that was over with. Gone were the rage and revolt that had racked him while he awaited his sentence. He had grown indifferent, like a lamb passively awaiting the slaughter at the feast of Tabaski. Mr. Rozier, who visited him regularly once a week, promised him a presidential pardon. He also told him that Guiana was a French territory in South America, situated between the Amazon and the Orinoco. This set Hakim dreaming. He imagined a dense, sempiternally green forest. Slow-moving, muddy rivers whose banks are eaten away by mangrove swamps. Dugout canoes loaded with naked, oily-haired Amerindians plying upstream. The men standing at the prow, armed with arrows whose heads are daubed with curare, a deadly poison. The women breast-feeding their babies, clinging to their sides like tadpoles. On their faces an expression of placid bliss. Setting foot on shore, they merged into the forest, heading for their huts in single file under the protection of the trees. At night, swaying in their hammocks, the men made love, preferably among themselves, sometimes with the women. Why had humanity shunned these mornings of the world? Why had predator nations wanted to discover other lands? And conquer and colonize them — in other words, destroy them?

As soon as night fell, Hakim’s thoughts took on a darker shade. In the icy darkness, however tightly he curled himself up, however much he called out to it in tears, sleep wanted nothing to do with him. He shivered with cold. His desperately sad life stretched out forever in front of him. A half-caste mockingly nicknamed Toubabou, “white boy,” growing up an outcast among other outcasts. Where was Bokar buried? He had never seen his grave. Mr. Philosophizer at Adjame-Santey, ridiculed by the Africans, held in contempt by the French. Then assistant to the merchant he had stupidly thought a friend. In reality Betti Bouah had always despised him because he wasn’t an Akan, he was merely a bastard without a race. Odd as it may seem, the only person who had taken any interest in him, had desired him, perhaps loved him, was Celanire. Pity he could not return the compliment. Unfortunately, you cannot force your nature. However much a prisoner he was, rotting in his dungeon, the very thought of what she expected of him made him feel sick.

One day two white men in pith helmets and khaki uniform, their faces cooked red like those exposed to the colonies, pushed open his cell door. They looked at him as if he were a heap of vermin, muffling their noses with a handkerchief against the stink that no longer bothered him. One of them unrolled a document and in a strong Corsican accent read him a series of orders. He retained just one thing. In one week he would embark on the Neptune for Serouane, where he would join the other convicts, all Arabs assembled together from every corner of North Africa. From Serouane the voyage to the transportation camp at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni in Guiana would take three months. When he had finished reading, the Corsican’s voice mellowed. He added that if Hakim renounced his political ideas and proved to be a model prisoner, he might be freed before the end of his sentence. In such an event he would be granted a piece of land. He could even take a wife and settle in Guiana. Other convicts before him had married and had sons.

Meanwhile at Bingerville events were working up to a crescendo.

Blacks and whites alike were still reeling from the shock of Kwame Aniedo’s murder and Hakim’s banishment. Most people were convinced the latter was innocent. The truth lay elsewhere. But where? That is the question! They would have liked to accuse Celanire. But for once she seemed as innocent as the Lamb of God. She had no known liaison either with Hakim or Kwame Aniedo and had no personal interest in their killing themselves. Some of the French, however, suspected Hakim of being a homosexual, since he had never been seen with a woman. But even the most malicious hid their thoughts like dirty washing at the bottom of a closet.

To everyone’s surprise, whereas Koffi Ndizi was thought to be an unnatural father, the death of his first son dealt him a fatal blow. One week after Kwame Aniedo had been laid to rest, a cold nailed the old man to his bed and snuffed him out like a candle before Queen Tadjo in her eagerness had time to prepare a concoction of zinblannan herb tea. His family preferred to forget he had converted to Christianity and gave him the funeral of an Akan king. Twenty slaves were sacrificed to serve him in the afterlife. Dozens of professional mourners filled the air with their wailing. During a week of feasting and drinking, gallons and gallons of palm wine flowed. Besides the slaves, the fetish priests slaughtered over a hundred oxen and as many sheep on the sacrificial stones, not forgetting the countless chickens plucked until every finger was worn out. The tradition of interrogating Koffi Ndizi’s corpse resulted in some strange happenings. Normally, when the question is asked who killed the dead man and a series of names are put forward, the porters carrying the corpse take three steps forward for a yes and three steps back for a no. But this time the interrogation caused such a free-for-all that two young people were crushed to death and half a dozen others were hurt. A few days after the funeral the wives and concubines whom Koffi Ndizi had repudiated returned to reoccupy their former quarters. Alas, not for long. The king had made a donation.

The affair had been conducted expertly by the illiterate king, oddly well informed of the mysteries of French law. One day he had gone to Grand-Bassam with two witnesses and in the presence of a notary had donated all his movable and immovable goods to the director of the Home, Mademoiselle Celanire Pinceau. Informed by Betti Bouah, the council of elders in its rage endeavored to prevent this act of madness. Alas, the deeds of donation were already stamped and signed. This was the beginning of a legal imbroglio that went through a dozen attorneys and reached an outcome only in 1963, three years after the independence of the Ivory Coast. The case came to be known as The Heirs of Felix Koffi Ndizi, King of Abila, versus Celanire Pinceau. In the meantime, Bingerville experienced the sorry sight of the queen mother, Queen Tadjo, and the ex-royal wives and concubines being thrown out manu militari by a rabble of tarbooshed soldiers. One melancholy morning a gang of Ebriés razed the compound to the ground as part of their corvée. In its place a magnificent sports stadium was built for the students at the Home. The inhabitants of Bingerville had hardly got over this affront to their late king when Tanella returned, free as a bird, after having waited for two years in Dakar for a court decision. She climbed out of a fishing canoe on the lagoon and, followed by a porter, his legs bowed from the weight of her heavy green trunk, walked through Bingerville in the direction of the Home. Those who saw her pass by were flabbergasted. When she had fled Koffi Ndizi’s compound after her deadly deed, she had been no more than a shy young girl with chubby cheeks. Now she had been transformed into a woman! At the prison in Dakar she had passed the native certificate of elementary studies. She had also learned to dress in the European fashion, and on that particular day she was flaunting a blue-patterned orange dress and a straw hat with a matching blue ribbon. But people had little time for their usual idle chatter as to who was the loveliest, Tanella or Celanire. It wasn’t long before they had far more serious matters to discuss. First of all one of the nurses recounted how Tanella and the oblate had become as intimate as husband and wife. Instead of entertaining the white guests of an evening at the dances organized at the Home, they made whoopee among themselves. They rubbed up against each other, dancing the habanera or the beguine, a dance from Guadeloupe. They drank champagne from the same glass until they were completely intoxicated. Once the visitors had left, they locked themselves in the same room. If Tanella was shy, Celanire was excessively bold. Even in public it was a never-ending serenade of “my pet” and “my little darling” and unequivocal caresses. Furthermore, Tanella had become Celanire’s right-hand woman. She supervised the workers in the palm groves, and the cooks in the refectory, and checked the accounts to such an extent that Madame Desrussie, whose place she had usurped, never stopped lamenting and took to absinthe. In the evening you could see her totter across the garden.

Another nurse was adamant that Celanire had the power to shed her body like a snake shedding its skin in the undergrowth. One night when the wind and the rain were making the shutters bang, the young girl had entered Celanire’s room unexpectedly and had seen a little heap of soft, shapeless flesh and skin in front of the wide-open window. Hiding behind a closet, she had watched as the young woman returned in the early hours of the morning. Her mouth smeared with blood, she had slipped back into her mortal coil and calmly returned to bed. No doubt about it, Celanire was under the spell of powerful aawabo.

Can one really believe such nonsense and malicious gossip?

One thing for certain was not a pack of lies; the Home entered six candidates, including four girls, for the native certificate of elementary studies in June. All passed, even the girls, and were immediately hired by the mission schools and the administration. As a recompense for her extraordinary results Thomas de Brabant was to award Celanire the medal for academic excellency, a large bronze medal attached to a purple ribbon. From two o’clock in the afternoon all that Bingerville could muster in the way of civil servants, merchants, missionaries, members of the royal family, cooks, nannies, tarbooshed guards, and militia had gathered on the lawns of the Home out of curiosity and were drinking barley water. People arrived on foot and in fishing canoes from Grand-Bassam and Assinie. In everyone’s view, the transformation of the Home in such a short time was pure witchcraft. How could the palms, the orchard, and the bamboo groves have grown so fast? How could the fruit trees be loaded with so much fruit in such a short time? Lemons as big as grapefruit! Mangoes that looked as though they had been grafted! Avocados as heavy as pears! All eyes were turned on Celanire and Tanella. At a quick glance they could have passed for twins. They were the same height, same weight, same velvety black-black skin. They were dressed identically except for the bouffant scarf of raw silk tied around Celanire’s neck. They wore the same Soir de Paris perfume, and their makeup and hairstyles were identical. Despite this resemblance, it was obvious that, between the two, Celanire was the leader and the brains while Tanella, in spite of her unusual, murderous act, simply followed her instructions. It was also obvious that Celanire was the less infatuated of the two. Tanella looked up to Celanire as if she were the holy of holies or the Eucharist, and Celanire was overjoyed to be the object of such boundless admiration.

The ceremony opened with the Home’s choir singing Vivaldi’s Gloria a cappella. Then the governor gave his speech and pinned the medal on the oblate’s breast, followed by the official embrace in the name of France. The pupils bellowed out “La Marseillaise.” There was a ripple of applause, and the celebrations began. The nurses, dressed in yellow-patterned blue wrappers, handed around petits fours, salted almonds, and Job cigarettes.

It was only once the sun began to bleed over the lagoon that the guests, stuffed to bursting, made up their minds to set off home. The inhabitants of Bingerville had scarcely finished grinding, chewing, and masticating the pittance of the memory of that lovely afternoon when two Ebriés, out fishing one night, hauled up the body of Madame Desrussie. They first thought a cayman, a sacred animal, had got tangled in their nets and were already thanking Heibonsha, the water god, for their miraculous catch, promising prosperity for many years to come, when they recognized the unfortunate widow. Her face had been beaten to a pulp. In fact they could only identify her officially from her dentition, a masterpiece fashioned by the colony’s only dentist, a soldier stationed at Assinie. This event caused quite a stir.

The widow was born Azilin Dossou. The Dossous, however, a well-known family in Adjame-Santey, had converted to Catholicism very early on, given two catechists to the mission, and changed the pagan name of their daughter to Rose. Rose, the jewel of the mission, had been one of the first to learn how to sew, read, and write. She had also been one of the first to enter the bed of a Frenchman. He had never taken the trouble to “regularize” her situation, even though everyone called her Madame Desrussie. Yet there was scarcely time to wonder whether it had been a suicide or an accidental drowning before another event followed almost immediately afterward that fired people’s imagination. They learned that Thomas de Brabant was to slip a wedding ring on Celanire Pinceau’s finger. Notified by his services, the governor-general of French West Africa cabled the Ministry for the Colonies in Paris. At that time, marital union between colonial civil servants and “native” women was frankly never heard of. What complicated matters was that Celanire was not a “native.” She was a French citizen from Guadeloupe who spoke French French and rendered remarkable services to her metropole in its civilizing mission. Moreover, she took good care of the unfortunate widowed governor’s child. After much debating, the ministry cabled its approval to the governor-general. In Bingerville itself, public opinion was divided: some of the French demanded the “nigger-loving” governor be replaced. Because of the controversy, Thomas’s wedding took place in the strictest privacy. Two witnesses: Tanella and Cyrille Sérignac de Pompigny, his right-hand man, an energetic recruiting agent for the new wharfs in Grand-Bassam. A carefully handpicked congregation: four or five district commissioners from the vicinity, all respectably married with their wives. These ladies of noble birth, more often or not with a title, eyed Celanire scornfully, this negress who was marrying their husbands’ hierarchical superior and consequently was going to have precedence over them. It was not only her color that infuriated them, but her impudent freshness. Whereas they wilted and yellowed from the heat, the humidity, the fevers and biliousness, she positively glowed. On her wedding day Celanire ignored the tradition of a white bridal gown and dressed all in pink, a pink as pale as cherry blossom during springtime in Osaka. She replaced the traditional bridal veil with a hat veil. Around her neck she wore a wide moiré silk ribbon fastened by a cameo. She looked at Thomas and Tanella in turn as if to say they must love each other as she loved them. In the great drawing room of the governor’s palace the servants uncorked bottles of champagne that kindled few bubbles, and Cyrille Sérignac de Pompigny proposed a toast to the happiness of the newlyweds.

The real festivities, however, took place at the Home. After a festive dinner — including Celanire’s homemade coconut sorbet — the pupils went up to their dormitories. The nurses then slipped out of their uniforms and got themselves up as they saw fit. Well, almost. No European-style dresses, since Celanire had very set ideas on the matter. In her opinion, an African woman who dresses in the European fashion is like a dish without condiments. Then a gang of Ebriés on their corvée hung resin flares from the trees, and the night turned as bright as daylight. Muslim houseboys busied themselves roasting meat and grilling kebabs and legs of lamb. Cooks prepared fresh and saltwater fish, pepper and groundnut stew, and pounded mountains of yams and plantains. For once Christians and pagans alike had a whale of a time until four in the morning.

Ludivine did not attend her papa’s second wedding. Just before lights-out, Thomas and Celanire walked into the dormitory, holding hands. Celanire had pushed back her veil, and her eyes gleamed like carbuncles. They sat down beside her bed and informed her of her good fortune. She was going to leave the Home and come and live with them. She was no longer an orphan in this world: she had a new maman.

“I did it for you as well,” Thomas kept repeating. “I did it for you.”

8

People in Bingerville still remember Celanire after so many years as a kaleidoscope of negative facets, whereas as a rule time tends to soften any bitterness. For them there was no doubt she was the “horse” of an evil spirit who had brought nothing but death, mourning, and desolation. Paradoxically, they also judge her as someone who should have been bound by the rules of society. Men think of her as a dangerous feminist. Yet what exactly do they mean by this word, which has so many significations? They cannot forgive her stand against excision. They swear she made the women rebellious, demanding, and disrespectful of the male species. They are particularly outspoken about the center she created for sheltering women who wanted nothing more to do with suitors or husbands. But despite its grand-sounding name, the Refuge of the Good Shepherd, a rickety wattle hut under a straw roof, the center never filled its function. One year it sheltered a group of wives arbitrarily repudiated by their husbands. Another year, a group of battered women. Around 1905 the mission turned it into a native dispensary. Some men go even further and claim that Celanire was a corrupting influence. They expatiate on what went on at the Home but have nothing to prove it. The African woman, they say, must be the eternal keeper of traditions. If she prostitutes herself, society is shaken to its foundations. But was it really a question of prostitution? It seems that the nurses received gifts in exchange for the favors they freely consented to their partners. Some of the French clients were extremely generous. Captain Emile Dubertin, for instance, left his entire estate to Akissi Eboni, who bore him a son. She made the journey to Nantes to receive her inheritance and was very well treated by the Dubertin family, who kept the child. Generally speaking, the generosity of the colonial civil servants allowed the ex-nurses to live the rest of their lives free from financial worries. Relatively well off, therefore, knowing how to read and write, they married into good families and helped form a genuine aristocracy in the country. As for the orphans, they made up the first contingent of teachers in the Ivory Coast. Some of them dabbled in politics and sat on the benches of the National Assembly in Paris.

Above all, nobody would admit that Celanire gave the town a certain character that it has lost only recently in the name of development. Besides the Home for Half-Castes, she transformed the sumptuous Governor’s Palace, which was a constant reminder of Charlotte’s death. A mournful and morose building, it had become a warehouse for storing pell-mell the packages of medicines, books for the mission school, and spare parts shipped from France for the factories. Thomas only occupied a small part of it: four rooms on the second floor — a study, a real shambles, a bedroom, unfurnished except for a deathly pale bed under its mosquito net, and a washroom where, among the pitchers and basins, all sorts of creepy-crawlies reveled in the humidity. The houseboys regularly killed snakes there of the most dangerous sort, those they called “masters of the bush.” The only attractive feature was a small living room, pleasantly furnished, where he would read at night.

With Celanire, all that changed.

Like Betti Bouah, she sent for Apollonians from the Gold Coast. Under her direction they worked for months, standing in the pale light of dawn and lying down in the black of midnight. She had no intention of imitating the style of the Home, and consequently, Bingerville could boast of two architectural treasures, each a source of pride in its own way. She had balconies suspended on the north facade of the palace, where the arabesques of their wrought-iron balustrades relieved the hardness of the stone. She also installed French windows to let in the light and the air, and extended the south facade with a terrace overlooking a garden that she stocked with monkeys and all types of birds — commonly found birds such as hyacinth macaws, brightly colored parakeets, large-billed toucans, budgerigars, and other chatter-boxes, as well as rarer species like those American yellow-tailed parrots called Amazonas. Clusters of kikiris hung on the branches of the azobé and ebony trees, while red ibis transplanted from the mudflats of the Aby lagoon waded through the grass on their long, melancholic legs. The roof of the palace was another open-air terrace where three hundred people could listen to music in the dry season. Once it had been restored, the palace was boldly painted ocher and pistachio green.

The interior was as sumptuous as the exterior. Two Fridays a month Celanire invited her husband’s compatriots to dinner and led her guests on a guided tour of the apartments. Even today, despite all the waste and excessive logging, the Ivory Coast is not lacking in wood. So with the help of the books of her “beloved little papa,” as she never failed to call him, Celanire initiated the Apollonians in the techniques of the furniture makers from Guadeloupe. They reproduced buffets à deux corps, arbalète commodes, spider consoles, recamier-style sofas, four-poster beds, and rocking chairs. Standing in front of the planter armchairs, she would explain that the arms pivoted into extensions so that the person seated could rest his legs in a horizontal position while sipping a rum punch, the traditional drink in Caribbean climes.

Finally Celanire turned Bingerville into an artistic capital. The highlight of the palace was its museum. It first took up a living room, then two, then the entire ground floor, and became the first “ethnographic museum” in Black Africa, far superior to the IFAN museum in Dakar. It is still a major attraction today. Its aim was to prove not only to the orphans at the Home but also to all those doubting Thomases that Africa has a culture of its own. The collection included Dan, Wobè, Gouro, Yaouré, and Baoulé masks, but especially masks from the Guéré people, masters of the art. The finest pieces in the museum were a series of nine Guéré masks: one singer’s mask, two warriors’ masks, two dancers’ masks, a mask for wisdom, a mask for running, a fool’s mask, and a griot’s mask. Celanire threw herself passionately into her treasure hunt. She had no qualms soliciting the chiefs and elders or mingling with secret societies and initiation ceremonies. This deeply shocked the Africans, who complained she was looting their sacred heritage. It would bring her misfortune. Women are not allowed to look at masks, let alone lay hands on them. Consequently, she would never give birth, neither to a son nor a daughter.

In actual fact the Africans could never forgive Celanire for marrying because she no longer had time to look after the Home and left Tanella in charge. For them, Tanella deserved to be stoned with a hail of rocks after murdering Mawourou and to rot without a grave on the land she had insulted. Her acquittal was scandalous. It was true Tanella did not have Celanire’s iron hand, capable of bringing to heel a troop of rebels. Under her management the Home foundered. Guinea grass overran the lawn. The papilios died in the aviaries. The nurses no longer wore white uniforms. The students’ success rate dropped to nil. Discipline became lax, as did hygiene. Epidemics returned at an alarming rate. One serious incident alerted the French authorities. An officer on leave from Upper Volta, Jean de Brezillac, stabbed a colleague, Melchior Marie-Marion. According to him, Melchior had stolen his “fiancée,” Akwasi, a nurse at the Home for Half-Castes, to whom he had given a gold ring. The latter denied everything. An inquiry was opened. But the inspector, housed at the Governor’s Palace, fell under the spell of Celanire. Consequently, his report boiled down to a panegyric of the “lovely Creole,” Madame de Brabant, and matters remained that way right up to Celanire and Thomas’s departure for Guadeloupe a few months later. This departure stunned blacks and whites alike. It was true Celanire never stopped talking about her childhood island to anyone she met. She liked to repeat that she kept the memory of it in her heart like a candle burning in front of the high altar, for a country, just like a mother, cannot be forgotten. She confided in close friends that she had a sacred duty to carry out: find her parents, especially her real mother. Yes, her birth had been darkened and marred by tragic events. That beloved little papa she spoke of so often was not her real father, even if their feelings for each other had been unparalleled. Despite all that, watching her bustling with activity in Bingerville, you wouldn’t be alone in thinking that Africa had replaced her island home in her heart and she would have trouble leaving. And yet she left.

One morning in February, a host of porters swarmed into the palace gardens. The strongest loaded onto their backs Celanire’s fourteen trunks. The others grabbed Thomas’s trophies — elephant tusks, a stuffed lion he claimed to have shot during a hunt, and miles of boa constrictor skin. The nurses had come down from the Home and were comforting Tanella, who seemed on the point of giving up the ghost. Celanire bade her an emotional farewell before setting off for the Ebrié lagoon. However, once she was seated in the fishing canoe under a canopy of woven palm fronds, she seemed to forget those she was leaving behind. She perked up as if the life she had just led no longer mattered. Ludivine, watching her, was shocked by so much insensitivity. Her own heart was grief-stricken. To what unknown destiny were they taking her? She already regretted the end of an era. She knew that the older she got, the more nostalgic she would feel for her childhood and Bingerville, and in spite of herself she would portray the Home as a lost paradise. She would forget its charged atmosphere, loaded with mystery. She would forget the way the nurses took good care of their boarders during the day and then the way everything changed from six in the evening onward. The way the children were hurried up from the refectory to the dormitory. As soon as the last Hail Mary was recited, the nurses locked the doors and vanished. The glow of a large lamp was scarcely reassuring, for once it had drunk its oil it generally went out before midnight, which plunged the room into darkness and a host of eerie shadows. The tots who couldn’t get to sleep thought they heard the hullabaloo of music, noisy conversation, and shouts of laughter.

In early August a new governor arrived in Bingerville, as well as an officer who took over the management of the Home. Without further ado, he removed Tanella and dismissed the nurses. He kept only the cooks, matronly Ebriés and sturdy mothers who would not appeal to anyone. He restored order to the curriculum. For the boys, arithmetic and grammar; for the girls, cutting and sewing. We have to admit, we shall never know what really went on at the Home for Half-Castes. This splendid edifice, which appears in the book on colonial architecture by Frédéric Grogruhé, keeps its secret closely guarded. Closed down for many years when it almost collapsed into ruin, it was later entirely restored and became the Orphanage of the Ivory Coast.

As for Tanella, her life dragged on in sadness and came to an even sadder end. As she was one of the few “women of letters” of her time — let us not forget, this was the term for those who could read and write in the white man’s language — she was hired as a schoolmistress for the mission. This unusual status aroused the lust of Chief Bogui Yesso from the region of Abreby, who hastened to make her one of his wives. But he married her merely for the sake of adding a woman of letters to his harem. During the first year he paraded her around like an expensive piece of jewelry. Then he abandoned her in one of the huts of the women’s compound and neglected her to such an extent that she turned to Catholicism and became deeply religious. Catholicism in fact had spread like wildfire along the Alladian shores. It was conversion upon conversion, christening upon christening. The catechists were too many to be counted. Churches sprang up like mushrooms. At first modest buildings made of bamboo, they were now built of prefabricated materials shipped from France. Tanella, christened Marie-Pierre, died giving birth to her third daughter, for she could only produce babies of the vagina variety. In fact, she had stopped living many years before that — once Celanire had left her.

The day before Tanella’s death — when she was already in her death throes — a dog such as had never been seen before in Abreby, a black hound with gleaming jaws, as tall as a heifer, as muscular as a bull, appeared in the compound. It lay down in front of the dying woman’s hut and uttered the most frightful yelps, groans, and whines. Africans have no particular liking for dogs, that’s a fact, and this one received a hail of mortars and a volley of machetes. Yet nothing would make it budge. If it retreated a few feet, it was only to return to the attack a little later and reconquer lost ground. During the wake ceremony, the commotion it made almost outdid the wails of the professional mourners. It kept watch during the church ceremony. It followed the cortege to the cemetery and stretched out on the black-and-

white-tiled grave that Bogui Yesso, still enamored with prestige, had built for his family. It only vanished at nightfall as suddenly as it had arrived, and nobody ever saw it again.

The Alladian fetish priests concluded it must have been the messenger of a spirit — a spirit far away who was lamenting the death of Tanella.

The inhabitants of Bingerville have nothing good to say about Thomas de Brabant either. He is not credited with any accomplishment. What surprised everyone was that once he was married, he lost interest in everything, he who was so authoritarian, meddled in everything, laid down the law, pontificated and exasperated Africans and Europeans alike. He lost interest in the roads, the bridges, the wharfs, and the railroad. He let his wife wear the pants, as the rather vulgar saying goes. He only stopped by his office long enough to absentmindedly sign the papers his secretary presented to him. At the same time his appearance changed. The former dandy now dressed any old how. His skin grew flabby; he lost the thick black hair he had liked to oil and became potbellied. In short, from a dashing man of authority he turned into a fat stick-in-the-mud.

They discovered the key to this transformation when they found out he was imitating another Thomas, Thomas de Quincey, whose book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater Celanire had given him for his thirtieth birthday. Like him, he was drinking laudanum. Under the pretext of treating a toothache, he had vialsful shipped from Grand-Bassam.

Morning, noon, and night he gorged himself on this lovely, amaranthine tincture.