Memoirs of a Porcupine

by Alain Mabanckou

  there are some victims I’ve forgotten completely, dear Baobab, but that’s because I carried out those missions during my period of apprenticeship, they were all so similar that I may well have got them muddled while trying to fill you in on what seem to me the most important facts about my career as a double to date, leading up to last Friday’s mission, the most dangerous of all

  I can still see that family now, they were new in Séképembé, I can still see the two kids running around shouting, they seemed to be everywhere at once, that should have aroused my suspicions, I had wanted to warn my master, but he’d already decided, his plan was in place, he wouldn’t put up with the cheek of these kids, he muttered nasty things about them, he was really just looking for an alibi, a reason to pick a fight with them, but things didn’t work out like that, as it happened

  my master was obsessed with thirst for mayamvumbi, and by his other self’s inexhaustible appetite, and as a result he had ignored certain basic prohibitions usually observed by those in possession of a harmful double, for example never attack twins, but he had started acting with a casualness which took my breath away, I was the cautious one now, he was convinced that by ignoring the prohibitions he would make it to the top, as though he was aiming to beat his father’s record, which is why he’d been all edgy ever since the Moundjoula family came to live in Séképembé, and it’s true that around the time the Moundjoulas arrived, the father of the family made a show of his pride, dragging the children around the streets as though to show off his great good fortune as father of twins to all the villagers, ignoring those residents who claimed the two children had done all sorts of damage in their fields, Kibandi scarcely knew the family, the village chief had been pleased to introduce the newcomers to the rest of the village, he had walked down the main street, stopping at every hut saying, ‘Papa Moundjoula is a sculptor, his wife is a housewife and looks after the twins, two charming children,’ they lived at the far end of the village, and became each day more and more integrated, so that it soon felt as though they had always lived there

  I met these two enfants terribles in rather dreadful circumstances, they are the kind of twins who have no distinguishing features, so that even the keenest observer would have found it impossible to tell them apart, their father and mother called them both Koté or Koty, since you only had to call one of them and they’d both turn round, but deep down Papa and Mama Moundjoula always rather enjoyed confusing everyone in the village, while in fact they did secretly have a means of telling them apart, they had decided to circumcise only one of the two children, it was said in the village that the older child was circumcised, the younger one not, and whenever Papa and Mama Moundjoula get in a muddle they just take the children’s clothes off to see which of them came into the world first, I swear the two of them can scarcely be more than ten or eleven years old, they are completely inseparable, they blink, scratch, cough, fart, hurt themselves, cry or fall ill at exactly the same moment, two identical entities who sleep with their arms wrapped round each other till morning light, have the same way of sitting down, with their legs crossed, and, as though to confuse things even further, the parents dress them in identical clothing, trousers with blue braces, beige cotton shirts, they each have a head the size of a brick, kept shaved by Papa and Mama Moundjoula, they are not a pretty sight, you can imagine, with their staring eyes, they don’t mix much with the other children, they go running wild through the village, they like to play near the cemetery, in a huge field of lantanas, they move all the crosses around, turn them upside down, they play hide and seek, hunt down butterflies, frighten the crows, give the sparrows a hard time with their dreaded catapults, they’re uncontrollable, they always pop up where you don’t expect them, the first time I came across Koty and Koté my quills were erect, by way of warning, the twins wanted to use me to play with the moment they saw me moving about in the field of lantanas, in fact I had just come from my hide-out, and was having a rest on Mama Kibandi’s grave, I was about to go and have a wander about behind my master’s old workshop, and perhaps read for a bit without straying far from Kibandi’s hut, just in case he needed me, and the two kids heard me rustling about in the leaves, they turned round, one of them pointed to me, ‘a porcupine, a porcupine, let’s catch him’, the other kid started to load his catapult, and bless my quills, I flung myself into an about turn, while their missiles landed a few metres away, I wondered where on earth they could have come from, these two rascals with rectangular heads, at one moment I decided they must be little ghosts whose parents, down in their graves, had given permission to go and play outside, as long as they were back before sunset, but the pair of good-for-nothings decided to follow me, I heard them brushing the lantanas aside, whooping for joy, laughing like two dwarves at a fair, one of them ordered the other to go to the right, while he stayed on the left, so they could jump out at me a few hundred metres further, they didn’t realise I understand human language, and could foil their plan, I curled up in a ball and began to roll at top speed, I landed in a pile of dead bracken, in front of me I saw a thicket of thorns, I plunged into it without a backward glance, and arrived at last in a clearing overlooking the river, without thinking I plunged into the water, which is quite shallow there, I was panting desperately, I reached the opposite bank, I shook my quills, but I was trembling more with fear than cold, the village came into view, I could hear nothing behind me, I therefore concluded that the kids must have turned back, I wasn’t certain they lived in Séképembé, but several days after this episode, when I saw them crossing the main street with their father, I recognise their rectangular shaped heads, and their matching clothing

  last Tuesday, early in the afternoon, Koty and Koté escaped from their parents again and came past my master’s hut as he sat in front of his door reading an esoteric book, the twins had been popping up like this for a while now, they’d stand opposite his house, on the exact spot where my master had seen the strange flock of sheep on the day Mama Kibandi died, and the two children seemed to be spying on him, imitating the bleat of an old sheep having its throat slit, they sniggered, then vanished, this really wound my master up, he was sure the two children had been sent by their parents to annoy him, and when he finally got up to go and talk to them, tell them they owed him some respect, the kids scarpered, then came back again the next day and took up their post on the same spot, imitating the old sheep again, I could see my master was growing uneasy, asking himself questions, these two children had some message for him, they knew something about us, so that Tuesday afternoon Koty and Koté took up their position as usual opposite my master’s hut, my master tried smiling at them, the two little urchins didn’t smile back, ‘what do you want then’, Kibandi said, at last, one of the little Moundjoulas answered ‘you’re a bad man, that’s why you don’t like children’ and my master, somewhat taken aback at this, answered ‘you little rascals, you know nothing, why are you calling me a bad man, you’d better watch out or I’ll tell your father’, and the other kid added, ‘you’re a bad man because you eat children, we know you ate a baby, he told us when we were playing in the cemetery, and he’ll tell us the same thing again tonight’, my master snapped his book shut, his anger got the better of him, he jumped up, crying, ‘band of vermin, birds of ill-omen, little lice, I’ll teach you to respect your elders’, he was about to run after the twins, when one of them shouted, ‘and that baby you ate, he told us to tell you he’s watching you, he’s coming to see you, it’s your fault he’s stopped growing’, and the two brats ran off, Kibandi saw them vanish over the horizon, he decided that whatever happened, he must go and see the parents of these little creatures

  my master went to see the Moundjoula family that same Tuesday, in the late afternoon, the father was carving a hideous-looking mask, the mother was preparing a dish of manioc leaves with plantains, the couple were surprised to see him because he’d never set foot in their compound before, the father immediately put down his work, hastily offered their visitor a raff
ia chair, the mother waved him welcome from a distance, perhaps Kibandi would like to drink some palm-wine, he said no, even if it was mwengué, the mother brought him some cold water in a gourd and then left the two men to talk between themselves, my master tried to peer inside the house in the hope of spotting the two children, they weren’t there, perhaps down in the cemetery, in the lantana field, after a few more general comments on the Moundjoulas’ roof frame, which, in his opinion, was badly constructed, Kibandi explained the purpose of his visit, coming straight to the point, ‘your twins have been disturbing me for the past two weeks, they came and bothered me again earlier this afternoon’, Papa Moundjoula paused for a moment, then replied, ‘I know, I know, they’re a pair of little pests, I’ll talk to them, they’re always wandering about, you’re not the first to complain, but you know how it is, at their age, they don’t understand the consequences of their actions’, then my master explained that the two kids had said he was a bad man, they didn’t even say hello to him in the street, they had said things to him which he chose not to repeat out of respect for their parents, Papa Moundjoula looked at Kibandi, and you could see in his eyes, that as a father he felt sorry for him, he probably imagined the children had been teasing my master for being thin, they must have found it so strange that they hadn’t tried to hide their real feelings, and just as Papa Moundjoula was asking Kibandi what it was the two children had said about him, Koty and Koté arrived with their clothes covered in dust, they threw only a cursory glance at their father and his visitor and went rushing over to their mother shouting that they were hungry, the pot was still on the fire, and the mother said ‘that will teach you not to go running around the village all day long, your food isn’t ready’, Papa Moundjoula called them to him with an authoritative air, ‘Koty, Koté, come and say you’re sorry to Uncle Kibandi, right away, he’s not a bad man, I don’t want you being disrespectful to your elders’, the two kids reluctantly came over, and the father said to the first one, ‘you shake his hand, he’s your uncle, all the grown-ups in this village are your uncles, you must respect Uncle Kibandi like you respect me, he has the right to spank you if you’re rude again’, Kibandi held out his dry, skeletal hand to Koty, or maybe Koté, who looked at it with distrust and suspicion, then held out his own, the child looked Kibandi straight in the eye, there was a kind of silence, then suddenly his face transformed, growing smoother, younger, the big, bare head was covered with soft hair, grew rounder, my master felt a kind of electric shock run through his body, he saw the head of the infant Youla in place of that of the twin who was shaking his hand ‘don’t look at grownups like that’ Papa Moundjoula said, and as he shook the hand of the other twin my master had the same vision, again the head of the baby we’d eaten, he quickly dropped his gaze, Papa Moundjoula hadn’t noticed anything, the kids apologised to my master, but were careful to add, with a touch of irony, ‘see you soon Uncle Kibandi, we’ll come and see you Friday’, and again with irony, they chorused, ‘have a good evening Uncle Kibandi’ and Papa Moundjoula breathed a sigh of satisfaction at his twins’ behaviour, ‘you’ll see, they’re extraordinary kids, very likeable, once you connect with them, they’ll be coming to play with you every day in your yard’, but Kibandi was lost in thought, fixed on the image of baby Youla’s head, he didn’t dare look at the twins, he knew now that he was going to have to see to these two, they seemed to be the only people who knew about our nocturnal activities, and so he declined the Moundjoulas’ offer of dinner, saying he had some urgent work to see to, which needed to be done before nightfall, and he left, without looking back, talking to himself as he went, he almost tripped over a stone, he sat drinking mayamvumbi all night long, I heard him cackling to himself in a way he didn’t usually, repeating over and over the name of the baby we’d eaten, his laughter was a façade, I discovered for the first time that my master too could be frightened out of his wits

  after the Tuesday when my master went to complain to Papa Moundjoula, his life was one little mishap after another, and on the evening of that same day, around the stroke of midnight, he heard a baby crying behind his workshop, he heard children sniggering, the sound of frantic footsteps, and things diving into the river, he heard flying beasts settling on his roof, it was impossible to sleep, he lay watching and waiting till dawn, then the following morning decided that enough was enough, and for the first time, to my great surprise, he summoned me in broad daylight, I realised then he had lost it, no initiate ever summoned his harmful double in broad daylight to brief him for a mission, but I couldn’t disobey him, so I left my hiding place, I had lost that spring in my step that I had back in the days when things were working out as we’d planned, this was an emergency, till now we had attacked living people, we had never confronted the shades of night, no one we had ever eaten had come back to settle with us, and when I got to Kibandi’s house I pushed the door open with my paw, and stood there in the entrance, imagine my surprise, I saw a man distraught, a man who had spent the entire night drinking mayamvumbi, his face haggard, as though he had not slept for two or three moons, there was fear in his eyes, he told me to enter, looked at me, murmured words I couldn’t catch, I said to myself we must be going to leave the village of Séképembé, and accept the fate of his family, which was to roam forever, in search of a new place to live, but instead he spoke to me of the twins, he was obsessed with them, he said the two kids were more powerful than he had realised, that we must see to them by Friday at the latest, that he did not wish me to return to the forest before this mission, which meant more to him than all the ninety-nine others before, and so I spent the day in a dark corner of his hut while he lay lifeless on his mat, the twins didn’t return to disturb my master while I was there that night, but the calm was deceptive, on Friday, around the stroke of ten in the evening, while we were getting ready to make our way towards the Moundjoulas’ lot, my master and I were startled by the sound of night birds scrabbling on the roof of the hut, a violent wind blew the door of his hut to bits, my master’s former workshop flew apart, we were blinded by a flash of light, as though day was breaking in the middle of the night, and in the yard we saw baby Youla, the one we’d eaten, he seemed to be in fine shape, he was pointing at us, and with him were his two bodyguards, the twins Koty and Koté, they had captured my master’s other self, it was painful to watch, it was as though Kibandi’s other self had not even the strength of a scarecrow planted in a corn field, he was passive, like a puppet, a clown, a marionette stuffed with cotton, rags, sponge, and the two rascals were tossing him about as their fancy took them, rolling him in the dust, trying to stand him upright, my master’s other self’s legs would not hold, his head flopped down onto his chest and his arms dangled down by his legs, the kids were sniggering, Kibandi barked an order at me, ‘ go on, throw, throw your quills, damn you’, but alas, my spikes would not move, I was petrified by what I saw, and then the twins let my master’s other self fall to the ground, they came towards us, they came level with baby Youla, they looked quite different, transformed, as though they were not the same little fellows who had chased me at the cemetery, Kibandi stepped backwards, we quickly retreated into the hut, we heard them coming like a herd of a thousand cattle, the earth shuddered beneath their feet, and the walls of the hut trembled, in they came, I had curled myself up small in a corner, Kibandi had run into his bedroom, I saw him come back out with a spear in his hand, the twins and the baby doubled up laughing, pointing at his weapon, my master took up his stance and tried to throw the spear, his hands were heavy, so heavy that the weapon fell at his feet, one of the twins leapt towards him, the other seized his right foot, they pulled together, while baby Youla sniggered just outside the door, and I saw Kibandi collapse on the ground like an old tree felled with a single blow, I don’t know what the little furies did to him after that because I closed my eyes I was so frightened, I heard a sort of report, like a gun firing, and yet there was no firearm in my master’s hut, and the twins carried none either, I was trembling lik
e a fool, the blinding light which had appeared when they arrived disappeared as though by magic, night fell upon us as baby Youla raised his left hand to the sky, as though he could command all nature, from my hiding place I could see his firmly planted little legs, and as he turned his burning gaze in my direction I realised he had flushed me out, that I would not be spared, his eyes bored deeper and deeper into me, he seemed to be saying that I too was finished, just like my master, who lay by the door, I began to panic, then to my surprise, the baby looked away, I thought maybe he didn’t want to attack me himself, that he was going to order the twins to deal me the same punishment as my master, but no, all he did was look back at me, nod at me, asking me to flee, I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t hang about though, I scuttled off discreetly, I was crossing my master’s bedroom when I heard a long gasp, his final breath, it was his last minute on this earth, and I went on running out into the night like a fugitive