‘Unbelievable!’ someone exclaimed.
‘Are you sure you weren’t mistaken?’ asked someone else.
‘I’m going to repeat the story, so there can be no room for doubt. The girl came to my door, but I didn’t want her visiting me, so I sent her away, back to her own house. She turned the corner and, from inside the house, I looked out to check she’d gone – I didn’t go outside, take her by the hand and lead her away, no. But exactly where that little girl should have been, there was an old woman instead, an old woman with a headscarf covering her hair. This happened not once, but twice, and I don’t smoke or drink, I know what I saw: a little girl came to the door, ta tata, but when she turned her back and thought I wasn’t looking, she turned into an old lady, and she walked calmly away, so that anyone watching would have thought she’d just been to visit me.’
‘Let me sit up in order to hear you better, brother. The girl turned into an old lady, a total stranger. She didn’t say anything to you, no?’
‘She didn’t see me, she didn’t know I was watching, I doubt she ever knew I’d discovered her secret. Once I’d assured myself that my eyes weren’t failing me and that I hadn’t got mad, I decided to leave the quata and in fact leave the country. That’s why I’m here, so far away from home.’
‘Brother Peter,’ said the man who’d sat up to hear better, ‘Where to start? I don’t think anyone here can say what you did or didn’t see, but your story does raise a number of questions. You’re saying that on the way back to her own house the old lady turned back into a little girl again and carried on with her ta tata, no? Now was her house close to yours? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.’
‘Look, brothers, I’ve told you the story as I experienced it. You may have your doubts, and every man is free to think whatever he likes, but it’s not right to call me a liar.’
‘No one’s actually calling you a liar,’ said another resident who’d also sat up to better digest the story. ‘That girl, tata tata, ta, came to your door, but you didn’t want her to come in. Off you go, there are no toys here, go on, on your way, I don’t want you pissing yourself on my doorstep. So you sent her on her way and you immediately went back inside your house. Now, she was just a little girl, so she obeyed you and she went away, but because you were afraid of her, or because you didn’t want the responsibility of having a little girl in your house or on your property, you followed her with your eyes, whereupon she actually turned into an old woman, only to then turn back into a little girl. So what we need to know is whether there was an old woman who looked like that who lived in the little girl’s house. Did you recognise the old woman or was she a total stranger? Because what this actually boils down to, brother, is the distance between your house and the girl’s house.’
‘I don’t want to say much more about it, and anyway, I’ve never thought the distance between the girl’s house and my house was of any importance.’
‘Know what, brother? I believe you,’ said another resident, ‘I believe your story, I don’t know why, but I do.’
By now several residents had sat up and they all had something to say.
‘Me, I’m the curious type, if such a thing happened to me, I’d follow that girl until I saw exactly how she transformed herself and how she converted back to normal.’
‘You have spoken well, but remember, it’s not actually your story,’ said the man who thought it boiled down to a matter of distance. ‘Do you think the same thing could have happened to Peter Ngambo? He probably lived in a district where newspapers came to the door every day and neighbours discussed the latest goings-on over cups of tea. Anyone wanting to turn themselves into a little girl there would have had to do so in front of everyone, or else gone to the bathroom so that no one could see.’
‘Don’t change the story, oh. It was a little girl who turned into an old lady, not the other way round.’
‘But that’s my point. Our brother has been looking at this the wrong way round: he actually should have begun by thinking of a woman who lived nearby who might have wanted to visit him. I say this because in my experience it’s easier for a woman to turn into a little girl than for a little girl to turn into a woman.’
‘Ah, this one will solve the mystery of the chicken and the egg next!’
‘It’s no joke. If we go on considering the story as being about a little girl, we’ll never get to the bottom of it. I just don’t actually think a little girl would have the expertise to perform such a wondrous feat. An adult woman on the other hand, well that’s a different matter. But brother – what did you say your name was?’
‘Darb.’
‘You see? Darb is a great name for a story like this. Anyway, what I was saying was that brother Darb had his own issues to deal with, he couldn’t actually just drop everything and follow a person just because they turned into a little girl and then back into an old woman again. Besides, in the moment between brother Darb seeing her turn into a woman and him getting out the door to unravel the mystery, she’d have had time to turn herself back to normal again, assuming, that is, she didn’t want to be discovered. No, the thing is we tend to think all eyes see the same things, but that’s not in fact the case. Furthermore, if you have to worry about finding someone to pay you to clean dirty hides, you don’t have time to play detective. The whites aren’t actually so dumb that they pay people to go around investigating any old thing. If brother Darb had focused his attention too heavily on this matter, he’d have died of hunger, because he’d have been too busy detecting to go out and find work. Especially if he lived in a neighbourhood where witchcraft was rife.’
‘You’ve spoken a great truth,’ said the born-again Christian, ‘but I’d still like to know how that little girl would have responded to a good smack, because I’m convinced she was the same child as the one who cried all the time. She knew her life’s secrets, brother, it’s not your fault that you did not. God bless you.’
II
Sirens were heard down below. It could have been an ambulance; maybe someone was hurt: maybe a policeman was hurt and being taken to hospital. Or it could have been the start of a raid; maybe the residence was about to be purged. For the residence, despite its grandiose name, was really just a cave. That’s right, Peter’s story and the story of the little girl who turned into an old lady were recounted in a cave, one of the many caves on Mount Gurugu.
Everyone on the mountain came from the heart of Africa, had a past like Peter Ngambo and a brilliant future that awaited them in Europe. They were divided into groups defined by language, for they generally either spoke French or English, although there was a subgroup of people who spoke the languages of Senegal, because they were from Senegal, or had come via Senegal, as quite a number of people had.
Different groups were allocated different caves, although there was mingling and overspill when the camp filled up. They slept on cardboard boxes or on dry leaves, a lucky few under old blankets donated by the Spanish Red Cross. When they had the will, and when the elements and the environment allowed, they warmed the cave by making a bonfire at its entrance, although they cooked outside. Whenever providence provided a candle, they placed it on a shelf in the rock and curled up beneath its glow, wearing all the clothes they owned.
‘I would like to continue my story,’ said Peter Ngambo, ‘the story of how I ended up in the residence.’
Peter took up where he’d left off and said that his father had been summoned to another meeting with the prefect as soon as the first meeting had ended. A friar was present for the second meeting, a friar of lower rank but of the same order as the prefect. The prefect needed a witness and a second opinion, in order to confirm the seriousness of the offence and the exemplariness of the punishment.
All this happened without anybody knowing the full story, for the fact that Peter’s father had glossed the poem wasn’t discovered until much later. The gloss was kept secret, the story’s unknown element, for although the poem
was widely distributed among pupils and the lycée community, the existence, never mind the content, of Peter’s father’s gloss, which explained the profound thinking behind its creation, wasn’t revealed until long after everything had been decided and the punishment imposed, a punishment befitting of such a brazen act of devilment. Indeed it was firmly believed that there was no gloss, that the recriminations were based solely on the superior reading of such a man of letters as the prefect, whose erudition was beyond question and whose interpretation of the matter represented the ultimate truth. So when rumour emerged of the existence of a gloss, it was dismissed as conspiracy theory. Nothing more was said about the matter until the gloss was leaked and finally began to circulate.
Its emergence marked a new chapter in the saga, a chapter in which the gloss became the central focus. At this point the sceptics were forced to renounce their scepticism, or they learned to live with the truth and found a space in the corner of their brain to let the story in, the story of a young student who became a poet and caused a furore in his city’s elite education centre. The time had come to find out once and for all what that young bard in the thrall of his muses had meant. In summary, and ignoring the more obscure aspects that will only confuse our story, what the young Ngambo’s gloss said was this: Charon, a boatman placed in the imprecise time and geography of ancient myths, is invited, with a degree of insistence, to bring his boat over and go on a journey of discovery to find a certain important centre of femininity. That was the gloss of the first verse and it was at this juncture that the prefect became very serious when interrogating Peter’s father, for this important centre was clearly supposed to be a concrete place in the bodily geography of women, and furthermore, duly stimulated – note the young poet’s audacity! – it would cause the thousands of virgins inhabiting Islamic paradise to wail in ecstasy. Having acquired this supreme piece of self-knowledge, they would inevitably rise up and confront their little God, the eunuch heathen, which was why the prefect found the young man’s words intolerable. Do you know what would happen if the more zealous followers of the faith you allude to were to learn of what you’ve written? Can you appreciate what the repercussions would be for our community? More trivial matters than this have seen war break out between previously friendly peoples; much blood has been spilled and many lives ruined over less. The prefect wished to make it quite clear that the boy’s insolence merited the strictest of penalties.
‘Do you not understand the implications of your words?’ the prefect priest demanded of the still very young father of Peter Ngambo.
The young man said nothing and so it was taken as given that he would accept whatever punishment was imposed on him. Indeed, how many people in the world have the wherewithal not to accept whatever punishment is imposed on them? Thus Peter’s father’s education came to an end. He had insinuated, through the medium of a Conceptist poem, that if the virgins inhabiting Mohammed’s heaven were to discover a very sensitive part of their female anatomy, there would be revolution, and this was unforgivable in the eyes of the prefect: first and foremost, it was a crime against religion, even if that religion was fundamentally flawed, and furthermore it was dangerously reckless, for God alone knew where Mohammed’s followers kept their hatchets. Such heresy, if transferred to the Catholic faith, would have to be punished, in other words, the poem was blasphemy, never mind the fact that it was aimed at the enemy religion and an unrepentant heathen eunuch manifestly beyond all salvation, as said in Deuteronomy. Blasphemy had to be punished, because he who blasphemed against another religion might very well do so against his own.
At this point Peter Ngambo paused again in his narrative. ‘I will continue my father’s story only after another brother has had the chance to speak.’
There were a few appreciative nods and sighs, and then another young man sat up and cleared his throat.
‘Without wishing to diminish the importance of the story we’ve just been listening to,’ the young man said, ‘I’d like to return to the other Peter’s story, brother Darb’s, which I listened to with great curiosity and no little surprise, indeed astonishment, for it is indeed a small world.’
‘Why do you say that, brother … ?’
‘My name is Alex, Alex Babangida.’
‘Welcome, Alex. You wouldn’t happen to be from Nigeria, eh?’
‘Don’t be so quick to link him to the dictator, brother, let him express himself first.’
‘That’s right, it’s not fair to jump to conclusions. Go on, brother Alex, explain yourself: Why are you called Babangida?’
‘And I’m the one accused of linking him to the dictator, oh!’
‘Will everyone just shut up! It’s Alex’s turn, so let him speak. Go on, Alex, please, tell us why you were so astonished by brother Darb’s story.’
‘Well, by the sounds of things I must have lived not fifty yards from brother Darb’s house. We’re from the same quata and yet look where we finally meet!’
‘You’re saying we were neighbours?’ asked Darb.
‘That’s right,’ said Alex.
‘But how can you claim this without stating the obvious?’ someone else interceded. ‘You’re saying you’re fellow countrymen, no?
‘I think so,’ said Alex. ‘But I swear, I’d never seen brother Darb before I came here.’
‘It’s not surprising you never saw brother Darb if brother Darb never left his house for fear of being seen by his tatata girlfriend,’ said another resident, sniggering. ‘It’s perfectly normal that this has happened, and you’re both most welcome here. Maybe we’ll get to celebrate a wedding in this residence yet!’
‘What are you talking about, a wedding? Where have got that idea from, eh? You’re inventing a story no one has told.’
‘I speak of a wedding because there are two neighbours here who’ve never seen one another before, but if they had met, they might have become love rivals, competing for the affections of the tatata girl.’
Someone burst out laughing. ‘This one has very funny ideas.’
‘Funny, eh? Anyone who starts out as a little girl and turns into an old lady will have an intermediary stage when she’s a young woman, right? So, imagine that young woman, her hair nicely done up, her buttocks firm in those tight trousers young women like to wear these days, and she goes to Darb’s house asking for Alex. Now, I bet the price of our entire palace that Darb would say he’d never heard of his neighbour and ask if she wasn’t in fact mistaken: Are you sure you’re looking for Alex and not Darb?’
The man who’d been laughing was now in hysterics. ‘You’re saying the girl didn’t even know who she was looking for? Ah, this one has a great imagination.’
‘Why don’t we actually just let Alex tell his story?’
‘Yes, do go on, Alex,’ said the man who’d spoken of a wedding. ‘But feel free to use any of my suggestions. You could say you were the nephew of the old woman the tatata girl turned into, for example.’
‘Go on, brother Alex Babangida, tell us your story,’ the man in hysterics said with a splutter.
‘Thank you, I will, although with all these interruptions, I’ve almost forgotten it. But yes, I lived in the same neighbourhood as Darb, and it’s possible we might have seen one another by chance, without us realising it. I might even have seen his girlfriend, the tatata girl, or the woman she turned into after brother Darb rejected her, but I was never fortunate enough to witness the intermediate stage, when the pretty young woman went to Darb’s house asking for me,’ said Alex, allowing himself a chuckle. ‘So anyway, according to what brother Darb said, I must have lived across from his house, with the house of the girl-woman somewhere in between. The neighbourhood had narrow alleyways and a fair few trees, so it wasn’t that easy for people to get to know each other. And as there were few opportunities in that town for people like me and Darb, we constantly had to leave the neighbourhood to earn our crust. On my way home, I often went to the little girl’s house, for they ran a grocer’s store there a
nd that’s where I bought kerosene and things to eat. And it’s things to eat I wish to speak of, for I left my land with the distinct impression that someone in my quata ate money, that someone being the owner of the grocer’s store in the little girl’s house.’
‘Ah, the plot thickens! Tell us about him eating money.’
‘Yes, let me explain. You would go there and order whatever, a litre of kerosene for example, Hi, I’d like some kerosene, and they’d give it to you in a glass or plastic bottle, and then you had to go up to a window to pay and you’d see a wealthy man sitting at a table. And I swear, every single time I went up to that window to pay for whatever I’d ordered, a tin of tomatoes or a litre of kerosene or whatever, I saw him feasting on the very thing I was about to pay him with.’
‘But he wasn’t actually eating the money, brother!’
‘No, but that’s the impression I got, because you handed over your money and you showed him what items you’d got and he worked out what you owed him and then he gave you your change, if there was any. And he did the whole operation with the same hands he ate his food with.’
‘Didn’t you just say this man was wealthy?’
‘Yes, what of it?’
‘Well, didn’t he eat with a knife and fork, eh? That’s what wealthy men do.’
‘No, he ate with his hands, and so every time you bought something there, you left with the image stuck in your head of a fat man handling money and licking his fingers. He would put your money away, and if he needed to give you change he’d find a lower-value note or some coins or whatever and give them to you, and then he went back to his eating, all as if nothing had happened, as if nothing had just passed through his hands.’
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