Black Moses

by Alain Mabanckou

  She wipes away the mist that has clouded her glasses:

  ‘I’ll tell you this: I live all alone in a district on the outskirts of Pointe-Noire, not far from the Mongo-Kamba cemetery, ten kilometres from here. When I can’t afford my fare, I leave home at four in the morning to get here in time for work. As I walk kilometre after kilometre, along the edge of the main road, with my eyes on the ground, I think about when I first got the job at the orphanage, which at the time was run by white religious people. Oh, those were the days, Moses, my little friend! Nothing at all like today, when the education of children’s all mixed up with politics and orphanages are considered laboratories of the Revolution, it was better back then! I was young, beautiful, but was I happy? What is happiness? Do you know? Do you?’

  I think to myself that for me happiness would be to wake up the next morning feeling well and say to her at last, ‘Thank you’, a phrase which till now has never crossed my lips…

  ‘Back then, dear Moses, the children called me “Mama Organiser”, and there were only thirty or so orphans, mostly girls, a good dozen of them abandoned by their parents because in their families, it was considered a failure to have a first child who was a girl. My job was to keep them amused, help them with their homework, or teach them songs in the main courtyard. There were only three buildings in the orphanage at that time, whereas now we have six, counting the room where the caretakers, Old Koukouba and Little Vimba, live, near the entrance, and the one behind the classrooms, which since the coming of the Revolution, you’ve called “prison”. Most of our life was spent in the main building, with the religious people living above, while on the ground floor the canteen separated the girls’ sleeping quarters from the boys’, which were much larger but also harder to keep clean, because they had lots of windows and the dust came in from the playground. At night, little monkeys like you and Bonaventure crept into the refectory to steal bread, corn, or fruits laid out for breakfast the following day. Did that make Father Jurek Wilski, the Polish Director, angry? Oh, no, not him! At worst Father Wilski would instruct the kitchen staff to leave out some things to nibble, because he knew the children would be passing through. When the children could only express themselves in the local languages – which I still speak to this day – I would act as go-between for them with the religious staff. Back then I didn’t have to walk huge distances to get to work, I lived here, in the room next to Papa Moupelo’s, which is now just a cupboard where they keep cleaning fluids and equipment. I felt quite at home here, probably because I’d lived at the National Orphanage for Girls in Loandjili and, according to Marie-Adélaïde, who ran it, had been enrolled there by my own biological mother, a plucky woman who bought and sold things on the border between Pointe-Noire and Angola. What did she get from selling peanuts and bananas? Nothing, my friend, but she had to survive, and she said it was the only way to earn a living. She couldn’t depend on my father, a Cuban soldier she’d met on the border, and who’d stopped to buy some roasted peanuts from her. He didn’t just buy peanuts, he stayed longer, the whole night in fact, in a little whore-hut which one of their superiors rented close by for their weekend entertainment, if you get my drift…’

  Suddenly serious, she adjusts her glasses: ‘I am the fruit of that one-night encounter, during which my mother may have said nothing, since she spoke no Spanish, and my father kept silent too, as he spoke neither French nor any one of the dozens of languages of our country. My father, I’m told, was tall, handsome, with light brown eyes. I get my light skin from him; when I was young I was both teased and envied for it. People made fun of it because you could see straight away I wasn’t as black as the Congolese girls, so I had to be a bastard, “a Cuban”, which meant my mother must have gone with some soldier, either because she wanted to have a child who was less black, or because she was secretly working as a prostitute near the military camps on the border, but I favour the first possibility. Yes, she did want to have a child with lighter skin, because at the time that represented a kind of superiority, it was silly, but it was all part of the complex we had about white people, anything white was superior, everything black was doomed, with no future, no tomorrow, are you still with me, Moses my friend…?’

  I look at her hard, and try to imagine this Cuban father of hers. I’ve never seen a Cuban in my life, and as I listen to her talking about this man I wonder if she admires or resents him.

  ‘He was a good-looking man, my father, he came to Africa at the time his country intervened in Angola, when the situation there was one of the most troubled anywhere on our continent. You’d see Cuban soldiers everywhere in Pointe-Noire, and they held the same fascination for young women as the sailors who came ashore at the maritime port, from far-away countries, in their white uniforms, with bronzed skin and a desire to let off steam in the bars of the economic capital. For young women like my mother, these soldiers were their sailors, and over 5,000 of them arrived in Angola, on the orders of their President, Fidel Castro! Well, they had to amuse themselves somehow!’

  She smiles, and at once she looks ten years younger.

  ‘Seriously, Moses, the Cubans turned up in Angola to help their “Communist brothers” in the MPLA (the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), led by Agostinho Neto, who was at war with UNITA (the National Union for Total Independence of Angola), led by Jonas Savimbi, supported by the United States, by the racist regime in South Africa and even our neighbours in Zaire! So the Cubans were our heroes, because our country openly supported Agostinho Neto’s MPLA. On their days off, the soldiers would leave Angola and roam all over Pointe-Noire. Who could blame them for taking advantage of their prestige to satisfy the young girls who fell at their feet, even though they knew full well these encounters had no future? Every time I look at the island of Cuba on a map I remind myself that my father was born somewhere there, in Havana, or Santiago de Cuba, or Las Tunas, Bayamo, Pinar del Rio or Santa Clara, but to me they’re just the names of cities, I don’t feel any particular attachment to this distant country, I’m no different really to all those tourists who dream of beaches with fine sand, music at every crossroads, the bright colours of those American cars from the 1950s, or the Ladas and Moskvitches, imported from the Soviet Union, driven by men with fat cigars between their lips. When I was born my mother put me in the National Orphanage for Girls in Loandjili. A bit later I realised half the girls in there had a Cuban soldier for a father, as though the institution had actually been created especially for them, or as though the orphanage practised a kind of positive discrimination, accepting only girls of Congo–Cuban origin. Sure enough I discovered a bit later that the place was entirely funded by the Cuban president, Fidel Castro. My mother intended to take me back when she’d managed to sort herself out. But really, my friend, that’s probably what most of the parents said, so they didn’t have to feel guilty about cutting themselves off from their offspring. What do they say? “Never put off to tomorrow what you can do today?” My mother should have heeded that, because sadly, she died three years after I went into the orphanage, after an attack by bandits on the border, where she continued to ply her trade. The orphanage only heard about it two months later, the day a couple turned up to adopt me. The woman who was to become my adoptive mother was crazy about my putty-coloured skin, my big eyes and afro hair. In fact until I reached adolescence she refused to let me have braids and nicknamed me “Angela Davis’, after a black American activist you may have heard of. I liked her calling me this, especially when I learned that this woman had fought for the freedom of black people in America and that she belonged to that brave organisation known as the Black Panthers. My new parents decided to call me simply by the pretty name of Angela, it was younger-sounding and more poetic than Sabine… Are you falling asleep?’

  ‘No, I’m listening…’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t regret being adopted by this couple, as they sent me to a private school in the town centre, and after that I went to the private Pasteur secondary school, and o
n to the Victor Augagneur lycée, where I got my baccalaureate in literature and philosophy with top marks, even though I was one of the youngest students in the school. If I’d gone on to university in Brazzaville, where my parents intended to enrol me, perhaps I would have got a job in a high-up office, or been in charge of men and women who feared and respected me. But there you are, at seventeen I let a man touch me for the first time, then take away the innocence which till then had distinguished me from the young girls of Pointe-Noire whose future was prematurely ruined by thoughtless – I might say irresponsible – lovers. The man was forty, married, and worked as a postman in the National Office of Post and Telecommunications. I’d known him since I was three, and felt completely safe with him, perhaps because he’d watched me growing up, calling in on weekdays to drop off the post at my parents’ house, chat for a few minutes with my father, accept a glass of palm wine from my mother. He’d hang around at our house, stroking my little afro mop, complimenting my parents: “When she gets older you must get her one of those haircuts you see on black American actresses in films at the Rex! I swear, she’ll be a heartbreaker, this little princess!” Yes, my friend, this is the man who got me pregnant fourteen years later, you can imagine the scandal that erupted in our family, especially since he actually took my virginity in our family home. My father, who was careful of his reputation, was beside himself, while my mother tried to convince him that they should have seen it coming, even if it was too soon, and with the wrong person. Papa disagreed and threatened to throw me out of the house. As a last resort, my mother proposed a solution which, to her mind, would suit everyone: get rid of the shameful foetus, which would otherwise remind them for the rest of their lives of the ungrateful postman, who now avoided our house, and got one of his young colleagues to deliver my parents’ mail…’

  Once again she takes off her glasses and wipes them, even though there is no mist on them. It must be a reflex, a tic, and I think that when I get glasses I’ll make sure I do that too.

  ‘My dear Moses, I wasn’t going to harm the fragile little being developing inside me. I could already picture its little Cuban head, its eyes, its little arms, its tears and smiles. I ate at all hours of the day, hoping it would help its development, and even bring its date of birth forward a little. It pained me to hear my parents talking about getting rid of it, booking an appointment for the following week in the surgery of a white doctor in the town centre. Yes, Moses, they wanted a white doctor to do it because they didn’t trust the Congolese doctors who, so they said, told their patients’ secrets in the bars of the run-down districts of Pointe-Noire. I asked myself so many questions: why had I been allowed to live when I too was the fruit of a one-night stand? Why should I not give the same chance to my baby, who hadn’t asked for anything from anyone and whose only crime would have been to come into this world? My parents were out during the day, so twenty-four hours before the appointment with the white doctor, I packed a few things and went to live with two of my girlfriends from the lycée, Elima and Makila, in the Rex quarter, where they rented a house on Independence Avenue. These two friends showered me with encouragement and support. Makila began to buy clothes for the child. She got them in pink, as though convinced it would be a girl. Elima, on the other hand, bet it would be a boy, so she brought home little rompers and bonnets in blue. I enjoyed the independence I found with my friends. No more father shouting at me. No more mother keeping silent, afraid to raise her own voice in front of her husband. Did they try to find me? I don’t think so, and I’m convinced this arrangement suited them very well. I was by now almost two months pregnant…’

  She automatically touches her belly, as though she needs to check the child is still inside. Her voice changes, getting sadder and sadder:

  ‘It was there, at Elima and Makila’s house, that I noticed one day while taking a shower that the water trickling down my thighs was turning strangely red. I fainted at the very sight of the warm, heavy blood as though from some internal wound. When I came round again, I was out of the shower, Elima and Makila had put me to bed, and I saw, from their downcast expressions, that the baby, whom I had already nicknamed Chouchou, had decided to depart for the other world, in Mpemba, the land where the sun never rises and where no one wears a hat… Since the child, of sex unknown, had chosen this route, I myself turned to religion. I sang in the church choir of Saint-Jean-Bosco, where an old priest who liked me, and who I told my story to, found me a position helping out at the orphanage in Loango. So in fact, my dear Moses, I was here before Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako, who was a political appointment, made once the orphanage no longer depended on the religious community. They moved away to Cameroon, to set up another institution. Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako had used his connections to get this post, because he belonged to the Bembé ethnic group, the one which, being skilled in its handling of knives, had helped the regime in power to win the ethnic war against the northerners. During his first few days in the job, the Director began to shake things up and impose his own rules. There was no question now of me working with the children: he replaced me with one of his nieces. Since I was of northern origin, by my biological mother, and by my adoptive parents too, I was considered a descendant of the losers of the ethnic war, and in his eyes would remain an enemy, a sort of spy who would help the northerners recover the power they had lost because they didn’t know how to handle a knife as the Bembés did. The Director was at my heels, morning till night. The entire canteen staff – four women and two men – had been sacked, replaced by Bembés and Lari and other southerners with no experience, who served the children dishes from their own region, like cat meat for the Bembés, caterpillars for the Lari, and even shark fish for the Vili. Old Koukouba was sitting pretty, he was a Bembé himself, and a few years later he brought along a younger colleague, Little Vimba, a first cousin of his. From then on the home was effectively run by a clan of Bembés, until the coup d’état which brought a northern president to power. Dieudonnné survived in his job, but only because he changes with the wind. Today he’s one of the great defenders of the Revolution brought about by the northerners, whereas yesterday he fought against them on the side of the southerners. For everything you pay a price in this world, my friend. A moment will come when the wind will drop, and the weather cock can’t turn, and will stand idle. That will be the end of everything, and I can feel it coming…’

  It’s break time. No one will dare come into the dorm, it’s forbidden. Niangui’s next revelation comes as a shock:

  ‘Moses, you’ve grown up so fast, I can hardly believe it was me who found you, thirteen years ago, at the orphanage door, when I arrived for work. You were wrapped up in a white sheet, with your head poking out, you weren’t crying, in fact your eyes were quite wide open for a child a few days old. I took you in my arms, and went straight to the Director’s office. At first he yelled at me, as he always did when a mother came to him to ask for help from his establishment. I must admit that for a moment I expected him to tell me to get someone else to help with “my” child, but eventually he calmed down, gave you a quick glance, and sighed, “I hope at least it’s a Bembé and not a northerner like you!” How could you tell the ethnic origin of a newborn baby, with no information about the parents? So it was that you entered this place under a cloud of suspicion, and, in the eyes of the Director, wrapped in his own paranoia, you had clearly been sent by the devil, with a secret mission to bring down the establishment under his charge. Worse still, he was convinced this baby had been left outside the orphanage by northerners. I personally couldn’t understand why anyone would abandon a boy child. It was rather different from what happened in the Orphanage for Girls in Loandjili, where, as I told you, only girls got left at the door, because a proper family had to have a boy first. Thank God, the Director didn’t throw you back out, but told the caretaker and corridor wardens to keep a very close eye on you, even at night, because he thought that around midnight or one in the morning you slipped out of your baby skin and turned
into a northern giant, with a great big beard, like a member of the Resistance. That Saturday you were presented to Papa Moupelo, who performed a special mass. That was the day he gave you the name Tokumisa Nzambe po Mose yamoyindo abotami namboka ya Bakoko. And since it was too long and no one could say the whole thing, we all just called you Moses.

  THE IMAGE I HAVE, when I think of Sabine Niangui now, is of the woman who helped me whenever things went wrong, perhaps because she felt in some way responsible for my fate, having ‘rescued’ me at the orphanage door. Between the ages of seven and ten, when the Director used to take his lash to me, and I’d struggle like a demon, I’d see a woman with a troubled face standing a few feet from him, watching the scene, and that was Sabine Niangui. You could tell by the look on her face that she disapproved of the methods of Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako, who, in spite of the blessed name given me by Papa Moupelo, persisted in believing I was the spawn of the devil, and that I used my intelligence to organise most of the monkey business that took place in the boys’ dorm, or in the canteen, when the inmates started throwing chunks of manioc at the girls.

  Sabine Niangui, who we simply called ‘Niangui’, gritted her teeth so visibly each time the whip made contact, it felt as though she was suffering on my behalf. She was forty years old, but to us she seemed like someone out of a different age altogether, perhaps the reincarnation of our ancestor Nzinga, except that Niangui hadn’t brought two twin boys and a daughter into the world.

  As soon as the Director had left the dorm, she would take me by the arm and we’d shut ourselves up in the toilets, where I’d take off my shirt. At the sight of the broad weals on my back she’d run to fetch some antiseptic.