Black Moses

by Alain Mabanckou

  Bonaventure, always inclined to alarmism, foresaw a gloomy outcome for the poor old man: ‘Yesterday I saw an old crow perched on the roof of the caretakers’ hut, and it was looking at me so strangely, I was about to ask him what his problem was, but suddenly he flew away! How weird is that? He must have been trying to tell me Old Koukouba was going to die soon, don’t you think? It’s serious, really serious! We must help him!’

  We didn’t really know Old Koukouba that well. Or rather, we thought we knew him, and imagined he must have been born an old caretaker, and would die an old caretaker. As though his end was imminent and certain, we began to learn about his past thanks to the indiscretion of some of the wardens, who took turns in the hut where he lay in bed. These same wardens, especially the nephews of Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako, already spoke about him in the imperfect tense, and extolled some of his good points, but mostly spoke ill of him, for the way he acted in his previous profession.

  Should he actually die, Bissoulou Ngoulmoumako said wittily, Old Koukouba would have to be sent to the morgue at the Adolphe-Sicé hospital in Pointe-Noire, where he had worked for over twenty years. Was he exaggerating when he said that Old Koukouba’s job there had been to rant at the deceased, according to the circumstances of their death, and then lay them out in boxes, stacked one on top of the other, and sometimes beat them like a rug if they’d died through their own fault? The corpses refused to pass on into the next world, and sometimes dared to wiggle a toe, as though trying to cling to life. When pupils from the secondary schools and lycées visited the morgue with their biology teachers, the moment finally came for Old Koukouba to act like the most important man on earth. With a wicked smile on his lips, he’d make a special show of his corpses, and explain to those present that he had made them look so handsome, it would be a privilege for any cemetery in Pointe-Noire to receive them. Looking at once overwhelmed by his work and passionate about it, he would whisper to his visitors:

  ‘It’s been one corpse after another these last few days! This morning two came in, in such a state, I was picking up bits of flesh all the way from the hospital courtyard to my morgue. Apparently there was a bad car crash at the Albert-Moukila roundabout, they were driving flat out, well they’re flat out for eternity now!’

  His black humour missed its mark with the pupils, who were terrified of the place and of the rigid corpses, so instead he’d say:

  ‘OK, let’s not waste time, we’ll do a quick tour of the morgue, put on these masks, it doesn’t always smell too good in there…’

  Old Koukouba then assumed the role of teacher, tenderly cajoling a corpse’s shaved and dented head, murmuring in fatherly tones:

  ‘You be good now, my friend, we’ve got visitors, nothing to be afraid of, they just want to see how we do things here, then they’ll leave us in peace…’

  As though conscious that the deceased could hear his words, he lowered his voice confidentially and told the visitors:

  ‘The bumps on his head are from a confrontation with his partner’s parents. I took pity on him when he arrived here, and managed to hide the worst of it. He keeps complaining about the cold and asking me to turn the heat up, or he won’t let his family take him to the cemetery. I’m doing my best to comfort him, telling him he’ll get a good welcome up where he’s going. But he won’t be told, he just sulks, turns over, starts hitting his comrades. The worst thing is, he thinks he’s here in this morgue by mistake, some other guy was meant to die in his place, he’s got important business to sort out, he hasn’t finished paying off his bank loan and he owes money to several people in the Three Hundreds! Yeah, right! The dead have been trying on tricks like this since the year dot, trying to win time, if it was up to them, no one in this world would ever die! It’s all very well and good to say it’s not your turn to die, what am I meant to do with myself if no one ever dies? And he keeps telling me to fetch his partner from Paris for him. I investigate, and discover the woman in question did go to France on a course for six months, but she got married there to some man who works in our embassy, a childhood friend of the poor corpse here. Hence the fight, which cost him his life, because he got the idea that the parents of his girlfriend were in on the secret of her marriage in France. He got hit over the head with a hammer and died an hour later. Do you think his ex-girlfriend’s going to come all the way from Paris for the funeral? If I tell him she’s not going to come, he’ll get even more difficult with the other corpses! You see what a pickle this job gets me into? It’s not just about the burial, the hardest part’s the moral support for the deceased. They arrive here in a terrible state, I keep them nice and chilled, I get them up again, I hold their hand all the way to the cemetery, and I’m even the one who digs their final resting place. I told this cheeky corpse, for example, he’d find another wife in heaven, more beautiful than the last, and he asks me if I think any woman up there will have an arse as lovely as his girlfriend’s! That’s why he keeps gesticulating, wiggling his toe at me, especially when we have company, like now. I’m telling you, it’s not an easy job!’

  Old Koukouba would forget his visitors were there for a lesson and that stories about corpses told them nothing about the intricacies of the human body, and would not be much help in their exams…

  I was surprised at Bissoulu Ngoulmoumako’s talent as he imitated Old Koukouba’s voice to perfection, not put off by the presence of several residents of the orphanage. It was as though he really wanted to get under the skin of the character, and when he adopted a sepulchral tone, his colleagues all stooped forward to look like old men, so that for us it was just as if Old Koukouba himself was recounting the anecdote from his distant past.

  The old warden could have spent his whole life running the morgue, but it all went wrong through his behaviour with the remains of the prettiest girls from Pointe-Noire. In a sense he dug his own grave, because people lost count of the number of young ladies who lost their virginity after they’d died. This was the case with Mandola ‘Mannequin’, who was still at school, preparing for her baccalaureate in biology at the Victor-Augagneur lycée, and would pass it, everyone said, with her eyes closed! She had a Solex moped, of the kind that was popular at the time with the children of wealthy families, and she wore short skirts, tight-fitting blouses, and braids that fell down to her shoulders. One morning, her friends from school, noticing they hadn’t heard her moped arrive, learned that the girl mentioned in the news, who had been violently hit by a lorry from the Maritime Company, near the Patrice-Lumumba roundabout, was in fact Mandola, and she had not survived the accident. Before the body even arrived at Old Koukouba’s, he heard the news on Radio Dead Street and had laid out a beautiful white dress, shoes and beauty products purchased at la Printania supermarket.

  As he washed young Mandola, he talked to her, saying: ‘You’ll be lovelier than ever! You’ll be a white woman, a real one, just for me. The other dead girls will be so jealous, I’ll have to find a chamber just for you, I couldn’t bear it if they scratched this angel face…’

  Old Koukouba got the idea she was his wife now, and for the short time her body was his responsibility he did a certain number of disreputable things, which decency and respect for the dead prevent me from mentioning…

  Eight days later, Mandola’s family arrived to fetch the body and were just about to take away a different one altogether, which Old Koukouba presented them with as though it was their daughter, in order to be able to continue with his macabre idyll. Out of curiosity, however, one of Mandola’s uncles leaned over the next corpse along, that of the ‘white lady’. While Old Koukouba had his back turned, busy preparing the false stiff, the uncle took a handkerchief from his pocket and discreetly wiped the face of the ‘white lady’. He noticed the black skin underneath, and the two slashes between her eyebrows, the distinctive mark of a sub-group of the Batékés to which the family belonged. His shout of amazement and the echo that followed prompted the entire family group to flee the morgue as if at the appearance of a ghost.r />
  Old Koukouba disappeared through a secret door, escaping the family, who might otherwise have shut him up live in one of the cold rooms. A post-mortem was requested that same day, by the uncle. The next day the front pages of the Pointe-Noire newspapers carried the strangest headlines: ‘Corpse rapist who transformed his victims into white women,’ ‘The man who loved cold and inanimate women,’ ‘A love disguised’, etc.

  To avoid public persecution, Old Koukouba left Pointe-Noire. Disguised as a tramp, he walked for half a day until he arrived in Loango, where he knocked on the door of the orphanage, and presented himself to the religious community which ran it as someone who had lost everything in life, and was seeking sanctuary. He was weeping like a baby, and out of the goodness of their hearts, the religious people opened their doors to him.

  He started off working as a gardener and stock-keeper. Then, when the religious community left, and the public authorities took over the establishment, he was appointed caretaker of the premises…

  IN THE PLAYGROUND, the last of the children playing football were already clearing away as the sun sank below the horizon. I whistled at Bonaventure to join me.

  ‘Moses, why are we hiding in a corner, as if we were plotting to run away from the orphanage?’

  I couldn’t contain my astonishment.

  ‘So you knew about it?’

  ‘Knew about what?’

  ‘About our escape tonight. You just said it!’

  ‘Really? Some people are going to run away tonight? That’s serious. Really serious!’

  I could see by the way his eyes stood out on stalks that he wasn’t kidding me.

  The twins had told me several hours earlier to do a runner with them to Pointe-Noire. I told them I couldn’t possibly leave the orphanage, it was my home, even if Papa Moupelo and Niangui had gone.

  ‘So you’re going to spend your whole life here, then?’ Songi-Songi said in amazement. ‘If you’re so special, how come no one ever adopted you? And how many children have actually made anything of themselves since you’ve been in here, you tell me that? None, that’s how many. Zero. You were here when we came, you’ve never gone anywhere, we’re giving you the chance to go to Pointe-Noire, and you start acting like you love your masters’ house! In fact you probably think we’re laying a trap for you, don’t you?’

  ‘What if your plan goes wrong and the Director…’

  ‘If it goes wrong it will be your fault!’ interrupted Tala-Tala. ‘Because you’re the only person we’ve invited to come with us! And I swear that if tomorrow we’re still here because of you, you’ll die twice over; I’ll kill you first, then my brother will kill you all over again!’

  They both had their eyes trained on me, as though expecting an immediate response. To gain a bit of time, I stammered:

  ‘What about Bonaventure… I mean, can Bonaventure come with us?’

  ‘What, that imbecile who still goes round acting like a kid? No way!’ thundered Songi-Songi. ‘He’s the kind who wrecks everything, we don’t want him in on it!’

  His rejection of my best friend gave me a possible way out:

  ‘Well, if Bonaventure isn’t coming, I’m not coming either! He’s like my twin brother… it’s like you two, one can’t leave without the other!’

  This argument silenced them. They looked at each other, as though conferring on how to respond, then Tala-Tala seized the bull by the horns:

  ‘OK, he can come after all… but if he gives our game away we’ll kill him first, then you! Meet us at midnight behind the meeting house of the National Movement for Pioneers of the Revolution. If you’re not there on time we’ll leave without you.’

  ‘And how are we going to get out of here?’

  ‘Either trust us, or don’t bother turning up at midnight!’

  They turned their backs on me and went off towards the main building, holding hands, as though they were afraid they might get separated before midnight…

  ‘If the twins are running away, that’s great, we can relax at last, we’ll be the masters of the orphanage!’

  ‘Bonaventure, you don’t get it: this is our chance to escape too! Believe me, we won’t get into trouble, we’ll just say it was all the twins’ idea, they led us astray!’

  ‘Who’s this “us” you’re always talking about?’

  ‘You and me! Don’t you get smart with me, time is short!’

  He moved his head from side to side a few times: ‘No, no, don’t count on me, I smell a rat, I’m not moving from here! They want to do like in that film they saw, Alcatraz. They have to be three to get out!’

  Unconsciously I repeated Tala-Tala’s words:

  ‘Bonaventure, are we planning to spend our whole lives here? If we were such extraordinary children, how come we never got adopted by a family? And how many children have actually achieved anything in all the time we’ve been here? None, that’s how many! We were here when the twins arrived, you and I, we’ve never been anywhere, and when they offer us a chance to go to Pointe-Noire, you start acting like someone who loves his masters’ house! You think it’s a trap, is that it?’

  ‘Well I certainly never planned to leave Loango that way!’

  ‘Really? So how exactly were you planning to leave?’

  ‘You know! I’m waiting for a plane to land here, just for me…’

  ‘In Pointe-Noire there’s a real landing strip, you’ll have all the planes you want when you get there, I promise, you’ll be able to fly anywhere you want!’

  ‘That’s just smooth talk, don’t get me muddled, I’m not coming with you! You go with them, I promise I won’t say anything, till the day my plane comes…’

  ‘Honestly! Sometimes I think the others are right when they say you’re an imbecile!’

  ‘Oh, I’m the imbecile am I?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m not going to just lie down and let you thump me this time, it’s over, OK? Finished. Good luck to you…’

  He threw me a look like a miserable puppy, then turned his back and walked back to the main building.

  For a moment I stood there, wondering if I wasn’t about to walk straight into an ambush laid for me by the twins to get me into trouble with Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako. It would be easy for him to get rid of me by explaining to the people in the Congolese Workers’ Party that I was just a little local lackey of imperialism. It might even take the pressure off his own hellish situation, and get him back in favour after being edged out by the newcomers. I might get out of Loango only to end up in Boloko, the prison that was said to take only recalcitrant adolescents intent on deflecting their comrades from the path of the Revolution as laid out by our Guide, the president of the Republic.

  I only had a few hours left to decide. Should I risk it with the twins, or stay with the person for whom I felt a deep affection? I couldn’t see myself leaving without him. And what if a plane did land outside the orphanage one day?

  At a quarter to midnight, though heavy with remorse and conscious of the strength of my affection for Bonaventure, I rose from my bed. I looked at him one last time: he was snoring and his left arm dangled from his bed.

  I slipped into the corridor and made my way to the meeting place with the twins…

  WE WALKED IN SINGLE FILE, and up ahead went Little Vimba, who, in the darkness, seemed about three times our height. I didn’t trust him, and I couldn’t understand why he had decided to offer us our freedom on a silver platter. Was it because everything in the orphanage was collapsing, and like rats escaping from their holes in a bush fire, everyone was scarpering to save his own skin?

  I was forbidden to open my mouth, the twins had been adamant about this: no noise at all, shoes off, moving on the soles of your feet so as not to wake Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako, Bissoulou Ngoulmoumako and Dongo-Dongo Ngoulmoumako. If they saw the structure holding up their empire collapsing piece by piece, they might well do something irrevocable.

  There was the exit, straight in front of us, and without
turning round, Little Vimba stepped aside to let us pass.

  The moment we finally set foot outside, my blood froze: the wardens Mpassi, Moutété and Mvoumbi were outside, each with a club in his hand. They stayed quite still, though, looking off into the distance.

  ‘They’re on our side,’ Tala-Tala whispered. ‘They don’t like the Director’s nephews…’

  I turned around to take a last look at the institution where I’d spent thirteen years. The little light we’d left in the dormitory seemed dull and dim, but in the frame of the window which had just opened, I could see the outline of Bonaventure; he watched us head off into the night, as the heavy double doors of the institution swung shut behind us…

  Pointe-Noire

  THE TWINS SET A MILITARY PACE for me to follow. I found it hard to keep up. No one spoke, and I broke the silence.

  ‘I still don’t understand why Vimba let us escape…’

  Tala-Tala explained:

  ‘I guess you think that kind of thing only happens in the movies. Well you’re wrong! As you know, for a long time now we’ve heard Old Koukouba groaning in the toilets every time he pissed. The day before yesterday we plucked up courage and went to tell Little Vimba that we could cure the old man. At first he told us to beat it, but yesterday he came back and asked us how we could cure Old Koukouba when the doctors hadn’t been able to. That’s when we explained to him that if he allowed us to lay our little hands on the old man, the illness would vanish, just like that. The problem was, Old Koukouba wouldn’t hear of it, and we needed to convince him. As soon as he gave us the green light, because Vimba told him he had no choice, he only had days to live, he finally agreed, though not without muttering: “If those two little sorcerers take me for a ride I will take my revenge in hell, I promise them flames that are hotter than the flames of hell!” Little Vimba came to fetch us at dead of night, warning us that if it didn’t work he would deal with us at dawn in a way we’d remember for the rest of our lives. We went into the wardens’ hut, where the old man looked so stiff we thought he had passed over to the other side. Little Vimba pulled down the sick man’s trousers for us, but he woke up straight away and told us we must close our eyes while we were treating him. We placed our four hands by his thing for a few minutes… You know, you won’t believe this, but all of a sudden his thing stood up as though he was twenty again. “Step back,” he ordered. He had an urgent desire to piss, and urinated in the bucket beside him, regardless of our presence. At first he gave a cry of pain, probably because he was used to doing so by now, then he turned towards us while his steaming urine gushed into the pan. “I’m pissing! I’m pissing normally!” He would have shouted for joy, folded us in his arms, but he had to calm down because if anyone had found us in this situation, with two minors touching an adult’s genitals, who would have believed we were only there to cure him? After that, as we’d agreed, Vimba said he would arrange for us to escape, aided by Mpassi, Moutété and Mvoumbi, who were still intent on war with the three other nephews of the Director and even with the Director himself, since he’d appointed the others heads of the orphanage section of the USYC, which may have precipitated the end of Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako’s reign…’