The Eye of the Wolf

by Daniel Pennac

  In the small hours of dawn, when Africa reached the first thorny shrub, his heart stopped beating. The shrub was empty! The hyena had disappeared. And so too had the cheetah. The signs of a fight were plain to see… But no one had any idea what had happened.

  The king of goats nearly died of shock. “My favourite Abyssinian dove! She was the most beautiful goat I ever had. The daintiest. The apple of my eye. The finest pedigree. Now do you see what comes of making friends with cheetahs? He’ll have eaten her. Curse you, Shepherd, you and your silly ideas about thorny shrubs. Be off with you! Out of my sight, before I strangle you.”

  Should he stay in Grey Africa? Out of the question. He’d feel too sad. What about going back to Yellow Africa? Not without Saucepans. Then the boy remembered the grey gorilla of the swamps and what he’d said about Green Africa. “I’ve got a cousin who lives there.”

  “And how will you pay for your journey?” the driver had asked him.

  “I’ll clean your lorry,” Africa had replied.

  “It doesn’t need cleaning; the engine’s what matters.”

  “I’ll cook your meals for you.”

  “I’m already sorted for food.” (The driver had shown Africa a store of black biscuits and white cheese.)

  “I’ll tell you stories.”

  “That’s better; I like stories. And they’ll stop me falling asleep. Climb up. If I get bored, I’ll throw you out of the window.”

  So that’s how they left Grey Africa. With the driver driving too fast and Africa telling his stories. But his mind was somewhere else while he was telling them. What had happened to the little goat? What had happened to the cheetah and the hyena? Am I going to lose all my friends, one after another? Is there something about me that brings bad luck?

  The sun rose and set. It was a sad journey. A long journey. A long hot flat journey.

  The lorry was actually a kind of small bus with rattling metal parts. Other passengers got on. The driver made them pay. He was charging a high price for the ride. (“I’ve got a boy storyteller.”) Lots of people got on. Far too many, as Africa pointed out to the driver.

  “You’re overloaded, and you’re driving too fast!”

  “Stop nagging and tell your stories!”

  So Africa told his stories night and day. At night a sea of eyes listened to him…

  One morning everyone let out a great cry. Over there, beyond the sea of dry and cracked earth, were the green rolling hills of the tropical rainforest. Green Africa! The grey gorilla of the swamps hadn’t been lying.

  Everybody pressed against the windows and whooped with joy. The driver accelerated again. They sped into the forest. And, inevitably, on a bend flanked by giant ferns, the little bus came off the road and turned over. There was a great din of clanging metal and the sound of the engine still roaring. With its four twisted wheels spinning in the air, the upturned bus looked like an old beetle on its back.

  It was the last thing Africa saw before he lost consciousness.

  VIII

  “Ma Bia, Ma Bia, he’s waking up!”

  “Of course he’s waking up. I’ve been taking care of him, haven’t I?”

  “All the same, he got better so quickly, I’d never have believed…”

  “Pa Bia, how long have I been healing people?”

  “At least fifty years, since you were a little girl.”

  “And how many of them didn’t get better, Pa Bia?”

  “None. They were all healed. It’s a miracle every time…”

  “It isn’t a miracle; it’s just the healing hand of Ma Bia!”

  “All the same, I really thought this one was going to die.”

  “Silly old thing! This one is stronger than all the others; he’ll live to be a hundred!”

  Africa had been listening to their whisperings and hushed laughs for some time now in his half sleep. It was time to open his eyes.

  “Ma Bia, he’s opening his eyes!”

  “Yes, I can see he’s opening his eyes. Give him some coconut milk.”

  Africa drank the milk. It was a cool, velvety sweet liquid with a slightly bitter taste. He liked it.

  “He seems to like it.”

  “Yes, Pa Bia, I can see he likes it. He’s drunk the coconut dry.”

  Africa fell asleep again.

  When he woke up for the second time, the house was empty. But he could hear a voice speaking to him. “Hello there!” It was a metallic, nasal voice that seemed to come from a strange pale blue bird with a red tail and a beak made to smash nuts. The bird was perched on an earthenware jar.

  “Hello,” said Africa, “who are you?”

  “I’m a parrot, and you?”

  “I was a shepherd. I’ve also been a trader, well, kind of…”

  “Really?” asked the parrot. “You’re just like Pa Bia then. And you’ll probably end up working the land too.”

  “Can I go outside?” asked Africa.

  “If you can stand on your own two legs, what’s stopping you?”

  Africa got up gingerly. But he needn’t have worried, because he was completely cured. It was as if all the life that had drained out of him in the accident had come flooding back in his sleep. So he let out a whoop of joy and ran out of the house. But his whooping turned into a terrified screech. The house was propped high up on stilts: he’d just jumped into thin air.

  Africa closed his eyes and waited for the crash. But it never came. Instead, two huge and unimaginably strong arms caught him in mid-flight, and he felt himself being crushed against a chest as wide and hairy and well padded as the king of goats’ bed. Then came a peal of laughter so powerful that all the birds of the forest flew away in fright.

  “Pa Bia, you could at least laugh a little bit more quietly.”

  “Think of all the animals trying to take their siesta.”

  The whole forest was in uproar.

  “Ma Bia, look at him: he’s completely cured.” Pa Bia held Africa up in his arms and showed him to a tiny old woman who was emerging from the thick of the forest.

  “There’s no need to make such a hullabaloo, Pa Bia. I can see perfectly well that he’s cured.”

  Africa’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. The old woman was followed by a gigantic black gorilla with a pointy skull. He was carrying a large stash of pink papayas, which are the most delicious fruit and a natural remedy too.

  “How strange,” said the gorilla, “that Pa Bia has never been able to get it into his skull that you heal everybody!”

  “Oh, be quiet, you big beast!” replied Ma Bia. “He’s only pretending to be surprised because he knows I like it.”

  “Ah! I see…” said the gorilla.

  IX

  Pa and Ma Bia’s house rose up on its four legs in the middle of the greenest clearing in the whole forest.

  “Why is it on stilts?” asked Africa.

  “So the snakes can’t pay us a visit, little one.”

  There was a wall of forest foliage all around. It was so high you’d think you were at the bottom of a leafy well.

  Pa and Ma Bia looked after Africa and fed him up. They never asked him any questions, and they didn’t expect him to do any work. In the daytime they looked after the clearing and the trees. At night they sat around talking. They had experienced a great deal in their lifetimes. They knew all the people and all the animals in Green Africa. They had children and cousins scattered everywhere, throughout the three Africas and in the Other World too.

  “The Other World? What’s that?”

  Pa Bia, who had just opened his mouth to answer Africa, was interrupted by the tumbling of broken branches and crushed leaves. The noise didn’t come from nearby, but the tree that had just fallen was so tall the whole forest must have heard it come crashing down.

  There was a long silence, and then Pa Bia said, “The Other World? Perhaps we’ll be in the Other World sooner than we think…”

  “Oh, be quiet,” said Ma Bia. “Don’t go putting ideas into the little one�
��s head.”

  Africa began helping Pa and Ma Bia with their work, even though they hadn’t asked him to. He went with them to gather the fruits of the forest, and every Saturday all three of them made the trip to the market in the small nearby town. Pa Bia was a good salesman who sold his fruit by shouting very loud. People also came to seek Ma Bia’s advice; she charged a pittance and cured nearly all of them. But Africa was soon the most popular.

  The moment their shopping was done, everybody gathered around him.

  “He tells them well, doesn’t he?”

  “He’s a good storyteller, isn’t he?”

  “It’s the way he tells them!”

  “And what about your own story, the story of your life – why don’t you tell us that?”

  It was a rainy day when Pa Bia asked this question. The rain was coming down in torrents. It was the right kind of weather for telling your life story. Pa and Ma Bia listened to Africa and nodded seriously.

  “So you don’t have a father?” asked Pa Bia when Africa had finished.

  “I don’t have a father, no.”

  “And you don’t have a mother either?” asked Ma Bia.

  “No, I don’t have a mother either.”

  There was an embarrassed silence, because the same idea had just occurred to all three of them at the same time.

  So Africa N’Bia became the youngest child of Pa and Ma Bia, who already had fourteen children, scattered throughout the Africas and the countries of the Other World.

  X

  But as the years went by, more and more trees fell. The forest was thinning out. And Pa Bia’s forehead was getting more and more wrinkled.

  “Don’t worry, they’ll stop one of these days.”

  But Ma Bia knew they would never stop.

  In the rainy season, felled trees were thrown into the rivers that flow out to sea. One day Africa and the gorilla were sitting on the river bank, watching the stripped trunks drift by, when the gorilla let out a big sigh. “Soon there won’t be any left.”

  Africa decided it was time to change the subject and asked, “Did you know you’ve got a cousin in Grey Africa?”

  “A small fat one with a flat skull, in the swamps? Yes, I know,” replied the gorilla, his mind on other things.

  They sat in silence. And the sound of axes rose up out of the silence.

  “Where are all these trees going, anyway?” asked Africa.

  The gorilla carried on staring at the river. “Where do you think they’re going? To the Other World, of course!” And he added, as if for his own benefit, “Gracious me, I need to make a decision. I’ve got to make up my mind, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Me too,” came a peculiar voice from nearby. It was a deep, pale whisper that sounded muffled.

  “Why should it bother you?” asked the gorilla. “You don’t live in the trees.”

  “Exactly,” replied the crocodile. “I live in the water, and the trees are clogging it up.”

  Pa Bia made a decision too. “Come on,” he said, “we’re going.”

  “Why?” asked Africa.

  Pa Bia drove him to the forest’s edge and pointed out the great stretch of dry cracked earth that Africa had crossed for endless days and nights in the truck.

  “Not so long ago,” said Pa Bia, “the forest stretched all the way to the horizon. Today, all the trees have been cut down. And when there are no more trees, it stops raining. Can’t you see there’s nothing growing? The earth is so hard a dog couldn’t bury his bone in it.”

  Suddenly Pa Bia pointed straight in front of him. “Look!”

  Africa followed his finger, and saw something small and black and gleaming. It looked furious as it made its way obstinately towards the forest, brandishing a curved knife above its head.

  “Even the black scorpion can’t cope with this dryness.” Pa Bia fell silent. A gust of scorching air raised a cloud of dust.

  “This is what will become of our clearing.” His lips were dry. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

  The Other World

  I

  And that’s how Pa Bia, Ma Bia and their son Africa came to join us in the Other World. They had a cousin in our town. Their cousin spread out a newspaper and helped Pa Bia look for work. Pa Bia would have turned his hand to anything, but there were hardly any jobs advertised.

  “Don’t worry,” said Ma Bia, “we’ll find something.”

  And, sure enough, one day their cousin did find something. “There,” he said, ringing a small newspaper ad with a pen. “That’s what you’re looking for!”

  So Pa Bia found a job with the zoo’s tropical hothouse department. “What’s a tropical hothouse?” he’d asked.

  “It’s a kind of glass cage, where they keep our trees from Green Africa,” his cousin had replied.

  The trees were almost dead; Pa Bia brought them back to life.

  Africa would never forget the day he visited the zoo for the first time. He had no idea what it would be like. “It’s a sort of garden filled with animals,” Ma Bia had said. Africa didn’t understand how you could plant animals in a garden. And he felt very sad. He missed the clearing and Green Africa. The walls of our town seemed a prison to him. He was alone in the world. All alone…

  But he’d hardly set foot inside the gates when a familiar voice stopped him in his tracks. “Hello, Sand Flea! So you found me in the end? I knew you would.”

  Africa was speechless for a few seconds. He could not believe his eyes or ears. It was too fantastic to be true. “Saucepans!”

  Yes. The dromedary was there, standing in front of him, in the middle of an enclosure circled with iron bars.

  “Saucepans! What are you doing here?”

  “Can’t you see? I’ve been waiting for you. I haven’t taken a single step since Toa sold me.”

  “Not one step?”

  “I kept my promise. All sorts of people tried to make me walk, but I wasn’t having any of it. I haven’t put one foot in front of another since we were separated.”

  Africa’s heart had almost stopped beating and he still couldn’t believe his eyes. “So how did you get here then?”

  Saucepans laughed quietly, on the inside. “What use is a crippled camel to a buyer?”

  Africa was indignant. “You could have been beaten alive!”

  “Oh no, my buyer preferred to sell me.”

  “Who to?”

  “Does it matter? To another buyer … who sold me again in turn.”

  “And then what?”

  “And so on, from buyer to buyer, until I ended up being bought by a zoo supplier. A dromedary who wouldn’t budge was exactly what he was looking for. He paid an awful lot of money for me.”

  He chuckled on the inside again. “I’ve travelled far and wide to get here, by boat, by train, by truck and even by crane! They lowered me by crane into the middle of the enclosure. Not a single step without you, Sand Flea! I didn’t take a single step.”

  I’m going to cry, Africa said to himself. I just can’t help it. I’m going to cry.

  “But now I’ll be able to stretch my legs at long last,” snorted Saucepans. And he suddenly started jumping up and down on the spot. Then he galloped the length of his cage at breakneck speed, before rolling in the dust and balancing on his hump. With his legs in the air, he twirled around like a spinning top and roared with laughter.

  His laughter was so infectious that it spread from cage to cage and animal to animal, until it came back round to Africa. The animal with the loudest laugh shouted, “Hey! Dromedary! Who d’you think you are? An Abyssinian dove?”

  That laugh, thought Africa. I recognize that laugh.

  Ten metres away, behind thick iron bars, the hyena from Grey Africa was laughing louder than all the other animals. “What’s up, misery guts? Why aren’t you laughing?” she asked the animal in the next cage. “Look at the dromedary!”

  “I haven’t got time to enjoy myself,” came a voice that Africa recognized instantly.
“I’m a shepherd, and it’s my job to keep an eye on that goat.” And the sad voice added, “In any case, if you’d kept a better eye on her yourself we wouldn’t be here in the first place.”

  “I did all I could,” the hyena complained, “so stop pretending you’re a better shepherd than me.”

  Africa ran to the scene of the argument, where he stopped dead in his tracks. He took a deep breath before whispering, “Hello, Cheetah, is it you she’s calling misery guts? Don’t be sad any more; I’m here now.”

  “Hello, Shepherd. I’m not sad, just a bit tired. I haven’t taken my eye off the dove since the moment the hunters captured her and that.”

  Africa smiled at the hyena, who looked rather embarrassed. “I did what I could, Africa, I promise you, but they used fresh meat to make a trap, and you know how difficult I find it to resist…”

  “I deliberately got myself caught,” said the cheetah, “in order to stay with the dove. Look at her – isn’t she beautiful?” The cheetah motioned towards an enclosure ten metres away where the Abyssinian dove was gambolling radiantly in Africa’s honour. “I haven’t taken my eyes off her for one second,” he repeated. “Day and night! But you’re here at last, and I’ll be able to have a rest.” And he fell asleep on the spot.

  They were all there. Africa caught up with all of them again in the zoo of the Other World. He saw the grey gorilla of the swamps and his cousin of the forest. (“What was I supposed to do? They were taking away my trees, so I decided to let them take me too. But they’re such idiots – they’ve put my trees in one cage and me in another.”) He saw the old lion from Grey Africa, the crocodile of the creeks, the blue parrot with his red tail and the angry little black scorpion, who had fled the drought and was brandishing his dagger behind the brightly lit glass of his tank. He even saw Toa the trader. He was selling ice creams now, but he hadn’t changed at all. He kept getting his fingers caught in the candyfloss, and he spent his time cursing.