When the Plums Are Ripe

by Patrice Nganang

  The trio walked on, talking about this and that, expressing surprise at one thing or another. But honestly, if Augustus and Xavier had known what was simmering there in Pouka’s head, they would have told him the truth: he’d planted the idea of their coming to the capital when he created his little poetry circle there in Mininga’s Bar, well before Free France arrived in Edéa. He needed to take responsibility for it. At the moment, they were following him peacefully through the different quarters of the city—its well-to-do and its poor neighborhoods—silencing their surprise at seeing the man who had always worn a jacket and tie back in the village now walk barefoot like any other native. With each step, our friends were discovering the duplicity of the city’s inhabitants. Ah, if they could have heard what their maestro would say to his friend Um Nyobè, three days after they’d moved in with him, when he stopped by his friend’s on the way home from work just to complain about his “guests from the village” and ask “desperately for advice.”

  “What should I do?” That was the question he couldn’t get away from; he asked it in French.

  “You can’t just put them out on the street,” Um Nyobè declared with a stony grimace. “That’s for sure.”

  Martha agreed. But she didn’t stay around for the rest of the conversation: the kitchen and their child both called for her attention.

  “Who knows?” Pouka said when she had disappeared into the back of the house. “Maybe they’re just thieves?”

  “Thieves?”

  Back in Edéa he had sworn they were poets. Hearing that, Um Nyobè burst out laughing. Pouka agreed he was exaggerating; but speaking of crime, he was lucky he hadn’t been robbed there in the Mokolo market after his last visit, when he’d left for home so late. Then it was Um Nyobè who changed the subject, suddenly seeming pressed for time. Talking about visits, he had been meaning for a few days to stop by Pouka’s house—he had something important to tell him.

  “Go on, I’m listening.”

  Um Nyobè lowered his voice.

  “Your thieves there, did they even tell you what happened in Edéa?”

  He said “thieves” in French.

  Pouka hadn’t heard anything, Um Nyobè soon realized. Unable to silence the truth, he gave him the details of what had happened to Ngo Bikaï, even sharing this confession from the Mother of the Market: “He penetrated her from behind, anally.” The more he said, the narrower the focus of his listener’s eyes. “But he didn’t have time to ejaculate.”

  The poet blew up.

  “She was sodomized?”

  What could he say? Suddenly Pouka’s eyes went blank. He didn’t shout, “Woyo-o!” Nor did he put his hands on his head, but it was as if he had, for he clapped his right hand firmly over his mouth. He shuddered. It was no longer Ngo Bikaï he was worried about, but the two fellows he had let into his own living room. Or maybe how the story about Ngo Bikaï fit with that of the two fellows? He grabbed hold of his friend’s hands. One word echoed in his mind, “sodomized.”

  “Why did you tell me that?”

  “To ask you what we can do.”

  Pouka slowly gathered his wits, as if the word “we” had torn away the stupor that had blanketed him. He was terribly afraid.

  “What does Martha say?”

  Um Nyobè hadn’t yet told his wife. The two men sighed. The storm that had rocked their boat suddenly passed. From the back of the house, the noises of dishes being washed suggested cooking, and the sounds of a child’s voice the image of a mother juggling her thousand responsibilities. Pouka was trying to figure out how to pick up the conversation. He wanted to ask his friend how he had heard about it, how Fritz was reacting, but he fell silent. Clearly Fritz was the only one who could have shared the details of the attack. His friend was just as stunned as he was. Their silence was only broken when Martha returned to the living room, chasing their rambunctious child. She was surprised to see the two men sitting in silence.

  “Did someone die?” she asked.

  That was about it.

  “Don’t ask Pouka anything,” the maestro said abruptly.

  Then he got up to leave.

  16

  The Equations of the Good Cameroonian

  To understand just why Pouka had gone to complain to his “brother from the village,” you have to understand what it means to be a “good Cameroonian.” It’s really just another version of “the good Frenchman.” When a Frenchman tucks his baguette under his arm early in the morning, who else besides another Frenchman would understand what he is doing? Because: Under his arm? And why, too, in the morning? And yet it’s simple: the good Cameroonian brushes his teeth each morning, wearing a towel wrapped around his hips and those cheap plastic sandals we call sans confiance. No need to add that he brushes his teeth out in his courtyard: that’s just another part of the code that I’ll try and explain to you. He brushes them standing in his courtyard because his washroom—toilet and sink—is outside. If outside toilets are the usual thing, both in the city and in the village, the one thing that you see only in the city is the towel around the hips, a reminder of the pagne that men wear in the village. It’s really simple, see? When the good Cameroonian gets up, he feels around under his bed to find his sans confiance and quickly puts them on; then he takes the towel he hung on the chair the night before, ties it around his hips, and heads out into the courtyard. Sometimes that really means into the street, but he doesn’t give a damn, since the towel is protecting his privates. That towel is really quite practical. If he wants to urinate, he just has to lift up the corner, using his right hand if he’s right-handed, grasp his bangala with his left, and empty his bladder into the drain, with his right hand pressed on his buttocks. He doesn’t even need to give his thing a shake after, for the towel is there to dry it off. If he wants to scratch his balls, same thing. If he wants to take a shit, he just needs to lift up the back of the towel, again using his right hand if he’s right-handed, and then poop. In short, the towel knotted on his left hip never leaves his body until he’s ready to wash up.

  At that point, the good Cameroonian spreads his towel over the opening in his wall that leads to the washroom—now it serves as a curtain. A tool with a thousand uses, it covers up the doorway or, if there is a swinging door, it covers the window, because there is no way the washroom of a good Cameroonian has both a door and shutters on the window. So you see, it is just as important for the body as it is for the setup of the washroom itself. Of course, towels aren’t really made to be used as a curtain or a door, but rather to dry off the body of the one who purchased them. That’s what they’re for. And it’s clear that this whole time, the towel itself is still dry. It’s logical, right? In the worst case—say, for example, the good Cameroonian urinated down the drain and then used the towel—there are at most just a few drops of liquid on it. Of course, after he’s washed up, when the towel has fulfilled the only real function it has here on earth, it is necessarily damp. At that point, according to tradition, the man whose body is now dry walks back across the courtyard, the towel again tied around his hips, goes through the living room to his bedroom, and gets dressed. He doesn’t even need to take off his towel first, because he can just slip on his underwear—if he wants to wear any—or his trousers, pulling them up under the towel. He puts on his shirt with the towel still there. Once dressed and doused in eau de cologne, the good Cameroonian goes back out from his bedroom through the living room to the courtyard; only then does the towel leave his body, when he hangs it on one of the many clotheslines that run across the courtyard, as they are supposed to do. He spreads his towel out, if he can, near the door to the living room, the real entrance to the house, because he doesn’t want to forget it when he comes home in the evening. That’s when he’ll carry the towel back into the house, now that it’s been dried by the sun, which means, according to the laws of mathematics, that it will be dry in the morning when he will reach out to pick it up from the chair where he placed it the night before, then tie it around his h
ips, and repeat the morning routine. The same is true for his sans confiance, the same mathematical principles applying to both towel and sandals.

  So it’s no surprise that Pouka jumped when, as he tied his towel around his hips, he felt it wasn’t dry. His surprise was that of any good Cameroonian, because his towel was there, where it hung every morning, without fault, but this time it was damp. I’m stressing the “damp” to emphasize his silent stupefaction. He mumbled an insult in French—“What an idiot!”—and thought about two equations, each with constants that he knew quite well. The first was, given that he didn’t live with a woman, he had a routine and quickly lost his temper if it wasn’t followed to the letter. If he wanted his guests—how long were they going to stay anyway?—to keep up the respectful attitude they’d shown by calling him “maestro,” he needed to regain the upper hand and keep calm. The second equation was that—good God!—it was just seven o’clock in the morning, too early to start an argument. But what our dear Pouka had forgotten was that his citified habits were at odds with the village ways of his two guests. Sure, he was sharing his bed with them, as any good Cameroonian would do, but they had gotten up before him. He called them the “attackers” because they had explained that they got up early to take the city by storm. Take life by storm, what an idea! The poet, the maestro of alexandrine verse, would admit with a smile that he had fallen into a soft way of life. The day of the damp towel—that is to say, the day after Augustus and Xavier had come into his life, ready to take the city by storm—he had seen the two attackers there in his courtyard, sitting on cement blocks, biting their fingernails. Because he didn’t want to start off the day with an argument, and mostly because he preferred to keep the peace, he spoke as if to himself, as any good Cameroonian would do in this situation.

  “Whoever used Maestro Pouka’s towel should take care not to do so again!” he said.

  Since these words weren’t addressed to anyone in particular, no one could take offense. The next day, however, it was his sans confiance that were damp, while his guests sat silently in the courtyard.

  “Whoever used Maestro Pouka’s sans confiance this morning should not do so again!” he said before leaving for work.

  The third day, he reached around in the darkness of his bedroom, trying to find his sans confiance, but no luck. He looked for his towel on his bedside chair and couldn’t find it, either. Wearing just underwear and barefoot, he went outside and found Xavier not only with his towel tied around his hips, but his sandals on his feet, too. Pouka did not jump for joy. No, he wasn’t happy to catch his thief red-handed—with the towel around his hips and the sandals on his feet—no. Because this was an outright affront. Still, he didn’t tear into that Xavier and leave him with a bare bottom as well as bare feet, for what good Cameroonian would do that to a guest? Yet all that day, while he was at work, he couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen the next morning when he reached around under his bed for his sans confiance and then moved on to his chair, where his dry towel usually hung. Xavier had crossed the line so egregiously that his maestro was really upset. It was in hopes of putting an end to his torment that he had gone to see his brother from the village, Um Nyobè. His mouth exploded with the question that had obsessed him all day: “What should I do?” His torment was so justified, so understandable, and yet so hard to fix that he didn’t really listen to the horrible story Um Nyobè told him. Because what had happened to Ngo Bikaï defied all reason.

  “She was actually sodomized?”

  That question, which emerged from the mists that clouded his thoughts, was the perfect illustration of the logic of a good Cameroonian.

  “What Cameroonian would do that?”

  That was his question.

  17

  In Praise of the Sahara

  Sodomy or not, damp towel or not, the liberation of France, or, to use the shorthand formulation found in books, complete with a capital L, the Liberation, was not going to slow its pace. On January 26, 1941, right when Yaoundé and Edéa were both scandalized by the same story, the column of tirailleurs and Allied soldiers began their march toward Kufra. They had to move on because, after taking a beating in Murzuk, the Italians were aware of their presence. Even the desert has ears. And, of course, no army could shrug off the loss of its aerial support. When soldiers march, it is always epic. And this was no exception. If you wanted to make a film about it, you’d silence the soldiers’ voice track and focus on them marching, because the tirailleurs went by foot. But then again, if Hollywood ever thought about telling their story, there’d be no speaking parts for the tirailleurs. They’d be filmed with orchestral music in the background, an air suggesting windblown sand, their story told by a narrator off-screen—someone like me. You’d only see the determined but exhausted faces of the soldiers, their silhouettes whipped by the sun and the sand, their bare feet sinking into the dunes, their columns snaking their way across endless expanses. And the trucks struggling to advance, their tracks mired in the sinking terrain of the fesh-fesh. At the head of the column of four hundred soldiers, Massu and his meharist scouts on camelback. Yet it wasn’t because of the foot soldiers or the meharists that the Leclerc Column, as it has come to be known, fought a nineteenth-century-style battle—one might even call it biblical. It was their outdated weaponry. Colonel Leclerc had at his disposal no more than thirty-five trucks; four all-terrain transports, model Laffly S15; two radio transmitters; and two archaic mountain cannons, 75mm Schneiders from 1928. The Italians, for their part, were armed to the teeth. We all know they were fascists—so this is no surprise.

  Let’s just note that they were stationed there in Kufra’s impenetrable fort. As you well know, dear reader, the pen that writes legends is always on its last drop of ink when the real story begins. And that day, a legend was born. The weapons the colonel’s soldiers dragged along with them were, as we know, the stuff of myth, or of disaster. Most of the tirailleurs had nothing more than their machetes. Obviously, the military statistics do not account for Hebga, who carried his ax over his shoulder. The woodcutter was used to taking on impossible tasks and invisible adversaries. The sandy wind that rose up before his eyes, at times like a mist, at others an opaque wall, was no different from the rain that used to block his vision back in the forest, or from the forest itself where the Man who had done that to our Sita had hidden. He still nursed the same rage in his belly and didn’t give a damn about what anyone might say about the battle later: that the tirailleurs, who were nothing more than cannon fodder, would face the Italians bare-handed. Hebga would have taken on anyone, anytime, with his bare hands, for all he needed was to invoke our Sita’s name and the rage took hold of his heart once more. He was assigned to the artillery, because his ax had been classified as a heavy weapon. There was a reason for that: the ax was gigantic. Hebga marched alongside the cannons. Philothée and Aloga were somewhere ahead, with the infantry. The three Bassas had been separated, but Aloga had found powerful words to reassure them before their departure: the sand united their steps. The false Hilun had described the country that opened up before them and swore that he saw in the unbroken blue of the sky overhead the protecting hand of Bilong, their guardian angel.

  Ah! Philothée should have told him that he had been praying since the start of the march for Bilong to save him, because he couldn’t even pee anymore. When he tried, his dried-up kidneys only let out three or four drops, which were immediately sucked up by the thirsty desert. The poor guy thought that he had “the soldier’s disease”—even though he hadn’t been laid since Yaoundé! But, like Philothée’s urine, drop by drop, one man after the other, the Sahara swallowed up the tirailleurs’ stories. A huge hole in the heart of the continent, its gusts of sand would have blown away the chronicle of their acts if it weren’t for me—me, the narrator of their glory, the writer of their tale, the poet of their bliss. There were tirailleurs who, in the middle of the desert, cursed de Gaulle’s own mama’s ass. There were those who tried to escape. Free Franc
e didn’t even pretend to hold them back. Those deserters realized all on their own that the word “deserter” was nothing more than a bad joke, and that it was better to be killed by fascists than swallowed up whole by the maw of the Sahara. For the men who were proud to have crossed lagoon, forest, steppe, and plateau learned that the man who hasn’t yet met the Sahara knows nothing about Africa. No one had sung the hymn of the desert to these men from the bush. With no warning the Sahara revealed to them its beardless face: that side of the Sahara that, while whistling a morbid tune, abused their bodies like a whore would abuse a virgin’s bangala. During the day, it beat their brows, burned their eyes, dug holes in their throats, and ate up their feet; then at night it transformed into a bitter cold that froze their balls. Unable to sleep at night, the tirailleurs spent their days dreaming of the torment of their cold bed. They didn’t know that the Saharan sands had a twin sister in Russia. But ask any good Cameroonian what he knows about Saharianas! Or rather, ask Aloga, because he in particular knew how to comfort his comrades by conjuring up images of impossible women; ask him and he’ll tell you that the Bassa ancestors never sang about those mamy nyanga. You tell me, how can it be that our legends from the forest have no songs of praise for this Stalingrad, for this African Smolensk that is 526,000 years old? Ah, no song for the heart of Africa!