The King of Kahel

by Monénembo, Tierno; Elliott, Nicholas

  The man looked at him for a good minute, opened his safe, and said in a voice choked with sobs:

  “In that case, sir, come and help yourself.”

  He hastened to telegraph before fate proved the article correct. Then, after a few days’ rest, he visited Conakry. With the imperturbable tranquility of Adam taking possession of the world, he carved out two estates for himself, one at the island’s western point, the other by the promontory.*

  { PART THREE }

  EIGHT YEARS HE’D BEEN STUCK with this damned Fouta, its steep slopes and enigmatic Fulas—or rather, eight years in the field. If he included the days he had spent captivated by the tales of Mollien, René Caillié, Mungo Park, and Lambert, it had been a lifetime. And if he counted the nights under his blankets given over to dreaming up misty forests teeming with Negroes, prehistoric reptiles, and demons, feverishly imagining the infernal din of torrents and buffaloes, and the dark character and degenerate appearance of the Fulas, he could say he had put every last drop of his blood and being into it.

  When he was a child, Africa had seemed to him like a monumental baroque opera: misshapen figures, extravagant scenes, an orgy of sound and color set to an unprecedented music; an over-the-top spectacle to shatter your mind and scorch your senses. It was all fiery extravaganza, intoxication, exotic exhilaration; thunder, hurricanes, volcanoes, and precipices delivered comic delights, while fever, boils, snakebites, and comas determined the aesthetic. He would only require a single dazzling high C to surmount the obstacles that usually stand in a hero’s way—the challenges, the intrigues, and the torments of love.

  As soon as he arrived, a kingdom would spring up as fast as in a dream, with the panache of Julius Caesar in Egypt or Lorenzaccio.

  It would be a brand-new country, virgin, with flowers everywhere and strange fruits, populated by animals and scattered tribes as jovial as they were peaceful. An embryonic country that was waiting for its little spark to light up and burst out of the darkness. Then it would only remain for him to mold it to his taste, with the ease of the potter handling clay. First in small doses, with music theory and the alphabet; then Archimedes, algebra, Virgil, and Ronsard; and finally Newton and scaffolding.

  Naturally, his child’s mind could hardly imagine the hunger, sunstroke, wounds, and near-lethal illnesses, let alone the two terrible obstacles now facing him: the Fulas and Bayol, Bayol and the Fulas, very possibly his own Scylla and Charybdis. He had no doubt the battle would be hard, cruel, and ugly. He would win anyhow. He had to win no matter what; he would win against fire and sea, against lightning and wind, against men and gods. He would show the era what a real Lyonnais was—and an Olivier at that!

  He already had resources to draw upon. He now had two shelters, two sanctuaries, two unassailable strongholds: Kahel and Conakry. The first would serve him to lull the Fulas; he would gradually imitate them and absorb their milk, guile, princely eccentricities, and country squire manners—and slyly take over their jewel of a kingdom. The second would serve to counter Bayol and those jackals in the Ministry of the Navy.

  He had not chosen these two sites by accident. The Kahel plateau spoke for itself: at a high elevation and in the very heart of the country! Conakry allowed him to keep from bothering his Portuguese friends in Bolama, or to get caught up in the intrigues of the Ministry of the Navy in Boké. Protected from the sandbar by the Loos Islands and from the fierce coastal tribes by its island-like isolation, it would be a perfect terminal for his railroad. In Kahel, he could count on Mangoné Niang to build the palace and train station, open the trading posts, and plant the tree nurseries. In Conakry, he would need someone to design a port and the plans for a city. Ah, if only young Souvignet were still alive! Ah, if only!

  After customs and a visit with the doctors, his first order of business was to strike the kahel, his kingdom’s official currency. Tails: a lion of Susa facing left beneath a crescent. Heads: the word Sanderval in sumptuous adjami* calligraphy, inside a finely in dented cartouche. He believed in his empire now more than ever; he could already see it glowing in the mist. He had only to navigate carefully—in other words, to steer clear of Scylla and Charybdis. Of course, for the time being Kahel was more like Lilliput than Eldorado or the Indies, but you had to start somewhere. Hadn’t Rome started with the modest Palatine Hill before expanding to the ramparts of Ephesus, the vineyards of the Narbonnais, and the granaries of Iberia and Numidia?

  Once carefully counted and packed, this state treasure was shipped to Bonnard with strict instructions to distribute it at his trading posts and in the markets of Fouta, and to provide weapons to all those handsome Fula princes, lots of weapons so each of the boys had his very own lovely little toy.

  Once the last crate had been loaded, he could put aside old grudges and go to the ministry to deliver a comprehensive report on Fouta Djallon, supported by a map, countless photos, and a minutely detailed cross-section plan of the Konkouré Valley. He told somnolent civil servants that it was unnecessary to invade Fouta Djallon, that the princes were divided, that the Fulas were growing increasingly tired of their whims and excesses, that it would only take a little more opposition to make the whole system collapse.

  “As far as that goes, I’ve already done a good part of the work. Just let me take care of this and Fouta Djallon will wind up in our pocket without having cost us a single bullet. In exchange, I require ownership of a few hectares of land on which to build my residence and company headquarters.”

  He would never settle for a few hectares. His tone unmasked him, his eyes betrayed him. He tried to look calmer, more reasonable, and be more convincing than he had been with Vice Admiral Cloué. But he was chagrined to realize that despite his best efforts, his agenda was obvious to everyone. Whispers, side-glances, snickers—the men he spoke to, who had not been born yesterday, seemed to read into his soul as if it were an open book. “We know perfectly well that you will never give up your harebrained idea of a kingdom. Perhaps you’re expecting France to serve as your stepping stone to the throne, ha!”

  Nonetheless, he left this difficult appointment feeling slightly comforted: the importance of Fouta Djallon was no longer in doubt. It was the constant subject of discussion in the salons, pressrooms, and ministries. Gallieni, Archinard, Faidherbe, Brazza, all the icons of the colonial saga spoke of nothing else.

  Thanks to whom?

  He returned to Marseille feeling generally optimistic and ready to dedicate himself to Rose, who was very disappointed that shopkeepers and theater ushers declined to accept her kahels. A year passed and his children got their fill of playing and snacking with him. Rose had enjoyed her fair share of opera and society dinners and had had her every whim generously catered to in the chateaus of France and the ancient streets of Italy.

  He enjoyed the rare pleasure of spending long, wonderful hours in the company of his family, devoting his endless nights of insomnia to his notebooks and the formidable manuscript of The Absolute. Then one fine day, as he was preparing to take his wife out to dinner, his friend Jules Charles-Roux, ever the bearer of ill tidings, stormed into the living room with the latest issue of La Dépêche coloniale: France had just claimed a new colony, the Southern Rivers. With Conakry as its capital and a certain Bayol as its governor!

  “You know me, Jules,” he roared, flinging the newspaper across the room. “I’m leaving to kick Bayol out of Conakry this very minute!”

  But a message from the State Secretariat for the Colonies (which had finally been established—on whose recommendation?) upset his plans: he was being invited to the Colonial Exhibition about to be held in Paris. Had the ministries finally come to their senses? Were his treaties finally going to be recognized and his claim to Fouta Djallon supported? Was he going to receive the protection from English ambitions any French citizen deserved? In any case, he could not afford to miss this opportunity. The Colonial Exhibition was the ideal place to meet influential people and speak his mind, even if he had to scream and shout and knock
a few imbeciles’ teeth in.

  He was whistling when he boarded the train, but his heart nearly stopped dead when he reached the fairgrounds. Noirot—the man who had accompanied Bayol to Timbo—was in attendance. He was as one of the masters of the exotic ceremony. The ex–Folies Bergères comedian had climbed the ranks since his adventure in Timbo; he had been thrust into the position of colonial administrator in the Senegal River valley. As such, he had been asked to organize an attraction, which quickly proved to be one of the most popular at the exhibition: a Toucouleur village of thirty people, consisting of ten huts, two tents, and six high stoves at the entrance of which he had positioned a barker: “Visit a Negro village as if you were in Africa! See their diabolical looks and shapeless clothes. Watch them pound grain, cook, and spin cotton. Only ten sous to go on the most incredible journey, to leap from the steam engine to the Stone Age!”

  Olivier de Sanderval made his way through the crowd and approached the director of this exotic spectacle:

  “You should have kept your first job, Noirot! I tell you, barracks humor fits you like a glove, but colonial administration really isn’t your style.”

  Noirot spat out a curse and reluctantly turned away from his straw huts and Negroes:

  “So, here’s the Portuguese viscount! I don’t like you either and you know it. Still, it’s a good thing you’re here: there’s someone looking for you.”

  Noirot led him to the center of the fair, where a group of honorable gentlemen were talking in low voices, waving their walking sticks and shaking their top hats. He stopped before the most imposing of them and adopted the voice of an aide-de-camp to announce:

  “Mr. President of the Chancellery, sir, here he is, the man known as Olivier de Sanderval. Monsieur de Sanderval, please allow me to introduce you to Général Faidherbe.”

  Faidherbe, his kepi, his mustache, his little glasses, his metallic stiffness, his sharp nose, and his stripes! Faidherbe standing right there before him, even more military and austere than legend had it—and the Napoleon of the colonies wanted to see him! The officer known to the Fulas as “the man with the four eyes and the bat-wing mustache” immediately turned from the men he was speaking to, extended a hand, and smiled:

  “So, here is our new René Caillié. Hats off, my dear friend, one hears of nothing but your exploits these days.”

  This was so nice to hear that Olivier de Sanderval forgot the solemnity of his surroundings and the grandeur of the man standing before him. He let himself go with the innocence of a baby relieving itself: without stopping to catch his breath, he spilled everything, this time looking so natural, so true, and so convincing that the general was careful not to interrupt him. When he had finished, Faidherbe took his hand again and shook it as if he had just graduated at the head of his class:

  “I will take care of Fouta. You can count on me for your treaties. And if ever France has an African Colonial Empire, its capital will be Timbo.”

  On his way out, feeling light as air, he discovered that a colorful spectacle had taken hold of Paris. The newspapers were having a field day; on the sidewalks the concierges choked with emotion:

  “Would you believe, my dear, that I woke up this morning and found all of Paris in black? They have brought a Negro king and his sorcerers and elephants all the way from Africa. And where have they put these good people? Maybe at a baron’s, or a marquis’s! A jungle is going to grow in Paris’s finest salons!”

  He asked around and learned the following: Noirot, drawing on his undeniable comic instinct, had invited the King of the Nalus, Dinah Salifou, and his wife, Queen Philis, to Paris. They were accompanied by princes from other tribes. These strange visitors were staying near the Invalides in the luxurious home of the marquis de Maubois on rue Faubert. The concierges hadn’t lied. And the Republic had gone all out to make their stay enjoyable. It had offered them tours of the most handsome monuments and invited them to the gala dinner recently held in honor of the Shah of Persia.

  He decided to drop in on them after dinner for a whiff of Africa, and especially to feel out this young Nalu king. Dozens of onlookers, journalists, caricaturists, ethnologists, tireless society hawks, and circus and opera lovers clogged the staircases to get a peek at this specimen of humankind. He forced his way through the crowd, making full use of his imposing frame and unmistakable air of baronial nobility.

  Dinah Salifou, who recognized him immediately, greeted him eagerly: “You don’t know me, but I know you, Yémé. I was a young guard when you visited the court of my uncle Lawrence.” He introduced him to Queen Philis and wasted no time in reassuring him: Bayol in Conakry, that would change nothing, the Sanderval treaties with the Nalus remained valid, no unforeseen event could affect that simple fact. Then he reverted to the inimitable tact of a tribal chief to whisper the news that had been burning on his lips:

  “Things are afoot in Fouta, Yémé: Alpha Yaya killed Aguibou and ran away with Taïbou!”

  The news was a bolt from the blue, sudden, stupefying, absolutely unanswerable. He needed to be somewhere else to take it in, to determine its significance and measure its terrible consequences.

  He hastened to say goodbye, but still shot one a last glance at the buffoon Noirot as he played tour guide to his visitors:

  “Môdy Cissé and Môdy Dian, princes of Labé! Nabi Yalane Fodé, prince of Mellancoré…Mansour Kane, prince of Matam…Sérigne Guèye, prince of Rufisque, M’Bar Sène, prince of Sine-Saloum…”

  Noirot was scum, but there was no denying his talent. If he had placed a ticket taker at the entrance, everyone would have thought they were at a cabaret.

  HE HURRIED BACK TO HIS ROOM at the Hôtel Terminus to shower and retreated to the Café de la Paix for a glass of Dutch gin. From the moment he had arrived among the Fula, he had known it would come to a bad end between those two brothers. They were inextricably connected, yet permanently divided by too many determining factors: two mothers, co-wives and rivals; one throne, the most coveted in Fouta; and, more inexorable and tempting than anything else, that cynical and desirable woman who, with a single glance, drew everything to her—gold, horses, slaves, and princes. He had always known it would come to a bad end and that Taïbou would be at the heart of the tragic outcome, in this Fouta Djallon where the path to the throne often crossed a river of blood. But he thought it would happen in the Fula way, that is to say, gently, elegantly, subtly, with a touch of chivalry. This ambush outside a mosque during evening prayer, in front of the children and the elders was not very Fula—not discreet enough, not clever enough, not well-mannered enough. Coarse work! Sicilian bandits in the caves of Mount Etna might behave this way—kill their adversary and take off with his lunch and his wife. Petty work, the work of someone petty. He couldn’t believe this of Alpha Yaya. After much reflection, he had staked his ambitions on him. Aguibou and Pâthé seemed to him to be too complicated, too cerebral, too haughty, in other words too Fula. They would never be easily manipulated. And Bôcar was certainly more simple-minded, but was too impulsive, too patriotic, too suspicious of white men. He preferred Alpha Yaya, a proud and wily type like any self-respecting Fula, but open-minded, better yet, both a good diplomat and a good warrior. All Olivier had to do to hold him in his grip was dangle the carrot of power and gold. He was a practical man, easy to figure out—his interests came first, his feelings second, unlike that emotional brute Bôcar-Biro. Olivier knew full well that he was a Fula, a real one, that he would never be able to know how Alpha Yaya really felt about him, but that he could count on him so long as they shared a cause.

  But to commit a crime and run off like a common highwayman! And where was he hiding?

  And that this news—probably more significant than Bayol’s appointment—reached him through a chance conversation! What was Bonnard doing? Where was Mangoné Niang? And what about his agents in Bolama and Gorée and his spies scattered in every corner of Fouta? What was he paying them for? Damn it!

  He settled his tab and left before he kill
ed anyone.

  This time, there wasn’t a second to waste. As soon as he got back to Marseille, he began nailing his trunks shut and going over his itineraries. At the harbor, they told him that the next ship would leave at the end of the month. Then the dark clouds rolled in and fate started playing games with him—he would not board that ship, nor any of the next ones. Two days before his departure, he received a letter from Paris that made him explode with joy. The new minister of the Colonies (they had just appointed a minister, a real one, by the name of de Laporte), who had often heard his exploits in Fouta Djallon extolled, expressed his admiration for him and asked him to come meet him face-to-face in order to discuss his grievances.

  This de Laporte was one of those Third Republic politicians: eloquent and refined, promoted to his position more through the political scheming of the moment than for any genuine expertise. He hardly knew where Africa was and imagined the colonies were barely more complicated than the Camargue, with monkeys instead of horses.

  An amateur for a minister, what a perfect opportunity! sniggered Olivier de Sanderval after asking around. He marshaled all the resources of a man from Lyon (audaciousness, tact, a sense of argumentation, seductiveness) before boarding the train. This time, his routine was a hit. The interview lasted far more than the hour that had been allotted and the minister personally walked him back to the courtyard and warmly shook his hand before repeating the decision that he had just made, and which filled Olivier with a beneficent and giddy joy:

  “I will send a notice supporting all your grievances to Doctor Bayol no later than today.”

  All your grievances! He had heard correctly—it wasn’t a joke! That would shut the beak of that vulture Bayol once and for all. The ministry in Conakry, he, Olivier de Sanderval, in Fouta Djallon, and France—at home everywhere! What could be a better arrangement? He would offer Rose a reprise of the La Verryère lunch after all, it was the best way to celebrate!