But Ballay, who knew how to savor a victory, was in no rush. He removed his kepi, his gaiters, and his boots, mopped his forehead, and had his feet massaged while making coarse jokes. No grudge stuck in his throat. The question of Fouta Djallon was settled once and for all and Olivier de Sanderval could now become a friend, just another person with whom to play chess, and pleasant company—and this above all was unbearable to the King of Kahel. The governor waited for the anisette, the leg of antelope, the fine wines, and the cognac—this was an event worth celebrating!—before rummaging through his bag:
“Here, read this, Sanderval; it’s written in French and in Fula.”
Sanderval made a point not to flinch as he reached for the paper. But he finished reading it not with a sob but a mocking laugh; an involuntary and beastly sound that echoed long and loud through the valleys and river gorges:
“You’ll obviously never understand anything about the Fulas, my poor Ballay! Bôcar-Biro didn’t sign this; he wrote bismillahi* instead.”
The cognac, the mountain air, the joy of knowing his Fouta hadn’t slipped out of his grasp! And how did the encounter come to a close? With a single image forever imprinted in his memory: Ballay rearing his horse on the grassy slopes of Fouta and loudly cursing the Fulas, the kings of Kahel, the almamis of Timbo, the viscounts of Portugal, and every pain in the ass on earth.
That year the rainy season brought constant deluges and harsh winds, lightning and thunder. The fanatics and the superstitious claimed this was proof that Allah, purveyor of malediction and mercy, had finally decided to pour out his wrath on this Fouta of hypocrites and miscreants and punish it once and for all for its crimes and sins.
Three months of uninterrupted downpours and rumbling isolated the villages from the provinces, the provinces from Timbo, and Fouta from the rest of the world. Alpha Yaya’s emissaries took nearly three weeks to return, more often traveling by boat than by foot, for the rivers and lakes had flooded even the highlands. Though they proceeded with extreme caution, a man was lost in the swollen Téné. But the news they brought was good: Bôcar-Biro agreed to forgive his vassal. He would come to Labé as soon as the trails dried out. It was time for the Fulas to move beyond their nomadic instincts and clan quarrels, time to turn Fouta into a house of peace, where love and friendship, trust and a spirit of sharing would reign for all time.
But while they waited, the floods did more than paralyze the caravans of Sarakolés and the shepherds stranded in summer pastures—they suspended Fouta’s history. The collapsed bridges and muddy paths put the mistrust and old grudges, honeyed promises and bad intentions on hold. Both in Labé and in Timbo, the Fulas were as prudent and calculating as ever. Each saw the long knife the other held behind a smile and smooth talk.
The fonio saved from the catastrophe sprouted and ripened, sorghum blossomed, taro grew to full height, and ears of corn hung heavy on their stalks. The fine October sun reclaimed its territory and the Fulas returned to carding and weaving, harvesting and selling, maligning and moving to new pastures.
Then one sunny afternoon Sanderval was approached by one of his spies while he was supervising the peanut harvest with Georges and Mangoné Niang.
“I have two pieces of news for you, Yémé—a good one and a bad one.”
“Start with the bad one.”
“The Beafadas.”
“What about the Beafadas?”
“They killed your agent Bonnard.”
“My God!”
“Now listen to the good news, it will surely cheer you up: Bôcar-Biro took the bait. At this very moment, he is headed for Labé.”
He wrote a long letter of condolence to Bonnard’s family and immediately left for Labé.
That old fox Ibrahima was already in place, with his troops gathered by the city’s eastern gate. He was right—they could take no chances this time. The acolytes’ armies had to lend their full weight to Kahel’s army, along with every soldier, bearer, scout, bullet, and arrow available.
The biggest trap in the history of Fouta was set around the Kahel plateau.
The almami’s noisy cortege was reported near Bhouria, then Porédaka, Sankaréla, Fogoumba…and finally in Mâci, a day’s journey from Kahel.
The almami trod this last village with the foot of bad luck, as the Fulas would say. For soon the world was turned upside down and events rushed forth in a chaotic tumult no one had anticipated. Before the next day’s evening prayer, Fouta’s fate had been changed forever.
Bôcar-Biro’s spies, who were waiting for him at the entrance to the village, told him what was afoot in Kahel. He had planned to stop there for two days, long enough to get a feel for where the notables stood and allow his troops to gather their strength, but decided to leave the next day at dawn. As a good Sorya warrior, he only needed a flash of inspiration to master the situation and decide on his riposte. He had ten times fewer men than his opponents. No matter, he had faced the same odds at Bantignel and Petteh Djiga; in the first case he had managed to escape and in the second he had roundly defeated the enemy. Here’s what he would do: divide his army in three unequal parts. The smallest would head straight to Kahel to serve as bait, the other two would swoop east and west to sideswipe the enemy. Having crafted this plan and carefully stored it away in his mind, he went to his quarters as if nothing was amiss and enjoyed a copious plate of doe meat with fonio and millet. After dinner, he said his evening prayer and fell directly to sleep.
He did not suspect death was closing in on him and that the kingdom of his ancestors was on the verge of collapse.
In the middle of the night, a messenger sent by his mother woke him to tell him the most terrifying news ever to reach the ear of an almami: the French army had just occupied Timbo.
Three columns of infantrymen had just converged on his capital—one from Dubréka, one from Siguiri, one from Kayes. His mother had fled, but all the other notables were in captivity and the French colors floated over his palace as if they had been there forever. He immediately mounted his horse and raced for Timbo. He didn’t know that the white men, furious not to have caught him in Timbo, were headed to Mâci, and that behind him the Kahel allies had quickly been made aware of the situation and were now shadowing him.
Fouta became the playing field for a curious game: the movements of three enemy armies, each one ready to make a deal with the devil to crush the other two.
The confrontation took place in the Porédaka plain: Bôcar-Biro and the French by the river; Olivier de Sanderval and most of Fouta’s army hidden in the woods at the top of the hill watching the battle without intervening.
It was over quickly—shells and cannons determined the outcome in just a few minutes. The wounded almami lost his eldest son, his horse, and most of his men. Yet he managed to escape and disappear into the gallery forest.
The echoes of war still sounded, but already someone could distinctly be heard crying:
“Catch that man! He wants to join his reserve army in Nafaya and recruit his friend Samory! Catch him, I tell you!”
Yet Bôcar-Biro contrived to get away once again. He was finally caught two days later, huddling in a blacksmith’s hovel. Beckmann claimed the honor of exhibiting his pockmarked head to the people of Timbo:
“Here is the horrible face that made Fouta tremble! And this will be the fate of anyone who contests the governor’s orders!”
SO IT WAS THAT SIMPLE.
Five minutes of war and Fouta had collapsed. On the way back to Kahel, Olivier de Sanderval surveyed the landscape around him with eyes full of sadness. He had the feeling that the same cruel bitterness that weighed on his heart was crushing the trees and the hills. The country’s picturesque beauty seemed to have melted along with his hopes—the colors of the valley were less magical, the roaring of the torrents less poetic. His Fouta had slipped out of his grasp, his Fouta would never be the same. Alone and on the verge of despair, he traveled on with his head down, in no rush to get to Kahel.
“Did yo
u hear, good people? They decapitated the almami! The sun still shines above our heads, yet Fouta no longer exists.”
Now he was on the outskirts of Fogoumba, distractedly listening to the chorus of mourners and the lowing of the cattle. He still had to cross the Téné and pass the Kébali plain and the piles of fallen rock by Diembouria.
In Porédaka, the allies had parted without saying goodbye; each went on his way as if returning from a hunt that had gone poorly.
Olivier had wisely waited for the battle to end before leaving the woods. But a French officer, seeing him arrive, had immediately given orders to fire at him. A counterorder from Beckmann had saved him in the nick of time. All he could do now was leave the battleground, trailed by the jeers of his archenemy—Beckmann had won and, more unbearable yet, had saved his life. He had headed for Sankaréla without paying any attention to the directions his allies had taken.
He rode along dejected, holding his bridle in one hand, with only three servant boys following him with his clothing, medicine, and supplies. He had been traveling for two or three days now and still he hadn’t reached Kahel—it was as if his pace had been broken, or even that the peaks of Kahel were gradually moving farther away after the disaster at Porédaka.
“My friends, Fouta has drifted away. A pile of dust carried away by the wind. La i la i lallahou. They killed the almami and his treasure has disappeared!”
People standing at the entrance to villages watched him drag himself by without saying a word. Those he met along the trail and on the banks of rivers turned away and disappeared like shadows in the dense undergrowth. The people were most certainly not happy with him. He wasn’t happy with himself either. In fact, he wasn’t happy with anyone. Fouta was becoming a strange domain where no one was happy with anyone. Bôcar-Biro was dead. That was what everyone had wanted, yet now everyone seemed to regret something, starting with him, Olivier de Sanderval. They had reached an outcome, but the outcome led to the abyss. Yesterday things were simple; today nothing could be counted on, neither pacts nor ideas nor friends.
A morbid sense of discomfort and doubt weighed on him throughout the trip.
“And do you know what, good people? The almami’s treasure has disappeared. They killed the almami and his treasure has disappeared!”
His path teemed with ghosts, the words he heard were addressed to no one.
He lingered in Kahel a few days to pay his soldiers and farmers, speed up the construction projects, and oversee the beginning of the harvest. But mostly he took advantage of this time to clear his head and gather his thoughts. Fear of the future was becoming more unbearable than insomnia. Everything was receding, everything was turning hostile or unknown. There was no one he could trust and he was out of ideas. Taking long walks on the moors and hunting for partridges was of no help.
This time Georges and Mangoné Niang had to fight harder than ever to pull him out of these long periods of withdrawal, filled with vehement and mysterious soliloquies.
“They beheaded the almami! What did they do with Bôcar-Biro’s gold?”
Yet he was not the kind of man to let himself get demoralized—at least he had not been. He was a buffalo, physically as well as temperamentally, that never hesitated to charge when danger was on the horizon; had he been born in Timbo or Labé, the soothsayers would have linked his soul to that animal. But now everything about him was going soft. Sometimes he was tempted by death. He thought of surrendering to the euphoria of the void and answering the call of the torrents roaring in the precipices.
“Who knows what they’ve done with Bôcar-Biro’s gold? Where is the almami’s treasure?”
An obscure prince by the name of Oumarou Bademba was hoisted to the throne. Governor General Chaudier came all the way from Saint-Louis to make it official…
News of recent events was as pitifully insignificant to Olivier as the chirping of the hornbills or the buzzing of the bees.
But reality does not stand being ignored for long. One Monday morning, three young riders arrived unexpectedly from Labé and broke through his lethargy:
“Alpha Yaya, Tierno, and Ibrahima are gathered in Labé, Yémé. They told us to come get you.”
He shook himself off like a man getting out of bed after lazing around all day.
He stood, called his son, and followed the young messengers, never once suspecting he would never see Kahel again.
In Labé, they all looked like his enemies. When he arrived, Tierno turned away and Ibrahima pretended to chant. There was no hint of anything human in Alpha Yaya’s eyes:
“I’ve just learned that a certain Bonnassiès is arriving to take command of the Labé post. The Labé post! I’ll greet him with my rifle, Yémé! I haven’t ripped my land out of Timbo’s claws to give it to the white man. Who in God’s name do you people think you are?”
Tierno was uncharacteristically hotheaded:
“I’ll do the same in Timbi-Touni!”
“It’s too late, far too late, kinsmen. I had warned you,” Ibrahima’s horrible voice rasped. “Allahu akbar, the lightning bolt I feared is the very one that struck. Cursed, cursed, cursed era!”
“Your infantrymen cross my land without even asking my permission,” Tierno continued.
“‘Your’? Why ‘ your ’?” Sanderval replied, indignant.
“They are your brothers, Yémé! White men like you!”
This torture lasted for an hour before Olivier finally exploded too: “Why don’t you talk to Ballay, you dishonest and unbearable shepherds! He’s the governor! He’s the white man! I’m a Fula, a Fula just like you!”
“Oh yes? When it rains, you’re white, when it’s sunny, you’re black, and when it’s windy, you’re no one at all. I know this kind of animal, it’s called a chameleon, it’s called a chameleon. I should have crushed you with my foot the day we met,” roared Alpha Yaya.
Sensing things were becoming dangerously inflamed, Tierno returned to the cool demeanor with which the white man was familiar:
“Patience, kinsmen, patience! What good can it possibly do us to yell at each other? We’ve already descended far enough into the darkness without further closing the door. What we need is a solution and the solution is in your hands, Yémé. Go to Conakry and talk to Ballay.”
“To Ballay? What in heaven’s name do you want me to say to him?”
“Tell him, tell the people of your race to respect their commitments: friendship and trade, nothing else.”
“Otherwise we’ll pick up our guns. Tell the governor this: let him take care of his business in Conakry and we’ll take care of Fouta’s business. Let him just send us his fabrics and pearls and he’ll get cowhides and wax in exchange. Can you make him understand that?”
“I’ll try, Alpha Yaya, but in their eyes I am a Fula.”
“And are you truly?”
“You’ll never believe me, but hurtling down your hills, stuffing myself with fonio and curdled milk, cheating and lying, and breathing in the dirty ways of you skittish, petty nobles has had its effect…But that only concerns me. Don’t believe me if you wish, but I too am a Fula. And the worst is that I rather like it!”
Tierno looked away. Ibrahima stopped sniffling. Alpha Yaya sighed deeply, then cleared his throat, as if to free his voice of the grime of anger and resentment, and extended his hand to the white man:
“Do you remember what I told you near the river, Yémé?”
“You told me: ‘This is the morning for good omens. Be my friend, stranger!’”
“Well, Yémé, come what may, those words will always hold true.”
With that they parted. Our two white men were housed in an outbuilding of the palace and a sheep was slaughtered in their honor. The next morning they were escorted to the Kokolo River. But as they said their goodbyes, Alpha Yaya resumed the terrifying appearance of a king:
“Listen, Yémé, if the whites take Fouta, I will go to war with them. Never forget that, Yémé!”
He headed straight for Conakry
without stopping in Kahel. Tierno was right, he had to speak to Ballay, and as soon as possible. He should have realized that the instant the battle of Porédaka came to an end. Except that at that moment his dulled mind had been unable to see the obvious. Bôcar-Biro’s death left so many things hanging. Would Fouta become a protectorate? A colony? Would it be autonomous, or integrated into French Guinea, Senegal, or Sudan? And what about his treaties? He had to hurry. He had to reach Conakry before Ballay was called to Saint-Louis or some distant province. He had to persuade him to treat the Fula princes carefully to avoid catastrophe, especially now that that fool Beckmann’s clumsiness had put the panther Alpha Yaya on the alert.
“If the whites take over Fouta, I will go to war with them!”
Alpha Yaya’s threats could never be taken lightly.
Terror reigned in Tianguel, his first stop after the cliffs of Guémé-Sangan. No one dared to go out at night. “A witch is haunting the area,” the village chief told him deadly serious.
“You Fulas with your tall tales!”
“This is no lie, Yémé. I saw her with my own eyes, with her wild hair and bloodshot eyes. You can see for yourself by the fountain-with-reeds, that’s where she’s been sighted roaming around.”
“I have better things to do; I need to check my itinerary and rest my tired old legs for tomorrow’s challenges. We need to cross the Konkouré and I’ve heard it’s flooded.”
But the next day, as he passed the fountain-with-reeds at the head of his small column, he witnessed a scene so profoundly revolting that his sunshade simply dropped out of his hands. A horde of overexcited boys was throwing stones at a poor woman dressed in rags, covered in sores, her nostrils clogged with snot.
The King of Kahel Page 24