Memoirs of a Porcupine Read online

  my death quickly became an accepted fact in our little community, I presume it was the governor who decided that the group must relocate without further delay because, dear Baobab, when one of our number died, we’d set off at once, on a two or three day journey, in search of a new homeland, there were two reasons for this painful migration, first it was thought that a change of place was the only way of shaking off our fears and anxieties, which lay largely in our terror of the hereafter, in the fact that we believed that the next world was populated entirely by terrifying creatures, the governor turned this to his advantage by telling us that when a porcupine dies he revisits his former fellows again a few days later in the guise of an evil spirit, but this time giant-sized, with his quills raised, longer and sharper than the hunters’ javelins, and, again, in his version, the quills of such a porcupine scraped against the clouds, darkened the horizon, stopped the day from breaking, so we lived in fear of this phantom coming back from the kingdom of the dead to terrify us, stop us sleeping, pull out our pretty quills, threaten us with its long poisonous spikes, but the second reason for emigrating after the death of one of our number had more to do with survival instinct, we were convinced that a man who had slain an animal in one place would be tempted to return, ‘forewarned is forearmed’, the governor would say, if he felt that the fear of the phantom of an ill-willed porcupine was insufficient to persuade us of the necessity to move on, and if he saw we still weren’t happy with his decision, despite his threatening talk, he would say mysteriously, ‘trust me, I’m like a deaf man running till he’s out of breath’, adding, ‘and if you do see a deaf man running, my dears, don’t ask questions, follow him, because he hasn’t heard the danger, he’s seen it’, and this is possibly why my fellow porcupines had left the place where we’d been living for some time, leaving no clue as to how I might find their new territory, and even if some of them had thought of guiding me towards it by whatever means, by, for example, leaving palm nuts along a path, or quills on the ground, strewing excrement, or spraying urine as they went, marking the trunks of trees with their claws as they passed, it wouldn’t have helped, the governor would have destroyed the signs, he probably posted himself at the rear so as to keep a watch on the migration and above all, to destroy any such clues

  and so it was that on the fifth day, when I returned to our territory to rest after my first contact with young Kibandi, I found no one from our group, all was calm, the burrows were deserted, and I realised at last that the governor must have given the order to clear out and I had been declared dead by my own people, faced with this emptiness, I started to sob, the slightest noise in the undergrowth revived my hope that I might find one of my fellows coming to embrace me, rubbing his quills against mine by way of joyful greeting, teasing me, calling me ‘little fawn’, and when at last I did hear something, my quills began to tremble for joy, alas, my enthusiasm was short lived, and I realised that it was only a palm rat venturing forth, his sinister laughter said it all, even now I don’t understand why these lovers of palm nuts hate us so much, obviously I did not respond to his challenge, his silly snickering, I stayed there alone for six days, on the seventh day I noticed a squirrel of a fairly advanced age hanging about, and since at least squirrels are rather friendlier towards us, and we’ve never actually come to blows with them, I asked if he’d seen a bunch of porcupines leaving the region a few days before, he burst out laughing too, and did all the things we most dislike about his species, dashing about wildly for no reason, rolling his eyes, twitching his nose, bobbing his head about in an epileptic fashion, all of which looks quite ridiculous, but having said that, these tics are often what saves them from the humans’ rifle, and I noticed that his tail, which dragged behind him, was damaged, perhaps he had narrowly escaped a human trap, the wound was still gaping, I had no wish to dwell on the origin of his misfortune, then, after sniggering, and performing a series of absurd tics, he scratched his behind and mumbled, ‘I’ve been spying on you, I wondered why you were crying like that, it’s because you’re looking for the others isn’t, it, well I can’t say I’ve seen any porcupines round here for a few days, it’s been rather quiet round here just lately, it’s as if there’s nothing more left to eat, so everyone’s gone, but anyway, if you’ve got nowhere to live, you can come and join us, if you like, I’d be delighted to introduce you to my fellows, particularly since the rainy season’s coming up and it looks like it’s going to be a really tough one, judging by the heavy clouds hanging low as an ass’s belly, come with me, we should help each other out, lend one another a paw, know what I mean’, I couldn’t see myself living with squirrels, putting up with their tics, sharing their nuts, intervening when they fell out over a rotten almond, climbing trees all day, so I shook my head, he tried to persuade me, I didn’t waver, I’d rather die than stoop that low, I said to myself, and he went ‘who d’you think you are, eh, pride won’t find a vagabond shelter when he’s wandering about in the rain’, and I replied, ‘a vagabond’s shelter is his dignity’, and that silenced him, he looked me up and down and then said ‘listen, my spiky friend, I offered you hospitality, you’ve refused it, I’d like to help you find your friends but I’m in a hurry just now, the others have been waiting for me all this time, they sent me out to find some nuts, but I can at least tell you your family went the other way, behind you,’ and he pointed with his snout towards the horizon, where the earth meets the sky, where the mountains merge like a little heap of stones, I knew he was teasing, that it gave him a thrill to see me in such a state, ‘I’m sorry, I have to be off, good luck, be brave, and let’s hope your dignity finds you a home’, he said, and off he went, without turning round, I looked at the horizon, then at the sky, I wiped my tears, I dithered about for a few minutes, emptiness all around, still, as though the silence was looking back at me, watching me, knowing which way my fellows had gone, I could picture them exactly, the governor speaking, praying, muttering orders, I stopped crying there and then, and taking a large gulp of air, my quills at half-mast, I said to myself ‘too bad, now I’ll live on my own’, and after two more days of gnawing loneliness and misery, I set off on the path to the village of my young master

  and that, dear Baobab, is how I left the animal world and joined the service of young Kibandi, who had just received his initiation in Mossaka, the boy I would later follow all the way to Séképembé, the boy I would stick to for decades, up to last Friday, when I could do nothing to save him from death, I’m still feeling sad about it, I’d rather you didn’t see my tears, so I’ll turn my back to you, out of decency, and rest for a moment, before I carry on

  how Papa Kibandi sold us his destiny

  not a day of his life went by without my master thinking of the night his father sold on his destiny to us, visions of the initiation haunted him, he was back in Mossaka, aged ten, it was night, a night full of terrors, of flying bats, when Papa Kibandi woke him without a word to his mother, and dragged him off into the forest, and even before he left the house, little Kibandi witnessed something so incredible, he had to rub his eyes several times, to be sure it really was his father, one lying next to his mother and one standing beside him, so there were two identical Papa Kibandis in the house, one asleep in the bed, the other moving around, and in a sudden panic the child cried out, but his father, the one standing, put his hand over his mouth and said ‘you saw nothing, I am me, and the one lying next to your mother is also me, I can be myself and my other self, you’ll soon understand’, little Kibandi tried to escape, the standing-up father easily caught him, ‘I can run faster than you, and if you escape, I’ll send the other me after you’, little Kibandi looked again at the father standing up and the other one lying down, it felt like he was being kidnapped, perhaps he should wake up his father’s other self, and he’d come to the rescue, but then he wondered if the lying down one really was his parent, the standing up father let him check, then nodded, to say that he was the one the child had to talk to, he was his father, the real one, little
Kibandi was speechless, the standing-up father nodded again, gave an enigmatic smile, my young master cast a last despairing glance at his parents’ bed, his mother now had her hand on the lying-down Papa Kibandi’s chest, ‘my other self won’t even wake up till everything’s over, in accordance with the ancestors’ wishes, and if he does wake up now, you’ll find yourself without a father, come on, we have a long walk ahead’, he grabbed the child with his right hand, almost roughly, the door was ajar, they vanished into the night, the father always with his hand on the child, as though afraid he might run off, they walked and they walked, the only sound was the cries of the night birds, and when at last they came to the heart of the bush, under the eye of the watchful moon, the father let go of my young master’s hand, he knew it was too late to run off now, he was too afraid of the dark, Papa Kibandi brushed aside a tangle of creeper, headed for a field of bamboo, picked up an old spade lying hidden under a pile of dead leaves, the child watched carefully, they turned back, went into a clearing, you could hear a river running somewhere down below, and Papa Kibandi began to sing in his gravelly voice, while digging the earth as skilfully as a grave digger, one of those shroud-stealers who, once they’ve committed their theft, and desecrated the sepulchre of the stiff within, immediately wash the burial cloths in the river, fold them up neatly, and set off to sell them at full price in any neighbouring village where there might be a funeral, Papa Kibandi went on digging, the sound of the spade hitting the earth pierced the silence of the bush, and after about twenty minutes, which was like an eternity for my young master, the father threw down the tool on the pile of earth, heaved a sigh of relief, ‘right, that’s perfect, we’re there now, soon you’ll be released’, and he lay down on his belly, plunged his hand down into the hole in the ground and drew out an object wrapped in a piece of filthy cloth, and inside the child found a gourd and an aluminium cup, Papa Kibandi shook the gourd several times then poured the mayamvumbi into the cup, took a gulp himself, clicked his tongue, then held the vessel out to his son, who shrank back, ‘hey it’s for your own good, come on, drink’, and he grabbed him with his right hand, ‘you’ve got to drink this potion, it’s to protect you, don’t be stupid’, and when little Kibandi began desperately to struggle, he pinned him to the ground, held his nose, forced him to drink the mayamvumbi, a few mouthfuls was enough, it worked straight away, little Kibandi at once began to feel dizzy, fell to the ground, got up, swayed, could hardly stand, his eyes were shut, the liquid tasted like palm wine, but also like swamp mud, the potion burned his throat, and when he opened his eyes, my young master saw a child who looked just like him, he just caught a glimpse of him, before he vanished between two bushes, ‘you saw him, your other self, didn’t you, you saw him’, said Papa Kibandi, ‘he was there in front of you, it’s no illusion, my boy, you’re a man now, I’m very happy, you’re going to follow the path I received from my father, which he got from his father before him’, little Kibandi was staring at the spot where the boy, his other self, had vanished, he could still hear dead leaves being trampled underfoot in his flight, an insane flight, as though someone was chasing after him, and there was silence, at last his father could breathe again, he had waited so long for this moment of liberation, when the duty of transmission would finally be fulfilled

  little Kibandi didn’t have much to do with his other self, who spent most of his time trailing me, stopping me sleeping, I’d hear him walking on dead leaves, running till he was out of breath, or breathing quietly in the bushes, drinking water from a stream, and sometimes I’d find food supplies piled up near my hiding place, I knew little Kibandi’s other self had left them there, and it was at such moments, I guess, that I felt comforted, I was glad to be privileged, I put on weight, my quills grew stronger, I saw them gleaming when the sun was at its height, I grew used to the game of hide and seek with my young master’s other self, he became a go-between, and when I hadn’t seen or heard him for two or three weeks, I felt uneasy, I’d set out in haste for the village, reassured only when at last I saw little Kibandi playing in their yard, I’d return to my hiding place, reassured, and so the years went by, the other self and my young master fed me, I lacked for nothing, I had no care for tomorrow, I only had to stick my snout out of the entrance to my refuge, there were my supplies left waiting for me, and if any other animal dared come and help themselves, my young master’s other self threw stones to drive them away, for once I had to agree with what humans say, I had a pretty easy life things were fairly quiet during my master’s adolescent years, we learned to get along, to synchronise our thinking, to know one another, I’d send messages to little Kibandi via the other self, then one day I was hanging around in a backwater when I came across him sitting on a stone, he had his back to me, I stopped moving, made no noise, or he’d have run off again, he was watching the herons and the wild ducks, I suddenly felt such a wave of emotion I almost thought it must be the real little Kibandi sitting there with his back to me, I moved forward a few yards, he heard me, at once he turned, too late, I had seen his face, though he looked just like my master, the strangest thing was, Kibandi’s other self had no mouth, no nose either, just eyes, ears and a long chin, I stared in amazement and at once he was off into the bushes, leaping into the backwater, and the herons and the wild ducks took flight, hiding him in his confusion, then he was gone, leaving only ripples in the water, it was one of the very few glimpses I would ever get of my young master’s other self, the last time was when the creature without a mouth came to tell me that my master and his mother were about to leave for Séképembé, a few days before Papa Kibandi died

  it was as though with age Papa Kibandi was returning to the animal state, he stopped trimming his nails, when he ate he did it just like a real rat, he scratched his body with his toes, and the people of Mossaka, who had always treated it as a rather sick joke, an old fool’s game, began to worry about it, the old man developed long sharp teeth, particularly at the front, tough grey hairs sprouted from his ears and straggled down to his jaw, and whenever Papa Kibandi disappeared around midnight, Mama Kibandi never even realised he’d gone, she just saw her husband’s other self lying in the bed by her side, my young master would suddenly find columns of rats marching up and down in the main room of his parents’ house, he knew the largest of these rodents, the rat with the big tail, flattened back ears, and hooked paws was his father’s double, he mustn’t whack him with a stick, though one day, for fun, he’d sprinkled rat poison on a piece of tuber and left it at the entrance to the hole where the rodents came out, a few hours later there were a dozen or so rats lying dead, while his parents slept my young master quickly gathered up the defunct rodents, wrapped them in banana leaves, and went and disposed of them round the back of the hut, but in the early dawn, to his great surprise, Papa Kibandi came and gave him a talking-to, saying ‘if you want to do away with me, get a knife and kill me in broad daylight, it’s thanks to me you are who you are today, ingratitude is an unforgivable sin, I hope I won’t have to speak to you about this again’, Mama Kibandi knew nothing more about it, father and son understood each other

  and there were so many deaths in Mossaka, one hard upon the other, nose to tail burials, you’d no sooner finished lamenting one dear departed, and there was another one lined up, Papa Kibandi didn’t go to the funerals, which got people asking questions in the village, where everyone knew everyone, he saw people looking at him, crossing the street to avoid him, with his rat-like air, and then there were the women who gossiped about him at the river bank, his name came up at every meeting in the palaver hut, children wept and clung to their mothers’ skirts as soon as the old man appeared, and even the Batéké dogs barked from a distance, or from their masters’ doorways, the whole of Mossaka now had it that there was something about Papa Kibandi, every detail of his life was scrutinised, examined with a fine toothed comb, it was strange, they said, how he hadn’t had many children, just the one, when his hair had already turned grey, he was prime suspect for any one o
f these deaths, take his own brother, Marapari, for example, who died sawing down a tree in the bush, when he was the best woodchopper in Mossaka, eh, it’s true that the brother had changed his working method, had got himself an electric saw, something you needed to learn to use, in this part of the world where everyone still used axes, perhaps Papa Kibandi was jealous of this piece of equipment, then, envious of his brother’s savings, which came from the profits from its use, from hiring it out, and what about the death of his younger sister, Maniongui, who was found limp, lifeless, with wide staring eyes, the day before her wedding, eh, everyone knew Papa Kibandi was opposed to the union for some reason to do with regions, ‘no marriage between a northerner and a southerner, and that’s that’, he’d say, and what about Matoumona, the woman Papa Kibandi wanted to take as his second wife, a woman of half his age, eh, did she not die when her corn soup went down the wrong way, and Mabiala the postman, who seemed to be interested in Mama Kibandi, and Loubanda the tam-tam maker, who was just too successful with women, and Senga the brick maker who wouldn’t come and work for him, and Dikamona, who sang at vigils for the dead, who snubbed him, and had publicly called him an old sorcerer, and Loupiala, the first qualified nurse Mossaka produced, a young woman who, according to Papa Kibandi, talked a lot but said nothing, and was always showing off her diploma, hm, and Nkélé, the biggest farmer in the region, a selfish man who’d refused him a plot of land by the river, eh, what had happened to all these people not related to him, who popped off one after the other, ah, my dear Baobab, these disappearances were all blamed on Papa Kibandi, while he gazed serenely into the middle distance, as though there was nothing he could do about any of it, as though he were above what he himself called ‘petty disputes of lizards’, and since no one would speak to him, he gathered his hurt pride about him and told his son and wife not to speak to the rest of the village, not to say hello, and whenever he passed another villager he spat on the ground, he called the village chief all sorts of names, called him wretched and corrupt, said he only sold land to his own family, and then there was the fateful business of the family conflict which the people of the north were never to forget, the falling out with his sister, the youngest in the family, and she should have known better, because here again, Papa Kibandi would shuffle the cards with his own hand, sow doubt in the minds of the villagers, postpone what should have been the end of his earthly existence, only Papa Kibandi could pull that off, believe me, dear Baobab, and to this day I still can’t believe he took them all for such a ride