Maryse Conde - Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? - A Fantastical Tale

Where were they going?

A crazy suspicion burgeoned in Hakim’s mind. He dashed up the steps as fast as he could. The staircase came out onto a landing that disappeared into a corridor, plunged into darkness at this hour. The couples had vanished into the night. He opened a door haphazardly, and the inimitable smell of childhood wafted out: a dormitory. That was not what he was looking for. He closed the door behind him, walked around and around on the landing looking foolish, and then went back down to the drawing room. Nobody now was intimidated by the tango and paso doble . The African girls were dancing, following the lead of their escorts and laughing at the outrageous music. The only other place of this kind was at Jacqueville, where an African by the name of Latta Ahui had built a hut for dancing. Only those familiar with the white man’s amusements were admitted. The others could watch. Celanire and Thomas were whispering cheek to cheek on a sofa. Thomas’s hand was impatiently creeping up the oblate’s thighs. Panic-stricken once again, Hakim dashed outside and ran home as fast as he could.

Karamanlis refused to believe a word. A bordello? And what next? Just a few embraces and kisses stolen from girls who were generally easygoing. You can think what you like about Thomas de Brabant, the colony knew he was the very model of virtue. As for Celanire, she was merely an oblate. Not a nun. She was entitled to use makeup and rig herself out as she thought fit. In the end Karamanlis became angry, forbidding Hakim to insult the woman he loved.

From that day on, it was nothing but quarrels and insults.

Within a few days, relations between Hakim and Karamanlis had grown so bitter that one afternoon, coming home from school, Hakim found his belongings thrown out under the rain. He gathered them up under the amused look of the houseboy and the neighbors. Where would he go now? The miserable wages of a schoolteacher were not enough to pay for lodgings. After hesitating, he set off for his only refuge: Koffi Ndizi’s compound.

The compound was in a state of pandemonium.

Koffi Ndizi had been in a meeting since morning with the queen mother and the counsel of elders. The three royal concubines had not put up with their thrashing by a cat-o’-nine-tails. Refusing to be treated for their wounds, they had fled, once again leaving behind them their young infants. They had not gone back to their families, as abused women usually do. Where in fact had they gone? To the Home for Half-Castes, where the director immediately recruited them. For it was rumored around, in a confused sort of way like all rumors, that the Home was a paradise for women. Up there, it seemed, you didn’t wait for happiness in vain. You grabbed armfuls of it. No more smoke from the green wood stinging your eyes! No more fetching water! No more foutou to pound! Hakim knew the way they treated women in Koffi Ndizi’s compound. Beasts of burden and fodder for pleasure! Only the princesses had the right to remain independent, to choose their husbands and replace them if they were so inclined. So in a way he could understand their escape. Yet he was afraid of what lay in store for the fugitives up at the Home if his intuition were right.

Since he was unable to approach the king, he walked over to Kwame Aniedo’s hut. The crown prince was amusing himself with a slave girl, but, good prince that he was, he interrupted his lovemaking and told Hakim he could sleep as many nights as he wanted in his entrance hall.

Kwame Aniedo was not only a handsome specimen. At school he ranked among the most gifted children, and Hakim had tried to persuade his father that he would have no difficulty mastering the secrets of the white man. To no end! The king wouldn’t hear of it. School, he believed, was a waste of time. He had removed his son at the age of thirteen so as to keep his prestige as crown prince intact. As a result, for three years Kwame Aniedo had been doing absolutely nothing except eat to his heart’s content, yawn at his musicians playing, and terrorize the girls who refused to go to bed with him. He hated the French who had humiliated his father and lent a sympathetic ear to Hakim’s anticolonialist diatribes, without realizing that the latter was only interested in keeping him company while Kwame slipped out of his clothes and dived naked into the lagoon.

In the early evening, the usual crowd of brothers and cousins, idle royal princes, streamed into Kwame Aniedo’s hut. The evening was spent downing vast quantities of palm wine while palavering over the fate of the royal concubines. The general opinion was that they should be brought back by force and inflicted a punishment which would serve as an example. The cat-o’-nine-tails was not enough. Rather a few days locked up without food or water. It was late when Hakim finally fell asleep and he was still snoring when a messenger came to wake him: Koffi Ndizi was asking for him. His earthenware pipe wedged between his teeth, the king was pacing up and down. He had not slept a wink all night and had been in constant consultation with the queen mother and the elders. They had finally come to a decision. Since the wretched oblate was the protégée of the French, they had to tread lightly. Hakim would write a polite letter on behalf of the king begging her to return the three concubines. He would explain they belonged to the royal family. To keep them would be a serious breach of tradition, an offense. Hakim therefore went back to look for some paper and a pen and wrote down everything they had asked of him.

After two weeks it was obvious that Celanire couldn’t care less about the letter Koffi Ndizi had sent her. This was another pretext for deliberation and consultation. The queen mother was outraged. The elders lost their saliva. Some of them called for a punitive raid on the Home, just like in the good old days. But how would they go about it? Nobody knew. As for the fetish priests, they advised on caution as they could not understand who this oblate was. In order to clarify matters, shouldn’t they get her to undergo a trial by ordeal? If she passed the test and came out unscathed, they would know she was a normal person with nothing on her conscience. Okay, but how could they approach her?

Finally, Koffi Ndizi entrusted Hakim with a mission that was to be a last resort. This time he would go in person to the Home and plead on behalf of the kingdom. Hakim obeyed, with heavy heart.

When he arrived at the Home, Celanire was teaching in her classroom. Madame Desrussie showed him into an office on the second floor. The view was magical. Beneath the balcony the garden stretched away like a priceless carpet embellished with freshly planted Madagascar periwinkles, coral hibiscus, and oleander already in full bloom. The long rainy season was drawing to a close. The sky was losing its leaden color. If the place was in fact a bordello, it hid it well under its aspect of a Garden of Eden. When Celanire appeared, Hakim did not recognize her. She was wearing a dress of tiny blue-and-yellow squares, buttoned from top to bottom, with a buttercup-yellow neckerchief. Her hair had been braided into two plaits. Without makeup she looked eighteen at the most. She was no longer the sensual vamp, but poetically poignant. While they drank mint tea, she talked of her passion for Africa. In her opinion there was only one dark side to the beauty of its civilization: the treatment of women. Was he aware that the Africans mutilated the female genitals? They excised the clitoris and the labia. Then they sewed up the folds, leaving a narrow passage for the urine and the menstrual blood. Hakim’s imagination had seldom ventured into such places. Ill at ease, he stammered that this practice was the equivalent of male circumcision. But it was an intolerable aggression, she exclaimed indignantly, perpetrated against women in order to control their sexuality. Then she changed the subject and began to describe the great solitude of her life. She had never known her true parents and was nothing but a foster child. Oh, she had nothing against her foster parents, especially her papa. But it was tough not knowing the sperm that fathered her or the womb that carried her. At Adjame-Santey, she felt an outsider. Thomas de Brabant possessed her body but not her heart. Stunned by her candor, Hakim was rendered speechless. She then turned to interrogate him, and he heard himself confiding and revealing all his childhood troubles. He too felt an outsider in Adjame-Santey. Moreover, he had always felt an outsider in Africa. In short, one hour later, furious with himself, he was back on the path taking him home. Not only had he not breathed a word about the mission Koffi Ndizi had entrusted him with, but he had promised Celanire he would pay her many more visits.