Alain Mabanckou - Memoirs of a Porcupine

the group left Lekana, the four witnesses all bombarding Aunt Etaleli with questions, she stayed silent as a clam, and since she still seemed angry with Papa Kibandi, who had a big smile of satisfaction on his face, he went off in the opposite direction, he walked for two hours and never once turned back, it was only much later that he expressed his joy, began singing songs, like a madman, what a comeback, and since his thoughts naturally strayed to the scene of the silver bracelet which had just proved his innocence, he burst out laughing, murmured something a little as though he were thanking someone, headed into the forest, looked about him, there was no one, not even a bird, and then he lifted up his long boubou around his waist, squatted down as if he was about to do his business, breathed out sharply, held his breath, pushed, pushed, pushed again, farted gently, a palm nut shot out of his anus, he grabbed it, inspected it, brought it to his nose, smiled and said ‘my dear Tembé-Essouka, you really are blind’, Papa Kibandi had good reason to laugh at the famous sorcerer, he had just become the first man ever to have caught out a sorcerer of Tembé-Essouka’s stature, but it was a mistake to cry victory too soon

Tembé-Essouka didn’t make mistakes, though, dear Baobab, we should have known that, and two months later, he turned up at Mossaka, and the people were sore amazed, fear crept into their shacks, their animals took cover, the sorcerer had news for us, what could it be, and in any case, he was blind, how had he found his way through the bush, then they said perhaps he was faking blindness, he could see everything, the village headman gave him a distinguished welcome, he admitted that for the first time his knowledge of the dark arts had failed him, he proved that Papa Kibandi was a threat to the entire village, he revealed the old man’s tricks, said most of the deaths in Mossaka were his doing, announced that to date Papa Kibandi had eaten more than ninety-nine people, ‘I have come here for you, I am here to deliver you from this evil, for this man is the most dangerous man in all this region, let him not eat his hundredth victim’, he said, and to back up his claim, he quoted, from memory, in alphabetical order, the names of his ninety-nine victims, only one of them lived outside of Mossaka, young Niangui-Boussina, Tembé-Essouka explained her death, a swap between Papa Kibandi and an initiate in the village of Siaki, none other than the Aunt Etalie’s husband, Papa Kibandi had set it all up, he had eaten his own niece, ‘I am here today to deliver you from this devil, Papa Kibandi, this is the first time I have left my own shack, and my masks, of course it’s not for me to put an end to him, Tembé-Essouka never kills, he liberates, you must decide, you just need to catch his harmful double who is hiding out in the forest now, he knows his time is almost up, I have used my special powers to immobilise him, if you lay hands on this animal you’ll be able to do what you want with his master, his death won’t be on your conscience, because you’ll only have attacked an animal, he told us exactly where the old rat was hiding, they thanked him, gave him a white mule, a red cockerel and a sack of cowries, the sorcerer refused to spend the night in the village, he would return to Lekana by night, the village headman tried to persuade him, ‘sleep here tonight, Venerable Tembé-Essouka, it’s dark now, we value your great wisdom’, the sorcerer answered, ‘Honourable Leader, your words warm my heart, but the blind man has no need of the light of day, I must now return to my hut, my masks await me, don’t worry about me, thank you for these gifts’, he grabbed the red cockerel by its feet, tied his sack of cowries to the mule’s back, and set off home

the next day, the chief citizen of Mossaka called an extraordinary meeting of the elders, an urgent decision was taken, to catch Papa Kibandi unawares, so twelve strong men were appointed to go out into the forest and track down the rat, the twelve strong men armed themselves with 12-bore rifles, poisoned arrows, they circled the part of the bush where Tembé-Essouka had said the rat was, wiped out all the rats they could find, at the foot of a paradise flower they discovered a rat hole, covered over with dead leaves, they dug and they dug for a full half hour till they’d cornered the old beast, who could scarcely move, perhaps he knew his time was up, he couldn’t escape this time, he bared his teeth, flashed his incisors threateningly, for once it didn’t work, he inspired pity now, not fear, an amber coloured liquid dribbled from his mouth, at this one of the twelve strong men aimed his arrow, let it fly at the beast, he squealed as a liquid as white as palm wine spurted from him, a second arrow shot his brains to pieces, then they took up their rifles, these twelve strong men, and peppered the creature with bullets, just to make sure on returning to the village, the twelve strong men heard, to their surprise, of the death of Papa Kibandi, no one went to the dead man’s house, the old man’s corpse was laid out in the living room, its staring eyes flipped back in its head, the tongue, a dark indigo blue, lolling towards the right ear, the corpse already rotting, a pestilential smell filled the air, and towards the end of the day as darkness began to fall, Mama Kibandi and my young master rolled the corpse in palm leaves and carried it deep into the forest, buried it in a field of banana trees, crept back into the village, packed a few things, and stole away at break of day, without a trace, following the line of the horizon till they arrived here in Séképembé, I was already here, I had gone on ahead, as soon as I’d seen my young master’s double come to tell me they were leaving the village in the north, I knew I must make my way south, to a village named Séképembé, so that is how, through no choice of our own, we came to live in this village, a foster village where we ought even so to have been able to lead a normal life

it was strange to see my young master grinding roots with his incisors, sharper than those of an ordinary human, I even wondered if he was going to spend his entire adolescence eating nothing but bulbs, but in the end he accepted the death of his father, living here in Séképembé broadened their horizons, the distance between them and the north helped them put the past behind them, and with it the memory of how the people of Mossaka, aided by the sorcerer, Tembé-Essouka, had wiped out Papa Kibandi, it was clear that Mama Kibandi and my master now hoped to start a new life, it seems only yesterday they moved here, the locals welcomed them as they would any outsider, inviting them in, they moved into a hut made of gaboon planks, with a straw roof, which admittedly was on the edge of the village, but only because there was no land left in the heart of Séképembé, the next question was work, my master became apprentice carpenter to an old man to whom Mama Kibandi paid a modest sum, the old carpenter became almost like a father to Kibandi, who called him ‘Papa’, he never dared use his real name, Mationgo, this man reminded him of his real father, probably because of his stooping posture, his chameleon-like gait, ‘Papa’ Mationgo recognised my master as an intelligent, inquisitive young man, Kibandi quickly mastered the subtler points of carpentry, there was no need for the old man to repeat things endlessly, though he did begin to have his doubts about the young apprentice, who, although he followed his instructions to the letter, never failed to amaze him, by updating ‘Papa’ Mationgo’s outmoded work methods, climbing up on to roofs with unusual ease, the old man was dumbfounded when one day, feeling ill, he put my master in charge of making the wooden roof structure for a farm, young Kibandi managed to make the ties, the laterals, the ridgepoles, the cross ridges, the boarding, the beams for the ridge, croup and semi-croup, which was not within the grasp of your average apprentice, and my master even showed the old man how to put up a metal roof frame, before that ‘Papa’ Mationgo had only ever dealt with wooden frames, in fact everything was just going perfectly between the two humans, I was the one, really, who aroused ‘Papa’ Mationgo’s suspicions, and I know the old man died quite convinced that there was something odd about his apprentice, one day I went for a little wander round the back of the workshop, my master was busy sawing a plank, I heard ‘Papa’ Mationgo’s hesitant tread, he undid his trousers, began pissing against the workshop wall, and when he turned round his eyes met mine, he picked up a large stone lying at his feet, and almost brought me down, the stone landed only a few centimetres away, but the days of his youth were gone, he had lost his aim, I took off in the direction of the river and a few moments later he told my master he believed the porcupines of Séképembé had lost their fear of mankind, that there were too many of them, that the hunters needed to deal with them, that one of these days he might well kill one himself, and eat it with a few green bananas, he swore he would make a trap, Kibandi stopped sawing his wood at that, and answered calmly, ‘Papa Mationgo, the porcupine you saw wasn’t from Séképembé, believe me’, and the old man faltered and gave him a long look, then said in a resigned voice, ‘I see, I see, Kibandi, my son, I see, I suspected as much, I must say, but I won’t say a word, in any case, I’m just an old wreck myself, a bit of old scrap, I don’t want any trouble with people before I leave this world, because I’m going to die any day now’