Alain Mabanckou - Memoirs of a Porcupine

a few years later, before taking his final leave of this life, ‘Papa’ Mationgo handed over his work tools to my master, Kibandi felt as though his own father had just died all over again, at that time he was seventeen years old, and in spite of his youth, he had learned everything there was to know about roofing, he had more work than any other artisan in the neighbourhood, most of the new huts in Séképembé had roof frames made by him, and when necessary, he would go to the cemetery and stand in silence before the tomb of ‘Papa’ Mationgo, I would see him sobbing as though at the graveside of his own parent, I was only a few hundred metres away from the cemetery, I knew too, that the noise behind me was coming from my master’s other self, I didn’t turn round for fearing of meeting the eye of the creature with no mouth, the other self was getting more and more agitated, he slept in the workshop, wandered dewy-eyed along the river bank, climbed trees, I sometimes wondered how he managed to eat, since he had no mouth, and, since I had never seen him snacking, I had to conclude that either it was my master who ate for him, or that the other self must eat by means of a different orifice, I’ll leave you to guess which, my dear Baobab

for twelve years, poor Mama Kibandi had woven mats which she sold to the locals, she did quite good business, and whenever it was market day in one of the neighbouring villages, Louboulou, Kimandou, Kinkosso or Batalébé, mother and son would go with their wares, Kibandi would spend his holidays in these remote little places, with Mama Kibandi’s friends, who were traders like her, leaving me alone with his other self, I didn’t much like it when he went away, I felt it upset the harmony between us, I didn’t come out of my hiding place, I ate only the supplies my master’s other self brought me, thus nights passed, and days passed, my thoughts turned to Kibandi, not that there was any cause for worry, I knew exactly what he was doing during these absences, which lasted only a few weeks, the other self kept nothing from me, I knew, for example, that my master had had his first sexual experience in Kinkosso, with the famous Biscouri, a woman twice his age, a most curvaceous widow, with a cumbersome behind and a rather excessive appetite for virgin boys, the moment she set eyes on one, she’d bound up to him, and pester him, she was well known for it in Kinkosso, she’d hang around after him, talk sweetly to him, prepare food for him, some parents even encouraged her, but widow Biscouri didn’t like actually to be offered a virgin boy, she liked to be able to choose her stallion herself, even if he was skinny as a rake, like my master, she had her own technique for snaring innocents, first of all she’d set up a conversation, along the lines of ‘I know your mother, boy, she’s a fine woman’, and then she’d wrap her arms around him and suddenly thrust her hand between his legs, grabbing his intimate parts and then cry ‘my god, you’ve got something there, boy, you’re set up for life with that thing’ and she’d laugh, and hastily explain ‘it’s ok, I was only joking, my boy, come on, follow me, I’ll make you our finest local dish, the ngul’mu mako ’, but people still felt that Biscouri was the least catastrophic solution to the problem of introducing a boy to sex, now my master did not enjoy this experience, he always felt that Biscouri’s excessive ardour had paralysed him, so that he had remained completely passive, as though he were being raped, from then on he began seeing local prostitutes, having got the idea that a woman would only perform the sexual act gently if she was being paid for it, and when he went on holiday to surrounding villages, he would break into his savings and go to the roughest areas, find a different partner every evening, get drunk with a working girl, then return to Séképembé with empty pockets, now Mama Kibandi was no fool, she had a good idea that my master had started seeing women, and she was confident that one day her son would present her with a future daughter-in-law, or people would come knocking at their door with a pregnant daughter

I remember, too, the day Mama Kibandi came across my master sitting in front of the hut reading the Bible, someone had given it to him in Kinkosso, a religious person who wanted to persuade him to take up the way of the Lord because he’d seen him in the prostitutes’ area, a sign that my master was a lost sheep, a sinner who must be guided away from the path to hell, before this servant of the Lord had had time to discover that he was in fact illiterate, Kibandi had taken the book and vanished, and the man in the cassock never realised what a favour he had done my master, for the first few weeks he didn’t open the book, he left it lying by his bed until it was covered with a layer of dust, and one evening, unable to sleep, he finally picked it up, opened it up in the middle, brought it up close to his eyes, drew a long breath, smelled the pleasant smell of the page, and when he opened his eyes the light of the storm lantern fell across the words, and stripped them of their mystery, forming a kind of halo around each letter, and each phrase began to move, flowing like a river, he never knew when exactly his lips began to move, to read, he didn’t even know he was turning the pages fast, that his eyes were flicking from left to right without his feeling any giddiness, the words were suddenly alive, representing reality, and he imagined God, and that mysterious vagabond, Jesus, he would never stop reading, and for the next few days he did not sleep, he’d fall on the book the minute he got in from the workshop he’d built behind their hut, Mama Kibandi couldn’t hide her astonishment, she was amused by her son’s behaviour, she wondered why the young man was so concerned to conceal his ignorance, after all, just because you had a book in your hands didn’t mean you were educated, and she treated it as a joke, considering my master had never set foot inside a school, so he couldn’t read, and another day, infuriated by my master’s new activity, she glanced at the book he was going through, as though she too could devour it, her son seemed very focussed, he murmured phrases, traced the lines on the page with the index finger of his right hand, it must have been that day, surely, that she realised Kibandi had to have a double and that his father must have made him drink the mayamvumbi in Mossaka

from then on my master just had to be reading, he brought all sorts of books back to the house, books he’d bought in neighbouring villages, he placed them in a corner of his workshop, there were some in the bedroom too, most of the books had lost their covers, he spent hours in the library of the church of St Jospeh in the village of Kimondou, and when he wasn’t in the workshop or working on site in a neighbouring village, he would spend the entire day reading, it was around this time that I too began to pick out letters among the thoughts passing through my mind, whole words even, it was fun identifying the letters, knowing that somewhere among them there must be a word, before long I could recite what my master read, several times I caught myself muttering aloud to myself, and then I reached the conclusion that for once men really did have a head start on us animals, because they could set down their thoughts, their imaginings on paper, and it was around the same time that curiosity drove me from my hiding place, I went into my master’s workshop while he was out with his mother at the market in Séképembé, fell upon the pile of books, I wanted to be sure that I could really recognise the words floating round in my mind like little silver-winged dragonflies, my master had put the Bible by his work tools, as though to consecrate them, I took it and opened it at random, I read several chapters, I discovered some extraordinary stories, like the ones I told you about at the beginning of my confession, I also found some other books, I didn’t need to read them all, my master would do that for me, I scuttled off before nightfall, in case Kibandi and his mother found me there, I don’t know what would have happened then