Alain Mabanckou - Memoirs of a Porcupine

there are some victims I’ve forgotten completely, dear Baobab, but that’s because I carried out those missions during my period of apprenticeship, they were all so similar that I may well have got them muddled while trying to fill you in on what seem to me the most important facts about my career as a double to date, leading up to last Friday’s mission, the most dangerous of all

I can still see that family now, they were new in Séképembé, I can still see the two kids running around shouting, they seemed to be everywhere at once, that should have aroused my suspicions, I had wanted to warn my master, but he’d already decided, his plan was in place, he wouldn’t put up with the cheek of these kids, he muttered nasty things about them, he was really just looking for an alibi, a reason to pick a fight with them, but things didn’t work out like that, as it happened

my master was obsessed with thirst for mayamvumbi , and by his other self’s inexhaustible appetite, and as a result he had ignored certain basic prohibitions usually observed by those in possession of a harmful double, for example never attack twins, but he had started acting with a casualness which took my breath away, I was the cautious one now, he was convinced that by ignoring the prohibitions he would make it to the top, as though he was aiming to beat his father’s record, which is why he’d been all edgy ever since the Moundjoula family came to live in Séképembé, and it’s true that around the time the Moundjoulas arrived, the father of the family made a show of his pride, dragging the children around the streets as though to show off his great good fortune as father of twins to all the villagers, ignoring those residents who claimed the two children had done all sorts of damage in their fields, Kibandi scarcely knew the family, the village chief had been pleased to introduce the newcomers to the rest of the village, he had walked down the main street, stopping at every hut saying, ‘Papa Moundjoula is a sculptor, his wife is a housewife and looks after the twins, two charming children,’ they lived at the far end of the village, and became each day more and more integrated, so that it soon felt as though they had always lived there

I met these two enfants terribles in rather dreadful circumstances, they are the kind of twins who have no distinguishing features, so that even the keenest observer would have found it impossible to tell them apart, their father and mother called them both Koté or Koty, since you only had to call one of them and they’d both turn round, but deep down Papa and Mama Moundjoula always rather enjoyed confusing everyone in the village, while in fact they did secretly have a means of telling them apart, they had decided to circumcise only one of the two children, it was said in the village that the older child was circumcised, the younger one not, and whenever Papa and Mama Moundjoula get in a muddle they just take the children’s clothes off to see which of them came into the world first, I swear the two of them can scarcely be more than ten or eleven years old, they are completely inseparable, they blink, scratch, cough, fart, hurt themselves, cry or fall ill at exactly the same moment, two identical entities who sleep with their arms wrapped round each other till morning light, have the same way of sitting down, with their legs crossed, and, as though to confuse things even further, the parents dress them in identical clothing, trousers with blue braces, beige cotton shirts, they each have a head the size of a brick, kept shaved by Papa and Mama Moundjoula, they are not a pretty sight, you can imagine, with their staring eyes, they don’t mix much with the other children, they go running wild through the village, they like to play near the cemetery, in a huge field of lantanas, they move all the crosses around, turn them upside down, they play hide and seek, hunt down butterflies, frighten the crows, give the sparrows a hard time with their dreaded catapults, they’re uncontrollable, they always pop up where you don’t expect them, the first time I came across Koty and Koté my quills were erect, by way of warning, the twins wanted to use me to play with the moment they saw me moving about in the field of lantanas, in fact I had just come from my hide-out, and was having a rest on Mama Kibandi’s grave, I was about to go and have a wander about behind my master’s old workshop, and perhaps read for a bit without straying far from Kibandi’s hut, just in case he needed me, and the two kids heard me rustling about in the leaves, they turned round, one of them pointed to me, ‘a porcupine, a porcupine, let’s catch him’, the other kid started to load his catapult, and bless my quills, I flung myself into an about turn, while their missiles landed a few metres away, I wondered where on earth they could have come from, these two rascals with rectangular heads, at one moment I decided they must be little ghosts whose parents, down in their graves, had given permission to go and play outside, as long as they were back before sunset, but the pair of good-for-nothings decided to follow me, I heard them brushing the lantanas aside, whooping for joy, laughing like two dwarves at a fair, one of them ordered the other to go to the right, while he stayed on the left, so they could jump out at me a few hundred metres further, they didn’t realise I understand human language, and could foil their plan, I curled up in a ball and began to roll at top speed, I landed in a pile of dead bracken, in front of me I saw a thicket of thorns, I plunged into it without a backward glance, and arrived at last in a clearing overlooking the river, without thinking I plunged into the water, which is quite shallow there, I was panting desperately, I reached the opposite bank, I shook my quills, but I was trembling more with fear than cold, the village came into view, I could hear nothing behind me, I therefore concluded that the kids must have turned back, I wasn’t certain they lived in Séképembé, but several days after this episode, when I saw them crossing the main street with their father, I recognise their rectangular shaped heads, and their matching clothing

last Tuesday, early in the afternoon, Koty and Koté escaped from their parents again and came past my master’s hut as he sat in front of his door reading an esoteric book, the twins had been popping up like this for a while now, they’d stand opposite his house, on the exact spot where my master had seen the strange flock of sheep on the day Mama Kibandi died, and the two children seemed to be spying on him, imitating the bleat of an old sheep having its throat slit, they sniggered, then vanished, this really wound my master up, he was sure the two children had been sent by their parents to annoy him, and when he finally got up to go and talk to them, tell them they owed him some respect, the kids scarpered, then came back again the next day and took up their post on the same spot, imitating the old sheep again, I could see my master was growing uneasy, asking himself questions, these two children had some message for him, they knew something about us, so that Tuesday afternoon Koty and Koté took up their position as usual opposite my master’s hut, my master tried smiling at them, the two little urchins didn’t smile back, ‘what do you want then’, Kibandi said, at last, one of the little Moundjoulas answered ‘you’re a bad man, that’s why you don’t like children’ and my master, somewhat taken aback at this, answered ‘you little rascals, you know nothing, why are you calling me a bad man, you’d better watch out or I’ll tell your father’, and the other kid added, ‘you’re a bad man because you eat children, we know you ate a baby, he told us when we were playing in the cemetery, and he’ll tell us the same thing again tonight’, my master snapped his book shut, his anger got the better of him, he jumped up, crying, ‘band of vermin, birds of ill-omen, little lice, I’ll teach you to respect your elders’, he was about to run after the twins, when one of them shouted, ‘ and that baby you ate, he told us to tell you he’s watching you, he’s coming to see you, it’s your fault he’s stopped growing’, and the two brats ran off, Kibandi saw them vanish over the horizon, he decided that whatever happened, he must go and see the parents of these little creatures