Alain Mabanckou - Memoirs of a Porcupine

so I’m just an animal, just a dumb, wild animal , men would say, though if you ask me most of them are dumber and wilder than any animal, but to them I’m just a porcupine, and since they only believe in what they can see, they’d see nothing special in me, just one of those mammals with long sharp quills, slower than a hound dog, too lazy to stray from the patch where he feeds

I wouldn’t want to be a man, to be honest, they can keep their so-called intelligence, for years I was the double of a man they called Kibandi, who died two days ago, most of the time I stayed hidden just outside the village, and went to him late at night, for specific missions, I know if he’d heard me making this confession while he was alive he’d have punished me severely, free speech, he’d have said, ingratitude more like, he may not have shown it, but all his life he felt I owed him, I was just a lowly bit player, a pawn in his hands, well, I don’t want to boast, but I could say the same about him, without me he’d have been a bit of rotten pulp, his life as a man worth less than a few drops of piss, the piss of the aged porcupine who ruled over us back when I still belonged to the animal world

I’m forty-two years old now, I still feel very young, and if Iu was a porcupine like the ones that hang about in the fields near the village I would never have lived this long, because for porcupines round here gestation lasts between ninety-three and ninety-four days, at best we live to twenty-one in captivity, but who’d want to spend their life cooped up like a slave, imagining a life of freedom beyond barbed wire, I’m sure some lazy animals wouldn’t mind, and might even grow to forget that the sweetness of honey does not soothe the bee sting, I prefer the ups and downs of life in the bush to those cages where some of my comrades are kept, only to end up one day as meatballs in some human being’s pot, it’s true I have had the good fortune to beat the survival record for porcupines, to live the same number of years as my master, I won’t say it was exactly a sinecure, being his double, it was hard work, it made great demands on my senses, I carried out my orders to the letter, even though towards the end I began to step back a bit, thinking maybe we were digging our own graves, but I had to obey him, I was stuck with my role as a double, as a turtle is stuck with his shell, I was my master’s third eye, his third nostril, his third ear, which means that whatever he didn’t see, or smell, or hear, I transmitted to him in dreams, and if ever he didn’t reply to my messages, I’d appear before him just as the people of Séképembé were going out into the fields

I wasn’t present at Kibandi’s birth, not like some doubles, peaceful doubles they’re called, who are born the same day as the child, and watch them grow, their masters never see them, they intervene only when necessary, when their initiate falls ill, for example, or has a jinx put on them, it’s a dull life, being a peaceful double, in fact I don’t know how they stand it, they’re soft and slow, the slightest noise sends them running, a foolish way to behave, starting at their own shadow, I’ve heard it said that most of them are deaf as well as blind, but you can never catch them out, they have a perfect sense of smell, so they protect their human, guide him, follow his every move until his dying day, when they, too, lie down and die, and their power is transmitted by the grandfather at birth, the old man seizes the babe after consulting the progenitors, disappears round the back of the hut with it, talks to it, spits on it, licks, shakes and tickles it, tosses it in the air, catches it again, and while this is happening, the spirit of the peaceful double leaves the body of the old man and enters that of the little creature, the initiate dedicates himself to good works, will be noted for his boundless generosity, will give money to the lame, the blind, the poor, will respect his fellow man, study plants to heal the sick and be sure to pass on his gifts to the next generation the day his first grey hair appears, it’s a very dull life, a monotonous life, you might say, I’d have no tale to tell you if I’d been a peaceful double, with no particular history, nothing out of the ordinary to speak of

no, I’m one of the harmful doubles , we’re the liveliest, scariest kind of double, the least common, too, the transmission of this kind of double, as you can imagine, is more complicated, more tightly regulated, it occurs in the child’s tenth year, he has to be made to take the initiatory drink known as mayamvumbi , an initiate will drink it on a regular basis, to achieve the drunken state in which he produces a body double, his second self , a bulimic clone, who, when he’s not snoring away in the initiate’s hut, spends his whole time running, cavorting, leaping over rivers, burrowing about in leaves, and there I was, caught between the two, though not just as an onlooker, without my intervention my master’s other self would have succumbed to the ill effects of his gluttony, because I’ll tell you this, the parents of a child who receives a peaceful double will know all about the initiation and encourage it, but the transmission of a harmful double takes place against the child’s wishes, without the knowledge of mother, brothers or sisters, the humans of whom we become the animal incarnation will cease to feel emotions like pity, understanding, empathy, remorse, compassion, night will enter their souls, once transmission has occurred, the harmful double must leave the animal world and come to live close to the initiate, performing his assignments without protest, when did you ever hear a harmful double contradict the master on whom his existence depends, tell me that, never in living memory of the porcupine, that’s when, and elephants aren’t the only ones with perfect memories, that’s just another human prejudice

long before my master started playing with fire, while I was enjoying a few months’ pleasant rest, just watching life unfold around me, fresh air in my lungs, a skip in my step, I ran, how I ran, and at the top of a hill I would pause, and look down at the bustling wildlife all around, I liked watching other animals, the rhythm of their daily lives, I was getting back to the bush, at times I just disappeared, with no word to my master, I’d watch the sun go down, and close my eyes and listen to the crickets, and wake next morning to the chirrup of cicadas, and during these periods of inactivity, or respite, I was constantly feeding, the more I ate, the hungrier I got, I can’t remember now how many tuber fields I destroyed, bringing great distress to the peasants of Séképembé, who put the blame on a half-man half-animal, with a stomach as deep as the pit of their own ignorance, then at dawn I’d go down to watch the ducks bobbing about on the river, the reflection of their gaudy plumage shimmering on the swell, how funny they looked, gliding not drowning, then one of them one would give the signal for the end of play, or the approach of a hunter, and off they’d fly, up and away, then some time towards noon came the procession of zebras, followed by the female deer, then the wild boar, then the lions, roaming in groups along the river, the little ones at the front, the old ones roaring at the slightest thing, they never overlapped, they seemed to share out the day between them, and only much later, when the sun was already high in the sky, came the army of monkeys, I’d see the males fighting, usually over a question of precedence, or a female, it was quite amusing really, their gestures reminded me of humans, especially the anthropoids, poking their bogeys, scratching their genitals, then sniffing their fingers and expressing disgust, and I did wonder whether some of them might not be harmful doubles to humans, then I told myself to get a grip, I knew harmful doubles had to stay well away from communal life