Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? (8 page)

He therefore plucked up his courage. To accept Celanire's offer was the last thing he wanted, but it was the only thing preventing him from descending into destitution.

With his mind made up, he set off for the Home one Sunday. Mass had just finished. The pupils, in freshly starched white uniforms edged in green, were filing out of the chapel, chaperoned by their monitors, now rid of their nurses' garb and dressed in identical wrappers with identical motifs, for apparently Celanire liked her surroundings to be symmetrical. Hakim took the arm she offered him. What a chatterbox! She never stopped for one minute. Without waiting to get her breath back, she told him how she had trained a choir to sing the
Beatus Vir
and the
Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera
by Vivaldi, her favorite composer. The choir had been invited to Grand-Bassam in a month's time for the inception of the new bishop. Considering her four pupils, one of whom was a girl, had passed the native certificate for elementary studies and were preparing to become grade-five office clerks, she had every reason to be proud. Hakim remained silent. In Bingerville gossip had begun to circulate openly about the true nature of the Home. Some of the nurses whispered that once the children had been put to bed, they were paired off with those nice, gentle white officers and soldiers who gave them all sorts of presents and caresses. No comparison with those rough, lascivious Africans. Never an unkind word, a clout, or a thrashing! The first French words they learned therefore, were “cherí” or “mon amour.”

Celanire and Hakim entered a drawing room furnished in exquisite taste. There she whirled around to show off her costume. For she was dressed in a fashion he had never seen before. A full gown of rich, dark red silk was gathered at the waist over a white lace petticoat with three flounces. Her neck was encased in a collaret of frilled lawn similar to the ruffs portrayed in old engravings. Her hair was frizzed out, rolled into coquette bobs over her ears. She swamped him with explanations in her self-satisfaction. This Guadeloupean costume was called a matador gown. She had given it a personal touch by adding the collaret and leaving out the madras head tie. The traditional jewelry was also missing—the gold-bead choker and the earrings. Suddenly she stopped her hollow talk, and her face took on an expression of reproach. He had put off accepting her offer, and now Betti Bouah had let him down. Didn't he realize that once the Africans had hoisted themselves up level with the whites, they would prove to be even more wicked? Envious, that's what they were, only set on taking their masters' place. Colonization would be followed by worse events, and the name
neocolonialism
would be invented to describe them. Hakim said his mea culpa. He now wanted to turn the page and start working for her as quickly as possible. What would she like him to do? At that moment he bravely turned to face her.

Celanire stared at him like a cat about to devour a mouse or a python about to swallow its prey, before uncoiling itself to digest it in voluptuous pleasure. She stretched out her arm and stroked his neck, winding a lock of his hair around one of her fingers. Hakim stammered out the terms of her letter as a reminder. She had promised him: no love, no sex. She laughed, revealing her white teeth and blue-black gums. And he had believed her? Only a fool would trust the words of a woman, especially if she were in love! She edged closer to him and whispered in his ear. She knew of his preferences, his desire for Kwame Aniedo. Nothing shocking about that. Everyone does what he likes with his body. She herself swung both ways, as the popular saying goes. But let her show him how she could get him to like other things than boys. Thereupon she grabbed his shirt and unbuttoned it. It was this offhand manner, this way of hers of treating him like a sex object, that infuriated Hakim. He shoved her away brutally and hammered her breasts. They rolled over on the floor. As agile as an eel, she climbed on top of him and pressed her mouth against his. Disgusted, he felt sucked in by this dank cavern. He reversed the situation, nailed her under him, and in his rage, grabbed her by the neck as if he wanted to strangle her. His fingers got caught in her collaret, ripped it off, and threw it away. She uttered a shriek and clasped her hands to her throat while her eyes dimmed, like a dampened firebrand. He remained speechless, stunned by what he had uncovered.

A monstrous scar.

A purplish, rubberlike tourniquet, thick as a roll of flesh, repoussé, stitched and pockmarked, wound around her neck. It was as if her neck had been slashed on both sides, then patched up and the flesh pulled together by force, oozing lumps all the way around.

While Celanire's eyes sprang back to life and glowed wickedly, Hakim ran for the door without further ado. The recreation yard was deserted, since the pupils were back in the refectory and the garden.

For the remainder of the day Hakim stayed holed up in his room. So the superstition was true. Celanire was a “horse,” and her mark was hidden on her neck. It was this extraordinary scar he had seen with his own two eyes. Consequently, he was to be the next victim: his death was foretold. Would he too be stung by a mysterious spider? Devoured by man-eating lions? How would it happen? How? He sweated and shook with fright all over. When night fell, he could not stand its darkness. He imagined the circle of trees around the house to be the lair of mysterious creatures. He could hear them hiss, murmur, and shriek. He ran to Njiri's, where they served palm wine and
akpetseshie
smuggled in from the Gold Coast. But nothing could deaden memory and conscience like the white man's liquor: gin, brandy, and absinthe.

The following morning he was stumbling out of bed in a daze when the widow Desrussie knocked on his door again. A third letter from Celanire. The woman certainly had no sense of shame; once more she apologized. Could he really be angry with her? Wasn't he flattered that a woman desired him so violently? But that wasn't the point of her letter. He had discovered her painful secret. Her slashed throat. She begged him to come so that she could explain. Hakim thought he smelled a rat. Celanire was cajoling him the better to smother him. He tore the letter up into a thousand pieces and did not trouble to reply.

From that day on he lived on borrowed time. The yelp of a dog, the howl of a monkey, or the scurry of a rat would make him jump. At night, the rustle of an insect or a bat beating its wings as it tangled in the straw of the roof made him go crazy. On the surface it was the same routine. Every morning he watched the same sun rise above the greenery of Bingerville. Three days out of five he climbed into the same outboard, made the rounds of the same suppliers of palm oil and kernels, and loaded his booty onto the same dugouts. The remainder of the week was spent in one of the warehouses where the oil was extracted and poured into casks to be shipped to Grand-Bassam. When he returned home of an evening, he had to help Kwame Aniedo as well as overcome his fatigue and his nagging sexual desire. Yet these routine gestures were transformed by the fear that had wormed its way inside him, that had crept into every corner of his being and tainted every second of his life. The young man who once mocked superstition now seriously considered consulting a fetish priest. After the death of their sworn enemy, the Father Templar, Diamagaram and the others had reoccupied Felix Koffi's compound as if nothing had happened. They continued to work against the French but could not prevent the king from giving the Home more land. Celanire had turned it into an experimental garden where she intended planting coffee and cacao, those new plants of which the French had great expectations.

Hakim was convinced that nothing nor nobody could save him from Celanire.

 

And that's why he took to drink.

And that's why he became a regular at Njiri's bar.

Only there did he feel safe. After having downed half a bottle of gin or absinthe, he began to reason with himself. How could he, a liberated young man, ex-philosophizer who had read the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, take at face value a load of superstitions good for ignoramuses? Okay, Celanire was a nutcase! Okay, she had the hots for him. But that was all. As for her scar, she was probably operated on for a goiter or some sort of hypertrophy of the thyroid.

After a few months his liking for alcohol had utterly consumed him. His regular evening visits to Njiri's bar no longer satisfied him. He discovered a dive at Grand-Bassam, just steps from the sea, named the Fisherman's Rendezvous. From early morning, mingling with the boozers of all sorts and chronic alcoholics, you could meet landlocked hunters of tuna, grouper, and whales who no longer set off to sea. Hakim liked the spot not because of its setting, which was somewhat sordid; not because of its alcohol, which was somewhat ordinary; but because of the conversation. The regulars never tired, in fact, of poking fun at the way the French spoke, dressed, and behaved. They would enumerate the girls who had lost their virginity to the district commissioners, the number of little boys abused by the priests. They ridiculed the orders of the governor, Thomas de Brabant, and the feats of the soldiers on campaign. And, what's more, they could name the name of every senior civil servant, every high-ranking officer, who, before embarking at Grand-Bassam for his annual leave, stopped over at the Home, and could count up the number of nights he had spent there. According to them, two officers from Upper Senegal–Niger had almost renounced their career and become orderlies to the nurses at the Home. The Home was well and truly a bordello, and Celanire its madam. Once the treasure trove had been discovered, it would be like a volcano erupting. Just wait and see!

People noticed, however, that Hakim had changed. Those who worked under his orders were the first to smell his breath. The French merchants were horrified by his slurred voice and the mistakes in his syntax, which had once been so refined. His sudden change of look for the worse was a shock. He had never been a dandy, preferring a Muslim caftan and slippers to French-style jackets and boots. But he had always been washed, clean-shaven, and his hair oiled. At present his mop of hair was as thick and tangled as a fetish doll's, and he bundled himself up in dubious-looking wrappers like an Ebrié laborer.

Kwame Aniedo was worried. The date of his examination was fast approaching. Alas, evening after evening, Hakim was too drunk to think about dictations, multiplication tables, and math calculations. All he could do was sigh and gaze longingly at his student with languishing eyes. He would stammer incoherently. On other occasions he cried like a child. Kwame Aniedo arrived at the conclusion therefore that someone wanted to harm Hakim. Out of respect for Hakim, who had made a “man of letters” out of him by teaching him his alphabet, he got into the habit of joining him at Njiri's. Once alcohol had done its damage and Hakim was too far gone, he would prop him up to prevent him from collapsing into a heap and bring him home. There he would splash his face with water, then help him lie down on his straw mattress.

On that particular evening, many of the regulars could testify that Kwame Aniedo and Hakim had left the bar arm in arm well before ten. Hakim was sober and walking straight. A full moon was sailing in the sky. The buffalo frogs were croaking. Kwame Aniedo was counting on Hakim to teach him more about civics, which was his weak point. Instead of this, the schoolmaster started confiding in him. Once again Kwame Aniedo had to put up with hearing the old story of the great white colonial papa, the Tukolor princess
maman,
and the snubs Hakim had suffered as an illegitimate child. And yet, protested Hakim, the mixed bloods are the future of the world, which is in a state of miscegenation. Yes, multiculturalism would conquer all. Exasperated, Kwame Aniedo was about to withdraw to his room when Hakim started on a new chapter—the one about how he had been propositioned by Celanire. Kwame Aniedo couldn't believe his ears. He had every reason to hate the oblate who had been the cause of the quarrel with his father. But no man normally equipped could reject such a creature. He plied Hakim with questions. What had he seen exactly?

“Go on, describe her dovelike breasts, the palace of her navel, the garden of her pubis, and the fountain of her delights. Did you drink your fill?”

Crimes between Africans arouse little interest. Genocide, pogroms, tribal warfare, ethnic cleansing—those people kill themselves and nobody says a word.

But this murder was an exception, for Hakim was of mixed blood, the illegitimate son of a distinguished colonial administrator who had served with distinction in Upper Senegal. The press had little trouble tracing the father: Robert Delafalaise, author of a remarkable anthropological study, the first of its kind in any case,
Les Bambara de Ségou et du Kaarta
. The incident was hotly debated. For those who opposed France's colonial endeavors—and there were quite a few, to tell the truth—it was proof, one more, of the crimes committed by the “gods of the bush,” as the governors-general, governors, and district commissioners were called. When they were on a tour of inspection, they showed no respect for the local chiefs and demanded a droit du seigneur over the local beauties. If they got them pregnant, they would heartlessly pack their offspring off to a Home for Half-Castes. Hakim was a victim, nothing but a victim. For the defenders of colonization, however, this crime illustrated the dangers of crossbreeding, the savagery of those half-castes capable of exterminating both the African and the European race, if you didn't watch out.