Mount Pleasant (34 page)

But did Mose Yeyap even want to listen? With his calculating mind, he already saw himself running in an election against the leader of the sultan's family—once the sultan had died, if not sooner. He dreamed of such an election. He certainly couldn't force the Bamum sultan to abdicate, but it no longer seemed impossible. Circumstances had forced the German kaiser, whose photo and W-shaped mustache had previously adorned Njoya's walls, to abdicate in 1918. The end of their monarchy had shaken the Germans, who, as Mose knew, hadn't seen it coming either. For him, the pathways of change were strange. Sometimes democracy was ushered in by machine guns, cannons, and grenades. Yes, sometimes it arrived at the end of a military occupation. Still, an election, and nothing but an election, would justify its bloody means. If the future could conjure monsters, he told himself, it could also open the doors to paradise.

“A paradise of gangsters,” Ngutane protested once more.

But Mose Yeyap didn't listen to her. He was convinced that she had a “prewar mentality,” meaning before the First World War. She hadn't yet understood that to win an election in occupied Foumban, what mattered wasn't your position on a genealogical chessboard or the way the ground stuck to your feet, but the number of votes in the ballot box and, of course, the support of the French colonial administration. To become a leader in post-1916 Bamum land, what mattered most was being friends with the French. That requirement excluded Njoya and his legitimate heirs. Mose Yeyap had popular support, thanks to his position in the Christian church and his defense of the slaves, a support that, he knew, would put him in power in any democracy. He didn't need to listen to the sultan's daughter. In fact, history was moving against her. If an election were organized, with democratic-style campaigns, the slave vote—which he had wrapped up—would far outnumber the Mbansi nobles and the freemen. In short, Mose Yeyap already saw himself the newly elected sultan.

“The world is changing,” he said, smiling broadly as he chewed on a kola nut and spat. “The world is changing very quickly.”

“And some are hoping it will just come crashing down, huh?” Ngutane retorted.

Ah, she was a master of irony!

 

5

The Writer's Creation

Meanwhile, in his room in Mount Pleasant, Njoya was battling with his body. He was battling to break through the barriers to his memory and his actions. Ibrahim held his right hand and taught him how to write again. Father Vogt had prescribed a number of exercises for the sultan to do each day to strengthen his muscles and had stressed the importance of drawing. The priest hadn't been able to convince Njoya to worship his white God, but his arguments had sufficed to awaken the artist that, since the onset of his illness, had been slumbering within the sultan. So he spent hours in his bed or armchair, holding a slate, his two faithful aides by his side; the ink dripping from the piece of wood between his fingers made him look like a writer.

If Nji Mama and his brother Ibrahim had forgotten that Njoya was recovering from a dangerous apoplectic seizure (could they ever forget that?), they would have thought that the sultan was frozen, just waiting for the inspiration he needed to create the seventh version of his writing system, which was, really, his most impressive work. What left the two masters speechless was that when he really did begin to write, the monarch jumped back to the birth of his intellectual project, reworking an older version of his writing, using once again the pictograms he'd abandoned long before. Memory can be a real curse, but it is also a testament to life. The two men were dumbstruck when Njoya dragged his hand across the slate and wrote, in the Lewa alphabet:

That was his name. They stared at each other when, after a similar effort, the sultan dug further into the past for the name of his ancestor Nchare Yen:

It was as if, through the flesh of the words, the sultan had invoked the spirits of his land, asking for their help to restore his crumbling authority. If Ibrahim had told him that the ancestors had fallen silent when faced with the sultan's tragedy, this historic truth would have wiped out his sovereign's efforts. Not all truths are good to say. Yet Njoya wanted his chief calligrapher to stay by his side. He wanted Ibrahim to mentor him in the cryptography of his pain as he sought to use the gracefulness of his fingers to rebuild the strength of his whole body. Ibrahim had previously supervised the composition of the
Saa'ngam
when they'd been in Mantoum; he had orchestrated the work of the scribes, the copyists, the calligraphers, the illustrators, and the miniaturists. Who better to be at Njoya's side in those moments when, once again, thousands of storytellers filled his belly with their tales? When his fingers were impelled to produce letters, who better to guide them? And when his memory of painful things came back in malevolent nightmares, who better to help distract his mind with healing arabesques? Who better? If writing reinscribes life on earth in furtive blots of ink, Njoya's battle against the forces that had defeated his body was waged primarily on the surface of a slate, by means of pictograms he hoped would bear fruit.

The whole of the universe resided in his words, but more than anything, they concretized the memory of his life's events. He wrote one word after another, one figurine after another, one story after another, revealing anew in his writing the sinuous fullness of life. Yes, he saw the world take shape again before him; he saw the new palace he had built, where he had not yet lived, take shape on the hills of Nsimeyong, not through the accumulation of bricks, but of words. He saw the House of Stories in whose corridors he was imprisoned connect with the Palace of All Dreams, letting him know he was free. For when he wrote, Njoya was free, free and sovereign! From his bedchamber in Mount Pleasant, he was free to wage war against the infamous forces that had spread their miasmas across Foumban. He didn't even need to hear the echo of Mose Yeyap's felonious voice.

Holding his writing tools firmly in his hands, Njoya battled for his survival, convinced that he would win by beginning to write the history of the Bamum once again:
Here again is the book of the history of the Kings of Rifum
. The year was 1932, the seventeenth day of the month of March: the day he awoke. According to all the history books I've been able to consult, Njoya had only another fifteen months, two weeks, twenty-four days, and twelve hours to live, so I can tell you this now: it was his most loyal servant, Nji Mama, who would oil his body and return it to the earth of Foumban that he missed so terribly, burying him alongside his mother, Njapdunke, who was seated and waiting for him. But that, of course, the chief architect didn't yet know.

 

6

Mose Yeyap's Manifesto

Even today there are many in Foumban who still believe that Njoya's battles began in 1920, in the time of Lieutenant Prestat and Njapdunke. The profound wound that event left on the soul of each person in the city is still as painful as the scar Bertha bore around her neck. However, Captain Ripert, who in 1922 took the place of the irascible lieutenant, had decided to let the fire beneath the Prestat affair burn out by itself. This man—whom people remembered most for his seven identical outfits, in the same cut and beige color, which led everyone to believe he never changed his clothes—would also have liked to disappear, humbly, beneath the silent piles of paperwork. In fact, Ripert would have been quickly forgotten by the Bamum had he not had his own episode with the sultan, one that discouraged all those who had hoped Prestat's replacement would have better or, as Nji Mama put it, “more civilized” manners.

Yet when he arrived in Foumban, Ripert took the dusty file he found on the table and read the reports in just one night, eager as he was to open new chapters. His attention was tripped up by some of the names written in large letters, but no matter. One of those was Monlipèr. Ripert soon happened upon that man's name again; during his tours of the city, it seemed that “Monlipèr” was the most popular name among the artists. Mose Yeyap explained to him that in Shümum, “Monlipèr” meant “teacher,” adding as well that the Monlipèr referred to in the text was probably Nji Kpumie Pemu, the chief of the Artists' Alley. Mose continued, although Ripert hadn't asked, adding that the young man whipped two years before was working for that same Monlipèr at the time of the incident with Lieutenant Prestat. The new French commander cocked his head.

Maybe that's when the captain concluded that Nebu must have learned to dream dangerous dreams from that man. Mose Yeyap, very chatty that day, also mentioned Nji Mama's name, which Ripert hadn't recalled, because it hadn't stood out in the confusing mass of Bamum names all beginning with Nji. Ripert hadn't given much thought to what his translator told him, but did he really need to think about it? A Cartesian, as all French colonizers pretend to be, he had seen a logical chain linking cause and effect and had drawn the necessary conclusions, though he didn't yet voice them. The red line that connected Nebu to the sultan seemed quite clear: it had already been traced in the report found on the table. Prestat had, in fact, stressed the details of his poisoning by his maid, Njapdunke. He had written in large letters the name of the man who had given her the poison (Nebu), the names of those who had plotted his poisoning (Monlipèr and Nji Mama), and of course the name of the man who, in his palace, pulled the poisonous strings (Njoya). He hadn't forgotten to wrap it up by warning his colleague about fish heads. Captain Ripert didn't need any additional arguments to convince him that here all the omelets were made with the same ingredients, but his first decision was to remove Monlipèr from his position in the Artists' Alley. Maybe he would have gone even further. All evidence suggests that Nji Mama was beyond his reach, since the chief architect worked in the palace. No need to say that from then on, the worksite of the Palace of All Dreams became the officer's main target.

Ripert's rather surprising second decision was to promote Mose Yeyap. He had hired Mose as a translator because his name appeared several times in his predecessor's report, each mention more flattering than the previous one. In French, and in a style far livelier than Prestat's listless prose, Mose Yeyap had told him the story of the fish and the poison, of the palace and the sultan, of dreams and lovers, of the public whipping and the girlfriend. Amazed, as he couldn't stop repeating afterward, “that a black could speak our language so well,” Ripert had put the Artists' Alley under the translator's control. It was Mose's first promotion in the ranks of the French administration, and it came just after he'd been hired. It had been facilitated, of course, by testimonials, each as flattering as Prestat's, as well as by a letter of recommendation from Madame Dugast describing him as a trustworthy man “who in 1915 had gone to Douala, at his own expense, to welcome us.” Madame Dugast had also written in her letter, “He's our Man”—with a capital
M
.

Nebu was never invited to the French commander's headquarters. Maybe Ripert had concluded that the sculptor was just a small footnote in his Book of Accusations. Only Nji Mama was summoned to answer some “routine questions.” The master emerged from the French commander's office totally changed, convinced of the truth of the assertion we've already heard, which at that point he only murmured: “They want to kill the sultan.”

Of course no one believed him. He repeated the phrase again and again, repeated it so often that it was finally lost in the silence with which everyone from then on took note of Captain Ripert's decrees.

“He only asked me questions about the sultan”—that's what Nji Mama confided to those who came to ask him for the truth.

Replacing Monlipèr would not be easy: Mose Yeyap could perhaps translate everything the French said into Foumban's multiple languages, but he'd never be respected by the artists and artisans, not to mention the apprentices. He wasn't of the same stuff. Giving him control of the Artists' Alley was like putting an army in the hands of a praise singer. Mose knew he would need to impose his authority on a world that was foreign to him, and no doubt hostile as well, but he didn't refuse the promotion. Instead he ran to borrow several books from the French school and quickly learned the basics of Western art. Then he invited all the artists to what he called a “very important” meeting. That day he dressed in his best
gandoura
. With the French commander at his side, he declared that a myopic tradition was limiting the potential of Bamum art.