Mount Pleasant (35 page)

“From now on, art is free,” he announced. “A new era has begun for Bamum art, my dear friends!”

Captain Ripert agreed.

“Have you ever thought of becoming your own masters?” the translator continued amidst the general silence. “How can you declare yourselves artists when you submit your creative powers to an authority figure? Times are changing, my brothers, and art must reflect those changes. In fact, it is through art that the upheavals of our times find their best expression!”

Mose Yeyap knew those words would hit home with these artists.

“You are the eyes in our head, the guardians of our imagination, the conscience of our people. You hold the roots of our future in your hands. In your hands, you have the truth of our condition, for you see what we cannot and you hear what is hidden from us. Your hands have the extraordinary power to give a name to our era! Even the sultan doesn't have that power!”

Though everyone was already listening attentively, they all jumped at the word “sultan” and then listened even more closely. Muluam and Ngbatu, for example, felt a new power surge through the tools they held in their hands, and they weren't the only ones. Behind them, the deposed master, Monlipèr, commented sarcastically on the words of the new chief of the Artists' Alley. This time he wasn't blind to what was going on. In another corner, Nji Mama grumbled along with him.

“The artist must represent the changes taking place across our society,” Mose Yeyap continued, “and in doing so, each must choose sides in history's battles.”

“Aha,” said Monlipèr. “What camp are you in, then?”

“You artists cannot remain neutral! You have been thrown into the Nshi River, and you must swim if you don't want to sink. Of course, you haven't been locked up in a madman's tower, but still, you must free yourselves from the authority of your master even if he's the sultan!”

This time the word “sultan” sent a wave of flames through the gathered artists. Such outrage had never before been felt among the Bamum.

“There you go!” said Monlipèr.

Having cleared his throat, Mose Yeyap was starting another subversive phrase when he was interrupted. “Do you mean that now our art must serve the white captain?”

The disgust with which the voice pronounced “white captain” had been lost on no one. The question was followed by a tumult, from which Ripert would have recorded many comments insulting the French administration if only he understood Shüpamum. He demanded a translation of the chattering, but his translator had mastered the art of liberal translation whenever necessary.

“They don't believe,” Mose said, moved by inspiration, “that art is free in Europe.”

Then Ripert laughed. “Tell them,” he added, following up where Mose Yeyap had left off, “that Europe has produced great artists! Talk to them about the grandeur of the French artists who decided to listen only to their own inspiration. Talk to them of Gauguin and Delacroix…”

Even if he peppered it with the names of Gauguin and Delacroix, Mose continued his tirade about artistic freedom in his own way. His gestures grew more emphatic. He seemed to be boxing an invisible but dangerous foe.

“The best artists,” he said, “are those who have freed themselves from the authority of their master and who obey only the laws of beauty, for beauty cannot be governed—”

“Does that mean,” Muluam interrupted, “that we can create works of art that oppose the sultan…”

“Answer him,” Monlipèr shouted from behind the young man. “Tell us the truth, you palm rat!”

Mose knew he was on dangerous ground, but he also knew he didn't have to answer impertinent questions, especially those from the apprentice of the man he had replaced. Yet Muluam hadn't finished his question. Ngbatu did it for him: “… or against the white man?”

This interrogation by a tandem of voices unleashed a din that forced Mose to move on to his conclusion. There was too much chaos and too many whispers. For the first time, the Artists' Alley was caught up in a strange fever. Even his French master looked in surprise at the inflamed crowd.

“What are they saying?” Ripert asked.

Mose Yeyap hesitated.

“Will you translate what they are saying?”

The tumult had overtaken the crowd. In truth, what could Mose have said? He had provoked a generalized anger, less because he had asked the artists to work according to his new rules than because he had reminded them that the palace had grown too poor and was no longer able to buy the works they produced. Njoya had always sponsored the artists; he was the one who had built the alley for them. It had been constructed long ago, when his demands for works of art had grown so much, requiring the efforts of so many hands, that the artists employed had needed to set up shop outside the palace walls. The sultan needed decorations for the palaces in and around Foumban destined for his wives, and he needed numerous gifts for his growing number of interlocutors. What he couldn't give away, he sold in stands that he opened in neighboring lands. This artistic flowering was possible only because of the stability of his reign. The arrival of the Germans, followed by the English and now the French, and the restrictions they placed on his trade had diminished the demand for works of art.

The last and most important order Njoya had made—can you believe it?—was a gift intended for the German governor, Ebermaier, in 1908. Later he had commissioned a new Mandu Yenu, but only after the Germans had confiscated the original throne. Who among the artists could fail to see that the palace's power was waning? Gone were the years when even the land of the Bamum reserved its best fruits to satisfy the palace's life of luxury. Njoya's income had been greatly reduced when the German colonizers had placed limits on his lands, his trade, and the work of his subjects. They had confiscated the best land in the sultanate for their banana, palm, cocoa, and coffee plantations, paying Njoya only a small dividend. Today, on Ripert's order, the sultan lived on an annual pension of a mere eighteen thousand francs. Even if he was still the only one who owned a vehicle in Foumban, and even if he maintained his prestige in the colony in other ways, in reality, Njoya no longer had the means to be the sole patron of the Artists' Alley. Clearly, when Mose Yeyap gave his impassioned speech on Bamum art (Nji Mama called it the Manifesto for the Prostitution of Bamum Art), colonialism had already bankrupted the palace of the Bamum sultan.

Yes, Njoya's position as patron of the arts had sometimes been seconded by the nobles' love of fashion, which kept many jewelers and sculptors busy. However, since fashion is a fickle supporter of the arts, the alley's masks and decorations fell out of favor after Herr Habisch opened his store in Foumban. The noblewomen wanted nothing but his gold chains; and Swiss watches, which enthralled them with their ticktock, were soon found on their wrists. Only a few remained faithful to the art of the alley's master jewelers. One might say that with his speech, Mose Yeyap landed the last blow on an already bowed back. And you'll recall all the elegant women of Njoya's court leafing through Herr Habisch's
Quelle
catalog and placing orders for things they certainly would have previously gotten from the Artists' Alley. Perhaps many of the noblewomen were genuinely overjoyed by the death of Bamum art. As for Ngutane, she recognized that this death in some sense foreshadowed her father's.

The artists—well, they didn't need anyone to explain the situation to them. They experienced it in the changes to the orders they received. They kept destroying more and more unsold sculptures in order to make copies of those sold by Herr Habisch. In fact, when Mose Yeyap gave his speech, the artists of the alley had already learned to bend to the desires of new patrons, artificially aging their sculptures “to give them an authentic look.” They had to, if they wanted to survive. Monlipèr was one of the few, even the only one, to resist money's subversive influence.

“So does this mean we should also sculpt prostitutes instead of noblewomen?”

There was no end to the questions.

“Should we sculpt in mud rather than gold?”

All these debates, of course, had happened before Ibrahim's hands-off approach allowed the workshops to produce what tourists wanted, which created work for everyone and killed the artist in each. Mose Yeyap saw that the workshops were stagnating. That's why he could only smile at Muluam's and Ngbatu's questions, which he knew were inspired by old Monlipèr. He understood that these voices of dissent were the last-ditch effort of a frustrated, already defeated group to salvage its dignity by throwing itself into the dying embers. The old man was condemned, and his art along with him. Was the translator too impatient for the birth of the new? Would he have preferred to hurry along its arrival? Had anyone asked his motivations, he would have sworn it was his love of Bamum art, even though many thought he was driven by political ambition alone. The truth is certainly somewhere in between.

“What are they saying?” Ripert demanded.

“They're discussing what I just told them,” Mose Yeyap replied.

The white man didn't insist.

 

7

How Can One Be Both Black and Fascist?

How could I forget what Arouna and his friends found in the archives? In 1922, the year of the events in Foumban, in the same month, September, and on the same day, the eighteenth, when Mose held forth, and just a few hours apart, a confrontation between two close friends took place in Yaoundé. This dispute is the first actual memory Sara has of her father, and the old lady was categorical: the friendship between Charles Atangana, the politician, and Joseph Ngono, the poet, couldn't have continued on a high note. They were too different to forever be arm in arm. Their only regret was that their personalities clashed during a wedding, particularly since it happened during the celebration for Atangana and Juliana Ngono.

It all started in the house of the young couple, whom Joseph Ngono had just honored with a speech in their language after they'd been sermonized and blessed by Father Vogt. It all started, yes, when the couple was still dressed in their festive clothes: the chief in his handsome tuxedo, a black top hat on his head and a long Cuban cigar in his left hand. Joseph Ngono was also wearing a tuxedo, borrowed but just as black, his handicapped hand in his pants' pocket. Juliana was standing, dressed in white, waving her gloved hands, asking everyone to calm down, just to calm down, good Lord, to get a glass of wine, a beer, or something else instead of tearing each other down with awful, cutting words.

What had happened?

Charles Atangana's voice had suddenly exploded: “One might say, my brother, that you have become one of those fascists.”

In the calm that followed his insult, which made everyone fall silent, he tilted his nose and stood tall, waiting for Ngono's reply and puffing on his cigar.

Fascist?
Ngono thought.

He immediately remembered Adolf with the mustache, and the echo of that hoodlum's violence rang again in his ears. He thought about his hand, which he could no longer lift up in a salute without feeling ashamed because of the two missing fingers. He saw again Berlin's police station, where the police had asked him the same question over and over for hours: “Are you a Marxist?”

Ah, those policemen knew nothing besides that one stupid question!

Why Marxist? he had wondered then.

And now he was a fascist?

Here are the facts: Joseph Ngono had said that it was time “in our country, for blacks to organize, to march on Ongola, the city center, and proclaim the Republic of Cameroon.” He had added that it was time, “high time,” for Cameroonians to realize that the days of colonization in their country had ended when the German administration had come to an end—that since then, they were free, “totally free,” as free as the Germans, for example, who hadn't waited for anyone's permission to declare themselves doubly republican and de facto to bury the monarchy that had governed them until then and led them into the hell from which they had just managed to escape. Cameroonians were free, too, Ngono had said, free to vote for whomever they wanted as leader, to elect the president of their choice, the chancellor or sultan or whatever they wanted, “free, even, to elect a demon if we want, because we are free to make mistakes and responsible enough to pay for them.”

“But my dear friend,” Charles Atangana had replied, this time in French, “we're not in Germany here!”

Ngono didn't see what that mattered.

“We are already a republic!” Charles Atangana continued. “Don't you know that yet?”

“You mean a colonial republic?” Ngono asked. “How can a republic be colonial, my friends?”

This time he had spoken not to Charles Atangana, resplendent in his tuxedo and enjoying his cigar, but to the many faces gathered all around.

“A colonial republic?” he repeated with a loud laugh. “The French are making a joke!”

“No,” Charles Atangana interrupted. “The French Republic, my dear friends. We are French citizens.”

Ngono's reply cut to the point.

“But we aren't French.”

This abrupt sentence had been met by total silence. Charles Atangana might have asked, “Are you German, by any chance?” and the discussion could have turned into a mudslinging fight. For who didn't know that Joseph Ngono had spent two years in an internment camp following his return from Germany, falsely accused of “collusion with the enemy” because he was returning from there; that despite his diplomas, his training, and his experience, his radical positions had brought him nothing but sorrow. He was out of work. Everyone also knew that Charles Atangana had changed the spelling of his first name; and most important, everyone knew he had vowed never to repeat the years he'd spent in exile in Mantoum among the Bamum.