The Lights of Pointe-Noire (7 page)

My mother's castle

A
t the family reunion to celebrate my arrival, I noticed two empty chairs opposite me, and two glasses filled with palm wine placed before each of them. Everyone had an explanation, except me. Just to be clear, I asked whether we were waiting for two more people, because there were already over thirty of us on the plot left by my mother. Looking embarrassed, a cousin whispered in my ear:

‘It's your mother and father sitting on the two chairs. You think they are empty but in fact they are taken…'

And she explained that other members of the family were absent, at rest in the Mont-Kamba cemetery, the burial place for the common people, at the other end of town…

I walked round ‘Maman Pauline's plot', as they say here. There is a tiny hut tucked away in one corner of the property. Almost a blemish on this neighbourhood of solid buildings, with electricity. Every property in the Voungou neighbourhood has been carefully fenced in. Except ours, where the hut seems to have pointedly refused this practice, preferring the mode of the old communist regime, where we were told that everything belonged to ‘the people, and the people alone'. There was no point marking out the limits of your land, because no one, in principle, owned anything, only the state, which could exercise its own prerogative and dispossess inhabitants in the ‘collective interest'.

Once the traditional chiefs started to sell off land, it was sensible to build ‘something' on the land you acquired, in case those no-good dealers from the city sold it with false property deeds. These kinds of makeshift dwellings were known as ‘houses for now', since the inhabitants hoped to put up comfortable homes at some point in the future. They usually died without having built the house of their dreams, having never had the means to do so.

My mother acquired her plot in February 1979. I had just turned thirteen and was at Trois Glorieueses secondary school. I can still remember the seller coming round, a chief of the Vili people, who bargained with my mother and tried to increase her bid, claiming he had other, higher offers. My mother, an experienced businesswoman, pretended to have lost interest in the purchase and indicated to the seller that he could do a deal with the highest bidder, since she had now found another piece of land, in a better position, in the centre of town.

A week later, the seller came back to see us in the studio we rented in the Fonds Tié-Tié neighbourhood. He had changed his tune, and modified his exorbitant demands. Where had all those clients gone, who'd been fighting to get in the door? He breathed not one word about them. The moment he accepted my mother's offer of a beer, I knew he had capitulated, and had fallen into the trap skilfully laid for him by Maman Pauline, on whose lips I detected a look of triumph. She even rejected the average selling price for the neighbourhood.

‘I'm not buying this land for myself, it's for my son,' I heard her argue.

I don't know what other arguments she put forward, but I saw her take out some crumpled notes, unfold each one, and count out loud under the watchful eye of the greedy vendor. The trader stuffed the money into a plastic bag which he pulled out of the back pocket of his trousers. Which convinced me that the sale would definitely be completed that day, since he had thought to bring along something to put the money in.

They arranged a rendezvous for the following day, to finalise the sale with the authorities.

We had become house owners, and my father was not to learn of it until later, on the day we moved in…

We planted maize on the land we had just acquired. But that wasn't enough, we needed to give a clear sign to the crooks that we were the new owners. Uncle Mompéro, my mother's younger brother, set about building a house made of wooden planks. I stood behind him, and from time to time he asked me to hand him the saw, the set square, the nails or the boards. I was proud to feel useful, to feel that I too, with my little hands, was contributing to the construction of our home. While the building work was going on, my mother prepared food in a corner, which we would eat during the afternoon break. She had engaged two Zairean builders, because she wanted a proper floor, even if the house had to be of planks. In less than a week, the house had taken shape, standing in the field of maize. We had left the house we were renting in the Fonds Tié-Tié neighbourhood and had moved in one morning, even though a storm was looming, threatening a heavy downpour. Our house had two tiny bedrooms and a small living room. I had one room, my parents the other. Uncle Mompéro himself slept in the living room in a bed he had built himself. And when two members of the family arrived from their villages – my mother's cousin, Grand Poupy, and Papa Roger's niece, Ya Nsoni – I let the latter have my room and slept in the living room with my uncle, together in the same bed. Every evening Grand Poupy spread a mat on the ground, and some nights I slept with him.

Back here again, I find it hard to believe this is the same house we had then. The family reunion is being held in the middle of the yard. My facial expression, one of utter astonishment, is being closely watched.

Uncle Mompéro, who took me on a tour of the plot as soon as I arrived, revealed that a part of the house had been ‘cut off', leaving only the one room, where he sleeps.

‘Can we go in and look?' I asked.

‘No, I don't want you to go inside…'

I didn't insist, and we went back into the yard, where things were beginning to liven up since the drinks had arrived…

Towards the end of the party, I leaned over to my cousin Kihouari, to ask him for the ‘right to occupy' paper that my mother signed back then. It is a pink piece of paper handed out by the land registry office, bearing the family name and forename of my mother. It says that the land has a surface area of four hundred square metres. Just looking at it, I doubt it is as big as that. Kihouari tells me that there are indeed four hundred metres, as stated in the description from the land registry, but our neighbours at the back encroached by several square metres when they built the wall dividing our land from theirs.

‘This wall is actually on our land…' he concluded, looking resigned.

I recall that in the past the two plots were separated only by some stakes and barbed wire. At that time our neighbours had also built a ‘house for now', a bit bigger than ours. Now they have a huge, permanent structure and this wall, which stops us seeing what's going on at their place.

Uncle Mompéro is listening in and gathers what Kihouari is telling me. My uncle adds, in quite a loud voice, as though he wants the whole family to hear:

‘After we buried my sister, Pauline Kengué, the neighbours didn't wait even two weeks, they put up this ridiculous wall without even asking us! And they pinched a few square metres from us while they were about it! Is that acceptable, d'you think? That wall is on our land!'

There was a general murmur of discontent. Everyone wants to express their exasperation in the face of this injustice. They wait for my reaction.

I reassure them:

‘Tomorrow I'll go to the land registry office and ask them to come and remeasure the dimensions of this plot. We can't let them get away with it, it's robbery!'

A storm of applause greets my remarks. Only Kihouari doesn't join in, surprisingly, since I was sure he would be in favour of my plan.

He gives me a nod and we move away from the group to a corner of the plot, just behind the hut. His face is very serious now. He puts his hand on my left shoulder.

‘
Please
don't do what you're planning tomorrow…'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Don't go to the land registry office…'

‘Are you kidding? They're stealing square metres from us, and you want to let it go? Tell me the truth now: have the neighbours been slipping you money?'

‘No, absolutely not! How can you think such a thing! Would I, Kihouari, sell off part of my own aunt's land?'

‘Well, what's the problem, then?'

He's silent for a moment, looking over at the rest of the family. The group is getting gradually smaller. Some people are starting to leave, others are watching us, wondering what we are cooking up, over by the old shack.

Kihouari clears his throat:

‘I think I had better tell you something very important, you seem out of touch with reality since you moved away…'

I had never seen him look so serious. The death of his mother, Dorothée Lohounou – another of my mother's older sisters – must have brought him face to face with his responsibilities: as the oldest of a dozen or more sisters and brothers, he had had to become wise before his time.

‘These neighbours you want to go for, they're a bit like our family too. The owner, Monsieur Goma, died one year after Aunt Pauline Kengué. Monsieur Goma's wife got kicked out like a sick dog by the brothers of the deceased. As for the children, they are scattered in their mother's village. Two of them, Anicet and Apollo, live in France and London, and no one ever hears from them. They must be about your age, you used to play together in our yard and theirs. You even used to eat at their house, and sometimes they came and ate at ours. Now the younger brother of the late Monsieur Goma looks after their plot. He's a bit strange, it's true, but even so, it's thanks to him that the plot hasn't been sold by the same people who threw out the widow and wanted to get their hands on the inheritance and disinherit the children! I respect him for that if for nothing else. Did you notice he dropped by to say hello and insisted on appearing in the photos we took when you arrived? His name is Mesmin, he knew you when you were a boy, that was his way of showing you he was practically a member of the family. So what would be the good at this stage of having a confrontation before the tribunal? You're going to go back to Europe, or America, and you'll leave us with hot potatoes in our hands. When we leave this life we leave whatever we owned on earth, why get into a fight over it now…?'

I am speechless. Kihouari goes back to join the family, and I stand there staring at the little hut.

I walk around the shack and trip over some stones propped up against the main façade. They used to be the two entrance steps. The seasons have worn them away, leaving just this scattered debris, which no one dares move, out of respect for my mother's memory. The old slats of wood, bound by a kind of unshakeable solidarity, hold together, defying time. On the left, by the only window, I notice some bits of wood and plank that must have broken off with wear and tear. It wouldn't occur to anyone to make a fire with them, they're used to prop up the corners, to stop the shack falling down for as long as possible. Strings and pieces of wood positioned on the sheet metal keep the roof in place. The main door has been eaten away at the bottom by termites.

Yes, I used to sleep there. My dreams were less confined than the space we lived in. At least when I closed my eyes and sleep lent me wings to fly, I found myself in a vast kingdom, not in a shack that looks today like a fisherman's hut straight out of
The Old Man and the Sea
, or even
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories
.

I've been so concerned with the shack, I've overlooked a solidly built structure on the plot, with three little studios attached. Two are occupied by tenants, and the third by Kihouari's little brother, his wife and three children.

Kihouari comes up behind me:

‘Aunt Pauline Kengué began the work on the solid structure… At the time she died there were only the two studios, we added the third…'

The day is almost over. A taxi draws up outside the plot. Uncle Jean-Pierre Matété called for it. I'm just about to climb in, when I feel once more the presence of Kihouari at my back.

‘Brother, the old shack is a disgrace to the family, we're going to pull it down and put something else in its place…'

I give him a furious look.

‘No way! I'm going to restore it, the place is meaningless without the shack…'

Before getting into the car I add:

‘It's my mother's castle…'

He looks at me pityingly, unable to understand why I should be more interested in the hut than in the solid structure, of which he is visibly proud. He's almost disappointed in me when I conclude:

‘The one I'm going to pull down is the solid building, I'll replace it with another one… I will start work next year.'

The taxi sets off, and Uncle Mompéro, Uncle Matété and Grand Poupy wave goodbye from a distance. I'll be back one day…