Under African Skies (6 page)
Read Under African Skies Online
Authors: Charles Larson
“Leave the dead be,” he had said. “They can no longer do anything for the living.”
The old chief had paid no attention and the chicken had been sacrificed.
When it was time to work the fields, Thiemokho had called it useless and even stupid to kill black chickens and pour their blood into a corner of the fields. The work, he said, was enough. Rain would fall if it was going to. The millet, corn, groundnuts, yams, and beans would grow all by themselves, and would grow better if the villagers would use the plows the local administrator had sent him. Keita cut down and burned the branches of Dassiri, the sacred tree, protector of the village and the cultivated fields, at whose foot the dogs were sacrificed.
On the day when the little boys were to be circumcised and the little girls excised,
2
Sergeant Keita had leaped upon their teacher, the Gangourang,
who was dancing and chanting. He tore off the porcupine quills the Gangourang wore upon his head, and the netting that hid his body. From the head of Papa Djombo, the venerable grandfather who taught the young girls, Keita had ripped the cone-shaped yellow headdress topped with
gri-gri
charms and ribbons. All this he called “the ways of savages.” And yet he had been to Nice, and seen the carnival with the funny and frightening masks. The whites, the Toubabs, it is true, wore masks for fun and not in order to teach their children the wisdom of the ancients.
2
Sergeant Keita had leaped upon their teacher, the Gangourang,
who was dancing and chanting. He tore off the porcupine quills the Gangourang wore upon his head, and the netting that hid his body. From the head of Papa Djombo, the venerable grandfather who taught the young girls, Keita had ripped the cone-shaped yellow headdress topped with
gri-gri
charms and ribbons. All this he called “the ways of savages.” And yet he had been to Nice, and seen the carnival with the funny and frightening masks. The whites, the Toubabs, it is true, wore masks for fun and not in order to teach their children the wisdom of the ancients.
Sergeant Keita had unhooked the little bag hanging in his hut which held the Nyanaboli, the Keita family spirit, and had thrown it into the yard, where the skinny dogs nearly won it from the children before the chief could get there.
One morning he had gone into the sacred wood and broken the pots of boiled millet and sour milk. He had pushed over the little statues and pulled up the forked stakes tipped with hardened blood and chicken feathers. “The ways of savages,” he called them. The sergeant, however, had been in churches. He had seen little statues there of saints and the Holy Virgin that people burned candles to. These statues, it is true, were covered with gilt and painted in bright colorsâblues, reds, and yellows. Certainly they were more beautiful than the blackened pygmies with long arms and short legs carved of cailcedra or ebony that inhabited the sacred forest.
“You'll civilize them a bit,” the local administrator had said. Sergeant Thiemokho Keita was going to “civilize” his people. It was necessary to break with tradition, do away with the beliefs upon which the village life, the existence of the families, the people's behavior had always rested. Superstition had to be eradicated. The ways of savages. Ways of savages, the hard treatment inflicted on the young initiates at circumcision to open their minds, form their character, and teach them that nowhere, at any moment of their lives, can they, will they ever be alone. A way of savages, the Kotéba, which forges real men on whom pain can hold no sway. The ways of savages, the sacrifices, the blood offered to the ancestors and the earth ⦠the boiling of millet and curdled milk poured out to the wandering spirits and the protective genies ⦠the ways of savages.
All this Sergeant Keita proclaimed to the young and old of the village, standing in the shade of the palaver tree.
Â
It was nearly sunset when Thiemokho Keita went out of his mind. He was leaning against the palaver tree, talking, talking, talking, against the medicine
man who had sacrificed some dogs that very morning, against the old who didn't want to hear him, against the young who still listened to the old. He was still speaking when suddenly he felt something like a prick on his left shoulder. He turned his head. When he looked at his listeners again, his eyes were no longer the same. A white, foamy spittle appeared at the corners of his mouth. He spoke, but it was no longer the same words that emerged from his lips. The spirits had taken his mind, and now they cried out their fear:
man who had sacrificed some dogs that very morning, against the old who didn't want to hear him, against the young who still listened to the old. He was still speaking when suddenly he felt something like a prick on his left shoulder. He turned his head. When he looked at his listeners again, his eyes were no longer the same. A white, foamy spittle appeared at the corners of his mouth. He spoke, but it was no longer the same words that emerged from his lips. The spirits had taken his mind, and now they cried out their fear:
Black night! Black night!
He called at nightfall, and the women and children trembled in their huts:
Black night! Black night!
He cried at daybreak:
Black night! Black night!
He howled at high noon. Night and day the spirits and the genies and the ancestors made him speak, cry out and chant â¦
It was only at dawn that I was able to doze off in the hut where the dead lived. All night I had heard Sergeant Keita coming and going, howling, weeping, and singing:
Trumpeting elephants hoot
In the darkening wood
Above the cursed drums,
Black night, black night!
In the darkening wood
Above the cursed drums,
Black night, black night!
Â
Milk sours in the calabash
Gruel hardens in the jar
And fear stalks in the hut,
Black night, black night!
Gruel hardens in the jar
And fear stalks in the hut,
Black night, black night!
Â
The torches throw
Bodiless flames
In the air
And then, quietly, glarelessly
Smoke,
Black night, black night!
Bodiless flames
In the air
And then, quietly, glarelessly
Smoke,
Black night, black night!
Â
Restless spirits
Meander and moan
Muttering lost words,
Words that strike fear,
Black night, black night!
Meander and moan
Muttering lost words,
Words that strike fear,
Black night, black night!
Â
From the chickens' chilled bodies
Or the warm moving corpse
Not a
drop
of
blood runs
Neither black
blood
nor red,
Black
night,
black
night!
Trumpeting elephants hoot
Above the cursed drums,
Black
night, black night!
Or the warm moving corpse
Not a
drop
of
blood runs
Neither black
blood
nor red,
Black
night,
black
night!
Trumpeting elephants hoot
Above the cursed drums,
Black
night, black night!
Â
Orphaned,
the river calls out
In fear for the people
Endlessly, fruitlessly wandering
Far from
its desolate banks,
Black night, black
night!
the river calls out
In fear for the people
Endlessly, fruitlessly wandering
Far from
its desolate banks,
Black night, black
night!
Â
And in the savannah, forlorn
Deserted by ancestors' spirits
The trumpeting elephants hoot
Above the cursed drums,
Black night, black night!
Deserted by ancestors' spirits
The trumpeting elephants hoot
Above the cursed drums,
Black night, black night!
Â
Sap freezes
in the
anxious
trees
In trunks
and
leaves
That no longer can pray
To the
ancestors
haunting their feet,
Black night, black night!
in the
anxious
trees
In trunks
and
leaves
That no longer can pray
To the
ancestors
haunting their feet,
Black night, black night!
Fear lurks in the hut
In the smoking torch
In the orphaned river
In the weary, soulless forest
In the anxious, faded trees
In the smoking torch
In the orphaned river
In the weary, soulless forest
In the anxious, faded trees
Â
Trumpeting elephants hoot
In the darkening woods
Above the cursed drums,
Black night, black night!
In the darkening woods
Above the cursed drums,
Black night, black night!
No one dared call him by his name anymore for the spirits and the ancestors had made another man of him. Thiemokho Keita was gone for the villagers. Only Sarzan was left, Sarzan-the-Mad.
Â
â1961
(BORN 1923) SENEGAL
Although he is known internationally as Africa's most important filmmaker, Sembene Ousmane began his artistic career as a writer. At the beginning of World War II, he was drafted into the French Army. Following the war, after a brief return to Senegal, he lived for a number of years in Marseilles. His first novel,
Le docker noir
(
The Black Docker
), published in 1956, was influenced by Claude McKay's Banjo (1929). Both novels are concerned with black stevedores living on the fringes of the white man's world.
Le docker noir
(
The Black Docker
), published in 1956, was influenced by Claude McKay's Banjo (1929). Both novels are concerned with black stevedores living on the fringes of the white man's world.
Ousmane's most widely read novel,
Les bouts
de
bois
de
Dieu (God's Bits
of
Wood
), was published in 1960. Events in the novel are based on the famous DakarâNiger railway workers' strike in
1947,
in which Ousmane participated. In the early 1950s, when Ousmane lived in France, he met other important Francophone writers, including those who had formulated the tenets of
negritude,
twenty years earlier. A decade later, Ousmane relocated again, to Russia, where he studied at the Moscow Film School.
Les bouts
de
bois
de
Dieu (God's Bits
of
Wood
), was published in 1960. Events in the novel are based on the famous DakarâNiger railway workers' strike in
1947,
in which Ousmane participated. In the early 1950s, when Ousmane lived in France, he met other important Francophone writers, including those who had formulated the tenets of
negritude,
twenty years earlier. A decade later, Ousmane relocated again, to Russia, where he studied at the Moscow Film School.
Ousmane turned to film because of his realization that in Africa in the early 1960s his reading audience was limited by illiteracy; with the cinema, he could reach many more people. His first narrative film was based on the story published here, “Black Girl” (“Le Noir de ⦔), which originally appeared in
Voltaïque
(1962), a volume of the writer's early stories.
Black
Girl was followed by nearly a dozen films, widely shown across the African continent and in Europe. Because of their strong political content, some of these films have aroused the hostility of officials in Ousmane's native Senegal.
Yet he has continued to pursue controversial subjects in both his fiction and his films.
Voltaïque
(1962), a volume of the writer's early stories.
Black
Girl was followed by nearly a dozen films, widely shown across the African continent and in Europe. Because of their strong political content, some of these films have aroused the hostility of officials in Ousmane's native Senegal.
Yet he has continued to pursue controversial subjects in both his fiction and his films.
He has compared his role as filmmaker to that of the traditional African storyteller, remarking: “The artist must in many ways be the mouth and the ears of his people. In the modern sense, this corresponds to the role of the
griot
in traditional African culture. The artist is like a mirror. His work reflects and synthesizes the problems, the struggles and hopes of his people.”
griot
in traditional African culture. The artist is like a mirror. His work reflects and synthesizes the problems, the struggles and hopes of his people.”
Besides the movie
Black Girl
, Sembene's later films include
Mandabi
(
The
Money Order
), 1968;
Emitai
,
1971
; Xala, 1974;
Ceddo,
1976; and
Le Camp de Thiaroye, 1988.
He has continued to write novels and short stories.
Le Dernier
de l'Empire
(
The Last of the Empire
), a two-volume novel about a fictitious Senegalese president, was published in 1981. Two earlier novellas,
Niiwan
and
Taaw
, were published in English translation in 1992.
Black Girl
, Sembene's later films include
Mandabi
(
The
Money Order
), 1968;
Emitai
,
1971
; Xala, 1974;
Ceddo,
1976; and
Le Camp de Thiaroye, 1988.
He has continued to write novels and short stories.
Le Dernier
de l'Empire
(
The Last of the Empire
), a two-volume novel about a fictitious Senegalese president, was published in 1981. Two earlier novellas,
Niiwan
and
Taaw
, were published in English translation in 1992.
Anny Wynchank, who has called Sembene the “voice of the voiceless,” has stated: “Sembene's driving concern has been to denounce hypocrisy, stupidity and injustice, as well as to expose the consequences of ignorance, superstition, and fatalistic passivity. His goal has always been to restore a sense of honor and dignity in the poor and the exploited of Africa ⦠.”
Translated from
the French by Ellen Conroy Kennedy
the French by Ellen Conroy Kennedy
Â
It was the morning of the 23rd of June in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred fifty-eight. At Antibes, along the Riviera, neither the fate of the French Republic nor the future of Algeria nor the state of the colonial territories preoccupied those who swarmed across the beaches below La Croisette.
Above, on the road leading to the Hermitage, two old-style Citroëns, one behind the other, were moving up the mountain. They stopped and several men quickly got out, rushing down the gravel walk toward a house on which a worn sign spelled out VILLA OF GREEN HAPPINESS. The men were the police chief of the town of Grasse, a medical officer, and two police inspectors from Antibes, flanked by officers in uniform.
There was nothing green about the Villa of Green Happiness except its name. The garden was kept in the French manner, the walks covered with gravel, set off by a couple of palm trees with drooping fronds. The chief looked closely at the house, his eyes stopping at the third window, the broken glass, the ladder.
Inside were other inspectors and a photographer. Three people who seemed to be reporters were looking with rather absentminded interest at the African statues, masks, animal skins, and ostrich eggs set here and there. Entering the living room was like violating the privacy of a hunter's lair.
Two women were hunched together, sobbing. They looked very much alike, the same straight forehead, the same curved nose, the same dark circles
about eyes reddened from crying. The one in the pale dress was speaking: “After my nap, I felt like taking a bath. The door was locked from the inside”âblowing her noseâ“and I thought to myself, it's the maid taking her bath. I say âthe maid,'” she corrected, “but we never called her anything else but her name, Diouana. I waited for more than an hour, but didn't see her come out. I went back and called, knocking on the door. There was no answer. Then I phoned our neighbor, the Commodore ⦔
about eyes reddened from crying. The one in the pale dress was speaking: “After my nap, I felt like taking a bath. The door was locked from the inside”âblowing her noseâ“and I thought to myself, it's the maid taking her bath. I say âthe maid,'” she corrected, “but we never called her anything else but her name, Diouana. I waited for more than an hour, but didn't see her come out. I went back and called, knocking on the door. There was no answer. Then I phoned our neighbor, the Commodore ⦔
She stopped, wiped her nose, and began to cry again. Her sister, the younger of the two, hair cut in a boyish style, sat hanging her head.
“You're the one who discovered the body?” the chief asked the Commodore.
“Yes ⦠that is, when Madame Pouchet called and told me that the black girl had locked herself in the bathroom, I thought it was a joke. I spent thirty-five years at sea, you know. I've roamed the seven seas. I'm retired from the Navy.”
“Yes, yes, we know.”
“Yes, well, when Madame Pouchet called I brought my ladder.”
“You brought the ladder?”
“No. It was Mademoiselle Dubois, Madame's sister, who suggested the idea. And when I got to the window, I saw the black girl swimming in blood.”
“Where is the key to the door?”
“Here it is, your honor,” said the inspector.
“Just wanted to see it.”
“I've checked the window,” said the other inspector.
“I'm the one who opened it, after breaking the pane,” said the retired Navy man.
“Which pane did you break?”
“Which pane?” he repeated. He was wearing white linen trousers and a blue jacket.
“Yes, I saw it, but I'd like to ask precisely.”
“The second from the top,” answered the sister.
At this, two stretcher-bearers came down, carrying a body wrapped in a blanket. Blood dripped on the steps. The magistrate lifted a corner of the blanket and frowned. A black girl lay dead on the stretcher, her throat cut from one ear to the other.
“It was with this knife. A kitchen knife,” said another man, from the top of the stairs.
“Did you bring her from Africa, or did you hire her here?”
“We brought her back from Africa, in April. She came by boat. My husband is with aerial navigation in Dakar, but the company only pays air passage for the family. She worked for us in Dakar. For two and a half or three years.”
“How old is she?”
“I don't know exactly.”
“According to her passport, she was born in 1927.”
“Oh! The natives don't know when they are born,” offered the naval officer, plunging his hands in his pockets.
“I don't know why she killed herself. She was well treated here, she ate the same food, shared the same rooms as my children.”
“And your husband, where is he?”
“He left for Paris the day before yesterday.”
“Ah!” said the inspector, still looking at the knickknacks. “Why do you think it was suicide?”
“Why?” said the retired officer ⦠“Oh! Who do you think would make an attempt on the life of a Negro girl? She never went out. She didn't know anyone, except for Madame's children.”
The reporters were getting impatient. The suicide of a maidâeven if she was blackâdidn't amount to a hill of beans. There was nothing newsworthy in it.
“It must have been homesickness. Because lately she'd been behaving very strangely. She wasn't the same.”
The police magistrate went upstairs, accompanied by one of the inspectors. They examined the bathroom, the window.
“Some boomerang, this story,” said the inspector.
The others waited in the living room.
“We'll let you know when the coroner is finished,” said the inspector, on his way out with the police magistrate an hour after their arrival.
The cars and the reporters left. In the Villa of Green Happiness the two women and the retired naval officer remained silent.
Bit by bit, Madame Pouchet searched her memory. She thought back to Africa and her elegant villa on the road to Hann. She remembered Diouana pushing open the iron gate and signaling to the German shepherd to stop barking.
It was there, in Africa, that everything had started. Diouana had made the six-kilometer round trip on foot three times a week. For the last month
she had made it gailyâenraptured, her heart beating as if she were in love for the first time. Beginning at the outskirts of Dakar, brand-new houses were scattered like jewels in a landscape of cactus, bougainvillea, and jasmine. The asphalt of the Avenue Gambetta stretched out like a long black ribbon. Joyous and happy as usual, the little maid had no complaints about the road or her employers. Though it was a long way, it had no longer seemed so far the past month, ever since Madame had announced she would take her to France. France! Diouana shouted the word in her head. Everything around her had become ugly, the magnificent villas she had so often admired seemed shabby.
she had made it gailyâenraptured, her heart beating as if she were in love for the first time. Beginning at the outskirts of Dakar, brand-new houses were scattered like jewels in a landscape of cactus, bougainvillea, and jasmine. The asphalt of the Avenue Gambetta stretched out like a long black ribbon. Joyous and happy as usual, the little maid had no complaints about the road or her employers. Though it was a long way, it had no longer seemed so far the past month, ever since Madame had announced she would take her to France. France! Diouana shouted the word in her head. Everything around her had become ugly, the magnificent villas she had so often admired seemed shabby.
In order to be able to travel, in order to go to France, since she was originally from the Casamance, she had needed an identity card. All her paltry savings went to get one. “So what?” she thought. “I'm on my way to France!”
“Is that you, Diouana?”
“
Viye
, Madame,” came her answer in the Senegalese accent. She spoke from the vestibule, nicely dressed in her light-colored cotton, her hair neatly combed.
Viye
, Madame,” came her answer in the Senegalese accent. She spoke from the vestibule, nicely dressed in her light-colored cotton, her hair neatly combed.
“Good! Monsieur is in town. Will you look after the children?”
“
Viye
, Madame,” she agreed in her childish voice.
Viye
, Madame,” she agreed in her childish voice.
Though her identity card read “Born in 1927,” Diouana was not yet thirty. But she must have been over twenty-one. She went to find the children. Every room was in the same condition. Parcels packed and tied with string, boxes piled here and there. After ten whole days of washing and ironing, there wasn't much left for Diouana to do. In the proper sense of her duties, she was a laundress. There was a cook, a houseboy, and herself. Three people. The servants.
“Diouana ⦠Diouana,” Madame called.
“Madame?” she answered, emerging from the children's room.
Madame was standing with a notebook in her hands, making an inventory of the baggage. The movers would be coming at any moment.
“Have you been to see your parents? Do you think they will be happy?”
“
Viye
, Madame. The whole family is agreed. I tell Mama for myself. Also tell Papa Boutoupa,” she said.
Viye
, Madame. The whole family is agreed. I tell Mama for myself. Also tell Papa Boutoupa,” she said.
Her face, which had been radiant with happiness, fixed on the empty walls, and began to fade. Her heartbeat slowed. She would be ill if Madame changed her mind. Diouana's ebony-black face grew gloomy; she lowered her eyes, ready to plead her case.
“You're not going to tell me at the last moment, on this very day, that you're leaving us in the lurch?”
“No, Madame, me go.”
They were not speaking the same language. Diouana wanted to see France, this country whose beauty, richness, and joy of living everyone praised. She wanted to see it and make a triumphal return. This was where people got rich. Already, without having left African soil, she could see herself on the dock, returning from France, wealthy to the millions, with gifts of clothes for everyone. She dreamed of the freedom to go where she wished without having to work like a beast of burden. If Madame should change her mind, refuse to take her, it would truly make her ill.
As for Madame, she was remembering the last few holidays she had spent in France. Three of them. And then she had had only two children. In Africa, Madame had acquired bad habits when it came to servants. In France when she hired a maid not only was the salary higher but the maid demanded a day off to boot. Madame had had to let her go and hired another. The next one was no different from the first, if not worse. She answered Madame tit for tat. “Anyone who is capable of having children should take a turn with them herself. I can't live in. I have my own children to take care of and a husband, too,” she declared.
Used to being waited on hand and foot, Madame had yielded to her wifely duties, and clumsily fulfilled the role of mother. As for a real vacation, she had hardly had any. She soon persuaded her husband to return to Africa.
On her return, grown thin and thoroughly exasperated, she had conceived a plan for her next vacation. She put want ads in all the newspapers. A hundred young girls answered. Her choice fell on Diouana, newly arrived from her native bush. Producing two more children during the three years that Diouana worked for her, between her last holiday and the one to come, Madame sang the praises of France. For three thousand francs a month, any young African girl would have followed her to the end of the earth. And to top it off, from time to time, especially lately, Madame would give Diouana little gifts of this and that, old clothes, shoes that could be mended.
This was the insurmountable moat that separated the maid and her employer.
“Did you give Monsieur your identity card?”
“
Viye,
Madame.”
Viye,
Madame.”
“You may go back to your work. Tell the cook to give the three of you a good meal.”
“Merci, Madame,” she answered, and went off to the kitchen.
Madame continued her inventory.
Monsieur returned on the stroke of noon, his arrival announced by the barking of the dog. Getting out of his Peugeot 403, he found his wife, indefatigable, pencil in hand.
“Haven't the baggage men come yet?” she said nervously.
“They'll be here at a quarter to two. Our bags will be on top. That way they'll be out first when we land in Marseilles. And what about Diouana? Diouana!”
The eldest of the children ran to fetch her. She was under the trees with the littlest one.
“
Viye
, Madame.”
Viye
, Madame.”
“It's Monsieur who was calling you.”
“That's fine. Here are your ticket and your identity card.”
Diouana held out a hand to take them.
“You keep the identity card, I'll take care of the ticket. The Duponts are returning on the same ship, they'll look after you. Are you glad to be going to France?”
“
Viye
, Monsieur.”
Viye
, Monsieur.”
“Good. Where are your bags?”
“At Rue Escarfait, Monsieur.”
“After I've had lunch, we'll go fetch them in the car.”
“Bring the children in, Diouana, it's time for their nap.”
“
Viye
, Madame.”
Viye
, Madame.”
Diouana wasn't hungry. The cook's helper, two years younger than she, brought the plates and took the empty ones away noiselessly. The cook was sweating heavily. He wasn't happy. He was going to be out of work. This was how the departure affected him. And for this reason he was a bit resentful of the maid. Leaning out the wide window overlooking the sea, transported, Diouana watched the birds flying high above in the immense expanse of blue. In the distance she could barely make out the Island of Gorée. She was holding her identity card, turning it over and over, examining it and smiling quietly to herself. The picture was a gloomy one. She wasn't pleased with the pose or with the exposure. “What does it matter? I'm leaving!” she thought.
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