GOD’S TRUTH, on the day of his death it took me no time to find Mademba Diop, disemboweled on the battlefield. I know, I understand what happened. Mademba told me, before his hands began trembling, while he was still asking me nicely, as a friend, to finish him off.
He was in the middle of a full-blown attack against the enemy on the other side, gun in his left hand and machete in his right, his performance was in full swing, he was fully playing the savage, when he fell upon an enemy from the other side who was pretending to be dead. Mademba Diop leaned in to look, casually, in passing, before moving on. He stopped to look at a dead enemy who was only pretending. He stared at him because, even still, he had his doubts. A brief instant. The face of the enemy from the other side wasn’t gray like the faces of dead people, white or black. This one looked like it was playing dead. Take no prisoners, finish him with the machete, Mademba thought. Don’t let down your guard. Kill this half-dead enemy from the other side a second time, just to be safe, so as never to have to feel bad about one of your brothers-in-arms, one of your friends, taking the same route and getting caught.
And while he is thinking about his brothers-in-arms, about his friends, whom he must protect from this half-dead enemy, while he pictures this half-dead enemy dealing a blow to someone other than himself, maybe to me, his more-than-brother, who may as well be him, while he’s telling himself that he must be vigilant for others, he’s not being vigilant for himself. Mademba told me, sweetly, as a friend, still smiling, that the enemy had opened his eyes wide before tearing open Mademba’s stomach from top to bottom in a single slash with the bayonet he’d held hidden in his right hand beneath a fold of his big coat. Mademba, still smiling about the half-dead enemy’s attack on him, told me calmly that there was nothing he could have done. He told me this at the beginning, when he wasn’t yet suffering so much, not long before his first plea to, as his friend, finish him off. His first plea addressed to me, his more-than-brother, Alfa Ndiaye, youngest son of the old man.
Before Mademba could react, before he could take revenge, the enemy, who still had some life in him, fled back to his line. Between his first and second pleas, I asked Mademba to describe the enemy from the other side who had disemboweled him. “He has blue eyes,” Mademba murmured, as I lay by his side looking at the sky crisscrossed with metal. I asked again. “God’s truth, all I can tell you is that he had blue eyes.” I asked again and again: “Is he tall, is he short? Is he good-looking, is he ugly?” And Mademba Diop, each time, responded that it wasn’t the enemy from the other side I should kill, that it was too late, that the enemy had had the good luck to survive. The person I now had to kill a second time, to finish off, was him, Mademba.
But, God’s truth, I didn’t really listen to Mademba, my childhood friend, my more-than-brother. God’s truth, I thought only of gutting the half-dead blue-eyed enemy. I thought only of disemboweling the enemy from the other side, and I neglected my own Mademba Diop. I listened to the voice of vengeance. I was inhuman from the moment of Mademba Diop’s second plea, when he said, “Forget the blue-eyed enemy. Kill me now because I’m suffering too much. We’re the same age, we were circumcised on the same day. You lived at my house, I watched you grow up and you watched me. Because of that, you can make fun of me, I can cry in front of you, I can ask you anything. We are more than brothers because we chose each other as brothers. Please, Alfa, don’t let me die like this, my guts in the air, my stomach devoured by a gnawing pain. I don’t know if the blue-eyed enemy is tall, if he’s short, if he’s good-looking, or if he’s ugly. I don’t know if he’s young like us or if he’s our fathers’ age. He was lucky, he saved himself. He is no longer important. If you are my brother, my childhood friend, if you are the one I have always known, the one I love like I love my mother and my father, then I beg you a second time to slit my throat. Do you enjoy hearing me moan like a little boy? Watching as my dignity is chased away by shame?”
But I refused. Ah! I refused. I’m sorry, Mademba Diop, I’m sorry, my friend, my more-than-brother, not to have listened to you with my heart. I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have turned my mind toward the blue-eyed enemy from the other side. I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have been thinking about the vengeance demanded by my brain, furrowed by your tears, seeded by your cries, when you weren’t even dead yet. But I heard a powerful and commanding voice that forced me to ignore your suffering. “Do not kill your best friend, your more-than-brother. It isn’t for you to take his life. Don’t mistake yourself for the hand of God. Don’t mistake yourself for the hand of the Devil. Alfa Ndiaye, could you stand before Mademba’s father and mother knowing that it was you who killed him, that it was you who finished the work of the blue-eyed enemy?”
No, I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have listened to the voice that exploded in my head. I should have shut it up while there was still time. I should already have been thinking for myself. I should, Mademba, have finished you off out of friendship so that you would stop weeping, writhing, contorting yourself in an effort to put back into your belly what had come out of it and was sucking at the air like a freshly caught fish.