A Mixed Couple in Batalébé
The main square. Houses of sheet metal or straw. The central market. The hospital. We lived in a mud-brick house. It belonged to Kimbembé’s parents, who had moved six miles or so away. His father was a potter; he was a man of medium height with an impassive face. He came to see us once a month, accompanied by his wife, Véronique Boutoto, who we called “Mâ Boutoto” out of respect. She kept a close eye on my pregnancy. When she came to visit, she brought bitter-tasting potions that I had to drink in front of her.
“This one will make it so you have a girl, believe me!” she would assure me with absolute composure.
She dreamed of a girl, whereas her husband, Tâ Kimbembé, predicted it would be a boy. They treated me like a daughter. From time to time we’d go out to their village, a quiet spot surrounded by mountains and giant trees. We’d sometimes stay there for a few weeks during the dry season. I would accompany Mâ Boutoto to the fields. We had to walk and walk to reach her plantations of groundnuts, corn, and root vegetables. In the evening I would be exhausted, but we’d have to make dinner. I’d pound the cassava leaves and the palm nuts while she carved a leg of dried wild boar that had been hanging above a sort of little basket by the fireplace.
Life in Batalébé
In that place encircled by creepers, bamboo, and flame trees, life seemed to spread itself out and flow by slowly. The men and women—farmers, hunters, or shopkeepers—wore carefree expressions, I found. They were never in a hurry. The Batalébé area was cut off from the rest of the country. In the morning I would get up very early. I’d sweep the yard and water the plants—I kept a little garden behind the house. Kimbembé would prepare his classes over the weekend; from Monday to Friday he’d leave for work around seven in the morning. He would come back home in the evening, tired out. He’d sit in a woven chair and tell me about his day. I’d listen as I peeled potatoes or cut up vegetables while he helped. My belly grew heavier and heavier.
It was at that time there was a conflict between Kimbembé and the midwife at the Batalébé hospital. He was insisting on being present in the room the day I had the baby. The affair was talked about all over the district. I was no longer able to avoid the gaze of the local people.
Despite all this, I can say I had good conditions for the delivery. I gave birth to a girl, much to Tâ Kimbembé’s regret but Mâ Boutoto’s satisfaction. A few months afterward I was going to have to begin high school. As I waited, I spent my days at home. I was a little bored when Kimbembé wasn’t there. I needed to get out of the house, explore the district, see other people’s lives. Yet I felt a certain apprehension. I couldn’t have said where it came from, since I felt safe sitting at home watching Maribé sleep. I read, knitted, or braided my hair.
Meeting Christiane for the First Time
One day when Kimbembé was at the high school, I decided to take our daughter for a walk toward the market in the center of the district. She was two and a half months old. The previous day I’d braided my own hair, as I usually did. I managed using two mirrors.
I walked along the side of the dusty main road, Maribé strapped on my back with a wrap. Near the first stalls of the market, a woman came up to us with a big smile. She was wearing a white T-shirt that showed her bust to advantage, and a wrap dress that clung to her curves. She stopped in front of us. She was taller than me; she had light skin and drawn-back hair. Her basket was full of vegetables. She put it down. In an unconstrained way, she touched my hair and turned back the edge of the wrap to see Maribé.
“What a beautiful little angel you have, Madame Kimbembé!”
Taken aback that she knew my name, I retreated a step. She went on.
“Your husband is quite a man! To dare to stand up to the entire staff of the hospital and write letters to ministers!”
“He was within his rights, Madame . . . ?”
“My name is Christiane Kengué. My husband is from your region. He works at the Moukoukoulou Dam.”
“How did you know I’m from the North?” I asked, once again surprised.
“There are no secrets in Batalébé. There are so few northerners here that those who come are as plain as flies in a pan of milk! My husband, Gaston, had the same impression to begin with. But later you become used to it, things get mixed up, and you even forget your little piece of native soil. Try to learn our languages, don’t shun the community, or you’ll be accused of who knows what. Gaston and I would be delighted to get to know you. We could arrange that right now, woman to woman.”
“I should discuss it with Kimbembé first.”
“That’s quite understandable, Madame . . . ?”
“Hortense.”
“Yes, Hortense.”
She touched my hair again. This familiarity made me uncomfortable. But I quickly learned the meaning of her gesture.
“Your braids are lovely, Hortense! Who did them for you?”
“I did them myself.”
“You don’t say!”
“Really.”
“Well then, I think I’m in luck! I’m also in the habit of braiding my own hair, but it always makes my shoulders hurt from turning around, keeping my hands up in the air and my neck turned to one side. This is a real bit of good fortune, Hortense! We could take turns at braiding each other’s hair.”
Her joyful nature contrasted with my reserve. After all, though, her suggestion touched me. When she spoke, her face lit up with sincerity and a deep kindness, and it was hard not to say yes. Before we parted, she stroked Maribé’s hair and kissed her on the cheek, in passing straightening one of my braids that the wind had blown out of place.
“We live on the other side of the center, near the river. You have to follow the main road and cross the Mampembé Cemetery. It’s easy to find: it’s the only house around there.”
The two of us arranged to meet again at the market two days later. Kimbembé was fine with it. Nor did he say no to Gaston and Christiane Okemba’s invitation to go eat with them one day.
The First Dinner
It was our first visit to Gaston and Christiane’s. We went over on a Sunday afternoon. Gaston Okemba was there, tall, with a well-trimmed mustache. Christiane wore a headscarf and a pink apron. In her right hand she was holding a wooden spoon, which from time to time she plunged in a large aluminum cooking pot placed on a three-stone fireplace. The fire sent smoke up as far as the trees. She said she preferred cooking outdoors. It seems the food has a different taste. Little Maribé was asleep. I’d put her down on the sofa in the living room. I went back out to Christiane, though she tried to stop me.
“You’re our guests, you don’t have to lift a finger.”
I insisted. In the end she agreed. So I helped her put wood on the fire. I set the table, which stood in the shade of a large mango tree in the middle of the yard.
In the meantime our husbands were getting to know one another, sitting a few yards away with a liter of palm wine. They were roaring with laughter. Gaston was calling my husband “professor.”
“Listen, my good friend, ‘Kimbembé’ would be preferable to this pompous title of ‘professor,’” the person in question said, not without a certain false modesty.
Gaston described in detail his work at the Moukoukoulou Dam. Kimbembé earned himself an explanation of the terms rock-fill dam, gravity dam, and arch dam. Christiane whispered to me that her husband would never stop. That he’d done the same thing to her. That he’d end by bringing up the legends surrounding the dam. Well, at least he’d stopped talking about his former duties as customs officer in Pointe-Rouge, and hers at the downtown post office.
Afterward, as I expected, their conversation turned to literature. They reviewed French writers. Gaston liked the Romantic poet Lamartine and recited a few verses of his poem “The Lake.” Kimbembé found Lamartine a little whiny; he preferred Rimbaud or Baudelaire.
“Rimbaud? A pretentious young upstart! Plus, what the hell was he doing going to Africa instead of just keeping on writing his poems? Eh? Trying to get rich? Since when have poets had anything to do with being rich? A true poet should write, die poor, and maintain the legend! I’m telling you, Rimbaud was lucky the other guy, that buddy of his—what was his name again—right, that’s it, that his buddy Verlaine only wounded him with his gun!”
Despite disagreeing with Kimbembé, Gaston was relishing the fact that he was sitting with an interlocutor who shared his passion. He let my husband know it.
“I can’t take any credit, my friend. I’m a literature teacher. When it comes down to it, like everyone else I only talk about what I know.”
“I’ve often dreamed of writing,” Gaston confided, “but I don’t think I’ll ever succeed. That’s just how it is. I’ve given up on the idea. One day I’ll clear out my things. Burn all those useless bits of paper. There are people who are made for that, and I’m just getting in their way!”
“My friend, from reading the biographies of several authors, especially those I teach, I’ve come to the conclusion that writing is a dangerous venture. And like any venture, it has its ups and downs. People of the pen write because they’re not capable of doing otherwise. They’re driven by an invisible demon that follows them everywhere like the eye of Cain. They’re stuck with themselves, facing a world that seems increasingly narrow. How does someone become a writer? When? It’s a mystery! If you’ll allow me, I’m tempted to paraphrase the novelist Céline and say that people write ‘when you have so much music in you that you make life dance’ . . .”
“Céline? Never heard of him. With a woman’s name like that, he’s likely to be waiting for centuries before I get around to reading him! He’s not one of those new French authors who bore readers with the state of their soul for hundreds and hundreds of pages, is he?”
“Dinner’s ready! Come to the table, my dear intellectuals!” exclaimed Christiane.
That dinner sealed the friendship between our two couples. Yet our husbands, busy with their work, didn’t see each other as often as Christiane and I did. Kimbembé lent Gaston his copy of Journey to the End of the Night. After six months of laborious reading, Gaston still hadn’t gotten through it. He had the impression of endlessly beginning again, he said. Or it may have been that the moment he set it down, the Céline who was haunting him tiptoed into his bedroom, took the book, and added even more paragraphs, making the story more and more complicated and endless. He never finished it. Incidentally, I don’t know what happened to that book, which I hope to read one day. I have no idea if Kimbembé ever got it back.
Christiane and I would run into each other every other day at the market. We’d spend a long time discussing, choosing the same foodstuffs, the same jewelry. We continued to see one another, notably that memorable Sunday when she spoke to me of her life and of Pointe-Rouge.
A third person walked along with us, fragile as could be, and we had to keep an eye on her among the market stalls: it was Maribé . . .
The Second Dinner
There was a second meal, at our place this time. Gaston liked my cooking and told me so.
“This chicken in groundnut sauce is delicious!” he said, taking a second helping.
For a long while before we sat down to eat, as on the previous occasion the two men talked of literature. I had to intervene to put an end to their lengthy discussions. In fact, they spent their time looking through the trunk of books. Each title had its history. Kimbembé was thoroughly enjoying himself.
“Ah yes, The Devil’s Pool. Here, feel this book, smell it! What do you notice? I bought it at the Talangaï Market when I was a student in Mapapouville. It was lying between a cassava stand and a bowl of sweet potatoes. Look on page forty-seven. There’s a mark that I wouldn’t get rid of for all the tea in China: it’s the imprint of the stallholder’s right thumb.”
“And this one?” Gaston asked.
“Destinies? That’s another story. You might say it’s a great story. I was passing a little kiosk in the Plateau des 15 Ans neighborhood on my way to buy cigarettes. And what do I see? A young man selling groundnuts who’s rolling his merchandise up in pages from de Vigny’s book! I didn’t buy any nuts, but I surprised him when I asked if I could buy the book! That’s why that copy is incomplete—it’s missing the introduction and a few poems, including ‘The Death of the Wolf.’ I photocopied everything that was missing at the French Cultural Center.
“I won’t even tell you about Man’s Fate. Poor Malraux, to see himself treated that way! His book was being used to prop up a table in the Le Relax bar—can you imagine that? I had a hard time buying it from them. The owner thought I was some wise guy who didn’t have the money for a drink and was trying to pull a fast one on him. Anyway, we need to go eat. Hortense just gave us an ultimatum. We can pick up again after the meal.”
We took turns inviting each other, and ate together twice a month. Sometimes, when she was five or six, Maribé would go spend the night at our friends’, even though I felt it would make Christiane sad about not having any children of her own.