The Return of Vercingetorix to Batalébé
With the return of Vercingetorix to Batalébé, we understood that the events of Mapapouville were now going to affect our region. It was at this time that Christiane began to alert me to danger. It was no longer possible to go anywhere in the district without encountering the Negro Grandsons in military uniform. The southerners had organized for resistance. Meetings took place in the Palaver House. The first measure that Vercingetorix had instituted was a hunt for northerners.
Since then the Negro Grandsons have been looking for “traitors,” meaning northerners who reside in the South. Vercingetorix has vowed to scalp them and send their skulls to General Edou.
Gaston Okemba was one of the first guinea pigs for this furious operation. Working at the Moukoukoulou Dam had been enough for him to be singled out at the beginning. And the Negro Grandsons had carried out their leader’s instructions to the letter.
A few days before we fled, I saw the leaflets that Vercingetorix’s men were distributing in the schools, calling for rallies and for the defense of southern interests. In the Palaver House many speakers had inveighed against His Excellency Lebou Kabouya, the “bad southerner” who had caused the region to fall from power. The motivational speech that Vercingetorix gave on the market square poisoned the atmosphere in the South.
I say to you, and I will not tire of saying to you: we have not lost the war, we have only lost the battle, in the words of General de Gaulle. The South will present an implacable resistance to those who recently took power in Mapapouville. We are in the majority. We have the oil! We have the sea! All the great intellectuals of this country are southerners! The northerners have nothing but forests. We will not allow ourselves to be crushed by peasants who have muscles and submachine guns in place of brains! No! In addition, it must be said that we lost power in a foolish way. President Lebou Kabouya was guilty of inexcusable weakness. He did not listen to his own people, he did whatever he wanted. Why did he let General Edou return from exile in Europe and parade about with his Romans in the capital? Why did he not lock him up on the spot? And there he was, His Excellency Lebou Kabouya, talking to us about freedom of movement, freedom of speech! Now we must act. We must ask ourselves the question that Lenin himself asked in his time: What is to be done? It is precisely for that reason that I have decided to return here instead of going into exile in Europe like the rest. The general wants my hide? Let him come here for it; he shouldn’t count on me handing it to him on a silver platter!
What is to be done? Time is pressing. We have to put together a list of northerners living in our region. We have to know what they do, what they think, what they eat, what they read, who they spend time with. I want this task to be our day-to-day priority. Let us not forget that treason can come from anywhere. It is here, in our ranks, in our homes. We will fight so our children should never say that we went down on our knees before these northerners, these sons of dugout boatmen and fishermen, these people with no railroad, no sea, and no oil!
What is to be done? Do not fear the bombardment that those in power are threatening. The northerners are afraid of crossing the Moukoukoulou Dam. For them, this region is what Diên Biên Phu was for France. We know the country better—its lakes, its rivers, its swamps. We will be able to surprise our attackers by employing the stratagems used by Vercingetorix against Julius Caesar. I tell you we are all Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix! Victory awaits us. We will be invincible, mystical, mighty. Our dead will rise up from their graves with their assegais that are faster than missiles. The trees will march in the nighttime, lashing the faces of our enemies with their branches in revolt. And twelve-headed monsters will burst forth from the depths of the rivers, along with green mambas and other snakes thick as the trunk of a baobab.
What is to be done? Strength has always been on our side, my dear brothers and sisters. Remember the confrontations of the fifties, when we went all the way to Mfoa to the rescue of our brothers and sisters of the South in danger from northerners, on whom we had inflicted a historic defeat. Such courage! Such incredible courage! That is the courage we have need of today. In that historic battle, among our ranks was a man to whom I must pay public tribute. His name was Moussahou. He was nimble. He was able to fly, to single-handedly disrupt the forces of the enemy. In the midst of the fray, he found himself face to face with a group of men armed to the teeth who were closing in on him. You will not believe me, but their bullets bounced off his chest without so much as scratching him. Moussahou moved forward, straight ahead, glaring at the northerners, who dropped their weapons and fled! Our hero snatched up a shotgun and loaded it with corn kernels. The gunfire that followed made Mfoa shake. He killed dozens of the enemy with each shot.
What is to be done? My dear brothers and sisters, the illegitimate authorities of Mapapouville have set their minds on annihilating our region, on wiping out anything that breathes. On the scale of barbarity, this is no longer slaughter but outright genocide. Let us not be afraid of words! From this day on, I call upon my fellow countrymen to hunt down any northerners living in our territory, to bring their scalps and drop them at my feet. They are the ones who are selling us out to their brothers. Everything we say here in Batalébé is reported in detail in Mapapouville by these traitors, who are eating us away from the inside. I no longer wish to provide for those who take the side of the executioner. Above all I point to those of our brothers who have committed the blunder of marrying women of the North, to our sisters who are living with northern men. This is a matter of life and death! Do not place personal interest over the cause of the region. Without knowing it, you are harboring vermin that will gnaw at your dead body. I charge you to live up to your responsibilities.
The Internment Camp
The hunt for northerners was on. Vercingetorix’s words echoed throughout the South, peddled from lips to ears. There were settlings of scores on every street corner. Gratuitous murders. Looting, destruction of personal property. A marriage between a northerner and a southerner? Treachery! Mixed couples were publicly torn apart. After the separation, the northerner was delivered into the hands of the Negro Grandsons, who took him or her to an internment camp deep in the bush. Some couples had resisted, love becoming their only shield against the poisoned arrows of zealots.
The example of Gaston and Christiane remained with me.
The Woman Prisoner and Her Child
In Batalébé we knew that the Romans were doing the same thing as the Negro Grandsons, in turn persecuting southerners who lived in Mapapouville.
Two weeks after she had explained the Okonongo Affair to me, Christiane told me of the ordeal suffered by a southern woman who lived in Mapapouville. Mother of a small baby, she had been pointed out to the Romans as being a first cousin of Vercingetorix. She denied this family connection, which was being wrongly ascribed to her. She didn’t know Vercingetorix. She had never seen him close up. She swore this by the child in her arms. As a witness she called on another southerner detained in the same building, who was from the same village as her. Yet this witness, a small red-eyed man, bald and dark skinned, claimed not to know the woman, never to have seen her in his life. The woman, outraged, gave the name of this man who could not remember anything. Without hesitation she further revealed the names of his mother, his grandparents, and some of his cousins. The Romans now turned their attention to the man. He was sweating, passing his hand over his head, which a merciless premature baldness had left with only wisps of gray hair around the ears. Taken aback, the southerner mumbled some indistinct words. After a moment in which he revealed his nervousness by cracking his fingers, he denied it once again, shaking his head three times as a sign of absolute negation.
“No, no, no! I don’t know this woman. I’m not from her village. And she doesn’t know me either. She’s lying!”
On hearing his words, the Romans left him alone. He had just saved his own skin. Rage filled the woman’s chest. She spat a thick mouthful of saliva in the face of the coward and spoke to him in Bembé, a language that the general’s soldiers could not understand. One of the Romans demanded a translation from another prisoner, who had been the only one to approve of the southern woman’s words.
“This brave woman was telling the forgetful man to make sure his balls haven’t disappeared from his pants after all his lies and denials.”
The claim made by the bald southerner was about to have grave consequences. If he’s still alive, I’m certain that the memory of that accursed day will keep coming back to him and will prevent him from sleeping for the rest of his life.
The Romans, convinced that the woman was related to Vercingetorix, intensified their mistreatment. The woman held the baby tightly to her chest and tried to calm it. For the last time the Romans advised her to admit the relation.
She denied it once again.
“I’m not his cousin. I’m from the same region and the same tribe as him, and also as this man with no hair and no courage who has betrayed the pride of his ancestors. If Vercingetorix were a relative of mine, I’d be proud to admit it to anyone, in any circumstances!”
One of the Romans, infuriated by this talk, grabbed the baby from its mother’s arms. The other soldiers watched dumbfounded. The Roman ordered a large mortar and pestle to be brought. In a couple of minutes these objects were laid at his feet. The baby bawled as the soldier shook it, holding it upside down in one hand. With a rapid, precise movement, he dropped the crying baby in the mortar and snatched up the pestle, which he raised high above his head, ignoring the stunned cries of the detainees pinned against the wall. The Roman backed up a little, set his jaw, and closed his eyes before bringing the pestle down with a powerful blow that knocked the tiny naked body of the baby to the bottom of the bowl. The last cry uttered by the child was stifled in its throat, at the moment when the mother flung herself with all her remaining strength on the Roman executioner, who smacked her with the back of his hand.
The woman collapsed unconscious.
Kimbembé’s Silence
Kimbembé went to the Palaver House every evening. He prepared for these meetings at home, very late, in front of the portrait of Vercingetorix. Deep down I still had faith in him. He wasn’t capable of handing me over to his people, despite the urgings of the former prime minister. He would spare me, I told myself. Our shared past would win out over the extremist fervor that had gripped the men of the district. Kimbembé would think above all of our marriage, of our daughter, Maribé. I reassured myself by imagining that he had forbidden me to visit Christiane in order to protect me. I’d be safer at home close to my daughter. That was it.
And then, a month later, came the arrest and internment of Gaston Okemba, and Christiane’s humiliation. I no longer believed in Kimbembé. He couldn’t rub shoulders with these monsters. He couldn’t endorse their ideas. He couldn’t have allowed a man like Gaston to fall into the hands of the Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix. True, he had no power of decision. But he could at least have reacted, shown me he was shocked, outraged by these actions. There hadn’t been one word of regret, not one mention of the arrest. It had all seemed normal to him. Gaston could die; it didn’t bother him at all.
So I continued to disobey his orders. I’d been to see Christiane a week after the misfortune that had befallen her. I couldn’t visit sooner, as I knew Kimbembé was watching me like a hawk.
I wanted to get news of Christiane, to learn more about Gaston. I wanted to hear about the tragedy from her own lips, in her words and her voice, with her repetitions. I wanted to sit down on the mat by the window and listen to her all afternoon. From now on I couldn’t have cared less if I’d been caught entering their yard.