We decided to rest in the shade of a monumental acacia whose branches were adorned with offerings to marabouts and ancestors: scarves, rag dolls, pieces of jewellery, combs tangled with hair, tiny terracotta pots at the bottom of which animal blood had dried. The area was strewn with dromedary droppings and traces of bivouacs. Near the revered tree, Bruno discovered a well without a coping, along with a rudimentary drinking trough. We washed ourselves from head to foot, cleaned our clothes and spread them over the burning stones to dry. Bruno dug out a pair of boxer shorts for me from the bottom of the duffle bag, but they were too big for me; I made do with a pair of Y-fronts and a vest, both still in their cellophane. I had lost a lot of weight. My body was covered in spots, some turning grey; I had a boil under my right armpit, with two others in my groin; my thighs had deep furrows in them and there was a thick whitish crust on my knees. Bruno preferred to stay naked. With his unkempt beard and reptilian hair, he looked like a guru. He performed a series of gymnastic moves, opened his arms wide and crossed them, crouched down and stood up again, twisted his neck so that the vertebrae cracked, then, in order to draw a smile from me, he turned his back to me and bent over to touch his toes, thus offering me the hairy indentation of his backside, which he began to wiggle in a coarse manner. He continued this clownish exhibition until I burst out laughing. Pleased with his success, he waved his arms about in a burlesque choreography and, now an angry witch doctor, now a ballerina, went from a mystic dance to a classical ballet with staggering ease. Dazzled by his sense of improvisation and his comic gifts, which I would never have suspected he possessed, I laughed until the tears ran down my face, and it was as if I were expelling all the filth polluting my body and mind.
We ate in the shade of the acacia and slept, cradled by the cool breeze.
When I woke up, I found Bruno absorbed in the book by Joma Baba-Sy. When he closed it, he made an admiring pout. He lingered over the photo on the cover and admitted to me that he couldn’t believe a mass of rage and bestiality like Joma could harbour so much sensitivity … He reopened the book, skipped several pages, stopped at a particular poem and read it out loud:
Africa,
Death’s head,
Bathing in the troubled waters
Of your horizonless seas,
What have your sunstruck bastards
Made of your memory?
On your ravaged shores
Your ballads lie rotting
Like flotsam
And in your godless sky
Your most pious wishes
Chase their own echoes.
Africa, my Africa
What has become of your tom-toms
In the silence of charnel houses?
What has become of your griots
In the blasphemy of weapons?
What has become of your tribes
In the deception of nations?
I have questioned your rivers
And your lost villages
Looked for your trophies
In the trances of your women
Nowhere have I found
Your age-old legends.
Your kings are deposed
Like your statues of wood
The voice of your traditions
Has faded and died
Your stories are told
In praise of tyrants
Your destiny denies you
Like a rejected mother
And none of my prayers
Find an echo in you.
Africa, my Africa
You have put death in one of my hands
And wrongdoing in the other
And you have stolen my masters,
My saints, prophets and apostles
Leaving me only my eyes
To weep over the insult
Your children inflict on you
Every day that God makes.
What will become of me
In the shadow of your ravens?
What can I hope
When I can no longer dream?
Perhaps to end up
Where everything began
Between a tombstone
And a cancelled vow.
‘Incredible, isn’t it?’
I shrugged my shoulders.
Bruno put the book down, rummaged in the satchel, and pulled out a wedding photograph. It showed a party taking place on a large patio hung with Chinese lanterns. Surrounded by tipsy guests, Joma posed solemnly beside his bride. Curiously, even though for two days and two nights I had been trying to shake off the crime I had committed, I found myself wanting to know a little more about my victim. Deep inside, I knew the idea was senseless, but driven by a morbid curiosity, like a murderer returning to the scene of his crime, I took the photograph from Bruno. The low quality of the image made it hard to distinguish much about Joma, who was barely recognisable among the guests. We then turned to a number of articles cut out of a poorly produced local newspaper. The texts were full of misprints; all of them praised in fulsome style ‘the force of an exceptional poet’. A somewhat more sober article included an interview in which Joma told how he had gone from being a penniless village tailor to becoming a bard. In the same interview, he expressed the opinion that ‘with the Word we can overcome adversity’. In another cutting, there was a photograph, stuck between a crossword puzzle and a game of spot the difference, showing Joma receiving a trophy from the hands of an African lady in traditional costume, with a few lines by way of caption relating the ceremony. Next, we came across a small item reporting a bomb attack which had left two children wounded and a woman dead, the woman being ‘the young wife of the poet Joma Baba-Sy who received the Léopold Senghor Prize two weeks ago’. This last sentence was underlined in red. The article had been carefully preserved in a plastic wallet.
‘Life is strange,’ Bruno sighed, putting things back in the satchel.
I went to look for my clothes.
We loaded up the pick-up. Bruno wasn’t too keen on resuming the journey. He looked at the drinking trough, the marabout tree, the offerings hanging from the branches, the tranquillity of the place, and suggested we spend the night here, arguing that since it was a sacred site, there was no risk of being attacked and that with a little bit of luck someone might turn up. The dromedary droppings weren’t fresh, but the well looked as if it was often used. I would have been happy to agree to his suggestion, and was about to do so when we heard a whistling sound. ‘What’s that?’ I asked. Bruno frowned. A quick glance around revealed nothing suspicious. Immediately, there was a swirl of dust close to us, followed by another soon after. Bruno shoved me inside the cab, started the engine, engaged the gear stick and set off at top speed. The pickup’s rear window exploded. ‘Get down!’ Bruno screamed at me as he accelerated. There was a sharp noise, and the windscreen cracked into a spider’s web pattern. Somebody was shooting at us! The pick-up wove in and out among the stones and the wild grass to avoid the bullets, leapfrogged on the uneven track, jumped several metres into the air, before falling again in a din of mistreated metal. The engine was being pushed to its limit. In our wild flight, we crashed straight into something; the pick-up skidded, almost overturned, but somehow righted itself. The impact had been unusually violent, and my head had hit the ceiling light. Now I clung to my seat and the dashboard. After a dizzying race, Bruno realised that the steering was going awry. A strange noise, like the grinding of defective gears, was coming from the right-hand side of the bonnet and getting louder with every bend. Stopping was out of the question. We had to get out of the sniper’s range as quickly as possible. A few kilometres further on, the vehicle became uncontrollable. The wheel that had been hit was becoming gradually looser, making it virtually impossible to steer. Bruno parked on the side of the track to assess the damage. He peered under the bonnet while I kept a lookout, my legs trembling and my heart pounding fit to burst. Apart from the dust that was settling in our wake, there was no threat in sight. Bruno joined me. His downcast expression told me that the damage was catastrophic. He informed me that the ball joint and the shock absorber had taken a major hit and that the shaft drive wouldn’t last much longer. Not having the right tools or any spare parts to do an emergency repair, we got back in the cab and set off again, very slowly, and very aware of how much the vehicle was swaying. Bruno drove extremely cautiously, concentrating on the road, dodging the stones and ruts as if he were carrying nitroglycerine. Sweat dripped from his chin. We managed to cross a river bed but when we reached the opposite embankment the vehicle suddenly tipped forward and stopped. There was nothing more we could do. The shaft drive had broken and the wheel had come away from its stump … We were stuck.