Back here again, I find it hard to believe this is the same house we had then. The family reunion is being held in the middle of the yard. My facial expression, one of utter astonishment, is being closely watched.
Uncle Mompéro, who took me on a tour of the plot as soon as I arrived, revealed that a part of the house had been ‘cut off’, leaving only the one room, where he sleeps.
‘Can we go in and look?’ I asked.
‘No, I don’t want you to go inside…’
I didn’t insist, and we went back into the yard, where things were beginning to liven up since the drinks had arrived…
Towards the end of the party, I leaned over to my cousin Kihouari, to ask him for the ‘right to occupy’ paper that my mother signed back then. It is a pink piece of paper handed out by the land registry office, bearing the family name and forename of my mother. It says that the land has a surface area of four hundred square metres. Just looking at it, I doubt it is as big as that. Kihouari tells me that there are indeed four hundred metres, as stated in the description from the land registry, but our neighbours at the back encroached by several square metres when they built the wall dividing our land from theirs.
‘This wall is actually on our land…’ he concluded, looking resigned.
I recall that in the past the two plots were separated only by some stakes and barbed wire. At that time our neighbours had also built a ‘house for now’, a bit bigger than ours. Now they have a huge, permanent structure and this wall, which stops us seeing what’s going on at their place.
Uncle Mompéro is listening in and gathers what Kihouari is telling me. My uncle adds, in quite a loud voice, as though he wants the whole family to hear:
‘After we buried my sister, Pauline Kengué, the neighbours didn’t wait even two weeks, they put up this ridiculous wall without even asking us! And they pinched a few square metres from us while they were about it! Is that acceptable, d’you think? That wall is on our land!’
There was a general murmur of discontent. Everyone wants to express their exasperation in the face of this injustice. They wait for my reaction.
I reassure them:
‘Tomorrow I’ll go to the land registry office and ask them to come and remeasure the dimensions of this plot. We can’t let them get away with it, it’s robbery!’
A storm of applause greets my remarks. Only Kihouari doesn’t join in, surprisingly, since I was sure he would be in favour of my plan.
He gives me a nod and we move away from the group to a corner of the plot, just behind the hut. His face is very serious now. He puts his hand on my left shoulder.
‘Please don’t do what you’re planning tomorrow…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t go to the land registry office…’
‘Are you kidding? They’re stealing square metres from us, and you want to let it go? Tell me the truth now: have the neighbours been slipping you money?’
‘No, absolutely not! How can you think such a thing! Would I, Kihouari, sell off part of my own aunt’s land?’
‘Well, what’s the problem, then?’
He’s silent for a moment, looking over at the rest of the family. The group is getting gradually smaller. Some people are starting to leave, others are watching us, wondering what we are cooking up, over by the old shack.
Kihouari clears his throat:
‘I think I had better tell you something very important, you seem out of touch with reality since you moved away…’
I had never seen him look so serious. The death of his mother, Dorothée Lohounou — another of my mother’s older sisters — must have brought him face to face with his responsibilities: as the oldest of a dozen or more sisters and brothers, he had had to become wise before his time.
‘These neighbours you want to go for, they’re a bit like our family too. The owner, Monsieur Goma, died one year after Aunt Pauline Kengué. Monsieur Goma’s wife got kicked out like a sick dog by the brothers of the deceased. As for the children, they are scattered in their mother’s village. Two of them, Anicet and Apollo, live in France and London, and no one ever hears from them. They must be about your age, you used to play together in our yard and theirs. You even used to eat at their house, and sometimes they came and ate at ours. Now the younger brother of the late Monsieur Goma looks after their plot. He’s a bit strange, it’s true, but even so, it’s thanks to him that the plot hasn’t been sold by the same people who threw out the widow and wanted to get their hands on the inheritance and disinherit the children! I respect him for that if for nothing else. Did you notice he dropped by to say hello and insisted on appearing in the photos we took when you arrived? His name is Mesmin, he knew you when you were a boy, that was his way of showing you he was practically a member of the family. So what would be the good at this stage of having a confrontation before the tribunal? You’re going to go back to Europe, or America, and you’ll leave us with hot potatoes in our hands. When we leave this life we leave whatever we owned on earth, why get into a fight over it now…?’
I am speechless. Kihouari goes back to join the family, and I stand there staring at the little hut.
I walk around the shack and trip over some stones propped up against the main façade. They used to be the two entrance steps. The seasons have worn them away, leaving just this scattered debris, which no one dares move, out of respect for my mother’s memory. The old slats of wood, bound by a kind of unshakeable solidarity, hold together, defying time. On the left, by the only window, I notice some bits of wood and plank that must have broken off with wear and tear. It wouldn’t occur to anyone to make a fire with them, they’re used to prop up the corners, to stop the shack falling down for as long as possible. Strings and pieces of wood positioned on the sheet metal keep the roof in place. The main door has been eaten away at the bottom by termites.
Yes, I used to sleep there. My dreams were less confined than the space we lived in. At least when I closed my eyes and sleep lent me wings to fly, I found myself in a vast kingdom, not in a shack that looks today like a fisherman’s hut straight out of The Old Man and the Sea, or even The Old Man Who Read Love Stories.
I’ve been so concerned with the shack, I’ve overlooked a solidly built structure on the plot, with three little studios attached. Two are occupied by tenants, and the third by Kihouari’s little brother, his wife and three children.