My mother would have gone to the stake to prove my father’s innocence. She was convinced it was only gossip, put about by jealous neighbours. But over the next few weeks my father’s alibis grew less and less convincing, and my mother cornered him and demanded the truth.
Papa Roger raised his voice:
‘Why are you and Martine spying on me? She won’t let me sleep when I’m at her house, you won’t let me breathe at yours, where am I meant to sleep? Tell me that!’
‘Go and sleep at Célestine’s! You might as well, I’m not sharing my bed with you! Aren’t two wives enough for you? You do nothing but snore when you are here! What am I meant to do? Find myself a lover?’
‘Fine, if that’s the way it is, I’m going out to get some air!’
‘You do that! You go and find her!’
‘That’s enough, Pauline! Every day it’s the same in this house! Is it because it’s your house? If it was my house would you dare talk to me like that? I’m fed up with it, and if it carries on, I’m going home!’
I sometimes got the feeling in my mother’s house that my father felt a bit like the lodger, since she was the one who had not only purchased the land but also built the house, which Papa Roger now visited every other day, alternating with his own home, a four-roomed house where Maman Martine lived with my eight half-brothers and — sisters.
The affair of the third wife eventually poisoned the atmosphere in both households. At ours, my parents no longer spoke to each other as they had. The slightest spark was enough to light the fire and set them off arguing, even though I was standing behind them, unable to understand why they were rowing about what seemed to me like the kind of things that occupy kids in the playground.
The situation grew worse every day, and in the end my mother and Maman Martine joined forces, and decided that it was up to us children to go and pay a little ‘courtesy visit’ to the potential ‘co-wife’. Permission was even granted to sort her out by whatever means we saw fit.
I was part of the little group that set off on this punitive expedition, along with six of my half-brothers. One afternoon we went over to the neighbourhood where the woman lived, having been told her name by our mothers: Célestine. Outside her house we found a woman of a certain age, and Yaya Gaston, the oldest of us, spoke to her, saying:
‘Excuse me, madame, we’re looking for a young woman called Célestine, your daughter, we need to talk to her…’
The woman answered curtly:
‘What do you want with her?’
I felt Yaya Gaston’s body shake with anger, and he clenched his fist:
‘Mind your own business, you old crone! We’ve come to tell your daughter to keep her little panties up and stop bothering our father, or we’ll beat her up! She should be ashamed, stealing money from a respectable man with two families!’
‘Well, go on, then. Beat me up!’
‘We don’t want you, old lady! We want to talk to Célestine! Come on, get out of the way, we need to search this place, we know she’s hiding in there!’
She burst out laughing:
‘There’s only one Célestine here, and that’s me! So what are you waiting for? Hit me!’
Yaya Gaston shrank back, turned to us and then looked at the woman again for a few seconds. Grey hair. Large, thick spectacles. Threadbare, patched pagnes. She must be older than Maman Martine, she could be Maman Pauline’s grandmother.
‘It’s — you’re — you’re her?’ stammered our big brother, incredulously, his fist still clenched as though he still meant to hit her.
‘You want to see my ID or what? You just try to hit me, and you’ll be cursed to the end of time!’
Gaston unclenched his fist and turned to us again:
‘I can’t. I just can’t… She’s really old. Who’ll hit her for me?’
‘I said hit me!’ yelled the woman, commanding now, sure none of us would dare lift a finger against an old woman.
Since no one in the group moved, and we were all looking at the ground, Yaya Gaston settled for intimidating the old woman:
‘We’ve come to warn you! If you don’t stop hanging round our father, you’ll live to regret it! Even if you are… like you are!’
‘And how am I? Old, am I? Stink do I? Do I ask your father to come over here? Go and sort out your own affairs, and tell your mothers to satisfy their man, because in my day, believe me, I was such a great lay, my late husband would forget to go to work for a whole month! And tell your mothers to look to their cooking, because when your father comes here you’d think he hadn’t eaten in years! And now, if you don’t get off my land, I’m going to expose myself to you. Then you’ll see with your own eyes what your father’s up to when he’s not with your mothers! I’ve got white hairs on my pubis, you want to see them?’
Yaya Gaston was already out of her yard, with his fingers stuffed in his ears to block out her obscenities. We dashed after him, and fled with our tails between our legs, just as the old woman lifted her pagne around her waist to shake her arse at us.
‘Don’t look back, it brings bad luck!’ Gaston cried.
Anyway, once Papa Roger heard about our visit from Célestine, he began to visit her less often, particularly since we started hiding out near by in the hope of catching him going into the house of the woman we considered a witch, who had cast a spell on our father.
A month went by and the ‘affair’ of the third wife was closed. Papa Roger returned to coming home on time, sitting in a corner to read the weekly magazines from Europe, and exclaiming at the idiot French for forgetting to mention our country, because it was only tiny…
Death at his heels
I never felt I really knew Papa Roger very well, partly because he told me nothing about his own parents. I didn’t know whether they were alive, or had passed on into the next world. Nor had I ever set foot in Ndounga, his native village. This didn’t bother me, as I cultivated a visceral hatred for anything connected to any paternal branch, my natural father having cleared off when my mother needed him. To me Papa Roger was father and grandfather, the perfect paternal rootstock, resistant to wind and weather, bringing forth fruit in every season. So I had given up desperately trying to find out about my paternal forebears.
I owe it to Papa Roger that my childhood was scented with the sweet smell of green apples. This was the fruit he brought home for me every week from the Victory Palace Hotel. In our town it was a great treat to eat an apple. For us it was one of the most exotic fruits to come from the colder regions. As I bit into it, I felt I was sprouting wings that would carry me far away. I’d sniff the fruit first, with my eyes closed, then munch it greedily, as though I was worried someone would suddenly come and ask me for a bite and spoil my pleasure in crunching it down to the last little pip, since no one had ever taught me how to eat an apple. Papa Roger stood there in front of me, smiling. He knew he could get me to do anything he wanted by simply giving me an apple. I’d suddenly turn into the most talkative boy on earth, even though I was by nature rather reserved. My mother realised the havoc an apple could wreak in my behaviour. She’d fly into one of her rages, usually at my expense, which to this very day tarnishes my pleasure in that delicious smelclass="underline"
‘There you go again, telling your father all sorts when you’ve eaten an apple! I’ll start to think they’re alcoholic, and have to ban them!!’
‘I didn’t do anything!’
‘I see, so why did you tell him I went out with someone this afternoon, then? Don’t come asking me to get your supper tonight! Let that be a lesson to you!’
It was true, I had been rather indiscreet that day, whispering to my father that a slim, tall man had dropped by our house, talked with my mother, after which the two of them had gone to a local bar for a drink. At this my father flew into a rage and yelled at my mother: