Prince Roger replied: ‘Grandfather, I accepted your invitation to come to Kinkosso because the man who just died is someone special. He’s not just the chief of the village, he’s our grandfather’s grandfather.’
‘Yes, but if you dance more than ten centimetres off the ground, you’re done for! You dance how you want, but no higher than ten centimetres! Don’t disgrace us in front of our people!’
Another unpleasant old man threatened: ‘Who d’you think you are anyway? Why d’you take this tone with us, when you’ve no grey beard and no bald head? Where were you the day the first white man set foot in this village, offering his mirrors, his sugar and guns, and taking our strongest men far away, across the sea? There’s Maniongui, who just asked you to show respect for his grey beard, his bald head, do you have a gold war medal too, like him? Old Maniongui’s seen every French president, since Emile Loubet at the start of the century, to General de Gaulle! Anyway whoever gave you the title of Prince, you don’t deserve it! We’re the ones who give titles! I’m giving you one last warning; if you dance more than ten centimetres off the ground, we’ll be burying you next, after our grandfather’s grandfather! And your corpse won’t find its way home, you’ll be buried in the bush like a wild beast!’
The third old man spat on the ground. Which meant that he wasn’t going to waste his words like the others.
Prince Roger moved away from the old men, but they went on threatening him behind his back. He called together his ten dancers to give them their instructions: ‘These old men are afraid they’ll look stupid, no dancer from this village has ever gone higher than ten centimetres, even though the levitation dance first started here in Kinkosso. We won’t be influenced by a handful of old goats who fancy themselves the guardians of tradition. We’ve learned their technique, we’ve mastered it, and now we’re the best in the region. And tonight we’ll prove it again, so get yourselves ready and don’t lose heart. You beat your tam-tams, as usual, and I’ll look after the rest.’
Maman Martine is scaling the last of the fish, and she almost cuts herself with the knife when she cries, ‘Prince Roger! What a fine young man! What a stubborn young man!’
When she saw I was waiting for the rest of the story, she cleared her throat and continued: ‘The evening of the grandfather’s funeral the men of Kinkosso lined up on one side and the women on the other. And between the two, Prince Roger danced bare-chested, with a wrap made of raffia, and cowries round his waist, bells on his ankles and white clay on his face and in his hair. The bravest of the women were meant to step into the area left for Prince Roger, and dance along with him. But none came. Now the crowd was growing restless, this wasn’t the kind of show you put on to say goodbye to the chief of the village. You could hear angry whistles, people shouting for a proper show. There had to be dancing, so everyone could get into a trance. Prince Roger whispered something to one of his dancers, who then yelled a challenge to the audience, and I can still hear that low voice shouting: “Prince Roger is very disappointed in this village! Have you no women in Kinkosso, or what? Is this the way to salute the memory of the grandfather of our grandfathers? If that’s the way it is, Prince Roger is stopping right now, he’s going home to his village. And he swears he won’t be coming back to help you next time someone dies.” At this, one skinny young village girl shot out of the line of other women, like an arrow. Prince Roger’s dancers all applauded, the crowd clapped too, and the drums went wild, as though the hands of ghosts were drumming. You could hear them the length and breadth of the district, they even woke the animals sleeping in the forest. The young village girl kicked up the dust as she danced. The wind blew so hard now, it lifted the pagne round her waist up to her chest, and you could see her red pants.
‘Everyone stepped back, and slowly the levitation dance began. The old men of Kinkosso shouted for joy, and they danced too, happy to see that the dance was led by a girl from the village, and not that rude Prince Roger. One of the old fetishers who had threatened Prince Roger earlier in the day asked his colleague: “Tell me, whose daughter is that? What’s her family name again?” Another replied “What does it matter? Who cares who it is and what her name is, I just know she’s a girl from Kinkosso, and she’s leading the dance! So let’s dance with her! That rude little guy who claims he’s a prince is finished now! Shame on him!” Everyone booed Prince Roger. They all said he was useless. All this time, he was watching the girl with his arms folded. He turned to the chief drummer of his group. “Hey, who’s this stick insect coming on to me, who is she, she dances like a sparrow that’s just fallen out of her parents’ nest.” The chief drummer almost shouted, “We don’t know her, but she’s got to almost five centimetres off the ground, you’d better do something or it’ll be a disgrace for us and the village of Ndounga!” Prince Roger made his mind up. “I’ll just have to go higher myself. After all, I’m the prince! Give me ten bars of muntuntu beat, the one Mubungulu used to play when he was alive, when he played for the dead in the Batalébé cemetery!” One of his dancers was afraid. “You really want us to play that? It’s too dangerous! The last time we played that rhythm it almost got you killed!” Prince Roger was adamant. “I’m telling you, it’s an order!”
‘And so the rhythm of the tam-tams suddenly changed. Even the sky started to stir, as though something might fall on our heads any moment. When the drummers beat their rhythm it was as though the skin of the drums was bursting and the clouds were parting. The villagers’ eardrums were fit to burst with the unfamiliar rhythm, and they covered their ears. Up went Prince Roger, up off the ground. He reached six centimetres, then seven, then eight. He never got up to ten, because the three old fetishers who’d been on at him earlier that day were upon him, tearing at their beards in anger. He came back down to earth, the old sorcerers sighed with relief. Now, behind them, the skinny little village girl from Konkosso had started dancing again, and now she was ten centimetres off the ground and all the villagers were applauding. Furious, Prince Roger pulled himself up to his full height, span round in a circle, nodded to the drummers, who doubled, then tripled then quadrupled the speed of the lamented Mubungulu’s muntuntu rhythm. And there they saw Prince Roger begin to rise, pedalling now, then up he rose, then pedalled again, then rose again, then pedalled harder and harder. We knew he must be over ten centimetres by now, but because no one believed it, there was now total silence in the village. They said it was the spirit of the grandfather of our grandfather that had hidden inside Prince Roger’s body. The villagers were frightened and fled from the wake with their mats rolled up under their arm pits, with their wailing children. The dogs ran off into the bush with their tails between their legs, like wild beasts. Even the old men who’d challenged Prince Roger and his dancers had gone. The corpse of our grandfather’s grandfather was abandoned, and Prince Roger had come back to earth, panting as hard as if he’d been lugging great sacks of potatoes for miles. He fell into a coma, the people in his group brought him round by throwing cold water over him. As soon as he opened his eyes he asked the drummers, “How high did I get?” And they all replied in chorus, “Over fifteen and a half centimetres!” He got to his feet, murmuring, “Let’s get back to Ndounga straight away, I don’t know what’s happened here. I’ve never been that high before, I wasn’t alone, a spirit was pushing me, and I could have died, I couldn’t breathe properly up there.” It was already past four in the morning when Prince Roger and his group set off again for Ndounga. On the road they heard a strange noise behind them. They turned round, each one ready to run for it, as you do when you meet a devil out in the bush. The dancers had already scattered, but Prince Roger stayed where he was and saw someone coming towards him. He shouted after the men who’d disappeared, “Come back! Come back! It’s no devil! It’s the skinny little dancer from Kinkosso.”’