The following morning Hakim was scarcely awake when the widow Desrussie, bundled up in a wrapper against the cool morning mist, brought him a letter from Celanire. It was written on pretty yellow stationery, well phrased and sober given the circumstances. Celanire apologized for having betrayed a fondness for him that he obviously did not share. As for her job offer, it still stood. She was especially keen on having him, as she knew he could work miracles. Wasn’t he preparing that good-for-nothing Kwame Aniedo to compete for the French administration examination? Likewise, he would know how to transform the Africans into responsible men of their times. As for the love angle, he could sleep safe and sound, she would no longer bother him. The trivial adventure was over! Hakim retained only one thing from this epistle. It was no coincidence that Celanire had mentioned the name of Kwame Aniedo. She had seen right through him. She knew about his feelings for the prince. In actual fact, this apparently innocuous letter constituted a threat.
In a state of frenzy, he set out for the landing stage on the other side of Bingerville. A mob of small traders carrying calabashes and makeshift basins brimming with unrefined palm oil was already laying siege to the warehouse. The smell of grease mingled with that of the decomposing mud and humus. All around, the banks appeared strewn with bones, in actual fact dead tree trunks bleached by the sun and the brine. Hakim seated himself in the outboard. Bordered by dense foliage, the blackish waters of the lagoon lapped threateningly against the landing stage. He had always been scared of water. As a child, after his papa had left him, he had only to close his eyes to imagine himself slipping slowly into a bottomless lake and drowning. He shivered. Celanire was like the lagoon, cunning and dangerous.
But the day turned out to be so busy, he completely forgot about the oblate.
The day before, the vessel Alexandrie had fired a cannon shot, indicating that it was ready to trade. While maneuvering along its side, one of Betti Bouah’s boats had overturned. Four men had been sucked under the waves and their bodies kept for good by the ocean. Hakim had had to smooth out the accusations and greed of the families and negotiate compensation. The Europeans had introduced a new system. Everything had been calculated. A man who left behind small children was worth so much. A man who left a betrothed, so much. Several wives, so much. It was nighttime before he returned to Bingerville. An invitation was waiting for him. The following Sunday Koffi Ndizi was going to be baptized, and as a token of their former friendship, he was inviting him to the ceremony.
Hakim had never taken Koffi Ndizi’s amorous transports very seriously. Like those of Karamanlis, he got the impression they were sheer lunacy that would heal by itself. But when he saw him standing at the foot of the altar, his hands piously crossed over a thick candle, his braids shaved, and his belly cramped into a white chasuble, he realized his mistake. To go to such extremes, he really had to be smitten. Queen Tadjo, sitting in the front row, seemed to be in agony. He had given her three months to become a Christian. Otherwise, despite all her line-age, he would repudiate her as well.
The church, which dated back to the early days of the colony, was a reminder that the missionaries had followed in the steps of the traders. The altar and the pews had been carved out of ironwood. A local artist had sculpted in clay the fourteen stations of the cross. On that particular day there was the usual lot of “converted” natives and French religious crackpots. In addition, a crowd of Africans was bent on seeing with their own two eyes the extraordinary sight of a king turning his back on the traditions of his ancestors. Those who could speak French fervently sang:
Je crois en Toi, mon Dieu,
Je crois en Toi,
L’ombre voile mes yeux,
Mais j’ai la foi.
The others listened, intimidated by the sonority tumbling from their mouths. The father superior, a Knight Templar, was an ascetic, nothing more than skin and bones, once a great friend of Thomas de Brabant, who often used him as an interpreter. For Koffi Ndizi, baptized Felix, he delivered a long homily, stressing his rebirth and his duties as a Christian. Adopting an inspired look, he prosaically exulted in a conversion that compensated for the defection of his former friend Thomas, up to his neck in adultery with a Negress. The new Felix fittingly received the water on his forehead and solemnly ate the salt. After the ceremony the guests gathered at the royal compound where the free-of-charge domestics who had replaced the slaves served lukewarm lemonade in the famous blue-stemmed glasses. Hakim’s eyes filled with tears as he found himself back in that place, that theater of so many sweet moments: drinking bouts, never-ending palavers, and anti-French dreams. Now that the Father Templar had asked the learned assembly of sébékos and fetish priests to vacate the compound, their courtyard was deserted. The only witnesses to the past were the queen mother, stripped of half of her suite, and a few elders who had nowhere else to go. Poor Kwame Aniedo! His father had ordered him to convert, swearing he would disinherit him if he refused, for his mentors had forbidden him to bequeath his estate to a heathen.