Meanwhile at Bingerville events were working up to a crescendo.
Blacks and whites alike were still reeling from the shock of Kwame Aniedo’s murder and Hakim’s banishment. Most people were convinced the latter was innocent. The truth lay elsewhere. But where? That is the question! They would have liked to accuse Celanire. But for once she seemed as innocent as the Lamb of God. She had no known liaison either with Hakim or Kwame Aniedo and had no personal interest in their killing themselves. Some of the French, however, suspected Hakim of being a homosexual, since he had never been seen with a woman. But even the most malicious hid their thoughts like dirty washing at the bottom of a closet.
To everyone’s surprise, whereas Koffi Ndizi was thought to be an unnatural father, the death of his first son dealt him a fatal blow. One week after Kwame Aniedo had been laid to rest, a cold nailed the old man to his bed and snuffed him out like a candle before Queen Tadjo in her eagerness had time to prepare a concoction of zinblannan herb tea. His family preferred to forget he had converted to Christianity and gave him the funeral of an Akan king. Twenty slaves were sacrificed to serve him in the afterlife. Dozens of professional mourners filled the air with their wailing. During a week of feasting and drinking, gallons and gallons of palm wine flowed. Besides the slaves, the fetish priests slaughtered over a hundred oxen and as many sheep on the sacrificial stones, not forgetting the countless chickens plucked until every finger was worn out. The tradition of interrogating Koffi Ndizi’s corpse resulted in some strange happenings. Normally, when the question is asked who killed the dead man and a series of names are put forward, the porters carrying the corpse take three steps forward for a yes and three steps back for a no. But this time the interrogation caused such a free-for-all that two young people were crushed to death and half a dozen others were hurt. A few days after the funeral the wives and concubines whom Koffi Ndizi had repudiated returned to reoccupy their former quarters. Alas, not for long. The king had made a donation.
The affair had been conducted expertly by the illiterate king, oddly well informed of the mysteries of French law. One day he had gone to Grand-Bassam with two witnesses and in the presence of a notary had donated all his movable and immovable goods to the director of the Home, Mademoiselle Celanire Pinceau. Informed by Betti Bouah, the council of elders in its rage endeavored to prevent this act of madness. Alas, the deeds of donation were already stamped and signed. This was the beginning of a legal imbroglio that went through a dozen attorneys and reached an outcome only in 1963, three years after the independence of the Ivory Coast. The case came to be known as The Heirs of Felix Koffi Ndizi, King of Abila, versus Celanire Pinceau. In the meantime, Bingerville experienced the sorry sight of the queen mother, Queen Tadjo, and the ex-royal wives and concubines being thrown out manu militari by a rabble of tarbooshed soldiers. One melancholy morning a gang of Ebriés razed the compound to the ground as part of their corvée. In its place a magnificent sports stadium was built for the students at the Home. The inhabitants of Bingerville had hardly got over this affront to their late king when Tanella returned, free as a bird, after having waited for two years in Dakar for a court decision. She climbed out of a fishing canoe on the lagoon and, followed by a porter, his legs bowed from the weight of her heavy green trunk, walked through Bingerville in the direction of the Home. Those who saw her pass by were flabbergasted. When she had fled Koffi Ndizi’s compound after her deadly deed, she had been no more than a shy young girl with chubby cheeks. Now she had been transformed into a woman! At the prison in Dakar she had passed the native certificate of elementary studies. She had also learned to dress in the European fashion, and on that particular day she was flaunting a blue-patterned orange dress and a straw hat with a matching blue ribbon. But people had little time for their usual idle chatter as to who was the loveliest, Tanella or Celanire. It wasn’t long before they had far more serious matters to discuss. First of all one of the nurses recounted how Tanella and the oblate had become as intimate as husband and wife. Instead of entertaining the white guests of an evening at the dances organized at the Home, they made whoopee among themselves. They rubbed up against each other, dancing the habanera or the beguine, a dance from Guadeloupe. They drank champagne from the same glass until they were completely intoxicated. Once the visitors had left, they locked themselves in the same room. If Tanella was shy, Celanire was excessively bold. Even in public it was a never-ending serenade of “my pet” and “my little darling” and unequivocal caresses. Furthermore, Tanella had become Celanire’s right-hand woman. She supervised the workers in the palm groves, and the cooks in the refectory, and checked the accounts to such an extent that Madame Desrussie, whose place she had usurped, never stopped lamenting and took to absinthe. In the evening you could see her totter across the garden.
Another nurse was adamant that Celanire had the power to shed her body like a snake shedding its skin in the undergrowth. One night when the wind and the rain were making the shutters bang, the young girl had entered Celanire’s room unexpectedly and had seen a little heap of soft, shapeless flesh and skin in front of the wide-open window. Hiding behind a closet, she had watched as the young woman returned in the early hours of the morning. Her mouth smeared with blood, she had slipped back into her mortal coil and calmly returned to bed. No doubt about it, Celanire was under the spell of powerful aawabo.
Can one really believe such nonsense and malicious gossip?
One thing for certain was not a pack of lies; the Home entered six candidates, including four girls, for the native certificate of elementary studies in June. All passed, even the girls, and were immediately hired by the mission schools and the administration. As a recompense for her extraordinary results Thomas de Brabant was to award Celanire the medal for academic excellency, a large bronze medal attached to a purple ribbon. From two o’clock in the afternoon all that Bingerville could muster in the way of civil servants, merchants, missionaries, members of the royal family, cooks, nannies, tarbooshed guards, and militia had gathered on the lawns of the Home out of curiosity and were drinking barley water. People arrived on foot and in fishing canoes from Grand-Bassam and Assinie. In everyone’s view, the transformation of the Home in such a short time was pure witchcraft. How could the palms, the orchard, and the bamboo groves have grown so fast? How could the fruit trees be loaded with so much fruit in such a short time? Lemons as big as grapefruit! Mangoes that looked as though they had been grafted! Avocados as heavy as pears! All eyes were turned on Celanire and Tanella. At a quick glance they could have passed for twins. They were the same height, same weight, same velvety black-black skin. They were dressed identically except for the bouffant scarf of raw silk tied around Celanire’s neck. They wore the same Soir de Paris perfume, and their makeup and hairstyles were identical. Despite this resemblance, it was obvious that, between the two, Celanire was the leader and the brains while Tanella, in spite of her unusual, murderous act, simply followed her instructions. It was also obvious that Celanire was the less infatuated of the two. Tanella looked up to Celanire as if she were the holy of holies or the Eucharist, and Celanire was overjoyed to be the object of such boundless admiration.