With Celanire, all that changed.
Like Betti Bouah, she sent for Apollonians from the Gold Coast. Under her direction they worked for months, standing in the pale light of dawn and lying down in the black of midnight. She had no intention of imitating the style of the Home, and consequently, Bingerville could boast of two architectural treasures, each a source of pride in its own way. She had balconies suspended on the north facade of the palace, where the arabesques of their wrought-iron balustrades relieved the hardness of the stone. She also installed French windows to let in the light and the air, and extended the south facade with a terrace overlooking a garden that she stocked with monkeys and all types of birds — commonly found birds such as hyacinth macaws, brightly colored parakeets, large-billed toucans, budgerigars, and other chatter-boxes, as well as rarer species like those American yellow-tailed parrots called Amazonas. Clusters of kikiris hung on the branches of the azobé and ebony trees, while red ibis transplanted from the mudflats of the Aby lagoon waded through the grass on their long, melancholic legs. The roof of the palace was another open-air terrace where three hundred people could listen to music in the dry season. Once it had been restored, the palace was boldly painted ocher and pistachio green.
The interior was as sumptuous as the exterior. Two Fridays a month Celanire invited her husband’s compatriots to dinner and led her guests on a guided tour of the apartments. Even today, despite all the waste and excessive logging, the Ivory Coast is not lacking in wood. So with the help of the books of her “beloved little papa,” as she never failed to call him, Celanire initiated the Apollonians in the techniques of the furniture makers from Guadeloupe. They reproduced buffets à deux corps, arbalète commodes, spider consoles, recamier-style sofas, four-poster beds, and rocking chairs. Standing in front of the planter armchairs, she would explain that the arms pivoted into extensions so that the person seated could rest his legs in a horizontal position while sipping a rum punch, the traditional drink in Caribbean climes.
Finally Celanire turned Bingerville into an artistic capital. The highlight of the palace was its museum. It first took up a living room, then two, then the entire ground floor, and became the first “ethnographic museum” in Black Africa, far superior to the IFAN museum in Dakar. It is still a major attraction today. Its aim was to prove not only to the orphans at the Home but also to all those doubting Thomases that Africa has a culture of its own. The collection included Dan, Wobè, Gouro, Yaouré, and Baoulé masks, but especially masks from the Guéré people, masters of the art. The finest pieces in the museum were a series of nine Guéré masks: one singer’s mask, two warriors’ masks, two dancers’ masks, a mask for wisdom, a mask for running, a fool’s mask, and a griot’s mask. Celanire threw herself passionately into her treasure hunt. She had no qualms soliciting the chiefs and elders or mingling with secret societies and initiation ceremonies. This deeply shocked the Africans, who complained she was looting their sacred heritage. It would bring her misfortune. Women are not allowed to look at masks, let alone lay hands on them. Consequently, she would never give birth, neither to a son nor a daughter.
In actual fact the Africans could never forgive Celanire for marrying because she no longer had time to look after the Home and left Tanella in charge. For them, Tanella deserved to be stoned with a hail of rocks after murdering Mawourou and to rot without a grave on the land she had insulted. Her acquittal was scandalous. It was true Tanella did not have Celanire’s iron hand, capable of bringing to heel a troop of rebels. Under her management the Home foundered. Guinea grass overran the lawn. The papilios died in the aviaries. The nurses no longer wore white uniforms. The students’ success rate dropped to nil. Discipline became lax, as did hygiene. Epidemics returned at an alarming rate. One serious incident alerted the French authorities. An officer on leave from Upper Volta, Jean de Brezillac, stabbed a colleague, Melchior Marie-Marion. According to him, Melchior had stolen his “fiancée,” Akwasi, a nurse at the Home for Half-Castes, to whom he had given a gold ring. The latter denied everything. An inquiry was opened. But the inspector, housed at the Governor’s Palace, fell under the spell of Celanire. Consequently, his report boiled down to a panegyric of the “lovely Creole,” Madame de Brabant, and matters remained that way right up to Celanire and Thomas’s departure for Guadeloupe a few months later. This departure stunned blacks and whites alike. It was true Celanire never stopped talking about her childhood island to anyone she met. She liked to repeat that she kept the memory of it in her heart like a candle burning in front of the high altar, for a country, just like a mother, cannot be forgotten. She confided in close friends that she had a sacred duty to carry out: find her parents, especially her real mother. Yes, her birth had been darkened and marred by tragic events. That beloved little papa she spoke of so often was not her real father, even if their feelings for each other had been unparalleled. Despite all that, watching her bustling with activity in Bingerville, you wouldn’t be alone in thinking that Africa had replaced her island home in her heart and she would have trouble leaving. And yet she left.
One morning in February, a host of porters swarmed into the palace gardens. The strongest loaded onto their backs Celanire’s fourteen trunks. The others grabbed Thomas’s trophies — elephant tusks, a stuffed lion he claimed to have shot during a hunt, and miles of boa constrictor skin. The nurses had come down from the Home and were comforting Tanella, who seemed on the point of giving up the ghost. Celanire bade her an emotional farewell before setting off for the Ebrié lagoon. However, once she was seated in the fishing canoe under a canopy of woven palm fronds, she seemed to forget those she was leaving behind. She perked up as if the life she had just led no longer mattered. Ludivine, watching her, was shocked by so much insensitivity. Her own heart was grief-stricken. To what unknown destiny were they taking her? She already regretted the end of an era. She knew that the older she got, the more nostalgic she would feel for her childhood and Bingerville, and in spite of herself she would portray the Home as a lost paradise. She would forget its charged atmosphere, loaded with mystery. She would forget the way the nurses took good care of their boarders during the day and then the way everything changed from six in the evening onward. The way the children were hurried up from the refectory to the dormitory. As soon as the last Hail Mary was recited, the nurses locked the doors and vanished. The glow of a large lamp was scarcely reassuring, for once it had drunk its oil it generally went out before midnight, which plunged the room into darkness and a host of eerie shadows. The tots who couldn’t get to sleep thought they heard the hullabaloo of music, noisy conversation, and shouts of laughter.
In early August a new governor arrived in Bingerville, as well as an officer who took over the management of the Home. Without further ado, he removed Tanella and dismissed the nurses. He kept only the cooks, matronly Ebriés and sturdy mothers who would not appeal to anyone. He restored order to the curriculum. For the boys, arithmetic and grammar; for the girls, cutting and sewing. We have to admit, we shall never know what really went on at the Home for Half-Castes. This splendid edifice, which appears in the book on colonial architecture by Frédéric Grogruhé, keeps its secret closely guarded. Closed down for many years when it almost collapsed into ruin, it was later entirely restored and became the Orphanage of the Ivory Coast.