Meanwhile, summoned by the king, Hakim was entering Koffi Ndizi’s compound. Locked away in his private quarters, the latter was conversing through an interpreter with a man draped in a burnoose, a dress seldom seen in this coastal region: Diamagaram, a Muslim fetish priest, come down from Kong. When Hakim entered, Koffi Ndizi dismissed the interpreter, since the schoolteacher spoke perfect Malinke. Seated with the Holy Book open in front of him, Diamagaram had also made a cabalistic drawing in a tray filled with sand and was deep in concentration. He could see that evil spirits had recently set foot in Adjame-Santey, terribly malevolent spirits who had crossed over from the other side of the ocean. This was particularly surprising, since spirits never travel over water. They are frightened by this moving expanse inhabited by cold-blooded creatures, and you can hear their roars of anger and helplessness from the shore as they watch their prey escaping them. If they had set foot in Adjame-Santey, this meant they had mounted a “horse.” That’s the word for a human who obeys their every wish and who can be recognized by a sign. The aim therefore is to discover this sign, to find this “horse” and stop it from causing any harm, not an easy task. Diamagaram confessed that he had chased a “horse” in Bondoukou for months bearing a tiny sign on the body: two toes joined together. Getting the better of a “horse” requires extraordinary sacrifices. Not your ordinary chickens. Neither sheep nor even oxen. No, we’re talking albinos. Children born with a caul. Twins. Prepubescent girls. Koffi Ndizi made it known he would do anything. He stared at the fetish priest, visibly impressed by his gift of the gab, his heavy string of beads, and his thick Koran.
At that moment Kwame Aniedo, the heir to the throne, a magnificent sixteen-year-old specimen, crawled in on all fours, as was the custom. He begged forgiveness from his father for daring to disturb him. But this too was an urgent matter. Three royal concubines, one leaving behind her an infant still at her breast, had left the compound without the queen mother’s permission. They had refused to say where they had spent the afternoon. How many whiplashes should they be given?
At six in the morning, before the sun had opened its lazy eyes, before the women had lit the wood fires and heated the water for the men to wash, a piece of news was flying from mouth to mouth. The oblate, whom Thomas de Brabant had just appointed director of the Home for Half-Castes while awaiting the governor’s approval, was recruiting. There was nothing extraordinary about recruiting! The French never stopped. They recruited to build roads, bridges over rivers, railways, wharfs, sawmills, brick factories, and lighthouses. The surprising fact about this new case was that she was recruiting only girls, and what’s more, she was paying them. She handed each of them a small sum of money on the spot — enough to buy wrappers and head ties at the CFAO company store, soap, perfume, and talcum powder at Karamanlis’s.
There was a rush to the Home.
Standing in the middle of the garden, Celanire was examining each candidate as if she were back in a slave market. From their teeth to the soles of their feet. Then, with the help of Desrussie’s widow, turned interpreter, she switched to the interrogation. Did the candidate have a husband? A betrothed? Did she have any children? Girls? Boys? How many? At the end of the inspection, which lasted a full day, she recruited about fifteen girls whom she assembled under the mango trees together with the little half-castes. A nursery, she explained, would be set up for the under-threes, who would now no longer be left to dribble and poop, like they used to be. The one-class school would be enlarged. Pupils would wear khaki cotton uniforms on weekdays and white ones on Sundays. Girls old enough to hold a needle would learn sewing, but this would not constitute the basis of their education. They would learn the same subjects as the boys. However, on Thursdays and Saturdays the boys would clear the wasteland around the Home to make it into palm groves. They would also plant a kitchen garden and grow tomatoes, eggplants, and cabbages. Together with the chickens and sheep they would raise, the Home should be self-sufficient in a year or two at the most. Is that understood? Dismiss!
At day’s end Celanire confided in her newfound friend, the widow Desrussie. She had never got over losing her darling little papa, and he was constantly in her thoughts. He was a splendid half-caste, a mulatto as they were called in the Caribbean, as good as he was handsome. A man of duty whose only passion was science. He conducted experiments on animals and had led a lone crusade against the ravages of opium introduced into the island by Chinese laborers. She described Guadeloupe as a paradise perfumed with the scent of vanilla and cinnamon. Despite her naïveté and her love for a good story, the widow Desrussie, like Thomas de Brabant, guessed that Celanire was not telling the truth. This woman was hiding something. They suspected she was more dangerous than a mamba. Her plans for the Home were troubling, for the land around it did in fact belong to someone. It belonged to the Ebriés.
If Karamanlis had not insisted, Hakim would never in his life have accepted Celanire’s invitation. The Home for Half-Castes had too many bad memories for him. They spewed up a whole chapter of his childhood. But ever since the Greek had caught sight of the oblate in the depths of her tipoye, he raved about her to anyone who entered his store. He who was so miserly would give back the wrong change and could no longer sleep a wink at night. In short, he begged Hakim to strike up an acquaintance with the object of his desire so that he could get closer to her later on. For he knew that as a common trader, and a foreigner into the bargain, he would never be invited to the Home. Hakim therefore brilliantined his hair and slipped on a white caftan.
Within a few weeks the Home had been changed out of all recognition. The wind sang through the branches of a budding bamboo grove. Pink cassias, magnolias, and bushes of croton grew in profusion. In the drawing room downstairs, where a host of oil lamps cast broad daylight over everything, a rather formal reception was in full swing, and Hakim found himself ill dressed for the occasion. Even if nobody was dancing, a phonograph was playing the latest tangos and paso dobles from Paris. Every senior civil servant and factory manager whom Adjame-