Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou

Author:Alain Mabanckou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Published: 2012-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

I remember, too, the day Mama Kibandi came across my master sitting in front of the hut reading the Bible, someone had given it to him in Kinkosso, a religious person who wanted to persuade him to take up the way of the Lord because he’d seen him in the prostitutes’ area, a sign that my master was a lost sheep, a sinner who must be guided away from the path to hell, before this servant of the Lord had had time to discover that he was in fact illiterate, Kibandi had taken the book and vanished, and the man in the cassock never realised what a favour he had done my master, for the first few weeks he didn’t open the book, he left it lying by his bed until it was covered with a layer of dust, and one evening, unable to sleep, he finally picked it up, opened it up in the middle, brought it up close to his eyes, drew a long breath, smelled the pleasant smell of the page, and when he opened his eyes the light of the storm lantern fell across the words, and stripped them of their mystery, forming a kind of halo around each letter, and each phrase began to move, flowing like a river, he never knew when exactly his lips began to move, to read, he didn’t even know he was turning the pages fast, that his eyes were flicking from left to right without his feeling any giddiness, the words were suddenly alive, representing reality, and he imagined God, and that mysterious vagabond, Jesus, he would never stop reading, and for the next few days he did not sleep, he’d fall on the book the minute he got in from the workshop he’d built behind their hut, Mama Kibandi couldn’t hide her astonishment, she was amused by her son’s behaviour, she wondered why the young man was so concerned to conceal his ignorance, after all, just because you had a book in your hands didn’t mean you were educated, and she treated it as a joke, considering my master had never set foot inside a school, so he couldn’t read, and another day, infuriated by my master’s new activity, she glanced at the book he was going through, as though she too could devour it, her son seemed very focussed, he murmured phrases, traced the lines on the page with the index finger of his right hand, it must have been that day, surely, that she realised Kibandi had to have a double and that his father must have made him drink the mayamvumbi in Mossaka

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