When the Plums Are Ripe by Patrice Nganang

Author:Patrice Nganang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

13

The Poignant Hymn of the False Hilun

At that very moment, in far-off Tibesti—although the Mother of the Market couldn’t know this—a second drama that involved her was playing out. You’ll agree with me that it was a good thing, in the end, that Ngo Bikaï wasn’t aware of it. Yes, each place has more than enough suffering of its own. It was Philothée who announced Bilong’s death. His three companions had taken turns watching over him in the clinic. They intentionally ignored military orders and organized shifts so that the boy was never alone. They were more diligent than they had ever been before. Each had his own way of helping the wounded soldier, but they all agreed that there was one prayer that made them clench their fists during the day and grind their teeth at night. Aloga was shaken. Of the five tirailleurs selected for the mission, only Bilong had come back alive from the battlefield, while of the white men who had taken part in the battle, only Lieutenant Colonel d’Ornano had died. Aloga assumed that most of those who died in war were black—contradict him if you will. Colonel Leclerc had made a big announcement about the victory of Free France over the fascists, but the false Hilun just couldn’t get over the racist reality of it all. And that’s what determined what he said in his repeated prayers to the Bassa ancestor, whom he asked to save “our victory.”

While Philothée was on guard, Bilong opened his eyes wide, took a deep breath, and then froze, as if he were struggling to find some bit of strength left in his body, his mouth open on a silent scream, a scream he never released. Was it the ever-stammering Philothée who screamed in his stead?

“Bi … Bi…”

“What?”

“… Ng…”

“What?”

“… Ng…”

“What?”

“Ah!”

When the false Hilun finally understood what his eyes refused to believe, he started to sing. He wanted Charles—not Bilong, although that was one of his many names—to dribble past death as he had done in that battle he’d heard about. Because, he asked, just what is this war that refuses to let a hero die gloriously on the battlefield, only to lay him out on a clinic cot? What kind of a death is that, Aloga asked in his song, and Hebga replied as the Bassa chorus would have—for he knew that song too—asking, what kind of a death is it that tears a child from life and leaves the adults to carry on with their wretched existence? What kind of life, Aloga asked in his song, remains for the living, now that he who in his heart had wanted nothing but love had been torn from it? What kind of a death is this, Hebga asked, that takes a child, a son, from his mother and upends his whole life? What kind of a life is this, all the Bassa tirailleurs asked, that tears them from the forest and throws them away in the desert? Just what kind

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