Read an Excerpt
The Fire of Origins
A Novel
By Emmanuel Dongala, Lillian Corti Chicago Review Press Incorporated
Copyright © 2001 Emmanuel Dongala
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61373-734-7
CHAPTER 1
I proclaim the night more truthful than the day.
— L.S. Senghor
1.
In those days, when nganga Mankunku was born — before he became nganga and even before he was named Mankunku — the world was neither better nor worse than it is today, it was just different. The earth had long ceased to writhe from the enormous geological sufferings out of which had emerged the walls and peaks of mountains, the faults; its primitive face had already been profoundly disfigured by streams, torrents, and immense rivers flowing peacefully through the savanna, cunningly through the depths of the forest to the mephitic swamps, violently against all obstacles on their various paths to the Ocean. Where there was no water, large expanses resigned themselves to the laws of dunes, barrens, plateaus, and especially of the wind, supreme spirit under the ferocious eye of the Sun. Only the sea had not changed, ever violent and passionate, profound and fecund, original mother, source of life and all beings who shared the earth, the sky, and the water.
The world was different: the ancestral founders had already lived and worked out the laws and rites which would make life on Earth coherent and even if, now, they sometimes revealed less knowledge to old people, they still guided them through the difficult evolution of existence; young people already respected their elders less but they still respected them; the earth and the women no longer produced as bountifully as before but they nevertheless produced enough to relieve the hunger of men and their progeny.
Thus he was born one day in the dry season, in a banana plantation where his mother was left alone, the village being deserted as the men were out hunting or pillaging adjacent territories, the women preparing the earth for planting. Having nothing with which to cover the child, she picked a large banana leaf and passed it through a straw fire which she had lit in order to cook his food: after this infusion of warm spirit, the leaf went limp, became softer than a kapok comforter, as generous and protective as his mother's breast, while the smoke coated it with a layer of oil as greasy as palm oil in order to protect the tender body of the newborn.
She wrapped the child up in the large leaf, pressed him against her chest, and lifted her eyes to heaven in order to express her gratitude to the beings who surrounded her in her womanly solitude: to the weaver birds which circled gaily around their nests, acrobatically suspended among the palm leaves, to the solitary hornbill flying back and forth, all the while snapping his large helmet-like beak, strange and dignified among the little drunken sparrows, to the marauding and rebellious monkeys that jumped from vine to vine, whistling and noisily crunching wild fruits, to the butterflies and dragonflies in shimmering multicolored dresses flying aimlessly here and there as if intoxicated by the light that played hide-and-seek with the shadows of the leaves trembling under the caress of the downy wind; she expressed her gratitude to all those beings who had heard the cry announcing the presence of the new little being in the wide circle of life, among those who were still there and those who had already gone away. For a moment the silent mother and child shared body and soul with the beautiful moire flowers of the lantana bordering the edge of the cassava fields; they feasted their eyes on the violet of the jacaranda flowers lost among other, more ordinary trees; they delighted in the pallor of the taro flowers and the deep green of the peanut plants struggling with hungry tufts of couch grass: thus mother and child took possession of their world and allowed themselves to be possessed by it. Joy of nature, consecration of the newborn!
Finally, she left the plantation and returned to the village, leaving along the trail a trace of the blood that continued to ooze, blood which would later be licked up by panthers and hyenas, blood of sorrow and joy which would perhaps soften the hearts of the ancestors. Before leaving, however, she cut down a palm frond and thrust it into the place where the child had been born in order to preserve the memory of the event. Thus, years later, when the boy had become a man — the man named Mankunku, already known as nganga, confronting the turncoat king before the reunited villagers — he would appear with a palm frond in his hand as a reminder to all that his destiny, like his birth, was that of a solitary and extraordinary man.
2.
The women often returned to the village before the men. Those who got back first that day refused to believe in the birth of the child. How could they believe in a birth without cries or pain, without witnesses? Where had this child been born, where was the web of flesh that always accompanied the arrival of a being born of woman, where were the mother's blood and water?
Too tired to take them to the birthplace, the mother told them how to get there: they had only to follow the traces of blood to the place marked by the palm frond; they would see the ashes of the straw fire that had warmed the child, the place where she had buried the afterbirth; they would see the witnesses, the banana trees, the weaver birds, the great leaves of the flowering taro, the acrobatic thrushes, they would hear the barking of the dog-faced baboon, the distant murmur of the river... So they followed the traces of blood which were already beginning to be discovered by the driver ants, noticed the single palm leaf lost among the tall banana trees, and were very moved; they cleared the surrounding land, cut down other palm fronds, planted them around the one left by the mother, then returned singing.
Not all the women of the village went to inspect the birthplace, some stayed behind out of laziness, others out of jealousy; they thus refused to concede the natural origin of the child and insisted that he was one of those beings who exist without having been born. Fortunately, the majority of women not only saw the sanctuary of palm trees but also helped to build it; these women always attested to his birth. What would happen when, not being there, they could no longer give witness? The two versions of the story would compete with each other, but if the version doubting the authenticity of his birth should win out, there would no longer be any material trace of his passage on the earth.
The old men of the clan, being very wise, did not bother to give him a name right away. Why name something that would perhaps prove to be ephemeral? In any case, many did not believe that he would survive, seeing the skinny baby sucking avidly with little nervous gasps, in the manner of a puppy, at his mother's enormous breast. So they called him just "the palm child," then "The Palms," Mandala.
In those days, there were only four days in the week, so there were many more weeks in the year and people therefore lived longer on the Earth. The child survived two weeks, three, then four. They waited three entire moons. The child began to babble, to chirp. He became handsome and strong like the men of his mother's line. It was only then that he was considered a real person, an independent creature meriting a name of his own to distinguish him from the rest of Creation. On account of his extraordinary birth, they chose a prestigious name, that of an ancestor whose exalted deeds were lost in the night of his people's history. The entire family got together and old Nimi A Lukeni, the memory of his nation, presented him to the ancestors: "... so, from this day on, you'll be a man called upon to live, you'll have your own name, that of Mankunku, the one who defies the powerful and makes them fall as the leaves fall from the trees. May the spirit of the great ancestor, noting the palm wine I spit into the wind and the kimbazia leaves which I chew up and spit out in front of everybody, consent to watch over you. Try to become strong like him and not to fear any man, not even the powerful. Be worthy of your mother's family."
And the wind responded by accepting the wine, it carried the fine droplets in all four directions, rose, kissed the face of heaven, and brushed the Sun before falling back down on the mother and the father, a great blacksmith. And the spirit of the ancestor accepted the child by stopping once and for all the pain that had continually gnawed at the lower abdomen of the mother since the birth of the child.
Thus they called him Mandala Mankunku.
3.
When they discovered that the child Mandala had green eyes, the family went into a frenzy. They had heard of ancestors with eyes gray as sadness, gray as the sky of the dry season, brown as heat, brown as a woman's breast, black as a secret, black as the heart of a sorcerer. But sea-green eyes, palm green, that glowed in the dark, never! Never had they seen in the clan the green eyes of a wild day-blind creature, the eyes of a wicked sorcerer wandering at night with owls!
Since the people of the Earth always fear things which threaten social equilibrium, each member of the clan tried to find meaning in this event in order to avoid the possibility of ill fortune and its inevitable wake of trouble and tribulation. He is not a natural child, some maintained, but the reincarnation of a panther, or rather of a panther-man come to demand a reckoning of the clan, no, said those who had never believed in the birth of the child, these green eyes are the mark of his bizarre arrival on this earth, the mark of his non-birth, no, no, protested others, we can testify to his birth, this boy is neither a strange child nor a stranger, his mean green eyes are rather a curse from his father's side of the family which has never really accepted this marriage, stop spouting such idiocy, protested the members of his father's family, such a defect can only come from the mother's family because it isn't possible that a family of blacksmiths, workers who by dint of sheer will force metals to take any form imaginable, should transmit any imperfection, any genetic weakness whatsoever! Nzambi-a-Mpungu, perverse eyes, mean green eyes!
The mother's family, troubled by these malicious insinuations, took the mother out of her husband's house, and the child along with her. The father then demanded reimbursement for the bride price he had given to his wife's family: two goats, some chickens, ten or so of the most beautiful shells from the seashore, two hoes, and a package of salt; he would say nothing about the dozens of gourds full of palm and pineapple wine which he had contributed for the ceremony. The wife's family rejected the husband's demands, refusing to reimburse him for the least part of his claim because, after all, during the time the woman had spent with him, had she not worked for him? Who was the first to rise, day in and day out, to go and cultivate, plant, weed? Who went twice a month to dig up the cassava tubers and let them soak for days in stagnant arms of the river in order to prepare foufou, the flour which sustained them all? Who kept the house in order, washed the laundry, took care of the child, who ... who ... The family never tired of enumerating, of counting and recounting the multiple activities of their daughter, diligent dragonfly, lithe as a swallow, industrious as a bee, sweet and tender as a mother hen. The polemics between the two families became more and more acerbic. It was during this time that the child was given the name Mambou, child of discord.
It was old Nimi A Lukeni — the one who had given Mandala the name Mankunku — who reconciled the two families, persuaded them to bury the dispute forever, and spared Mandala Mankunku from being called Mambou all of his life. Already so old that he was hardly able to see or hear anything anymore, the wise man spent his days stretched out on a chaise longue in the shade of a kapok tree, a fly swatter in his hand. He could be heard from time to time muttering unintelligible words or bursting out in exasperation when a stroke of the fly swatter failed to get rid of a particularly pesky insect. Only in the evening did he seem to come back to life, when, surrounded by the youth of the village, he recounted, browsing in the library-museum that was his memory, the historic and legendary events which his people had preserved for generations. He always began in a dull monotone which, little by little, became more lively and heated, gradually vibrating as he got deeper into his narrative; sometimes, in a trembling voice, he would break into song, the melody of which would immediately be taken up by a chorus before flying away to the land of the ancestors whose praise he sang. Then, tired, he would go to bed, only to resume his post under the kapok tree on the following morning. So, when he found out about the dispute between the two families, it was to that spot under the tree that he summoned them, each bringing several calabashes of wine. In fact, the entire village gathered about, some wishing to help reconcile the two families, others as partisans of one side or the other, and the rest in order to take in the show and also benefit from the abundant refreshment which was offered on such occasions.
... Old Lukeni savagely chases the fly that has been pestering him and bats it into his hands. Everyone becomes silent. Rituals and counsels of the ages, let the elders guide us! He opens his palms in the generous gesture of one who receives and of one who gives: "Woman, your complaint."
She speaks, accuses, cries, presses her beloved child to her breast. Her family and partisans approve and support her affirmations with cries and phrases thrown to the wind.
"Man, what do you have to say about this?"
He speaks, accuses, boasts about his descent from a long line of blacksmiths. The relatives of the bride protest, boasting about their own lineage. Everyone's speaking at once; voices are raised, get heated, petty insults, the voices rise higher, the threat of more serious insults hangs in the air, crippling speeches which will proclaim a definitive rupture in the clan; they are balancing on the edge, one more word, a gesture and ... at this moment the old man raises his hand.
The abrupt silence that ensues is broken only by the cackling of hens and roosters chasing each other in the yard, eager to couple. Eyes turn, ears strain; his voice is no longer his voice but another voice charged with the weight of the elders, as priestly as a mask: "Man, and you, woman, I've seen more suns depart for Mpemba and come back again than the two of you together, and all of you here are my children. I am the last direct descendant of those who, a long time ago, left the ancient kingdom and crossed the river when the world was falling completely into chaos. It was my father who chose, next to the great river, the location of this village which he named Lubituku, the rebirth, while others pressed on, fleeing toward the sea ..." He pauses for a moment to allow the wind to carry his words into their earlobes, into their hearts. "Do you know what precipitated this chaos? Well, it was because of the clans, the blood-lines, the families, who fought, killed each other in competition for the throne; clans which made and unmade alliances with the whim of the wind, men who went so far as to make pacts with strangers against their own people. My father chose this place so that our clan might start from scratch. Believe me, it pains me to see all this starting again because of a wicked quarrel ..." He speaks for a long time, asking questions without answers, giving answers to unasked questions, distributing blame and praise; he goes back to the dawn of History, returns to the present, questions the ancestors, the world, the seasons, the Earth, describes the colors of the rainbow, and finally comes back to the village, to the clan, to the child: "... one of our ancestors, one of the greatest, the one who overthrew the powerful, I've mentioned Mankunku, he had green eyes. Thanks to his glow-in-the-dark eyes, he had vision which penetrated bodies and read hearts and souls; he could study the looks of wild beasts at night, dazzle those of owls, track down day-blind sorcerers. It's an honor for us to have this child with eyes green as palm fronds, because he's really Mankunku who has returned to us."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Fire of Origins by Emmanuel Dongala, Lillian Corti. Copyright © 2001 Emmanuel Dongala. Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
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