Cruel City. Mongo Beti
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those whippings makes her all the more precious.
“Everything she was became clear to me the first time I suffered. My mother had registered me at the city school. From then on I was away from her five days a week. That day, I cried in a way I’ll never cry again.” He leaned over and spat on the floor. “I finally got used to this new existence: but in the beginning it was very difficult; because of my mother’s jealousy I wasn’t used to being around other children. At school, I was stubborn, gloomy, timid, always close to tears. This always annoyed my playmates and led to frequent punishment . . .
“Every Saturday, my mother came to the city. On Sunday, she’d take me to mass, where I’d just yawn. She would leave at the end of the day, but not without a few tender words, that she loved me, that she constantly thought of me, and that she prayed God that nothing bad would happen. Nevertheless, without my knowing it, I was growing up, getting tougher. I was becoming a man. I had already begun to think less frequently about my mother. I had other worries. Her visits, her words, her piety, began to embarrass me. She was fully aware of the changes happening in me. But, precisely because of my age, her sense of propriety prevented her from criticizing me for certain things. How she must have suffered! I only figured this out much later.
“I had been laboring away for eight years in their school, planting, harvesting potatoes, never doing what one normally does at school. Finally, they decided that I was too old and they kicked me out, without a diploma of course.
“Because my mother had stopped visiting, I hadn’t seen her in a while. Once I was reunited with her, I could barely recognize her. She was already ill with the strange sickness that continues to drain the life out of her. She had sacrificed too much in raising me. And I had given her so little thought! If she remained in this hostile country among my father’s half-brothers, people who despised her because they knew she didn’t have any respect for them, it was for me.” Once more, he leaned over and spat on the floor. “To think that she could have returned to her native country where she had relatives. But no, my father wanted me to take up the family land in Bamila. She didn’t have the right to leave, to deprive me of my own land. Frankly, I was wracked with remorse. Thinking back, I imagine her bent over in the baking sun, resolutely scratching the earth with a miniature hoe or going to the market loaded down with a basket of vegetables; all this for me, and I had forgotten her so quickly . . .
“I wanted to redeem myself. I started arguments with those I thought had made her life difficult since my father’s death. I was strong . . . The result? Everyone in the village hates me now, and I’m glad. Nothing is greater than the love of a mother for her child. Perhaps I’m exaggerating; but my mother loved me too much for me to think otherwise.”
He paused at length. His chest suddenly expanded more than usual and he let out a violent breath. Seated at the very edge of the bed she continued to observe him with the same curiosity tinged with reserve.
“It’s true. My mother will soon be dead. When that happens I’ll simply go to the city. It isn’t that I want my mother to die. No, that’s not what I want. Still, she’ll be dead soon. And then I won’t be able to continue living here; there won’t be any reason for it. I’ll leave the country, the village, and I’ll go try my luck in town.”
“What will you do in the city?”
“I’ll try to work. But don’t be misled; it goes without saying that I won’t marry you. I won’t disobey my mother even if she’s dead. The dead walk among us. It’s true that I haven’t been a model son, but at least in that respect. . . .”
“And the kid? Does your mother like her?”
“Well, she came to the house, my mother took a look at her; all she said was, ‘She’s a beautiful woman.’ That’s it. She doesn’t particularly like her.”
She was panting a little, as if she’d run to catch up with Banda, who she sensed was irrevocably escaping her grasp. The same person she always thought of as a big baby was now crushing her. Their eyes locked. She commented without much conviction:
“Would you really pay that much for that miserable waif?”
His stare was almost severe, almost condescending as he answered her.
“The fact is that I like her . . . Don’t you get it, my child? It’s because of my mother. She wants me to wed before she dies. It will be her dying joy. I can’t deny her that pleasure. And since this is the only woman that my mother hasn’t explicitly rejected . . . “
Outside, the morning was already bright with sunshine and blue sky. Banda was suddenly ready to leave . . .
“Tomorrow,” he announced, “I’m going to the city to sell my cocoa to the Greeks. I hope those sons of thieves will give me enough money for the business I have in mind. On the off chance that you needed something . . . “
Without really knowing how, she understood that it was finally over. She didn’t express any particular need.
Now alone, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for herself. That brat really wasn’t the woman he needed.
2
What has become of the city of Tanga since the events described in this story? As if anything could really happen in so few years! Today, everything is racing ahead in Africa, yet what upheavals could the city have possibly experienced? One can only hope for some manner of change; it would simply be too painful to accept such downtrodden people unless the city were marching boldly toward a less ferocious destiny; unless it were feverishly crossing a night that will soon give way to the sharp brightness of day.
At that time, Tanga certainly looked like other cities in the country: corrugated iron, white walls, red gravel streets, lawns, and farther out, scattered about with no apparent order, little mud huts roofed with dull thatch, naked children in the mud, or on the grass of the courtyard, with housewives on the stoop. Yet, upon arriving in Tanga, the astonished visitor might say, though perhaps only to himself, “There’s something different about this city!” Tanga didn’t lack for distinction.
Imagine an immense clearing in what explorers, geographers, and journalists like to call the equatorial rainforest. Picture, in the middle of this clearing, a large hill bordered by smaller ones. Tanga, or what was in reality two Tangas, sat on the opposing flanks of this central rise. The commercial and administrative Tanga sat on one, while the other— the foreign—Tanga occupied the steep and narrow southern flank. This latter part of the city was cut off from the nearby forest by a deep dark river spanned by a reinforced concrete bridge. The river was one of Tanga’s main attractions, a kind of permanent circus. One only had to look and wait. Soon, a houseboat would sweep into view upstream. It would slide softly through the water, one man standing in the bow and one in the stern. Each would lift a long, a very long pole: each in turn would plunge that pole down into the water until it hit bottom. Then they pushed off with all their might, thereby moving the vessel along.
Inside the boat, bulging bags were piled up against the bamboo railing; a woman squatting on the deck washed tattered clothes next to a smoking kitchen fire. The crowd amassed on the bridge never got tired of this spectacle; these huts mounted on lashed-together canoes had traveled hundreds of kilometers. The craft would come heavily to rest on the sand, one next to the other.
Sometimes it was enormous logs of wood that had been lashed together. These rafts likewise came from far away. These were steered by men, usually naked, who were superbly indifferent to the catcalls that drifted down from the bridge. They calmly maneuvered their craft up to the log station. Once they had arrived, one of the two cranes stationed on the wharf would clatter into action. Panting and grinding, rolling along its track, it moved toward the river. Then it stopped and leaned dangerously over the water; it finally came upright again with a log clenched in its teeth. Then it turned and was gone. It was a monstrous object. It would be hard to imagine anything uglier.
This machine made an elephant look handsome. The crane proceeded to pile the logs in a lot where one could hear the angry snap of axes smoothing off the tree trunks, rounding out their rough edges, reducing them to dimensions fit for the