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1. a pop quintet in the
south of the country released a catchy song describing,
in the Bantu dialect of the region, the trouble that
occurs when a man sleeps with his brother’s wife.
The national radio station played it continuously, the
disc was rapidly pirated and sold on the streets of
the capital, and within two weeks the song issued from
every bar and shop in the country. Men whistled it on
the streets. Mothers sang their children to sleep with
it. It even penetrated the expatriate community, normally
immune to the local rhythms, and was played in the embassies,
the expensive restaurants.
The members of the quintet, wrapped up at the time in
a busy concert schedule complete with ecstatic all-night
parties where the song was placed on repeat and allowed
to play for hours, became the victims of hate mail and
low-scale vandalism. At first they thought it the work
of kids and malcontents, individuals jealous of their
popularity and spiteful enough to want to tarnish it.
Soon it became apparent that a larger problem existed.
The lyrics to the song, innocent in the southern dialect
in which they were composed, contained a line that,
when translated into the dialect of the northern tribes,
seemed to insult the sexual capacities of the northern
men and incite the southern tribes to violence. The
quintet issued a statement on the national television
station explaining that none of the members of the group
spoke the northern language and all alternate interpretations
of their song were therefore unintentional.
At the time the country was preparing for a general
election and was divided both politically and geographically.
The southerners held most of the offices in the government
and owned the nicest homes in the capital, located in
the south. The discontented northerners were mostly
subsistence farmers. The northern-based opposition party
mobilized a protest, and their supporters traveled three
days by bus to picket the streets of the capital. They
claimed that the song was unreasonably popular. It was
supported, they claimed, by either the southern politicians
or the southern witch doctors, both of whom were equally
untrustworthy. They showed video of masses of young
people dancing frantically. Their own witch doctors
testified to the power of the song’s insidious
bass line. They demanded that it be banned from radio
play and all existing copies be destroyed. There were
minor skirmishes that the police dispersed without difficulty.
The house of the quintet’s drummer was burned
to the ground, but no one was injured.
The president issued a statement saying that the government
had played no role in the popularity of the song. It
was just an excellent song. He went on vacation to Australia.
During the following month the song, like all songs,
slowly faded away. The northerners, short on money and
perhaps realizing the ridiculousness of their position,
likewise dissipated. The elections were held three months
later without incident. The lead singer of the quintet
ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the national assembly.
The international press, unable to determine if the
episode was a harmless human-interest story or an example
of the dangerous irrationality of African politics,
ignored the event completely.
2. ALONG A PARTICULARLY BEAUTIFUL
stretch of beach to the northeast of our town there
is a sacred cashew tree. The people native to the area
recognized its power long ago. They built their spirit
house beneath it and made monthly offerings of palm
wine. Only the most respected elders were allowed to
touch the tree, and no one ever climbed it, because
it was said that if a person climbed the tree without
the tree’s consent he would lose his sanity among
the branches.
Several years ago a development company discovered the
beach and entered into negotiations with the locals.
The company was impressed by the cashew tree and planned
to make it the centerpiece of a new resort complex composed
of 14 luxury cabins, a restaurant/bar, a swimming pool
and boating facilities. The cashew tree would be situated
in the courtyard and provide shade for picnic tables
(to be constructed locally).
The population was divided into two groups. The Matavels,
the largest family in the area, claimed ancestral rights
to the beach and proposed to sell to the development
company, provided that a suitable agreement could be
reached. The Matusses, the second largest family, also
claimed the beach and said that selling it was impossible,
that it would represent the death of their local culture.
The families argued for many days. The issue revolved
around the birth order of two brothers, Matavel and
Matusse, both dead for more than 100 years. The family
descended from the older brother would hold ancestral
and legal rights to the land. Both families claimed
that their patriarch had been the firstborn, and the
elders responsible for the village history issued confused
and contradictory statements.
It was decided that the cashew tree should be allowed
to settle the argument. Each family chose a representative
to climb the tree. One would go crazy, one would descend
unchanged. The tree’s will would be determined.
The two young men chosen were best friends, having played
together throughout childhood despite the rivalry of
their families. They arrived at the tree together at
dawn of a hot midsummer day. Their families and neighbors
formed a circle around the tree. The national television
station had been informed in advance and a camera crew
was present to film the two boys climb the tree and
sit together, holding hands, in one of the lower branches.
Throughout the day the boys told each other stories,
the old stories passed down through their grandparents
that told of the astonishing uncertainties of the world.
By noon neither showed signs of madness, and the television
crew went back to the capital. At dusk the boys curled
up together in a crook of the tree and went to sleep.
A few of their family members kept watch from beneath
them. A representative of the development company slept
in a large orange tent just outside the reach of the
tree’s branches.
The boys sat in the tree for a week. They exhausted
all their stories. They grew tired of eating the food
their families brought them, of drinking the sodas,
of listening to the encouraging words. The tree refused
to make a choice, and both remained sane. The boys decided
to speed up the process by fasting. One of them would
eventually grow weak and fall from the tree. The one
that remained would claim victory. For the boys, which
of them fell was of little importance.
After three days the hunger pains became nearly unbearable
but they remained in the tree, still holding hands.
They began to refuse water. After five days of fasting,
two without water, their throats burning and stomachs
clenched, one of the boys, the descendent of Matavel,
counted to three and they both began to hold their breath.
It was unclear to the observers on the ground which
of the boys began to fall first. It mattered little,
since the boys held hands and seemed unable, or unwilling,
to let go of each other. They slumped off the branch
and fell limply to the ground, heads first, landing
in a jumble of broken bones and starved muscles. Both
died within minutes.
The families agreed to give the tree and the length
of beach on which it stands to the development company.
The resort opened last fall. Many of the guests comment
on the tree. Cashew trees do not normally grow near
the ocean. Management forbids the staff from telling
the story of the two boys, but occasionally they break
the policy for one of the more inquisitive guests. On
these occasions the members of the staff like to re-enact
the scene, two of them hopping from the lower branches
and sprawling together on the ground. The guests—and
I have been one of them—rarely know how they are
supposed to feel.
3. A JOURNALIST FRIEND
of mine, the writer of several novels, was on assignment
at an orphanage with the national television station.
He fell in love with one of his subjects. She worked
at the orphanage and was an orphan herself, only 18
years old but with the self-possession that dramatic
loneliness can give. She was the only good thing, he
said, produced by 16 years of civil war.
The difference in their ages was no obstacle in their
culture, but the journalist was sensitive to the international
perspective and regarded his own emotions as foolish,
or, when in the depths of his obsession, depraved. He
watched the film of her relentlessly. He listened to
the tape of their interview until he knew every word,
until her answers to his questions seemed to be the
only possible answers. He thought that, if he could
just have her, if he could know her story and perhaps
be her story, there would be no more questions
to ask. He visited the orphanage five times that month.
The girl, for her part, treated him with the same gentle
empathy that she distributed to the orphans in her charge.
He decided to propose to her, but first invited me to
join him on a visit, wanting, I suppose, the opinion
of a foreigner for either validation or censure. I went,
and I saw why he loved her. She was like one of his
novels: delicate, peaceful, naive, morally clear. The
way she looked at him said that love was not impossible.
But she was also uncomfortable; she was aware of being
evaluated. She saw how the journalist watched me watching
her. The orphans, experts at observation, watched us
all.
She asked for some time to consider his offer, and two
weeks later sent a short note. It said, “I’m
sorry but I can’t.” Requiring explanation,
my friend went to the orphanage, but the girl had quit
the previous week and had not left an address. He took
on more assignments from the television station and
allowed a busy schedule to hide his disappointment.
He did not allow me to speak of her.
It was a surprise, therefore, when three months later
he looked out the fourth-story window of his office
and saw her there, on the pavement looking up, small
and foreshortened, more of an orphan now than she ever
was in the orphanage. When he reached the street, after
rushing blindly down the stairs, she was gone. It was
as if she were a goddess, he said. A minor goddess,
one who wants no sacrifice.
4. THE OLDEST MAN in our
town was also, before his stroke, the best storyteller.
The neighborhood children gathered each day at dusk
to sit in the dirt around his straight-backed chair.
His house is next to mine, and at times I went to crouch
among the children and listen to him chant his stories
in a language I don’t understand. He was spectacular.
He hid inside his hut until the children were assembled,
then limped out, bent over his cane, his eyes on the
dirt, looking all of his 90-odd years. It was an act.
He sat on the edge of his chair, collected himself,
allowed the tension to build, and then burst into a
story with the bright eyes of a teenager. He spit and
waved his cane.
He told the old stories: why Rabbit has long ears, how
Snake lost his legs, the importance of love, the first
meeting of Earth and Sky. But he had modern fables as
well. Monkey fell from a speeding train. Crocodile stole
Heron’s cellular telephone. I understood nothing
he said, of course, but I listened to the way his voice
embraced the story and I watched the point of his cane
punch the air. When one of the older children gave me
the translation it always, somehow, was exactly what
I expected.
He was in the hospital for two weeks after the stroke.
At first, perhaps from habit, the children still came
to sit in the dirt of his yard. Other adults tried to
tell stories, but the children complained, cried, beat
the dirt into dust. They wanted the old man.
His daughter, herself an old woman, was unable to deal
with the flood of rowdy children that arrived each night,
demanding to be entertained. She asked for my help.
I have a television that I don’t use. We set it
up in the yard where the old man used to sit and ran
an extension cord into my house. The children gathered
as usual and, while still complaining about the absence
of the elder, seemed to be content with the national
television station.
There was an enormous crowd of children on the day the
old man returned from the hospital. Adults came as well—and
old men that rivaled him in wrinkles and baldness. I
stood in the back. The elder was helped to the chair
by his daughter. The crowd was silent. He began his
favorite story, the one about the contest between the
rat and the frog to see who could hold his breath the
longest, but his words were barely audible, there was
no expression on his face, he slumped in his chair like
a sack of rice. Midway through the story he paused,
and the pause lengthened, and at some point he began
to snore. Some of the children cried.
The old daughter came to me and, with a look that might
have been sadness, perhaps shame, asked for the television
set. I brought it out and set it on a table next to
the sleeping old man. Some of the audience melted away.
Some stayed for the evening news program.
The old man is encouraged to rest as much as possible,
and spends the majority of his day inside his hut. But
he always gets anxious at dusk, and if kept inside becomes
irritable and mutters insults at his relatives. So each
day his daughter helps him outside to sit before the
semicircle of children, in front of and to the side
of the television. He seems happy there, an audience
facing him and blue television light at his back. The
children, understanding that they owe him something,
do not complain that he partially blocks their view
of the screen. |
