The Laughing Cry Read online

  The title of this book in French is Le Pleurer-Rire, first published in Paris by Présence Africaine in 1982.

  © Editions Présence Africaine 1982 on behalf of the author

  First published in English by Readers International Inc. USA and Readers International, London. Editorial inquiries to London office at 8 Strathray Gardens, London NW3 4NY England. US/Canadian inquiries to N. American Book Service Office, P.O. Box 909, Columbia Louisiana 71418-0909 USA.

  English translation copyright © Readers International Inc. 1987

  2017 update. All rights reserved

  Readers International gratefully acknowledges the help of the Google Book Project in producing this digital edition.

  Cover art and design by Jan Brychta

  Catalog records for this book are held by the Library of Congress and The British Library

  ISBN 9780930523336

  E-BOOK ISBN 9781887378116

  It’s no use my crying, the laughter will always slip out somehow.

  Beaumarchais

  Whoever writes the history of his times must expect reproaches for all that he has said and all that he has not.

  Voltaire, Letter to Valentin Philippe de Rocheret, 14 April 1772

  The argument of the following pages draws all its force from the fact that the story is entirely true, since I have imagined it from beginning to end.

  Boris Vian, The Froth of Days

  Contents

  The Laughing Cry

  About the Translator

  About Readers International

  BE WARNED

  Our first impulse was to ban these pages, to have them shredded and burned at the foot of the Palace steps by the executioner of the High Court, for their impudent expressions and charges, so scandalous and injurious to the High Magistrature in general and that of Africa in particular. But fifteen years of experience have wisely turned us aside from such excesses. Banned books always sell, under the counter, better than good ones. And we hold files on authors who, just to make a reputation at little cost and get better sales for their goods, cynically seek the publicity conferred by the censor’s decrees.

  Our information services have, besides, supplied us with the names of many of them, whose secret dream is that one day they will hear the air hostesses at some African airport caressing the ears of disembarking passengers with their announcement that SUCH-AND-SUCH AFRICA, AFRICA EXPOSED, LONG LIVE THE AFRICANS . . . and his forthcoming work are forbidden throughout the territory.

  Our second thought was to employ a more elegant and centuries-old procedure: to buy up all the copies from the publisher and burn them under cover of a bush fire. But, all things considered, that would merely be to enrich in record time a wretch who really deserves a dungeon, a few good lashes and oblivion.

  Thus, at the hour when Africa, confronting her historic destiny, has need of heroes exalting our positive moral values and our ancestral cosmology; at the hour when you, our readers, demand a literature of diversion; our esteemed writers use their unbridled imaginations to paint Africa and the Africans in the blackest colours — but in a manner which has nothing to do with negritude.

  If a few of them can be excused as the playthings of a vast plot orchestrated by obscure forces* that seek to spread subversion to every corner of our dear continent and introduce foreign, destructive ideologies, there are certainly others (anarcho-decadent aesthetes) who have mastered the most primitive methods of mass psychology, and employ them in the most Machiavellian way to increase tenfold the profits of the poison they sell.

  While we expect from them spiritual nourishment, they unceasingly glut themselves with the basest material concerns.

  But the people of Africa will know how to judge for themselves how these freethinkers squander the riches that the schools have generously showered on them, thanks to the sacrifices of their fathers and mothers in our countryside. We trust that they will know how to draw lessons from this and to deploy them in the elucidation of coming generations.

  That is why, in conformity with our semi-secret Resolution No. 006/79, voted by a simple majority during our recent historic conference at Bobo Dioulasso, we shall no longer fall into their trap.

  From now on, we shall allow publication and sale of all works.

  In exchange, every book, every film, every record, every cassette that ought to be struck by our interdiction for the safeguard of our morals, will be preceded by an introduction; written, visual or oral; prepared or delivered by Us.

  So, on the present occasion, for THE LAUGHING CRY.

  Africa begs for clarity, and this book brings confusion. It misleads curious spirits, throughout some two hundred fifty pages, in the pursuit of false problems.

  No, all sane readers know that no President exists so flippant, burlesque and cruel as Daddy.

  The heroic masses of Africa would not tolerate it, and the other peoples of the world, in the interests of justice and peace, would help them to overthrow him.

  Daddy is the image of a black president such as the racist and nostalgic whites, still dreaming of a vanished colonialism, imagine him. They hope, by means of this gross example, both to demonstrate the incapacity of the blacks to govern themselves without barbarity, and to discourage all forms of cooperation between the developed world and ours, so as to let us founder in misery. The African writers who lend their hands to this game hope by doing so to hasten the fall of certain regimes, not seeing that they are really preparing a new bed for the colonialism of old, which will find it all the easier to reconquer us and recover its old privileges.

  No, Daddy does not exist, cannot exist, in these days and on this continent. He is the fruit of a macabre imagination that is close to frenzy: a comic strip character!

  We even suspect the author to be a white man who has had the chance to spend some time in Africa. An African worthy of the name would never dare to write such trash.

  A true son of Africa would never describe his milieu and epoch with such detachment.

  We are dealing with an unscrupulous forger, whose work is stitched together with threads . . . WHITE ONES, for sure.

  Real Africans will know how to laugh, anyway, at the inauthenticity of these characters and situations.

  Finally, thank God, this gutter style cannot seduce the amateur from good art. Yes, strictly speaking, this is how we talk in our streets, but not how one should write about it. THE LAUGHING CRY is an offence to good taste.

  If by chance, nevertheless, some feeble and honest souls should allow themselves to be hypnotised by the sentimentality, the subjectivity, the malice and partisan spirit of the author, we know we can count upon the wisdom of our literary critics and the vigilance of our masses to raise a wave of counter-propaganda that will obliterate, beneath a sea of sanity, this drop of anti-African poison.

  So that Africa may live as herself, or die.

  For the Secretary-General and Assistant Secretary-General in Charge of Written Works Anasthasie MOPEKISSA

  Inter-African Association of Francophone Censors**

  * * *

  * Here, some would want to describe this plot as “imperialist”, and a majority as “communist’”. The adjective“obscure”is thus a compromise chosen to preserve African unity.

  ** This association is an independent and non-governmental organization. It draws its resources from its own contributors, from gifts and from various legacies.

  The Laughing Cry

  Did she notice my moment of hesitation when entering the yard? Usually, when I come home at that hour, Elengui is still asleep and if I clumsily let the door of our bedroom squeak a bit, she just sighs, turns over and plunges back into her land of dreams.

  That morning, prey to some strange agitation, she was prowling up and down the verandah.

  Mam’hé! What’s going on?

  She shouted my name.

  Some misfortune?

  Her head against my breast, she was gasping heavily, as if just finishing a race.

  Who the devil can have told her?

  I let her pull me over to our small sitting room.

  “What, what, what?”

  The radio was bawling out some vile melody.

  Oh, to be a soldier in the Marines . . .

  Or some rubbish like that.

  The wake was held in a little alley in Moundié: the Avenue Général-Marchand. I recall arriving at the place and beginning, as always on these occasions, by dropping a few coins in the collection bowl before scribbling in the book of condolences. The niece of the deceased was careering about the yard with a broom in her hands, driving off the clouds that threatened to chase away the friends who had come to honour the dead man. She forced a passage for herself between the mats scattered on the ground, which were bordered with sprawling women, wrapped up in their cloths. Their faces all fixed in a scowl, they were recovering the energies they had used up during the day. Some were accompanied by their babies, who sucked half-asleep, indifferent to the hubbub, the drums and the mosquitoes.

  Young voices were singing the dirges to the rhythm of the drums and in a language other than mine — girls sitting on the floor in the small vestibule. Simply clad and with their feet bare, they each had a headscarf negligently tied. Whoever speaks one of our languages can understand them all, and I could easily have followed the songs of these nubile maidens. But a song always s
ounds better if we don’t understand the words.

  Farewell, my brother, farewell. Death has stiffened you like a stone, éhé, éhé, but we are with you here, for the journey. You lived among us and we spared you only a few rare moments, éhé, éhé. Each of us carries alone his own huge world, éhé, éhé. Today, in your death, who among the great of the earth is more venerated than you? Éhé, éhé, éhé . . .

  As for the old women, they had their shoulders bare, with wrappers tied under the armpits, their hair and faces liberally powdered with dust. Relieving each other, they came and went untiringly, in groups of two or three, singing incantations to the ancestors above the grave rhythm of the drums, in the language of the tribe. The great piece of orange up there in the neon-blue gazed impassively at the movement of their slow convoy of dusty cotton.

  A sacrificed frog, wrapped in a cellophane bag, had been nailed above the doorway. The spirits had been offered their due for holding back the rain.

  I went to sit among the menfolk, in the midst of a group of friends. If you are not among friends, those we call friends in moments like these, the subject of conversation always changes immediately.

  “Those Vietnamese, old boy,” said one of them, turning up his thumb. “The Americans can stuff their B-52s.”

  From that point, someone else developed an argument too complicated for me to recall now. And a third contributed:

  “No, in all of that, the one I like is Mao. Un-bel-iev-able! A genius! See how he controls that Cultural Revolution over there!”

  “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!”

  “Yeah, you’re right, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution . . . And the others don’t understand a bit. They think it’s just anarchy, whereas he’s always there in the wings, pulling the strings, organising the smallest details, always gaining ground. As long as Africa still isn’t capable of . . .”

  “Exactly. We must cut the umbilical cord.”

  “Really! Otherwise we . . .”

  “Just corrupted, totally,” (wrinkling his lips with contempt).

  “Agreed. But those Chinese are real workers. Here among us . . . ”

  It was old Tiya who had just cut in sharply. The intellectuals didn’t even bother to answer him. They allowed themselves to share a smile. I found their disrespect wicked. But the old man was a match for them. He gave them another smile in return. A smile from another world, full of its own mystery.

  The barrage of military music which, since dawn, had kept us company, was suddenly cut short. First came a torrent of static, then something like the call of a muezzin, then the radio thrust its speech into every hearth of a town suddenly turned to stone.

  Day of anger, day of wrath, the Guinarou growled. The hour was critical, and the demagogic politics of Polépolé, which . . . I could easily fall into parody; but you have all heard, or read, a thousand and one patched-up speeches sewn on the same pattern.

  The tones of a schoolmaster, carefully distinguishing the short from the long a on the one hand; the short from the long o on the other hand; and, finally, the i from the u. I could even imitate the voice for you:

  As a re-

  sult the Na-tio-nal

  Arm-ed Forces

  composed of . . .

  Mam’hé, this is no time for jokes!

  Someone crossed himself close beside me and saw the night fall at his feet. From now on we must be on our guard, salute, chin-up, half-turn. Quick march! Lef, rai; lef, rai; lef, rai; lef! Halt! Half-turn left! No, right.

  Hell, as for me, I’d better get back to work.

  “You want to get killed?”

  “What should I say to the boss, then? I’m not one of your faint-hearted blacks, Elengui. Not one of those who take advantage of the lightest shower . . . ”

  “You want to get killed?”

  “Kill me?” (I looked at her disdainfully). “What have their quarrels to do with me? Have I eaten any of Polépolé’s money?”

  “But those men in berets, Mam’hé!” She clapped her hands thrice.

  “Listen, Elengui, you just don’t understand. What does my boss care about these local affairs? It’s not Uncle Whitey’s problem, this business.”

  To tell the truth, Elengui unsettled me. It’s for the men to command, but we shouldn’t ignore the presentiments of women. Delicious animals that they are, they can sniff trouble coming.

  Bwakamabé? Colonel Bwakamabé Na Sakkadé? Yéhé! A son of my own tribe . . . And a whole clutch of officers with him. Known, unknown, known — all of them big shots from now on. And Yabaka among them.

  So the youngsters went on with their international politics. My word, what a lot they knew about what goes on in the big world! I’m certain our journalists, Aziz Sonika included, have never known half as much.

  And they spouted philosophy in terms much too complicated for me to follow, using lots of obscure words that all end in -isms or -ists. Real scholars, I’m telling you. They kept citing names that escape me now. They kept attacking France and the Uncles. They insulted General de Gaulle. There I don’t agree with them, because Papa de Gaulle . . . But don’t dream of speaking up, when you don’t know the jargon.

  Old Tiya, now, he knows. And he told them he didn’t like it. And he spelled out all the things General de Gaulle had done for the country. And I was happy to hear the old fellow talking so. Really, he knew the arguments all right. But those intellectuals there, instead of respecting the age and wisdom of Tiya, and saying “thank you, Father,” went on pressing the contrary. Ah! that school-learning of theirs. They claimed that de Gaulle was a pater . . . a paternalist, I think, or something else that sounded like that. And they went on arguing, arguing, arguing — but it was all very complicated. Too complicated to be expressed in Kibotama.

  “You walk on the whiteman’s tarred road. And the soles of your feet don’t know the feel of our own mud.”

  One of them pulled a face, as if to say that the old man had made a remark in bad taste. But the others admitted he had a point.

  “Yeah, you’re right there, old man. But we were educated by the Uncles. It’s good to know one’s enemy.”

  “And France is our enemy?”

  The intellectuals insisted that France was indeed our enemy, and that we were all alienated.

  “Alienated? You want them to throw us all into an asylum, then? Go on!”

  The young men protested.

  “Wo! you certainly said ‘alienated’. Yes, yes! Here are the witnesses.”

  The conversation was getting serious. Very serious. Among us, when someone is treated as mad, it’s like naming his mother’s privates. Fortunately, the young men kept cool and showed some sign of repentance. Then they explained again. And Tiya calmed down the other elders and sorted everything out. Only then did they calm down, because they had confidence in Tiya.

  Now the conversation turned back to France. The young men pressed their point. France was not our friend. We were simply her neo-colony.

  “But we’re independent now. What more do you want? Anyway, you are the most alienated ones.”

  Then an intellectual explained that they were not responsible for that situation. It was the neo-colonial environment! Yes, the neo-colonial environment! Polépolé and his clique! The neocolonial environment! The student added that when they made the revolution, they would break with France without a pang, but that it wasn’t yet the revolution, even though Polépolé and his clique were always talking about it. The neo-colonial environment!

  Old Tiya concluded by remarking that blacks were indeed blacks, and everyone burst out laughing like a forestful of monkeys. Not so loud as that: it was a wake, after all. But loud enough, anyway, for everyone to understand that, even there, one couldn’t spend the whole night just pulling long faces like a Djassikini totem.

  I left the wake towards midnight. The young intellectuals also left then, and I still remember, as if it were only yesterday, how they exchanged instructions while parting. No one was to phone the others at home that night. Then they all laughed. And I, who caught their words in passing, also laughed, for I was in the same position: we were all going to sleep somewhere, but none of us in the right bed! They were bandits, and so was I, all our hearts swelling with joy as much as with pride. As the elders say, to have only one woman is like having only one cord to your kora. And anyway, where’s the sin? It’s almost an obligation, if you’ve married your wife in church. As for me, I married Elengui according to native custom, bringing wine, whiskey, a machete and several cloths, besides satisfying the other demands of her blessed family, who obliged me to get a loan from the Development Bank. A loan it took months to repay.