Ambiguous Adventure (17 page)

The room was becoming completely filled. The new arrivals sat down in silence. Then the whole house became full of people, and people were sitting in the neighboring streets. They were running up from all sides. Soon the entire village was no more than an immense assemblage of men, seated there in silence.

“Master, take me with you, do not leave me here,” the fool was whispering, as he cradled the dying man with a slow movement of his head and shoulders.

“My God, I thank Thee—for this grace which Thou hast bestowed upon me,” the feeble voice went on, “to sustain me with Thy presence, to fill me with Thyself as Thou art doing now, even before I die.”

“Hush.… Be still. Be still now, they are listening to you,” and the fool placed a blunt hand across the dying man’s mouth.

At the same time he looked around with tear-drenched eyes, as if to assure himself that no one had heard.

No person in the assemblage, not even the chief of the Diallobé, who was crouched close against the teacher and lost in prayer, would have dared to intervene to push the fool aside.

Suddenly the teacher stiffened, pronounced the name of God, and seemed slowly to relax. The fool laid him on the ground, left the room without a glance at anyone, and went out.

Then, outside, the great funeral
tabala
^*
sounded. The silent village knew that the teacher had ceased to live.

No one saw the fool at the burial. He reappeared only on the following day, calm and once more serene, denying that the teacher was dead, yet refusing nevertheless to go to visit him at his house, as he had been doing every day.

When Samba Diallo came home, some little time after this, the fool postponed a call upon him until after the delegations from all parts of the country had gone away. He arrived alone, and found Samba Diallo reclining on a rattan couch in the courtyard of the chief’s house, surrounded by members of his family. He paused some steps away, took a long look at the young man, whom he was seeing for the first time, then approached him and sat down on the ground.

“Teacher of the Diallobé, you have come back? That is good,” the fool said.

There was laughter around them.

“But no, I am not the teacher of the Diallobé. I am Samba Diallo.”

“No,” said the fool. “You are the teacher of the Diallobé.”

He kissed Samba Diallo’s hand.

“Nothing can be done about it,” said the chief, smiling.

Samba Diallo drew back his hand, which he had felt to be damp. He raised the fool’s bent head, and saw that he was weeping.

“He has been like that since the teacher’s death,” said the chief. “He cries all the time.”

Samba Diallo stroked the head of the little man seated on the ground.

“I have come from the country of the white men,” he said to him. “It seems that you have been there. Then how was it?”

There was an impassioned gleam in the fool’s eyes.

“Truly? You want me to tell you?”

“Yes, tell me.”

“Master, they have no more bodies, they have no more flesh. They have been eaten up by objects. In order that they may move, their bodies are shod with large rapid objects. To nourish themselves, they put iron objects between their hands and their mouths. That is true!” he added, abruptly, turning with an aggressive air toward those present, as if he had been contradicted.

“It is indeed true,” said Samba Diallo, thoughtfully.

The fool, calmed, looked at him, smiling.

ON THE HORIZON, THE SETTING SUN HAD DYED the heavens with a tone of blood-stained purple. Not a breath of air stirred the motionless trees. The only sound to be heard was the great voice of the river, reverberating from its dizzily steep banks. Samba Diallo bent his gaze toward this voice, and saw the clay cliff in the distance. He remembered that in his childhood he had believed for a long time that this immense crevasse divided the universe into two parts, which were united by the river.

The fool, who was some distance ahead of him, retraced his steps, took him by the arm, and pulled him along.

Suddenly he realized where the fool was leading him. His heart began to beat fast. This was indeed the little road where his naked feet had been scratched, in the old days, by the thorns. Here was indeed the same ant-hill deserted by its inhabitants. At the turn of the road, this would be—this would be Old Rella and the City of the Dead.

Samba Diallo paused. The fool wanted to push him on and, not succeeding in this, let go of him and ran ahead by himself. Samba Diallo followed slowly. The fool passed Old Rella’s renovated mausoleum, ran across the tombs, and abruptly crouched down close to one of them.

Samba Diallo stopped short, motionless. He saw that the fool was praying.

“You—you have not prayed,” remarked the little fellow, panting.

It was the same tomb, the same orientation, the same little oblong heap of earth, as all the others about it. Nothing distinguished the mound where the teacher of the Diallobé lay from the other mounds all around.

Samba Diallo felt that a great lump was rising within him, that it was submerging him, moistening his eyes and his nostrils, making his mouth tremble. He turned around. The fool had just planted himself before him, and now took hold of his chin, violently.

“People are not obliged to pray. Do not tell me to pray, do not tell me any more, ever,” Samba Diallo said.

The fool scrutinized the other man’s face, then, slowly, smiled.

“Yes, teacher of the Diallobé. You are right. You are still tired. When you have rested from
their
fatigue, you will pray.”

Samba Diallo’s thought was an invocation:

“Teacher of the Diallobé, my master, I know that you have no longer a body of flesh and blood, that you no longer have eyes open in the darkness. I know, but thanks to you I am not afraid.” His thought went on:

“I know that the earth has absorbed that miserable body which I used to see only a short time ago. I do not believe, as you had taught me when I was a child, that Azrael, the angel of death, would have cleaved through the earth beneath, to come in search of you. I do not believe that down there, underneath you, there is a great hole through which you have passed with your terrible companion. I do not believe—I do not believe very much any more, of what you had taught me. I do not know what
I believe. But the extent is so vast, of what I do not know, and what I ought indeed to believe.…”

Samba Diallo sat down on the ground.

“How I wish that you might still be here, to oblige me to believe, and to tell me what! Your burning faggots on my body.… I remember and I understand. Your Friend, the One who has called you to Him does not offer Himself. He subdues Himself. At the price of pain. That I understand, again. That is perhaps why so many people, here and elsewhere, have fought and are dead, joyously.… Yes, perhaps at bottom that is it.… In dying amid the great clamor of battles waged in the name of your Friend, it is themselves whom all these fighters want to banish, so that they may be filled with Him. Perhaps, after all.…”

Samba Diallo felt that someone was shaking him. He raised his head.

“The shadows are falling. See, it is twilight. Let us pray,” said the fool, gravely.

Samba Diallo made no response.

“Let us pray, Oh, let us pray,” the fool implored. “If we do not pray immediately, the hour will pass, and neither of the two will be content.”

“Who?”

“The teacher and his Friend. Let us pray, Oh, let us pray!”

He had seized Samba Diallo at the neck of his boubou, and was shaking him.

“Let us pray, speak, let us pray.”

The veins of his face were standing out. His visage had become haggard.

Samba Diallo pushed him from him and got up to go away.

“You cannot go away like that, without praying!” the fool cried. “Stop, Oh stop! You cannot!”

“Perhaps, after all,” Samba Diallo was thinking. “To constrain God.… To give Him the choice, between His return within your heart and your death, in the name of His glory.”

“You cannot go away. Stop, Oh stop! Master—”

“He cannot evade the choice, if I constrain Him truly, from the bottom of my heart, with all I have of sincerity.…”

“Tell me that you will pray at last tomorrow, and I will leave you.…”

As he spoke, the fool had begun to walk along behind Samba Diallo, burrowing feverishly into the depths of his frock-coat.

“Thou wouldst not know how to forget me like that. I will not agree, alone for us two, to suffer from Thy withdrawal. I will not agree. No.…”

The fool was in front of him.

“Promise me that you will pray tomorrow.”

“No—I do not agree.…”

Without noticing, he had spoken these words aloud.

It was then that the fool drew his weapon, and suddenly everything went black around Samba Diallo.

QUITE CLOSE BY, A VOICE SPOKE:

“My presence disturbs him now. Delicious welcome which the parched valley offers to the stream when it comes back. You are rejoicing in the stream.”

“I was waiting for you. I have waited for a long time. I am ready.”

“Are you at peace?”

“I am not at peace. I have waited for you for a long time.”

“You know that I am the darkness.”

“I have chosen. I have chosen you, my brother of darkness and of peace. I was waiting for you.”

“The darkness is profound, but it is peace.”

“I wish for it.”

“Appearance and its reflections sparkle and crackle. Shall you not regret appearance and its reflections?”

“I wish for you.”

“Say, you will regret nothing?”

“No. I am tired of this closed circle. My thought always returns upon myself, reflected by appearance, when, seized by disquiet, I have thrown it out like a tentacle.”

“But it returns to you. Toward whatever side you turn, it is your own countenance that you see, nothing but that. You alone fill the closed circle. You are king.…”

“The mastery of the appearance is appearance.”

“Then come. Forget, forget the reflection. Expand. You are spread and span. See how the appearance cracks and yields. See!”

“Farther, farther still!”

“Light and sound, form and light, all that is opposed and aggressive, blinding suns of exile, you are all forgotten dreams.”

“Where are you? I no longer see you. There is only that turgescence which rises up in me, as the new water does in the river in flood.”

“Be attentive. See what brings about the great reconciliation. The light stirs the darkness, love dissolves hate.…”

“Where are you? I hear nothing, save that echo in me which speaks when you have not finished speaking.”

“Be attentive—for, see, you are reborn to being. There is no more light, there is no more weight, the darkness is no more. Feel how antagonisms do not exist.”

“Farther away, still farther.…”

“Feel how thought no longer returns to you like a wounded bird, but is unfurled infinitely, no sooner have you dared it!”

“Wisdom, I sense your approach! Singular light of the depths, you are not circumventing, you are penetrating.”

“Be attentive, for here is the truth: you are not that nothing which is confined by your senses. You are the infinite which scarcely holds back what your senses confine. No, you are not that closed disquiet which cries out in the midst of exile.”

“I am two simultaneous voices. One draws back and the other increases. I am alone. The river is rising. I am in its overflow.… Where are you? Who are you?”

“You are entering the place where there is no ambiguity. Be attentive, for here, now, you are arriving. You are arriving.”

“Hail! I have found again the taste of my mother’s milk; my brother who has dwelt in the land of the shadows and of peace, I recognize you. Announcer of the end of exile, I salute you.”

“I am bringing your kingdom back to you. Behold the moment, over which you reign.…”

“The moment is the bed of the river of my thought. The pulsations of the moments have the pulsations of thought; the breath of thought glides into the blowpipe of the moment. In the sea of time, the moment bears the image of the profile of man, like the reflection of the
kailcédrat
on the sparkling surface of the lagoon. In the fortress of the moment, man in truth is king, for his thought is all-powerful, when it is. Where it has passed, the pure azure crystallizes in forms. Life of the moment, life without age of the moment which endures, in the flight of your élan man creates himself indefinitely. At the heart of the moment, behold man as immortal, for the moment is infinite, when it is. The purity of the moment is made from the absence of time. Life of the moment, life without age of the moment which reigns, in the luminous arena of your duration man unfurls himself to infinity. The sea! Here is the sea! Hail to you, rediscovered wisdom, my victory! The limpidness of your wave is awaiting my gaze. I fix my eyes upon you, and you harden into Being. I am without limit. Sea, the limpidity of your wave is awaiting my gaze. I fix my eyes upon you, and you glitter, without limit. I wish for you, through all eternity.”

The philosophic fiction of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s
Ambiguous Adventure
is sustained by a vision of mankind, and more specifically, of a new African consciousness shaped by the wisdom of Islam and a sensibility that occasionally, very occasionally, suggests the animism of African traditional beliefs: