Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? (10 page)

Another nurse was adamant that Celanire had the power to shed her body like a snake shedding its skin in the undergrowth. One night when the wind and the rain were making the shutters bang, the young girl had entered Celanire's room unexpectedly and had seen a little heap of soft, shapeless flesh and skin in front of the wide-open window. Hiding behind a closet, she had watched as the young woman returned in the early hours of the morning. Her mouth smeared with blood, she had slipped back into her mortal coil and calmly returned to bed. No doubt about it, Celanire was under the spell of powerful
aawabo
.

Can one really believe such nonsense and malicious gossip?

One thing for certain was not a pack of lies; the Home entered six candidates, including four girls, for the native certificate of elementary studies in June. All passed, even the girls, and were immediately hired by the mission schools and the administration. As a recompense for her extraordinary results Thomas de Brabant was to award Celanire the medal for academic excellency, a large bronze medal attached to a purple ribbon. From two o'clock in the afternoon all that Bingerville could muster in the way of civil servants, merchants, missionaries, members of the royal family, cooks, nannies, tarbooshed guards, and militia had gathered on the lawns of the Home out of curiosity and were drinking barley water. People arrived on foot and in fishing canoes from Grand-Bassam and Assinie. In everyone's view, the transformation of the Home in such a short time was pure witchcraft. How could the palms, the orchard, and the bamboo groves have grown so fast? How could the fruit trees be loaded with so much fruit in such a short time? Lemons as big as grapefruit! Mangoes that looked as though they had been grafted! Avocados as heavy as pears! All eyes were turned on Celanire and Tanella. At a quick glance they could have passed for twins. They were the same height, same weight, same velvety black-black skin. They were dressed identically except for the bouffant scarf of raw silk tied around Celanire's neck. They wore the same Soir de Paris perfume, and their makeup and hairstyles were identical. Despite this resemblance, it was obvious that, between the two, Celanire was the leader and the brains while Tanella, in spite of her unusual, murderous act, simply followed her instructions. It was also obvious that Celanire was the less infatuated of the two. Tanella looked up to Celanire as if she were the holy of holies or the Eucharist, and Celanire was overjoyed to be the object of such boundless admiration.

The ceremony opened with the Home's choir singing Vivaldi's
Gloria
a cappella. Then the governor gave his speech and pinned the medal on the oblate's breast, followed by the official embrace in the name of France. The pupils bellowed out “La Marseillaise.” There was a ripple of applause, and the celebrations began. The nurses, dressed in yellow-patterned blue wrappers, handed around petits fours, salted almonds, and Job cigarettes.

It was only once the sun began to bleed over the lagoon that the guests, stuffed to bursting, made up their minds to set off home. The inhabitants of Bingerville had scarcely finished grinding, chewing, and masticating the pittance of the memory of that lovely afternoon when two Ebriés, out fishing one night, hauled up the body of Madame Desrussie. They first thought a cayman, a sacred animal, had got tangled in their nets and were already thanking Heibonsha, the water god, for their miraculous catch, promising prosperity for many years to come, when they recognized the unfortunate widow. Her face had been beaten to a pulp. In fact they could only identify her officially from her dentition, a masterpiece fashioned by the colony's only dentist, a soldier stationed at Assinie. This event caused quite a stir.

The widow was born Azilin Dossou. The Dossous, however, a well-known family in Adjame-Santey, had converted to Catholicism very early on, given two catechists to the mission, and changed the pagan name of their daughter to Rose. Rose, the jewel of the mission, had been one of the first to learn how to sew, read, and write. She had also been one of the first to enter the bed of a Frenchman. He had never taken the trouble to “regularize” her situation, even though everyone called her Madame Desrussie. Yet there was scarcely time to wonder whether it had been a suicide or an accidental drowning before another event followed almost immediately afterward that fired people's imagination. They learned that Thomas de Brabant was to slip a wedding ring on Celanire Pinceau's finger. Notified by his services, the governor-general of French West Africa cabled the Ministry for the Colonies in Paris. At that time, marital union between colonial civil servants and “native” women was frankly never heard of. What complicated matters was that Celanire was not a “native.” She was a French citizen from Guadeloupe who spoke French French and rendered remarkable services to her
metropole
in its civilizing mission. Moreover, she took good care of the unfortunate widowed governor's child. After much debating, the ministry cabled its approval to the governor-general. In Bingerville itself, public opinion was divided: some of the French demanded the “nigger-loving” governor be replaced. Because of the controversy, Thomas's wedding took place in the strictest privacy. Two witnesses: Tanella and Cyrille Sérignac de Pompigny, his right-hand man, an energetic recruiting agent for the new wharfs in Grand-Bassam. A carefully handpicked congregation: four or five district commissioners from the vicinity, all respectably married with their wives. These ladies of noble birth, more often or not with a title, eyed Celanire scornfully, this negress who was marrying their husbands' hierarchical superior and consequently was going to have precedence over them. It was not only her color that infuriated them, but her impudent freshness. Whereas they wilted and yellowed from the heat, the humidity, the fevers and biliousness, she positively glowed. On her wedding day Celanire ignored the tradition of a white bridal gown and dressed all in pink, a pink as pale as cherry blossom during springtime in Osaka. She replaced the traditional bridal veil with a hat veil. Around her neck she wore a wide moiré silk ribbon fastened by a cameo. She looked at Thomas and Tanella in turn as if to say they must love each other as she loved them. In the great drawing room of the governor's palace the servants uncorked bottles of champagne that kindled few bubbles, and Cyrille Sérignac de Pompigny proposed a toast to the happiness of the newlyweds.

The real festivities, however, took place at the Home. After a festive dinner—including Celanire's homemade coconut sorbet—the pupils went up to their dormitories. The nurses then slipped out of their uniforms and got themselves up as they saw fit. Well, almost. No European-style dresses, since Celanire had very set ideas on the matter. In her opinion, an African woman who dresses in the European fashion is like a dish without condiments. Then a gang of Ebriés on their
corvée
hung resin flares from the trees, and the night turned as bright as daylight. Muslim houseboys busied themselves roasting meat and grilling kebabs and legs of lamb. Cooks prepared fresh and saltwater fish, pepper and groundnut stew, and pounded mountains of yams and plantains. For once Christians and pagans alike had a whale of a time until four in the morning.

Ludivine did not attend her papa's second wedding. Just before lights-out, Thomas and Celanire walked into the dormitory, holding hands. Celanire had pushed back her veil, and her eyes gleamed like carbuncles. They sat down beside her bed and informed her of her good fortune. She was going to leave the Home and come and live with them. She was no longer an orphan in this world: she had a new
maman
.

“I did it for you as well,” Thomas kept repeating. “I did it for you.”

People in Bingerville still remember Celanire after so many years as a kaleidoscope of negative facets, whereas as a rule time tends to soften any bitterness. For them there was no doubt she was the “horse” of an evil spirit who had brought nothing but death, mourning, and desolation. Paradoxically, they also judge her as someone who should have been bound by the rules of society. Men think of her as a dangerous feminist. Yet what exactly do they mean by this word, which has so many significations? They cannot forgive her stand against excision. They swear she made the women rebellious, demanding, and disrespectful of the male species. They are particularly outspoken about the center she created for sheltering women who wanted nothing more to do with suitors or husbands. But despite its grand-sounding name, the Refuge of the Good Shepherd, a rickety wattle hut under a straw roof, the center never filled its function. One year it sheltered a group of wives arbitrarily repudiated by their husbands. Another year, a group of battered women. Around 1905 the mission turned it into a native dispensary. Some men go even further and claim that Celanire was a corrupting influence. They expatiate on what went on at the Home but have nothing to prove it. The African woman, they say, must be the eternal keeper of traditions. If she prostitutes herself, society is shaken to its foundations. But was it really a question of prostitution? It seems that the nurses received gifts in exchange for the favors they freely consented to their partners. Some of the French clients were extremely generous. Captain Emile Dubertin, for instance, left his entire estate to Akissi Eboni, who bore him a son. She made the journey to Nantes to receive her inheritance and was very well treated by the Dubertin family, who kept the child. Generally speaking, the generosity of the colonial civil servants allowed the ex-nurses to live the rest of their lives free from financial worries. Relatively well off, therefore, knowing how to read and write, they married into good families and helped form a genuine aristocracy in the country. As for the orphans, they made up the first contingent of teachers in the Ivory Coast. Some of them dabbled in politics and sat on the benches of the National Assembly in Paris.

Above all, nobody would admit that Celanire gave the town a certain character that it has lost only recently in the name of development. Besides the Home for Half-Castes, she transformed the sumptuous Governor's Palace, which was a constant reminder of Charlotte's death. A mournful and morose building, it had become a warehouse for storing pell-mell the packages of medicines, books for the mission school, and spare parts shipped from France for the factories. Thomas only occupied a small part of it: four rooms on the second floor—a study, a real shambles, a bedroom, unfurnished except for a deathly pale bed under its mosquito net, and a washroom where, among the pitchers and basins, all sorts of creepy-crawlies reveled in the humidity. The houseboys regularly killed snakes there of the most dangerous sort, those they called “masters of the bush.” The only attractive feature was a small living room, pleasantly furnished, where he would read at night.

With Celanire, all that changed.

Like Betti Bouah, she sent for Apollonians from the Gold Coast. Under her direction they worked for months, standing in the pale light of dawn and lying down in the black of midnight. She had no intention of imitating the style of the Home, and consequently, Bingerville could boast of two architectural treasures, each a source of pride in its own way. She had balconies suspended on the north facade of the palace, where the arabesques of their wrought-iron balustrades relieved the hardness of the stone. She also installed French windows to let in the light and the air, and extended the south facade with a terrace overlooking a garden that she stocked with monkeys and all types of birds—commonly found birds such as hyacinth macaws, brightly colored parakeets, large-billed toucans, budgerigars, and other chatter-boxes, as well as rarer species like those American yellow-tailed parrots called Amazonas. Clusters of
kikiris
hung on the branches of the
azobé
and ebony trees, while red ibis transplanted from the mudflats of the Aby lagoon waded through the grass on their long, melancholic legs. The roof of the palace was another open-air terrace where three hundred people could listen to music in the dry season. Once it had been restored, the palace was boldly painted ocher and pistachio green.

The interior was as sumptuous as the exterior. Two Fridays a month Celanire invited her husband's compatriots to dinner and led her guests on a guided tour of the apartments. Even today, despite all the waste and excessive logging, the Ivory Coast is not lacking in wood. So with the help of the books of her “beloved little papa,” as she never failed to call him, Celanire initiated the Apollonians in the techniques of the furniture makers from Guadeloupe. They reproduced
buffets à deux corps, arbalète
commodes, spider consoles, recamier-style sofas, four-poster beds, and rocking chairs. Standing in front of the planter armchairs, she would explain that the arms pivoted into extensions so that the person seated could rest his legs in a horizontal position while sipping a rum punch, the traditional drink in Caribbean climes.

Finally Celanire turned Bingerville into an artistic capital. The highlight of the palace was its museum. It first took up a living room, then two, then the entire ground floor, and became the first “ethnographic museum” in Black Africa, far superior to the IFAN museum in Dakar. It is still a major attraction today. Its aim was to prove not only to the orphans at the Home but also to all those doubting Thomases that Africa has a culture of its own. The collection included Dan, Wobè, Gouro, Yaouré, and Baoulé masks, but especially masks from the Guéré people, masters of the art. The finest pieces in the museum were a series of nine Guéré masks: one singer's mask, two warriors' masks, two dancers' masks, a mask for wisdom, a mask for running, a fool's mask, and a griot's mask. Celanire threw herself passionately into her treasure hunt. She had no qualms soliciting the chiefs and elders or mingling with secret societies and initiation ceremonies. This deeply shocked the Africans, who complained she was looting their sacred heritage. It would bring her misfortune. Women are not allowed to look at masks, let alone lay hands on them. Consequently, she would never give birth, neither to a son nor a daughter.