The others welcomed me to the belly of the earth like a hero. I’d walked beneath the bright moon, my arms around Mademba, without seeing that a long ribbon of his intestine had escaped from my shirt knotted around his waist. When they saw the human disaster I was carrying in my arms, they said I was courageous and strong. They said they would not have been able to do it. That they might have abandoned Mademba Diop to the rats, that they wouldn’t have dared to neatly gather his guts into the sacred vessel of his body. They said that they would not have carried him such a long distance beneath such a bright moon in sight of, and with the knowledge of, the enemy. They said I deserved a medal, that I would be given the Croix de Guerre, that my family would be proud of me, that Mademba, looking down on me from the sky, would be proud of me. Even our General Mangin would be proud of me. And yet I was thinking that I didn’t care about the medal, though no one would ever know this. Like no one would ever know that Mademba had begged me three times to finish him, that I had remained deaf to his three supplications, that I had been inhuman by obeying duty’s voice. But I was now free to listen no longer, to no longer obey the voices that command us not to be human when we must.
III
IN THE TRENCH, I lived like the others, I drank, I ate like the others. Sometimes I sang, like the others. I sing off-key and everyone laughed when I sang. They would say, “You Ndiayes, you can’t sing.” They made fun of me, a little, but they respected me. They didn’t know what I thought of them. I found them foolish, I found them idiotic, because they didn’t think about anything. Soldiers, black or white, who always say “yes.” When commanded to leave the shelter of their trench to attack the enemy, defenseless, it’s “yes.” When told to play the savage, to scare off the enemy, it’s “yes.” The captain told them that the enemy was afraid of savage Negroes, cannibals, Zulus, and they laughed. They’re content if the enemy on the other side is afraid of them. They’re content to forget their own fear. So when they leap from the trench, their rifles in their left hands and their machetes in their right, hurling themselves out of the earth’s belly, they do so with eyes like madmen. The captain has told them they are great warriors, so they love to get themselves killed while singing, so their madness becomes a competition. A Diop would not want it said of him that he is less courageous than a Ndiaye, and so the minute the sound of Captain Armand’s whistle commands him, he leaps up from his hole and screams like a savage. Same rivalry between the Keïtas and the Soumarés. Same thing between the Diallos and the Fayes, the Kanes and the Thiounes, the Dianés, the Kouroumas, the Bèyes, the Fakolis, the Salls, the Diengs, the Secks, the Kas, the Cissés, the Ndours, the Tourés, the Camaras, the Bas, the Falls, the Coulibalys, the Sonkhos, the Sys, the Cissokhos, the Dramés, the Traorés. They will all die without thinking because Captain Armand has said to them, “You, the Chocolats of black Africa, are naturally the bravest of the brave. France admires you and is grateful. The papers talk only of your exploits!” So they love to sprint onto the battlefield to be beautifully massacred while screaming like madmen, regulation rifle in the left hand and savage machete in the right.
But I, Alfa Ndiaye, I understand the true meaning of the captain’s words. No one knows what I think. I am free to think whatever I want. And what I think is that people don’t want me to think. The unthinkable is what is hidden behind the captain’s words. The captain’s France needs for us to play the savage when it suits them. They need for us to be savage because the enemy is afraid of our machetes. I know, I understand, it’s no more complicated than that. The captain’s France needs our savagery, and because we are obedient, myself and the others, we play the savage. We slash the enemy’s flesh, we maim, we decapitate, we disembowel. The only difference between my friends the Toucouleurs and the Sérères, the Bambaras and the Malinkés, the Soussous, the Haoussas, the Mossis, the Markas, the Soninkés, the Senoufos, the Bobos, and the other Wolofs, the only difference between them and me is that I became savage intentionally. They play a role only when they crawl out from the earth, but I play a role only with them, inside our sheltering trench. In their company, I laughed and I even sang off-key, but they respected me.
As soon as I left the trench sprinting, as soon as the trench birthed me and I began to scream, the enemy was in trouble. I never retreated when a retreat was called, I would return to the trench in my own time. The captain knew this, he let it happen, amazed when I would return each time alive, smiling. He let it happen, even when I returned late, because I would bring trophies back to the trench. I brought back the spoils of a savage war. I brought back, at the end of every battle, in the dark night or in the night bathed in moonlight and blood, an enemy rifle, along with the hand that went with it. The hand that had carried it, the hand that had gripped it, the hand that had cleaned it, discharged it, and reloaded it. So when the retreat was sounded, the captain and my trench-mates who had come back to bury themselves alive in the damp protection of our trench asked themselves questions. First: “Will Alfa Ndiaye come back to us alive?” Second: “Will Alfa Ndiaye come back with an enemy rifle and the hand that carried it?” And I always came back to the earth’s womb after the others, sometimes under enemy fire, whether it was windy or raining or snowing, as the captain said. And I always brought an enemy rifle and the hand that had carried it, gripped it, cleaned it, greased it, the hand that had loaded it, discharged it, and reloaded it. And the captain and my surviving trench-mates who always asked themselves those two questions on the evenings of attacks were pleased when they heard shots and enemy cries. They would say to each other, “Well, Alfa Ndiaye must be on his way home. But will he bring back a rifle and the severed hand that goes with it?” A rifle, a hand.
Home with my trophies, I saw that they were very, very pleased with me. They saved food for me, they saved bits of tobacco. They were truly so pleased to see me come back that they never asked me how I did it, how I captured the enemy rifle and the severed hand. They were so pleased that I’d come back because they liked me. I had become their totem. The hands confirmed for them that they were still alive for one more day. Nor did they ever ask me what I had done with the rest of the body. How I had captured the enemy, that didn’t interest them. Nor how I’d cut off the hand. What interested them was the result, the savagery. And they laughed with me, thinking that for some time now the enemies on the other side must be very, very afraid, imagining their own hands being severed. And still, my captain and my trench-mates didn’t know how I captured them and what I did with the rest of their bodies after. They couldn’t imagine even a fraction of a fraction of what I did to the bodies, they couldn’t imagine even a fraction of the fear felt by the enemies on the other side.
When I leave the belly of the earth, I am inhuman by choice, I become a little inhuman. Not because the captain commanded me to, but because I have thought it and willed it. When I leap, shrieking, from the earth’s womb, I do not intend to kill multiple enemies from the other side, but to kill just one, in my own way, calmly, deliberately, slowly. When I emerge from the earth, my rifle in my left hand and my machete in my right, I’m not concerned about my trench-mates. I don’t know them anymore. They fall around me, faces in the soil, one by one, and I run, I shoot, and I throw myself flat on my stomach. I run, I shoot, and I crawl under the barbed wire. While shooting, I might kill an enemy by accident, without really meaning to. I might. But what I want is to fight face-to-face. That’s why I run, shoot, throw myself on my stomach and crawl, to arrive as close as possible to the enemy on the other side. In sight of their trench, I slow to a crawl, then, little by little, I stop moving almost completely. I play dead. I wait, calmly, to capture one of them. I wait until one comes out of his hole. I wait for the evening cease-fire, the moment of relief, when the shooting stops.