God’s truth, I, Alfa Ndiaye, youngest child of the old man, saw the rumor chase after me, half-naked, shameless, like a fallen woman. And yet the Toubabs and the Chocolats who watched the rumor chase me, who lifted her skirt as she passed, who pinched her ass, snickering, continued to smile at me, to talk to me as if nothing was wrong, friendly on the outside but terrorized on the inside, even the toughest, even the hardest, even the bravest.
When the captain whistled for us to surge out of the belly of the earth so that we could throw ourselves like savages, temporary madmen, on the enemy’s little iron seeds that were oblivious to our shrieks, nobody would take their place beside me. No one would dare rub shoulders with me anymore in the cacophony of war, leaping from the earth’s hot entrails. No one wanted to be next to me when they fell to the bullets from the other side. God’s truth, now I was in the war alone.
That’s how the enemy hands earned me my solitude, beginning with the fourth. Solitude in the midst of smiles, winks, encouragement from my trench-mates, black or white. God’s truth, nobody wanted to attract the evil eye of a soldier sorcerer, the shit luck of death’s best friend. I know this, I understand. They don’t think much, but when they think, they think in dualistic terms. I’ve read it in their eyes. They think devourers of human insides are good so long as they devour only the enemy’s insides. But devourers of souls are no good when they eat the insides of their trench-mates. With soldier sorcerers, you never know. My trench-mates believe they have to be very, very careful with soldier sorcerers, they have to manage them carefully, to smile, to be friendly, to talk casually to them about this and that, but from afar, never to approach them, touch them, brush against them, or it’s certain death, it’s the end.
It’s why, after the first few hands, whenever Captain Armand whistled for the attack, they kept themselves ten large steps away from either side of me. Some of them, just before they would leap screaming from the earth’s hot entrails, would avoid even looking at me, letting their eyes fall on me, glancing at me at all, as if to look at me was to touch the face, arms, hands, back, ears, legs of death. As if to look at me was to die.
Humans are always finding absurd explanations for things. I know this, I understand it, now that I’m able to think what I want. My brothers in combat, white or black, need to believe that it isn’t the war that will kill them, but the evil eye. They need to believe that it won’t be one of the thousands of bullets fired by the enemy from the other side that will randomly kill them. They don’t like randomness. Randomness is too absurd. They want someone to blame, they’d rather think that the enemy bullet that hits them was directed, guided by someone cruel, malevolent, with evil intent. They believe that this cruel, malevolent, evil-intentioned one is me. God’s truth, their thinking is weak, flimsy. They think that if I’m alive after all these attacks, if no bullet has hit me, it’s because I’m a soldier sorcerer. They think the worst. They say that many of their trench-mates have been hit by bullets that were meant for me.
This is why some of them smiled hypocritically at me. It’s why others looked away when I appeared, why still others closed their eyes to keep them from falling on me, from grazing me. I became taboo, like a totem.
The totem of the Diops, of Mademba Diop, that egotist, is a peacock. He said “peacock” and I replied “crowned crane.” I said, “Your totem is a fowl, while mine is a wildcat. The Ndiayes’ totem is the lion, it’s nobler than the totem of the Diops.” I let myself repeat to my more-than-brother Mademba Diop that his totem was laughable.
The joking relationship between us had replaced the war, the feud between our two families, between our family names. The joking relationship between us succeeded in cleansing old insults with laughter and mockery.
But a totem is more serious. A totem is taboo. You can’t eat it, you have to protect it. The Diops would risk their lives protecting a peacock in danger or a crowned crane about to die, because it’s their totem. The Ndiayes don’t need to protect lions from danger. A lion is never in danger. But it’s said that lions never eat Ndiayes. The protection goes in both directions. I can’t help but laugh when I think that the Diops are hardly in danger of being eaten by a peacock or a crowned crane. I can’t help but smile when I think again of Mademba Diop laughing when I told him that the Diops weren’t very smart for having chosen the peacock, or the crowned crane, as a totem. “The Diops are shortsighted egotists, like peacocks. They act proud, but their totem is just an arrogant fowl.” This is what made Mademba laugh when I tried to make fun of him. Mademba simply replied that you don’t choose your totem, it chooses you.
Unfortunately, I brought up his arrogant fowl totem again on the morning of his death, not long before Captain Armand whistled for the attack. And that’s why he left before the others, why he shot out of the earth shrieking toward the enemy on the other side, to show us, me and the trench, that he was not a braggart, that he was brave. It’s because of me that he left first. It’s because of totems, because of our joking relationship and because of me, that Mademba Diop was disemboweled by a half-dead, blue-eyed enemy on that day.
VIII
ON THAT DAY, Mademba Diop wasn’t thinking, despite all of his learning, all of his science. I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have made fun of his totem. Until that day, I didn’t think enough, I didn’t reflect on half of what I said. You don’t provoke your friend, your more-than-brother, to leave the belly of the earth screaming louder than anyone else. You don’t drag your more-than-brother into temporary madness, into a place where a crowned crane couldn’t last an instant, into a battlefield where not even the smallest plant can grow, not even the slightest shrub, as if thousands of locusts have been gorging themselves, without rest, month after month. A field sowed with thousands of tiny metallic seeds of war that produce no harvest. A scarred battlefield made for carnivores.
So here we are. Since I decided to think for myself, not to forbid myself any subject, I have come to understand that it wasn’t the blue-eyed enemy from the other side who killed Mademba. It’s me. I know, I understand why I didn’t kill Mademba Diop when he begged me to. “You can’t kill a man twice,” a very, very quiet voice in my mind must have murmured to me. “You already killed your childhood friend,” it must have whispered to me, “when you mocked his totem on a battle day and he leapt first from the belly of the earth. Wait a bit,” my mind must have whispered in a very, very low voice, “wait a bit. Soon, when Mademba will be dead without your help, you’ll understand. You’ll understand that you didn’t kill him, even though he asked you to, so as not to blame yourself for having finished the filthy job you began. Wait a bit,” my mind must have whispered, “soon you will understand that you were Mademba Diop’s blue-eyed enemy. You killed him with your words, you disemboweled him with your words, you devoured the insides of his body with your words.”
From there to the thought that I am a dëmm, a devourer of souls, there’s hardly any distance, any air. Since I’ve thought anything I want since then, I can admit everything to myself in the privacy of my mind. Yes, I told myself that I must be a dëmm, an eater of the insides of men. But I told myself, immediately after thinking it, that I couldn’t believe such a thing, that it wasn’t possible. At that time, it wasn’t really me who was thinking. I had left the door of my mind open to the thoughts of others, which I mistook for my own. I wasn’t hearing myself think anymore, but was hearing the others who were afraid of me. You have to be careful, when you believe you’re free to think what you want, not to let in the thinking of others, in disguise, the false thinking of your father and mother, the spurious thinking of your grandfather, the masked thinking of your brother or sister, of your friends, in other words, of your enemies.