THE YEAR OF PLENTY
Eric-Anderson Koudio Momou
Email: ekmomou@gmail.com
Phone: 608-691-1937
The growth of mangos heralds the end of the Ivorian rainy season. As the fruitage buds, it is a call to action for the villagers. Awake, they rouse each other from their slumber and rejoice for the new season. Men enter talks of crop and business. Between swallows of palm nut stew and mashed plantains, they chastise their children, who run barefoot. Women wear boubous, and fashion their linens in a back sling, to carry their infants. Under porticos they plant okra and cassava. After it has been laid out to dry, they grind it with mortar and pestle, milling out the impurities so that they might cook for the men. Among the denizens of the village are the sagacious griots. Slowly, the villagers forget their tales. There were many, but they dwindle now, as do their orators.
I’d met one such man, whom the villagers called Zulan.
Zulan told stories. He recited lessons verbatim, the way his father told him, and he taught them truthfully. Last year, a band of surveyors for the annual census congregated around him in his brick house. Though the visitors listened to the interpreter, their eyes watched Zulan. Even beyond the language barrier of his native Baule, he could see that his words had touched them.
The satisfaction this brought him, almost erased his worry. His mind fixated on the gossip that spread to the surrounding villages. That year, Zulan’s wife divorced him and his in-laws fought for assets and money. His daughter had flown to Europe, studying journalism, and she called sparingly.
Meanwhile talk grew restless. He heard the slander in the marketplace, or on the road as he walked to the mosque. He even heard it in hushed undertones from his neighbors. As much as he hated the rumors, he understood why they were spoken, for he was the last griot.
Finally, he addressed his contemporaries. This is what he told them:
“I’m going to take a trip. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Come along if you’d like.”
His ex-wife declined. She called him crazy. His daughter refused also. Some of his longtime childhood friends–the ones he played pilolo with– pitied him, citing that he’d acquired an early bought of senility. But Zulan was nearly fifty, and alzheimers, though it was hereditary, had not yet set in.
“Then I’ll go by myself,” Zulan said.
“And where will you go to, fool?” said his ex-wife.
To this Zulan had little response, but a long winded sigh. “To Mali,” he said, “To see the Niger.”
He had planned for three weeks, setting up the necessary accommodations. He sold cassava to fund his expedition. He also sold hibiscus tea, and many of his own personal articles of clothing, including several wooden, animist idols.
This was his year, and he’d make the most of it. Once, he wanted to visit America, and hike through the Adirondacks. He’d read about the cricket team in the West Indies, and dreamt of competing there as a young man. Now, rumination had sent him on a separate path; not an ascension to another continent but to Mali where he was born.
He started his journey in Abidjan. For a couple francs, the double decker bus ran through the rural townships of Yamoussoukro. By foot, He descended across the border into Mali. He ate fish and attieke from his pack, and rationed some so that he could sell the rest on the road. He walked further north still into Bamako. There the Niger river ran ruddy and black like the entrails of some animal.
Zulan trudged through the plain. Dust skimmed the sun-cracked earth, and the glare of sun reflected off the sheen, like a prism. Stony cliffs outlined the western slopes, such that broad shadows beckoned him. At the foothills, the city of Bamako reserved its prisonon, a rite of passage. The city clutched the waking life, and made the green world a facsimile: an unnatural one. He had no intent of visiting it.
Despite his fatigue h e wouldn’t die of exhaustion, or the heat. He knew that his power was not his own.
*
Zulan found the dog in a sewer at the edge of the city. Its paw had been cinched between the concrete rubble and rivets. Mange accumulated under its fur, and its muzzle swelled.
“Stay there.” He told the dog. The dog whimpered, but it showed no sign of agitation. Zulan wedged his hand in the crack of the crag, and dislodged the debri. Then the dog’s paw came out.
“Now you’re free. Go.” But the dog stayed. Whether it was out of predatory instinct or stubbornness, he did not know.
He’d named the dog Whisky, after an old habit. Whiskey was a hybrid: the result of a husky and some undomesticated wild dog. He’d heard of those tame foxes; the silver ones sold from out of Russian genetics institutes. Long ago, he bred dogs for a living, but among all the thoroughbreds he’d never observed a wild dog even half as tame.
For all he was worth, the dog kept following him. He trotted a few paces behind, its tongue lapping the humid air, saliva drizzling onto the arid sand. It would not leave his side. At noon, when Zulan stopped to rest under the shade of a baobab the dog did also.
“A loyal companion, yes” said the man to the dog. “Go now. See that your hunt is good.” The dog seemed to perceive his intent in this, and drew his long tongue into his mouth. It cocked its head thoughtfully, then trotted off.
Zulan rested. He dreamt of many things, though he did not recall them upon awakening. When he rose, the night was brisk again and the stars shone upon their heavenly dais. The plain croaked with life. It teemed now, as it did when he was a boy–before the land development and the plotters. Now he felt the whisk of wind. He could grasp the seedheads of wild grass. This ebb and flow, Zulan liked.
Later in the night, the dog returned. In its jaws was a pheasant. He dropped the game at his feet, and fell asleep.
At dawn, Zulan woke, but the dog was gone.That’s when he saw the place of his birth, in full sunlight. Dappled flecks of gold floated upon the Niger. He stoked a fire to cook the pheasant that the dog had left for him; he seasoned it with mustard from the field.. By midday he had reached the bank. That was where he met the boy. He weaved baobab bark, and palm leaves into a sort of dirigible. It was bound by strips cut from leather, and hemp. Quart water jugs floated like buoys on either side of it, giving the construct buoyancy.
“Boy,” he called. “What is your name?”
The boy arranged the sticks, parallel to each other like yarn strung from a loom. Then, he snapped them one after the other, and tossed them into the river. Still, the boy did not respond, and this goaded him.
“Who taught you? When an elder speaks, you respond.”
“Stick. That is my name.”
“I am Zulan. I am a foreigner in your land.”
“So you ask for hospitality?” The boy grinned.
“Yes.”
“I have no house. I nap under the shade of baobabs. For food, I fish when there are any.”
“If you have nothing to offer, then I’ll bid you luck.”
“That is all I’ll need.”
“I have another request,” said Zulan. He bridled his tongue.
“And what is that?” said the boy.
“To ride in your boat so that I may cross the river.”
This confounded the boy, and he shook his head. “This side is the same as that one,” said the boy, “There is no difference.”
“This does not convince me. Please, grant me this request.”
“And do you have payment?”
This angered the elder. He had only twenty francs, and the hibiscus waned. “I don’t.”
The boy crossed his arms. “Then I cannot do you the service.”
At this Zulan stood dumbfoundedly on the bank. He had nothing, but himself to give.
“And if I tell you a story?” said Zulan.
“I do not listen to the ravings of old men,” the boy said. He threw another stick into the water.
“Today you will.” Zulan told the boy. He recounted how he’d ridden on the bus from Ivory Coast, and peddled, and walked a cramped roadway. He spoke about his wife, and the surveyors. He spoke of the murmurers, and his decision in coming here.
“The village of my birth is across the river.”
“The story is good, but I will still charge you a discounted toll.”
The boy took silver franc coins, from his pouch, and touched them to Zulan’s lips. He placed them under his tongue.
“Now you must pay the ultimate price,” said the boy. He grinned like a fiend, and the old man did not like it.
“And what may that be?”
“Your soul.”
“There. You have paid the fare. Now you may enter my boat.”
Along the shore, the riptide lulled them. He rowed the oar more vigorously now. But, before Zulan could complain, it shook them viciously. Meanwhile, the boy kept his balance like a gondolier.
A whirlpool swirled. To Zulan’s surprise Stick maneuvered the boat into it. The boat capsized, and he plunged in. Between gasps of air, Zulan saw the boy, standing on the water.
Underwater, he lost track of his belongings. He spat out the francs the boy had placed in his mouth. All about him the water of the Niger grew murkier. He saw light struggling through a pitch expanse, and felt the clutch of seaweed at his ankles.
At the surface, hippos sunbathed on the shore, gaping their mouths, yawning. A snake writhed in the reeds.
Then the water stilled. He heard nothing, and saw nothing. Zulan heard a voice. It was the boy’s. The language was Baule.
He found the boy on the opposite shore, waiting.
“I have seen all there is to see, and it is a great sight. But I really must go back home.”
“For what, old man?” said the boy. “You told me of your plight, and it is foolish to return back upon your path. What lies ahead of you is greater than what came. Before”
“Not there. Where I was born.”
“Why do you want to go back to the place of your birth?”
Zulan thought about this. He longed to taste the fried plantains of his youth, and climb the mango trees again. He wished to tread the same fertile ground that his father had as he herded livestock, and to hear the call of the muezzin in the courtyard.
“Because it is where I am from and that is where I am going.”
The storyteller waded through the water. He heard the shrill cries of crickets, and the whip of wind in his ears. He witnessed the houses, made of sod and mud brick and cinder block.
He found the boy standing alongside a mango tree. Then he smiled.
This is what the boy told him:
“I am the dog, and the wife, and the mango groves. I am Stick. But above all else I am the Niger; the place of your birth. What the river takes, it deposits into the Sea. You have lived beyond it, so that you may tell your story to those who continue living.”
This, the storyteller hadn’t known, but he smiled for the thought was comforting.
Zulan plucked the ripest fruit from the lowest branch, a mango. He bit into the soft rind, into the flesh of it, and the juice dripped down his chin.
His wrinkled skin receded, and his stature grew. Zulan became young again.
The dog loped at his side.
*
Zulan woke amidst his friends, in the arms of his wife. When Zulan told me his story he grinned. He told his friends what had happened, but they all laughed.
“They told me they were such foolish tales,” Zulan told me. “ I agreed with them–that the story was pure dribble, and the result of malaria fever. ”
“But secretly,” Zulan said, “I believe in such a wondrous place, and I think that I shall return.
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