The King of Kahel Read online

  The King of Kahel

  The King of Kahel

  TIERNO MONÉNEMBO

  Translated by

  NICHOLAS ELLIOTT

  This is not a biography but a novel,

  freely inspired by the life of Olivier de Sanderval.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2008 Editions du Seuil

  English translation copyright © 2010 Amazon Content Services LLC

  Map illustration copyright © 2010 Dave Stevenson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonCrossing

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  Produced by Melcher Media, Inc.

  124 West 13th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  www.melcher.com

  Library of Congress Control Number:

  2010909000

  ISBN: 978-0-9825550-7-1

  The King of Kahel by Tierno Monénembo was first published in 2008 by Éditions du Seuil as Le Roi de Kahel.

  Translated from French by Nicholas Elliott.

  First published in English in 2010 by AmazonCrossing.

  Cover design by Ben Gibson

  Map illustration by Dave Stevenson

  Author photo by Getty Images

  Translator photo by Sophia Chai

  For Jean-Louis Langeron.

  In memoriam

  Alpha Ibrahima Sow and Saïdou Kane.

  “The Creator made them black so the bruises couldn’t be seen.”

  OLIVIER DE SANDERVAL

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  { PART ONE }

  { PART TWO }

  { PART THREE }

  { EPILOGUE }

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I WOULD LIKE TO THANK Mr. and Mrs. Bruno Olivier de Sanderval for graciously opening their archives to me.

  Mr. Rov’H Morgère, Mr. Philippe Abriol, and the entire staff of the Archives départementales de Caen for their warm reception and availability.

  My headmaster, Djibril Tamsir Niane, for giving me the idea for this book, and Professor Ismaël Barry for providing invaluable information.

  The Centre National du Livre for its equally invaluable grant.

  Area of Olivier de Sanderval’s expeditions in West Africa, circa 1890

  { PART ONE }

  HE WAS ON THE STAIRS, leaving home to catch his boat, when his wife’s shrill voice stopped Olivier de Sanderval* in his tracks: “My poor dear Aimé, look what you’ve forgotten!”

  He touched his hot ears and his trembling back, then cast an imploring glance at the gentle little monster who had just chastised him.

  “What is it, my dear Rose? You yourself helped me to pack my bags!”

  “What about this?”

  She produced the object of controversy from behind her back.

  “Oh! This is really no time to joke, my dear! Must I remind you that I am on the verge of leaving for Africa? For Timbo?”

  “Exactly!” she interrupted, cutting ahead of him into the courtyard, where the servants were finishing loading his trunks and hitching up the horses.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to reopen my suitcase just for that!”

  “Indeed!”

  “But what possible use could I have for that among the Negroes?”

  “You’ll wear it to act in their opera.”

  “In other circumstances, I would happily agree, my dear. After all, I did marry you for your colorful dresses and exotic necklaces, the flowers in your hair, and those impromptu singing exercises you sometimes launch into in churches and tearooms. But playing Mephistopheles for the Negroes is something else entirely.”

  But his beloved torturer had already closed the trunk again. He kissed her goodbye and climbed into his buggy thinking, I’ll throw that disguise away at the port…or once I’m on the boat…That’s it, I’ll throw it overboard. I’m going to Africa to become a king, not a buffoon! But the costume was soon forgotten and stayed with him throughout the trip.

  A few months later, that oversight would save his life—when the Fulas threatened to behead him.

  He took a last look at his farmhouse, admired its saddleback roof, its ocher walls, and the olive green of its many shutters. It was still hard for him to believe that Napoleon had slept here the day after the siege of Toulon and dreamed of marrying Désirée Clary, the household’s eldest daughter. He chuckled to himself and wondered what would have become of France if she had chosen Napoleon rather than Bernadotte, whom she would marry shortly before he was crowned Charles XIV, king of Sweden. Then the first Republic collapsed, and then the first Empire, and then the Pastrés—you know, the famous shipowners—happened along and bought the farmhouse, and then he happened along and married Pastré’s daughter.

  Now, some eighty-six years after Bernadotte, he was stepping across the same threshold on his way to claim his own crown. Could that really be attributed to happenstance? And he wasn’t going just anywhere—he was headed for Fouta Djallon!

  The date was November 29, 1879, and it was snowing in Marseille. The mere sight of the port de la Madrague and the avenue du Prado, barely recognizable under their ridiculous coat of white, sent shivers up his spine. He imagined this was exactly what Norway must look like.

  As he reached the port, he rubbed his hands together and told himself he couldn’t have found a better time to go to Africa.

  An agent of the Compagnie des Messageries maritimes led his coachman to the pier where the Niger was docked among the ships bound for Constantinople and the Far East. He waited with the ship’s captain while his cabin was prepared, half-listening to the captain prattle on about his steamer’s attributes and the landscapes of Madera and Piscis Island. He felt nervous. The only thing he liked about traveling was the pleasure of arriving. Trains and boats made him nauseous; horseback riding and bicycling made his head spin. He was sorry to think he would be dust in the wind by that faraway time when inexorable progress made it possible to travel to Africa in a fraction of a second.

  “Breakfast is at seven. Please relax, sir, we are only at the beginning of our adventure.”

  “That may be true for you, Captain,” he grumbled. “In my case, the adventure started nearly forty years ago.”

  Forty years: an entire lifetime with his feet on French soil and his mind far, far away, lost in the nebula of the Tropics. A man born in the heart of the nineteenth century could only become a poet, a scholar, or an explorer. He had resolved the question early on. He would be an explorer—in other words a poet and a scholar too. At that time, school-yard discussions of the colonies were as popular as hopscotch or marbles. Children’s tales weren’t about ogres and fairies, but sorcerers and cannibals brandishing assegais as they dashed through the jungle, chasing after a brand-new kind of prey: white priests and colonists.

  He had caught the colonies bug listening to his great-uncle Simonet’s stories. Every night, wild adventures of pioneers of civilization lost among the cannibals, saved from the boiling pots of the Zulus and Papuans at the last moment by the goodness of Christ, sent shivers up and down his spine after long and tedious family dinners. Afterward he would rejoice to huddle up under the covers, delighted that the walls of his room were thick, the roof solid and the doors safely locked ag
ainst those scarred bandits who prowled the parks of Lyon in the snowy night, searching for tasty little blond boys.

  Old Simonet was a real case, the bohemian of the clan, the family wild man. He knocked around Java and Anatolia for years and came back with countless tall tales, strange words, and jaw-dropping novelties. He even introduced France to the marvels of muslin, a major contribution to feminine elegance that made the city of Tarare’s prosperity. Strangers took off their hats as he passed and greeted “the king of muslin.” Which was no small thing—even among the Oliviers, where everyone had to invent something before procreating.

  When he was about seven, his tutor, Father Garnier, took his colorful forebear’s place. And thus he passed from words to action. A Pacific atoll soon landed on the banks of the Azergues, the river irrigating Chessy, the village where he spent part of his childhood. The atoll was peopled with mandrills made of rags and imaginary coconut trees. Wearing his helmet and boots, little Aimé played the brave ethnologist the Geography Society had sent to discover Zaratusthania, a jungle land still unknown to cartographers and possibly even soothsayers. Father Garnier painted tattoos on his forearms and scarifications on his face to become Guénolé, the bloodthirsty savage who ambushed the white man after his ship was capsized. They spent the day playing hide-and-seek, pretending to strike down wild beasts and jump over canyons. Cunning and sidestepping would eventually get the best of Guénolé. The good savage surrendered at the feet of the master, swore off fetishes and human sacrifices, kissed the cross, and promised to behave like a good Christian forevermore. Then they set up camp nearby for the Latin lesson and a dinner of canned sardines.

  By the time he was eight, it was clear that being an explorer wouldn’t be enough. He had to be king of the savages. He would carve out a colony for himself by draining the marshes and educating the tribes. He would turn it into a kingdom adhering to his ideas and radiating the genius of France. But where: in Tonkin or in Fouta Djallon? After many months of reflection, he decided on the latter. In his child’s mind, “Tonkin” sounded like a tocsin, but Fouta Djallon! That was something else entirely. Besides, Marco Polo hadn’t left much of Asia to be discovered. Its cities and laws reached deep into the furthest ends of the Taklimakan Desert. But Africa remained obscure, extravagant, and perfectly unpredictable.

  At ten, he began tearing through narratives by explorers and writing to geographic societies. He took out subscriptions to L’Illustrateur and the Joanne and Murray guides. He kept up his secret education and let time race on. His life was rooted in the Rhône Valley, but he was surrounded by the rivers, plants, and tribes of the Sudan.

  Then came the baccalaureate and the engineering diploma, marriage and children—he had to make his contribution to society before going roaming. He found time to cut his teeth on ascending Mont Blanc, inventing the sprung-hub wheel and building the first velocipede factory. At forty, he could finally turn to the essential: Africa!

  Africa had always been his whole life, but it was still only words—sketches, pictures, and maps, all buried in words. The serious business had only started a few months earlier, as he led his childhood obsession beyond dreams and illusions and boarded a train at Austerlitz to set off for Lisbon.

  In those days, the best way to reach the shores of the Dark Continent was to start by crossing the Tagus. As the pioneers of African exploration, the Portuguese had the strongest foothold. Their archives were the most abundant; their maps, the most reliable. Most important, their trading posts in Bolama and Bissau were strategically placed near the foothills of Fouta Djallon, on the estuaries connecting to the region’s streams and rivers.

  His friends had recommended he meet Francisco da Costa e Silva, the director general of the Department of Overseas Territories, and the leading merchants. He had had no trouble obtaining visas, recommendations, the most recent maps, and detailed information about the peculiarities of the climate and the ways of the natives.

  The evening before his departure he purchased a cyanide capsule, then mailed his last will and testament to his friend Jules Charles-Roux, the president of the Marseille Geography Society. Perhaps it was gauche to do so, but how in good conscience could he leave for Africa without writing his will? Perhaps he should have given the will to Jules when he said goodbye to him, but surely it was bad manners to look your friend in the eye and hand him your will.

  The trip to Africa is entirely different from the return journey. In one direction, you have the dinners and formal balls, the ladies in their wide-brimmed hats and tarlatan dresses, the merchants’ card games, and the naval officers’ riotous laughter. In the other, a gloomy atmosphere settles over dismissed civil servants, ruined adventurers, and widows crying over husbands lost to malaria or the Negroes’ poisoned arrows.

  Dinners on the Niger were tedious, despite the oompah-pah of the orchestra—no one had heard of Fouta Djallon and only a single passenger had a decent chess game. He was a young graduate of the École Polytechnique headed to Senegal to draw a road to the interior. His name was Souvignet, and he displayed the wild enthusiasm of his twenty-three years with disarming naïveté. The night the ship sailed, he came into the tearoom and saw Olivier de Sanderval killing time with his ubiquitous bar of chocolate and solo chess games. He headed straight for his table, pulled up a chair, and sat down:

  “May I?”

  “Careful, I only play with masters!”

  “With masters! Well, let’s go, old man, you won’t find any greater master than me at chess or anything else. If you beat me, I’ll give you this…What are you going to do in Africa, old man?”

  “I’m going to carve out a kingdom for myself.”

  “King of Africa! Yes, you look the part. Please don’t eat me once you’ve become a Negro, old man!”

  “It seems you’re more insipid than pretentious, my dear young friend. And to tell you the truth, I’m going to Africa to put an end to cannibalism.”

  “What, are you going to kill all the cannibals?”

  “No, I’m going to convert them and turn them all into scholars.”

  “Oh, that will be just dandy—Pygmies quoting Gay-Lussac. You’re a genius, old man. Not only are you beating me at chess, but you’re even more eccentric than I am. I’m not sure I care for that, old man.”

  “And you? How do you plan to make your mark?”

  “Bridges, ports, and monuments. So many that the authorities will grovel at my feet and beg me to accept the position of governor of Senegal. Africa is my generation’s golden opportunity. And you can tell from a mile away that I’m ambitious.”

  “Well, I wish you the best, my dear future General Faidherbe.”

  Madera, the Canary Islands, Cap Blanc. Here, finally, was Gorée!

  Of the thirty games they played during the crossing, the young engineer won at least a dozen, but insisted—over his adversary’s protests—on leaving him a beautiful gold watch bearing his initials:

  “What’s due is due. That’s life, old man!”

  A few miles out of the harbor, the first Negroes appeared. Their flimsy boats darted in and out of the ship’s wake. They gestured wildly on the water, practically naked, their figures reminding the white passengers of the mysterious, fiery forms of their statues. Some yelped with enthusiasm and paddled to keep up, others dove headfirst into the water and pirouetted with the waves.

  “Ma’am Pretty-Pretty, throw-a me some coins!”

  The new colonists were all on deck now, amused by the spectacle. They bustled about like restless cattle. The Negroes were exultant, racing to catch the pretty little projectiles, the lucky ones showing their thanks with outsize smiles and a burst of song.

  “Sir Nice-Nice-Hat, throw-a me some coins!”

  The passengers pulled out their binoculars and marveled at the Negroes’ biceps and astonishing agility.

  Others on the ship rushed from one end of the deck to the other, gasping and pointing at the Negroes, the birds, the plants. But nothing surprised him. This was exact
ly what he expected. Everything was as it was supposed to be: the dark, warm earth, the scrawny, tousled palm trees, the constant noise of the tom-toms and the gulls. He was simply amazed that the sun was so white and the birds so dazzlingly colorful.

  Gorée was now within reach. He could see its slave forts and balconied villas surrounded by acacias, rosebushes, and paradise flowers.

  An intense shiver traveled up his spine as he took hold of the ship’s rail, dispelled all fear of ridicule, and proclaimed:

  “Here I am, my dear old Africa! Here I am!”

  It was nothing but soil, sand, flowers, and waves. But in Africa!

  “Here, the most ordinary thing takes on a significance and an intensity unimaginable elsewhere.”

  Despite the jostling of the gawking crowd, he managed to get his notebook out. A broad smile appeared on his face as he wrote: “Here, all is sun, all is joy!” It was dull, banal, perfectly ridiculous, but exactly what he felt at that very moment. He readjusted his hat and set foot on land without removing his frock coat and gloves, even casting a mocking glance at his unhappy companions panting like beasts of burden and mopping their sweaty brows, attacked on two fronts by the heat and the feeling of utter disorientation.

  He had been born an insomniac and sensitive to the cold—in other words, made for Africa. In fact, the coast was already practically like home to him. As a proper spoiled child, he had had a house built for himself in Bolama long before his arrival. He owned most of the trading posts in town and the Jean-Baptiste, a brand-new yacht, was anchored nearby, waiting to take him on his African expeditions.