Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou

disappearances were all blamed on Papa Kibandi, while he gazed serenely into the middle distance, as though there was nothing he could do about any of it, as though he were above what he himself called ‘petty disputes of lizards’, and since no one would speak to him, he gathered his hurt pride about him and told his son and wife not to speak to the rest of the village, not to say hello, and whenever he passed another villager he spat on the ground, he called the village chief all sorts of names, called him wretched and corrupt, said he only sold land to his own family, and then there
was the fateful business of the family conflict which the people of the north were never to forget, the falling out with his sister, the youngest in the family, and she should have known better, because here again, Papa Kibandi would shuffle the cards with his own hand, sow doubt in the minds of the villagers, postpone what should have been the end of his earthly existence, only Papa Kibandi could pull that off, believe me, dear Baobab, and to this day I still can’t believe he took them all for such a ride
    Â 
    Â 
    it was during the dry season in Mossaka, when the waters of the Niari river scarcely covered the bather’s ankles, that the terrible event occurred, one day at sunset they found the lifeless body of Niangui-Boussina on the far bank of the river, across the water from the village, her belly swollen, her neck puffed up as though she’d been strangled by a criminal with giant hands, she was none other than the niece of Papa Kibandi, the daughter of his younger sister, Etaleli, whom I will call Aunt Etaleli, as my master did, Ninagui-Boussina was a teenager who had come to spend her holidays in Mossaka with her mother, their village was a few kilometres away, Aunt Etaleli insisted her daughter could not have died from drowning, not that, no way, she was born on the banks of the most dangerous river in the country, the Louloula, she’d spent her childhood in the water, it was an odd business, Papa Kibandi’s name obviously came up, Aunt Etaleli said she wasn’t leaving Mossaka until some light had been shed on the drowning of her daughter and as tensions began to rise, she left her brother’s house and went to stay with a friend, and did not leave her house until the day the body of the young girl was to be brought back to Kiaki, the village where
Aunt Etaleli lived with her husband, and this time Papa Kibandi heard the word ‘sorcerer’ the minute he set foot outside his house, they called him ‘plague rat’, wouldn’t let him put his case, he would have liked to discuss it with his sister, point out that they could accuse him of many things, but not of eating his niece, and when I say eating , my dear Baobab, you must understand that I am talking about terminating someone’s life by means which are imperceptible to those who deny the existence of a parallel world, in particular incredulous humans, well then, for porcupine’s sake, on the day of Niangui-Boussina’s burial in Siaki, they waited for Papa Kibandi with poisoned spears, they planned to skewer him in public, in the very village where he was preparing to come to pay his respects to the memory of his niece, at the last moment he changed his mind, the old rat he’d sent ahead to sniff things out caught wind of what was afoot, how Aunt Etaleli, along with some of the other inhabitants of Siaki, had set a trap for him, but anyway, a week after the funeral Aunt Etaleli showed up in Mossaka again early one morning, with a delegation of four men, she shouted at Papa Kibandi, saying openly, ‘it was you that ate Niangui-Boussina, you ate her, everyone knows, everyone says so, now look me in the eye and admit it’, Papa Kibandi denied the accusation, ‘I didn’t eat her, how could I eat my own niece, hm, I don’t even know how you eat someone, the girl died of drowning, that’s all there