Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou Page A

is to it’, and his sister got to the point and said, ‘if you’ve got any balls come with us to Lekana, the witch doctor Tembé-Essouka will pick you out in front of these four witnesses, one of them is from Mossaka anyway’, and to everyone’s surprise, perhaps also because there was such a crowd pressing in around them, Papa Kibandi offered no resistance, just put on his rubber shoes,
pulled on a long boubou, and said defiantly, ‘I’m all yours, let’s go, you’re wasting your time, sister’, and Aunt Etaleli replied ‘don’t call me sister, I’m no sister to an eater ’
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    the four witnesses who’d come with Aunt Etaleli had been chosen from four different villages, as tradition required, to ensure that that whatever these people reported back to their different localities would be neutral and faithful to the truth, the little group walked for half a day till they got to Lekana, home of the famous witch doctor Tembé-Essouka, an old man, born blind, with spindly little legs, and a beard which grazed the ground as he moved his head, it seems the local leaders revere his knowledge of the dark arts and go to him for advice, he never washes, for fear of washing away his powers, he wears a tattered old red garment, does his business by the side of his bamboo bed, can control the rain, the wind, the sun, requires payment only on results, and even then you pay in cowrie shells, the currency which was used at the time when this country was still a kingdom, he doesn’t trust the national currency, he thinks times haven’t changed, the official currency’s a delusion, that the world is made of kingdoms, each with its own sorcerer, and that he is the greatest sorcerer of all, and as soon as they reach his house on the hill he gives a great snort of derision, which always terrifies visitors, then he’ll start telling you in detail about your past, the exact details of your date and place of birth, the names of your father and mother, tells you why you’ve come, shakes the terrifying masks hung up above his head, communicating with them, this was the man who would decide between Kibandi’s father and his aunt, the four witnesses had tried everything
they could to reconcile brother and sister, who had not spoken a single word to each other while they were walking through the bush, the group arrived at the gates of Lekana around midday
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    dear Baobab, the people of Lekana were used to a flow of people coming to consult Tembé-Essouka, who, on hearing visitors’ footsteps, shouted from his tumbledown house, ‘hey, you there, what do you think you’re doing here, Tembé-Essouka isn’t here to sort out trivial matters you could easily settle among yourselves, don’t come bothering me for nothing, I don’t need your cowries, the guilty man hasn’t come with you, I see water, yes, I see water, I see a young girl drowning, she’s the niece of an old man being accused by a lady, if you insist, if you don’t believe me, enter at your peril,’ and since Aunt Etaleli was more determined than ever, the group entered his hut, and it was not so much the putrid smell that repelled them, all six, but the masks, who seemed angered by the strangers’ stubbornness, their temerity, Tembé-Essouka had a damp, exhausted look about him, he was sitting on a leopard skin, fiddling with a rosary made from the bones of a boa, whose head was nailed above the entrance to the hut, the visitors sat down on the floor, and the fetichist set to thinking, murmuring, ‘disbelievers, I told you the culprit wasn’t with you, why have you entered my hut then, do you doubt the word of Tembé-Essouka, or what’, Aunt Etaleli got onto her knees, began sobbing at the sorcerer’s feet, she wiped her tears on the edge of the pagne knotted about her waist, the sorcerer pushed her away, ‘let’s be