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The Fortunes of Wangrin/L'Étrange Destin de Wangrin
Amadou Hampâté Bâ
(First published 1973)
There lived in the town of Diussola a girl called Tenin. She was extraordinarily beautiful, but possessed of a vivacious personality as well as a quick tongue. She went by the nicknames of "Pretty Doe of the Markets" and "Comely Egret of the Caravanserai".
She had always refused all offers, however alluring, to be led to the altar. How many white-Whites had yearned for her! How many had been prepared, if necessary, to go through a French registry office ceremony! "I am not so foolish as to let myself be done in by one man," she would say laughingly, "when thousands of them are ready to die for my beautiful eyes and exquisite mouth!"
While she was still a child, her father had entrusted her to Wangrin’s care. The latter had brought her up, made of her an able seamstress, and introduced her to the business world, where she was a great success. She modelled for him the fabrics and some of the feminine items of wear he marketed. If she happened to wear a bubu made of unusual material, the next day every woman in town would try to buy that same material in Wangrin’s shop.
Tenin felt for Wangrin a filial devotion that bordered on worship. Although every month he provided her with fine fabrics and handsome suits of clothes, he never demanded payment, either in cash and certainly never in kind. According to the Fulbe adage: "If you want the respect a woman feels for you to wane or vanish altogether, just make love to her and you’ll be amply satisfied."
On the eve of Jacques de Chantalba’s arrival, Wangrin sent a messenger to Tenin very early in the morning asking her to come to him that same night when the sound of human voices and steps had died down in the streets.
At first, Tenin doubted the authenticity of the message. Never before had her gently benefactor asked her to visit him at the hour of lovers, thieves, and plotters, as it was commonly called. She felt all the more perplexed in that Wangrin expected her to knock on the secret door, which led straight to his private apartments.
The young woman immediately called Niele, who had been her confidante for so many years, to her side. "My dear old mother," she said. "I badly need your counsel. Wangrin, who has been both a father and a most generous benefactor to me, suddenly asks me to visit him at the hour when both town and nature are enveloped in silence . . . What do you suppose he wants? I confess that I feel apprehensive, for I know that the human heart is a labyrinth inhabited by a thousand passions. Which of Wangrin’s passions may be trying to break loose? What makes him ask me to visit him at such an unseemly hour? Could you go to him and find out whether the message I got this morning really did come from him? That’s all I want you to do."
Old Niele covered her head with her white wrapper and went out. Avoiding all main thoroughfares, she succeeded in getting to Wangrin’s house as inconspicuously as she had left Tenin’s.
She found Wangrin reclining on a deck chair, in front of his shop, in the shade of a mango tree. He was lost in a reverie that had led his thoughts far, far away. He was so deep in thought that he neither heard nor saw anything around him. His features were drawn, he looked exhausted, spent, as though he were dead to the world.
"Good afternoon, Wangrin!" came Niele’s greeting.
As if rudely awakened from a deep sleep, Wangrin started slightly and replied:
"Forgive me, old Niele, I must have been sleeping with my eyes wide open, just the way certain animals do. Peace be unto you. Make yourself entirely at home and be so kind as to sit next to me and tell me to what I owe the pleasure of your unexpected visit."
"O Wangrin! I do not bear you unhappy news; I have but come to ask if you can help me set someone’s mind at rest. According to the proverb: ‘When an animal whose anatomy is unknown happens to die and is ready for a skinning, the men who are to do the job don’t know where to begin.’ In other words, when one is faced with a somewhat unusual task one feels perhaps a little perturbed, a little uneasy, one might even say, a little irresolute."
"Come out into the open with what you have to say, old Niele; not everyone is able to separate the crocodile’s tears from the water in which he is swimming. A thought expressed through allusions or parables is not altogether dissimilar from the crocodile’s tears that have fallen into the water," added Wangrin.
"The trouble in my poor old heart, the trouble that has guided my steps to your house concerns neither me, nor you, but your protégé, Pretty Doe of the Markets. This morning, just as the children were getting ready to guide their goats to pasture, she was visited by a messenger who claimed to have been sent by you. He actually said to her: ‘O Comely Egret of the Caravanserai, Wangrin will be expecting you very late tonight. . . .’ Now Pretty Doe of the Markets would like to know whether it was really you who sent that message."
Wangrin looked pensively at Niele: "Heavens above!" he exclaimed. "So there are already four of us who know my secret!"
"Don’t worry about me," protested Niele. "I’ll be silent as a grave."
Wangrin crisped his mouth in a grimace of doubt. "An old woman full of discretion and silent as a grave? If anything, she’s more likely to go into a grave!" he was thinking to himself. But aloud he said: "All right, Niele. Since you promise to be as silent as a grave, I promise to give you a suit of new clothes for the next festival, and enough francs to fill both your palms if you really are able to control your tongue. But if you don’t, instead I promise you a very sharp blade to shave your head and every hairy spot on your body as well before I cut your tongue as far down as your vulva and slit your throat all the way to the neckbone!"
Instinctively, the old woman brought a hand to her throat, as if she were trying to protect it from that hypothetical knife.
"No, Wangrin!" she said. "I know that you are a man of your word, but still. . . . You won’t slit my throat, will you?"
"It will all depend on you, my good woman. I don’t want to keep you too long now. Go to Tenin Pretty Doe and tell her that the message did come from me and that I expect her at the time and place I mentioned. She is very much at home in the dark, moreover this week the moon is not flooding us with her indiscreet glow."
Niele was about to leave when Wangrin slipped into her hand two hundred-franc notes. "So that you can buy yourself some fresh milk, my good Niele. . . ."
The old woman drew strength from this gift. Baring her teeth in a smile like that of a boiled sheep’s head, she returned to Tenin Pretty Doe’s house in a third of the time it had taken her to come.
Seeing such a cheerful expression on her face, Pretty Doe of the Markets thought that Wangrin had denied having sent the message. . . . Alas, the old woman undeceived her at once. The message did come from Wangrin. "He expects you without fail tonight. Make sure you get there," she piped cheerfully instead.
Pretty Little Doe pouted sadly, as if she’d just heard news of her mother’s or her maternal uncle’s death. Having repeated word for word her interview with Wangrin, Niele tried to give her some good advice. But Pretty Doe, suddenly lost in a daydream, was no longer listening. Instead, she was mentally exploring a vast city of her imagination, and searching for someone who might tell her how to conduct herself during the forthcoming interview with her adoptive father. But all the city gates remained impenetrably closed. Like one electric discharge following another, her mind began roaming rapidly all the streets and alleys of her chimerical city, but none of the doors opened, none of the inhabitants peered out. Pretty Little Doe came back to her senses.
"Sheathe your tongue properly," she said to old Niele. "You know that Wangrin is very good at making other people laugh while he himself remains in dead earnest. If you were inadvertently to drop one single hint of what passed between you two this morning, Wangrin would make such a gash in your throat that his knife would split even the soil beneath you. If on the other hand you keep your mouth tightly shut, he’ll dress you to the nines and he’ll put plenty of good money in your basket."
"I’ll try not to emulate the man who kept trying to fish for sardines while a caiman was already busy chewing one of his feet!" replied Niele.
The old woman left Pretty Doe deep in thought. Like a crazed little bird, her mind fluttered between two alternatives: whether to keep her nocturnal tryst or stay at home. Finally she decided in favour of the former. The young woman supped without enthusiasm. All she could get down was a small mound of rice and three little gulps of milk.
As time drew near, she bathed and decked herself in her best finery. Scented like a flower, she set forth toward Wangrin’s house. On the way there she didn’t meet anybody and didn’t even notice that a shadow was following her at some distance, choosing the same alleys and bifurcations as herself.
Pretty Doe knocked on the secret door. Five minutes passed without a soul showing up. She was about to turn back, when a man swathed in a dark cape came out of the shadows and said: "You are impatient, my daughter. Wait, the door is going to open." The girl thought this voice familiar, but she was too frightened to incline her mind to any kind of careful listening.
The masked individual came forward and to Tenin’s surprise pulled a key out of his pocket, opened the door, drew aside and said: "Go in."
Paralysed with fear, Pretty Doe took a few steps, followed by the masked man, who then proceeded to open the door leading to the private apartments. She slipped like an automaton into the darkened room. The man struck a match and lit an acetylene lamp that had been left ready on the table.
As the flame dispelled the darkness, Pretty Doe, who was at last recovering her spirits, exclaimed: "Who are you? Where is Papa Wangrin?" Without answering, the man tore off his mask and said: "Here I am!" It was Wangrin.
The young woman drew back a few steps, her eyes and her mouth wide open with astonishment. Then she said, "O Pa Wangrin, you are a real devil! You nearly frightened me to death."
"I walked behind you in case any vampire nesting in that old haunted cotton tree that is Romo might try to intercept you on the way here and consign you to the night, which knows how to swallow with impunity any passerby. . . . "
"Thank you, Pa Wangrin."
"On the contrary, it is I who must thank you for consenting to come to me at this unusual and seemingly libidinous hour of the night."
"What do you want your daughter to do?"
"I want my Pretty Doe to do me a favour which is both easy and difficult, yet something that a beautiful girl can manage with a minimum of effort."
"Come straight to the point, Pa Wangrin, I am in agony lest you ask me for something that I am not able to offer you. I am well aware that you have given me unstintingly – your protection, your kindness, and your generosity have bred in me an attachment and a feeling of gratitude so deep that nothing could eradicate them. But what is it you want from me?"
"I want you to help me to get a magic potion stirred into the stew that is going to be fed to the new Commandant. He will be here in a few days. You’ll have to ensure the complicity either of his cook or of the steward who will serve him at table."
Pretty Doe raised her arms in a joyful gesture. "Maa-Ngala!" she said, "Thank you for having prevented my father from asking me something that a girl, however wanton she may be, cannot give her father. . . ."
Deeply moved by her words, Wangrin said: "What did you think I was going to ask you, my child?"
"I thought you wanted me to surrender my body to you. That’s why I got myself so dressed up and scented."
"And if it had been that?" asked Wangrin.
"I would have let you take me, but afterwards I would have drowned myself in the old ancestral well which has never regurgitated any living soul!" Wangrin pressed the young woman against his breast.
"I am no old libertine," he said. "I know that you consider me your father, and my wives your mothers."
Pretty Doe drew herself up and spoke with great determination: "I don’t quite know how I am going to set about it, but I assure you that the new Commandant will drink your potion as many times as you wish him to!"
Wangrin saw her safely home.
The night continued to cradle gently all sleeping things till dawn. Then the first crowing of the roosters woke the housewives, who began to pound millet for the first meal of the day. The first strokes of the pestle woke the muezzins, who climbed their minarets and threw their call to prayer. This, in turn, woke the faithful. Sounds of human voices began to be heard, mingled with animal cries. As the sun rose, so, gradually, did the uproar.
Later that day, around three in the afternoon, instruments began to play all over Diussola. Improvised, made-up songs rose from every quarter, while a human throng emptied itself on to the road that led to the Residence. The new Commandant was expected between five and six. All the inhabitants of Diussola in their Sunday best, whether they felt like it or not, were expected to form rows along the sides of the main artery that crossed town and led to the Commandant’s residence, then shout their welcome, and wave hands as well as handkerchiefs. On no account must the representative of France discern traces of sadness in the features of the inhabitants of his jurisdiction, for this would suggest a lack of enthusiasm on their part! Decidedly, Jacques de Chantalba was not to be insulted in that way. His good friend Romo, who was about to become the "demigod" of the distrct, would see to it that his deity was suitably honoured.
Around 5:45pm, a car flourishing the French flag appeared on the main road and nosed its way into town. At once the sound of drums, balaphons, castanets, flutes, trumpet-horns, the clapping of hands, the griot women’s yu-yus, and the vociferations of wags redoubled in intensity, as if each group were vying for first prize. For a Commandant is the microcosm of French authority. Jacques de Chantalba was seen to rise, and from a standing position wave right and left in the same way as the governor was wont to do, and the governor-general, and the minister of colonial affairs, who was the greatest of all colonial masters and responsible for all administrators, who, in turn, feared him and him alone.
Romo, astride a superb mount, escorted the car as if he were the defender of the Commandant’s very life.
Wangrin was seated among the managers of the largest firms in town. A dais, situated in front of the residence, had been reserved for officials, missionaries, and managers of big businesses. Thanks to his license, Wangrin has been given a prominent seat.
As soon as Jacques de Chantalba had done with the African crowd, he proceeded with great ceremony toward the dais where the men who went by the name of "constituted bodies" but who an indecorous joke had been re-christened "constipated bodies" were awaiting him.
He shook hands with some, others he regaled with a smile, while a few got no more than a quick, absent-minded glance. With the bishop, he lingered longer than with most.
When he came to Wangrin, Jacques de Chantalba shook hands in a distant sort of way, saying: "I’ve heard a lot about your doings. I would like to get to know you."
"Thanks to France, Sir," replied Wangrin, "my business is positively flourishing. I am entirely at your disposal as far as making myself known to you is concerned."
With the official introductions over, the crowd dispersed while refreshments and a variety of drinks were being offered to the officials. Wangrin contented himself with a glass of lemonade.
The day after his arrival, the Commandant sat down to work with Romo as his closest assistant as had been expected. From the word go, no effort was spared to confound Wangrin and eventually destroy him.
