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Gods Bits of Wood/Le Bouts de Bois de Dieu
Sembene Ousmane
(First published 1960)
One morning the door was thrown wide open, allowing a brutal sunlight to flood the room and releasing a wave of nauseous air which made the guards recoil. It was the periodic 'promenade' organised by the 'commandant', an ex-sergeant major in the colonial forces named Bernadini. Since he had long since been retired from the army he was no longer subject to military authority, but only to that of the colonial police administration; and the men under his orders as 'commandant' of this camp were auxiliaries and not regular troops. He was a holdover from a time that was gone and a breed that had almost disappeared, but he had been kept on, in the thought that he might some day be needed. ...A Corsican, and the product of a series of foundling schools, he hated all macacos, as he called the Negroes.
He stood in the sun in the centre of the enclosure, his head protected by an old-fashioned conical helmet, tapping the naked thigh beneath his army shorts with the tip of a riding crop, waiting for the prisoners to file out.
They were lined up in ranks in front of him by the guards, seeming, with their jerky steps, their hairless legs and fleshless bodies, more like an assembly of locusts than of humans. The sun burned at their eyes, and when they closed their lids a round, black spot pulsed violently at the centre of a red cloud.
The man from San leaned towards Fa Keita and whispered, 'That one is the worst of all the bilakoros, of all the unclean infidels.'
'Macou!' the chief of the auxiliaries shouted.
'Silence!' Bernadini repeated. 'Now who was talking? No one, of course! I am accustomed to that. But let me tell you that I was in the camp at Fodor, in Mauritania, and I swear to you that no one who was with me there is likely to forget it!'
he went over to the stammerer, who seemed to be muttering something to himself, and lashed at his face with the riding crop. 'That's just in case it was you who was talking! If you open your mouth again, I'll plant my foot here!' he flicked at the man's groin with the butt of the whip. 'That should make you come, macaco! All right, chief, on with the promenade!'
There were about forty of the prisoners, Fa Keita, discovered as they began circling around the enclosure, walking in single file, one behind the other. On each turn they left behind them in the sand a faint, circular track, like the tracks of circus horses around a ring. And as they walked, the heat of the sun aroused their lice, and the itching in every portion of their bodies drove them to such frenzy that they scratched until the skin was raw.
In the centre of the circle they marked out, there was a shallow pit about the size of a man's body, marked at its corners by four pegs about six inches high. Resting on the pegs was a sheet of steel pierced with holes.
Bernadini had walked off with two of the guards, and, when he saw this, Salifou, the man of San, turned his head slightly towards Fa Keita.
'If you want to talk, Old One, keep your teeth together and don't move your lips, and then they won't see you.'
'Man, what is that pit?'
'It's for the ones who are tired and can't walk any longer - that's the way he describes it, a place to rest! And I was the one who had to dig it! When I finished, he put me in it. When they took me out, I was pissing blood!'
'Thié! Fa Keita exclaimed.
'Man!' Salifou repeated. 'You are right - but that is the way that bilakoro is. Today he is pleased with himself, though - it seems he has a new prisoner.'
'Do you know who it is?'
'Macou!' One of the guards came running toward them, his whip brandished threateningly above his head.
They said no more, and the silent circling in the burning sand went on.
A short time later, Bernadini came back to the centre of the circle, with the two guards pushing another man between them. It was Konaté, the secretary of the union local at Bamako. His hands were tied tightly behind his back.
'Well,' Bernadini said gleefully, 'what do you think of your charges now, secretary of my ass? They are pretty, aren't they? And I am here just to satisfy all of their demands - even the ones they haven't made! I even give payments on account. Here, would you like one?'
His fist crashed against Konaté's nose.
'Try to organize a meeting here, and you'll see what I give you to discuss! You think you're a big man, but you're just as much of a fool as the rest of them. And as for your Bakayoko, we'll catch him, too and he'll be brought right here to complete my little collection of monkeys!'
Konaté was not listening to Bernadini. He had been watching the men circling around him, and when he saw Fa Keita his heart seemed suddenly wrapped in iron bands.
'Well then, secretary, what about this strike? You can see for yourself that the men have everything they need - fresh air for their promenade - good food, instead of cockroaches and vultures they eat at home...'
'You have no right... Konaté began, but he was never able to finish. The riding crop slashed brutally across his face.
'How dare you interrupt a white man, you stinking pig! The right here belongs to me, and don't you forget it! You do nothing but obey, macaco!'
Konaté hurled himself at the man, but the guards moved more quickly than he and dragged him back.
'Chief!' Bernadini shouted. 'Throw him in the pit!'
Konaté struggled violently, but the guards stripped off his clothes, bound his legs with heavy cord, and rolled his naked body into the pit.
Bernadini walked over and grinned down at him. The sun's rays struck Konaté's body only in the spots where holes had been pierced in the steel, patterning it with rows of little yellowish disks.
'So you wanted to show off before your friends, eh, secretary? But you see who is master now, don't you? I've screwed tougher ones than you, you know.'
He leaned over and touched a finger to the steel plate, but withdrew it hastily. The metal was burning. 'All right, chief,' he said. 'Let's give him a little water.
Very slowly the guard began pouring water from a gourd. On contact with the metal, it made a little hissing sound, a faint white vapour steamed up, and the scalding water rolled across the surface of the steel plate and began to fall, drop by drop, through the holes. With implacable regularity it burned and bit into the skin of the man beneath.
'You've got guts, my little secretary,' Bernadini said. 'You're doing better than most of them - we'll see how long you can hold out. Chief, a little more water.'
Grimly, desperately, Konaté struggled not to cry out, but no matter how tightly he clenched his teeth he could not prevent a moan from escaping as the drops continued to fall. The other prisoners were still circling around him. Fa Keita was not even watching the scene at the pit. His eyes were lifted toward the east, above the thorned wire of the fences, beyond the reach of the savanna and the great trees shouldering the sky, far off to the line of the horizon. His eyes were lifted toward a meeting with the only thing truly worthy of any form of suffering - a faith in God. The debasement of which human beings were capable was a thing he could neither conceive nor bear. He had never shared the feelings which had brought the men around him to where they were now, but he was beginning to wonder if his wisdom had been only ignorance.
Two times more he made the seemingly endless round, and then he took the decision he had been reflecting on all this time. Since he could not pray in the filth and stench of the prison, he would profit from the chance that had been offered him now. With slow, deliberate steps, he left the file of prisoners and began walking towards the fence that surrounded the camp. At a little distance from the circle, he paused, gathered up a handful of sand for his ablutions, and stood up again, girding up the cloth around his waist. Facing towards the Kaaba, his palms turned outwards, he began to pray.
'Allahou Ackabarou...'
'What?' Bernadini roared. 'What's going on here?...' The guards had already raced over and seized the old man. 'No, let him alone,' he ordered. Then he turned to Fa Keita. 'Go ahead...'
The old man stumbled a few paces toward the fence.
'Well,' Bernadini said, 'are you going to pray, or am I...?'
And as Fa Keita began to kneel, the 'commandant's' boot caught him in the kidney and hurled him head first into the strands of barbed wire. Little drops of blood flecked the skin of the old man's shoulders and back and sides.
The prisoners had stopped, as if their feet had suddenly been trapped in the sand.
'Get them moving!' Bernadini shouted to the guards. Then he turned back to watch Fa Keita, who was trying as best he could to free himself from the barbs. His hands were bloody, and scarlet threads ran down from the dozens of points where his flesh was torn.
'Well, are you going to pray some more?' Bernadini asked.
'How far will God lead me?' Fa Keita thought. Again he lifted his palms and began to bow down, and again the 'commandant's boot flung him into the steely pointed wires. More slowly this time, he freed himself, but no sound at all came from his lips. With his arms stretched out before him, he knelt again, his forehead resting on the sand.
Bernadini put his foot on the old man's neck, like a hunter posing for a photograph. 'Just look at how well he prays,' he said. 'He's a real saint, this one.'
Suddenly, then, he seemed to lose interest in the man kneeling beneath him, in the men still shuffling around their circle, and in the man in the pit, who was screaming now with every drop of water that seared his skin.
