The Old Man and the Medal

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The Old Man and the Medal/Le Vieux Nègre et la Médaille
Ferdinand Oyono
(First published 1956. English translation 1967)

This Centre was a corrugated iron hut where the Commandant usually held his functions. It had been built half-way between the European quarter and the African location. The Commandant had had it whitewashed all over to hide the colour it had been before. Chairs had been put in for the whites on the dais which had been covered with a red cloth. Some benches from the Government school completed the furnishings. A sentry had been put there to look after the cask of red wine which had come before the crates for the reception. A huge French flag had been set up on the courtyard. The Africans gathered in the road had watched with amusement these changes being made to the hut which was to shelter the Chief of the whites. The Commandant himself had been over several times to see how far they had got.

'So long as it does not rain tomorrow,' he said, running a somewhat dissatisfied eye over the Community Centre.

'So long as the first storm at the end of the dry season does not blow up tomorrow,' thought the Africans.

At the Commercial centre, on the veranda of M. Angelopoulos's shop where Ela, the famous tailor of Doum, set up his sewing machine every morning, Meka was chewing a kola nut and waiting for his jacket. It was midday and Meka was beginning to worry whether his jacket would be ready before the sun went down. Ela on the other hand wanted to be sure he produced his masterpiece.

'The jackets the whites wear are not well made,' he said, resting his foot on the pedal. 'If you look when they are wearing them, they look as if they are being strangled...I am in process of making you something very fine,' he went on. 'I am giving you the zazou cut...'

'Well, you look at the jackets the whites wear, they're a bit like the coat of a baboon that does not cover its behind. They've got their buttocks showing. Well, what I'm going to do is to make you something which will come right down to your knees. This will be called the zazou jacket. I get the catalogues from Paris, and I am always up with the latest fashions. What really upsets me is to see a whiteman walk in front of me on this road here with his buttocks showing. Sometimes I want to go over and say to him "Sir, why don't you come and have your jacket lengthened...".'

Meka went over. Ela unrolled his tape measure. He put Meka against the wall and told him to put his heels together, pull in his buttocks and throw out his chest.

'Good,' he said, letting the tap measure fall from Meka's shoulder down to the point behind his knee-cap.

'But these "ezazou" jackets,' said Meka, puzzled, 'Are you sure they aren't Hausa boubous?'

An indulgent smile played across Ela's lips. He shook his head, pressing on the pedal. He looked at Meka over the top of his spectacles.

'It is hard for you countrymen to tell the difference between things,' he said condescendingly. 'It is all above your head as cocoa is above mine. Trades and occupations are as many and as various as the birds God has created and no man knows his trade unless he has sweated to his balls to know it and be master of it...I am making you a zazou jacket and soon everyone will be asking you if your jacket comes from Paris. I shall soon be inundated with orders. I shall have to think about taking on another apprentice...'

'Why, of course I have!' cried Ela tossing his head over the back of his chair. 'If the pig has fat, how much fat will the elephant have? I have five apprentices, at the moment they are engaged in building me a hut.'

Meka looked at the tailor in amazement. Great drops of sweat were falling onto the sewing machine and his jersey was unbuttoned down to his navel. He was all over a hairy man but no hair seemed to have ever grown on his head. He wore a pair of check trousers held up by mended elastic braces. He smiled between his words, a goat-smile that Meka found it hard to endure.

'For your sleeves,' he said, shaking with laughter. 'Those you've got there are too short. You look as if you are wearing a catechist's coat.'

'You'll see, when the Chief of the whites pins the medal just there,' he went on, pointing to the jacket he was sewing, 'I'm sure he will ask you in your ear to give him the address of your tailor.'

Meka's mind was elsewhere. With a heavy heart he was looking at what was left of the white linen that he had brought that morning rolled up under his arm. He wondered how he could have been recommended to this tailor that he found so coarse, conceited and pretentious.

'So long as a jacket finally comes out of all this mess,' he thought, 'Then I can tell him frankly what I think of him.'

Ela chatted, whistled, panted, drank and ate at his machine. The shucks of the ground-nuts he kept munching fell over the cloth.

Meka tossed his head, resigned. When the first shops were beginning to pull down their blinds Ela took the jacket from the machine and bit off the ends of cotton.

'Try it on,' said the tailor. 'I have to take the machine in soon, M. Angelopoulos will be shutting his shop directly.'

'Keep it on,' the tailor told him. 'It's all right, with these zazou jackets...'

At first Meka thought he had been manufactured a half-cassock. He was a good Christian but he would be the first Christian to wear a half-cassock.

He knelt on one knee and drew together the two flaps on either side of the vent. He took a few steps back and told Meka to walk forward. He walked round to the front and put his hands on his shoulders.

'There,' said Ela biting off an end of cotton from the sleeve. 'For the buttons, I shall give you a reel of cotton and a needle. It is quite easy, women's work. My wife is ill,' he added with a quaver in his voice.

'A woman's illness,' said the tailor with a little smile of triumph on his lips. 'The pain is everywhere but not in the groin. What do you recommend?'

'Well, that's easy,' said Meka who had not seen that Ela was collecting his tools together. 'All you have to do is tell her to give herself a purge with soap. It was Father Handermaye who told me about that,' he added, dropping the initial V and the final R of the priest's name.

'Really,' said Ela, who had now put the cover over his sewing machine. 'What brand of soap?'

'Thank you,' said the tailor going off into the street. 'You can take your zazou jacket.'

He offered him his hand. Meka took his new jacket, folded it in four, then, fumbling in one of the pockets of the jacket he was wearing he produced five hundred-franc notes which he handed to Ela.

'A price between friends,' said the tailor slipping the notes into the pocket of his check trousers. 'Now about the buttons...'