At Night All Blood Is Black Read online

  The joking relationship between us had replaced the war, the feud between our two families, between our family names. The joking relationship between us succeeded in cleansing old insults with laughter and mockery.

  But a totem is more serious. A totem is taboo. You can’t eat it, you have to protect it. The Diops would risk their lives protecting a peacock in danger or a crowned crane about to die, because it’s their totem. The Ndiayes don’t need to protect lions from danger. A lion is never in danger. But it’s said that lions never eat Ndiayes. The protection goes in both directions. I can’t help but laugh when I think that the Diops are hardly in danger of being eaten by a peacock or a crowned crane. I can’t help but smile when I think again of Mademba Diop laughing when I told him that the Diops weren’t very smart for having chosen the peacock, or the crowned crane, as a totem. “The Diops are shortsighted egotists, like peacocks. They act proud, but their totem is just an arrogant fowl.” This is what made Mademba laugh when I tried to make fun of him. Mademba simply replied that you don’t choose your totem, it chooses you.

  Unfortunately, I brought up his arrogant fowl totem again on the morning of his death, not long before Captain Armand whistled for the attack. And that’s why he left before the others, why he shot out of the earth shrieking toward the enemy on the other side, to show us, me and the trench, that he was not a braggart, that he was brave. It’s because of me that he left first. It’s because of totems, because of our joking relationship and because of me, that Mademba Diop was disemboweled by a half-dead, blue-eyed enemy on that day.

  VIII

  ON THAT DAY, Mademba Diop wasn’t thinking, despite all of his learning, all of his science. I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have made fun of his totem. Until that day, I didn’t think enough, I didn’t reflect on half of what I said. You don’t provoke your friend, your more-than-brother, to leave the belly of the earth screaming louder than anyone else. You don’t drag your more-than-brother into temporary madness, into a place where a crowned crane couldn’t last an instant, into a battlefield where not even the smallest plant can grow, not even the slightest shrub, as if thousands of locusts have been gorging themselves, without rest, month after month. A field sowed with thousands of tiny metallic seeds of war that produce no harvest. A scarred battlefield made for carnivores.

  So here we are. Since I decided to think for myself, not to forbid myself any subject, I have come to understand that it wasn’t the blue-eyed enemy from the other side who killed Mademba. It’s me. I know, I understand why I didn’t kill Mademba Diop when he begged me to. “You can’t kill a man twice,” a very, very quiet voice in my mind must have murmured to me. “You already killed your childhood friend,” it must have whispered to me, “when you mocked his totem on a battle day and he leapt first from the belly of the earth. Wait a bit,” my mind must have whispered in a very, very low voice, “wait a bit. Soon, when Mademba will be dead without your help, you’ll understand. You’ll understand that you didn’t kill him, even though he asked you to, so as not to blame yourself for having finished the filthy job you began. Wait a bit,” my mind must have whispered, “soon you will understand that you were Mademba Diop’s blue-eyed enemy. You killed him with your words, you disemboweled him with your words, you devoured the insides of his body with your words.”

  From there to the thought that I am a dëmm, a devourer of souls, there’s hardly any distance, any air. Since I’ve thought anything I want since then, I can admit everything to myself in the privacy of my mind. Yes, I told myself that I must be a dëmm, an eater of the insides of men. But I told myself, immediately after thinking it, that I couldn’t believe such a thing, that it wasn’t possible. At that time, it wasn’t really me who was thinking. I had left the door of my mind open to the thoughts of others, which I mistook for my own. I wasn’t hearing myself think anymore, but was hearing the others who were afraid of me. You have to be careful, when you believe you’re free to think what you want, not to let in the thinking of others, in disguise, the false thinking of your father and mother, the spurious thinking of your grandfather, the masked thinking of your brother or sister, of your friends, in other words, of your enemies.

  So I am not a dëmm, am not a devourer of souls. That’s what the people who are afraid of me think. I am also not a savage. It’s my Toubab sergeant and my blue-eyed enemies who think that. The thinking that is mine, the thinking that belongs to me, is that my mockery, my hurtful words about his totem, are the true cause of Mademba’s death. It’s because of my big mouth that he leapt shrieking from the belly of the earth to show me what I already knew, that he was brave. The question to answer is why I laughed at the totem of my more-than-brother. The question to answer is why my mind hatched words as sharp as a locust’s bite on the day of an attack.

  Because I loved Mademba, my more-than-brother. God’s truth, I loved him so. I was so afraid he would die, I wanted so badly for the two of us to return safe and sound to Gandiol. I would have done anything to keep him alive. I followed him everywhere on the battlefield. As soon as Captain Armand would whistle for the attack so as to fully warn the enemy from the other side that we were about to come out shrieking from the belly of the earth, so as to warn the enemy to prepare to spray us with bullets, I would glue myself to Mademba so the bullet that hurt him would hurt me, or the bullet that killed him would kill me, or the bullet that missed him would miss me. God’s truth, on attack days we were elbow to elbow on the battlefield, shoulder to shoulder. We ran shrieking toward the enemy on the other side in the same rhythm, we fired our guns at the same time, we were like twin brothers who come out the same day or the same night from their mother’s womb.

  And so, God’s truth, I don’t understand. No, I don’t understand why one fine day I insinuated to Mademba Diop that he wasn’t brave, that he wasn’t a real warrior. To think for oneself doesn’t necessarily mean to understand everything. God’s truth, I don’t understand why one fine day of bloody battle, without rhyme or reason, when I hoped we would return safe and sound, he and I, to Gandiol after the war, I killed Mademba Diop with my words. I do not understand at all.

  IX

  AFTER THE SEVENTH SEVERED HAND, they’d had enough. They’d all had enough, the Toubab soldiers and the Chocolat soldiers. The sergeants and the not-sergeants. Captain Armand said that I must be tired, that I must rest. To tell me this, he called me to his dugout. It happened in the presence of a Chocolat, much older than me, higher ranked. A Chocolat with a Croix de Guerre and his heart in his boots, a Croix de Guerre Chocolat who translated whatever the captain wanted into Wolof. A poor old Croix de Guerre Chocolat who thought, as did the others, that I was a dëmm, a devourer of souls, and who trembled like a little leaf in the wind without daring to look at me, his left hand gripping a talisman in his pocket.

  Like the others, he was afraid that I would devour the insides of his body, that I would bring him to his death. Like the others, white or black, the infantryman Ibrahima Seck trembled when our eyes met. That night, he prayed silently for a long time. That night, he fingered his worry beads for a long time to protect himself from me and from my contamination. That night, he purified himself. As he stood listening, the elder Ibrahima Seck was terrified to have to translate the captain’s words for me. God’s truth, he was terrified to inform me that I was being given exceptional permission to spend an entire month at the Rear! Because, in Ibrahima Seck’s mind, what the captain ordered couldn’t come as good news to me. Because my elder, the Croix de Guerre Chocolat, believed I wouldn’t be happy to learn that I was being separated from my larder, from my prey, from my hunting ground. In Ibrahima Seck’s mind, a sorcerer like me would certainly be very, very angry at the bearer of this bad news. God’s truth, it would be no easy thing to escape a soldier sorcerer you’ve deprived of an entire month of prey, whom you’ve deprived of souls, friend or foe, to devour on the battlefield. In Ibrahima Seck’s mind, I must be holding him responsible for the loss of all the insides of soldiers, frien
d or foe, I could have eaten. And so, to distance himself from my evil eye, to shield himself from the consequences of my anger, to be able to show his grandchildren, one day, his Croix de Guerre, the elder Ibrahima Seck began each of his sentences with the same words: “The captain says…”

  “The captain says that you need to rest. The captain says that you are really very, very brave, but also very, very tired. The captain says that he salutes your courage, your very, very profound courage. The captain says that you are going to be given the Croix de Guerre like me … Ah! You already have one?… The captain says maybe you’re going to get another one.”

  So yes, I know, I understand that Captain Armand no longer wanted me on the battlefield. Behind the words reported by the elder Croix de Guerre Chocolat Ibrahima Seck, I knew, I understood, that they’d had enough after the seven severed hands I brought home. Yes, I understood, God’s truth, that on the battlefield they wanted only fleeting madness. Madmen of rage, madmen of pain, furious madmen, but temporary ones. No continuous madmen. As soon as the fighting ends, we’re to file away our rage, our pain, and our fury. Pain is tolerated, we can bring our pain home on the condition that we keep it to ourselves. But rage and fury cannot be brought back to the trench. Before returning home, we must denude ourselves of rage and fury, we must strip ourselves of it, and if we don’t we are no longer playing the game of war. Madness, after the captain blows the whistle to retreat, is taboo.

  I knew, I understood that the captain and Ibrahima Seck, the Chocolat infantryman with the Croix de Guerre, didn’t want any warrior’s rage in our midst. God’s truth, I understood that for them, with my seven severed hands, it was as if I had brought back screams and moans into a place of calm. It was impossible for them, seeing the severed hand of an enemy from the other side, to keep from thinking, And if it were mine? It was impossible for them to keep themselves from thinking, I’ve had enough of this war. God’s truth, after battle we became human again for the enemy. We can’t celebrate the fear of the enemy from the other side for long, when we ourselves are afraid. The severed hands are our fear, brought inside from outside the trench.

  “The captain says that he thanks you again for your bravery. The captain says that you have been granted a month of leave. The captain says that he would like to know where you have … hidden, uh … put the severed hands.”

  And so, without hesitating, I heard myself reply:

  “I no longer have the hands.”

  X

  GOD’S TRUTH, the captain and my elder Ibrahima Seck took me for an idiot. I may be a little strange, but I’m no idiot. I will never reveal where I hid my severed hands. They are my hands, I know which blue-eyes they belonged to. I know the provenance of each one. They had had blond or red hair on their backs, rarely black. Some were fleshy, others flaky. Their nails turned black after I separated them from their arms. One hand is smaller than the others, as if it were a woman’s or a large child’s. Little by little, they became stiff before rotting. So, to preserve them, after the second one, I slipped into the kitchen of the trench we called home, I sprinkled them very, very heavily with coarse salt, and I placed them in the cooling oven beneath the still-warm ash. I left them there for an entire night. In the morning, very, very early, I went to retrieve them. Then, the next day, I put them in the same place after having salted them again. And again and again, until they became like dried fish. I dried the hands of the blue-eyes the way at home we dry fish we want to preserve.

  Now my seven hands—out of eight, I’m missing one thanks to Jean-Baptiste’s pranks—now my seven hands have lost their individual characteristics. They’re all the same, tanned and smoothed like camel leather, they have no more hair, blond or red or black. God’s truth, they have no red spots or beauty marks. They’re all a dark brown. Mummified. There’s no chance their flesh will rot now. Nobody will be able to sniff them out, except the rats. They are in a safe place.

  I thought how I had only seven because my friend Jean-Baptiste, the trickster, the joker, had stolen one, and I’d let him, because it was my first severed hand and it was beginning to rot. I didn’t know yet what to do with it. I hadn’t yet had the idea to dry them the way the fishermen’s wives in Gandiol dry fish.

  In Gandiol, we dry fish from the river or the sea in the sun and with smoke after salting it very, very well. Here, there isn’t any real sun. There’s only a cold sun that doesn’t dry anything. Mud remains mud. Blood never dries. Our uniforms only dry by the fire. That’s why we make fires. Not only to try to warm ourselves. Mostly to dry ourselves.

  But our fires in the trench are minuscule. Big fires are forbidden, the captain said. Because there is no smoke without fire, the captain said. As soon as they see smoke rising from our home, as soon as they notice the smallest thread of smoke, even from a cigarette, with their piercing blue eyes, the enemies on the other side will adjust their artillery and bombard us. Like us, the enemy on the other side bombards trenches at random. Like us, the enemy launches random salvos even on truce days, when there are no infantry attacks. So, best not to provide any targets to the enemy artillerymen. So, God’s truth, best to avoid revealing our position with the blue smoke from a fire! So now our uniforms are never dry, so now our dirty uniforms and all of our clothes are always damp. So we try to make small fires without smoke. We position the kitchen stovepipe at the rear. So, God’s truth, we try to be cleverer than our enemy with the piercing blue eyes. And so the kitchen stove was the only place where I could dry the hands. God’s truth, I saved them all, even the second and the third, which were already half-gone.

  At first, my trench-mates were so happy that I was bringing them enemy hands, they even touched them. From the first to the third, they dared to touch them. Some even spit on them, laughing. By the time I returned to the belly of the earth with my second enemy hand, my friend Jean-Baptiste had rifled through my things. He’d stolen my first hand, and I let him because it was beginning to spoil and to attract rats. I never liked the first hand, it wasn’t pretty. It had long red hairs on its backside and I’d cut it off poorly, I had severed it roughly from the arm because I hadn’t yet formed the habit. God’s truth, my machete wasn’t sharp enough yet. But then, with experience, by the fourth one I was able to separate the hand from an enemy arm in a single slice, in a single very clean cut with the blade of my machete that I spent hours sharpening before the captain would whistle for us to attack.

  So, my friend Jean-Baptiste rifled through my things to steal the first enemy hand, which I didn’t like. Jean-Baptiste was my only real white friend in the trench. He was the only Toubab who came to console me after the death of Mademba Diop. The others had touched my shoulder, the Chocolats had recited ritual prayers before they took Mademba’s body to the Rear. The Chocolat soldiers didn’t speak to me again about it because for them Mademba’s was one death among the rest. They too had lost friends, more-than-brothers. They too wept inside for their dead. Only Jean-Baptiste had done more than place a hand on my shoulder when I brought Mademba Diop’s disemboweled body back to the trench. Jean-Baptiste, with his round head and his clear blue eyes, had taken care of me. Jean-Baptiste, with his narrow waist and small hands, had helped me to wash my dirty clothes. Jean-Baptiste had given me tobacco. Jean-Baptiste had shared his bread with me. Jean-Baptiste had made me laugh.

  And so, when Jean-Baptiste rifled through my things to steal my first enemy hand, I let him do it.

  Jean-Baptiste had a lot of fun with that severed hand. Jean-Baptiste laughed a lot with the enemy hand that had begun to rot. From the first morning when he stole it, from that first breakfast, he shook all of our hands with that hand, one after the other. And when he saluted any of us, we knew, we understood, that he was extending the severed hand of the enemy instead of his own, which was hidden beneath the sleeve of his uniform.

  It was Albert who got stuck with the enemy hand. Albert screamed when he realized that Jean-Baptiste had left the enemy hand behind in his. Albert screamed even as he threw
the enemy hand on the ground and everyone laughed and everyone made fun of him, even noncommissioned officers, and even the captain, God’s truth. So Jean-Baptiste cried out, “Bunch of idiots! Every one of you has shaken the hand of the enemy, you will all be court-martialed!” So everyone laughed again, even the elder Croix de Guerre Chocolat Ibrahima Seck, who translated for us what Jean-Baptiste had said.

  XI

  BUT, GOD’S TRUTH, that first severed hand brought no luck to Jean-Baptiste. Jean-Baptiste didn’t stay my friend for long. Not because we stopped liking each other but because Jean-Baptiste died. He died a very, very ugly death. He died with my enemy hand attached to his helmet. Jean-Baptiste liked to joke, to play the idiot, too much. There are limits, it isn’t good to play with the hands of the blue-eyed enemy in front of enemies with blue eyes doubled by binoculars. Jean-Baptiste shouldn’t have provoked them, he shouldn’t have made fun of them. The enemies from the other side resented him. They didn’t like seeing their friend’s hand stuck to the point of a Rosalie bayonet. They were sick and tired of watching it wave in the sky above our trench. God’s truth, they’d had enough of Jean-Baptiste’s antics, like when he would cry out, at the top of his lungs, with their friend’s hand on the end of his bayonet, “Filthy Krauts! Filthy Krauts!” It was as if Jean-Baptiste had gone mad, and I knew, I understood why.

  Jean-Baptiste had become a provocateur. Jean-Baptiste had been trying to draw the attention of the blue-eyed enemies behind their binoculars ever since he received a certain perfumed letter. I knew, I understood, when I saw his face as he read that letter. Jean-Baptiste’s face was alive with laughter and light before he opened the perfumed letter. When he finished reading the perfumed letter, Jean-Baptiste’s face had become gray. No more light. Only the laugh remained. But his laugh was no longer a laugh of happiness. His laugh had become the laugh of misery. A laugh that was like tears, an unpleasant laugh, a false laugh. After the perfumed letter, Jean-Baptiste helped himself to my first enemy hand so he could make crude gestures at the enemies on the other side. Jean-Baptiste made asses of them by waving it in the sky above our trench, stuck on the end of his rifle’s Rosalie: the enemy hand whose middle finger he had raised. He’d yell, “Up your ass, Krauts, go fuck yourselves!” shaking his rifle so that the enemy’s matching blue eyes would be sure to receive his message, so that there was no way his middle finger would go unnoticed.