efforts were soon visible in the growing crowd that slowly assembled in the Fopou compound. Many came with questions: why had a child died? Others came with sympathy. The women. The mothers. Some wailed openly. Some cuddled other wailing women.
Some shook their heads so hard and so often their lightly knotted headscarves dropped to the ground in protest. Some just sat still, staring at the disbelief all around, immobilized by its intensity. The stronger women quickly pushed aside the grief and went from one kitchen to the other, seeing to the cooking arrangements.
The men hung about in small groups of two, threes and fives, preoccupied with village customs and beliefs about the dead. The head of an ‘ancestrally departed’ was left in the grave only long enough for it to get rid of its flesh, after which it was exhumed, restored to life and handed over to the deceased’s successor. The spirit of the deceased, embodied in the skull, then acted as a mediator – springing the people’s petitions to the gods and showering the gods’ blessings and curses on the people. While one school of thought held that it was forbidden to restore life to children’s skulls because their premature departure was evidence of their dislike for the land, another countered that children were not wise enough to intervene on behalf of grown-ups, insisting that poor comprehension was not a good trait for a broker, especially one whose job was to mediate between two worlds, between two kinds of entities, between the gods and men.
Had it been the death of an adult, everyone would have agreed that the customs were being respected: the women seeing to the food and the men, discussing culture and related issues in small groups. Yet this was the death of a child. Such preparations and discussions were permitted only after the burial, which had to take place within the hour following death. However, the little girl had been dead for close to two hours and she still had not been buried. Her body was still stretched out on the hay mattress, wrapped in her mother’s best cloth. Such was the last sign of honour to a child who will never grow old enough to know elegance.
‘I have spoken, Temkeu. This child has gone to visit the ancestors, and you know that she is not coming back. We will never see her again. We will never see her skull.’ Mefo stood at one corner of the circular thatched hut. She appeared shorter without her headscarf. Of all women, a Mefo always had to cover her hair. This Mefo was a renowned traditionalist. This Mefo was also the child’s grandmother. ‘Temkeu, we need to put the child into her new home.’
It seemed as if there were several Temkeus in the hut, and that Temkeu Fopou, the child’s father and Mefo’s son was certainly not the one being addressed; he just sat at the corner of the hut, staring at the wall with blank eyes.
Tired of trying to reason with him, Mefo accused her son of betraying his manhood by disrespecting the gods’ decree to immediately unite departed children with the earth. ‘The people came to help you carry your pain’ she said ‘but you are driving them back to their farms. You sit there making as if you are the first to hold or taste pain. What pain even?’ As she spoke, she picked up her headscarf from the floor and twisted and knotted it over her head. ‘You will fool me only after you have fooled every person in this village!’ Mefo stared at her son with a stabbing expression. ‘You think I do not know why you are clinging to that body? I know, Temkeu! I know. I like the way our people put it. They say that when a river starts swallowing a man, the man hangs on to anything, even grass which is being carried away by the same river.’
The picture she gave was one of an old woman who loved the sound of her voice. She was about start another round of monologuising when one of the elderly women walked into the hut, caught Mefo’s wrist in her fist and started towing her away. ‘You know you suffer from chronic headache attacks, Mefo. If you talk too much your sickness may start again.’
Mefo would not leave without a final warning: ‘If I come back and find that body still lying there,’ she said to Temkeu, ‘one of us, you or me, is going to take its place in that hole. One disaster is enough! I will not sit here and allow you to call the anger of the gods on this village. I will not allow you make the gods blacken another day with death. No! One disaster is enough!’
A sixty-seven-year-old woman, Mefo bore the title of Queen Mother more gracefully than most youths, the future. The royal title was conferred on a chosen female member of the Fon’s family, and it came with privileges usually not accorded to other women, especially not to single women. When Mefo approached, women bowed, men threw greetings. In a land where women needed permission to speak even among their gender, Mefo had a voice, a voice louder than that of most men. Elders and titleholders often sought her opinion.
Though many relatives and friends secretly discussed her obvious disgust for her only child, few wanted to walk about with the heavy weight of the legendary feud; fewer wanted to burn their fingers, not when the adopted enemy was to be Temkeu Fopou, a man who had proved he could challenge Mefo. Whether for the glory of proving he was tough or in retaliation to Mefo’s hostility towards him or for some other reason, no one really could tell.
Temkeu watched his mother walked out of his hut. He often described himself as the head of three women, pocket of thirteen children, proprietor of a compound with five huts, owner of two skulls and a belated titleholder. Yet he allowed a woman to talk down to him. How his mother had come to have so much authority over him was a mystery. Her influence had reached the point where people at times described him as a fifty-two-year-old man who lived under the shadow of a woman. Even on such a day when he had refused to fight, she had still come after him, openly describing him as a problem too big for any solution. She challenged him. She put him on the same scale as boys who owned neither compounds nor skulls. Just how could he prevent her imposing presence from making him feel like a prisoner within his own bricks?
Temkeu got up from the stool where he had been sitting and walked towards the window. From the window to the door, from the three-stone fireplace to the built-in slab, he roamed about his empty hut with his hands folded across his chest. Almost two hours had gone by since the child’s death. Those who had still been handing around, hoping he would return to reason, had left one after the other. Those who were still hanging around were not about to get any satisfaction, for burial was the last thing on Temkeu’s mind. First, he wanted to understand why death had visited his compound.
‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘What did I do?’ he asked his uncle and grandfather, or what remained of them. Their skulls sat on the slab built into the wall opposite his bed. A skull was a symbol of honour. He who lived with skulls lived with the blessings of the ancestors. He was a man among men. ‘Why me?’ Temkeu repeated. The only reply he got was the echoing sound of silence. That was all which emerged from the skeletal brain cases with deep eardrums, empty sockets and clenched teeth.
Like one who had received insight that the reply would come by action rather than words, Temkeu rushed to the bed and nudged the child slightly. She did not stir. He stared hard at her, and then as though for want of something better to do, sat down next to the body on the bed. He carried his chin in his right hand and closed his eyes. One hour went by before he opened his eyes again, this time to stare at his third wife, Nkem Fopou, the child’s mother.
‘Do you not think it is time to let her go?’ she said. ‘I have spent the last hour putting oil on the palms of family members. Yes, they have eaten the meat I put on their palms, washed their hands, and now they are again threatening to return to their compounds and farms.’
As Temkeu looked up, the two relatives who had followed Nkem into the hut shushed each other to silence. They watched his every move and waited anxiously for his next word. However, Temkeu had no word for them. He ran his eyes over them and about the empty stools and then to his daughter’s body. After a few minutes of futile waiting, Nkem beckoned her companions to follow her out of the hut. The women were already by the door when Temkeu let out, ‘You can take her.’
The compound had been waiting for this moment. For almost three hours close family members,
