times and prostrated. ‘Come good, elder of our land; come good, eye of the gods.’ Pre-empting the question and apologising all the while, Temkeu dove into a narration of how the child was just some minutes away from full consciousness.
‘Where is the body?’ Without waiting for an answer, the Elder and his silent companion stomped into Temkeu’s hut. Temkeu hesitated at the door. The village crammed into every nook and cranny in the Fopou homestead.
‘There is just one child here,’ the diviner said after examining the body, ‘and she dwells with the living. I can feel her heartbeat. Did anyone check for a heartbeat after Temkeu started claiming the child was alive?’
‘No!’ Temkeu exclaimed. ‘No. It was easier for them to conclude that I was crazy.’
‘You people have all heard,’ the Elder declared after a few moments ‘that the child is alive.’
The Elder had proclaimed that Fatti Fopou was alive. Fatti Fopou was alive. Had the family indeed succeeded in stealing back from the night what it had stolen from them? Perhaps the night had not stolen her after all. Perhaps it had just taken her for a short visit to the place. Perhaps she had escaped from its grip and somehow managed to find her way back. Or perhaps the night had taken pity on the family and decided to shed some light on their faces. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. The fact was that Fatti Fopou was alive! Those at the window exclaimed it to those further out. Those in the yard shouted it to those in neighbouring compounds. So the news travelled to the village, with bits and pieces added and subtracted along the way.
Back in the hut Temkeu, who had sprinted inside at the Elder’s confirmation, lowered himself onto the hay mattress. He enfolded Fatti’s feeble hand in his. ‘Fatti, it is your father.’ He shook the words into the child, who had again closed her eyes to the world. ‘Fatti. Fatti.’ He nudged her but she was as immobile as she had been all morning.
The diviner shoved Temkeu aside, bent over Fatti and ran his hands over her body. Temkeu tapped his feet. In a matter of seconds, his status had changed from dreamer to victor. The Elder’s declaration had proved to the village that he was not insane. Yet, if Fatti did not keep cooperating, if she did not stay alive, then everyone knew what was going to follow: someone was voluntarily going to compose a song which the children were eagerly going to adopt, singing after him wherever he went. ‘This child should not do this to me. The shame will be too much,’ Temkeu whispered to himself. ‘I refuse to imagine that I may lose my victory before I have had time to gain more respect and win influential friends through it. I refuse to imagine that I would lose a second chance of being a father-in-law, and why not to an important man.’
Only one thing could give Temkeu the fame he desired and only one thing could help him keep his head up: the Elders decision. Was he going to give the child more time or was he going to order her seemingly lifeless body to be buried?
‘I do not plan to send this child back to the land of the ancestors,’ the Elder stated after the diviner’s words to his ears about the child’s health. ‘I will not send back a child who decides to stay with us. But let us remember that if she chose to go in the first place, it was because she did not like it here in the land of the living. Let us not forget that he who tries the patience of the ancestors calls the anger of the gods.’
This remark was greeted with chilling silence. Everyone was waiting for what was still to follow. Looking directly at Temkeu the Elder declared, ‘Thirty minutes. If the ancestors want to convey a message to us through this incident, I am sure they will do it in the next thirty minutes. If she has not fully returned by then, we will bury her.
‘Thirty minutes,’ Temkeu said under his breath. ‘Thirty minutes.’ As if to take his mind off the child and the drama surrounding her, he took to attending to his august guests. ‘Bring a stool for our Elder,’ he said but then leaped to a corner of his hut from where he pulled out a special wooden stool carved in repeated patterns of a spider, the symbol of wisdom. ‘Bring some palm wine too.’
While the Elder accepted the cow horn transformed into a drinking vessel, Temkeu’s best, the diviner plunged his hand into his raffia bag and brought it back with a similar horn. Stooping in front of his guests, a gourd of palm wine in his hands, Temkeu filled both horns. The Elder lifted it to his mouth, wrapped his lips around it and gulped. He nodded several times.
As they drank and waited, Temkeu swerved the conversation to the activities to follow. Once a hole had been dug with the intention of feeding it with a body, it could not be refilled without the promised meal. His voice louder than permitted, he singled out the self-declared corpse bearer to dig out a plantain stalk and bury it as a symbolic gift to the crater. Temkeu continued preaching until it hit him that he had spoken too fast on two accounts: his daughter had not been officially welcomed among the living and he was no longer head of a compound but host to an Elder and a diviner. What saved him from any repercussion was his daughter.
‘Water,’ a feeble voice said. ‘I want water,’ Fatti moaned from the bed.
‘Bring water. Fatti wants water.’ Gourds changed hands and soon the diviner stood over Fatti, supporting her head and urging her to drink.
Outside, the decision had been made: Fatti had returned and returned to stay.
‘No more cry die. Let us celebrate life,’ one of the women intoned.
‘No more cry die,’ the crowd repeated the incantation, obviously happy for a child sent back to life and happier that instead of gathering in the evening to eat in remembrance of the ‘ancestrally departed’, they would be communing to celebrate life.
‘Let us thank the ancestors for the gift of life,’ the woman again intoned and the women, joined by others on the way back from their farms, transformed the compound into a festive ground as they clapped and gyrated in a circle around the mango tree in the middle of the compound. They danced to the admiration of the men, who had just snuffed out life from a goat – compensation to the ancestors for Fatti’s life – and were chopping off and cleaning out the head, feet and entrails. In a couple of hours, their palms would all be stained with palm oil as the meat was shared around.
At that moment the compound had two faces. While those outside were thinking, talking and acting in the light, those inside Temkeu’s hut were still battling with the night. It had shown its face again. However, its coming out in the daylight could either brighten the light or deepen the imminent darkness. Fatti had regained full consciousness and recounted what she remembered of the past three hours. Her statement was simple: her great-grandfather had sent her back to life with a message for Saha Tpune.
An ancestor had sent the child back from the land of the ancestors after three hours. Those in the hut did not try to understand how that could be possible. Humans did not understand the power or actions of the gods. An ancestor had sent the child to Saha Tpune. Who was Saha Tpune? That was the preoccupation of the men.
‘I do not know of any person in the Fopou clan with that name,’ Temkeu declared.
‘For my part,’ Tchafo said ‘I was born here and grew up here.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I have lived in this village all my life. I know the names of almost all children in all compounds in Mumba quarter, and I know almost every family in the entire Nchumuluh village.’ Tchafo stressed. ‘But this man, who is he? Where is he from?’ Tchafo, even with his umbilical cord tied to the gods, could not put a face to the name. ‘Are you sure you do not know him, Temkeu? Your father never mentioned any man by that name?’
‘Saha Tpune. Saha Tpune’ Temkeu repeated the names. ‘Saha Tpune. Wait, I think I remember something.’ The Elder and diviner tilted towards him. ‘It seems
