suspended his step in midair. He credited the diviner to have foreknowledge of his arrival but as to asking him to return, he was not prepared to give in without a fight. Lips curved in a fury, he dared, ‘What do you mean, Tchafo?’
‘I mean that you should go back to your compound!’
Temkeu took several steps forward. ‘How can you ask me to go back when you have not even heard what I came to tell you?’ he asked boldly. ‘How can you ask me to carry my problem back to my compound?’ At the mouth of the shrine, he took off his ntamp cap, folded it under his armpit, took a deep breath and stepped inside.
‘Temkeu,’ Tchafo said without lifting his head from the bowls into which he was extracting juice from crushed leaves, ‘I have told you to go back.’
‘Go back to where?’ Temkeu asked defiantly. ‘If I cannot get comfort and answers here, where am I going to get them? This is the place where the wisdom of the gods dwell. How can you send me away from the shrine? This shrine is big enough to carry all our problems.’
The shrine! The walls of palm fronds woven between bamboo pillars, the feathers of rainbow colours planted into the fronds, the animal skins sprawled across the earth floor, the raffia bag from which dangled dry snake skins and monkey tails, the gourds and clay pots of various sizes filled with concoctions of leaves, barks and roots of almost every plant species around, the skulls displayed at the four angles of the rectangular structure – such was Tchafo’s shrine. Such was the place where he performed the divine duties of invocation, purification, protection, solicitation, libation and every act related to the gods that had ‘tion’ as suffix.
‘Temkeu,’ Tchafo repeated, ‘The gods have nothing to tell you today except that you should go back to your compound. Your compound is shaking with trouble.’
‘But I am just coming from my compound’ Temkeu barged in. ‘It was very well when I left. There was no trouble around it.’
‘I tell you now that trouble has visited it. Go, Temkeu. You know that the rain has no pity for the man who decides not to cut a leaf to protect himself. I tell you that you should leave my shrine and go back to your compound.’
Temkeu looked over his shoulders at the door. That was as far as his effort went.
‘If you really take me for the eye of the gods, then go back to your compound now.’
Temkeu made as if to keep arguing but then marched out of the shrine. He was used to dishing out orders, not receiving them. He was accustomed to talking down to women. He usually had the last word, even with Mefo. What was Tchafo trying to prove? He swung around and started walking right back. At the entrance he removed his cap, stomped inside, folded his hands over his chest and waited.
Tchafo did not lift an eye in his direction. He went about his business as though in the company of one of his spirit visitors.
‘Why did the ancestors send Fatti back with a message for a dead man?’ Temkeu finally spat out. ‘Why did the ancestors send my child to a dead man? And what is the message which she carries for Saha Tpune?’
‘If you believe in the gods’ Tchafo said, ‘then do what they tell you. The answers you seek will come to you when the time is right. Go, Temkeu. Thunder is striking in your compound.’
This time Temkeu walked out and did not return. The seriousness of Tchafo’s tone had finally sent home the message that something was amiss in his compound. He had strolled to the shrine; he was almost running back to his compound. His body was dripping, beads of sweat trapped in the hairs that had invaded his chest. Despite the searing sun, he marched on, his soles beating the earth.
What good did it do to run ahead of the future? If Tchafo had not told him that trouble was wrecking havoc in his compound, he would have lived the present according to plans of the past. He would have enjoyed the present while poising to tackle whatever lay ahead, but only when it became the present. Here he was breathing like a horse as he rushed to address trouble. What kind of trouble could it be even?
He accidentally hit his left foot against a rock and squealed, ‘I kicked my bad foot? Trouble is really following me. But what kind of trouble?’ Could it be Fatti’s health, or the boys or one of the women? Or maybe it could be Mefo. ‘Disaster strong enough to remove Mefo from my life!’ he muttered. ‘Do I really want to intervene? Do I want to arrive early enough to prevent it from doing its job?’ The stride slowly became a lumber and then nothing. After a few moments, he sighed in resignation. ‘When a man bites his tongue, he cannot spit out all the blood. He must swallow some.’
Mefo remained in his thoughts as he continued the journey home. If only she would acknowledge that the gods are always men, never women! If only she would accept that the eyes of the gods are always men, that Fons are always men, that elders are always men, that nchindas are always men. ‘She may be older,’ Temkeu blurted out, ‘but I am the man. She may be a Mefo, but I am the head of a compound. People will talk of Mefo’s hut but never Mefo’s compound!’
As if in defiance of his words on the subordinate role of women, a woman’s squeal greeted him as he came in view of his compound. Temkeu dashed forward, following the sound until he stood face to face with the source. Nkem. She was clinging to the mango tree in the middle of the compound as though eager to be one with it. Temkeu just stood and watched as she released the mango tree and transferred her aggression to the earth, tormenting it with her buttock’s back and forth movements. Asking her to keep her hands still would have been tantamount to preventing her from discharging her pain, for the more she wailed, the more active her hands became – carrying her jaws, holding her waist, tapping her laps – they just seemed unable to remain still. Her headscarf which had been attacked by her roving hands lay under the tree not far from where she sat. Such a display could have been the climax of a traditional dance but it was the expression of a woman’s distress. ‘Come and help me! Oh, people of Mumba, come!’
And they had come – the nearest neighbours, family, friends, onlookers. Inhabitants of Mumba quarter had taken their usual place around Temkeu’s stage of a compound – the cry of a woman in distress was as good as the village crier’s gong. The villagers had still not gotten over Fatti’s unprecedented return from the land of the ancestor. They talked about it on the farm, the market, the stream, the road, at funerals and death celebrations and in their huts at night. They had again converged in the Fopou compound, and they did not just talk about Fatti, but also about Nkem, the white man’s faithful disciple. Was her agony linked to the white man who had brought his God to compete with theirs?
‘People of Mumba come and help me!’ Nkem again cried out from the ground.
Temkeu did not step forward to help his wife. He took one last glance at her and asked, ‘Where is Fatti?’ He rushed from one hut to the other, starting with Achile’s and ending in Nkem’s from where he pulled out his daughter. ‘Are you okay?’ He stooped to her height and began a rapid physical examination of her body, stretching bones here and flexing joints there. Satisfied, he stretched out and looked about. Nkem was still rocking on the ground. She seemed even more disconsolate.
Mefo was conspicuously absent. Temkeu started hurrying towards her hut but then changed direction and moved towards the five women trying to console Nkem. ‘Come good, my mother-in-law. What trouble is worrying your child? Why is she crying like a child?’
Tangue Pualine gave a thunderous clap, folded her arms above her breasts and clumped her lips. ‘hm!’
‘Hm, what?’ Temkeu barked. ‘Speak woman.’
‘Trouble
