2
What has become of the city of Tanga since the events described in this story? As if anything could really happen in so few years! Today, everything is racing ahead in Africa, yet what upheavals could the city have possibly experienced? One can only hope for some manner of change; it would simply be too painful to accept such downtrodden people unless the city were marching boldly toward a less ferocious destiny; unless it were feverishly crossing a night that will soon give way to the sharp brightness of day.
At that time, Tanga certainly looked like other cities in the country: corrugated iron, white walls, red gravel streets, lawns, and farther out, scattered about with no apparent order, little mud huts roofed with dull thatch, naked children in the mud, or on the grass of the courtyard, with housewives on the stoop. Yet, upon arriving in Tanga, the astonished visitor might say, though perhaps only to himself, “There’s something different about this city!” Tanga didn’t lack for distinction.
Imagine an immense clearing in what explorers, geographers, and journalists like to call the equatorial rainforest. Picture, in the middle of this clearing, a large hill bordered by smaller ones. Tanga, or what was in reality two Tangas, sat on the opposing flanks of this central rise. The commercial and administrative Tanga sat on one, while the other— the foreign—Tanga occupied the steep and narrow southern flank. This latter part of the city was cut off from the nearby forest by a deep dark river spanned by a reinforced concrete bridge. The river was one of Tanga’s main attractions, a kind of permanent circus. One only had to look and wait. Soon, a houseboat would sweep into view upstream. It would slide softly through the water, one man standing in the bow and one in the stern. Each would lift a long, a very long pole: each in turn would plunge that pole down into the water until it hit bottom. Then they pushed off with all their might, thereby moving the vessel along.
Inside the boat, bulging bags were piled up against the bamboo railing; a woman squatting on the deck washed tattered clothes next to a smoking kitchen fire. The crowd amassed on the bridge never got tired of this spectacle; these huts mounted on lashed-together canoes had traveled hundreds of kilometers. The craft would come heavily to rest on the sand, one next to the other.
Sometimes it was enormous logs of wood that had been lashed together. These rafts likewise came from far away. These were steered by men, usually naked, who were superbly indifferent to the catcalls that drifted down from the bridge. They calmly maneuvered their craft up to the log station. Once they had arrived, one of the two cranes stationed on the wharf would clatter into action. Panting and grinding, rolling along its track, it moved toward the river. Then it stopped and leaned dangerously over the water; it finally came upright again with a log clenched in its teeth. Then it turned and was gone. It was a monstrous object. It would be hard to imagine anything uglier.
This machine made an elephant look handsome. The crane proceeded to pile the logs in a lot where one could hear the angry snap of axes smoothing off the tree trunks, rounding out their rough edges, reducing them to dimensions fit for the factory and for civilization. A miserable wheezy little train arrived from a nearby depot without a station and picked up the load of newly squared logs. It carried them off, bleached and numbered, lying on the train cars in well-behaved rows, heading God knows where.
On this side of the town, everything seemed to live for these logs, all the way to the sawmill in the distance, where one could make out gangly chimneys rhythmically spewing forth clouds of smoke into the sky. Here the log was king.
Climbing up the hill, one entered Tanga’s commercial center. The “commercial district,” as it was known, could have just as easily been called the Greek district. All the store signs sounded Greek: Caramvalis, Depotakis, Pallogakis, Mavromatis, Michalides, Staberides, Nikitopoulos— and so forth. Their shops were built at ground level with verandas where indigenous tailors set up shop with their apprentices. You could find absolutely everything in these stores. Behind the counter, Black clerks and their assistants warmly, indeed, too warmly, invited you in. Theirs was the place where you would find the best prices. Theirs was the place where you would find the highest quality merchandise.
You rarely saw the Greek boss, except during the cocoa season, that is, from December to February (for if down below wood was king, here cocoa reigned supreme). So eight o’clock was ringing and Mr. Pallogakis—hair slicked back, olive-skinned, fresh looking, soberly garbed in white, lean, a hooked and paternalistic nose—was already at his post in front of a steelyard, surrounded by his men, beaters who cried out, vociferated, stamped about frantically, and slapped their thighs. From afar, they sang the praises of their boss with a few colorful and evocative words. If you appeared disdainful, they came into the street, grabbed you by the collar, and said, “Put down your load right there, on the sidewalk, we’ll put it back on your head if need be. Listen to us. Sixty francs a kilo . . . Think about it, brother. Where else will you find such a price?” And so it went. Mr. Pallogakis started the day with a rate that was higher than the official price: the news spread like wildfire. The peasants came running with their bags. And the more there were, the more came rushing in, the easier it became for Mr. Pallogakis to progressively and imperceptibly lower his price and commit various other forms of fraud.
The incessant traffic in Tanga gave it a distinct drama. For example, no day passed without someone being crushed by an automobile or a spectacular crash between two trucks. Indeed, there seemed to be too many trucks in Tanga. Perhaps this was simply because they came from the four corners of the earth: each factory had sent at least one such vehicle to represent it. There were long bony ones that looked like a prehistoric animal; others were gigantic and full bodied and made enough noise to drive you mad; still others were short and squat. They came from the North, the South, the East, and the West, all at insane speeds. Without slowing down, they barreled into the city, leaving a triumphant cloud of dust in their wake, or they splattered everyone and everything with red mud: the streets of Tanga weren’t paved at the time of this story.
This commercial district ended at the peak of the hill with a block of administrative buildings that were too white, too showy. They sparkled in the sun, the sight of them for some unknown reason giving off an implacable sense of desolation.
The other Tanga, the unspecialized part of the city, the Tanga to which the administrative buildings turned their backs—out of a lack of appreciation, no doubt—was the Tanga that belonged to the natives; this Tanga—of huts— fanned out over the northern flank of the hill. This particular area of the city was divided into innumerable little neighborhoods, though these were actually just a series of little dips in the landscape, each of which had an evocative name. You could see the same kinds of buildings that you might encounter along the road through the forest except that here they were more decrepit, squatter; they were constructed in a manner corresponding to the increased difficulty of obtaining materials the closer you got to the city.
Two Tangas . . . Two worlds . . . Two destinies!
These two Tangas held equal sway over the locals. During the day, the Tanga of the Southside, the commercial district of money and wage labor, emptied the other Tanga of its human substance. The Black population filled up the Tanga where it worked. The streets then came alive with workers, peddlers, cooks, servants, dishwashers, prostitutes, functionaries, underlings, beaters, con artists, the lazy, and forced laborers. Each morning, the peasants of the local forest would join the existing mass of people, either because they just wanted to broaden their horizons, or because they needed to sell the product of their work; among the locals, a particular mentality had arisen that was so contagious that the men who periodically arrived from outside were contaminated as long as they remained in the city. Like those of the distant forest who retained their authenticity, the people of Tanga were apathetic, vain, too playful, and overly sensitive. But on top of that, there was something else in them now, a certain inclination toward venality, apprehension, alcoholism, and everything that reflects a disregard for human life—as is the case in any country where material interests are paramount.
