(1928â80) GUINEA
On Tuesday, February 5, 1980, Léopold Sédar Senghor, the president of Senegal and one of the earliest proponents of
négritude
, announced over Radio Senegal that Camara Laye, the Guinean novelist, had died the day before. The fifty-two-year-old writer had been ill for many yearsâmuch of the time during his exile in Senegal, where he had resided for thirteen years as Senghor's guest. Laye was regarded as his continent's preeminent Francophone novelist.
Most of Laye's career as a writer was a continuous struggle against hardship, poverty, and government censorship. Laye had become a writer somewhat by accident. Born in Kouroussa, Guinea, in 1928, he distinguished himself as a student and in time received a government scholarship to a technical school in France. At the end of the year overseas, when Laye decided that he wanted to continue his studies and pursue a baccalaureate, his government abruptly cut off his funds.
Impoverished, Laye took whatever work he could to support himself. Out of loneliness, frustration, and a fear that he would forget his African heritage, he began writing down memories of his childhood in Guinea. Although he never intended his writing to be published, he was persuaded by a Parisian woman who had befriended him to show the material to a publisher. The work appeared in 1954, as
L
'
enfant noir
(
The Dark Child, or The African Child,
as it is translated in the two English-language versions), still perhaps the most
beautiful account of traditional African life ever publishedâin large part because of the haunting portrait of Laye's mother.
Laye's first novel,
Le regard du roi
(
The Radiance of the King),
was published two years later, in 1956, by which time he had decided that he wanted to be a full-time writer. This novelâa lengthy narrative about a white man who undergoes a spiritual transformation and becomes an Africanâhas repeatedly been cited, along with Chinua Achebe's
Things Fall Apart
, as one of the masterpieces of African fiction. Layeâa firm believer in the positive aspects of cultural syncretism, in ethnic reciprocityâwas an optimist, in spite of the unsettling difficulties that were about to unfold in his own life.
Back home in Guinea, Laye was given an innocuous position in the civil service, which permitted him time to write. But when Sékou Touré, the president of Guinea, read the author's work-in-progress, Laye was given two options: not publish the book or go into exile. Laye chose the latter, and
Dramouss
(a sequel to
L
'
enfant noir
) was published in Paris in 1966, after being postponed for several years.
In exile in Senegal, Laye was a haunted man. Sékou Touré ordered Laye's wife imprisoned, apparently in retaliation for the books her husband had published. Laye agonized about his wife and children in Guinea while suffering recurrent physical and psychological illnesses. Like other African writers of his generation, he discovered that his fame as a writer did not bring commensurate economic rewards or intellectual freedom.
Laye's writing suffered, though more in quantity than in quality. His final work,
Le Maître de la Parole
(1979), was published in Paris the year before his death. Though the volume chronicles the life and death of Sundiata, the first Emperor of the ancient Malian empire,
The Guardian of the Word
(the English-language title) is equally a celebration of the traditional African storyteller, the
griot.
In the narrative itself, Laye warns the reader not to confuse the true
griot
with contemporary storytellers, “those music merchants, those choristers or guitarists who wander through the big cities looking for recording studios.”
Rather, Laye tells us, the true
griot
, “one of the important members of that ancient, clearly defined hierarchical society, is ⦠preceding his status as a historian ⦠above all an artist, and, it follows, his chants, his epics, and his legends are works of art.”
Camara Laye was such a custodian of the word.
Translated from the French
by
Una Maclean
Â
She stopped walking for a momentâever since she set out she had been feeling as though she had earned a moment's restâand she took stock of her surroundings. From the top of the hill on which she stood she saw spread out before her a great expanse of country.
Far away in the distance was a town, or, rather, the remains of a town, for there was no trace of movement to be seen near it, none of the signs of activity which would suggest the presence of a town. Perhaps it was merely distance which hid from her sight all the comings and goings, and possibly once within the town she would be borne along on the urgent flood of activity. Perhaps.
“From this distance anything is possible,” she was surprised to hear herself say aloud.
She mused on how, from such a vast distance, it seemed still as though anything could happen, and she fervently believed that if any changes were to take place they would occur in the intervals when the town was hidden by the trees and undergrowth.
There had been many of these intervals and they were nearly always such very long intervals, so long that it was now by no means certain that she was approaching the town by the most direct route, for there was absolutely nothing to guide her and she had to struggle continually against the intertwining branches and tangled thorns and pick her way around a maze of swamps. She had tried very hard to cross the swamps but all she had succeeded
in doing was getting her shoes and the hem of her skirt soaking wet and she had been obliged to retrace her steps hurriedly, so treacherous was the surface of the ground.
She couldn't really see the town and she wasn't going straight toward it except for the rare moments when she topped a rise. There the ground was sparsely planted with broom and heath and she was far above the thickly wooded depths of the valleys. But no sooner had she finished scrambling up the hills than she had to plunge once more into the bushes and try to force her way through the impenetrable undergrowth where everything was in her way, cutting off her view and making her walk painful and dangerous again.
“Perhaps I really ought to go back,” she said to herself; and certainly that would have been the most sensible thing to do. But in fact she didn't slacken her pace in the least, as though something away over there was calling to her, as though the distant town were calling. But how could an empty town summon her. A silent deserted town!
For the closer she came to it the more she felt that it must really be a deserted city, a ruined city in fact. The height of the bushes and the dense tangled undergrowth about her feet convinced her. If the town had still been inhabited, even by a few people, its surroundings would never have fallen into the confusion through which she had been wandering around for hours; surely she would have found, instead of this tangled jungle, the orderly outskirts of which other towns could boast. But here there were neither roads nor paths; everything betokened disorder and decay.
Yet once more she wondered whatever forced her to continue her walk, but she could find no reply. She was following an irresistible urge. She would have been hard put to it to say how this impulse had arisen or indeed to decide just how long she had been obeying it. And perhaps it was the case that if only she followed the impulse for long enough she would no longer be capable of defying it, although there was no denying that it was grossly irrational. At any rate the urge must have been there for a very long time, as she could tell from the tiredness of her limbs, and moreover it was still very close. Couldn't she feel it brimming up within her, pressing on her breast with each eager breath she drew. Then all of a sudden she realized that she was face-to-face with it.
“The urge is me,” she cried.
She proclaimed it defiantly but without knowing what she was defying, and triumphantly although unaware of her opponent. Whom had she defied,
and what could she be triumphing over? It was not simply that she was identifying herself with the strange compulsion in order to get to know more of it and of herself. She was obliged to admit that the urge was indefinable, as her own being forever escaped definition.
After one final struggle with the branches and obstacles, and after skirting one more morass, she suddenly emerged in front of the city, or what remained of it. It was really only the traces of a town, no more than the traces, and in fact just what she had feared to find ever since she set out, but so sad, so desolate, she could never have imagined such desolation. Scarcely anything but rough heaps of walls remained. The porticoes were crumbling and most of the roofs had collapsed; only a column here or a fragment of a wall there proclaimed the former splendor of the peristyles. As for the remaining buildings, they seemed to waver uncertainly, as though on the very point of tumbling. Trees had thrust their branches through broken windows, great tufts of weeds pushed upwards the blocks and the marble slabs, the statues had fallen from their niches, all was ruined and burst asunder.
“I wonder why these remains seem so different from the forests and bush I have come through already?” she said to herself. There was no difference except for the desolation and loss, rendered all the more poignant by the contrast with what had once been. “What am I searching for here?” she asked herself once more. “I ought never to have come.”
“Many people used to come here once,” said an old man who appeared out of the ruins.
“Many people?” she said. “I have not seen a single soul.”
“Nobody has been here for a very long time,” said the old man. “But there was a time when crowds of people visited the ruins. Is that what you have come for?”
“I was coming toward the city.”
“It certainly was a great city once. But you have arrived too late. Surely you must have been delayed on the road.”
“I should not have been so late but for my battles with the trees and undergrowth and all my detours around the swamps. If only they hadn't held me back ⦔
“You should have come by the direct route.”
“The direct route?” she exclaimed. “You cannot have any idea of the wilderness round this place.”
“All right, all right,” he said. “I do have some idea of it. As a matter of fact, when I saw that people had stopped coming, I guessed how it was. Perhaps there isn't any road left?”
“There isn't even a bush path!”
“What a pity,” he said. “It was such a fine town, the most beautiful city in all the continent.”
“And now, what is it?” she said.
“What is it?” he replied dismally.
With his stick he began to mow down the nettles which rose thick and menacing about them.
“Look at this,” he said.
She saw in the midst of the nettles a fallen statue, green with moss, a humiliated statue. It cast upon her a dead, gray glance. Presently she became aware that the look was not really dead, only blind, as the eyes were without pupils, and it was in fact a living gaze, as alive as a look could be. A cry came from it, an appealing cry. Was the statue bewailing its loneliness and neglect? The lips drooped pitiably.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“He was the ruler who lived in this place. His rooms can still be seen.”
“Why don't you set up the statue over there?” she said. “It would be better there than among all these nettles.”
“That is what I wanted to do. As soon as the statue fell from its alcove I wanted to put it back, but I simply hadn't the strength. These stone sculptures are terribly heavy.”
“I know,” she replied, “and after all it is merely a stone sculpture.”
But was it merely carved stone? Could sculptured stone have cast upon her such a piercing glance? Perhaps, then, it wasn't mere stone. And even if it were nothing more than mere stone, the fact remained that for all the nettles and moss and the vagaries of fortune which it had endured, this stone would still outlast man's life. No, it could not be mere stone. And with this sort of distress in its look, this cry of distress â¦
“Would you care to visit his rooms?” asked the old man.
“Yes, take me there,” she answered.
“Pay particular attention to the columns,” he told her. “No doubt there is only one hall left here now, but when you consider the number of broken and fallen columns it does look as though there used to be at least ten halls.”
With the end of his stick he pointed out the marble stumps and debris of broken slabs buried in the grass.
“This gateway must have been exceedingly high,” he said, gazing upwards.
“It can't have been higher than the palace, surely,” she said.
“How can we tell? I have never seen it any more than you have. By the time I arrived here, it had already fallen into the grass; but those who were here before my time declared that it was an astonishing entrance. If you could put all this debris together again I dare say you would get a surprise. But who could tackle such a task?”
He shrugged his shoulders and continued: “You would need to be a giant, to have the hands and the strength of a giant.”
“Do you really believe that a giant ⦔
“No,” he replied. “Only the ruler himself, who had it erected, could do it. He could certainly manage it.”
She gazed at the niches where great tufts of grass had been bold enough to replace the statues. There was one space, larger than all the rest, where the weeds grew particularly ostentatiously, like a flaming torch.
“That is the niche, over there, where he used to stand before his fall among the nettles,” he remarked.
“I see,” she said. “But now there is nothing left but wild grass and the memory of his agony.”
“He used to find this city and his palace trying enough. He personally supervised the building of the entire place. He intended this town to be the biggest and this palace the highest. He wanted them built to his own scale. Now he is dead, his heart utterly broken.”
“But could he have died any other way?”
“No, I suppose he carried his own death within him, like us all. But he had to carry the fate of a felled Goliath.”
By this time they had reached the foot of a staircase and he pointed out a little door at the end of the corridor on the left.
“That is where I live,” he told her. “It is the old porter's lodge. I suppose I could have found somewhere a little more spacious and less damp, but after all, I am not much more than a cartetaker. In fact, a guide is only a caretaker.”
So saying, he began to make his way painfully up the steps. He was a decrepit old man.
“You are looking at me? I know I'm not much better than the palace! All this will crumble down one day. Soon all this will crumble down on my head and it won't be a great loss! But perhaps I shall crumble before the palace.”
“The palace is older,” she said.
“Yes, but it is more robust. They don't build like that nowadays.”
“What have you been saying?” she demanded. “You are not stone! Why compare your body to a palace?”
“Did I compare myself to a palace? I don't think so. My body is certainly no palace, not even a ruined one. Perhaps it is like the porter's lodge where I live, and perhaps I was wrong to call it damp and dark, perhaps I should have said nothing about it. But I must pause for breath. These stairs. At my age no one likes climbing stairs.”
And he wheezed noisily, pressing his hand over his heart as though to subdue its frantic beating.
“Let us go,” he said at last, “up the few remaining steps.”
They climbed a little higher and reached a landing with a great door opening off it, a door half wrenched from its hinges.
“Here are the rooms,” he said.
She saw an immense apartment, frightfully dilapidated. The roof had partly collapsed, leaving the rafters open to the sky. Daylight streamed in upon the debris of tiles and rubbish strewn upon the floor. But nothing could take from the chamber its harmonious proportions, with its marble panels, its tapestry and paintings, the bold surge of its columns, and the deep alcoves between them. It was all still beautiful, in spite of being three-quarters ruined. The torn and rotten tapestries and the peeling paintings were still beautiful: so were the cracked stained-glass windows. And although the paneling was practically torn away, the grandeur of the original conception remained.
“Why have you let everything deteriorate so far?” she asked.
“Why indeed? But now it is too late to do anything about it.”
“Is it really too late?”
“Now that the master is no longer here ⦔ He tapped the panels with his stick.
“I don't know how the walls are still standing,” he said. “They may last a fair time yet. But the rain deluges through the roof and windows and loosens the stones. And then when the winter storms come! It is those violent storms that destroy everything.”