My Kingdom for a Guitar

A Novel

Kidi Bebey, Karen Lindo

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780253057860
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

My Kingdom for a Guitar is a novel based on the remarkable life of Cameroonian-born writer and musician Francis Bebey. Born in Douala, Cameroon, Bebey studied in Paris and New York. He found fame when his first novel, Le Fils d'Agatha Moudio ( Agatha Moudio's Son ), was published in 1967, and that fame continued to grow with the release of his first album in 1969. He would go on to become one of the best-known singer-songwriters of Africa, whose groundbreaking style merged Cameroonian makossa with classical guitar, jazz, and pop.

Narrated by Bebey's daughter, Kidi, My Kingdom for a Guitar is a tribute to her late father and his family. Through a combination of recollections and fiction, it offers the reader a chance to witness the admiration of a daughter for her father and the love of a man for his music.

–1–

There are many ways to tell this story. One way is by going back in time, to several centuries ago. During the serene hour following lunch, a page slumbered in a siesta on the ship’s deck. He had surrendered to the lulling of the waves, drifting along, pitching and rolling with the heaviness of the humid air, gradually lowering his eyelids. He had unfastened the neckband to his ruff, which hung like a large white butterfly alongside his chin. The quiet hour. Even the crew was half asleep. No one noticed the brown line of a coastal strip between the blue of the waves, the green of the trees, and the gray of the sky.

But the local inhabitants, they had sharp eyes. In the distance, amid the sea mist, they caught sight of a foreign flag. A ship of that size? It was a shock and an equally exciting surprise. They were eager to get to know these men who had learned how to make these kinds of machines. They would surely be able to have a discussion with these inventors, share important secrets for the common good. From one intelligent group to another. Because they, too, were in possession of treasures. For instance, they knew the plants that could heal and those that made you invincible. They also knew the kinds of sophisticated rhythms that could transform the most formidable enemies into languorous dancers. Had these foreigners heading to their coast ever heard of such knowledge? They grabbed hold of their paddles and pirogues and headed out into the bay. They would be sure to start off with the customary greetings: they held to a strong practice of mores and knew very well that long before engaging in conversation a foreigner is thirsty and needs to recuperate from the rigors of his journey. We need to let them come and take a seat, offer them something to drink, and then introduce them to the leaders. Within the forest, the drums had sent out the message of an impromptu and extraordinary arrival. The leaders had already begun to adorn themselves in ceremonial attire. Standing looking outward, their sense of pride was apparent in their physical bearing.

Back on the ship, upon hearing the shouting from the main deck, the page opened his eyes. He slumped into the crumbled cakes soiling his black-and-white doublet and caused his guitar to fall and break a string. The top man reported:

– Some dark forms! No . . . Looks more like skiffs! Who’s that heading directly toward us? They look like pins!

Friends or enemies? The captain was in command. The quartermaster bluntly shouted out orders to the harquebusiers as the local inhabitants advanced between the demanding efforts of their paddle strokes with welcoming smiles. They had brought with them banana leaves to fan their visitors and water jugs filled with coconut milk and fresh water that had been prepared by their wives. Back in the village, the chief donned his best costume. Not far off from the vessel, suddenly catastrophe broke out. Shots were fired and bullets came down on the approaching men like a lethal rainfall. Some fell immediately and were swallowed up by the waves. Others, screamed out, bewildered, and tried to turn around while fighting against the current, asking themselves, why?

From his hiding place on the deck, out of sight from the captain and the men trying to get away, the page looked on, appalled. He watched as the sea swallowed up the bodies of these men who, a moment ago, had been smiling. These people seemed welcoming. Was it a given that their souls were black? Unsettled by what he was seeing, the page’s heart began to bleed. He hadn’t left his mother, his sisters, and his family behind to witness such a horror. He wanted to discover the world, meet people, and learn, not watch men destroy each other long before they’d even had a chance to exchange greetings. He thought about his younger sister, who had been in tears, enraged because she wasn’t a young man and therefore would never have the chance to take off to the Indies. He was now unsure he’d ever make it back home to tell her about the lamentation the sea carries within its waves. Tears trickled down his face. He was afraid to want for courage. His sister would not be proud of him. He discreetly wiped away the tears as the pirogues, saved by a moment of grace, managed to recede into the distance.

The page’s fingers gripped the neck of his guitar.

The trouble having passed, the caravel carefully cast its anchor at a distance from the coast. From the arches of the sky, the darkness of evening suddenly fell. The page stood paralyzed, stilled by the thoughts of the events of that day. He kept seeing images of the men drowning, whose last gasps he believed he could still hear in the Atlantic night. He always believed deep down he should have become a priest or a monk. He loved the peace of mind he experienced from the words of God. Without him, he was lost. He looked within, trying to find the words to comfort himself against all the violence he had seen.

– Help me to understand the real meaning of all of this, dear Lord.

As an idea came to mind, he slowly released the firm grip he had on the neck of his instrument. A few hours ago, lives had been sacrificed; whether or not they had been devils or animals, a sacrifice needed to be made as a gesture of reparation, for what had been taken away and could never be replaced.

– My Lord, who are the savages?

For a moment, he imagined climbing onto the edge of the vessel and, after a short prayer, letting himself fall into the dark waters. But the Lord would never pardon the infamy of a soul that would have decided its own fate. The page looked around him. He felt helpless, but then remembered he had his guitar, the sole reason for his presence on board. He would tell his shipmates that he threw it overboard to make amends for what had happened. And if they didn’t understand, at least he would have the satisfaction of having taken action. He examined one last time the instrument he had received from his father. Nothing was dearer to him than his guitar. He offered it up on behalf of his fellow men, men of all countries, who, because of harquebus shots, had been denied their humanity. The instrument took flight into the damp night air before falling into the water. The page imagined his guitar taking on water from the sound hole, becoming heavier and heavier as it spiraled downward onto the seabed.

But he was mistaken. The guitar his father had gifted him dated back to the days of the page’s grandfather’s time, when people believed things that were well made were never destroyed. The guitar had no intention of dying. In its fall, the guitar had landed on its back and the water’s current aided it in getting to shore, resisting the waves by the strength of its varnish. And it all paid off because in due course it shored up, whipped but all in one piece, filled with sand, salt, and algae.

History never did say what next became of the guitar. Was it discovered by fishermen, having been caught within their nets? Did it create a big surprise the next day when it appeared at the ceremony honoring the lives of those who had died at sea, killed at the hands of foreigners? Was it taken back to the village and placed in the home of the miracle-maker so that he could decide whether it should be safeguarded or, on the contrary, reduced to nothing by throwing it into the fire? I would like to imagine that the next day while a child was playing on the beach, his heel brushed against the guitar and he was overjoyed when he discovered a ruff inside. He removed the sand and the algae, cleaned it up, repaired it, and then hid it, as one would an injured person who remained mute after having traversed years of adversity . . . And from one hiding place to another, from one child to another, from one bequest to another, and from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, the legendary instrument found its way to become the well-guarded secret of my father’s family, to whom he would entrust it at the time of his departure from his native Cameroon. Not as far back as 1472 this time, but rather in 1950 . . .

–2–

Another way to go about this might be to tell the story of all that was never said: I would re-create the story of a man and his family. I would pronounce the words I imagine they would have used and place my own words within the interstices to try to understand why life brings us from one continent to another and never takes us back, how a painful exile can be transformed into a benediction by seizing on the opportunities that come your way as new paths on which you confidently walk toward what is possible and grow.

On that day in the middle of July 1929, heavy rains fell on the village of Akwa, a small fishermen’s village between the Atlantic Ocean and the equatorial forest. The whole village was used to the din of the water lapping against the calabashes, the cisterns, and streaming down from the roofs. The rainy season lasted for about six months, including two months of warnings and two months of farewell tours. July was smack in the middle of it. You woke up with the rain, and you went to bed with the rain. The long days of solitude went on for one hundred days, without ever stopping. So no one paid particular attention to the earsplitting screams emanating from the pastor’s house on that Monday morning. His wife was bringing their eleventh child into the world. To help her courageously get through the delivery, a midwife with knitted brows stood by her side.

– Stop screaming, she snarled. Contractions are normal when you are about to give birth. You’re not going to keep on screaming because of that, are you, especially not with the eleventh child?

The midwife took hold of the newborn at the very moment he glided into life and verified he had ten fingers and ten toes before administering a few necessary taps on his buttocks that would make him cry at the top of his lungs, thus making it clear that they were working.

– I know you can’t believe you’re actually here. You’re asking yourself, where am I? But you need to breathe, baby. Find your rhythm.

The only mission the little one had was to survive in that moment, which meant to escape the fate of very young children who fell into death’s web and were carried away by Mami Wata into the depths of the ocean. He had just come into the world near the Wouri estuary, and he was going to have to swim with all his might to shore, to escape the currents, recover his breath at the edge of the river, and stand there contemplating the world and its movements until the day would come for him to take his place. The pastor’s wife was called Magdalena, and her baby’s crying was drowning out the intensity of her belabored breathing. She barely had the strength to say a little prayer to ask God to save his life. She had already lost several young children and didn’t want to have to go through that again. She would never know the outcome for her newborn. She drew her last breath and thus never had the chance to place her hand on her little boy’s head. Was she the person who named him Francis? Had it been agreed that he would be called Franziskus or Frantz? As a result of the more recent German occupation, Prussian first names were flourishing in the country. The little boy had a first name that began with F, like his father, Fritz. Francis would survive the unjust law that condemned so many children to an early death.

He began to live, and breathe, and move his fingers and toes as his mother passed on. There he was, motherless, at an age where his memories were nothing but a shapeless mass in a humid zone, forgotten by the soul. So alone, and so soon. And so it was his father, a pastor in Cameroon, who would come to leave a mark on his childhood memories. A pastor for whom it was a point of honor to tend to his church flock long before his own children. Destitution was nevertheless also present within his own family. Francis would come to know it all too well. His whole life, he would recall how hungry he used to be as a child. But for Pastor Fritz, there was no greater or more important service than that which was due to God. Francis would go on to assimilate, at great cost to himself, that devotion to the Almighty—the selflessness and the self-sacrifice. It was better to learn to manage on your own when you were a child growing up in Pastor Fritz’s home. It was better to count on aunts, cousins, sisters, and the ladies at the market, who sometimes showed great kindness by setting aside a little something for the little one who came by . . . After all, children during those days, weren’t they all more or less raising themselves?

The girls learned the everyday tasks from their mothers, aunts, and cousins. Cooking took hours: you had to go and buy the vegetables, ready to be cooked, then sort through them, trim, shell, peel, and cut. You had to catch the chicken cackling out in the courtyard, slice its neck, drain and clean it out, and rid it of its remaining fuzz by holding its skin to the flame. Then you had to cut it into pieces and prepare a marinade in which it would sit for a while. Before all that, you had to be up at the crack of dawn, while the house was still sleeping, and go and fetch the precious water you would carry on top of your head, with your hands fully extended to keep it in place, your stomach tucked and your back straight . . . When you were not cooking, you were cleaning. And when you were not cleaning, you were braiding your little sister’s hair or getting your own hair braided by one of the older girls, exercising great patience as you simultaneously shelled the grains that would be used to prepare the next meal. Being a girl was not a life; it was a maelstrom of chores and obligations. The boys, they learned about the world in the streets, on vacant lots, in the forests, and on the banks of the Wouri River, where they would collect stones that they would skillfully ricochet off the water’s surface. The housekeepers who would come to do family laundry by the river would raise their heads and send off these annoying boys with a few well-chosen words.

– What are you doing here splashing us? Shouldn’t you be over there attending the White man’s school?

Because the obligation to learn to read and write was widespread, like hot pepper in a cooking sauce, children, especially the boys, were required to go and sit from first thing in the morning till the end of day to learn all the beautiful things Europeans had written in books. The pastor had already adopted the Christian faith and the Protestant church service. More and more families were converting to the practice of attending school. In their eyes, the teachings would complete what the children had already been learning: the heroic exploits of the ancestors narrated to music and dance; the legends and proverbs that sharpened the mind; the skills for hunting, navigating, and fishing; the art of planting and cultivating herbs that heal and those that can harm; the art of bantering and being able to one day seduce; the art of giving birth to a family; and all the secret know-how that men transmit to men and women to women. Francis preferred to skip classes and hang out with fellow truants rather than attend elementary school. They enjoyed doing anything but learning to read and count. Oh happy days! In school, the teacher was as severe as a prison warden. Outdoors the wind caressed their cheeks, carried their voices, and stirred the trees’ foliage. When one of the housekeepers took the little rascals to task, they would just take off and hide elsewhere by the estuary. They hid in mangroves at the edge of the lagoon and in abandoned boats on the beach. And there they would hold council.

– Me, when I grow up . . . when I grow up, I’m going to come back to the school and give the teacher the same thrashing he gave me the other day. When I grow up, I’ll have polished, very shiny white shoes. When I grow up, I’ll have a huge watch like this and a car, big like that. I won’t need to drive it myself because I’ll have a chauffeur, wearing a hat and gloves. When I grow up, I’m going to go see if the White man’s country looks just like what’s written in the books.

They knew nothing about the world beyond the games they played, the meals they hoped to eat, and the estuary that connected to the ocean. They played at making flutes from the leafstalks of the papaya tree and ran around naked, even during the downpours that bathed them as they went by. They played at turning their faces to the sky and leaning back far enough so that with their mouths wide open the rain could generously slide all the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Epilogue
• About the Authors