When the Plums Are Ripe: A Novel

By Patrice Nganang

The second volume in a magisterial trilogy, the story of Cameroon caught between empires during World War II

In Cameroon, plum season is a highly anticipated time of year. But for the narrator of When the Plums Are Ripe, the poet Pouka, the season reminds him of the “time when our country had discovered the root not so much of its own violence as that of the world’s own, and, in response, had thrown its sons who at that time were called Senegalese infantrymen into the desert, just as in the evenings the sellers throw all their still-unsold plums into the embers.” In this novel of radiant lyricism, Patrice Nganang recounts the story of Cameroon’s forced entry into World War II, and in the process complicates our own understanding of that globe-spanning conflict. After the fall of France in 1940, Cameroon found itself caught between Vichy and the Free French at a time when growing nationalism advised allegiance to neither regime, and was ultimately dragged into fighting throughout North Africa on behalf of the Allies.

Moving from Pouka’s story to the campaigns of the French general Leclerc and the battles of Kufra and Murzuk, Nganang questions the colonial record and recenters African perspectives at the heart of Cameroon’s national history, all the while writing with wit and panache. When the Plums Are Ripe is a brilliantly crafted, politically charged epic that challenges not only the legacies of colonialism but the intersections of language, authority, and history itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Aug 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780374719302

Patrice Nganang

Patrice Nganang was born in Cameroon and is a novelist, a poet, and an essayist. His novel Dog Days received the Prix Marguerite Yourcenar and the Grand Prix littéraire d’Afrique noire. He is also the author of Mount Pleasant (FSG, 2016) and When the Plums Are Ripe (FSG, 2019). He teaches comparative literature at Stony Brook University.

Book preview

THE PUTSCH IN ONGOLA, 1940

1

June Vacation Back in the Village

To make a long story short, M’bangue concluded, crossing his hands on his knees, that’s how Hitler committed suicide.

Then he began to describe the deceased dictator, his blue jacket, his black tie, the barricaded toilets whose doors had to be broken down to get him out. Everyone was staring, their mouths agape, especially Pouka, who no longer recognized his father, whose hands were now tracing outrageous symbols, expansive symbols. The seer’s face was lit up for an instant, then his eyes quickly disappeared into the fractals that his fingers had traced on the ground, into the geomantic mystery of the signs that gave shape to his pronouncements. No one called his word into doubt, for who could challenge his dream? Until that moment it had been nothing more than monologues, whispers, and murmurs: a spitting of distant sounds that evolved into words in the hollow of his belly.

In the toilets, he continued, mark my word.

No, Pouka no longer recognized his father. For everyone there, and him most of all, it was impossible to take this tale seriously. Besides, the month of June was strange enough already. Why would Hitler have committed suicide after occupying half of Europe? The Old Man didn’t say—but that was the real question. Oh, his son didn’t push for an answer: he just wanted to rest. The village held out that hazy promise to anyone returning from the city. Yaoundé could turn a man into a dog, as some would say. It sounded like a taunt, and this time they were right. And yet, with plum trees laden with fruit, where rows of pine and flame trees and bushes full of daisies meant it always smelled of Christmas, the village held out a promise of happiness that he could not turn down.

He ate a good sausage, M’bangue concluded, and then he killed himself…

There were some who chortled. But not Pouka. No, he didn’t laugh.

To think it was already 1940! Three years had gone by since he’d last set foot in Edéa; yes, three years when he hadn’t come home. Maybe that’s why he was staring at the Old Man’s gestures with more surprise than anyone else; why he jumped at the end of the prediction. Clearly, Pouka was no longer the adolescent he’d been, torn from the shirttails of his cousin, the boxer, and sent to the mission school. It wasn’t just that he’d converted to Catholicism in the meantime; no, he’d been promoted to the position of writer (really more of a secretary), écrivain-interprète! And that meant something! If reading shifting signs in the dirt was his father’s business, juggling with words and filing folders was his. He, too, lived in the place where the future was created; or at least that’s what he believed.

Or rather, no, that’s what he hoped. How else to explain the meticulous care he took getting dressed each morning? Pouka could very well have given up on wearing his polished shoes, his tergal pants, his formal shirt, his multicolored cap, and … what else? But then he would have reverted into the barefoot little boy he’d left behind long ago. A kid. A native. Since then he had set his eyes on a goal, even if it was a little blurry. But now he’d come back. During the trip, he had come up with a reason for his visit: he told his father that he wanted a wife. Obviously that was a diversion, a way of avoiding the confrontation to come.

I didn’t send you to the white men to have you become a…

What had he become? What? Wait a moment, dear reader, for this is a scene he had played out for himself several times. Never had he managed to say just what it was he had become. Yet it was obvious. A tall man, a head taller than anyone else. And on that head, Edéa would soon grow accustomed to seeing, come rain, come shine, a puffy cap that he never seemed to take off. Looking around, he saw respect inscribed on the faces of all the villagers. Envy, too. Jealousy, sometimes. Or maybe curiosity? Just what had he become? And they wondered: Why didn’t he ever lift his cap to greet people? Did he screw with it still on his head? As for girls, no, no need to talk about girls. Still, there were a lot of stories told about him, racy stories. Stories, he knew, that worried his Old Man.

When are you going to get married?

Pouka hadn’t yet found a good answer for that question, which he’d read long ago in his father’s inquisitive gaze, on the day he left the village. He was the eldest son, the first of some fifty children, many of whom already had passels of children to show the Old Man. And then there were his friends—especially Fritz. We’ll come back to him later, but really, his name says it all. Yet right then, as he stared at his father, whose eyes still glowed with distant visions, Pouka suddenly realized that the war had become an ugly distraction in this peaceful forest.

Hitler… M’bangue continued.

This time, however, he didn’t finish his sentence.

2

The Collapse

Pouka’s return to the village had been abrupt, but necessary. After June 14, a sudden change in the winds made the capital’s offices aware of their own superfluity. The news had come just a week after school had let out, unleashing crowds of children. It seemed like the whole territory was on vacation. And yet! Ongola, the city center, had fallen under the sway of a particular type of fever: one instant stretched out infinitely, a point turned into a zigzagging line. It wasn’t just that there was no more paperwork to file or notices to circulate. Since the start of the war officials had been spending their days glued to the radio, and the rest of their time trading improbable stories from Paris—from France. What was new that day was the dramatic expression on their faces.

I always said, one voice began, that Lebrun is an idiot.

If failure can take on several forms, powerlessness has only one.

A traitor, you mean!

Useless words, superfluous mouths, transparent hands gesturing endlessly, caught up in a chattering, toothless conspiracy.

The Reds have taken Paris!

The Communists?

Hitler, you mean.

That would be the worst!

You said it!

My dear friend, better the Brown Shirts than the Reds.

The face of the man who had just spoken looked around and, suddenly noticing Pouka, his native assistant, shooed him away angrily.

The government is on the run, someone repeated.

A government only falls if it has already been crushed; otherwise, there is always hope it will rise again. And yet, on the run?

There was very little credible news. Rumors were inflaming the spirits of those starving for updates from the metropole, and hope buoyed up imaginations.

In exile, said someone over here.

Relieved from duty, corrected another over there.

In Bordeaux, a third added, but not defeated.

But not defeated.

Never defeated!

Hope is the drug of the tortured.

In Africa! the prison warden announced the next day. My brother told me that the government is now based in Africa.

In Africa?

All the colonists stared at each other, mouths agape.

Where in Africa?

Days of doubt; days of suspicion. In all truth, the atmosphere had grown unbearable. His boss’s irritability made it imperative that Pouka leave on vacation. No one challenged his request for leave. The offices were empty, decisions superfluous. The rhythm of war flooded over the city, imposing a sense of emptiness none could ignore. One day Pouka asked for a month’s leave, since the future really didn’t mean anything anymore. Days of uncertainty. What excuse had he given? No, he hadn’t said he was going home to take a wife, since that would have been ridiculous … who gets married in times like these?

What times!

The truth itself would have been judged, if not ridiculous, then at least stupid, and would have resulted in a resounding no. Can you imagine if he had simply said what he intended to do: I want to start a poetry circle in my village?

First off, who would have believed him? Although he had written many manuscripts that had failed to find an editor—not yet, not yet, he told his friends—he was still the most celebrated poet of his generation, having published pieces in La Gazette du Cameroun and in L’Éveil camerounais. So he was fed up that no one in his village had heard of him—even though he’d received the Palmes académiques d’outre mer, as well as colonial medals for poetic distinction—while his cousin Hebga, the boxer, remained the area’s favorite son, just for the strength of his muscles. No, Pouka hadn’t won the Goncourt Prize, but still. He had finally realized that these French institutions that awarded him prizes didn’t give a damn that none of his compatriots had ever seen any of his books, that the natives were unaware of the definition of a rondeau, and so he had decided to take matters into his own hands.

Rebellion? No, he considered himself a French subject. The need for recognition can sometimes lead to folly, but the mere thought of rebellion scared him. In truth, he despised his brothers, yes, he despised them. Yet, the idea that they couldn’t even read made him angry. In short, what he really wanted was to create a reader for his poems in his village, and to his mind that made him no different from Hugo, or Mallarmé, or even Gautier, whom he saw as his model. He couldn’t confide the goal of his trip to his boss, of course. But he was too honest to say it was because of a death in the family, although that would have been the most believable excuse. No, you never know what consequences will come from claiming that your father has died, or of killing off your grandfather again, although he’d been buried years before.

On the bus that took him to Edéa, he thought of just how he would explain his unexpected arrival—or rather the three years since his last visit—to his father. Our dear Pouka wouldn’t be the first one to invent some story: in those days, people were afraid of truth more than anything else. For who on earth would admit that what was going on—whether it was a Swiss watch losing time, gusts of wind coming through new zinc roofs, or the whimpering of an infant in a closed room—was actually happening? And so our hero, a rather haughty, but timid, young man, prone to avoidance, and who had built a temple to the scents of women, had suddenly realized that being alone in a bus filled with passengers meant sharing all of their silent illusions. Vacation! The old village!

At the very moment when his father kissed him in the courtyard of the family compound, the clamor that had followed him since the bus station fell silent. A woman selling grilled plantains had recognized him and shared the news of his arrival with the Bassa hills. Then she followed along behind him, accompanied by the kids from the missionary school who had just been let out into the playground for four months of vacation.

3

The Old Man’s Four Eyes

In Edéa, the world kept turning, which at that point meant following the rhythm of the Old Man’s deliberate gestures. M’bangue had a power that made everyone who could be considered a figure of authority in the region bow down at his feet—everyone, that is, except the French, who had never forgotten that once he had spoken German. Maybe there were other reasons, too—dubious ones, to be sure, for why on earth would anyone have doubted the accuracy of his visions? Once he had crossed the forest in the middle of the night to wake up his brother, arriving just in time to save him before the roof of his house could come crashing down on his head. Those who didn’t believe his words had always paid dearly for their skepticism. Take, for example, his brother-in-law, a woodcutter who had gone to cut down trees one day despite his warnings, only to have one tree, which he hadn’t even touched, twist around strangely and fall right on top of him. Where the Old Man was really unbeatable was in predicting rain. Though many others shared this gift, his was beyond question. M’bangue could tell you the hour the storm would start, how long the rain would fall, and even where it would come down hardest, along with the number and even the names of its victims—if there were any men stubborn enough to ignore his warning not to make love to their wives the night before the storm.

Did he screw? M’bangue asked about a man he’d warned and who had been struck dead by lightning.

Embarrassed, the dead man’s wife opted not to answer; maybe she even went into hiding to avoid retribution. No one ever cast doubt on the Old Man’s dreams, except for his Hitlerian predictions, which were, you had to admit, rather preposterous. This wasn’t the first time M’bangue had done something out of the ordinary, however. That his son had gone, like only a handful of other village boys, from the Catholic school to the French administration, without ever asking for his approval—well, people said that was enough to explain why he hadn’t come back to the village for so long. Was it because of a bad dream? Or just a sulking father? What? Looking back on this now, it would be easy to write that M’bangue had foreseen what his son would become! But don’t read too much into the squabbles of a father and son! There were stories about voices raised in the house one night, or maybe it was one afternoon, or why not even a morning … A mother’s tears shed in a darkened room, curses offered up right in the living room. But then again, what didn’t people say?

4

Flourishes of a Far-Off Conversation

These sessions of divination were for M’bangue what the writing of a poem was for his son, poetry’s newly converted disciple. The Old Man had traced a circle in the dirt in front of his feet. He counted once, twice, three times, calculated the odds, and then checked his equation. He wiped his face with both hands, as if trying to come to grips with the truth of his own prediction, before describing what he had seen. His words had made Pouka shudder, then stand up and leave. Pouka was well aware that, had he repeated this paternal declaration to his bosses, who were so caught up in their own whispering back in the capital, they would have burst out laughing. Clearly, not much would have changed if the colonists had a good laugh from time to time, if Yaoundé had been shaken up by a resounding peal of laughter, especially in these uncomfortable days, but still, yes … still! And besides, many of his father’s visions hadn’t come true, after all, his son could bear witness to that. But Pouka would never forget that dream about Hitler. Much later, when his mocking compatriots began to call him Trissotin, he remembered the words his father had spoken with such confidence to the crowd gathered there in Edéa as he emerged from a trance, and Pouka thought, deep in his heart: That time I was right.

Being right means nothing, except in history’s long view, as we all know. And the history in question here was improbable, unbelievable, the most obvious of tricks. The young man just shrugged his shoulders, as anyone would have done upon hearing a story too far-fetched to be true, then stood up and dusted off his behind. A moment later, as he arrived in the courtyard of his cousin the boxer, he was already thinking of something else. He had no choice, really, his father’s words were chasing him away.

Hey, cuz, the boxer shouted as soon as he opened the door, you’ve turned into a white man!

He pulled Pouka in and hugged him tight, then grabbed him by the shoulders and stared: first at his face, then peeling away his clothes with his eyes and stripping him bare to the bone. His booming voice roused everyone around who hadn’t already heard who’d just come back from the city, and by that I mean, just his friends.

Take a look at this! Hebga! they exclaimed.

It’s true he had really changed. Pouka was no longer the little boy who trailed in the boxer’s shadow, who wrapped Hebga’s fists with cloth before each match, massaging his muscles, slapping his stomach, saying just the right words to build up his courage so he could smash his opponents’ faces. Pouka was no longer the ambianceur who livened up Hebga’s matches, but did that mean he’d become a white man? The thought amused the writer, just as he was amused by the famished eyes eating up his clothes and shoes, seeing on his shoulders an aura of success—something quite unimaginable to the overworked drudge he’d become. This called for a celebration, for exuberant toasts in the bar. Never would the newly returned prodigal son have deprived the village of its deserved bacchanal.

What luck—there in Mininga’s Bar he met up with Um Nyobè, an écrivain-interprète like himself, another kid from the village who’d been educated in the missionary school and then joined the French administration, but whose boyish looks and sartorial simplicity were in stark contrast to his own exuberant style. The seminarian, that’s Um, Pouka would say. Um Nyobè had arrived in the village before him, called back by a sudden death in his family—an uncle on my father’s side—and his need to attend the funeral. He was only going to stay for a few more days, but still, still …

You never come to visit me, either, Pouka shot at him. You’d think I was some kind of a criminal!

Oh, Yaoundé, Um Nyobè replied. You know how it is.

Pouka lives in Madagascar, did you forget?

Um Nyobè stifled a laugh. No, Pouka hadn’t changed at all. After all this time … his vanity hadn’t waned one bit. He still always talked about himself in the third person. Ah, Pouka! In fact, Pouka’s neighborhood, Madagascar, was right next to Messa, where Um Nyobè and other civil servants like him lived, just one or two kilometers away, really.

Are you forgetting that I’m your elder? Pouka added.

Although surprised that these two guys from Yaoundé only ran into each other in this village courtyard, the villagers were all of one mind: it was up to Um Nyobè to make the first step.

Oh well, then my apologies, he conceded, adding, big brother.

As expected, Pouka recognized many other childhood friends. Fritz, for example, already the head of a family, whose business interests were in Douala rather than the capital, and who seemed to want to list all the benefits of his lifestyle: when you don’t work for the white men, when you are your own boss, as he said. Before he could, Hebga cut him off.

Ah, my brothers, the boxer jumped in, tell me all about Yaoundé!

Today you’d be more likely to hear, Tell me about Paris! And in fact, there in the middle of June 1940, that’s what Hebga would have asked if he hadn’t been, like all the rest of the local population, cut off from history’s twists and turns. He should have asked what had happened in France, why she had surrendered so quickly, how the City of Light could have fallen so easily and allowed herself to be occupied by Germans; and then, most important, what would this mean for Cameroon? Yes, was Cameroon going to remain under the control of a defeated country? The guys who were so busy giving each other hugs, drinking beer, and eating grilled plantains and plums, they would start asking these questions soon enough, believe me. All you had to do was see the cold look in Um Nyobè’s eyes to realize that—even if Hebga’s endless questions dominated this comical welcome-home party until the night gave way to snores.

5

Like Mythical Cousins

Hebga was a young man, about twenty years old; his bulging pecs, adorned with a few scattered tufts of hair, stood out as a challenge. His braids hung down on both sides from a middle part, a reminder of the German haircut he once had, an elegant look that was accentuated by the billowing pagne wrapped between his legs, like an ample diaper, and tied at his hips. For Pouka, he was a godfather. He always had been. What joined these two together was stronger than the blood that linked the writer to his father’s fifty other children: a mysterious bond born in the bush, the work of a tenacious woman, if truth be told. For Pouka had really been raised by our Sita, Hebga’s mother, his father’s eldest sister and, for all the residents of Edéa, the Mother of the Market. She had never come to terms with having only one living child and so had accepted her brother’s firstborn as if he were her second. This wasn’t a problem in the eyes of the young Pouka, who readily accepted his adopted older brother, since he had none of his own.

In the depths of the forest, the bond between the two boys had strengthened. After his father’s death, Hebga had become the village’s woodcutter. He was only sixteen at the time. That it was an iroko, an African teak tree, that had made him an orphan seemed to have instilled in him an endless need for vengeance. The forest was filled with too many enemies to count. He faced off against the tree trunks alone, when usually it took a whole legion of men to cut one down. Pouka always went with him into the bush, balancing on his head the food and water that fueled his cousin’s strength. Once Hebga began his struggle with the chosen tree, Pouka would shout out words of encouragement, sometimes intoning hymns to spur him on. Their bond grew quite quickly through this routine of song and grunts, of words and effort, and soon was so strong that it would have been difficult to say which one of them needed the other more.

It was only a question of time before everyone would learn of the bonds of sweat and words that made them brothers. One morning Edéa awoke to a chorus of voices announcing the arrival of the boxing champions. This was nothing surprising. Several times each dry season, the railroad company crisscrossed the bush, putting on its show and raking in money. They were as much actors as wizened athletes, trained by a wily manager—a Frenchman, to top it off—who understood how much money he could make by putting on spectacular, if rigged, fights. For the villagers, this was an opportunity to break the dull monotony of their day-to-day. Two hulks smashed each other’s face to the pack’s applause, while women covered their children’s eyes and grumbled about men’s stupidity. The men preferred these boxing matches to the itinerant movie showings organized by the Catholic church, because after a while the films chosen by Father Jean made only the children laugh. Boxing, that was what they clamored for, and the company took advantage of the breaks between each round to keep raising the stakes.

But one day this happened: someone in the crowd, a kid, burst out laughing when the referee lifted the arm of the declared winner. What kind of fly had bitten Pouka? That disrespectful little kid couldn’t contain himself when the man named the Champion of Cameroon stared at him with his red bloodshot eyes. No way! As if galvanized by the attention of the crowd now fixed on him, the boy shouted in his loudest voice:

My cousin is the real Champion of Cameroon!

The boxers burst out laughing. But they were the only ones there who didn’t know Hebga. Sometimes, as they toured the country, they had met villagers, lacking in modesty, whose long struggles in the fields had led to fantasies of incredible victories: weak men blind to their own delusions of grandeur. Thinking perhaps that this would be a chance to make a bit more money by adding an unplanned battle to their routine, the manager asked the crowd: So who is this champion? No one stepped forward.

Where is your cousin? he asked the