The Demon and The Giant

Two days ago my next door neighbor died. He was only in his early thirties, immensely tall, quiet. The last time I had seen him, reclining on his chair beneath the baobab tree on Tuesday the week before, he seemed healthy. I was going to Sotouboua. “Bring me back some bread,” he said. “You bet.” In Sotouboua the bread ladies refused my worn-out bill and I came back empty-handed.

He died around five o’clock on Friday, they said. That night, I looked out my back window before going to bed. The compound had never had electricity, even though the owner of the houses, Tchao’s sister, was well off enough to install it. He didn’t want to pay the monthly bill, he said. But Friday night I was attracted to my window because of the almost neon glow of a halogen bulb coming from the compound. Sitting around the courtyard were all his female relatives. No one was speaking. I went to bed, and woke up twice during the night, as is my habit. Both times the light was still on, and the women were outside, though now they were sleeping on the wooden benches instead of sitting upright. They were like that until the morning.

On Saturday I dressed and shaved and went next door. Benches were arranged outside the compound for people to sit on. No one was really speaking. At that hour, there were only two rows of benches, so I greeted all the men, and then went inside to where the women were waiting, and greeted them. They led me into the room where Tchao was being kept. His wife sat at his feet under the window, and another woman sat at his head, waving a plastic fan over his face to keep the flies off. He was covered up to his chin in a purple blanket patterned with gold. His head was cushioned on pagne.

I haven’t seen many dead people. Only four. Two in America, two here in Togo. Three of those bodies were clearly devoid of life. The skin looked plastic and painted, the muscles seemed to have shrunk and fallen from their bones, the proud jut of their chests had crumbled and caved in. But Tchao looked normal. When I saw him he’d only been dead about fifteen hours. I even thought I saw his eyelid twitch. It made me think that children’s responses to death are the most honest, much more honest than the wailing and the tears of the adults. Death to me is just very confusing. Sad, yes. But mostly just bizarre. Silence is the best response I can think of.

The crowd outside the house grew larger but stayed silent. I stood in the shade of the baobab. Around ten-thirty an open coffin was brought. On the bottom were two handlebars, one at the head, one at the feet. They set the coffin down at the entrance to the compound. They brought the body from the room, leaving the purple blanket behind. The woman began wailing again. The wails of the women are throaty and wavering, and they rise and descend like a song. Just before they’d brought the body out the deceased’s mother had been scolded for not mourning properly. She immediately began her song, and soon was sobbing. Unlike her scolder, I never doubted her grief. But she is an old woman, arthritic, slightly handicapped, usually in pain. No doubt she feels that her death is near as well. As I implied earlier, I can understand why she felt no need to weep.

They placed the body in the coffin and covered it from head to waist with an animal hide. Tchao was a tall man with large feet, and his toes stuck up over the rim of the coffin. A group of men bent down and they lifted the coffin onto the heads of two other men. Their heads were padded with palm fronds woven into fat green donuts. They then loped toward the cemetery, and the village followed. Periodically the men carrying the coffin would grow tired and a new man would take his place. The cemetery was half a kilometer from the house. It is not cordoned off or indicated by any plaques. A passerby sees only the concrete and tile tombs resting in the dubious shade of teak trees, the ground bare of undergrowth, covered only with the dried mantas of old leaves.

When the procession reached the cemetery the women turned around. It is forbidden for women or children to view the actual internment. I continued with the men. A hole had been dug in the ground about four feet deep. It was half covered already. Logs had been placed over half the hole across the width, the cracks filled with rocks and leaves, and then a large pile of dirt placed atop. The men who had dug the hole were standing barefoot in shorts with no shirts. They removed the hide from over the body, then lifted it out of the coffin. One man was already in the tomb, hidden by the half-covering. He received the head, and the men placed the body gently in the hole. One by one they made an effort to turn the body on its side and tuck the thin faded blue blanket under his whole body. The feet were still exposed. I couldn’t see the head. When the body was arranged they climbed out and handed a hoe to the dead man’s uncle. He grasped a handful of dirt in the bend of the hoe. He gave a brief eulogy in Kabye, which I did not understand, but which I’m pretty sure contained the promise that we would all meet again on Judgment Day. He tossed the dirt into the hole. The spectators were all invited to take one last look on the deceased. Then logs were placed over the remainder of the opening, and the tomb was covered. It was only at this point that I noticed all the other mounds around us. I’d thought that every family built a concrete tomb, and had been a little skeptical about this hole in the ground, with stray roots stick out from the walls of earth. When I looked around I saw at least twenty mounds of earth, all covered with rocks. I left before they finished the mound.

On Saturday after the internment, I was walking with one of my students, a fourteen-year old in cinqieme. He had been bitten by a snake a few months ago, was on the verge of death himself, but his father and some charlatans had healed him. I remember seeing him at school; the whites of his eyes were blood red. His skin was still an ashy grey. He looked like the snake that bit him.

When we were walking together after the internment, he mentioned the snake bite. It had been sorcerers, he said. His father had gone to the village chief, and together they’d performed a ceremony to find out if there were any reasons behind the boy’s being bit. They’d found out that it was revenge sorcery, and the name of the man who had gone to the charlatan to make sure it was done. “What about our friend’s death yesterday,” I asked him. “Is that sorcery?” He said that we don’t know yet. “But we’ll find out tomorrow,” he said.

That night it rained. The sky was clear most of the day, but toward three o’clock we could hear thunder in the distance. The sky took on an orange tinge, but not the tinge of Midwestern sunsets I know so well. It was the hue of coming rain, of disparity between heat and humidity, a drop in the pressure. Around six o’clock it began to rain, just as the sky was losing all traces of twilight. The rain was heavy and straight, but the wind was fierce and wild. I closed all the windows of my house, and the front door, but the rain blew straight through it, and a large pool of water collected along the base of the north wall. The lightning was bright white, not a trace of blue. We could hear branches and fruits falling from the trees, whole woody fronds dropping from the palms. One of my chicks, and three belonging to my neighbor, drowned.
In the morning there was the ceremony to find out how Tchao had died. When Lao had told me of his death Friday night, he said that Tchao had been gravely ill for about a week. But what brought on the illness was unknown. Two charlatans were hired, one by the widow, one by the uncle.

Like the day before, many among the village were there to watch, arranged on benches enclosing the open space outside the compound. The chiefs were there, the widow and her sister-in-law, their kids. Most of our quarter of town. Two women were leaned against the wall of one of the compound’s buildings. One was tapping a calabash with piece of wood, the other was tapping a hunk of concrete with a piece of steel. Tap-clink-tap-clink. The charlatan was moaning and wailing lightly. He came shirtless out of the compound wearing on his head one of the frond donuts used in the procession the day before. On top of that sat a ceremonial bow, loosely strung, and a chunk from the husk of a baobab fruit. The charlatan was rubbing his crotch, and his arms shook like ribbons of water. The uncle, an old limping man who leaned heavily on his cane, came up to the charlatan, lifted the piece of husk and placed it on the ground. Then the widow walked up, picked up the husk, tapped it three times to the bow and donut, and replaced it on the ground.

The charlatan began speaking. It was not in tongues, just Kabye. A man sitting in front of me slipped out of his sandals and went to stand face to face with the charlatan. They spoke in short bursts, finding a rhythm alongside the tapping women. I could understand nothing except the occasional “What did you say?” and frequent grunts of confirmation. At one point the chief took over the dialogue and the other man sat down. After about twenty minutes altogether, the charlatan stopped speaking. The chief sat down and the charlatan tilted his head back to let fall the donut and the bow. Some water was brought to him, and he washed his face. Then he left.

My friend told me that the vision had not been clear. “He gave many reasons for the death. First he said Tchao had had the devil in him. Then he said someone in the village had killed him with an evil song. Then he said that it was not an evil song but an evil object. He just wasn’t clear at all.” What would happen next? “Now the second charlatan will come. Hopefully he will be more specific. If he isn’t, the family will find a charlatan from another village, and they will perform the ceremony privately.”

I thought then about the whole business of sorcery. I told everyone I didn’t believe in it. I’d been saying that for awhile back when I’d first heard about its prominence in my village, and after of few of these declarations one of my friends took me aside and told me I needed to stop it. “You don’t have to believe. But you can’t tell people that what they believe is lies.”

In about five minutes the second charlatan came. He was young and thick, whereas the other had been old and thin. He took his shirt off behind us, near the lime grove. He began whistling shortly and slapping his body. His chest, his back, his shoulders. He whistled with his upper lip hooded over his lower, blowing short bursts of breath out to make a sound like the women make when they prepare food with the grindstones. While he was doing that, one of the men from the crowd, a carpenter, stood where the other charlatan had stood, with the palm donut on his head. When the charlatan approached him, the carpenter gave him the donut, and the charlatan entered the atrium of the compound. He continued to whistle and slap, hitting himself in the armpits, pulling his skin and rubbing it. Like the crotch-work of the previous man, it looked vaguely sexual.

The charlatan came out of the compound with the palm donut on his head, and he stood where the other had stood. Two different women than before were beating out the rhythm on the calabash and the concrete. The uncle hobbled over, picked the husk of baobab from the ground, tapped it on the charlatan’s head, put it back on the ground. The widow got up, tapped the husk three times on the man’s head, and again replaced it. Then a new man from the crowd stood before the charlatan, and they began to speak as before. Again, within twenty minutes the ceremony was over. The charlatan washed his face. The people began to disperse. I turned to my friend for the translation of all that had been said.

“This time it was clear. The man who died had the devil in him. He was of a mean nature, and he signed a contract with the devil. He was supposed to pay the devil with alcohol, and food, and to sacrifice to him sheep. He did not fulfill this part of the contract. The devil came and took him.”

Before everybody had left, the uncle stood up and walked to the center of the circle of benches. He spoke in Kabye, and my friend told me this is what he said. “I am sorry to find out that Tchao died like this. But it cannot be changed. Let us give what thanks we can that it was only of his own hand that he died. And let us hope that his pact with the devil will not return to act malevolently upon his family.”

Once again, my only reaction to all this is confusion. I cannot understand this. I cannot dismiss this verdict as superstition, though neither can I declare my belief in it. I just know that Tchao died mysteriously. He rarely smiled. He seemed often tired, and not just from the fields. The kind of things that seem to line up after the fact, but would never have aroused suspicion without this bizarre declaration. Nobody could tell me what he was supposed to receive from the devil according the contract. I can’t think of anything myself. The only thing I can think to say, if you were to ask me if I believe this, is, “I kind of feel like I have to.”