A Girl Called Eel E-Book

Ali Zamir

• Herausgeber: Jacaranda Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Jacaranda
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 397

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

"It is rare to say about a book that you have never read anything like it, and this is one such case." Elle "A pure diamond, a magnificent event. A mind-blowing debut novel." Le Point Eel is a 17-year-old girl who leaves her rock on the archipelago of Comoros to lose herself at sea. She drifts between two states of mind and between two islands 'in a hollow maze', evoking her memories so as to forget nothing and so as to delay the inevitable outcome. Confronted with the pressing immediacy of imminent death, Eel recounts the story of her whole life in one long, sustained breath, in a series of brief couplets. A story told in a single sentence, A Girl Called Eel is a memorial, a reckoning, and a powerful narrative imbued with a prevailing sense of urgency.

Leseprobe

Praise for Anguille sous roche

Winner of the Prix Senghor 2016

Longlisted for the Prix du Roman Fnac 2016, the Livre sur la Place award, the Hors Concours 2016, the Prix Révélation de la Société des Gens de Lettres, the Prix des Rencontres à lire de la ville de Dax 2017, the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie 2016, and the Prix du Premier Roman de Chambéry

“An upcoming literary phenomenon.”

—Elle

“Anguille sous Roche takes us with its dizzying, sensual, revolted prose.”

—Gladys Marivat, Le Monde

“An ambitious novel with a precious gloss but flowing like a swell.”

—Christian Tortel, France Télévision

“A pure diamond, a wonderful event.”

—Valérie Marin La Meslée, Le Point

“Of stupefying beauty.

—Baptiste Liger, Lire

“A brilliant first novel.”

—Frédérique Briart, Marianne

“Unique,”

—Agence France Presse

“It is unconceivable that Anguille sous Roche won’t make a splash.”

—Marine Landrot, Télérama

“Impressive”

—Grazia

“Ali Zamir’s writing reads like a breath or a heartbeat”

—LCI

“This book will keep, nothing will put it out of fashion”

—Julien Delmaire, author

This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s “PEN Translates” programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org

This book is supported by the Institut Français (Royaume-Uni) as part of the Burgess programme.

A Girl Called Eel has been produced with the support of the Centre National du Livre.

This edition first published in Great Britain 2019 byJacaranda Books Art Music Ltd

27 Old Gloucester Street

London WC1N 3AX

www.jacarandabooksartmusic.co.uk

Originally published in France by Le Tripode in 2016 under the title Anguille sous roche

Copyright © 2016 Le Tripode

English language translation © Aneesa Abbas Higgins (2018)

Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

This edition published by arrangement with Le Tripode in conjunction with their duly appointed agents L’Autre agence, Paris, France and The St Marks Agency, London, UK. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publishers.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the

British Library

ISBN: 9781909762817eISBN: 9781909762824

Jacket Design: Rodney DiveTypesetting: Kamillah BrandesPrinted and bound in the UK

My father, All-Knowing, thinks he really knows it all

Oh, the earth spat me out, the seas are devouring me, I’m expected in heaven but here I am coming to my senses again and I can’t see, can’t hear, can’t feel anything but so what, I’m just a nobody, why should I care if this is where it all ends, as my father, the wise and wonderful All-Knowing used to say “once you’re dead and buried you won’t care if you rot,” it was my father, All-Knowing, who decided to call me Eel, little did he know that everyone lives in an eel pond of their own, that under every rock there lurks an eel, in every silence, a surprise, the deeper the silence the bigger the surprise,

I say my father, All-Knowing, because I have another father somewhere, or so I’m told, some guy roaming around out there, it shouldn’t really surprise you whoever you are, some people have one father, some have several, and right now I have two, but that’s a whole other story,

it’s completely deserted here, nothing seems real, I feel as if I’m in a dark, bottomless pit, it’s a tomb, it must be, is this my final resting place, what’s happened to the others, the rest of the miserable rabble I was with, the terror consuming everyone but me, the heartrending cries, good grief, those outbursts of agonised sobbing, all gone, vanished without a trace, not a living thing in sight, what is this place, answer me, I know you can hear me, there’s nothing remotely alive here, nothing but wreckage, is there anyone here can tell me if I’m alive or dead, someone answer me, for the love of an eel, can someone set my mind at rest, I must be hallucinating, there’s no other explanation, it all seems so empty, so futile, even the hollow, crushing blackness has gone, now it’s just dark, nothing but watery darkness, and that terrible cacophony filling my head, the roar of the waves, oh God, those nightmarish waves crashing down on us like raging monsters, all mixed up with the shrieks of terrified women and children, men calling for help, their voices gradually dying out in despair, as if they knew they had no choice but to accept their tragic fate, like outcasts fallen in battle, dying a silent death in the midst of hideous carnage, but the weirdest thing is that while I’m talking to myself here, I can’t feel anything at all, I feel completely detached, nothing makes any sense, for goodness sake, what’s happened to me, am I in some kind of limbo, I can’t even feel the water surging around me, doing its best to finish me off for good, the gigantic breakers crashing down on my flesh, taking swipes at me, the searing cold,

but there is one thing I can be sure of, even here in this labyrinthine void, I realise that in spite of the darkness, the eerie silence and absence of feeling, I can see everything again now, although not with my eyes, mark you, I have no idea how I can see all this, I’m just parroting words I’ve learned to use in this theatre we call the world, I can see images spinning around in my head, streaming by, a crowd of them, pushing and shoving, crashing up against each other, I don’t know where to begin, how to choose from this swarm of fleeting visions,

I see my home town first, Mutsamudu, with its inner sanctum, the medina, my rock where I was moulded, and now here I am in this place of death, clinging on to life, more vulnerable than that so-called hero Achilles with his heel and all because I was forced to leave my rock and the silence that lay at its heart, that silence was my last refuge and now I’m breaking it, kicking and screaming, I’m opening my eel’s mouth to speak, which is something you’ve probably never seen before but what else can I do, when you lose your rock you lose its silence too, your true self, with all its secrets, but you don’t need me to tell you this, I’m not here to lecture you, I’m just a miserable outcast paying the price for making a royal mess of things, so bear with me while I get it all off my chest before I’m sucked into the vortex of eternal sleep,

there, I’ve managed to pin down my first vision as it hurtled by like a wild beast in flight, no question about where I come from at least, God, that wasn’t easy, there it is again and I can see our neighbourhood, Mjihari, the oldest part of Mutsamudu, oh, such wonderful memories, what a joy it is to look back amidst all this wreckage, to look back without bitterness, for I regret none of it, just to be myself again as I breathe my last is balm to my spirit, so for the time being, I’m happy with the two images I’ve managed to seize, after all, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and I wouldn’t want to end up with nothing to show but an empty belly,

it’s hungry work all this remembering, it takes everything out of you but I’ve got two creatures within my grasp, no, I don’t know exactly what animals they are, please don’t ask me any questions, the main thing is that I’ve pinned them down, there they are, Mutsamudu and Mjihari, names that conjure so much for me, youthful delights, delicious adventures, a life bubbling with excitement, their names alone are enough to bring it all back to me, and other names are popping into my head too, of their own accord, thank God for that, you have to try and remember, even if you’re groping in the dark, poking around blindly in the past, much better to give it a go than just wait here at death’s door getting pissed off, teeth chattering, bemoaning your fate, like a wretch who’s lost the plot,

this time the neighbourhood is close enough to touch, I can see it and feel it, so light and airy, like a smiling child, there it is, throbbing with life, I can see the beach with the pirogues lined up, nose to tail, side by side, left to right, right to left, at the water’s edge, on the promontory, like the cars I used to see parked on the sidewalks whenever there was a wedding under the badamier tree, and there are the fishermen, those heroes of the sea, how they loved to brag about their boats, like rich men with their cars, always envying each other, squabbling, arguing, coming to blows even like little kids fighting over a toy in the playground, same as it’s always been since the world began,

what am I saying, as if the world wasn’t always there, I’ve hardly started and I’m already going off the rails and spouting shit, I know what my father All-Knowing would say “empty vessels make the loudest noise,”

enough of this, let’s get back to our flock as they say, now, see that’s the kind of thing that comes out of my stupid mouth, what flock for God’s sake, I’m not a shepherd that was Mussa Muda’s job, and who’s Mussa Muda, you may well ask, we’ll come back to him later, he’s not really important in my story, in fact he’s probably best left to the historians, it’s just that if you want to make sense of my life you need to know something about an eel’s life at sea, a subject that remains a mystery even to the so-called experts, take fishermen for a start, so although it’s true that I started on land, there’s a world of difference between my life and a shepherd’s and as they say, you have to separate the sheep from the goats, oh that’s enough, I’m tired of all this stuff about sheep and goats, all these hackneyed phrases, I’d rather tell my story in my own words, so we’ll stick with Eel and leave it at that, let’s get back to Mjihari and work out how I ended up in this bind,

so, I was talking about the fishermen, those men who came from all over Mutsamudu to gather in Mjihari, where life really is life, with a capital L, because as you know, some places are more dead than alive, like here for example, although this as good a place as any for an eel to die, floundering and thrashing about as if I were trying to hit someone, although of course there’s no one here to hit, it’s just what an eel does when it’s in its death throes, so as I was saying, the fishermen were always arguing, either because they had a bumper catch and couldn’t agree on how to divvy up the customers, or because the catch was meagre and wouldn’t measure up to the tide of customer demand, and then they’d all do their best to stay out of the firing line in an effort to avoid the evil eye, and you could be sure that if the fish were scarce there’d be no shortage of those, it didn’t take much for things to flare up, the smallest thing could become a bone of contention,

they’d squabble among themselves but underneath they knew they were all in it together, like kith and kin, if a customer happened to pick a fight with one of them, it was an attack on all the fishermen, every one of them, they were always ready to stand up for each other, to fight tooth and nail against any outsider that threatened the family, customers would do their best to get the better of them by demanding a lower price when there was a bumper catch but that only worked if one of the fishermen stabbed his mates in the back and quietly accepted the customer’s price, most of the time they were as thick as thieves and they weren’t about to be hoodwinked, if one of them had a beef with a customer they’d all join in, the hapless customer had no choice but to buy at the price decided by the group, and the fishermen would let the punter know in no uncertain terms that they’d rather eat the fish themselves, thank you very much, even if was off, for it was a rare fisherman who could boast of owning a fridge, although to tell the truth that was because they didn’t want to cough up for the electricity bills, I knew they were just trying to lead the customer up the garden path, get him to take the bait, like the fish in the sea, they’d claim they’d rather dine on rotten fish than be taken for a ride by a stingy customer, but I ask you, where’s the fisherman who can say no to a handful of coins and go home to rotting fish for dinner, eh, it was all just an act, and of course I’d have a good laugh, it was great fun watching these hilarious scenes from the terrace of our house, it was classic theatre, just like the comedies we studied at school, yes, my mind would turn to those plays as I watched the fishermen down on the shore, grabbing hold of a fish, reaching for the scales or maybe even an oar when they couldn’t come to a harmonious agreement on some point or other,

I’d sit there for ages feasting my eyes on the show, I couldn’t hear their repartee most of the time so I’d try and imagine what they were saying while I waited for my father All-Knowing to come home and fill in the details, I didn’t have to ask him, he’d rattle away of his own accord, all the time, he loved the sound of his own voice, wind him up and off he’d go, one day I was watching a fisherman laying into a customer, it was hard to hear what they were saying because of the wind whipping round my ears, and the sun was so bright I had to shield my eyes with my hand, but I could see All-Knowing laughing along with the others while one of the men ripped into an elderly customer with “you try going out to sea day after day, you’ll soon see, you think we’re impressed with your paltry offer, well let me tell you, we’re not a running a charity here, you could never pay us enough for everything we have to put up with, what have we got to lose anyway,” and that was when another fisherman there coined the slogan that became a favourite with All-Knowing, he’d always say it when he came in from a day at sea “what’s a sailor got to lose,” and if a customer happened to annoy him, All-Knowing would get all hot under the collar and come home so worked up he’d start in on his tirades, I don’t really know if that’s the right word, his outpourings weren’t really addressed to anyone in particular, they were just words spilling out of his mouth, I think it calmed him down to keep talking, especially when he came out with “what’s a sailor got to lose,” or “they can say what they like, but every man is lord of his own manor,” All-Knowing used to say that a customer who insists on bargaining is like a hunter who doesn’t respect the forest, no, if you crossed the fishermen’s path you’d better watch your step, they’d always find a reason to fight like tigers to hold their ground,

I used to think I was the only one watching these displays, except for the handful of onlookers passing the time of day on the low wall along the beach, but I realised the cows too were enjoying having a ringside seat at these delightful spectacles, for people kept their cattle at the beach and these cows roamed freely, they had more than their share of freedom, far more than I did, I was kept under lock and key to make sure I behaved like a good eel, why am I bringing this up, oh for heaven’s sake, put yourself in my position for once, I’m telling you those cows were free as birds, they could wander back into town at nightfall and stroll about like young lovers on their honeymoon in the promised land, they knew the medina with all its ins and outs much better than I did, and they never missed a chance to make an appearance when people were least expecting them, they liked nothing better than to take the faithful by surprise as they were on their way to morning prayer, they even killed an old lady once, without touching her of course, they were quite oblivious to it all, she didn’t even know they were there until she turned a corner and walked straight into them, and there she stayed, standing bolt upright ad vitam aeternam, eyes and mouth wide open, they didn’t find the body until the next morning and no one realised it was a corpse, it looked more like a marble statue straight out of a museum, someone touched the body very lightly to see if it was real and it toppled over like an uprooted tree, as for the cows, they weren’t bothered at all, they had their walk to complete, they just carried on calmly plodding along without a care in the world, swinging their tails from left to right as if to say it was time for them to rule the town, but that’s another story, we were talking about the cows and the shows put on by the fishermen on the beach, you talk too much Eel, damn it, you haven’t got all day, stop beating about the bush you nitwit and get on with the job,

the cows would watch the arguments too, you could see they loved it, they’d crap all the time and moo to calm the situation if things started to get out of hand, but if one of them happened to come too close, the fishermen would pelt the unfortunate beast with rocks, it didn’t occur to them that the cow might want to make a name for itself by keeping the peace, who knows, it could be a contender for one of those Nobel prizes or whatever they’re called, anyway, being smarter than you’d take them to be the cows would keep their distance, to avoid the taint of blood as they say around here, they’d just carry on mooing and munching on the kitchen waste dumped on the beach, chewing their cud and winking to show they weren’t happy or to demonstrate their outrage at something or other,

one day my father All-Knowing came back from the beach and said a cow had peed on his right foot while he was having a lively discussion with his best friend Guarantee, All-Knowing had laid into the cow declaring he wanted to slit its throat there and then, but Guarantee had jumped on him and stopped him doing something really stupid that could have cost him dearly, something the owner would never have let him forget, All-Knowing had made a furious grab for a huge knife he used for gutting fish, they all gutted their fish before weighing them, and Guarantee grabbed the hand he was holding the knife with and said “you don’t seriously intend to slaughter a cow just because it pissed on you, that’s not a good idea, it’s crazy, surely you can see that, do you really think you’d sleep easy in your bed after that,” and All-Knowing retorted “the long arm of the law doesn’t scare me, they can throw me in jail for all I care, a sailor’s got nothing to lose I tell you, that damn cow thinks it can spray its fucking urine on me, huh, what does it take itself for, God’s gift to the world,” and then he attacked the cow from behind, he gave it a violent kick and announced to the cows and innocent bystanders alike “and you needn’t think I’m like that poor old woman you killed in the medina, you think you’re so tough, I’ll show you what tough means,” the cow was long gone by this time, but All-Knowing went on ranting and raving like a madman, looking down at his foot and muttering “filthy beast, I should have just slit your throat, what gives you the right to swan around like that,” he was still holding forth on the subject when he came home from the beach, you’d think he’d been drinking from the toilet bowl as we say around here, the cow had given him a haughty look while it was pissing on him he said, which was proof the beast thought it was better than him “if I hadn’t kicked it, the damn thing would have gone on taking the piss out of me, bloody vermin,” I’d had enough of listening to his demented raving, all that fuss over a bit of cow piss, basta, so to shut him up I told him I’d made his favourite dish for dinner, he peered at me for a moment, realising what I was trying to do and gave me a look that said “I’d keep my mouth shut if I were you,”

I’d cooked breadfruit with fish, a dish we called mtsongolo that All-Knowing always enjoyed, you make it by boiling the breadfruit first and then mixing it with a fish or meat sauce, and I’d made it the way All-Knowing liked his mtsongolo, hot and spicy,

as usual, before he said anything directly to me, he’d ask me the same question without even looking at me, as if he was talking to the walls “and what about Rattler, I suppose she’s still not home, what on earth does she do at school at this hour,” and he’d start talking about my sister Rattler, using me as a sounding board for his threats, he was like a little kid, asking the same question over and over again, he always wanted to know what Rattler was doing, he never tired of castigating her, whenever she wasn’t home he’d say “I don’t like it, your sister’s trying to pull one over on me, she doesn’t realise she’s playing with fire, she’ll find out soon enough though, I’ll show her what stubborn means, we’ll see who’s the first to crack,” sometimes he’d suddenly clam up and I’d make the mistake of thinking he’d finished his diatribe, he was probably waiting for me to say something, hoping I’d back him up, that I’d agree with whatever punishment he might come up with for Rattler, but he never got so much as a word out of me, and he’d start up again all of a sudden “how many times have I told her not to waste her time hanging around with those louts, eh, useless layabouts, she’ll soon find out what I’m made of, it’s not enough just to tell a child that chillies are hot,” at some point, he’d change his tone and set about explaining his views on life in general, at great length, almost as if he was trying to justify all the demands he made on us and then he’d declare “oh, why upset myself like this, I do everything I can to make sure you do well in life, it wasn’t for nothing I gave you those names,” and after that he was off on our names and why he chose them, it was always the same, whenever he railed against Rattler he’d bring up our names, especially Rattler’s “I called you Rattler to protect you, can’t you understand that, you’re a rattlesnake, you’re supposed to use that rattle of yours to scare off those louts, not to stretch my nerves to the limit and pile disappointments on me, after all the trouble I’ve gone to, why don’t you listen to me, Rattler, when are you going to wake up and stop dragging your boyfriends with you wherever you go, it’s high time you stopped roaming the streets with that pack of stray dogs, you’ll end up fair game for anyone, you mark my words,” he’d pause for a moment as if he was thinking of a solution, I could see him getting worked up until it was all too much for him, and then he’d start up again, chiding her with “why don’t you act more like your sister, Eel, try and follow her example, I’ve never seen her with any of those layabouts, she comes home on time, I’m sure if one of those good-for-nothings were to approach her she’d say what I’ve told you to say to them ‘if you’re a man worthy of the name you can go and speak to my father before you say anything at all to me’,”

to be honest I thought it was all a load of nonsense, I’d never have said that to anyone, my personality was abrasive enough, people were wary of me anyway, yes, it’s true I was very different from Rattler, but I was far from being the Eel All-Knowing believed me to be, he thought the moon was made of cheese and ended up learning the hard way, he had no idea what he was doing advising Rattler to follow in my footsteps, I trod stealthily, my footprints were dangerously invisible to the naked eyed, and I need hardly tell you that it’s a rare eye can see through a silence that masks a cry for help, no, for something like that you need brainpower, or shit power perhaps, just to spice things up a bit,

All-Knowing would always come back to our names when he wanted to explain the mysteries of life to us, to lecture us with the teachings of a second-rate philosopher marooned on an island in the Indian Ocean, but I couldn’t stand it when he made comparisons between me and Rattler, for the simple reason that he didn’t know me at all, he was making a grave error using me as his yardstick, God damn it, when will people realise that this world is a vast ocean, full of all kinds of creatures, and no two of them are exactly alike,

so where were we, oh yes, All-Knowing, the great moraliser, and his reasons for naming us as he did, so after a brief pause he’d carry on holding forth against Rattler “a rattlesnake is supposed to repel people, what kind of rattlesnake makes itself attractive, eh, a rattlesnake that plays dumb and then rolls over to be stroked and petted like a kitten,” my father All-Knowing imagined all kinds of things about Rattler, he had much more faith in me, he’d give her a dressing-down at least three times a week, but she never budged an inch, she refused to give up her friends or change her ways, she carried on living it up with her gang, I knew she often cut class, I’d see her sometimes in the school grounds, under a tree with a group of girls, all with their boyfriends, reclining on the grass like cats sunning themselves, I’d make myself scarce and pretend I hadn’t seen anything, and whenever my father asked me, I’d always give the same reply “she’s still in class,” Rattler knew I’d never say anything to our father, but other people filled him in, the very same people you’d see sitting under the giant badamier tree not far from our house, the scene of so many goings-on, but let’s not get dragged into all that, fuck it, I want to work out how I got into this mess before I slip into my final slumber, so give it a rest Eel, you dope, let’s get on with it, you don’t want to look like a fool when you’re on your last legs,

so let’s get back to where we were when we left off, the day the cow peed on All-Knowing’s foot, and unleashed a flood of talk about Rattler from the old windbag, he’d gone red in the face and got himself all wound up, grumbling on and on, I realised it wasn’t just the cow he was angry about, it was all mixed up with Rattler not being there, it scared me to see him like that, all fired up with anger like a lion, so I avoided speaking to him at all, apart from what I’d said to him about the meal I’d cooked, but he’d just about managed to pull himself together when all of a sudden we heard the creaking of the old metal door, an ancient thing that’d been there since it was made fifty years ago by my father himself when he was young, and he’d never replaced it,

Rattler came in the door and All-Knowing gave her an inquisitorial look, staring at her without batting an eyelid, but Rattler pretended not to notice, she came out with her customary “hi everyone,” and carried on as usual, going straight to our room, double quick, just as she always did, and staying there for quite a while before emerging to help me in the kitchen, the bedroom we shared was pretty small, it was our parents’ living-room before we were born, our house had the two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen and a miniscule bathroom, we did all our homework in our bedroom, but when I got fed up with Rattler reading out loud I’d go up to the terrace, I loved doing my homework up there, I’d savour the peace and quiet, that was what I liked best about it, and don’t forget, silence was my rock, it’s important to remember that,

on days like this, when Rattler came home with that attitude of haughty indifference, All-Knowing wouldn’t say a word, he’d wait until evening to talk to her calmly, as if she left him no choice, and that’s when he’d give her the lecture about why he’d named her Rattler, but I knew that by waiting, he was giving himself a chance to practice a few of his catchphrases from the repertoire he reeled out to us endlessly “you don’t tuck in to a steak the minute you take it off the stove, you let it cool down first, any more than you go chasing after a farmyard chicken that’s wandered off, you wait, and when it’s good and ready it comes back of its own accord,”

actually, since last year when Rattler had been held back a year at school, my father was trying not to be so tough on her, but it hadn’t helped, Rattler hadn’t changed her ways at all, she still came home late, she was like a cat, she always appeared at the same time, two hours or so after school finished, and school wasn’t that far, it was barely fifteen minutes’ walk away even at snail’s pace, All-Knowing knew she was hanging around with her gang for hours on end after school, and since, as he always said, he wasn’t the kind of parent to show no interest in what his children got up to, the kind who didn’t care if his daughters went off the rails, he’d show up at school on the first day of term and come with us to meet the principal and the teachers, he’d make sure he was up to speed on the timetable too, and he made a point of knowing all our teachers by name, some of them would even end up being pally with him, I knew it was only because they were hoping to get special treatment at the fish market, they thought they were so smart, all clustered around All-Knowing as if he were some kind of venerable sage, and when they saw him at school they’d give him the full courteous treatment and let it be known that his position as provider of nourishment to the people entitled him to a certain amount of respect, and that would make our resident moraliser really believe he was a Great Man, it was no laughing matter, when he realised he was in their good graces the great All-Knowing of Mutsamudu would think nothing of comparing himself to Nelson Mandela, didn’t he have to fight against adversity too, going out to fish every day, it was a constant struggle to provide food for himself and others and what’s more he had to battle against juvenile delinquency, he’d try and curry favour with the teachers with his pronouncements, saying things like “we have our responsibilities, you and me, our kind have our responsibilities to face up to,” and they’d all agree with him, and before you knew it there was friendship and bonhomie all round,

All-Knowing committed everything on our timetables to memory, from the names of our teachers to the class times and room numbers, something we never managed to get our heads round all term, I did wonder how he managed to memorise all those names and numbers, although he didn’t seem so interested in the classes themselves, I suggested to Rattler one day that the reason our father All-Knowing avoided learning the names of the subjects was because it was difficult for him, maybe it was beyond him, maybe he had no idea what philosophy, history and geography were, or even maths, although to be honest I knew perfectly well that wasn’t true at all, he knew exactly what they were, it wasn’t for nothing he was called All-Knowing, as he was always reminding people, he knew every bit as much as people who’d been to high school, or even to university, he’d always refused to be ignorant about anything whatsoever, which is exactly why the name of All-Knowing was well known to all the residents of Mutsamudu, and especially people from Mjihari,

All-Knowing never had the opportunity to go to high school, his parents were too poor, his father was a fisherman like him but he struggled to feed his family, so the young All-Knowing had left school at the age of twelve while he was in the middle school in Hombo, he’d learned to read and write but his handwriting was terrible, an indecipherable scrawl that looked like mumbo-jumbo, but as he always said, the important thing was being able to read and not so much to write, I’d crack up inside whenever I heard that, I’d think about what he was always saying to us about losers harbouring secret regrets “Satan hankered after paradise too, and when he didn’t get there he claimed he didn’t care, but that was just sour grapes,” as far as All-Knowing was concerned, it was being able to read that mattered, he’d say it quite openly and add smugly that this was why he read everything he could lay his hands on, everything he could glean from ads and posters along the roads, he’d read them slowly, so people could see he knew how to read, he was simply showing-off, that’s all, he’d stand with his hands in his pockets, perusing the department store ads, the ones you find in public places, in the medina, even ads for pharmacies, like the ad for the Frenchman’s pharmacy, the most well-known drugstore in Mutsamudu, Pharmacie Patrick I think it was, but you know, he never dared set foot in there, he claimed it was too expensive, that the pharmacist was over-charging, that his medicines cost too much, that traditional remedies were more effective, but the truth is that All-Knowing was nothing but an old skinflint who preferred to treat his family with cheap herbal remedies, he singled out the owner of this particular pharmacy to rant about at home “what does he think, this Frenchman, eh, that I’m going to hand over my money just because his drugs come from Paris, huh, are his drugs going to banish death on Earth for ever, will they guarantee you go straight to heaven once you’re dead or what, that pharmacist has some explaining to do,” he’d declare, all pumped up and full of himself, to hear him talk you’d think he actually knew what the drugs cost, whereas in fact he didn’t have a clue, he was simply repeating what he heard from people who were even more penny-pinching than he was, other fishermen most likely, they’re all cut from the same cloth,

All-Knowing followed the news every day, he’d read scraps of newspapers left lying around and when he came up against a word he didn’t know, he’d carry on regardless, without stopping, but he’d bring the bit of newspaper back home with him and get out the dictionary, the Petit Robert he’d bought for us, and he’d pore over it until he’d satisfied his curiosity, it was a habit he’d had all his life, and that’s the way he’d learned the meanings of a whole host of words, our names included,

what happened was that All-Knowing had stumbled on half a magazine lying in the road in Mjihari, a special edition featuring animals apparently, he’d found all sorts of passages with information about the birth and development of various marine and land animals such as turtles, frogs, eels, crabs, snakes, scorpions, all of which really piqued his curiosity, he read all sorts of things into those animals’ characters, he was fascinated by their defence mechanisms and their lifestyles, take eels for example, he’d learned not just that they are to be found all over the world but that they are by nature calm, patient and cautious and what’s more, they use their extremely slippery skin as a means of defence, they can slither out of dangerous, potentially lethal situations, they can even escape the clutches of seriously nasty creatures, like sharks for example, All-Knowing was big on the strategies various animals used for feeding and self-defence, which explains why he decided to give his children names that were completely unheard of in our part of the world, it was a way of making his mark, he was a man who always tried to stand out from the crowd, he liked to shake things up, to be noticed, he’d often call out to the people sitting under the badamier tree “my friends,” he’d say “you’d do well to pay attention to me when I tell you what’s going on in the world, I read the newspapers, there’s no fisherman better informed than I am, so listen up, this is a funny old world I tell you, if you want people to respect you, all you have to do is turn things upside-down, and you’ll get a fancy funeral with your ashes placed in a pantheon, like the one in Paris, and you can be sure that none of those ashes in the Pantheon in Paris were ever sent to a psychiatric lab to see what kind of worm was eating away at the deceased person’s brain, so those worms are still at large, they’re still giving people parasites, and just as well too, I’d do the same myself,” nothing could stop him if he had an audience when he was off on one of these riffs, but they’d get tired of listening and one by one they’d drift away, and there he’d be, all on his own, with a few stragglers who’d fallen asleep on the benches snoring at full belt and then All-Knowing would grind to a halt in frustration and come back home all hot under the collar,

when our deceased mother fell pregnant, All-Knowing had already decided on my name, he hadn’t yet picked Rattler as he didn’t know my mother was expecting twins, it was just the name Eel that had lodged in his brain “the eel is a ubiquitous species,” he’d inform us “eels are smart, very much in demand, the envy of all other fish,” and he’d tell us that the day he conceived the idea, he’d dashed home quick as a flash and announced to Mum that the baby would be called Eel “boy or girl, Eel is what it’ll be,” and because my mother obviously hadn’t understood what he was on about, he’d expanded on this and said “I intend to make a difference, I want my child to be an example for the next generation, a child who can stand up for themself, make their mark on the world, a child whose every pronouncement will enlighten the ignorant,”

God he was full of himself, he really did think he could change the world, Mum would be all ears as he described the child he fantasised about, and on this particular occasion he’d started up again “if it’s a girl, she’ll need to be able to escape the hunters’ traps, and there’s no shortage of those around, you have to be able to negotiate all sorts of traps in this life if you want to emerge unscathed, blink and you lose it all, as our ancestors used to say, no room in this world for dreamers,”

he never tired of criticising parents who let their fifteen-year old daughters run wild, he blamed it all on the parents, girls like that were losers, he said, the saddest cases of all, he had much the same to say about the boys who hung around on the streets of Mutsamudu “I’ll stop at nothing to make sure my offspring don’t go down the wrong path,” he’d say to my mother over and over again, and as always she’d keep her thoughts to herself, but when he started on about the name Eel she couldn’t believe her ears, All-Knowing hadn’t given her a chance to get a word in edgeways, but when the cock starts to crow it’s usually best to keep your own counsel, to stay quiet as a mouse and listen, All-Knowing was never one to change his mind, my mother did try to impress on him that it was an outlandish name to give a child, that the whole idea was beyond the pale but he’d responded by holding forth at great length “everything about this life is outlandish, why shouldn’t a child have an outlandish name, he has to learn, even before he comes into this world, he has to know what to expect in this life, the world being what it is, it’s no laughing matter, these days a name can mean whatever you want it to mean, people give human names to animals, why not give an animal name to a human being, I’m serious, haven’t you ever heard the name of the neighbour’s cat, you know what it’s called, Bacari, a bit outlandish don’t you think, eh, or another thing, when the Soviets sent their dog into space on the third of November nineteen fifty-seven, what was the dog called, Laïka, a lovely name, worthy of a beautiful woman like yourself,”

on and on he’d go, interminably, any excuse to give full rein to his gift of the gab, he’d stop at nothing to win over the person he was talking to, fact or fiction it was all the same to him “I was telling you just the other day about this writer who’d made his name with a story about an animal that makes fun of human beings, doesn’t that just say it all, it shows you what kind of world we live in, eh, how do I know all these things, from the bits of newspapers I read every day, people think I’m crazy but I don’t care what they think, sooner or later they’ll understand that there’s more to a chicken’s arse than meets the eye, it’s not there just for pooping and pissing, it’s for shagging too, and laying eggs,”

he was incapable of saying anything without falling back on stock phrases of one sort or another, and they didn’t always make much sense, I often wondered if his thoughts didn’t run on batteries like a mechanical instrument of some sort, he was convinced he was the smartest person around, he’d say to Mum, all puffed up with pride “while others are wasting their time dreaming, I’m busy reading the newspapers I pick up from the trash on the beach, I swear to you even the people who throw them away have no idea what’s in the papers, I’m sure of it, they only buy them to make it look like they’re educated, they think all they have to do is stick a pair of spectacles on the end of their nose and hold up a newspaper for a few seconds, and everyone will think they’re an intellectual, to hell with that, I’m a sucker for a newspaper, even one that’s been ripped to shreds, I’m a compulsive reader, I read when I’m out fishing, I forget what I’m doing sometimes, I forget all about my line and let it drift, I start reading something and those sly fish cash in on their luck and gorge themselves on my bait, strip it bare, hook, line and sinker, it happens all the time, it doesn’t bother me though, bloody fish, I curse them but it doesn’t stop me, when I set out at dawn for a day at sea, I’m always looking for a few scraps of newspaper on the beach to take with me, and that’s how I’ve learned about all the stupid things men have done, worse than anything you can imagine, I’d never want to be like that, I have a goal in life, I intend to protect my offspring, you see, that’s what this life is all about, you have to come up with the opposite of what other people do to survive, if we call our child Eel it’ll be all smooth sailing, I’ll have less to worry about because people will probably keep her at arm’s length, everyone that is except a man who’s worthy of that title, a man who’s worth his mettle never balks at approaching a fearsome beast, no it’s the creature itself that backs away, what animal hasn’t learnt something from all those traps set for them by hunters,” my mother had no choice in the end but to resign herself to this scheme of his, she simply didn’t know what to say, she just sat there, dumbfounded and defeated,

on the day we were born, a torrential rainstorm fell on the town, and with my mother in the throes of agonising labour pains, our father All-Knowing decided to take himself off to the market to buy some medicinal herbs, leaving our mother with her sister Tranquil to attend to the birth, the downpour didn’t let up at all and our father was held up and didn’t come back for a couple of hours, by the time he eventually arrived he was soaked to the skin, he opened the front door and stood there on the threshold, shaking from the cold, dumbstruck by the sight that greeted him, for most of the neighbours were there, old men and women, teenagers, and even children, poking their noses in, curious to see what their parents and grandparents were doing in our house, All-Knowing was rendered speechless when he saw this gathering of people all dressed in their boubous