The Heart of the Leopard Children (15 page)

Given that Drissa and I look like no one else, we will remain standing! Together, we will continue to pull each other along, always higher, more agile, marvelous, strange, extraordinary. I'll take his hand so that we can perfect our great leaps, the ones that we'll weave among continents, worlds, and times. This is the real masterpiece of tomorrow.

We will swallow up the distances; powerless they will collapse on our path! Starting today, we will resist questions, weapons, and medication. You will not have my skin, captain, not you, not the judges, not Mireille, no one! You won't ever have Drissa's either, for I know he's watching out and I'm minding out for him!

1
. A reputed Parisian hospital in the Fourteenth Arrondissement, specializing in psychiatry and neurology, and symbolic of a mental institution.

2
. The
galette des rois
is a flaked pastry cake traditionally on sale in France in early January to celebrate Epiphany. A small bean or porcelain figure, known as a
fève
, is inserted into the cake and the person who bites into it is anointed king (or queen), gets to wear the golden paper crown that is sold with the cake, and then select his queen (or her king) for the day.

Wilfried N'Sondé
was born in 1969 in the Congo (Brazzaville) and grew up in France. He is widely considered one of the shining lights of the new generation of African and Afropean writers. His work has received considerable critical attention and been recognized with prestigious literary awards, most notably the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Senghor de la création littéraire.

Karen Lindo
is a scholar of French and Francophone Literatures who taught in the United States for several years and is currently teaching and translating in Paris.

Dominic Thomas
has published numerous books and edited volumes on the cultural, political, and social relations between Africa and France, and on immigration and race in Europe, including
Black France
(Indiana University Press, 2007) and
Africa and France
(Indiana University Press, 2013), and has translated works by Aimé Césaire, Faïza Guène, Alain Mabanckou, and Abdourahman Waberi. He is the Global African Voices series editor at Indiana University Press.