The Heart of the Leopard Children (2 page)

In the following excerpt from
The Heart of the Leopard Children
, we can observe the tenuous conjunction between experience and personal development, the confrontation with racism and the awakening of consciousness:

The teacher, who really liked him, asked him to talk about his home country. He went up to the board, turned around, and faced the class. Not knowing what to say, he smiled, mumbled two, three fragments of history about ancestors, threw in a lion here, a banana tree there, and a village made from terra cotta that he'd seen on television the night before. He decided to leave the spirits out of it. It's way too easy for them to see us as primitive and stupid. When he was done, everyone was silent, wanting to hear more. Drissa, you should have had a teacher like mine. She would take my notebook and ask me to keep a few steps back from her, don't be angry my child but that odor, you understand, I'm just not used to it. She would shake her head, left to right,
her palm elegantly placed in front of her mouth and nose. Personally, I liked her, like a child hungry for affection. She was so refined, not to mention the lovely pink lipstick she wore with her smile. So, the good and patient boy that I was, I would remain a good distance from her. That's good, my boy. (
p. 12
)

N'Sondé's recourse to social realism thus gives a voice to those “invisibles of the French Republic,”
⁸
who are so often the subject of media and official governmental focus, yet only rarely included in the broader national conversation.
⁹

In
The Heart of the Leopard Children
, N'Sondé draws inspiration from Kongo mythology, ancestral stories, and the recurrence of the figure of the leopard in these narratives and memories, collectively mined here for the purposes of the novel, “a cultural imaginary steeped in an African cosmology.”
¹⁰
He writes, “Later on, we will dive body and soul into the Bakongo country, under the protective eye of the invisible eternal leopards, sit at the tombs of our ancestor without fear of sorcerers or witch doctors” (
p. 37
). Nonetheless, as Srilati Ravi has observed, in N'Sondé's first three novels, “the impoverished Parisian
banlieues
serve as principle backdrop to the stories of second-generation immigrants. . . . While these narratives offer a realistic depiction of the life of immigrants (of all ethnic and religious affiliations) who are economically, socially and ethnically marginalized from mainstream society, they also contain in their unfolding the redemptory poetry of hope and shared understandings.”
¹¹
The 2008 French Nobel Prize laureate J.-M. G. Le Clézio fastens on this dimension, stating that “I am also very fond of francophone literature outside of France. Alain Mabanckou is someone quite remarkable, and so is Wilfried N'Sondé, the author of
The Heart of the Leopard Children
.”
¹²
When the narrator recalls an outing into Paris with his beloved Mireille, the intensity of N'Sondé's poetic sensibility and passion are palpable:

Mireille, oh Mireille, our meeting place, Place Saint-Michel, you in your flowery dress, and beneath, your perfume in which I would drown myself. Your warm lips with the taste of the rain, sweet venom, and a velvety kiss
teasing my own lips. The wine of lovers. With a shared will to be good to each other, Paris became our conquered kingdom and opened itself up to us. Mireille, oh Mireille, I have fallen Mireille, a falcon with broken wings, a wild cat in captivity. I'm in prison, Mireille. Defiled, I have fallen so low. My darling, my secret, Mireille, oh Mireille, what is love, Mireille? Is it my tongue on your moist flower, when you murmur, no not there. Your eyes close a little bit, your lips trembling, you take my head between your tense fingers and passionately imprison my face in your hands. Your whole body melts ever so slowly, burning under my weight. Mireille navigating back and forth, my desire capsized in your storm. You whisper to me, don't stop. I carry us into a marvelous shipwreck. Your cries and moans make a symphony. It's a lover's hymn. Without ever saying I love you, for that would be too banal for you. Mireille, those afternoons in my room on the ninth floor, on the roofs of Paris, the yellow light of the sun on your bare body, ornate with pearls of perspiration. These are the real jewels of lovers! (
p. 13
)

Aesthetics and politics are indistinguishable in the architecture of the world N'Sondé builds. “In the meanwhile,” as Karen Lindo writes, “as part of the creative possibilities by which the French cultural imaginary may flourish, the literary landscapes of writers like Wilfried N'Sondé paint their murals, which if we look close enough do color in the hope of belonging in postcolonial France.”
¹³

N'Sondé's journey has, as he himself recognizes, made him into “a cultural mosaic of sorts,”
¹⁴
and it is perhaps not surprising that he was to find in the new German capital “a culture of tolerance.”
¹⁵
Somewhat paradoxically,

This distance, moreover, made it easier for me to begin to understand the archaisms and contradictions that were specific to French culture. I realized that the decision to come to Germany had allowed me to finally distance myself from a kind of hexagonal schizophrenia: that of being at once a French citizen whose equal rights were clearly and loudly affirmed but yet whose skin color gave rise to such great rants and ravings that I became increasingly skeptical of what was still being taught at university. Only too accustomed to police checks and the standard disregard for formalities and the patronizing
use of the familiar “tu,” I quickly had to learn to answer their stupid questions and accept the humiliation if only to avoid a more serious incident. I soon came to realize that this recurrent police harassment was inversely proportionate to the whiteness of one's complexion.
¹⁶

1
. Wilfried N'Sondé, “Ethnidentité,” in Michel Le Bris and Jean Rouaud, eds., Je est un autre: Pour une identité-monde (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2010), 100.

2
. Fabienne Arvers, “Entretien avec Wilfried N'Sondé, auteur du Cœur des enfants-léopards,” Les Inrockuptibles, March 12, 2011,
http://www.lesinrocks.com/2011/03/12/arts-scenes/scenes/entretien-avec-wilfried-nsonde-auteur-du-coeur-des-enfants-leopards-1118636/
(accessed August 19, 2015).

3
. See Véronique Bragard, “Parisian Alternative Cartographies: Meandering the Ambivalent Banlieue in Wilfried N'SondeÏ's Fiction,” in Pascale de Souza and H. Adlai Murdoch, eds., Metropolitan Mosaics and Melting-Pots: Paris and Montreal in Francophone Literatures (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 136–155.

4
. See for example Dominic Thomas,
Black France: Colonialism, Immigration, and Transnationalism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), and Charles Tshimanga, Didier Gondola, and Peter J. Bloom, eds.,
Frenchness and the African Diaspora: Identity and Uprising in Contemporary France
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

5
. Vitraulle Mboungou, “Wilfried N'Sondé livre ‘Le cœur des enfants léopards,'”
Afrik.com
, May 19, 2007,
http://www.afrik.com/article11755.html
(accessed August 19, 2015).

6
. Mboungou, “Wilfried N'Sondé livre ‘Le cœur des enfants léopards.'”

7
. Karen Lindo, “N'Sondé's Post-2005 Youth Mural: Exploring Afro-Europe in Wilfried N'Sondé's Literary Landscape,” in Dominic Thomas, ed.,
Afroeuropean Cartographies
(Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 113.

8
. See for example Achille Mbembe, “The Republic and Its Beast: On the Riots in the French
Banlieues
,” translated by Jean Marie Todd, in Charles Tshimanga, Didier Gondola, and Peter J. Bloom, eds.,
Frenchness and the African Diaspora: Identity and Uprising in Contemporary France
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 47–69.

9
. For an overview of other works in this genre, see Romuald-Blaise Fonkoua, “Ecrire la banlieue: la littérature des ‘invisibles,'” in Nicolas Bancel, ed.,
Le retour du colonial, Cultures du Sud
165 (April–June 2007), 89–96.

10
. Lindo, “N'Sondé's Post-2005 Youth Mural,” 115.

11
. Srilati Ravi, “Toward an Afropean Cosmopolitanism: Hospitality, Friendship and the African Immigrant,” in Nicki Hitchcott and Dominic Thomas, eds.,
Francophone Afropean Literatures
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014), 138.

12
. François Dufay, “J.-M. G. Le Clézio: On ne peut pas faire barrage au métissage,”
L'Express
, October 10, 2008,
http://www.lexpress.fr/culture/livre/jmg-le-clezio-on-ne-peut-pas-faire-barrage-au-metissage_587614.html?p=2
(accessed August 19, 2015).

13
. Lindo, “N'Sondé's Post-2005 Youth Mural,” 126.

14
. Mboungou, “Wilfried N'Sondé livre ‘Le cœur des enfants léopards.'”

15
. Arvers, “Entretien avec Wilfried N'Sondé.”

16
. Wilfried N'Sondé, “Francastérix,” translated by Karen Lindo, in Nicki Hitchcott and Dominic Thomas, eds.,
Francophone Afropean Literatures
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014), 204.

THE

HEART

OF THE

LEOPARD CHILDREN

From Vancouver to Brasilia, from the gangsters in New York, Bahia, Lagos, behind the bars at the Fleury-Mérogis prison, on the benches of the amphitheaters at the Sorbonne, for some of the junkies at the central station in Amsterdam, for the
AIDS
orphans of Mombasa, the commuters pressed and packed into the
RER
train on line A heading into Paris, for the memories of the deceased watching over
Kongo
, all the faces of voodoo ceremony participants in Haiti, those buried for centuries below the African continent, beneath the uniforms of ear-cutting Senegalese soldiers, the drug addicts, the fanatics, those stuck in the trenches in the Flanders during the Great War, the bones of those scattered at the bottom of the Atlantic, the asylum seekers, the
EU
authorities, for the female vendors in the Brixton market, the jubilation of the sound systems in Jamaica, and especially for those genocided in Rwanda,

. . . Africa haunts our black skin.

Questions, always questions, they'll never stop, will they! I have a hard time figuring out where I am. The captain keeps blaring questions at me and I can't follow what he's saying. It's late. I have had too much to drink and smoked way too much. He needs to cut it out! He probably doesn't even realize that I'm in no condition to answer him. At least open a window, please! No, he persists, telling me to shut up for Christ's sake, reminds me I'm in police custody! I'm in
so much pain. In all this confusion, I can see the silhouette of my ancestor, beside himself!

Son, is this why you came to France? I'm afraid of the interrogation. All the years of nonstop questions have encumbered my brain. Who are you? Where do you come from? Did you work hard in school? What's it like where you come from?

I feel like I'm caught up in a whirlwind of chaotic images. Hazy thoughts are coming at me, one after the other in full force. They're like flashes of my life. I glimpse my ancestor rising up. He stands awkwardly. He is surrounded by the glow of the benevolent spirits. Hallucinating, his gaze extends beyond the living, his words, I can still hear them very clearly . . .

You must always believe. Stay strong. Faith moves mountains. Don't be a bystander in life. No. Take it by the reins. Lay it down beneath you like a woman, a real woman with curves like a prayer pillow. Embrace it gently, at other times intensely. Seek out the source of life, where it pulsates, where it burns hot and humid, here, there, everywhere. The world is yours for the taking. Learn to feel out the world. Always give the best of yourself. Bite into it and don't hold back. Fear; leave it behind, far away from you. It will pass through you and continue its course. Walk like a God among men. Always consider what your actions say about you. Every step resonates; yours levitate! Be mindful of the way you carry yourself, especially when life punches you right in the heart, your body. Spit violently on the ground if you have to. Turn a deaf ear to the mean-spirited and narrow-minded. They can only drag you into the lair of regrets, jealousy, and resentment.

Aside from the words, there is also this presence that is difficult to describe. When the invisible ones come to me, they deliver each syllable directly into my soul, and this gesture charges them with even graver significance. It's such a powerful sensation that I can feel it under my skin, like the touch of a tender lover. My whole body is taken in by it, enlivened by these words.