Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou

his arm, and then, just on the stroke of eleven in the morning, a flock of skeletal sheep appeared from nowhere, trooped around my master’s workshop, stopped in front of the hut, covered the courtyard in diarrhoeal excrement, then made off in single file towards the river, while the oldest of them let out a cry like that
of an animal being slaughtered in the abattoir, Kibandi rushed into his mother’s bedroom, found her lifeless, her face a rictus, her right hand laid upon her left breast, she had probably been counting her final heart beats, before her eyes closed forever, my master went running all round Séképembé like a madman, telling everyone, Mama Kibandi was buried in a place set aside for strangers, a few people came to the funeral, but not enough, because the villagers still considered her and her son ‘outsiders, come from the belly of the mountain’, even if they’d been living there for aeons, and, my dear Baobab, the way I see it, confidence between humans comes from a shared knowledge of the past, it’s not like in our world, a long established group of animals might view the arrival of an unknown beast with suspicion, animals are organised too, I know that from experience, they have their territory, their governor, their rivers, their trees, their paths, it’s not only elephants have graveyards, all animals are attached to their own world, but with the monkey cousins it’s strange, there’s an emptiness, a shadow, an ambiguity about the past which breeds suspicion, even, sometimes, rejection, and that’s why not many locals came to Mama Kibandi’s burial, after her body had lain for three days and three nights, under a shelter of palm leaves made by my master in his workshop
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    dear Baobab, I should like you to think of Mama Kibandi as a brave woman, at least, a woman who loved her child, a humble woman who lived in this village, and loved it, who spent her days weaving mats, a woman who maybe won’t find rest in the world hereafter, because my master failed to keep his word, from that point on Kibandi lived here alone, he decided to take
up carpentry again, I’d hang around outside his workshop, I’d hear him banging away furiously with his tools, sawing away at the wood, I’d see him set off for the next village, work there, come back in the evening, lie down on his bed, open a book and in that silent hut, where Mama Kibandi’s shade could still be felt, especially when a cat meowed late in the night or a fruit splashed into the river, my master’s other self visited me more and more often, always with his back to me, all I saw was a sad, lost looking shape, I knew now that we were close, very close to the start of our activities, we could begin, now Mama Kibandi’s death had relieved my master of the last of his scruples

how last Friday became black Friday

let me tell you about the day Kibandi came back from his mother’s grave, the day when towards the stroke of ten in the evening, I decided to go and sniff around his hut, all afternoon my master’s other self had been hanging about, I heard his footsteps, running everywhere, rustling in the undergrowth, plunging into the river, vanishing one moment, popping up again half an hour later, I knew the other self had a message for me, the time for our first mission had come, I grew restless in my lair, I couldn’t keep still, Kibandi wanted to see me, smell me, so, at dead of night I went to the workshop, it was so dark I could scarcely see beyond the end of my snout, there was no light in the hut, usually my master read till the early hours, I also noticed that the door was half open, I slid quietly through and found Kibandi stretched out on the last mat his mother had made before she died, it was only half finished, he loved that mat more than anything, I started nibbling his nails, his heels too, he appreciated these signs of affection and woke up, got to