Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou Page A

his feet, I saw him dress, turning his back so I wouldn’t see his genitals, and as I crossed what served as the living room, I stumbled over his other self, stretched out on the ground, we left the hut, while the other self went and lay down on the last mat woven by Mama Kibandi,
I tripped along behind my master, who was walking with his eyes half closed, like a blind man, and we arrived at a place a few hundred metres from the house of Papa Louboto, the brick maker, my master sat down under a mango tree, I could see he was trembling, talking to himself, touching his belly, as though he had a pain there, ‘go on then, it’s your call’ he said to me, pointing towards the hut at the far end of the concession, and seeing me hesitate he repeated his order in a sterner tone, I did as I was told, and round the back of the hut I found a gaping hole, the work, presumably, of some local rodents, I pushed straight through it and found myself in the bedroom of Papa Louboto’s daughter, young Kiminou, a light-skinned girl, an adolescent, with a round face, said to be the prettiest girl in Séképembé, four young men had already asked her father for her hand in marriage, and were just waiting for Papa Louboto’s decision, due next year, when the girl came of age, here was young Kiminou now, I stopped to admire her beauty for a moment, the pagne scarcely covering her thighs, her breasts within reach, I felt a violent lurch of desire, I was shocked by my own genitals, I who had never done anything improper with a female, not even one of my own species, I swear, I’d never even once felt the itch, it never crossed my mind, unlike certain members of our group at that time, who stooped to such things the moment the old governor’s back was turned, they were older than me, these comrades, and then all at once, the day of my first mission, I got this curious bulge between my hind legs, my sex was growing hard, I’d always thought it was only for pissing, just as my rectum was only for defecating, I was suddenly ashamed, and I swear I couldn’t tell you to this day what I would do if I found myself face to face with a porcupine of the opposite sex coming
on to me, or giving me the come hither, perhaps I’m still a virgin because of being a double, whenever I saw the other members of our community knocking around with females it felt like I was watching something indecent, it was all very hard work, but they got there in the end, they squealed, groaned, clutched at their partner’s quills, I always wondered what they were feeling when they waved their paws around as though they were having an epileptic fit and let me tell you something else, the noise of their quills rubbing together really irritated me, anyway, my comrades seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly, then suddenly they’d groan and fall into a state of semi-consciousness, even a babe that piddles in his cradle could have caught them bare-handed, then, the day of my first assignment, I discovered that even though my sex was quite indifferent to the attractions of a female porcupine, it immediately reacted to the sight of a naked human of the feminine sex, still my mission was not to try to get it on with this girl, so after a moment’s hesitation I set these thoughts aside, and told myself such things were not for me, they were things to be done between members of the same species, and to rid my mind completely of such ideas I tried to think about something completely different, I wondered what had made my master take against the lovely Kiminou, her perfectly formed body perhaps, and once again I brushed aside such considerations with the back of my paw, not wanting to weaken just as I was about to go into action, but deep down, even if I was deliberately making my mind go blank, I couldn’t help wondering, and I remembered that Kibandi was one of the four marriage candidates, which had made the whole village