PART ONE
The production of a mounting body of writing on the phenomenon of the “Abiku”, the spirit child who is reincarnated, in West African literature suggests an awareness and recognition of its presence in the works of some of the region’s major writers. But while necessary attention has most often been focused on Nigerian writers such as Achebe (for the ogbanje in Things Fall Apart), Soyinka and J.P. Clark (for their respective poems titled “Abiku”), and Okri (for The Famished Road and its sequel, Astonishing the Gods), because of each of these authors’ fine handling of the spirit-child as protagonist, critics have generally not examined the presence of this phenomenon in francophone African writing. A brief look at some of the works by Olympe Bhêly-Quenum from Benin will indeed reveal why such an assessment might be necessary. Thematically (at least) Olympe Bhêly-Quenum has excelled in presenting many different (if often unrecognized) materials to readers of African literature. It can be argued that perhaps one reason for the relative lack of critical appreciation is the thematic variety of Bhêly Quenum’s works. The varied nature of his writing often makes them as enigmatic as they are rewarding.
Bhêly-Quenum’s handling of the “Abiku”.
It may be sometimes difficult to believe that the author of Un Piège sans fin also created Les appels du Vodou or La Naissance d’abikou. But that is precisely the strength of the Beninois author’s writing. For, as I shall show with just one example in this essay, Bhêly-Quenum’s handling of the “Abiku” not only provides a francophone version of that phenomenon already present in (anglophone) African literature but also adds a new dimension to it. Moreover, I believe that, although Bhêly-Quenum has secured a reputation already as one of the first African writers to have dealt successfully with the anti-colonial theme in his previous works, an examination of his treatment of the ‘living dead’ in works such as Les appels du Vodou and La naissance d’abikou would provide a serious opportunity to look at another group of “others” that have been used to evaluate both the past as well as the present and the nature of human relations in West Africa.
An exploration of the disembodied self as ‘other’.
My study will also show some connections and areas contrast to other anglophone West African works dealing with this same theme: “Abiku” by J.P. Clark and Wole Soyinka respectively, and Ben Okri’s The Famished Road. An exploration, then, of the disembodied self as ‘other’ and the implications of such artistic treatment will form the crux of this essay. It might be said that though the Abiku persona first appeared in West African writing as the daughter of Ezinma, Okonkwo’s favorite daughter in Things Fall Apart, it is with the eponymous poems by Clark and Soyinka respectively and the creation of Azoro by Okri that this occurrence really took hold.
In the earlier depictions, Abikus are shown as spirit children whose mercurial treatment, even rejection, of their parents (mothers especially) leave the mothers in a most pitiable state. Demonstrating the vulnerability of a nervous parent who does not want to lose another child, the speaker in J.P. Clark’s “Abiku” at the conclusion of the poem offers a most heart-wrenching plea for the spirit child to stay this last time:
“ Then step in, step in and stay
For her body is tired,
Tired, her milk going sour
Where many more mouths gladden the heart.”
This plea comes after the persona has offered a series of possible reasons (extraordinarily poor, almost uninhabitable living conditions), for the Abiku’s perennial departures and arrivals as well as measures taken by the parents to prevent the continuation of Abiku activity (scarring the dead child’s body, for example).
In Soyinka’s “Abiku,” the speaker ridicules the pain suffered by the mothers of Abiku and, especially, the efforts made by Abiku mothers to placate their obviously mischievous, pain-causing offspring:
“ In vain your bangles cast
Charmed circles at my feet
I am Abiku, calling for the first
And the repeated time…
Night, and Abiku sucks the oil
From lamps. Mothers! I’ll be the
Suppliant snake coiled on the doorstep
Yours the killing cry.”
Two of Bhêly-Quenum’s works.
Although much insight has been gained from these initial representations of the Abiku, one can say that the primary goal of the earlier authors was to introduce the phenomenon and the consequences of the Abikus’actions on their mothers: the seeming callousness and wanton disregard of the sprit children and the sense of deep personal grief of the mothers. Indeed, it is with the publication of works such as Okri’s The Famished Road and Bhêly-Quenum’s Les appels du Vodou that we begin to see several new dimensions being added to the role of the Abiku. Okri’s brilliant use of an Abiku and a combination of traditional realistic techniques with those that he considers another kind of realism (and which some readers call “magical realism) to portray some major problems of contemporary Nigeria allowed The Famished Road, almost from its first day of publication, to receive much and important critical attention. I will thus postpone discussion of this Okri work for now. Rather, I will concentrate on two of Bhêly-Quenum’s works: Les appels du Vodou (Harmattan, 1994) and an unpublished prequel, La naissance d’Abikou, which as early as 1979 had been listed among a collection of short stories slated for publication (see L’Initié, Présence Africaine, 1979).
It is perhaps typical of the heavily autobiographical Bhêly-Quenum that he would have previewed some of the major themes to be found in Les Appels in the shorter “Naissance.” The spirit child protagonist in both “La Naissance d’abikou” and Les Appels du Vodou like other Abiku stories focus on the relationship between the Abiku-child and the world the child is born into. Bhêly-Quenum’s versions are more similar to Okri’s than to Achebe’s, Clark’s or Soyinka’s not only because of the vitality, the here and now realistic actions of the protagonists but also the manner in which their positions as Abikus do have a direct effect on those around them (and not only on their suffering mothers).
The ninth month of Konoussi’s pregnancy.
Definitely autobiographical in parts, “La naissance” depicts an Abiku-child who obviously is very close to his mother but who also relishes the role of tormentor for the long-suffering woman. Paralleling some of Bhêly-Quenum’s own life and experiences, the unborn boy co-protagonist is the last child about to be born to Konoussi, the mother who had lost her twins after the birth of her first child, a girl. All of the events in the story- which are mostly a series of verbal confrontations between the mother and her yet-to-be born child--take place during the ninth month of Konoussi’s pregnancy. These sometime verbal banters center on two seemingly diametrically opposed viewpoints.
On the one hand, there is the unborn child’s utter contempt for a world whose religious practices, rituals, and other forms of social interaction he interprets as being highly hypocritical and reactionary (and of which he wants no part) as well as the disdain he has for his father-to-be whom he regards as an exploiter (especially sexual) of Konoussi and other people.
On the other hand, Konoussi is constantly making a case for her son-to-be to recognize this earthly world as a place worth living in and to respect the values of traditional Beninois culture, as practiced by the boy’s family. Through a series of dialogues, which are actually more like the harangues and the scolding of a bully than that of a boy having a conversation with his mother, the mother is all but made to admit that it was wrong for her to have had sex with her husband, lectured about the stupidity of the boy’s only living sister, the foolishness of the religious and other social practices of the boy’s family members, and the contemptible ways of the world in general.
The boy’s oedipal attachment.
What is particularly striking to the reader as well is the boy’s oedipal attachment to his mother. He makes it quite clear that the father is seen as a rival, and a nasty one at that. In an argument that the unborn child is supposed to be having with his mother he talks about his love for her in these terms:
« Tu ne vas dire que tu ne savais pas ce que je suis en toi? Quand je te prends, te possède et que tu me caresse en passant agréablement tes mains sur ton ventre, avec qui crois-tu que tu fais l’amour? Et puis, ton langage t’a trahie: ce n’est pas un amour de petit homme que tu désires, mais un sexe que tu attires dans le tien quand tu en as envie ou qui s’empare de toi jusqu’à te faire hurler d’orgasme quand il te veut…»
[You will not say that you did not know what I am in you? When I take you, possess you, and you caress me while agreeably passing your hands on your belly, with whom did you think you were making love? And then, your language betrayed you: it is not a love of a boy friend thatyou desire, but a sexual organ which attracts you in yours when you want of it or which seizes you to the point of howling in orgasms when he wants you...]
It should come as no surprise that not only is the mother scandalized by this kind of rhetoric and attachment but also that the boy is extremely antagonistic and rude toward his father (and all that the father stands for). As the “dialogue” between mother and soon-to-be-born son continues, we overhear the constant threats of either not appearing in the world of the living (i.e. being born) or taking off from that world just after birth.We also learn of the scorn the boy has for the traditional divinities : “…impossible de finir une phrase avec vos bavardages de dieux, de divinités et d’ancêtres…” […impossible to finish a sentence with your chatterings of gods, divinities and ancestors] (p. 21), society in general, “Tu peux les invoquer, tous les dieux: je n’ai rien de commun avec ces gens-là. Rien à voir avec eux. Que de tracas dans vos milieux! Et tu voudrais que je vienne m’embrigader…m’embringuer dans un monde ainsi quadrillé d’interdits, manipulé par les aînés, traficoté par des supérieurs et les dieux?”
[You can call upon them, all the gods: I do not have anything in common with those people. Nothing to do with them. So much worry in your locales! And you would like me to become indoctrinated with that... to become involved in a world thus controlled by interdicts, manipulated by elders, interfered with by their superiors and the gods?] (p. 29), and even for well-respected family members such as his grandfather and grandmother.
While Konoussi is struggling with this inner turmoil, she is informed by her loving father-in-law that she will not only deliver a baby boy but this time the boy will survive. True to the prediction, Konoussi delivers a healthy boy who is immediately recognized as the Abiku reincarnation of his dead twin siblings—the boy and girl—and the worthy heir of a venerable household. The story ends with hints that the Abiku’s prediction of himself as a future great man will come to pass.
PART TWO
A remarkable novel “out of the fashion of the moment.”
As I mentioned previously, what distinguishes the Abiku in “La naissance” from poetic representations is its roguish liveliness. Readers may be shocked by the almost sacrilegious derision of certain things held sacred in traditional Beninois, indeed West African, society - the gods, respect for one’s parents and the elders but Bhêly-Quenum seemed determined to use his Abiku in this story to ask some important questions about himself and his world: what kinds of connections exist between a child who has an almost mythic closeness with his mother? What is the role of the father (especially taking into account the two highly contrastive roles of the two fatherly figures presented in the text - the father and the grandfather respectively)? How should a person with extraordinary abilities such as an Abiku comport him/herself ? When, if ever, do the powers of the Abiku cease? (In this story, it seems as if the powers of disembodied communication ends with the birth of the boy). Bhêly-Quenum did not offer readers the opportunity to explore all of these questions when the story was expanded upon (re-written?) and published as a novel, Les appels du Vodou.
In 1994, three years after Ben Okri won the Booker Prize for The Famished Road with much critical acclaim, Bhêly-Quenum published Les appels du Vodou, a remarkable novel that so far has received scant scholarly attention. There is little wonder that this is so for Bhêly-Quenum seems to be the kind of author that always is always writing “out of the fashion of the moment”; thus, although the explanations offered for the lack of critical response to this Bhêly-Quenum work will be various and even contradictory---especially at a time when some British and anglophone critics were celebrating the “other-worldiness” present in The Famished Road- one can speculate that the theme of Les appels du Vodou perhaps made it seem strange among contemporary francophone writings.
A dominating and endearing presence.
Bhêly-Quenum aptly opens this novel with the dominating and endearing presence of his mother because her character, as that in “La naissance”, will serve as one of the co-protagonists in this novel. Defying generic classification, Les appels combines strong elements of autobiography, biography, memoir, ethnography, hagiography, history, political and social commentary, poetry, and some other genres. It is, above all, a celebration of the Bhêly-Quenum’s extraordinarily warm, loving and tender relationship with his mother and, to a lesser extent, the other members of his immediate family - his paternal grand father, maternal grandmother, father, sister, numerous other relatives, and indeed, Benin his homeland. The novel is also a profound tribute to the voodoo religion and its practitioners, acknowledging them as major forces of religious and cultural syncretism in that country.
Vicédessin or Grand-Maman, as she is affectionately called by most, is the daughter of Yaga, a Yoruba woman from Abeokuta who had been captured initially as a slave-bride during a time of inter-ethnic wars, then eventually married off to the son of the old man whose wife she was initially destined to be. A person high priestess of the voodoo religion and an extremely savvy and able entrepreneur, Vicédessin, is like Konoussi will become “La naissance,” the mother of two surviving children, an older girl and an Abiku boy who came after the twins. And, as in the short story, the boy’s birth and survival are not only predicted but his arrival is also heralded as a momentous event. The oracle realizes, at the moment of the traditional baptism for example, that the boy named Agblo (Bhêly-Quenum’s traditional name), that “il n’y avait pas eu d’erreur: le fils de celle qui aurait pu être une autre femme de Daagbo [her father-in-law] était né sous le signe de l’illustrissme ancêtre TCHIKOTON: AGBLO TCHIKOTON lui-même” (p. 12). Moreover, as in the short story, Agblo in Les appels develops an unusually close relationship with his mother. As a child, he is upset beyond measure when his mother has to leave (abandon , from his own point of view) him and his sister to attend to her duties of the voodoo high priestess and, as an adult he remains almost inconsolable, though stoic, upon learning of the death of his mother.
New and even more interesting work.
What is quite remarkable about Les appels, however, is the way in which it becomes a new and even more interesting work than “La naissance.” Whereas the unborn child’s relationship with his mother in “Les naissance” is at times nauseating in the depiction of the boy’s incestuous possessiveness of and attachment to his mother and in his arrogance, selfishness, and callousness, and while he seems to be obsessed with only one thing -his total (including sexual) affection for his mother- Agblo the Abiku in Les appels is given a much more interesting dimension. There are in a substantive sense many stories in this novel and this Abiku is allowed to perform many roles. From Agblo’s vantage point, readers are able to have a kaleidoscopic view of the history and social mores of his family (especially his mother’s life story), his own experiences as an Abiku who has remained on this earth, and an ethnographic account of Dahomeyan culture.
This novel is a biography of and eulogy to Agblo’s mother - beginning and ending with her death and internment - and also the autobiography of an Abiku. It provides in very affectionate terms the life story, the vicissitudes, and the joys of Agblo’s mother from the time she is captured as a booty of war to her ultimate success as a very enterprising businesswoman and socio-religious pillar in her community. In perhaps an idealized manner, Vicédessin is portrayed as a very kind soul who is always willing to help the down-trodden- be they family members or outsiders - unshakable in her religious convictions but also extraordinarily tough in her business dealings. As a co-wife in a polygamous household, Vicédessin and her colleagues come to represent the ideal in such a relationship. They provide support for each other and genuinely treat each other’s children as their own specific progeny. Moreover, unlike the almost sex-crazed and selfish father of the boy in “La naissance,” Agblo’s father, Paul in Les appels, is shown to be not only a gentleman - when, for example, he is accused of mismanaging financial books by the colonial administration he refuses to plea bargain and is kept in jail for eight months, only to be completely vindicated later on - he is also a gentle person who treats his various children with the same amount of dignity and respect. He is a man of tradition and custom who is not ashamed of his culture but is also a forward-thinking Christian who learns as much as he can from the West. Like Vicédessin, he does not hesitate to mete out punishment when it is deserved - as we see in his whipping of Agblo when the latter defiles the sacred statue - but is also aware of his own limitations.
Bhêly-Quenum creates a quite consistent form of reality.
The true measure of the significance of Les appels rests, however, on the way the world of disembodied existence is made to coexist with that of the living. Because of Agblo’s special powers as an Abiku and a divinely ordained child, he is able to see and communicate with the non-living as well as understand mysteries of the netherworld. Unlike Okri, whose version of realism is at times only seen as a account of magical realism, Bhêly-Quenum creates a form of reality that is quite consistent with the traditional African view that sees life as a continuum in which the worlds of the living and the dead intersect. At the moment when Vicédessin is breathing her last on this earth, a step-son, Toinou, recognizes the back of her spirit without realizing that he is looking at a dead person. At about that same moment, in the Parisian suburbs, “La présence de sa mere frémissait dans son [Agblo’s] cerveau” (p. 23) and memories of Vicédessin flood his mind as he whistles and searches for some voodoo hymns recorded by her on tape (p. 25). In circumstances that are almost identical to those with Toinou, Vicédessin, her father-in-law, Daagbo, and two of Paul’s assistants in the farm respectively encounter the ghost of Comlanvi, one of Agblo’s half brothers, just at the point when the young man is dying. In fact, Daagbo, does not only meet and chat with Comlanvi’s ghost, the old patriarch describes the terrible omens he had received before just before he learns of his grandson’s death:
« J’ai pris la décision de venir après une nuit étrange; il y a eu un mauvaise rêve et de l’angoisse; le coq n’avait pas encore chanté son deuxième chant quand je me suis réveillé; j’ai essayé de me rendormir; ça n’a pas été possible; le songe était revenu. C’est assez rare qu’un même dro se renouvelle ainsi dans une nuit ; mais je viens de rencontrer Comlanvi. » (p. 251).
[I made the decision to come after one strange night; there was a bad dream and some anguish; the cock had not crowed a second time yet when I woke up; I tried to to sleep again; that was not possible; the dream returned. It is rather rare that same a dro is renewed like that in a night; but I have just met Comlanvi].
Years after Comlanvi’s death, he appears to Agblo in a dream and helps guide him to become a reassuring presence for Paul, their father. And, when Paul is giving Agblo his final fatherly words of advice just before Agblo leaves Benin for France, the young man has a sensation which is described as follows:
« …il eut l’impression que se posait sur son épaule, amicalement, une main qui n’était pas celle de son père; on eût dit qu’une connaissance de son adolescence , l’ayant déjà reconnu de dos, l’avait rejoint sur la pointe des pieds et disait: “Eh, mon gaillard, tu me reconnais? Il paraît que toi aussi tu fous le camp de Gléxwé!
Il ne regarda pas en arrière; personne ne l’avait appelé et il ne soliloquait pas …; il en était sûr, la main fraternelle sentie sur son épaule était un contact immatériel. » (pp. 283-84).
[…he had the impression that posed on its shoulder, in a friendly way, was a hand which was not that of his father; one could have said that an acquaintance from adolescence, having already recognized him from his back, had joined him at the back of his heels and said: " do Eh, young fella, do you recognize me? It appears that to you also are clearing out of Gléxwé!
He did not look back; nobody had called him and he was not soliloquizing...; he was sure of that, the fraternal hand felt on his shoulder was a disembodied contactl].
In all of these instances Bhêly-Quénum simply connects the living and the dead as if they simply coexist. The imagination at work? Reality? We are never too sure. While avoiding the type of complexity that sometimes seems to exist for its own sake in The Famished Road, Bhêly-Quénum produces writing that allows his readers to tip into the world of the unknown without necessarily overwhelming them with his concept of reality. Moving away from the technique of “La naissance,” Bhêly-Quénum seems to want to stress that reality might best be perceived if it is taken in, not just observed.
The world presented of the Abiku in anglophone West African fiction has often been one of deep personal or national trauma, with a pervasive sense of pain and tragedy. Bhêly-Quenum seems to have started out with that in “La Naissance” but definitely breaks out of that mold by creating a much broader canvas which also includes some of the lighter shades of existence even for an Abiku.
Abioseh Michael Porter.
