Bitter Chocolate (2 page)

‘How did you do that?’ Kamil had exclaimed.

‘Great goal!’ Bobo cheered.

‘Hey, littl’un, where did that come from?’ Olivier cried.

Pascal couldn’t explain it and wished he could relive every minute of the goal in slow motion. He remembered the feeling of triumph, though, as he made his way down the village street, past Mr Bon in his bicycle repair shop, past the bush taxi, past his aunt, who was braiding Olivier’s sister’s hair, past the empty marketplace, and on until the shops gave way to groups of scattered houses with hens scratching around outside and lines of washing laced in between. At this point, the street was little more than a dusty track, which branched right and left, linking the houses together.

When he rounded the bamboo fence that separated their homestead from the pathway, Pascal could see his mother standing near the front door of their home, his baby sister, Bijou, balanced on her hip. In the courtyard to the side, his elder sister, Angeline, was pounding rice in a mortar.

‘Pascal, my child, how has your day been?’ his mother called.

‘I scored a great goal when we played football,’ Pascal replied. ‘You should have seen it, Maman! I ran and ran, and no one could catch me and I kicked it hard, straight between the posts.’

‘And there was me thinking you didn’t like football,’ his mother said, smiling. ‘Did you have a good day at school? And how are you getting on with your lessons?’

‘I had a good day, Maman,’ said Pascal. He took Bijou from her and let his baby sister pull at his hair. ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ he squealed, before tickling her ribs and laughing at her giggles.

‘It’s nice to see you looking so happy, little brother,’ Angeline called over.

‘I wish Papa had been there to see me score my goal,’ Pascal replied. ‘I wish he didn’t have to go away to work all the time.’

Chapter 3

Pascal knew a little about the fighting that was going on in Sierra Leone and Liberia. He’d heard his parents and some of the other villagers talking about it, and occasionally it was mentioned on the radio. He knew that refugees from those countries were pouring over the border into his own country, Guinea, and that camps were being set up to house them not so far from where his family lived. He’d wondered vaguely what it would be like to live in a country at war, and whether he would want to stay there or run away to a foreign place, where he wouldn’t know anyone and where they might not even speak the same language or eat the same food. He thought he would probably want to stay put, and that it might even be quite exciting, as long as the fighting wasn’t too close by. But this conflict seemed very remote from his own life in a village, where everybody was friends with, or related to, everybody else.

Sometimes Pascal heard his parents complaining that the huge number of refugees was costing their country too much money.

‘We can barely afford to feed our own people,’ his father said, ‘let alone all these others.’

‘But they can’t go back, can they, Papa?’ Pascal said. ‘They might be killed if they go back.’

‘No, I suppose they can’t. We can only hope that the fighting stops, and soon. Then there won’t be any excuses.’

‘It can’t be much fun living in a refugee camp,’ Angeline responded. ‘Surely they’re not going to be making excuses not to go home.’

‘Unless the fighting goes on for so long that they have nothing to go home to,’ their father observed.

Pascal was glad that his own country was peaceful, though he joined in with his cousins and friends at playing shoot-’em-up games. Sometimes they rampaged through the surrounding forest, whooping and hollering at the top of their voices, threatening violence against each other and acting dead or wounded. Pascal wasn’t sure how much he enjoyed the sheer riotousness of it all, and so he would hang around on the fringes, hoping not to be noticed, but taking part just enough that no one, particularly Kamil, could accuse him of ‘cowardice’. At times it made him feel vulnerable, like if he found himself alone and hid by a tree, heart pounding, certain that someone would be creeping up on him, but not knowing from which direction. The forest played its own tricks too. Branches would suddenly lurch or creak, bushes would shiver, small animals would dart out from the undergrowth by his feet, and monkeys would hurl sticks from their treetop playground.

By the time a game had run its course and the boys had headed home, still loud and boisterous, Pascal couldn’t wait to immerse himself in the relative quiet of his family and chores. He would happily feed the chickens and collect their eggs, or bounce baby Bijou on his lap, while his mother and Angeline prepared their evening meal.

‘You boys,’ Mrs Camara would say, smiling. ‘We could hear the racket you were making all over the village. I expect they could hear it in the Côte d’Ivoire.’

‘I’m surprised the monkeys haven’t packed their bags and moved out,’ Angeline said more than once.

‘It’s fun,’ Pascal insisted. He really could mean it when he wasn’t in the middle of a fight, and objected if his mother ever tried to suggest that he was a sensitive child, a bit of a loner and perhaps not cut out for the rough and tumble of boyhood, especially when his father once added that he needed to toughen up, to be more like his cousins.

‘Why does he have to be like his cousins?’ his mother argued. ‘That Kamil could do with a little of Pascal’s gentleness.’

‘I’m just saying that he won’t get anywhere in life if he doesn’t stand up for himself,’ his father replied.

‘I do stand up for myself when I have to, Papa,’ Pascal protested. ‘I’m just not loud and bossy like Kamil.’

‘Kamil will go far,’ said Mr Camara.

‘Why do you think that, Papa? He’s always missing school and when he’s there he messes about. And his English is far worse than mine.’

‘He’s a leader. People will follow him.’

‘Not if he’s ignorant. Certainly not for long,’ Pascal’s mother replied. ‘Anyway, he’s two years older than Pascal. Why do you expect our son to have such confidence at the age of ten? I tell you, he’ll be fine if you leave him be. Children are all different, and Pascal will deal with things in his own way.’

Pascal’s father shrugged his shoulders and muttered, ‘I guess you’re right’, while his mother hurried outside, loudly clattering the pans she was carrying. He grinned at Pascal. ‘You’ll find that with women,’ he said. ‘They’re always right. At least, you have to let them think they are.’

‘Maman
is
right,’ said Pascal. ‘And I know how to look after myself.’

Chapter 4

Every so often, the noise of gunfire could be heard in the village now. Pascal didn’t know what it was initially. The distant
rat-a-tat-a-tat
sounded as if it might be loggers or a carpenter or a stonemason at work, but when it happened in the middle of the night, Pascal began to ask questions.

Mrs Camara shrugged her shoulders when, in the absence of his father, he asked her for the first time.

‘There are all sorts of strange noises in the night,’ she said. ‘I don’t know which ones you mean.’

‘It’s not just in the night,’ said Pascal. ‘Sometimes you can hear them in the daytime too.’

His mother shrugged once more. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’ She smiled and carried on with her washing, humming quietly.

Pascal was sure she was hiding something, and asked his cousins what they thought the noise was. They laughed loudly at him.

‘That’s gunfire you’re hearing, dolt,’ Kamil sniggered. He placed a pretend gun at Pascal’s head. ‘Bang, bang, you’re dead!’

Pascal pushed his hand away. He thought Kamil meant that someone was practising shooting, until Olivier added, ‘There are rebel soldiers all around us, waiting to grab us when we’re asleep.’

The cousins laughed again. Pascal tried to laugh with them, even though he couldn’t see the joke.

‘Poor Pascal, he won’t sleep a wink ever again,’ Kamil snorted.

‘Yes, I will, because I don’t believe you,’ Pascal retorted lamely.

‘Believe what you like,’ said Olivier.

Pascal wanted to believe that it was all just stupid talk, but when he spoke to Angeline, she failed to douse his suspicion that something bad was happening.

‘Why can’t you tell me what’s going on?’ he asked. ‘I’m not a baby.’

‘It’s nothing to be concerned about,’ she replied. ‘It’s a few rogue soldiers from across the border firing a few shots to make themselves feel big.’

‘But how far away are they?’ Pascal wanted to know.

‘Far enough,’ said Angeline. ‘And our soldiers will soon send them packing.’

Try as they might to prevent him from worrying, his family couldn’t stop him from listening to the gossip at school. Some of the children had heard that rebels had taken control of a number of nearby towns and that there was fierce fighting. Others said that the refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia were causing trouble because they wanted to go home.

Pascal wished his father would come home and stay home. He was scared that he might be caught up in the fighting while he was away, and that they might never see him again. Besides, he wanted his father to be there to protect them.

‘What if Papa is at work and the rebels come here?’ he said to Angeline. ‘What will we do?’

‘They won’t come here. There’s no reason for them to come here.’ Angeline tried to reassure him, but Pascal could tell that she was anxious herself.

‘What are they fighting about, anyway?’

‘I don’t really know. Perhaps they just want change. Perhaps they want a better life and fighting is the only way they can think of to get it.’

One morning, a crackled news bulletin on the radio in the village shop told of people being attacked in another village.

‘Is that village near here?’ Pascal asked his mother as she hurriedly paid for her groceries and shunted him outside.

Mrs Camara shook her head and busied herself with Bijou.

Olivier saw them from across the road and dashed over to them, greeting his aunt politely. To Pascal he said, ‘Did you hear the explosions last night? They sounded really close.’

‘Sound travels,’ Mrs Camara broke in. ‘You’ll find they were many kilometres away.’

‘Papa doesn’t think so,’ replied Olivier. ‘He sleeps by the door at night with an axe and a knife.’

‘Your father has always been over-cautious.’

Olivier looked somewhat taken aback by this criticism of his father by his aunt.

Mrs Camara sensed his unease and patted him on the arm. ‘It never does any harm, though,’ she said.

Together they walked back to their homesteads and no further mention was made of explosions or fighting.

As they approached, Pascal was delighted to see his father. He was carrying a large piece of wood across their yard, but put it down as soon as he saw them. Pascal ran to him, cheering loudly.

‘Hey, Papa,’ he called. ‘I thought you weren’t coming home till the end of the month.’

‘Well, I decided to come home early and spend some time with my family.’ He smiled, squeezing Pascal’s shoulder.

He gave his wife a hug, then lifted Bijou high above his head. She wriggled and squealed with pleasure. They went indoors, where Angeline was preparing their meal.

The conversation over dinner that evening revolved mostly around Mr Camara’s work at the diamond mines. Mrs Camara regularly steered the talk back to this topic if it looked like it was heading towards more sombre subjects. There were things Pascal wanted to ask his father, but he soon realised that his mother wouldn’t allow their time together to be spoiled, and in any case he was happy just to have his father there. Pascal didn’t want to follow in his footsteps, but he loved hearing about how he passed his days and the people he worked with. As a manager, his father didn’t have to pan for diamonds himself, but that didn’t stop Pascal wanting to know everything about the process of searching for diamonds and what happened when a worker found one.

‘What’s the biggest diamond anyone’s ever found?’ he asked. ‘Can the person who found the diamond keep it? How much do you get paid if you find a diamond?’

Pascal especially liked listening to stories about what the miners did when they were off duty. Mr Camara and his fellow managers seemed to spend many hours playing card games, or watching sport on television in a bar in the nearby town, or kicking a ball around with the local townspeople.

‘I wish we had a television,’ Pascal said when he heard that they had watched the national team playing football against rival Malawi.

‘We only drew,’ said Mr Camara. ‘We threw away a one-goal lead, so you didn’t miss anything.’

Pascal asked him, not for the first time, if he would teach him some card games. Not for the first time, his father promised that he would one day soon. Pascal wished he meant it, but he always seemed to have more important things to do when he came home. Sometimes Pascal felt that he would never be important in his father’s life and that he disappointed him because he was too quiet.

Before he went to bed that night, he asked his father how long he was staying.

‘Just as long as it takes,’ Mr Camara replied.

‘As long as what takes?’