Unexpected Surprises

It may be that you knew Mokoubamba who became famous in Passy for his labours as a reseater of rush-bottomed chairs, weaver of mats, of baskets and hampers, mender of all things breakable, teller of tales, entertainer of the passerby, lover of all haunts where poor mortality resorts to eat and drink. He was an old Negro from the coast of Guinea, very black as to skin, wholly white as to hair, with great velvety black eyes and the jaws of a crocodile whence issued childlike laughter. He used to honour me with his visits on his way home at evening when he had not sold quite all his wares.

With abundance of words and gestures, he would explain to me how fortunate I was to need precisely the article of which by an unforeseen and kindly chance he was the owner. And as he saw that I delighted in his talk, he gave free rein to that spirited eloquence which never failed to bring him more or less remuneration.

Our latest "reformers" having put intoxication by the juice of the grape within reach of all, Mokoubamba died on the fourteenth of last July, from having too copiously celebrated the taking of the Bastille. No more will Passy see Mokoubamba, with his white burnous, his scarlet chechia, his green boots, and his drum-major's staff. A genuine loss to the truly Parisian picturesqueness of this quarter. As for me, how should I not miss the rare companion who had seen so many lands, consorted with so many sages, and collected so many strange teachings?

"Mokoubamba knows the whole earth," he was wont to say, candidly adding: "Mokoubamba knows everything that man can know."

And the generosity of this primitive nature will be seen in the fact of his not keeping his hoard of knowledge to himself, but lavishing it upon all comers. He was equally willing to announce what the weather would be on the morrow and what it had been on the day before. By means of cabalistic signs on a very grimy bit of parchment he foretold any man's destiny: a choice destiny, indeed, of whose felicities he was never known to be niggardly.

The poor were informed that a rich inheritance awaited them, the rich saw their fortunes increased by unlooked-for events, love knocked at the door of the young, children came into the world who were to be the pride of their families, the old, beloved for their own sakes, saw their lives stretch out indefinitely: Mokoubamba kept a Paradise shop.

One day I made bold to call him to account for this, claiming that life held in store for us disappointments, here and there, for the purpose of giving an edge to our pleasures, and that there must from time to time be a discrepancy between the sovereign bliss of which he so freely held out the hope and the sum of realized joys.

"Life," replied the wise Mokoubamba, "is a procession of delights. As soon as one has disappeared, another has started upon its way. It may be a more or less long time in arriving, but no one will begrudge waiting for it, and the waiting is often the best a man gets out of it."

For a chairmender this saying seemed to me fairly profound.

"Who taught you this?" I asked.

"A fakir from Benares from whom the heavens withheld no secrets."

"You have been in India?"

"I have been everywhere."

"Mokoubamba, my friend, yours is no ordinary life. Will you not tell me something of it? The past interests me more than the future."

"If you will order them to give me coffee and cigarettes, and if I may drink and smoke as long as I talk, you shall have my entire history."

I nodded in assent, and Mokoubamba, taking possession of my verandah, squatted upon one of his own mats, inhaled the perfume of Arabia, exhaled three puffs of curly blue smoke, and seemed to lose himself in the search for a starting point.

"What was your first occupation?" I asked by way of helping him on.

"The easiest of all," said he, with a shamefaced air. "I began by being a minister."

"Minister!" I cried in high surprise. "Minister to whom? Minister of what?"

"Minister to the great King Matori. Down there-down there-beyond the Niger."

"Truly! My compliments to His Excellency! And you say the profession seemed an easy one to you? Your colleagues up here would scarcely agree with you."

"I speak of what I have seen. In my country those who are the masters are always in the right. Tell me if you know of a place on earth where it is any different? I did not know how to do anything. I could not even have braided a mat in those days. Well, then, all that I said was admirable, and as soon as I had given an order it was considered the best in the world. I was myself a Fetish, my mother having given me birth on a day of rain after a long drought which had reduced our villages to famine."

"And what were your functions?"

"The same as elsewhere. I was purveyor of provisions to the royal household and I reserved a just share for myself. Matori loved me very much. But I had enemies. They persuaded him that my Fetish was stronger than his, and as he feared my power, he sold me to an English trader who needed carriers for his ivory. It was a long journey to the coast. If a man fell he was gently dispatched on the spot, so that he might not be eaten alive by the beasts, and his load was distributed among the rest of us. Without my Fetish I should have been left behind. I may add that being beaten with a stick helped to keep up my courage."

"And what is your Fetish?"

"At that time I did not know, but I felt it without knowing. In time we arrived among the English. I was not a slave. Oh, no! but I had been 'engaged,' and in order that I might better fill my 'engagement' they fastened me, with many others, to the wall of a courtyard, by an iron chain."

"Poor Mokoubamba!"

"I was not unhappy, for they fed me very well. They wished to have us in good condition so as to get rid of us. It was there that I learned the art of weaving reeds and rattan, and carving curious designs upon wood. My neighbour, the man chained beside me, was a great sorcerer in his own land. He could carve bamboo, he could cook; he was skilled in hammering red-hot iron, in stitching leather, in dancing; he could call up spirits. They took very good care of him. They did not sell him, of course, since there existed no slavery, but they bartered him for two dozen bottles of French brandy. There was a price for you! Matori had handed me over for a single calabash of rum and a copper trumpet."