Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? by Maryse Condé

her pass by were flabbergasted. When she had fled Koffi Ndizi’s compound after her deadly deed, she had been no more than a shy young girl with chubby cheeks. Now she had been transformed into a woman! At the prison in Dakar she had passed the native certificate of elementary studies. She had also learned to dress in the European fashion, and on that particular day she was flaunting a blue-patterned orange dress and a straw hat with a matching blue ribbon. But people had little time for their usual idle chatter as to who was the loveliest, Tanella or Celanire. It wasn’t long before they had far more serious matters to discuss. First of all one of the nurses recounted how Tanella and the oblate had become as intimate as husband and wife. Instead of entertaining the white guests of an evening at the dances organized at the Home, they made whoopee among themselves. They rubbed up against each other, dancing the habanera or the beguine, a dance from Guadeloupe. They drank champagne from the same glass until they were completely intoxicated. Once the visitors had left, they locked themselves in the same room. If Tanella was shy, Celanire was excessively bold. Even in public it was a never-ending serenade of “my pet” and “my little darling” and unequivocal caresses. Furthermore, Tanella had become Celanire’s right-hand woman.She supervised the workers in the palm groves, and the cooks in the refectory, and checked the accounts to such an extent that Madame Desrussie, whose place she had usurped, never stopped lamenting and took to absinthe. In the evening you could see her totter across the garden.
    Another nurse was adamant that Celanire had the power to shed her body like a snake shedding its skin in the undergrowth. One night when the wind and the rain were making the shutters bang, the young girl had entered Celanire’s room unexpectedly and had seen a little heap of soft, shapeless flesh and skin in front of the wide-open window. Hiding behind a closet, she had watched as the young woman returned in the early hours of the morning. Her mouth smeared with blood, she had slipped back into her mortal coil and calmly returned to bed. No doubt about it, Celanire was under the spell of powerful aawabo .
    Can one really believe such nonsense and malicious gossip?
    One thing for certain was not a pack of lies; the Home entered six candidates, including four girls, for the native certificate of elementary studies in June. All passed, even the girls, and were immediately hired by the mission schools and the administration. As a recompense for her extraordinary results Thomas de Brabant was to award Celanire the medal for academic excellency, a large bronze medal attached to a purple ribbon. From two o’clock in the afternoon all that Bingerville could muster in the way of civil servants, merchants, missionaries, members of the royal family, cooks, nannies, tarbooshed guards, and militia had gathered on the lawns of the Home out of curiosity and were drinking barley water. People arrived on foot and in fishing canoes from Grand-Bassam and Assinie. In everyone’s view, the transformation of the Home in such a short time was pure witchcraft. How could the palms, the orchard, and the bamboo groves have grown so fast? How could the fruit trees be loaded with so much fruit in such a short time? Lemons as big as grapefruit! Mangoes that looked as though they had been grafted! Avocados as heavy as pears! All eyes were turned on Celanire and Tanella. At a quick glance they could have passed for twins. They were the same height, same weight, same velvety black-black skin. They were dressed identically except for the bouffant scarf of raw silk tied around Celanire’s neck. They wore the same Soir de Paris perfume, and their makeup and hairstyles were identical. Despite this resemblance, it was obvious that, between the two, Celanire was the leader and the brains while Tanella, in spite of her