At Night All Blood Is Black: A Novel

I

… I KNOW, I UNDERSTAND, I shouldn’t have done it. I, Alfa Ndiaye, son of the old, old man, I understand, I shouldn’t have. God’s truth, now I know. My thoughts belong to me alone, I can think what I want. But I won’t tell. The ones I might have told my secret thoughts to, my brothers-in-arms who will be left so disfigured, maimed, eviscerated, that God will be ashamed to see them show up in Paradise and the Devil will be happy to welcome them to Hell, will never know who I really am. The survivors won’t know a thing, my old father won’t know, and my mother, if she is still of this world, will never find out. The weight of shame will not be added to the weight of my death. They won’t imagine what I’ve thought, what I’ve done, the depths to which the war drove me. God’s truth, the family honor will be spared, the honor of appearances.

I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have. In the world before, I wouldn’t have dared, but in today’s world, God’s truth, I allow myself the unthinkable. No voice rises in my head to forbid me: my ancestors’ voices and my parents’ voices all extinguished themselves the minute I conceived of doing what, finally, I did. I know now, I swear to you that I understood it fully the moment I realized that I could think anything. It happened like that, all of a sudden without warning, it hit me brutally in the head, like a giant seed of war dropped from the metallic sky, the day Mademba Diop died.

Ah! Mademba Diop, my more-than-brother, took too long to die. It was very, very difficult, it wouldn’t end, from dawn into evening, his guts in the air, his insides outside, like a sheep that has been ritually dismembered after the sacrifice. Except Mademba was not yet dead, and already the insides of his body were outside. While the others hid in the gaping wounds in the earth we called trenches, I stayed close to Mademba, I lay pressed against him, my right hand in his left hand, staring at the cold blue sky crisscrossed with metal. Three times he asked me to finish him off, three times I refused. This was before, before I allowed myself to think anything I want. If I had been then what I’ve become today, I would have killed him the first time he asked, his head turned toward me, his left hand in my right.

God’s truth, if I’d already become then what I am now, I would have slaughtered him like a sacrificial sheep, out of friendship. But I thought of my old father, of my mother, of the inner voice that commands us all, and I couldn’t cut the barbed wire of his suffering. I was not humane with Mademba, my more-than-brother, my childhood friend. I let duty make my choice. I offered him only mistaken thoughts, thoughts commanded by duty, thoughts condoned by a respect for human law, and I was not human.

God’s truth, I let Mademba cry like a small child, the third time he begged me to finish him off, pissing himself, his right hand groping at the ground to gather his scattered guts, slimy as freshwater snakes. He said to me, By the grace of God and of our marabout, if you are my brother, Alfa, if you are really who I think you are, slit my throat like a sacrificial sheep, don’t let the scavengers of death devour my body! Don’t abandon me to all that filth. Alfa Ndiaye … Alfa … I’m begging you … slit my throat!

But precisely because he spoke to me of our great marabout, precisely so as not to disobey the laws of humanity, the laws of our ancestors, I was not humane and I let Mademba, my more-than-brother, my childhood friend, die with his eyes full of tears, his hand trembling, groping the muddy battlefield for his guts so he could stuff them back into his open belly.

Ah, Mademba Diop! Only after you were gone did I finally begin to think. Only with your death, at dusk, did I know, did I understand that I would no longer listen to the voice of duty, the voice that commands, the voice that leads the way. But it was too late.

Once you were dead, your hands finally immobile, finally at rest, finally released from their shameful suffering by your last breath, I thought only that I should not have waited. I understood, one breath too late, that I should have slit your throat as soon as you asked me to, while your eyes were still dry, your left hand clasped in mine. I shouldn’t have let you suffer like an old solitary lion, eaten alive by hyenas, its insides turned out. I let you plead with me for reasons that were corrupt, because of thoughts that arrived fully formed, too well dressed to be honest.

Ah, Mademba! How I’ve regretted not killing you on the morning of the battle, while you were still asking me nicely, as a friend, with a smile in your voice! To have slit your throat in that moment would have been the last good bit of fun I could have given you in your life, a way to stay friends for eternity. But instead of coming through for you, I let you die condemning me, bawling, drooling, screaming, shitting yourself like a feral child. In the name of who knows what human laws, I abandoned you to your miserable lot. Maybe to save my own soul, maybe to remain the person those who raised me hoped for me to be, before God and before man. But before you, Mademba, I was incapable of being a man. I let you curse me, my friend, you, my more-than-brother, I let you scream, blaspheme, because I did not yet know how to think for myself.

But as soon as you were dead, with a final groan, your guts exposed, my friend, my more-than-brother, as soon as you were dead, I knew, I understood that I should not have abandoned you.

I waited a bit, stretched out next to your remains, and stared at the night sky, deepest blue blue, crisscrossed by the sparkling trails of the last tracer bullets. And as soon as silence fell on the blood-soaked battlefield, I began to think. You were no more than a heap of dead meat.

I set about doing what you hadn’t managed to do all day because your hand was too unsteady. I neatly gathered your still-warm guts and deposited them into your belly, as if into a sacred vessel. In the twilight, I thought I saw you smile at me and I decided to take you home. In the cold of night, I took off my regulation trench coat and my shirt. I slid my shirt onto your body and tied the sleeves against your stomach, a very, very tight double knot that became stained with your black blood. I picked you up and brought you back to the trench. I held you in my arms like a child, my more-than-brother, my friend, and I walked and walked in the mud, in the crevices carved out by mortar shells, filled with bloodstained water, dispersing the rats that had left their burrows to feed on human flesh. And as I carried you in my arms, I began to think for myself, by asking your forgiveness. I knew, I understood too late what I should have done when you asked me, eyes dry, the way one asks a favor of a childhood friend, like a debt owed, without ceremony, sweetly. Forgive