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