To evoke the inexhaustible and dizzying subject of death, this universal as well as individual experience, the Togolese writer Sami Tchak has unsheathed the spell of a series of timeless stories. Twenty-three texts like so many fables make up Melody for a Pain, his recent opus as original as it is fascinating. But let us be reassured: if seriousness underlies the pages of the book, the author does not launch into a logorrhea of sadness.
In his stories we come across couples driven by passion, ardent friendships and the freedom to live. A strong sensuality, a frequent theme in the work of Sami Tchak, brings a counterpoint to the theme, recalling the inextinguishable capacity of the human being to transcend the darkest trials through a romantic relationship.
Death can then take various forms: in turn the natural conclusion of a long life journey or an unexpected appearance in the form of an accident or illness. She also died symbolically when adversity destroys the dreams we had formed for the future. This is what happens to Lisa and Zario, the couple in the first story of the book, when they become parents of a child with autism.
A half-enchanted, half-evil universe
“Discussions, meals, laughter, ordinary contents, in general, of human existences, made us see the horizon in the joyful colors of our own dreams and ambitions. Today, all of this has shrunk due to the combination of our own withdrawal into ourselves and the progressive, almost imperceptible distance from others. We have reorganized our days and our nights in the narrow parenthesis of our deep suffering. (…) And tomorrow, the child without us? That terrible question! »
Confronting the incomprehensible inevitability of disability, renouncing traditional parenthood, managing constant anxiety about the future, this is the form of daily mourning that Lisa and Zario must face. Sami Tchak’s stories can thus be read as a whole as a variation on the anxieties raised by death. Under his pen, echoing this mystery, everything becomes a symbol.
The locations – the desert, a lush garden, a hill and its perched house – have no precise geographical connection. The very present plant world is alternately a provider of wealth or a threat, with plants being able to reveal themselves as gifted with speech. Animals and insects – birds, snakes, white butterflies, caterpillars, etc. – also intervene in this half-enchanted, half-evil universe.
“Fleeing the bite of reality, we found ourselves in the desert (…). A shrub handed us its yellow fruits and warned us of their bitterness: “Your life will no longer have the sweetness of honey,” the shrub told us. I bit a piece of fruit and spat. Bitterness, oh bitterness, something that descended, burning, in my heart, like a trickle of lava attacking my arteries. »
Grant yourself pleasure and freedom
The writer invites us into improbable gardens where beings sing, dance, undress and indulge in bacchanalia like innocent imps, conjuring as best they can the passing of time and the idea that “old age is a shortcut to the horizon.” We think of works of pictorial art like those of the Dutch Jérôme Bosch or, closer to us, the Congolese Chéri Samba.
In the fairyland created by Sami Tchak, humans, however, stand out from others by their ability to fertilize the word. The couple of Maria and Joséphin have literary ambitions. Azrur, the friend of the initial couple, leaves an unclassifiable manuscript upon his death: The city of centuries-old manuscripts, a work which deals with “an initiatory journey where the living, the dead, the plants, the animals, the dunes , the mirages… were on the same level of existence and conversed in an accessible language. » It is up to the reader to interpret all these propositions in their own way.
This Melody for Pain is an astonishing literary object, which borrows on the one hand from the magic of the tale to make us move between the visible and the invisible, and from the moral (but not moralizing) character of the fable. Throughout the pages, Sami Tchak basically reminds us of the impermanence of life and the unpredictability of the ending scenario that awaits each of us. And if there is a general lesson to be learned from this set of stories, it is undoubtedly to live, as best and as strongly as possible, to grant yourself pleasure and freedom, because
“Life caresses us then claws us to blood
Who cares!
Life is a party with tears
Who cares! “.