Tropic of Violence

by Nathacha Appanah

  I killed him.

  He crumpled up and an uh emerged from his throat like a choking gasp and after that, there in the woods, for long minutes there was nothing but the day dawning and that pink glow slicing through the branches, bearing down on Bruce like knife blades. The pistol was hot, hard, and heavy in my hand. I gripped it firmly and felt its energy mounting up my arm like thousands of burning needles.

  I sat down on the ground. Between Bruce and me there was a carpet of dry eucalyptus leaves. I pictured him standing there beside his own body, half-dead, half-alive, the way he used to stand when he’d been smoking spice, his head tilted on one side, his hands in his hair, his fingers twisting his frizzy curls rapidly this way and that, unable to stop this nervous tic, wondering what the hell he’s doing here, stretched out among the eucalyptus trees with that stain on his T-shirt. Can he see me, this half-dead, half-alive Bruce? Is he starting to forget who he is or, on the contrary, is everything clear, everything plain? Does he see his whole life spread out before him, does he have regrets, or is he as filled with rage as ever?

  This island turned us into dogs, Bruce. You, who’d chosen the nickname of a superhero, Bruce Wayne, you once explained to me, while jumping up and down on the spot as if you had springs in your feet. Bruce Wayne, Batman, because you liked bats, or at least that’s what you told me, although for my part, I never saw you liking anything other than smoking spliffs and dominating other people.

  This island has made me into a killer. Do you remember how you used to say to me No Mercy Mo, well you see, Bruce, this morning I had none for you.

  I slipped the gun back into my rucksack, and thought about everything it contained from my past life, from that life when I lived in a house built from rectangular, pinkish bricks, when the nighttime was for dogs, flying foxes, and thieves and I was not yet a dog, a thief, a killer but just a boy with one green eye and one dark eye. I thought about how this black, weighty gun was now lying there next to my book and Marie’s scarf, I pictured the black pistol possibly getting caught up with her identity card, maybe the barrel of the murder weapon was pointing at the photo of Marie in the top right-hand corner of her card. I told myself that if I stuck my head into the rucksack now, the way I like to do, because I imagine that things from the past have a smell of their own and that this smell, unlike people and dogs, lasts for ever, well, you see, sometimes it’s only this fantasy of a smell that lasts for ever that keeps me from going mad, yes, I told myself that if I stuck my head into my bag now, there’d be nothing but gunpowder, iron and blood and that, there you are, such was my life now.

  I stood up and left Bruce in the woods. I walked and walked, I kept my head down, I didn’t look at the early-morning streets, I didn’t look at the sky, I didn’t look at the sea, I walked all the way here, I waited by the gate and the cop opened it to me. I said I’ve killed a boy up there in the woods near Lake Dziani. The pistol’s in my rucksack and the cop looked at me like he’d seen a ghost. At the desk I gave them precise directions and they put me in here. In this cell.

  The edges of the bench are rough and graze the back of my knees. These little abrasions are nothing much, but for me, who’s known nights in the open, bare-fisted fights, chases through the woods, the fire of a knife across my face, my toes nibbled by rats, hunger, solitude, fear, real fear I mean, the kind that makes you shit yourself, for me today, having just killed a human being, these little abrasions are unbearable.

  I shift in the hope of finding a place where the edge of the bench is smooth but no, it’s like that all the way along. It’s as if all the people who’ve been here before me had picked away at this concrete bench with their fingernails. Fingernails bursting with rage and despair.

  I get up and go to sit on the ground. Maybe it’s all passed out of me now, the despair, the fury, the violence, the feelings that gnaw at you from inside and drive you to pick away at a concrete bench, aim great kicks at the door, kill, or bang your head against the wall like that guy was doing who was here earlier.

  He was here when I came in. He said nothing, he simply moved along to the end of the bench, keeping his head down. His pants made a little scraping sound against the concrete. He smelled of grass, of earth, of rain and wind, as if he were nature itself. It was very strange. As for me, I hadn’t washed for I don’t know how many days and I’d killed someone that morning. Do you have a particular smell when you become a killer? I stopped looking at him, in any case there’d be no point in sussing him out, noticing what he wore, or how he wore it, the shape of his head or anything else. I didn’t greet him, I didn’t ask him why are you here. What point would there be in knowing where he was from, what his name was or that kind of thing. Maybe it’s better like that, no more speaking, no more seeing, no more knowing.

  Hardly had I sat down and felt the first bite from the bench when that guy stood up. He began moving forward slowly, really slowly, he took a small step, sliding one flip-flop along the ground and bringing the other one up beside it, waited for I don’t know what, then began again with another little sliding step and stopped again. I watched his strange maneuvers with fascination. Was he crazy? Was he having visions like the ones I’d been having during these past few weeks? When he got to the end, he arranged his flip-flops carefully so that they were neatly lined up side by side and all at once began banging his head against the wall with incredible speed. Boom boom boom. Stupidly, it took me several seconds to react, I wasn’t expecting that guy to do such a thing, and for a moment, I thought I didn’t want to have anything to do with that kind of misery, yet all the same I stood up and pulled the man backward while calling out for help.

  He fell back limply into my arms without struggling, like a dead bird, as if that was all he’d been waiting for. His clothes were soft and of good quality and that whole earth smell of his filled my head completely. Two policemen came in and took him away, saying Monsieur! Monsieur! Wake up, Monsieur!

  Bolts groaned, latches clicked, keys turned. A moment later a vehicle drove off outside. Soon he’d be in the hospital. In the firm, knowledgeable hands of doctors, with the soothing words of a nurse who’d come to see him at regular intervals, in that clean, odorless linen he’d have to wear, his head would be x-rayed, the white sheets on which he’d lie down, the painkillers, the antidepressants, the antidotes to death, the sleep into which he’d fall heavily with arms outstretched. A sweet respite which would last for several days until he returned here: to this cell.

  The cop from this morning comes back, without my rucksack.

  “You all right?”

  I don’t reply.

  “You hungry?”

  I think about the ones outside with empty bellies, roaming around the houses, the grilled meat stalls, driven nuts by the blue scent of roasting chicken, I think about the ones hiding behind restaurants and bakeries, it’s only yesterday that I was one of them.

  “Can I have my bag back?!”

  “Not yet. Don’t you want anything to eat?”

  “No. I just want my rucksack.”

  “OK. Soon.”

  His voice is gentle and serious, the voice of an adult who knows things, one who could understand everything, fix things. Suddenly I want to cry. I wonder if he’s opened my book, if he’s read my name on the back of the cover, if he’s noticed the pages where the corners are turned down, if the pages that are coming loose from wear and tear have caught his eye. I’d like to tell him that I’m not just a killer, I was once a boy who read books, who listened to music, who was an ace at Legos, I’d like to tell him that I didn’t know how to fight back against Bruce, that I’ve been cowardly and stupid, that for months I was paralyzed by fear. I’d like to tell him that all this, this filthy body, these rags that serve me as clothes, this hand that held the gun …

  I suddenly hear Bruce’s Uh. The sound comes from just here, beside me. I look around but there’s nothing there. I close my eyes and say:

  “I barely squeezed it this morning. The gun just went off.”


  “You didn’t mean to kill him? It was an accident?”

  I see Bruce emerging from between the eucalyptus trees like an apparition of the devil, I didn’t stop to wonder how he’d found me, I pulled out the pistol and that’s when he called me Mo, my darlin’ with that smile that I want to wipe off his face because I know what’s in his mind, I remember how he, what he did to me …

  “Tell me. Was it an accident?”

  “No, I wanted to kill him.”

  My own words are swirling around me like large birds with giant wings and nothing in my life has ever been as true as this.

  “Ah. You’ll be brought before the magistrate this afternoon or tomorrow.”

  “My bag.”

  “Don’t think about that now. Get some rest, Moïse.”

  This use of my name gives me a shock and my hands begin shaking again. The cop goes off but I know he’s still standing outside the door he’s just bolted.

  No one’s called me Moïse for a long time. Out there among all the wild boys like me, who dream of their mamans in their sleep at night, I’m Scarface Mo. Yes, as they say Mo, they make a swift gesture like this, starting at the right eyebrow and ending on the cheek. Behind my back they say I’m the child of a djinn and that I’ve gone nuts. Some of them think Mo is for Mohammed, but the only time I’ve ever set foot in a mosque was to steal a piece of carpet or some slippers or to eat there at night during Ramadan or Eid.

  I miss my bag and, in spite of myself, my hands pat the ground, feeling for the shape of it. That dark brown rucksack used to belong to Marie. She took it with her when she went to work, carrying it over one shoulder. It’s made of a kind of synthetic fabric that’s resistant to everything; to mud, rain and even the Mayotte sun that can crack open concrete paving stones and make asphalt explode. Every night I rest my head on it like a pillow. Inside this rucksack are my book, The Boy and the River, Marie’s French identity card, a knife I found yesterday in Stéphane’s kitchen, and a scarf with a blue and green pattern that belonged to Marie. She liked to wear it around her neck on evenings when we went out to eat chicken and coconut at Nassuf’s. On those occasions she left the brown rucksack at home and took a canvas shoulder bag embroidered with threads of gold and bright blue. For how much longer will I carry memories of that bag, the way the threads were woven to create a symbol in the shape of a drop of water?

  Last night I had a dream about the house. I was hiding on the old children’s playground at the beginning of Moya Road. Well screened from view by big mango trees, it’s an area that can’t be seen from the road but I had a clear memory of it. The earth is all uneven and cracked. When it rains the ground becomes an expanse of red mud and days go by before all the water evaporates. The only fruits produced by those mango trees are bitter and fibrous, it only takes a few mouthfuls to give you stomach cramps and violent diarrhea. In summer the mangoes fall and slowly rot. The mosquitoes and midges lay their eggs on them. At night they’re nibbled by squeaking rats. When the sun is high in the sky, lean stray dogs come to sleep there in the shade of the dense foliage. On this playground there’s a concrete ping-pong table. You can still see the line marked for the net. I’ve never seen a soul on Mayotte playing ping-pong, but, as Marie used to say, just because you’ve never seen it that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. This table seemed to me a good place to sleep: high up on the cool smooth surface, safe from the rodents and the dogs. I rested my head on my rucksack and stretched out there. The night was silent, dense and hot. It bore down on me and it felt as though it might swallow me, painlessly and gently.

  I took out the knife and made several figures in the air, as if I could slice the night into pieces and cram these pieces into my mouth. I remembered those evenings at the house when Marie used to play her record of Barbara. In those days the night stayed outside, the night was for dogs, flying foxes, thieves. I formed the words with the tips of my lips. Hey, bird, hey, take me far away. Take me back to that land of long ago, the way it was in my childhood dreams, catching at stars with a trembling hand. The way it was in my childhood dreams, the way it was on a cloud in the sky, the way it was to light up the sun, to make the rain fall, and make wonders unfold. Then I’d go back to the beginning, again and again, until sleep overcame me.

  I dreamed I was back at the house. I had the body of a child again, warm, flexible, soft. There was no scar on my face. There was music playing and slanted rays of sunlight poured into the living room, making patterns on the tiled floor. It was clean, it smelled good. I was playing, running from one room to another, jumping from one patch of light to another, from one patch of warmth to another.

  I wonder why a part of me refuses to accept that it’s all over, all that time at the house, the solid concrete walls, the colored curtains at the windows, the filmy mosquito nets, the green corrugated iron roof on which the rain danced like a peashooter, the mango tree with its sweet fruits in the yard, the scent of the ylang-ylang as dusk fell, hot meals, The Boy and the River, school, games, homework, showers and Le Petit Marseillais soap, white cotton shirts, squares of chocolate, the letter “X” in Scrabble, petit beurre cookies, “L’aigle noir,” nights of deep sleep, days with thoughts of nothing other than play. Where is this unbreakable thing hidden? Is it in that mysterious place known as the unconscious, that word which Marie taught me when she talked about the past? This is what she said, Marie, and this is how she said it, her hands joined together in prayer. You may have forgotten but it’s in your hidden memory, my love. The unconscious never forgets.

  I stretch out on the cool floor of the cell that reminds me of the ping-pong table. Maybe I sleep a little, maybe I dream of the dense, endless night that can be sliced into pieces and swallowed. Maybe I’m still singing, Hey, bird, hey, take me far away …

  Bruce

  Uh.

  Behind Mo there’s a weeping woman. I say Hey, behind you but Mo does nothing, he’s staring at the ground at my feet. He still has that frigging gun in his hands. I don’t know where he got it from, must be his pal Stéphane who gave him the thing. If it turned out to be only a toy, that wouldn’t surprise me with Mo, he’s such a coward. I look at the woman who’s still weeping and tell her Get lost! But she doesn’t move, it’s as if she can’t hear me. Who is she, anyway? Mo has a knack of attracting all the muzungus, it must be the way he talks good French with all that Monsieur Madame s’il vous plaît. Fuck off, Mo.

  I came here to settle accounts with you. I’ve got a knife in my pocket and know what needs to be done. Come here, my darlin’. I’m not scared of you and your toy gun, you think you can play the hard man but don’t have a clue. Yesterday you humiliated me in front of everyone, how the fuck could you do that to me, you know I’m the one has to win in the ring, I win all mourengué fights, I’m the strongest, the king of Gaza.

  Then you snuck away like a thief but I knew you’d come here. I’ve been waiting for you since last night Mo. Do you remember how you told me about this place, and how your mother, you know the one you called your mother, the muzungu who dropped down dead without anyone hitting her, without anyone scaring her, a typical whitey’s death, a death for rich people whose trash cans are full to overflowing? So there’s this bweni, this female, standing there in her kitchen putting cereal into your bowl for you and you hear a noise crash bang wallop and she’s dead. And she used to bring you here, this woman you told me all about it, using your good little boy’s words, the good boy who’d been to school, and you told me it was your favorite place and believe me that day I almost went for you and tore you apart like a papaya, every frigging bit of you, your green eye, your blood, your shirt, your mouth, your fucking rucksack, your balls, your prick, your heart, I wanted to see all that on the ground, on my hands and on the walls.

  I suppose you think I was born like this, and all I ever wanted to do was hit and bite and beat people up, but me too, I’d’ve liked it if I could talk in a little voice with a faraway look in my eyes about my favorite place here in this cou
ntry. Me too, I’d’ve liked someone to fix me a bowl of cereal, fucking cereal, I don’t even know what cereal tastes like, d’you think I wouldn’t have liked someone to take me for a picnic by Lake Dziani or on its island of sand, or go swimming with the dolphins? To go see my own country, d’you think I wouldn’t have liked that, too? I should’ve kicked you out of Gaza the very first day, that’s what dropped me in the shit. La Teigne warned me, said having you around wasn’t good for business. He told me you were a nutjob and in the end it’d all go fuckries. I should’ve listened to that dumb bastard. OK let’s be done with it. Come here Mo, I don’t want to hang around here on Petite-Terre any longer. La Teigne and Rico are down by the ferry already, they’re waiting for me.

  You don’t speak. Why are you looking down at the ground like that and why’s she bawling? What’s on the ground that’s so interesting …?

  Shit.

  What’s wrong, I don’t get it. What’ve you done, Mo, tell me it’s magic, tell me it’s a trick you learned because you seriously are the child of the djinn, you really do have powers and that green eye of yours is still working, tell me Mo, come on, I won’t hurt you. I’m putting my knife away, I don’t have a knife anymore, look, my hands are empty. Answer me!

  Mo doesn’t answer. He sits on the ground and goes on looking down at my feet, just there where there’s a body and it’s my body but it’s red and it can’t be mine because I like to move around, I don’t like staying like that with my eyes open, yellow eyes, I don’t like it, I have to wake up.

  I’m trying to get back into my body, I lean over sharpish, I want to jump back into my own body, just like that, like jumping into a puddle and get splashed all over with myself, that’s mine, that body, that’s me there on the ground, and every time I think I’ve almost got back in, out again I pop as quick as if I’d been sucked out by an outside force. I’m trying to run, to escape and I’m heading through the woods, I’m crossing the lake, but after a bit there’s always this force that pulls me back here, there, at Bruce’s feet. No: my feet, because Bruce is me.