Yes, but me, I am a young black man who passed two university entrance exams brilliantly and who’s drawn to study architecture. I want my peace and quiet. I want my freedom. I want the right to choose and decide for myself. Maybe the two things would go together, maybe the uniform I would wear outside of school would assure me high grades in school and permission to live how I want, to do whatever appeals to me. I am not so sure, though. Now, that would be an interesting experiment: university benches filled with two hundred, three hundred students in architecture, medicine, all Blackshirts. Why not?
Dr. Valois? Who’s to say he’s not playing along so they’ll leave him alone? He and his daughter, pretending to applaud. No, no, no. They were indifferent to what’s happening to us! And now this sudden attentiveness!…
I’ve been practicing knife throwing against the almond tree. The only tree that still belongs to us now, since it stands right in front of our door, just off the street, the only entrance permitted the virtual prisoners that we are. It turns out I have unusual skills. The trunk of the almond tree is riddled with wounds. I am wasting my rage and rebellion on it. Every day for two hours, I strike it mercilessly, from afar and from up close. I am really astonishingly skillful, even in the dark. Not once have I missed my throw. Ready for the circus. Paul Normil, Knife Thrower! I’ll frame Anna’s body with twenty knives without a nick. Blindfolded, I’ll trace her outline head to toe. Paul Normil, Champion Bladesman. From whom did I inherit such a talent? A man can learn a lot about himself as his life unwinds. He is what circumstances make him, as they say. Could my father kill him? He’s nothing but a coward. Good for nothing save playing at Jesus. Good at holding out his left cheek after being hit on the right. The beggars have learned how to handle guns, and here I am dabbling in knives. Is there anyone who owns a firearm besides the men in uniform and their spies? I will slip on the uniform to kill the Gorilla. That way I will get hold of a weapon with which to defend myself. I’ll give a military salute and they’ll think: another one of us. My boots will crush the invalids, the indifferent, anyone who hasn’t joined up, anyone too suspicious to be invited to join, the impotent ones like my father who are scorned and hounded.
Palm shadows move and rustle beneath my feet! I walk over them with heavy steps, leaving my house far behind, leaving the others behind. Cutting myself off from everything! Forgetting my parents, imagining no one in the world will shed tears over me. Rose, skin and bones. My mother and her dim, suffering eyes! My father’s shoulders sagging with shame! A heavy thing, shame. Harder to bear than a ton of scrap iron. Coward! You threw your daughter to the wolves.
I sat on a bench nestled under the trees, on the edge of that little square where I like to loaf, and opened my textbook. It must have been eleven in the morning. A group of kids coming back from school filled the square, running, chasing each other, carefree. Immersed in their play, they paid me no mind. It made me miss childhood. Memories rose up, disappeared and reappeared. Grandfather said: “Not one sheep left in the country but the birds of prey are everywhere.” Did the little one understand that? He searched the sky for the heavy black wings of the malfinis circling above the oak trees, their beaks aimed at the ground. It’s true that it’s been a long time since we’ve eaten lamb. Will I kill him? Could I? Or just kill myself, that would certainly be easier. You’re born either a killer or a suicide. I tread upon tree shadows looking for my elusive self. Lazy. The self that likes books, the self that wants to be an architect. There are choices. Everything is here. But first, take out one of them, just one. Watch his blood spread like a red sheet over his black uniform! And after that, live my life. A lie. That won’t be enough. I’ll stagnate like the water in this stinking ditch, green, no strength to move, never realizing myself. Despair is like an itch; you satisfy it for a moment and then it returns. A useless gesture! I think too much. I’ll end up going soft, sinking into a refusal to act. Tell me what they’ve done to you, Rose, and I’m sure I’ll find the strength. But you won’t talk. You’ll take your secret to the grave, your mouth sealed with dirt. Full of spite, I trample the tree shadows. I can’t stand their serene indifference, their imperturbable mechanical movement. I’ve returned to the bench where I was sitting before. A blind man held out his hand to me and I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep under the slanting ray of sunlight hitting me full in the face. What’s the point of giving alms to one invalid when ten thousand others go hungry. I’ll walk through our front door and present myself in uniform, weapon on my belt. And Grandfather will cry, “Get out of here this instant, you bird of prey!” I’ll present myself in uniform, weapon at my side, and my mother will clutch at her heart in shock and horror. I’ll say to Rose: “Sell the land and leave.” She will shriek: “Why have you done this? Why have you done this?” A complete waste. Her sacrifice would have been a complete waste. Unless maybe she enjoys it? Dirty whore! No, she’s skin and bones, I don’t want to point the finger at her. What man hasn’t wanted her? It’s a brother’s job to look after his sister. “You’re from another era,” Fred Morin once said to me. I had a dollar in my pocket. In broad daylight, I went to some dive and paid a woman. She was afraid of me and kept her eyes closed, saying: “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” I left her to wander aimlessly through the streets. I saw cars rushing past and beggars running after them. They were almost throwing themselves under the wheels, holding out their hands, stinking and emaciated. A car for every man in uniform, that comes to thousands. I too will have one, and ride around with my women and my family. I returned to the bench in the square and opened my book again. I have to study, I must. I heard the shots and I hid behind a tree as if I were guilty. The fugitive ran past me, then saw me and stopped. I retraced my steps and he followed quietly a few paces behind me, not saying a word. I could hear him panting as I sat back down on the bench. So I took a look at him. He was about my age and his clothes and shoes were clean. The sweat streaming over his face was enough to give him away if the people who were after him were to find us together. I said to him:
“Sit down and wipe your face.”
“I don’t have a handkerchief,” he said to me.
Taking mine from my pocket to give it to him, I felt the point of the knife pricking my chest. Not far from us, we heard the sound of the boots, and he instinctively drew near me.
“What did you do?” I asked him.
“What do you think I could have possibly done to deserve execution,” he replied. “Don’t you know they kill for the sheer pleasure of it?”
I handed him my textbook. “Keep your head down. Read quietly.”
He did what I said. The sound of boots faded and we could hear the whistle blow for the squadron to regroup.
“Thank you,” he said to me as he gently slumped back. Then, resting his head on the back of the bench:
“I’m falling asleep, I’m falling asleep,” he said again.
And he quickly closed his eyes.
Why did I stay behind to keep a lookout as he slept? Lunch had come and gone by the time I returned home. I had left the stranger asleep, and the next day I learned that a student had been executed on a bench in the middle of a public square. That day, Fred Morin came by and I refused to see him. I locked myself in my room, afraid I’d come unhinged if anyone spoke to me. I felt as if I had lost a friend. I was in mourning. Horrible pain, part remorse, part rebellion, gripped my heart. Why? Why? I kept asking myself. Why had they murdered him? Why? Why? What was he guilty of? Did he refuse to offer his sister? Rose! My very own sister! Defiled! If I want to kill the Gorilla, I have to face facts. As for Grandfather, he’s filled with silent hatred toward her, as though she were the enemy. I fear the day he’ll ask to be served in his room in order not to share his meals with us. Skin and bones. So gaunt. I’ll kill him, I can feel it…
I wanted to see Anna again before doing anything. I have a pretty good idea what will happen to me, so I might as well feel a bit of joy before I go. It was seven in the evening and she was al
one in the living room. She looked at me and began to sob.
“Are you angry at me, Paul?” she said to me. “What did I ever do to you?”
She tried to take my hands but I pulled back.
“Well, speak, say something!” she shouted.
I couldn’t. I tried to take her in my arms, but I was held back by something stronger than myself. A long line of hotheads. Never trusting anyone. My mother is right.
She mumbled:
“I don’t know why you’re like this. I don’t. I love you and I don’t know why you’re putting me through this. Is that fair? Or is it that you don’t love me anymore?”
I left and could hear her crying:
“Paul! Paul!”
I’ll return to her house with a weapon on my belt and that’s the day I’ll know the truth. I’ll know why she and her father act like there are no men in black on our land. I’ll go all out, even if it means losing her, or death. I prefer losing her and dying on top of it than to have to doubt her…
My mother’s getting drunk. I saw her staggering upstairs. She looked at me with her dying eyes and then began to laugh miserably. A bloody throat clearing itself of crushed glass. A great open mouth rattling in agony. She’s going to cough up her heart. Rose, who was coming in just then, ran past us and shut her door behind her. My mother pointed at her, bent in two by the awful laughter that contorted her mouth. Then she suddenly fell silent, went to the window on the landing and leaned over as if she were about to fall. I looked past her: a shadow was slowly moving through the yard, accompanied by a completely white crawling, jumping thing. The shadow bent down to the ground and then stood up with the thing in its arms and walked over to the stakes. I heard my mother laugh. She wasn’t the one laughing, someone else was laughing in her. She turned around and said: “Paul, son, nothing and nobody can stop destiny.” She opened the cupboard and took out a bottle of rum that was three-quarters empty. Someone else laughed in her again, and after pointing her finger at the land, she staggered into her room. My father wasn’t there. I heard him come home an hour later. I stood up and went out on the landing. I saw light coming from Rose’s room and pushed open the door without knocking. She was on her knees beside her bed, head sinking into the pillow, breasts flat against the mattress.
“You might as well come in and close the door,” she whispered.
She remained on her knees on the floor, and I looked at her profile, not daring to move. Gaunt and beautiful, eyes swollen with tears.
“You’ll get to leave, I promise you that much.”
I grabbed her and struck her in the face.
“I never asked you to help me.”
“You have to get out of here, you have to.”
“I don’t want you to worry about me, you hear me?”
She threw herself on the bed and curled up under the sheets with her back to me.
“It’s not that much trouble, believe me,” she said again.
When I heard these words I left her and went to my room, sat at my desk staring into the darkness. And the sweat from my forehead drenched my eyes and burned like tears.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The lawyer had me come in right away and was very considerate. That’s because I was with the uniformed man I had met in his office, toward whom he had seemed so respectful and attentive. The lawyer reached for the five hundred dollars, but the uniformed man gave him such a savage look that he very quickly dropped the money on a corner of his desk as though he’d made a mistake.
“We have a deal?” said the man in uniform.
“We have a deal,” the lawyer replied.
Then he turned to me:
“You may begin by taking off your clothes,” he ordered me as if he were requesting a simple secretarial task.
After that, he left the room and closed the door. The lawyer had spoken to me beforehand and I knew what to expect. I began taking off my clothes and once I was half-naked, the man in the uniform pulled me sharply by the arm to drag me behind the screen.
“You’re not going to struggle, you’re not going to cry out,” he instructed me. “Because if you do, you’ll be sorry.”
He pounced on me with his long hirsute hands, tearing off whatever garments I had left.
“Lie down,” he said, “lie down, spread your legs and put your arms out like a cross.”
I refused to obey, so he threw me on the sofa.
“You’re going to ruin everything,” he hissed, “if you resist, I won’t be able to do anything. You have to do what I say, without hesitation, otherwise it’s no go, you understand? I can only be a man with pretty saint’s faces like yours, a defeated martyr with a pretty little face. Do what I say, do it or get out of here. But remember that no one else will ever be able to do anything for you and you will lose your land. On the other hand, if you are cooperative and do what I ask, then I promise, I swear to you on all that is most holy to me that you will have my protection and will have restitution of your property.”
As he was talking, he slowly opened my legs and splayed out my arms in a cross. He leaned over me for a moment, moaning slowly, his breath short, oppressed. He stared at me like this for some time, and then I saw his horrible hand approach my body and touch it ever so lightly with a kind of unbearable, sick curiosity.
“That’s it, don’t move, stay like that.”
Leaning over me, he caressed me, sniffing me like an animal, and a little later, popped the buttons off his uniform and stood naked before me.
“You’re a virgin, right? You didn’t lie to me, did you? This is going to hurt, hurt a lot, but I don’t want to hear a word, got it? Not one word.”
He was dripping with sweat and I felt defiled.
He rammed himself into me in one rough terrible thrust, and immediately groaned with pleasure. I bit my fist in pain and disgust. He got back up.
“You have the prettiest martyr’s face I have ever had. I have a feeling I’m going to like you. If you let me have it my way, we’re going to become good friends, great friends.”
He gave me my clothes without another word. Then he showed me the door, saying:
“I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll see you every night for a month. If you’re faithful, I will personally give you back the papers your father signed.”
It hurt so much I could barely walk. I took a car and went home. I saw him again the next day, but not at the lawyer’s. He drove me out of town to a grotesquely and richly furnished house where the only bedroom had wall-to-wall mirrors. Once I was naked, he threw himself on me so brutally that I cried out. He immediately let me go.
“I’ll open you up until my entire fist goes in,” he shouted.
I could see his reflection in every mirror, unsightly and frightening.
What’s it to me? I would have brought dishonor on myself only if I enjoyed it as he did, but he slept with a corpse. A corpse, and he has no idea. That’s my revenge. “Feels good, no?” he asked me anxiously. And with my closed eyes I seemed to acquiesce. What’s it to me! A month will go by quickly. I won’t tell a soul, I’ll do whatever he wants. He’s made me bleed five times and I haven’t cried out. My cooperation knows no bounds. I have come to tolerate the horrible things without which he can’t feel like a man. “I’ve killed ten men point-blank,” he confessed to me, “and here I am trembling with desire before your little saint’s face. But women who turn me on are hard to come by.” His awful hands on my body! Inside my body, shamelessly probing my flesh. What do I care! I am dead. I could laugh, watching him moan over a dead body. “Your idiotic father,” he informed me, “came to beg me to spare you. He was crying and crying. You get your martyr’s face from him. And your brother? What’s he waiting for before signing up? He’s not against us, is he? No, no, calm down, I know very well he wouldn’t dare. Do you know what I was before I became this figure of authority protecting you with his powerful hand? No, I won’t tell you. You might run out of here and you mean a great deal to me. Wait. I’m going to lock the do
or… A flea-ridden beggar, that’s what I was. Yes, my beauty, a beggar, despised, shunned by haughty little saint’s faces like yours. And now, spread your legs. Wait, I’ll undo your hair. It makes you look even more like a saint. I love the saints. A long time ago, when I was little, I would go sit in church for long hours and gaze at them. Put out your arms in a cross. You’re pale. You look like you’re suffering. You’re perfect. That’s it, suffer in silence.”
You’re going to get out of here, Paul. My brother, my friend, so proud, so studious, so noble! The smell of death is upon me. Our baby brother knows it. I am dead. Has my mother realized it? It must be awful to bury your child, but even more awful to see your child die little by little without being able to do a thing to save her. We’re caught in a vicious circle. Everything’s changed, everything’s suddenly upside down since they took over our land. They are a blight upon us. Cursed, we’re cursed and Grandfather knows it. That’s why he prays, that’s why he steps out at night with Claude. I won’t say a word. At least let everyone be free to do what they need to do. As for me, I’ve tasted hell and it no longer frightens me. I’ll get somewhere, and Paul will leave. A few more days, just a few more days and this ordeal will end. My stomach hurts. I should go see Dr. Valois but I’m afraid of what he’ll think of me. And to think I once slapped Fred Morin for kissing me! I knew I would come to this, I knew it. To make sure he wouldn’t be the first, I had offered myself to Dr. Valois, but he pushed me away.
“You are too young, you have no idea what you’re doing,” he cried.
Love, Anger, Madness Page 27