by Maryse Conde
At the age of fifteen, while they were lying in each other’s arms, she had burst into their bedroom and violently pulled them apart, shouting, “Two cursed wretches! Two cursed wretches! That’s what you are!”
“But we’re not doing anything wrong,” they had protested.
Maeva would hear nothing of the sort. If Simone hadn’t intervened, she would have grabbed the nearest broom handle and given her grandchildren a good hiding. From that day on, they had never again slept together.
Nobody could guess the secret motivations behind Maeva’s behavior nor understand why she had wanted to add “L’Aigle noir” sung by Barbara to the choir’s repertoire. She, too, had been raped by her father who was neither a braggart nor a chatterbox and lacked confidence in himself. On the contrary, he was shy and indecisive with a long jet-black face and frayed trousers. Nevertheless, he had hurled himself on her when she was twelve, and a few years later on her young sister, Nadia. When he fell from the roof he was tiling; Maeva never forgave herself for feeling so joyful, which consequently dampened her later moments of pleasure. She recalled his smell of cigarettes and the burning sensation of his member. It had lasted about five years and then he had tired of the mother and her two daughters and left home.
For years Maeva had been preparing the clothes for her funeral: a black percale matador dress embroidered with white motifs, a black-and-white checkered madras head tie, and violet velvet slippers. How lovely she looked dressed in her finery, compared to the last years of her life during which she had appeared so insignificant. Death is the great equalizer since it mows down not only presidents of the republic but also street cleaners, not only the wealthy but also the destitute. Yet the manner in which each individual treats death betrays the difference in class. Simone could only afford a third-class funeral for her mother. As a result Veloxia, the undertakers, hung a collection of black rags on the door and windows sewn with the initials MN, for Maeva Némélé, and made an arrangement of white lilies which only underscored the miserable setting. The only appropriate element was the wake’s thick soup prepared by Anastasia the neighbor, a tasty mix of onions, carrots, potatoes, and morsels of beef. For two days the house never emptied, since Maeva was no stranger. Not only was she member of the choir but nobody could forget the power of her visions long ago when she would sit up straight and point her fists at the sky. A group of mourners filled the small church. The mayor’s homily attracted a lot of attention; he had not curbed his remorse at having evicted Simone from her council house. That was the reason he had offered Ivan the job of building the Mediatheque. He planned to have him join the roads and sanitation department since every trade has its own value and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when he actually made the offer it was haughtily rejected. Ivan had no inclination to rummage in Dos d’ne’s garbage. Hadn’t they recently found a baby boy a few hours old in a dustbin which sent the police hurrying from Basse-Terre? Besides, he was about to leave for France with his sister and start an apprenticeship at a chocolate factory in the Paris suburbs.
This rumor of their departure, in fact, soon turned into a certainty. The women nodded their heads with compassion: Simone would feel so isolated. But, as the English say, “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Simone’s condition moved Father Michalou’s heart. He realized the moment had come to make an offer of living together. For the time being she was affected threefold: by Lansana Diarra’s misfortunes, by the death of her mother, and by the imminent departure of her children. Old age would suddenly find her all alone.
One Sunday Father Michalou slipped on his best and only suit and went to propose to Simone what he had in mind. They had known each other now for a dozen or so years. He wouldn’t be able to offer her much money, that’s a fact, but constant companionship. Simone listened to him, head lowered, betraying nothing of her emotions. When he had finished she simply said, “My children are leaving at the end of August. As soon as they’re gone I’ll come and move in with you.”
As if to conclude their agreement they then made love, not systematically or routinely as they were accustomed to, but passionately as if they were discovering and desiring each other for the first time.
He who leaves a country for good or for a long period of time undergoes a complete change of personality. A voice, which he hears for the first time, wells up from the trees, the meadows, and the shore and murmurs gentle words in his ear. The landscape is invested with a strange harmony. Ivan and Ivana were no strangers to this rule. As the date for their departure came closer they began to cherish Guadeloupe like a parent they were about to lose. They rented two bicycles from the Nestor cycle shop and cycled around the surrounding countryside for several days, usually on a Sunday when the roads were empty except for the buses. They first rode to the Commandant Cousteau marine reserve which until now they had never paid attention to. Together with a crowd of tourists, for whom Saturdays and Sundays are no different from weekdays, they climbed into a glass-bottom boat to discover the splendors of the seabed. Then they rented a traditional sailing boat and rowed to a small, flat, rocky island a stone’s throw from the shore. It was called Englishman’s Head after the name of the cacti which grew there in great numbers. The slit-eyed iguanas were not frightened when the visitors approached but rather stared at them scornfully. Ivana, who adored the sun’s caress, took off her clothes and spread them out on the sand. Sick with desire, Ivan said to himself, “And what if I fucked her here and now!” In order to cool down he dived into the sea where a cold current flowed in from the north. Ivana would have loved to climb aboard a catamaran and sail to the islands of Les Saintes and Terre-de-Bas where they had been on so many summer camps organized by the municipality when they were young. Ivan, however, loathed these memories. He recalled the miserable wooden building where they had been parked, both humid and stuffy, the narrow cots, and the insipid food. One day when he and Frédéric, his companion in misfortune, were starving to death, he had killed one of the neighbor’s chickens with a stone, skillfully plucked its feathers, and roasted it over a wood fire. The crime had been promptly discovered and he had been given one of the biggest hidings of his life. Ivan and Ivana agreed that one of the best vacations of their teens had been spent at Adèle’s, their mother’s half-sister, illegitimate daughter of the same absent and invisible father who nobody knew where he lived or who he was exactly.
Adèle and Simone had since quarreled for confused reasons and were no longer on speaking terms. Simone did everything she could to prevent them from going to Port-Louis where Adèle lived.
“She didn’t even bother to come to Maman’s funeral,” she objected.
“Perhaps she didn’t even know,” Ivana replied conciliatorily. “She does live at the other end of the island.”
“The local paper said that one of her boys had gone to prison,” Simone said.
“Like me,” responded Ivan. “I went in twice.”
“Yes, but your case was unfair. You hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Guadeloupean mothers are blind when it comes to forgiving their sons for everything. In the end the two youngsters took no notice of their mother’s declarations and set off for Port-Louis.
Anyone who claims that one shoreline looks like all the others doesn’t know what he is talking about. Firstly, the color of the sea is never the same. Iridescent from the sun’s blaze, it is sometimes violet, sometimes green like that ink they no longer make since nobody writes by hand, and sometimes pastel-colored. Likewise, the sand turns tawny like the mane of a wild animal or blond like the down of a new-born chick. Lastly, the dome of the sky shimmers differently from shore to shore.
Aunt Adèle lived at the other end of the beach. Less destitute than Simone since she was locally employed and worked for the town hall as a sweeper, she occupied a vast house together with her daughters. The youngest had just sat for her baccalaureate, but unlike Ivana she had not passed. Adèle looked like Simone. Ivan an
d Ivana were surprised to see traces of their mother’s face mixed in with somebody else’s features. Adèle’s heart had been stricken with grief and she soon confided in her nephew and niece. Five years earlier her son Bruno had left to look for work in France; because of his athletic build he had been rapidly recruited by Noirmoutier as a security guard. Everything was going wonderfully! Every month he would send home to Port-Louis half of his wages. He promised Adèle and his sisters he would have them come to Savigny-sur-Orge and show them the wonders of Paris, the City of Light. Suddenly they no longer heard from him. After having endeavored to call him dozens of times in vain, Adèle vaguely remembered an unemployed cousin living in Sarcelles and begged him to help. The cousin called on Noirmoutier who informed him that Bruno had not turned up for work. Since he wasn’t at home either, his friend Malik Sansal became alarmed and alerted the police, who had not exactly moved heaven and earth to find him. He had been gone for three years now. Vanished! For the second time Ivan came up against this word, this barbed-wire wall as frightening as death itself. First Miguel. Now Bruno. What became of people who disappeared? Where did they go? Ivan imagined them in a cold and icy limbo.
“You can’t imagine the handsome little boy he was,” the aunt said, totally absorbed in her grief. “He was so fond of me and his two sisters, especially Cathy, to whom he was godfather.”
Ivan shivered as he listened to her quavering voice. He heard himself promise to track down Bruno as soon as he arrived in France. The mater dolorosa immediately went and fetched the photo album she kept among her worthless treasures.
“He took this one a few days after he had started work at Noirmoutier,” she explained. “And this one’s on his wedding day. She’s the girl he married: Nastasia, an Algerian.”
“An Algerian!” Ivan exclaimed. “Perhaps he’s quite simply in Algeria with his wife’s family.”
Adèle shook her head.
“His wife’s family lives in Aulnay-sous-Bois where they emigrated in the 1950s.”
“Where is Nastasia? I’ll get in contact with her.”
“Nastasia has disappeared as well,” Adèle said. “She was a very bad influence on my son. He became a Muslim because of her.”
All of this reminded Ivan of Monsieur Jérémie’s story.
“We should not convert to Islam,” Adèle said categorically. “We Guadeloupeans have been raised as Catholics. We know there is but one God in three distinct persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
“One God! He doesn’t do much for us,” Ivan couldn’t help mocking.
Adèle’s eyes immediately brimmed with tears.
“You’re right! What have I done to deserve to suffer so much?”
Bruno’s disappearance was the subject of every conversation in Port-Louis, as Ivan and Ivana realized on entering the bar on the corner. A certain Jeannot, who had been his closest friend and paid him a visit just before he disappeared, lamented:
“I took him some rum. Good rum, Damoiseau and Bologne. He calmly emptied the bottles down the sink telling me he no longer drank that sort of poison. Likewise, he no longer listened to music despite the fact we had once created an ensemble together in Port-Louis. He had completely changed.”
“I think he left to wage jihad in Syria,” exclaimed another young man.
“Syria? Why would he go over there?”
The group broke up without agreeing on Bruno’s possible motivations.
Jihad! There’s a word that Monsieur Jérémie didn’t like and which made him angry, Ivan recalled. Jihad! Jihad! Every religion proselytizes. We tend to forget the Inquisition when heretics were burned by auto-da-fé at every crossroad.
Back in Dos d’ne, Ivan was kept awake at night thinking of his future. A certain Sergio Poltroni, originally from Italy but settled in France, owned a chocolate factory in Saint-Denis and was hiring an apprentice. Thanks to the government’s generosity, Ivan would receive a modest sum every month. This was not exactly to Ivan’s liking since he had no intention of becoming a chocolate maker. First of all, he didn’t like chocolate and secondly the idea seemed ridiculous. He reassured himself by saying that in one respect he was lucky since he could accompany Ivana to France. Otherwise, what would become of him without her?
To her surprise, at the beginning of August Simone received a heavy, registered package containing a letter from Lansana and two airline tickets for Ivan and Ivana Némélé, issued by Jet Tours. Jet Tours was a low-cost airline proposing a complicated itinerary. First of all, a three-hour stopover in Paris then an entire day in Marseille and another in Oran before arriving in Bamako, from where they would finally reach Kidal. Three days’ traveling was a lot! Lansana explained that he had returned home earlier than expected as the political situation in Mali seemed to have calmed down thanks to the efforts of a foreign power. The latter had pushed back the invaders to the north and everyone was trying to lead a normal life again. But now that he was in such poor health and virtually penniless he could no longer take care of two seventeen-year-olds without jobs, as he had once intended. For that reason he had found them each an occupation: Ivana would work in an orphanage which took in children whose parents had been killed during the war against the horde of attackers. As for Ivan, he would become a member of the national militia whose patrols protected the country. Ivan and Ivana pouted in disgust on receiving the letter. Firstly, the length of the journey put them off. Then, as we have already said, they were not particularly interested in seeing their father. As for the jobs he was offering, there was nothing attractive about them. Why travel so far to do subaltern work?
Simone, however, went into a rage. It was not for nothing she had asked for Lansana’s help. Ivan and Ivana had to go to Mali and postpone their plans for France which anyway had nothing worthwhile about them. Okay, perhaps for Ivana, but did Ivan really want to become a chocolate maker? As for Father Michalou, he sided with the twins; all you saw on television were terrible pictures of Africa. There was one war after another, refugees were fleeing in every direction, and some countries no longer had a government. Simone persisted and ended up having the last word. With a heavy heart the twins had to obey her. With the same aching heart they embraced their mother. Of course, she had been devilishly strict and often finicky, but her love and devotion for them had remained unquestioned.
Since the Jet Tours flight left at four in the morning they had to travel to Pointe-à-Pitre the day before and stay with a relative, Aunt Mariama, who lived on the Morne Verdol, a densely populated neighborhood filled with children of every age and every color. Opposite her house the general hospital loomed up, on whose facade the three letters CHU glowed red. Ivana felt a deep regret at the thought she would never work there, dressed in the comely uniform of a nurse. Aunt Mariama had done her best and cooked Creole rice, slices of avocado, and a fricassee of curried pork.
“What are you going to do in Africa?” she asked. “I hear the people over there are savages.”
“We’re half African,” Ivan replied in a mocking tone of voice. “Don’t you know our father comes from Mali?”
You can judge from this conversation that neither Aunt Mariama nor the twins were conversant with the origins of the Guadeloupeans. They were ignorant of the fact that the peoples of the Caribbean were shipped from Africa in slave ships and were prepared to return to Africa to seek their ancestry. In their defense it must be said that they had heard very little about the raids on the African coast. Like most of their fellow islanders they believed the blacks were native inhabitants of the Caribbean. It was during the pale light of the predawn hours they took off with Jet Tours. Although they had just enough time to change planes in Paris, in Marseille they had an entire day to kill. What can you do in a strange city when you have so little money to spend? Ivan and Ivana roamed the Old Port, then wolfed down a sandwich in one of the numerous cafés while enviously watching the expensive restaurants that bo
asted to be offering the best bouillabaisse. After their frugal lunch, Ivana suggested they visit the Château d’If. Such a suggestion didn’t interest Ivan at all since he had never heard of Alexandre Dumas or the Count of Monte Cristo. They both agreed, however, to climb up to the basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde, thinking how overjoyed their mother would have been if she had been with them. For the first time they were alone, free to act as they pleased. They sensed they were entering adulthood, which aroused in them a delicious feeling of trepidation.
They did not like Oran, where Ivana searched in vain for the memory of Albert Camus and his necessitous childhood. As a result of a car bomb the streets were under the tight control of armed soldiers who inspected the shopping bags of women returning from market, stuffed with innocent victuals. All these assault weapons seemed dangerous and could easily be pointed at passersby should the military take it into their heads. Why was there a bomb attack? Ivan and Ivana realized they knew nothing of the world around them. Despite their poverty and the anxiety it had caused them back in Dos d’ne, they had been living in a cocoon.
They finally reached Mali and landed at the airport in Bamako.
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IN AFRICA
Mali occupies a proud place in history books. Nobody has forgotten the famous pilgrimage by Emperor Kankan Moussa, who distributed so much gold on his way to Mecca that the price of the precious metal collapsed. Likewise, everyone has read the book by Djibril Tamsir Niane, Sundiata, An Epic of Old Mali, which narrates the exploits of Emperor Sundiata, who despite a difficult childhood was destined to become a hero:
Listen then, sons of Mali, children of the black people, listen to my word for I am going to tell you of Sundiata, the Father of the Bright Country, of the Savanna, the ancestor of those who draw the bow, the master of a hundred vanquished kings.