by Alexis Jenni
‘We were eagles, but no one knew because we wore camouflage and scrabbled on all fours through scrubland or crouched behind rocks. And our enemies were not equal to us. Not because they lacked courage, but because of their appearance. If they had beaten us, we would have been impressed that these poor little men could beat us; if we defeated them, we would joke about our kill rate and grumble that they were easy prey, these pathetic, poorly armed men in ragtag uniforms lined up in front of us in our battledress. We were eagles, but we were not fortunate enough to be struck like the German eagle, the eagle of the Reich Chancellery, toppled by bombs and shattered on the ground. We were eagles, but we were ensnared, like those gulls whose feathers become matted with oil, and as the black slick spreads over the water, they shrivel and die an ignominious death, where asphyxia vies with absurdity. The spilled blood has clotted over us, giving us a gruesome aspect.
‘And yet our honour was saved. We picked ourselves up again, we regained the power we had lost; but afterwards we applied it to causes that were confused and ultimately contemptible. We had the power, we lost it, and we never quite knew where. The country bears us a grudge. In that twenty-year war there were only losers who spitefully snipe at each other. We don’t know who we are any more.’
‘You’re exaggerating, Victorien,’ said Eurydice in a tiny voice. ‘Life over there was not so bad. There weren’t very many wealthy pieds noirs, most of us were ordinary folk. We didn’t have much to do with the Arabs, but we got along well enough. We lived among ourselves and they lived among us.’
‘Eurydice,’ I interrupted her, ‘do you hear what you’re saying?’
‘That’s not what I meant to say.’ She blushed.
‘But it is. We always say what we mean to say.’
‘Sometimes we make mistakes. Words just come out.’
‘The thing is, they were there, like the stone under the sand that makes the car swerve and sends you off the road. You told it like it was, Eurydice: you among yourselves and them among you, constantly, day and night; them, who obsessed you, destroyed you, ruined your lives simply by their presence, because you ruined their lives by your presence, and they had nowhere they could go.’
‘You’re exaggerating. We got along well.’
‘I know. I’ve heard all the pieds noirs say that they got on well with their cleaning lady. I understand what Victorien is saying now, the tragedy of Algeria was not torture, it was “getting along well with your cleaning lady”.’
‘That’s not how I would have put it,’ Victorien said, amused, ‘but it is what I believe.’
‘We could go on talking about colonialism,’ I said. ‘We could talk about it for years. People pick sides, they bandy words like “abuse” and “injustice”. We balance public works against a detailed history of violence. Everyone draws their own conclusion, one that confirms what they thought in the first place: a noble cause that tragically failed or an original sin and an ongoing disgrace. To anyone who challenges their right to exist, those who lived in the colony always say “we all got along well”. That’s the best they can do: the best that colonialism can achieve is getting on well with the cleaning lady, calling her by her first name – something she would never dare do without prefixing it with “madame”. At its best, colonialism allows people to be human, respectful, full of finer feelings, to be benevolent to an inferior, coloured people with whom they do not mix. At best, colonialism allows for an entrenched, affectionate paternalism established by the simplest criterion: hereditary resemblance. When people talk about it, they tell us how well they got on with the cleaning woman, how the children adored her, but they always called her by her first name.
‘How could it be possible to have three French départements with préfectures and police stations and schools, three départements with war memorials and café terraces with people sipping aperitifs, and shady streets of plane trees with men playing boules; how could any expect these three départements to function with eight million invisible people trying to keep quiet, so as not to disturb anyone? Eight million shepherds, shoeshine boys and cleaning ladies without a name, a place; eight million pharmacists and lawyers and students with nowhere else to go, who will be the first to encounter violence when the time comes to separate us from them. Camus, who knew a lot about the subject, offers the perfect image of the Arab: always in the background, never saying anything. He is there wherever you go, and in time he becomes a burden; he haunts you like the spots of light dancing before your eyes, he clouds your vision; in the end, you shoot. In the end, we are condemned because we don’t regret what we did; we brushed away the spots with a wave of the hand, but the general contempt is a relief. We did what everyone else longed to do, and now we have to pay, but at least it was done. The violence of colonialism is such that it requires regular human sacrifices to ease the tension that would otherwise destroy us all.’
‘I was right to tell you what I did,’ said Salagnon.
Eurydice looked at me, her lips trembling. She wanted to answer, but did not quite know what to say. This could be seen as another attack on her right to exist.
‘Don’t misunderstand me, Eurydice. I hardly know you, but I’m glad that you exist. You are here, and everyone has a right to exist. I think it’s tragic that French Algeria disappeared. I don’t say “unfair” or “a pity”, but “tragic”. It existed, it was created, this thing where we lived was created and nothing of it remains. The fact that it was founded on violence, on the injustice of the segregation of races, on a terrible human price paid every day in no way diminishes it, because existence is not a moral category. French Algeria existed; it no longer exists. It is tragic for one million people who were erased from history without being given the right to speak of their grief. It is tragic for the seventy-four députés who got up and walked out of the Assemblée never to return, because they no longer have constituencies to represent. It is tragic for the one million Algerians who were living in France – who we referred to as Muslims to distinguish them from real ‘Algerians’, who were the French living over there – who had their citizenship revoked because another country had been created somewhere else. The names were utterly confusing. We changed the names. Everything became clear. But we never quite knew what we were talking about. Now the young people over here who look like the people over there, to whom we don’t grant full citizenship because of their confused heritage, want us to call them Muslims, as we used to over there, to accord them a dignity to replace the one that we deny them. It is utter confusion. War is close. It will relieve us. War reassures, because it is simple.’
‘A simplicity I no longer want,’ murmured Salagnon.
‘So history has to be rewritten, to be willingly rewritten, before it scrawls itself. We could ramble on about de Gaulle, argue over his talents as a writer, express surprise at his ability to use the truthful-lie when he misrepresents things that are problematic or passes over in silence those that might be disturbing; we can smile when he compromises with history in the name of higher values, in the name of novelistic values, in the name of creating characters – first and foremost, himself – we could; but he wrote. His imagination made it possible to live. We could be proud to be among his characters, this was how he created us, to be proud to have been part of what he wrote, even if we suspected that, beyond the pages he allotted us, there existed another world. We need to rewrite now, we need to expand the past. What is the use of brooding over a few seasons in the 1940s? What purpose is served by this idea of a national Catholic identity, by the image of rural villages on a Sunday morning? None, not any more, it has all vanished; we need to expand.
‘We were broken by refusing to recognize the humanity of those who were a part of us. We laughed at the fact that we did not dare call what happened in Algeria a “war”, but only “les événements”. We thought that by finally calling it a “war” we would put an end to the hypocrisy. But to use the word “war” implies we fought a foreign country, when in fact the violence was
between us. We knew each other so well. It is only possible to kill so efficiently among one’s own kind.
‘The violence committed in the Empire broke us; the obsessive controls of the nation’s borders continue to break us today. We invented the universal nation, a rather absurd notion, but marvellous in its absurdity, since people born on the far side of the world could be a part of it. What does it mean to be French? The desire to be French, and the recounting of that desire in French, a tale that hides nothing of what happened, neither the horror nor the life that emerged in spite of it.’
‘The desire?’ said Salagnon. ‘Is that enough?’
‘It was enough for you. It’s the only thing that connects. And all the black veils that hide it are hateful.’
She looked at me as I was speaking, my heart. I knew she was looking at me all the time that I was speaking, and so, when I had finished, I turned to her slowly and I saw the three bright radiances in a cloud of swan feathers. I saw her eyes shining in the twilight and her full lips smiling at me. I laid my hand on hers as it came to find me, and our two hands, so perfectly matched, clasped each other and did not let go.
At length we got up and said our goodbyes to Victorien and Eurydice, who had welcomed us into their home, and we left. They walked us to the door. They stood at the top of the three steps, beneath the glass canopy flushed red in the evening light. As we crossed their barren garden where nothing grew, they watched us and they smiled, his arm around her shoulder, her head nestling against him. When we came to open the gate, I turned to wave and I saw Eurydice, pressed against his shoulder, smiling and weeping over what had been said.
We went home. We caught a bus heading west. We rode through Voracieux-les-Bredins again, but heading in the right direction, in the urban direction, towards the city centre. In its last moments, the sun dipped at the far end of the avenue, directly in line with this concrete trench lined with cars, lorries and buses, chugging slowly, all stinking, all rumbling, all belching fumes, spewing a vast, coppery cloud that was dirty and hot. Lyon is not very big, but there are a lot of us living here, squeezed into the simmering cauldron of the city in which human currents move like lava flows, spreading through the streets, clustering around the entrances to metro stations, which suck them in in slow, infinitely flexible eddies. We are lucky to have a huge urban melting pot into which everything can blend. People got on and got off the bus, they took our mode of transport – a possessive I feel I can use only because we had boarded it a few stops earlier. There are so many of them, so many people, even though Lyon is not very big. We are so tightly packed in the bus, juddering down the avenue of tarnished copper. We share the same clattering floor, we breath the same warm air, shoulder to shoulder, and in each one of us, in this metal box transporting us, moving at a snail’s pace down the avenue towards the sunset, slowly cleaving the dazzling copper cloud, in each of us is a silent tongue that quivers according to the distinctive tones of French. I can understand each one. I grasp the meaning of what they say before identifying the words. We are packed together and I understand them all.
It was hot in the bus heading west, shrouded in clouds of fumes tinted reddish copper by the dying rays of the sun; we were able to sit, my heart, because we had boarded before the others, simmering as we sat in this copper pot, while others got on, got off, taking the same means of transport, all of us in this urban melting pot set on the banks of the Rhône and the Saône; we are lucky that it is positioned here, since from it comes the richness, the infinite richness of the magic cauldron, a cauldron that is never empty and from which we get much more than we put in; in it everything is mingled, everything is remade, we are blended in the precious soup, simmering and changing, ever varied, ever intense, and the spoon that stirs it is the male member. Sex brings us together. It unites us. The veils that we hang to hide this particular truth are hateful.
That should be enough.
I did not take my eyes off you on the journey back; I never tired of the beauty of your face, of the harmonious curves of your body. You were perfectly aware that I was watching you, and you let me, pretending to watch the city flashing past the window, a faint smile playing on your tremulous red lips, constantly about to speak to me, and that smile while I was watching you, in the field of signs, was the equivalent of kissing me endlessly.
When we entered the metro tunnel, the windows looking out on to nothing became mirrors, and I saw myself looking at you in the black mirror that reflected your perfect face framed by white swan feathers, and your eyes, which to me seem violent, and that red mouth that is a source of pleasure, and the splendid arrogance of your nose that is the Mediterranean’s gift to the universal beauty of women.
When we were back at her place, she made me tea, green tea that smelled of mint, strong, sweet, as thick as petrol, that instantly boiled through my veins. I wanted to be still closer to her. I wanted to undress her, to paint her, to come with her, and to show, to tell these things. Together. Lying on the cushions she had arranged on a low sofa, we drank this tea that inflamed me. We talked for a long time, but our hearts were beating too loudly for us to really hear what we were saying. She told me that in families that move here from elsewhere, the traces of that elsewhere fade gradually, in stages. The yearning to go back dissolves, then the gestures and the postures that had a sense elsewhere, then language, not so much the words – words linger awhile like stones scattered on the ground, like the rubble of some magnificent building whose blueprints have been lost – not so much the words, but the deep understanding of the language. In the end, among the children and the grandchildren of those who settled here, all that remains is a whiff of vanished scents, a fondness for a certain music, because they heard it before they learned to speak, certain names that could be from here or from elsewhere, according to how they are pronounced, and culinary preferences, certain drinks at certain times of day or a ceremonial dish that is rarely cooked but often mentioned. As I listened to her, I drank the tea she had made for me, which smelled of mint, which she had sweetened, this tea that I drank like burning petrol, a viscous oil rolling over my tongue, whose surface dances with flames, and tongues of fire trickled all the way to my heart, consumed my soul, blazed in my mind, shimmered on my skin, while she, warming to her theme, shone too. We both shimmered, because we were bathed in a light sweat, a fragrant sweat that enticed us, that would facilitate our movements, allowing us to glide against each other, smoothly, tirelessly, indefinitely.
I placed my hand on her thigh and left it there, to feel the liquid warmth coursing beneath her skin. Beneath the skin of my fingertips it sparked a tingling of longing for her, and a longing for ink. I don’t know whether it had something to do with her skin. I don’t know whether it had something to do with my fingers. I don’t even know if it was a tingling, although I know it was about ink. But I was stirred by a physical ache. And when, deep inside me, I imagined taking her in my arms, or when I imagined taking the ink-laden brush between my fingers, it soothed the ache. Gazing at her unsettled me; thinking of taking her in my arms or painting her calmed me. As though in her presence I was suffocating from the intensity, from too much life; as though in her presence my flame guttered for lack of air; and when, in my mind, I began to paint her, the air returned, I could breathe again, I could burn brighter. It might seem strange that ink should mingle with desire; but that, surely, is what painting means, only that? Desire, matter and vision melded in the body of the painter and in the body of the viewer?
Painting with ink produces a particular feeling. The diluted ink is too fluid, the slightest gesture affects it, a breath ripples it; like the breath of someone drinking ripples the surface in his bowl. I learned. I use the rage I could never manage to express and which made my life a long series of accidents. I paint awkwardly, but powerfully. What I paint is not figurative. With my meagre ability, using black liquid spread by a brush, my painting would have trouble representing what I see. But ink-wash painting does not represent, it is. In each str
oke you see the shadow of the object painted and the trace of the furious brush that painted it. In speech, too, what is said merges with the vibrating air it produces. What we hear has nothing, absolutely nothing in common with what we want to say, but no sooner is it said than it is revealed. Such a miracle cannot be explained. We spend the first years of our lives mastering it, and still it remains a miracle. Like speech, ink painting is the Word incarnate, revealed as it is set down, in the quivering cadences of mental images appearing. Ink-wash painting appears in the beam of consciousness, and it illustrates, in sync with the constant beating of our hearts.
The Chinese, who have an explanation for everything, must surely have a myth about the invention of painting. It would involve a master calligrapher going into the mountains one morning; followed by his apprentice, who carries his tools, asks foolish questions and memorizes the answers. He would settle on a pleasant spot propitious to noble thoughts. Behind him the soaring mountain, at his feet a roaring torrent. Pines would cling to rocky outcrops, a cherry tree would be a sign of spring, vivid orchids would tumble from branches, thickets of bamboo would sway and rustle. The servant would set up a silk screen around his master. It would be morning, the day still hesitant, and in the chill air each of the master’s words would be accompanied by whorls of mist. With his brush the master would improvise poems about the wind, about the movements of the air, the rippling of the grasses, the shifting shapes of water. He would recite them aloud as he set them down in ink, and the mist modulated by his words would drift back to be absorbed into the silk of the screen protecting him. When evening came, he would set down his brush and get to his feet. His servant would pack everything away, the teapot, the meditating cushion, the writing paper covered with poems, the ink stone in which he ground black pigment with pine resin. In his haste, being a simple man, he would stumble and spill the contents of the ink stone, spattering the panels of the screen. The precious fabric would greedily consume the ink; but in the place where his vaporous words had impregnated the silk, the ink would not stay. The embarrassed servant, not knowing what to do, would contemplate the ruined screen, waiting to be rebuked. But the master would see. The trails of ink brushed on to the silk panel would balance subtle whites, where he had been speaking, between great splashes of black, where he had been silent. He would be seized by an emotion so powerful it would leave him reeling. A whole day of lofty thoughts would be there, intact, faithfully noted down, more perfectly preserved than anything possible through calligraphy. And so he would tear up all the poems that he had written and toss the scraps of paper into the rushing torrent. Why write, when the smallest thought was here, captured in all its precision, and did not need to be read? He would head home, serene, with his barely reassured servant trotting behind him, carrying everything he needed to carry.