A Time of Miracles

by Anne-Laure Bondoux

  In 1999, as I turned fourteen, the computer in our class was linked to the Internet. According to Mrs. Georges, it was a very important event, and she was happy to initiate us into new technologies that would become our passport to the new millennium.

  “With this tool,” she said, “you’ll know everything about anything!”

  Our eyes shined because we were all searching for something or someone in this vast world of ours. Jamal asked if it was possible to learn about people who had been lost in the Mediterranean. His brother had drowned during their trip to Europe.

  Mrs. Georges looked sad. “With this tool you’ll know nearly everything about anything,” she corrected herself.

  She explained how to use the Internet, and I decided to make my own inquiry to get out of the status quo.

  The first word I entered in the search engine was “Gloria.”

  Results:

  concentrated milk trademark

  American actress, dead a long, long time ago

  Latin words of a Christian prayer

  lots of restaurants and hotels

  Not a trace of my Gloria, even when I added “Bohème,” which sent me to a European region and to a song and to a poem by Arthur Rimbaud.

  As sad as ever, I entered a second request: “Jeanne Fortune.” This was even worse because no one seemed to have that name, either at Mont-Saint-Michel or anywhere else in France.

  Finally I entered “Zemzem Dabaiev.” At last something popped up—newspaper clippings in Russian saying that Zemzem was a warlord, a terrorist, a bloodthirsty monster who was armed to the teeth and who had killed many innocent people. I was sure they were mistaken, that they weren’t talking about the same person, because Gloria’s Zemzem wasn’t a monster. Gloria’s Zemzem had saved people; he had run to get the tanker truck. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  Upset, I abandoned the computer. I went to see Mrs. Georges and shouted that I was disappointed with the new technology. What good was it to be modern if the millennium didn’t offer me a little bit of hope? I demanded.

  “Lies, that’s all there is in there! Lies!” I cried.

  I slammed the classroom door and stormed out, a ball of rage forming in my stomach.

  I sat on a low dividing wall at the back of the courtyard that surrounded the shelter, near the athletic field. I was fed up with everything, with my friends, even with Modeste Koulevitch and Mrs. Georges and her kindness. What I wanted was Gloria. She was the only one who knew the truth! She was the only one who could help me find my mother, the only one who could bring the scientific proof that I was French. Even more important, she was the only one who could soothe my distress by taking me in her arms.

  I cried a long time, hitting my heels against the wall, then, unexpectedly, I felt a presence behind me. When I turned, Prudence was looking at me.

  “What do you want?” I snapped. “My picture?”

  I was in a foul mood.

  Prudence smiled. She came near me.

  “If I sit here, you’re not going to bite me, are you?” she asked.

  I shrugged and she sat down.

  I was surprised because Prudence was the quietest and shyest girl in the class. I didn’t know much about her except that she came from Liberia, a country that borders the Gulf of Guinea. I remembered that it was on page 91 of my green atlas.

  She remained silent for a long while. Suddenly she asked me if I wanted to play a game.

  “A game? What game?” I asked.

  “A contest.”

  “What kind of contest?”

  “A contest of misfortunes.”

  I stared at her inquisitively.

  “It’s simple. We each mention something unhappy that happened in our lives,” she explained. “The winner is the one who has had the most misfortunes.”

  I thought this was funny. “OK,” I said.

  And we played.

  Misfortune for misfortune.

  For a long time we stayed sitting side by side on the wall in front of the athletic field.

  We revealed everything about ourselves, starting with our oldest memories. And the pure and simple truth is that Prudence won by far. What had happened in only thirteen years of her life was unbelievable! A list to make the hair on your head stand on end—massacres, fleeing through a hostile jungle, venomous stings, beheadings, and scars on her arms to prove torture. By the end of the game, my mouth was agape. She made the victory sign with her fingers, and tears ran down my cheeks because I was reminded of the last time I had seen Gloria in the parking lot.

  Prudence handed me a tissue.

  After that we became inseparable. Not really in love, as when I was little. Just inseparable.

  chapter thirty-eight

  BECOMING inseparable from someone makes you happy. All it takes is meeting the right person—whether by chance or, if you are a believer, because Allah makes it happen.

  Prudence was the right person for me, and I began to tell myself again that I was lucky. Because if I hadn’t fallen asleep with the pigs, if the customs officers had not apprehended me, if Article 20 had not existed, and if Prudence’s family had not been hacked to pieces, she and I would never have come to Poitiers, and we would never have met.

  chapter thirty-nine

  THE year 2000 was over. I turned fifteen, then sixteen and seventeen.

  Apart from the times when I thought of Gloria and got depressed, I was adjusting to my new life. In the morning I got a freshly baked baguette, the smell of Mrs. Georges’ coffee filled the classroom, and there were fireworks on the Fourteenth of July and the annual Tour de France.

  I was getting used to living in peace and I was getting ready to take the high school exam.

  I walked the streets, hand in hand with Prudence, waiting to be of legal age so I could obtain my French citizenship and become a person rather than a ghost.

  It happened officially on December 30, 2003. I remember it clearly because it was very cold on the square of the city hall. Modeste Koulevitch and Mrs. Georges came with me, and Prudence was there too. They each kissed me as if I had won a sports event, as if I’d broken a world record at the Olympics. I was holding an ID card and a brand-new passport in my hand.

  “This is a wonderful day!” Mrs. Georges said, crying.

  And Modeste Koulevitch patted me on the back again and again because he was so happy for me. The laws of the republic had recently changed: France still stood for liberty, equality, and fraternity, but many new amendments made it increasingly difficult to obtain official papers. The new immigration policy, based on fear, as always, had made it that way. But I had gotten my papers. I could breathe.

  We went to a restaurant to celebrate, and Mrs. Georges ordered a glass of champagne. Then she asked me what I was going to do with my newfound freedom.

  Prudence leaned against my shoulder. She knew my plans because I had told her about my dreams. We smiled at each other.

  chapter forty

  PRUDENCE went to sleep. I did too, my head leaning against the bus window. The driver had to shake us awake to tell us that we had arrived.

  It was low tide. The huge parking lot was almost empty, flooded with gray puddles. Seagulls were flying in all directions, crying in the January sky. In front of us the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel seemed surreal, planted in the sand, surrounded by a veil of fog that came from the sea.

  Prudence took my hand.

  Heavy drops began to fall as we reached the fortified city. Our hoods over our heads, we ran to take shelter under the awning of a store.

  “My gosh,” Prudence said as she looked at the torrential rain running over the cobblestones.

  I had come with every intention of questioning the inhabitants about my mother. One after another, if necessary! We had looked in the telephone book, and there weren’t many, maybe about forty in all. It seemed easy enough to do, but once we were there, walking the narrow lanes, I felt indecisive.

  Fried-food smells floated in the damp air. The souvenir shop sold
countless plastic knickknacks, all of them made in China. It was a tourist trap, but I wanted to buy something, regardless.

  When we came out of the shop, the rain had stopped and Prudence took me toward the stairs leading to the summit.

  I raised my eyes. In between the mossy roofs, the statue of the golden angel was watching us.

  The view was magnificent from the top. The rain had cleared the sky; big, dark clouds hovered over the horizon, and the immense spread of the bay glistened in the sun.

  I looked at the landscape for a long time. Thoughts were churning in my head and I grew dizzy. I had to move away from the edge and sit on the stairs with my eyes closed.

  Prudence was quiet. She waited. I guess when you’ve seen your family massacred in the suburbs of Monrovia, nothing can surprise you. She understood the pain that I felt at finally being at my birthplace, without a mother or a father to tell me who I really was.

  The dizziness passed. I opened my eyes. Behind me the angel was shining in the sun. I started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Prudence asked.

  “I don’t know.” I took a deep breath and contemplated the abbey. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Prudence didn’t comment about the many bus hours we had spent to get here, or the savings we had used to pay for the trip, or my fickleness. She followed me and we headed down.

  While we were looking out onto the amazing panorama from the top, I had realized that being at Mont-Saint-Michel and finding Jeanne Fortune weren’t essential. I didn’t have to question the forty people who lived here to confirm what I already knew. The most important thing was to find Gloria.

  chapter forty-one

  WHEN you reach legal age and you’re officially a French citizen and the everyday vocabulary is at your finger-tips, you’re able to lift mountains. Even if they’re in the Caucasus. Even if it takes a lot of time. Even if you sometimes lose courage. Even if you feel that it’s a waste of time and that it would be easier to look for a needle in a haystack.

  It took me eighteen months and dozens of letters, phone calls, and e-mails. Finally I received a letter from the French Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, in the Caucasus.

  The letter is in my suitcase. It says:

  Dear Mr. Blaise Fortune,

  We believe that the person you are looking for might be here. But the situation is delicate. You will need to come in person to the following address.

  Etc, etc.

  So on a morning in July 2005, I am at Charles de Gaulle Airport, my heart beating madly, the memories of my childhood rushing through my head, with the little made-in-China knickknack that I bought at Mont-Saint-Michel in my pocket.

  Now it’s time to board the plane, and I can’t help thinking of a Charles Baudelaire poem that says, “It is time! Let us raise the anchor!”

  The gate attendant checks my passport, smiles at me, and wishes me a safe trip.

  chapter forty-two

  I spend the first night in a hotel in the center of Tbilisi. Unable to sleep, I stand in front of the open window. It is stifling hot. I observe the lights, the traffic of cars, the facades of the illuminated cathedrals and mosques. Is it here that I lived with Gloria in the Complex? I wonder. Or was it in another town? I don’t recognize anything, and I wait impatiently for sunrise with a sort of fever that brings me close to nausea.

  After almost nine years of being away, what I know of the Caucasus is that it hasn’t changed much. Officially the war is over, but there are still rebel fighters, Kalashnikovs, shifting borders, and refugees who slip in and out through the valleys. From time to time there are attacks, kidnappings, people who disappear. It is the kind of place that no one can understand. Yet people live here. They breathe, they walk in the streets, they work, drink, eat, even have fun.

  At last the sky is clearer, and dawn brings some coolness.

  I take a shower, shave, button my shirt, and look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I can’t help thinking that I’m as clean as the day I came out of the puliba. I’m a real Frenchman, rid of lice and fleas. Now I wonder if I’ve become a stranger on the soil where I spent my childhood. And I wonder if Gloria will recognize me.

  I leave the hotel, my throat tight. The hospital address is written on a piece of paper folded in my pocket. No need to read it again, I know it by heart.

  Dr. Leonidze greets me. He is a soft-spoken man, elegant, and he speaks Russian with a bit of an accent. The French Embassy notified him about my visit, and he offers me a cup of tea in his office.

  It is only eight in the morning. The sun shines through the window. I perspire in my clean shirt.

  “Before I take you to her room,” Dr. Leonidze says, “I have to tell you that she has not said a word in seven years.”

  The cup of tea shakes in my hand.

  “She has been here for seven years?” I ask.

  Dr. Leonidze nods. “When she arrived here, she was in very bad shape.”

  “Was she … was she coughing?”

  “Yes, with a serious infection of the respiratory tract. At first we thought it was tuberculosis, but the illness is more likely the result of chemical poisoning. These days her condition is stable.”

  I put down my cup and wipe my sweating forehead.

  “During all these years,” Dr. Leonidze goes on, “we didn’t know her name or where she had come from, so we called her outsnobi khali, “the unknown” in Georgian. Some more tea?”

  I shake my head. What I want now is to see her.

  “If she is the person I’m looking for, I …”

  I don’t know how to finish my sentence. Actually, I don’t know what will happen if it is my Gloria who is here. I feel like I’m floating in a state of weightlessness. The doctor finishes drinking his tea and cleans the two cups.

  “A few months ago a TV channel came here to make a documentary about the hospital,” he explains. “They filmed our patients, and we allowed them to show outsnobi khali. Shortly after a man came. He said he recognized her. According to him, her name is Gloria Vassilievna. Some articles appeared in the newspapers about her.”

  He wipes his hands on his smock.

  “Come,” he says, “I’ll take you to her.”

  I get up. We leave his office and walk down corridors. The elevators are out of order, so we have to use the stairs to go to the third floor. All I hear are the sounds of our footsteps on the tiled floor and my heart drumming in my chest.

  Dr. Leonidze stops in front of a door.

  “The man who thought he recognized our patient wanted to see her, just as you do this morning,” he adds. “He talked to her, and Gloria Vassilievna started to cry. It was the first time that she showed any emotion. But she still did not say a word. So don’t expect too much, you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  My legs can hardly carry me. I don’t even think to ask him the name of the man who made Gloria cry. I only see the doctor’s hand on the doorknob.

  chapter forty-three

  I see someone, from the back only, seated in front of a window. I enter.

  The sunlight is intense. I squint, walk around the bed, and come closer. The woman’s dark hair is gathered behind her head, and a few locks are loose at her temples. I approach her. I can see her profile now, the line of her nose, the curve of her cheekbones. A bomb explodes in my chest: a bomb that irradiates my entire body and splinters me into a million pieces.

  It’s her. It’s really her. It is my Gloria.

  She turns her face toward me. Her gaze is like a dead star, a black hole. I lean forward. My hands fall to my sides.

  “Gloria?” I say.

  My mouth is as dry as a desert.

  “It’s me, Gloria. It’s Koumaïl.”

  The dead stars of her eyes focus on me. No sign of life. Nothing. Emptiness.

  I try again. “It’s Koumaïl. I came back. Can you see? It’s me … Monsieur Blaise.”

  It seems as if something is happening. A vague glimmer lights up her expressio
n. I kneel down in front of her because I don’t have the strength to stand any longer. My throat constricts, but I have to talk to keep this glimmer alive.

  “You remember … nearly eight years ago you told me to climb into the back of a truck driven by a Spaniard. It was in the parking lot at the Hungarian border. Do you remember? You told me not to move. And I did as you told me, Gloria. I stayed with the pigs, in the dark.”

  As I talk, I see Gloria’s eyes come back to life. Each word is like a puff of wind over dying embers.

  “When I arrived in France, you were gone. I was alone and I didn’t know where you were. I …”

  In spite of myself, I start crying. I put my hands on her knees and I can feel her warmth. She is as thin as when we were in the Gypsy camp, but she is here in front of me, alive! Except for her expressionless face, she hasn’t changed much.

  “It’s me, Koumaïl!” I say again. “I’ve grown up. I’ve changed, of course. Do you recognize me?”

  She lifts her left hand and brings it close to me with hesitation, as if afraid to get burned or bitten. I stay motionless, on my knees; suddenly, an image of Fatima’s father as he was killed praying on his rug pops into my mind. I wouldn’t want to die now for anything.

  Gloria’s hand touches my cheek, as light as a bird on a twig. She brushes my skin; she feels the shape of my face.

  Her mouth opens and lets out an indefinable sound, something like the cry of a wounded animal. Then she starts sobbing, unable to stop. Life has returned to her eyes, and they are devouring me. It feels almost like a fairy tale, when the princess wakes up after sleeping for a hundred years.