Men

by Marie Darrieussecq

  Paris–Lisbon!

  No distance at all, she enthused, championing Europe’s modest size, extolling the speed of the TGV, the quality of the freeways, the Maastricht Treaty and budget airfares. Whereas Luanda was so far away.

  And so expensive, added Kouhouesso. There was nowhere under four hundred dollars a night. Compared with Rio, which was half the price, and half the distance.

  She wanted to say that he wouldn’t be in a hotel in Paris, but everything was moving too fast to get hung up on the geography.

  The mother divided her time between Rio, Luanda and Lisbon, the three ports in Lusitanian waters. As for the twins, they lived in the Miami, one of the nightclubs frequented by the Luanda jetset, on a peninsula, right on the water.

  A girl and a boy on a Facebook page, out-of-this-world good-looking, illuminated in red, green, blue, silver, spangled by glitter balls, fireworks and fairy lights—they seemed to be in their habitat. Spin the globe as fast as you can: that’s the colour of the future. Luanda is a party. Rio is finished. Lisbon is dead. The twins both fell in love for the first time in Luanda: that’s the problem with adolescents, according to Kouhouesso: they get settled, much more than their parents do.

  With all these images piling up inside her skull, she couldn’t think of anything else to say, other than how beautiful his children were. There’s no such thing as mixed race: she knew what happened with sentences like that, sentences he uttered. They led to another image, a baby who might have been theirs, Kouhouesso and Solange, Solange and Kouhouesso.

  She really should tell him about her son. But she still had two more days.

  ‘THE STAKE OF DEATH HAS BEEN PLANTED’, ‘WE HAVE THROWN AWAY THE HOE’ AND ‘THERE ARE NO MORE NAMES LEFT’

  Kouhouesso had seen Oprah. And Oprah had seen Kouhouesso: she agreed to be a co-producer. The film shoot would be on a boat, following the chronology of the novel: leaving from the Thames in a schooner, navigating the coast of West Africa, then upriver in a little steamboat. If not in the Congo—let’s be reasonable—then in Gabon or in southern Cameroon: better logistics, fewer heavy weapons. Kouhouesso pulled a face, but Canal Plus was coming on board. And the screenplay had been sent to Vincent Cassel.

  ‘It’s going to be shot in the Congo,’ he said to her. Yes, to her. She focused less on the hubris of his assertion than on the fact that he trusted her and was confiding in her. They were smoking a joint in bed, their bags packed for Paris. The flight was the next day. Kouhouesso in the Congo. She smiled. A good antidote to Tintin. Kouhouesso had never set foot in the Congo, any more than she had. For him, too, it was the unknown. For him, too, it was Africa: jungle, untouched, inaccessible. For both of them: no asphalt, no guardrails. Being Kouhouesso—being black—did not immunise him against anything.

  From what she had gleaned, he was born in a relatively arid area of Cameroon (she’d only recently learnt that there were arid areas in Cameroon). He was about two when he ran away from the concession. His mother found him, dead, stiff and dried out like a log of wood. She took him to the medicine woman, but the medicine woman said she needed to take him to the witch. He was probably under a spell. There was only one witch in the valley and she did nothing for less than a goat. The father was violently opposed to the expense and to resorting to such extremes; he was a rational man and didn’t want to hear anything about spirits, from either the natives or anyone else. But Kouhouesso was still dead and looking more and more like a log of Assemela hardwood; he was getting harder and blacker before their eyes, turning into charcoal. When there was nothing but powder left of him, his mother sneaked away from the other wives, taking the family’s only goat with her.

  While his mother set off towards the hollow tree where the witch lived, with him dead and the goat on a leash, a never-ending stream of car headlights disappeared behind the Hotel Bel-Air. She asked him if it was a traditional folk tale. Traditional of what? He laughed. Of the suffering of mothers, perhaps, she thought. She could picture her own mother lying down between her two aluminium bedside tables from the 1970s. But Kouhouesso’s childhood seemed to be from an earlier time, as far in the past as she and he were in the future, bathed in the cone of light from the Bel Air cars. Cars that were not going to take him away, and into which he would not disappear—him, speaking now, alive and well, in her arms.

  The witch took the goat and studied what was left of the dead child. She said that the child’s name was Kouhouesso, that he had several other names but Kouhouesso was his real name. That he was an only child, but not the first. That his mother had had other children before him.

  All that was true, the absolute truth. The witch said he was one of the children from a series of abikus. An abiku is a spirit child who lodges itself in the belly of women and is born in order to die, over and over again. As long as the spirit child is not recognised for what it is—an evil, tormenting and unrelenting creature—he will come back to blight hopes and promises.

  The witch said that she would keep the child for as long as was necessary, but that it cost more for abikus: they would need to bring another goat. Otherwise, although the child would live, it would stay crouching under the roots, waiting to be reborn as an abiku.

  So Kouhouesso spent days and nights in the hollow tree with the witch. When his mother returned, he was well and truly alive: he had got some colour back, and had even put on weight. Two fresh cuts, little triangles, were forming scars on his forehead. The witch told them to coat the scars with soot. Scarification was part of the treatment.

  According to the adult Kouhouesso, bearer of triangles on his forehead, while he was in the tree, the old woman had buried him up to his neck in the moist, loose earth, the rich humus under the hollow tree, and she persevered in feeding him a mixture of water and milk, drop by drop, into his little mouth, just like the Fulani people do in the case of severe dehydration—and the Khoisan, the Tuareg, the Songhai, the Berabiche, the Reguibat, the Toubou, the Hausa, the Toucouleur, and the Australian Aborigines.

  During all those days and all those nights, at church, and before altars, his mother had offered up prayers—prayers of struggle. And she had argued at length with his father, insisting that he sell an acre of wine palm trees in order to purchase another goat. The father had protested that it was a case of kidnapping and ransom, and that he would go himself to get his son, dead or alive. But some strange phenomenon prevented him: he kept banging into an invisible wall. He tried to leave the house but found himself laid out on the floor like a drunkard, his forehead swollen with unsightly bumps. So the mother took the opportunity to carry out the goat-acre transaction and to recover her son, Kouhouesso, who right now was speaking to Solange on a Los Angelean night.

  He claimed to be able to remember the smell of goat on the witch, and a sensation of being enveloped in the damp, dark softness. Henceforth, he no longer needed anything or anyone.

  Solange assured him that it was an intrauterine memory, a metaphor for a lost state of bliss that we have all known. Like the memories produced under the influence of LSD.

  Kouhouesso smiled and took a drag of the joint. Africa exists, he said. Before him, three children had died, three sons mourned when in fact they were the same spirit returned to the same womb. He was the first to have lived because the preceding child, finally recognised for what he was, had been buried with the proper funeral rites. On his grave, near his head, the shaman had planted a special stake around which were woven carefully chosen leaves. The abiku would no longer trouble the family. Nine months later, Kouhouesso was born. His name meant ‘The stake of Death has been planted’. He had been born to carry this name, a name he had lived up to by surviving beyond the age of seven, when the abiku could still make an appearance, and by remaining alive all the years since then.

  After him, a girl was born, who had also survived and whose name was Losoko, which meant ‘We have thrown away the hoe’—the hoe used for digging graves. She had stayed in their homeland and they sometimes shared photos on Fa
cebook. And last of all, a brother, who had also survived and who worked on construction sites in South Africa. His name was Orukotan, ‘There are no more names left’.

  It was a powerful name, which banished the abiku children forever, but also any other children, and so the mother stopped giving birth. And the father died quite quickly of septicaemia.

  ‘I was born after a child died, too,’ said Solange. If they had performed funeral rites in the village, if they had managed to cover up the whole business with stakes, hoes and unpronounceable names, if they had gathered around the little dead body and behaved like Zulus, would their devastation have been less brutal? Would they perhaps have managed to speak to each other? To get together with a little bit of joy at Christmas? She was about to reach for the photograph on the bookshelf when Kouhouesso pronounced solemnly, ‘You’re a sort of abiku of the north. Perhaps that’s what appealed to me.’

  So she appealed to him. He had said it: ‘appealed to me’. And just as she was going to divulge the name of her brother (an ordinary name, and so French), just as she was about tell him a tiny portion of all her huge secrets, just as, in their lovers’ intimacy, on the eve of their departure, in the intimacy of the shared joint, she was about to reveal the tiniest portion of what they never talked about, or at least not yet—about the past, families, perhaps her son, perhaps the future—just as she was going to speak, he kissed her passionately and they made love again.

  BUSINESS CLASS

  He hated psychological claptrap. Not all the inventions from the north were to be rejected, of course—medicine and science were especially welcome—but the only worthwhile psychology was that used with dreams, taboos and deep-seated forces. As an actor, he had always rejected psychological motivation, all the fuss around Coppola’s directions, to Brando, Hopper or Sheen—each one more drugged and hopeless than the other, in any case. He was interested in phenomena connected with the collective unconscious, and all forms of non-verbal communication; but the individual unconscious left him cold. In Heart of Darkness there is not one single psychological explanation: just facts, actions, consequences. One driving force: inordinate greed. One type of conduct: brutality. One result: hatred. It’s up to the audience to work out what the emotions are, if that’s what they’re after. As director, he would leave it to the actors and actresses to delve into the depths of their souls, but in silence, for God’s sake.

  She was in love with a man whose name was The Stake of Death Has Been Planted. She tried to get used to this idea. And she loved it that he explained things to her, that he cared enough to explain things to her. If he spoke to her it meant he loved her.

  On the plane he was happy. He wanted to see Paris again, the historical buildings. He never imagined he’d have so many interviews lined up. He stretched out his long legs in his spacious seat; she held his hand between the wide armrests; he would have happily smoked a cigar. They ordered champagne, vodka frappés and truffle canapés. Air France was still Air France, goddamn it. He hardly ever swore, or only as a joke. He even made a point of speaking a more polished French than was necessary, as if he felt responsible for the respectable behaviour of every African in the world. In the business-class cabin of flight AF066 to Paris, in which only a gentle rumbling could be felt at take-off—here, in the luxury of the skies, flying over the northern snow, it was the stewardesses he spoke to. He and Solange had champagne, beauty, and the pleasure of being looked at, recognised, and of being the subject of no end of attention, and of clearly being the most glamorous couple in the plane (538 passengers).

  Yes, he wanted to see Paris again, the historical buildings. And he was happy about all the appointments. When he had managed to emigrate, Paris had seemed more familiar to him than his birth country. Cameroon was dysfunctional, but he wasn’t. He recognised everything. The culture, the language; France had been in his blood since childhood: he’d recited Molière and Racine and fallen desperately in love with his French teacher (he didn’t elaborate on this chapter of his life). His whole being was shaped by the idea of structure that characterised the French people, by the structures of the French language. He had seen Paris a thousand times. The sharpness of the avenues, cut sheer between the façades of the buildings, the pavements, the pedestrian crossings, the number of shop windows, the shiny cars, the efficient Métro system: he knew it all. That’s where he came from, where he felt at home, in that smooth, open, sparkling world.

  In the beginning, he had managed to rent an apartment thanks to a director who had taken on the lease in his name. Kouhouesso had wanted to become French; his application had been rejected. He only had a temporary visa but he had a Mercedes, one of the beautiful vintage models he loved. He was performing in a Chekhov play in Avignon and had driven all the way down, following the Rhône: his car was dirty and he didn’t want to arrive filthy at the Avignon Festival. He found a garage where they washed cars by hand and had just paid, including the tips, and was doing a final inspection when a guy pulled up and held out his keys: ‘When you’ve finished that one, do mine.’

  It was nothing, just one incident. But, as an African, and in general, he decided that France could go to hell, and he became Canadian.

  They had just flown over a big chunk of Canada. Through the plane window, they could see the polar icecap, re-formed for winter, passing by below. Canada was a last resort. He said it was his ‘only unhappy love affair’: Canada had made him one of its own, but he wasn’t Canadian.

  She waited a while and then said that Paris was her city, that she would love to show him the street in the Charonne neighbourhood where she used to rent a room, the Amandiers Theatre, her friends Daniel and Lætitia, and then, on the way to Lisbon, the Basque Country; it was Christmas, after all, her family was there…He had signalled to the stewardess for some more champagne (with a Parisian accent) and raised his glass to her: ‘Cheers! To Heart of Darkness.’

  She made a scene right there, in business class, over the Arctic Circle. For months, all she had heard about was his film, couldn’t he possibly, even for two minutes, show some interest in what she had to say? Or was he congenitally incapable of listening to her?

  The glaciers slid past, impassive. There was the tip of Greenland. He apologised. ‘There are doors I need to knock on in Paris, for the film. When I’ve finished, I’ll be less preoccupied.’

  She concluded that he was being more sincere than rude. A film—pre-production, the shoot, the editing, post-production, distribution—a year. She would wait.

  HOW COULD I KEEP MY WITS ABOUT ME

  As always, there were exquisite flower arrangements at the little studio Daniel and Lætitia had lent them and, wonder of wonders, a little Christmas tree. She pulled out the sofa bed and Kouhouesso’s long body completely filled the tiny attic room. They got up at dusk, it was only five o’clock, winter over the roofs of Paris. In the kitchen area, under the eaves, he had to bend over so he wouldn’t bump his head. She taught him the expression ‘ye olde’, for the exposed beams, part of the charm of the Marais. She called a contact for some weed, and they got some good wine delivered. He had hardly listened to his messages, or checked his emails; he was, it seemed, on holidays for the first time since she’d met him.

  He had a shower the way he usually did: with a plastic supermarket bag on his head. Even at specialist hairdressers he’d never found a big enough shower cap. He sat in front of the mirror for a long time, twisting his hair, then tied the loops at the back of his neck. She watched him; it reminded her of when she was a little girl, watching her father shaving carefully.

  They made love swiftly, in one burst. It took their breath away. She would have given ten years of her life for those few minutes. It was madness. An illness.

  She could have stayed there, absolutely self-contained beneath the roofs, until the end of the world, but he wanted to go out for dinner. Men always have to eat, go out. He spoke to her in camfranglais: ‘Whatever, whatever, let’s Johnnie there?’—Johnnie Walker, the whisky of walke
rs. She laughed and they set off at a clip towards Bastille. They stopped at Zadig & Voltaire; the salesgirls made a beeline for them. She bought him a sea-green fine cashmere jumper. The floodlit city was brighter than in daylight; seen from a satellite, Paris must have been twinkling like a Christmas tree.

  ‘Solange.’ He was calling her. The roar of the traffic on the square was so loud that he’d had to say those syllables, Sol-ange, the an- like the am in champagne. She felt effervescent. Her, and no one else: Solange. She was becoming real. She existed, out of all the women here on this particular section of the Earth that had witnessed the world changing—‘Solange!’ Near the canal, he pointed to the entrance of the amusement park, the statue of the black man with the huge mouth who was collecting tickets on his butler’s tray.

  She in turn pointed to the Spirit of Freedom on top of the column: the angel holding aloft broken chains. He called her idealistic and ‘my little Frenchwoman’. And he kissed her.

  Looking back, that short walk in Paris was perhaps the happiest moment of her life. After that sublime moment, everything was a letdown, a dangerous drifting off course.

  People looked at them. They were beautiful, certainly, like they were on the plane, but there was something else. They were political. She who never used that word savoured the provocation of walking arm in arm with him. Nothing much: a minute disturbance of the atmosphere, a slight hesitation as passers-by looked at them: a black person and a white person. Together. Beautiful and wealthy and happy. And she noticed that there was always a touch of envy, or complicity, a sort of reverse aggression, in the way they were looked at, as if they were a couple of famous criminals, doomed but dashing romantics, the Bonnie and Clyde of Humanity’s Happiness. Solange and Kouhouesso, pray for us.

  She cuddled him. ‘We’re making quite an impression.’