Blue White Red

by Alain Mabanckou

  Hold on to hope for as long as possible. Say, after all, nothing is lost in advance. I don’t undress. It feels like this all unfolded in a single day, in a single night. A long day. A long night. I’m split between a pressing anxiety that fills my lungs and this false serenity dictated by the way the situation developed. I forgot to be who I had always been. Calm. Serene. Attentive. Who, in similar circumstances, would lift faithfulness above and beyond reality? Vanquished by fatigue, my back up against the wall, it’s difficult for me to understand that I’ve come to that fateful moment, the one those in our small world dread, when the race ends in a cul-de-sac . . .

  Believe me, it’s not so much the confrontation that makes me hopeless; I broke with that. Instead, it’s what I can foresee from here: all those wide-open eyes, all those hands held out, waiting for me. It’s a promise each of us carries like a turtle carries its shell. I can’t allow myself not to look at things from that angle. I can’t suddenly ignore all that. They are waiting for me. I am their only hope. I feel entrusted with a mission that must be accomplished at all costs. Otherwise, what will I say to them? That I couldn’t stick it out to the end? Will they forgive me? Will they understand me?

  Things are going to happen really fast.

  An almost logical continuation. I have never been a fatalistic preacher. I have always fought obstacles, even the most insurmountable. At some point, strength abandons us to our fate, as if to reassure itself that we can move beyond ourselves, without groaning, without wiping our brows, and without making the slightest grimace as evidence of our weakness. Then one feels alone. The wind howls above the rooftops. Little by little, the sun is eclipsed and leaves a lasting, scorching heat. The horizon unfolds, while the land, scattered with rough spots, leaves us no choice but a painful march and burning feet.

  At bottom, I feel like I’ve anted up my fate and it will be decided by how the poker game is played. Some will think that I’m looking to justify myself, to plead atonement before the Supreme Being. I am far from thinking that. I’m not one to whimper over my fate or lie on the sly when the time comes to explain myself, even if that particular moment is the most painful for someone who has lived in our milieu, a world one doesn’t escape from again once the door is shut.

  Yes, the door that slams shut.

  That mechanical noise, here, there. The clicking of the lock. Advancing footsteps. A hand gestures, pointing a finger at you, singling you out. And you, you say that you’re in here for no reason. You raise your right hand. As high as possible. You swear. In the name of God. In the name of your family. They insist, they prove the opposite. Proof with supporting evidence. You were there, at that place, at that hour, with Mr. So-and-so, this is what you did, you left on this street, you passed a thin, small man in a suit. The man gave you an envelope, you took it, you opened it, you exchanged a few words, you got on the subway together. That’s it. Would you like us to continue the description? Here’s a photo. Take a good look. You’re with the man in a suit. What do you have to say about it?

  They’ve won.

  I would like for everything to be put back in chronological order. For every link of the broken chain to be put back in its place. For every fact and every gesture to be faithfully repeated. To stop this confusion in my head. It’s imperative for me to suppress this bad habit of rapidly reacting on impulse in the face of events, without taking the time to reflect maturely. That way, I would see more clearly and maybe clear a path out of here, even if my chances are, to put it mildly, pathetic.

  I’ve stepped back a bit now that I’m heading, for better or worse, back to square one. And this path is not one of the easiest. To retrace one’s footsteps is to confront the specter of one’s past. I am not so intrepid. I’m worn out. I don’t dare take a look at myself. It looks to me like I’ve lost weight, prominent jaw, hollow cheeks, dry lips, like the last time when, a few days before the two men arrived, I stared at myself in a basin of water in the middle of that courtyard in Seine-Saint-Denis under the watchful eye of the guard who ordered me to come back inside quickly. I pretended not to hear his barking. I dawdled, not convinced that the reflection in the basin was my own. I turned around, imagining that someone else was looking at his reflection over my shoulder. Those were the only occasions when I could take the time to make out my face. Otherwise, I was limited to guessing what it looked like when I lightly passed a hand under my chin to feel the roughness of my unkempt beard.

  To this day, if I were to show anyone the first photo of me in Paris, tacked on the wall long ago in our room on rue du Moulin-Vert in the fourteenth arrondissement, they would be so shocked that it would almost cause a commotion.

  It had been an exhausting, terrible forced march to get all the way here. It wasn’t my feet that carried me but the unfolding wave of events, and I realize from one day to the next that my suffering isn’t over, that once again I have to expect more trouble ahead.

  I had shown from the beginning that I possessed an immense capacity to adapt. I had never outdone myself like that before. Above all, I showed that I was capable of liquidating myself into a milieu while adding my own personal touch, which could prove decisive. And I could also work in collaboration, as I did with Préfet later on. That I could dedicate myself to the other members of the milieu, notably by assuring them copious meals that they won’t soon forget, except for ill will on their part—and that would hardly surprise me.

  This was a miscalculation, openly trashed by the entire milieu after my grace period expired. It seemed that these deeds were nothing but a drop of water in the ocean and that I would need more enthusiasm if I wanted to see the end of the tunnel someday.

  Under these circumstances, one will understand that silence, observation, and sometimes contempt lived inside me. I thought that things would go in my favor, suturing the gaping wounds here and there of my disillusionment. I saw the distance sinking between my dirty past and the illusory cocoon of a future.

  I had no choice. I took the plunge.

  As soon as I look beyond my careless mistake, I can’t see anything except a cloud of dust. A plane takes off in a very low sky during the dry season and lands at dawn the next day at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport. It’s as if I’d shut my eyes and found myself all of a sudden on the other side of the gate. It doesn’t surprise me anymore that my first reaction was to viscerally turn my back on all that. To deny reality and not take the place that awaited me, or to be more precise, the position I had been granted in this other universe.

  To be sure, those of my ilk will treat me like a coward—a débarqué, someone just off the boat—because I put up no resistance whatsoever when I saw the two men coming toward me in that little deserted street.

  The images come back to me, slightly blurry, one superimposed upon another. Those pigeons that took flight and perched on the rooftops when they were disturbed. Me, too. I would also have liked to have been a dove. To have wings and lift myself above those buildings so I could survey how the situation developed. I was suddenly paralyzed by some sort of guilty conscience. A sense of malaise. It was as if I first had to pay a fine to recover the freedom to exist, to be myself. But this kind of liberty can’t be bought. There’s the weight of conscience, the embarrassment in front of this mirror that weighs the pros and cons of our actions.

  I admit that I lack finesse, flair, and especially the scruples that made it possible for my companions to slip through the fine web of the net that awaited us. I don’t know how they always managed to have nerves of steel, especially to evade the traps placed along our route at the opportune moments. In fact, they don’t look at what’s happening behind them because, as they say, run for your life—you don’t have eyes in the back of your head. They adopt a blasé attitude and don’t think about what’s going to happen next; they act first. The rest doesn’t concern them and will be resolved when the problem is posed.

  These are the basic precepts of our culture. Tested and proven elementary principles for all situations at a
ll times. A dogma to cling to with your eyes shut. To use without hesitation at the right moment. I should have adopted that philosophy. If I wanted to achieve my goal, that’s what I should have done. They made me understand that there was no other solution.

  I put up no resistance when confronted by the two men. How could I pump my legs to run for my life when they were paralyzed and wouldn’t hold me up anymore? Which direction would I have gone? I was rooted to the ground. Like a tree.

  No, I put up no resistance whatsoever, and I have no regrets about that.

  Escape? I fantasized about it.

  I felt the time was coming. I couldn’t foresee anything else happening. I certainly would have made the situation worse if I had done anything except give myself up. I wasn’t totally wrong, since I saw this behavior again, a little later, in other circumstances, before other men supposedly charged with setting me straight. The result, however bitter, still seems acceptable to me today, with a few qualifications. Escape, frankly, would have changed things.

  I stayed put.

  I still can’t get one question out of my head.

  It had already occurred to me when I was in the car watching the scenery pass by, those mournful willows, those spindly fir trees, those trees, wind-whipped and shrunken by the cold of full-blown winter: why was it the same men who came back to arrest me in Seine-Saint-Denis eighteen months later and put me in the same white car, a Mazda, this time without the black chauffeur who had been so overzealous in Château-Rouge, that working-class neighborhood in the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris?

  Indeed, they came eighteen months later.

  They were waiting for that day. Or maybe they had been entrusted with the task to come back. They had to finish the job they themselves had started. I felt as if they had been assigned to track me from the beginning until the end.

  They came. Both of them. Without the black guy.

  They took me. Forced me into the Mazda. We drove all around the region. It seemed to me like we were turning around and around before picking up a boulevard on the perimeter (without letting anyone pass on our right), then the highway. We crisscrossed more regions than just Ile-de-France, but I wouldn’t be able to name them today, even if I were asked under torture. As for the other regions, from the time I arrived in France, I had never been to any. What I do remember is that the car went at breakneck speed, really fast. Some kind of race car with shot shock absorbers propelled us in fits and starts and lost its steering when the red needle on the speedometer clocked 160 kilometers per hour. The car spat blackish smoke every time the motor had a coughing fit. Nobody said a word. It seemed to me we had traveled a long way. A very long way. I would have guessed that we were traveling further from the region. The signs along the highway meant nothing to me at all. There was less housing, and it became more unusual with the passing of each kilometer marker, giving way to factories, to vast pastures without cattle, to rustic countryside under a thick fog that permitted nothing but ghostly shadows to appear. I guessed there was a plow here, haystacks over there, a combine, an old broken-down tractor in the distance, next to the highway; we were in backcountry.

  But we kept on rolling.

  After more than two hours on the road, we came to a silent place that, at first, I thought was a railway depot, because broken-down trains were parked all over the place. A mass grave for railway cars. I thought about elephants that go to cemeteries to protect themselves from prying eyes. Nuts and bolts and iron bars were strewn across the ground. Yellow safety helmets hung from the branches of the few trees in this spot. Railway workers’ overalls hung from the windows of locomotives. It was quite a deserted site. Nobody around. Not the shadow of a life. We got out of the car, my arms still handcuffed to the big guy.

  In the late morning, a dusting of white snow carpeted the ground and crunched under our feet. Mine were damp, frozen, and numb. I couldn’t feel them anymore. I wasn’t dressed for the weather. A blue cloth shirt over a black T-shirt. Jeans worn through at the knees, Spring Court sneakers on my feet. I shivered. The two men made great fun of this, decked out in military boots, heavy coats, lined gloves and hats that covered their ears as if they were crossing Siberia.

  We had walked several hundred yards on foot. The engines and railway cars were far behind us. A vast expanse opened before us with a horizon of antiquated buildings. We hurried toward them. Crows punctured the fog, cavorting high in the sky, in search of the tallest ledge of those buildings, their wings clenched in the cold.

  Four thugs pushed open the gate without batting an eye when we arrived. We crossed a large deserted courtyard marked by tracks of gigantic boots. This place had clearly been used before. I noticed a fenced soccer field on the other side, a few barbells, and just one basketball hoop. We headed straight for the tallest building and took the stairs that led to the basement. The two men dragged me down an interminable corridor. Our steps reverberated in rhythm, as if we had planned it. The silence gave the place the feeling of a decrepit penitentiary, abandoned if not outright haunted.

  Awakened by the heavy silence of the place, I started to get worried. What had we come here to do? Did I deserve this isolation? Moreover, to be treated like this, was I a prisoner? That’s what it looked like. I thought it unfair that they had taken me captive. I wasn’t going to let them mistreat me this way. Certain things had to be clarified.

  Many things.

  First of all, I demand that you tell me why we’re here. What did they say to you when you shoved me into the car? Answer me, sirs! Answer! Come on, give me an answer! Is this just for today? Until this evening? Until tomorrow? Or until the day after tomorrow?

  Silence.

  I wanted to express myself, explain, convince, tell them to give me a few minutes, just a few minutes. To ask a favor: take me back to rue du Moulin-Vert in the fourteenth arrondissement. Our building. The cars parallel-parked down the whole street. The Arab on the corner who let comrades buy on credit. The stairs. The window. The wool blankets. The plastic table. The camping stove on wheels. Which was the way to rue du Moulin-Vert?

  They would drive me there. Maybe not.

  They’d say, “What are you going to do back there? No, it’s out of the question.”

  I would beg them again.

  Nothing but this one last favor, please, sirs. They would no longer listen to me. Definitely wouldn’t talk. Shut up! One more word and they’d have an excuse to beat me with a billy club. Follow them silently. Do what they want.

  And wait.

  The corridor became narrower the further we went. We went down several flights. The two men escorting me, one in front, the other behind, knew where to step. Their practiced, aloof attitude meant this was certainly routine. The bigger of the two must have been at least six feet tall. His primate arms hung down to his knees and he had to unshackle himself from me to be able to move with ease. The second man was not as tall. He turned around and looked me straight in the eye, a dark look of resolution. His thickset muscular bulk showed that he worked out assiduously.

  We had been forced to walk lopsidedly and had to hunch over so we didn’t bump into the stairs above our heads.

  Finally, we got to a heavy iron door, equipped with no less than a dozen locks. One of the two men, the smaller one, took out a bunch of keys. He picked the wrong one several times. He muttered and cursed before finding the right one. The other one, without a word of warning, pushed me into the room. . . .

  When the door slammed shut, it was as if night had fallen. I stayed still for a good minute with my eyes closed. I opened them gradually to accustom myself to the darkness. Then, little by little, a glint of light made its way through the barred holes of the building’s air ducts, way above my head.

  The silence would have been complete were it not occasionally punctured by quick footsteps, coughing, murmuring behind the door, and even sometimes, to my great surprise, by outbursts of resounding laughter that I heard coming from above this sort of cell.

  So th
ere was life in the building.

  Since then, I’ve been in this somber room, facing my shadow, which I see get up and walk without warning me. It comes and it goes. It gets up and sits down again, holding a hand to its cheek as if we formed just one entity and our fates were sealed forever.

  All their warnings struck me as ridiculous. Even left outside, alone, I wouldn’t find my way back. From the get-go, the idea of escaping never entered my head.

  I repeat: I do not consider myself a prisoner. I have nothing to escape from. But them, would they believe me? Experience had proved the contrary to them. I have no doubt, people in my situation, incensed, tried anything and everything. Wait behind the door, pretend to fall into a complete faint, then grab the throat and don’t let go of the man who would come toward them or bring in a meal.

  If they sequestered me—I can’t find a euphemism for the circumstance—in this sort of bunker, it’s only to protect themselves against an eventual escape.

  It is highly likely that a police van will come take us like damaged goods to put in storage before being disposed of later in a public dump, far away from everyday life. I say us because my intuition tells me that I’m not alone here.

  Do I have neighbors of misfortune in the adjacent rooms? Nothing indicated I should think so. Or think not. If they are there, are they there for the exact same reason as me or at least a related one? Had we also been neighbors in Seine-Saint-Denis, or did they come from other places around Paris? No information at all. A complete wall. Night.

  The rank smell.

  The room I was in had been unoccupied for a long time. In the dark, man’s only reflex is to turn inward on himself. The dark reminds him that he is nothing but an infinitesimal speck without the blessing of the light of day. He can’t set out to do anything, and he is reduced to groping his way.

  I curled up in a corner across from the door. Fatigue tightened its grip on me. But don’t sleep. Stay awake. Rub your eyelids. No, don’t sleep. Don’t do it, in order to see what is in store for me next. . . .