by Maryse Conde
The wreaths had not yet wilted on his wife’s tomb when Thomas set off again for the Home. Blacks and whites alike saw it coming. Even so, they were shocked. Should a defenseless child be handed over to her maman’s murderer?
They say you cannot remember anything before the age of five.
However young she was at the time, Ludivine was never to forget the first time she met Celanire.
She had left the governor’s palace midmorning. Her papa had explained to her he worshipped her like the apple of his eye. But a father cannot take care of his little girl all on his own. He was placing her therefore in the care of a lady who was as good as she was beautiful, who would take charge of her education. She would not live all alone in the palace, lost in a huge mansion. She would have lots of little playmates her own age. He made her say farewell to Ana, her beloved maid. Then they had left. The weather was terrible, of course. To protect her from the rain Ana had dressed her in boots and yellow oilskin, which made her feel too hot. The path up to the Home seemed a difficult climb, pitted with potholes filled with rotten leaves and muddy water. Thinking of Ana, she could not help whining and sobbing, even though her papa kept repeating, somewhat irritatedly; “Stop crying, for goodness sake!”
The Home made her think of a prison with its fence overgrown with thick vegetation barring the sky. As for the garden, the Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens in Paris, where her maid used to take her to play, were far nicer.
Doing her best to keep her head up, she entered the nursery, a huge tiled room, the only adornment being a crucifix nailed to a wall. Here a dozen children of her age—Papa had been right—ranging in skin color from yellowish brown to off-white, boys and girls, all closely cropped, dressed in steel gray smocks, were grouped around a piano. As clean as new pins, even chubby in some cases, they nevertheless had the look of society’s rejects, a nobody-wants-
me-on-this-earth expression. They were singing with a long face:
Baa-baa black sheep
Have you any wool?
Yes sir! Yes sir!
Three bags full!
This was the music class, which she taught herself, explained the young woman seated at the piano. After giving Thomas a tender kiss, she clapped her hands to indicate class was over and stood up. The children surged to the back of the room, where a group of African women rigged out in blue veils and long white nurse’s aprons was waiting for them.
The stranger approached with a smile.
“So you’re Ludivine? My name is Celanire. Something tells me we’re going to do great things together.”
Ludivine was no fool, unlike Thomas, who was staring at Celanire, besotted. This smile clinging lopsided to a set of cruel ivory teeth hung like a piece of frippery on a carnival puppet. It wobbled from side to side. Even so, she was impressed by her beauty. Here too her papa had been right. Not a classical beauty, which Charlotte had bequeathed her—an aquiline nose, a domed forehead, a finely drawn mouth. No, Celanire possessed the beauty of the devil! A thick black braid snaked down her back, as if it had a life of its own. You could not take your eyes off a wide blue ribbon studded with a tiny golden heart wound tight around her throat. What did it conceal underneath? You sensed some terrible, terrifying secret.
“She looks like her mother,” Celanire remarked with a semblance of emotion.
Thomas seemed surprised. How could she know? She had never met Charlotte. Celanire was not disconcerted. She explained in a mysterious tone of voice that she had visions and premonitions. In her dreams she could see people who were going to die. Or even those already dead. The day Charlotte disappeared, she thought she saw her standing under her window in the flower beds of dahlias, busy admiring the Home. She was dark, wasn’t she? Like an Italian with green eyes. She was wearing a pastel-colored dress, and since she had lost so much weight in Africa, she wore her wedding ring on her middle finger.
Thomas was stunned by the accuracy of her description.
Ludivine went and joined the other children at the back of the room. They made way for her as she approached, then closed in around her, as if to signify they had adopted her. They began halfheartedly to play with modeling clay. The supervising nurses paid scant attention to their charge, talking earnestly among themselves, and never stopped giggling. They were watching Thomas and Celanire, who, shoulder to shoulder, were playing a piece for four hands. For Celanire was an accomplished musician. She sang like a nightingale and was capable of playing Beethoven sonatas to perfection as well as enchanting the listener with her recorder. The nurses seemed to find the sight hilarious. Thomas finally took leave of Celanire, standing to attention and clicking his heels in military fashion before kissing her hand most civilly. Then he lightly brushed his daughter’s forehead with his lips and drew the sign of the cross. Ludivine swallowed back her tears, for her papa’s was the last familiar face she was to see. When he had disappeared, Celanire signaled to one of the nurses to take her by the hand up to a room on the second floor. A dormitory—rows of identical twin beds tightly stretched with bedspreads in yellow and green African cloth. Beside each bed stood a yellow wardrobe painted with a green number. On the wall, a crucifix like the one on the ground floor.
The nurse assigned her bed and wardrobe number 16. She removed her white chiffon dress and slipped on a smock. Then, armed with a pair of scissors, she began snipping one by one the curls of her mop of black hair until her head was completely shaved. When they went back down, the nurse led her to a table in a refectory as austere as the classroom and the dormitory. Children and adults alike stood, head lowered, in front of their place. On a platform Celanire was saying grace.
Despite the prayers that tumbled out of her mouth, she looked the very picture of sin. She was so hot she could have set a church font ablaze. Ludivine swallowed back her tears. One of the nurses placed a ball of yam foutou on her plate and sprinkled it with chicken kedjenou. She realized she was very hungry, and the sight of the chicken kedjenou made her mouth water.
Ana had gotten her used to such food, and now she had a natural liking for these spicy dishes and their rough, barbaric taste.
6
In the end Bingerville recovered in next to no time from the death of Charlotte. Too many major events followed the tragedy, one after the other. On the French side, Karamanlis finally managed to commit suicide, by drowning. The Father Templar died from a heart attack. Their beloved Father Rascasse left for the colony of Oubangui-Chari. No sooner had it been built than it was announced that Bingerville was going to lose its rank as capital of the colony to Abidjan-Santey. What had been the point of so much trouble and effort? For the Africans, their concerns were all too clear: corvée and taxes had been increased, and then there was the news that Tanella, Mawourou’s murderer, had been acquitted by the court in Dakar and was returning to the Ivory Coast. Acquitted! The jury had decided she had acted in self-defense. No doubt about it, the white man’s world was walking on its head! In short, it wasn’t long before everyone had something else to think about. In the markets, the gin bars, the factories, the trading houses, and the offices, in the residential districts as well as the poto-poto neighborhoods, conversation turned to other things.
One morning, a messenger brought Hakim another letter from Celanire. She apologized for harping on the subject. What must he think of her? But she had learned—nothing was a secret in Bingerville—that he had fallen out with Betti Bouah. Under the circumstances, wouldn’t he like to reconsider her offer, to which, in fact, he had never replied? Sadly enough, Celanire was speaking the truth. Betti Bouah and Hakim could no longer bear the sight of each other. Betti Bouah realized that Hakim was a very different person from what he had imagined. When it was a question of badmouthing the French, Hakim was only too ready. But when it came to working as hard as they did, he was nowhere to be seen. He had demanded a five-day workweek, plus weekends off as was the custom in England and the colonies of the Crown. He insisted on being paid a commission on his sales. And that he was ent
itled to two days off for the feast of Tabaski, since he had declared himself Muslim. Naturally, Betti Bouah had not given in to any of his demands, and Hakim had sent him a stinging letter, calling him an exploiter. Betti Bouah had got a laugh out of that. Exploiter! Here was a new word! Apparently the traditional chiefs were just as much exploiters as the whites. Ever since, the two men had ignored each other and limited any contact to the business of palm oil. No more hot chocolate at four in the afternoon, no more discussions on “pacification,” no more exchange of books. Hakim thought of writing a letter, this time a letter of resignation. What held him back was that once his pride had been satisfied by this act of bravado, there would be nothing or nobody to help him fill his belly. The mission would no longer want him as Mr. Philosophizer. So he would have to return to Soudan, and in order not to starve to death, he would have to live off his grandfather or one of his uncles on his mother’s side.
He therefore plucked up his courage. To accept Celanire’s offer was the last thing he wanted, but it was the only thing preventing him from descending into destitution.
With his mind made up, he set off for the Home one Sunday. Mass had just finished. The pupils, in freshly starched white uniforms edged in green, were filing out of the chapel, chaperoned by their monitors, now rid of their nurses’ garb and dressed in identical wrappers with identical motifs, for apparently Celanire liked her surroundings to be symmetrical. Hakim took the arm she offered him. What a chatterbox! She never stopped for one minute. Without waiting to get her breath back, she told him how she had trained a choir to sing the Beatus Vir and the Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera by Vivaldi, her favorite composer. The choir had been invited to Grand-Bassam in a month’s time for the inception of the new bishop. Considering her four pupils, one of whom was a girl, had passed the native certificate for elementary studies and were preparing to become grade-five office clerks, she had every reason to be proud. Hakim remained silent. In Bingerville gossip had begun to circulate openly about the true nature of the Home. Some of the nurses whispered that once the children had been put to bed, they were paired off with those nice, gentle white officers and soldiers who gave them all sorts of presents and caresses. No comparison with those rough, lascivious Africans. Never an unkind word, a clout, or a thrashing! The first French words they learned therefore, were “cherí” or “mon amour.”
Celanire and Hakim entered a drawing room furnished in exquisite taste. There she whirled around to show off her costume. For she was dressed in a fashion he had never seen before. A full gown of rich, dark red silk was gathered at the waist over a white lace petticoat with three flounces. Her neck was encased in a collaret of frilled lawn similar to the ruffs portrayed in old engravings. Her hair was frizzed out, rolled into coquette bobs over her ears. She swamped him with explanations in her self-satisfaction. This Guadeloupean costume was called a matador gown. She had given it a personal touch by adding the collaret and leaving out the madras head tie. The traditional jewelry was also missing—the gold-bead choker and the earrings. Suddenly she stopped her hollow talk, and her face took on an expression of reproach. He had put off accepting her offer, and now Betti Bouah had let him down. Didn’t he realize that once the Africans had hoisted themselves up level with the whites, they would prove to be even more wicked? Envious, that’s what they were, only set on taking their masters’ place. Colonization would be followed by worse events, and the name neocolonialism would be invented to describe them. Hakim said his mea culpa. He now wanted to turn the page and start working for her as quickly as possible. What would she like him to do? At that moment he bravely turned to face her.
Celanire stared at him like a cat about to devour a mouse or a python about to swallow its prey, before uncoiling itself to digest it in voluptuous pleasure. She stretched out her arm and stroked his neck, winding a lock of his hair around one of her fingers. Hakim stammered out the terms of her letter as a reminder. She had promised him: no love, no sex. She laughed, revealing her white teeth and blue-black gums. And he had believed her? Only a fool would trust the words of a woman, especially if she were in love! She edged closer to him and whispered in his ear. She knew of his preferences, his desire for Kwame Aniedo. Nothing shocking about that. Everyone does what he likes with his body. She herself swung both ways, as the popular saying goes. But let her show him how she could get him to like other things than boys. Thereupon she grabbed his shirt and unbuttoned it. It was this offhand manner, this way of hers of treating him like a sex object, that infuriated Hakim. He shoved her away brutally and hammered her breasts. They rolled over on the floor. As agile as an eel, she climbed on top of him and pressed her mouth against his. Disgusted, he felt sucked in by this dank cavern. He reversed the situation, nailed her under him, and in his rage, grabbed her by the neck as if he wanted to strangle her. His fingers got caught in her collaret, ripped it off, and threw it away. She uttered a shriek and clasped her hands to her throat while her eyes dimmed, like a dampened firebrand. He remained speechless, stunned by what he had uncovered.
A monstrous scar.
A purplish, rubberlike tourniquet, thick as a roll of flesh, repoussé, stitched and pockmarked, wound around her neck. It was as if her neck had been slashed on both sides, then patched up and the flesh pulled together by force, oozing lumps all the way around.
While Celanire’s eyes sprang back to life and glowed wickedly, Hakim ran for the door without further ado. The recreation yard was deserted, since the pupils were back in the refectory and the garden.
For the remainder of the day Hakim stayed holed up in his room. So the superstition was true. Celanire was a “horse,” and her mark was hidden on her neck. It was this extraordinary scar he had seen with his own two eyes. Consequently, he was to be the next victim: his death was foretold. Would he too be stung by a mysterious spider? Devoured by man-eating lions? How would it happen? How? He sweated and shook with fright all over. When night fell, he could not stand its darkness. He imagined the circle of trees around the house to be the lair of mysterious creatures. He could hear them hiss, murmur, and shriek. He ran to Njiri’s, where they served palm wine and akpetseshie smuggled in from the Gold Coast. But nothing could deaden memory and conscience like the white man’s liquor: gin, brandy, and absinthe.
The following morning he was stumbling out of bed in a daze when the widow Desrussie knocked on his door again. A third letter from Celanire. The woman certainly had no sense of shame; once more she apologized. Could he really be angry with her? Wasn’t he flattered that a woman desired him so violently? But that wasn’t the point of her letter. He had discovered her painful secret. Her slashed throat. She begged him to come so that she could explain. Hakim thought he smelled a rat. Celanire was cajoling him the better to smother him. He tore the letter up into a thousand pieces and did not trouble to reply.
From that day on he lived on borrowed time. The yelp of a dog, the howl of a monkey, or the scurry of a rat would make him jump. At night, the rustle of an insect or a bat beating its wings as it tangled in the straw of the roof made him go crazy. On the surface it was the same routine. Every morning he watched the same sun rise above the greenery of Bingerville. Three days out of five he climbed into the same outboard, made the rounds of the same suppliers of palm oil and kernels, and loaded his booty onto the same dugouts. The remainder of the week was spent in one of the warehouses where the oil was extracted and poured into casks to be shipped to Grand-Bassam. When he returned home of an evening, he had to help Kwame Aniedo as well as overcome his fatigue and his nagging sexual desire. Yet these routine gestures were transformed by the fear that had wormed its way inside him, that had crept into every corner of his being and tainted every second of his life. The young man who once mocked superstition now seriously considered consulting a fetish priest. After the death of their sworn enemy, the Father Templar, Diamagaram and the others had reoccupied Felix Koffi’s compound as if nothing had happened. They continued to work against the French but could not prevent the k
ing from giving the Home more land. Celanire had turned it into an experimental garden where she intended planting coffee and cacao, those new plants of which the French had great expectations.
Hakim was convinced that nothing nor nobody could save him from Celanire.
And that’s why he took to drink.
And that’s why he became a regular at Njiri’s bar.
Only there did he feel safe. After having downed half a bottle of gin or absinthe, he began to reason with himself. How could he, a liberated young man, ex-philosophizer who had read the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, take at face value a load of superstitions good for ignoramuses? Okay, Celanire was a nutcase! Okay, she had the hots for him. But that was all. As for her scar, she was probably operated on for a goiter or some sort of hypertrophy of the thyroid.