Time has passed, it’s probably morning, now he’s alone in the apartment. Someone knocks. The force of the knocks and the authoritarian voices worry him. Mouloud is on his guard. Lost in the fog of his thoughts, a dark expression, evil, he grabs a knife in the kitchen. He opens the door and gets into a panic when he sees the uniforms in front of him. He waves the white weapon before the police officers, pushes the one who advances against his colleague, locks himself in and yells:
—I’m going to bleed you dry like sheep, leave me alone!
ROSA MARIA IS alone. Her friend Margarine is dead. Jason is in prison. Mouloud, still being sought by the police, seems to have disappeared. He’s out of circulation. Gone, paradise island on the other side of the world with seafood on the menu, white beaches, head spinning from traveling crazy and intoxicating roads—it’s all come to an end. Stretched out on the bed, her face buried in her pillow, alone in her room, she makes out blurry images of her little chocolate love walking clumsily between her lover and her along the neighborhood paths. She sees Margarine again smiling, hears her, bursting out laughing in the train cabin, romantic songs repeated in chorus before settling into the side aisles and kissing like lovers, the sun in their eyes. Some minutes of freedom, far from everything, a breath of fresh air in their lungs. The sky is pure, it bathes the countryside in sheets of gold, the landscape of Île-de-France is spectacular with trees lined up like sentinels of happiness in the immense yellow fields. Rosa Maria is a child again, the simple pleasures of childhood, hugs, tenderness that makes you feel good. She has a hard time holding back the tears, the neighborhood unhinges everybody. Margarine grew up on the streets like a wild plant, big, beautiful, and sensual in the middle of the grime on which she wound up lying forever.
Close to Rosa Maria, emptiness, an open wound, an uncertain future, now that the dreams have been punctured on all sides, evaporated into indifference and absence. Her newly spread wings have already been broken, she has fallen from the sky, all that remains is opaque mud all around her.
Her father is clearly drying up, he looks like someone being chased by the devil. At least he’s leaving her alone. He’s endlessly scratching his thick gray stubble, never saying a single word. Sonia no longer consoles her. Her big sister only asks that she kindly avoid yet another disaster, then she goes about her business.
—OK, good, now, Rosa, keep your nose clean, please, just don’t make any waves, gotta just cut your losses!
Rosa’s chest has gotten shapely, full, the young girl notices it as she contemplates her reflection for a long time in the bathroom mirror. She sighs, she’s barely been able to feel like a woman, and now she has to go to the clinic for an abortion incognito. A blade and local anesthesia are going to remove the fruit of the seconds of love with Jason. Rosa Maria has accepted putting her desire and her own will on hold.
Only yesterday, the little heart was beating timidly on the screen from the ultrasound. Fascinated at having created life by offering her body to her beloved, Rosa Maria was over the moon. Two days ago, during her lunch break, the gynecologist had examined her private parts, legs open wide on the examination table, her head leaning backward. Absent, she forbade herself to feel anything. At no point did the practitioner look at her; he merely examined.
ANGELINA GOES TO collect Anna, whom she has left for the day at a friend’s place in the neighborhood. Suffering from persistent headaches, she left work a little bit earlier. The mother is tortured, so much tragedy in such a short time. She dreams of leaving project 6000 and wishes for the complex to be swallowed up by a lifesaving tsunami after she leaves. Her husband has lost the ability to speak, you would think he’d crossed an evil spirit in person. It’s been two nights now that he’s been screaming like a crazy person, making it hard for her to sleep. Rosa avoids her, elusive, and Sonia, who’s looking pretty morose, is killing herself at work. Little Anna has tons of questions for which she has no answers.
—Karima, it’s me, Angelina. Send down the little one, I’m in a hurry . . . thanks again . . . see you later!
Her index finger leaves the button of the interphone. Angelina adjusts her outfit and takes a breath, ignoring the clamor getting louder in the distance. About a minute or so later, her daughter arrives, flies into her arms, and covers her in kisses.
—Mama, Mama, Karima says the police are all over the place. Do you know what’s going on? Apparently there are a lot of them.
Angelina almost jumps out of her skin. She starts trembling, and her migraine starts up all over again.
ROSA MARIA HAS had an anonymous abortion. She dresses in silence. The effect of the anesthesia is beginning to wear off, the pain keeps jabbing into her lower abdomen, she’s bleeding. In the end, Sonia had refused to go with her:
—You’re a real pain, Rosa, shit, I can’t. I’m working while you’re sleeping around with all these black guys! You’re on your own now!
A gust of wind picks up right before Rosa Maria’s horizon, a storm that definitively sweeps away Jason, the kisses in his aunt’s apartment. The rays of light in her eyes have disappeared, the cherished baby is now gone. Sicily carried away in one sweeping embrace, the black sand from its beaches covers the entire world, November is here, the neighborhood she makes out in the distance is uglier than ever. Ever since the iron entered her private parts, everything has disappeared. Hope has run aground, its flowing nonstop from her belly. The obstetrician wiped away the sweat on her forehead before taking a breath and washing her hands. Rosa Maria is suffering, her body and her soul form one great affliction. Nothing left to see on the ultrasound screen, everything has been replaced with agony, starting from her knees and moving right up to the tears that have yet to be shed. Ten thousand white-hot needles torturing her abdomen and lodged into her thighs.
CAPTAIN TRAORÉ AND his colleague from the antiriot police are reviewing the situation. Moussa begins to question the methods being used. He doesn’t like the cold and warlike tone of his counterpart, who wants to wrap up the whole matter as soon as possible. It will be up to the courts to determine the guilt of the young man being pursued, who still deserves some respect.
Police officers have been deployed around the building. A special intervention team advances slowly up the stairwell. The inhabitants of the entrance have been evacuated. A cordon is keeping the crowd at a reasonable distance.
The whole situation has left Moussa with a bad taste in his mouth. The young man, who will not be able to get away from them, remains a mystery to him. Why didn’t he try to escape? The measures that have been put in place concerning this unstable person seem exaggerated, out of proportion.
Angelina and Anna cross the street quickly, right in front of the police car driving at full speed, blue police lights flashing with a deafening siren. It goes by so fast that it’s impossible to make out Mouloud’s parents, completely doubled over, in tears in the back seat. From the front seat, Laurence da Silva is holding the hand of the old woman and trying to comfort her:
—Don’t worry, ma’am, it’s going to be all right.
—My son didn’t do anything, he’s a good person!
Her husband is wearing a hard, cold mask, moist streaks on his expressionless face, the traces of tears. Laurence is taking them to the police station. She’s going to record their deposition before handing them over to the national police force’s psychological unit.
Rosa Maria is in pain, suffering with each step she takes to the bus stop. Her dashed hopes have left an emptiness in her head, solitude, despair.
—The suspect has just washed his face, his hands, and feet in a basin of water, he’s squatting and reading a big book . . .
Moussa is distraught, he’s thinking about sitting down for a minute. He would love to be able to explain to his colleagues that however guilty the suspect might be, this is a solemn moment for a believer. The captain is standing on stiff legs, stoic, just as much a stranger to his colleagues with whom he shares the three-striped card as the one who is submitting
himself to God right in this moment.
The blood is pulsating like crazy in Angelina’s veins, especially at her temples. That bad feeling she’s been having since yesterday has now been confirmed. Something catastrophic is lurking in the air. She hastens her step, dragging Anna brutally by the arm, ignoring the child’s complaining:
—Don’t pull so hard, Mama, you’re hurting me!
The mother makes out a gathering in the distance, the fear of yet another tragedy grips her in the stomach, her moist hands begin to tremble uncontrollably. Police officers in huge numbers are on a war footing, the tension is palpable, a tragedy has occurred.
Luckily, it’s not the entrance to her building. Angelina is relieved that at least this time her family has been spared.
ROSA MARIA IS waiting alone under the bus shelter. Still, she feels neglected, abandoned, wounded, heading to the complex, returning to no life, humiliated.
Mouloud murmurs, he chants while rocking back and forth, the palms of his hands caress his face before resting delicately on his thighs close to his knees. He repeats these gestures again and again, a part of life, bracketed from the world around him. Mouloud prays for his parents. Eaten away by regret, he asks Rosa and the child she’s carrying to forgive him. He submits to the Almighty, the only one who can forgive his mistakes. He swears that he tried to do the impossible before the situation got out of hand and became a crazy story, a real disaster . . . To the point of no return.
Mouloud is all confused, his ideas are getting all mixed up again. Margarine, resuscitated, kisses him on his forehead and caresses his cheek, she’s wearing a necklace of tropical flowers, a light transparent sarong that barely covers her legs, a gold and silver piece of jewelry decorates her navel, she is beautiful. A distant voice comes to his ears and whispers: Indulge yourself, Get away, Discover Bora-Bora!
Margarine and Mouloud embrace tenderly, a fluid dance, barely swaying in the basement, they reconcile. Then Rosa and her son run toward them on a white sandy beach of the South Pacific. A warm, smooth voice out of nowhere announces in the mic:
—Welcome to Bora-Bora! The water temperature is perfect, dinner, seafood on a bed of coco leaves, and nonalcoholic cocktails will be served under the palm trees at approximately eight p.m.!
Mouloud doesn’t hear the loudspeaker threatening, the police summoning him to surrender, he is surrounded, no chance of getting out:
—You would be well advised to cooperate . . .
Amid the confusion in his head, Margarine is dancing on the beach. The sound of the boots in the stairwell is dangerously gaining momentum. Mouloud is surprised to feel his pulse racing so fast, his palms are sweaty, he sees himself straddling a white horse over there in the desert, the sand is turquoise blue, the tide coming in and out . . . Project 6000 is disappearing into the calm of the waters.
Mouloud is unable to complete his prayers before the door bursts open. He has just enough time to catch a glimpse of the weapons and the helmets of the officers who rush toward him, as one of them maces him. Mouloud passes out, the world vanishes and suddenly drowns into a thick fog.
ANGELINA TAKES A turn to bypass the crowd, dreaming of just collapsing onto her sofa in the living room, to forget herself for a moment, close her eyes before taking a hot bubble bath of fruity fragrances. Then to dine afterward in the quiet and fall into a deep sleep. Anna climbs the stairs quickly to the second floor and, waiting for her mother at the doorstep, goes ahead and knocks:
—Nobody’s home, Mama!
They enter, Angelina is immediately worried. Anna settles into the armchair in the living room and turns on the TV. At the edge of the open window in the back of the kitchen, there’s a letter addressed to Angelina. Her fingers are trembling so much she has a hard time opening it. The text is brief:
She was still breathing when I got down to the basement. I recognized Antonio’s belt and I went crazy. May God forgive me.
SALVATORE
Angelina rushes into their bedroom. It’s empty. She opens Antonio’s bedroom, then the girls’, still nothing, and Salvatore is not there either. She stops for a minute, reads the letter she’s holding in her hand again, and rushes outside.
—Where you going, Mama?
Angelina descends the stairs to the basement, enters the basement, and stumbles on a chair turned upside down. She feels her way for the light switch, the light goes on. Salvatore has hanged himself with an electric cord attached to a hook in the ceiling. His tongue is dangling from his mouth, giving him a goofy-looking expression. His stomach has sunk toward the ground, and he has soiled the pants he’s wearing, held up by his son’s belt. A yellowish stain has formed beneath him, and there’s a disgusting smell. Angelina stares at the scratch marks around her husband’s neck. The instinct to survive must have compelled him to fight before his passing. A part of Angelina dies right there on the spot, blown away by the nightmare of her husband suspended in the air. She recognizes the jacket, the shirt, and the black pants, fitting poorly now after so many years, the outfit he was wearing on their wedding day, back there in Sicily, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, an outdoor celebration that was filled with so much hope, at the foot of the mountain . . .
THE BUS RIDE home to the neighborhood seems interminable to Rosa Maria, the torture continues, the agony of tiny metallic needles planted into a wound continues to torment her stomach. At the least break or sudden start-up of the vehicle, the pain becomes unbearable, running all the way down to her toes before shooting back up her spinal column and lodging itself in her spine. Amid the general indifference, she has a hard time getting up from her seat to get off. The young woman walks painfully toward the projects, doing her best to absorb the wave of shock that shakes up her whole being as soon as she puts her foot down on the asphalt. She moves along wincing, stops for a moment, and looks up.
A noisy agitated crowd blocks her view. There are vans and blue uniforms close to Mouloud’s entrance. In the distance, a loudspeaker and a barely audible message, yet she is able to hear:
—Mouloud Zayed . . . This is the police . . .
Rosa Maria refuses to hear any more. The wound between her legs, the commotion in her ears, not a word from her mouth, the dried-up dream buried in her eyes, sweet revolt in her fists, she decides to turn around.
The young woman imagines light somewhere toward the horizon, she ignores the rectangular buildings at her back and the cold, moist wind that brings with it the bitter smell of exhaust pipes. Rosa Maria heads past the cars and trash containers, crosses the square in front of the supermarket, and takes off. She advances backward to distance herself from the grime and the concrete. The sky is black with dark clouds. Bitterness is doing a number on her, Rosa Maria is heading toward the unknown, she’s not afraid.
A bus deposits her at the train station. While going down the steps, she stares at the tracks and hesitates a moment . . . In the distance, the yellow headlights of a locomotive looms in the night. As it approaches, a fresh breeze blows through her hair and violently sweeps the platform. Weak in her bearing, she vacillates, closes her eyes, and rocks gently from front to back on the tips of her toes. The emptiness before her pulls her in.
Rosa Maria allows herself to be lulled by the rhythm of the monotonous motion, her eyelids closed until the train pulls into the Gare du Nord station.
So as not to miss out on the landscapes she will discover in the morning, she settles in comfortably into a window seat, in the direction of the moving mainline train that will take her far from the project 6000 cages. Anywhere. The final whistle blow rings out. With tear-filled eyes, Rosa Maria is dreaming.
WILFRIED N’SONDÉ was born in 1969 in the Congo (Brazzaville) and grew up in France. He is widely considered one of the shining lights of the new generation of African and Afropean writers. His work has received considerable critical attention and been recognized with prestigious literary awards, including the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Senghor de la création littéraire. He
is author of The Heart of the Leopard Children and The Silence of the Spirits.
KAREN LINDO is a scholar of French and Francophone literatures and currently teaches and translates in Paris.
Concrete Flowers Page 13