Eddie Signwriter

by Adam Schwartzman

  He thought about the journey preceding that.

  The prostitute near the station.

  The train.

  The cars and buses.

  He scanned down the list of cities in the window until he came to Accra.

  He hesitated for a moment, then he turned around, and climbed back down into the metro, and made his way over to the 16th arrondissement.

  THE BOATS AT TESHIE

  MARY DANKWA received three envelopes from her brother bearing Senegalese postage stamps. Each contained a postcard, the text on which was continued over a number of handwritten pages torn from a notebook. Although they arrived at the same time, they were dated over a period of half a month.

  The postcard in the earliest-dated of the envelopes bore the image of a soldier in ceremonial dress standing outside the wrought-iron gate of the Presidential Palace in Dakar. Behind him, through the gate, the pillars, stairs and walls of the palace itself were blurred. The soldier wore a thin, recently pressed, blood-red tunic, the wedge shapes of the iron still visible in the folds of the material. It had black epaulettes and a black collar with a gold buckle, and gold buttons down the front. The fit was slightly awkward, giving the soldier the appearance of a well-conceived but slightly ill-executed puppet. A large-caliber automatic assault rifle was slung diagonally across his chest. The barrel was ribbed like a husk of corn. The gun gleamed like polish. The soldier wore a red cloth cap, with a gold insignia, attached to his head by a black strap around his neck in the style of a train conductor of old. His head was slightly cocked to one side. The light made an S shape across the contours of his face. His mouth was closed. His eyes wide open, the whites like yellowed marble. The eyes themselves expressionless, as a soldier’s should be, but for the musculature around them, Mary Dankwa couldn’t help thinking, as if about to collapse like burnt plastic and reveal everything of the real person.

  Mary Dankwa turned the postcard over.

  In his message to her, Festus Ankrah explained that the Presidential Palace, figured in the blurred background of the postcard she held in her hands, was a few blocks from the Place de l’Indépendance—the Senegalese equivalent of their Black Star Square—and that a few blocks to the other side of the square, or place, as it is called in French, was the hotel where her son had stayed on his arrival in Dakar, which serves as a kind of clearinghouse. From here, he told her, Kwasi had moved into the care of other smugglers, about whom Festus Ankrah was trying to find out more. He would write again when he had news.

  The second postcard, dated ten days later and relating to his sister the information that he had discovered, had on the front the image of a building at dusk. The building was made of thick, solidly built walls, plastered and painted an earthy pink, worn milky and smudged along its balustrades, balconies and pillars, as if by the touch of human hands over many, many years. The building was divided into two levels. At the bottom, two sets of stairs with waist-high walls rose from a courtyard to a second story, in gentle symmetrical ellipses. The stairs were uneven and chipped. The second story comprised a gallery, with five pillars, obscured in darkness, behind which rooms led off further into the building. The gallery afforded an unobstructed view of the courtyard below, which was deserted but for a small child carrying a lantern, pausing, looking over his shoulder at the camera. Between the rising sides of the staircases was an arch that led to a passageway. From there, a long tunnel led under the building to its exit onto the sea, from which—through a distant doorless frame—a rectangle of light from the setting sun burst into the centre of the picture.

  Isle de Gorée, the postcard said on the front.

  On the back of the postcard, Festus Ankrah had written to his sister that from the Place de l’Indépendance clearinghouse, Kwasi had moved to a group operating close to the airport. He intended to visit there soon when he knew more. But already he knew that after a few days Kwasi had gone to Paris by aeroplane—not directly, but thankfully nor by boat or overland. As soon as Festus Ankrah could contact the people who had procured Kwasi’s ticket, and establish who facilitated his arrival and settlement in Paris, he himself would follow.

  The third and last postcard, dated only a few days after the second, and about a month before the day that Mrs. Dankwa held it in her own hands, bore the picture of a flotilla of long canoes—hundreds of them it seemed, tied up together in harbour so tightly that they resembled the scales of a fish; different colours, bleached almost to gray by years in the sea and dulled further by the evening light, seamlessly packed and overlapping, and covering the surface of the water at least twenty metres out from the shore, to where some sea birds were wheeling overhead in the low sun, indicating where pieces of fish gut and offal were to be had. On a distant boat two people, a few pixels in silhouette, appeared to be discussing the contents of a yellow bucket between them.

  In his message Festus Ankrah told his sister that the postcard she held in her hand was of a fish market, Soumbedioune, and did it not make her think of the beach at Teshie, from which their father and the other fishermen had set out on their boats when they were children?

  He told her that he had found the house from which Kwasi had flown to Europe, that he had enough information to continue his search, and that he himself would be in France in the next few days. He told her that her son was somewhere in Paris, although he would not be able to find him directly, but would have to seek out others in that country first.

  Mary Dankwa put the three postcards down.

  Yes, the third did remind her of the beach at Teshie, as long ago as it was.

  Their father, in his youth, had been the leader of one of the fishing crews that worked a watsa dugout on the sea near Accra—one with beautiful designs all along the topside planking: pictograms of swords and stools, writing she could not understand, and right at the front, the drawing of a man with enormous private parts.

  This was in the days before motor engines. When they powered their boats by muscle alone. How everyone admired them. These huge, strong men, pride of the district, eight, ten of them, paddles carving the water as they headed the canoes out through the waves.

  Admired them. But feared for them too.

  “Where do they go to when we cannot see them anymore?” Mary would ask her mother, where they stood on the shore watching the boats recede.

  “Out to where the sea is sooo deep,” their mother would say.

  “How deep?” Festus would ask—a little boy, beside himself with wonder.

  “So deep,” their mother once said, “that anything lost will never come back.”

  “But why do they get lost?” Festus asked, “Why don’t they come back?”

  “Because they die,” Mary had said sharply, “they drown.” Just because her small brother might have been fooled, she wasn’t. She knew the measure of things, her mother’s uneasiness, her father’s restlessness when the season was slack and he had to stay home.

  “No,” their mother said gently, “they don’t. They sink to the bottom of the sea, and continue to live, except that their memories of us are lost.”

  Mary noticed her brother’s mouth open as he listened, his eyes still trained on the distance.

  Their mother said, “That is why we must send them out to sea with memories of us that are so strong that they may never forget.”

  “And so that we can find them afterwards and bring them back!” Festus said, with a tone of triumph.

  “Yes,” their mother had said, “that is correct.”

  “You?” Mary said contemptuously to her brother. “You can’t even find the path to our compound.” And to finish off the conversation, “You are only six.”

  “Yes,” their mother had said. “But he is only six now,” drawing her reluctant son into the folds of her skirt, her hand falling round his head.

  Mary Dankwa, more than half a century later, frowned at the memory. Taking a last look at the postcards on the table, she began walking slowly to the bedroom, to the mat in front of the bed whe
re she prayed.

  But then she didn’t.

  Instead she went out onto the verandah, and lowered herself into a wicker chair and closed her eyes, and started to call into her mind images of her son—every one that would come, starting from the moment of his backwards birth.

  LE REFUGE CLANDESTIN

  WAITING OUTSIDE Bernadette’s apartment building on Avenue Victor Hugo, Kwasi Dankwa stood back against the wall where he could least be seen. The sodium lamps dropped pools of light onto the pavement.

  At last the door opened from the inside and a woman and her child, bundled up in wool against the cold, came out.

  He slipped behind them as they left and caught the door before it closed. He let himself into the lobby, with its marble floors and walls, its potted plants and its mirror, which a month before had reverberated with the sound of his and Bernadette’s final argument.

  He got into the elevator and pressed for the sixth floor.

  The doors closed over the lobby, and he watched the six floors gliding past through the lattice grill, and it felt like time passing and passing, each stage a life, there, then gone.

  On the sixth floor he got out and walked to the stairwell and climbed the last flight of the service steps up into the attic.

  A thin corridor ran the entire perimeter of the building, off which the converted servant quarters now housed the au pairs and lodgers and servants who lived in the eaves above the apartments.

  Bernadette opened the door on the second knock.

  At first she said nothing.

  Then she saw the small canvas bag at his feet.

  “No, Kwasi,” she said, her eyes narrowing, her bottom lip rising, as if in indignity at an undeserved and suddenly realized unkindness. “Why should I? Tell me why I should.”

  Her voice had risen, and he could hear in it her incredulity and simultaneously her hurt.

  He said softly, “Give me a week. I’ll tell you then.”

  She sighed and leaned against the doorframe.

  He didn’t look good at all to her. He wasn’t eating properly. Probably he was living on sunflower seeds and bread, she thought, which is what he snacked on.

  And he hadn’t cut his hair, for what that was worth, which made his head look round. The light shone off the oiliness in his skin. There was only one bulb in the corridor and half of his face was in shadow. He looked like the moon.

  Already, she could feel her anger subsiding. She could see how this was going to turn out if she didn’t stop it now.

  How could she trust him, she wondered, as they stood there in silence—this man, half in the light and half in the dark.

  He lifted his eyes towards her.

  He’d caught her in the middle of cooking. The kitchen was two portable electric hobs under the window. The room was filling up with the smell of frying.

  Over her shoulder he could see that the windows were closed. The glass was mottled with steam. He knew that if she didn’t open the windows the smell would get into her clothes and airing them out from the pole he’d once rigged up out of the window would probably not do the trick by morning.

  He shifted on his feet, raised his eyebrows questioningly.

  On the other side of the windows he could hear the pigeons padding around in the eaves where they nested. He could hear the ruffling of their wings. The purr of their communication.

  Without realizing it, Bernadette was still holding the wooden spoon with which she’d been stirring the chilies and tomatoes. A slow stream of hot red sauce was inching its way down the handle towards her fingers.

  He watched it but didn’t say anything.

  Still she hadn’t responded.

  The truth was she never thought she’d see him again. She was used to people coming and going. She was used to not relying on other people. Certainly not men.

  So what had there been to feel so cheated by? What had he promised? Nothing. Nor had she wanted any promises out of him.

  She stood aside to let him walk past her into the room. As she started to move he grabbed the spoon by the handle just above her hand.

  The sauce flowed over his knuckles.

  He winced but didn’t say anything.

  She saw what had happened. She let go of the spoon and he put it down.

  “That must hurt,” she said calmly.

  “It does,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said with a little less disinterest—now she was trying to wipe the hot sauce from his hand with the cloth she’d held in her other.

  He let her dab away and then tried to take her hand.

  She felt anger flaring again. She was thinking about the scene down in the lobby from his departure, the humiliation it had caused her. How could she have done that? She still couldn’t look some of the tenants in the eye. It was his fault. To have made her do that? That wasn’t her.

  She pulled away.

  But this wasn’t her either. She didn’t want to feel angry and proud.

  She said over her shoulder, “It had better be a very good story.”

  She opened the window, and tried to wave the steam out of the room with her hands. He laughed from behind her, and she laughed too.

  Then she turned around and leaned back on the counter on her hands.

  “Are you all right, Kwasi? Are you hurt? Nobody’s seen you at all. Where have you been living?”

  “Under a roof,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, the sides of her mouth turning downward in noncommittal interest.

  She asked if he’d been alone.

  He told her that he had.

  She nodded.

  Then he leaned down and picked up the bag he’d brought with him, which was at his feet. She thought it was clothes inside, but it wasn’t. He opened the bag and it was flowers he’d picked up from Madame la Fleuriste.

  “I brought these,” he said.

  What does this man think? she thought. But still she let herself smile and came over to him and took the flowers, smelled them, even as she hated the stupidity of being flattered by flowers.

  But so what? She was.

  “So is this sorry?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he told her.

  “Idiot,” she said, and she put down the flowers and let him hold her.

  Then she asked him if he was hungry.

  He was. So she added some more tomatoes to her sauce and made a double portion of rice. He got out the knives and forks and the water and salt and they ate the meal together.

  He did the washing up and then they sat down together on her sofa that opened up into her bed, and for twenty minutes, speaking softly, not looking at her, he told her where he’d been in the last four weeks, of some of the things that had happened, and what he had done and what he had felt, and something of what he made of it, to the extent that he could make anything of it at all.

  When he’d finished speaking they sat in silence.

  Then he looked at her and asked her if she thought he was crazy.

  She wanted to tell him that she didn’t care if he was, but she didn’t. She didn’t say anything.

  He said that maybe he should ask her rather if she could live with it.

  “I can,” she said, “until I can’t.”

  But then she corrected herself because it wasn’t quite what she wanted to say.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He put his hand on her hand.

  He said, “Thank you.”

  She said, “At least for tonight.”

  “Oh,” he said, “so now you want me to stay the night.”

  She said, “You don’t?”

  “I wouldn’t want you to think I’m easy,” he said.

  She smiled back. “OK,” she said, letting go of him and getting up, “then I’ll try not to,” and she went over to the basin and pushed the pots aside and got out her soaps and her toothbrush and the creams for her face to get ready for bed.

  It was the end of February. The month had but a few days to run. Over three trips h
e moved his clothes and his few possessions from Pigalle to Bernadette’s rooms. On the last of the trips he stopped by his old apartment in Strasbourg to see if perhaps Denis had come back, or in any event learn news of the others.

  Denis was gone. They were all gone. Nobody knew where he was. Six people from Vietnam were now living in his old rooms. They let him poke around for a few moments. There were still some of the pieces of furniture he and Denis had purchased, or found, or fixed—a large chest of drawers they’d once seen on a pavement in Barbès, and somehow managed to wedge in the back of Fawad the Algerian’s station wagon. An old record player that Mamadou had given him. There was a framed painting he’d picked up in his first month in Paris from a bouquiniste on Île de la Cité—a van Gogh–inspired scene of Saint Michel, all garishly yellow and blue—still hanging, though on a different wall, and behind which he and Denis would keep the monthly rent.

  He turned the painting round. There it was, three months later. The franc notes folded up like a cigar, pinned behind a nail that held the plywood in its frame, which he took. It was all the cash he had.

  Down on the street he recognized a few faces. He recognized the clochard, a knitted cap pulled tightly over his head like a tea cozy, as he slept under a stair. He recognized the tall Liberian waiter at Café Deux Garçons, who had a cut down the side of his cheek, scarred up like sofa upholstery; and two of the waiters in the Indian restaurant. He recognized in the small bar filled with mirrors, birdcages, and orchids, the woman tending the bar who was really a man.

  But he knew better than to linger as the people of the quartier came in for the early evening, and instead went round the corner to where the Refuge de l’Ouest had been. It was still closed. What had he really expected? There were posters over the windows now. The glass at the top of the doorframe was marbled over with dust. At the bottom there was still the crack where the boot of a gendarme had kicked it, patched with heavy masking tape.

  He stopped at the North African restaurant two shops down, where sometimes in the old days they would get something to eat after Monsieur Richard got tired of them and closed up the Refuge for the night.