The Restless

by Gerty Dambury

  Tailor’s cloth, tweed, velvet, quilted velvet, Vichy fabric, wool . . . He lines up his sample books against the wall, packs them together so they won’t tumble down, turns around, and viciously pushes his wife away before hiking up the pants that have fallen to his hips. Then he leaves.

  His wife mutters complaints; the children laugh.

  This scene plays out pretty often, but he does lose from time to time because, knowing almost everything about him and his ambition, his wife is skilled at hurling the most personal of insults.

  He can’t stand it when she calls him “a fake Patou, a loser.”

  When Émilienne’s father arrived in La Pointe in 1936, Jean Patou had just died of apoplexy. It’s strange, isn’t it? One moment a person is talking to you, and a second later, everything stops in his head and he dies, or everything slows down: thought processes, gestures, speech.

  Anyway, Patou was the father’s inspiration, a kind of distant relation—at least that’s what he claimed.

  The truth is, Patou had served with the Zouaves during World War I, while Emmanuel’s uncle, Lord knows why, was stationed in the Dardanelles with the Allied Army of the Orient. The two men ran into each other there, and Patou, a captain, couldn’t stop talking about what he wanted to do once the war was over: he would dive into fashion, women’s clothing, haute couture. “You mustn’t be afraid to act.” When you’ve come so close to death, you can’t waste time by hesitating.

  In short, the uncle was captivated. So the day when the first creations of the man who was to become Emmanuel’s “mentor” began to appear in magazines like Madame, the uncle—what was his name?—was proud to tell his nephew (the only boy in that whole pack of kids, and his boy too because he had no children) that Jean Patou was ALSO HIS UNCLE. He never stopped saying it: “When you have such a celebrated relative, you can’t waste away in the forests of La Côte-Sous-le-Vent. By God, I tell you, dear nephew, Pointe-à-Pitre is yours for the taking!”

  In 1936 the nephew decides to relocate to the big city. He’s learned to sew from a modest tailor in the village of Bouillante. He has talent, a lot of talent, and that same year, Jean Patou suffocates and dies.

  The uncle and the nephew interpret “Uncle” Jean Patou’s death as a sign for his disciple from afar to rise up and take his place. So there Emmanuel is, arriving in La Pointe dressed just like Patou: suit, hat—and if he’d dared, a cane, too, and even three-pieces. But you have to admit that, in Bouillante, it’s a little too hot for a jacket and a vest.

  8.

  The cake isn’t cooked enough. The middle is soggy, too heavy.

  Sylvine murmurs, “It’s a doucoune. We can’t eat it.” Everybody giggles.

  It’s not the right moment for a soggy cake. We can’t appreciate it at all; we’re too miserable. You can eat almost anything with a little joy in your heart. Just sprinkle a little joy on anything that’s bitter or tasteless. (That’s what you always say, Papa, especially when Mama gives us magnesium salts to clean us out.) But there’s nothing to be done for that disgusting cake. It’s too late to sprinkle anything on it.

  We nibble on the edges of our pieces of cake and then throw what’s left back on the tray. And we wait for the bell. Nobody speaks. We keep our arms crossed on our desks, like when we’re being punished. Our book bags are on the floor; the prizes are on our desks, next to white inkwells stained with violet ink spots.

  “Are you sulking?” She dares ask us that, Papa! Are we sulking? Of course we are. It’s her fault. She’s betrayed us!

  We watch her walk back and forth between the cupboard and her desk. She empties the cupboard calmly and puts all the work we’ve done from October to May on top of her desk. Our herb collection, all those colored rocks and birds’ feathers from our lessons about nature, and the yellowed breadfruit leaves we designed, even the makeshift paper cubes we made and got graded on. (Do you remember how much time I spent in our courtyard, Papa, bent over the blue table tearing up paper because I couldn’t figure out how to make that cube?) And odds and ends of embroidery she made us glue onto white paper: the chain stitch, the chevron stitch, the feather stitch, the herring stitch, the overcast stitch, and—the hardest of them all—the ladder hem.

  Even Mama said to me, “Soon you’ll be able to embroider my sheets.”

  Our teacher spreads out our whole year on her desk: rolls of tracing paper, sheets of bright Canson drawing paper—all the colors you can think of—stickers that have escaped from their package and created a little trail of colored spots between the cupboard and the desk. We watch them fall without moving a muscle; no one picks up the stickers. We’ve decided to let her handle this sudden departure all on her own.

  “Oh yes, there’s this too,” she says.

  And she hands us back our plastic corks, the ones we’d recycled from the Coeur Volant wine bottles. We were supposed to cut the corks in two and keep the fat part to cover it with wool for the table runners we were making.

  “Sunday is Mother’s Day. You should try to finish your runners. I’ll give these to you. You should use your free time on Thursday to finish the project.”

  We don’t say anything.

  The bell rings.

  “Make sure you pull the yarn tight, and don’t leave any space. You shouldn’t be able to see the plastic. And make sure you get your report cards signed. See you on Friday, children.”

  And we say nothing at all.

  It seems everybody already knows she’s leaving. The concierge with her cake; Madame Desravins, who tried to make us feel better; Madame Gaspésie, the principal. Everybody.

  But nobody is telling us why she has to leave. How can we find out why she’s leaving and where she’s going? Maybe she’ll tell us on Friday.

  When we go past the concierge’s loggia, Madame Parize shouts out, “How are you children doing?”

  Somebody insults her. “Ou two makrèl, Parize!”

  And then we escape, crossing rue Duplessis as fast as we can, right in the middle of traffic. We run until we get to La Place de la Victoire.

  We’ve changed; we know we’re not the same little girls. We would never have done this before: insult the concierge, tell her to mind her own business, and run wild. Like cattle set loose on the savanna. That’s what Madame Ladal always warned us about: “Don’t start running in the street, like cattle set loose on the savanna.”

  May 24, 1967. Remember that date, Papa, because that was when Madame Ladal’s good students, the best second-grade class in the Dubouchage Elementary School, ran across La Place de la Victoire like a bunch of crazed animals while Madame Parize went in search of the principal, yelling the whole time, “Who said that? Who said that? I’m telling the principal.”

  Rushing into the streets, we don’t wait for our teacher; we don’t carry her bag right up to her pretty wooden house on La Place, a house with gingerbread cutouts all around the roof.

  Normally, we walk a little ahead of her. We hurry ahead and then wait for her in front of her door. This time, since we didn’t wait, we don’t stop. And she isn’t following us like she normally does, a few feet behind with the other teachers who talk nonstop, while she listens in silence, smiling.

  She’s not with the other teachers.

  Maybe she’s no longer part of the teaching corps at Dubouchage Elementary. Maybe she’s already moved elsewhere in her head, already turned her back on us. Maybe she isn’t worried about us at all.

  So we run across La Place like mad cows, and she doesn’t even give a darn. (See, Papa, I said darn like you told me to, not damn!) Maybe she doesn’t give a darn so much that she doesn’t even see all the men who’re at La Place, many more than are normally gathered at “the senate,” as Émile calls it. That term makes Mama laugh, but you get all riled up, Papa. You think it’s stupid to call their gathering the senate. You say, “The senate is serious business.”

  But a senate on La Place de la Victoire, where men discuss problems or talk about sports, really does exist. And when we
leave school on Wednesday, there are lots of people there. Old men and young ones too.

  Every afternoon, as a rule, young men flirt with all the girls. “Psittent, what a beauty!” And they wink at us. But today at the senate everybody is really serious. No winks, no “psitt,” no “Ay!? Mi bel ti moun!”

  Everything is upside down.

  Marlyse, the Jehovah’s Witness, says, “Joy has withered away, away from the sons of men.”

  And just like every time she says that, we burst into laughter.

  9.

  Let me tell you how the first suit the child’s father ever made got him involved with the communists, even if he didn’t plan it that way. And why he stayed, even if you’d never think he would, and even if he never attended the big meetings at the Mutualité or participated in a cell. He just couldn’t get away from them. What happened is, his first customer was too poor to buy himself a suit, so he decided to pay Emmanuel in speeches and propaganda sheets until he had enough to give him real bills. Try to feed your family with that! But Emmanuel read what he gave him, and in a flash, became a total know-it-all on the history of the Soviet revolution.

  The same thing happened with the Gaullists. Because of his discretion and his nice smile, the father got himself enrolled in the party of Charles de Gaulle by a school principal who also needed a fine suit. The end result? Depending on which orders came in, he’d become either a Gaullist or a communist, especially because he was crazy enough to agree with every idea that was expressed in his presence. He’d always remark, “Once you’ve said that, you’ve said it all.”

  It was his way of showing neutrality, but everyone else just thought he was agreeing with them. And I can guarantee that he never added another word. Not a “You’re so right,” or a “Well, there I tend to disagree.” Only that expression: “Once you’ve said that, you’ve said it all,” which, of course, is just a way to say nothing at all.

  He also knew how to keep his mouth shut if by chance the communist and the Gaullist got into an argument in front of him, because it sometimes happened that they both showed up around the same time for a fitting. Who knows why he never thought to give them appointments at different times. He just said, “Come by when you can.”

  So, of course, they’d have at it in his workshop of just about two square meters. And in the middle of all those different-colored spools of thread rattling around on the floor, the piles of cloth, catalogs, tape measures, needles—and the mice those mounds of paper and cloth had attracted—the two opponents always battled it out, insulting each other. The father watched out for himself by keeping his mouth full of straight pins.

  Emmanuel became a kind of black robot, busying himself with his customers, his chest covered in pins, his mouth full of them. The two men were so involved in their squabbling, it didn’t even occur to them to ask his opinion. In any case, his mouth was sealed on those occasions, and all he could manage was an occasional “Mmmm,” which could mean anything.

  Oh, oh! I see a few other ghosts milling about. My, they’re growing impatient, but I can’t not talk about this aspect of his character. The child is still young, and we can’t allow her to wait for explanations from a father who never had an opinion of his own in the first place.

  What could he possibly teach her?

  He’s probably already messed his pants with all the events going on, and it’s not like he’d be the one to ask questions about a teacher who’s gone missing. I even wonder how upset he’d be if someone told him one of his kids had been wounded during the rioting. Maybe he’d say, “What in hell was he doing there?”

  As if the fact of sidling into an alley and getting yourself beat up by a band of crazed soldiers proves how wrong you were to walk, just to walk, to get home from school or to run an errand for your mother—a simple everyday activity turned catastrophic.

  I’ve only ever thought of the child’s father as a castrated rooster, as cowardly as a fart in the wind, a conseiller-j’applaude, agreeing with everyone—except (I’d almost forgotten this) when he screams that old refrain, the one we were taught a long time ago, the one we repeat without a second thought: “You need a whip to get those blacks moving!”

  His thunderous voice could be heard even in the farthest corners of our neighborhood’s courtyards, especially when he went after his children, usually the boys—because his daughters were princesses and untouchable, at least most of the time. And we heard that voice too when he went after his wife; then it seemed to occupy the entire street, becoming a kind of sheet that swelled in the wind, growing bigger, flying horizontally, and projecting its shadow on the ground. But after having really strutted its stuff—pecs, tummy, ass—a sheet in the wind will suddenly lose its volume and hang limply from a clothesline. Now it’s big in front, now it’s big in back, but now—flop!—the wind stops, and it falls flat, lifeless, all dried up.

  Well, Sauveur Emmanuel is just like that sheet when his wife gets angry. She’d finally snap and jump on him or throw a jug of wine in his face. He never expected it, and from the black fellow he was, he’d turn gray and trembling, calling out for help or stuttering, “Mé ka i rivé’y?” And again, “But what’s got into her?”

  Then his voice would shrink to a mere hesitation, stammering accompanied by a little smile, a smile seeking forgiveness. “Come on, you know my yelling doesn’t mean anything!”

  After that tiny embarrassed smile, he’d shrug his shoulders and flee, while the mother’s voice would grow louder and faster, penetrating our streets, our little homes, even our bedrooms like a strong draft—while we kept prudently silent.

  Frankly, when I say he’s a coward, I know I’m judging him too harshly. Of course he’s not the only person like that; his whole family is careful not to take too many risks. They take some, just what’s necessary to move up in the world, slipping in here and there, moving if possible without a hitch from one rung of the ladder to the next. And all of this carefully, slowly—but sometimes they explode without warning, as if to loosen the reins of their silent rage.

  Really, when I think about it, this cowardice disguising itself as excessive caution is pretty much the norm for the entire neighborhood. Sometimes even the roosters won’t crow. They’re being prudent, as if their singing might reveal an opinion.

  You might say I’m exaggerating, but I swear it’s true. All a politician has to do is show up, and the chickens kneel while the bull turns into a field mouse. The men’s voices, usually heard loudly complaining about the mayor, turn to whispers. Their heads incline, as if begging for something. They stammer; they laugh with the mayor or his lackeys; they offer him a shot of rum and charge it to the account they’ll have to pay later with money they aren’t earning. A total transformation.

  I mean, when I think about it—or think about it again—why should I use the word “cowardly”? What makes me think they aren’t courageous? If you really dig into this story, you’ll see that everyone has a hell of a burden to carry, just with getting up in the morning and continuing to live their lives, with customers who don’t pay, salaries that never come in. There are so many songs about it; we can’t pretend it’s only a matter of complaining. And those hordes of children tumbling out of their wives’ bellies like red ants streaming out of a discarded loaf of bread during Lent, those debts accumulating in little shops—and that impression of never quite getting on top of things, that blacks are damned for all eternity, from century to century.

  They have to be clever, tricky, and act like a fox—but all that leaves scars on the spirit. You can’t forget the other side of the coin: hating yourself for what you’ve become, for constantly questioning your life. You can end up detesting yourself, imagining what others think of you, and then rebelling, violently. You demand respect by brandishing a knife, consideration by carrying a revolver. You take revenge for slights you’ve only invented in your mind.

  Some are satisfied, not by killing anybody, but by taking on another personality, by putting on a courageous and va
liant face that shrinks any imaginary adversary.

  For example, when the child’s father tells his own story, he becomes gutsy and daring. He’s always the one speaking the loudest, while his enemies sound like weaklings, with voices he’d prefer not to have, to never have, so as to not sound pathetic.

  How he rants and raves: “By God, I tell you, if I’d really let myself go . . . If only I’d had the authority . . . If even for a moment . . . If only God had given me the strength . . . Oh, what I would have done . . . You can’t even imagine what I’m capable of doing.”

  I think I imitate him pretty well. Yeah, that’s the child’s father, all right. The father she’s waiting for in the courtyard, while trying to fend off her fears.

  THE SECOND FIGURE: L’ÉTÉ

  1.

  We call forth l’été! Let the dance begin!

  Take your places; everyone to your place!

  Escort the queen to the door!

  Accept her salutations!

  And let ma-commère prepare his entrance; his turn is next.

  His is the violin’s role.

  The accordion player gives way to the violinist, and the dancers quiet down!

  They say the violin’s too sad? What are they saying? Do they imagine we’ve invited them to an orgy, a voyé monté?

  My God, pay attention to the caller! You know nothing at all about this quadrille, Émilienne’s.

  We, the chorus of brothers and sisters, know the little one like no one else, and for once we’re listening carefully to her needs.

  Better than any of us, our Émilienne hears what the silence says. The music of the last three days will emerge from the strange universe she’s summoned.

  We’re looking at Thursday, and so much has happened on Thursday! So please, a little patience.

  My friends, the night must unfold slowly until dawn slips in. Our quadrille will evolve according to the musicians who appear.