The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana

by Maryse Conde

  After a few months they began to stand up and walk bowlegged until their legs straightened and turned into two pretty pillars. They soon began to speak and endeavored to put the world around them into words. When silence was required they learned not to make a sound. Consequently Simone could take them to her choir of an evening. They sat on their little benches as good as gold, sucking their thumbs, beating their hands in rhythm to the music. Famous from one end of Guadeloupe to another, the choir specialized in the island’s old melodies, one of which, “Mougué,” dated back to the time of slavery when the slaves were in irons.

  Mougué yé kok-la chanté kokiyoko.

  The song “Adieu foulard, adieu madras” dated back to the time when the crowds sang on the quay while the steamships of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique left for the port of Le Havre, their berths loaded with civil servants on administrative leave.

  Adieu foulard, adieu madras, adieu gren d’or, adieu collier-chou.

  As for “Ban mwen an ti bo,” it was composed during the schmaltzy doudouiste period when Creole was considered to be nothing more than bird twittering and not a language of protestation.

  Ban mwen ti bo, dé ti bo, twa ti bi lanmou.

  After her singing Simone would dance barefoot and throw back her shoulders, her silhouette standing out from the other women who were incapable of rivaling so much grace and beauty. She was often accompanied by her mother, who was just as black, but with hair powdery-white like salt. Her mother was called Maeva. With no milk in her breasts she would feed the babies with spoonfuls of savory cereal. Maeva and Simone would take each other by the hand, bow, and do entrechats. For the two children this was the first such performance they were to see.

  Simone never failed to tell them why they were called Ivan and Ivana and why she had stood up to the priest. Ivan was named after the Czar of All the Russias, a capricious and atrabilious man who had lived in the sixteenth century. Ivana was a feminine version of his name. When she was younger Simone was too poor to afford a seat at the cinema on the Champ d’Arbaud in Basse-Terre. She only watched films when Ciné Bravo, a cultural association, set up a white cloth on the main square in Dos d’ne. That was how she sat in awe through a series of films comprehending little of the cavalcade of images and matching music that filled her eyes. The children sat on numbered metal chairs in the first row. The older generations crawled out of the woodwork of their shacks like cockroaches on a rainy day. Everyone went on chattering loudly until a gong called for silence. Then the magic began. One of these films, Ivan the Terrible, had made a deep impression on her. She couldn’t remember the name of the director or those of the actors. All she could recall was the lavish jumble of images.

  While Ivan was born first, Ivana took refuge behind her brother as if he were destined to be forever and wherever in command. He was the first to learn to dance, filling all those around him with admiration for his instinctive sense of rhythm.

  One particular date comes to mind. When the twins were five years old Simone gave them a thorough wash, put on their best clothes, two unbleached linen bodysuits embroidered with cross-stitch, and took them to have their photo taken at the studio Catani. This was one of the obligations that no inhabitant of the actual island of Guadeloupe (as Basse-Terre was called at that time) could shirk. Louis Catani was the son of Sergio Catani, an Italian who arrived from Turin in the 1930s because he had no intention of marrying a Fiat like his brothers. Car engines and bodywork did not interest him. He was more interested in portraying men’s grim, pimply faces, or those with a fresh face and smooth skin, languishing looks or piercing eyes. Comfortably well-off from his wife’s dowry, a rich white Creole heiress, Sergio Catani opened a photo shop he called Reflections in an Eye, which was the talk of Basse-Terre. On weekends he set up his camera in the countryside and captured everything that caught his eye. He published three books, now forgotten, but which at the time were highly successful: Gens de la Ville, Gens de la Campagne, and Gens de la Mer.

  The portrait of Ivan and Ivana appears on page fifteen of Volume One, entitled “The Little Lovers.” It features two children holding hands and smiling at the camera. For some reason the boy is darker than the girl, but just as adorable.

  Ivan and Ivana lived in the company of women—their mother, their grandmother, aunts, cousins, aunts-in-law, and cousins-in-law—who each took turns washing them, dressing them, and filling their stomachs with food.

  Of the two, Ivana was more inclined to dream. She would examine flowers and leaves, smelling their scents, and seeking the company of domestic animals. She was especially fascinated by birdsong and the color of butterflies which her chubby, clumsy hands tried to capture as they flew by. Her mother devoured her with kisses and as proof of her love invented light-hearted songs especially for her.

  Ivan considered his sister his own personal property and grudgingly accepted the love she showed for their mother. As soon as he was old enough, he was the one who washed her, chose her clothes, and tied her mop of picky hair into braided buns glistening with black castor oil. At night, more than once, Simone found them sleeping in each other’s arms, which was not to her liking. Nevertheless she didn’t dare intervene. The power of their love intimidated her.

  The first years therefore went by in perfect happiness.

  The place where Ivan and Ivana were born was called Dos d’ne, a village no uglier or lovelier than the others scattered along the Leeward Coast. Their only claim to finery was the immensity of the sea, the pink and blue sky over their heads, and the emerald green of the sugarcane.

  The school stood in the center of Dos d’ne. It had been rebuilt from top to bottom by the Conseil Général after Hugo, one of the most terrible hurricanes Guadeloupe had ever experienced. It was built at the top of a hill on whose slopes the shacks were terraced. Ivan and Ivana very soon realized they had no father in Guadeloupe. Their father, Lansana Diarra, was part of a Mandingo traditional ensemble that had come to perform in Pointe-à-Pitre. No sooner had he made Simone pregnant than he returned home to Mali. He had promised to send her a ticket to come and join him but never did. Simone had seldom left her island. Occasionally the choir was invited to Martinique and Guyana. Lansana Diarra, however, regularly sent postcards and letters to his children. And that was the reason why Ivan and Ivana grew up with the dream of a wondrous country where their parents would be reunited: Papa plus Maman.

  Lansana Diarra was originally from Segu in Mali and belonged to the royal family who had previously ruled the kingdom. Now ruined by the consequences of colonization, they had withdrawn to Kidal and got by trafficking kola nuts. Instead of attending school Lansana and his brother Mady sat on the back of an ill-natured, raucous camel and transported huge sacks of nuts. Sometimes they journeyed as far as the great city of Taoudenni, known for its salt mines. Shadows emerged from every wall and every thorny copse. When they were not traveling with their father, Lansana and Mady sat beside their mother in the noisy, filthy market. One day Lansana came across a house he hadn’t previously noticed and was struck by the music which suddenly filled his ears. Two musical instruments were answering each other, one shrill and slightly piercing, the inimitable ngoni, the other, which he had never heard before, ample, majestic, and deep-sounding. The music stopped and a human voice rose up, that of a griot, of an indescribable harmony. Lansana stopped in his tracks. The following morning as if guided by a magnet he returned to the same place. Then again the day after and the days after that. This little game lasted for about a week when all of a sudden the door opened. A tall, scrawny man emerged with an emaciated face under a long head of gray hair as tangled as a fetish doll’s.

  “What do you want?” he shouted at Lansana.

  Lansana’s only thought was to run but the man grabbed him by the wrist and said in a gentler tone, as if he regretted his bluntness:

  “Why are you running away? You are not doing anything wrong. Music is a sweet sug
ary loaf which we can all share.”

  He dragged Lansana inside the house, where another man, a white man with a mop of curly hair, was clutching an enormous instrument in the shape of a violin. These two men were the famous griot Balla Faseke and the no less famous cellist Victor Lacroix. That was how Lansana became the pupil of two of the best musicians of his time.

  At the early age of seventeen he too had acquired a reputation beyond compare. When he was twenty he was invited all over the world from Tokyo, Jakarta, and Beijing, to Paris, where he gave a concert in front of an audience in raptures.

  From her very early years Ivana proved gifted at school. The teacher would read out to the class her French homework and give her top marks. She was also an obedient, well-behaved little girl, never without a kind word and the budding flower of a smile at the corner of her mouth. Everyone adored her, especially the aunts in the choir. They claimed Ivana would go far and had a voice of gold that would captivate admirers in Basse-Terre and beyond.

  Nobody, however, could put up with Ivan, who was disobedient and always prepared to hurl abuse, a real little hooligan. With his shirt gaping open on a chest glistening with sweat, he dared to constantly defy and disrespect men and women much older than himself. He fully deserved the nickname of “hoodlum.” But as the years went by the affection that united the two children never dwindled.

  Ivan’s sharp, raucous voice took on a softer tone when he spoke to his sister. As soon as Ivana appeared Ivan would holster his bravados and become as meek as a lamb. Ivan vaguely remembered the pleasure he got from his sister’s body. When? He could no longer recall. Perhaps in another life? As a result Ivana frightened him somewhat because of this desire that never ceased to haunt him: her brown skin, the small cups of her breasts, and the tight curly hairs of her pubis.

  The second date that comes to mind is when they were ten years old and Simone took them to Basse-Terre. Basse-Terre is a small, nondescript town; only the monuments built by Ali Tur make an impression. This Tunisian architect was commissioned by the government to repair the damage wreaked by the hurricane of 1928. The Conseil Général and the Préfecture especially are worth a visit. Simone regularly traveled to Basse-Terre to buy manuscript paper on which she noted her compositions. She seldom took her children with her. Where would she find the money to pay for three round-trip bus tickets? How could she even afford to buy a codfish sandwich from one of the cheap restaurants on the edge of the market?

  But this time she got it into her head to let them enjoy the ride. They climbed into the bus Hope in God that drove for a good hour. The road from Dos d’ne to Basse-Terre is “magnificent,” as the tourist brochures say without exaggeration. It is lined by flame trees that turn scarlet in season. It overlooks the sea and you travel between the blue of the sky and the phosphorescent blue of the ocean that unrolls to your left.

  When they arrived at the noisy, multicolored market, typical of the tropics, they decided to buy those brown-skinned fruit they call sapodilla, which have given their name to a black woman’s velvety skin. Nobody knows exactly how the quarrel broke out with the market woman, but the fact remains that under her ill-fitting yellow and green madras head tie, her cheeks glistening with sweat, she insulted Simone who was clutching her children. She berated them in no uncertain terms in a thick, aggressive Creole:

  “Just look at these good-for-nothings, miserably black, who are complaining my fruit is not sweet enough. People like you shouldn’t be allowed on this earth.”

  From that day on Ivan and Ivana realized they belonged to the most underprivileged category of the population, the ones anyone could insult as they liked. At Dos d’ne they weren’t aware of social differences. Except for the school and the town hall, there was no building of significance, no fine houses, no flower-bedecked garden. Everyone lived in the same miserable shacks seeking to earn a living as best they could and hoping to find a little happiness.

  In an instant they realized their skin was black, their hair kinky, and that their mother worked herself to the bone in the sugarcane fields for a pittance. Ivana was heartbroken and she promised that one day she would avenge her mother and give her the gentler way of life that she deserved. Yes, one day her life would be coated with barley sugar. Ivan, however, was filled with rage against life and against his fate which had turned him into an underprivileged subordinate.

  Simone guessed only too clearly what was going on in her children’s hearts. For her the quarrel with the market woman was banal and of no consequence. She was more affected perhaps by Lansana, who had promised her a country where color didn’t count and where there were neither rich nor poor. Lansana was a smooth talker, that’s all there was to be said.

  When Simone, Ivan, and Ivana left the market they made their way to a shop called Au Lac de Côme, near the Conseil Général, where they sold accordions, saxophones, string instruments, and all kinds of drums: drums you could sit on and drums you could just tap.

  The shop’s star attractions were a guitar that had belonged to Jimi Hendrix, and John Lennon’s sitar. The owner was an old mulatto who had had his moment of glory accompanying Gérard La Viny when he sang at La Cigale in Paris.

  “Please don’t touch anything,” he strongly urged the children.

  Coming so soon after the quarrel at the market this remark ended up exasperating Ivan, and, small things sometimes having lasting consequences, here began the perfect breeding ground for revolt.

  From that day on Ivan’s marks at school got worse and he truly became the hoodlum he had been playfully nicknamed up till then. Despite his young age, he began to steal and pilfer. Simone didn’t know which way to turn. Gradually the idea germinated in Simone’s mind that she would have to get Lansana to realize that the son he had neglected might soon become a public menace.

  It did not take long before it happened. The start of the school year in October saw the arrival in Dos d’ne of Monsieur Jérémie, a high yellow chaben, with short graying hair and a square face half hidden by an ayatollah’s beard. He was no ordinary teacher. You would never guess from his cheap cotton shirt or his coarse commonplace canvas jeans bought at a discount that he had traveled the world. Where exactly, nobody knew. It was rumored he had been sent to Dos d’ne for disciplinary reasons. Some claimed he had made as many women pregnant as he had hairs on his head, others said he had had love affairs with men, while yet others maintained he had got rich from drug trafficking. Nobody could get to the truth with certitude.

  Monsieur Jérémie was put in charge of the class studying for the primary school diploma, up till then the pride of Dos d’ne, whose pupils passed with flying colors every year. Alas, as soon as he arrived, the pupils who had worked so diligently were left to their own devices: gone were the tests, the essays, and almost all the compositions. Monsieur Jérémie passed the time churning out endless tirades during which he claimed to be able to fix the world: for example, he said we needed to combat Western ideas; he described the superiority of certain religions and certain doctrines. He very quickly made friends with Ivan who was repeating his school year. Very soon Ivan spent all his free time round at the primary school teacher’s home.

  Out of bravado, he would repeat the teacher’s words without thinking.

  “France is a country of white people,” he repeated, echoing his master’s voice. “It’s a fact! People as high up as General de Gaulle said so. We Blacks have nothing in common with them.”

  Simone tolerated his blasphemy with the indulgence she reserved for her children. Ivan was foul-mouthed, everyone knew that, but no one paid much attention to what he said since deep down he was not a bad kid.

  When one evening she received the visit of Monsieur Ducadosse, the deputy mayor, Simone was dumbfounded. Monsieur Ducadosse was a little man with skin the color of night, and oddly red hair. His excessive smoking had blackened his gums and teeth.

  “Make sure you look after your son,” he
said solemnly. “Monsieur Jérémie is planting strange ideas in his head. He is turning him into a critic, an enemy I would even say, of France who transformed us from African savages to civilized men.”

  Simone had trouble understanding his words. She had spent her life working amidst the sting of the sugarcane and had never questioned her condition or that of her country. She endured a sleepless night, and in the morning decided to act. But she didn’t yet know how.

  In actual fact, Monsieur Jérémie was neither homosexual nor makoumé, as it was rumored. He didn’t like women either. He was obsessed only with politics. A denunciatory letter had informed the Ministry of Education that his five-year disappearance had been spent in Afghanistan or Libya. That sounded fishy. What was he doing in these countries of ill repute? As usual the Ministry of Education had taken its time before opening an inquiry. When it finally made a decision the trail had gone cold and they couldn’t prove anything against Monsieur Jérémie. As a result there was no way he could be struck off the list and all they could do was send him back to his native Guadeloupe and appoint him to the school at Dos d’ne, that godforsaken hole. Monsieur Jérémie, first name Nicéphale—a name you wouldn’t be seen dead with, a phrase invented by a sixteenth-century innkeeper who refused to lodge a traveler because of his name—became besotted with Ivan for reasons that had nothing to do with his athletic build, his muscular frame, or his prominent member, which always seemed to be in a state of erection. Firstly, he had calculated that Ivan would have been the same age as his unborn son, killed along with his mother in a NATO bombing raid. He sensed that in the breeding ground of this uneducated and unrefined mind, his ideas would germinate into a burning bush. He especially liked the way the boy listened to him: slightly bored and slumped in an armchair, his hands locked over his stomach. Monsieur Jérémie, therefore, didn’t hesitate to speak his mind: