The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana

by Maryse Conde

  Standing in front of a shack with the notice Rooms to Let, Ousmane drew a key from his pocket and they went inside: three filthy bedrooms, a bathroom hollowed out in the center, and a Turkish-style toilet. A powerful smell of urine and excrement caught Ivan’s throat. Nevertheless, he told himself that under the current circumstances he couldn’t be too difficult. Consequently he entered one of the bedrooms and lay down without a word of protest on the inflatable mattress Rahiri had designated. Despite the stink and the mosquitoes he immediately fell asleep.

  He had been asleep one or two hours when the door opened gently on its hinges. A woman entered wearing a heavy navy-blue burka. She sat down beside Ivan, and good-humoredly, it seemed, began to nibble his ear. Then she moved down to his mouth and gave him several kisses. Ivan was amazed at her audacity. But he was too exhausted to resist.

  “Take this burka off,” he told her. “It’s ridiculous.”

  She obeyed him, threw off the heavy blue veil in which she was wrapped, and he found himself in the arms of a skeleton. Terrified, he ran to switch on the light. The squalid room was empty. It was merely a dream. A bad dream.

  When he awoke the second time, the window was streaked with light. He called out to his companions but there was no answer. The shack was deserted. Rahiri and Ousmane had vanished. As well as his bag, he realized. He ran outside. The sky was now bluish. The men who were sleeping on the square had rolled up their mats and were washing their faces in the public fountain. One of them, his cheeks covered in foam, was shaving while he whistled. No sign of Rahiri. No sign of Ousmane. As fast as he could, Ivan ran to La Bonne Table where he had dined the night before. The restaurant was closed. He shook the metal shutter furiously with his foot but nobody responded to the din. Still no sign of Rahiri or Ousmane. Ivan ran back along the road he had just taken and ventured down the neighboring streets, one of which was comically named General de Gaulle. After a while he had to resign himself to the fact he had behaved like an idiot. He had been taken for a novice. The two men had stripped him of everything he owned.

  What do you do when you find yourself without ID, without money, and without friends, miles from home? You cry. That’s all you can do. Sitting on a public bench, Ivan had no idea his body could weep so many tears.

  Gradually, however, he found enough courage to act before considering himself beaten. Rahiri and Ousmane had not disappeared into thin air. They must have left clues. Someone must know them in the neighborhood. Last night at dinner the waiter spoke to them as if they were regular customers. Resolutely, Ivan stood up and made his way back to La Bonne Table. As he approached, a man, a white man, drew up level with him, came to a standstill, gaped on seeing him, and grabbed him by the arm, whispering, “Don’t stay here, come with me.”

  Ivan tried to shake him off.

  “Are you crazy? Take your hands off me!”

  The man looked left and right and, lowering his voice, asked, “Aren’t you Ivan Némélé? I’ve just seen you on television. You have a price on your head.”

  “What!” Ivan shouted, immediately regaining the use of his legs, and began to run hand in hand with the stranger.

  The two men climbed into a dilapidated jeep parked nearby.

  The white man was skinny, ascetic even, with vivid blue eyes set in an emaciated face. His long graying hair curled down to his shoulders. A genuine Jesus Christ, you might say. With a roar of the car’s engine he shot off at top speed.

  After a while he held out his hand to Ivan.

  “My name is Alix Alonso,” he introduced himself. “I hear you are responsible for the attack that killed a certain Boris Kanté, otherwise known as El Cobra.”

  Outside the car the décor was picture perfect: a blue sky in which the sun was slowly settling into place; the river sparkling without a ripple between reddish stone cliffs; and, inside the car, a feverish conversation between two overexcited men.

  “Me?” cried Ivan. “Never in my life. I never committed such a crime!”

  He knew that one must always proclaim one’s innocence, even under the worst circumstances.

  “You’ll be safe with us,” Alix continued. “I live alone with my wife and nobody ever comes to visit.”

  For ten or so kilometers the car traveled alongside the river. Suddenly it turned its back, veered left, and set off along a rough stony track. They drove under an arch where the following words were written: The Last Resort. However hard Ivan searched his memories from school, he could not understand what those words meant.

  At a bend in the road, a stone house appeared, spacious but plain, surrounded by a wide terrace shaded by yellow striped parasols. A woman could be seen lying on a deck chair, her back resting on a pile of cushions. Her feet were wrapped in navy-blue woolen slippers without a sole, as if she never walked in them.

  “This is my wife, Cristina,” Alix explained. “She’s disabled.”

  Cristina had the same blue eyes as her husband and her smile was marked with a singular grace. Her face fell when her husband explained the circumstances in which he had met Ivan and who he was.

  “You have nothing to fear with us,” she reassured him. “Alix must have told you we never have any visits.”

  Thereupon Alix took Ivan familiarly by the arm and led him inside. The minimal furnishing was not lacking in charm. Alix preceded Ivan and opened the door of a comfortable bedroom that looked out onto a section of the garden.

  “Feel at home here,” he repeated with a wide grin.

  Ivan discovered in astonishment that Alix and Cristina seldom left The Last Resort. They had no friends, and no servants working for them. In order to entertain Cristina, Alix had bought a gigantic, ultramodern television set which broadcast the most unlikely channels, such as the one from Wallis and Futuna. You could watch endless programs where the king decorated a number of his subjects. It was thanks to this television that Ivan was kept up to date about the tsunami which had swept over Kidal after he left. Birame and his two younger brothers had been arrested in Djenné, where they had taken refuge at a relative’s place. Oddly enough Ismaël had been left untroubled, as had every member of the Army of Shadows. What broke Ivan’s heart and made it bleed was the fact that both Ivana and his wife, Aminata, had been arrested. What he didn’t know was that they hadn’t stayed very long in prison, since both of them had foolproof alibis. On the evening of the attack that took the life of El Cobra, the nurses at the Sundjata Keita Orphanage swore that both women were giving the infants their baby food and putting them to bed. There was also another story that was badmouthed around: apparently Abdouramane Sow was in love with the lovely Ivana and wanting to take her as a second wife, he had rapidly liberated her together with her sister-in-law.

  “Don’t take any notice of all this agitation,” Alix advised Ivan. “When matters have blown over I myself will go and fetch your sister in Kidal. I’ll drive her here and then you can both take a flight from Niamey, which is only about five hundred kilometers from here.”

  “You forget I no longer have a passport,” Ivan groaned.

  “I’ll find you another one,” Alix promised jokingly. “Which one would you like? Libyan, Lebanese, or Syrian? Nothing works better in this country than the trafficking of false passports.”

  Cristina squeezed Ivan’s hand and softly inquired, “Ivana’s your twin sister, am I right? Just like I’m Alix’s twin.”

  Ivan had but one regret. Why hadn’t he made love to Ivana before being separated from her? All these years of platonic passion were ridiculous! When they’re reunited he will take his revenge. He’ll make her howl and scream and writhe beneath him! But will he ever see her again? Perhaps he was being punished because of his real or imaginary misdemeanor with Aïssata. There were moments when he sobbed bitterly.

  Alix Alonso and Cristina Serfati had known each other from the cradle for they were the offspring of two families of acrobats who per
formed at the Seventh Wonder circus. They had been born on the same day in the same year which allowed them to think that not only were they simply made for each other but they were one and the same person. They got married at the age of eighteen, unable to postpone any longer the merger of their two beings.

  The Seventh Wonder circus had been founded in Bordeaux in 1758 by Thibault de Poyen. We know for a fact that he was of mixed blood: the son of a woman from what later came to be known as Nigeria, and Aymery de Poyen, a French man who hunted slaves in Africa. Little Thibault was brought to France when he was very young, and we have all the letters his mother, Ekanem Bassey, wrote inquiring about his condition. We don’t know, however, the reasons why the circus was created. Was it Thibault’s yearning for his mother or his lost homeland that drove him, on reaching his majority, to collect wild animals, lion tamers, acrobats, and dancers of all sorts? Whatever the case, the Seventh Wonder circus became increasingly popular. In summer it entertained children in the South of France. In winter it traveled to the French-speaking regions of Africa. The two countries where it met with its biggest successes were Algeria and Mali, where it set up its colorful tents near Bamako.

  Unfortunately, colonization, which destroys everything in its path, destroyed it along with all the rest, while the popularity of the circus throughout the world diminished and disappeared.

  When the Seventh Wonder circus finally closed its doors in 1995, Alix and Cristina had no difficulty finding work with the Barnum circus in the United States of America. Unfortunately, the day before they left to go and work for Barnum, during a farewell gala, Cristina, who was performing one of her acrobatic numbers, had a terrible accident. She survived but remained paraplegic. Alix and Cristina decided to sell everything they owned in France and go and live in Mali where they had grown up with their parents.

  The first few years were not rosy. They disliked the town where they were living, a mixture of parochial traditions and the extravagance of a consumer society. Moreover, Alix was working himself to death, torn between his job in a cosmetics factory owned by some Germans and the constant attention needed by Cristina who Alix jealously guarded for himself. After a few years he got lucky; it happens sometimes. He discovered a formula for making shea butter and sold it to his bosses for a small fortune. Together with his wife he bought a patch of desert and turned it into an oasis. By dint of Alix’s love Cristina managed to regain use of her arms, but that was about all.

  Ivan had never been close to white folk. It was a species he saw only from a distance in Guadeloupe. In fact he had nothing against them, as despite Monsieur Jérémie’s lessons colonization for Ivan remained an abstract concept. Much more often, it had been people with the same color as himself who had brought about his misfortune, Ivan felt. White folk were simply mysterious beings who spoke French with a strange accent. Eager for the sun, this sun which does so much harm, they crowded along the beaches at all times of day and lined up on the sidewalk to watch the carnival processions. Now, for the first time, Ivan found himself in close contact with a white couple.

  At first Cristina felt uneasy with Ivan. She would jump at the sound of his voice and his rare bursts of laughter. Once a week Alix went to El Markham to stock up again with provisions, and Cristina didn’t like staying alone with Ivan. Gradually, however, the ice melted and she warmed to him. Ivan caught himself finding her beautiful with her milky-white complexion, her extremely slim figure, and her hair, not marred by a single white streak, which flowed brown down to her shoulders.

  Leaving Alix to take care of Cristina’s intimate needs, Ivan began to feed her and help her drink like a baby. He peeled her fruit. He pushed her wheelchair onto the terrace and went down into the garden to have her admire the flowers which had just bloomed. During the afternoon siesta, unaware of his ancestral gesture, he would fan her to keep her cool. His feelings for Cristina were a mixture of tenderness, compassion—she must have suffered so much—and also desire, yes desire, when she revealed velvety patches of her skin.

  He leafed through their shared photo albums, which portrayed her when she was an acrobat, her black leotard enhancing her magnificent body.

  “I can’t tell you what I felt,” she said, “when I was up there at the top, the circus ring sparkling with lights down below my feet. I imagine that’s how you feel at the moment of death: the soul flies away and leaves the body behind, a rough, unwieldy sheath. I felt like a goddess.”

  It would be an understatement to say that Alix and Cristina worshiped each other. They were one and the same: brother, sister, father, daughter, and lover, achieving the deep fusion that Ivan had dreamed of attaining with Ivana.

  One afternoon while they were taking in the cool air, Cristina declared, “You are the son Alix and I could never have. You are everything that’s missing.”

  Ivan burst out laughing.

  “Your son? Me, a black guy? And you, both white?”

  She looked him straight in the eye.

  “Black, white! What does that mean? They are words which divide, invented by humans to cause harm. Color doesn’t exist. I repeat, you are our son, full stop.”

  Night flung itself voraciously over The Last Resort. It was the same psychodrama every day. The sun, mortally wounded, ran to take refuge in a corner of the heavenly canopy, not without having first spilled long scarlet streaks. And its rival, the moon, never managed to replace it; however hard it puffed itself up, it always petered out and then darkness set in.

  Cristina often had herself pushed along the river that flowed nearby. She watched for its swirling waters, convinced they were caused by the combat of the great manatees swimming down from the cold waters of the North, and remained hours looking at them. Alix had a great deal of trouble getting her to come home, insisting he disliked the way the impenetrable darkness wrapped itself over everything. Once back at the house, as a rule before going to bed, the trio would drink a sweet-smelling tamarind herb tea prepared by Alix. Then he and Cristina would each plant a kiss on Ivan’s forehead and make their way to their bedroom. As for Ivan, he would head up to his room under the roof.

  One evening the routine changed. Alix pushed aside his half-filled cup and declared, “Let’s stop pretending. Ivan, you’re coming with us.”

  Thereupon he stood up, pushing Cristina’s wheelchair in front of him. Ivan was frank enough to confess that he had been waiting for this moment. Without uttering the slightest protest he stood up in turn and followed in their footsteps. We can hear the criticism of the righteous, who claim to be shocked by this ménage à trois. But they have no idea how those moments were immersed in poetry; how so much tenderness was applied by so many hands. Cristina’s body was that of a young girl, her breasts uplifted, her stomach flat, and her legs as graceful as the columns of a temple. Alix’s body was powerful and heavyset. As for Ivan’s, he was built like a young bull capable of satisfying the entire human race. They made love until the morning hours without managing to satisfy each other’s hunger. Henceforth it became a habit.

  Confined to her invalid’s wheelchair the entire day without being able to move her legs, Cristina dreamed at night of a whole different life from the one she was actually living. Every morning she would describe her dream to her two lovers who were also her two sons and offered them the tenderness of her surprisingly young and firm breasts.

  “My body was floating like the cotton fibers of the silk cotton tree,” she said. “I zigzagged across the sky. Sometimes I sat on a cloud and swung back and forth. From my swing, I could see the earth parched by the sun. I liked to float down and land at the top of a tree. I was particularly fond of flame trees and jacarandas. I also loved the perfume of the ylang-ylang and the scent of the cayenne rose bushes and arum lilies. Sometimes I floated even further down and took it into my head to race the humming birds. I was always last even though they stopped to gather nectar from every flower.”

  When he found himself a
lone with Ivan, Alix often burst into tears.

  “It’s my fault. I’m to blame for what happened to her. I shouldn’t have left her for a second. Instead of which, I let her experiment in the air on her own.”

  Ivan dried Alix’s tears.

  “Don’t say such nonsense. What happened was surely not your fault.”

  One day Alix looked him straight in the eye.

  “I haven’t told you what happened during that gala evening when she had her terrible accident. We were supposed to climb up together to the top, glide through the air, and shower the spectators with red rose petals. But just before our number I felt dizzy, so I let her go on her own. So you see, it’s all my fault.”

  Disconcerted, Ivan clasped Alix in his arms, unable to find any words of comfort.

  Four weeks passed in perfect bliss. Ivan got the impression that Cristina represented for him a mother, a sister, and a lover, whereas Alix was his somewhat scary double, exciting the brutality of his desire. Only Ivana was missing. Oh, if only she had been present, it would have been happiness fulfilled, utter perfection.

  Nobody expected Alix to discover the trail of Rahiri and Ousmane again. It happened quite by chance. One Tuesday while he was at the market in El Markham he caught sight of two men near the second-hand clothing stands who perfectly matched Ivan’s description. He threatened them with the Mauser he carried constantly under his shirt. In actual fact this weapon was illusory; Alix was against all forms of violence. In May 1968, while the riot police and students were waging a war to the death in the streets of Paris, Cristina and Alix had created an association called On the Trail of Mahatma Gandhi. They were also fiercely opposed to the war in Algeria and had sided with the draft dodgers. The Mauser, however, produced the desired effect.

  Rahiri and Ousmane sat down and confessed they had robbed Ivan. They had sold his suitcase and his clothes, which were of good quality, but kept his French passport, which they hoped to sell for a small fortune. Rahiri and Ousmane agreed with Alix that they shouldn’t involve the police, and in exchange for his silence they offered to drive Ivan as far as Niamey. They knew places along the border where there were neither police posts nor customs checkpoints.