by Maryse Conde
One day coming out of La Baignoire in this depressive condition, Mansour questioned him, intrigued.
“What’s up? Why are you crying?”
Ivan told him of the episode at The Last Resort. When he had finished Mansour shrugged his shoulders.
“This Alix and Cristina were white folk, weren’t they?”
“Why are you asking me? What do you mean?” Ivan asked.
“I mean they belong to a different species to us. If I saw some Whites fall into the water, I’d help them drown.”
It was against such inept theories that Alix and Cristina had struggled. In their eyes there was no such thing as color. Yet Ivan did not say a word; he knew Mansour wouldn’t understand.
When the yellowish light of dawn rose over the roofs of Paris they would breakfast as a rule in a bar called L’Éteignoir. Ivan would down cups of coffee while listening to Mansour recollect his memories.
“In Belgium I was a member of the H4 unit in charge of preparing attacks in the airport, the railway stations, and the metro. Finally, killing people for no reason at all while the world made martyrs of them seemed senseless. From that moment on I refused to obey instructions and I was considered a coward. I had to flee to France to save my life and there I met Abou, a drug trafficker: an African like you and me, no more, no less. He opened my eyes to the way the world works. Money rules the world; you’ve got to make money by every means possible.”
Ivan devoted Sundays to his sister, whose well-ordered and studious life was totally different from his. She was already up, washed, and dressed at seven in the morning. At eight she climbed down the stairs of Tower A and walked briskly across the dismal patch of wasteland to the street. There, she took her seat in the regional express metro and got off at boulevard Brune in Paris where she was studying to become a policewoman, the career she had always dreamed of. The teachers, charmed by her pretty little face, couldn’t stop praising this lovely girl from Martinique (the French have always mixed up Martinique and Guadeloupe, you have to forgive them), who was so talented and would go far.
When Ivan entered her bedroom on Sunday mornings she was already seated at her desk, preparing her classes for the following day. She never failed to lecture her brother in a serious tone of voice.
“You gave up your apprenticeship,” she said, “and it’s a shame. Maman and I are brokenhearted. Be careful Mansour doesn’t drag you down into his dark dealings. I’ve heard he’s mixed up in drug trafficking on the estate. That’s where his money comes from.”
Ivana had not exaggerated. Simone had gone into a fit of rage on hearing Father Michalou’s indiscreet remarks that her son was a drug dealer. Her son a drug dealer! Never on her life! She planned to travel to France herself to lecture him and make him ashamed of his behavior. She stormed on until Father Michalou became tired of listening to her and ended up giving her a piece of his mind.
“What would be the purpose of such a trip?” he asked. “That boy has never listened to you and has always done exactly as he pleases. Keep calm, it’s a good remedy, as the saying goes.”
Henceforth Simone no longer talked about taking a plane. She merely dispatched a daily dose of threatening and despairing emails and telephone calls to her son.
On Sundays Ivan invited his sister for lunch at his favorite restaurant, Le Pré-Catalan Lenôtre, situated in the middle of the Bois de Boulogne. This elegant pavilion was built in 1920 and its specialty was butterflied sea bream served with chestnut purée. Sometimes he invited Hugo and Mona, although they didn’t get along very well together and made no mystery of their opinion that Ivan was mixing with dubious, even dangerous, company. This Mansour was a notorious drug dealer wanted by the police.
These events lasted around three months. Deep down Ivan was increasingly dissatisfied. What was to become of his ambitions, his dreams, and his future plans?
One afternoon when he arrived at Mansour’s as usual to pick up his load of drugs he found the apartment empty, the doors wide open, the furniture overturned, and the contents of the drawers strewn over the floor like in an American crime thriller. He dashed down to the ground floor for an explanation. The entrance hall was empty. Nobody. What had happened? he asked himself. He then got it into his head to run to La Porte Étroite, and in his haste knocked over two children who were playing ball at the foot of the tower blocks. The bar’s metal curtain was lowered, which was strange since it was after one in the afternoon. Fortunately for Ivan he knew the entrance to the storage room that served as a back shop. At the third ring, Zoran, Zachary’s cousin, finally opened the door.
“You! What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted, his eyes wide open in stupefaction.
“I want to see Zachary,” Ivan answered feverishly.
Zoran stared at him, wide-eyed in amazement.
“Haven’t you heard? The police came to arrest Mansour at dawn. They are certain to hunt down his ring of connections. Consequently, Zachary is lying low. At this time Mansour is probably at the Fleury-Mérogis prison.”
In actual fact Zoran was mistaken. Mansour had been taken to La Santé prison. Weak-kneed, Ivan returned to the André Malraux housing estate convinced that at any moment the police would swoop down to arrest him.
But days went by and nothing of the sort happened.
You are probably wondering why Ivan wasn’t arrested as well. We have no idea and cannot provide a reasonable explanation. Nevertheless, he remained at liberty despite the fear that gnawed at him and forced him to hole up at Hugo’s.
It was then he received a letter from his wife Aminata Traoré, whom he had totally forgotten. She informed him that his son had been born and was called Fadel, such a handsome little guy. Did he have a computer or an email address where she could send photos of this marvel they had conceived together? She had moved heaven and earth to find his address and was getting ready to come and join him as soon as she had the means. This merely sent Ivan even further into the panic stations in which he was already living. What would he do with a wife and a baby, he who possessed nothing? Where would they live? How could he feed them? Money ill-gained has the odd particularity of being spent immediately. Ivan had kept nothing of the considerable sums that had slipped through his fingers and was reduced to living off his sister, who received a grant from Guadeloupe due to her brilliant studies. Mona had found him a job. Pathetic, it should be said! Dishwasher at the school canteen. Despite his revulsion, Ivan told himself that if his situation didn’t improve, he would have to resign himself to accepting the offer.
Come December, winter arrived with a bitter cold. The patchy-looking grass of the André Malraux housing estate was covered with a thick white carpet while a violent, ice-cold wind blew between the tower blocks.
Children no longer played ball in the parking lots. Muffled up to the eyes, they crowded into the entrance halls desperately attempting to keep the doors closed to protect them from the cold. Except for Mona and Ivana nobody left the apartment. In an effort to battle his depression Hugo downed glass after glass of neat Depaz rum and, half drunk, began chattering away, out of character with his usual taciturn self. He told Ivan, who also hadn’t set foot outside, that it reminded him of the terrible winter of 1954. When he was still young and working in the factory on the Île Seguin. Frozen birds would fall from the sky between the feet of passersby. This was when the Emmaus charity was founded and Abbé Pierre, a young unknown priest, became the spokesperson for the homeless. As for Mona, she was happy because it was the holiday season and she was setting up a Christmas tree for her three grandchildren. The stars and colored lights reminded Ivan of the warm Christmases of his childhood. He would accompany his mother and grandmother to the church at Dos d’ne whose ugliness briefly faded and which turned into a throbbing vessel. Dressed in white, the members of the choir who had rehearsed for weeks sat down in the pews to the left of the altar, holding their children between their kn
ees. Under the vaulted ceiling “O Holy Night” burst forth and filled the congregation with its fervor.
“Why did you convert to Islam?” Mona often asked Ivan while she decorated her Christmas tree. “Our religion has such lovely ceremonies.”
Ivan confessed he no longer remembered what had made him convert. Islam today had become an integral part of his life. He who seldom opened a book never tired of reading and rereading his suras.
“It’s because I believe Islam to be tolerant and generous as well,” he said gingerly.
Mona looked at him slightly scornfully.
“That’s true of every religion,” she affirmed.
She was probably right.
They had a white Christmas. Oh, those white Christmases when Bing Crosby’s melody floats furtively in the air:
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know,
Where the treetops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow.
For Christmas Eve, Ivana put on a dress by Jean-Paul Gaultier that her brother had given her when he was in the money. How pretty she was, dressed in all this red and gold! She was much lovelier than Mona’s daughter-in-law, a Kabyle who took herself very seriously because she had studied to be a nurse and was now working in a famous hospital. Mona had gone to a lot of trouble. She herself had made a joyously spicy blood pudding, accras, salt fish fritters, meat patties, and, marvel of marvels, a mutton pot patty, a specialty from Martinique made from sheep’s offal. This sumptuous meal was naturally accompanied by a great variety of rum punches and lasted until the early hours of the morning. Everyone laughed and joked, especially Mona’s son who had come especially from Montpellier where he lived with his family.
Only Ivan felt forlorn and was unable to share in the general mood of good humor. Moreover, he didn’t eat pork and didn’t drink alcohol. More than ever, the memory of Alix and Cristina haunted him. He thought he could breathe in their scent and imagine himself deep in the delights of their beings. He felt a painful premonition coming on, as if destiny was granting him one last chance before dealing him a fatal blow. What did the future still hold in store for him? he never stopped anxiously asking himself.
Two days later the postman handed him a registered letter. It was an urgent summons from the director of La Santé prison to present himself together with his ID. Let’s take this opportunity to take a closer look at this somewhat surprising missive. It was typewritten on ordinary stationery and bore a large seal by way of a signature. What did it mean? What did they have against him?
“Nothing,” Hugo assured. “If they had wanted to arrest you because of your ties with Mansour they would have done it a long time ago. The police would have swooped down and taken you with them.”
According to Nathaniel Hawthorne, prison is the black flower of civilized society. The prison of La Santé does not fit this description at all. Located at the very heart of the fourteenth arrondissement in Paris, it is a vast, featureless construction. Its thick flint walls are appropriately whitewashed. A vaulted door opens onto a large paved courtyard. Despite this nondescript appearance Ivan’s heart beat faster with a deep sense of foreboding. He felt the forces of evil were waiting for him, hidden inside this building; like a beast about to pounce on him and tear him to pieces. He was shown into an office where a photo of the president of the republic was majestically on display. Three men were waiting for him. Two of them were uniformed police officers, their faces pale and arrogant beneath their flat caps. The third man was a civilian with a pleasant face, slightly dark-skinned under a head of curly brown hair, and an affable smile. He introduced himself.
“My name is Henri Duvignaud. I’m Mansour’s, your cousin’s, lawyer. My father was from Guadeloupe, like you,” he added.
Cutting short this show of politeness, one of the police officers with the same arrogant look picked up a blue folder and opened it.
“We have some very bad news for you. We took our time contacting you because we first tried to track you down in Guadeloupe and then in Mali.”
The second officer took over and with eyes lowered, declared, “Your cousin, Mansour Diarra, committed suicide in his cell. He left a letter for you.”
Suicide? Ivan refused to understand the meaning of such a word. Here is the text of Mansour’s letter to Ivan, which we finally discovered after much research. It’s not very long but loaded with emotion:
My dear Ivan,
Do you remember what I told you? That all you need is money and that you have to make money by every means possible?
Well, I was mistaken because here I am at the end of the road. Perhaps you were right. In order to change the world we need to attack people’s hearts and minds. But how? The hearts and minds have become as hard as stone and are hidden deep inside the body.
I’m writing to you because you mean more than a brother to me, you are the only person on this earth who granted me your esteem and admiration. I am sure we will see each other again somewhere.
Yours affectionately,
Mansour
We will not dwell here on the painful formalities Ivan had to confront. We will highlight rather the extreme despondency which took possession of him. He wandered around like a zombie. If it hadn’t been for his sister’s tenderness and the consideration of Mona, who beneath her looks of a harpy hid a motherly heart of gold, he would have probably gone out of his mind.
The most painful moment was without doubt the burial of Mansour, who they threw into a common grave at Villeret-le-François’s municipal cemetery. Henri Duvignaud had insisted on attending. Although he never failed to allude to his origins, he had not known his father and had never been to Guadeloupe. He had grown up with his mother in his maternal grandparents’ luxurious apartment. For generations the Duvignauds had been business lawyers whose rich clients had paid them in hard cash. They married gifted women: pianists, violinists, and cellists who were content to play for friends of the family. Only one of them, Araxi, an Armenian who set ablaze the heart of Joseph Duvignaud, eighth in line, had made a name for herself and been invited to play violin solo at Carnegie Hall. Henri was the first of the Duvignauds to become involved in social issues. He had created an association to defend the growing numbers of undocumented migrants.
After Mansour had been buried, he put his arm familiarly around Ivan.
“Can I see you again?” Henri asked, using all his charm.
It was rumored he was a homosexual and often became the lover of those he defended. It had never been proven, however. Ivan, who was stumbling along in a thick fog, gathered his wits about him and had the strength to answer.
“I shall be only too pleased to see you again.”
Henri Duvignaud, therefore, slipped him his business card. He worked together with two other lawyers, who shared his interest in social topics, at their office on Place du Châtelet. Ivan turned up the next day.
“How are you feeling?” Henri asked, still just as affable. “What I’m about to tell you is extremely serious. I don’t believe your cousin committed suicide as the police claim. But rather that he was tortured and died from his wounds.”
Ivan recovered his wits enough to shout, “Tortured!”
“Didn’t you see the bruises all over his face and the massive badly patched-up wounds on his head?”
No, Ivan hadn’t noticed anything of the kind since he was blinded by grief. Henri continued, burning with enthusiasm.
“You have no idea how these interrogations take place. The police don’t care a damn for minor drug dealers such as your cousin. What they want are the names of the drug lords and barons who ship in their merchandise from abroad and smuggle it around wherever they want. The police will go to any lengths to get what they want.”
Ivan had the impression of listening to a crime thriller.
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br /> “What are we going to do?” he stammered.
“For the time being, try to find proof,” Henri replied. “I’m asking you to find witnesses who can testify to your cousin’s gentle character. Everyone must be made to realize that he was a victim who was led to the slaughterhouse.”
Once this conversation was over, Ivan found himself on the banks of the Seine beside a secondhand bookseller who sold first editions of André Gide’s novel Les Nourritures terrestres. How had he got there? How had his body managed to obey him, avoid all the traffic, and unconsciously make it over the pedestrian crossings? It was as if he had received a blow to the head that had left him half dead.
As usual the day was gray and rainy. Ivan sat down on a crowded bus which, after numerous stops, was to take him to the boulevard Brune. Remembering his mother’s advice on manners he gave up his seat to an old lady bent in two whom nobody took notice of.
“Thank you very much,” she said.
Then, sadly shaking her head, she continued:
“People didn’t used to be so indifferent, selfish, and devoid of compassion for those around them as they are today. As soon as they saw me they would get up and offer me their seat. Nowadays people don’t know which way to turn … with all these bomb attacks.”
