The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana

by Maryse Conde

  Nobody paid attention to Simone and Father Michalou. Nobody was of the same color and they felt lost and isolated. Where is Ivan? Simone wondered frenziedly, having expected to see him at the airport. She had called him but received only an unintelligible gurgling in response. Where could he possibly be when such a tragedy had struck his family? To say nothing of his special feelings for his sister, he had always been a loving and considerate son. He wouldn’t leave his mother alone in such circumstances. The more time passed, the more Simone’s heart grew increasingly anguished and filled with dark premonitions regarding her son. Hugo and Mona were of no help and were as surprised as she was by Ivan’s absence. She could find nobody to answer the questions that were breaking her heart.

  During this time of extreme distress, she was dealt two shattering blows. The first occurred when she had to go and identify her daughter’s body the day after she arrived. The hospital at Villeret-le-François numbered a team of specialists whose reputation was firmly established and who were nicknamed “the embalmers of death.” They weren’t exactly embalmers since the art of embalming has long gone out of fashion in France. They were genuine experts who knew how to restore the velvety smooth texture to cadavers riddled with wounds, how to draw a smile again on twitching lips, in short, how to recreate an illusion of life. The team hadn’t yet finished when Simone came face-to-face with the body of her daughter, whose sallow complexion and bandaged neck was squeezed into a white dressing gown at the bottom of one of the drawers in the morgue.

  The second blow was dealt the day after, when she went to prostrate herself in the temporary morgue at the Cathedral of Saint Bernard du Tertre. She almost fainted at the sight of all those coffins and heady-perfumed flowers that were slowly wilting. She had to wait several days and several nights before hearing a vague explanation for Ivan’s absence.

  One morning while she was sadly downing her breakfast in Hugo’s and Mona’s modest apartment, Henri Duvignaud, the lawyer, marched in accompanied by the mayor, who had come in person to express his condolences. Henri Duvignaud grasped Simone’s ice-cold hands.

  “Be brave, Madame Némélé,” he said. “What I’m about to tell you is terrible.”

  He told her that Ivan was seriously wounded, since he had been a member of the commando of jihadists, and was now at the hospital in Villeret-le-François.

  “The ballistic tests have not been completed,” Henri continued, “but from what I can deduce Ivan is also his sister’s assassin.”

  Here we are obliged to wallow in pathos despite our dislike for it. On hearing these words, Simone fainted. She might even have passed from this life to the next if Mona hadn’t possessed a well-stocked pharmacy in the bathroom. Mona poured mint spirit between the clenched teeth of the unfortunate Simone. She rubbed her forehead and temples with tiger balm. She made her inhale essential oils. After an hour of agitation, tears, and sobs, Simone came to and murmured in a dying voice, staring at Henri Duvignaud with her reddened eyes: “You’re totally mad! Ivan had nothing to do with these jihadists. As for killing his sister, he would have been incapable, he adored her!”

  “That’s exactly why,” Henri Duvignaud retorted, launching into a long tirade, using all the skill of a lawyer used to verbal jousting.

  When he stopped, Simone, whose fiery gaze had never flinched, cried out, “You haven’t understood a thing. Not a thing! My children are not perverts and I repeat, Ivan would never have killed Ivana!”

  In the icy silence that followed, the mayor hastened to declare that the Regional Council would take charge of the return tickets to Guadeloupe for the deceased Ivana, Simone, and Father Michalou, as well as a delegation from city hall led by an officer by the name of Ariel Zeni. Despite the separation of church and state, the Regional Council would also pay for the cost of the religious ceremony at Dos d’ne. Did Simone know Ariel Zeni? Did she know he was her daughter’s fiancé? He would come during the afternoon to pay his respects and present his condolences.

  It would be a grave mistake to think that all French Antilleans, Guadeloupeans, and Martinicans alike suffer from the complex of “lactification” as denounced by Frantz Fanon in his famous work entitled Black Skin White Masks, and that they feel flattered by the slightest mark of admiration and esteem lavished on them by white folk. Often the opposite occurs. Ariel Zeni sensed it immediately when he came to pay his respects to Simone and her family. As soon as he entered the apartment, a flow of hatred struck him full in the face. His identity changed. Suddenly he was seen as a slave trafficker on the coast of Mozambique, advocate of hard labor on the Ivory Coast, and plantation owner of acres of sugarcane on an island in the Caribbean. He had just mutilated one of the slaves’ shins and cut off a leg. Despite the fact that his grandparents had been victims of the pogroms in Poland, despite the fact his parents had barely escaped the concentration camp in Auschwitz, and despite the fact he considered himself to be one of the West’s most pitiful victims. There is no need to recall here the Nazis’ Final Solution, which everyone is familiar with.

  But Ariel and Simone quickly got along very well together since they shared the same intense love for the deceased Ivana. Above all they shared the same blind tenacity, refusing to yield to what was slowly becoming the implacable truth. For them, Ivan was not a terrorist. They couldn’t explain what he was doing in the retirement home at Villeret-le-François that morning. He hadn’t killed his sister: such an idea was out of the question.

  “I didn’t know Ivan very well,” Ariel repeated, “but he seemed a happy, open-minded, level-headed boy.”

  “He was a badmouther,” Simone added. “But his heart was as good as gold. When he was little he refused to eat the hens we were raising in our farmyard or the rabbits from our hutches. ‘They’re our brothers,’ he used to say. ‘We’re alike.’”

  For Ariel and Simone it was all one big mistake which one day would be cleared up. Together they asked permission to go and visit Ivan, who apparently was at death’s door, at Villeret-le-François’s hospital. Ariel was convinced that his rank as police officer would open every door. Alas, they were met with a refusal. The three remaining jihadists, one of whom had died in the meantime, were not allowed visitors. A line of ferocious police officers guarded the entrance to the pavilion where they were located.

  In her grief, Simone was not entirely alone. Henri Duvignaud came to see her every day, but they ended up quarreling again and Simone barred him from entering the apartment. She also received a visit from Ulysses. Poor Ulysses! He had given up his lucrative job as escort and had fallen in love with Celuta, a girl from his own country blown on the wind of misery to Paris where she house-cleaned. They were now squeezed together in a miserable maid’s room. His activity as an escort, which for Ulysses was just another job, had since changed nature and he now believed it betrayed his heart and soul. Even worse, little did he know that Celuta prostituted herself for quick sessions with the bourgeois where she worked in order to make ends meet. Isn’t life surprising? It has a sense of humor which doesn’t make everyone laugh.

  It was thus, arm in arm, that Ariel and Simone went off to the airport at Orly to fly back to Guadeloupe. Father Michalou walked behind looking furious since this tenderfoot white boy had stolen the show from him. The journalists now ran after Ariel, holding out the mike for him. Ariel, who was rather frail physically, swaggered contentedly, with an excited expression on his juvenile face.

  “The words color and race should be banned,” he clamored fervently. “They have caused too much harm to mankind. Whole sections of the world have been plunged into obscurantism and servitude because of this vocabulary. So many people have been assassinated because of it while others, so-called discoverers, conquerors, and the righteous, belonged to societies authorized to dominate. I have never thought Ivana’s color to be different from mine. For me, only her soul counted.”

  We will not dwell on this stay in Guadeloupe more than neces
sary. We shall merely indicate certain facts. A considerable crowd was waiting for them on arrival at the Pôle Caraïbes Airport. A convoy of every type of vehicle headed for Dos d’ne, which had never experienced such crowds in all its history. On several occasions we have underlined the ugliness of Dos d’ne; it was as if a toad had been squashed by a car and thrown on the side of the road. Yet the day of Ivana’s funeral it assumed a singular beauty. Invisible hands had packed the much too tiny church with arum lilies, tuberose flowers, and Canna lilies. Every commune in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Guyana had sent delegations of schoolchildren dressed in white to wave tricolor flags. There were representatives of religious associations, priests, and even a contingent of cloistered nuns who had come down from the heights of Matouba where their convent was located. In his homily the mayor underlined how this day brought the overseas departments closer to France. Not only did they share the same family allowances and unemployment insurance benefits, they were united in the unspeakable suffering inflicted by an unparalleled event. After the mayor, Ariel Zeni stepped up to the pulpit and recited a poem of his own composition which brought tears to everyone’s eyes:

  “She was our ray of joy / she was the little rose we watered / she was the sweet-smelling breeze that cooled the sweat on our necks.”

  This poem figures on page 301 in An Anthology of Poetry from Guadeloupe, published by the well-known Haitian-Canadian publishers Mémoire d’Encrier. By common agreement the religious ceremony dedicated to Ivana Némélé, cut down in the prime of her youth, was unforgettable. Those who were lucky enough to attend were transformed. Gone were any self-centered and selfish ambitions; such a tragedy urged each and every person to give meaning to life and fight to improve the common lot. Ivana Némélé, who had dreamed of becoming a police officer so as to help and protect the destitute, had become a role model and an example for all. After the ceremony, once everyone had gone home heartbroken and reflecting on the day’s events, Estelle Martin wiped the smile off her face and announced the incredible information on the evening news that Ivan Némélé, the twin brother of the saint who had just been buried, was one of the terrorists and had died at the hospital of Villeret-le-François. Hearing such news, the inhabitants of Basse-Terre and Grande-Terre came out on their doorsteps and began to weep. My God! Have pity on Guadeloupe! Whereas she had just appeared to the world as the birthplace of a martyr, her image was now downgraded to the birthplace of an assassin.

  Shortly after midnight a comet shot across the sky spreading its unique tail and everyone realized that such a night was out of the ordinary. From that moment on, Simone Némélé occupied a special place in the national narrative of Guadeloupe. (But is there such a thing as a national narrative? Guadeloupe is an overseas department. Its only national narrative is that of France.) Simone, a humble woman in appearance, had given birth to both the best and the worst. She had borne in her womb an angel and a demon. Booklets began to be sold in the markets for a few centimes. They described the life of Simone and had a photo of her on the cover which was taken at the church in Dos d’ne, her hands crossed over her heart and her eyes raised to heaven. These booklets were published by the Bénizat printers, already known for their best-selling The Key to Your Dreams and Ten Ways to Success, translated from the American.

  Once she had recovered from her grief, Simone went along willingly with the game plan. She formed a prayer circle which grew so quickly it became the heart of a sect called The Shining Path. From that moment on she changed her appearance radically, adopting the attire befitting for someone who was half supernatural and filled with faith and love. She no longer combed her hair, which now resembled the tangled mop of a fetish child from certain countries in West Africa. She refused to wear any sort of color and dressed strictly in loose white albs tied at the waist with a cord, made free of charge by Madame Esdras, the dressmaker. She renounced wearing shoes to go barefoot and her nails grew gray and sharp like clam shells.

  Every third Sunday, accompanied by her disciples, she climbed up to the altar and returned lost in prayer to the central nave. During this time Father Michalou sulked. He hadn’t held in contempt all this religious nonsense throughout his life only to be forced into it in his old age. He often thought of taking off on his own, of leading a quiet life, in other words of leaving Simone. He couldn’t make up his mind, however, since he loved his old woman who had suffered so much and was so good at making love. It was then that Simone committed the act that made him balk. One fine day she abandoned him just like that and went to live in a house given to her by one of her disciples. She no longer needed a man. God was enough.

  Several points in our narrative remain wrapped in mystery. What happened to Ivan’s body, which was not shipped back to Guadeloupe? It appears he was hastily buried with the other terrorists, thrown into a common grave in the cemetery at Villeret-le-François. His loyal friends walked behind the coffin: Hugo, Mona, Henri Duvignaud the lawyer, Ulysses, and Stella Nomal. Mona sobbed openly and shook her head, repeating tirelessly, “He didn’t deserve to die like this! He didn’t deserve to die like this!”

  As for Stella Nomal, she didn’t say a word and wondered what double-faced Janus she had made love to. The police arrested Abdel Aziz, but could hold nothing against him. Once he was released he returned home to his native land together with his wife, probably to continue his misdeeds. For a few weeks everything calmed down and life went on as usual as it always does.

  Then in December an event occurred in Guadeloupe which was to have considerable consequences far beyond the borders of this little island, as far as Martinique, Guyana, and Suriname, and even as far as some English-speaking islands such as Trinidad and Tobago. The month of December in the Caribbean is calm and reverential. The season of Advent is focused on the coming miracle whose memory is celebrated faithfully on the 25th. The weeks leading up to it are strung with carols, some of which are local favorites: Michaud veillait la nuit dans sa chaumière or Voisin d’où venait ce grand bruit qui m’a réveillé cette nuit. The hurricane season is over. The great winds are sound asleep. The sea turns gentle, as good as gold, and the flying fish flashing along the surface deck it out with silver during the day. On the night of December 20th a group of strangers showed up at the gate of the Briscaille Cemetery in Dos d’ne and asked where the tomb of Ivana Némélé was located. You must forgive their ignorance for they were a group of Haitians alerted by a mysterious star that had begun to shine above their homes in the village of Petit Goave. It hadn’t left them for a second and had protected them during their crossing. No overzealous coastguard had confused them with the illegal immigrants seeking to infiltrate forbidden territory. They stood around Ivana’s tomb intending to cover it with candles and flowers and to spend the night in prayer. That’s when a television crew, alerted by the rumor, came to film them. Henceforth every year on the fatal date of December 20th people make the pilgrimage of “our little wounded sister” or “petite soeur de la blesse,” as Ivana came to be known. So as to fully appreciate the fervor contained in this name you need to know that the Creole word blesse associated with Ivana means roughly “scar” or “wounded.” It refers of course to the scars dealt by life which are never erased and always remain a wound in both body and soul.

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  MORE ABOUT THE UTERUS: THERE’S NO ESCAPING IT

  We know that for you, reader, there remains a mystery. You believe it more important to clarify Henri Duvignaud’s words when he introduced himself to Simone. On that day he didn’t hesitate to use the word crime. In his words there was no doubt Ivan was his sister’s murderer. Yet to our knowledge he hadn’t seen Ivan, even though on several occasions he had taken advantage of his status as lawyer to request permission from the town authorities to visit Ivan on his hospital bed. Each time the response came back that Ivan was much too weak and had lost too much blood to see visitors. On what, therefore, did he base his argument? You are probably asking the question, Why attach so much
importance to Henri Duvignaud? It’s because our lawyer was gifted with a superior intelligence. Besides his brilliant law studies, he had passed the entrance exam to the prestigious School of Political Sciences in Paris and had studied three years at Harvard, the best university in America, which enabled him to speak English as good as his French. Back in Paris he had become a loyal follower of André Glucksmann, quoting entire pages from his book La cuisinière et le mangeur d’hommes (The Cook and the Cannibal).

  Henri Duvignaud had firm ideas on the subject of Ivan and Ivana. He would shrug his shoulders when he heard certain allegations. According to him the sad fate of Ivana was a striking illustration of this globalization which was blowing us an ill wind. Nowadays, it’s a well-known fact, very few people spend their entire life from birth to death in their homeland; there are no longer borders which lock you in till kingdom come; in other words, no longer a pattern of life all mapped out. Ivana Némélé, born in Dos d’ne in Guadeloupe, had been shipped kilometers from her native island to a suburb of Paris called Villeret-le-François, where she found herself mixed up in a drama and overtaken by events that destroyed her petty reality. Naturally, the story of Ivan and Ivana put an end, as if we needed another one, to the myth of Negritude. The notion of race no longer implies the question of solidarity. Worse still, it lost its meaning ages ago. What excited Henri Duvignaud was rather the individual interpretation of these uncommon destinies.

  In order to back up his arguments he quoted Dr. Eisenfeld, a world-famous specialist in fetal medicine who was a friend of his. He had become a close friend because he had got his son off a heavy prison sentence for dealing drugs. In their mother’s womb, Ivan and Ivana had first been a single egg. Then a mutation had occurred. The professor had assured Duvignaud that such an occurrence is not rare. Quite frequent in fact, although we don’t know the exact cause. Perhaps a change of metabolism or hormones? As a rule, when such an event occurs the mother is afflicted with fever or bleeding. Such a mutation probably occurred shortly before she gave birth. Simone Némélé, therefore, already stressed by other factors, didn’t notice a thing and the egg, split in two, emerged into the world. This explains why Ivan and Ivana had remained so close to each other. The time needed to adapt to two distinct lives had been too short. What complicated matters further was that the fetuses were not of the same sex. One was a little female, the other a little male. As a result they had elaborated a very intimate working arrangement: cuddling up together, kissing, and penetrating each other whenever they fancied.