by Marie Ndiaye
He recalled the gentle, persuasive tones he’d managed to infuse into his voice, he who, after a month spent alone with Djibril, spoke only in a sort of hesitant croak. Then, even when Fanta came home in the evening, he felt too weary to utter more than a few words.
Quietly happy just to be back once more with her child, she took over with discreet alacrity from Rudy, even though they both knew that he hadn’t had to do very much, and she busied herself so energetically with the toddler that Rudy could pretend there was no opportunity to get a word in.
He would feel relieved and would go out and lean on the balcony, watching the sun set over the placid avenue.
Big gray or black cars were bringing home businessmen and diplomats who would pass a few servant girls returning on foot carrying plastic bags, and those women who didn’t pad wearily along flew above the pavement just as Fanta still did, seeming not to touch the ground except to use it as a springboard.
Then, sitting on opposite ends of the table, they’d eat the meal Rudy had prepared, and since by then Djibril had been put to bed, they could feign wanting to listen to the news on the radio and not have to speak to each other.
He would gaze furtively at her sometimes: at her small, shaven head, the harmonious roundness of her skull, the casual grace of her movements, her long slender hands, which, at rest, hung at right angles to a wrist that was so slender it looked as if it would snap easily, and her serious, thoughtful, conscientious air.
He was overwhelmed with love for her, but he felt too tired and depressed to show it.
Perhaps in some obscure way, too, he resented her for bringing home the daily action and images of a lycée he was no longer in touch with, her free movement in a scene from which he’d been excluded.
Perhaps, in some obscure way, he was insanely jealous.
Early on in his suspension, when he was supposed to be on sick leave only, he used to listen glumly to tidbits of news she thought would interest him, about colleagues and pupils and this and that; he’d gotten into the habit of leaving the room at that point, this evasion as effective an interruption as if he’d hit her in the mouth.
Wasn’t it to avoid doing precisely that, that he’d walk out of the room?
But once he’d been informed of the panel’s verdict—dismissal from his post and loss of his teacher’s certificate—he’d recovered the gift of smooth talking and put it at the service of his unhappiness, dishonesty, underhandedness, and envy.
He’d assured her that it was only in France that they had a future, and that through her marriage to him she was lucky to be able to go and live there.
As for what she’d do there, no problem: he’d make it his business to get her a job in a middle school or a lycée.
He knew nothing was less likely, and yet his tone became all the more eloquent as he started to be assailed by doubts, and Fanta, being naturally honest, never suspected anything, perhaps particularly because he’d reverted to his former guise of the young man in love, the fiancé with the cheerful, tanned face and pale blond forelock that he tossed back with a puff of breath or jerk of the head, so that even if Fanta knew some people whose faces were adept at dissembling and lies, whom she therefore would never have trusted, behind that loving, tanned, open face, those eyes so limpid and pale, surely nothing could be concealed.
They’d spent long days visiting members of Fanta’s extended family.
Rudy had remained on the threshold of the green-walled apartment where, a few years earlier, he’d first met the uncle and aunt who’d raised Fanta.
His excuse for not entering was that he felt unwell, but in truth he couldn’t bear to look those two old people in the eye, not because he feared his lying mask would be torn off but rather because he was afraid of betraying himself and—standing in that greenish-blue room beside Fanta as she talked in proud, confident, determined tones about all the good things that awaited them over there—of being tempted to drop everything, to say to her, “Oh, they won’t give you a teaching job in France,” and of finally telling her about the crime Abel Descas had committed long ago and about the way he’d died, about why the boys had thrown him, her husband, to the ground, because Fanta, while not believing he’d insulted the pupils exactly as people said, must have thought he’d shown them some kind of disrespect or another.
He’d stayed put, not daring to go into the apartment.
He hadn’t run away, he just hadn’t gone inside.
He’d been content to defend his interests while avoiding any risk of letting the cat out of the bag.
Feeling very tired all of a sudden, he turned off the road into a plantation of poplars.
He parked on a grassy track where the last row of poplars gave way to a wood.
He was so hot in the car he thought he’d faint.
The ham and soft white bread sat heavy in his stomach.
He got out of the car and threw himself on the grass.
The earth was cool and smelled of damp clay.
Drunk with happiness, he rolled around a bit.
Then he stretched out and lay on his back with his arms crossed above his head, and turning his face toward the sun screwed up his eyes and through the slits looked at the white trunks and their tiny silvery leaves turning reddish.
“There was no need, Fanta …”
It was at first only a black spot among others high above him in the milky sky. Then he heard, and recognized, its aggressive, bitter shriek and, when he saw it diving toward him, realized it had recognized him, too.
He leaped to his feet, jumped in the car, and slammed the door just as the buzzard landed on the roof.
He could hear its claws scraping on the metal.
He switched on the ignition and rammed the stick shift into reverse.
He saw the buzzard fly off and land on one of the middle branches of a poplar. Tall and rigid, it looked at him askance, its mottled eye full of menace.
He did a three-point turn and drove away along the track as fast as he could.
The heat was stifling. He was in anguish.
Was he ever now, he wondered, was he ever now going to be able to get out of his car without the vindictive bird pursuing him relentlessly over his old misdeeds?
And what would have happened if he hadn’t been made aware, precisely on this day, of his past misdemeanors?
Would the buzzard have appeared, would it have made itself known?
It’s so unfair, he said to himself, on the brink of tears.
When he arrived at the little school, the children were coming out of their classrooms, which were all situated on the ground floor.
One after the other each door was flung wide and, as if they’d been pressing up against it to force it open, the children tumbled out onto the playground, staggering a little, looking rather frantic as they squinted in the golden light of the late afternoon.
Rudy got out of the car and looked up at the sky.
Reassured for the time being, he went up to the gate.
In the midst of the children who, at a distance, all seemed to look alike, to such an extent that they couldn’t be told apart but formed a mass made up of the same individual multiplied bizarrely many times over, he recognized Djibril, even though, with his chestnut hair, gaily colored T-shirt, and sneakers, he differed little from the rest—that child was, of all the others, his child, and he recognized him at once.
He called out, “Hey, Djibril!”
The boy stopped in his tracks, and his wide-open, laughing mouth closed at once.
Feeling hurt and uneasy, Rudy saw his son’s lively, animated features freeze with anxiety the moment he caught sight of the man standing behind the gate and all hope that it wasn’t his father’s voice evaporated.
Rudy waved to him.
At the same time he scrutinized the sky and above the noises in the playground tried to catch the sound of a possible curse.
Djibril stared at him.
He turned around deliberately and began to run.
Rudy called out to him again, but the boy paid no more mind than if he’d seen a stranger at the gate. He was now at the far end of the playground, immersed in a ball game that was unfamiliar to Rudy.
In truth, should he not know the games his son played?
Rudy thought that like any other father he could go into the playground, walk over to his son, seize him sternly by the arm, and take him to the car.
But apart from being afraid Djibril might start crying—something he wished at all costs to avoid—he was fearful of embarking on the wide-open space of the playground.
If the buzzard arrived, doleful, pitiless, where would he hide?
He went and sat in the Nevada.
He saw the school bus arrive and the children line up in the playground ready to get in.
As Djibril was leaving the playground Rudy jumped out of the car and trotted up to the bus.
“Come here, Djibril!” he said in a tone that was both cheery and insistent. “Dad’s taking him home today,” he said to the woman supervising the children on the bus. He ought to know her, he thought, at least by sight—but was it not the first time he’d fetched Djibril from school?
The boy left the group and followed Rudy. He kept his head down as if ashamed. He looked at nothing and no one, but he tried to act natural.
He held the straps on his schoolbag at the armpits and Rudy noticed that his hands were trembling slightly.
Rudy was about to put his arm around Djibril’s shoulder in a gesture he never normally went in for. He had to think it through before doing so in order to make it look as natural as possible. Then, beside the acacias that lined the road, he saw a brown shape out of the corner of his eye.
Turning his head gingerly he looked at the calm, watchful buzzard perched at the top of one of the trees.
Frozen with terror he forgot to embrace Djibril. His arms hung stiffly and awkwardly down his sides.
It took a lot of effort to get to the car. He threw himself in with a groan. What do you want with me, what can you possibly want with me? he wondered.
The child got in the back and slammed the door with studied brusqueness.
“Why did you come and fetch me?” he asked. Rudy sensed that he was on the brink of tears and didn’t answer straightaway.
Through the car window he gazed at the buzzard, uncertain as to whether it had seen him.
His heart was beating less fiercely now.
He drove off slowly so as not to attract the buzzard’s attention. Perhaps it had learned to recognize the sound of the Nevada’s engine.
When they were out of sight of the school, driving with his left hand he turned around to face his son.
The child was frowning, anxiously and uncomprehendingly.
It made him look so much like Fanta whenever she dropped her mask of indifference and revealed what she commonly felt—anxiety and incomprehension—about her husband and their life in France, that Rudy was momentarily annoyed with the boy and the old dark, aggressive emotions toward Djibril welled up inside him once again—as if the boy had only ever existed to judge the father—emotions that had burgeoned in him when, during his suspension from the lycée, he’d spent a mortifying month of indignity and bitter regret in the child’s company.
It seemed to him now that, whatever he did, his son would blame him and be terribly afraid of him.
“I felt like coming to fetch you from school today, that’s all,” he said in his most amiable voice.
“And Mummy?” the boy almost shouted.
“What about Mummy?”
“Is she okay?”
“Yes, yes, she’s fine.”
Still a bit suspicious, Djibril nonetheless relaxed a little.
So as not to betray his own feelings, Rudy now looked straight ahead.
What did he know about how Fanta was at the moment?
“We’re going to your grandmother’s,” he said, “you can spend the night there. It’s been quite a while since you last saw her, hasn’t it? Is that okay by you?”
Djibril grunted.
Choking suddenly with emotion, Rudy realized that the child was so relieved by his assurances about Fanta that all the rest—what was going to happen to him personally—was merely of secondary importance.
“Mummy’s okay, you’re sure?” the boy asked again.
Rudy nodded without looking around.
In the rearview mirror he could see the little pale brown face with its coal-black eyes, its flat nose and quivering nostrils like a heifer’s, its thick lips, and he recognized all that and said to himself, That’s my son, Djibril, and although that statement failed to resonate, although it sank inside him, he thought, like a stone, he was beginning to see, to take measure of both the innocence and the independence of the boy whose thoughts and intentions bore no relation to Rudy’s, and who inhabited a whole intimate, secret world in which Rudy had no place.
The meaning of Djibril’s existence didn’t boil down to condemning his father—or did it?
Oh, that death sentence that the two-year-old with the stern look had seemed to pass upon his father: a man so debased, and so despised!
But the figure he saw in the rearview mirror was but a pensive—and for the moment pacified—schoolboy enjoying childhood reveries far removed from Rudy’s preoccupations: it was his son, Djibril, and he was only seven.
“Tell me, are you hungry?” Just hearing himself ask this in a voice choked with emotion made Rudy embarrassed.
Like Fanta, Djibril took time weighing his responses.
Not, Rudy imagined, to work out what he really wanted, but to avoid laying himself open to anything that might be misinterpreted, as if everything he said could later be used against him.
How did we get to this point?
What sort of man am I, that they should need to tread so carefully with me?
Feeling demoralized, he didn’t repeat his question, and Djibril remained silent.
His inscrutable face had a serious look.
Rudy felt a great awkwardness between them.
What should he say?
What did other fathers say to their seven-year-olds?
It had been so long, so long, since they’d been alone together.
Was it necessary to talk?
Did other fathers find it necessary?
“What was that game you were playing just now in school?”
“What was …?” the child repeated after a few seconds.
“You know, when you were playing with a ball. It’s not a game I know.”
Djibril’s eyes darted anxiously, hesitantly, right and left.
His mouth was half open.
He’s wondering, “What’s behind this sudden curiosity?” and since he can’t work it out, he’s looking for the best strategy, the best way to find out what underlies my question.
“It’s just a game,” the child said slowly, in a low voice.
“But what do you have to do? What are the rules?”
Rudy was trying to make his voice sound kindly and unthreatening.
He lifted himself up to smile into the rearview mirror.
But the child now seemed terror-struck.
He’s so scared he can’t think straight.
“I don’t know the rules!” Djibril almost shouted. “It’s just a game, that’s all there is to it.”
“Okay, okay, no problem. Anyway, you were enjoying yourself, weren’t you?”
The child, still not looking any less anxious, mumbled something that Rudy didn’t catch.
Rudy felt that his son was looking a bit like a half-wit. That annoyed and upset him.
Why was the child incapable of understanding that his father was only trying to get closer to him? Why didn’t he make the effort to meet his father halfway? And the high intelligence that Rudy had, perhaps smugly, always credited him with, did it still exist, had it ever existed?
Or else, finding little stimulation at the village school where the teachers were narrowminded and
hardly up to much—at least that was what, deep down, Rudy felt—and oppressed by the atmosphere of sadness, resentment, and dread that prevailed at home, the boy’s intelligence had shriveled and withered, so that without it Djibril, his son, would be just like so many other children: not very interesting …
If Rudy felt no particular hostility toward mediocre children, he saw no reason to love them and didn’t think it likely that he ever would.
He was sliding into a state of bitter affliction.
He was powerless to offer his son unconditional love, so that must mean he didn’t love him. He needed good reasons to love. Was that what fatherly love amounted to? He’d never heard it described as depending on the qualities a child might or might not possess.
He looked at Djibril in the rearview mirror again; he looked at him intensely, passionately, alert to any sign of paternal feeling stirring within himself.
It was his son, Djibril; he’d recognize him even surrounded by other children.
Force of habit?
His heart was just a muddy pool into which, with a ghastly swish, everything was slipping.
Rudy’s mother lived in a tiny, low-roofed, square house in a new housing development at the end of a village consisting of only one street.
When she’d returned to France with Rudy just after Abel’s death she’d gone back to live in their old house deep in the countryside, and Rudy had gone to board at the nearest secondary school.
He’d gone to university in Bordeaux (he remembered the infinite desolation of the gray streets, the campus located far away in the dreary suburbs), and it was to the same old, isolated house that he occasionally went to visit Mummy.
Then, after taking his finals, he’d gone back to Africa and was appointed to a teaching post at the Lycée Mermoz.
Five years ago, after getting fired, when he’d returned to France under a cloud with Fanta and Djibril in tow, he’d found that his mother had left her house for that little villa with tiny square windows and a roof that, like a low forehead, made the whole place look mulish and stupid.
From the word go, he’d felt ill at ease in this neighborhood of houses that all looked alike, built on bare rectangular plots now artlessly graced with tufts of pampas grass and a few replanted Christmas trees!
