Nothing for You Here, Young Man
Marie-Claire Blais
Translated by Nigel Spencer
For Marie Couillard, in friendship and gratitude
. . . once again my thanks to a remarkable artist . . . Sushi
— M.-C. B.
So this is how it would always be thought Daniel, this rush of painful sounds and images pouring through you, whether it was the fate of the sparrow, the chick swept by dust from the streets and calling for its mother, or anyone tiny and young in this distressed universe that laid claim to Daniel’s heart and even his failing breath, his futile, seemingly infinite patience in the face of suffering, no matter how small the creature that struggled, even in this airport they had just closed, nothing flying in or out till who knows when, yet Daniel, a man of his time, was accustomed to this, a lightweight in the balance of things he thought, even if it all seemed so ponderous to him, making his own particular rotations around the Earth like the bird’s feather, still no flight, what was it though that kept bringing him back to that bird trapped among the cables over a station platform in Madrid, what was it, oh if only this kind of delay wasn’t happening just when Mai, away at college and so far from them, was coming back for a visit, you can never be sure of course, not even sure she was still his daughter, what he did seem to know was the wild sparrow in Madrid, chirping in despair like the chick this morning, endless cries ignored by merchants, standing with cross-armed in front of their shops, and about to sweep it away with the street dust under its golden newborn feathers, when would all this stop drumming in Daniel’s ears like the sparrow he’d left to its fate among the cables of the Madrid station, and this is what we all do without a clue how it leads to our undoing, unknowingly building airports, stations, steel and concrete deserts, oh but this one gets us a view of the beach and the calm sea, so why are all flights cancelled. At this moment squinting from his bed through the half-open door, Petites Cendres could see Mabel out on the veranda talking to her parrots and getting screeches in reply that seemed to say, the rent, you’re behind on the rent, he could see their beaks hooked against the shadows, and soon Mabel would go downtown to put them on display or sell roses, well aren’t you the lucky one she said as boss of the rooming house you got someone nice to pay your board and lodging, but Lord Jesus, you haven’t been out of bed for almost two weeks Petites Cendres, now you’ve got enough hair for plaiting, and nails so long and dirty, I daren’t say, you’re no better than the next man, whilst I break my back showing off these parrots to folks, selling roses and all, oh yeah and what do you suppose you got inside those scarlet petals now, Mabel, what eh, maybe some powder for me or do you keep that specially for your customers, not for me though, no way, Lord Jesus no said Mabel, not for you, you got no idea what that stuff costs, and you living here in my respectable house like some trash, you sunk as low as a beggar, and if it weren’t for that nice anonymous donor of yours, you’d already be out there dragging yourself round Bahama Street, you’re just lucky this nice person gives me the money for you Petites Cendres, so my lips are sealed, no way you going to know his name, he watched the hooked beaks in the shadows and the downy white eyelids of one asleep on her shoulder, now the whites around town, Mabel went on, they mistreat these birds showing them off the way they do, stolen from Brazil too, why I saw one, pale pink, that looked like it had dengue fever, head flopping from side to side, whoever was it said hurt something smaller and you hurt me too, maybe some fat-bellied comedian, just watch how they treat you my darlings, no respect, just yelling out to tourists, hey ladies and gentlemen come take your picture with these birds from the tropical savannas, that’s how they treat you, charlatans that stole you out of the jungle, Mabel went on, and you Petites Cendres, you haven’t forgotten we’re throwing a party for your Doctor Dieudonné, oh yes, soon as he gets back, the entire Black Ancestral Choir’s going to celebrate Dieudonné, man of God taking care of the poor and never asking for one cent, why did he have to go away said Petites Cendres, carefree in the comfort of his bed, wasn’t his clinic enough, he mumbled into the dishevelled folds of his sloth, I mean why go volunteer there when we’re holding a party for him right here, Mabel’s singsong voice cut in, going from deep to nasal, he’s getting the town’s medal of honour for doctoring all you lazy layabouts and lost souls, and running two hospitals and a hospice, our very own choir director’s going to give him his plaque with those same fingers and long thin red nails of hers, the ideal man, says the doctor, is not one who piles up money but one who saves lives, why he’s even helped our Ancestral Choir a whole lot too, he’s going to need a nice black tuxedo, just what he hates, and Eureka, the head of the choir, will be so proud that day when Reverend Ézéchielle invites us all to sing in her church, right where all those good-for-nothings and scoundrels wash up, the only church or temple that would want them, no other would take a one of them, just the Reverend, she’ll help anybody and take on anything, her heart’s that big, everybody knows she can remember the young Dieudonné, an immigrant from Haiti tossed out of universities along with those first black students, and the white student who stood beside him, both of them later becoming doctors, in those days when the burning crosses were planted in front of dormitory doors, he was forever there, as if to say I’m always going to be with you, I’ll even burn with you from the fire of those torches or the acid tossed in our faces, because there needs to be someone by your side Dieudonné, yes Valdez would always be there, right by his side and honoured as well, you’re too young to remember all that, Petites Cendres, either that or you’re just being thankless and indifferent, oh shut up was his answer, of course he’d be up to celebrate the doctor’s return, Mabel would be there first though, parrots clinging to her shoulders, her full round silhouette proudly floating past the gaping sprawlers on Bahama Street, he thought, dirty young hands on guitars, dogs sitting beside them, worn out, mournful and lazy, get to work Mabel would tell them, no-good loafers, whilst me who’s three times your age, right, me, me, shrieked the parrots in mock repetition, hey we want a taste of that bitter stuff in your roses said a boy with an earth-coloured face through a cobweb of hair, don’t you got nothing for us, hey listen to me said Mabel, these roses I’m selling tonight are honest ones, their petals, their pollen and not a thing more, no way I’m going to prison like Marcus, poor dumb kid, all he wanted was to help his friend Herman, going crazy up there onstage, too bad he got searched and locked up, poor Marcus, that’s what happens when you want to help someone in this world, you get punished, Petites Cendres was still not up, the boy with the cobwebbed hair-straggled face asked, want me to bring the band into his room and wake him up, nah he’s not sleeping said Mabel, when you play your flute nice like that he can hear you where he is, those sonatinas get him crying you know, and he wonders where you went so wrong, Fleur, because you did you know, like I told him this morning, I’d be forever grieving if I was your ma, Fleur listened thoughtfully with his flute in his lap, one hand stroking his German shepherd, when I think how you used to be, Fleur, I really got to wonder, but Mabel couldn’t divert the boy’s gaze from under that overhang of hair, and just as well he thought, so she doesn’t see the anger in his eyes, the rage shaking his body, furious with himself, and though it was a warm autumn and hot at noon, he was glad to retreat deep inside the hoodie that hid his chin but couldn’t stop the piercing words that went straight to the young musician’s heart, Mabel’s voice was like his own, what exactly have you done, Child Prodigy Fleur, not to be that flower crushed in the street, just a raggedy stuffed hoodie, what, what, geez you reek of alcohol, the cocktails your ma serves in the pub by the ocean when the illegal families come out to dance on the b
each on Saturday nights and your ma gives them free drinks that knock them out right there, while ever since the divorce, your pa and grandpa stayed on the land, poor land back in Alabama, and haven’t they all just driven you backwards, shrunk you down to their own size, you could have gone to study in Vienna, attended the greatest conservatories and music schools in the world, but no they said, no don’t go Fleur, don’t go, you’re so young, a boy can’t just up and leave his folks at eleven or twelve, your only shot, Mabel went on, is to get yourself into a music-teaching program right here on Bahama Street, yes, I know, you wouldn’t get anything for your cello and flute and piano lessons, but at least you’d eat every day, child, Garçon Fleur, you remember that don’t you, that’s what they called you when people came from all around to hear you play a Bach sonata on the piano or conduct a jazz band that Garçon Fleur is dead though, just a fake, an illusion the boy murmured sombrely, or perhaps he didn’t and the words simply weighed on his lips and forehead without the strength to force them out of the unseeing shade inside the hood pulled all the way down to his brows; and soon night would fall, time for him to fall asleep like Petites Cendres, his dog stretched out beside him and the flute hidden in the folds of his coat, sleep, thought Fleur, just so I don’t hear or see them anymore, at least not till tomorrow, so even if I play well on any instrument, just a fake, an illusion, it’s because I love it that I can’t get free, now it’s become merely a mechanical longing for the loftiest sounds possible, Bach and Schubert, planted in me like it wants to kill me, his thoughts ran to this as he sat slumped against the wall out there on Bahama, same age as the young Korean violinist, both of them the great revelations of the year on the New York concert stage, but at least she didn’t have to scrap her career because of ignorant parents who loved her too much, oh no, she was still listened to with respect, veneration, a grown woman now, dazzling to hear, said the critics, in a world where talent is worn out and used up so quickly, the stars perfectly aligned for some and not for others, they aligned for Ky-Mani Marley though, son of the legendary musician and not devoured or blotted out by his father’s passing, the exact opposite perhaps, Fleur’s father knew nothing of music, just a farmer toiling on an arid plot of land, so the stars, well maybe for some like Ky-Mani Marley, I’m going to hear him tonight as a matter of fact, to hear him sing “Dear Dad,” we wear our hair the same but I’ve got no beard, now that’s music come alive “Dear Dad,” I could perhaps try and play at the New Music Festival or reunite the guys I used to play with for my New Symphony, if I had some willpower as Mum used to say, you’ve got to want to, son, you’ve got to want to, and now out of breath, the fat lady in the pub is rushing over to her customers, still beautiful mind you, they flirt with her though she doesn’t like it, no man, not one since the divorce, just her son and his bad reputation, Garçon Fleur she still calls me and never has caught on that it gets on my nerves, Fleur’s enough Ma, blossoming up from the spit in the streets, you just don’t get it do you Ma, it’s all an illusion, a put-on, he can hear the din of street noises, the chatter of Mabel and her parrots, the one called Jerry says Mabel let’s get out of here, Mabel says over towards the docks and stop scratching my head with that beak of yours, no, no Jerry says, let’s go, let’s go, hey it’s an old head so don’t mess with it Jerry, okay, and Fleur can see Jerry’s blue-rimmed eye staring at him as the bird repeats softly, let’s go Mabel let’s go okay Fleur carried a torch for just one woman, love them all as he might, it was always her he thought of, the young Korean violinist, the revelation of that year’s contest, she, not Fleur, would be crowned and she would go to Moscow, for his parents had decided, isolated, Fleur would stay at home stranded like a pebble on the edge of a brook, too young his parents said, you can’t let a child just go off like that, besides he’d need a new suit, the chubby kid who’d sat playing the piano with bare feet, not laced up to the neck in some outfit, no you wouldn’t be happy that way his turbanned mother said, just a jean jacket without sleeves and jean shorts she’d embroidered for him, stringy at the bottom, his hair combed flat and brushed with a motherly love that intimated his destiny, wasn’t this how she’d dressed him for the concert in New Orleans, complaining even that was too far without her by his side, oh he’s not going to be alone, there’s the drummer, guitarist, and bass player too, and yes, he would have grown up to marry her, the violin virtuoso friend with flying fingers whose name in her own language was Fleeting Dawn, but she’d rather be called Clara, as in Clara Schumann, an integral part of the music itself, Fleur, well perhaps he was too simple for her or the exotic air of such a distant culture, it was far too complex for a background like his, stooped over the piano, stripped to the waist but for a short embroidered vest, a primal child not about to cavort as a trained curiosity on the world’s concert stages he thought, down-to-earth and devoid of imagination, they always got it wrong and took the boring, purely common-sense route, though Grandad would have sold his barren land for me, yes, he’d have done that for his grandson, and Fleur would have grown up, the childlike boy in him torn away so he could grow to manhood in that little cocoon of lies, with shoes on his feet before this, even now here he was out in the street, barefoot under his overcoat, he’d have worn a suit too for Fleeting Dawn’s triumph at the Moscow competition instead of remaining captive like a netted fish, its throat finally cut while his parents said they only wanted what was good for him, and wasn’t it enough to be well-known as a virtuoso at home and in the towns nearby, surely that should be enough for a young lad, still a boy, we’ll see later on, his father told him, but Fleeting Dawn was already married to a pianist, he was on tour though and rarely at their home in Paris, well actually they had several places, still one day Fleur would catch up with them, new shoes, tight-fitting black suit and all, and then he’d say to her, well he’d say hi it’s me, Fleur, remember that sonata we practised so hard, well would you like to hear it now, and he’d give his dog a shake and get up with his flute, and he had the impression passersby were listening, whether they stopped or kept on walking briskly, still they clapped, but it was really Fleeting Dawn or Clara he thought of, the daylight that shimmered in his heart against his nocturnal haunts, kind but unhappy, he’d be off to his mother’s for a shower tonight, and maybe she’d even wash his feet and hair like when he was small, such nice hair she’d say, but look what you’ve gone and done to it, let me at least brush it for you, her gaze melting into the hesitant look of this errant, ill-famed child, you mustn’t hold back from your mother, she’d say, but the island would close in on him like a net over the exposed skin of a fish, even a shark and he couldn’t escape, eyes rolling skyward, gone forever those playful vacations at his grandfather’s, running with goats through the fields, sitting on his knee, so what about music he’d ask, well I don’t know much came the answer, but I do know you can’t do only that in life, this is an old man speaking and he doesn’t know anything, but music, oh don’t listen to me he said sipping his dark beer, listen to what God tells you, after all He loves music too, now I’m a man of little faith but I do know this, they say there’s lots of music in Heaven, angels’ music, and without it I don’t think too many people would want to go there, though as I say, I’m not long on faith, but no, ascending to those heights for some boring human voices, or even the memory of them, celestial or not, I doubt the gates of paradise would be open to me anyway, nope, not me the doubter, c’mon are we going asked Jerry, one of Mabel’s parrots, she’s got big teats like Martha my mother, also good for a show out on the docks, oh she’s got herself all prettied up too, several layers of clothing and that hair, thought Fleur, yes it’ll be cool out there by the sea tonight, and his fingers mechanically played the sonata he had so often rehearsed with Clara when they were very young, it’s beautiful said Mabel, beautiful like in church, you know the Reverend’s going to pay for my trip, plane and all, so I can see my girl in Indiana when she has her third baby, Mabel was wearing a worn pink velvet vest and a tight red top that Fleur thought pushe
d up her breasts, plus a white skirt and shoes, with a handbag that seemed heavy with the ginger beer she said she was going to sell out on the quays, she said it would do him good to have some himself, it could cure pretty much anything, and she made Petites Cendres drink some every single day, though it didn’t do anything for his dejected look or his sinful laziness, I have to appear worthy of seeing and hearing him, I have to go freshen up at my mom’s Fleur thought, he’s going to have three other bands there with him, oh the stars are all aligned magnificently, uh-huh Ky-Mani Marley, what’s the idea of having so many babies anyway, said Mabel, my stomach’s empty, I haven’t eaten a thing since yesterday, but at Mom’s I’m gonna get nachos and brown ale, then get into fresh jeans and go out, Fleur’s breath flowed abundantly through the flute, even though he’d begun to feel hungry, and there was the sharpness of alcohol sliding past his lips, yes, he ought to have followed Fleeting Dawn to Moscow instead of listening to them all, simply taken the money and gone, as someone had suggested. Then the metallic-sounding Voice announced they’d be held over, but you can’t leave here the Voice kept saying, and Daniel obediently listened, the same as all the other passengers, and already two hours had gone by, one of them got to the bar before Daniel, I guess we have no choice but to drink, she said, I really need to talk to someone mister, I can’t go outside for a smoke so I guess it’s you, boy what a world and what strange times Daniel said, as though sensing her crisis and trying to soften her tremors, the flight’s delayed, that’s all, he said, but not for long, look, the sea’s calm and the sky’s blue and cloudless, that only makes me worry more said the woman, think of it, I could be having a smoke on the beach and here we are all piled together and for god knows how long, oh it won’t be long now said Daniel with a doctor’s reassuring tone, already dismissing her in favour of Mai, his daughter, can I buy you a drink he offered with what seemed a pontificating tone of indifference, one that strips one of one’s habits, no, too cruel she said to herself as she watched his gaze surf elsewhere, oh that was men for you, still this one seems more attentive, even affable, and he thought about youth and nothing else; unknown barely a moment ago, she had already disappeared from his radar as it swept on into the limbo of anonymity, oh sure he’d offered to buy her a drink as his eye settled on a group of college girls pouring into the seats fully armed with computers and identical jackets, so there you have the mind of a mature male, the woman thought to herself, carbon-copy girls on borrowed time from carbon-copy parents, compact, dense, and cast from a single mould, the woman wanted to phone someone like everyone else, cellphones at the ready, hers too, but she had no one, no, absolutely no one right now to whom she could report her delayed flight for instance, no, off on vacation all alone, pleasing herself and no one else, delayed flight or not, what did she care, no, her sole obsession was this habit, these colourfully wrapped little packages in her bag, not to be touched, and oh the smoky taste right down deep inside, did she even have the right to dream of them, so why was this man eyeing those girls anyway, was he seeking out someone special among these untouchable, well brought-up, well-nourished offspring, densely packed into their miniskirts and short shorts, all pink and healthy, not like Mai at all, thought Daniel, well maybe a bit in that physically poised way of looking life in the face, that slightly unaccomplished grace in their movements, looking askance at adults like aliens, no wait, Mai wouldn’t do that, not create distance like that, cool and inaccessible, safely confined within her parents’ class, smiling at you dismissively if at all, no, I’ll be late for Mai’s photo exhibit at college thought Daniel, glad that she was headed for arts instead of science, no longer sharing a room, the way she wanted it without the distraction of a roommate, Mai being Mai of course, she had plenty of friends, sociable as always Daniel reflected, oh I agree sir that these are indeed mysterious times we live in, said the woman trying desperately to hold Daniel’s gaze, grey and dark, ruthless and pitiless she said, aware of him slipping beyond her grasp, Daniel, my name’s Daniel and I’m on my way to see my daughter, it’s been six months he told her, I guess this is how they slip away from us bit by bit, so he had a family, worse luck, fathers, all they ever do is talk about their families she thought to herself, what narcissism to think anyone was interested, wife and kids and all that, domestic defeat so inimical to a woman who enjoyed living alone with her own habits, her own freedom, although law and order would inevitably invade that too, invade everyone’s retreat, no smoking in the apartment ma’am, look at the colour of your face, listen to the cough, your health is not good, so we will take you hostage, the imperious voice of authority, the Voice in airports announcing delayed or cancelled flights, nothing leaving here today, the absolute Voice impartial and infuriating, subjugating all to its will, impervious to any resistance, like these passengers and baggage suddenly corralled, young and old with no escape, not even a hallway or a smoking area thought the woman, no living space, just walking in circles in this hateful homogeneity, sky and sea so near and yet so far, unreachable beyond a sliver of glass, a bay window onto a calm sea and a blue heaven Daniel was reminded that Augustino had written that in one of his books, too much, perhaps he writes too much, his father wondered, and how was it he wrote so much about a time long before he was born, a frantic force driving him to see the world in its totality, every bit of its turbulence and tragedy, never mind when things happened, now or decades ago, perhaps it was simply today as it would be tomorrow, right here on this beach, Augustino had written this one Thursday in October as the military installed their missiles, putting up a barbed-wire camp, deployment today or deployment tomorrow on this gentle beach called Repose, up in an instant they were, the camps, Eagle missiles, and for hours, even days, not a bird was to be seen in the sky, darts ready to be launched from the missiles perhaps, no, wait, was it in November as the fog rolled in Daniel wondered, maybe not, maybe only a flying exercise, the usual Caribbean practice runs, nothing out of the ordinary, the young president had, after all, said no to the missile shield, no to the fiery darts, perhaps thinking of his own children, Augustino’s brothers and sisters and a generation that might never see the light of day, with an eye on his own progeny and the generations after that lingering for now in an antechamber of limbo, he said no, that is what Augustino wrote, though born long after this miracle of a man with the brass to say no, Augustino himself a young man with nothing here for him here, Daniel thought, nothing, just torn prematurely from the tree like a dried-up piece of fruit, a strange son, strangely grateful that by saying no they had conceived and borne him, strangely grateful in his impulsive, virulently spontaneous writing carried away perhaps by his all-consuming desire to scramble up, over, and beyond the lip of History’s crater, Augustino pointed to the tortuous twists by which countries could swallow without themselves being swallowed, Augustino’s existence and his parents’ could so easily have been evaporated by an almost casual lick of fire, that was how he described it, no city or its people, no matter how distant, would have survived, every one of us betrayed in a day by that voice saying so fast and without hesitation, yes, quick, take the offensive, we’ve lived within close reach of unimaginable betrayal, that October, for instance, when we very nearly ceased to be, when Repose Beach, with its white sand, its whiter herons, egrets, and doves, was invaded and encamped by troops, barbed wire everywhere, the trumpet sounding to herald this very betrayal, each one glued to the radio not for this story of battalions and artillery ready to put an end to life, no, but to witness the fall of the San Francisco Giants in the seventh game of the World Series, others nibbling popcorn before movie screens, cinema and TV providing the drama that was lacking in real life, the radio telling them that it might have happened during the night, but with daylight, afternoon, and evening past, no point in getting all worked up, after all, trains were running, no steel-clad Eagles were on their unerring one-way flight, no, here on the island, the sea was calm and a brand-new blue sky stretched over them, Daniel in his thoughts had no inkling today, any
more than he did yesterday, that this October’s make-believe beauty masked an occult world of warlike laws bound to endanger him and his own. You’ve got to be there in time for sunset on the sea tonight said Robbie, begging and laughing as he knelt on Petites Cendres’ bed, oh yes, tonight’s the night, there, you hear Fleur’s music out in the street Petites Cendres said melancholically as he pulled the sheet over his head again and made sure Robbie knew there was no way he was going out, come on get your underwear and jeans and vest, you have to be there, all our friends are coming, I’m going to have a gold crown like this Robbie said sporting a paper one with “Queen” written on it, it was his year to be crowned and honoured and kowtowed to, I’m even going to stand by the Christmas tree and give out presents to the kids on Bahama Street, and come nightfall I’ll dish out condoms and other cool stuff at the Saloon, cinnamon cookies and chocolates, ’cause I reign supreme, see this mole above my lip, well it’s sexy and I’ve decided I’m keeping it for my coronation, oh and they’re building a stage specially for me out in the street, all the former queens and princesses will be there, parading and sparkling, oh and my calves will be in such a knot, I know it, I’ll be so afraid of tumbling off my glory ladder, and Yinn behind me in one of those grandiose outfits she brought back from Asia, maybe a beaded blue tux, narrow-waisted like a bouquet of lilies, buttocks and legs practically nude underneath, glass-heeled pumps too, makes you giddy, doesn’t it, to say Yinn’s name out loud, and Petites Cendres stirred under the sheets and Robbie said enough already and dragged him by the hair then the afternoon silence and you could hear it fading into colours raining over the city, yes there it was, Fleur’s sonata, or was that just the sound of Petites Cendres trembling under the sheets and refusing to get up even when Robbie cried victory, here put on your jeans and Jockeys and tank top, Mabel got them ready for you over at the laundry, what a saint she is, always praying too, praying for you and me brother, what a pair of sinners, that’s a tall order for a simple woman with no husband, tossed out the good-for-nothing just like that she did, the slacker said he was on unemployment, crack dealer more like it, says he’s going to open a vending machine for the school kids on Bahama, one more nut-job, so yeah cried Robbie, victory, got them right here, Jockeys, jeans, and sleeveless, come on brother, up, why you lying there rotting away on that mattress, how many days you been here anyway, your landlady Mabel came and got me, and Yinn, no never mind, I told you already, look no man’s got a broken heart that can’t be fixed, that’s the way it is, indestructible, look come on and get dressed brother, oh and Fleur’s beautiful music out on Bahama, that’ll get you back to life, sure the man’s every bit as lazy as you are, languor and sloth bring shame on an unhappy man, told you already didn’t I meanwhile Mabel tramps up and down the docks with those parrots Jerry and Merlin, she says Merlin’s tail feathers are as orange as a ray of setting sun, and when he spreads his wings oh that’s something to see, yep that bird’ll outlive me by years, he could make it to eighty, and who’ll his master or mistress be when I’m gone, eh, I already went to so much trouble training him not to think about his former owner the way he did, any male voice would make him jump, his old master’s voice maybe, well no, he’d look at me like a disappointed lover, that mask of a face looking down black and white, brown lines around that piercing yellow eye, come on down and see Merlin and his lost-master blues, the guy who gave him to me was a ship’s captain before he died, sometimes when he’s being good he calls me Mama, my Mama all blue and gold this Merlin, but Jerry now he’s white as snow all over, Robbie said, and Mabel’s weaving through the dream merchants on the wharves, oh yes, and she stomps and frowns about you Petites Cendres, wanting you to get your love of life back, ambling among the fire-breathers, the trained animals and acrobats, yes you, Petites Cendres, and selling her lemon-and-ginger drinks while Merlin, with his orange tail, wonders what’s become of the old master gone before him same as Mabel will, ’cause he’s the only one who will last forever, just old nostalgic Merlin pining over his past loves, and in this perilous uncertain moment Mabel loves him oh so much, totally devoted to him and to Jerry the reasonable one, see it’s a bit like you, Petites Cendres, hobbled by these silly regrets of yours, dreams or whatever, but outside it’s all music and dancing and singing, do you really want me to go get Dorothea the doctor of stooped shoulders and broken spirits, wait till she flips you over like a pancake and massages those bones the way she’s trained to do, a miracle cure, her gift from heaven, yeah they say she’s gotten the paralyzed to walk again: I remember now thought Petites Cendres, once when Mabel wasn’t watching over me, when she was out of the house, I did walk to the veranda, the whole town was baking under the sun during those summer days, bathing in it, suffocating from the jasmine in the gardens, corncobs on the grills along Bahama Street, and there he was collapsed in Mabel’s hammock, no I never saw him, not even a glimpse, goddess of obscure temples, he saw me as he drove by and maybe soon would give me a lift too, strong as he was, was it the dark approach of some deathly convoy coming for me under sweltering sun, or just him, Yinn, giving me a friendly wave and nodding as he drove by, smiling in the shade of a blind, did I really see him wave to me, saying hi wordlessly there in the street, or was he only passing by oblivious, maybe let down or sad the way he often was at the end of the night, when he’d roll Robert’s T-shirt up over his virile body, saying look at this god, let me caress him, he’s grown up hasn’t he this Robert from Martinique, one day he washes up here at the saloon, the next here he’s all cuddly, ’cause on the outside he’s music and song, Robbie said once again knowing Petites Cendres wasn’t listening, undaunted Robbie went on, your clients are wondering where you’ve got to, you’re not in the sauna where you used to be, nor on the hotel terraces at night, not in the Jacuzzis or men-only pools or gyms you used to go to so often, and the erotic video parlours where you used to pick them up, boy what a life you’ve lived Petites Cendres, gym, sauna, bar, you were all over the place, you charming, shameless, crazy half-breed, it’s time you got cleaned up again, cut your nails and hair, he pointed in Yinn’s direction and imitated him, better arch those eyebrows brother, I want you front and centre for my coronation tonight. Oh yes, the stars were aligned for him tonight Fleur was thinking as he played his flute in the street, the music slicing out of him and right through those rags as though bringing on a sudden spell of dancing, yeah all night at the Sunsplash Club he’d be listening to Ky-Mani Marley, got to get to Mom’s for a clean shirt, yeah and some hibiscus in my hair like the old days, a man of flowers like when I played concerts as a kid, the flower was me, I blossomed the instant I sat down at the piano, splish splash, flowers falling in bits and withering like rotten teeth in the back of my mouth, hey what is that I smell, jasmine or something even more extravagant, the rare flowering from corn, suffocating, and who knows, maybe on one of those tours Clara might actually show up in one of the halls for a master concert, yes, appear she will and I’ll see her bring the violin towards her face, pallid under the stage lights, yes, it will be a Beethoven concerto, so if I want to get in to see her and hear her I’m going to need a new suit, oh and they’ll all know me in the orchestra, they’ll wave, then splash, how it all just breaks up and shatters, I’ll go to the Sunsplash Club tonight and listen to him sing, the man from the stars, dear Daddy, Daddy dear, oh where are you, yeah I could conduct that orchestra, could’ve, could still, in a brand-new black suit and shoes nicely shined, not like before with my parents content to let me go barefoot, playing the taverns while people stuffed themselves or just nibbled something, sailors and nasty captains with their drunken wives yelling bravo at me, oh he’ll go places that Garçon Fleur kid, bless him, and there she is on the podium my sweet flower Clara, Fleeting Dawn, face pressed to her violin for the Beethoven concerto, listening to its celestial music, oh it makes me cry, yeah, I’ll be there to hear and admire, but I don’t know if she’ll even recognize me moments when suddenly devastated by deafness in the middle of a composition, y
oung Beethoven there in his miserable rooming-house covered his boiling brows with pots of water that filtered through the floorboards and set the neighbours to howling scandal, and who’d have known that youthful bellowing maniac upstairs would be the humble author of such music, so undone and so wounded, yeah thought Fleur, he wrote in blood and under showers of freezing water, it shows doesn’t it, life, I want it back, and tonight I’ll be there to listen to him. Oh may those stars be aligned said Robbie ripping the bedclothes off the mummy that Petites Cendres had made of himself, come on, up brother, I’m not going to let you live in this mess between the bed and the bureau, think about Fatalité, always the hero, always on his feet, bold even when he could barely stand, I remember the last trip, it was to Mexico and they’d invited him to dance and sing at some ball they were having, so Fatalité said come with me, ’cause he didn’t want to be alone with the shadow hanging over him that first time he had pneumonia, nope, no way, we’ll have a ball too he said, dancing and drinking and all that, stoned and drunk the whole time, it was his last hurrah, exalted and supercharged with nothing in his head but the finish line, yeah sure stoned and drunk all the same, even on the plane they were taken aback by how grandiose he was, especially with all those plumes and feathers and hat, splendid in his decadence and saying I am noticed therefore I exist, and when that’s over, well there won’t be anything to see, nothing, for two whole weeks we did nothing but laugh and dance and sing in club after club swilling martinis, and to turn on his fans Fatalité showed himself off in all sorts of weird and insane disguises everywhere in the streets and later on the beaches, he’d say here’s my audience tonight right here on Los Muertos Beach, what PR, we ate out by the ocean so happy and pissed, yeah okay stoned as well, still with that trace of pneumonia casting a shadow over it all, nothing too serious though, not enough to stop him from having fun, then out of the blue in that romantic setting Fatalité says to me, I wish this could last forever, you and me, this is the life isn’t it, nothing to do but smoke weed, so much happening, so many adventures while we’re still young, look at that sky and that ocean, oh how majestic, really, if only this could last forever, hey tonight you perform at the Atlantic, don’t forget, I told him, a table for two by the ocean and forever stoned and drunk, the two of us, as we pondered the riches of our existence, a virtual treasure chest, ah this is the life, Petites Cendres, fighting on fearlessly, saying whatever happens tomorrow, today’s the day my senses are aglow, so what do you say Petites Cendres, but he just shaded his eyes and said nothing. Daniel saw one of the college girls move away from the others and undo the team shirt she’d tied round her waist, just as Mai would have done to unburden herself, they were all loitering around the airport with their video games, must be from some private school, and Mai too had gotten out of the uniform that marked her as a member of the elite and impatiently tossed aside the shirt, without which she seemed almost undressed, her belly piercing on display amid the light white summer clothes she had on underneath, then the girl sat on the ground with a book titled Scientific Discoveries, and of course Daniel realized it meant women’s scientific discoveries, he’d dared assume that Mai was interested only in the arts, but maybe not, perhaps he was shut out of this new growth into womanhood a very few years from now, like this college girl bent over her book and drawn in by the demands of knowledge that he and his generation had no right to, as his kids were always reminding him, he was a relic of the past rather than a forerunner of the future, he needed to realize this, unfair maybe, as unfair he thought, as our children judging us like enemies, so here she is this diminutive college girl studiously glued to her book beneath a crown of golden locks, he could have lifted her into his arms and cradled her the way he had his own daughter, yet beneath that forehead were eyes like Mai’s, so pitiless and inquiring, and who knows maybe this girl would be the great one to make or apply new discoveries; this was Daniel, but he was also a man who desired women and managed to hold on to what his children called his writer’s youthfulness, nevertheless when they recorded all the discoveries to be made by these young people still in schools, colleges, and universities, boys and girls on the verge of tomorrow’s astonishing creations, Daniel had slipped past that beatific summit of his life, and like it or not, he’d have to accept old age regardless, this was the heart of the huge injustice that separated women and children, he thought, the clash, the rage, this thought saddened him the instant the woman told him her name, Laure she said, elbows on the bar, funny that was my mother’s name, he replied, Laure he said again, sorry there’s no place to smoke here, yes she said, and I’m not the only one, if only they’d let us out for a few minutes, it really is an assault on our freedom to deprive us like this, no, really, Laure went on, there’s no one you can go to for any kind of recourse, no one, they’re all against us, me, she said, it’s like stopping us from breathing whatever makes us relax, a cigarette, now how harmless is that, they think they’re the guardians of our health, our ventilation, the air in our lungs, the reproduction of our cells, our fight against bacteria, when all they’re really doing is ham-fistedly stopping us from breathing, that’s how it’s going to end for real you know, it’ll finish me, and Daniel allowed that yes it was a cruel situation to be in, offering her some mineral water, thinking all the while about his daughter Mai, like this young college girl with a book of female scientific discoveries open on her lap, a look on her face every bit as uncompromising as Mai’s when she looked up at him, Mai the engineer perhaps out to save an endangered planet, even included in the book this girl had in front of her, converting India’s grain to flour in an incubator that functioned without electrical current, an innovator in the labs where such devices were created, and aiming to produce them locally in Africa, inventions that were her gift to the world, offered with an elegance that was pure and natural as her philosophy, rooted in the needs of others, simply arrived at and wholly her own, if not this, then perhaps a reform-minded financier, an economist whose career was entirely free of corruption, maybe a troubleshooter on the hunt for young disaster victims with her humble cellphone, or part of a network reporting on the countless cases of malnutrition and malaria, she, all of them saving thousands who might die before they were five, a dream thought Daniel, maybe a dream that all these little ones might not grow up amid ruins, his greatest wish for the disinherited of the Earth, for this, for Mai he had partially shelved writing for ecology, there were still the conferences, signings, and readings that connected him to literature, but the Earth is our one vast muse, isn’t it he thought, still nothing flying out of this place, perhaps he was stuck here all day while colleagues and others awaited him at the university in Ireland, and he wouldn’t see Mai till he returned home, or was that a dream as well, a hug and reconciliation with Augustino, cool and cerebral, not the emotional kind like me at all thought Daniel, no, he wrote unsentimentally as a bringer of justice to a generation of scholars, researchers, and physicists who’d thought the neutron bomb would be a betterment for humanity, the men, women, administrators, and politicians behind this project, oh yes he judged them, all those spectral squads like criminals in a war of shadows, a war chilled by its own fixation on horror, and how could a renowned physicist on his deathbed face designing that monstrosity and calling it the most moral of weapons, so wrote Augustino in his book Letter to Young People Without a Future, how could a man who had designed this bomb for ripping enemy troops to shreds without the slightest harm to buildings and installations, the moral model of the perfect nuclear device, invented and designed to spare all things inanimate: tanks and helmets would not be obliterated, just those who sought protection in them, the killing fire beneath their feet reduced just enough for that, such a fine calculation made by a man who at forty-nine would take this secret and unutterable betrayal to the grave, leaving only the controversy of a weapon yet to be used, as this great mind lay dying and dissolving into madness, wrote Augustino, the world needed proof that the ignition of invisible particles made this machine
into a model of morality, living organisms consumed in seconds, yet not the stones of our houses or the metallic frames of our cell phones, this much revered man with a gnarled face that bore no hint of criminality, how would he spend his last hours, struck perhaps by the lightning of conscience, mightn’t he feel damned without redemption or any way to reclaim what he had erased from the face of the Earth with the very pencil strokes that had laid out the foundations and intricacies of this indescribably demonic project Daniel responded, would an abrasive youth like Augustino have been able to inflame the wound of his cowardice as it tried to close over the satisfaction of a job too well done in the hope of making his country safe, a cleansing disinfectant bomb as he thought of it, his very own discovery, neglected and wrapped in its own Machiavellian mystery, a device intended for purification, he alone perhaps felt no blame in seeking a defence for his country, alone in knowing that grey zone where inventors like himself might commit the worst crimes and always be pardoned for defending their homeland, thus erasing all notions of good or evil amid the exaltation of their scientific epiphanies, Daniel told his son, perhaps at the close of his life he may have felt the light at the end of the tunnel casting some of its first warmth over him, long sought after throughout his research, no need at this stage to question any of it, perhaps seeing in all those pages of calculations an answer he could call God, well so much the better then after finding consolation in the Bible and prayer each day, at the gates neither of Heaven nor of Hell, but merely doubt, declaring himself a man released from his most hard-won accomplishments, feats that would destroy the Earth, ah now at last to sleep and think no more, for that door opened slightly onto a much sought-after nothingness. And Fleur remembered the foreign teacher forcing him to do exercises for hours, oh yes my young friend, work and work some more, we could work a whole day without one transcendent sublime note rising from the piano, your skill may be phenomenal but it is not the gift of music, think of Rachmaninov sitting for hours at the piano, think back to them every one, and Fleur would hear that strange voice carry him back to those stormy December nights of Lenin’s putsch and revolution, when one composer tore himself away from his much loved native soil, his house sleepy under snow-laden trees, nights near a river murmuring beneath a thin skin of ice, ripped away from his homeland with his wife and children, so beautiful and so far away thought Garçon Fleur, he too would be leaving father, mother, and grandfather, although deprived of October and revolutions and Lenin’s putsch, no one even waiting on a train in St. Petersburg to gather him and his family and whisk them away to Sweden where the voluntary exile, his heart contrite, would play concerts, having fled forever, his house probably burnt behind him, his forest, all of it a blaze to be fled with infants in arms and a thin suitcase with his sheet music and orchestral parts, nothing more, just a basket of food brought by a friend with warm clothing, chubby young Fleur had listened to three of these piano compositions, reaching towards the piano, and soon he too would be gone, he and his teacher together, oh how the notes rippled beneath his fastidious fingers as he practised without any of the sublime resonance and transcendence his teacher talked about, content only to say let’s start again, then you can play the sonata, how difficult indeed to get a child to feel the music when it was written for grownups, first you must loosen the fingers, but then there were the insensitive parents fiercely opposed to so many hours of practice, but alone in Russia with his teacher, Clara and his agent, they said their boy would not be the same, his cheeks were growing pale and he slept badly at night, no, no, he would stay here with them in town, on the island, he was just too untamed to land in the middle of a competition like that, and so far from them too, he still heard his teacher’s goodbyes in the pained notes of the flute when he played in the street, goodbye, what a shame, a real shame the German shepherd growled softly at the wall as Kim and her big mongrel showed up, not even on a leash like Fleur’s shepherd, only a bit of rope, this girl so young with flowing curls, a backpack, and black boots, but why was she always stalking him like this, usually so bad-tempered and smiling at no one but him, one of the very few who dared sleep out alone at night, though of course she avoided the really dangerous beaches and knew how to snarl when she had to, everywhere I go thought Fleur to himself, here she is now as he plays, sitting right next to him on a drum she taps languidly, Fleur wanted to yell get out of here, go on, that’s enough, but courage failed him, oh he could have run off one December night with his sheet music under his arm, could have caught some train or plane, simply got away that’s all, he was eleven or twelve when his fate was decided, either get out or let everything go, fade away. What Daniel had to himself here in this airport during the long wait for a flight to Europe, what he had was time to reflect on Augustino and Mai and Samuel and Vincent as though they were right there with him, watching him and not without irony either, as if to say okay Papa, what is it you really think of us eh, he remembered that Augustino, steeped in his books, wasn’t always the same avenger, with something approaching tenderness he recounted the loss of Jessica, a life snuffed out in the crash of her cardinal-red Cessna, and whether it was the rain or the mist, the twelve-year-old pilot had not managed to break the record, flying as she said, flying my Cardinal till it dies in flight, like the bird, perhaps it was at seven she said, I’ll cover five hundred kilometres in three days, then her name would go up next to John Kevin’s in The Guinness Book of World Records, never done before, and it said right there on her cap, “Women Fly,” ever since, Augustino had written, each day and night a whole line of them took off in Cessnas they’d learned to fly for that very same trip with Jessica’s words on their hats —“Women Fly”— and she’d flown, not died, just flown somewhere to beat every record, saying to all who followed her, the sky is yours, don’t get distracted or afraid, keep a close eye on your controls, if you wander for a moment, and above all don’t listen to the sound of the rain, ignore its spatter and fly over it, she knew that instructors had taken back the controls, though not hers, now calcinated beyond recognition with her, her angel, unrecognizable but beside her always, as every one of the girls following her lead, their instructors saying Jessica needed three cushions just to reach the pedals and still see the dials, two minutes to takeoff he said, and she’d had only forty-eight hours of flying time, I told her it wasn’t enough, it really wasn’t, but she said it will do, she was morose and hadn’t slept well the night before, so that made things worse, fearless little girl didn’t listen but still, but still he was sorry he hadn’t convinced her that forty-eight hours wasn’t enough, he heard the applause out on the runway before takeoff, people yelling come back soon, and Jessica smiling at her little sister in their mum’s arms, both of them so small below, later over the cellphone, her mother heard Jessica’s desperate complaints, I think I hear rain outside Mum, it wasn’t supposed to rain, she went on as though she were still beside them, why didn’t they cancel, but the rain went on and on, her instructor forever beside her, calcinated and unrecognizable, and no he hadn’t cancelled when they were on their way to Route 30 for Cheyenne Airport, there was still time to stop this and save them, intact and not disfigured nor obliterated, a curse on the transcontinental flight she had set her heart on, the instructor thought, the pride and wilfulness of a child had led them astray, after all storms had been forecast for Wyoming while they were still over California, storms, big ones in Wyoming, he’d told her, but she said one minute to takeoff, and that’s when he felt his strongest regrets, knowing she’d slept only two hours, knowing all he did, why didn’t he snatch her hands, so frail in those black gloves, from the controls, what equanimity was it that caused him to do nothing, to listen to what she said over and over again, five thousand kilometres in three days, what a celebration there would be, what praise and admiration, too late to turn back now, and now here it was, the thunder and lightning leaping across the sky and tearing into the plane’s aluminum skin, no, no it’s okay, rain, that’s all said Jessica, only rain she said at 8:23 a.
m., flying too low over Cheyenne Airport, definitely too low, he’d have to wrest the controls from her, much too low he thought, no more flying now, a smudge on the smoke-coloured clouds, rocked by explosive thunder, the wing tip poking through the thick of it, frozen in awe, he heard her say into the phone in fright, it’s raining hard Mom, and we’re coming down, don’t worry her mother heard her say, we’re on our way back, gone in a deluge of fire, thought the instructor frozen dumb, that’s how it will read, oh God, how could I, both of us like an engaged couple as both of them closed their eyes just before the crash, forever in an embrace circled by clouds of smoke and fire, so that later on, when the other young girls flew over that spot in Wyoming in the same model of plane, they felt a tremor in the air and with it the exaltation of flying and flying till death overtook them, that was Jessica’s last rejoicing, her last cry of passion and happiness this, Augustino wrote, it was for this she lived to the last, to be an offering to freedom of the skies for all the others, though not for Jessica’s little sister to whom she’d waved goodbye through the window of the cockpit as they took off, now grown, the azure blue into which Jessica and her Cessna seemed to bounce playfully but Icarus-like too close to the sun, enjoying it all so much, taking to it so naturally, to her sister though, the sky seemed more muddied and dark than clear blue, so absorbed was Jessica with her instructor beside her that her father behind in the third red seat barely registered along with the smoky sky, so he’d scribbled her a note, or perhaps he’d merely wanted to, and slipped it on the end of a piece of string next to her ear, this is it sweetheart, we’ll never meet again, or perhaps it read there’s no hope, soon all three of us will be dead, then again maybe she never even got the message, or there was none, only one her younger sister imagined afterwards, there was so little time, but when as a teen she looked to the sky, it was in hatred, oh so blue it was, then it was covered with clouds that piled up and shed their jagged rain, three red seats spinning and spinning forever, and the ghostly cries from them, a pilot’s heaven had snatched her sister and father away and the instructor, a heaven she hated, a heaven of their parents’ ambitious gamble on Jessica’s life, for that’s what it was, a tragic error of proud overreaching, alone now with her thoughts, the sister still saw the three red seats twisting in the sky over the wreckage on the runway, and perhaps Jessica’s voice came to her, sorry little sis. There was no point, no point indeed thought Daniel, for his son Augustino’s writing bore out all his contradictions, his multi-faceted being, the multitude of resources at his command from all corners of the universe, while his father held to one subject, a single overarching description of his thoughts, or was that Daniel’s perception when he himself might be inclined to say and portray all in a single stroke, though without his son’s singular ability, Laure meanwhile withering the earth with her recriminations because she couldn’t have a smoke, finding herself always accompanying Daniel, and dead set on following him wherever he went in the airport, Laure the smoking degenerate indecorously dogging a rather likeable married man was how she saw herself, though not without a hint of self-indulgence, as she later confided to someone, for apparently he was the only one who felt any empathy at all for her, of course that was a writer’s occupational hazard, and she sensed this clearly, so better to tag along with him than another who might lecture about her dirty habit, it’s actually pretty cool but everyone gives you grief about it she thought, and though she followed in his tracks, he was the one who led her to the large panoramic window and pointed to the nearby beach and on it a solitary bird, a plover, scratching away the sand with its long legs, a plover, not such a small bird as the one caught among the cables in the station, he explained that long-legged birds didn’t usually come to this beach because of the sound waves from planes coming and going, and this oversized one was freer to explore the wet shores, all at once Daniel saw all of them in this bird, everyone close to him, the sparrow hemmed in by cables in the station in Madrid, the hatchling fresh-born on the morning sidewalk, every bird he’d ever had to leave to its fate, and so he stared tenderly at the plover, perhaps recognizing in it a beloved creature at this point Laure sighed self-pityingly I’ve had it, why, she wondered, had she bothered, especially given the way she was feeling, Daniel’s empathy with this bird, just an ordinary plover on a beach, and she turned away to the first-class passengers all sitting as though in reserved seats already, not one of them smoking of course, and she decided to despise them all, knowing they’d probably found a way to sneak a smoke before they got to the hotel in their limos, all very smug with a smoke already under their belts in some space specially reserved for them, the stewardesses were now addressing their announcement directly to them it seemed, ladies and gentlemen we apologize for the delay, all flights have now been cancelled for a short period, refreshments and magazines are available for your enjoyment, we are here to make your wait more comfortable, oh boy, Laure could feel the rage welling up as she looked around, she could rejoice over all this with just one little cigarette, its sweet smell would restore respect for all around her, not that she was cynical really, her mind was taken off her anger, unjustified perhaps though still justifiable, as she saw latecomers sealed in by the closing glass doors with no other way to go, Laure glared at the eccentric family, filthy rich of course, the star-like mother trailing bracelets and necklaces in her wake and young handsome hubby looking obsequious, a kid dressed up like its parents and much too old for the teddy bear protruding from its backpack, that was the real surprise though, kid and bear looking equally glassy-eyed with boredom, but what really struck Laure was that over her chic blouse the woman had on a jacket made from wolfskin, thrown on as if by a whim, the head of the wolf lolling back empty-eyed down to her waist, now how, thought Laure, could anyone wear such a thing, and she said so to Daniel, who was still contemplating the plover out on the beach on the other side of the huge slab of glass he felt a jolt when he saw the torn and butchered wolf the woman had on, you could almost see it bouncing and recoiling from the blows it had taken till it finally settled into this abject and tormented position, was this woman in the grip of sadistic vanity and wholly unaware, maybe having received this gift somewhere in her travels and parading it with a kind of rebellious and barbaric pride as though somehow transformed by it from her svelte, almost fragile, former self into the ferocious wolf whose strong, resilient soul she had stolen, or perhaps having shot it herself at point-blank range Daniel thought, all the better to give herself a new look, own it inside and out, the wolf with all its woods, forest lands, and lairs, fuse them all into her selfish little body with its pallid air, perhaps making it a little less breakable in the process, less transparent under the smooth fur cloak of humiliation, her sickeningly servile hubby sometimes screwing up his courage enough to stroke her ever so slightly, over the once-pricked ears now blasted flat, down over its bushy tail and his wife’s lower back, itself bloodless white under the decimated grey tail, carnivorous and savage, no hiding place left, borne in plain sight, open shame on this woman’s back, a public sacrifice to extravagance, Daniel pulled away to look at the plover by the shore once again, but his heart pounded at the sight of this lone stilted young creature pacing next to the waves so peacefully, how long does it have left before we bring everything down around it, ravaging the seas and killing the oceans and shorelines, what have we done wrote Augustino, from Atlantic to Pacific, we’ve created floating cemeteries for the most beautiful herons, albatrosses, doves, all of them choking on our plastic waste and glass, hecatombs, yes cemeteries afloat on the high seas he wrote, and if he’s right, thought Daniel, if it’s true there is nothing left for them, and yet he’d never have thought it Daniel quickly buried this reflection that so desperately needed his attention, and still the Voice announced neither arrivals nor departures but merely advised against wandering off too far, fresh announcements would follow, so there was plenty of time for Daniel to be alone with his plover out on the sunlit beach under the blue sky on the other side of the gla
ss — heat, sun, a seemingly limitless beach — but inside the terminal and inside himself Daniel felt a very real chill, he’d probably done like Mai and dressed too lightly, white shorts, blue shirt, sure that’s the reason. Kim sat on her large drum holding a thick rope with her guard dog at the other end, Fleur could put up with the rancid smell that branded her a street person because he had on a whiff of grasses and pine, and his skin wasn’t scabby like hers, she wanted to say she showered every day on the beach when no one was looking, well almost every day because someone was always watching, but how dirty and awful it was when the menstrual blood ran between her legs and out into the street, hey this isn’t here for you girls, and the black kids from Bahama Street she used to fight called her disgusting, hey you got blood on your skirt from your panties on down, want someone to lick it for you, and off she went with her army surplus backpack, same place she got her jean skirts and hobnail boots, khaki tops and matching cap for winter, Fleur went on playing his flute without a glance at her, not to be seen or smelled she thought, and he couldn’t bear her presence, oh she’d have loved to tell him she fought with the kids because some of them had been poisoning cocks and hens in the neighbourhood, some had even been locked up, but others kept right on, and Kim was going to turn them in, and that was the main reason she fought with them, to protect the local chickens, but there was a new boy in their midst, the Shooter, air pistols were his firecrackers, he shot randomly, and she had to turn him in too or someone would get killed, not just the poultry, she couldn’t tell Fleur all this though, he never battled the local kids, never swam with them in the pool the way she did on Sundays, no one ever fought before or after temple, it was a day of prayer and none of the mothers let their sons out in the street, but she had a dog and hobnail boots, so she wasn’t afraid of anybody, and there under the shower by the sea with her dog prowling around she’d wash her skirt, rubbing and scrubbing till the blood came out, and she’d sit in the sun waiting for it to dry along with her G-string and khaki wool socks until some busybody told her to get dressed before the sheriff rode by on horseback, though many times her skirt was still damp, so that’s probably why she always smelled bad and Fleur didn’t even if he lived in the street too, no, he smelled of grasses and pine, the battle of Bahama Street made the day a long, dirty, and painful one, what with the black kids in yellow vests chasing the hens and roosters in and out among the cars, yes Kim was going to get those delinquents busted, but first she needed something to eat, maybe a slice of pizza or even a sandwich from the trash can, which was tricky and awkward because Kim didn’t want anyone to see her and it didn’t help her rancid smell any either, Fleur of course had his mother to feed him in the pub, maybe washed and spruced up once a month too, but he still had no shoes, so his feet were always dusty and brown, he used to fetch us beers that we drank in paper bags under the pine trees on our beach when no one was watching too close, or at least they pretended they didn’t see us, specially the younger cops, they didn’t care about us except when it came to crack, but that was the Bahama Street bunch, I wanted to tell Fleur this but he wasn’t going to listen to me anyway, him and his music, nothing else, boy that could get old, specially when I was always so tired by the time I got here at the end of the day, I told them straight out, you don’t even know what a girl is, it’s not my fault the blood starts flowing, I scratched them when I could, so they said wait till the Shooter gets back at the whites for putting Marcus in prison because of one of you, the Shooter will get even, still we don’t even know who he is, that’s what I wanted to tell Fleur, be careful when you play out there, Mabel I wanted to warn her too, but she’s already on the wharves with those parrots of hers, so all I could do was wait for sundown, wait is all, Fleur won’t spare even a glance for me or my dog, not a one eh Max, she said, and Max raised his massive head in response, like we didn’t even exist, told you didn’t I, we should never have come, either you’re smelly or I am, way too tired to walk any more with that bag digging into my shoulders, we oughta go see Bryan, Brilliant he calls himself, ha, stuck-up ’cause he writes books no one ever reads, not a one, oral tradition he calls it, he recites them out loud without writing them down, doesn’t trust computers and geeks who might steal his ideas, he’s been a crazy liar ever since his fourth hurricane, works mornings for the breakfast rush at Café Español and maybe some sidewalk cafés at night when he isn’t too drunk, but in between he sits around in bars doing oral poetry and composing books if no one’s listening, maybe if Brilliant’s not too drunk, we can sleep with him in his boss’s convertible and put the top down if it’s too humid, nice eh Max, he’s got a room but he never sleeps in it, afraid the floods’ll come creeping up the steps, winds whipping away his head like the palm trees, his friend and half-brother Victor, the black giant, never made it, he says he’d never be what he is if Victor were still around, nope I wouldn’t, he says, he was my brother, and we were together on the roof yelling for help and waiting for a copter to come by and save us, that was our first hurricane and a plank of wood took him out and he couldn’t swim, he sank in a river of mud with all the other planks and fallen branches, my brother my bud, our big house in New Orleans, his family, his mother my nursemaid, his brother all locked away for thieving, but our Nanny said I’ve got one good son, Victor the giant, and it was true too, the others were mistakes, she knew even whipping wouldn’t change them, they were already too hard-boiled from beatings, and Nanny had quite a hand on her, she was our very own Nanny for my sister and me up there in that big white wooden mansion, and Mama before she got converted used to go out a lot on my dad’s arm, a queen of mothers, the grande dame about town, patroness, then the evil fell on us and she got religion and cursed us for our sins, you didn’t save Victor when you could, he who grew up with you, the one good son Nanny had, she was strict even before she converted though, she wouldn’t let me out of the house, and only Nanny would babysit me in case I disappeared she said, ever since I ran away on a train when I was twelve, she wouldn’t even let me out of the house or past the garden fence my getaway on the train lasted two days and nights and it got me a lashing, Mama wouldn’t do it herself of course, too high-class for that, she’d watch Nanny do it for her, and Nanny kept saying with pity, isn’t this enough, but Mama still on high said no keep it up till he starts crying, but I wouldn’t, see these scars Kim, still got them, but it wasn’t really Nanny that did it, it was my mother through her, and she saying the whole time, please ma’am I can’t bear to hurt a child, madam, not mine, not yours, the Lord will surely punish me, our family’s suffered enough and it will suffer some more, but still my high-and-mighty mother, don’t pity him; the first storm that comes along and Victor not knowing how to swim in such filthy water, Nanny was sure her punishment had come for listening to my mother and beating a white boy, sure it’s true Nanny said, the second storm came but I wasn’t there, it was like I flew over the dips and waves as they came, but it finally caught up with me, and there I was on a rooftop again yelling for help, but no Victor this time, nope, no Victor, gone, drowned, this is what Brilliant’s first book was about, the spoken-out-loud one, first I gotta buy some paper says Bryan, otherwise it’ll never get done, but when he got back to his room he was so drunk he fell asleep, so it got put off till the next day, second book, second hurricane. But in the second one, thought Kim, everyone died the same, that’s what Brilliant said, if he hadn’t been able to save Victor his friend and brother along with the three dogs he brought from New Orleans, all dead in what he called the Second Great Devastation, two of his dogs were never found, the third still on the mend at the vet’s, in shock like Brilliant himself, terrified by the wind and the waves, but the minute he was better, Brilliant would go get him and they’d never be apart, never ever, yeah that’s it, Kim would go and see Brilliant, there was a brain for you, okay so a bit cracked after all the storms and cyclones, but still, who knows, maybe it’s true and he did get it all written down, Kim thought, scribbled out fast and exulting, like the thin
gs he published when he was young that won him city prizes, all of it gone for good in the Second Great Devastation, or was it the third, so it had come to this, no more notebooks, not a thing written down anymore, and he figured by the Fourth Great Devastation there’d be nothing left of him anyway, so the only thing to do was get back to that oral tradition, writing by talking, talking endlessly so that and that alone would never be over, and he speechified, orated, not giving a damn whether anyone in this crazy-house of a world heard him or not, he just sowed his poetry wherever he went like balm on the wounds of the Earth, he did write a lot to Isadora his sister, trust our mother up in her ivory tower to give you a name like that sister, my painter sister, why just be a kids’ book illustrator, okay a great one, for some New York outfit when you could be painting the way you used to paint while I sat beside you in the nursery, remember I used to tell you what to paint while I told you a story, remember the one about the striped cat that Mama brought a long way just to get rid of the mice in the stable, more a tiger than any ordinary cat, she got him from India, then we discovered he really was a tiger when he got out in the field and swallowed the cow with one bite of his massive jaws, you never did believe that one, but you did do some childhood drawings of it, still I swear it’s true that nobody ever saw a cat like our Tiger, what a huge appetite, oh Isodo my dearest big sis, I’ve got no one else in the whole world but you, please come back or phone or something, and don’t say I’m to blame for Victor’s drowning, Mama goes on about how I could have saved him by pulling on the beam that carried him away, my brother, my friend, dragged under that dirty water full of bodies, I could’ve, I could, she blames me ever since she got religion, the only mother we ever really had was our black Nanny, she brought us up Iso, you know it Iso, our only real mother, Victor’s too and his brothers’ and sisters’, the guys in jail up there on the hill during the festival, we can eat and drink and sing in the street while they’re in their spotless white building yelling and screaming through the bars in their prison city, we can practically touch and see them on festival days, yup just one mother for both of us Isadora, and what do you think our hoity-toity Mama would say if she knew what her son Bryan the Brilliant was thinking, contemptible reject that he is, maybe he should’ve been left there in the straw when they found him on the train two days and nights after he ran off, better if they’d never seen him again, or maybe surviving one hurricane after another because he was so small and nimble, had his head whipped off by the deadly winds, that’s what our Mama would have said, and Isadora told him not to be so outrageous, after all he was supposed to be a grownup now and maybe he should get back to his writing, she even promised to illustrate his first novel, well she promised everything to her nimble little brother, so much that he flitted from one catastrophe to the next like a butterfly, she said, adding that their mother prayed for her son now she was converted, her nut-job son, though it wasn’t his fault, no really not Bryan’s at all, he even got shards in his forehead while trying to save Victor from behind that beam, then after he came to he babbled senselessly for days from the time he was in the helicopter, describing in detail how he saw Victor face down in the river filled with detritus and bodies, his blue overall swelling up over the foam, yes he could see it all, all he said, so they gave him a sedative but he would never be calm again, so please Brilliant, please, she wrote, I’m hoping you’ll send me your first novel, the one about your exploits and adventures, what’s more extraordinary than your very own Brilliant life, oh do let me put my drawings to it, flamboyant pictures to match what you’ve seen and been, your escape on the train for instance, two unforgettable days and nights towards the ends of the earth, and how skinny you were when you came home, Mama had to get Nanny to spoon-feed you, don’t commit a sacrilege Brilliant, we have one mother and she’s our darling Mama with all her faults, every mama has them, she loves and forgives us for everything Bryan, she sends you money doesn’t she, so you can live properly, okay maybe you’re not crazy about your job Brilliant, so go get another one, but most of all live a good life, a thousand hugs and kisses dear brother, same as before that beam ever fell and despite all that has kept us apart, if you were here with me on this new island I wouldn’t be who I am he replied, battered by winds and storms, ’cause it’s here the Third Great Devastation happened, here I really thought I could at last find refuge with my dogs and my books and my writing, nope I’d be different if you were still here with me, and Victor, still here forever, Mama sends me money to make sure I stay away, anywhere, nowhere, just so I’m gone, but I wouldn’t be what I am, my dog too, homeless, shattered, in shock, waiting for someplace to settle, no I’d be different if you were here sis, and that, Kim thought, was how Brilliant wrote to her often at nighttime in his boss’s convertible, when he’d pull all the ballpoints out of his shirt pocket and write on paper napkins from the Café Español where he served morning breakfast to the tourists, Kim next to him finally lying down to sleep on the back seat, but again she heard the angry voice of Fleur pausing for breath in his flute-playing because his mouth was dry, he said that he needed a drink, always bad-tempered, anyway it was time for Kim to start drumming while he took a break, this part of the sidewalk was his turf, so play your drum or get lost, Fleur said, disgusted by her smell of course or her dog’s smell or maybe both of them reeking of the alleys and backyards, when she washed she really went to town and when she took the dog to the dog-walking beach it was still repulsive for the swimmers who moved farther off, it hurt her feelings, but maybe she had imagined it, Max looked all shiny like her hair, which she brushed every day, you both have real nice hair Brilliant told her, yeah Max looks like a real somebody’s dog, not some street mutt, when Brilliant rambled like this every detail mattered because he was brought up in a family with principles and good manners, even if Mama was too tough on them, he used to say, but Fleur was so scratchy and unbearable Kim thought, he wasn’t so different from those Rainbow Kids who’d invaded the town, once rich and the worse for wear, rebellious papa’s boys still with their credit cards and cellphones and laptops, materialistic one way or another, all of them from overseas or elsewhere in North America and here for the winter, Rainbow Kids, the flotsam of an itinerant subculture was how Kim thought of them, Fleur was really more like them, a spoiled brat tied to his mother’s apron-strings, plus the credit cards and the cellphone he never used, the chief of police had busted some of them squatting in an abandoned school, it was a historic building and vandals had wrecked the place, even the walls, doors, and windows were pushed in, ignorant vandals said they were non-violent but they broke everything for fun all the same, thought Kim, but Fleur was neither a vandal nor a dropout, he was something nobler, a musician, Kim put her stick on the drum as he stroked his dog, a German shepherd called Damien, a short break he called it, maybe now he was relaxed he might finally smile at her, that would sure lighten a long and stupid day. Petites Cendres stayed wrapped in his sheets refusing to get up, and Robbie told him about Yinn’s triumphant success as a drag actor, singer, and dancer in Japan, then in Thailand where he was born, so hot that young people flocked to applaud his shows in nightclubs and even theatres, so this proves it can be done, and we’re going to have a retirement home for drag queens after all, this was Yinn’s dream, he’d already talked to an architect about it and it would be ready for spring, don’t ever forget this terrific career won’t always be here, I’ve wondered, Petites Cendres, if we, had it before, maybe Fatalité wouldn’t have died alone at twenty-nine in an apartment with the lights blazing, she hated the dark with no stage dressing, really too bad, it really is, so young, so weak, too weak to go on singing and dancing, no funny, ironic laughter, Fatalité like before, no cozy rooming-house with friends around, barely standing like a horse on its last legs, hopeless maybe but still upright, and having to inject that last dose herself, but in Yinn’s retirement home for drag queens they’d be surrounded by love, compassion, tenderness, and everything a soul could want on its voyage to nowhere,
Robbie said, none of this preparing-the-way stuff for me ’cause I’m not a Buddhist like Yinn, Yinn whose mother protested with vehemence, the minute you get a bit of money you have to go out and spend it son, just one moment of success and glory and out you go spending money on someone else, while you and your poor mother who needs shoes, yes poor Mama, I’ll have shoes and you’ll have shoes, he answered, yes but don’t get them so tight that you have to cram your feet in, okay Mama I won’t, thinking about Fatalité I had the idea for young retirees, they don’t like that word actually, it sounds too final, too headed-off-into-limbo, uh-uh we’ll call it the Rehearsal or Comeback House, now that’s nice, isn’t it:
Nothing for You Here, Young Man Page 1
