She went upstairs while her mother was getting out the Yule log. The dwarf ice skaters on the icing reminded her of Christmas at Jessie’s. Galaxies from here. In her room, the Playmobil pieces were in the same place she had left them a year ago. Her mother mustn’t have opened the shutters since then; lit by a bulb in the ceiling, it was the bedroom of a girl who had disappeared. She pulled apart the Playmobil pieces; last Christmas she had piled them up, like an orgy, their little hooks grabbing imaginary genitals, girls and boys, boys and boys, girls and girls, along with the swimming pool, the campervan, and a horse. What was going on in her mind a year ago? There was really no point asking the question. She had no memory of herself. Back then, she was already waiting for Kouhouesso, without knowing it, suffering less. She was still waiting for the future, just as she had been here in Clèves when she was fifteen, but back then the immediate future appeared in the form of a baby, surprise, surprise. A baby who, twenty years later, could barely speak. But that was understandable.
She would have liked to tell Kouhouesso her stories. Pour her heart out. In her childhood bedroom, under the light bulb with the rattan lampshade, she started whispering to him. She had had a child very young, like African girls did. In Voici magazine, just before she left for Hollywood, they had even written that her son was eighteen; it was all lies. She should have sued them. ‘Solange!’ Her mother was calling from downstairs, the same sound as when she was young. She opened the shutters, and rolled a joint. The garden was in darkness; behind the cypress trees, she could see the lights on in the house where Rose’s parents lived. ‘Solaaange!’ The same summons. She carefully lined up all the Playmobil pieces along an imaginary pathway, then downed the whisky and knocked them into the campervan. She would find them again in the same spot in a year’s time. No, she wouldn’t come back. Or just with him. ‘Solaaange!’ She fiddled with the Playmobil so that she wouldn’t die. So that something would keep happening in that bedroom. Otherwise the Playmobil pieces would outlive her. Those things are indestructible. She left her glass, the size of a jacuzzi, in the middle of the toy swimming pool. She noticed that Playmobil people were all white.
Her son hadn’t moved from the couch. A plate with dwarves on it was lying on the floor. Something about those dwarves annoyed her. She was drunk. No, it was the joint. She raised her head and saw Kouhouesso. No, her father. She was an idiot. He was opening a bottle of his precious Saint-Émilion. The same attitude, shoulders back, neck held high, cigarette in his mouth. And the voice, that’s what it was. The dictatorial solemnity. To pronounce whatever nonsense, as well. Older now, obviously. And white-haired. And bald: that was the funniest bit. But the same: same nose, same forehead, same slightly Chinese eyes.
The next morning—no, it was midday—the next day, she had no memory of her son leaving. Did her father drive him? Even though he was drunk? Her mother told her that a truck had come by, yes, a truck, not the postman, but a delivery man—with a FedEx package for her, signed for by the neighbour because the whole house was asleep. Her daughter obviously didn’t do things the way everyone else did. The package made a rattling sound when she shook it.
It was a box of strange brownish-red fruit, the size of plums, as hard as walnuts. And there was a letter, or rather a scrawled note. It was the first time she’d seen his handwriting. ‘Some kola nuts from the Château-Rouge market. Ciao ma belle.’
What did that mean, ciao ma belle? If she imagined him saying it, it was tender, macho in a nice way. If she just read it, for what it was, it was a farewell. Was that a metaphor, sending nuts? She was going mad. He had told her how much he was addicted to kolas as a child; she had never heard of them. Full of caffeine. In West Africa, everyone gives them as presents, as a sign of friendship, of welcome—when you’re having drinks, whatever. She tried to peel them. She imagined his supple fingers stripping off the thick membrane. Fancy him remembering their conversation, paying that much attention—inside there was an ivory-coloured puzzle, pieces that fitted together perfectly, joined in order to be separated, shared. You could see it as a symbol, a thing cut in two; each person keeps a piece. It was surprisingly bitter for a friendship nut. And it made her fingers and teeth all red. She scrubbed them carefully.
She might as well head off on a bike ride along the river. A big sweater and old running pants. The cottonwool sky and the Nive River in winter, running high and silently beneath the bare trees, its surface grey-brown. Herons, moorhens, and an intrepid cormorant drying itself in an oak, far from the sea.
She daydreamed about his childhood, what he had told her about it, on the nights when she managed to get him to leave the computer. The intoxication of his words, yes—she had that feeling of being filled up with him, and then of being tense again, anxious to be with him properly, worried about having the right response, the right facial expression—to the point where all she could remember of his stories of playing in Benue was his fear of the hippopotami, and the capture of a crocodile, like in a story from Kipling. Two childhoods from the same time but on two planets—no, the same planet but different coordinates. When she was in Grade 5, he was a courier for a Lebanese guy running a brothel. When she was watching Children’s Island, he was going to the cinema for the first time: The Miracles of Bernadette, film reels carted around by missionaries and projected onto a length of printed fabric, the plainest they could find. The apparition of the Virgin in the cave at Lourdes was interrupted by little aeroplanes, Super-Constellation printed in copperplate, and the young paralytic started to walk with the slogan Long Live Air-Africa Foreign Aid.
His open return ticket! She had to get on to it.
He had learned to read all by himself, not from the projections onto miraculous printed cloth but from the cases of beer the Lebanese guy was trafficking. Then an uncle had helped him to go to a Jesuit school in Douala. He had devoured their library. She, too, had learned to read by herself, with John and Betty books. What was the point? He had never shown any interest in her childhood—did he think he already knew about the childhood of white girls, the identical childhood as told in all the books and films? But what about her river, her summer, the surprising heat of temperate countries? And their dense forests? She would have censored her sexual exploits; she didn’t feel he was ready to know what she was like as an adolescent, the little wild girl, the young cannibal.
She thought about her father who, once he had got over the shock of meeting Kouhouesso, and had spouted his racist clichés as if out of politeness, would have settled into the serious issues: the rapport between men, the glass of red, the exclusion of women, male jokes. Everything would have gone smoothly. In fact, they would have got on brilliantly. Her father had lost his son. Kouhouesso had lost his father when he was a child. It would have been a perfect arrangement, clean and tidy like the strips of kola-nut skin. They had in common a silent world, a tough, seductive world where they stood alone, defeated or triumphant, but alone. And they both had a Big Idea; she was not sure exactly how to describe her father’s—something to do with planes, blue sky, a spin-off business, diverse markets. He scorned chasing the yield: he was a man of the moment, taking the plunge, all in one go, heading into the wind. His Big Idea had not taken off, no doubt because he had not worked out exactly what it was. But she remembered the look in his eyes, the look into the distance, the look into which you wanted to disappear. What Kouhouesso saw, over there in the Congo, was the enormousness, the richness, the depth of horizon across the rivers. That was the problem with Africa, all that unfulfilled hope, and she could no longer live without it.
SOLANGE, BEST WISHES
Two and a half months without any news. Two and a half months. Without any direct news, at least: Ted and the executive producer had heard. He was location scouting in Africa. He had called from Luanda. He had visited studios in Lagos with his assistant and the director of photography. He had called from Kinshasa. The Congo was complicated. The Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and the President
ial Protection Division (DPP). The North—Kivu; and the South—Kasai. The Ugandan and Rwandan armies. And over in Tshikapa there was a full-on epidemic of Ebola. He had to retreat to Brazzaville. Even in Brazzaville, it was chaos. George’s agent was fed up with it. She stayed tuned to the news like never before, at least she tried to—the news from over there.
Recently, he’d been moving around south of Cameroon, near the border with Guinea; he had sent a fax from a town called Kribi. She was following him on her mobile tracking app. At the end of the fax, which the producer showed her, he had added a line, in French, by hand: ‘Solange, best wishes.’
She was left with ‘best wishes’ just like she had been left with his kola nuts: inside the skin, a bittersweet taste that was better than nothing.
She had received her contract: the Intended, three scenes with Cassel, interior day, location of shoot to be determined, $23,000. Everyone was making some sort of salary sacrifice (except Jessie, apparently). Africa had drained the budget, swallowed it up. On the other hand, given the cheap cost of local labour, fitting out a boat on the spot ended up being cheaper than a boat in the studio. As for the river, the location scouting had come up with the Ntem, the Dja or the Lobe. They still had their work cut out with the choppers. If they stayed in Cameroon, the tracks were supposed to be accessible in the dry season; he was scouting for caves that would be four-wheel-drive accessible. But it was borderline for George, whose window of availability was right when the rainy season began.
So that was the bulletin to the yellow hills of Hollywood, the news filtering through, bits and pieces, in the stress of preparations, among the cross-purposes, both obtuse and obvious, the contradictory, conflicting interests, all in an attempt to come up with a film.
Olga had been recruited: from the mourning dress to the crew’s uniforms, from the raffia sarongs to the brass leggings, it was a real costume film. Natsumi had been promoted to costume props and was already at work on the ‘polished gold ring stuck in the lower lip’, on the charms and amulets, the feathers, the ankle and wrist bracelets. The make-up artist was brushing up on scarification, tattoos and teeth filing.
It did her good to spend time with the girls during her long Los Angeles days. She worked on her mourning dress with Olga; they chose the material together on Pico Boulevard. A grey dimity cotton. Mother-of-pearl buttons. A double hem in pleated crepe, with a ruffle and a belt. Puff sleeves with lace cuffs. Period stockings. A real corset. Long underwear. What wasn’t visible on the screen was also important—a corseted woman, an Intended stiffened by grief.
She had ended up acting in ER, three episodes in a row. The wife of a diplomat refuses to leave the hospital until she can determine the fate of her son. She starts living in the waiting room, in the corridors and the cafeteria, her YSL suit more and more crumpled, both noble and a nuisance, and a romance develops with Dr Barnett. Finally, an interesting role, and she could pay for her house in Bel Air. They were talking about a comeback for her in the next season.
Two and a half months. How long does it take for a relationship to break off ? For an affair to unravel? Love deteriorated. Idiotic love, which stops you from living. Desire, which is a form of hell. Ciao ma belle. Best wishes. In the ER studios, in the arms of Dr Barnett—she was with him everywhere. Playing a woman rescued from a fire—a telemovie about Los Angeles firemen, a fee and a role beneath her capabilities; the director knew it and made the most of it. And she couldn’t take refuge in the hollow of his shoulders. Rose was virtual on Skype; George was filming or on Lake Como; Olga was not really a confidante—and all the others, competing actors and actresses, were out for her blood. Lloyd, a kind and professional agent, treated her with long-suffering sympathy, as if all he could do now was wait for the end, the end of a terrible illness, one of those horrifying tropical contact diseases.
But the film was going to happen: George’s contract was signed. Lloyd looked enigmatic, like the person who predicts the exact date of plagues—locusts, ulcers, the annihilation of herds of animals, the descent into darkness.
A year earlier, she had committed to the next Chabrol film. In a fit of sensible behaviour, she turned up in France on the scheduled date and it was during this very film shoot that Kouhouesso had reappeared in Los Angeles, and was looking for her—yes, looking for her, so it seems—and by the time she arranged to return, he was no longer taking calls; then he replied too late. Desynchronisation. No dates, no meeting places, no peace of mind. ‘It’s hardly convenient’: the last sentence she was left with, the last text from Kouhouesso. The next meeting, the only scheduled date, the only commitment, was playing the Intended, towards the end of the shoot, in six months’ time.
She couldn’t wait that long.
Incredibly motionless. Unmoving. Immovable. Anchored. Watching films he has watched. Polanski and even Pollack. Listening to Leonard Cohen on a loop. Preparing her role as well. Only hearing conversations in which, through various convolutions, his name cropped up. Reading books he had read. Biographies of Conrad. The story ‘The Forest’, by Robert Walser, in the last book she’d seen in his hands: she read and reread ‘The Forest’, looking for clues, tracks, the map of Kouhouesso’s brain, the shape of his thoughts, ‘incredible images of worlds where the forest went on forever…’
She looked for Kribi on Google Earth: the forest extends to the sea, unless it’s the river, a thread of river for every thread of tree root…and the trees continue, beyond the Equator, through Gabon, through the Congo, and up to the north of Zambia.
Her stomach all scrambled, her mind on fire. A tight thread linked her to him, over there, in his forest. In which unimaginable, dense vegetation? Or in which coastal bar with which girl, which Favour, which Lola? She remembered that slightly old-fashioned novel from her childhood, Future Times Three, by Barjavel. The Traveller journeys through time, but he has a little rip in his spacesuit. In his belly. He disembowels himself. His intestines stay in the past while his body returns to the present. Poor gutted chook. She was the traveller staying in one spot. And which seer could read her future, when her entrails were uncoiled in the labyrinth?
A MOMENT OF GLORY
She woke up over Mali, went back to sleep. She woke up over Kano for the breakfast tray. The earth was bright orange. The place names came up on the flight information screen. Above Jos she saw a river and a huge dark triangle—she couldn’t tell whether it was a lake or a rocky mountain range. Then a series of parallel grey lines, one after the other. Then clouds. Suddenly Mount Cameroon, a red island in the white sea. Then they began the descent into Douala. She couldn’t see anything, not the mangroves as promised in Google Earth, nor the river heading into the sea. They landed in clouds. Clouds of hot water. She took off her sweater. The clouds were in the city, in the airport. It smelled like fuel, sewers and sugar. Under the sign If you are accosted by unauthorised taxi drivers, call this number were thirty taxi drivers, all asking, ‘What’s it like over there?’ As if they were fans, she smiled and waved, aloof. She saw on the screen that there was a delay of six hours for her connecting flight to Yaoundé. The counter where she stood to make a complaint was so wet she thought someone had spilt a glass of water. ‘Wait here,’ advised the stewardess in a Cameroon Airlines boubou, ‘and don’t get in a taxi.’ Was it dangerous? No, but with the traffic jams, she probably wouldn’t make it back—the bridge was impassable at that time.
Nevertheless, she was not going to spend six hours here without seeing some of the city where he had spent his adolescence, the beach where he must have daydreamed, out on boats, cargo ships. As soon as she had left the shade of the airport, she coated herself in SPF50 sunscreen. She had studied the area on the satellite app and located the highway, as well as a path on the right to the sea. She dragged her hand luggage and the wheels made a noise on the worn-out asphalt. Lots of people were on foot like her, and, like her, dragging or pushing paraphernalia, but, unlike her, they were all black. Women with objects on their heads, including a Dell comput
er. Children with goats. Daring motorbike riders with three or four passengers who called out to her, ‘What do they do over there?’ And cars tooted at her. There was no footpath. The way to the beach was there, off to the right, an ochre dirt path. A woman was selling mangoes. The beach? It was more like the port down there. Wasn’t it lucky that all these people spoke French. This was Kouhouesso’s country, this was his birth-place—to hell with Canada.
Soon a wheel broke and anyway it was awkward dragging the little suitcase. She put her passport and her money in a pocket and hid the case under some leaves she would later learn were called ‘elephant ears’. Right then they looked to her more or less like the philodendrons in dentists’ waiting rooms. The path was no longer yellow but brown, and soft; her sneakers subsided and she felt momentarily demoralised when her toes became immersed in black water. A plane took off right over her head; the air smelled of kerosene and flattened vegetables.
They reached the river she had seen on the satellite app—a sewer, unfortunately, lined with garbage, and foul-smelling. Giant ficus trees or other green things had grown into tangled creepers. You would need to be the size of a frog and have the same skills. The jungle must have grown back since the satellite image had been taken; she had heard about this phenomenon: in the same way objects become coated with limestone in petrified waterfalls, so tropical plants grow over abandoned bodies.
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