The Fury and Cries of Women

by Angèle Rawiri

  Silence fell on the room, surely because it was rare to hear a speech in this place. The young people sat down at the bar, a few steps away from Emilienne. Not having noticed the crowd that was gathering around them, the little guy was now no doubt intoxicated by the interest he was stirring, and burst out:

  “You know, my sisters and cousins think my missus is arrogant? And you know why? Simply because she’s the master of the house, has everyone under her control, including my little brothers. Those boys, thinking they’re so precious, don’t want to demean themselves by doing household chores. As custom would have it, they consider my wife theirs and demand she serve them as if they’re her husband. On the other hand, they have no problem emptying bottles of my alcohol and eating my food with their girlfriends. My mother—that mother hen—approves of that behavior and sees me as their future adoptive father, after her husband dies. No, man! Traditions and customs have got to adapt to modern times. Besides, I don’t want to hear these words any more ’cause it’s just a nasty way of exploiting people. Why do you think the young folks are turning to wine and whiskey?”

  The semicircle of customers grew larger. The little guy, appropriately and yet simply dressed, raised his eyebrows as if it would give more weight to his question.

  “Think about it. You’re an intellectual—corrupt, maybe, but an intellectual all the same.”

  He flashed a mischievous smile. His sidekick, who hadn’t yet opened his mouth, shrugged. He was about six foot five and must have weighed over 300 pounds.

  “Aw, man! Let’s order a drink.” The giant finally put a word in in his reedy drawl.

  His hands moved up and down the suspenders holding up his oversized pants.

  “Take a good look at me,” the short one went on tirelessly. “Since I’ve been drowning myself in alcohol, I’ve been soaring alongside the angels. With them by my side, I feel perfect bliss. They ignore the problems of Earth dwellers, problems that crush humans and drive them to an early grave. Our world is an AIDS syndrome that gnaws away at our lives calmly and surely until our last breath, and when it can no longer inhabit our unharmonious organs, leaves them. You’ll go on, no doubt, and say that this world is ours for the taking, and I will answer: Yes, but we gotta get through armored glass. If you really want at all costs to have everything that it reflects back to you, break the glass. And then you’ll agree with me and notice that a lot a people draw back in the face of its resistance. Are you still following me?”

  “Step by step” the giant replied.

  “So, our world offers up everything to us and only throws us scraps. Unless you’re one of those fools who risk breaking their bones to make pacts with the devil, or that rare type of individual who crosses that bullet-proof glass barrier effortlessly and without a scratch, as if they were an exceptional race. And speaking of that type, there’s something I really don’t understand about God’s plan. And though I hold no bias against the opinion of those who find him unjust—which is fundamentally in opposition to Tradition and Knowledge and all its benefits—I think that some divine laws have been overlooked, even if they are not mentioned in the Bible, not clearly anyway. Well, that isn’t all,” he concluded, tapping his friend on the shoulder. “Put in our order, man, you know what I like.”

  “Two gin and Cokes, boss! My friend and I want to forget this world and its unsolvable problems. Hey, ya little asshole!” the giant yelled in the direction of the waiter picking up dirty glasses the next table over. “Come drink with us. I recognize your kisser.”

  “No thanks! I don’t drink on the job,” the young waiter answered, smiling.

  His massive neck folded into his rippling shoulders, like a turtle hiding inside his shell from an attack.

  “I said, come,” the giant growled threateningly, grabbing him by the arm.

  The waiter struggled free. His smile stiffened. His neck moved in and out of his shoulders, disappearing then reappearing.

  “No, sir, I will drink after work.”

  “What’s this refusal all about? For all we know this gin is poisoned! To make sure it’s not, I order you to drink with us. We all know what happens in your bistros. Cowards come here to settle their scores. Can you tell me how many of your customers have died of cirrhosis or bilious attacks? Come on, answer!”

  His grip tightened around the waiter’s wrist. His buddy, indifferent to what was happening around him, sipped his gin and Coke with half-open eyes. Emilienne trembled at her table.

  Suddenly, the fire-brand got up, grabbed the waiter by the neck, and smashed his mouth against the rim of the glass. The drink spilled onto his white shirt. The waiter quickly whipped out a pocketknife and pointed it at the giant, who, caught off guard, backed away.

  Emilienne stood up and took a step back as well.

  “He’s scared,” someone whispered quite loudly.

  Several people started laughing.

  “Oh, do you believe that!” the giant hissed, rolling up his sleeves. He stared mercilessly at his opponent. “I’m going to kill him.”

  And with that he took out a pair of scissors and hurled them at the waiter’s throat as if throwing a spear. A gush of blood spurted from his chest. The waiter grabbed his killer’s neck with both hands, then collapsed on the floor. It took the latter a few good seconds before he could get out of the dying man’s grasp.

  Having watched the murder up to the last second, Emilienne lost consciousness as soon as the waiter fell. A heavy silence weighed over the bistro.

  “Let’s get out of here,” one of the patrons yelled.

  “I didn’t see anything,” another claimed as he ran out.

  Almost everyone left, one after the other, hugging the tables and walls.

  “You’re all a bunch of louses,” shouted another patron, who’d emerged from the adjoining room with the second waiter. “You just stood by and let them try to kill each other, and now you rush out of here to get out of being witnesses for the police. You two over there! Don’t move.”

  He stood immobile before the killer and his friend. Emilienne slowly came to.

  “Don’t stay here, Madame, if you don’t want trouble,” the last customer mumbled to her as he helped her up. He escorted her to the door.

  “What’s all this violence about?” He wanted an explanation. “It is rampant at home, is spreading to public places, and is becoming the order of things between nations. When there is violence, there is anger, and anger is only one step away from hatred. It’s as if man has lost all connection to his heart, where there is love.”

  “Who are you, Mister?” asked the young woman.

  “I’m a journalist. I’m preparing an article on bistros, that’s why I’m here. Don’t stay here. It won’t be long before they start going at it again. Do you want me to drop you off somewhere? My car is parked right next door.”

  “Thanks, but I have my own car.”

  They parted without another word.

  NOT FULLY RECOVERED from the shock she had just endured, Emilienne walked toward her car. In front of her, an exhilarated crowd trailed on the heels of the police headed toward the bistro. She saw expressions of glee on all of their faces. She moved to the side of the road to let the tidal wave of people pass. Finally, she reached her car. A few yards away, her cook and secretary were babbling excitedly. The scene intrigued her.

  How long have they known each other? she wondered. She was tempted to go and ask them. That would not be appropriate, she thought. So, she got into the car and started the engine. Hearing the engine rev, Dominique turned around and noticed her. And before Emilienne could take off, she was running in her direction. She carried a basket in her hand and wore a pagne tied carelessly around her waist over a transparent black blouse through which you could see her bosom supported by a white bra.

  “Good morning, Madame, what a surprise! And what are you doing around here?” Dominique exclaimed after Emilienne had rolled down the window.

  “I was going out for a drive, and I acciden
tally witnessed a bar fight that cost one of the waiters his life.”

  Dominique blinked and crinkled her almond-shaped eyes. Her voluptuous lips formed a thin line.

  “The news is already the talk of the neighborhood. You know, there is on average a murder a month here. It’s sad—frightening, really—but we’re used to these tragedies.”

  “How can you live in such a state of insecurity?”

  “As long as the killings happen in bars, we don’t really feel threatened by them.”

  “Tell me,” Emilienne went on, this time in a dry tone, “where did you meet my cook?”

  “Your cook, who’s he?”

  “The young man you were chatting with a few minutes ago.”

  “Oh! That’s your cook! He was asking me for some information.” She ran her hand through her straightened hair, flung her head backward, and then added, “My place isn’t far from here. If you’re not in a hurry . . . that is! Do you want to have a drink?”

  Emilienne did not answer right away. Her secretary seemed, like any woman in this neighborhood, so confident. Her private life had never interested her. Like everyone else, she had two lives: she wasn’t just an employee; she was also a young woman with her own problems. In any case, she was very beautiful, Emilienne admitted. Why would she refuse her spontaneous invitation? Before she got out of the car, she looked carefully at her dog asleep in its kennel.

  “Actually, I just bought fruit juices and alcohol.”

  She raised her basket.

  “I live down the hill. Watch out, these stones get slippery when it rains.”

  The young secretary jumped with great ease from one stone to the other while Emilienne walked carefully over the huge stones, placing one foot after the other. Along both sides of the trail, small houses made of wooden planks, cement, and bamboo stood on mounds of soil eroded by bad weather. The inhabitants of the makeshift houses yelled out to one another from their homes. With whimpering infants clinging to their skirts, the women were braiding hair or patching their worn clothes on their sun-soaked porches. Walking behind, Emilienne wondered again about the nature of the relationship between Godwin and her secretary. Contrary to what the young woman had told her, she was still convinced they knew each other. Why had she lied? I will find out, she thought to herself, whisking the idea from her mind.

  “Are you okay, Madame?” Dominique asked as she turned around.

  Her smile, so innocent and reassuring, made Emilienne drop her suspicion. What was happening to her? For some time now, she had been obsessed with the idea that everyone was out to get her. Dominique, however, had no reason to hide the truth from her.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Emilienne answered. Then, in a low voice: “I must be tired. It’s not surprising given all I’ve been through since the morning.”

  “We’re here.”

  DOMINIQUE OPENED the door to her wooden-plank house. The stylish, welcoming interior impressed her employer. The furniture was top quality. Cartoons were playing on a color television; a VCR sat beneath it. At the other end of the room, an imposing air conditioner hummed softly.

  “I love cartoons so much that sometimes I forget to turn off the TV when I go out.”

  She pointed to one of the armchairs for Emilienne to sit down and turned off the television set.

  “It’s so hot outside, and it’s so nice to come home to a cool house,” she continued as she herself sat down. “I live here with my two children and my three brothers. They’ve all gone to spend the day at my elder sister’s, who takes care of my parents. What do you want to drink: Campari, martini, gin, rum . . . ?”

  “A simple glass of water is fine. Your house is tastefully decorated,” Emilienne continued the conversation.

  “Thank you,” Dominique replied, smiling, as she brought her a bottle of mineral water and a crystal glass. If I weren’t my little brothers’ guardian—all of them are still in high school—I’d have already left this appalling neighborhood. Oh! I’m sorry, Madame. I must be boring you with my troubles.

  “No, no, go on.”

  The two women looked into each other’s eyes. There was renewed chemistry between them.

  “So, the father of your children doesn’t live with you?”

  “No way, Madame! He’s married.”

  “It doesn’t bother you to rob another woman of her husband and to have two children with him?”

  “You know, Madame, no woman can keep her husband from having extramarital affairs. Just as I, as his first mistress, cannot keep him from taking a second or a third. If every married man’s lovers took pity on the plight of their legitimate rivals, a lot of single women would commit suicide from loneliness. You know, we too should be pitied.”

  “You think so? After all, you have the best of all worlds, as they say. These men generally come to see you when they’re relaxed and in a good mood. They take pride in showering you with gifts and compliments.”

  “A woman, no matter who she is, cannot be satisfied merely with a man’s gifts. There comes a time when she wants him. From then on, the gifts lose their value and the money its power.”

  “What stage are you at with yours?”

  Dominique shot her employer a sideways glance. Emilienne’s calm, even kind look loosened her tongue a little more.

  “For now it’s fine. Compared to other single women, I am a little spoiled. I’ve got his children, and I do not intend to let him leave me. In fact, he’s with his children now at my parents’.”

  “Don’t forget, you’re talking to a married woman.”

  “Sorry, Madame. I said too much.”

  She lowered her head, ashamed.

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  The two women looked at each other and laughed. Then they talked about other things. Emilienne got back home at the end of the afternoon. The two women promised to meet often outside of work.

  FROM INSIDE her bedroom, the door ajar, Emilienne could hear her nephews telling their grandmother about their weekend with their mother. Her husband, who’d brought them home, had left. With nothing better to do, the young woman riffled through the latest issue of a women’s magazine. The alluring title of an article grabbed her attention: “How can you win back a man who is slipping through your fingers?” Curious and skeptical at the same time, she skimmed through the article.

  “You think for sure he doesn’t love you anymore, that it’s a lost cause or that he is responsible for the downhill turn in your relationship! Don’t be so sure, and don’t be so impetuous. Forget for a moment everything he may have said or done. Instead, think about your attitude, your behavior, and your words. You’ll see that something wasn’t right on your part! You are therefore also responsible for the bad parts of your relationship. What must you do? Above all, don’t give up and prejudge his feelings toward you. Make some new resolutions right now and put them into practice right away. And, unless you are a couple that has truly reached the point of no return, you will be surprised by the changes you notice in your partner . . .” Emilienne closed the magazine and had that pensive look on her face that reflected the intensity of her thoughts.

  She could no longer remember when her relationship with Joseph had started to go downhill. She hadn’t been made aware of it until her mother-in-law pointed out that a divide had long existed between them.

  ONE EVENING several years ago, when her car was in the shop for a tune-up, she’d come home in a taxi earlier than usual, and from outside she had heard his mother talking to her son:

  “Avomo has agreed that his daughter will be your second wife. Until, that is, your Emilienne asks for divorce. Yes! She plays the role of the sophisticated woman so well; she’ll never accept sharing you.”

  “Still, I must see this girl you’re talking about. After all, I am fine with being polygamous as long as my wife approves. Though it would definitely surprise me if she did.”

  What Eyang had proposed hadn’t bothered her; it was more Joseph’s comment that had horrified his
wife.

  Two days later, Eyang had come to Emilienne’s bedroom trying to blame her for her son’s financial ruin. She had even gone so far as to say that it was Emilienne’s doing that she, Eyang, lacked clothing. Emilienne had to wave both of their pay stubs in her face to prove to her mother-in-law that she earned twice the salary of her husband. Later that day, when his wife repeated the bitter words she’d exchanged with his mother, Joseph was so enraged, he completely lost it:

  “Just how far will you go to humiliate me?” Joseph howled. “Was it really necessary to show her my pay stub? Isn’t it enough that the whole city knows that your company provides my housing? Did you also have to belittle me to my own mother? If you want a divorce, let’s go ahead and do it. You assume this air of superiority, and I’m just about fed up with it. Get it through your head that I will never allow a woman to control me, even if it is in the interest of women’s lib. If ranting and raving about it is so important to you, go live in your head. This has been going on for too long, and I’ve had it up to here.”

  She’d neither had the time to explain herself nor to talk to him about the conversation she had overheard between him and his mother. He spent that night out. For the first time, she realized that her husband reproached her for her social success and that, with his mother’s help, he had considered taking a second wife. Although many a time she’d been told anecdotes about husbands who, in spite of their choice to register their monogamous marriage at city hall, ended up secretly marrying a second wife, then a third, never had Emilienne thought that Joseph belonged to that category of mean and vicious men.