The Story of the Cannibal Woman

by Maryse Conde

  “What a place!” Stephen shivered.

  As for Rosélie, she had tears in her eyes. A feeling of guilt was torturing her that was never to leave her in peace again. It was as if, irreversibly, she was cutting the ties of which she herself knew neither the nature nor the tenacity.

  10:00 a.m.

  Patient No. 7

  Dawid Fagwela

  Age: 73

  Particularity: one of the few South African clients

  Profession: retired miner

  He was a former trade unionist who too had languished for years on Robben Island. The Ministry for Tourism had had the brilliant idea of retailoring his prison uniform and using him as a guide for the thousands of tourists who tramped through the concentration camp, heaving pitiful sighs at the sight of the tiny cell where Nelson Mandela, the exemplary hero, had been interned.

  “How many years did he spend here?”

  “Eighteen. He was then transferred to Pollsmoor to the south of Cape Town because he was a bad influence on the other prisoners.”

  “Can we visit that prison as well?”

  That’s all they thought about! Get as many pictures as possible for their photo albums. As for Dawid, the fact of reliving his abuse and torture day after day, and describing it down to the last detail to the inquisitive hordes in an endeavor to satisfy their curiosity, the poor guy was losing his head. It woke him up at night.

  Was apartheid really over? Was he really free?

  The hospital had kept him for several months and then diagnosed his case as incurable. His wife had refused this categorical diagnostic. Since Dido, her cousin, had spoken highly of Rosélie’s talent, she came to consult her. At first Rosélie hadn’t known what to do. This case was different. It’s not every day that a political prisoner turns into a tourist guide and travels from hell to paradise in a single lifetime. Then she got the idea of asking Dawid to record his memories on a tape recorder and write them down. Straightaway he plunged into the job from morning till night. No more time for the blues. Put his obsessions into words. Transform them into images. He planned on writing a book and had already found the title, the most difficult thing to find, according to Rosélie: “The True Confession of Lazarus, A Death Survivor.” He had regained his smile and his sleep, and was eating and drinking again.

  Proof that sometimes writing does serve some purpose.

  TWO

  Rosélie only ventured out at the end of the day. Now that Stephen was gone, she, like the Catholics on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, religiously headed for the Mount Nelson Hotel, where he loved to take afternoon tea. It was a magnificent colonnaded building, one of the last remnants of the British Empire, the colossus with clay feet that had crumbled into dust, a living example of “grandeur and decadence.”

  “Britannia rules the waves,” they nevertheless proclaimed from India to Africa.

  Right up to the early years of the twentieth century, it was filled with aristocrats fleeing the English winter and fog, for Cape Town is known for its bracing and energizing climate. Today the Mount Nelson is mainly a tourist attraction. Hordes of tourists in Nikes and T-shirts, leaving their all-inclusive deals at the Holiday Inn, invade the gardens and have their pictures taken as they walk up the drive of centuries-old oaks or pose smugly in front of the greenhouses of orchids from Thailand. In spite of this, the power and majesty of the place had such an effect that Stephen, who as a rule hated everything English in him, rediscovered the intonations of his childhood to address the waiters, those bearded, formidable Indians, tightly bound in their cummerbunds, who glided around like well-trained ghosts. Rosélie, less susceptible to the lost glories of a colonial past, liked the Mount Nelson for quite a different reason. The undesirables in Nikes and T-shirts never ventured onto the waxed parquet floors inside. Trained in the art of discretion, some would say hypocrisy, the personnel swept by, their eyes fixed on the horizon. Consequently, for the space of a few hours, gone were the inquisitive looks that ambushed Rosélie and Stephen, whatever they did and wherever they were. They slipped into anonymity as if resting in eternal peace. In the Churchill room they would sit facing a gossamery pianist wearing a dancer’s headband who played “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and listen in silence as they filled their plates with scones and muffins, Stephen adding egg and cucumber sandwiches. They would drink gallons of Darjeeling tea. When outside in the garden it began to grow dark they would stroll home, making a detour by the Big Bazaar on Kloof Street, where they rummaged through everything and bought nothing, which gave the owner, an Afrikaner, an extra reason to be angry.

  Rosélie thought she saw Stephen slip between the deep red chintz drapes. In the past, leaning against the piano, he would hum along in his nice, melodious voice. The Indian waiters knew all about the crime that had made headlines in every paper, even the very serious Manchester and Guardian, more geared to political analysis than brief news items. They never approached her, however, to present their condolences. Despite their reserve, something in their silence testified to their compassion.

  One afternoon she was pouring herself a second cup of tea when a white man greeted her. Tall, with a slight paunch, a shock of black hair, gray eyes, and tanned cheeks. In answer to his polite request, she nodded that he could join her.

  “My name is Manuel Desprez, but everyone calls me Manolo because I play the guitar. You don’t recognize me, do you? I used to teach at the university with Stephen. We got on very well together. He told me so much about you I have the feeling I know you. What’s more, I have spent several evenings at your place.”

  In Cape Town, like in N’Dossou and New York, Stephen would organize such lively and successful dinner parties, they never ended before dawn. Ever since an Australian, a Keats specialist, took her for the maid, Rosélie no longer attended them.

  “You’re making a lot of fuss about nothing,” Stephen shrugged it off. “David is so absentminded he wouldn’t recognize his own mother if she was standing in front of him.”

  She was by no means convinced and locked herself in her studio. Quite a few students came to these parties. Stephen assured her it was both a reward for the best in the department and a sure way of breaking the ice between professors and students, in other words between whites and blacks. When masters and disciples get drunk together, it’s something they never forget. Rosélie bumped into these young things, awkward and embarrassed, as they came out of the toilet, and quickly withdrew so as not to embarrass them even more.

  Manuel Desprez was still talking.

  “I’ve been away in France on a sabbatical and when I got back at the beginning of the week I heard what had happened. I was about to come and see you.”

  She closed up. He was probably going to spout some commonplace remark, bemoan the absurdity of the crime, and find fault with the local police. It was true, in fact, that despite Inspector Lewis Sithole’s constant visits and the notes he kept jotting down, Stephen’s murderers seemed to have disappeared into thin air. But instead of uttering the predictable, his question was direct, even brutal:

  “Aren’t you going to return home?”

  Home? If only I knew where home was.

  Chance had it I was born in Guadeloupe. But nobody in my family is interested in me. Apart from that, I have lived in France. A man took me to Africa, then left me. Another took me to the United States, then brought me back to Africa, and he too left me stranded, this time in Cape Town. Oh, I forgot I’ve also lived in Japan. That makes for a fine charade, doesn’t it? No, my only country was Stephen. I shall stay wherever he is.

  Despite the insistence of his half brothers—his mother had passed away some months earlier—Rosélie had refused to take his body back to the family vault in Verberie. Stephen, who loathed Europe, would have certainly preferred to remain in the country he had chosen.

  “South Africa is such a tough place,” Manuel insisted.

  The whole world is a tough place. They take potshots at you on the sidewalks of Manhattan as well as in London’
s Chelsea. You’re not safe in the deadly Twin Towers, symbol of American capitalism. Almost three thousand dead, killed in a single morning. They rape old ladies in the east of Paris. They tell me that even my little Guadeloupe is keeping up with the times.

  “I’m not talking just about violence.”

  About what, then? Racism? Let’s talk about racism. I could write volumes on the subject. If racism is more deadly than AIDs, it is also more widespread, more commonplace than flu in winter.

  I’ve always dreamed of writing a book on racism. “Racism Explained to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.”

  He became confused and changed the subject.

  “They tell me you’re a painter.”

  Rosélie stammered out a yes. This type of question always embarrassed her. As if she had been asked to put on a swimsuit, despite her cellulite, and pace up and down the stage of the Miss Guadeloupe contest. Manuel called a waiter, ordered a single malt, then went on to explain:

  “My sister has a gallery on the rue du Bac in Paris. If I can help you in any way, I shall only be too pleased.”

  The tone was sincere. The things he must have heard at the university! Doris, the coloured secretary, entertained her audience with her hissing voice:

  “They’re not married, you know.”

  I was the one who refused. He proposed regularly. Without any real desire, in my opinion. Like a broker offering comprehensive car insurance.

  “If something happens you’ll be covered.”

  It’s true that if I had listened to him I wouldn’t be where I am today! Worrying about how to make ends meet.

  “So of course she’s not entitled to a pension,” Doris hissed excitedly. “Since she can’t do anything except paint ghastly pictures that nobody would want in their house, she’s bought a crystal ball and calls herself a medium.”

  Split between hysterical laughter and commiseration, the circle of teachers gasped:

  “No, you must be joking!”

  The more generous-hearted proposed collecting donations. The idea didn’t meet with general approval: giving money or a check, it’s humiliating. The gesture might hurt her.

  Before Stephen, few people had taken Rosélie’s ambitions seriously. Elie would throw a fit whenever he saw her wasting her time messing about with paint instead of revising her math or science for the baccalaureate. If she couldn’t be a lawyer, he’d like her to be an economist. No Guadeloupean can boast of a daughter as economist at the World Bank. As for Rose, who was never short of compliments, she whined for an explanation:

  “What does that represent, darling? Is it a person, a tree, or an animal?”

  Those members of the family who had visited the Louvre museum in Paris once or twice shook with hysterical laughter. She thinks she’s that painter who was fascinated by Tahiti and also spent time in Martinique. What was his name?

  In the eyes of Salama Salama, Rosélie’s penchant for painting was incomprehensible and exasperated him. Stephen’s behavior was radically different. She hadn’t been with him for three months before he began to take charge of her affairs, as he did with everything else. She lacked technique because painting is like singing, cabinet making, or masonry: it’s not something you make up, it is governed by rules. So he got her admitted to the National School of Beaux Arts, the latest gift from France to N’Dossou, a place of extreme material poverty but spiritually very rich. The two are not incompatible. On the contrary. The Antillean proverb is mistaken when it claims: Sak vid pa kienn doubout. In other words, those who have an empty belly are only preoccupied with filling it. Not at all, they are devoted to the creation of Beauty and Spirituality. A French government minister had inaugurated the school in great pomp a few months earlier. The director was a friend. Stephen had no trouble whatsoever.

  N’Dossou’s entire population is no bigger than a district of Manhattan. Moreover, the entire country numbers fewer than a million inhabitants. The dense forest and fevers have got the better of it. The rumor quickly spread through the residential areas and suburbs that Rosélie had no business being where she was.

  Favoritism! Favoritism!

  Especially as she had no talent. Her paintings lacked that opacity generated by cultural authenticity. The professors, too busy saving up for their retirement, made no effort to defend her. Wounded by the criticism, Rosélie found no consolation in receiving her final diploma. Locked in her studio rented by Stephen in the Riviera IV district (everything an artist could wish for), next to the Afrika recording studios, she couldn’t touch her brushes for weeks on end. Nobody could reassure her that she was anything but a conscientious student. She would have liked words of encouragement from painters as different as Modigliani, Wifredo Lam, and Roberto Matta to admit her into their magic circle.

  Am I nothing more than one of those tlacuilos, Indians from Ixmiquilpan who filled the Spanish with so much admiration?

  Stephen in no way influenced Rosélie. He merely expressed his approval. Why did she always get the feeling he behaved like a doting daddy?

  You know, those parents who consider their little darling’s daubings a masterpiece, frame it, and hang it on the wall.

  He encouraged her to expose at the French Cultural Center, run by a friend of his, in between a sculptor from Niger and a watercolorist from Togo. The few visitors wrote admiring comments in the visitor’s book on the creativity of Francophone artists. Stephen hosted a dinner for the only two journalists in the country who specialized in painting. Since the evening was devoted to the arts, he also invited his inseparable Fumio. Fumio was a Japanese artist who staged an avant-garde show in front of a stunned audience, more used to the singers of the National Instrumental Ensemble, fully clothed in ceremonial wrappers. His was a one-man show called Ginza-Africa (Ginza being a trendy district of Tokyo), during which he completely stripped and threw a full frontal into the bargain. Although Fumio was of not much use that particular evening, the two journalists were impressed by the dishes served up by the former cook of the Finnish embassy, the high point being the crabs stuffed with snails. They published articles as excellent as the meal. As a result, Rosélie sold two of her paintings to the owner of the Hotel Paradiso, on the seafront, who hung them in the lobby and forced his reluctant guests to enthuse over them.

  The color of the air changed. Rosélie stood up, followed by Manuel Desprez. Nowhere was safe nowadays. Only the day before yesterday a group of tourists had been attacked outside the District Six Museum. He offered to escort her home. Deep down she knew only too well what the neighbors would say if, three months after the death of Stephen, she came home with a white man.

  I’m telling you, they’re all whores.

  “Black and Asian women are alike, they’re machines, they can’t tell one man from another.”

  Cowardly, Rosélie declined his offer.

  “Can I come and see you one of these days?” he insisted.

  She thought she hadn’t heard right. What type of Good Samaritan was this who took an interest in a morose, destitute widow of a left-handed marriage?

  “I’d like to see your paintings,” he stammered, taken aback by her look of surprise. “As I told you, my sister has a gallery. Sometimes I work as an art dealer for her.”

  Pity, nothing but pity!

  As night fell a cool wind settled on their shoulders, a treacherous wind blowing in from the merciless Atlantic and Indian oceans, that swept through the streets, sending dust and grease papers flying. In the background, the massive Table Mountain, like an evil spirit, overshadowed the city.

  Rosélie had been reluctant to move. She had sort of got used to New York. Why set off again? But Stephen was a stubborn man. Once he had something fixed in his mind, he was not afraid to make bold comparisons. After seven years in New York, he argued, to see South Africa after apartheid would be like going back in time. Going back to when the United States had just finished muzzling its police dogs and the fight for civil rights was over. They would have a front-row seat to observe ho
w communities, once bitter enemies, learn how to live together. Apparently, in South Africa the experience was particularly remarkable. Not the slightest drop of blood spilled. But no agrarian reform either. No redistribution of land. No Africanization along the lines currently meant. In Durban, Jo’burg, and Cape Town the statues of the colonials remained firmly in place on horseback, just like in the good old days. Rosélie had been incapable of holding out against such an onslaught. She had laid her canvases, like recalcitrant schoolgirls, in boxes custom-made by a carpenter on 125th Street.

  She hated Cape Town as soon as she left the airport, while sensing inside her a strange fascination. For towns are like humans. Their singular personality attracts, repels, or disconcerts. Cape Town possessed the brilliant sparkle and hardness of rock salt; its gardens and parks, the remarkable roughness of kelp. While Stephen admired pell-mell the mountains, the gnarled pines bent in two, the mass of flowers, the dazzling blue sky, and the endless expanse of ocean, she was blinded by both this splendor and the hideousness of the shacks that mushroomed all around her. No place had been more marked by its history. Never had she felt so denied, excluded, and relegated out of sight because of her color.

  Outside the Victoria Cinema, the line was growing longer. A group of out-of-towners, recognizable by their antiquated dress, were chatting. Rosélie hurried on to avoid being struck down by their looks, then remembered with a start that she was alone. Stephen was no longer walking beside her, arm in arm, or ostentatiously placing an arm around her shoulder. They would not turn their heads in her direction. She no longer irritated, she no longer gave offense. She had become invisible. Sadly, she had to choose between being excluded or being invisible.