The Story of the Cannibal Woman

by Maryse Conde

  Forever.

  Meanwhile, fraught with worry, Stephen had moved heaven and earth, including his mother’s retirement home in Verberie, his half brothers, the Hotel du Mont Parnasse in Paris, Cousin Altagras, Lucien Roubichou, and their numerous kids, the airline, and, as a last resort, the central police station.

  “Fill in this form with your last name, first name, and address.”

  “You’re not French?”

  “She’s not your wife? When did she disappear?”

  “Did you quarrel?”

  In despair, he ended up in La Pointe about the same time as Rosélie. When he found her he hugged her in his arms in an embrace straight out of Gone with the Wind, reported a facetious nephew who was fond of movies.

  “It was my fault,” he said, shouldering the blame. “I should never have left you on your own.”

  Fearful all this fat would rapidly decompose, the undertakers had invented an ingenious system of refrigeration. They placed an insulated icebox at the bottom of the coffin that needed to be changed only every four hours. The family was dismayed by the stream of strangers filing in front of Rose’s body. They came from all over to get a last look at the recluse, confined to her room for thirty years like a monstrous Gregor Samsa. They elbowed their way into the funeral home, hastily sweeping their breasts with the sign of the cross and getting an eyeful of the horrible sight.

  Following these painful events, Rosélie symbolized the ingratitude of children that kills the hearts of so many parents. Worse, she gave no explanation for being inadmissibly late.

  “If she had gone via the North Pole she would have got here quicker,” as one uncle put it.

  Rosélie walked behind the coffin like a zombie, or rather a junkie. Besides, she took drugs, it was whispered around in the family. This was not an entirely false rumor. Rosélie had tried marijuana in Salama Salama’s time.

  As for Stephen, his preppy looks were reassuring. The women especially appreciated them. It’s sad, really, to think that white men make the best husbands. They don’t chase around. They stay at home and watch game shows and the news on television before climbing into bed with their wedded wives. The good-for-nothing husbands, those who come home to snore at four in the morning, drained by their exploits with their ladyloves, sneered:

  “All that glitters is not gold! In bed, a black is worth at least two whites.”

  True or false? They only had to ask Rosélie. But no one dared.

  As for the politically minded cousins, they first found themselves in a predicament. For years Rosélie, who had never read a line of Fanon or Gramsci, had been their bête noire. The fact she was living with a white man and chose to live in the empire of evil didn’t surprise them. But here was her white man, who was not French (only the naive can’t tell the difference), proving to be the opposite of what they loathed. Not only was he always prepared to criticize France, Jacobin and colonialist at the dawn of the twenty-first century, but he professed he had no interest in rum punch or the beach.

  “All that sand makes me sick,” he claimed. “I didn’t come here for that.”

  This favorable opinion changed to negative when he announced he was leaving the rue du Commandant Mortenol and taking his wife to St. Barts. St. Barts! Now he was showing his true face. In the end, for him and others of his color, the Caribbean was nothing more than a tray of exotic fruit for the tasting.

  It was true that Stephen hated these tourist paradises. But although he was suffocating in La Pointe, this was not the real reason. He had trouble adapting to the Guadeloupean way of life. In other words, the constant stream of visitors, wave upon wave of friends, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, great-nephews, and great-nieces; the telephone calls without rhyme or reason, preferably at dawn or bang in the middle of siesta; lunches for christenings, first communions, engagements, weddings, silver, gold, or, more rarely, diamond anniversaries that lasted from noon to seven in the evening, and the everlasting discussions on the political status of the island.

  “Do we need a single Assembly?”

  Elected by universal suffrage, by proportional representation according to the principle of the current regional reforms.

  Above all, he wanted to remove Rosélie, who lent herself only too well, from the grip of death: the mass and ceremony of the ninth day, the fifteenth day, the thirtieth day, the daily collective prayers and the annotated reading of L’ Imitation de Jésus-Christ. Finally, quite simply, he believed that nothing would be better than the luxury of a five-star hotel to give her a new lease on life.

  To a certain extent, they didn’t feel out of place in St. Barts. Where were the natives hiding out? The island was swarming with Americans, Caucasians, and a handful of African-Americans. None of your university bookworm types, dressed any old how. None of the obese proletariat either. These were people with money, recognizable, despite the required look of jogging suits and Nikes, by their slim figures, their tan, and their assurance. On the beaches at Les Salines and l’Anse du Gouverneur the men showed off their tanned skins and flat stomachs while the women unraveled their hair like Rita Hayworth in Gilda. They politely grimaced a smile at Rosélie and made small talk, nothing intellectual:

  “Beautiful weather, isn’t it?”

  “The water’s great this morning.”

  “I hear the East Coast is snowed under!”

  Stephen had somewhat miscalculated. Rosélie accompanied him to the beach, the pool, the restaurant, and the bar, swimming, eating, and drinking three or five cocktails an evening. But it was obvious she was not drinking in the luxury, blinded as she was by her own grief. So she was unaware that the hotel staff were eating her up with their eyes. Those who kept the books at reception had passed the information on: she was not married to Stephen. So the verdict of the men, from the gardeners and the pool boys to the servers of planter punches in their tight-fitting white pants, bulging back and front, was final. She was nothing more than a bòbò picked up in the airport in Guadeloupe or Martinique together with a gift package of aged rum, a jar of hot peppers, and three sticks of vanilla and cinnamon. The population of chambermaids wavered between rage and envy. What did she have that was so special to hook a white man and wallow at his side in painless opulence at the five-star Palm Beach, safe from the sun, AIDS, and underdevelopment? Not that beautiful. Not that light-skinned. Not that young. And bad hair.

  Grief is a marathon runner that sets its own pace.

  On their return to New York, Stephen took Rosélie to Carnegie Hall to listen to Vivaldi, and to Brooklyn to admire the Bartabas horses, and, on the advice of some colleagues, consulted Orin Sherman, a respected psychotherapist who treated half the university, but there was nothing doing. Zombie she was, and zombie she stayed, creeping blindfolded through the glare of her days and the shadows of the night. This lasted almost a year.

  One morning her nostrils filled with the delightful aroma of Linda’s coffee—Linda, whose magic potions bought in a botanica on 110th Street had been having no effect. She felt the desire for Stephen’s body, forgotten for so long on the other side of the king-size bed. Her hands burned to pick up her brushes again. Life had reasserted itself.

  Shortly afterward, Aunt Léna, decidedly the messenger of misfortune, called to announce the death of Elie.

  Elie had died while Carmen, his favorite bòbò, was giving him a blow job during the blissful hours of siesta. His member, on the point of bursting, had suddenly gone limp. She had looked up and there was the old man prostrate in his rocking chair, his eyes rolled upward and his mouth gaping wide open. Sealing the quarrel with the family, Rosélie refused to go to Guadeloupe to attend the funeral. Her time for mourning was over! She had finished eating her heart out. Above all, she confessed her father had never meant anything to her. She could not forgive him his infidelities toward her mother and the rivers of water his humiliations had made her cry.

  It had all started when some good souls had reported to Rose he was complaining to his group of fri
ends.

  “Man, soon I’ll need a ladder to climb up onto that woman!”

  “Man, she’s not the Aegean Sea, but the Sea of Grease.”

  “Man, that woman’s a nightingale locked up in a demijohn.”

  He was a useless individual, devoid of dreams, utopia, and ambitions. A Creole-style dandy. He took himself to be the center of the world when he walked on his crooked legs to the clerk’s office to scribble his mumbo jumbo, dressed in a white drill suit, his bunions pinched into button boots.

  TWELVE

  Fiela, he always forgave me, I who was not beyond reproach, who, I confess, had been unfaithful before. Did you ever cheat on Adriaan?

  For it was at the very moment when Stephen had shown her so much indulgence and kindness that she had cruelly wounded him. At the very moment when, thanks to him, she ventured out once again into life without crutches. As if she had wanted to assess the strength she had regained by hitting the person dearest to her heart.

  One evening, she was fed up with eating out of a tray on her knees in her room in front of a dreary television, despite its 126 channels, and decided to join the guests in the living room. She was amazed at their warm welcome. As if they were glad she was healed and back on earth. As if Stephen had been right when he claimed they loved her but never dared show it. It was the usual clique: specialists from the English and Comparative Literature Departments, with or without their spouses—at the mercy of that frightful species, the babysitter—favorite students, and Fina. Not only had Fina and Rosélie made up, but during those dark days Fina had proved to be her most loyal friend, wrapping her in tenderness and consideration. Stephen was fluttering around a stranger, obviously trying to charm him and include him in his crowd of admirers. When she came up, he hurriedly introduced her in his usual way:

  “My wife, Rosélie.”

  Smiles. Handshakes.

  Love at first sight seems to belong to the outmoded props of melodrama. Today, most adults no longer believe in it any more than children believe in Father Christmas. Yet, that evening, Rosélie discovered its vitality and its powers.

  Born and raised in Manhattan, Ariel was the son of a mestizo father, whose parents were an Amerindian from Colombia and a Japanese woman from Hawaii. His mother was the daughter of a Haitian and a Polish Jew whose parents had narrowly escaped the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. He spoke five languages fluently, each with the same foreign accent. He had so much mixed blood in him that he was unable to say which race he belonged to. What’s more, he was handsome. A handsomeness that was not particular to any one people, as if every category of human had harmoniously combined to create him. His skin was copper-colored, his thick hair curly black, and his full eyebrows perfect arcs above his eyes. Oh, the eyes, those windows of the soul, large and luminous, though somewhat languishing.

  After a while, Ariel and Rosélie felt the need to get away from the hubbub of these irksome individuals desperately discussing Ridley Scott’s latest film, the tribulations of the Palestinians, and the famine in Ethiopia. To be alone together! The only refuge left was Rosélie’s studio, where only close friends were admitted. Yet, here she was letting in this man she had only just met.

  Ariel inspected each canvas as a connoisseur and delivered his verdict. In his opinion, she was influenced by the German neo-Expressionists. Her painting was so violent, somber, and virile whereas she appeared so feminine and gentle. So she too liked monkeys, those miniature humans with the eyes of a clairvoyant. Did she know the story of that señora in Cuba who housed all sorts of chimpanzees in her palace? Had she ever visited Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul in Mexico City? No? The power of art that forges a dialogue through time and space!

  In fact, he was a friend of Fina’s. He ran a community arts center in the Bronx called La América in honor of José Marti, his hero. La América was unlike any other center. First of all, classes and supplies were free. Knowledge should not have to be paid for. Second, it had as its motto the phrase by Montaigne “An honest man is a many-sided man.” Although the center was mainly frequented by Latinos, given its location, it also attracted a fair number of young African-Americans, Caribbeans, and Asians. In fact, there was a bit of everything: old people of both sexes and every color who, after a life of hard work, were indulging in the delights of creativity, junkies endeavoring to replace one passion with another, the idle rich wanting to invent an occupation, the destitute trying to forget their destitution, atheists, and religious fanatics. All of them learned the essential truth, which may sound simplistic, that Art is the only language on the surface of the planet that can be shared without distinction of race or nationality, the two scourges preventing communication among men. At the end of the year Ariel would organize an exhibition and sale of his students’ work, the only materialistic activity permitted in this temple of spirituality where profit was spurned. Connoisseurs came from every country in South America. One year a group arrived from Japan, and another year some Senegalese traveled from Kaolack. The Spoleto Festival regularly bought several paintings. A few months earlier The New York Times had devoted an entire page to him: “Ariel Echevarriá, a man of globality, not globalization.”

  Ariel ardently begged her to join him in this major project of his and teach painting (free) at La América.

  Normally Rosélie would have rejected such an offer, with or without payment. The prospect of dealing with thirty undisciplined and quarrelsome students would have scared her off. But the times were not normal. It was the dawn of a new life.

  Elie, the model husband, had gone to fetch the midwife. The baby girl presented well. Soon she would emerge from Rose’s womb, not as a pale, skinny newborn that only her mother’s milk and devotion would keep on this side of the world, but as a strong, beautiful child, ready for life’s adventures. Rose sang to her the barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann:

  Belle nuit, succède au jour,

  A nos douleurs, fais trêve.

  Confused, Rosélie had trouble finding her words. Yet Ariel, who could already read her thoughts, knew that her silence meant she accepted. He then asked her when she could come to La América to meet the students and begin her mission.

  On the other side of the bay windows, the slow procession of cars streamed along Riverside Drive while the mosaic of illuminated skyscrapers glittered in the distance. Nobody could say how this tête-à-tête would have ended if Fina, out of curiosity, hadn’t pushed open the door. She clapped her hands when she heard of Rosélie’s plans. Wasn’t this what she had been hoping for all these years? By breaking her dependence on Stephen, she would be able to prove to herself and everyone else her unusual talent. At the same time the expression in her dark eyes, almond-shaped beneath the knot of Frida Kahlo–like eyebrows, indicated she was not fooled as to the nature of Rosélie’s feelings, that she was overjoyed and offered her complicity.

  Once the guests had left, however, Stephen ridiculed her plans with his usual verve. He was not venal. But why would she work for nothing? This volunteer work masked the regrettable exploitation of man by man, glorified in the name of Art. Did she realize the boredom and exhaustion involved in teaching? Besides, she wasn’t qualified to teach. Every man to his trade and there’ll be no complaints. As for this Ariel, he was an ambiguous individual. It was rumored he swung both ways. Where did the money he invested in the center come from? Some people accused him of having close ties with the drug world. More seriously, though, La América was based on an absurd utopia, a childish premise straight out of one of John Lennon’s songs.

  And the world will be one.

  Men, women, and children of every country, of every color, workers or not, unite under the banner of Art. To think that we all have a budding talent just waiting to be tapped, how naive can you get! Some are born talented. Some are geniuses. Others are nobody at all. He had gone with Fina to an exhibition of the students’ work at La América. Pathetic! But nobody dared tell the truth to the Bronx. Tell the truth and run.

  Rosélie did n
ot contradict Stephen but did as she pleased. The next morning, no sooner had he turned his back than she went out, much to Linda’s dismay. For months she hadn’t breathed in the smells of New York. The city was in a festive spring mood and Nature was singing like Charles Trenet:

  Y a de la joie!

  Partout, y a de la joie!

  The sun was laughing at the blue corners of the sky. All along Broadway the cherry trees were budding, waist deep in a splash of forsythia blooms. She took her seat in a bus that, cleaving the city, climbed up and up toward the Bronx, taking on an increasingly somber, increasingly humble, and increasingly hospitable humanity as it slowly progressed. When a black kid sitting next to her placed his hand on her knee in a friendly gesture, she felt that the contact that had been broken, through no fault of her own, had been renewed again after all these years.

  To tell the truth, La América was a nondescript place. It was a former lunatic asylum, a two-story brick house topped by a small tower called the Turret of the Raving Mad where they used to lock up patients in straitjackets. It now housed Ariel’s apartment. The Center was located in a secluded alley, behind a shabby plot of grass, cluttered with various transportation devices used by teachers and students alike, such as bicycles, roller skates, and skateboards, for they loathed technology and gas pollutants as much as they hated material gain. Rosélie soon noticed that at La América Art and Politics made strange bedfellows. The teachers, most of them refugees disowned by their governments, felt no gratitude toward their American savior. They constantly criticized U.S. foreign policy, and at the slightest pretext would demonstrate in the street, brandishing banners and defying the police. A march against the U.S. intervention in Somalia emptied the Pottery and Sculpture Department for weeks on end.