by Maryse Conde
Sometimes, childhood memories surfaced.
Rose’s bedroom in La Pointe. The wide-open window showed a cutout of the sky. In the middle stood the bell tower of the church of Massabielle, as clear as on a photo, crouching on its hill, housing the miraculous Virgin Mary for the adoration of the faithful. The last time the statue had been carried through the island she had made cripples walk again while a deaf-mute from birth had begun to shout “manman” at the very sight of her. Rose, who at the time weighed 250 pounds on her scales and was a tight fit in her rocking chair, was balancing her on her thighs, rolls of fat squeezed between the wooden armrests. Wheezing passionately, she asked:
“Who do you prefer? Your papa or your maman?”
Rosélie didn’t hesitate and docilely gave the hoped-for answer:
“My maman.”
Then Rose showered her with kisses.
At other times Stephen took the place of Rose. The decor had changed. The sun was shining, remote and cold. They were in New York. The bay windows looked out onto the glistening Hudson and the high-rises of New Jersey. Stephen was sitting cross-legged on the bed in his jogging outfit, his hair in his eyes.
“Out of all your lovers, which one did you prefer?” he asked.
“Out of all my lovers!” she protested. “There were not that many, you know full well.”
The civil servants in N’Dossou didn’t count. Oh no! My private life is hardly material for a pornographic novel. Neither Confessions of O nor Emmanuelle nor The Sexual Life of Catherine M. nor Perverse Tales by Régine Deforges. The voyeurs wouldn’t lose their sight spying on me. I kept my virginity until I was nineteen, a venerable age, even in my time. I’ve never been to an orgy or had multiple partners. I’ve never fornicated in a public place such as a museum, an elevator, or a church. Never been sodomized. For me, sex has never been a feat or a performance. It has always simply rhymed with love. That’s why I wouldn’t know if one black is better than two, three, or four whites. I’ve never compared my men.
“Even so,” Stephen insisted. “Which one did you prefer?”
Here again there was no hesitation.
“You, of course!”
Then he showered her with kisses.
Was he lying then?
Fiela, wherever you are now, you must know. Just one word of consolation. Did he love me? Had he always put on an act? Is it possible to put on an act for twenty years? And why?
Then it was Faustin’s turn. In her life Faustin had symbolized one of those children conceived at the last minute, a latecomer, a krazi a bòyò. They give immense happiness to their forty-year-old mothers.
I can do it! My husband can do it. I took my insides to be a bundle of dry, wiry ligaments and his sex a stick of dead wood. What a mistake! Together we created life.
Toward the end of the morning, the tourist buses moved off to other vineyards. Soon a flow of private cars replaced them. Friends and relatives of the de Louws, attracted by the smell of death, that inimitable smell, sadly nodded their heads and remarked:
“Well, Sofie didn’t survive Jan for very long. A few weeks ago we were gathered in this very same place for a similar painful event. It’s as if the couple is tied to an umbilical cord, stronger than the ties uniting mother and child. As if he couldn’t bear to be separated from her.”
We shouldn’t be duped by the good-natured expression, the self-conscious countenance, and the unassuming dress of these farmers and their wives. They had composed the silent cohorts, the pillars of apartheid, throughout the country. Each in his own manner had paved the way for Afrikanerdom once the ties with England had been severed. They had often occupied regional postings in the Party. Dido, who knew them all by their first names, introduced them to her friend Rosélie, clairvoyant, magician, capable of performing miracles. As a result, they bowed to her out of superstitious respect. As for Rosélie, she was fighting her malaise. She hadn’t forgotten Jan’s last look. Consequently, she braced herself for the insults and contempt that lay behind every eye.
If Stephen had been there, she would have been treated to one of his tirades.
“What are you afraid of? What are you going to invent now? They are preoccupied by the same fears that haunt every human. The same fears as yours. Fear of death, fear of life, fear of the known, and fear of the unknown. Of the foreseeable and the unforeseeable. Must we constantly blame people for what they once were? Must we forever hold it against the English, the Americans, the French, the white Creoles in Guadeloupe, and the békés in Martinique for the crimes of their slaveholding ancestors? We must move forward.”
Stephen was unfair. She didn’t deserve these reproaches. She wouldn’t have asked for anything better than to make peace with everyone, to live free and die. Was it her fault if the other camp wouldn’t lay down their weapons? They could never forget the Good Old Days, and despite the passing of time, their prejudices remained intact.
Whatever we do, the world is like badly ironed laundry, impossible to get the creases out.
Around noon, the prayers stopped. The room of the dying woman emptied, with everyone’s thoughts on getting something to eat. In the courtyard the women lit stoves and began preparing braais. The men opened cans of beer, and despite the nearness of death, the homestead’s courtyard was as festive as a fairground. While devouring their lamb chops, friends and relatives were making dire predictions. How frail Sofie seemed! Three times in a few hours her breathing had stopped, then started up again in fits and starts with a persistent death rattle. Would she survive until Willem arrived? In other words, until the following afternoon? Rosélie gained everyone’s esteem by asserting that Sofie would live as long as was necessary. Her gift at clairvoyance, however, surprised nobody. The Kaffirs, everyone knows, make excellent sorcerers.
Halfway through lunch the new parish priest, Father Roehmer, a small, sickly man, climbed out of his four-wheel drive. He was giving Sofie Holy Communion, as he did every day. Despite his fragile appearance, Father Roehmer had survived nine years in a high-security prison, accused of being a Communist in a cassock, a KGB agent, and a supporter of the ANC. He appeared not to harbor any bitterness over his past suffering and humiliation. He smiled, shook hands, and patted his former enemies on the back. An old friend of Dido’s, he went up to Rosélie as if she were a longtime acquaintance and said in a familiar tone of voice:
“Dido tells me you’re leaving us. When are you going?”
She had no idea. In fact, she had vaguely noted the address of a few estate agencies and even more vaguely sorted through her personal belongings and made an inventory of the furniture she hoped to sell. Suddenly the thought of saying farewell to Cape Town was heartrending. She realized that, unbeknownst to her, ties were binding her to this city, ties she had never formed with any other place. Even that of her birthplace. Liberated as if by magic from her fears, she would walk through the streets drinking in the arrogant, enigmatic beauty that was so special.
In the morning, she would walk as far as the wharf for Robben Island when the sea opened its bleary eyes, muffled in gray like the sky. The sun hesitated on its path: was it expected to climb up there once again with the little strength it had left? She had no inclination to mix with the crowd of tourists already lining up for the ferries, shivering in their anoraks. She waited for the light to slowly dawn and the day to change as she strolled through the harbor. She never tired of this sight. The whole world was here. Japanese, Brazilians, and Liberians, as black as Niggers of the Narcissus, were washing down the decks of their rust buckets. Americans, Australians, and Scandinavians with mops of flax-colored hair were preparing to sail out to sea. Next to the catamarans, birds eager to take flight, balancing on the crest of the waves, idle passersby were admiring a fore-and-aft rigged schooner from the pioneering age of navigation.
Silently, dusk fell.
The mountains glowed red before turning blue and melted into the surrounding darkness. Without warning the penumbra became umbra. One by one the visitor
s withdrew, leaving only Father Roehmer and the cronies of death, never tired of trotting out psalms and litanies. Dido handed round cups of very strong coffee flavored with cardamom, which revived people’s spirits. Prayers were replaced by talk. The subject turned to Fiela. Some thought that the priests of her parish should refuse to give her remains a religious burial. Others, including Father Roehmer, objected. In this country where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had pardoned unimaginable torture and heinous crimes, why should Fiela not be forgiven? This caused a heated debate. One can only compare what is comparable. Can one compare the guilt of an individual with the collective guilt of the supporters of a political regime?
Incapable of expressing an opinion, Rosélie slipped outside.
The courtyard of the homestead was bathed in darkness. The trees, bushes, and even the flower beds had taken on disturbing shapes. The old superstitions of her childhood resurfaced and she began to run clip-clopping over the flagstones, arousing echoes of the three-legged horse of the Bèt à Man Hibè.
Standing rigid in the dark, Stephen, Faustin, and Fiela were waiting for her beside her bed.
The night was long.
Willem’s taxi arrived earlier than expected. At noon, whereas they were expecting him in the early afternoon. When he entered the room, blond and weather-beaten by the sun, the smell of wide-open spaces in the folds of his clothes, Sofie uttered a sigh as if something had come undone inside her. Staring wide-eyed, she examined him from head to foot so as to engrave his image for eternity. Then she closed her eyelids while a mask of peace settled over her face.
Eternal peace.
TWENTY
At six forty-five the sound of the telephone ringing drew Rosélie from her bed. It was Inspector Lewis Sithole.
He did not apologize for calling so early, for he had an excellent reason. As he had predicted two days earlier, Bishupal had decided to squeal, as they say. Mrs. Hillster was right, he wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Even less Stephen. It wasn’t him. It was Archie Kronje. It was an incredible story. Archie had got it into his head to blackmail Stephen. He had asked him therefore to bring three thousand U.S. dollars in cash and to meet him in front of the Pick ’n Pay. But he misjudged him. Stephen had in fact gone to the appointed meeting empty-handed, in a fighting mood and threatening to inform the police of his drug dealing. The quarrel had turned vicious and Archie had fired. The murder weapon apparently was at his poor mother’s, wrapped in a towel hidden under a pile of sheets.
Fiela, Fiela, you have shown me the way. To be done with life. Living is a bitter potion, a purgative, a calomel I can no longer swallow.
For days on end Rosélie abandoned her consultations and remained in her room, virtually from morning to night and night to morning, lying prostrate on her bed. Despite the increasingly bitter cold, she kept the windows wide open in order to counter the feeling of suffocation that was creeping over her. She never closed her eyes. On a clear night she could count the stars, which twinkled for hours on end, then suddenly were snuffed out like candles on a birthday cake. The moon was the last to disappear, swaying on its swing until dawn. But when the nights were ink-black, she would watch the air slowly whiten, the sky turn gray, and the silhouette of Table Mountain loom up, pachydermatous, like an elephant emerging from the bushes. First of all, only the natural elements of the decor came to light: the clouds, the pines, and the rocks. Then the humans appeared. The first tourists took up their positions around the cable-car station. A new day was dawning.
Andy Warhol said that we would all be famous for fifteen minutes of our lives.
Rosélie had not foreseen that the Cape Tribune, The Observer, and other dailies and weeklies would snatch up her story so that thousands of readers who had never heard of her could relish it. That photos of Stephen, Bishupal, Archie, and her—my God, what do I look like, am I really so ugly?—would be splashed over the front pages. Admittedly, the details were juicy.
The honorable professor of literature, the specialist of Joyce and Seamus Heaney who was writing a critical study of Yeats and had made a name for himself in college theater productions, murdered a few months earlier, was in fact leading a double life. No doubt about it, nowhere is safe nowadays, and the university’s no better than the church. After the pedophile priests and bishops, here are the professors slumming it. My God, whom can we trust our children with? What do these false mentors teach them? Vice, nothing less. The papers reeled off fictionalized biographies of Stephen. They had readers believe that this admired, respected, and celebrated professor had secretly accumulated a series of dirty tricks. In Africa, his well-placed connections had got him out of a tight corner. But in New York, where love is a many splendored thing, a minor had filed a lawsuit and Stephen had had to leave to flee a prison sentence.
These unfortunate circumstances, however, had a positive side to them. The journalists had discovered that the companion of this modern-day Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Rosélie Thibaudin, originally from Guadeloupe, a Caribbean island under French domination—some still are, a smattering of islands, two or three pieces of confetti on the ocean—who was totally unaware of her partner’s misdemeanors—how blind can you get, women are so stupid—was a painter. Misfortune often works like a magnet. Anxious to get a closer look at this poor dupe, people made a beeline for Faure Street. They hadn’t counted on Dido’s presence of mind. Thanks to her, the house had become a trap. Not only were they wasting their time—Rosélie was invisible, wrapped in her grief, far from prying eyes—but they weren’t allowed to leave until they had visited her studio. Although they had hoped for better, her paintings were so dark, so unattractive, in other words, not at all exotic, they were obliged to dig deep into their pockets. Dido was the one who fixed the price, admittedly depending on the person, and tolerated no excuses. She took her job as manager very seriously. That’s how she not only sold two paintings to Bebe Sephuma, attracted like everybody else by the smell of scandal, for her house in Constantia, but also dragged out of her the promise of simultaneous exhibitions, one in Cape Town and the other in Jo’burg. That evening, taking a bowl of soup up to Rosélie, she counted up with satisfaction the day’s takings and remarked:
“You see, some good always comes out of evil. It’s a law of nature.”
Rosélie, who could only see her life in ruins, had trouble making out the contours of good.
She was ashamed and she was hurting.
Sometimes she had the strength to leave her room, leave the bed that everyone had scorned, and climb up to her studio. Her canvases gave her a cool reception.
We are tired of waiting, they complained. We’ve done nothing to hurt you. Can’t you understand that we’ll never betray you, like your men have done, one after the other? We’ll always be faithful to you.
She tried to explain. Pain and shame had swooped down on her, wreaking havoc on her, obscuring her convictions. She must get control of herself and think things through.
Did she really want to leave Cape Town? To go where? And find what? The indifference of Paris? The emptiness of Guadeloupe? Who was she? Who did she want to be? A painter? A clairvoyant? She invariably ended up losing hope in her wrecked life.
That morning she got dressed very early so as not to keep Papa Koumbaya waiting. Despite Dido’s efforts to dissuade her, she had made up her mind to pay Bishupal a visit.
“What do you hope to get out of that little bastard?” Dido fumed. “You’ll just hurt yourself even more, that’s all.”
I hope to understand.
Understand what?
What is there to understand?
Inspector Lewis Sithole, who was now a daily visitor to Faure Street, thought along the same lines.
“She’d do best to put all that behind her,” he repeated to Dido, who highly approved.
Behind me? It’s a vicious circle: If I haven’t understood, even if I can’t forget, how can I manage to grin and bear it? And start off again along life’s bumpy road.
As unlik
ely as it may seem to those who know the age-old hatred between blacks and coloureds, Dido and Lewis were having a love affair. Rosélie, in fact, was the culprit. Through drinking endless cups of coffee in the kitchen, lamenting on life’s unfathomable machinations, Lewis and Dido had grown closer together. Lewis, who owned a secondhand Toyota, had offered to drive Dido home to Mitchell Plains. First he had stayed for dinner and then the night, when he had performed as well as any other.
Blushing like a virgin, Dido confided in anyone within hearing distance:
“He’s not very handsome, but he’s got a heart as good as gold.”
She was now planning to rent her house and move in with Lewis in an ultramodern apartment block built by the police in False Bay. Her relationship with the Inspector assured her all the papers for free and firsthand knowledge of criminal cases. That’s how she learned that Bishupal’s defense was proving difficult. Beneath his angelic looks, he had a stubborn streak. He refused to follow the strategy advocated by his lawyer, once again a young fellow officially appointed to the case, but we know now we have to be careful of young lawyers officially appointed to the case. He refused to dissociate himself from Archie or accuse him. On the contrary, he claimed responsibility. He had approved the murder committed by his friend. He had even bought the gun.
The street emerged livid and shivering from the torment of the night. Rosélie was hurt.
