Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (13 page)

still on a white page, but remember, it was only for an instant while they groped their way in the night, suddenly these hands were sighted and as light as Charles' fingers on the piano, he was so young and prodigious then, I remember how they all looked, and what surprises me even more is that I loved it when models sometimes had their lips half open, it was as though they were all going to be speaking to us long after they had disappeared and only then betray the secret of their voluptuous living by spilling a few words, your hand in mine, you patiently suggest that I sleep, give me a sleeping pill that I turn down, annoyed, and say Harriett, Miss Désirée, leave me be, you're always watching over me, you obey, you're never far off, when I start to feel sleepy, I can feel you behind me, like the flinch of an animal, all those portraits I've done, all imprinted in the memory of my eye, it's an unending photogravure, too many images and faithful reproductions, I always go back to my mother's lover in the bedroom, or my cousin in the woods on the pony in autumn, he who knows nothing about me, this plate is engraved and can never be effaced, not a word, not a gesture, an exasperating image because it endures forever, whether disorganized or not, it lasts, etched in the phosphorescence of the past, as though present, it sees me with precision as I see it, my models' mouths half open to say, today I live and tomorrow I die, whether it's Charles, Frédéric, Suzanne or Adrien, they all say it, the young Caroline is busy elsewhere in the half-shadow of the afternoon bedroom, when she hears her cousin's voice, oh, when are you going to come and play with me, the pony's getting nervous, then she hears rumours of war being declared, and her parents send her away to elite colleges and universities, she'll become an architect, she tells her classmates as she photographs them in studied, stilted poses in luxuriant gardens on campus, then all this carefree happiness ends, and the skies bursts into flame, the elegant world she lives in will no longer exist, she is afraid when she takes her first flying lessons, but still she wants to fly solo once, just once, and now here I am alone, high in the sky with no visibility, solitary, just as I wanted with all my preoccupations elsewhere, young Caroline learns to fly with the man who will become her first fiancé, her first death, hero or angel thrown from a flaming heaven, here is the fiancé, the uniformed lieutenant in his flying-suit, my first death, heroic, no time to think about it as I have, in battle, one doesn't think, one dies, maybe even without knowing fear, young people give their lives without holding back, bravery is not an act of reflection, thought does not hang on, one just dies, I received the telegram, it might have been the same day I learned to use a hunting rifle and gathered up a young pheasant whose plumage had dripped blood all over my hand, perhaps the day I remember my grandfather's words, don't point your weapon upwards to the sky, that will bring out your determination to kill, the plumage with iris-like glints, plumage of a bird fallen on the same day as he did.

I could do nothing about it then, Désirée, nor now. You have your God, I have what was mine, and Samuel, working out at the bar, heard his teacher Arnie's voice urging him to the lightness of Japanese masters Samuel had seen dancing in the interpretation workshops that had so disoriented him, these masters were able to show our western world the refinement of dance so slow and other-worldly, when the body evolves into serenity, but the relentless atmosphere of the world heralded to Samuel a heavy footfall, no longer capable of slowing down, whose echo he heard under his window at night, if he wanted others to understand what he was feeling, he would have to dance wearing fibres with the texture of flexible metal, like the biological suits worn by hazardous-materials teams in post offices or any strategic point where a troublesome bacterium might have insinuated itself beneath a stamp or onto letter-paper, living in symbiosis with the written word and travelling with the letter, this bacterium would distance itself from its host organism and any other secret information, these trackers would spray the area with antibiotic powder, cleansing one hand after the other of typhoid and diphtheria, Samuel would dance through the streets of New York with a disturbing dressing over his mouth, held over his nose by two threads around his ears, he'd wear the outfit he had just learned the term for, Tyvek, which would be needed for his safety tomorrow, like those worn by rescue teams in the worst epidemics, dancer or mailman, he would be ready to resist infection, from the minute he got up in the morning, he'd remember that even his own shower could produce contamination, who knows what harmful substance ran into the wells and seas and rivers, especially if an envelope holding a card or letter could propagate pustules of smallpox or traces of chicken-pox, even more insidiously, the postal worker might contract something as harmless as a cold, plan a picnic on Sunday with his family, being a health enthusiast, drink eight glasses of water a day and stay away from communion wine, Samuel too would be kept in this trap of healthy living and false security, and wouldn't even know what was ailing him, colic or nausea, he'd go to class and be found at noon the next day lying on the bathroom tiles, not breathing, or again he might be exercizing on the bars, a butterfly of a dancer as light as he was graceful at one instant, thinking of unencumbered grace, free of ornamentation, of the Japanese dancers, or the unclean cast out by all, quarantined like so many others, whichever way it was to be, he had to live cautiously, especially being Samuel, it meant that his life and growth would forever be punctured, yet still he would be determined to live well, like his father and grandfather, thus it was with his home computer, Samuel thought, he communicated daily with his friends, and like him, they tried wriggle out from under the conformity of fear that could have destroyed the will to live in each of them, one poet from Argentina wrote that lately he couldn't sleep at night, a visual artist in India did a gouache of a lion emerging from a man's head, from Uruguay came red circles on the glass page of the computer, a composer in South Africa sent the opening pages of a piece with notes so tightly squeezed they seemed illegible, the art of combining sounds had also become the art of being seen and heard, however unmusical the combination of signs and notes might be, art put all its urgent preoccupations out there, as though a hand of iron had written in the sky over a calm countryside of mountains and hills, beware, can you not see me coming, and it was the voice of the red tumult heard by them all, thought Samuel, his musician friend wrote that his piece for violin and orchestra was to remind people of a lost perfume, a brief sparkle of light through a crystal, like us and our history, and as Samuel listened, it seemed that the crystal was odd and tarnished, in this light emerging from the earth in cacophonic music and videos — sometimes highlighting a scene from a past in conflagration — Samuel had the impression his friends saw the world as from a flying saucer where nothing could be pinpointed, it could not be labelled archival or propagandistic, was this a Vietnamese village, the morning after a deep night with all the villagers fled, the green smoke of a raid in Rwanda after a genocide in which even the children they carried on their backs were killed, mothers still alive then finished off with a machete as they ran with the little ones one their backs, this mother's race had been revived in the unvoiced terror of all mothers whose panting and running feet only could be heard, the race form all misfortunes in the shadows, but which ones, all terrible, all nameless, gliding towards the abyss, the killing-fields with millions of crushed skulls, so many fields on fields that no one knew who was in which, men or animals, so many genocides that they had no names or graves, and henceforth no commemoration, an occasional trial or improvised tribunal, perhaps, would underline the assassins' actions, but neither killer nor victim actually put in an appearance, no commemoration or jurisdiction, Samuel thought, just evanescence and smoke, the world as the artist discerned it on his radar, you could only go on as though this world was ours and go forever forward, but what kind of progress or advance was it for the artist, knowing how to paint a grey pigeon lying dead in an alley among the garbage, that abandoned bird would show our lack of respect for life and our obsession with death, a charcoal drawing of a fan on a table, as though the pigeon or the fan had provided the same purposeless energy, both mistreated and misused, tossed in a corner amid a limitless choice of objects, Samuel and his friends no longer knew what to remote-control, the almost weightless portable phone with a memory, or some other compact digital instrument, or the remote with pre-programmed keys, the only energy came from these tools, as easily tuned to us as we to them, comfortable, pleasing in format, easy to sip into a coat pocket, useful as a deliberate distraction, the stubborn determination to cut oneself off from whatever was happening out there, thought Samuel, every evocation of places where torture reigned over the lives of women and men was wiped out by the Leviathan authority of a VCS or a DVD, who wanted his Samsung SCH-i600 phone whose digital code, so new, so mysterious, with instant messaging, he thought, a whole range of virtuoso phones he'd have liked to own, though his father kept saying one was enough, he'd have liked to see on the diaphanous blue screen, not today's messages, often love-letters from the several women he loved at one time, he didn't seem to have time to get attached to just one since he'd broken off with Veronica, but what was happening in those forbidden hidden places his father wrote about, the gulags, the re-education camps, maybe it would have been too troubling to know so much about these catastrophic realities, sure they still happened, but it was so far away in North Korea or China, Hitlerian or Stalinist regimes where men and women took pleasure in torturing one another, they even said they enjoyed torturing children, women and men wherever this duty was required by their superiors, jailers who coldly used choking gas on those they called opponents or had carried out chemical tests, who would want to know all these macabre details on opening their e-mail, better maybe to forget all about this great terror machine and be a dancer-choreographer like Arnie Graal, possibly the real manifesto was in this staging, and you had to serve your art with rigour, the silent rigour that took time for love away from a young man, yes, said Caroline, my soldier fiancé was my first death, then the sadness fades till one feels nothing, but it was never like that for Charles, I can still see him when he returned from India, he came to see me in my villa by the sea, before this censorship that kept my friends from visiting, I'm no fool, I never was, as soon as Charly came into the house, people stopped seeing or phoning me, even dear Jean-Mathieu, I know Harriett, you'll say it was her all along, I don't know what Charly did to keep me apart from Jean-Mathieu, she may not fool me, but I can't hate her for it, sure poor Charles was in tears, but for all his pitiful air he never wrote so well, he paid for his genius in tears, so my dear Caroline, what do you think of this, Cyril likes promiscuity, hanging out with scum, I can't put up with it, what's going to happen to us, does he even realize what kind of world we're living in, I've never been so worried about any of my partners before, a friend who has contempt for any and all rules, what can you do, I told him, unaware that I too would have to undergo this same promiscuity and disregard for any rule one day, he is young and sensuous, that's all, isn't it more like debauchery, said Charles, these words, debauchery and sexual promiscuity, were as foreign to him as to me, so long had we observed the world from our ivory tower, so honest, so perfect before the temptation that overflows the bounds of respectability, nor taking account of the fact that Cyril's flaunting our relationship everywhere hurts Frédéric, Charles went on, I took his sweet, delicate head in my hands and comforted him, what you're going through, Charles, may hurt you, but it feeds your work, so you needn't be so unhappy, oh what should I do, he asked, love him more or less, more, I told him, always more, what I believed was that Charles, being a spiritual creature, ought to become more of this earth and learn, like all of us, the implacable lesson of modesty in love, and this is just what Cyril was forcing him to do, Charles' fleshly rebirth was happening before my eyes, he loved, he cried, another man entirely, through all this very palpable turbulence of love, which humbles even the proudest and breaks the spirit, I watched him grow, Cyril forces me to anger, oh why did I ever meet him, and instead of taking that trip to India, I should have taken care of Frédéric instead of leaving him to others, though there were some angelic people looking after him, besides I'm too old for Cyril, young people should be with their own, what bothers me the most is that Cyril wants it all and despises my attachment to Frédéric, in fact he begs me not to see him any more, can you imagine that, dear Caroline, not see Frédéric any more, never have him to go back to, and when you think about it, we've never been able to live without one another, really a brilliant marriage, I told him, a very successful one you had, until Frédéric began to go downhill, Charles said, until we both realized our own mortality, that day that Frédéric fell by the pool and he began to suffer memory loss, that was intolerable, and then along came Cyril, the demon of youth and dark light, what could I do, and now it's too late, I'm in to stay, so all I can do is love even more, as you say, they had had this conversation a long time ago, I was feeling strong in those days, it was not yet that fateful time when I was no longer to see Jean-Mathieu, on his return from Italy from which there was no return, ever, it wasn't yet the time of scattered ashes off The-Island-Nobody-Owns, I went out in the evening arm-in-arm with Jean-Mathieu, sometimes his tone held a note of reproach, he said I was too proud, maybe it was an air of patriotic arrogance that he had always disliked, we were from different social classes and different countries, you can't build a country on servitude or the enslavement of some for the shameless profit of those who have the upper hand and hold them down, Jean-Mathieu was one of those thousands of child labourers exploited in a period from which I'd collected photographs, I couldn't help feeling shame at seeing those kids in black boots carrying heavy loads, just like in Dickens' time, a curse on us who allowed it, I said to myself, knowing that it was not just my ancestors who needed to be judged, but all of them, was it my fault if Jean-Mathieu was so vulnerable sometimes and compared himself to those sons of immigrant farmers living in a nameless misery, that tone of his upset me, and yet I felt no bitterness, Jean-Mathieu always seemed ready to pardon me without being patronizing, but I hear his voice in my ear, so close it's as though he's here in this room where you're keeping me captive, all of them, I can hear all their voices, Charles' is melodious, and Frédéric's, Suzanne's laughter, you never die, she says, they just tell us we do, hey, courage Caroline, come back and join us, what are you doing with that black nurse, you've bored the poor woman with all your stories and now she's asleep in her armchair, you mustn't refuse to eat, that could be bad for you, come back to us, Caroline, let's go out to the tennis court at dawn, I'll expect you there tomorrow, it will soon be day, Caroline, or is it the voice of my cousin telling me the pony is shying at the fence, we'll soon be trundling down the dunes and the grass, the sand will still be wet, I'll say shivering in warm daylight, maybe I'll keep quiet, or maybe I'll say, listen, dear cousin, this is my secret, I was with a man, my mother's lover yesterday afternoon; maybe I'll see a line of all those poets I've photographed coming towards me pushing aside the leaves in an arbour, and they'll say to me, prepare to follow us, and one says, the thing I regret the most is the night I left at age thirty-nine, I had drunk so much I don't even know how it happened, just a stupid mistake, I wish I were still there with my wife and children, especially the youngest whom I haven't seen growing up, a mistake that can't be fixed; the young painter from London, still shadowy and desolate, says, yes, it was an absurd suicide, remember, a few days after we met in London, I said goodbye to the earth, you took a picture of my hands clenched around the pencil, one must never say goodbye to the earth, because the earth reclaims us, all of them, I can see and hear all of them, that laugh of Suzanne's that her husband never was able to tame, a laughter so fresh it just might convince me, we're having a party for Esther's eightieth, do please come with us, Caroline, but I have to tell her I haven't got a dress or shoes anymore, just that ridiculous hospital gown I can't go out in, and my hat, I've asked Harriett, my servant, over and
over where she's put my hat and gloves, but she's just a servant, Charly would have scolded me soundly, Harriett was my nurse's name, not a servant any more, I'm your friend says Miss Désirée, and that is God's will, not mine, now Harriett's gone without telling me where she's put my hat and gloves, my cousin and I have a beautiful pony, his name's Beauty, but has the hour struck when the falcons fly to their prey, no, I don't think so, it's not yet dawn, though the sun is pale, the falconers have pitched their tents in the desert and lit the braziers, the deer have heard the dogs barking in their sleep, and the gazelles tremble when they hear the squeal of tires on the country road, they can sense us coming, my husband and I, and our accurate shooting from the convertible, we're afraid of nothing; my mother was a rebel, when we have our picture taken together, she wants me to sit next to her on the lawn in front of the entrance to a grand hotel, she looks sleepy, and so do I, she is distracted as she'll often be, perhaps she's thinking of her nightime lover and his charming smile, she seems to be saying, like a woman use to luxury, listen my dear, I'll never be a submissive woman, nor the kind of mother you might want me to be, no, I move with a kind of magnificence that makes me unapproachable, that, no doubt, is why she left me from birth in the care of her servants, of aunts and uncles whose houses were often filled, tender uncles filled with goodwill who rape their nieces when the mothers are away, is it time for the falconers to urge their rapacious hawks to the skies . . . already? A star glitters in the paling sky, Harriett is sleeping noisily, head on chest, it really is the time when there is no one around, even vigilance sleeps, and my mother has brought a more-than-viable girl into the world, hard and conquering, the hardiness and courage were hers, I didn't want a merely viable daughter, for she would hardly have survived our massive insanity, barely more than few years, like the brothers and sisters in one family who were slaughtered slowly by the Red Guard after their father had been fired, humiliated in front of a crowd, a time of dissoluteness and madness, or perhaps I'm wrong, maybe she would have fought like me, one of the first to do so, she would have been a friend and ally, not that vain and cruel Charly who hurt me so badly, please realize she is not the main cause of the catastrophes in my life, no, she would have been the non-viable daughter, the first surgeon as good at heart transplants as any man she admired, an enthusiast, an astronaut, her footprint venerated, honoured in twenty-two countries, would she be repudiated in her dazzling abilities on unknown planets as she had been on the one she knew so well, would she still be that question mark in one world and another, in the reign of mass insanity, or taking the first invincible step of man on the moon, or flying one-by-one to the other planets, then would she still be marginally viable? She'd have fought as I did, for the right to legal abortion, been excluded amid controversy like Norma McCorvey as she overthrew the outdated laws of Texas that January Monday in 1973, she'd have lived in a time of exiled prophets, miracle babies fertilized in test tubes, sidestepped the laws of our species, committed the bold strokes and dangers of freedom before ever being born, viable to see so much, belonged to so many alliances, witnessed the falling of walls as well as the erecting of new ramparts to separate nations, been on the other side of the barbed wire in Berlin with no one to hear her name, been an activist with a gas mask, shouted, been viable and alive, mine, my child, my daughter, if I had never felt so strongly in the time of hostilities that she could never be born of a woman, scarcely viable. Timidly affable, Mère had approached Nora and her husband Christiansen, shaking hands with them, she'd said how much she wanted to get to know them better, but when would that music Chuan's son had chosen be over with, these young people, she thought, do they always have to hammer our ears with those loud noises, soon this night would be over and she wouldn't have anything to complain about, in this evening scented with jasmine and frangipani, Nora's face, thinned since her return from Africa, expressed the same sudden fatigue as Mère's, so it wasn't age, Mère observed, but an ascetic way of life Nora had adopted in Africa: a sort of moral exhaustion, Nora looked around her, wondering if this was a celebration or something else in a disgraced and ruined country, there are birthdays and anniversaries for people, but not many for tragedies that have shaken the world, Nora thought, victims don't speak, we treat them as voiceless, forgetfulness or silence, what point was a tormented conscience, maybe Nora should have listened to her children and not left, while her husband Christiansen had strongly advised going back there, how edgy it was with your father already doing medicine in the bush, but now the soil of Rwanda was so weighed down with the dead — although the newspapers and TV rarely talked about it, about Tutsi children killed by the thousands — who would Nora be tomorrow, the same person or someone else, it was so easy to get comfortable again and forget what she had seen and smelt, the intoxicating perfume of jasmine, the burning brush, landing in Kinshasa with lights on in the rain, seeing the southern Sahara again from the window, an expanse of white sand I'd have liked to go running in, the smell of smoke so close choked me, was it a gold-coloured or a whitish sea that blinded me, a chauffeur and a porter asked me if I was the nurse they'd been expecting for days, no, I said, I was just there to revisit the country, but I was available if they needed me, I had no particular role, mother, artist, how could I explain to them who I was, Nora, I am Nora, coming back to a disgraced and ruined country, there were so many people around me, so many kilometres from town, the smoky smell was from all the votive candles that had been lit, merchants and vendors sitting on chairs along the road, all of them with ridiculous things to sell, since we're travelling by car, there are checkpoints everywhere, one truck is piled high with huge sacks of rice, children with their mothers, hunger in those eyes feverishly staring at us, should I stay or go, the girls said, don't leave tomorrow, have you forgotten that at fifty you need to accept the state of the world as it is, wasn't it a sneaky manœuvre for the girls always to keep her close to them, Nora thought, maybe just a form of legitimate self-concern, for what else can they do, even as we grow old and suddenly feel unable to offer them what they demand of us, they still do, yet we can offer it to others, we'd like to give whatever is left to those kids crouching over sacks of food that thieves will come and steal from them before they get to town, stay or go, a grandson was on the way, and Nora had thought long and hard about them at night in Kinshasa, her three daughters and two sons, having a light dinner of samosas by the hotel pool, tomorrow Nora would be knocking on a schoolroom door, she knew people thanks to her diplomat husband who had often stayed in the region before, no, it would be better to act alone, already there in the deserted hotel, she'd written to them, my angels, each one of you is unique, tonight I'm sending you these few words, I love you, Dad must not forget to transfer some money, please believe, all of you, that I am serene and happy, your were all together for Thanksgiving, all my love, Christiansen, you who often understand better than I do myself the overall direction my life must take, if I myself have any doubt, dear Christiansen, it is that am afraid your limitless confidence in me might be disappointed, then I would falter, yes, I'll go to the African party at your friends', I hug and kiss you my unique children, stay or go, it was dizzying, Nora explained to Mère, I didn't know what to decide, look at that heat-mist over the sea, and those purple-and-pink waves which will soon wash away the night, that smell of smoke and water, like the brush fires of my childhood, we used to have a couple of little monkeys, then one night they disappeared, my brother was devastated, my father said owning toys was a frivolous thing anyway, he was on call night and day and didn't have much time for my mother and us, and Mère told Nora, it has been a long night, I was going to ask my daughter if I could excuse myself and go to bed, but listening to you now, Nora, I don't feel like sleeping, at last they've turned that music down, the malaria has weakened you quite a bit, you must take good care of yourself, Mère said recovering her maternal instincts with Nora as if she'd been talking to Mélanie, my poor girl, women seem so brave, stay or go, Nora shouldn't have come back, she should have taken time there to get better, why did her daughters get worried so quickly, there was an African party where they had spent all day making chicken in peanut sauce, fish in manioc leaves, lots of music and tons to drink, some drinking themselves into a stupor and dancing, do white women come here with their husbands and drink and dance this much so as to forget the country's devastation and the mute pain of their African servants? What was that awful malaise I'd already started to feel myself those first days and nights, Mère said, I'd be very sad too if someone had taken away the little monkey or lion-cub who kept me company during the night without my knowing why, growing up alone like that, one certainly can be inconsolable, how can one imagine it, Nora said, going to school meant a boat-trip for days and unstable planes, my brother and I went away for months, far from our family, he was six, and I was eight, he started throwing up and wouldn't stop crying, he was so afraid, hand-in-hand we spent Christmas holidays with the nuns, all of them very loving to us, when are Mummy and Daddy coming to get us, soon, the nuns said, when the school year is over, patience my treasures, patience, your parents will be back, oh how sad you are, come on now, be brave, blow your nose, big boys don't cry, they said to my brother, and he was always crying, they'd taken our monkeys away a long time ago, a roving hyena had eaten them during the night, we'd heard strange noises on the mosquito-screen, Mummy had said not to get up, kids can feel such awful things, Mère said, I had a French nanny I adored, and when I came back from Europe — I remember a huge luxury liner and being seasick — the French nanny wasn't at home, I never saw her again, I don't know what kind of plotting or manoeuvring my parents had done to take her away from me, I never did find out, Mère became morose as she reflected on it, this first betrayal was to be followed by many others, she admitted, oh well, such is life, I wanted to work with street-kids in Kinshasa, Nora said, I felt guilty when I read my daughter's e-mails, and what about us, Mama, couldn't you take care of us, we need you here at home, I'm expecting a baby, Mama, and the waiting is awful, why can't you be here with me, Mama dear, we are women, Mère said, and sometimes I feel it's a sort of curse, I love all my grandchildren, but I'd so have liked it if Mélanie had only her career to think of, that would be quite enough, Nora said, this is where I have so much to do, that's what I said to my daughter Greta, my dear, my only, believe me, I don't think any of my letters and calls from town reached them for a long time, my darlings that I'd willingly left behind, even the one in which I told Greta, I'm flying to Gemena, Kindu, tomorrow, it's a reconnaissance mission to assess needs in orphanages, maternity clinics, lack of support, prevention, and you know, Greta, how I'm thinking of you every day in this difficult pregnancy, what I mean, my sweet, is that every one is difficult, when it was you, I was too nervous with anticipation, and despite what I thought, there were no complications, conceived in Africa during one of your father's missions, there you were, beautiful and blonde, and Dad said, this will be my little Norwegian, I've got to meet the experts, doctors especially, I'll be living in a guest-house with four rooms and a shared kitchen and bathroom, that is why I have left, dearest, we've got to the point where two or three bathrooms are essential, more than one car too, we could live with so much less, especially the things we have in duplicate, and even so, I'm so sorry about leaving you feeling hurt, but we will have central air conditioning and filtered water, I've bought a chair and a hot-plate, but I'm afraid I'm boring you with all these details, my treasure, kiss Dad for me, your father's a model, my dear, the directress is lending me a table and a foam mattress that will just go on the ground, think of all those rooms and beds we have in the house, we really are spoiled, as Dad often says, after seeing so many sad things in his work overseas, has he transferred the money, I've had no news from any of you for days, I'd really like to have that money for the orphans' Christmas, I know your father will be in touch with the charitable organizations right away, my kisses to you all as I eat my first African corn right here in the street, I used to feel that my childhood shared with my brother gave me all possible happiness, it was just for an instant, that school you visited in the bush, what was it like, Mère asked, her gaze riveted on Nora's intense expression, and I couldn't believe it, she replied, all those groups of kids and only two teachers, now my kids have all been to private schools where they had plenty of space and attention, how moving they were those hundred-and-fifty children, all so hungry to learn despite the awful conditions, in a hut made of