Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (14 page)

matiti
, manioc-stalks, with a roof of palm-branches covered with a tarp, a school in the savannah, the soldiers have taken a part of the roof, so when it rained there was no school, the families pay for school uniforms, as well as books and exercise-books, which is a lot for them, but still it's the least every schoolchild must have, I don't think I even gave a thought to the cost of uniforms and notebooks before I came to Africa. Never, that's the truth, so many things I didn't know or just forgot, like the teacher taking the blackboard with him after class so it won't be stolen. I thought of my own kids, each with his or her own desk, table and board . . . benches for these children are just planks nailed to uprights, Mama how can you go on making comparisons all the time, Greta wrote me, come home for Christmas, my dearest, every day I worry about the baby, is it normal to be this way, come home, we're waiting for you, Nora was thinking that she had not yielded to Greta's demands, nor any other, that might have distracted her from her goal, after the school in the bush, she'd visited a hospital, and there, she wrote Christiansen, we've got about sixty beds, almost all with no mattresses or covers, one clean operating-room, only one maternity room, and it was also used for patients with sleeping-sickness, mentioning only the ways in which she felt well off and serene, Nora did not say she was beginning to feel the vague effects of paludism, of course malaria was very common here, and Nora wrote to her husband that she had been especially moved by a patient who ran towards her with a foam of blood on his lips, begging her for money to buy medication, this scene often came back to haunt her dreams in endless torment, she felt disgusted by the twenty-five-dollar donation she'd made to the doctor on the ward, and if she couldn't do anything remotely helpful here, she'd go to Mount Ngafula and help out with the orphans, lots of abandoned babies, this was the only place where she had felt fulfillment and joy, giving the bottle to a couple of the newborns found during the night at the door of this refuge for abandoned children, she'd at once written to Greta, you know, my dear, everything's going to be fine for your baby, and it's perfectly normal to feel the way you do, what was stupid of me was not to have brought the candies the older ones asked for, oh, if only you saw these kids with nothing, so tiny, playing in the dirt, and through it all, still able to laugh, I'll say it again, you have nothing to worry about Greta, everything will go just fine, it's often like this the first time, when I was expecting your brother Hans, I was just like you, and now look at him, he's a flight-attendant, already a man, oh the older ones in Room 8 held on to me, asking, where are the candies, how stupid I felt, how worthless, I was the volunteer in the shelter run by an Italian doctor-priest, I learned how to give a blood transfusion to a three-year-old boy, so underdeveloped he hardly looked two, no running water in this hospital, it has to be brought in by tanker-truck, the volunteer I replaced had malaria, then typhoid, and wouldn't be able to work again for several weeks, Nora did not tell her daughters nor her husband about the skin-inflammation at night that felt like worms crawling around underneath the surface, she'd have been self-indulgent to complain, these infections came from washing the bodies of kids found lying on piles of filth, then reanimating and feeding them, pathetic little creatures so quick to come back to life, that was the miracle, every day we saved some, all of a sudden the child would be healthy and happy, the little girls are often adorable, Nora cared for them so much she'd have liked to adopt them right away, while the inflammation or nest of worms under the skin continued, she wasn't sure which it was, the volunteer wanted to adopt one of the little girls as soon as she was better, the miracle was that joy in their eyes, were her letters and faxes getting through to her husband and children, alone with the magnificent sunsets, Nora waited in silence, suddenly startled by the song of the toads, this was when she missed her family most and reminded herself this was where she was meant to be, Christiansen supported her when the work was most dangerous, how she would have liked to feel his hands on her shoulders, when would she see him again, would she leave these tropical swamps intact or with jaundice, no, this was where she was meant to be, that was certain: the nights were warm, and she was behind window-bars and locked doors, under mosquito-netting, when she would rather have slept with windows open onto the valley, this same song of the bull-toads she'd heard before in her parents' house when they'd left her brother's monkey outside, her mother saying the air was less oppressive for monkeys when they spent the night outside, and Nora always added at the end of her letters how much she was with her children in thought, never forgetting them, it had rained for several days, she wrote, and on her way to the post office in Kinshasa the roads had turned to mud, beggars emerged from everywhere, grabbing hold of the truck, but the driver had said, we're not stopping, it was only an impression perhaps, but there was such ruin and dilapidation in the streets of Kinshasa, it is said that malaria grows here in drains buried under garbage and filthy water, it certainly didn't spare the eight-year-olds working in the streets like adults selling cans of oil, there are also traffickers who take advantage of them, beggars and children crying out with hands reaching for our truck, Nora was afraid one of them might get run over as the driver kept saying, faster, we can't stop, Mère said, I think you must have felt joy and even fulfilment, Nora my dear, in Kinshasa you were in charge of your own destiny, that's a great delight for a woman, perhaps, Nora had allowed, but a mother who really is a mother as I am can never feel that kind of satisfaction away from her husband and children, there was always that shadow, Nora said, and her eyes darkened as she began to see herself as Ibsen's Nora, torn between an almost-primitive longing for freedom and a conventional set of familial attachments that had prevented it; furthermore, unlike Nora Helmer in
A Doll's House
, she could not blame her husband for any masculine egotism, she thought, Christiansen loved her free and even more self-affirming in her convictions of freedom than she actually was, and she told herself that any selfishness was probably her own in the unrealistic expectation of combining her family life and household with her bohemian life of humanitarianism, still nothing can ever be full harmonized for us women, Mère said, and here come the first rays of sun on the ocean, Nora remarked, and there was a smell of fried plantain and smoke over the water, no doubt Jermain and his friends had decided to have breakfast by the pool after a night of dancing, at last the music had died down to a vague rumble, Mère said, we can hear each other talk, it's going to be a hazy sun in that heat today, Nora went on, I was independent, I had a place to live while I was working in the daytime, I asked nothing of anybody, except to be allowed to volunteer, the feeling of freedom and fulfillment was delicious, I'm sure it was, said Mère, so many authoritarian attitudes made me feel hemmed in, Nora replied, like when I was kid, the way foreigners — whether black or white — talked to servants was unbearable, they had to be venerated and obeyed, especially those with high positions in embassies, and I suppose nothing has changed since those days, eh? I'm afraid nothing has changed the way we wanted it to, said Mère, her right hand apparently trembling more since she'd been talking to Nora, maybe paying so much attention to what she said had exacerbated it, she was sorry now to see daylight after finding the night so long, I love listening to you, Nora, she said, it's as though your busy life and commitment underline how inactive mine is, except with my family of course, now why didn't I set up hospitals like your friends, the women doctors who rescue children and the handicapped from the streets where they have nothing but awnings for shelter in the rainy season, all I do is bring up my grandchildren, oh I've been cultural director of some museums, but it's not much, Mère's cheeks reddened, she was proud all of a sudden, of herself and Nora, women often being strong and loyal, her life would be prolonged by Mélanie and Nora, for what was a successful life if not a serene extension into the lives of others, since all things came to an end, and one has to resign oneself to that without a struggle, seeing churches bothered me just as it did when I was a child, said Nora, a shameful abuse of a credulous populace too poor to fend off the hold of religion on their lives, as long as they pray they don't rebel, instead of giving out bread and rocks and cement to rebuild the roads, instead of recovering a little dignity through work and education, it's anaesthesia through prayer and hymns, Nora fell silent, afraid of boring Mère with her laconic remarks, how could Nora judge the power of hymn-singing after making friends with a doctor-priest in Kinshasa, only too happy to load the trunk of the car with powdered milk, candy, cocoa, marmalade and cookies for the kids with tuberculosis in one of the hospital wards, when every piece of bread and every drop was so precious, the least effort by a woman or a priest, however small it might be, had meaning, Nora thought, you couldn't really measure their value, and after the party was over in the tubercular ward, she followed the doctor-priest into Room 6, for which she would be responsible, they had assigned her a sixteen-month-old baby with AIDS and weighing so little it seemed almost weightless in her arms, no longer really a baby, she said to Mère, just a small thing with skin that seemed to be eaten away with scabs and fleas, so tell me, where is God in all this misery, I asked the priest, he didn't answer, what's the point in this epidemic of churches springing up everywhere, Nora had brought her own children up in atheism and certainly didn't regret it, she said to Esther, and Mère felt in her that fierce will not to depend on any phoney spirituality, though it seemed amazing when Nora had self-doubts and needed that faith, or at least that hope from which she distanced herself, they had to look to the management of things, and in the evening, older orphans in Room 12 who were taken to school several kilometres from the hospital, another mission run by nuns, and without these stalwart women there would be no schooling, said Nora, when they lent me the jeep, the kids would not have to walk home from school in the afternoon, I'd buy some dried fish and some sugar, always berating myself for things not done, so why were there no young idealists here, engineers and doctors, it's as though I'd never brought it up with our influential friends, the hospital was on the side of a mountain and something had to be done to stop the erosion in the rainy season, rainwater collected in gutters would have irrigated the vegetable garden and the orchard instead of ruining what was once a beautiful country, all that corruption, individuals as well as fraudulent organizations, multinational corporations and politicians, angry words that Nora wrote to Christiansen every night from her locked room, reminding him how much she loved him, restraining her anxiousness to see him again, underlining how much farther she wanted to go, you know, Christiansen, this country's so divided you need permits to get to the Equator — Ituri, Maniema, Kivu or Shaba, kiss all the kids for me, dear Christiansen, and tell each of them how much they mean to me, and please tell Greta to have more trust in the future, we're going to have a wonderful grandson, you must reassure her, dear, because you're there with her, as I promised you all, I hope to be there in time for the birth, but, thought Nora, what exactly was that promise but the expression of a visceral doubt, she wouldn't have promised anything if she'd been in less doubt about the genuineness of her volunteer work in Africa, she who so wanted to be free and unattached, she always had to go and contradict herself, no doubt because she never had enough patience and plunged hastily into way too many life contests, always wanting to outdo herself, while for many life was a slow and much-delayed process, Nora could not wait, no, she told Esther, it's a serious failing, I have no patience, mission mandates arrived slowly, meanwhile people died because of me, those handicapped from war and babies I'd held in my arms, they said every mission was too dangerous for me, whether in hospitals or the bush, but nothing was, none of it, and as a heat-haze blotted out the horizon over the sea, now turning mauve in the dawn, Nora felt herself vacillating and stunned, it was the smell of smoke and jasmine perhaps, when her mind overflowed with so many images and memories, like white and orange frangipanis bent under the weight of their brilliant branches, she no longer knew if she was in Chuan and Olivier's garden or back there with the doc-tor-priest who was saying, oh if only you'd seen what I saw in the war-zones, everything destroyed with machetes and burnt, the malnutrition is even more widespread, if you knew, the priest's voice saddened her the way her father's had done before when he said there were so many lepers and so few doctors with him in the bush, and now here was Nora spending the night out joyfully celebrating Esther's birthday with Christiansen, as though of a sudden she'd been relieved of any perception she had of the suffering, so close up, like her father before her; the red-eyed turtle-doves could be heard cooing, and she again saw the grey or Gabon parrots flying over Kinshasa, she thought she heard their whistling imitation of other birds, that is where her home was, she thought, she had to go back, if her father was the saint they said he was, why was he so intolerant with his wife and children at home, God was no more present in his thoughts than in Nora's, but he shared his daughter's failing of impatience, always pressed by work, he ordered them to do everything instantly, meals, sleep, what was this laziness of the kids who didn't always get top marks at school, his wife and nursing-aide was never appreciated, Mama worked so hard for that man, Nora thought, sometimes said, my life will be a failure because of that man, I'll avenge you, Mama, I used to tell her, but she quickly smoothed it over, you know Nora, I love your father, I'd just like to do better, that's all, and that's what Nora wished for, a productive ability to cure, now where had she got to, once back from Africa, she had spent too much on clothes, this was her particular way of dressing, and there was nothing she could do about it, Christiansen liked her looking this way, sweet and ravishing, her ribbonned straw halt tilted forward over her forehead, a slightly androgynous touch to her very feminine outfits, that was Nora, not saintly like her father, nor exuberant and rational like her husband, complex, disturbing, she had to live fast, paint everything she saw with the same vivid alertness, love everything with an ever-more-lively passion, she thought, how disappointed she'd been when she found out that her mission to Kindu had been cancelled, the departure for Lubumbashi with an ambassador friend delayed, too much time wasted on discussions of protocol, she'd written to Christiansen, still nothing from you, my darlings, I'll try for the plateau where perhaps you could wait for me, waiting for a mission is so very lonely, I'm thinking of each one of you, my darlings, Greta, do be careful, on the local TV I saw an unscrupulous bishop tell his flock about damnation from his ecclesiastical throne on high, I know what you're thinking dear, I'm just the same as I always was, these shameless preachers still make me so enraged and cynical, as I write this, I can see a cloud of hummingbirds enjoying the nectar from the flowers, and every day outside my window, I can see my passeriformes suspended in flight, motionless in this palpably humid air, I was able to draw a few of them for an African tableau I started before I left, remember Christiansen, I only like painting outside, and I'd forgotten it in the garden during the rain, it was you that brought it in and said I'd been careless, and why was I, maybe because I didn't really take my talent as a painter seriously, so when am I going to be able to convince you how little confidence I have in myself, not in you, my dear ones, in me, I paint outside so I can be surrounded by light, everything's beautiful then, but I am glad you saved it from the rain and that you like it, sweetheart, I'm afraid to return to what once was my homeland, now a dying one, I can't yet leave it because of that, now the sweet nectar that delighted the hummingbirds was intoxicating the air that Nora breathed from Chuan's garden, and this is what made her tipsy, wobbly on her feet like when she'd shared a hash joint with Bernard and taken on a daring air for one who'd never even had cannabis before, you'll see, Bernard, I won't even get high, these artificial paradises are just an illusion, and just as she said this, she had almost fainted onto the garden fence amid the perfume of acacias, so quickly had the intoxication overcome the resistance of her brain, and Bernard had laughed and taken her in his arms before she fell, a benevolent and tender laugh she remembered, and she was amazed at her body's being so rubbery all of a sudden, a slow elasticity that altered the collapse of her limbs onto the grass, oh what a sudden and unpleasant feeling of emptiness, Valérie disapproved of this habit her husband Bernard had of giving joints to his friends following an after-dinner cognac, she was afraid they'd have to bicycle home wavering and euphoric, the way Bernard sometimes arrived home, head in the clouds, hands barely touching the handlebars, you're not supposed to do that at our age, she told him sternly, but he wasn't listening, a complicit smile on his lips for Nora whom he'd helped out of the acacia bush saying, here, Nora dear, let me drive you home, Christiansen's been gone to the Niger Republic for weeks, don't stay on your own, come and see us, it may have been at that instant she had thought about the monkeys stolen by thieves or killed by hyenas during the long African nights a while ago, as Bernard guided her through the night arm-in-arm, she had the impression she had mumbled confusedly about how much she loved his books, but wasn't sure he heard, Nora was not a creature of civilization like him or Valérie or all the others, not regimented or gifted by the touch of civilization, she had only come to know Europe when her parents had sent her to school in France, but maybe it was too late by then, a child of Africa, she could not be reborn elsewhere in a web of societies where she would always be an outsider, in that rapid euphoria she'd known while talking to Mère, and still stunned by the weakness of her body after overcoming tropical diseases, Nora wondered, is it true, one day will I too belong to civilization or at least be accepted in it, no, I can't, I'm too wild, when will I see my country again, I wonder if my kids will let me leave again, and Marie-Sylvie heard the cock-crow in her sleep, when the first was over, others echoed it in reply, she was with Jenny in the Chinese province where the hills rose in a choking mist, pushing the wheelbarrow her brother, He-who-never-sleeps, was struggling to get out of, you can't bury me, he was yelling in his insane voice, I'm still alive, Marie-Sylvie would have liked to bury him under one of those stones that lay over so many anonymous coffins, but there was too much mist, a sulphurous mist that stuck to your skin, no, you can't, you can't, he screamed just as Marie-Sylvie awoke and cursed the crowing cocks, she was covered in sweat, these regions of the dead that Jenny had told her about were terrifying, why would she abandon her brother here, you could even smell the dead who'd been buried in a rush, soon it would be daylight and still Daniel, Mélanie, and Esther weren't back, the light still shone from under Augustino's door, Marie-Sylvie was going to chase those cocks out of the courtyard, they were the neighbour's, and Daniel put up with them, but he was too tolerant, she thought, hens and cocks in the yard at all times, like Augustino's parrots and parakeets that also made a racket in the garden, and those cats that slept with Mai, now how could you keep the house clean when you had to give in to