Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (15 page)

everyone's whims, even in the nightmare she'd just awoken from feeling agitated, He-who-never-sleeps had seemed far too much alive, in a pile, arms and legs swung out from the wheelbarrow, around his mouth and eyes — one of them partly open and glassy — a thick coating of flies like those she'd often seen on children's face in the Cité du Soleil, surrounding their eyes and mouths drooling black saliva, doing who-knows-what damage to their skin, or was that just something sulphurous sticking to their skin, in Marie-Sylvie's dream, these flies were so close to the tongues and lips that the kids could-n't even spit anymore, they were so close to the whites of their eyes that they couldn't close their eyelids anymore, this cock-crowing would just not let up, while Marie-Sylvie washed her face and eyes, she kept wondering, where can he be hiding, why does he have to persecute me that miserable brother of mine, He-who-never-sleeps, I can't stand to see him, the hospitals in Port-au-Prince were overflowing with kids just like him, why does he go on haunting me? The funny, clean-shaven young man was there again, in Mai's room, his head a dark shadow against the rows of bookshelves, once more he'd managed to get in through the window, taking out the screen with his knife, getting slowly closer to Mai's bed, I'm here, he said in his smooth voice, even if you're asleep, don't pretend you can't hear my voice, I've come to get you for Colombia, for the Cause, the one and only, you've got to get dressed and come with me because we really need little girls like you, headstrong child, you can't be locked up in your parents' house with a nanny who doesn't even like you, you'll have your own gun and be able to work like all my other recruits, your own group, your own unit, you'll be queen of the mine-fields, the younger girls will follow your orders for the Cause, the one and only, I'm not just a predator, I'm a fighter bringing along the youth, and what could be more tender and youthful than you, you can be ready and useful for all kinds of kinds of expeditions, you open the way to fields men fear to die in, there's nothing you won't do because you have no idea yet what you'll be forced to do, we used to take only boys, and that was a mistake, we need girls in our groups too, come on, wake up, please, we've got to leave for Colombia, they're waiting for us, your gun will take care of you, even defend you against rape, you'll be completely unaware of explosive charges under the earth and follow the paths where antipersonnel mines sleep waiting for your step, Mai, I'm waiting for you to open your eyes and see me, my head's shadowed against the bookshelves, I cut through the mosquito-net with my pocket knife, I don't like screens and curtains they sometimes put around kids' beds, anytime now your nanny will come in and chase me away, please Mai, I've come to take you to Colombia, there are so many countries where thousands of little girls fight with cool calm, they're every bit as good as boys, come on, let's go to the minefields, the sky is grey right now, but I can see dawn beginning to show, Caroline said, Harriett, Miss Désirée, time to wake up, let's go down to the port and look for the first glint of day on the water, my father's down there with one of his many wives, elegantly dressed, glass in hand, he's still actually a colonel, but they call him Captain, always navigating to his pleasure-spots, his home in the Bahamas, with servants, a cabin under the palms, he's a man of the world who sometimes likes to be a hermit, fishing alone on his island, suddenly disappearing for months, I wonder if the wind will whip the waves up to the windows today, splashing against the glass, the tide is up, way up, into the doorways and windows, cracking like whips at windows, shutters, masts on yachts dipping into the ocean, each time my parents got married I wondered who would adopt me, would it be you, Harriett, they said, or an aunt or a grandfather, what do we do with the little one, you say you're the one, Harriett, you'll keep me close, I'll take care of her, you say, it is God's will, you go on and on about it's being God's will that I be with you, there's still a crescent moon in the sky, and the sea will calm down, these lashing winds in December, like all men of his class, my father wears white pants and a blazer, I hide behind you while you serve cocktails, what will we do with the little one, this crescent moon can drive women out of their heads, women like me who ask this grey hour why they are here, one is a great sculptress and remembers the name of her master better than her own, was she drugged or poisoned so she no longer knows who she is, or why she is in this asylum in Montdevergues, she remembers her fingers getting worn on some sharp, rocky substance, but what is she doing here, she has been poisoned by the bitterness of betrayal, everyone remembers her master better than her own name, one of them recalls a brother-in-law called Manet, she herself has the merest shadowy recollection of him, that's right, she was an impressionist painter, yes, betrayed perhaps, locked up here with me, she doesn't know how or when she'll get out, and the sea continues to rise, cottages and houses lose their roofs in the violent winds, fleeing the coast and going upstream on the boiling rivers, the gulls and seagulls, all the marine birds have gradually deserted the shores, and from my window, I photograph the sky and the waters, I would so like to go out in this weather, Harriett, instead of being shut up here with these moaning, visionary women, one futilely hooking her nails onto a block of marble, where are my sculptures, she asks me, where are my children, what treachery was used to take them away from me, and if they're visionaries the way I once was, why weren't they able to survive, as I did, by avoiding all sentimentality in my relations with men, I wouldn't associate with them except as an equal, perhaps they said I was seductive but hard, but what else could I do, if they moan and cry, it's because they were forced to silence for a long time, the one whose brother-in-law Manet never commented on her work, even though she was an essential member of the Impressionist movement, well maybe, he observed condescendingly, Berthe, my sister-in-law Berthe Morisot, can paint, sure, but she's still just a woman, it may not have been said, but Berthe heard it anyway, just the murmur of a suspicion, but audible to her nevertheless, a murmur and thus a defeat, another, an American artist who had lived all her life in Paris, apparently painting the joys of serene motherhood, still nothing was more troubling than that appearance over submerged, shifting, burning floes of ice, this painter had been advised by Degas, but in what manner, friendly or authoritarian, and how had she received it, no one knows, only maternal happiness seems to have made a lasting impression and set limits on the self-expression of this genius, a woman knowing how to paint the exclusive and fleeting happiness of motherhood, just this, portraitist of mothers with pink-skinned children, they don't say who this woman was, Mary Cassatt born in Pennsylvania in 1844, a master of chalk and pastel drawing, that much perhaps is said, all the pastel drawings laying bare the clear, pink skin of the faces, critics praised her work, adding treacherously, it is too bad that such a remarkable artist, with such mastery of colour and supple technique, too bad that she became blind after a botched operation on her eyes, she might have overcome the fact that her work bore too much resemblance to Degas, those last pastels of his, free and tormented at the same time, so it was not enough to be a master colourist, even blind, her eyes mutilated by bad surgery, Mary Cassatt had to be the perfect pupil to Degas, otherwise insignificant in a style limited to her experience as a woman and mother, shouldn't she just be contented with that, her expression, perhaps inwardly tormented, looked like Degas, so what did the work of a woman born in hostile times amount to, the waves on the ocean continued to rise with no let-up, the masts on yachts bending and curving in the wind, Harriett, you say I can't go out, it wouldn't be a good idea, so here I sit and wait in my chair in the portico near the bay window, Adrien and Suzanne are coming for dinner tonight, have you ironed the black outfit you're going to put on me, I don't want any tea or bouillon, nothing at all, I loved the English poets I photographed, Jean-Mathieu wrote their stories next to me, travelled with me, two painters of souls and the landscapes their bodies were going to, so beloved that I felt the inexpressible thoughts and desires of these poets were my own as well, one day in the exaltation of being alive, the next with despair tightening one's throat, was it them or was it me, I was the pet dog that consoled them, the woman who took them in her arms, I was also Jean-Mathieu reading their thoughts, just as he was the photographer of their disordered poses as well as their real lives, and the branches entwined about their chests, crucifying them all, men with no future, their houseboats built on fragile rocks and slipping into the waves at Laugharne, the poet sends out a lifeboat, I recognize it, no wine glass, no bunch of blue grapes, take nothing that is offered, for it will be poison, I tell her, and Harriett stupidly says that it was Charly that offered me the glass that I drank from without any fear, Harriett said, that was your downfall, having her in your house, or perhaps it goes back even further, with its roots in Jamaica, where Charly herself decided to follow me and be my chauffeur, after all those hours in the darkroom, I couldn't see well and had to give up driving, but the real truth is that, whether it be Charly or Cyril, fate knocked on my door as usual, and there was nothing I could do, not a thing. Mère noticed Nora was walking more quickly, racing along, which showed her impatience, outside the house and along the path that Chuan had decorated with bouquets of red roses in glass vases, she walked towards the sea saying to Esther, come on, come on, look at that flame of colour under the fog, Mère was thinking and walking slowly towards the beach path, turning to listen to Jermaine talk to his friends, to her the voices of all these young people sounded like a nearly incomprehensible choir, for she didn't really know what they were talking about so fervently after dancing all night, it's my world, he or one of his friends was saying, electronic music, DJ-ing, that's my thing, first you mix the styles and rhythms, then bang, no need for words, words are my father's thing . . . he writes, electronic music for raves doesn't need words or hot melodies, it's a question of technique, especially for dancefloors, and bang, hey let's wake up the sleepers, even electro will soon be out of date, keyboards, synthesizers, all that can be junked with the past, who's going to want to remember the 2000s, even electro music, all of it gone, listen to me, we'll have walked on the Red Planet and be living there, just like on earth, maybe things will be just as bad as here, you are totally the best DJ in the club, bang, no words — that verbal stuff that sticks you with a way of seeing things, raves, all-nighters, that's a cacophonic language like the music Samuel listened to when he was with us, Mère thought, deplorable, that's what it is, still Jermaine is a good son, certainly his parents' pride and joy whatever his language, they're good kids, as Jermaine and his friends passed by her on their way to the beach, he greeted her with respect, happy birthday, he said optimistically from a way off, and she responded with a nod of her head, as if to say, why are you pretending to be polite, as though I were an old lady, which I am not, then she pressed on to catch up with Nora on the beach, happy and encouraged at the thought of talking with her, so Nora, you finally got authorization to go to Lubumbashi, you can see the river the second you step off the plane, Nora said, so much mist on the water, just like today, I saw the same hills again, the river widening and then narrowing again, those red waters you see all over equatorial Africa, I was home, then came the sadness of areas of Lubumbashi where I again saw orphans in the camps for war refugees, there were some representatives of donor countries with me, I am ashamed as I say this, of course they say they're helping the displaced population, but do they really, or is it just official posturing, they were amazed when they saw kids in schools and maternity wards dancing and singing to the drums for them, I just wanted to weep, even at that well-kept Methodist orphanage with freshly repainted walls, where teenagers sang in long robes, I wanted to cry, saying to myself, what's going to happen to these refugee kids, when I went to the delivery-rooms in a hospital, I asked, why can't I come work here right away, the tables were rusted, why no linen in the cribs, they said, yes, you can stay till tomorrow and help our nurses, I didn't want to go back to the hotel with the others nor have the evening buffet, no, all of a sudden, in the middle of the day, I saw an ibis running across the light, a sacred ibis, I couldn't believe it, I really was there, I had to be, I told myself, it was a miraculous vision, why did I have to feel so badly when my daughter Greta wrote me, what are you fighting for, Mama, and against whom, dear Don Quixote, tilting at windmills when you ought to be with us, your family and kids, Dad hasn't got much time for us, his work in New York takes up nearly all his time, besides it's not the same, he's not a woman, Mama, come home, Esther, was it selfishness for me to want to scream at my daughter whom I love so much, don't write to me anymore, leave me alone, all I want is to be here alone without you, let me live these private moments of mine, life is so short, do we really have the time we need to better know humanity and all it suffers from, of course not, no, said Mère there was no selfish complacency on your part, it's intelligent to want to understand in a world like ours, that's all, your daughter was wrong about you, it often happens, sometimes our children really don't know us well at all, but she was careful not to mention her sons to Nora, she immediately added, with the privileged
feelings she had for Mélanie, I don't mean to be unjust, but my daughter is so intuitive she knows a little too much about me, and I can't blame her, it seemed as though Nora was not listening but just looking at the sky, I was able to go back to the bush in the Lower Congo, she said at once, I was being stubborn after what Greta had said about the absurdity of my battle, I'm sure I did resemble that ridiculous Don Quixote, but that was who I was after all, Nora felt so mortified by the memory of Greta's words that she longed to rest her head in Christiansen's arms, as she often did in a silent gesture of confidence, and he would write or read with her nearby, a bird in its nest, he felt less stricken by the report or exposé he was working on when Nora was near, then, once calmed, she would take flight again, she had three paintings to work on outside under the eucalyptus leaves where she painted all morning, three pictures before the town bell rang noon, because the afternoon would be taken up with shopping for her future grandson and getting surprise meals ready for the beach-wanderers, what did Christiansen think of the African painting still outside after two storms, that was clumsy, I may have to start it again for a third time, only then did her husband lose patience, I've already told you how much I liked that picture, don't touch it, you don't want to say so, she said with her usual self-doubt, but that gold on a black sky is overdone, isn't it, oh sweetheart, are you really sure you like it, I really am an awkward woman, how can you possibly love me, that was who she was, Nora, it couldn't be any other way, she thought, the child on whom her father had impressed doubt and clumsiness forever, when I needed to win the right to feel at ease each morning, my dream was to revisit all those places we had lived in, my brother and I, the way you do in a picture when you paint those subconscious regions from the past, but it seemed even more important to revisit the tubercular children's ward where I might be of some help, Nora said, because you have to do what you can, however little, even if it has no impact, that meagre contribution is what gives life its value, how else can we know who we are, Mère felt Nora was asking these questions of herself alone, for a long time I was with the kids in Building 8, Nora went on, I bathed them early in the morning, they told me to do it in cold water, but I heated the water when no one was looking, these poor little things should have been in incubators, all of them premature, often their mothers had died a few hours after giving birth, their fathers left them at the hospital entrance, I often had one of the babies in my arms, because in the cradle their atrophied limbs could not stretch out, and they suffered from scoliosis, I can still see those tiny thin limbs, Hugo his name was, I finally found him an orthopedist, though there's little hope he's still alive, the soldiers had found him on a garbage can, he was eight days old then, you can't imagine how these little kids suffer, another newborn I was changing was so lacking in vitamin A that his skin was raw in places, you can't imagine, I wrote to all my kids, though I didn't tell them how revivifying it was for me to be mother to a second family, Hugo or Garcia, I loved them like my own children, and nothing seemed more natural, Garcia, my orphan suffering from tuberculosis of the bone, he had to stay lying down, held to a board with straps, we got him to smile, though I knew his heart would eventually stifle his lungs, as the doctor explained it to me, death was everywhere, waiting, the only thing was life, everything to hold onto it, there was still the smile of life on Garcia's dry lips, though I did feel terribly cut off from the world, alone with my distressed kids, now I am far from Garcia and Hugo, once again in the social whirl, the hospital kitchen was a rudimentary shelter with a corrugated tin roof, no light and very little food, worn out as we were, the evening meal of beans and cold noodles seemed like a feast, and I just can't say how happy I am to be with you all again, Esther, how do you account for such contradictions, probably because we're children at heart, and we adapt easily to sadness and to joy, still I wish I could have contributed, just a little, and then, as though embarrassed by having confided too much in Mère, Nora walked faster in the direction of the sea to put distance between them, pelicans were diving headlong into the waves, putting her cell phone to her ear, she thought all of a sudden she heard her son's voice, Mum, it's me, Hans, sounding lost, Nora could hear his laboured, staccato breathing, Mum, our plane's been hijacked around Ohio, I don't know where exactly, it's nearly eight in the morning, can you hear me, the other flight attendants and me, Mum, can you hear me, I don't know what direction we're going in now, a bump, another bump in all this fog, we're going down, we can't descend any farther, we served breakfast the way we always do on this morning flight, everything as usual, listen, Mum, kids are sleeping in their mothers' arms, and we can't say anything yet, especially not now, because it's too soon, I'm sure, our plane, Mum, hug Dad and my sisters for me, they're wolves in sheep's clothing, we were fooled, I'm not saying everything's gone bad for us on Flight 88, but listen, above all, don't panic, just listen, first, you're going to need to be very patient, and you aren't, you know that, don't let your pain and grief and impatience get the better of you, Mum, I'll always be your son, whatever happens today, we're not over Ohio any more, those are shouts you hear from the back of the plane, we're going to reassure the passengers, none of us can be afraid, only brave, I always told you I wanted to be a hero, didn't I, well now's the time, we're going down, we're going to fight and defend the passengers, all those fields in the fog, we can still avoid cities, going down, yes, we really want to pull this off, no shouts, now, Mum, nothing, just something like a prayer, I don't know how to do that, because you never showed me, not shouts, something like a prayer that says, above all, Mum, don't lose patience, I know what you're like, you know, darling Mum, they're not screaming any more, they're singing, listen Mum, kids are waking up and asking why, they're not screaming any more, they're singing, listen Mum, they're saying, we're going through the valley of the shadow, be not afraid, we have nothing to fear, can you hear me Mum, it's me, Hans, your son, we're coming down to the fields, the valley of the shadow, they're saying, it's me, Hans, we're landing on time, we won't be late, Mum, on time, either with an irreversible slowness or a deafening noise, I can't hear anything anymore, Mum, breakfast has been served, hijacked to where, I don't know, I don't know anything anymore, that's what we had to do, serve breakfast, a razor blade to the pilot's throat, breakfast, all polite, that's what we have to do, we already knew about the pilot, we knew, what you're hearing, Mum, aren't shouts, those have stopped, it's more like a prayer, the Lord is my shepherd, that's what they're singing in those heartbreaking voices, I go on working, that's what you asked of me, they'll tell you I was a hero, freeing the pilot too late, taken hostage, Mum, all of the others are heroes too, even the little kids who don't know what's going on, every one, where is the valley of the shadow of death, we're flying low over it, so low we can see the grass and raspberry fields, low without wanting to, we've lost all control, the real hero was Dad, a child resistance-fighter in Norway under siege, and you, Mum, sacrificing your art for us, first prize at the School of Fine Art, for us, just us, please be patient, we'll make it, soft green and dirt-yellow fields all around us, the sky's gone white all of a sudden, state of siege here, like in Dad's time, heroes, everyone here praying, me last of all, the man you gave birth to is no hero, just a man, what was it Dad said that evening when we were all together in New York, Dad said that one day there was an awful, dark moment in our history, we were with him after he came back from Jordan — he's been all over, more than seventy-five countries, he said — and what was that dark moment in your country's history, I asked him, nothing specific, he said, but I picture myself as a little boy running with evil joy behind trucks with crying women whose heads were shaved, a terribly dark moment, and so you commit your first act of cruelty, Dad said, I didn't know then that all the children born of those who had collaborated would undergo the same fate as their mothers and be punished forever, I knew none of that running happily behind the trucks that way, no, I wanted to be a hero like Dad, although he said he never was because of that terrible, dark moment, and you'll see, Mum, everyone here is a hero without knowing it, it seems like the valley of death we are in, but don't you believe it, there's nothing else we can do, Mum, I'll be on time, but don't wait for me at the airport the way you usually do, our crew's courageous and will go on that way, we're going down, I'm kissing you, Mum, how green the fields are, how green the autumn is, Mum, but hearing only the song of the waves, Nora put her cell phone away in its case, thinking, of course Hans will be on time at the airport, unless there's turbulence from the fog, no storms are expected, and Mère plodded on in Nora's direction, a little out of breath and tempted to take her shoes off too, but she didn't, it was more appropriate for Nora, who was still young, svelte and a bit tomboy, maybe a veneer of upbringing she had missed, Mère thought without judging her, for Mère admired her primal instinct for freedom, then Mère thought about all the money this birthday party of hers had cost, it must surely have cost Chuan and Olivier thousands of dollars for such a fabulous party and banquet, she thought, too much, too bad Mère had not thought of this before this conversation with Nora that changed her view of everything, even the cost of her celebration, maybe she should have turned it down, and why had she willed so much money to museums and cultural institutions, when the African hospitals . . . oh, what's the point, she thought, as she saw her right hand trembling, it must be too late, this stupid tremor, when you think about it, she'd done what she had to do, and Mère thought back to the boy Chuan called Lazaro, almost a second son to her, the caterer who often went out fishing with the men for months at a time, with what heavy resentment he had dumped the tray of seafood on the kitchen table, he seemed sinister in his white apron, there was no mistaking the look of hate on his face, and why was that, since Chuan welcomed into her house like a son and was friends with his mother Caridad, bought handicrafts from her, knowing she often cried, saying she had lost her son, he'd lost his way, his hostile face confronted Mère and seemed to say, you ought to be ashamed of all this money spent on your celebration, you'll repent this, on Bahama and Esmerelda Streets, we've got our gangs about which you know nothing, nor about us, I, Lazaro, am not alone on Bahama and Esmerelda, then Mère dismissed this concern, for that's all it was, her friends had fêted her, and she was happy, even if this tremor in her right hand worried her constantly, Nora came back up from the beach, smiling, you know what Bernard says, that we can't be responsible for everything that happens, it's already commendable to look out for friends and relatives, she said, and for Bernard, friends means writers, which is why he's so generous to colleagues of his all round the world, that's pretty wise, I wish I were like that, it's the sort of thing a man would think, said Mère, Bernard is a man who's more sure of his qualities than you or I, Nora, and his wife Valérie too, she's more like us as far as that goes, sometimes I wish I were him, she continued, I'd own a few more certainties, but I don't want to be him, because he either negates or downplays the number of women philosophers, fortunately Valérie stands up to him on that, I mean, women writers and philosophers have always existed and always will, whatever our delicious friend Bernard thinks, the most learned among us, but did you know I can beat him at poker, she said, thinking that the tremor was fairly slight after all, no one, except Mélanie perhaps, had noticed it, and why had critics not attentively considered that Valérie's novels were essentially philosophical, the work of a moralist rigorously examining the drama of individual responsibility, all they ever talked about was the ambivalence of her characters without getting through to their motivation, be they cowardly or destined to contempt and condemnation, Valérie had written that crimes of cowardice were human too, and why did she frequently get up at four in the morning, sneak out of the house, and stand alone at the far end of the beaches, where, she said, the structure of her books was developed gradually a hundred times over and synthesized in a thousand details, in the calm of dawn by the ocean, and in a mind no longer agitated, it was that philosopher's thought that took flight like an incantation that would give shape to her novels, who should be held to account in this drama of responsibility which everyone shared, it was wrong, Mère thought, that Bernard and his friends rarely let women play poker with them, they were wrong to think that a new Descartes might spring from the mind of a woman, Valérie was not a mathematician or physicist like Descartes, and she never claimed to have reconstituted the foundations of learning, as a woman she would never have a notion of absolute certitude, but her humanity was her science and her field of inquiry and reflection, she often woke up by Bernard's side, heart beating wildly, she said, that's when she had to go and quietly get her bike from the garden, followed by her cat, how precious that solitude by the sea with no one to see her, and the illumination of thought took on solid form in the last traces of night trailing away on the water,