Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (17 page)

with all those faces, bodies hoisted to windows amid the red-and-white flags or any other funereal drapery, their hands waved from the windows, he would have to live in their place from now on, dance for those who no longer could, and Mère said, as she lay her arm next to Nora's, it's going to be a calm day out on the water, I don't feel the least bit like sleeping now, while you were walking alone lost in thought, I was thinking about my grandson Augustino, you know, he writes, like his father, he writes a lot, oh I really ought to remember more of what he wrote that upset me so much, what was it, I don't remember, it's silly, memory often plays tricks at my age, and what if it isn't just that, she said, relieved that her words were masked by the sound of the waves and Nora didn't seem to have heard her, absorbed in the flight of birds, and Nora said, during my years in boarding-school and those long months away from my parents, I had only one childhood wish that never came true, it's hard to know why such simple wishes can't come true, it was to have a bird sleep in my hand, we had monkeys, lion-cubs and snakes, so why not a little bird to sleep in my hand and go to around with me all day at school and everywhere, my brother and I felt so abandoned there, but I couldn't have a little bird, a small thing to stroke, always gentle and soft and feathery and good-natured, yet much later on, when my son Hans said, Mama, I'd like to have a bird, at last my wish came true, and I bought him a cockatoo, we already had dogs and cats, and Hans became a Australian-parrot breeder, the house was soon full of them, is that what happens, after a long wait our wishes come true exaggeratedly, in an excess of abundance and joy, yet I still remember how desolate I felt when they refused to let me have a little bird to sleep in my hand and go to school with me, the easiest of pets was denied me because I was not being reasonable, they said, little girls couldn't live in a convent or a boarding-school with birds, otherwise what would happen to the rules and order of the place? There was a place for everything, animal, vegetable and mineral, and we humans over them all, however imperfectly, the nuns asked me why I had to mix everything together, forgetting I was only five and my brother four, Mère was listening to her more attentively than Nora usually did in turn, awkward socially and too readily absorbed in her own thoughts, Nora was thinking she had brightened up the house with happy moments with the happy chattering of children and birds all day long, that was not the truth, she thought, because she had moved with her doll-house and animals so many times, like a nomad's tent, from one country to another, depending on her husband's diplomatic duties, getting used to new customs again, learning a new language, as though the childhood exile from Africa were constantly renewable, though it was also an opportunity for rebirth whose benefits and diversity she acknowledged, a cancerous growth had cast a shadow on her thirty-fifth year, coming through the treatment period, the upheaval in her family life when all at once the presence of Hans' birds, the ones she had so longed for, weighed on her, when she had rebelled and told the doctor, I can't die, my children are young, and they need me, we've got to stop this cancer from growing, and I'll do it, serenely and hopefully exercizing her rights over her body, she had beaten cancer once, gathering her loved ones around her, children and birds, and ready to leave for Italy, Australia or Africa with Christiansen, saying she'd celebrate her cure with the birth of another child, conceived in Africa, fortified by Christiansen's love, then suddenly Nora said to Mère, I met Christiansen in Europe you know, when we were medical students, though that wasn't what we ended up doing, to Christiansen's despair, he had to spend over a year in hospital after a motorcycle accident, and he had to give up medicine and competitive tennis, though he'd won several trophies at home, and I switched to painting, since medicine had been forced on me by my father, when I met him, I was afraid he was too good-looking for me, what a nasty turn of fate, not to deserve this man in any way, she fell silent, since Mère's expression had suddenly turned irritated and preoccupied, that's bad, very bad, she said, to feel inferior to your husband, my dear Nora, I'm speaking to you as a friend, you are wrong, think of the trials you have gone through with such courage, not only are you a very talented painter, but you speak several languages, a very gifted woman, Mère asserted, like my daughter Mélanie, and Bernard's wife Valérie too, a very free-spirited writer, yet still they're a close couple, just like you and Christiansen, these feelings of inferiority are really not good for a woman, Mère repeated, I don't want you to feel that way anymore, my Nora, because you'll end up believing them, yet still, if Esther was right about this, why was Nora feeling so dissatisfied with her work in Africa since her return, it's because I wasn't able to save anyone there, she said, not the kids with AIDS under perfusion and unable to eat, of course I recognized the bad results of blood-tests, my father had treated, operated on and cured lepers, but where I was, the population had been deliberately infected to wipe them out, a nurse even told me the Ugandan, Rwandan and other militias that occupied and robbed a large part of the country had been systematically made up of AIDS-carriers so the entire population would be infected, when a virus becomes a weapon of war, I guess you can expect a worldwide calamity, so how do we go about centralizing our aid and feeling useful, I wondered, here's a criminally infected population which is helpless, my father never gave up on his patients, he was never put off the way I was, once I was confronted with misery, I never stopped feeling this disgust and nausea, eating the same food as them, cassava and cassava-leaves, I couldn't get it down any more, I thought about the diapers waiting for me in Room 9, the flies on the baby bottles, honestly, Esther, my father would never have given way to disgust the way I did, where he surpassed me was in never letting himself get discouraged, just being effective and miraculous, but I couldn't get myself to believe in these miracles, when I saw a doctor trying to find a vein to transfuse in a child who would be dead at any moment like a glimmer of light in a wind, all their lives went out like that, I was beyond disgust, I was dispirited, and although I'd once learned to speak Lingala like a native, I suddenly felt myself a complete beginner faced with pain, war is a poisonous energy, evil, hard to combat, and I didn't know how much longer I could hold out with all these dying children around me, there again my father would have been more resolute, I put in twelve-to-thirteen-hour days, my father would never have stopped, he wouldn't have slid under the netting and used perfume to blot out the nauseating odours of the day, he would have been uncompromising, though he still would have been just as furious as me at the priests and the growing number of churches, especially in their pernicious enthusiasm to convert a populace so impoverished and weak, I should have known on this temporary return to Africa I'd never be as strong as he was, when I got a chance to phone Christiansen and the children, which wasn't often, I was in tears and telling them that Amos was gone, he was one I'd especially watched over, and so was little N'suzi, they were names and faces in my mind, suddenly no more; mine were warm and cared for, well-fed, and all they could say over and over (and how wrong they were) was, we told you so, Mama, don't go, we knew you'd be unhappy, come back right away, Mama, I didn't feel any better until I heard the voice of my dear Christiansen saying, you did the right thing, you had to follow your heart and go, try and get some rest, you'll feel better tomorrow, you know I'm with you, how did you celebrate Christmas, and I plucked up courage and said, yes, well, we gave out presents to the little ones, I was now friends with a thirteen-year-old boy called Jerome, even though his ex-parents had left him at the orphanage saying he had the evil eye, I told Christiansen that I still had some belief that I could be useful here, and I remembered as I spoke to him as though he were right there with me and so warm, that I remembered coming home from town the night before and seeing three funeral processions with drums amid the choking air as I passed by in the car, why this moment of faith, because after giving baths to the eight kids in Room 10, I had delayed for a few hours, or maybe even a few days and even months, who will ever know, the inevitability of all these deaths, feeding Joël a little milk or a little camomile through a small syringe every fifteen minutes, I had also bought some ointment for chapped skin and some soap at the pharmacy, and ironed the diapers that hadn't dried because of the rain, I'd also laid in a supply of cookies, diluted milk and milk-powder, I also had to listen to the doctor tell me that as soon as the kids were better fed, they soon felt much better, I'd thought Joël wouldn't make it through the night, though he wanted to live and went on to the bottle after the syringe, I didn't tell Christiansen how afraid I was in the hospital at night when I heard starving wild dogs roaming around, and nothing about the insects either, I was all wrapped up in his voice as it said, good night now, good night, my love, you know we're thinking of you, then Nora interrupted herself, saying, I know, Esther, I know it's a sign of weakness to always seek approval and love, especially approval, Mère smiled back at her saying nothing, she felt all at once that Nora's spirit had been inoculated with doubt so far back that it couldn't be undone, if only Nora had more contact with women like Mélanie, perhaps solidarity would have stimulated her to suppress this doubt little by little, though her timidity or unsociability and her longing for domesticity when she was home and waiting for Christiansen, perhaps that held her away from others, if Mère had many more years to live, she would have made friends with Nora and advised her, and then who knows, besides, maybe she did have those years in front of her, but why speak of tomorrow when we know we only have today, and suddenly Mère found that today very palpable though frozen, as though she were standing in front of a painting, nothing moving around her, her brain the repository of entire images, an emerald-green sea out at the horizon, and blue-grey closer to the beach where she was standing, Nora's profile set against the rose-pink of the sky, the straight-line legs of the birds, herons and gulls at daybreak, beach chairs piled on one another like pages in a book, and far off the quays, long jetties with the shadows of strolling people not moving, stopped with their bikes when the beauty of dawn stretched out as though there were no more morning or evening, Mère thought, was this the sign that that one's spirit was pausing too, no, not yet, it was surely just an overflowing of delight, a life well-lived, though a life that passed like all others, hers or Nora's, even Marie Curie who had also known doubt, or might it be Valérie getting up at dawn by herself to think about her books, alone with the ocean, the full extent of what she knew belonging to no one but herself for a few moments, not to the husband she admired, nor to her children, Christiansen had told Bernard the night before that women had been taking part in politics in his country for a long time, Valérie's men, Bernard and his friend Christiansen, had spent a long time talking about luxury cars, plush Rolls-Royces, like little boys comparing toys, and avoiding what really played on their minds, knowing that the politics of men was the politics of disaster or at least came very close in its risky tensions, how sweet that lukewarm breeze, was this the hour of the world's beginning, Mère thought, of course, how Christiansen and Bernard, two serious men, bragged about the construction of cars inherited from family members, well, these are the frivolities they chewed over, old-fashioned convertibles, coupés, sedans, bodywork and accessories, this flow of enthusiasm masking what they both felt at the edge of the abyss, what Valérie openly referred to as men's politics of disaster, look at the times we're living in, and they talk about cars, about durability and conserving them, male strength in their voices, making less audible Valérie's voice, or at least what she wanted to say, after they'd gathered around Esther in Chuan's garden during the night, both men knew that dust was their cars' future, though straight out of a rich man's mythology, one of them once so heavily commercialized, but now ageing so badly it had no value anymore, the other, Christiansen's, sold years ago to pay for Hans' studies in botany and zoology, so fascinated was the boy with animals ever since his mother gave him a gold-combed cockatoo, I suppose you'll be a bit like a bird, Christiansen said, when his son finally decided to become a flight attendant, his inner wings always longing for the free flight of birds on high, who knows what dreams our children get from us in our wild imaginings, during the night Mère had thought, so now I'm an octogenarian, and who's going to listen to me now, or will they just think, who is that charming old lady and when's that know-it-all going to shut up, what was a life well-lived, however long it may be, and Caroline said, Miss Désirée, I'm sure it's because I haven't eaten and hardly drunk anything for days, but even during the little sleep I get, I have this nightmare, I am approaching a wooden bridge dangling over a narrow waterway, an obstacle I was afraid of but had to overcome, for I could hear my own heartbeat, even though I'm locked up here, then I see, or rather hear, a woman coming towards me, limping on the wooden floor of the bridge, thump-thump, towards me, hard sounds, it's her, an invalid, coming slowly towards me, I knew that even if I yelled, you wouldn't hear me asleep in your armchair after reading your psalms, can't you hear her yourself, the sound of her leg as it drags along the boards of the bridge, can you hear her calling me, Miss Désirée,
Harriett, can't you hear me, Miss Désirée, Harriet, no, how could you, when there's a sign between us, like in the old days, that says, only Whites allowed here, though my family rebelled against that vicious law, and my mother said to me, we're against racial segregation, I hold out my arms to you on the other side of the gate, how dare you separate a child from her black nurse, how dare you, shouted my mother, I'm here with you, said Harriett, you must sleep, say with me, the Lord is my shepherd, and I shall fear no evil, repeat it with me, Harriett said, I can't hear you Caroline, you and those prayers of yours, you wrote on the walls, where will you spend eternity, when the Whites used to laugh in the streets and on the sidewalks, only Whites allowed here, they've separated the two of us, yelled insults, is the hour that Whites call eternity, and the gazelles return as quickly as they left, the antelopes my husband and I shot in the desert, then cut off their arched horns and opened their snow-white bellies, who, who is it, the falconers have trained their birds of prey against me, but I don't know where to run, Harriett, Miss Désirée, will they feast on me, and I remember that bullfight I filmed in Lima, are there three horses I harness and ten men waiting for me with the clean-up crew to remove my beaten body from the arena like a bull turned over on its side while the crowd exults, they snatched the box, the case with the ashes from my hands, and Adrien still whispers in my ear, we know how much you loved him, come on, the boat will take you into port, come now, and on board the boat I saw the young man I had photographed in the night before his suicide, he was standing, and he too said, with graceful, welcoming gestures, you know they talk a lot about it, but there's almost nothing to it, here, do you recognize that music the Academy of Music played in the ruins,