Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (9 page)

glory of knowledge, victory at university, each with a late-model car of his own, insolently parked in the campus lot, Saab, PT Cruiser Turbo, performance car and performance student alike, how do you place a value on a life like that, when Augustino thought about the miserable existence Marie-Sylvie de la Toussaint had led before, like her convict brother, He-who-never-sleeps, would he, Augustino with his intelligence, be the one at the head of this elite class of two thousand students of the twenty-first century, would it make any sense that the century was meant to be cut short and determined by the launching of missiles that all refused to see? If Daniel, his father, had really determined that he was going to a doctor of neurology, not a poet or a writer, well, then Augustino would study the afflictions of the nervous system, his father would effectively have assigned him that role, not writing, which would unbalance his health, all he had to do was think of Kafka's tuberculosis, if that's how it was for Augustino's future, whom the missiles pierced like spears, then he would be the doctor to trace a neurological cause for his brother Vincent's shortness of breath, his spasms and his convulsions, whether he became researcher, a doctor, or a poet, Augustino could not conceive of a future without his grandmother, without her it would be like walking through the storm-tossed thickness of an unknown jungle, and this night perfumed with jasmine in Chuan's garden, Daniel thought about Augustino writing next to the lamp near the covered perch where his parakeets slept, what a pity if the boy got it into his head to write, Daniel thought, he felt pressured by his own book, thinking that if Hitler's dog could be declared innocent, like the children of out-of-favour officials, where would the fertile infamy of these fathers lead, for it could not be expunged, but would influence several generations, suddenly sheltered like atomic dust in the wind, just as deadly, in the hearts of two young boys: Alex, age twelve; Derek, thirteen; pious altar boys, hair nicely combed, with barely a hint of pink ear showing, tight collars, white shirts and grey ties, church angels, how had they come to condemn their father, by what mysterious tribunal, brutalizing him under a rain of blows from a baseball bat till he died, surely they knew that the aluminium covering of the bat would cause pain, but the ineffaceable infamy had lighted on them, how many times did you hit him, asked the judge, ten times, maybe eleven, then we set fire to the house, our parents' room first, then we took off, it was at home in Pensacola, and Dad was sitting on the sofa drinking his coffee and relaxing after work. What time was it, Derek, just after midnight, Your Honour, Dad called us his little masterminds, and he was right, we'd been planning to get someone else caught instead of us, Rick the child molester who'd already been in prison, our dad was one too, so we punished him, Alex and Derek's biological mother had denied all the accusations, the father of my kids was a good, protective man, she said, so were Alex and Derek just piling one trick on top of another, or were they telling the truth, the choirboys in this criminal ritual would be tried separately, sent to juvenile detention separately, but what did they feel together as they delivered blows to their father's head, Daniel wondered, one of them told a detective, boy, was it ugly, that hole in his head, his face all swollen like a really bad cold, nose blocked up, really gross, but things just couldn't go on the way they were, we'll wait till we're twenty-three, then we'll be free, what were Derek and Alex really, if not a fetid swamp, their two souls mere receptacles for the unspeakable things of the past, those of nazi fathers and torturers whose work was still being carried out, Derek and Alex in white shirts and grey ties, angelic, lying faces, a cesspool, two spirits numbed by cruelty, shouldn't they too be declared innocent, wondered Daniel, and looking around to make eye-contact with Mélanie, who was talking with Olivier, late as it was, but what sweetness this night under the stars, the ringing of his phone sounded like a crystalline harness-bell, and holding the thin object to his temple, in an effervescent glow he heard the breathless voice of Vincent, Dad, it's me, I can't get to sleep, Dad, and Daniel replied that it was time to sleep, and hadn't he already phoned twice today, so tell me Vincent, did you like that outing in the kayak, tell me all about it, hectares and hectares of mountains and lakes, you know, many years ago the entire northern part of the continent was covered in ice, you do go for a walk in those leafy forests every day, don't you, and before you were born, Vincent, your mother and I climbed Mt. Mansfield — don't forget your raincoat when you go out on the trails with your instructor — your mother got the tent ready, and I prepared the stove for the meal, what we liked the most was going to sleep that way, it was like being at the top of the world among the deer that would come to drink at the ponds and rivers, are you listening Vincent, never go out without your raincoat, you're still coughing a bit, do you feel any better, Vincent, but was Daniel really hearing his son's voice this late in the night, Dad, said the breathless voice cut short, I want to see Marie-Sylvie again, even though you say I shouldn't, the sea air, Dad,
Southern Light
, oh
Southern Light
, our boat anchored in the marina, and Mélanie your mother, don't you want to see her, Daniel asked, she's here with me at Chuan and Olivier's, did you remember it was your grandmother's birthday, all Daniel could hear was a murmur in the fog, Marie-Sylvie, the sea, Samuel's boat
Lumière
,
Southern Light
, yes, it really would be better, thought Daniel, that his son Augustino never become a writer, and Olivier was saying to Mélanie, you'd never think so, but there's been progress since that August 28th, 1963, when we marched on Washington, president of the black students in our student committee for non-violence, I felt very alone despite the huge audience, white cops eyeing us and our speakers with hostility, maybe I was very much afraid, even in that crowd of 300,000, I said to myself, pray Olivier, concentrate and pray that you behave like a leader and a man, then all of a sudden, it was as though I'd been lifted up by the waves on the sea, and what I saw calmed me again, to my left, groups of young people on their feet and sitting in trees, listening to me, I was floating with those close to me on this sea of humanity, and all around me, every single person seemed to be saying, shouting out the words with me so all could hear, they call us niggers in this rich country, Mr. President, and regardless of what you want, we're not moving from here till something changes . . . here we are, marching through the streets of Washington towards you, Mr. President, these streets belong to us now . . . we've been patient, too patient, but we aren't any more, doubting that their society had really evolved after all, Mélanie was listening to Olivier, and these women who not so long ago were still gagged, censored, and imprisoned like Margaret Sanger the obstetrics nurse, simply because her ideas were my ideas and those of so many women today, that every woman had a right to contraception and safe birth-control, did Olivier shrug knowingly, seem less attentive to Mélanie's words, though it was a splendid evening, and the arbour Mélanie and Olivier were in, a little way from the noise of the celebration, was embalmed with the insidious intoxication of an assortment of bougainvilleas and African lilies, Mélanie was distraught at not being properly understood by the man she so admired, but perhaps it was not so, Olivier seemed carefree and amused as his dogs bounded toward him, my friends, my fine friends, he said, I just can't get away from you, and Mélanie saw his strong hand seize an orange from a vase Chuan had filled with them and with lemons, what delicious fruit, he said as he peeled it with his teeth, it quenches one's thirst on a hot night, if Olivier could be so easily distracted from what he was saying, well, of course on a party night, Mélanie thought, a heady, sensuous evening to which even Olivier had to give in, tasting an orange, scenting the corollas of African lilies that seemed to spill from the arcade of the bower right down to their faces, while Mélanie could not help being preoccupied by her own struggle, they would see tomorrow, not thousands, but millions of them, she mused, women marching through the streets of Washington, emerging from every epoch of their history, daughter of an Irish Catholic mother of eleven who died so young, Margaret Sanger would no longer be alone, in the rush, eager to judge their obscene censors, we will be seeing those who had kept them so long in ignorance, the perpetrators of epidemic deaths of newborns and mothers, perpetrators of secret shames, syphilis and gonorrhoea, yes, we'd meet them all again, Mélanie thought, a living mural by young artists from New Mexico like Erin Currier who painted political demands with collages, like that grandiose mural of women cut off from the world, veiled and showing their hands tied, widowed of their lives, eyes submerged in fatalistic pain, hundreds, thousands of them, when Mélanie thought this tableau of widows, grieving women beneath the veil, would be broken and fragmented, baited by a new ethic, that by painting slavery, the artist proclaimed liberty, now, now, you'll make me all dirty with your paws, Olivier was saying to his dogs, it was true, wasn't it, what Mère was saying about the African lilies, you could get drunk on their perfume, dizzy in fact, like an intoxication of the senses, and Petites Cendres left the Saloon and went out into the street, lower back soaked in sweat after the dry vapour of the sauna, there were all kinds of people, cop cars screaming through the night, what's going on, Ashley asked the Queen of the Desert, who showed up wig in hand, a cloud of red streaks she held onto carefully, it's one of the New York models, my favourite, Blondie, she said, he's stolen a motorbike, and he doesn't even have a license, practically still at his mother's teat, Petites Cendres said, they won't arrest him, will they, he's the boy who smiled at me so nicely, button up your front and zip your pants, said the Queen of the Desert, what do you want to go out in the street like that for, I heard the siren, and God, I just knew, said Petites Cendres, they're putting cuffs on him and humiliating him the way they did me so many times with those chained bracelets, oh those stinking rats, they've arrested my boy, we've got to call his mother in New York, she lamented, wait, let's be reasonable, said the Queen of the Desert pointing to two of the blond kid's friends, the charming Asian and the Mexican with the dark fringe, look at how those three kids carry themselves, each one has a lover who's a fashion designer and maybe a constellation of handsome gentlemen, so don't you worry, Petites Cendres, he won't be behind bars for long, stinking rats, Petites Cendres repeated, snatching up a child like that, the other two boys bent their heads in astonishment in the direction of their friend who'd been admonished by the police, like some bundle on the back seat of their car, he's innocent, they were saying, it was just a game, we all bet he'd drive the motorcycle without a license, we're tolerant of minors in this town, said one of the cops, but theft is theft, Petites Cendres saw the hubbub was subsiding beyond the barricade of police cars, when suddenly she saw the blond boy, barely visible on the other side of the car window, smiling under his curtain of hair and making a sign with his cuffed hands, as if to tell her, I'll be OK, you'll see, God bless you, sweet ruffian, yelled Petites Cendres, Christ be with you, after all, he was the one that said, suffer all the children to come unto me, yeah, well, it's nearly time for my second show, said the Queen of the Desert, don't worry too much about them, they've got good uncles, godfathers (though maybe not real fathers) and mothers, it's not the same as those boys who sell themselves in the streets of Moscow and sleep in cardboard boxes, shivering from cold, huddled against their puppies, Petites Cendres said, I always said, God help this furnace of an earth, God has nothing to do with it, I don't even know who you're talking about, said the Queen of the Desert, if this earth is a furnace, it's because cold and indifference reign supreme, I've got to get going or I'll be late, and you'd better get dressed, Ashley, what a way to go out in the street, all undone like that, God help you, said Petites Cendres blown away that the blond kid had smiled at him, you may not know it, but God exists, I get proof of it every day and every night of my miserable existence, you and your chatter, interrupted Timothy appearing on the doorstep of the Vendredi Décadent piano bar, one of the pubs where he hung out, Timo, my Timo, said Petites Cendres, you look like some kind of businessman or banker, well, hey, said Timothy, that's what I am, and no familiarities, don't kiss me in public, I've got a chic clientele, you know, a journalist interviewed me inside the pub, I didn't tell him my name, you're no ordinary pusher, Ashley told him as they went down toward the ocean walking side by side, as Timothy covered Petites Cendres' eyelids and forehead with cigarette smoke, a somewhat saliva-laden smoke, she thought, you've shined that leather jacket up nicely, and brushed your hair so it's glossy, I could help you pluck those eyebrows, though, they often get me to do that at the sauna, nope, you're no ordinary sex-trader, Petites Cendres said, and what did you say to this reporter, that for me it didn't count with men, it was just about the money, but my relationships with women last a long time, maybe a year or two sometimes, they don't know anything about what I do down here, I said one day I'd be an oceanographer and study algae and oceans, that's all we really have, that I'd go back to Savannah, when, asked Petites Cendres, oh in a few years, but first I have to get rich, said Timothy, that idiot asked me about my family, nothing to say, my moral values are my own, since I was ten I've made it alone, and drugs, he wanted to know all about that, whether my clients were old or young, up to seventy-five, I said, and I don't like the cops, in this business they beat you up, not all of them, he was particularly concerned about condoms, I said, once in a while, but I often forget, oceanography, that would be a cool profession, Petites Cendres interrupted, there's no future for you on this island, you need customers who get around less than the ones in the Vendredi Décadent, then Timothy tapped him on the shoulder and said he had an appointment with someone in the navy, I'm due there now, and off he went, confidence in his stride and a cigarette between his lips, Ashley thought back to the thick-necked man who had ordered him to come up to his hotel, brutish he thought, well, he wouldn't, he just wouldn't . . . unless the envelope of white powder in his front ran out before the night was over, unless his need began to hollow him out like the point of a knife, what a furnace of torture it was to need, he often thought that, the earth was a furnace — cold for some, comfortably tepid for others — so what can you do, that's life, Timo was a lucky one, all nicely slicked up and groomed, no buttons, he wasn't going to get hurt, and they weren't going to call him Black Dog, but God would look out for Petites Cendres, as He had always done, tonight or tomorrow when dawn broke over the ocean, as cigarette smoke rose in the air, and doves cooed, Ashley knew for certain that God would come to the aid of His son Petites Cendres, and His voice would burst forth in the singing of the waves, and He would say, they have offended you to your face, wash it in this water, my son, and be relieved of all your pain, I say unto you verily, it is you I love. Mai could see a ray of light under her brother's bedroom door, she'd have loved to know what time her parents were coming home, Daddy had said it would be very late, and he'd be angry to know Augustino's lamp was still on and he was writing at his desk, and that Mai refused to go to sleep as well, with her cats rolled up in a ball against her knees, sometimes she thought she was asleep in her bed and dreamt of an empty swing, and the day they scattered Jean-Mathieu's ashes near The-Island-Nobody-Owns, she also thought she was awake, stretched out on her bed with the cats, the scenes that tumbled pell-mell into her brain also seemed real, although she was afraid of their being true; when Mélanie had noticed Mai was not on the swing any more, the seat was empty, she had asked everyone, Mai, where is Mai, have you seen her, Mummy's voice was overlaid by the slightly cracked voice of an old lady, Caroline, asking them each where her little cloth bag was, and that must have annoyed my mother, thought Mai, suddenly the shouts of Mummy, Caroline, and Augustino echoed to the sky, Mai where are you, I could hear them, but there was a little boat near a rock that I really wanted to get to, my feet and my sandals were covered in mud, what would my mother and grandmother say, you were so pretty this morning, that never-ending funeral service gave me plenty of time, walking along the low tide to the sky-blue boat that seemed to be tied to a stake, there was this mist on the sea because it was summer, the closer I wandered to the boat, the more I could see beach after beach of white sand, deserted clearings, then all of a sudden I was under an umbrella of Australian pines, Daddy told me these were the tallest and the strongest, and as I sat under them, I could see the boat was still there, and I knew there was a man in it, a fisherman dozing with his hat over his face, the boat shifting on the waves, Mai, where are you, they were all yelling, the voices of my parents faded to echoes as I went over to the boat, in that thin film of water where my feet sank in among the seashells, the man in the boat woke up with a start, isn't this a surprize, where are your parents, he asked, not far, I went off while they were reading Jean-Mathieu's poems on the podium, they were crying because their friend is dead, dead how, the fisherman asked, stowing a supply of shellfish in the bottom of the boat, Daddy says old age, but my Grandma says you only die from living well, don't you want to get into my boat, asked the man from beneath his hat, eyes reddened by the sun, is this how it was supposed to be, Mai wondered, why should she get into a wet, dirty boat with her nice dress on, or would you rather go collect some rare shells on the beach, that would be over by the Australian pines, Mai thought, she could find her way back more easily, by now they must have noticed the swing was empty and maybe begun to worry a lot, she could still hear them calling out, Mai, where is Mai, the man jumped out of his boat, let's get to the wharf before the tide comes in, he said, because I have to make out to that other boat over there, see, imagine all the men fishing for days out in the middle of the ocean, the things they say about women, boy, you wouldn't want to hear that, they're drunk and raunchy when they get into port, women waiting for them everywhere, sometimes very young ones, I only like delicate creatures though, as brittle as shellfish, you're OK, just a little girl, no need to be afraid, we won't get lost, when Mai asked his name he grumbled back, it's not nice to want to know everything, I don't have a name, the men on my boat call me a lunatic hermit, I don't have a name any more than The-Island-Nobody-Owns, and don't forget, everything between us is a secret, no yammering to your Ma about the man with the bushy beard and hair and no name, here give me your hand so we can walk over to the pine wood, what are you waiting for, I won't hurt you, Mai begged him to let her hand go, it's full of fine bones this hand, l like subtle, delicate