Colour of Dawn (9 page)

I have brought Gabriel up to fear God. To be horrified by sin. A far cry from the lightness of Joyeuse, the mischief of Fignolé. From the superstitions of Mother. Nourished from birth on the word of the prophets and the psalms of David, in this little church where men, women and children gather, hands joined, mouths open, singing and chanting. Sometimes Brother Derrick, a big American evangelist, comes from his native Kansas to preach to us with zeal. In his dark three-piece suit, Pastor Jeantilus gets so agitated behind his lectern that he works up large beads of sweat. Sister Yvette, his wife, follows him, a towel in her hand, and wipes his face. Pastor Jeantilus, his eyes closed, his whole body trembling, always finishes by summoning in his cavernous voice the angels of Heaven and the demons of Hell who in their turn take possession of the faithful or depart their bodies. A finger pointed to Heaven, he fixes us with his eyes and petrifies us. From his pulpit, like from a mountaintop, he breathes out the word of God from the depths of his lungs. He is like the wind rushing through the depths of a forest, moving the tops of the trees and shaking the crazy branches. Eyes closed, spirit reaching out, he imposes his voice and his force on this vale of humanity. And as he speaks we cry out ‘Amen' and ‘Your name be blessed, Lord Jesus'. And we wave our arms from side to side. ‘Alleluia! Alleluia!'

Only last Sunday a man who was there, battered, visibly exhausted, shouted out while waving his arms that he was waiting for the firm touch of God's work. Her body shaken by convulsions, her eyes rolling, a woman wept the tears of Niobe. Through her tears she cited all the want, the deprivation, the hunger of her world. Manette, a frail young girl recently come to live in our neighbourhood, confessed her acquaintance with the devil and cried out at the top of her voice her desire to renounce Satan, his pomp and his works. She told of what she alone had seen, things capable of appalling people and driving them away from her for good. That great shadow of a hairy, horned figure stood before her, face gleaming, broad chest heaving and panting. Her eyes rolled up, she lifted the sleeve of her blouse and revealed the scar that this creature of darkness had scored onto her shoulder with the fine point of a knife. This testimony caused the faithful, squeezed tightly together, to cry out their faith at the tops of their voices until the walls of the building shook. Other miracles are produced before our eyes, day after day. Pastor Jeantilus has built up the church and has recently begun to arrive to bring us the message of God in a brand-new car. God indeed moves in mysterious ways!

Standing at my side, Gabriel has listened to all these extraordinary words. Nourished by the words of the prophets and the apostles, Gabriel has sung and prayed. I can still see him, wide-eyed, heart beating, turned towards Pastor Jeantilus, this speaker of spells, this teller of marvels.

All these stories have not, however, prevented Gabriel from asking me, exactly a fortnight ago, who his father was.Without the slightest hesitation, my nose once again rubbed into my sin, I replied that he had died shortly after his birth. However false this notion, I wanted it to be the foundation on which Gabriel builds his life from now on. Between him and the nothingness from which he emerged, between him and eternity, there will be this lie. The words seemed as if they were coming from the mouth of a stranger, one of those who inhabit me.Those for whom I have never known how to make space, and who appear suddenly with hardly a sound. And that is why my reply vanished as anger and remorse grabbed me by the throat.

SIXTEEN

T
hese disturbing memories that assail me make the tap-tap journey to the uptown commercial district seem much shorter than usual. After getting off the vehicle I go to a public phone box and again call the mysterious number written by Fignolé on that scrap of paper. Without success. I get the voicemail service again. And once again, I don't leave a message.

I walk through the streets of the city centre which breathe to the rhythm of its strangely calm crowds. How long will they remain calm? No-one can say. The city centre also has its mysteries.Working in this luxury shop, I have come to understand that its upper echelons, distributed in an enigmatic order, include German and French descendants and immigrants from the Middle East. Mixed blood, great-grandchildren and grandchildren of the natural sons of a fornicating, arrogant conqueror, bent on dissipating the remains of African blood or adapting to it as they would adapt to rather disreputable family secrets. Everyone has their history. More or less glorious, more or less acceptable, hints of which I have caught in snatches of conversations picked up from Madame Herbruch, my boss. Reported words. Rumours placed end to end, that I associate with certain faces, unknown to them. The pieces of a jigsaw, the whole of which is totally insipid, mediocre, hollow.

I open the doors of the shop mechanically, caught in a pincer movement between these thoughts and my anxiety at the absence of Fignolé. As she does every morning, the vendor sitting by the entrance offers me seasonal fruits, mangos, soursops, cachimans or pomegranates. Every day Madame Herbruch drives her away, her and the others who crowd round the door. And every day they make a show of shifting a few metres up or down the street, then gradually creep back those few metres they have moved in one direction or another, to return to the same place.

‘Too expensive,' I retort to the fruit seller. She must have mistaken me for someone else.The poor do not buy fruit. Or very rarely. We pick them from the trees or we pinch them. But she sees fit to insist. This little game has been going on between us for several months. I know she will get me in the end by wearing me down. Wearing down – the most formidable weapon there is, as I know from trying it myself with Madame Herbruch herself and those before whom I should resist or disappear. The fruit seller in turn tries it on Madame Herbruch and me. We therefore wear one another down to the bone, to the marrow.

I will never forget the day when Madame Herbruch asked me to help her with a large banquet she was preparing in her luxurious residence. When I crossed the living room to the beautiful toilet with its blue ceramics beneath the stairs, I felt the eyes of the prestigious guests burn into me, reducing me to the mere idea of a being. To these bourgeois mulattoes with their fair skin I was not a budding young woman but merely a black female of a breed with simple, distinctive equipment: two breasts and a vagina. A breed doomed to the shanties, to domestic service, or to bed.

After closing the toilet door, I leant against it to catch my breath and give a moment's freedom to my feet that were suffering in too-tight shoes. It is events like this that penetrate a life like a violent torrent that slashes through dry, hard earth.

On the wall across from me hung a reproduction of an autumn scene. To this day I do not know why this picture had such an effect on me. I had never seen the autumn, but school books and the television had given me a glimpse of the beauty of leaves in this season, colours that set the trees ablaze. It was a scene from elsewhere, a landscape from elsewhere. People from elsewhere. In what must have been the garden of a manorhouse, two little girls with blonde hair were playing, laughing, watched lovingly by their parents. I told myself this must be the image of happiness, of paradise, this impression of tranquil abundance, of carefree serenity. The promise of a life without hardships, without cares, without needs. Recalling my geography lessons, I imagined the list of countries that might be home to such a scene and after hesitating between the English, Danish and German countryside I settled on the Danish countryside, as I thought it was the furthest removed from this place where chance had decreed I should be born. This image has never left me.

Madame Herbruch phones me as I arrive to reassure herself that I have made the journey despite the barricades that have been blazing since the dawn. She reminds me to ensure that the cleaning lady wipes the shelves and to make certain there is coffee and a jar of guava jam, her favourite, in case she calls by in the early afternoon.

I am prepared to accept anything from Madame Herbruch. Madame Herbruch is a springboard. Madame Herbruch already belongs to my past. Sitting at the table, I take out the notebook containing the notes from my business studies course. But I won't be reading a line of it today. I am waiting for a brother who likes to play with fire, who plays reason off against insanity. A brother of sun and lightning. Inside me there is something greater than I am, planted by Luckson, a man whom I hardly know and who turns my soul inside out like a glove.

SEVENTEEN

G
abriel was born of a treacherous act by one of those many men of immediate pleasure and no tomorrow. One of those men who wear the male mask of boastfulness and unconcern and whom I didn't recognise for what he was until too late. It was the time before I discovered the word of God. Before the Redemption. Before Pastor Jeantilus. Now, from daybreak until the moment when the dark of the night envelops me, I turn the same question over and over in my head: who is this man, Gabriel's father? I wait for the moment when I can wash away the stain of my mistake. I wait for this past that hammers at my ears to fall silent.

I recall the light of an afternoon, a walk by the sea that I was discovering for the first time. Perhaps, in all this story, account should be taken of the sun and the sea. Of my delight in this white-hot day. The blue of the water. The dazzling light. My spirit filled with wonder at such extravagance and beauty. Such splendour given, offered – without a fight, without sacrifice. Such a profusion of splendour. So many sparkling images. Light dancing on the foam and waves coming to lap at my ankles. I keep this memory, a blend of soursop and pomegranate. Enough to make your skin prickle with the feet of crazy ants. To make you forget the name of your mother or your country. A kind of inebriation seizing hold of me. A mouth on mine. Tongues entwining. Silent kisses. Murmurs and promises. A body against mine. A hand on my breasts. My body split in two. And the world swaying around me…

The scarcest glimpse of pleasure, trousers zipped up. A handkerchief to wipe away a few white drops, a pinkish streak, left on my stomach. Between my thighs. Sticking to my fingers. Then very soon, becoming a blemish that I washed away every day like a child dirtied by mud and games. I had a desire to slash my lips so that no man could place his own lying, deceitful mouth there. To mutilate my genitals so they would no longer be of use to these conquerors so full of haughty pride. And then there was my stomach, more swollen day by day as the fruit grew inside. Every day my body felt the disaster. Mirrors kept giving me the image of my decomposition. I had this shame that made a dull noise inside my head, that gnawed at my guts, that I still try to curb to this day like a wild horse so that I can get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other some mornings.

I wait for the curse to be lifted, for the bad spell to be cleared! I wait…

Like me, Mother didn't know that she was carrying a child. She confided it to me a few years ago, one day when I was surrounding her with questions:

‘One morning I felt bad, but I didn't immediately make the link between what the man, your father, had done and this sickness that was unfamiliar to me. It was my mother who told me, when, the next day and the next, I threw up everything I had ingested since birth. Mother made me lie down on my bed, looked at me, and as two tears slid down her cheeks, she caressed me to reassure me. The man disappeared. Took off. Without leaving the slightest trace.'

As for me, from the start I wanted this child out of me. There were moments when I thought I was going to die. The smell of herring, that of armpits, of frying, of cheap Sunday perfumes, all filled my nostrils, penetrated my stomach only to come back out of my mouth in nauseous waves. And I wanted to do everything a woman does when she wants to get rid of a child. To go to an unknown woman who would make me drink a greenish liquid and would leave me for three whole days in a chasm of pain until I expelled from my belly that thing that had become attached there despite myself. It was not Mother's words that made me change my mind, but Joyeuse, my little fairy at that time, who never stopped stroking my stomach once she knew that a little red oyster had made its nest there. She would often place her cheek on it, close her eyes and remain there for a long moment of contemplation…

At the table next to mine, the other nurses are chatting away nineteen to the dozen. Darline, who I don't like and who feels the same towards me, is animatedly giving out the details of the festive atmosphere last Sunday at the Champ de Mars as the carnival approached. A young DJ set the place alight by pouring out the best merengues of the carnival from the speakers. Unable to hold back a moment longer, Darline rises from her seat as the others laugh, to demonstrate how she had swayed her hips, moving her buttocks in all directions like a top. She doesn't stop looking over towards me, to be sure that her poisoned arrows have hit home. But it doesn't work. These girls are possessed… I know it. Possessed… I humbly ask God to spare them from all the diseases lying in wait, and to lead them, Darline and the others, to repent. Burying my nose in my plastic bowl I eat with complete indifference yesterday's rice with a single meatball that I have brought from home.

From nowhere, suddenly and despite myself, I think of the stranger who arrived a few days ago. The stranger lying in the big ward never complains. Rarely speaks. And when he does his words are few. But I can sense a strength that moves in silence beneath his skin, his muscles, his torso. This man seems capable of resisting everything the bite of the sun, the fury of the waters, the provocations of a woman. My own involuntary provocation as I prepared to give him an injection three days ago and our heads touched above his bed.

You have hurt me, my friend, with a single hair from the back of your neck.

The contact of his skin on mine had the effect on me of a static electric shock. And his eyes were fixed on the swell of my breasts. I was ashamed of what I felt – I, Angélique Méracin, practising Christian. Perhaps he takes me for something I am not, a female on heat. And not for what I am, a poor woman beseeching God for assistance. A poor woman tempted by the Devil. I crucified myself by that very task on that day, waiting for the evening service and the following Tuesday's fast.