The Bay of Foxes (2 page)
The Bay of Foxes
A Penguin Readers Guide to the Bay of Foxes
An Introduction to the Bay of Foxes
I
D
AWIT IS SITTING AT THE BACK OF THE CAFÉ IN THE SHADOWS
, when he notices her. She floats in from the street, her cigarette, in the tortoiseshell cigarette holder, held in graceful, tapered fingers. A plume of smoke obscures her face, but he knows at once who she is: M. With a thrill he recognizes the ethereal presence of a celebrity whom he sincerely admires. He stares at her tall, slim silhouette. Beneath her hat her white hair shimmers around her pale face like a nimbus. The large expressive eyes gaze dreamily heavenward. The long Modigliani neck arches arrogantly. She turns her head and stares at him.
He averts his gaze, conscious of his ragged jeans, threadbare shirt, holes in his shoes. Exhausted, faint with hunger, he has slipped into the shadows at the back of this café, ordered the cheapest item on the menu, adding several lumps of sugar, and lingering long over his espresso, which only the French seem to condone.
St. Sulpice.
The still Parisian square shimmers before him, and for a moment he is afraid he might fall from his chair. He lifts his cup to his lips with trembling hands.
Sometimes he kneels in the pews in the church on the square for hours. He prays to his guardian angels and the saints of his
childhood, Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel, asking for help—he wonders how Jesus knew to tell his followers to ask God for their daily bread. He thinks of his father, who loved Paris so much and first brought him here. He sees him in the white garment his father wore at home, which would fall from his shoulder from time to time, and which he would adjust. With his deep-set, dark eyes, his playful, ironic smile, the small, neat mustache, he always seemed to be laughing at Dawit. Or Dawit just wanders around the side aisles, staring at the dramatic Delacroix paintings, the man wrestling with an angel. Like his father, Dawit loves Delacroix, who he knows visited Africa.
The café, too, is deserted at this dead hour on a late spring Sunday afternoon. The Parisians in this elegant quartier have already fled the town on the weekend for their country houses, for the sea. The waiters stand about idly in their long white aprons, vacant-eyed, their arms dangling lifelessly. From time to time their gazes register his dark presence with what seems to him suspicion. The French often take him for an Arab, which doesn’t help.
He watches M. as she, too, sits down at the back of the café not far from him. The few people turn their heads, stare, and whisper to their neighbors. She is at the height of her fame, recognized wherever she goes as a rock star or a famous actress, her new book already both the Prix Goncourt for 1978 and a best seller.
She smiles at him curiously from the corner where she sits. He cannot keep his gaze from her pale face. He feels obliged to answer her smile as one would a mirror.
The famous face is found on the covers of her many books, which have been translated into every language under the
sun. Highly praised by the critics for their originality, their distinctive voice and style, her books are also popular.
He had read them as an adolescent. His father had given him a cluster, taking them down from the shelves of his library, handing him the books with their distinctive cream covers and the name of the great French publishing house, the Nouvelle Revue Francaise, the
nrf
scrolled elegantly below the title. “You must read these,” he can still hear his father say. “I think you will like them.”
What Dawit appreciated was the authority of the voice, the brevity, the omissions, and, in one of his favorites, the unusual love affair: a young Ethiopian landlord of wealth, elegance, and position and his little white concubine, the girl he buys and falls in love with “to the death.”
Dawit’s father was a reader, educated abroad, first in England in exile with the Emperor during the Italian occupation, and later at the Faculté de Droit in Paris, where he did his law degree. Even his mother, from a family of priests, was sent to Switzerland to study French during the exile. His father had written a book on Ethiopian history. The family spoke both French and English, as well as an elegant Amharic, replete with multilayered puns and allusions. Dawit, taught by Orthodox priests, had learned to recite all the psalms in Ge’ez by the age of six. At ten, thanks to the Emperor, he had been sent to boarding school in Switzerland. At dinner the conversation sparkled, often in French or English so that the servants could not understand. The paranoia of the palace.
Now he glances warily at M.
She is wearing a mauve hat, which suits her, hiding what he surmises may be fine hair. The hat, despite its color, is
mannish, with a wide brim, tilted slightly to one side, so that it shades her pale face. Her tailored, elegant clothes have a masculine air, too: the wide-legged gray linen pantsuit with the cream padded jacket, the striped gray and cream chiffon scarf, and the flat black tasseled shoes. He supposes they come from the Italian designer shop he has noticed on the square. She is smoking a Gitane in a tortoiseshell cigarette holder. She orders a
menthe verte.
She has a paperback book before her, but she is not reading. She is still staring at him.
Knowing something about her life from her books, he can imagine why. He was a reader and a writer at an early age. For years he kept a diary, writing ten pages a day in French or English, trying out different voices, different styles, looking for his own. He imitated M.’s spare, strong voice as so many did, the sort of distinctive style that enters the mind and echoes there, recording the events of life in her voice.
She is that rarest of writers, a literary best-selling one. Now, at her advanced age—she must surely be almost sixty—he finds her beautiful. She keeps looking at him as if she has seen him before.
He knows it is not just the glow in his smooth bronze skin that often seems to attract people, nor the high cheekbones, aquiline nose, large eyes, long, slender body, or even his youth. He is not yet twenty-one.
Mostly he dares not sit in expensive cafés. He walks the streets. He keeps moving for as long as he is able. He has no papers, no passport, no
carte de séjour
, not even an orange card for the bus. He hopes to mingle with the crowd, to hide, afraid of being followed, his own shadow, the police. He has
seen what they do to African immigrants who attract their attention. His friend Asfa has told him of a man in the
banlieue
shot “by mistake.” Every noise startles him, every glance causes panic, every word a death summons. He reproaches himself, hearing his father say,
They have turned you into a coward, Dawit!
He has pawned the last of his mother’s rings long ago. He owes Asfa money for the rent and food. He avoids him and the others in the crowded apartment, slipping down the stairs and out into the streets, ashamed to be seen in his increasingly ragged clothes, afraid to get caught up in endless and inconclusive conversations. Asfa would never press him for money, but Dawit knows his friend needs it badly. Asfa’s own children are hungry, and his wife glances reproachfully at Dawit when she sees him.
He feels he has become invisible. People he knows shake hands with him so slowly and languidly and with such a bored expression, looking past him, he thinks they will fall asleep. Occasionally a stranger stops him, and he trembles, terrified. Usually it is a man whose gaze lingers on his shoulders, slender waist, narrow hips. He asks Dawit if he would like to come to his studio so that he could sculpt him, or something obvious of that sort. Dawit would like to ask if the visit would include a hearty meal, but he shakes his head, smiles, walks on.
Sometimes he does odd jobs if he can find them, but he is not strong. He has not been trained to do manual work. He has difficulty washing his own clothes. All through the winter he has had a constant cough from exposure to the
elements. It has taken him a while to realize that the fine mist in the air is rain, that it will wet his clothes and skin. Besides, he has no umbrella or raincoat. He hugs the walls to stay out of the weather, a voice in his head recording his every step. Mostly, he thinks about food.
He has been hungry for so long now. At first he thought he would get used to it. Surely the stomach would adjust and shrink. But he has not. The hunger has become worse. Particularly as he walks past the bakery shops that trail their delicious scent of fresh bread, he is excruciatingly hungry. He has a craving for sweet things. He stands and stares at the croissants, the
pains au chocolat
, the
chaussons aux pommes
, as though he could absorb them with his eyes. He remembers the sticky deep-fried pastries of his childhood. Despite this longing he cannot manage to carry heavy things, the only work available.
Sometimes, despite the rain, the grayness, the hunger, despite the homesickness, he becomes aware of the beauty of the city, the quality of the flickering light between the leaves of the plane trees. He thinks of his mother lifting her lovely gaze to the light sky and saying, “
Levavi oculos
,” lift thine eyes, her Swiss school’s motto. He thinks of the photo on her dressing table of her as a girl in her school uniform with the round felt hat, smiling shyly, showing uneven teeth, beside an identically dressed friend.
M. beckons him over now, waving her white hand, with its flash of square green emeralds. He approaches hesitantly, terrified but thrilled, not sure what she wants of him. She does not say anything but motions for him to sit by her in the wicker chair. She uses her lovely hands like a dancer, he
thinks. He does not dare sit down—he can hardly breathe but just bends toward her.
Afterward, he is not sure why he says what he does. He has been brought up to be polite, to always be aware of how his words would be received, and he knows how important this might be, but somehow, despite himself, he hears himself telling her the truth, as one does an author whose books one knows so well.
“You have a ravaged face,” he says, “but one which is more beautiful to me than it must have been when you were young and pretty.” She smiles a little ruefully, as if acknowledging what has not been said, that the cause of her ravaged face is not only age. She must suspect he knows she is a drinker. She asks him to sit down beside her. “Tell me about yourself,” she insists gently. Her voice has a deep, gravelly, masculine texture.