The Heart of the Leopard Children (5 page)

But now it's dark, Mireille, I'm scared in prison. Apparently in prison they sodomize the guys!

Follow us without making a scene. For now, you keep the handcuffs on. I can already see the face of the scavenger captain, his need to know everything about me, what happened, admit to whatever he needs to reassure himself, good job officer, very good for your ulcer. Just the idea of it exhausts me, not even a window where I can get some air and see the light of day. What time is it? Why do they all want me to give them sound answers? Do you come from Africa? Have you thought about your future?

There is no more reason to be afraid of me. I'm in handcuffs now, confined by four officers, left to battle with my own fucked-up self. I'm moving like a zombie, a date with the prick 24/7, day and night. Officers, why do I bother you so much? Identity papers? You would think that I actually frighten you. Residence permit? Oh, you're French? Racial profiling. Empty your pockets. Do you have a knife on you? How do you defend yourself?

Hey Warden man. I also want to have some peace, alleys of flowers, smiles, good morning miss, how are you doing missus. I don't want to see anymore spit in the stairways, argue with the drunk guy across from me, find syringes in the sandbox, Saturday nights that wind up as local news stories. Close up those bars and tobacco shops so our fathers can actually sit down and enjoy their dinner. I'd also like to have some blue in my life, walks in the parks, a beautiful car in the garage, a fresh-cut green lawn, a garden for the summer. It's a shame that you can't hear me captain, I actually had a beautiful confession for you!

The door closed, another room in the back, white overcoats seated scientifically across from me. I hear the first pile of questions. These
trackers of deviances and other forms of madness can't wait to hear what I have to say. I'm going to focus intensely on Drissa; he's already been through this. Brother, you're going to help me get me through this. The one in the middle is wearing a red beard. I have to really pay attention. His presence seems to calm things down some. I'm almost relaxed although certainly on guard. If only I had it altogether. His words are audible and gentle. It's a real break from the captain's barks. He's right to warn me. Hold on to whatever you want to use against me. In any event, I have no plans to tell you anything. This one must like to make love to his wife with his perfectly groomed hands. He should have met me during the good old days with Mireille. He would have considered us a very cute couple, tasting wine on the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts, an Argentine guitarist playing flamenco music, all smiles and in love, or when we used to roll around on the lawn on the Champ-de-Mars, lost in our endless laughter. If he had known us during that time, our tenderness might have melted his heart, just watching us, heading off to Paris to study, hand in hand down the Rue de Rennes, the impression we gave of finally living, the world at our feet, welcoming us. A couple, that's it, the city and its nights just for us. It's the most beautiful thing in the world.

Today, I'm having a hard time seeing my hands, bound by those who are themselves dispossessed. At the same time, I don't want him to take me to his country for crazy people. We're going to be playing hide and seek, the first one to crack has to go. That's why I'm not going to talk to you. Call the marabout instead, it's Drissa's uncle. He will burn a few things, draw some figures in the sky, and when he moves his buffalo tail, he will insult the evil spirits, and with one great breath my grandfather will personally put everything back in order in my head and in my life. Professor, psychiatrist, or specialist of God knows what, sitting comfortably on your books, can you hear the voices in my head?

I don't really remember what happened. Somehow time just went on without me. I'm tired. It's hard to have lived for so long in a storm.
What do you think, professor? Are you hesitating? Do you think I'm weird, sadistic or just a plain old pervert? My life, I already drag it alongside me with great difficulty. Leave it to me; together we are doing the best we can. You would like to hate me but you can't help but find me somehow likeable. We share a look of complicity. There is someplace where we understand each other but we are flying side by side without ever having a real meeting of the minds. He stops for a moment before the gunk that is brewing deeply inside of me. Anger, the hotbed of pure energy, dangerous, ready to spill out everywhere and at any given time, it only requires a spark.

Try at least once to communicate with the spirits the ancestor invokes. They will tell you about the leopards and me, they will teach you about our life. Doctor man, there is no one person more important than another in my life. Only the absolute power of a good heart deserves admiration. You are looking on at me as though I were unstable, ask some of your battery of questions instead, shake up some of your certainties. This should be pretty easy for you to do since I'm already among the condemned! Don't bother wasting your time trying to compare our systems. Leave the dance of tolerance to the streets, for the times of protests for progress. To show that you actually care for me, I wouldn't be surprised to see you wearing an African tunic, or beating on a djembe drum in an ethnic dance class. But as soon as it has to do with death, you rely systematically on your pragmatism and science to analyze me! The trance, when it's not attributed to alcohol, is interpreted as hysteria and referred immediately to Saint-Anne.
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Go on, keep talking and run your tests all on your own, I took off a long time ago. Leave my neurons in disorder. Forget about trying to treat the ills of the leopard. This is my unique garden, the only riches I possess. Don't be so fast with your confidence, don't use my case to immediately justify and forgive everything. I was marked a
long time ago by the authorities. I've been screaming at the top of my lungs to plead my case before the court. They have given a color to my skin and denied my existence. I have given in to the weight of the mask that tries to disfigure me. I wouldn't celebrate too soon if I were you; you can't get rid of me that easily!

When you think of me there, doctor in your white coat, know that I have the same desires as the great wild animals sequestered in cages. Ten thousand times a day, sometimes even more, they are searching for a way out, and looking at every possible angle to do so. They'll never stop. Showing their fangs, they will never give up. Go ahead, use my silence against me. Today I'm free and all you're left with is me, and now all your threats are just annoying me. Forget about me for a little while. Try to get out, at least once, from under the weight of protocol. Let me tell you about this desire I have to spit in your face, just like that, just to see your face defiled. Why don't you go and lock up, say, those who no longer make love to their wives, you would be sparing us tons of bitterness every day. Stop analyzing me and take care of the mean-spiritedness and cynicism of this world. Let me enjoy a peaceful exile. I need some quiet after all the madness, a kind of gentle respite that proud, rebellious dogs enjoy, once they are finally running in a wild nomadic pack, after having bitten their master!

Yes sir, I'm a good student, everything is going well at the university. I passed my exams. I couldn't find a decent job. I don't have the right kind of face for the ticket window! My love for Mireille, like my love for my mother, I'll keep that safe deep inside of me. You see, I'm doing the best I can. It's not easy but I'm managing, a beer, a glass of wine, a bit of weed or hashish, it's more for fun at the end of a long week. Leave me out of your statistics. Try to come and meet me where I really am or if you like I can come to you! Go on, let the sorcerers and magicians dance, they only come out to dance at night once the church and the library are closed. Get a good night's rest. Lay your head on your pillow and let them sing you to sleep. Their steps are so quiet, only the sound of their voice will resonate in your head.

Drissa knows the white overcoats only too well. From now on, they accompany him in every step of his life. The nurses take him away in the middle of the day. He was frightening everyone! Unbalanced, going berserk, wallowing in his urine, screaming his insanity. The police were already there to put his uncle in his place.

Do you know Drissa? That's my question for you. One sentence, only four words as you get up to leave the room and I block your passage. I want to go back to the cell, be among the cigarette butts, the filth, my thoughts, my leopard ancestor, with my barefoot grandfather, Drissa exhausted, drained of his whole being like a wet bird. Mireille and her cotton underpants, like when we were kids.

Push me violently against the wall of my cell, my ancestor is waiting for me!

Ancestor, look at me, this thing in chains, a disturbing cascade, this incomplete knot, in blood and tears. This is your son, ancestor! You are looking on at me from a distance; I'm in suspension, chained down in these new lodgings. Disguised as a proud patriarch, you seem legitimate, reigning over a bunch of crazy detainees. But I'm sad for you, you also believed. What kind of legacy have you have passed on to us, what wasted freedom, laws executed by those with the most powerful arms? Promises of independence, pride reclaimed, all of it exploited, winding up with the most absurd expression of racism. Greed inaugurated the order of the day, paving the way for genocides and killings. Ancestor, you are pretending to have forgotten. As in your childhood, you are meditating, making appeals and taking refuge among the eternal invisible ones, meanwhile a cannonade continues to dominate mutilated bodies.

Charlemagne Ngouvou, Joan of Arc Maboundi, Wilfried N'Sondé, Anatole Nganga, and so many other names, what have we become, ancestor, we don't even realize that we have been handing out ridiculous sobriquets that imitate our former master? Blanche Senga, Euloge Sita, Jean de Dieu Mienandi, Anicet Boungoudiabampoutou. . . . We
have emulated the pride of the clever monkey, who can find the most unusual first name from the Catholic calendar. Ancestor, who are we really? Look at what I have become!

I have let you down, ancestor? I did my best. What can you do with me? There is no garbage can for humans! I'm bringing a little bit of you to suffer with me in my hole. Stop pretending you can't hear me with your disdainful scowl. Get down from your contempt and submit to my turmoil! I have the clarity for those who are lost. Remember how Drissa wanted to know what a Bakongo chief was, a Zulu, Kikuyu, Shona, Bamileke, Mandingo, Ashanti, Wolof. . . . His father had bought a driver's license to show off with a car that was way more than he could afford with his salary. That car meant no electricity at home, and there you were going on about great men of remarkable dignity and rectitude, who nobly executed the justice of proud and merciful men.

Ancestor, you stayed quiet, while your friend, Drissa's uncle, great marabout that he was, went on to fill his pockets by exploiting other people. Magic, the foundation that connects us all to the single broken line in life, the horizontal line that banishes right before our eyes the differences between yesterday and today. He made a business of other people's naivety and you looked the other way. He sold his powers and became a merchant of dreams and threats, all so that he could buy himself women and cars.

Where were your words in the face of this tragedy? And what of the future you silence, leaving me here to face myself? Shaking your head you say you can't understand, you grew up so far away from all of this. A couple of years in Europe and you accuse me of having forgotten who I am! Was there so little to preserve and transmit in the end?

It's high time to open a high-security national park so that I can be kept in my original ecosystem against all outside influences. Captain, professor, ancestor, grant me at least the dignity of whales, the right to exist that giant tortoises enjoy.

You can go now, ancestor. I'm not angry. I have the devil and the benevolence of the spirits. I only need the strength to rediscover love and the will to live for tomorrow.