In the beginning was absence. Say nothing, be nothing. Nothing but a thing they use. Use up until its insides break.
I saw everything. Don’t ask me what. Lost words are lost forever. To speak all that is in my mind, I’d have to invent. Words for laughing, words for forgetting words, words for acting as if. Who still cares about the details?
The sea is blue. A ship sits upon it. So heavy, you think it will never hold. It holds. It even moves. White magic.
(The sea can be seen in the distance. Nothing extraordinary. The girl squints into the sun, squats on her heels, begins her story.)
I no longer know the name of the country. I was too young when they came to take me. I have forgotten the woman who rocked me in her arms. Only the husky voice has stayed, the voice of a crazy sky. Around the village, I can still see the trees, haunting at nightfall, their heavy oblong fruits dangling from branches like human bodies. They are called spirit houses because they shelter the souls of the dead. Not all. Only those still alive.
In the country, suspended like a dream, I hear the river flow and swell. Taking earth, men, and beasts by force. Nothing can resist it. Overhead, birds glide past. They look like the head ties worn by women on feast days. Down below, children take aim and shriek with joy when their prey drops to the ground. Beneath the generous sun, I watch the children until a voice calls them in. The huts close up. Sleep burrows in, stinging eyes like red ants.
In the country, men don’t know what it means to cry. In their language there’s no word for it. But there are plenty of other words: eat, dance, cook, hunt, fish, sow.
In the country, women are always happy. Every task puts a song in their mouth and they suck on it all day, like a sweet. Late at night, the song sometimes refuses to melt. Runs through their head until morning. Always the same story playing on their lips. The same doing repeated. Eat, dance, cook . . .
In the hut where I was born, an old woman is sleeping. It seems that she’s always been there like that, and her old age, over one hundred years, lets her read the sky and see what the stars hold for tomorrow. Usually, she foresees rains or lightning. Sometimes she sees war, but then no one believes her. Where we live, this wicked word does not exist. Or rifle, or ship-hold, or master, or sea.
Like my people, I am short. The sun in the sky is so huge, it shrinks the bodies of people. In my village, the grown-ups are like children. Only their face shows age. The oldest of our old have wrinkled skin, cotton on their head, and blue in their eyes. The oldest of our old sometimes rise in the night. Walking stick in hand, they penetrate deep into the forest. It is said that death hides out there, a hyena so fast it can pierce dreams. No one has seen it but the trees. Humans can no longer hear it.
I was too young to learn and too small to climb up to the branches or remember how to reach the huts where those who are not dead keep their vigil. I knew nothing of the world when they took me. Because I knew nothing of crying, I screamed when water fell from my eyes. So much water behind my eyelids, how was that possible? I gazed at the sky, studied the clouds. In vain. Looked for the river. Searched the landscape. Nothing. Inside my body the rain had started. From my wide-open eyes this stream flowed, dragging me far from the village to the sea where the river came to lose itself each day. With no mouth to name them, the words fell away. Joy, smile, childhood, grasshoppers, baobabs . . . the words sank, unspoken. Only much later did I realize it. When nothing was left, and I opened my mouth. Emptiness. Silence.
One night, they ate my belly. The man was alone but felt like a hundred. I had run out of tears when he came in. I thought only of my finger in my throat. The finger that would never be enough to get rid of it all. I would need two, my whole hand, my arm. Until this man’s water was gone. He never tried again, no doubt knew about my finger.
Now, I hurt when I look at my hand. My legs tremble. I bleed, clench my fists and try hard to think of something beautiful.
On the road to oblivion, the men who are shouting look just like us. Same dark skin, same coiling hair, same feet accustomed to the night. No one knows where they come from, some claim they’re from here. How to believe it? How to think the unthinkable? To avoid sinking into madness, a few of us take the opposite view. Surely, those Black men are shams, White men made to look like us, so we’ll let down our defenses. White magic.
Today, a man has collapsed. His eyes are yellow, his ribs heave. From his lips dribbles a milky liquid. It foams. Like a dying fish. There’s no time to pray, a hand raises a club. Strikes, then breaks the iron chain that attaches the corpse to the rest of the group. Without a word, without a backward glance, we move on. Understand that only dead, will we be free. Fully.
I no longer recall the date. Or the place. We’ll just say it was an ordinary day. Some African town wedged between forest and water. Upon arrival the night before with a group of ten (five of us had perished during the long trek), I had immediately been sold. My new masters paid the asking price, pressed to set sail after long months of waiting. It had all happened quickly, the hot iron on my skin, the descent below deck, the cries in the hold as the ship weighed anchor. An hour passed, an entire night. A lifetime it seemed, we were so sure we’d end our days down there, slapped about by the waves. Forgotten, forgetting who we’d been.
Call them whatever you want, I no longer hold their names in my head. Barely even their faces, turned toward the ocean, facing it, laughing. So was I.
I did.
I.
We jumped.
Together. We.
Jumped. Sea. Jump!
We
Did it.
UNDER THE SEA, haunted by death, the immobile triumphs. Long life to those who made it. Down there, reality has taken over. The bodies, their verticality. Through the fog woven by nightmares, I see them stir. I open my mouth, spit up salt and water. Want to speak but I’ve lost my words. How many, how many lives remain? The sailor counts how many. He scans the horizon, willing answers to appear. White magic.
They say that the earth won’t emerge from the sea for another four hundred years. That when it does, a new day will dawn. We will return, neither ghosts nor beasts, our memory emptied, washed clean.
I have more to tell. There’s also the woman badly chewed up, bled by the sharks, but refusing to leave us. Like an animal, she hangs on. From the hold where we huddle, we follow her battle in silence. For hours she clings; the dead woman will not die. When day breaks, we are only six bodies who remain. I spit. I have thousands of words in my mouth. A story, what I saw down there, under the water. The beast bearing down on us. And I, just escaping its fangs, look ahead-behind. Ahead-behind, believing nothing more can be done. Nothing more to hope when the little one screams for help. Too late. The beast swallows her whole. Only then, if my memory is right, do the White men toss their nets out onto the water—surely, they were in league with the sharks—and haul us out of the water like a catch of fish.
The hatch slams shut. Like a period in a sentence, the period in a sentence. End. This is where we will die, with no family to see us off or earth to cover us. The last hope has faded from our faces. Where will our souls go when our bodies depart? As the day unravels, a song rises. Song of a thousand tongues, all saying the same, accompanying the rising of friends’ souls.
*
When land disappeared behind the line, I began keeping count. With my thumbnail, I scratched lines into the wood. One stick = one day. That’s how I proceeded. Every day, in the wood, afraid of forgetting one. Slicing up time . . . I’d never done that before. So I scrape and count twenty-seven scars.
(One. Close-up of the girl’s mouth. On three, the lips tremble. Let a tear escape. A comma trailed by a word traced in fine ink. No emotion in the girl’s eyes. She must be used to telling this story. Unless she’s making it up, like the name she claims to have forgotten but which she must have put somewhere, right?)
In my mouth, there is a word that refuses to be said. Weighs me down like these irons that chain us to the sea. The day my tongue started moving again, I prayed for the word to fall from my mouth. But it didn’t come. My finger was too short. Ohé! Has anyone seen my name? Ohé! That’s the one I’m looking for. I had one before coming here, all people have one. Lying on my back, I inspect every bit of me. It’s like a game, my hand walks all over my body, across my legs, my hips, goes around my belly. Not there! Not since they broke it. One time, it happened. By that, I mean the man entered me and spoiled the music that cradles childhood.
I hate men!
I don’t think that will change.
With all the sticks I’ve scratched into the wood, I could rebuild my village. Top the huts with pointed roofs, draw granaries, trace paths, and outline trees so tall, their leaves would mingle with the clouds. At the center of the village would be all the lost words. Dream-words with weight only for those who can speak them. Just saying them aloud would make the world exist and once again be as it was before.
I thought that time had come the day the sea stopped. I have no idea when; I had long since stopped counting. At the end of a night of storms and prayers, the ship suddenly went silent, not daring to believe the miracle: land, almost there, a few leagues off. Our throats tight, we, the women of the ship’s hold, pressed against the railing up on deck. Could it be that the earth was round? That after sailing all the way around, we had arrived back home? Others said so. Others built it up, until the land lay before us in plain sight. Nothing but an island. A place with no name.
I would not be staying long.
(A woman, white head kerchief, pleated dress, watches the sea go past. Is she dreaming? Unless she’s hoping that a wave, higher than usual, will carry her away.
Hands clutching her flapping headscarf, the woman turns abruptly. Stares into the distance at a gull, or perhaps a gathering storm.
The girl is familiar. Despite the dress. Straight hair with two white strands.
In all directions lies the sea. Much less blue than two days before. The Atlantic Ocean, I assume. The captain nods, then takes a nap. The same two, later, look at each other. The man watches the young woman study the sea that is the measure of man. They talk, though neither understands. The white headscarf fades. Night falls.
The following days are almost the same. Only the light has changed. Comes early and slips away fast. Looks like the young woman has dry skin and a runny nose. Never goes out without shawls.)
Until the ship docked, I never thought we’d arrive. Would have bet it on my forgotten mother’s head. By what miracle have I survived? I don’t know how I held out. Remember only that night when, after searching for my words a hundred times, I stumbled on my reflection and my name came back to me.
The-one-who-walks-the-world.
It helps me to know that. In this land where everything moves fast, I am the one who comes from afar, no longer resides but passes through. I am the-one-who-walks-the-world.
Falling into step behind my new master, I climb into a coach and press my forehead against the glass. For a long time on the left: the galloping water transports spices, sugar, and salt, floats between land and sea under a fuming, fishnet sky. Everywhere crowds, thousands of bodies moving, hanging around the docks, walking along the edge of the water that rises. Then. Falls. Rises-falls until night falls just beyond the Pirmil Bridge. The city takes shape, lights its lanterns. Its stones. Its contours. Its Negroes. Free to wander at will. Go everywhere. Are everywhere, even laughing on the stone facades of the houses. Booming, explosive laughter!
Some of them live at my master’s house, over the doors and windows. Cut leg, cut tongue hasn’t made them lose all sense of hospitality. They welcome me as if feting their own kin after a long voyage.
(It is a house of distinction. That’s what is usually said when they don’t want to think any further. A house of rich people, where you worry about tracking in mud on your feet. Because it’s raining out. It’s dark inside, despite the windows. The cold is penetrating, the embers in the fireplace have died. The furniture is draped with white sheets. Like animal pelts. White sheets masking the furnishings, it’s as if the house has never existed.
Down the hall is the bedroom. Bed unmade. Parquet floor strewn with seashells, so many, a hundred slaves couldn’t pick them all up.
A mirror is swaying on the dressing table. A few hours earlier, reflected the image of a woman, hollow cheeks, blond, though most of her hair has fallen out.
Close-up of a man’s face. The man on the ship, but older and sadder . . . Drawing close to the bed, it is clear that the sheets are wet. “Soaked,” to be precise.
At this moment, the man, hands clasped behind his back, is standing in front of a watercolor. A seascape with a woman in silhouette running along the shore in the foreground. An angel with her golden curls flying in the breeze.)
The staircase leading up to the attic is steep. I almost fall when my foot catches in my dress. The stairs bring back memories of the open sea. The ship where I died, in the time before I walked the world. The enormous blue-black flies tracing circles in the room, usually announce death. They are not wrong. Death is present. In her disemboweled body.
“Marie, Ma . . .” stammers the captain, before crumpling to the floor at his wife’s feet.
LATER, I, too, will go in. I will go to wash the body.