TWENTY-SIX

As he opened the door his hand brushed against mine, leaving a bite-like tingle on my skin. Luckson then whispered a few inconsequential words in my ear, words that melted into one another: ‘your lips, you, want’. A river burst its banks inside me and the desire for this man burst through my veins in thousands of tiny bubbles. I said ‘My love’ to him without thinking, as if I were singing. In a low murmur. I undid my blouse myself. In my haste I missed a button. My boldness surprised him at first and then pleased him, so much that his face creased up in a grin of admiration and pleasure.

Luckson undressed me like someone dying of thirst peels an orange. Pressing his lips against my breasts, my stomach, slipping his hands towards that dark triangle between my thighs. My body slowly came to life beneath his fingers and his mouth. His touch left feverish traces on my aroused skin. I offered my stomach to his lips, my breast to his brow. His incipient beard tickled me and I let out a surprised laugh. I have never laughed with any of those other men whose fervour has flattered me, repulsed me or left me cold. Luckson’s laugh is a favour. I don’t know if I should seize it. I don’t know… I float my face against his skin. And the Luckson holds me, firmly but gently. Firmly but very gently between his hips. Until the moment of that exquisite suffering that grips me and slowly turns me inside out.

Luckson is a man of will and a man of love, and I like that.

These thoughts skimmed over me, full like the geography of the clouds. I didn’t want to hold on to any of them, especially not those which, in the blink of an eye, tried to trap me in a strange melancholy or that hint of happiness that sometimes follows our embraces. I very soon shook from myself both the melancholy and all temptation of happiness. Like the other girls of the inner-city suburbs I first learned the sensual pleasures of the flesh at a very early age. They have never been able to take away from me, soul that I am scoured from birth by deprivation, an inner mistrust of the happiness of books and the melancholy of the cinema.

After a moment I detached myself from Luckson’s embrace. I looked at him, fascinated. I went to the bathroom and reapplied my lipstick. My lips were full as if I had just woken from a long sleep. My forehead was glowing. And I wanted to make my eyes lie. They were shining too brightly not to belong to a woman who has just been made love to. Who has just made love herself. My eyes were shining too brightly not to give me away. I looked at myself one last time and told myself in the mirror: ‘My heart, you especially, don’t get carried away, don’t get carried away…’

But since then, despite myself, a force has grown against which I am helpless. A thought has taken root deep inside me, around an image, always the same one, the image of Luckson. Everyone around me may walk, breathe, smile, but I no longer see them walking, no longer hear them breathing, I am blind to their smiles. Whatever they do I no longer sense them approaching, seeking me out in their arrogance and hunger. No-one can cure me of Luckson. The earthquake has already happened.

I closed the doors of the shop earlier, at four o’clock precisely. I should call to see Uncle Antoine to warn him of Fignolé’s absence. I feel my strength leaving me. But I don’t want to give in. I mustn’t give in. I will go and see Luckson. Luckson’s skin will make me forget. Luckson’s slim thighs will make me forget. His bold hands. Luckson is missing me. He is waiting for me somewhere in this city…

Black-skinned and from a poor background, Uncle Antoine used this despised colour and low origins as an incontestable argument for robbing the State and committing one wrong deed after another. Every day, without respite and without a word, Aunt Léonide would keep Uncle Antoine from stumbling. After years of this thankless battle, Léonide Nériscat had become a sly, tough, falsely friendly person. Looking more closely, the task of Uncle Antoine and Aunt Léonide was harsh and allowed them no respite. So harsh that it had caused the hair of Antoine Nériscat to go white prematurely and had slowly eaten away at the eyes of his wife, leaving them surrounded by two deep, pallid hollows.

My conversation with Uncle Antoine is brief. I’m always nervous of talking to this uncle who would receive us, the poor, between the backyard and the kitchen. The wealth of Antoine Nériscat was always a subject of wonder for those of us whom poverty sought to entrap. Antoine Nériscat thought deep down that all those who were poor were only like that because they were unable to manage the range of tricks and schemes that were actually within reach. Or because they had got bogged down in those useless, endless considerations, justice and injustice, the master and the slave, as if they imagined that these things could have any weight in the reality of the world.

I tell him in a few words about our anxiety. We call Madame Jacques immediately. We are told that Paulo returned from Martissant more silent than he was when he left. We try our luck with the mysterious phone number and we get a police officer. Uncle Antoine knows that he has to make up a pretext on the spot. I can feel the ceiling sinking down until it crushes me. My heart will no longer stay in my chest. Uncle Antoine hangs up, frowning. Uncle Antoine doesn’t like what has just happened. He must be scared. But in his eyes I can also see a great anger. And so Uncle Antoine, not knowing which to choose, his fear or his anger, finally launches into a diatribe against Fignolé’s morals, his idleness, his foolishness and goodness knows what else. I sense that Uncle Antoine is on the verge of passing out. He is drooling and his lips are trembling. I tell him I have not come to see him this afternoon to talk about Fignolé but to find him. He shows me the door and leaves me with a remark, like throwing a bone to a dog: ‘I’ll have a word with my political contacts and keep you informed. Give my love to your mother and hurry home.’

Far from being solved, the mystery of my brother Fignolé is growing deeper.