My mother was convinced that the hospital did not really know how to cure people. Every evening she applied a yellow cream with a rancid taste to my still-sensitive lips and gently massaged my sides with a thick oil. She placed her outspread hands at the base of my ribs, it was like an angel’s wings being laid on my stomach, she would close her eyes and if I remained still I could feel the blood pulsing in her veins. Her hands had something mysterious about them. She knew how to find herbs, and leaves, she knew their language: touched by her fingers, every plant found its destined purpose: healing, protecting, soothing, sometimes killing. At Mapou people would come to her with a pain or a wound and in a whisper she would give them the name of a plant with some instructions. Then, if it worked, a few days later we would find a fruit, a vegetable, a handful of rice or some sugar, outside our door.
My mother never spoke to me about plants, but I know she passed on a little of her knowledge to my son. It has always amused me to see him, someone whose work is in a world of technology, meticulously tending his garden and among the bookcases filled with science fiction novels and computer manuals at his house there is a shelf devoted to herbal medicine and botany. When I spend the weekend with him at his home, where one can hear the gushing stream lower down the hillside, I know my mother lives on in him a little: I see him opening and closing his jars of dried herbs, I watch him weighing out and mixing together unknown roots, purchased at great expense, and when he prepares a delicious infusion for us to drink on the terrace in the evening, and I compliment him on the drink, he does not reply that it is one of my mother’s recipes, instead he says to me in a disarming way: this is Grandmother.
After my return home at the start of 1945 few things had changed outwardly. The forest surrounded us, sometimes it felt to me like a belt drawn so tight that it was suffocating my family, sometimes it protected me like a shield. My father would come home in the evening and we kept as far away from him as possible. There was no doubt that one day he would start hammering his hand down again upon my mother, upon me, it was simply a matter of time.
But since my return from the hospital I was no longer afraid, or more precisely, I now knew that there was something more to life than my father’s rage. Following our arrival at Beau-Bassin a great part of my existence and my energy had revolved around that violence. Now I knew there were other things that mattered more.
After school I would run without stopping until the rush of air into my mouth grated on my parched throat. I would return to my hiding place in front of the prison barbed wire and wait for David. During the three weeks following my release he did not appear. Other prisoners, yes. Always at the same time of day when the sun was in their eyes, its rays slanting at an angle, soon to disappear behind the hill where I lurked. I would remain there until the second bell rang, the one that sent them back to their living quarters. Occasionally I would recognize one of the patients from the hospital, which made me glad, and, naive child that I was, I would wave my hand, knowing they could not see me but, how can I put it? I followed the dictates of my heart.
I was too little to understand what was unfolding in front of my eyes, but the mixture of nervousness and curiosity that had initially drawn me there, hoping to see rObbers, bAd mEn, and rUnaways, had disappeared. Now that I knew who was hidden there within the darkness of the pathways, knew the walls that towered around them, had heard the sound of the grass beneath their feet, heard their singing in the evening, I viewed them with great sadness and went on waiting for my friend. If David did not come out to exercise it was because he was still in the hospital.
During those long weeks I did not abandon hope. I persisted seriously, methodically. When I came home from the prison I would be sweating, my clothes covered in twigs, leaves, and mud. My mother would be waiting for me in silence, she never asked me for an explanation of these escapades after school. I had returned safe and sound, I was back before my father, that was what mattered to her. She took my clothes, aired them, beat them with a kind of flat wooden spoon, and in the morning I would find them almost clean; in those days I wore the same clothes for a week at a time. In the evening, after supper, I used to stay out of doors, watching nature as much as it seemed to be watching me. We very rarely notice changes within ourselves at the time, we perceive them later, in the light of events and our reactions to them, but, sitting there as I did, motionless in the dark, I sensed it, a change in myself, I felt as if I were getting bigger, growing, like the trees around me, and it seemed to me that the exhalation of the green, dark forest had something to do with it. I was still puny, my clothes fluttered loosely about me, my mother could still close her hand around my calf, but there was this new hope within me, the promise of less lonely a life, the bond that had formed between David and me.
I am sure that if I had had to wait countless weeks before seeing David again it would not have been a problem for me. I was one of those children who learn early in life that nothing comes easily, quickly, and without effort. When I went to ground in my hiding places and my feet grew numb I did not get up, I did not shake myself, I stayed put, motionless, and only that way could I forget everything.
So this is what my life came down to for many days in a row: waiting for the end of lessons, slipping out of the classroom, running strenuously, without flagging. Stones, thickets, branches, earth, the darkness of the forest, all these were nothing to me compared with my goal. Sometimes, as I slithered in under the bushes, alongside the barbed wire fence, my body flat upon the leaves, I would have a blackout, my body suddenly heavy. But I was prepared for this. In a screw of paper I kept a few spoonfuls of cocoa, which I used to filch during the break at school. I also kept the dried fruit from the afternoon snack that the school gave us and with all this I calmed my shaking and the little black spots gathering before my eyes gradually vanished. I stayed there until the last of the prisoners disappeared and my father left his post beside the gate and went back into the shade of the mango tree, until the policemen returned inside the house with the bougainvillea and the picture became unmoving, neat and tidy once more. Then I went home, hardly disappointed, hardly at all. But with the emptiness there was in my little life, as a boy with no brothers, no toys, no laughter, no freedom from care, I was all the more determined to see David again and I would wait for the next day.
Several times during this period, my father advanced on us with great strides, flinging out his hands and feet and all that I have related before began again, like a stage play he performed to perfection. Since my stay in the hospital, however, my father now had a new weapon: a bamboo cane that could inflict pain, lacerate, and burn, but could not crack ribs, break arms and noses, or split open lips. This new cane, thicker and greener than before, reminded me of Mapou and the one, all ribs and knots, with a fine tip, which he had left behind in our house made of cow pies and straw, and, curiously enough, I found this memory comforting. I can picture myself going up to it, feeling the weight of it, peering inside it, into the stem, disappointed not to see light at the other end, and putting it back in its place against the wall with a feeling of nostalgia coming over me. Perhaps because back there at Mapou there were more of us, I had two brothers to protect me and my father had friends and his pride, perhaps back there he was not quite so bad… On days after the nights when he beat us I would stay at home, incapable of moving, my limbs throbbing with pain, the shouting still present in my head. My mother would vanish into the forest and return an hour later, carrying in her hands the herbs, roots, and leaves she had picked. On such days the battle was won by my father, his rage, and his violence, once more he occupied all the space in my life and all my newfound strength and proud resolution ebbed away.
Several weeks had passed. As I have said, I was not counting the days, I was not impatient, I had not given myself a date beyond which I would no longer go to the prison. At the start of 1945 it was very hot. All around our house the grass had dried and turned brown. Our well was drying up more and more and we had to lower the bucket down deeply to draw water. In the morning you could already feel the shimmering of the heat all around. At night the insects flitted about for a long time, maddened by the temperature, and if you cocked an ear the burnt grass sometimes crackled under the footfalls of a rodent, a feral cat, a stray dog. The forest had lost some of its green brilliance and its density, it seemed to be drawing back from our house, exposing us more and more to the immensity of the sky and the sun’s fiery swords.
On the day when I finally saw David again the spry, colorful flowers, the thick, green lawn, the mango tree with its shade and dense foliage, the hungry, fast-growing bougainvillea, all were as if stricken by a blistering flash of lightning and the result was a prospect now much reduced, shriveled, petrified. My own bush was no longer the same and I had to resort to dry branches, twigs, and leaves to camouflage myself. The bell rang and, as always, my heart began to beat a little faster. David was the first to appear and this gave me a shock, I’d always come prepared to search for him, to track him down, as it were. The others appeared slowly and then for the most part did not stir. David walked the length of the house with the bougainvillea, he leaned against its wooden wall and stared toward me. A few feet away from him a policeman kept removing his cap to mop his head with a handkerchief. I emerged from my hiding place and crawled right up to the barbed wire, staying as close to the ground as possible. David was looking toward the place where he had sat down and wept, where he had smiled at me with that smile of his, that way he had of turning up one side of his mouth, which I had often sought to imitate, though with no other result than a twisted grimace. Watch, crawl, wait, pray. I prayed that the policeman would go away so that I could stand up, make a signal, wave my shirt, my canvas bag, tell him I’m here, I’ve always been here, won’t leave you in this prison, heavens above, just a few seconds, that was all I needed.
But the policeman remained close to David, they even exchanged a few words and the second bell rang out. David stepped away from the wall and moved into the shadows, followed by all the others. I was nine years old and the patience I had shown during those long weeks suddenly vanished. I held myself back from giving voice to the immense vexation I felt, I struck the ground with both my fists and grabbed hold of the barbed wire in a rage I had hitherto rarely known. My eyes were flooded with tears and the prison was no longer more than a blurred picture. Clenching my teeth, I plunged the palms of my hands into the metal coils, pain mingling with my anger, I shook the barrier with all my strength and with a dull sound something was suddenly uprooted like a rotten plant. A part of the barbed wire fence came out of the ground. It vibrated.
If I had been struck by lightning it would have been no different. Everything stopped in me, the rage blinding me, the fury in my hands and feet, the flowing tears. I had become a dried-out bamboo. I slipped into my hiding place. I waited, with fear in the pit of my stomach, but nobody came. I got up and walked home. Today, just as I remember David’s golden curls, I can also remember the smell of rust and blood on my hands. In the forest on the way home I would sniff at my palms, as if they were a drug, and at each intake of breath I was infused with a surge of serenity and hope.