A Surge of Memories
That day of farewell was no longer like the other days, when we could give free rein to our outbursts of laughter. In front of me was a mere shadow of a woman. Yet her face was lit by a kind of glow, and she didn’t need to speak—we communicated otherwise. It was for that reason I watched her, imagining to myself the turmoil of her thoughts. This same story she was telling me: she had no idea that one day I’d write it down in my notebook.
Gaston’s Arrest
In her confusion of thoughts, Christiane for sure began by remembering the arrest of Gaston Okemba, and then the following day, when the Negro Grandsons had returned late at night to administer their “correction,” as the local expression went. In Batalébé everyone was familiar with this episode in her life. It all went back to the first punitive acts by the Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix: Christiane and Gaston were among the first to suffer the consequences of events that were taking place in Mapapouville, our political capital.
At the time it happened, she had refrained from telling me. It wasn’t out of embarrassment. She had worried about making me distrustful, about putting me in a state of permanent suspicion. Later she’d realized that, like the other inhabitants, I must have heard rumors—all the rumors going around the district. So at that point she’d wanted to establish the truth, tell me her own version of events, even if it meant making me anxious. I didn’t see her till a week after the “visit” by the Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix. She was curled up in her bedroom, no longer opening the door to anyone. In a flat voice she told me that the Negro Grandsons had turned up outside their house in the middle of the night. A light rain was pattering on the metal roof, and the wind blew in intermittent but strong gusts over Batalébé. One jeep pulled up by the front yard, another a little farther off, both with their lights out. Men carrying flashlights and armed with pistols and shotguns kicked in the front door. At first Christiane and Gaston were so shocked they thought it was a nightmare. The men who had broken into their home all wore balaclavas, and at no point did any one of them utter a single word. They communicated through gestures, training their guns on the couple. Christiane and Gaston knew that a single cry from either of them would have been enough to prompt a gunshot. So above all they had to stay calm. They had to let their “visitors” do what they were going to do, and try to understand why. It wasn’t easy. Aggression showed in every movement these men made. Underneath their masks, Christiane could tell they were inflamed with hatred and rage.
There were more than half a dozen Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix inside the house. One of them, seemingly their commanding officer, nodded to the couple to move apart. Gaston begged Christiane to do what she was told; it was all a big mistake that he would clear up with them. The officer, incensed, pressed the barrel of his gun against Gaston’s forehead. There hadn’t been any mistake, and he would have to go with them, or they’d carry him out feet first. Christiane was beside herself.
“Who do you think you are? This is our home. Get out!”
“Right, this is your home,” the officer said sarcastically, throwing his mask to the ground in a nervous impulse.
His circumflex-shaped mustache twitched in anger. The slap he gave Christiane sent her staggering to the other side of the bamboo bed. As she crumpled to the ground, she knocked over a little stand with three shelves on which she kept her toiletries and a few knickknacks. The clatter of the breaking objects drew the attention of another masked man, more single-minded than the first, who burst into the bedroom. He pushed his associates aside. He wanted to get the job done quickly. Without a word he raised his submachine gun high in the air and smashed the butt down on Gaston’s head. Gaston instantly slumped to the floor, unconscious.
During this time, other men who were posted by the door, aided outside by moving shapes whose presence could barely be made out, had formed a line and were removing the furniture from the house and carrying it toward the two vehicles. In no time at all the Formica-topped table, the carved chairs, the meat safe, the kitchen dresser, the radio, the black-and-white TV set, the tape player, the big hanging mirror by the window—all had disappeared. The living room was emptied out. The rats and the cockroaches, whose presence had been legitimized by these objects, made a rush for the kitchen.
Christiane was shouting herself hoarse, calling in vain for help. The rain was now pouring down. Gaston, his head covered in blood, was dragged across the floor as far as the living room, limp and still out cold. Two men tried to pick him up. The stronger of the two told the other man to step aside and let him handle it. He grabbed the northerner by the belt and, with a sudden jerk, hoisted him in the air. Gaston landed on the shoulders of the masked giant, who lugged him outside. In desperation Christiane sprang out of the bedroom like a wounded big cat and pushed one of the Negro Grandsons against the wall. She tore his face with her nails. She received another slap from the officer; the house seemed to spin, and the men were now no more than blurry images. The officer accused her of being a traitor and promised that other Negro Grandsons would deal with her in the coming hours, that she would regret bringing her “northern scum” to the district of Batalébé.
The two vehicles roared off, their lights still out, their wheels splashing through the mud. Christiane got to her feet and for a long time walked around outside in hopes of finding help. She would have had to run for half an hour at least. The jeeps were already rumbling through the Mampembé Cemetery, heading for the highway that led out of the district. Lightning struck the top of the highest tree in the vicinity; then there was a crash of thunder. Helpless, Christiane sprawled in the mud and yielded to the hypocritical rain as it beat down on her.
The Correction
Five Negro Grandsons had come back to “correct” her. Christiane had not moved from her house. She’d left the disorder from the previous night as it was. She recognized the officer by his short stature and his drooping mustache. How could she have slept the night they took Gaston away? She couldn’t get the images of the men beating him out of her mind. She remembered that after the Negro Grandsons had left with her husband she had felt vanquished; she’d run out into the rain and sprawled on the ground. She’d lacked the strength to get back up, or even to call for help. Crawling back to the house, she’d bumped up against the boards of the broken door that she was no longer able to close. She’d also noticed boot prints, and Gaston’s blood on the front of the house. The shadows of “those men” seemed to be everywhere. But she wanted to confront them, so she sat down on the living room floor. She put her legs together, rested her chin on her knees, and closed her eyes till morning. In her weakened condition, she’d seen the sun rise in a state of confusion then set slowly, like a boa that had been deceived by the large size of its prey and was now reduced to a few convulsive movements.
On the morning after the abduction of her husband, she hadn’t heard a single sound around her. The day had come and gone as if nothing had happened. The few birds to be seen—crows—flew low over the roof of the house or perched in the tops of the mango trees in the neighborhood. For Christiane these were clear omens: these birds, in the traditions of the south of Vietongo, symbolize mourning, misfortune. With their rasping voices they broadcast bad news. On that day no one crossed the river. In this way the entire district had consigned Christiane to complete isolation. Where could she have gone to complain without making those she spoke to burst out laughing? Since the events in Mapapouville, we no longer had any representative of public authority left in the district, or for that matter anywhere else in the South.
The Negro Grandsons had come back the following evening to administer a “correction.” The threats of the previous day had not intimidated her in any way. Quite the opposite, she’d begged to be taken to where they were holding her husband.
The Negro Grandsons found Christiane there, sitting in the living room, in the same position as when they’d left the day before. She had the feeling that her blood had stopped circulating, that her heart had slowed. She felt sharp pains in her joints, and her feet were numb.
After Christiane’s “correction” by the Negro Grandsons, I began to ask myself questions about the future of my marriage with Kimbembé. I imagined myself in my friend’s place, faced with these men who had decided to pursue their objectives to the very end. Their actions were of such barbarity that even in this notebook I’ve had to erase several passages. Christiane would never once have considered letting someone abuse her body in such a way. On that night she shook with hatred, rage, and frustration. Her body belonged to a pack of stinking hyenas. She saw the mustache of the commanding officer coming close to her face to kiss her greedily. His breath was rancid; he must have been chewing moldy tobacco, garlic, leeks, cola nuts. His coated tongue passed over her lips, and Christiane felt as if an icy centipede were probing her mouth. She wanted to bite this flesh that lay motionless against her palate, but her strength had long ago abandoned her. The man defiled her, repeating the word traitor right up till the moment he let out an animalistic groan of climax, then got up, unburdened now and cheerful, his khaki pants around his ankles. He gave the order to another man, then another again, to repeat the same task.
Falling Apart
Since that wretched day—that day of degradation—Christiane completely ceased to feel herself a woman. She resolved to abandon anything that recalled her physical beauty or gave men the idea of chasing around after her. From that moment on, the men of the district disgusted her. She was convinced that the face of each of them could be that of the officer, whose features she had not been fully able to make out, and who had held on to her, panting like a rutting stag. Any short-statured man she saw revolted her. Her whole body would start trembling. At the sight of such a stranger, a man in the street, she felt the need to vomit, though she would get a grip on herself in time. She was no longer any more than filth—she who had once been tall and graceful, with her brown skin and the small of her back that gave rise to the boldest conversations in Batalébé. Most, if not all, of the men in the district had at least once fantasized about having her in their bed. Christiane was an upright and faithful woman. Faithful to her husband, faithful to their love. It was appalling to see how a human being could fall apart in the space of a few months, then totally collapse. She took it out on herself, on the body that had betrayed her by receiving the sticky sap of the little man with the mustache, the commanding officer, then that of the other Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix. She had to erase the stigma of these blemishes on her skin. To no longer be the same debased woman—that was her intent. She had thought about washing herself for an entire day in the Léfini. That would not have sufficed. What she wanted was a visible transformation. So she shaved her head, cutting off her beautiful silky black hair. Her eyebrows too. She kept pressing her nose with her thumb to make it flatter. She let the dirt harden under her fingernails, which she stopped trimming. She barely ate anything and grew thinner by the day, as if she were already in mourning for her husband, because in Batalébé a widow has to withdraw herself from the community. According to the customs of the South, after her husband dies a wife is expected to stop paying any attention to her grooming. This means no longer brushing her teeth, looking at herself in the mirror, washing with soap, combing her hair, wearing sandals or earrings. With her odor she should repel anyone who draws near, especially men.
And so Christiane went barefoot, eyes lowered and turning away; she wore tattered black or crimson clothes that trailed in the red dust of her yard. Some widows still lead such an existence in the district. Their beauty withers in less than a week, like a fruit rotting prematurely. In fact, Christiane must have thought of her own mother, who lived like that following the death of her spouse.
After Gaston’s abduction, Christiane had resolved to live an austere life. In her mind, Gaston was no longer of this world. Vercingetorix’s men said that she’d gone mad and that no one had arrested her northerner husband. He’d fled of his own accord, they claimed, in the night, so as to join the camp of the victors in Mapapouville. The Negro Grandsons lectured the local inhabitants: harboring a northerner would rebound on you in the end; you ran the risk of being betrayed one day. Especially because Gaston had worked at the Moukoukoulou Dam, an important strategic point in the region.
The Infertile Woman
Neither the fetid smell in her house nor the fact that she looked like a madwoman would have put me off going to see her. She remained my friend, my best friend, if not the only one I had in the district. We’d known each other since my arrival in Batalébé. Not because her husband was from the same region as me, but because I felt I could trust her. It was even more than friendship, in that land where I was somewhat isolated. We would braid each other’s hair once a month—back then Kimbembé had no objection to my spending time with her. Sometimes we would buy identical wrap dresses, earrings, or necklaces and head over to the big market in Batalébé, where we’d met for the first time. Deep inside me I cherish the image from those days of Christiane’s hand stroking my braids and touching Maribé’s cheek.
I admit, and still regret, that I was reluctant to take Maribé with me when I went to her house. Yet I had a reason that might have served as justification. The times I went to see her with my daughter, Christiane kept staring at her. I imagined what was going through her mind: she was sorrowful at not having been able to bring a child into the world. Not having experienced the happiness of being a mother. Her infertility grieved her. Her mother had made her drink the bitterest concoctions, whose virtues had been known since the beginning of the world, but to no avail. Christiane had tried everything. She and Gaston had consulted the most renowned healers in Batalébé and even throughout the South. Nothing could be done. The spirits had turned her ovaries upside down and knotted them seventy-seven times, concluded these men who possessed the power to stop the rain, to make it fall in the middle of the dry season, or to question a dead person in his coffin until he gave his mourners the address of the man or woman who had been the cause of his death.
Patient Gaston consoled her in her moments of bitterness. The failure did not originate with him—that much had been established by the most trustworthy doctors of the Adolphe-Cissé Hospital in Pointe-Rouge. For all that, he wasn’t tempted to go elsewhere. Quite the opposite, he grew closer to Christiane, but that didn’t help to ease his wife’s distress. She believed that a love so intense ought to be rewarded with the arrival of a little angel. She held it against herself when she saw a woman carrying a baby on her back, or a pregnant woman. She struck her belly, insulted it. Each month she cried at the first drops of her period. She railed against the natural cycle that reminded her she would never know the three dry trimesters during which a little being is made in the intimacy of the umbilical cord and the amniotic fluid. For her, the worst part was that when Gaston seemed quiet and distant, she imagined it was because of her childlessness. She didn’t dare ask him about it. She knew Gaston didn’t like to make a big deal of it. She would leave the house and walk alone by the Léfini, tears in her eyes.