The Flow of Memories Interrupted
She was sweating. The sound of pigs walking upstream along the river cut into her journey into the past. She half opened her eyes. I was there, in front of her, saying nothing.
“What are you doing here?”
I didn’t answer.
“Haven’t you gone already?” she continued, rubbing her eyes. “I’m sorry, I’ve never stopped thinking about that Sunday when I told you my life story. So you’ve decided to leave Batalébé, that’s it?”
I nodded.
“Back then, when I spoke to you about my life, about Pointe-Rouge, everything was so wonderful!”
“Yes,” I agreed, clapping my hands together to kill an insect that was buzzing around her head.
“It’s such a pity you never knew Pointe-Rouge. But I know you’ll make it there, maybe you’ll even live there.”
The effort of memory had left furrows on her forehead. She brought the photograph close to her face and gave the faintest of smiles.
“You must go home now, Hortense. You’ve taken a risk in coming here this time. You could have left the district without seeing me, I wouldn’t have held it against you. Go now . . .”
She leaned back against the wall, without letting go of the photograph. Her eyelids grew heavy again, then closed. This string of memories must have been overwhelming for her.
Yes, it was our last meeting, our day of farewell. Perhaps everything was jumbled in her mind. She was certain that I knew her life from beginning to end. I was virtually its guardian. I would have liked for us to talk for a long time, but a silence was parting us. I had let her slip away, follow the twists and turns of her recollections. We seemed to be communicating through our thoughts.
Final Return to Memories
I was no longer going to delay leaving her. On her face, with its closed eyes, I’d seen a sort of relief, a kind of serenity. But I sensed she would reread another few pages of her past, especially her appointment to Batalébé, which had come right after the death of her mother, when Gaston had set foot in Christiane’s region for only the third time. The first had been to introduce her friend to her mother. The two women had talked aside for a moment, the mother wanting to know more about the man who was to become her son-in-law. The second time was to announce the marriage, which was going to take place six months later in Pointe-Rouge, where they tied the knot among a small circle of friends and coworkers. Gaston’s family had been there. Christiane’s mother had not made the trip, despite the urging of the future couple. She had, wrongly, been wary of the city, about which she’d heard so many bad things that she was convinced she’d be attacked by bandits on her way there. Plus, when she imagined the long journey all the way to Pointe-Rouge, she was reinforced in her decision not to leave Batalébé for anything in the world. Indeed, she would have had to cross the South in a truck overloaded with goods and passengers. Each run was fraught with danger. The bridges usually unnerved those traveling for the first time, whenever they arrived at a river. These bridges, which had been constructed by hand by the local population, all resembled one another: two large tree trunks joining the two banks of the river. The trucks had to keep their tires on them as they crossed. The driver’s aide would ask if anyone wished to get out and cross to the other side on foot using one of the trunks, arms spread like a tightrope walker on a rope. Dizziness was a constant possibility. But no one chose to leave the vehicle, for fear of losing their seat once they’d crossed the river. This meant that the truck was even heavier, more prone to tragedy. The only ones who got down were the intrepid folks perched on the covered top of the truck. As for the drivers, they were used to this perilous exercise. They operated the steering wheel nimbly, and once they felt the vehicle’s center of gravity on the bridge, they stepped on the gas. One false move and the travelers would all end up at the bottom of the river. That had happened several times in the region. When it did, people said that the spirits of the river, the Mami Wata, had called for a sacrifice for the purpose of regulating the waters, to avoid an unprecedented flood in the region.
The Funeral of Mother Kengué
The third time Gaston had come to Batalébé was for the funeral of his mother-in-law, who had died of malaria in the middle of the night, in the same remote house that Christiane would inherit and in which they were going to live.
How could she fail to recall her mother’s funeral? All of Batalébé had been there, except for the district chief, who had delegated one of his deputies. Gaston and his family formed a group apart. Not knowing anyone, they found it hard to understand this world, which expressed itself in the multiple languages of the South. Word had quickly gotten around that Gaston was the husband of Christiane and that he was from the North. Many people came to greet him. Others eyed him from a distance without hiding their curiosity. Gaston kept his eyes glued on his wife, who was surrounded by the elderly women of the district, many of whom had been childhood friends of the deceased. Christiane wore a black scarf that covered her face. From time to time one of the old ladies brought her water or coffee to drink, but the rites of her tribe called on her to avoid eating in public and to stay away from her husband. The wake lasted three days and three nights. On the day of the interment, to the general satisfaction, the sky donned its most somber vestments, thunder sounded, and it rained profusely: that is how the dead of Batalébé take their leave from those who remain here below. The rain is said to wash away the bad things they have done without meaning to, so the gates of Eternity will open for them.
The district accompanied the body all the way to its final resting place in the Mampembé Cemetery, a few hundred yards from the deceased’s house. The elderly women remained three more days to stand vigil over the grave, then went their own ways, folding away their bedrolls. Madame Kengué now lay by her husband, close to their home and to Christiane.
Léopold Mpassi-Mpassi did not get in touch.
Return to the Fold
After her mother’s funeral, Christiane finally received her posting to Batalébé. She was appointed to a post office that had just been created by the Postal and Telecommunications Ministry as part of the national campaign to “open up the back country.” At this time every district was given a post office, often built of planks, with a used vehicle that had to be pushed by passersby whenever it got stuck in the mud.
At first Christiane had come to Batalébé alone. She seemed a little disoriented, but she wanted to live close to her mother’s grave, and that of her father, who, it seems, had been taken by the same illness as that which had ended her mother’s life. The latter hadn’t had the chance to get to know Gaston better. All she knew was that he was from far away. From the North. That had been enough to put her on her guard. She felt duty bound to warn her daughter about the dangers of such a union. She took her aside on the first day Christiane had introduced the northerner. Madame Kengué spoke to her daughter, looking her straight in the eye to make sure she’d thought hard before choosing a man who came from more than six hundred miles from their district and who did not understand most of the languages of the South. Christiane burst out laughing and did not answer her mother.
The second question only came later. Simply because the mother was afraid of her daughter’s reaction. Madame Kengué took the plunge: “Tell me the truth: he beats you, this northerner . . .”
Like everyone in Batalébé, she was convinced that northerners were nothing but barbarians, brutes, jealous creatures who spent their time beating their wives like dusty carpets.
Christiane replied calmly: “Gaston has never so much as slapped me. I, on the other hand, gave him a slap one time, and I regret it . . .”
“What? And he didn’t do anything to you afterwards?”
“No.”
Madame Kengué was speechless with incredulity.
Christiane gazed at her fixedly and added: “That man wouldn’t hurt a fly . . .”
That day Madame Kengué put her arms around Gaston as if he’d been her own child. She had just understood that from this point on her daughter was the only person who mattered to her. She no longer thought of Léopold Mpassi-Mpassi, the ungrateful son who looked very much like her late husband. He had the same features. Léopold Mpassi-Mpassi had been a strange child who was always staring at the horizon, as if he were plotting within himself the route he would take when the wings of Liberty grew on his back. He rarely opened his mouth, and until he was five years old, they’d thought he would not speak. In fact he heard all words, all sounds. Then one day, to everyone’s surprise, he’d opened his mouth. First to repeat the word “No!” several times and refuse to eat. Then to let out a series of hysterical howls, after which he beat his chest like a gorilla. The abuse he spouted exasperated his parents, and the hidings he received did not deter him from such behavior. He had directed an inexplicable hatred against his sister from the moment she was born. Léopold Mpassi-Mpassi could not comprehend the arrival of this tiny being that was dependent on their mother’s breasts and that enjoyed the attention, all the attention, of their parents. He was caught over and over spitting on his little sister or trying to smother her. After that the mother or the father always made sure to be close by. The brother and sister had grown up like this, in an atmosphere of conflict that the father had in his lifetime been unable to dispel.
A Rock in Place of a Heart
Léopold Mpassi-Mpassi was so resilient that his schoolteachers said it was useless to cane him in class for a bad grade—you never heard him cry like his classmates, who would be sobbing before the cane even struck their calves. This trait got worse as he grew older. A withdrawn, secretive boy, he gave his mother a headache by spiriting away her savings, even though she kept them hidden in her locked bedroom. When his mother spoke to him, the boy got mad, threw rocks at her, and then went to sleep in the market square with the stray dogs of the district. Then Madame Kengué, who by that time was already a widow, threw in the towel; the teenager became even tougher in character and grew ever nastier. He was from a different world. Perhaps she told herself that life had not been easy on her. She seemed to spend her life atoning for sins she hadn’t committed. Fate had taken away her husband and left her with two children of twelve and five. In the middle of his teenage years, the son with the nasty disposition had slipped out of the district and set off in a truck for Mapapouville in search of adventure. She had cried, but she ran out of tears because her son never came back home again. She loved him, that son of hers, despite his abominable behavior. She virtually wore mourning for him, up to the moment when she learned he’d been terrorizing the elderly in the Bleu-Blanc-Rouge neighborhood. Léopold Mpassi-Mpassi had descended into delinquency. At the head of some gang of young hooligans or other, he plagued the poorly lit quarters of Mapapouville. Madame Kengué only breathed easier when the young man went to France: people said only good things about that country. France would temper the young rebel’s activities. He couldn’t have continued his bad-boy behavior in that land of snow. From France his mother received a letter, or rather a scrap of paper. It was the only document that linked her to her son. “I’m never coming back,” Léopold Mpassi-Mpassi had written. He was living in the twelfth arrondissement, on the rue du Congo. That was it; there were no other details.
After the death of her mother, the letter came into Christiane’s possession; she too had reread it from time to time, when the image of the vagabond of Mapapouville haunted her thoughts. She would imagine her brother on the street that bore the name of a country in this continent: rue du Congo. The piece of paper had faded. A long time ago, Madame Kengué used to unfold it, study her son’s hesitant yet vigorous handwriting. If it hadn’t been for the stamp saying “République Française,” she wouldn’t have believed her son really lived in France, with an address like that. She’d often predicted she would die without seeing again that neglectful son, who could not be bothered to make the journey even when he received the news. He had a rock in place of a heart; no doctor could have operated on him to give him a real heart, a human heart.
She had not been mistaken.
Gaston Arrives in Batalébé
Gaston rejoined his wife in Batalébé two months after she herself had settled in. He’d been transferred to a local branch of the National Office of Public Works that covered the districts of Batalébé, Komono, Ndounga, and Tsiaki. He traveled constantly among these places. His office was located between Batalébé and Komono. In fact, he and his colleagues were responsible for overseeing the famous Moukoukoulou Dam, one of the last gifts of China to the Vietongolese people: a token of friendship between nations that advocated “government of the people, by the people, for the people and the people alone.” The dam was strategically important in the country. It provided drinking water, produced energy for a good part of Vietongo and also for neighboring countries. On top of which, it irrigated farms throughout the South.
Christiane gradually got used to the public works jargon that at the beginning Gaston would parrot as he sought to practice on her. In his frequent flights of technical speech, at the table, even on Sundays, he would speak in minute detail of the different kinds of dams, as if he’d attended Bridges and Roads—a school, he said, that was respected by the Whites themselves, and that kept cropping up in his talk ever since he’d taken his new position. He would elucidate, for example, that a rock-fill dam was a structure made of loose rocks and that its stability depended entirely on the watertightness of the upstream face. That had to be understood. He would add that a gravity dam usually had a triangular shape and resisted the current by its weight alone. Here too, he himself was figuring out the things he was saying. All of this to explain to Christiane that the huge structure of Moukoukoulou was rather an arch dam. A triumph of engineering, the concrete barrage directed the pressure of the water onto the banks by its arched form, and it had a convex curvature facing upstream.
Christiane had been intrigued, and one day she paid a visit. The whole thing looked like a flying saucer that had fallen in the middle of the river and was holding back the water to the level of the trees on the banks. Gaston was pleased by her visit. He spent hours elaborating the details of the dam and telling her legends that he’d heard along the Moukoukoulou River since he’d taken up his post.
The Inherited House
The couple restored the Batalébé house that Christiane had just inherited from her mother. The straw roof was replaced by aluminum sheeting. Christiane had especially wanted to put her Singer sewing machine near the window that she opened in the morning. The daylight entered the house and lit up the symbol of their love. Without that Singer, which of the two of them would have made the first move?
The house in Batalébé came back to life, with a little garden in back and the end of the plot marked by the mango trees that blossomed in September. Their home was far from the center, and it was rare that anyone ventured near. Christiane would go into town, especially on market days.
The district chief, a bald, potbellied little man in glasses with a nasal voice, paid the couple a visit one day. He offered his apologies for not having been present at the funeral. He was sorry about Madame Kengué, who had joined her husband in the cemetery.
“They were decent people who loved the district and who embodied its deepest values. Life is so blind that it usually only cuts down those who still have some ideal to transmit; let me assure you, your parents-in-law were of that stamp.”
Always that pompous official tone, thought Christiane.
The chief claimed to be glad that a compatriot from the North had chosen to settle in a small place in the South.
“Naturally, reasons of the heart often prevail in one’s decisions, whatever they may be,” he had proclaimed when he had gotten up and, in the company of his two bodyguards, headed for the black Peugeot 405 waiting for him out front.
“Remember that I’ll always be here. Don’t hesitate to get in touch whenever you wish. It would be a pleasure.”
At that point Kimbembé and I were just leaving the Oweto district in the North for Batalébé. It was also the first time I had set foot in the South of Vietongo, far from my native region. Maribé had been in my belly for four months.
The Reminiscences Come to an End A Farewell Gift
I was now sure that Christiane’s journey into the past had come to an end. She opened her eyes. I was afraid she would ask me the same questions as she had each time she came back to reality. I sat there, still not saying anything.
At no point had Christiane let go of the photograph, which she was still holding tight to her chest. She looked me in the eye, perhaps waiting for me to ask her what she had been thinking about in the sort of dead time during which we could hear the wingbeat of the flies.
She was fully aware that I had figured everything out. It had been enough for me to see the sweat trickling down her forehead to let me imagine her inner dialogue. Moments of joy made her nostrils flare. Surprise made her perk up her ears. Frustration caused her mouth to contract. Reflection made her lift her chin. I had been noting these details attentively. That was how I’d been able to accompany her as a discreet witness during the ups and downs of her reverie.
Christiane seemed worn out, defenseless, out of breath, her top soaked with perspiration. The question I had been dreading came out of her mouth at the moment I least expected it:
“Have you not gone home yet?”
“No,” I replied. “What are our chances of getting away from the Negro Grandsons?”
In the face of her silence and her barely open eyes, I took the last nuts from the bowl and ate them without appetite.
Night had fallen on Batalébé. Yet it was hard for me to leave her. She reminded me that it was the last time we’d see each other.
“I don’t think so,” I said unconvincingly.
“You know it, things like that can be felt. It would be easier for two of Vietongo’s mountains to meet each other than for the two of us, except in the next world. But I’ll be there before you,” she concluded, looking toward the cemetery where her parents were at rest.
A silence followed her words. I was still sitting. Out of habit I let her take the lead in permitting me to go. She pointed out again that my daughter was at home and that I ought to hurry back to take care of her.
She asked me to get up. She put the photo on the little table and lit a hurricane lamp whose glass was dirtied with smoke. A flickering light encircled our two faces, while the rest of the house was plunged in shadow.
“You have to leave now; your daughter’s waiting for you, and tomorrow is a big day for the two of you. All I can do is wish you both luck. Walk on, don’t give in to despondency or fear. Remember to take a radio, that’s important. I’ll never forget you, Hortense. You’re more than a friend to me. Take good care of your daughter.”
She put her arms around me.
Our embrace went on and on. Neither of us wanted it to end. She was sobbing, and I couldn’t help doing so too.
She pulled away from me, turned around, and scratched her head, thinking hard about something. Finally making up her mind, she moved back to the rickety table, returned with the photograph, and kissed me. She showed me the picture again. Did she wish me to look at it one last time so as to fix her existence forever in my memory? She held it out toward me like a trophy. I didn’t understand what she wanted of me.
“Keep it with you. That way we’ll always be by your side.”
“No, Christiane, it’s the only photo you have of the two of you . . .”
“Do it for me, Hortense. Take the picture with you when you leave. Go on, have it, here.”
A last glance at the image that was now in my hands: the couple seemed to be sadder. Even Gaston’s smile appeared to have faded. I no longer recognized the faces. Maybe in the morning, with the sunrise, the brightness of their life would break the glass protecting them, I said to myself. Then I’d see Gaston smile again, see Christiane with her affected yet touching expression. All of that I’d see only by the light of day, or probably never. We were about to slip away from the district.
Parting
As I left Christiane I was thinking only of the name of the village stuck in my head: Louboulou. I turned the photograph over and found a folded scrap of paper wedged in the corner of the frame. I took it out carefully and read aloud in a low voice:
I’m never coming back
Rue du Congo, 75012 Paris
Léo . . .
It was the curt letter that Léopold Mpassi-Mpassi had sent long ago to Madame Kengué.