FOUR
THE WOMAN AND THE SURVIVOR
She no longer remembered her age. She had hidden it so well all her life. Ever since adolescence, first as a coy flirtation, and then, over the years, out of habit. And now she is losing her way in the thousand detours of a tired brain. All her energy was concentrated on peering into the corners of her mind, on not letting go. She couldn’t recall whether she was born in 1913 or 1914. The Deceased had been ten years older than she, or was that an invention he went along with and repeated to anyone who cared to listen? What did it matter, apart from the need to put your finger on details suddenly deemed important out of a sheer desire for control? Whether she was eighty-four or eighty-two changed nothing of the reality that her life was ebbing away. Like a faucet that’s wearing out, it’s useless to turn it off more tightly, there’s no stopping the slow drip that’s so annoying to hear. In this establishment where death so often dislodged life, no one else was attending to the sounds of her life leaving.
Except perhaps that young woman with the sad, heavy- lidded eyes. In fact, Odile was beginning to get used to the aide’s piercing stare that contrasted so strangely with her calm and assured behavior. The days she didn’t come seemed much longer to Odile, too much like death and the eternal silence—despite her decision to still her own voice. What was making her listen for Marie-Ange’s footsteps? Was it perhaps her ultimate need of being, if not loved, then at least understood? Why had she given in to that overpowering impulse to murmur the girl’s first name? For some time she had felt less threatened, or perhaps it was that, not being able to confront the young woman directly, she had adapted to her latent hostility. Instinctively, Odile knew that Marie-Ange came from Quisqueya, not from the French Antilles. And yet she did not have a Quisqueyan accent. In her brief conversations with other caregivers, she used the expressions of the young students of the Parisian region. She would check her cell phone, continually fiddle with a little gadget she carried in her pocket, mention her credit card, and like so many others of her generation, she seemed to suffer from anorexia or some other eating disorder. Nevertheless, Odile had immediately detected a Quisqueyan background behind her outward appearance as a young woman from mainland France. Probably in her gait! Those buttocks that cause a swishing sound as they rub against the fabric of her skirt or slacks, those gently swaying hips that invite attention, and that movement of the shoulders at once languid and deliberate. In her expression, also—proud, unyielding. Or was Odile trying to visualize herself as youthful and sporty again, like this young woman who undoubtedly hated her without even knowing her?
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I detest death. It’s been around us all my life, invading our slightest movements. Unknown dead people dominated my childhood and adolescence. All those anonymous fatalities I mourned. Family members with frozen expressions in yellowed family photos. I abhor the atmosphere in which you raised me—oozing with fear and regret, anger and powerlessness, with unfinished farewells forever dangling. An atmosphere devouring every intention I had of living happily. Swallowing up all my possibilities of pleasure and joy.
I detest this dour gravity I inherited from you. This glumness that, according to you, settled permanently in the family with Jean-Édouard’s passing. A young man barely nineteen. Feisty and fearless, ready for action. After the public execution of the two dissidents against the wall of the Port-du-Roi cemetery, your brother changed. His once-contagious liveliness dimmed. He became secretive and taciturn, slow and deliberate in his movements. Oddly reassured, your mother believed he had settled down. He was coming home earlier than usual, no longer staying out to wander around with his neighborhood pals, skirting dangerously close to the curfew hour. Avoiding the enforcement sweeps that could result in a trip to the nearest police station and a brutal beating, if not much worse. His parents thought that on his rare evenings out he was dutifully reviewing his notes with fellow students in preparation for the coming academic term, his first year of law school. It was only when the Dorévalist police raided the local branch of the PPPL and arrested its leaders that your parents learned of their son’s recent enlistment in the party ranks. Every week he attended consciousness-raising sessions there, led by an eminent history professor known for his revolutionary ideas. Jean-Joseph Desravines Aubert and his wife Laurette were taken into custody on the day of the raid. Lengthening the list of murder victims. Jean-Édouard returned to your house, frantic with excitement. Explained to your terrified parents that he had to go underground, that the police were investigating and pursuing everyone connected with the party.
That was the very last time you saw your big brother. He would never again pull your braids the way he so often did to tease you. His slightly panicked yet resolute expression glided over your father, your mother, and lingered a moment on you, the little sister. Like a tender, emotional snap of his fingers. He left the house and never came back alive. Two days later your parents retrieved his body at Fort Décembre. Officially, the guards had been forced to shoot the prisoner as he tried to escape.
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When she received her first paycheck as a nurse, she ordered two new dresses for herself. She insisted that the dressmaker follow the patterns perfectly, with an impeccable cut, precise and classic lines. She despised cheap clothing, preferring to invest in high-quality fabric rather than settle for skirts that frayed after two launderings. Buying clothes consumed all of her savings, sometimes amassed by literally depriving herself of all nonessentials and by walking even during heat waves to save the cost of public transport or taxis. Her clear and detailed requests on matters of fashion were a topic of conversation for the local seamstresses and dressmakers. Some were reluctant to accept her orders, since the fittings dragged on for so long and always led to alterations. But she invariably came away satisfied. Never would she accept an inferior piece of work. Years later, the staff at the National Palace would grumble that she was overly meticulous and had luxurious tastes. Believing, no doubt, that her position as first lady had gone to her head.
A perfect appearance. That was always her motto. She wasn’t going to fall short of it under the pretext of economizing for the government, while all around them supporters of the revolution were stuffing their pockets and their bank accounts and corrupt hacks were building stately mansions with public resources.
Of course, Fabien sometimes chose not to intervene. Not because he longed to be appreciated, but to assure the loyalty of his most competent subordinates. No investment was more solid than a carefully measured sharing of resources with true and devoted underlings. On the one hand, the most severe punishment for traitors, and on the other, protection and generosity toward the most loyal. As a result, Fabien was invariably forewarned of attempted conspiracies, the slightest hint of restiveness within the army or among the cabinet ministers. Naturally, he often had to differentiate unfounded rumors and smears from actual attempts at subversion. Fabien distinguished them easily, even if he was predisposed to believe allegations of conspiracy and didn’t shrink from carrying out dismissals, arrests, or executions. Or transfers to the unit specially created as a gilded limbo for military officers of doubtful reliability: the Coordinating Council for the Defense of the Nation, the CCDN. Privately, the army brass called it the Correctional Center for Disgraced Nonentities. Those assigned to it were never again entrusted with any real responsibility, and they were kept under tight surveillance.
She generally approved of Fabien’s decisions. Except when he went after her personal military escort. Men who were well-trained, rigorously correct, and closely attentive to her protection and welfare. She was not oblivious to the rampant rumors about her relationships with two of them. As if every friendship between a man and a woman had to lead inevitably to a bed. She had never cared to defend her reputation. Personally, she preferred to maintain a slyly ambiguous and tantalizing veil over her relationships with these men. Certain memories belonged only to those who had lived them. Those officers were very handsome specimens! Nicely filling out their trim uniforms, conscious of their powers of seduction. They attracted attention, and several women were jealous of the confidential rapport she had developed with them. Regarding special tasks to be accomplished, services rendered, advice provided. So, she acted diligently and deftly to shield them from Fabien’s suspicions. Warned them against all threats, gave them the necessary resources to shelter themselves and their families, told them where to take refuge until calm was restored. Before the doubts were transformed into unshakeable certitudes. Once the Deceased had someone in his sights, it was difficult to divert him to another prey. She preferred not to abuse her influence. She reserved it for important occasions, those she deemed fundamental.
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You spent a good part of that last year making allusions to my boyfriends, or rather to the lack of boyfriends in my life. “Marie- Ange, I don’t hear you talking anymore about that young accountant you met at Madame Désamours’s house. And the customs officer’s grandson who used to phone you constantly, what happened to him?” You knew very well, Maman, that I didn’t keep any boyfriend longer than six months. Contrary to what I heard you tell a nosey cousin, this was not to avoid making a commitment. No, it’s because my heart is frozen between fear and regret. I run away as soon as I feel the first stirrings of affection.
I’ve spent my life trembling in fear of past events, wrestling with demons that have become mine. How can I fall in love when I carry this perpetual anxiety within me? And yet I would like so much to be able to connect with someone and allow the relationship to impose its own calendar and colors on me—joyous or somber, no matter! To revel in the euphoria of closeness and let myself be carried like an infinitesimal grain of sand until I come to rest somewhere or other, happy or unhappy, but excited and alive.
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The selection of Fabien Doréval’s successor was one of her rare defeats. The worst. Also the most humiliating. For everyone who knew the family, who spent time with the children, followed their development, their involvement in political matters, the choice should have been easy. Marie-Danielle possessed all the necessary qualities to succeed her father: determination, vision, intelligence, and toughness. She never hemmed and hawed at crucial moments. Never succumbed to a soft-heartedness that might have made her look weak. She could anticipate an individual’s lapses in order to take advantage of them. She was in her element both times she replaced a bedridden Fabien. Especially the second.
When, after strong persuasion on Odile’s part, he finally admitted that the end was inexorably approaching. With a firm hand, their eldest daughter was fulfilling the duties of the presidency, doling out the various tasks, handling calls and correspondence, making decisions without hesitation. Nevertheless, Fabien categorically refused to make her his successor. He tried to answer Odile’s reasoning with specious arguments that she easily refuted. In the end, he said to her, “She’s only a woman.” As if she, too, had to acknowledge the manifest impossibility—as he saw it—of a woman in sole charge of the country.
Her hand refused to take orders from her tired brain. Her weepiness embarrassed her for several reasons. She used to think that only weaklings shed tears over past actions. Cowering behind their regrets. Tears have never resolved anything. She had seen men whimper and squeal when they realized that Fabien, having learned of, surmised, or suspected their treason, had condemned them. That had changed absolutely nothing, as their wailing had debased them still more in the Deceased’s estimation. Annoyed, she tried again to brush the tears from her eyes. In vain. None of her fingers moved. How she hated losing control over the body that had submitted to her will throughout her life! The imperious way she held her head, her distinguished bearing, her measured and sparing movements—all those she had acquired through tenacity and discipline. She had multiplied her genetic capital a hundredfold. To present the lofty image that defined her. These days, however, her fingers and the rest of her body were deserting her. She let out a raspy sound, inhuman to her ears. In an instant, like an unexpected breeze, a fresh towel wiped her eyes. Grateful, she let herself be overcome by silence.
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Why a benevolent gesture toward this woman who no doubt participated in the decisions of her dictator husband? She helped send so many people to their deaths, contributed to the destruction of entire families. Yours—ours—came out of it broken. Your brother, my father, all the people whose stories I knew and all the others who lost their lives with no witnesses to keep their memory alive. This pitiful woman on her deathbed, isn’t she responsible? I mustn’t forget that.
This evening, the widow’s shriveled fingers encircled my wrist in a grip astonishingly tight for someone so feeble. In the twinkling of an eye, my gaze met a pair of alert and darting eyes. The celebrated face became animated before me, haughty, inscrutable. Then, an instant later, I saw only the parchmented skin of eyelids once again closed. I heard her breathing even more raucously than usual under the whiteness of the sheet. But the throaty yet distinct utterance left me no retreat. “Thank you.” Slowly, the fingers let go, one after another. As if in spite of themselves. I gently withdrew my hand and moved away from the bed.
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Marie-Danielle never forgave her father. Wasn’t that the reason for her dry eyes and pouty chin at the funeral? Fabien’s dogged insistence on ignoring her abilities, relegating her to certain secondary functions because of her gender. Plus his stubborn resolve to banish his son-in-law, Michel Durandique, mainly on the basis of allegations made by his scheming private secretary. Until the last, Fabien failed to understand that the younger generation was much less accepting of discrimination against women. She had sensed this in the behavior of the younger nurses and in the attitudes of the secretaries and the married daughters of her women friends. The wind was changing, slowly but unmistakably. And so much the better, she felt.
Even so, she had always eyed with considerable distrust the campaigns and initiatives of the activists from the Women’s League for Social and Community Action. Those ladies who, for the most part, lived at a safe remove from the real social problems and who presumed to speak for all Quisqueyan women. Yes, she had mistrusted those lawyers, pretentious intellectuals, and idle housewives. Most of the time, the group would criticize without proposing solutions. The practice of sending children in from the rural areas to live with relatives in the city and do domestic chores in return for lodging, board, and school tuition—a tradition that had existed for decades—those women dared to compare it to slavery. Unable to understand that the peasant parents were acting for the best, investing in the future of their son or daughter. A number of these children had learned a trade after several years of primary education: sewing, auto mechanics, cooking, woodworking. Some had even passed the qualifying exam and earned secondary diplomas.
Fabien was the first to think of enacting laws to protect these young domestic workers. Of course, the abuses and excesses could never be totally eradicated, but given the peasantry’s deprivation, the practice has clearly been beneficial. It’s wrong to confuse the aberrations with the norm. Besides, most of the people who criticize the system also profit from it. A bunch of hypocrites! The legions of underpaid domestics in the homes of these crusading women free them up to write their pamphlets and organize marches for the betterment of women’s lives.
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I know that you despaired of having grandchildren and that you left this world with your heart pining for their love. As if you knew I had closed that door and intended to remain childless. You stopped raising the question with me, certain that you must somehow have reinforced my aversion to motherhood. Although I did try to embrace the idea of having kids, Maman, anxiety overwhelmed me every time.
Last week I couldn’t invent any new excuses to justify a third postponement of my visit to Martine. She’s an old college friend who just had a baby. But first I went with two girlfriends to a baby store and impulsively chose a gift. A chubby stuffed animal with a huge green and yellow bow. Both in the Metro and on the street, I felt incredibly awkward, as if I were heading for my execution with the hangman’s noose over my arm.
When I arrived at Martine’s, it was even worse. I had to listen to the others rhapsodize. “How handsome he is! Oh! He has your eyes. Look at his tiny hands.” Motionless and mute, feigning the sudden onset of a cold, I stared across the room at the infant. The odor of mother’s milk, blended with the fragrance of sweet and delicate toiletries, reached my nostrils, and I wanted to let myself be swallowed up by it. I would have liked so much to hug the little body to me, as the others had done, and squeeze it until my tears flowed. Powerless to move, I pasted a tense smile on my lips, nodding from time to time in response to others’ comments. I eventually slipped away with the promise to return as soon as I’d shaken off this untimely cold. Then, on the way down the stairs, distraught and gasping, I burst into drawn-out sobs. With my arms dangling ridiculously from my body.
I’m so afraid of having a child and spoiling its life, turning it into a creature like me, with fear dogging its heels.
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How she scorned women who shrank behind their husbands, women who saw their charge as solely to obey, stay in the shadows, and not stir up discord in the marital domain. She had always bluntly expressed her opinions, even when they didn’t coincide with the Deceased’s. They often argued out of sight of prying eyes, since she didn’t want in any way to create the image of a troubled couple. But sometimes, like the time she had wanted to defend her daughter and her grandsons, she had no longer cared about decorum. On that day he had dared to commit an unpardonable act! Yes, she finally had to admit it to herself. Her resentment toward the Deceased for that slap, those furious and deranged eyes, still festered. The arm poised to land a second blow as their son was rushing to restrain it. She had not forgiven him for that. Kept to herself, also, the nauseating sense of frustration brought on by Fabien’s unilateral decisions and by his colleagues’ attitudes verging on condescension. Until they learned to their detriment exactly who they were dealing with. She knew how to take revenge without fretting over it, striking hard and accurately.
Her daughters had inherited her independence of mind. The second a little less so than the others, with her tendency to hide behind a man, both in public and in private. Odile never trusted any man completely. In her days as a nurse in the maternity ward at Bon Séjour, she had witnessed instructive examples of the shamelessness of some men. Of course, her personal experience had relieved her of all naïveté on that score, but she was nonetheless disgusted time and again by the cynicism of the new fathers. Many greeted the newborn with doubt and skepticism. With remarks like, “Am I really the father?” and, “That baby doesn’t even look like me!” Sometimes the man’s mother would show up to examine the baby, palpate him, look for a sign, a birthmark associated with the family down through the generations, a splayed toe, asymmetric lips. And implacably, the verdict would fall, a negative scowl, a shake of the head. The man would reject all responsibility for the baby. Without any right of appeal.
One day the family of an alleged father turned up at the clinic with some blood. It was the man’s blood, and they demanded that it be force-fed to the baby. If he got sick, that would be irrefutable proof he wasn’t really the man’s offspring. The nurse, mother, and wife in her was so outraged that she lost her usual calm and forcibly ejected the representatives of the father’s family from the maternity ward. Threatening to call the police if they dared to come near the baby.
The widow winced as she thought of this incident. The staff in the maternity unit talked about it for quite some time. Divided into two groups: on the one hand, those who were offended by the fathers’ attitudes; on the other, those who tried to justify them, casting doubt on the veracity of the mothers’ claims.
Life had thus proven to her that a woman owed it to herself to be independent, even if she didn’t subscribe to the inflammatory speeches of the feminists from the League. She brought up her children, both daughters and son, to respect themselves. She imparted to them some basic principles: think independently, behave with dignity, don’t let anyone step on your toes. Take care of your appearance. Watch your back. Protect the family to the end.
And yet today she was dying alone.
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I think it’s time for me to say good-bye to the ghosts. To the biggest absence in my life, the one who takes up the most space, for you have never wanted to explain the circumstances of his death.
Today I’m ready to reconstruct the disastrous day you always kept to yourself, just as you never mentioned your six years of marriage, as if sharing it with me would have abridged or changed that carefree interlude. In trying to picture the two of you as a happy couple, I must rely on my imagination to fill the gaps and blank spots in my frustratingly scant memories. To place in the domestic scene the little girl who was me on that November day. The happiness was truly present, even though it stemmed in part from suffering. And it was capable of holding us in the warmth of our day-to-day routine. The gales of laughter, the passionate embraces, the flights of tenderness, the words of endearment when you both left the house in the morning, the kiss of greeting when you reunited. “See you later.” “Have a good day.” “Take care of yourself.” “I love you.” That last day, what did you say to each other before leaving home, each in your own direction? You on the way to drop me off at preschool, before going on to a job interview. My father bound for the high school where he taught history, before proceeding to the radio station to record his broadcast. Surely you kissed on that November morning. Did Papa give me a hug before catching a taxi that would get him to school on time? Did he squeeze me really tight? Was he struck by a premonition that this would be the last time he saw his wife and child? I see him now, Maman, kneeling in front of me, and I snuggle against him as his arms encircle my shoulders. I inhale the freshness of a green shirt against my skin. The scent a powerful blend of chalk, aftershave, and books. A voice never erased from my memory: “Have a good day, my little angel.” I fill myself with love, Maman, and then, because there’s no choice, I let my father go.
I can unhesitatingly situate the day within its context. It’s so easy for me to dive into this universe, though it’s been more than twenty years; I find myself back in it, but with the eyes of an adult. In that fateful year, under the reign of Jean-Paul Doréval and his mother—sometimes called a modern-day Cornelia* by her admirers—an independent press came to life. The year 1980 marked the coalescence of dissenting voices. At first tangled up in its promises of liberalization and intent on staying in power, the government was ultimately forced to react to every criticism of the regime. Intellectuals, artists, and writers were seething. Petitions were circulating. Theatrical productions dramatizing the reign of terror during Fabien’s regime—and Jean-Paul’s mitigated version of the same—were being performed pretty much everywhere. The government decided to put on a show of force. Some said the widow played a pivotal role in that decision, but who knows? Jean-Paul Doréval launched a crackdown worthy of his father. An infamous Friday. The tiger cub bared his claws. The forces of order rounded up journalists, writers, artists. Locked them up, tortured the unlucky ones, allowed some to take refuge in foreign embassies, murdered others who had even worse luck than the torture victims. A witness recounted how some journalists tried to escape. Three units of the new elite presidential bodyguard, the Panthers, were waiting for them at the street corner. The men in their camouflage suits opened fire. The civilians crumpled to the ground, wounded or dead.
My father was among the latter. With other anonymous fatalities whose names are hardly ever mentioned nowadays. He had just begun working as a commentator on a radio station in Port-du-Roi. In addition to his work as a social studies teacher at two secondary schools in the capital. To help make ends meet. To give us something better—me, his daughter barely past her fifth birthday, and you, his wife, who had just finished a management course and begun job hunting. Also to act, to speak out. Not just to stand there with his arms crossed and his mouth stopped up. He envisioned a serious and dynamic commentary about various fields of work, a broadcast capable of evoking an enthusiastic reception, of examining the business elite and their complicity with officials at the Ministry of Social Affairs, of exposing the pressures brought to bear on the labor unions.
Papa didn’t return home that evening. With the help of friends, you searched for him in all the places where the regime might have taken him. The police headquarters, Fort Décembre, the general hospital, even the private hospitals just in case he might have ended up there. Then, as a last resort, the morgue, with a chill in your heart. It’s there that you found him. With two bullet holes in his blood-soaked green shirt. One in the small of his back, the other at the back of his neck.
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She was leaving with the certitude that the family constituted the focal point of an individual’s personality: the nucleus of frustrations and drives, the source of life’s possibilities. Even if, as is obviously the case, experiences external to the family setting influenced the mature personality. Even now, when she found herself too often alone, in this nursing home reeking with the stench of worn-out bodies, she still believed it. Family members certainly came to visit her. First of all, her sisters, who were still living. Clara never came, but the other two did. Angela, flying in from Florida with stories of her offspring settled in Quisqueya and grappling with the complications of a daily existence in perpetual turmoil. Emma, who had emigrated to Panama City long before the exile, with her growing retail business, two new locations this year, the children and grandchildren likewise multiplying, three more of the latter, now numbering five. Emma’s brood sometimes came along to keep her company. Also Odile’s own children. With the beginnings of a farewell in their expressions. Sincere but hurried. Touched to see her but soon ill-at-ease.
Signs of financial strain were everywhere in this suburban Parisian nursing home. The tattered curtains, the scuffed furnishings, the drab, unpolished floors, and the resigned faces of the staff. Odile’s children were accustomed to the luxury earned by her exertions. These children whose parents and grandparents had lived through childhood with uncertain mornings, evenings with empty bellies, and nights with hunger-fueled dreams. They wriggled with embarrassment when they saw the nursing home’s modest decor. Bit their lips, observed the surroundings with an air of annoyance, or stared at the wall as if the story of their lives were written there. In the end, she stopped looking at them and closed her eyes in their presence. Spoke to them less and less, without determining whether her fatigue was weighing her down to that extent or whether the desire to hear herself talk had fled. Bringing her closer to the day when she would lapse into total silence.
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Don’t be angry with me, Maman, if I switch off your storytelling today and repress your memories. I’ve had enough of letting myself be submerged by the words of others. Your voice, your mother’s, Jean-Édouard’s, Papa’s, and the voices of all the other characters in your innumerable stories that have been heaped on top of my own story for my entire life.
You, Maman, so attached to your family, you for whom the mere mention of your brother put flecks of rainbow in your eyes, why didn’t you think of giving me a brother, or a little sister? Someone with whom I would have stored up so many memories, both trivial and profound, that our existences would have blended forever, like a vast mosaic with unexpected colors, riotous or soothing, but always overflowing with life. Together, we would have exchanged so many touching anecdotes, such an ebb and flow of searing anger and tender smiles that even our quarrels would have had the zest of friendship. Maman, you drew strength from your memories of star-strewn nights, of delicately crafted tenderness, of laughter and lagos* in the midst of the dictatorship, but still you piled misery on me. You were occasionally empathetic, but always solitary. Blinded by the harsh radiance of your pain and rage, I could perceive only faint glimmers of your joy.
Today I would like to build myself spaces that are both diverse and roomy, intimate and welcoming, where suffering and elation coexist, where both memories and possibilities would find room to live. I would like to stay up at night, for the simple pleasure of passing the night free from alarming dreams. To stay alert in the expectation of daybreak. For the ineffable joy of its first glow. Precious. Unique. In unspoken collusion with the dazzling brightness to come.
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April 1981. Another ceremony, but this time the Deceased was not present at her side. She was the principal figure. In her capacity as widow of the greatest leader of the Dorévalist revolution, the national legislature was awarding her the official title of Guardian of the Revolution. Her widow’s status finally guaranteed her exclusive honors. Though often decried, a solitary existence could be highly beneficial and sometimes indispensable. After her colossal grief, she had appreciated those moments of calm, of intimate encounter, without pretence and with no pressure to explain anything at all for reasons of love or duty.
Guardian of the Revolution. She richly deserved the title. Having battled after Fabien’s death to prevent the country from sliding into chaos. Fortunately, she was surrounded by solid people she could count on. The “dinosaurs.” She was aware of that disparagingly sarcastic nickname given to the authentic and faithful protectors of the Dorévalist ideals. Moreover, she suspected that the Foreigner had coined the name to advance the campaign she was leading against Odile in the palace. Where Odile had lived for at least a third of her life. One day, in a fit of anger, she left, taking her keys—that’s the truth. Why wouldn’t she? That odious woman, her face taut with hatred and ambition, was employing Odile’s only son against her and against the country. Sabotaging her initiatives. Wasting the taxpayers’ money, flouncing around in front of everyone, and shamelessly enriching her friends and relatives, all of them clueless elitists like herself.
If Odile had not managed to keep her wits and exert influence over her son’s decisions, Jean-Paul’s government would not have lasted as long as it did. Lambert’s presence at his side helped him withstand the pressure from all quarters and display the necessary firmness. “Economic revolution,” intoned her son, without really understanding, especially at the beginning, that a firm hand was still necessary. Letting people express their disagreement, their grievances, gave them the idea that in due course some of their demands could be met and their most pressing requests dealt with. Democracy cannot succeed without a tangible improvement in living conditions. The little priest experienced that just recently. He was compelled to take drastic measures to muzzle the opposition’s rabble-rousing rhetoric. Once in power, all those who believed that it was easy to rule came to recognize the complexity of the task. Jean-Paul, too, had to do an about-face and return to the good old methods. Some have said he blundered in ordering the arrests and other authoritarian measures of November 1980, but the steps he took were necessary. The government had to clamp down in order to avoid anarchy.
No, there was no bungling on that morning of November 1980. The revolutionary regime was showing its might.
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Are we prisoners of our memory, or is memory instead beholden to our weaknesses and hidden wounds? Can our memories still flow freely when our scars accumulate and surround them like a gory ring of barbed wire? My memory is freeing itself today and bringing me a spontaneous recollection like a serendipitous magical charm.
It’s a summer’s day at Descailles, and I catch sight of an elusive and captivating image. Man Nini is making paper dolls and gluing them together to form a chain. Still alert, she is eager to kindle sparks of delight in her great-granddaughter’s eyes. She used to call me “Tizanj.” How had I forgotten her voice? With a few deft movements, despite her arthritic fingers, Man Nini would cut out a line of little female figures with pliable bodies and grinning faces. She’d hand them over to me with a back-and-forth motion of her slack-skinned arm, and for me they were the most marvelous gift. I, in turn, would make them twirl as I danced around with them. A whole string of dolls in colors that varied according to the paper used to make each one. A long chain of little silhouettes, bathed with sunlight and dancing in the wind, fragile and beautiful.
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How tired her mind suddenly felt! She would like very much to rest, to stop thinking about things—but not to die. To float in a lethargic state that would bring serenity and peace, without losing the ability to emerge from it from time to time. To sift through the past once again, organize her ideas, rid herself of emotions too strong to allow her to fall asleep without a last look.
A foreign journalist, bolder than the others, had one day asked her a question before Fabien could intervene from his adjacent chair and abruptly terminate the interview. “Madame Doréval, as a woman and as a nurse by profession, how do you feel when confronted with accusations of torture launched from overseas against your husband’s government?” In no way had the question haunted her, despite what some might think. To preserve the gains of the revolution, the Deceased had been obliged to act in a manner that was sometimes brutal. Their enemies bore a much heavier responsibility for the retaliation provoked by their intemperate, ill-considered, and egotistical actions. Also, the critics exaggerated the casualty figures. To claim an average of more than one hundred killings per day! What a grotesque exaggeration!
And they were never inclined to acknowledge the regime’s achievements. For example, the Fabien Doréval International Airport, built under difficult conditions. Since her family had left, the unlucky airport has seen its name changed, like a weathervane, at the whim of successive governments, none of them capable of staying in power. The Avenue Desravines, paved with four and a half miles of concrete that have survived the negligent installation of the sewers, the incomplete disposal of surplus materials, and more than thirty years of heavy use by truckers. A modern building to house the offices of the tax administration and likewise for the police headquarters. And to be sure, the housing development that once bore her name!
The journalist’s question didn’t prey on her mind, but it sometimes surprised her by recurring in her thoughts. She was still sure of the response, yet the backdrop was becoming murkier. New objects were looming up unexpectedly. Severed hands, gouged-out eyes. A shape noticed at the turning of a corridor. A pair of lips glimpsed at the door to the little back room where the Deceased would personally direct the interrogations. A profile immobilized between two uniformed guards. The shock of recognition of an old friend from the orphanage. A shudder. The refusal to believe it. And unwelcome flashbacks like a leaden lump in the depths of her memory. Her name was Henriette. A pudgy girl with thick red hair, whose good humor seemed to defy her bad luck and succeeded in penetrating the young Odile’s cynical aloofness. “Who was that?” she later asked Fabien. “An opponent’s wife. We finally got her to talk. She was in league with him.” “Where did they take her?” “To Fort Décembre.” It probably wasn’t her. Henriette wouldn’t get involved in political matters. Maybe her husband; after all, Odile didn’t know the man! Henriette would have immediately revealed everything she knew. If she did know something, Henriette wouldn’t expose herself to torture like that. She wouldn’t let herself be taken to Fort Décembre. Henriette knew that people who went in there seldom came out. And if they did, in what condition! No, that woman couldn’t be her old friend from the orphanage. Odile crammed the image back into her tormented memory, where it would patiently await its next turn to resurface.
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I want to live. Without the oppressive burden that I’ve inherited. Without fears or anxieties except those that life will bring me in its ordinary course.
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Unconsciously, she was slipping toward oblivion. The strident noises of the oxygen regulator and the other machines did not awaken her. Suddenly, cool hands grasped her, shook her, brought her back to the world. A puff of air invaded her constricted lungs. Borne toward the oxygen like a drowning person, she opened her mouth wide and gasped for air. Reflexive vanity made her want to close it, but she couldn’t. Strange, rude, and barbarous croaks were escaping from someone’s throat—her own. The needle and the intravenous tube were encumbering her, and she tried vainly to remove them. Let out a scream of impotence and rage. Struggled. “Calm down! The doctor is on his way. I sent someone to find him.” The voice was speaking their shared language. She let the familiar inflections descend drop by drop to calm her anxiety. The oxygen mask enfolded her within its tepid silence, and for a brief moment her eyes opened onto the face that was leaning over her, before her eyelids dropped again.
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While the medical team is attending to the dictator’s widow, I notice several staff members staring perplexedly at me. No doubt my face reflects my disarray.
Why, then, had I given the alarm? I who had wanted, for the repose of my memory, to see this old woman die by my own hands, and here I have just saved her life. And what a life! An unrelievedly dull existence, with the colors of faded white sheets and sterilized walls, and with food that is predigested to the point of squeezing out all taste and aroma. An existence on the borderland of death.
I followed my instincts, Maman, just as you would undoubtedly have done. Despite your long stay in a maze of dread, you instilled in me a profound respect for life. The reverential attitude you took on quite naturally when contemplating a baby’s smile or swelling waves. The atavistic resistance to death. All the emotions that had overwhelmed me when you closed your eyes forever in my presence. One moment alive, albeit declining, and then suddenly nothingness. The doctors and all their modern technology couldn’t save you. You had departed irretrievably. In contrast, the old woman is little by little resuming her slow-motion existence. Apparently as listless as before, or even more so, yet still alive. I could have let her die. Easily. By doing nothing. By saying nothing. But you know very well, Maman, you had always known, that I could never have done that. There have already been too many deaths around me.
Besides my father, how many others had perished? Anonymous, forgotten as the years go by. Perhaps still mourned by the tears of a close relative, but unnoticeable among all the other victims of the dictatorship. No remarkable story accompanying their death. No instructive anecdote, like that of the restaurant owner who, through ignorance, inattentiveness, or bravery—it doesn’t matter—served a meal to members of the insurgent group, the Thirteen, before their entry into the capital. He passed into history as a victim of the Doréval dictatorship because he sold a plateful of rice. Executed for so trivial an act! Gone to his death like so many others. For most of them, no heroic story like that of the militant who took his own life when Fabien Doréval’s forces surrounded the cave at Fancy, where he had taken refuge. Faced with his refusal to surrender, they had dragged his mother to the scene to use her as a hostage, either as bait or as a human shield. The militant killed himself. History, as if by chance, does not record what became of the mother. Apart from the ordeal of watching helplessly as the militia unit attacked her son, of hearing him shoot himself several yards away from her, what was her fate? Vexed at not being able to capture an enemy alive, incensed by the public humiliation this militant had inflicted on them, what did they do to his mother?
So many stories of extraordinary men and women! The young mother not yet thirty, arrested at the same time as her two brothers and killed at Fort Décembre. The celebrated writer tortured for months because of his leftist ideas. The child mowed down by one of the many vehicles in the young president’s reckless, rowdy motorcade. The families of victims forever maimed, retaining in their imaginations the body parts torn away or mutilated.
So many overlooked stories of men and women just guilty of having been alive at the wrong moment, in the wrong place. So many people executed in humdrum fashion. With all of their potential. Crushed, annihilated. As if their existences represented nothing but stray marks to be wiped from the blackboard. So many stories linked to one another by the ordinariness of the event or by the symbolism of the gesture. Or, more simply, by the human possibilities laid waste. My father, my uncle, the resister whose grandchildren will never know him, Madame So-and-So’s husband, the grocer’s cousin, his friend’s godfather, the mother of the little girl who will not be born, the boy who should have been born. All those men, women, and children who could have been happy. For a little longer.
Once more I approach the bed. The widow’s breathing is stronger and stronger. Outside, the December cold is coating the windows with frost. The room seems to shrink, isolating us from all outside intrusions. Keeping the past and the ghosts at bay. Crowding out regrets and reproaches. Leaving nothing but the intoxicating scent of salt air and the tantalizing image of a chain of little paper figures dancing in the sunshine.
Sitting very close to the emaciated body, I wait.