Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (11 page)

I can't speak, money or food
, it was as though she stood apart from any request, like Our Lady, all the more devastating because she was mute, Our Lady had no place to fall from, there was no precipice where she could twist her ankle, nor tip over her Bible on her chest, because where she solicited people for prayer, there was nothing to give altitude, and when she had to go from one place to another, it was always by lower passageways, flagstone walkways, asphalt passages sloping downwards to the innards of the subway, perhaps one would pick up her trail among the grey, gravelled, rock-strewn lots from a few definable objects — the comb she used to wave her hair in moments of vanity, or her Bible, or her plaited skirt, but so much dirt had been shovelled, a tide of pebbles, she would have found her home at last circled like grass around her compact grave, flagstoned, asphalted and well below the earth from which strange flowers would spring again, how evanescent this world was, didn't they always say that at bottom it was solid and material, all those office workers, bureaucrats, obscure secretaries dictating the order of things free of panic, evanescent this world now gone, Samuel thought, after morning coffee, men and women gathered together before reading the day's first e-mails, and before the cataclysm dispersed them in whirlwinds, in stairways, against window-bars, where all could see they were still alive, piled on one another, perhaps giving a last word of consolation, was Samuel asleep or in a highly agitated state of consciousness while he slept, from his window he could see the wall facing him brighten with autumn sunlight, endlessly replaying the act of falling, some as if with limbs as powdery as sugar, interwoven with one another, leg, head, arm glimpsed outside against the azure, spilling from concrete columns, characters in a tableau that had ground into motion, with nothing but emptiness for them to fall into, an arm, a leg, a head bursting forth with a white flag, the torch showing its colours, help us, they cried all together, their voices modulated like a choir, handkerchiefs, white flags, who could they save, or were these messages of farewell, others jumping solitary, a plunge that seemed infinitely long and deliberate, a fall whose stiffness, step and bend of the knee, Samuel had studied, the step between heaven and earth, already celestial, no longer that of someone walking, will never walk again, moving in air, distancing themselves from bodies, ties, scarves, stoles whose flight became as agile as doves, along this wall fell the solitary man with his boots on, of whom Samuel thought, once a friend of the family, perhaps only ten years older than me, this is how he looked when he was a dancer, Tanjou the student from Pakistan, he who stumbled, finished, no future, smoke had blackened his forehead, the lone falling man was him, Tanjou, Samuel could have kept him from falling by stretching out his hand and saying, let me take you home, you'll be safe, before the rescue teams and paramedics arrive, but there hadn't been time, the string of bodies from the sky went on, Tanjou stopped a second in front of the window then continued far below, if it was him, he was among that pile of legs, feet held on by boots, an ear, that pile on the pyre over which a rescuer had wept, saying how can I see this, and why didn't Samuel run down into the street saying, this arm and foot, that's my friend Tanjou, or is it someone else, after seeing all this and examining the pictures, Samuel had figured out how to dance Tanjou's last step, but at night on the opposite wall outside it seemed like Samuel's set in the theatre and the planes circled before landing on his kitchen table, an evanescent world now disappeared during the coffee-break, Tanjou had read his first e-mail of the morning, saying it was going to be a beautiful day, he had on boots that had picked up red leaves in the streets and avenues leading to work in that moderately cool light of September-October, soon to begin fading, it seemed like a leisurely stroll, it was his ultimate step, it was going to be so nice today, not a cloud in the sky, Tanjou had mused, all that was needed was for Samuel to open the window and stop the solitary man from falling, before the boots disappeared into night, where were they, Tanjou the Pakistani student he'd met a while ago in Jacques' garden, the professor, Our Lady of the Bags, where were they, then once Samuel thought he had found her in a station or in an airport, she'd grown, she might have been living with some ideologically oriented group in the terminus, a group of very young women kneeling in prayer, touching their Bibles compulsively, mumbling incoherent phrases, while their spiritual guide, an older man, the clown of the sect who knew the strength of his revelations to these women, standing among the kneeling women, gently nudging their heads close together, implanting the mark of servility in each one of them with the incompetence of his doctrine, I'll teach you how to survive the Apocalypse, he said, yes, my sisters and children, pray, pray, his voice was sententious and ordinary, one of them had raised her head, Our Lady of the Bags, she had asked, is it true, tell me the truth, where is my friend the Apostle, where am I, and the guide had replied, lower your head, obey, submit, her face, the face of she who was Our Lady of the Bags, still had its purity intact, her tone of voice was limpid and detached, but perhaps this voice had a higher timbre, her hair was no longer wavy but short, dogmatized, stigmatized, who was she really, and Samuel longed to say to her, so you're alive after all, can you find it in you to pardon me, then, like waking from a dream, he knew it was not her, but someone equally pure begging and praying, head bowed to the ground amid all these travellers passing by, tightly bound to her master and guide by that renegade force that is servility, and feverishly turning the pages of her Bible, unlearned and broken, just as Our Lady had been, for this is how her guide, the head of the sect, liked them, tamed and repressed, tossing and turning in her bed, Mai revisited her dream, possibly it was as real as the photo of a dark bouquet framed on the wall, there were oyster-fishermen on the wharf, enormous, she'd never seen men that corpulent all at work, like the fisherman in the blue boat on The-Island-Nobody-Owns, leaning over his molluscs till she stumbled on him and he said, come with me over to the Australian pines, she knew these men were a larger reproduction of the same man; beneath the oyster flesh was life, she thought, the precious milky pearl he had spoken of, they were all just common fishermen roughly manhandling this abundance from the gulf whose basin of troubled, muddy water Mai could see and in the shells of which swam a lime-like substance which was life, shouldn't these men have been especially careful at every instant, for they were conceivers of life, allowing reproduction and life, like them one entered the vast cycle of birth and death, and that was the secret Mai had deciphered, knowing she would never tell anyone, for it was a fearful thing, attractive too, and thus one day she would yield to the clean-shaven young man who came in her bedroom window or took out his pocket-knife and slashed the flowers in the Robert Mapplethorpe photo, saying, here I am, I'm the one they're looking for, can I sit on your bed, even if you can see the fence of the state prison where they kept me, I've come back, he'd say to her, I'm your father, and I've come to kidnap you and take you far away from here, why not follow me, Daniel and Mélanie aren't your real parents, I am, I followed little Ambre who was nine on her bike in Texas, and they found her body four days later in a thicket, and despite the laws of about thirty states and counties, they're still looking for me, look at that tender skin under my penknife, when they're only six, like Adam and Ethan, grabbed and taken off from toy stores in New York and Hollywood, their deflowered ghosts wander and wander the canals and rivers, I love birthday parties when parents put their kids to bed very late, then I come in here through the open window and take them in their sleep from beds perfumed with their own smells, still a taste of chocolate on their lips, sweet breath, so who loves you more than me, Daniel and Mélanie aren't your real parents, Mai, come with me, do you hear me there under the sheets with your cats at your feet, oh I'll bring you back, just like lots of others, and you won't say a word, and your parents will say, what a miracle that she's back, she's so silent, won't say a word, still just as normal as yesterday, her room a mess as it was before, she's forgotten it all, our joy, our hope is home, and your black nanny will take you to school every morning again, and you'll keep up your cello lessons, then later on you'll go out dancing with boys, you'll be perfectly normal, even after months of privation and deflowering, and they'll go looking for me again, parents, psychiatrists, judges, I'll hold them all captive in their fearful unawareness, their apathetic bigotry which works on them like an anaesthetic, for they'd like to put me on trial for my offences, but they don't want to know about my inappropriate acts, they don't want you to talk, because you might upset their prudery, and you'll go to the prom, you'll be the hope of the family later on, but you won't tell them a thing, not your parents, not judges, during a trial they'll say, the predator, the one who called himself a prophet, was with a woman, a mistress, wasn't he, and they both abused you, and when you left the house that night, they dragged you along with them to their hangout in the mountain, you have to talk about what happened there, but I know you won't say anything, you'd rather let them think you're just the same as you were before you left and came back, obedient to your grandmother, normal, totally normal, you'll never mention the days without eating, just some water in a dirty cup, one week, two, when you were our prisoner below ground, then one morning you'll say to your father with no feeling at all, you know, Daddy, I've gone a week without eating, and he won't ask any questions, because he doesn't want to know what we do with our captives, all of them, year after year, in caves, underground hiding-places and hangouts, some of them we simply left to die of thirst, starvation, and the accomplice — wife or mistress — had doubts, I think I ought to go down in the basement and see what's happening, then gradually she gives up on it, I can numb her into anything, guilt becomes more and more dormant and sterile, your parents will say, no need to rush to trial, they just don't want to know, parents and psychologists, none of them want to know anything about those lower depths, maybe you remember those underground storage cellars for fruit, well, that's what we did with some of you, eight-to-twelve-year-old boys and girls, we kept all of you quiet in the cellars, petrified with hunger and exhaustion, our best fruit rotted one by one, then suddenly the woman would say, I can't go down there anymore, there are too many bodies under the stairs and under the earth, I can't, I won't, and we'd take off again, walking to different mountains, I don't know why we let you get away back home, but at least you've got to let me come and visit you every day, open the window onto the rose garden wide, then the day will come when you'll give in to me again, and now, as she sat on her bed, Mai saw a shape moving in her room, she thought it was him again, the same odd young man the police were looking for, but it was Marie-Sylvie, the nanny, hey, how come you're not asleep yet, and the light's on in Augustino's room, your parents won't be in till late, not before dawn I bet, because it's your grandmother's birthday, Mai heard Marie-Sylvie de Toussaint's impatient voice, back where I come from, you wouldn't have a roof over your head, not a bed, nothing, she said, then brusquely she laid Mai on her bed, wishing it was Vincent she needed to comfort and relieve of his nightime fears instead, Vincent was in a sanatorium for the summer, that's really what it was, they had talked about a summer school for bronchitic children, but sanatorium said it better, for two or three months, Mélanie had taken him away from her, Vincent was her own child since she looked after him, my brother's going crazy in that ghost-country, no house, no home on an island that didn't even export coffee or sugar anymore, she went on as she slid Mai between the covers, then one day they discovered the victims had turned into torturers and fled the country, whatever their crimes, good citizens, barbers, higher-ups who had tortured my brother, you'd never know them abroad in their disguises, these words ran like a litany, and Marie-Sylvie told Mai she had to sleep, she wasn't going to put out the lamp until Mai had her eyes closed, she'd got a letter from Jenny today, Mai didn't remember her, she was too small, when you close your eyes you forget everything, then with the first cooing of the doves in the garden, it would be dawn, Mai, like her brother Augustino, recognized bird-songs when the wind stirred the chimes in the doorways, what innocent happiness those moments were when Marie-Sylvie carried Vincent to bed, calling, my angel, murmuring in his ear that they would take to the sea in the
Southern Light
, but not to say anything to his parents, no, no, they laughed together, Vincent, her child to protect, defend and cure, above all to distract from his coughing bouts, both of them rocked by the calm sea, navigable in fine weather,
Southern Light
,
Southern Light
, and in the arbour, slightly heady from the perfume of African lilies, Mélanie told Olivier that, if that shameful segregation had gradually come to an end in restaurants, hotels, and theatres, everywhere the crime of segregation had been legalized for so many years, it was thanks to one woman aged forty-two, Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, in forty-eight hours she had overthrown those inexorable laws, Rosa said, no, I'm not getting up, take my fingerprints, set on your fierce dogs, I'm not getting up, no white passenger is going to sit here in my place, because I'm tired standing up, arrest me, every bus in town will be boycotted, we're going to march, get our mules and horses out of the countryside, but I'm not getting up to give my seat to a white man, a young Baptist pastor called Martin Luther King heard the voice of the young woman with a defiant look, sharp under her thick glasses, was the hour approaching when men would be delivered from their chains? Send on your packs of dogs whose souls you've twisted, it isn't they who are biting our legs but you, their masters, those are your teeth we can feel in our flesh, Rosa Parks says she was not alone, completely calm in her white cotton dress, a black student with a binder under her arm, walking to Little Rock Central High School, picking her way through a hateful crowd, women insulting her, in the front row, imperturbable, she continued forward, she could not go back, but only go on to college and university, send on your dogs, Rosa said, point your garden hoses at us, I'm not getting up, a president sensitive to our oppression, seeing these images of violence on television, will say, that makes me sick, he ought to have said sick with shame, that was it, a young woman with a defiant look had changed the world, said Mélanie, this time it seemed that Olivier had listened to her, still complaining that Jermaine had turned up his music, what do you call this, blues, rock, sometimes it even sounds like off-beat church singing, my son really loves it, and he even got his mother to dance with him, come on, let's join the others, Olivier said, taking Mélanie's hand, we really shouldn't be so preoccupied, look at my wife, she knows how to escape all these problems with her joie de vivre, when they got near the pool, Mélanie saw Chuan and her son Jermaine dancing to music that was way too loud in the phosphorescent rays from the water under a starry sky that was gradually getting paler and paler, come on, said Chuan exuberantly, come and dance, my friends, a group of young people, as colourful in their hairstyles and clothes as the house was in Chuan's orange-and-pink walls, bounced around her and Jermaine, Mélanie spotted her mother looking concerned at this frenetic celebration which she hadn't expected to be endless, really these young people do go to bed late, or maybe they just didn't sleep at all, one could see the tiredness etched into Mère's face, who was also wondering how Chuan managed to get along with a misanthropic husband like Olivier, who hardly appreciated the qualities of a woman specializing in design, creating comfort and beauty, Chuan said she had decorated the house pleasantly so he would have peace to write in, but Olivier was a man steeped in sadness, there he sat in his hut, compiling the political errors of the past century, the catastrophes that could have plunged us into an apocalypse and were avoided by a hair's breadth, whether it be the Cuban missile crisis resolved by the voice of a head of state on Radio Moscow, or the memory of infamous assassination in Dallas, from October, 1962 to that day of November 22, 1963, in his articles, Olivier still felt disturbed by grief, yet all around him, Chuan, the good fairy of harmony in an unharmonious world, aimed at a form of weightlessness in industrial fashion design, whether she was decorating an ancestral home in New Orleans where she allied present to past, a multi-branched crystal chandelier with shaded candles to illuminate a stairway whose steps looked like sand-coloured velvet and made one feel as though they were flowing in a torrent of water in this decor, Mère thought, modernity or old-fashioned elegance with antique clocks over marble fireplaces, Chuan evoked shades of the sun going down or already set that were her own, writing in the red room, did Olivier notice the way the Chinese porcelaine pieces were placed in the alcove, or the gilded horse sculpture on the wall-shelves by the window, or the loggia with French doors where he came for a rest with a book in hand, not even the explosion of lunar and solar colours could assuage his eyes and heart, and that fruit, all of it brought in every morning, avocado, lemons, pineapples, brilliant daffodils, did he see the flowers arranged on the patio each day, did he breathe them in, he liked the circular pool that had a view of the dwarf palm trees and the sea, the turquoise sea and sky flowed together completely, suddenly he would be biting into some fruit, chewing the twig of a plant, vaguely remembering that Chuan had brought the silk for the curtains from Brazil and the porcelain pieces, slightly too exquisite for a man's room, from China, and why was this room as red as Chuan's dresses and shoes, then he stopped thinking about it, repeating what he often said to Jermaine, all I want, my dear son, is for you to love me, and even if he was always just as ill at ease with his thoughts of the evil century past, he admitted to the comfort of being loved by his wife and beloved son, if he'd been a little more reasonable, perhaps he would have been less tormented by the irreversible repetition of events he resented, this was how Mère imagined the particular understanding between Olivier and Chuan, wasn't every couple just as unique; those charming couples, Bernard, Valérie, Nora, and Christiansen were carrying on their conversations amid the noise, would Mère have a chance to know them better when her right hand hurt, our physical maladies tend to keep us apart from those we think in better health than ourselves, she thought, younger, stronger, and Caroline said, take this tray away, Harriett, Miss Désirée, this bread dipped in soup is for old people forgotten in homes, not for me, no bouillon, nothing, I don't want to be one of those animals they stuff before the slaughter, yes, a little more green tea, I'd like that, I love you, Charles had written to Fédéric in the years when their union was flourishing, I am your drawing and painting hand, you are my writing hand, even apart, we will always be together, we are already, aren't we, Frédéric had painted the walls of a spacious house they had lived in a sanguine pink, almost orange, and although the living room was empty, it seemed as though they were both still there under the domed lighting-fixture that hung from the wooden ceiling, reading, painting, writing, hands on the glass table, friends and lovers always, seeking each other out from time-to-time over the books and notes, when you're no longer there, I'll look for you and see you everywhere, even in the arms of strangers, and summer dappled on the windows through the acacia branches, I'll love you tomorrow and always, see you everywhere, and neither of them seemed to foresee the last glimmers of summertime and the return of winter's chilly light, still less the boundless love that Charles would feel for Cyril years later, when I think of that picture of Frédéric, I can still see and hear them in that huge house, I'm still there beside them taking pictures, Charles' refined head against Frédéric's athletic shoulder, hearing the ripple of water from the fountain in the garden, flowers crowding the window in summer, Charly and Cyril not even born yet, perhaps growing like embryos in our respective limbos, gnawing on us without our knowing it, Charles and Frédéric writing and painting a lot, in those days, my husband and I went deer-hunting, killing the deer, I remember the animal fallen on the tracks, and my daughter not a viable fœtus, so unhealthy the world, I'll love you through all that I no longer possess, under the chandelier they write and paint in the New England woods, the deer at dawn are as free and happy as in the painting by Courbet in which they stretch out to reach the leaves, wild and free and happy, not knowing we exist, my husband and I, with our dogs and hunting rifles, the deer heft their weight upwards into the tree and its sweet fruit, stretching their bulk and shaking themselves; perhaps it's their voices I hear in the roomy house, back from Greece, what a grand and beautiful universe, while I'm taking their pictures I don't tell them I'm pregnant, nothing about the scarcely viable little girl, I'm just a woman with a husband she doesn't love, I'll take a lover, I think that Charles and Frédéric will always love one another, I tell them, sit quietly together so I can photograph you, Charles unbuttons his shirt-collar, he doesn't like having his picture taken, but he has to because it's for the cover of his book, Charles, Frédéric, and I make up an independent and solid trio, enthusiastic about the same sports, riding and tennis, Charles is amazed when I tell him I've flown a plane and got a diploma in architecture, he says, I'll introduce you to my friend Jean-Mathieu, this winter I'll have a lover, and it will be him, we're in the most torrid of regions, by the sea, I meet Jean-Mathieu in a sunny February, and we languish on the terrace under the sun, Jean-Mathieu is wearing classic Italian shoes with no socks, I spot a scorpion and kill it with a swift blow of my book before its venomous stinger can reach him, we should go to Italy, Jean-Mathieu says, that was a long time ago, Harriett, when my villa was open to so many venerable friends, Jean-Mathieu, Adrien and Suzanne, Charles and Frédéric, later the European writer-painter couples, Bernard and Valérie, Nora and Christiensen, it's a crying shame that I'm shut up like this, no villa, no friends, no Jean-Mathieu by my side, can you tell me why Harriett, why force-feed me when it's nightime, it is night, isn't it, you'll panic Charly's cat, where is Charly, always out dancing and drinking in the discotheques till dawn, it's a crying shame, where has my house gone, Ma'am, she squandered your fortune, that Charly, a really nasty piece of work, Ma'am, remember that gap between her teeth, degrading a lost tooth like that, it was her, she got on your nerves so many times, so much bad temper, it was nothing, said Caroline, it wasn't her, it was the ecstasy, it wasn't her behaviour, my sweet child would never do that, but she had to buy more and more expensive drugs, I know it wasn't her, Caroline repeated, and they say the motivation for his actions was racial hatred, Olivier thought, that's what he would emphasize in his article, hate had pushed the skinhead to kill a black girl driving her white fiancé, they were both twenty, the skinhead had shot from his car, five shots had been heard, some said a trucker was about to pass both cars when he saw the racist, the engaged couple were students at the Atlantic University of Florida, adolescents in love, their killer was twenty as well, hate, hate was still killing these days, the bullet had hit the girl's temple, they had been waiting for the light at an intersection, and they were found still wrapped in each other's arms, hate, hate, thought Olivier holed up in his office, he was waiting for the night to end, the contralto voice of Nina Simone in his headphones revived his anger,