Colour of Dawn (6 page)

It has been so long since I laughed until my sides ached, like on those Friday afternoons when I would join the young women of the neighbourhood from whom Lolo and I have now taken over. Between hairdos they would sip fruit juice or pop, running their hands over the thin layer of sweat just above their top lips, or over the occasional droplets forming on the bridges of their noses or foreheads. These girls with their legs like palm trees, their expressive behinds who, when the stickiness became unbearable, sucked or noisily bit into ice cubes by the entrance of the only hairdresser's in the neighbourhood. It was an excuse to watch the men go by in rare luxury cars or jealously watch those whom good fortune had placed in these dream machines. I particularly liked the evenings when Juanita, the owner of the salon, would prepare for her outings. She would quickly run a comb through her hair, her blow-dry completed in the early afternoon, coating her body with a perfumed veil of Opium, her favourite scent. Then, once she had coloured her eyebrows dark brown to match that mark just beneath her throat, she would adjust her breasts in her push-up bra, slip on a dress, always a very clingy one, and put on her high-heeled sandals. The moment would then have arrived when she tuned the radio to her chosen station and performed a few rumba, cha-cha-cha or salsa moves to satisfy herself that everything was staying in place. She would always bring this ritual to an end shaking with a storm of crazy laughter as if she were being tickled.

I wait three-quarters of an hour before I am finally able to jump into a tap-tap. I woke early so as not to be late and to be in a position to throw myself, claws out, into the merciless stampede of everyday life. When an old woman with rough skin, bent back and vacant gums raises her face to mine as she stands by my side, to tell me in a conspiratorial whisper: ‘Mademoiselle, these are difficult times. You know, in my day…' I remain unmoved. Not like me, I know, but I am unmoved. Because that face and that voice could trap me. Compassion is a luxury I can't afford. And so I consciously raise a wall between the old woman and myself, topped with barbed wire, broken glass and a ‘Beware of the Dog' sign in large red letters. As I turn towards her, I do not notice soon enough the brand new four-by-four that slows down right in front of Lolo and me.

Dark glasses on his nose, a heavy chain around his neck, a bracelet on his wrist, rings on his fingers, the driver, grinning like a rampant dog, offers Lolo and me a place in his car. He reeks of illicit dealings a mile off. I do not paint on my coarse smile, straighten my shoulders or push up my chest. I do not accept the offer, despite the imploring expression of Lolo who always swoons at the sight of a luxury car. I could have done, like I would have in those days of lassitude, when, to make my body sing and lighten the wallet of one of those arrogant males who rush their pleasure and take urgent possession like soldiers on a campaign, I would play the game and win. Slipping away unnoticed … But last night Fignolé did not come home. I've been tormented for several weeks by a man. None of my strongly-held beliefs about the species applies to Luckson, not one. I am serious despite myself. Despite my twenty years. Despite my great hunger and love of life, the way you do love it at twenty years of age, with the wings of a bird, a sun-drenched look, a heart ready to travel…

The driver with the detestable smile roars away, making a point of splashing water up in a foul-smelling spray from a puddle right by the pavement. Lolo, who's never at a loss for words, follows him with a barrage of vitriol, insulting every attribute his mother has ever had. Her anger pours out in a torrent of choice words. A few passers-by are already applauding and guffawing. I look at the stained hem of my trousers, Lolo's shoes smudged with mud, and like a distant drone hear the voice of the old woman: ‘You see what I was saying, you see…'

More than anything I want her to shut up and leave me alone with my rage.When the tap-tap arrives I elbow my way on with a violence I didn't know I had in me. A huge wave of anger and exhaustion breaks over me. A huge, deep wave that rolls me over, drawing back to leave only foam, beating against me with its great liquid body to make me taste the salt and the sand of powerlessness. It all mixes together and weighs ever heavier. Everything I've lost, people, things, my childhood. Everything I've wished for, that I've never had and never will have. Everything I've wanted to know, that I've never known and never will. I measure the immensity of the void until I no longer remember where I am, where I am going, nor where I have come from. I sit down on the bench behind the driver, the very spot I have set my sights on. I don't feel a thing as the tap-tap sets off and I see, through the window, the little old woman, left standing desperate and lost on the pavement, who will have to wait at least another half-hour beneath a sun that is already baring its teeth. A sun like a curse.

This city has taught me one lesson, only one: never to give up on yourself. Never to let a single sentiment soften your spirit. In place of my heart a lump of hard, crude matter has settled inside my chest, right between my breasts. I recognise my little grey stone. And I breathe heavily as I know with certainty that it will remain firmly fixed in place. On this island, in this city, you have to be a stone. I am a stone.

Wedged into this
tap-tap
I allow myself to be gradually invaded by Lolo's chatter as she sits beside me. All the time showing off her fingers with cherry-red fingernails, she has been boasting to me for a full five minutes, and for the nth time, of the talents of a manicurist who has recently been taken on in the beauty salon where she works and who has unrivalled skills in the application of Chinese acrylic nails. And, placing her fingers right in front of my eyes as the incontrovertible evidence, she adds, ‘You should allow yourself this little luxury. Go on, I'll get you credit, you won't regret it.'

My laconic reply clearly doesn't please her. She shrugs, a little vexed.

Lolo has the latest mobile phone clamped to her ear. I'm dying to borrow it from her to dial this mysterious telephone number. But I change my mind. You never know. Lolo talks a lot. Too much. In any case, even now she is already giggling with her new lover, ‘her old man' as she calls him. Sixty if he's a day and afraid – afraid of growing old. A man who wants to prove his virility in her velvety youth, in the elixir of her twenty years.

‘Well, he pays for everything,' Lolo has told me on numerous occasions, giving me a list of all the things she believes she's entitled to: a trip to Miami, a hair extension à la Naomi Campbell (‘Honestly, Joyeuse, these hair extensions are never in the colours you need for those great long tresses like the whites have'), cards for her mobile phone and, of course, clothes – if it's clothes you want, here you are. She confided to me that after her first trip to Miami she would come back so as not to arouse suspicion, but on the second she would disappear into the orange groves of Florida.

‘You know full well that misery and I just don't get on. I'm not like all those people we're surrounded by who wait for God, Notre-Dame du Perpétuel Secours, Saint Theresa, Agoué, their boss, the government or the revolution to come to their aid. No-one's going to come and save us, Joyeuse, no-one. So the old man won't see Lolo for dust.'

A month ago, out of curiosity, I asked her, ‘Your old man, in what way is he old?'

She replied, concentrating hard, as if trying to find the words to describe an expedition to a far-off land, the Antarctic or the North Pole: ‘Old like something that's foreign to me, Joyeuse, how can I tell you…? Something I don't know. Old like the snow, cold like the winter.'

Of course, that day we must have talked about Poupette, who took off two years ago with a French aid worker before our dumbfounded, admiring eyes. She returned a few months ago, rolling her r's, talking with a French accent, dressed like a celebrity and took up residence, if you please, in a hotel up there in the swanky district of Pétion-Ville. Lolo, too, never lost hope of landing a similar rare bird to put a ring on her finger.

‘The old man is just the first step on my ladder, Joyeuse.'

And Lolo filled my ears with the things we had all heard as whispered secrets from our mothers, who in turn had heard it from their grandmothers, back as far as the ancestors on their pallets in huts and in the holds of ships.That wherever the imploring master hoped to find an anchoring place for his anguish, somewhere to quench his man's thirst, in the calm bellies of the negresses, their turbulent hips and that moist, hot place between their thighs, they would be able to leave the interminable path of the defeated.

John was no exception. I sensed his collapse as man and conqueror in his fascinated hands, his enquiring tongue, his avid mouth, his impatient sex. He could have cried from it. He called me ‘My little charcoal-haired sorceress'. For a long time after his attentions ceased to move me, I continued to allow him to touch me, to explore again and again that black cave inside me. I wanted both to learn the lessons of the flesh and to understand this man, his legacy of conquests and my own strength as one of the defeated. A homecoming like this troubled me.Yes, ‘troubled' is the right word. I hadn't yet felt with enough certainty my grey stone in the middle of my chest. I wasn't yet clear-headed enough. Not tough enough, either. I'm still not. Still not… And as if she has read my mind, Lolo has no hesitation in dealing me one of those deadly blows she is so good at: ‘The love of mathematics has only ever led to a scholarship to go away and study in France or the United States. And what then? You're wasting your time with Luckson, Joyeuse.'

Perhaps she's right? Perhaps I haven't yet totally rejected the complex background of the defeated, whose history is locked up in this black sea that surrounds our island like a tomb?

Lolo's conversation with her old man this morning revolves around lovers' trysts, sugary thank-yous and a new request for money. A bargaining to which I am only half paying attention when a heavy thump against the door, on the driver's side, makes me turn. The thump is followed immediately by the noise of a breaking window pane. A few passengers shout out and protect their faces. I curl up like a snail against the front seat while a strange, deafening rumble comes up from the street. We fear, with good reason, an ambush like the ones that have been taking place for a few weeks now in every corner of the city. The driver stamps on the accelerator and shoots off. Lolo has not let go of her mobile and tells her old man in the minutest detail the misadventure we are in the middle of experiencing. I know her well enough to be sure that she has found here the perfect excuse to raise the stakes later on when she sees him. Later on… That's Lolo all over.

The first emotional moments over, the driver slips in a music cassette. His intention is to prevent any comments by the passengers on the incident we have just experienced, and also to lead us, dancing, to the shores of forgetfulness. The voice of star singer Djakout Mizik ends up getting the better of that fear that for so long has thrown its huge black veil over our city. We lift up the veil, and for a brief time light once again bathes the world. And the things of this world appear to return to their proper place. We allow ourselves to be led by this electrified compas sound which tells us in a rhythmic language not to worry, that money is easy, that life is good and that Djakout Mizik has found the recipe for happiness.

ELEVEN

W
e gave John the love he wanted. In our own way. Deep down, we were delighted by this man, Fignolé's find. The real spoils of war. And on his second visit Mother took him by the hand and stood him in front of the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Here, she touched him two or three times in succession on his beard and his hair to ensure that he made the connection between this Christ hung on the wall and himself. Mother knows how to do it, I can assure you. She knows how to use her charm to maintain her world. He burst out laughing, revealing his white, neat teeth, and kissed Mother on her cheek. He must have found her charming and exotic.

John arrived ten years ago with a contingent of American soldiers during the second occupation of an island where there has since been no-one but subjects returning with their tails between their legs or losers leaving on their knees. Subjects and losers passing one another in a joint humiliation.What could they do, a race whose bosses, too, had at that point been conquered and humiliated, but themselves become part of that daily, banal disaster? Who on this island would not like to get the better of a foreigner, whether a pastor, aid worker or humanitarian? Previously, there had only been the white Blancs; now we have the black Blancs. The Blancs have brought us unhappiness with one hand and promises of happiness with the other. Who, if they are normal, would not want some of this extravagant thing known as happiness that you see gleaming in the distance? Always in the distance. And it was in order to prove to us that this happiness was within reach that John shared some of our meagre meals, paid for Mother's prescriptions and during a really lean period even agreed to settle up for the funeral of a cousin who didn't actually exist. We pocketed the money in silence. He guessed at the subterfuge but played the game to appease his guilty conscience at being the messenger of the gods. More than anything else on earth he wanted Joyeuse. And the first black Republic got women down on their knees for a few dollars, a meal, some squares of chocolate. John looked at Joyeuse, he looked at her and was barely able to restrain himself from sinking his teeth into this morsel of sweet flesh and devouring her before our eyes. And Joyeuse sensed this. Joyeuse was already so different from me. Full-figured, curvaceous. So sure of herself. So shameless and so sexual. Yes, the word is out. That's what Joyeuse is. Sexual. With all the connotations that go with it, and everything you can guess from it. She fired John up from head to toe like a torch. As young as she was when John came into our lives, her body still uncertain, Joyeuse already knew about the power of that thing she was well aware she carried between her thighs. Every time John visited she would take great care, watched by his mesmerised eyes, to wrap herself up, to build an impenetrable wall of silence or to laugh out loud, all out of breath from running. John was flattered by the agitation he caused in Joyeuse, this young, tantalising Black, this little fairy with a thousand magic spells, with eyes that shone like embers, with her enchanting backside. As for me, I was watching for the moment when John would weaken or bite. I could imagine the film, tinged with coffee, sugar cane and honey, that John was playing in his head, himself a novice among novices, he who, back in his white America, had never gone near anyone like Joyeuse except on a bus or at the checkout of a shop. John had an obstinate, stubborn taste for this forbidden fruit and would salivate at the slightest glimpse of her. And I, Angélique Méracin, I said nothing, as ever.