Fanon (19 page)

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To leave his island Fanon must risk the sea. The sea itself an island, one of many floating islands in a greater sea, itself an island in the sea he must risk to escape his island.

Does one trip lead to another and another, the threads of a life bound together as threads in a fabric, the whole pattern known, decided before the first stitch, a bolt of cloth finished before it's begun. Fanon could have saved himself lots of worrying, lots of wear and tear if he'd believed what he'd read about the old hags or was it madwomen, strange sisters who doled out the threads of human lives, so much for this one, less for her, more, more for him and cut each length to please themselves. He thinks of them cackling, squabbling, ill-tempered, foul-mouthed, gossiping like the women selling mangoes, cloth, vegetables, doughnuts, cod cakes, telling fortunes, telling news, black women in the marketplace measuring out short life there, long life here for each passerby who buys or doesn't buy the stacks of merchandise the women arrange on the tamarind-lined Savanne. If some witch or god knows his fate—and he was sure the market women privy to his, impossible to sneak past without their appraising eyes, their sharp tongues peeling his secrets, pulling down his khaki shorts so he was a naked, tender boy again—if his life a finished thing tied with a cord like the roll of cloth he'd stolen from his father to pay for passage to Dominica, why worry and plague himself,
should I, shouldn't I, go-stay-no-yes-no
...his mind tossing like the sea tosses this flimsy boat in its passage to another island, the chop, chop sea, waves splashing, sea sloshing in the boat's belly soaking his feet he can't see in the black night, feet darkness can't hide from the women's cat eyes, Lookee that boy's long feet him long hand. Hello dere, Mr. Boy-boy, Sweet-boy, boy, Mr. Long boy hide-in-grass snake.

His father's skin. Must the son squeeze into his father's skin and wear it forever. Skin father like son had no choice about, except to slip inside and wear. If it had been a sack of coins not a bolt of cloth
his father had cached away, would the son have stolen it to pay for passage to Dominica, No, no, he protests to the father. No, no, claims the son who must use this last chance to tell the truth to his father before drowning in the sea because the son Frantz certain he won't survive the rough passage to Dominica, this running-away thread he had believed would connect him to war, to France, a brave warrior risking the sea to rescue the captive motherland, the raped, weeping motherland calling for her son, embracing him, embracing his island, her island she'd neglected till her time of need. Ancient marriage. Dark bastard children. A timeless link severed by the here and now of treacherous waters between two islands, wind that whips and cuts, hungry sharks, shotgun blasts of rain, no mercy, nowhere to hide, a guillotine slices the watery neck between Dominica and Martinique, his picked-clean skull will wash up on a rocky, deserted beach. Stealing money different, Papa, from stealing skin. His father's skin belonged to both of them. To neither. Always. Wasn't he born wearing his father's skin. Money belonged to no one. Money's stolen and you only hold it till it's stolen again. But he'd die wearing his father's skin. His fate. Their fate. No choice. The father had purchased cloth for a suit he intended to wear to the wedding of his first son, Felix, the wedding tomorrow afternoon in Morne-Rouge, the day the drowning son, drowning brother Frantz won't see or will see in a new way, learning how sunrise appears if you watch it from inside the ocean's belly or from inside the belly of a whale. Thread by thread, saving pennies for a year, the father paid for that wedding suit never cut from cloth the son stole. The elegant fabric destined not to cover the father's shoulders but to be unraveled by the son's thieving fingers, picked apart thread by thread, respun into gold, the gold traded for a ticket, the ticket a passage to a different life a different fate for Frantz who must wear it forever as he wears the father's skin no matter how far from the island of Martinique the stolen ticket transports him. Nothing lost. Nothing changed. In the son's
skin his father is saved thread by invisible thread, threads accumulating like the precious pennies set aside each week for the cloth.

The father, Casimir, had purchased the cloth from a mule-faced woman in the Savanne who nodded and smiled while he recited his happy story—a son's wedding in Morne-Rouge, family and friends gathering from all over the island, a goat killed, a pig roasted in a pit, the father's story unfolding as she quick studies him with her cold, measuring eye, unrolling a portion from a bolt of cloth, cutting it she promises to meet exactly the specifications he desires, assuring him that her single swift glance—as swift as the glance unveiling in a second all a boy's secrets—was enough in every case to ascertain precisely how much material needed to tailor a fine suit for a fine gentleman's fine frame. She unfurls from her best stock a generous portion, not too generous, just a tiny bit of slack, not too much, sir, not too little, after all, she smiles, you must pay for every square centimeter. She hums to the cloth as her scissors snip, snip, snipping an unmarked, perfectly straight line, hums as she listens to his plans for a son's wedding, absorbed it seems by the man's story, but all the while another tale passes through her practiced hands, a tale like Braille she reads in the nap of the fabric, the man's fate, the fate of Frantz, his son, bound and twisted in the threads of this good cloth, cloth the father thinks is one thing, a thing purchased and owned, when in fact it's another, a story the market woman sees and the man can't. Behind her hooded eyes she watches the father looking back at himself from a mirror, admiring the suit he imagines he wears, the suit he dreams will cover skin he can't shed, skin he can't hold up to the light and assess and say yes, this, or no, a bit more color, less stripe, a tad thinner perhaps or thicker, sampling, pinching it between thumb and finger, a little less blue, let me think about it overnight, I'll decide tomorrow. The father with no more power to change his skin than the son, the son Frantz she sees stealing the cloth a month before the wedding, denying his crime, bearing his
secret shame, fearing the theft has doomed him when he's dropped off the solid earth's lap into a cauldron of boiling sea, the son riding a skimpy boat woven from his father's never-to-be suit, dreaming with other clandestine volunteers that he's joining the fight to free France, son like father unable to go back in time and reverse false steps. Son can't unrob his father, unlie, unsteal himself, recross the goat track over the steep, ravine-crisscrossed mountains between Le Prêcheur and Morne-Rouge, arrive forgiven, guiltless, drink rum punch, eat roast pork and conch fritters, dance tomorrow at his brother Felix's wedding.

To perform your duty you must forfeit your duty. To save yourself, to save France, you must be pitched into the sea and drown. Always too late to change what you struggle to learn. What you don't learn no help either. Crazy old crones haggling over your fate, then forgetting you as soon as they dispense your portion. So what if you believe that myth or some other myth. Yes, all threads connect. Yes. No way you can follow how or why. No. You can't choose, even if you could guess where this particular thread or that one might lead. The same step leads everywhere, nowhere. To France. Back home to his island. Glory. Shame. Hitler's fatherland. The motherland. War. Peace. The bottom of the sea.

The woman he crossed the sea to save does not hiss at him or shriek curses but if a look could kill, there on the dock of the bay in his uniform inspecting the wrecked port of Toulon, Fanon would have dropped to the gray boards, one young dead Martinican hero the German army needn't concern itself about. How was Fanon supposed to recall a day twenty-odd years in the past, a day he was not born yet, when this woman had walked this very same dock, newly married, her pregnant belly round as a sail full of wind, her soldier husband off fighting in the trenches of a war from which she fears, correctly, he'll never return, fear of his death a burden she willingly
suffered, as if the worst, made real in her heart, her dreams, might somehow stop the worst from actually happening. Fanon has just arrived in battered Toulon, and ignorant of this woman's history, as she is of his, he cannot guess that his smile of greeting is lost upon her or worse, that she sees beneath the smiling mask atop his cadet's trim shoulders the grizzled face of an old black man, so black he must be an African, an old man sweeping the walkway bordering the water, and she sees Toulon miraculously intact as the city was twenty-some years before, the dock's planks gleaming under the patient strokes of the black fellow's push broom, the entire harbor spick-and-span, water calm, sparkling in the morning light. Perhaps this pitch-dark man she's passing by had swept the sea too, sweeping all night, as far as the horizon so he's tired now, leans on the shaft of his broom, exhausted but proud of his handiwork, the sea clear and bright, the walkway at its best, clean and safe for your morning promenade, madame, a huge African smile smiles these words at her, like that big black smiling African soldier's face on cocoa boxes, the only thing missing the red kepi crowning his glossy forehead black as Bamboulinette's, blacker than the shoe polish Bamboulinette's smile entices you to buy. How could a woman, walking on the dock, anxious, alone, pregnant in that time of terror and war, resist the African's wide grin, how could she not smile back at those white eyes those white teeth, and for an instant her dread quiets when she sees, no, feels his eyes caressing her, no, tracing, no, amening the curve of her belly, and she's slightly embarrassed but proud of her handiwork like the old African fellow's proud of his. Good luck, madame, barely a whisper, barely louder than a nod, which perhaps is all it was, an unspoken blessing she believes she hears, no, sees, no, feels directed at her between one slow, easy stroke and the next as he resumes his sweeping. Good luck, she thought she heard him wish her, and sure enough she'd enjoyed luck since that morning over twenty years ago, lots of luck, plenty, plenty luck, endless goddamn luck, all of it bad, a
bad, bad, sad portion of misery and misfortune she dated from that exchange twenty-odd years before, blaming her bad luck on the old black devil's evil eye, his fat white African lips and heathen magic. Her young man lost at sea, the lost child drowning in her rotten-apple womb, boatloads of sailors pawing her, stomping her, one famished man after another gnawing on her breasts, wrecking her body like the bombs raining down in this new war wrecking Toulon's harbor. Old widow, old whore, who'd want her now, a ruined city this fresh brown boy mocks with his smile, his nod, because he'd been there that clean, dreamy morning and cursed her, this black demon who changes color and shape at will, returning to taunt her with his perfect white teeth.

Are there semblances of plot, of direction, purpose, and necessity, in Fanon's story. Someone or something in charge—weird sisters, a deity, Progress, History—wouldn't that be preferable to no one, nothing in charge, only random permutations and combinations of desire and fear, slaughter and love, the relentless cannibalizing of ourselves, our offspring. Why not you in charge, Doctor Fanon. A physician who first cures himself, then cures us, the world, of its ills. Why not you. Seize the bit in your teeth, horse and rider, and ride.

A false start the first time Fanon risks the sea. Two weeks languishing on Dominica, a neighboring island very close to his, though it seemed a million miles away the night of his crossing. Boring duty on Dominica. A handful of lucky ones steam off to the fighting in Europe. The rest, including most of the volunteers who'd cowered with you while rough waters battered your frail boat, become toy soldiers, marched, drilled, bullied by veterans in faded uniforms—here a tunic with gold epaulettes, there trousers with a thick red stripe—the buttons remaining on the officers' coats polished bright as mirrors, mourning, doing double duty for buttons missing. Twiddling your thumbs and waiting on Dominica, groaning awake in the
middle of the night aroused by the ache of your sex, the ache of impatience, impetuosity, of guilt, your eighteen-year-old body sweating, fiery from mosquito bites, skin raw from scratching, from the sandpaper rub of your father's suit you can't remove even when you collapse exhausted on the plank serving as a bed in the crude barracks. Why do you daydream knights on horseback, fair damsels, besieged castles, fire-belching dragons. Why not a maroon in the hills above a plantation, counting the guards, killing careless whites whenever you get the chance, stealing back your people one by one, patient in your impenetrable hideaway until the odds tilt to your favor and one flaming dawn or moonless night your band sweeps down from the mountains and snatches what's yours. Your fate, your destiny, your portion not something you can wait for or beg or borrow. No one can grant you freedom. If you're in charge, you never wait. You prepare. Gather the threads in your hands, connect them, braid them, take the next step you must take. That next step the only truth, all truth. But isn't truth, Fanon reminds himself, also true if you don't take charge. Your fate's your fate, whatever steps you take or don't take. No way out. And this reversible truth a kind of bittersweet comfort or a good laugh at himself squeezed out of the worst times when he lies awake, beyond the possibility of sleep, empty-handed, famished, waiting for something or someone he couldn't say what the fuck it might be, trying like a prisoner in a cell to remember in the middle of the night what he had believed was worth the risk of winding up in prison. Would he recognize the thing he desired, the thing he'd been willing to steal or kill for, if it rose up and shook its feathers, fur, wings, bared its fangs, its pussy, at the foot of the hard plank where the little generals and sergeants and corporals order him to sleep.

Here is the itinerary or log so to speak of Fanon's Great Escape, his journey from an old New world to a new Old world, after a false start
on Dominica. I learned the details of his getaway in a book Fanon never had the opportunity to read so the information's thirdhand at best, an outsourced search for truth, documented by the plausibility of facts, facts unconfirmed by Fanon, untouched by his hand dead forty years before the book published. Welcome information in any case (thank you Mr. David Macey, assiduous historian), welcome as some of the facts might have been to Fanon on those fitful nights conflicted, stalled on Dominica. A healing glimpse of the future. Proof the rumors of the wanderer's return home are true. The flock of vulture suitors will be routed one bright morning and Penelope will never be forced to wear the wedding gown she weaves in public by day and unravels in the secrecy of her bedchamber each night.