Men (22 page)

She moved off a few paces. The guys from the crew had chosen trees along the path. Favour, too—although Favour was probably not subject to any laws of nature. Solange walked around the kapok tree, which took about ten minutes. Showers of fireflies exploded at her feet, illuminating the undergrowth for a moment. The soil was clear, covered only with leaves. She remembered a television documentary about women collecting what looked like balls of wool from under a tree—handfuls of big grey spiders, to fry…But hang on, those women were Asian. They wore Chinese-style hats. In the watchful silence her stream of urine made the leaves crackle. She wiped herself with some baby wipes. She hesitated, then dropped them, right there on the ground. A slap in the face of Mother Nature.

She sprayed Rambo insecticide all over her clothes. The fireflies blinked, hello, goodbye.

She found Kouhouesso's tent. The flap was shut. She hesitated. She pulled on the zip gently and felt it slip out of her fingers: Kouhouesso, from inside, asked what she was up to, where had she been? She glimpsed his open arms in the darkness and cuddled up against him. She could not see him, which made it irresistible. He told her to take off her clothes: she stank of insecticide. The relief of bare skin. Yours, mine. He rolled on top of her; they breathed gently, trees and insects all around them, endless.

Afterwards, he talked. The structure supporting the central projector had been damaged in the storms and had to be reassessed before sunrise. And parts of the set were missing. Who would have thought light fittings and cables would be stolen? The guard posted at the caves had seen torches and heard singing; apparently he had left his post to have a closer look. Who would have thought fucking pilgrims would turn up in this forest? Later on, he called out in his sleep: could she stop moving? She was scratching herself. It was agony. Something had bitten or stung her on her buttocks and the tops of her thighs. She rummaged in her bag, trying to make as little noise as possible. At first the freshness of the baby wipes applied as bandages was a relief, then she wanted to howl, the burning pain was so bad.

All of a sudden, he sat up. His voice was harsh,
like a tree thrusting down into the earth: he had to work tomorrow.

She lay still. The tormented hours before morning were like an abridged version of what she endured with him, yet another day of waiting, unbearable waiting.

A WORLD TOO PERFECT

They were on an island, a volcanic island that had appeared in the middle of the chaos. It was like looking out from a lighthouse. Threads of mist turning pink as the sun set. A huge population of trees, as thick as a sea of clouds, billowing, rippling, serried, of every shade of green, rounded, dome upon dome, laid out in a way that derived from nothing human, but rather from natural forms, the structure of growing things. There was Gabon, and then the Congo over there, the Congo where they would not be going. The sky turned completely red, then the light died. It was six o'clock. They could hear giants fighting, supernovas of leaves and dust and smaller trees dragged into the explosion, leaving holes in the ground. There was secret sawing going on. In the distance, was the sound of animals on the run, screeches.

They had not started filming yet. And George was leaving the day after tomorrow. They had had to rebuild the whole gantry for the lighting, redo a cable network and give up on the top light, which fused everything. The end result was a sort of wigwam of interconnecting wires with a projector on top and a reflector on the bottom, all of it inside the cave, as if the Pygmies had gone mad. When they had finally been able to connect the generator, a thousand bats flew off. And Kouhouesso had to make an announcement about how the Ebola virus was only transmissible if you were bitten.

Everyone was jittery, telling each other off, chasing after bits and pieces, running through the leaves, shrieking a bit like birds.

‘Hey, Miss Chinese!' yelled Welcome.

‘I'm Uyghur,' retorted Olga.

‘Are you sick?' asked Solange anxiously.

‘It's a nightmare,' said Favour into her personal satellite phone. They had located a large tree stump where the actors could wait. The wet moss was creeping up their backs; they felt themselves growing along with everything else. Seen from the trees, they must have looked like large mushrooms on a skewer. And the whole encampment in the clearing, entertainers among the chaos of green, was such an assortment of random and coordinated elements, thirty-odd human beings gathered together, bending over backwards to give shape to the Big Idea, conquering the
river, framing History and keeping the jungle in check… and those characters would be seen moving around on cinema screens far from here…Mushrooms were dangling from her hood.

‘You don't say “jungle”,' said Kouhouesso. ‘That's for Asia. We're not in Mowgli country; anyway, there are no tigers in Africa.'

His explanations of the world, in the three minutes a day she managed to grab with him, were like stolen kisses.

While George and Vincent were talking poker, Favour announced that it was scandalous: a so-called democracy with a quarter of the French population not represented, the quarter who voted for Le Pen and who were despised. If the National Front won the election, at least the situation would be clear, the truth would be out about the country of the Rights of Man, and that's when we could start talking. Solange tipped her head back towards the trees. She let herself be carried along by the foliage. She wanted to go home, home with him, back to their country, to a beach, a house on stilts, a somewhere-else à la Laurent Voulzy,
under the sun, we're all the same colour, the same colour for everyone, under the sun…

She swam in the river—barely a stream—where Hilaire and Glueboy went to collect water. It was good to wash herself, to sluice away the dust and sweat; as soon as she had stepped in the lukewarm current up to her waist, it was as if the heat of her body and that of the air combined, as if the
stream became heavy, too, constituted of the same matter as the forest. The animals remained mute. The birds were motionless. Even the insects were hiding; all she could see in the long grasses on the bank were little frogs, the size of a fingernail and glossy red. The water was marvellously clear; puffs of yellow sand rose between her toes. ‘Come on,' she had begged Kouhouesso. He would not come.

She found the caves rather disappointing. Not so much caves as piles of fallen rocks, to be honest. Slabs that had slipped on top of each other and formed cavities. All right, it was attractive, and looked suitably haunted. Resin skulls were stuck on assegais; torches and spotlights did the rest, and all of the available black crew, including guides, cooks and grips—transformed into extras, wearing old-time fancy dress—were getting ready to clown around. Freeboy was the only one to baulk at the idea. Did they want to provoke the demons? Welcome chased after him to put his make-up on, the big Bantu on the heels of the little Pygmy; laughter rippled through the crowd like a whole lot of switches lighting up. Kouhouesso wanted mouths that would shine on film. ‘As if their mouths were not already visible enough,' said Welcome, referring to the Pygmies.

Before the
clap
of the clapperboard, Kouhouesso made each person listen to the tone of
Heart of Darkness
, a few pages of the novel
:

‘The girl! What?…Oh, she is out of it—completely. They—the women, I mean—are out of it—should be out
of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own…'

Did the passages about women refer to her?

‘It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own…It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset.'

Kouhouesso was a literal man who knew about subjugation, who, like her, was conversant with the facts about domination. But no one objected, least of all Favour or Olga. It was a question of narrative, period, point of view…A last bat fluttered around without finding the exit: a low IQ. George went ‘Boo!' as he shined his pocket torch beneath the bat; Freeboy did not laugh.

Freeboy's iPod never left his ears. Apparently it didn't work. Kouhouesso and Olga thought the dozen little trinkets attached to the earbud cords were wonderful. Pebbles, eye teeth, feathers, pearls and twists of string, what Kou called his
jujus
: wonderful, but best without the iPod. If Freeboy could just be sensible: keep his amulets, but on a leather cord. Otherwise the iPod would be visible on screen.

‘
Je wanda
…who is this Kouhouesso?
Yikes
, does he grow Caterpillar machines? Does he eat hot pepper? Who does he think he is. The man is full of himself ! Don't get me started. Whatever, whatever, I have to speak up now. I wear my things and he wants to use them?
Hell!
This guy looks really really bad.
Helele
, what's he talking about? It's a lie!
What a sycophant. I've got a bone to pick with him. I don't give a fuck! He's stirring up shit with me. I'm walka me. What a green dog. What a lying cheat, that's it. I'm outta here, pardon!'

Patricien translated Freeboy's
camfranglais
in the neutral tone of an interpreter from the United Nations. So Kouhouesso's authority was in doubt; persecution had its limits. Freeboy pulled out of the project.

He rolled up his sleeping mat, took some flasks of whisky, some sticks of cassava, his scrap of soap and his scrap of towel, tied it all up with a creeper, and headed into the forest. The sound of his machete echoed for a while, then died away. Freeboy had a flair for the dramatic. Fortunately there were still a couple of Bagyelis guides, M'Bali and Tumelo. But absolutely no one could understand a word they said.

She put on the long white tunic Olga had laid out for her. Welcome had made her up with a pallid complexion, a bit too vampire for her taste, but she would only make a hazy appearance. George-Kurtz was on his deathbed, and the Intended wafted before him. It was her idea—taking liberties with Conrad, but he could go to hell. In front of the spotlights, the insects gathered in clouds so dense you could see them, their buzzing so loud you could hear them. They had to use the fan to drive them away, but without it being visible or audible. Favour, that schemer, was also in the scene, as flamboyant and wild as Solange was pale and
languid; one had to wonder if Kouhouesso wasn't falling for the very clichés he wanted to condemn. She glanced at the video-assist screen: it looked good, anyway. She adjusted her tunic one last time: it was her good side. She leaned forward slightly to get in a better light. Watch out: lights, camera, action.

CAMEO

Those words he had said to her. ‘See, it's not working.' He had turned to her at the end of the last take. She felt as if the words had made their way into her forever, as if she would hear them over and over in the silence. See, it's not working.

And yet the scene was beautiful. She was standing straight, ghostly, soulful. But he said that he didn't believe in it. That Kurtz's final thoughts were not about the Intended. That all Kurtz wanted was to ‘exterminate all the brutes'.

They made love. Let's call it love. At first it seemed like he didn't want to. But as soon as he touched her…Perhaps, also, he was astonished, confused, mystified. They were radiant, intoxicated, in awe. They both plunged beneath their skin. One shudder after another. Stripping back, layer after layer, a little more, a little further, until they reached the
skeleton, the universal whiteness of bone, in the universal blackness of flesh.

He was so tired. George was flying back tomorrow. All the close-up shots were in the can, but for the end of the film, well, Kouhonesso would use a mannequin or a body double to set up the scenes where Kurtz's corpse is carried on board the boat. He was talking to himself. His hands were moving like moths. He might as well take the role himself, a Hitchcock appearance, a cameo. He would appear, then disappear, dead, stiff, a cadaver; they could whiten his hands and substitute George's head in the editing. Cinema language was all he used now: these were becoming his everyday words. She wondered if he was taking amphetamines or something. Words of love were the words she was speaking, softly, her head in his neck, in that nocturnal, salty hollow. Was he annoyed by her feelings for him? Why would he be annoyed…She mouthed
I love you
, breathed
I love you
.

Words. The substitution. The editing. The Intended. She saw strange bodies. Creatures from films. Ancient monsters, Blemmyes, whose heads were in their torso and who were said to be cannibals, the Nubians seen by the first white explorers. See, it's not working. She saw the child on the ground, in the witch's hollow tree. She felt her forehead burning but she was cold: two climates had a hold over her, a chronic malaria and a drowsiness that was all her own. He was taking the time to explain the film to her again, even though time was running out for everything.

But he did not know on the last night. He did not know himself that it was their last night. She was certain of that: now the film was finished, he was not making any plans. She herself did not know; no one knew that was it, their last night.