The Restless Page 9

  “Those shiny nylon helmets are really hot. That’s what exhausts the brain, your scalp stuck with hairpins while sweat rolls down your face.”

  And then he’ll make his move; he’ll get into the school through the side gate. It’s easy to go behind the school, you just have to avoid the shit, because there’re a lot of people who like to do their business behind the school. And you have to watch out for the coconut-tree roots, which can trip you up in a second if you’re not paying attention. So he’ll slip through the iron bars, stay close to the wall with the toilets (another pissy area to get through), creep up the spiral staircase—the big stone one with the faux marble steps. Yeah, that one, so it won’t be noisy. Because if he were to try it in the part of the school that’s mostly wood, it would be a lot harder. He’ll go right up to her apartment and find her seated in one of those faux teak armchairs. She’ll be alone. Her husband, a tax collector, won’t have come back yet.

  “I’ll surprise her! I’ll make her confess the awful things she did!”

  Speechless, Colette and I listened to this torrent of words accompanied by clenched fists, his hat thrown violently to the ground. We didn’t dare interrupt; perhaps we were fascinated by his ability to reenact the exact workings of his imagination.

  When he finally shut up, I muttered, “No, no, my brother. That’s too much. You don’t need to do all that.”

  Colette took advantage of my own objections to add, “I don’t think he realizes he’ll only get me into worse trouble. Why can’t you see that? I think there’s something else going on. The idea about that poem is ridiculous.”

  I suddenly felt the desire to splash cold water on my face. “I’m overheated,” I broke in. “Damn these days in May, they’re so dry and brutal.” I needed an excuse to get away from them, as soon as possible.

  I bent over the pail of water I always kept full, a black plastic pail. I studied the plastic as if I’d never seen it before and spent a long time over that troubled water, already dirty because I’d washed my hands in it. I plunged my hands back into the muddy water, water that was almost as hot as my fiery head. But even the hot water did me good. I scrubbed at my face, almost as if I were trying to take the skin off. It calmed me to rub my eyes, my neck, the back of my head.

  When I stood up, Colette had come over to me; we were almost face to face. I could see she was begging, and I understood, even if I dreaded my peaceful life being disrupted by their bickering, that I couldn’t desert my brother and disappoint Colette.

  She picked up her story again.

  And she talked. She’d been summoned to the rector’s office Thursday morning—a meeting with one of the administrative heads of the state education machine, in a small office under the stairwell. The door left open, the feeling of being scolded like a child. The rectory was packed; Thursday morning, after all. She’d been called in precisely on the most crowded day, despite it not being a school day, with hundreds of people passing through the corridors: colleagues (even her own colleagues needing to solve some administrative problem), parents, students, too, high school students—primarily high schoolers. An open door in a building that echoes like a cathedral. Anybody could get their fill of the conversation, listen in on what that seemingly proud woman and that official with the too-tight black tie (even trying to look casual in short sleeves) had to say.

  Of course Colette knew who he was. A local guy, from her own generation, maybe a little older, by three or four years. She’d even danced with him once or twice, at a ball or a wedding; she didn’t remember anymore. They’d met several times before this, but now he was treating her as though she were a perfect stranger, an unknown face. She called him by his first name, but he was formal from the start: “Sit down, Madame Ladal. They asked me to see you. Nothing too serious right now, but there could be trouble down the road.”

  “Trouble? Why?”

  “Seditious activities.”

  That was hilarious. She burst into laughter, of course upsetting the state’s representative. A self-important man assigned the supreme task of keeping the enemies of the Republic and the mother country in their place. But just look at how that mulatto was making fun of him!

  “You think this is funny? Well let’s see how long you keep laughing!”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. But really”—and she called him again by his first name—“to accuse me of seditious activities! What does that even mean?”

  “You think I don’t know what words mean? Are you trying to test me? To mock me?”

  “Don’t be so sensitive!”

  “Sure, that’s right—blacks are hypersensitive.”

  “I’m just as black as you, monsieur.”

  “I’m not sure we’re the same at all, madame.”

  Every time she opened her mouth, Colette only made it worse, so she decided to keep quiet. But he took offense at that as well.

  “Nothing more to say? What am I supposed to write in my report?”

  With that, she snapped, lashing out in rapid-fire Creole: “Makyé sa ou vlé, an byen fouté pa mal!”

  “I don’t give a fuck about your report.”

  That’s when I knew she’d gone too far. You can’t take back those words, more devastating than any seditious activity.

  The official most likely would have been appeased by a little groveling, a confession that she had maybe made a few critiques of the power structure. From that, he would have understood that she wanted a little piece of it: a position somewhere, a bone to chew on, just like him. Then they would have been in the same race, equals somehow. By doing so she would be admitting he was ahead of her, because he already had the position she coveted. She would have recognized his ability to connect her to the labyrinthine power structure of the middle class. Just enough to expect her to be grateful.

  That was the role she should have played, but Colette wasn’t capable of it, Julien either. Besides, they both despised people who got caught up in that game. Félix Eboué would have said, “Play the game.” But not them; they weren’t made for compromises that looked like collaboration. Me neither, but I shied away from administrations and state bureaucracies. I wasn’t trying to make my living in anything that depended on them.

  The sun had started to set while we were talking; a shadow was closing in on us. The flamboyant tree we were standing under had stopped complaining about the heat, no more regular sharp little cracking noises. And the bats were about to start their anarchic flying overhead. A few voices had already called out to me as they passed: “How you doin’, Henri!”

  “Hey, Plumain.”

  Men were leading their cows back. “Hey, Henri.”

  “Hey, Girard!”

  Knee-high boots, clothes stained with banana sap, huge hats, rubber gloves, and sharp knives had all finished their day’s work and were moving slowly away from us. Walking with ease, taking big determined steps.

  I asked, “What do we do now?”

  “I want Colette to stay with you tonight and all weekend, if need be.”

  She wouldn’t go along with this; he was the one who needed protection. I didn’t exactly feel like spending my evening listening to increasingly crazy stories. I knew all the bad aspects of my brother: his penchant for useless provocation, his ability to piss off every kind of imaginable authority, his stubbornness and fury—angering even the people in the various political groups he frequented, without missing a meeting. I would have happily welcomed Colette into my home, but she was having none of it. There was no way she’d leave him by himself when she could help keep him from encountering an armed policeman in some dark alley.

  My brother mumbled, “All this way for nothing.”

  “That’s not true,” she answered, smiling.

  I invited them up to the house for a drink, but she avoided answering. She whispered to me later, when I leaned into the car to say goodbye, “If we’d gone into your house, he’d convince you to keep me there, and I don’t want him to leave for La Pointe alon
e. I’m really worried, you know.”

  When they left for La Pointe, I started to gauge how dangerous it was, especially for him. I’d heard from friends that that Friday was going to be messy, and I figured he’d for sure be one of the first persons the authorities would go after.

  Our mother was especially worried about him, and I was too. One of Colette and Julien’s neighbors, whose balcony looked onto their inner courtyard, told me about his tirades against the government. His provocations as well.

  Those inner courtyards are the best thing about Pointe-à-Pitre. They’re a little like a port: you land there after a long day, half-dead from life in the noisy and dirty city, sit down in the cool shade underneath a tree, and then you have a little rum or some ice-cold lemon soda with anisette liqueur—or both, the fiery rum followed by the pleasure of an icy drink—and watch the sun hurry on down. People who don’t have a courtyard sit on their stoops or on a bench they’ve brought out front, or on a rocking chair installed like a sentinel in front of their door. Some have folding chairs they take out only to fold them up again and store them behind the door. Others end the day in the backrooms of shops, inhaling the smells of dried cod or gasoline.

  Everybody finds a way to enjoy this blessed lapse of time separating the blindingly bright days from the deep lightless nights, nights overtaken by the hordes of stray dogs that sweep through town. Everybody enjoys dusk in their own way, but nothing’s as good as a courtyard aperitif.

  The neighbor who’s observing Julien at my request has often enjoyed that little moment of early evening calm at their place, under the breadfruit tree.

  He told me it’s not easy to get Julien to shut up; he’s so chatty, so ready to tell the world what he thinks about France meddling in our country’s politics. Nothing can stop him. Trying to keep him from going too far, Colette does her part by gushing about her favorite class, her thirty-two little schoolgirls.

  My spy said that Colette knows her students so intimately that when she begins to describe them, it feels like you’re looking at a photo that’s just been taken.

  Everybody who’s enjoyed the shade of the breadfruit tree in my brother’s courtyard knows all about how little Maryvonne struggles to avoid making holes in the pages of her notebook, how she tries to stop spotting her face with purple ink. Everybody finds it funny and at the same time a little pathetic, everybody except Julien, who’s troubled by ridiculing the disadvantaged.

  Julien is the kind of man devoted to the rights of the most humble—“the poorest of the poor,” “workers ferociously exploited by colonialism”—and he wouldn’t stand for anyone making fun of their failures or limitations. He certainly wasn’t going to allow his wife to be one of “the vectors of cultural alienation.”

  But she’d just smile, shrug her shoulders as though she were annoyed. She thought he maybe went too far, but she would never not stand by him in the fights he and his comrades engaged in.

  Was Julien a socialist, a communist, a nationalist, for autonomy, for independence? Even I didn’t know how to classify him anymore. Regardless, he was somebody that no administration or bureaucracy could stomach.

  My brother wasn’t afraid of anything. Or you could say, and I will, he just didn’t have any sense of the word “caution.” Everybody warned him to cool it, but it was hopeless. He insisted his political loyalties be known and accepted by everyone.

  If I had to describe him, what would I say?

  Julien was a voice. Yeah, that’s what he was, a voice that careened towards you from the end of the street even before he started walking down Commandant Mortenol to La Place de la Victoire, where he lived. A voice that interrogated children who fell into his clutches: “What the hell are you doing in the street? Just where are the parents of these children?”

  A voice that was amplified by a thunderous laugh whenever he encountered Panpan, an enormous dock-worker who sweated rum and introduced himself by imitating the sound of a fire truck, echoing the words of a popular song: “M’wen ni on loto nèf pin-pon, pin-pon, pin-pon, pam-pam.” Some people, liking all the musical sounds, also called him Pinpon.

  I met Panpan in their courtyard. A colossal figure—you’d better get out of his way—because one of his feet, looking bleached and dried from what leaked out of the cement sacks he carried all day long across the docks, was as big and heavy as a cinder block. Nobody wants to have that land on his own zaïgos, not even when you wear shoes.

  Julien and Panpan were equals when it came to their vocal prowess. Yes, indeed they were! Except Panpan’s voice was a lot rougher than Julien’s. But they were thick as thieves, even if Panpan said only nasty things about the communists and all their buddies. It seemed he had a free hand in the house, and the fact he could say whatever he liked about the Party could be explained by Julien’s absolute conviction: “The working class is alienated. It’s up to us to help it get ahead.”

  If Panpan was any kind of example, the working class had serious troubles with alcohol. But did that poor fellow even know he was part of the class in question, or even that he was alienated?

  One time I was sitting with Panpan under the breadfruit tree. There he was, sweating like a pig in his torn undershirt, his enormous khaki shorts hanging off his body, when, with eyes riveted on the tree and hands on his stomach, I heard him say, “Gotta cut this fouyapenla; it’s gonna tilt up your house and one day you’ll be sleepin’ with the roots, Madame Colette. They’ll be in your bed!”

  I always wondered how Colette could be so easygoing about letting him into their home. No fuss, Colette—always leaving behind the delicious scent of eau de cologne, Reine des Fleurs. I liked to imagine my sister-in-law making Panpan sit in a big silver tub of water, scrubbing him briskly with a grass brush and spraying him with Héliotrope Blanc, the men’s version of her royal perfume. In the daydream I had, I saw Panpan groaning with pleasure while Julien railed against the old Easter tradition of bringing street people home, washing them, cleaning them up, putting fresh clothes on their backs, and then releasing them again to the streets, to their delirium and their wanderings, until the next festival of Christian charity.

  Because Colette was a good Christian, she taught the neighborhood children catechism on Thursday afternoons, and I know the priest was proud of her, even if he scolded her for marrying that crazed Castro supporter. Colette and the priest argued incessantly about Julien. My mother told me all about it.

  Colette would protest, “A Castro supporter? Do you see a beard anywhere? I don’t even like men with beards; they itch, and I don’t like to see them scratch their necks and their chins.”

  “Well maybe he doesn’t have his beard, but he certainly has his ideas. Yes, he does.”

  Eventually Colette thought up the best argument for getting the priest to stop lecturing her once and for all: “You’re the first priest I ever heard of who wanted to tear asunder what the Good Lord joined together.”

  Bingo! Father Anselme stopped his attempts at persuading her that Julien was nothing more than a mad good-for-nothing she should never have married. No more discussions, just some teasing once in a while. “How’s your communist? Does he have a beard yet? How’s it coming in?”

  Though, if Colette had let him, Julien would have dressed himself up as the perfect Castro revolutionary, donning beard, cap, olive drab military uniform, or that Cuban shirt we call alcora, but they call guayabera. But she kept an eye on him, and he pretty much kept himself in check with that kind of thing. From time to time, he’d disguise himself as a peasant when he went off to feed the few animals he kept, wearing that same bizarre straw hat from yesterday—just before my stupid accident along l’Allée Dumanoir.

  As for the rest, Colette didn’t get involved in the speeches, the meetings, the conventions at the Mutualité, the communist pamphlets distributed at the end of mass, the closed-door political workshops—even though he couldn’t stop himself from telling her certain things.

  My brother spoke so loudly that his words coul
d be heard by the gendarmes drinking their aperitif on the doctor’s balcony next door—those police officers with a vested interest in the suspicious happenings of the Ladal courtyard. But while Julien raised his voice and yelled, Colette would whisper, calming him down. Whereas Julien encouraged his guests to stay to listen to his ideas, Colette would try to send them home, gently suggesting, “My friends, it’s time for dinner.”

  How many different strategies did she invent when those imposing calves in their white socks appeared on the doctor’s balcony? Those big white legs of the law were an omen, a guarantee that a terrible and unavoidable tragedy was about to befall them. So she’d pick up the glasses and invite everyone inside, justifying herself by saying, “Don’t you think it’s getting a little cold out here?”

  She’d pull the salon door shut behind her and close the shutters, and everyone would settle into wooden armchairs with fake red-leather cushions. A collection of shiny blue-marbled animals was scattered around the room, looking straight ahead, their eyes empty. Sometimes she even sent Julien over to our mother’s. “Weren’t you supposed to go see your mother today?”

  Or she’d ask about the animals he was pasturing in a rental property in Besson, just outside Pointe-à-Pitre. How about the chickens, the cow, the goats? Didn’t he have to feed and water them? What about the grass for the rabbits in their hutch?

  “Don’t you want to go with him, Panpan?”

  Panpan would have done anything to keep sitting comfortably squeezed in that armchair that was too low for his legs, in that salon that was too small for his size. Nevertheless, he went with Julien, who was never fooled by Colette’s maneuvering and who’d always yell out one last explosive thought, “One of these days those people will have to find their way back to their own country and leave ours to us!”

  The gendarmes’ hands would linger distractedly near their hips, barely touching the pistols hanging there in their worn brown holsters.

  Julien let them have it, “And when they’ve killed enough of us, as though we were rabbits, they’ll even get a medal.”