Mai at the Predators' Ball (11 page)

Jacobinia carnea
which grew best in the shade, the African tulip that closed up against the cold, the jacaranda from Brazil, orchids from the Philippines, a Texas olive tree, amaryllis, these were trees and flowers that would not bow to storms or even to the island’s hurricanes and would last until long after Mère was gone, always, always they would be there she thought, how incomprehensible that a human life should be so short, burnt out and consumed, so very short, while others found it endlessly long, they told her it was time to rest when she really wanted to go on talking to Franz, and they wondered why Daniel and Mai weren’t back yet though he had phoned to tell them about the fog on the roads out where they’d gone, far into the archipelago to see the does and fauns, deer and foxes, oh well perhaps they were right, it might be better to get some rest even though it was still early, she was not quite sure whether it was evening but it couldn’t be night yet with its shadowy hues and silence, soon they’d be hearing the sound of toads, the cracking of branches under the weight of Mai’s cats by the open window, her dogs barking too, amid the silence any sounds were dispersed in echos, and in the brownish shadows Mère feared the return of the nightmare in which she walked through a station seeing nothing at all, picking her way through a crowd of people she didn’t know, a flurry of bodies whose faces she couldn’t see, walking in the midst of a thick fog with her cane, afraid of hurting someone as she went, touching the shadowed heads with one hand and saying to herself who are all these people, are we all headed for the same train, all of us shrouded from the others, faceless in the deepest of shades that nevertheless presses us all together, I’d so like to be alone, especially when they’re strangers, what are we all walking toward anyhow and why am I following along, a noise in the room brought an end to the nightmare, a presence in the shadows, but since she didn’t have the strength to light the lamp she remained mired in her sighs and uneasiness, unable to see who was there, whoever it was opened a cupboard and held out a secure box to her, it seemed to be the one where she kept her jewellery case with all the gifts Mélanie had given her over the years, medallions, chains, rings . . . all of it, all she had to do was simply light the lamp and she’d see the person, wouldn’t she, and if she did who would she catch off-guard, perhaps Mai’s old governess, now her own nursemaid, Marie-Sylvie de la Toussaint, better to pretend she was still dozing, out of it, then Marie-Sylvie de la Toussaint would just leave with her takings if it was really her robbing an old invalid in her room, and if it was, better to forget the whole thing Mère thought, no point in worrying the whole family, especially Mélanie, besides, with Mère one never knew if things were true or not, such were the byways of an overactive memory sometimes, and what if it was real after all and Mélanie never knew, she was calmer now and actually did half doze off, remembering how much she’d enjoyed hearing the Schubert this afternoon, what delight she thought, what was it that Fatalité sang just the day before the funeral,
kiss me, love me
, debauched and aloof under her plumage, that’s what she was singing,
kiss me, love me
, and though it was still night there was no one in the streets yet, and Herman had rearranged the prayer fixed to the back of his electric tricycle in lights of every colour and rode all over town singing of her who transgressed every law there was,
kiss me now before it’s too late
,
kiss, let’s kiss
, and these were the words that galvanized Yinn’s dance and all who heard it through their sleep, as though written in fire in the night air,
love me, kiss me
thought Petites Cendres, also on the back of Herman’s cheeky tricycle was the racehorse Robbie had spoken about to Petites Cendres, Victoire it was called, or that other filly Neuvième Beauté, and Victoire running, running even with an injured leg, operated on and then bandaged, running, running with the white dressing on her right leg, nasty little mafia jockeys pulling on her reins almost to suffocation, Victoire or Neuvième Beauté, and run they did like haywire locomotives on the very track where they’d be put down, unable to stand again, oh for a rest somewhere in the country or in their stable with the other horses, rivals, when, when would a kind master rub their ears, they understood all, saw all with those oblique eyes, the crooks, the jockeys, they saw it all, never to get up from the track again after winning and wounding, no never get up again with the gleam of a dream in their eyes of rest and pasture in a field and the rain, impertinent Herman now, he was that horse, Neuvième Beauté or Victoire, whichever, that fell as he danced on Yinn’s set the night before, Herman couldn’t care less about the roadblocks in his way, maybe not a real injury, just a sprain in his left leg, forget about it he’d say, yeah forget about it, and standing on the back of his tricycle he sang
kiss me, love me
, too bad if you don’t get it, this is what galvanized Yinn’s dance in the glow of the red night light, but just as he held out his hand to Petites Cendres, Petites Cendres realized he was alone, where had Yinn got to after this private dance, where were Herman and Robbie,
kiss me, love me,
parched with thirst Petites Cendres ran into the bar to douse himself with water, his hair streaming with sweat and water, he all at once saw Timo in the reddish glow, hey friend what are you doing here wearing only boxers and a hat, you can’t go around like that with nothing else on, you’ve got to put some pants on Petites Cendres said to him, Timo showed him the white suitcase he was carrying, in here I’ve got everything we need, it’s full of money, his voice was chilly as though reciting a dictation, you thought I was gone or lying dead from a gunshot wound in the mud somewhere, actually I was in Mexico, Culiacán, down there it’s hard to tell who kills the most, druggies like me or the guys who try to catch us, it’s an equal-opportunity fraternity, sheriffs are always after us but anything they can do we can do, even decapitate or throw a grenade at them, yep fifty-fifty, I’m telling you Petites Cendres, it’s just a matter of strategy, I mean our guys in the forests are commandos right, Culiacán, yeah I was in Culiacán and I’m going back there, no need to do without down there, nah, the paradise of coke, the bandit capital, they’ve got their posters and cemeteries, their due, graves people pray before, I’m going to be a lord like them, you’ll see, Petites Cendres, a local saint, that’s me, I’ll be one of them, Felix is one too, they’re not going to gun me down out behind my truck, I’ll be the one doing it to them, like we say down there, better to be a millionaire for a few days than broke all your life, I want one of those diamonds the women wear on their little fingers in the Culiacán casinos and nightclubs, that’s what I want Timo said, bye Petites Cendres, I’m headed back to the pleasure capital of the world, you can’t go like that without a decent pair of pants Petites Cendres said again, hey have you got a bit of coke for me, just a little, bye said Timo, you thought I was gone, run over or shot down in the mud, you did, didn’t you, then Petites Cendres felt the water dripping down his chest and the back of his neck,
kiss me, love me
, that Timo was something else, I mean he’d got away from the sheriffs four times already, once they arrested him in a bar while he was on probation with a white suitcase full to bursting with illicit substances, when they caught him he said okay let’s not get excited, let’s just all chill out for a second, it’ll do us all good, I just wanted to see the sun on the bay, that’s all, so let’s just stay calm, that’s all it was, the sun on the bay, okay you can put the cuffs on now gentlemen, I won’t try to escape, who knows, maybe he really was down there in Culiacán, not gunned down, not yet anyway, maybe it is true after all Petites Cendres thought to himself, a price on his head but still alive or maybe running through sandstorms with men behind him carrying machine guns, running, running like Herman on his multicoloured tricycle, like Victoire and Neuvième Beauté along a track where they’d be surrounded, put down, running but with no strength left and thirsty like Petites Cendres, so maybe Timo really was down there in Culiacán, no need for Petites Cendres to worry about him anymore, sure, what was he so worked up about, what for eh, the little girls were all exhausted from playing and fast asleep on a foldaway bed in the cabin, Rosie’s parents had said she could sleep over on the boat and Lou wrapped a possessive arm round her shoulders, this proprietorship didn’t sit well with her father considering how mean and dominant Lou had been with her friend all day, even making her cry at times, yet here they were like two angels on the folding bed, really only one though Ari thought, this daughter of his was turning out to be a little devil, what had happened to the sweet Lou from before, Ari flashed back to the bus ride through the mountains of Guatemala with his friend Asoka on their way to the poor people’s clinic in Champerico, I don’t know when I’m going to get to see my goddaughter Lou, Asoka said to him, when you get back, tell her she’s my one and only child, the only one I can ever have, being a monk, bless you Ari for having a joy I’ll never know each and every day, there was an unmistakeable tone of regret in this confidence and it must have hurt him to know what was forever forbidden him as long as he remained in the order, ah but you are the purest of Buddhist ascetics Ari replied, and your charity makes you the father of every underprivileged child in the world, feeling a pain of his own for the distant little girl, imagining her at that very moment in her mother’s house while he was out here wandering the byways with Asoka, and the man with AIDS and a towel round his neck sitting in the bus not far away, pain and suffering all around maybe but he, Ari, had a little girl, still what did this kind of posterity really mean if his painting and sculpture declined as time went by, if all his life were reduced to just this one child Lou, she was all he ever seemed to think about since her birth, the order bestowed on Ari must surely be his art then, Asoka’s stern profile enclosed his meditation and prayers but Ari couldn’t discuss it any further with his friend, it seemed that the young man with AIDS was smiling at him as he sat in his seat wiping his lips with the towel, unhappy no doubt yet smiling at Ari in all his faults as assuredly as his daughter would have hers, whatever could make him worthy of a friend like Asoka, a father, a father was just someone who would atrophy without a child, a child who was doing what now, doing well in school, being good for her mother, her manners really needed some work, yes definitely, starting when they got back, she had it all, a throne room of computers, canvases, pencils, brushes, dresses, toys, oh yes she had it all, anything she might want and she always wanted more, like dinners out in seaside restaurants and he never should have let it happen, he’d caught her cutting off flower petals with scissors and made her stop, no when he got back he was going to have to be tougher, he’d tell her your godfather Asoka, Asoka never sees a child who owns anything at all and often they die very young of colic, Lou, how could he get her to think of them, the young, the very young in Guatemala and India, how to get her to understand, both the girls Lou and Rosie in pyjamas on the folding bed in the boat cabin, the usual disorder that also reigned in Lou’s room in her father’s house, damp towels, scattered underwear, he really should be picking this up for the laundry, as if he’d never needed to clean up here on the boat, books scattered around too, colouring books, a barely nibbled sandwich, candies, but there they were sleeping like angels, what could be more charming, Rosie and his Lou in their pyjamas on board under a foggy sky, fog that he hoped would lift by morning so they could go and see the herons and egrets on a tiny isle nearby, that would be perfect, now he recognized the daughter he longed to see when he was on the road with Asoka, how were they to know about the earth’s most abandoned children, about their wretched clay huts, their insides eaten by polluted water, the debilitating emptiness, how could they know anything but the things their parents smothered and spoiled them with, what had happened to his elf-ballerina-butterfly-chrysalis, what had emerged after all, a fully formed girl, a swimmer, who might seem angelic and harmless at times of course but never missing a chance to contradict him, hey let’s go to New York, Noémie so wants to meet my little girl, and what a fuss Lou set up, oh yeah, well you can go on your own Papa, no way I’m meeting that woman, how can I love anyone else, and you can love only Mama and me and no one else Lou replied, but we’re divorced and I need a woman to live with, and why, Lou would answer implacably, shouldn’t I be that woman, no no you’re still a little girl though you were easier to get along with when you were smaller, I always had you in my arms, remember, we went everywhere together, we were inseparable, even when you got bigger, so you see it could be even, one week at Mom’s place and one week plus
holidays with me in New York
,
what do you say, oh yeah and what about my gifted classes and Italian and Spanish, you’re a real nasty dad and all you ever think about is that woman and yourself, she was intractable, you’re supposed to spend your life with me Ari and you know that, don’t you, you know you’re doing a really bad thing, look I’m a man who’s in love, that’s just the way it is, was Ari’s reply, well you just should have thought of that and not be in love, she’s too young for you anyway, it’s nuts to be in love at your age, that’s what Mama says, I didn’t invent that, I’m just passing it on, any dart or arrow she could lay her hands on was aimed straight at him, she disapproved of her father, even repudiated him, innocent as he was of anything but loving and desiring a woman, Noémie, and worst of all Lou treated him like her personal maid he thought as he gathered up beach towels and clothes for the laundry, he’d waited on her hand and foot ever since she was born, hadn’t he, so why all this trouble between them now, his karmic comeuppance, is that what she was, just another test, good thing he had Noémie then, the freshness of new love late in life, you can’t live without it, or was it just him that his daughter was upset about, him and his renewed passion and desire that caused her to be shunted aside just now when she was so attractive, but she was still only a young girl just growing up, could she impress him with her height the way Rosie was impressed, soon she’d be overtaking him, then suddenly bearable compared to Ingrid, in all Ingrid’s beauty back when she had said out of the blue I don’t want to live with you anymore Ari, all that matters for you is your art, not your wife and child, so that’s it, goodbye Ari, Ingrid in Lou’s body or vice versa, how could he resist one any more than the other woman, Noémie, Noémie he thought as he climbed the spiral metal steps to the fog-bound bridge, talking to Noémie would help, here was the cellphone in his hand and Noémie’s voice on the other end saying she loved him as the boat rocked on the evening breeze, there at least, out under the stars, his daughter couldn’t hear he thought, she was fast asleep with the other little angel in the cabin below, he was saying to Noémie, he had to lie just a little and say Lou was dying to meet her, Lou, don’t worry about her Ari the enthusiastic voice at the other end said, I can help her grow into someone fine, all I need is to meet her, the will and the proprietorship in her voice made Ari shiver as though it were his daughter speaking, women, these women he was to tell Asoka, surely they were his karmic incarnation on this earthly voyage, Petites Cendres saw the man climb out from under the bench where he’d slept by the bar, and it turned out to be the elderly sophisticate, Robbie’s friend, who said that’s right, I bought a round, okay fine then another and a third, and so, well here I was under the seat, I live out in the country and I don’t make it in here more than once a month, then I head back out to that jungle and the family and my animals, hey where is Robbie anyway, he was s’posed to call me a taxi, where the hell is that boy-whore, yep that’s what he is, always on display like that every night, now do they really have to look like they’re for sale, ’course they don’t, so tell me how are they gonna get people inside so they don’t play to empty houses answered Petites Cendres, ’specially on weeknights, I’m an old sea dog the man replied, navy, and I travelled all over Asia and I know all there is to know about men and boys and brothels, yes I do, and what I want to know is why does Robbie have to put himself on show like that eh, traitors all of them, that’s what you are, traitors, that’s why I want to have Robbie all to myself, but she’s one too, a bit of cash on the line and she’ll trot off with any couple, then you know what happens next don’t you, an orgy, betrayer I said, I wonder if I took three rounds or was it four to slap me under that bench, where’s Robbie and that taxi he was going to get me, Robbie’s got no morals you know, listen to me Petites Cendres, and off he was again calling them all traitors, still he couldn’t tear himself away from this place, always well dressed and freshly barbered, this was his monthly night out with the betrayers, and a man’s got to spill his seed so he doesn’t end up killing someone, though this time he hadn’t got lucky, no traitresses available tonight he told Petites Cendres, hey you’re soaking wet, you’re trembling, oh I’m hurting ’cause I need some Petites Cendres said, too weak to help out the talkative old sophisticate, besides this was a fashionable bar and prostitution wasn’t allowed, maybe sometimes in the Porte du Baiser sauna, that’s where the old man would sometimes trot off with someone who was willing but not that often, turncoats every one of them the old guy went on till Petites Cendres said I’ll find you a taxi, but he had trouble standing too and he didn’t like hearing Robbie called a boy-whore, I’ve got to get rid of this one, I don’t want to listen to any more of his garbage, a girl-whore maybe, the old guy was droning on, Robbie, your Puerto Rican friend, says he doesn’t want any more of those daddies,