Colour of Dawn (10 page)

I look through the window at the unbroken blue of the sky. The blue of a false paradise. But so beautiful… So beautiful. I would like there to be a sun inside me that is as perfect as this blue. Perhaps it would mean that I can erase the conqueror, forget that strong man. Forget that I am waiting for Fignolé. I who have not discovered how to bridge the distance Fignolé has placed between himself and the world. I who have not discovered, in that marsh I wade through, anything other than tedium. A life gnawed at by the worms of tedium.

Bursting into my thoughts as if breaking chains, a young auxiliary arrives at a run: ‘The young wounded man has gone delirious.'

Of course I haven't finished my lunch. I leave the bowl and the plate as they are and run towards the big ward.

EIGHTEEN

F
ignolé always had the face of a child who was different. One of those children of the light whom the shadows observe and around whom madness and death prowl.Very early on I wanted to confront those shadows for him.Very early on I wanted to be his rampart against death. And I took this part upon myself, devoting myself to the all-important occupation of keeping him on his feet. Safe and sound. Whatever the cost, whichever way the wind blew.

As children, Fignolé and I played all kinds of games. When Fignolé dressed up my old rag doll, Mother shouted from inside the house that he would do better to run after a ball. When I ran after the ball with him, Mother warned me against the misfortunes that only boys could bring me. We laughed up our sleeves, or sometimes so loudly that the earth of the cramped back yard seemed to burst apart on the spot and rise up in eddying dust clouds. We ran, tasting the luminous air of the Tropics. Fignolé is my soulmate, a reflection of myself, my brother in love. Our bodies are still those of the angels of our childhood.

I recall the east-facing paving stone in front of the house that often stayed cool into the afternoon. I was lying on my stomach on this cold paving stone, topless. Fignolé was at my side. Our bodies had been covered with a mixture of starch and kleren, an infallible remedy against heat bumps. But the heat always ended up getting the better of us. Fignolé had his head on my chest and we were both dozing – a moment I wish had never ended. I awoke abruptly and watched him sleeping. And I guarded him for two whole hours against all the dangers of the world that could arrive in succession to threaten him: floods, the injustice of adults, illnesses, cyclones, dog bites and whatever else.

You alone, Fignolé, have the power to take the place of my whole childhood. You alone were able to extinguish before time the pleasures of my childhood. And feelings of astonishment and amazement, terror and pride would rise up in me all at once to see you when you were smaller, weaker and soon to become wilder. An extraordinary love was to grow between us. A sacred union.

And then, little by little, I stopped seeing life as a group of clear lines beneath a big sun. I turned resolutely towards death to see it charging right at Fignolé. Right at me. At full speed like a huge dumper truck. And then, reaching an age of reason, I began to doubt the kindness of a God who could launch such a meteor at defenceless beings. I now thought it a matter of urgency, before this meteor struck us at full force, to classify everything in the world into the things which were important and those which were not. The important things included Fignolé, my brother, my son, my gift. And there was me.

Three years before Fignolé was born, Mother slapped away the man whom I see rarely, whose mistress she had been for a while and who is none other than my father. She courageously sought to support us in life, the three of us – Angélique, herself and me. She mended clothes, prepared pots of jam and made several return journeys to the Dominican Republic to sell cheap trinkets. A few dollars from Uncle Thémosthène, who had moved to Little Haiti, Miami, made it easier to make ends meet at the end of the month. And then one evening, against all expectations, Onil Hermantin, a man who, from time to time, had offered her consolation against the tribulations of ordinary life, asked her to marry him. To the great surprise of everyone, she accepted. She let down her guard before a man who was offering her a roof over her head and a ring on her finger. She was mistaken. But tell me, what woman, however strong she may be, would not want to be consoled once in her life? Tell me. This arrangement did not last long enough to leave its mark on her, but enough to sicken her like the smell of rotten fruit. A few months after the birth of Fignolé, Mother recovered her status of free woman with a relief she did not try to conceal. Mother had a husband and many lovers, but no man ever possessed her. None of them was her lord or master. They hardly shared their fleeting relief. They did not teach her much but a few techniques in bed. Gave her nothing but a few dollars. Mother is not one to buy the peace of a home by selling her soul.

She left the house, taking with her a little money, enough to keep herself for barely four days, the two bags containing our clothes, her three children and inside herself the certainty that she was coming out on top. Aunt Sylvanie helped us to move into a single room, damp and dark, at the end of a seedy passage. We three children all slept on a mattress on the floor behind a curtain cut from coarse cloth. It may have been only a room, but Mother wanted wherever she lived to be her own; she would not be accountable to anyone. At that time, when Mother offered food to the loas it was often Erzulie Fréda, Erzulie the beautiful, Erzulie the tender, who would possess her. After demanding all, the spirit would leave her lascivious and reassured.

One day, between moon and sun, when we had not eaten all day, a shadow appeared behind the drawn curtain. I let out a cry of fright. I was at that age where I still believed in creatures lying dormant in the legends or awaiting us in our dreams. Holding her nightshirt over her breasts, Mother placed her lips on my brow and whispered that one of them had come to visit us. I soon believed them capable of a thousand wonders as we ate better during the days following their furtive visits.

Without having to dress in revealing clothes, without swinging her hips, sometimes without having to make the slightest gesture, Mother could attract men. She was surrounded by a perfume of eroticism, of which she herself was not aware. She exuded sex like other women exude boredom. There were lovers who, some days, would listen to her talking before delighting her body. I always saw her make these men feel as if they were unique, and they believed her. And the light she radiated held them fast without them being able to do much to get free. Once under her spell, they were caught. There was no-one like her for drawing out the simplest words and giving them music, mellowness or resonance. I never heard a woman ask a man ‘Will you have a coffee or a finger of rum?' with such sweetness. Mother had no idea of this sweetness that flowed from the depths of her wide eyes, from her voice of caves and expansive distances that constantly exhorted them to follow, from her violet, flower-like lips. She had no idea of the subtle invitation of her ample hips. However often I have delved into the metal box and taken out the yellowing, ageing photo that has fixed her at twenty-five, I still have not found the key to this mystery… Right now I suspect Maître Fortuné is ready to lay his cheek against her breasts and to kiss the hem of her dress.

Madame Thomas, the first customer, arrives around eleven o'clock, an hour after the shop opened. I hate Madame Thomas. A woman with an extravagant hairdo dyed in tawny shades, with outrageous make-up, having applied every artifice. Madame Thomas belongs to the nouveau riche set who give the city a flashy gaiety in total contrast to the hordes of destitutes who are still in the process of encircling it.

‘Joyeuse, bring me Madame Herbruch's new stock to look at.'

‘Of course,' I reply with a smile that doubtless does little to conceal my irritation.

Madame Thomas inspects the whole of the dress section, the accessories and the shelf of shoes. As usual she turns the shop upside down. I read in her eyes what her lips do not say: ‘You can sulk and curse silently all you like, my girl; I don't care. I could buy the shop and you with it.'

But Madame Thomas is mistaken. She can't buy everything. This fine edifice of Madame Herbruch's conceals some major faults. Madame Thomas herself is worried. If I've understood correctly, her young gigolo by the name of James, fifteen years her junior, decided to drop her a week ago. The advice of Madame Herbruch no longer makes any difference. I assume that young James prefers to satisfy himself, alone and whenever the fancy takes him, beneath the eyes of God, rather than awake a dead soul. Fignolé always made clear his aversion for her starchy type, and for that other type, imbued with arrogance, the privileged of any age. Fignolé told me on one of his talkative days that something was there turning the world against us and all those like us. That life was an absurd lottery where those who won have everything and those who lost, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Madame Thomas, for the moment, is visibly savouring her gains.

‘You're right, Fignolé, the world is divided between the dogs and those who hit them on their muzzles. Joyeuse does not want to hit anyone, Fignolé, but has sworn not to be on the side of the dogs.'

I grit my teeth, hold my tongue firmly and think of my pay at the end of the month. A salary that doesn't bring in much. A salary without fanfare but that I can't turn my nose up at. And I dream of the day when I, too, can go to a luxury shop and, forgetting everything, have the shelves emptied for me one by one by an ill-tempered assistant. Actually, I don't dream. I hone my weapons. I sharpen my fangs. I have this force in me which knows how to confront the pain, reduce sorrow to silence. I care nothing for changing the world. I want to howl with the wolves.

NINETEEN

T
he skin of the wounded young man has taken on that greyish hue that is so familiar to me, and that foretells no good. The blood is not irrigating the arteries and the veins very well. And his moans are getting louder and louder. As he moans, a kind of foam comes from his mouth. The auxiliary fails to notice and I wipe the corners of his mouth with a little square of cloth given to me by his mother. The moment when I lift his head and move the cloth towards his lips, he loses control and shouts right out. I call the duty doctor as a matter of urgency.

The injured boy's mother is shaken by convulsions. It takes two assistant nurses to get her under control and lead her out for a moment. The moans of the youth then become louder than before. They no longer come from his throat, but are scraped out from deep in his belly, shorn of that last modesty to which he has been clinging. He cries without holding back at all. The sobs and moans of a young man of eighteen are more terrible than the Apocalypse. But the Apocalypse has already happened so many times on this ward, so many times in this city, on this island. And so many times the world has continued on its way, impassive.

The young patient finally collapses, taking on the glassy-eyed, lost expression of the dying. At the first question of the doctor, the young patient nevertheless shows him his left side. When the doctor bends gently over him to examine it, feeling with his fingers, the young man moans like a suffering beast. The doctor then takes an ampoule from the tray held by the auxiliary and gives him an injection, to stop the pain and the cries. During the preceding days, as the injection wore off he began to suffer and cried out again.This afternoon he is numb from suffering. Above all, he is afraid of dying. Between two groans, incomprehensible words emerge from his mouth, distorted by pain. His forehead is damp. Cold. Death will not be long. It is a question of minutes, of seconds.

It is hard to imagine the sun outside. Perhaps it is to reassure himself of its presence that the dying young man turns his head towards the only window of this ward from where you can see the sky. I look with him at this sky that he is without doubt seeing for the last time. It is desperately blue, pure as it often is in this season. The youth turns back to the other side of his bed. The side where his mother is. His eyelids gradually grow heavy and the gap between his moans increases until they die down, fading to a round of silence. I watch his sleep attentively, keeping a vigilant eye on him until his last breath. Until a death that comes without delay.

I use a cloth to bind the jaw of the young man who has just died, and place his hands together on his stomach. ‘Until when will I still be driven by this undiminished desire to rub shoulders with death without batting an eyelid? Until when?' Every day I come up against it. Every day it brings me to sit on the edge of my own tomb. And every day I wake up in the same ignorance. However often I face the death of others, my own remains alien to me. I tell myself simply that a normal being could not leave the vicinity of their own tomb every day like I do, with all these scars and blemishes inside their own soul, and believe themselves unscathed. Impossible!

Passing close by the strong, silent man this afternoon, I would like him to reach out an arm and stop me. I would like him to squeeze my hand tightly, passing on all the warmth his words evade. I would like him to say something, anything. I would even be able to bear his words dying in his throat, if only his expression would tell me he finds me strong and feminine. And for the first time since that afternoon on the shore, I feel a great emptiness deep down inside.

‘What am I supposed to do with this body that suddenly feels so heavy, too heavy for me to bear alone?' I repeat to myself over and over again.

I pass through the hospital barrier almost at a run, my head as full as a jug. I breathe in the air on the street; it has never seemed so soothing. I undo another button on my blouse the better to fill my lungs with it.

TWENTY

O
nce Madame Thomas has left, I call the mysterious phone number again. Still in vain. I wait for a sign, watch for an apparition. Perhaps I am thinking about Fignolé more than I should. The tears rise from my heart to my eyes. I grasp onto my grey stone. The more hours that pass, the further away I am from a happy ending. Images take me over. All the same – black and terrible.