Under African Skies (7 page)

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Authors: Charles Larson

BOOK: Under African Skies
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“Samba,” said Monsieur, who had come to the kitchen, “the meal was excellent today. You outdid yourself. Madame is very pleased with you.”
The cook's helper stood at attention. Samba, the cook, adjusted his tall white hat and made an effort to smile.
“Thank you very much, Monsieur,” he said. “I too am happy, very happy, because Monsieur and Madame are happy. Monsieur very nice. My family big, unhappy. Monsieur leave, me no more work.”
“We'll be back, my good man. And then, with your talent you'll soon find another job!”
Samba, the cook, wasn't so sure. The whites were stingy. And in a Dakar filled with country people each claiming to be a master cook, it wouldn't be easy to find a job.
“We'll be back, Samba. Maybe sooner than you think. The last time we stayed only two and a half months.”
To these consoling words from Madame, who had joined her husband in the kitchen, Samba could only answer: “
Merci
, Madame. Madame very nice lady.”
Madame was glad. She knew from experience what it meant to have a good reputation with the servants.
“You can go home this afternoon at four with Monsieur. I'll pack up the rest. When we come back I promise to hire you again. Are you pleased?”
“
Merci
, Madame.”
Madame and Monsieur were gone. Samba gave Diouana a slap. She hit him back angrily.
“Hey! Careful. Careful. You're going away today. So we shouldn't fight.”
“That hurt!” she said.
“And Monsieur, does he hurt you too?”
Samba suspected a secret liaison between the maid and her employer.
“They're calling for you, Diouana. I hear the car starting.”
She left without even saying goodbye.
The car moved along the highway. Diouana didn't often have the privilege of being driven by Monsieur. Her very look invited the pedestrians' admiration, though she dared not wave a hand or shout while going past, “I'm on my way to France!” Yes, France! She was sure her happiness was plain to see. The subterranean sources of this tumultuous joy made her a bit shaky. When the car stopped in front of the house at Rue Escarfait, she was surprised. “Already?” she thought. Next door to her humble house, at the Gay Navigator Cafe, a few customers were seated at the tables and several were talking quietly on the sidewalk.
“Is it today you're leaving, little one?” asked Tive Correa. Already tipsy, he steadied himself, legs apart, holding his bottle by the neck. His clothes were rumpled.
Diouana would have nothing to do with the drunkard. She didn't listen to Tive Correa's advice. An old sailor, Tive Correa had come home from Europe after twenty years' absence. He had left, rich with youth, full of ambition, and come home a wreck. From having wanted everything, he had returned with nothing but an excessive love for the bottle. For Diouana he predicted nothing but misfortune. Once, when she had asked his advice, his opinion had been that she shouldn't go. In spite of his serious state of inebriety, he made a few steps toward Monsieur, bottle still in hand.
“Is it true that Diouana's leaving with you, Monsieur?”
Monsieur did not answer. He took out a cigarette and lit it, blew the smoke through the car door, and looked Tive Correa over from head to toe. What a bum he was, greasy clothes, stinking of palm wine.
Correa leaned over, putting a hand on the car door. “I was there. I lived in France for twenty years,” he began, with a note of pride in his voice. “I, whom you see this way, ruin though I am today, I know France better than you do. During the war I lived in Toulon, and the Germans sent us with the other Africans to Aix-en-Provence, to the mines at Gardanne. I've been against her going.”
“We haven't forced her to go! She wants to,” Monsieur answered dryly.
“Certainly. What young African doesn't dream of going to France? Unfortunately, they confuse living in France with being a servant in France. I come from the village next to Diouana's, in Casamance. There, we don't say the way you do that it is the light that attracts the moth, but the other way round. In my country, Casamance, we say that the darkness pursues the moth.”
In the meantime, Diouana returned, escorted by several women. They were chatting along, each begging for a little souvenir. Diouana promised happily; she was smiling, her white teeth gleaming.
“The others are at the dock,” said one. “Don't forget my dress.”
“For me, some shoes for the children. You've got the size in your suitcase. And remember the sewing machine.”
“The petticoats, too.”
“Write and tell me how much the hair-straightening irons cost and also the price of a red jacket with big buttons, size 44.”
“Don't forget to send a little money to your mother in Boutoupa …” Each one had something to tell her, some request to make of her; Diouana
promised. Her face was radiant. Tive Correa took the suitcase, pushing it drunkenly but not roughly into the car.
“Let her go, girls. Do you think money grows on trees in France? She'll have something to say about that when she gets back.”
Loud protests from the women.
“Goodbye, little cousin. Take care of yourself. You have the address of the cousin in Toulon. Write to him as soon as you get there, he will help you. Come, give me a kiss.”
They all kissed each other goodbye. Monsieur was getting impatient. He started up the motor to indicate politely that he wished they'd be done with it.
The Peugeot was moving. Everyone waved.
At the dock it was the same—relatives, friends, little commissions. Everyone pressed around her. Always under the watchful eye of Monsieur. She embarked.
A week at sea. “No news,” she would have written if she'd been keeping a diary, in which case she'd also have had to know how to read and write. Water in front, behind, to port, to starboard. Nothing but a sheet of liquid, and above it, the sky.
When the boat landed, Monsieur was there. After the formalities, they quickly made their way to the Cote d'Azur. She devoured everything with her eyes, marveling, astonished. She packed every detail into her head. It was beautiful. Africa seemed a sordid slum by comparison. Towns, buses, trains, trucks went by along the coastal highway. The heaviness of the traffic surprised her.
“Did you have a good crossing?”
“
Viye
, Monsieur,” she would have answered, if Monsieur had asked the question.
After a two-hour drive, they were in Antibes.
Days, weeks, and the first month went by. The third month began. Diouana was no longer the joyous young girl with the ready laugh, full of life. Her eyes were beginning to look hollow, her glance was less alert, she no longer noticed details. She had a lot more work to do here than in Africa. At first her fretting was hardly noticeable. Of France, la Belle France, she had only a vague idea, a fleeting vision. French gardens, the hedges of the other villas, the crests of roofs appearing above the green trees, the palms. Everyone lived his own life, isolated, shut up in his own house. Monsieur and Madame went out a good deal, leaving her with the four children. The
children quickly organized a mafia and persecuted her. “You've got to keep them happy,” Madame would say. The oldest, a real scamp, recruited others of like inclination and they played explorer. Diouana was the “savage.” The children pestered her. Once in a while the eldest got a good spanking. Having picked up phrases from the conversations of Mama, Papa, or the neighbors back in Africa—phrases in which notions of racial prejudice played a part—he made exaggerated remarks to his pals. Without the knowledge of his parents, they would turn up, chanting, “Black Girl, Black Girl. She's as black as midnight.”
Perpetually harassed, Diouana began to waste away. In Dakar she had never had to think about the color of her skin. With the youngsters teasing, she began to question it. She understood that here she was alone. There was nothing that connected her with the others. And it aggravated her, poisoned her life, the very air she breathed.
Everything grew blunt—her old dreams, her contentment eroded. She did a lot of hard work. It was she who did all the cooking, laundry, babysitting, ironing. Madame's sister came to stay at the villa, making seven people to look after. At night, as soon as she went up to bed, Diouana slept like a log.
The venom was poisoning her heart. She had never hated anything. Everything became monotonous. Where was France? The beautiful cities she had seen at the movies in Dakar, the rare foods, the interesting crowds? The population of France reduced itself to these spiteful monsters, Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle, who had become strangers to her. The country seemed limited to the immediate surroundings of the villa. Little by little she was drowning. The wide horizons of a short while ago stopped now at the color of her skin, which suddenly filled her with an invincible terror. Her skin. Her blackness. Timidly, she retreated into herself.
With no one from her universe to exchange ideas with, she held long moments of palaver with herself. A week ago, Monsieur and Madame had cleverly taken her along to visit their relatives in Cannes.
“Tomorrow we'll go to Cannes. My parents have never tasted African food. You'll do us African honor with your cooking,” Madame had said. She was nearly bare, and getting bronzed from the sun.
“
Viye
, Madame.”
“I've ordered some rice and two chickens … You'll be careful not to spice it too much?”
“
Viye
, Madame.”
Answering this way, she felt her heart harden. It seemed the hundredth time that she'd been trailed from villa to villa. To this one's house and then to that one's. It was at the Commodore's—everyone called him the Commodore—that she had rebelled the first time. Some silly people, who followed her about, hanging on her heels in the kitchen, had been there for dinner. Their presence was an oppressive shadow on her slightest movement. She had the feeling of not knowing how to do anything. These strange, selfcentered, sophisticated beings never stopped asking her idiotic questions about how African women do their cooking. She kept herself under control.
The three women were still chirping when she waited on them at the table, testing the first spoonful on the tip of their tongues, then gluttonously devouring the rest.
“This time, at my parents', you must outdo yourself.”
“
Viye
, Madame.”
Restored to her kitchen, she thought of Madame's former kindness. She detested it. Madame had been good to her, but in a self-seeking way. The only reason for her attentiveness had been to wind the strings around Diouana, the better to make her sweat. She loathed everything. Back in Dakar, Diouana used to gather Monsieur and Madame's leftovers to take home to Rue Escarfait. She had taken pride then in working for “important white people.” Now she was so alone their meals made her sick to her stomach. The resentment spoiled her relations with her employers. She stood her ground, they stood theirs. They no longer exchanged any remarks but those of a business nature.
“Diouana, will you do the washing today?”
“
Viye
, Madame.”
“Last time you didn't do a good job on my slips. The iron was too hot. And the collars of Monsieur's shirts were scorched. Do pay attention to what you're doing, will you?”
“Viye,
Madame.”
“Oh, I forgot. There are some buttons missing on Monsieur's shirts and his shorts.”
Every little job was Diouana's. And then Madame started speaking to her in pidgin French, even in front of guests. And this was the only thing she did with honesty. In the end, no one in the house ever spoke to the maid anymore except in terms of “Missie,” Senegalese pidgin talk. Bewildered by her inadequacies in French, Diouana closed herself into a sort of solitary
confinement. After long, lonely moments of meditation she came to the conclusion first of all that she was nothing but a useful object, and furthermore that she was being put on exhibit like a trophy. At parties, when Monsieur or Madame made remarks about “native” psychology, Diouana was taken as an illustration. The neighbors would say: “It's the Pouchets' black girl …” She wasn't “the African girl” in her own right, but theirs. And that hurt.
The fourth month began. Things got worse. Her thoughts grew more lucid every day. She had work and work to spare. All week long. Sunday was Mademoiselle's favorite day for asking friends over. There were lots of them. The weeks began and ended with them.
Everything became clear. Why had Madame wanted her to come? Her generosities had been premeditated. Madame no longer took care of her children. She kissed them every morning, that was all. And where was la Belle France? These questions kept repeating themselves. “I am cook, nurse . maid, chambermaid; I do all the washing and ironing and for a mere three thousand francs a month. I do housework for six people. What am I doing here?”

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