When I got up the third day, it seemed my skin had taken on a grayish, white-veined tint-marbled, so to speak. I've often thought I was too sensitive, but what could I do about it? I ran out to the yard. I didn't look gray in the daylight. I was the same as I'd always been-a bit pale, perhaps, as if I'd just suffered a slight onset of anemia. Suddenly I craved sunshine. Burning sands. Blue water. Tanned bodies. Thatched huts beneath the trees. A thatched hut, I thought, how marvelous! A house of leaves and straw, open to every passing breeze. A house alive with the hum of insects, geckos on the walls and hens getting tangled up in your legs and a dog snoring under the table. Ah, the good life in a grass cabana! No worries, no cleaning, no upkeep… When the thatch rots, you set the whole thing on fire and build another a bit farther off. Friends come and help, and when the work's done you sing, drink, dance…
That same afternoon I left the travel agency and stopped by to give the keys to the house back. As per the contract, I had to forfeit my deposit. No matter what I do, I always end up losing my shirt. Bah! My head was full of thatch-roofed huts, sarongs, and leis. Maybe one day I'll tell you the story of my grass cabana and Hurricane Julia.
Lozere, October 1988
A Room on the Abvss
ox is life's chosen one; he's six and always losing his balaclava. In such cases, the rules say to go bother Mrs. Bernard, the matron, and get bawled out. Boarding school is tough when you can't even tie your own shoes. Life's chosen one finds himself in tears so often he hasn't time to forget how they taste.
He doesn't know why life has chosen him, and what role it has in store. It'll do what it wants with him. Six isn't the age to be asking such questions. But chosen him it has. He doesn't doubt it for a moment. When he thinks about it, too many signs confirm his intuition. First off, he's almost died three times, and he's only six! Ordinary little boys don't waver so often between river and shore. Next, his papa left. Not to work far away, or wage war, or recover from some illness-all valid reasons for a father's absence-but just up and left, for good, forever. That, if nothing else, is a sign of election: a phantom father, alive and well God knows where, but always referred to in the past tense, as if already dead. And then there's his red hair. Funny, having red hair when your name is Fox, right? Hardly: every recess ends up a foxhunt. But his mother once showed him a book, written by a certain Mr. Fox, whose hero also has red hair and is named Carrot Top. Carrot Top is precisely what the young boarder's bullies call him. So elsewhere, in a world beside our own, he'd be the hero of a story? Perhaps one day, when he's learned to read, opening the book like the door to the house where he was born, he'll go home.
At school, night has fallen. Wind bends the branches of the courtyard's chestnuts to the windows of the study hall. The housemaster is reading the paper. From time to time, he casts a weary gaze over the class. Everything is peaceful. Comics are passed around, games of hangman and tic-tac-toe are carried on in low voices. A few students from the provinces are writing their parents. At the back of the room, not far from Fox, the son of the king of Tanganyika is dreaming of savannahs and gazelles. In truth, no one's sure if that blackamoor is really the king's son, or if he's even from Tanganyika. Rumor has it, is all, and the boy in question neither confirms nor denies a thing. In his indifference, or the daze of the uprooted, one detects a wholly royal reserve. The purported prince in fact numbers among the institution's disinherited, who get to go home only three times a year: Christmas, Easter, and summer. A well-dressed black man always comes to pick him up out front.
"Psst! N'Mambo! Is that the ambassador?"
Unhurried, N'Mambo crosses the courtyard, suitcase in hand.
"N'Mambo! Psst! N'Mambo! If you go hunting, shoot an elephant for me!"
The boy vanishes into the vestibule, that airlock decked with diplomas and potted plants, smelling so sweetly of freedom and furniture polish.
N'Mambo's wandering gaze meets Fox's. Life's chosen one gives him a half grin, which N'Mambo vaguely returns. Fox slides down the bench toward the black boy. "Psst! N'Mambo!"
"What?"
"Your father-"
N'Mambo's gaze returns to the issue of Coq Hardi open before him. "Please leave me alone. I am reading."
"It's a lie! Your father's not the king."
N'Mambo shrugs. Fox is dumbfounded. The words just came out of his mouth. "N'Mambo-"
"Shut up. You're bothering me!"
"I was just kidding. Your father is the king."
"Leave me alone!"
"He is the king, he is!"
"Teacher!"
The housemaster looks up.
"Teacher, Carrot Top is bothering me!"
All heads turn toward the culprit.
"On your feet, Fox! Bothering our classmates now, are we?"
"It's a lie, teacher! I didn't say nothing!"
"I've got ways to keep you busy. Write this sentence down a hundred times: I will not bother my classmates. Now get started!"
Fox sits down, but stands right back up again. "Teacher…"
"What is it now?"
"I don't know how to write."
The class snickers.
"Then draw tallies. I want two hundred, nice and straight in sets of five. You can count, can't you?"
"No, Teacher," Fox whispers.
The snickering gets louder.
"Do it anyway! I'll tell you when to stop. Everyone else-silence!"
Fox sits down again. He takes the penholder he's never yet used out of his desk. He tears a sheet of paper from his notebook. He dips the pen in the earthenware inkwell and draws his first tremulous tally line. On the third line, he makes a blot. He hasn't got a blotter. He tries to dab at the stain with his handkerchief but only manages to make it bigger. He rips the sheet up and tears another from his notebook. Another row of lines, another blot. Despair overcomes him; tears spring to his eyes, tumble to the paper, blur the lines and the blot. He huddles over the desk, hides his head in his arms. Soon he's asleep, cradled by the class' gentle clamor, nose pressed to his sickly lines.
The Turk is only ten, but he's the strongest kid in the schoolyard. No one, not even the biggest boys, dares attack him. Strong as a Turk, the expression goes. The Turk, who's from Courbevoie, established his reputation once and for all by knocking an older student out the first day of class. The older student had been picking on the Turk. The Turk turned pale-everyone saw. He turned pale, and then he lashed out. Life's chosen one greatly admires the Turk. When kids attack Fox, he turns red. He turns red, and then he runs. That's no way to behave.
Fights are among the students' primary concerns. Generally speaking, boys at the boarding school fall into two types: the weak and the strong, victims and their oppressors. A few individuals stand outside these basic classifications. The Turk, because he never abuses his prodigious strength, and N'Mambo, because in some vague way the others are afraid the king of Tanganyika will send his Zulus to lay waste to the school if his runt gets pestered too much.
This morning, while waiting in line in the courtyard, the students saw a new boy go by, a blackamoor like N'Mambo, led by the caretaker. They noticed that the principal hadn't bothered to walk the boy to class himself, as he had N'Mambo. So the new boy wasn't a king's son: they vowed to have some fun at his expense during recess.
With the exception of N'Mambo and the Turk, everyone got into it, even Fox. The big bullies didn't leave anyone else much of a chance to pick on the new boy. At last, when they were muddying his cap and emptying the contents of his satchel into the toilet, Fox had plenty of time to prance about behind them like the rest of the pack, shouting Bamboola-Ayaya-Bamboola at the top of his lungs. Then he saw the Turk standing to one side and watching him with a funny look on his face. Contemptuous, or disappointed, or both at once. And suddenly his joy at having finally changed sides evaporated. He chanted Ayaya- Bamboola-Ayaya a moment longer to himself before turning from their quarry and running off to hide in a dark corner of the playground.