It was cruel and unfair. The students of the university here — a new university, with landscaped grounds and paved roads and red-brick halls of residence: most of the students the first in their families to get higher education, and all with government grants — the students here couldn’t possibly imagine the discouragements Lebrun had had to live through in the world outside.
And it was strange that Phyllis, in spite of her own history, her unhappy African marriage, her blank life in Africa, her dependence on expatriates for society, should have taken the African side in this judgement of Lebrun. But that was her way. She didn’t like it when visitors were at all supercilious about Africa; she liked it much less when the visitors were black, from the United States or the West Indies. It was as though she wished to make it clear that she was standing by her decision to come out to Africa.
One day I asked her about her marriage.
She said, “I used to go to this club in Paris. It was for blacks. A cellar, really. And there was this ugly little African fellow. And I mean little. He was small and black and soft, with a lot of gold. Gold watch, gold rings, gold pen. The gold used to reflect on his skin. He courted me hard. He said he loved my name, Phyllis. And my voice. Then he began to ask me to marry him. He said his family was very rich. They were like chiefs, he said. They had lots of land, lots of servants, lots of slaves.”
I said, “He said that about the slaves?”
“I thought he was lying. But I didn’t mind. I liked him for it, in fact. I thought he was just trying very hard to impress me, and I liked him for trying. This went on for some time. And then I agreed to marry him. Do you want to know why? Will you believe me? I agreed because I didn’t like him, because I found him repulsive, in fact. That ugly face and that soft body and that very smooth skin reflecting the gold. I thought it would be good for me, to marry a man I couldn’t possibly love. I felt I was making a deal with God, giving up love and pleasure. I felt I couldn’t go wrong. I used to talk to myself in my room. I used to say, ‘Phyllis, you have to forget about love and beauty. You have to forget your old ways. They haven’t got you anywhere, my girl. They have just got you to this room in Paris. You have to think about your life and future. That is where true happiness lies.’
“So I went to my little chief and said yes, and tried to find happiness in his happiness. The days afterwards in Paris were the best. I felt I had done the right thing, made my deal with God. And I was courted more than ever. After some months, when my little chief had finished his studies, we came out to Africa. And there it all crashed. He hadn’t told his family about his marriage, and they ignored me. Literally. They didn’t talk to me. They even in my presence began to talk to him about the need for him to get married.”
I said to Phyllis, “But how could you go so calmly to that country? Surely you knew it was a tyranny?”
“I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe what I read in the papers. I felt they were lying. I thought there was another truth. You see the way we can tie ourselves up. And I was more concerned with my own adventure. I was nervous, you know. I was more frightened of Africa than any European woman would have been. I have known European women who have married Africans. It’s different for them. There’s the element of pleasure, excitement, even vanity. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and that’s that. For me it was different. I had staked too much on it. I had talked too much to myself.”
“Did you feel protected by your little chief?”
“In the beginning. He took me around everywhere with him. And he didn’t exaggerate. They had a lot of land, and they had a lot of servants and slaves. You didn’t buy the slaves. They were just there in the villages, certain groups, certain families. They were there to look after the other people. Everybody knew about them, so there was no question of them running away.
“Something happened not long after we arrived. We went to my little chief’s village. There was some ceremony of welcome, and at the end the little chief’s feet were washed in blood. Let me tell you about my feelings. I was excited and proud. I loved the ritual. I felt it was very old. I felt it came from the beginning of time. It wasn’t how I had thought of Africa when I was in Guadeloupe. I felt these rituals gave me a place in the world.
“Later I heard that a few days before that ceremony a child had been kidnapped from one of the slave villages. I put two and two together. You normally use animal blood in that foot-washing ritual, but the highest honour, the one that does most good to everybody, is when you do it with human blood. So look at that. Look at how far I had gone, so quickly. I was stunned, of course. But it didn’t do away with my feeling for the beauty of the ritual. My little chief had tried to impress me with his money. But it was the ritual side of his chief’s life that became more and more important to me.
“It was important to my little chief too. As he fell back into his old ways, he thought less of the beauty of my name, Phyllis, and of the beauty of my Guadeloupe French accent. The time came when he wanted to be rid of me. He wanted to do what his family wanted him to do, to marry a suitable woman of his tribe. He began to be violent, the little chief. He began to beat me, the soft little fellow with the gold. I remembered the foot-washing ceremony. And I didn’t have to be told now that I was in a country without law. The day actually came — it was as though someone were working magic on me — when I felt that if I stayed one more night in the country I would go mad. That was when I went to the airport and took a plane here. And to think that when I went against all my instincts and married him I thought I was making a deal with God.
“He’s very much on my mind now, if you want to know. I’ll tell you about something that happened about a month before you came here. The telephone rang very early one morning. In fact, when I woke up it felt like the middle of the night. It was a man’s voice on the phone, a French voice. The line wasn’t good. I thought it was a nuisance call. It does happen here. The voices are usually French. It makes me feel far from home, and very alone.
“I should have put the phone down right away, but luckily I didn’t. The call was from the police in Santos Dumont, and not from a man giving a bogus name. Santos-Dumont was an early aviator, and the French gave the name to a frontier post they established in the north. There are a certain number of French officers in the police here, and you have seen the French army barracks just outside the town.
“The officer spoke to me as though I was a member of the embassy, rather than a locally employed secretary. I didn’t put him right. He was very polite; I didn’t want to spoil that. He said he had with him in the police station someone from across the frontier. He gave the name of the little chief. He put him on the telephone. It was the little chief all right. His voice was squeaky with terror. He said things had gone very badly on the other side of the frontier. The president there had suddenly turned against him and all the rest of the cheferie. Somebody had told him the day before that he was to be arrested in the morning. He decided to run. He had been driving since the previous afternoon.
“ ‘Thank God for the Mercedes,’ he said, as though we were still together, and I still used the Mercedes. He had driven for hours on bad roads and dusty tracks and the car hadn’t broken down. In the middle of all of his trouble he was still proud of his car.
“He wasn’t absolutely out of danger. He could have been handed back. You know that over the frontier they are very Maoist and anti-French, and they don’t lose a chance of making propaganda in other African countries against the government here. However, I spoke to our ambassador, and he made a few telephone calls. He knew my story. The embassy more or less took the little chief under their protection. I drove up that afternoon to Santos Dumont with someone from the embassy to pick up the little chief.