Sofie entered first, then Dido. Gripped by a kind of fear, Rosélie was the last to cross the threshold.
What was she expecting?
A hulking, menacing man with an arrogant, slightly protruding jaw. Instead, deep in the four-poster bed lay Jan, as frail as his wife, dressed in a nightshirt with a pleated yoke, with chalky-white skin and his forehead wrapped in an enormous, soiled bandage that made him look like a sick fakir. The room was painted dark brown and made even darker by the closed shutters, which let in a thin shaft of light. You would never have dreamed that outside it was broad daylight. Besides the wardrobe from Batavia, the room was furnished pell-mell with a marquetry chest of drawers, a rosewood table, and a camphor wood trunk. In a corner stood the child’s cot on which Sofie had slept for years. Seeing this, Rosélie’s forebodings were swept away in a wind of compassion that brought her to the verge of forgiveness. The final moment the old man was going to confront, Stephen had confronted alone. Alone like Rose a few years earlier. How could she soften the blow? Could her meager talents be of any use?
It was then that Jan opened his eyes and she received his gaze full in the face. A bluish green gaze, stained in places by fibrils of blood, floating on the white of his cornea like clumps of seaweed. Bluish green like the ocean at the farthest end of the earth, at the extreme tip of this cape they call Good Hope. Wrongly. For the dismal cargo from the East Indies, Madagascar, and Mozambique, the sight of these jagged, rugged cliffs signified in fact the end of all hope.
His gaze pinned her rigid against the wall. It seemed he was sending her back to former places, to a previous role. Standing behind the master’s chair, waving peacock-feather fans to drive away flies and cool the sweat on his shoulders. Lying, legs spread open, fodder for the master. Back bent, lacerated by the overseer’s whiplashes. For Jan, time had stopped still. Today meant yesterday. There was no tomorrow.
Sofie and Dido vainly tried to get her to come closer, but the pitiless beam from Jan’s eyes paralyzed Rosélie while a host of feelings welled up inside her. The rage to hurt him, even kill him; in any case to make him lower his eyes. Part of her was ashamed, another part terrified by such violence. As a result, she could no more move than if she had been changed into a rock. After a while she got control of herself and, regaining a semblance of calm, turned the door handle and slipped into the corridor.
Stephen would have minimized the incident.
“As usual, you imagined the whole business. But if it was true, you were asking for it. Your pity deserves to be put to better use; the townships are full of people you could heal. But you don’t want to set foot in them.”
In fact, since the debacle with Simone, Rosélie had made this decision and kept to it.
She had understood that the townships were out of bounds to her. They were an exclusive domain patrolled by minivans painted with mysterious letters, MNM, FDT, CRT or even KKK — not what you think; on the contrary, a Dutch charity. They could be compared to gigantic bordellos, closed to intruders. The Westerners, burning with desire to erase the loathsome image of the Afrikaners, made frenzied love with the blacks, who passionately surrendered to the embraces they had secretly dreamed of. Whatever their type of work, they never stopped praising their protégés’ creativity and intelligence. Amazingly, the blacks never showed the slightest grudge against the whites. No trace of resentment in their behavior. Always ready to serve. Like Boy Scouts.
In N’Dossou, New York, and even Tokyo, thanks to Stephen, classes of youngsters had been introduced to the complexities of the Anglo-Irish repertory: Synge, Bernard Shaw, and Shakespeare. In South Africa, he worked for Arté, a religious association from Canada approved by the Ministry of Education. The idea was that culture would safeguard the young generation from the perils of modernity. Stephen was preparing the sophomores at the Steve Biko High School in Khayelitsha to perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream, since Arté believed Shakespeare to be a powerful antidote to crack. One day, swayed by his constant panegyrics, Rosélie forgot Simone’s analysis and accompanied him to a rehearsal. History repeated itself. Even though it was silent, the hostility of the teenagers toward her was palpable, as cutting as a razor blade. She got the impression she was tarnishing the image of their beloved professor, who spoke English with an inimitable accent and was the embodiment of Old World sophistication. What was the sordid connection between him and this descendant of cannibals?
Fiela, Fiela, you see, we are alike.
Stephen was too sharp not to perceive this hostility, but his explanation was quite different.
“They sense you’re not interested in them. Worse, they sense you despise them. So they react.”
Despise them? Why would I despise them? I’ve no right to despise other human beings.
“You deny it, but you’re arrogant.”
Me, arrogant? Whereas deep down I’m scared to death. I’m scared of other humans, of the world, of life and death. I’m scared of everything!
Dido’s return interrupted the stream of memories.
Sofie regretted she had rushed away. Jan now seemed to be in a coma. The doctor, called back for the emergency, claimed he wouldn’t make it through the night.
If she had had the means, Rosélie would have bade her farewells to South Africa that very evening. Alas! Besides the fact she was incapable of paying for a ticket, even the cheapest economy fare, she had no idea where to go. A notary had just written, informing her that Aunt Yaëlle, Elie’s last remaining sister, an eccentric, who for a long time had lived in Santiago de Cuba with a drunken musician, addicted to ether, it was rumored, breaking with the family’s general hostility, had left her the house in Barbotteau, high in the hills, surrounded by the rampart of mountains, where she had taken refuge in her old age. Rosélie had memories of birthdays, frantically racing over the lawn, green with the hope of those years, slices of marble cake, smooth to the palate, and coconut sorbet served with silver spoons.
What would happen if she accepted the offer?
“Ola fanm-la sa sòti?” Where did this woman come from? the neighbors would grumble.
Those who are born and live in metropolitan France have been given a name. They call them Negropolitans or Negxagonals. To have a name means you already exist. Stones that roll around the world gathering no moss have no name. They call them nomads.
Unable to turn her back on South Africa, Rosélie decided to leave Lievland. Jan had opened her eyes for her. Having lived week after week in these former slave quarters beside the master’s house meant that she closed her eyes to the past, that she endorsed it, that she absolved it. She had visited Monticelli, Thomas Jefferson’s house in Virginia. The finishing touches to historical color had been the African-Americans ensconced in smocks selling souvenirs in the slave quarters’ gift shop.
Come and buy an ashtray made from genuine shackles! Branding irons made into paperweights!