“What type?”
Rosélie realized that she knew nothing about a man with whom she had performed one of the most secret and intimate acts imaginable.
Dido licked the end of her pencil.
“He took you out? Where did he take you?”
“To the Paradise,” she said docilely. “In the Malay district.”
The Bo-Kaap or Malay district, as the inhabitants of Cape Town call this fascinating and charming enclave of ocher, pink, and blue facades, is in fact a misnomer. Historians tell us that fewer than one percent of slaves actually came from Malaysia and, consequently, have left few traces in the region. They also call it the Muslim district. This seems more appropriate given the number of mosques in the area. Moreover, a religious leader by the name of Abu Bakr Effendi lived and founded a school there. Malay or Muslim, Bo-Kaap is one of the nicest areas of Cape Town because of its tangled network of alleys, its tiny restaurants smelling of ginger and curry; and it is also one of the safest, the only neighborhood in this city of living dangerously where you can stroll around on foot.
Dido pulled a face.
“He didn’t go to much trouble. The Paradise is a very ordinary sort of place. Admission is a few rand. The club belongs to a Congolese refugee. It’s where all the French-speaking Africans hang out.”
In his eyes, I don’t deserve any better. I’m not a prize conquest.
“At his age, he must have a wife and children. Where are they?”
Rosélie nodded.
“He’s married to an African-American,” she replied naturally, hiding how stunned she had been on hearing the news. (So he had a liking for foreign women.) “They have two daughters. When he lost his job, his wife went back to her family. They haven’t seen each other in years.”
Dido rolled her eyes.
“The usual story! They’ve always quarreled with their wives. Always separated or in the process of divorce. What’s he doing in South Africa?”
Rosélie made a vague gesture.
“Like everyone else. He came to do business.”
“My God!” Dido groaned. “The worst kind. The so-called African businessman. In that case, why isn’t he in Johannesburg? That’s where the business is!”
Rosélie confessed she didn’t know. Dido continued her interrogation.
“I’ve heard he’s a government minister?”
“He didn’t mention it,” Rosélie once again confessed.
“Then he can’t be too proud of it,” Dido concluded in a cutting tone. “Why does he drag around all those bodyguards with him?”
“It seems his enemies tried to assassinate him while he was living in Kinshasa, then again in Brazzaville.”
Dido sniffed scornfully on hearing this story of hired killers. At that moment, Rosélie endeavored to reassure her and adopted a casual approach. What was she frightened of? What was she trying to protect her from? Whatever people might think, she wasn’t born yesterday. The heart had nothing to do with it. Just a one-night stand, that’s all it was. Dido put her harshly in her place.
“I’ve already heard that tune. You’re wrong, women can’t divorce sex from the heart. You least of all.”
Thereupon she stuffed her paper in a drawer.
“Don’t trust him. That Faustin tells me there’s nothing good about him.”
She sounded like Dominique ranting on against Stephen years earlier. Dido didn’t like Stephen either, even though she hadn’t dared admit it. At times Rosélie caught her looking at him, black with animosity. Good friends are always Cassandras.
Rosélie got dressed, then went downstairs to drink three cups of coffee on the patio. She needed at least that to regain a semblance of equilibrium.
On the other side of the street, her hands protected by pink rubber gloves, her face behind a blue mica eyeshade, Mrs. Schipper, the neighbor, was trimming her roses. Snip snip snip. The branches fell around her like heads during the Reign of Terror. As usual, she looked straight through Rosélie. This voluntary blindness had lasted four years.
The night with Faustin gave Rosélie the courage she had lacked up till then. She pushed open the door to Stephen’s lair. It was an oval room, “my oval office,” Stephen liked to joke, the loveliest room in the house, evidently designed to be a living room, as the marquetry and moldings on the ceiling testified. His favorite picture, the third of a series he had named Virgins, Monsters, and Witches, had pride of place. Stephen’s den was filled with an ill-assorted collection of furniture, the way he liked it, an armchair bought for next to nothing at the flea market standing next to an expensive roll desk in lemon wood. Stephen was very proud of his library filled with leather-bound first editions in French and English. What was she going to do with them, she who hated the opaque, oppressive presence of books? She decided to donate them to the university. She would call Doris the very next morning. Dido would love the extra flat, wide-screen Sony TV — Stephen adored the latest gadgets — which would set Keanu Reeves off to better advantage. As for the CD player, Deogratias, who was a lover of Gregorian chant, would be overjoyed with it. But all those CDs and videocassettes? Stephen’s taste in music was totally opposite to hers, strictly jazz and Verdi operas, which she hated. She would give everything to Mrs. Hillster. Mrs. Hillster was a great friend of Stephen’s. Twice or three times a week she would come and have tea, and sit and chat with him at the foot of the traveler’s tree. Mrs. Hillster was an English lady, the widow of a senior civil servant who in the seventies had written a report, oh nothing too critical, against apartheid. This gave her the right to criticize the government and to fill everybody’s head with “All they have to do is this” or “All they have to do is that.”
Apart from that, she owned the most delightful shop imaginable, called the Threepenny Opera. Everything was shelved together in total disorder: Christmas carols with requiems, motets with oratorios, cello suites with raï music, and Cesaria Evora with Cheb Mami. Rummaging around, you came up with all sorts of things. That’s how more than once Rosélie’s heart had missed a beat. One day, in the middle of a collection of iscathamiya music, she had come across some old recordings of biguines by Stellio: Elie’s favorite music, together with the Afro-Cubans. “Guantanamera,” “Dos gardenias,” and “tutti quanti.” In his youth Elie had even tried his lips at clarinet playing. Together with his four brothers, Emeric, Eliacin, Evrard, and Emile, they had formed a group called the Musical Brothers. The band had made quite a name for itself playing at afternoon dances and quadrille balls. But in the long run music is not enough to feed a man on his own, let alone four strapping guys. The band had broken up. Whereas his brothers found jobs wherever they could — two emigrated to Paris, another to Canada — the valiant Elie sat for the civil service exam and spent the next forty years in a stuffy office on the second floor of the clerk’s office in Pointe-à-Pitre. Another time Rosélie had discovered Salama Salama’s gold record, The Reggae of the Wretched, that had sold over a million copies and whose music had no trouble feeding him comfortably. She had helped him compose the lyrics.
Dance, the wretched of the earth,
Dance, the prisoners of hunger,
Yes, dance, dance, dance to forget!
Me rasta man, I urge you to love one another.
If everyone loved each other
Loved each other in the morning, loved each other in the evening,
Loved each other at noon, loved each other at midnight,
The world would be a better place.
Her cheeks were still burning.
A young Nepalese, Bishupal Limbu, reigned over the Threepenny Opera. One customer would ask for the Concerto for Violin by Alan Berg, another for Legend by Bob Marley, and some woman the Requiem by Gilles. Despite the surrounding jumble, Bishupal would head straight for the recording. His musical knowledge was surprising. His literary knowledge too. During his rare spare moments, he always had his nose stuck in a book. He often came to Faure Street to borrow a book from Stephen. In three months he had read the complete works of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy and had begun to tackle William Faulkner. Taciturn and looking ill at ease, a fringe of jet-black hair caressing his slit eyes, he dreamed of becoming a poet. His poetry had been published in a journal in Johannesburg. Stephen had convinced him to take a correspondence course to prepare for English composition exams.