Rosélie never raised her voice. Never disobeyed, never rebelled. No preadolescent crisis, much less an adolescent one. The family cited her as an example to the cousins who got into bad ways. The school mistresses were less enthusiastic: “In class, she dreams. She sleeps standing up.” The art teacher in particular complained: “You should see her free compositions. Hideous! The other day she drew a woman with legs wide open spurting a stream of blood. I shouted: ‘Good Lord, what’s that?’ ‘It’s a rape,’ she replied. ‘Have you ever seen a rape?’ I asked her angrily. ‘Those sorts of things don’t happen around here.’ She replied: ‘I’m raped every day.’ And when I shouted in anger: ‘Don’t say such things! Who rapes you?’ She answered quite calmly: ‘My papa, my maman, everyone.’”
ELEVEN
Fiela, what have they got against him? He has always been by my side. Thoughtful. Considerate. Patient to my moods.
Often Stephen used to say:
“You are the most wonderful woman on earth. An extraordinary gift, too precious for me, like the ones my grandmother used to give me. My father and mother were so fraught with hate for each other they had no time for me. I grew up amid their indifference. So every Christmas my grandmother would decorate a tree in which she nestled little trumpets, little violas, violins, guitars, and bagpipes. She would switch on garlands of electric lights. On the branches she hung silver and gold balls that sparkled from the light. Then underneath she placed my present, wrapped in festive paper that I tore open when we got home from Midnight Mass. I can remember one year it was a white clown almost as tall as I was. When you pulled the strings it smiled and croaked, waving its arms: “Hi, how are you?” My grandmother died when I was ten. Shortly afterward my parents divorced. I followed my mother to Verberie and life never again gave me anything. Except you!”
Or else he would say:
“If I were to lose you, my life would revert to the desolate existence I led before I met you. I had nothing that was mine. I lived thanks to other men. Like a Tupinamba Indian I devoured their liver, their spleen, and their heart. But these bitter feasts left me even more despondent. Sated, I realized my baseness. You gave me everything.”
For their first Christmas together, he had wanted to take her on a journey. A real one. Because he realized that traveling for Rosélie meant only two things.
Either the drive from La Pointe to Basse-Terre. This was the time when she was a little girl and Rose still showed herself in public, when they would get up at four in the morning. The sky glowed pale over the hill of Massabielle as Elie, helped by Meynalda, loaded the Citroën with bottles of water, Tupperware containers of codfish fritters and curried chicken. Then the family would confront the perilous fifty-mile journey to attend a christening or a wedding.
Or else the journey by plane from La Pointe to Paris for her studies, for the Thibaudins considered Paris nothing more than a city where you were likely to find work. Neither Elie nor Rose was one of those fanatics who count up their stays in the metropole year after year and return home starry-eyed. In fact, Rose had only traveled once to the capital for her honeymoon. Her head had been ringing with the carnival songs of Cuba, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador da Bahia. But how do you get to those places? Elie had no idea. One of his brothers had recommended a cheap hotel in Paris with furnished rooms and a kitchenette where you could do your cooking. The Hotel des Deux-Mondes stood on the place Denfert-Rochereau, a busy shopping district. Rose would walk round the statue of the Lion of Belfort, green as the mirage of grass in the middle of the desert sands, and continue on to the narrow rue Daguerre, overflowing with food stalls. There she would rub shoulders with other housewives and bargain for tuna, scorpion fish — similar to the red snapper — red peppers, and violet-colored eggplant. Madly in love with his young bride, who weighed no more than 130 pounds and whose voice rivaled that of the kiskadee bird from Dominica, Elie had not been mean with his money throughout their stay. He had taken her to see films starring Tino Rossi, whom she adored and whose hit songs she sang:
Marinella, oh reste encore dans mes bras,
Avec toi, je veux jusqu’au jour
Chanter cette chanson d’amour.
He showed her the Folies Bergère and the Moulin Rouge, but she was shocked by the dancers and thought they were little better than the ladies of easy virtue back home, showing off their legs and their breasts. Once, he was in the mood for a bit of culture and bought orchestra seats to a matinee performance at the Théâtre de l’Odéon of Corneille’s Le Cid, which they used to recite at school.
Rose was bored in Paris. She returned home to Guadeloupe, determined never to travel again, and with the help of her illness, she kept her word.
Stephen chose Italy. He was astounded that the only museum Rosélie had visited as a child on Saturday afternoons under the supervision of her French teacher was the Lherminier Museum, a pretty colonial house with wrought-iron balustrades. All it housed were collections of faded postcards, lace and mother-of-pearl fans, and children’s spinning tops. But it was the only museum in La Pointe. Rosélie got to know the museums in Paris much later when she was a student. Stephen couldn’t get over it.
“When did you feel you had a vocation?”
Vocation? Rosélie was incapable of giving an answer. A child does not have a vocation. She wants to paint. Period. It’s her caprice and her freedom to choose. She had entered into painting like a novice enters into religion. Without suspecting what lay in wait for her. Uncertainty. Fear. Solitude. Exhausting work. Lack of money and self-esteem. The search for recognition.
“You’re a miracle,” Stephen marveled. “You’ve reinvented painting.”
Florence and Rome appalled Rosélie. She thought Art was a delectation enjoyed by the happy few. An elitist and outmoded notion. It is fodder for senior citizens, corporate employees, and underprivileged children. White-haired tourists and schoolchildren elbowed one another around the Uffizi and crowded onto the Ponte Vecchio. Paper litter, African priests, and Indonesian nuns fluttered around the square in front of St. Peter’s.
The brightly colored grotesques daubed on the ceilings of the convents and libraries in Parma, and Venice, especially Venice, despite its hordes, reconciled her to Italy. The city of the Doges drifted on the waters of a lagoon the color of the Sargasso Sea. Ocean liners, reviving the journeys of long ago, were escorted lazily out to sea. Rosélie dragged Stephen along alleyways off the beaten path, into obscure churches and hidden monasteries. And that’s how she came across Antonio Vivaldi. One evening, out of curiosity, they followed a small crowd into a patio cluttered with chairs and benches open to an indigo sky. They were giving a private concert, a common sight in the city. The concertgoers all knew one another and kissed and hugged with that Latin effusiveness. They made room for the strangers, turning round to whisper and stare. Yet this open display of curiosity was as vivifying as a hot bath. One man came up to them. Was the signorina from Ethiopia? Ignoring her negative answer, he began talking about Ethiopia. Or rather about himself in Ethiopia, since people only talk about themselves. For years he had worked with a team from Doctors Without Borders. He missed those isolated villages shivering in the icy mornings and the bitter breeze where he had treated the living as emaciated as the dead. Since his return to Italy, life had lost its meaning.
“And what about Art? And Culture?” Stephen asked in surprise. “You must have missed them in Ethiopia, you who are so blessed in this country.”