She therefore turned a deaf ear to Stephen’s warnings. It was not just a question of exhibiting a few paintings, he recalled. In addition, each artist had to explain his work, his sources of inspiration, and his technique. Was she prepared for that, she who had so much trouble expressing herself? Piqued, Rosélie spent the night scribbling page after page.
The festival took place at Medgar Evers College. Situated in the very heart of Brooklyn, this imposing edifice, proudly named after a martyr, appeared to be one of the last bastions of that African-American grandeur so ignored on American soil. The president and board of directors, however, regretted there were so few native-born Americans, and far too many Caribbeans and Africans without a hyphen. The college now attracted first and second generations, born from successive waves of immigration, for whom racism, high tuition fees, and the lack of adequate training would have prevented them from studying elsewhere. There were also a great many white skins, the Latinos, often similar, alas, to the Caucasians. The corridors echoed more with the sounds of Spanish and Creole than those of Ebonics.
On that particular day, a crowd was streaming toward the college. And Rosélie in a daze thought she recognized tens of Aunt Lénas, Aunt Yaëlles, cousins, and uncles; so true seemed the saying, which everyone mistakenly thinks is racist, that all blacks look alike. In the yard a circle of curious onlookers were crowded around gigantic sculptures arranged close to the fountains. However hard she elbowed, she was unable to get a closer look. Alice and Andy had in fact mentioned an African-American sculptor who was taking blacks and whites alike by surprise.
She followed the crowd heading toward an amphitheater. It was on the way there that she was gripped by terror and almost turned tail.
Was she in her place, she who colluded with the oppressor?
Sleeping with the enemy.
Unfortunately, a hostess dressed with a headscarf fit for a Senegalese drianke and a boubou in rich brocade, seeing her hesitate, dragged her to the podium with the heavy hand of a revolutionary guard leading an aristocrat to the scaffold.
The panel was composed of six artists: three men and three women. Equality oblige. Scheduled for 9:00 a.m., the discussion began around eleven, as they had to wait for a technician to set up the microphones. The ten minutes allotted to each speaker was not respected, since each participant complained louder than the other about the difficulties of being a creator in a materialistic world, thirsting for consumerism and threatened by globalization. The most vehement — and also the longest — was the moviemaker. The black public was no longer what it used to be, he hammered out. It no longer encouraged its creators. It had taken a liking for sex, visual effects, and violence, white values that had corrupted it. As a result, the wonderful stories that made up the heritage of the black people, those stories transmitted from mouth to mouth, were destined to perish. These diatribes together with the earlier delays and the rigors of alphabetical order had disastrous consequences. When Rosélie’s turn came, just before Anthony Turley’s, the other panelists had left, and the auditorium strewn with paper cups and litter was virtually deserted. Amid general indifference, Rosélie churned out the paper she had taken so much trouble over. Moreover, she got the impression that the few people left did not understand a word she was saying because of her accent.
“How about lunch?” he proposed.
Anthony Turley could boast of an impeccable pedigree. His family, originally from Alabama, tired of dying from hunger on land gone to waste practically ever since the South had been defeated, had left for Detroit. There they had found themselves as poor as before, but this time deprived of air and light, and imprisoned in the urban ghetto. The men, embittered, beat their women and raped their prepubescent daughters. He was the fruit of one of these family dramas. His mother, raped at the age of twelve by her uncle, had committed suicide in despair shortly after his birth. He had been raised by his grandmother, gone crazy from the brutality and abuse of numerous common-law husbands. Anthony had grown up on food stamps, spent vacations at summer camps for underprivileged children, and got through his studies with the help of scholarships for needy gifted children. In spite of all that, his entire personality radiated a gallant charm and an impression of joyful strength. You could guess the little boy and teenager he had been, tripping over corpses on the sidewalk and determined against all odds to get the most out of life, as he hummed his way along. He wouldn’t have been out of place on a basketball team, for he was well over six feet tall. Not an ounce of fat. Nothing but muscle. His head shaved, as shiny as a mirror, a mischievous gold loop in his left ear, and an easy laugh with the accents of a clarinet.
They crossed the yard, forcing their way through the crowd still gathered in front of the sculptures.
“Have you seen my work?” he asked. “I was very surprised to be invited to this festival. I hadn’t got much attention until The New York Times wrote a few lines about me, and now things are starting to change.”
A helping hand, that’s what I need! Who will give me a helping hand? To bring me out of the shadows where I am foundering. The wings of an artist need to be caressed by the light, otherwise they fold and wither like stumps.
There’s an unexpected charm about this neighborhood. They crossed a majestic avenue. Then he guided her through a maze of streets filled with little girls showing their chocolate-colored legs as they jumped rope, little boys running across imaginary baseball fields and old folk clutching walkers, and finally, they reached a restaurant called Nature. Yes, kids often took him for Michael Jordan and asked for an autograph. But once they had deciphered his signature, they went away disappointed. Sometimes young girls insisted on taking their photo with him. They often accepted a rendezvous. When he told them his real name they would shout insults at him as if he had wanted to cheat them. One of them had even tried to sue him.
Anthony had invented a substance that was a mixture of clay, resin, melted metal, ground glass with shards of flint and quartz, baked in an oven at a very high temperature. He used it to sculpt animals and creatures of his imagination, trees, and plants. Never humans.
He changed his tone of voice and became serious.
“I listened carefully to what you said…”
What did I say? Rosélie had merely repeated Ariel’s theory: Art-is-the-only-language-that-can-be-shared-on-the-surface-of-the-planet and blah, blah, blah. Nothing very original.
“I don’t agree at all on what you said about nationality, especially race. Aren’t you proud to be black?”
Me? Proud?
I’d like to be a Hindu princess combing her long hair from a window in the palace. The prince passes by on horseback and tramples on this billowing stream that flows into the forest.
He took offense.
“Don’t you ever feel bitter when you think of all the evil they have done us?”
My good friend, I’m an egoist. I am more concerned about the failure of my present than the wounds of our past.
“I’m not talking about the past. They’re still doing us so much harm.”
They’re not alone. They are joined by a cohort of those who wear the same skin color as ours.
He lost his temper.
“Don’t you think it’s time for us to take our revenge?”
Revenge? Revenge is not for me. I fear I would never succeed, since I’m in the category of losers.