Most people found Rosélie somber, withdrawn, quick to retire to her apartment when there was a visit, and not at all polyglot, since she only spoke French-French. She didn’t cook, didn’t do the washing, didn’t iron, and especially didn’t give birth. But since Salama Salama couldn’t bear them criticizing her, they kept their thoughts to themselves.
Rosélie could very well have been an example of that reprehensible feminine blindness denounced by Mrs. Hillster. She had never suspected the wedding plans of a companion who for six years had laid his head beside her on the same pillow. How could she have done? Salama Salama penetrated her, made himself at home, and took his pleasure with her several times a night. He asked her opinion on everything. On the lyrics of his songs, for instance, which as a rule he wrote in French. A journalist from the BBC reproached him in no uncertain terms:
“Isn’t French a colonial language?”
What is a colonial language? I speak what I am. I am what I speak. I speak therefore I am. I am therefore I speak. Et cetera.
Salama Salama’s answer irritated him considerably.
“The French language belongs to me. My ancestors stole it from the whites like Prometheus stealing fire. Unfortunately, they were incapable of setting light to the French-speaking world from one end to the other.”
In fact, whereas Rosélie and Stephen agreed about everything, there was nothing but points of friction between Salama Salama and Rosélie, except for the hashish they smoked together, of which Rosélie had trouble breaking the habit. First of all, he blamed her painting. It was a rival. He couldn’t bear her devoting so much time to it, locked up days on end in her studio she had installed at the bottom of the compound between the washhouse and the storeroom. What’s more, everyone poked fun at it. Servants fetching rice or dried fish for the meals would burst out laughing or make the sign of the cross, depending on their temperament, when they caught sight of the paintings. Second, she loathed his music, reggae music. However hard he tried to get her to listen to the undisputed master, Bob Marley, or read to her illuminating comments on the subject, she stuck to her guns. Finally, he adored children and she didn’t. He begged her. Did she want his father, the man who had produced fifteen sons and as many daughters, to think he was impotent? His younger brothers, the oldest of whom were already taking their first communion, to disrespect him?
When Rosélie, crushed as if the sky had fallen on her head, left the compound, Salama Salama’s mother had wept a lot. The reincarnation of her little sister was leaving. What sacrifice would hold her back? Alemanthia, her witch doctor from Benin, advised her to kill a white heifer with three ginger-haired stars marked on its forehead.
They unearthed and sacrificed this rare animal. But Alemanthia lost face, for Rosélie never came back. After that frightful interlude at Ferbène, she had met Stephen, whom she thought would be her savior. She had been wrong about that too, since he had abandoned her to the hands of Faustin, who in turn had deserted her.
Rosélie was lost in these hardly cheering thoughts when Dido came up to inform her that Raymond was waiting for her on the patio.
Raymond, buttoned up as usual in a double-breasted business suit of a dark cloth, looked out of place, like a night bird under the sun. But that afternoon he wore a radiant smile that clashed with his funereal dress. A positive thinker, he interpreted Faustin’s letter as a commitment, a promise he was bound to keep. Without wasting time, as he had been told to do, he had every intention of taking care of everything. While he settled into an armchair and spread out his leaflets, she asked him:
“What exactly does Faustin’s nomination consist of?”
“I believe he is going to be in charge of the CRTA,” he replied vaguely, as if he considered the question pointless.
“What’s that?”
“A branch of the FAO, I think, whose director is a childhood friend of his.”
“What does CRTA mean?”
“Center for Research in Tropical Agriculture. You know that Faustin is an agronomist?”
Then he got down to basics.
“Do you want to stop off in Paris for a few days? Women always want to stop over in Paris.”
Women? When Raymond talked of women, Rosélie didn’t know whether she was included in the species. She was not sure she saw herself as one of those whimsical creatures with uncontrollable and inexplicable desires, prepared to spend a fortune on Fashion Fair makeup, lingerie, and perfumes.
Paris? Now, there’s a city that has never taken to me, never celebrated me. Our strained relations go back a long way. To please Elie I had enrolled at the law school, a cold cavern built of freestone in the shadow of the Panthéon, where I shivered with boredom. As a result, I would sit for hours in the cafés of the Latin Quarter, smoking Gauloises like a chimney; the marijuana came later. Afterward I would walk down to the banks of the Seine to purify my lungs. I ended up making friends with a bookseller specializing in colonial photographs.
Algeria: Negro with a Fan.
New Guinea: A Head Hunter.
Ivory Coast: Missionaries and Their Choirboys.
He was the one who sold me a reproduction of a woodcut by André Thevet dated 1522: Tupinamba Cannibal Indians at a Feast.
I’ve always been fascinated by cannibals.
I also bought a photo of twenty or so Guadeloupean women landing at Ellis Island in April 1932. This talisman has followed me everywhere. Braver than me, my ancestors, all alone, without a man by their side. What America were they going to discover? Dressed in their traditional Creole costumes and madras headties, they smile gallantly at the camera.
“Do you know Washington?” Raymond asked.
Washington’s the anti — New York, a city in black and white, compartmentalized, segregated, and racist. Even Stephen couldn’t invent a theory to absolve it. The search for a manuscript had taken them there one weekend. On leaving the Library of Congress, they had ventured into the black neighborhood around the Capitol, where a driver had knowingly tried to knock them over. At a bus stop some youths had heckled them with obscene gestures and threatening language. In fright they had taken refuge in a white neighborhood with one of Stephen’s friends, a specialist of Milton, whose wife was from Ethiopia. They had lunch surrounded by suitcases. Tired of the neighbors’ snubs and the insults suffered by the children at school, the wife was preparing to go back to Addis Ababa.