“Brenda!”
A very young woman appeared, almost a teenager, in her last stages of pregnancy, shuffling along with a huge belly and heavy legs. He hurled a few words at her in their language and she turned and headed for the door like a frightened animal, without a glance at Rosélie.
“What have you come for?” he asked again.
Feeling weak, she collapsed into the only armchair and tried to regain her calm.
“I’ve come to give you Stephen’s computer.”
He frowned as if he had heard a bad joke.
“What do you expect me to do with a computer? We don’t even have electricity in the district. They’ve been promising it for over a year. But we’re still waiting for it.”
She couldn’t find anything to say.
“We’re in South Africa here, you know,” he sneered. “Not in America.”
“I’m not American,” she protested. “I’m from Guadeloupe. A country poorer than yours.”
Was she hoping to move him? He gestured in a way that signified he didn’t care whether she came from Mars, then repeated:
“What are you here for? What do you want from me?”
She didn’t know what to say. She could no longer understand why she was here.
“Your uncle told me you quarreled with Stephen,” she stammered.
“And so what?” he asked roughly.
Discouraged, she got up. This conversation was getting them nowhere. She headed for the door, mumbling an apology for having disturbed him for no reason, when he called out to her.
“You’ve probably just realized that your Stephen was a bastard, haven’t you? Not at all the liberal, role model of a professor, benefactor of the young, whom everyone adored. A bastard!”
She turned round to face him, and with the determination of someone who wants to know, she quietly asked:
“Why are you saying that? What did he do to you?”
“Me?” he repeated.
There was silence. Suddenly he began to yell. He was not that far removed from the disproportionate tantrums of childhood. With a distorted face, he became unrecognizable.
“He was a liar and a manipulator. He promised me the world. That he’d get me a scholarship to study in London. He said he had connections at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. I’d become an actor. I’d be another Paul Robeson. Better than Laurence Fishburne. I believed him. I believed him. Whereas, in actual fact…”
He collapsed onto the table, whimpering like a baby. She went over and placed a hand on his shoulder. He started.
“Don’t touch me!”
He sobbed for a long time while she stood motionless behind his back. He finally got hold of himself and methodically wiped his eyes, his cheeks, and his entire face. Then he stood up, jostling her almost, and coldly declared:
“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you want to know. Besides, the police have already questioned me. At the time of his death I was in Hermanus, at Tanikazi’s, a neighborhood bar, playing darts. Twenty people can testify to the fact. Then I went home. Brenda and I made love. She can testify to that too.”
He stared at her spitefully.
“Someone else had the courage to do it, someone about whom he cared fuck-all like me. If I knew his name I’d give him a medal, a medal for doing good.”
“If you hate him so much,” she asked, amazed she could keep her calm in spite of these provocations, “why did you cry at his funeral?”
“Why?”
He looked around him, distraught, started to cry again, this time silently, and his distress moved her more than his rage. After a while he stammered:
“I was remembering the time when…”
“What?”
She had screamed. It was too painful, she now had proof, she was not the only one Stephen belonged to. Others possessed images and memories she could not share. Without answering, he wiped his face again in the same methodical way. She stood just a few steps away, close enough to touch him, breathing in his smell, a pleasant smell of cheap eau de cologne and tobacco. He stared at her with dark, piercing eyes through a forest of eyelashes curled from his tears. He looked so young. He could have been her nephew. Or rather the son Salama Salama so persistently demanded, the son she at times had wanted. A wave of pity tinged with tenderness welled up inside her and surged toward him.
This truce made her grow bolder, and very quietly she ventured:
“What exactly was there between you two?”
He fluttered his eyelids like someone aroused from his sleep.
“What was there between us two?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”
She was already frightened and ashamed of her question. He looked at her again.
“What do you think there was between us?” he said in a childish tone of voice.
He laughed stupidly.
“You’re crazy! There was nothing between us. I adored him because he was my teacher. He taught me everything.”
Wasn’t that what she wanted to hear? Without insisting further, she walked out.
Brenda seemed to be waiting for her in the yard. With a smile she motioned to her to come over. Rosélie had trouble understanding. But Brenda insisted. Surprised, Rosélie obeyed and followed her into a room. A narrow shop. A girl was standing behind the counter leafing through an old illustrated magazine. Just about everywhere bunches of flowers were heaped on the ground, in front of the door, on tables, shelves, and window ledges, as round as suns, as rigid as ginger lilies, cut out from recycled cans of Ovomaltine, Nestlé’s condensed milk, Lazzarro coffee, Mozart cocoa, Del Monte tomato paste, Baci di Dama biscuits, Gustoro olive oil, and drums of motor oil, gas, and paraffin. The effect was stupefying. The humble room had become a petrified magic garden. The old dream of alchemists seemed to have come true. A hand had transmuted base matter and changed it into gold.
“Madam, buy?” Brenda articulated with difficulty.
Worried, quite rightly, at not being understood, she immediately forced a bunch into Rosélie’s hands.
“Did you make these?” Rosélie asked.
Brenda nodded and proudly handed her a business card that looked like the ones she had had printed for herself.
On your visit to Hermanus,
Don’t miss Brenda’s Garden
No. 17. Lane 3. Alley A.
So she’s an artist too. In her fashion. Wasn’t she teaching her a lesson? A lesson of courage. Her flowers were born in the heart of the ghetto, in the midst of poverty, at the heart of life’s ugliness. Filled with admiration, Rosélie looked at her. Despite her drawn features, covered with the heavy mask of pregnancy, she was pretty. If it hadn’t been for her belly, you would have mistaken her for a small boy. The inevitable shaved head. The high cheekbones. A slightly curled upper lip revealing pearly-white teeth. At the end of her slender arms, her hands were surprisingly strong, with nimble fingers. Hands made to deliver beauty under any circumstance. If only Rosélie could have communicated with her instead of being content with smiles and superficial gestures. She had the feeling they were standing on either side of a river or on a harbor wharf watching a ship leave, separated by the inexorable space of the ocean. Just in case, she scribbled down her address and telephone number and explained that she too was a painter. If Brenda came to Cape Town, would she come and see her studio? Did she understand what she was saying? She nodded reassuringly and mumbled a few incomprehensible phrases. Then, with the graceful simplicity of a child, she kissed her. Rosélie was expecting anything but that. What did that kiss mean? Was it a customary gesture of politeness, the way Olu’s children had kissed her? It couldn’t possibly be a symbol? The symbol of her reintegration!