“I wonder why they chose that band,” groused the father. “They’re only playing rap. Isn’t our music good enough for them?”
There then followed a discussion on the merits of iscathamiya, South African jazz, mbaqanga, and kwaito, which were head and shoulders above African-American music, that dared compete with them on their home territory. Besides, South African music was head and shoulders above every type of music. Dido was of the same opinion. Nobody could touch Hugh Masekela or Miriam Makeba!
What could you expect? She stuck with the artists of her generation.
“Not to mention gospel!” added the man. “Nobody can beat us.”
Whatever the African-Americans might think, they are only novices in the genre. Rigged out in ludicrous chasubles, they sway to and fro, shouting in their churches, whereas everyone knows shouting isn’t singing. Once again, listening to these affirmations of vibrant chauvinism, Rosélie felt empty-handed. Nothing in her culture made her want to fight tooth and nail for it.
Pity I’m not Haitian! In that case, I wouldn’t know what to choose.
Ayiti péyi mwen!
Carimi.
Perhaps she dreamed the world would be one because of her own destitution? Did it betray a desire to align everybody on the same tabula rasa as herself? She had lost her parents and her land, loved strangers who did not speak her language — besides, did she have a language? — and pitched her tent in hostile landscapes. Faustin joked about it sometimes.
“You’re like a nomad. Your roof’s the sky above your head.”
Aren’t we all nomads? Isn’t it the fault of this wretched, topsy-turvy century in which we live? At the age of twenty-six my mother could make up her mind and say: “I shall never leave Guadeloupe again!”
Even if I’d wanted to I could never have imitated her.
Faustin! Dido had enthused over his flowers and took his procrastination at face value.
“It’s better that way,” she declared. “It’ll soon be summer in America. I hear it’s suffocating in Washington. You’ll arrive for the autumn, the loveliest season.”
Why had Faustin set his heart on her? Wounds heal when you’re twenty. They infect and fester indefinitely at fifty. Women who are paid by the job exist too. Cape Town’s full of them, hanging round the streetlamps on the waterfront. The authorities, who hunt them down, claim these depraved women come from Madagascar, not South Africa.
Whores always come from somewhere else!
Faustin had set his sights on her, she who was already so fragile, so infirm. You don’t shoot at an ambulance. She was forgetting the pleasure he gave her, the impression she had of regaining her youth, of starting life over again, and at times she thought she hated him.
Gradually the atmosphere changed. The veneer of good manners cracked, and the guests, despite their elegant surroundings, sunk into vulgarity. With the help of alcohol and good food, voices grew louder, shrill, and quarrelsome. Tongues were loosened. The women criticized the callous Vreedehoeks, who were forgetting that white folk had despised them as well. The men, shrugging off such gossip, attacked the government. It was the whites who were profiting from the new regime. The whites and Kaffirs. Not the coloureds. The world no longer considered the whites as pariahs. They could travel, do business, and get rich. The Kaffirs’ wildest dreams were coming true. Thanks to special programs, they were invading the universities. Soon the country would be flooded with Kaffir doctors, lawyers, and engineers with degrees!
Rosélie was the friend of a relative, so she was treated like family. Everyone knew the terrible ordeal she was recovering from. Another dirty trick by the Kaffirs! They’ll ruin South Africa just like they’ve ruined the rest of Africa. Corruption, coups d’état and civil wars are their progeny of misfortune. But their sympathy was expressed in Afrikaans, a language that Rosélie, little gifted for languages, could not understand. So despite the smiles, she felt terribly isolated.
It was then, as she gazed around the room, she thought she recognized Bishupal. Yes, it was him, flanked by Archie, the young coloured guy who had replaced him at Mrs. Hillster’s. Apparently recovered, he was standing somber and indifferent at the edge of the dance floor, as if he were oblivious to the commotion around him. When their eyes met, she smiled at him. He immediately turned away and, grabbing his friend’s arm, was quickly lost in the crowd. Rosélie didn’t know what to think. What had gotten into him?
Hadn’t he recognized her?
Suddenly the lights dimmed. In the midst of shouts and applause, a female singer and a guitarist walked onto the stage.
“Rebecca! Rebecca!” screamed the guests.
Rebecca gave a gracious wave of the hand, then in a pleasantly husky voice began to sing a popular song that everyone seemed to know, since they sang the refrain in chorus: “Buyani, buyani.”
What will my life be like if I stay here? Rosélie wondered lucidly.
A powerful desire unfurled, flapped like a sail in the wind, and dragged her along. Blood, they say, is thicker than water. The Thibaudins would have to accept her and silence their reproaches. Even the prodigal son was embraced by his father: “Bring forth quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
She wouldn’t go and bury herself in the hills at Barbotteau. She had always preferred the city, its life and energy. She would go and live in La Pointe, in the house on the rue du Commandant Mortenol where she had grown up, among her childhood memories. In the living room, the photo of her first communion. On the Klein piano where she had practiced her scales. In the library on the first floor, the books that had bored her to tears but which Rose made her read for her general knowledge. Next door, her bedroom and the chaste, single bed where her recalcitrant body had experienced its first teenage desires. The mirror where she had gazed at her own reflection, dreaming of a magic wand that would transform her. Would she have the courage to enter Rose’s room? On the dressing table, the three porcelain cups painted with Japanese ladies and their ebony chignons were covered in a layer of dust. Next to them, a souvenir from Paris: a glass ball in which the dome of Sacré Coeur peeked through the snowflakes. An hourglass congealing time. All these trite trinkets that had outlived their owner.
The very next morning after her arrival, she would get up at four to go to dawn mass. The bells would ring out in the cool of the morning and the bigoted churchgoers would stream to the cathedral like flies to a puddle of cane syrup. Every day she would take communion. Every Sunday she would visit Rose’s grave, her arms loaded with flowers that would warm the coldness of the marble.
“She must have loved her mother so much!” people would wonder. “So surprising after what happened.”
But what had happened? Nothing very much when you think about it. Everyone knows each of us kills the one she loves.
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword.
Once her act was over, Rebecca bowed and left the stage amid the cheers. The lights came on again and the hubbub of conversation resumed.
“She’s our greatest singer,” the man boasted.
“Nobody comes close to Hugh Masekela!” Dido flung back at him.
A woman dared contradict him.
“Hugh Masekela? Old hat!”
The discussion almost turned nasty. Fortunately, a new band started up. Old-timers who began to strike up the old, familiar tunes. Dancers poured onto the floor. Dido grabbed Paul’s arm, the widower she was after, willowy and melancholic, who seemed frightened by her vitality. Rosélie stayed alone behind her drink.