And what about the domestics arriving for work? And the night watchmen ending their guard duty? Furtive comings and goings. A murmur of respectful greetings.
“Goeimore!”
Nobody had shown any sympathy for Rosélie. Deogratias had continued to meditate the Beatitudes and snore as usual. Raymond had stopped visiting, yielding to evidence and reason. Only Dido and Lewis Sithole remained loyal, attentive to her every need.
The latter had given her a flag tree with salmon-colored flowers, which he planted himself at the foot of the traveler’s tree.
While awaiting his sentence, Bishupal was being detained at Pollsmoor, a former political prison now reserved for juvenile delinquents. The highway was already congested with all types of gleaming cars, full of people going about their business in the pursuit of money. Papa Koumbaya, who had said nothing when his hero Stephen bit the dust, continued to drone on as usual. She closed her ears. Under her tightly shut eyelids she watched a series of images file past. The worst thing is trying to imagine the unknown. To visualize a truth patched up like a photo torn to pieces and stuck together again.
She understood now why during the last summer vacation Stephen had left her alone in Wimbledon on the pretext of a colloquium on Oscar Wilde at the university of Aberdeen. She remembered how surprised she had been. In the middle of summer? He hadn’t even troubled to reply, stuffing his traveling bag determinedly. He had entrusted her to Andrew. In the evening they used to go and watch old films by Luis Buñuel. Since neither of them could cook, they would have a pub dinner. Despite his sullenness and silence, she was convinced he was a friend, whereas his only allegiance was to Stephen.
Pollsmoor Prison comprised an endless number of buildings linked by covered exercise yards. It was a hive of activity humming with police cars, vans, and scooters, and Rosélie had to show the pass Inspector Lewis Sithole had obligingly got for her over a dozen times. She finally found herself in a rectangular visiting room with cream-colored walls. As usual, there were very few whites. Only blacks. Mothers, yet again, recognizable by their tears and their looks of distress, were seated in front of glass partitions. You had to press a button and speak into a kind of ear trumpet. A dozen black and white police officers were pacing up and down, scowling and fingering their guns.
When Bishupal entered, flanked by a guard who shoved him to his seat, Rosélie had trouble recognizing him. He was dressed in oversized striped pajamas. His mane of silk had been ruthlessly shaven and his bare head appeared enormous, the color of old ivory, dappled in black. His emaciated face seemed to be just two huge eyes and he looked like a concentration camp survivor. All that, however, couldn’t deprive him entirely of his beauty, grace, and juvenile appeal. Rosélie felt a pang of jealousy.
“Why are you here?” he murmured savagely. “I didn’t want to see you. Then I told myself we have to get it over with. I had to come and tell you.”
Rosélie realized this was one of the few times she had heard his voice, pleasant, deep-sounding, and slightly nasal. Up till then he had only spoken in monosyllables with her:
“Here!”
“Thanks!”
“Many thanks!”
The perfect employee at the Threepenny Opera. The perfect poet’s apprentice. Who was he, in fact?
In its generosity, the Cape Tribune had depicted him as a depraved individual. He apparently lost his modest job at the Nepalese embassy because he sold his favors for visas. According to the paper, it was a lucrative business. Although the path to Kathmandu is less traveled nowadays, the rush has gone, but there are still tourists anxious to admire the Bhimsen Tower.
Following that, he is said to have prostituted himself.
Where exactly was the truth? It probably wavered somewhere between these two extremes. Rosélie thought she could read between the lines a story of solitude, naiveté, and dashed hopes.
She had prepared a little speech. But as usual the words disobeyed her. They fled in confusion left and right, and she remained silent, a sob sticking in her throat like a fishbone.
“He never loved you,” he said slowly, his eyes sparkling through the glass partition. “Never.”
She wasn’t expecting such spitefulness, which destroyed everything she had imagined.
“Neither me. Nor anyone else,” he continued. “He was only in love with himself. Stephen had no heart.”
“And you, did you love him?” she managed to stammer.
“There was a time I worshiped him,” he said without any emotion.
He leaned closer to the partition and hammered out between his clenched teeth:
“He got what he deserved. If we had to do it again, we would. Archie had the balls to do it. I lacked the courage.”
She heard herself burst into tears. He stared at her with the same coldness, then went on:
“Don’t feel sorry for us. There’s no point at all feeling sorry for us.”
There was silence.
“Even if we get fifteen or twenty years, we’ll be thirty-three, thirty-four when we get out. We’ll still have a life in front of us.”
He threw himself back and cruel-heartedly let out:
“For you it’s over with.”
The words burned through her.
“Why do you hate me?” she groaned.
He stood up in exasperation and motioned to the guard that the visit was over.
“You’re mistaken. I don’t hate you. I’ve no time for you. Don’t ever come back.”
He walked away, determined, resolute, and yet so helpless, so pathetic in the uniform that was too big for him, that Rosélie was heartbroken.
The interview hadn’t lasted five minutes.
Rosélie regained her room and returned to her bed with the window wide open to the chill and din of the city. She had always thought New York a noisy city. Cape Town was even noisier. At times its cacophony deafened her.
How can you possibly take your life when there are no barbiturates at hand? Go into the Pick ’n Pay and look for rat poison on the cleaning shelves? No Madame Bovary—type ending. The thought of Emma’s atrocious suffering took away all her determination. You cut your wrists like Fiela with a razor blade? She hadn’t the courage to do that either. How do you go about it? You lie down and wait for the end fixed by God. That’s what Rose did, nailed to her bed, slowly suffocating in her own fat.
Shortly before noon, Dido pushed open the door and announced mysteriously with a strangely overjoyed expression:
“Get dressed. You’ve got a visit.”
A visit? You know full well I don’t want to see anybody.
Dido insisted in the same enigmatic way:
“It’s not a reporter. It’s not a busybody either. He says he’s a friend of yours.”
A friend? How many friends do I have in this country? In Guadeloupe? In the whole wide world? Nobody loves me. Yet out of curiosity she got up, slipped on some clothes, and went downstairs.
A man was waiting for her in the living room. A white man. Tall, with a slight paunch, a full head of black hair, gray eyes, and tanned cheeks.
Where have I seen him before?
“Don’t you recognize me?” He smiled. “My name’s Manuel Desprez. But everyone calls me Manolo because I play the guitar in my spare time.”
It was like a record she heard for a second time. The memory came back to her. Tea at the Mount Nelson some months ago. Another professor! I hate the lot of them through having frequented them too much. This one teaches in the French Department. But English, French, Oriental Studies, they’re all the same. Same arrogance. Same conviction they belong to a superior species. The intellectual species.