The Home made her think of a prison with its fence overgrown with thick vegetation barring the sky. As for the garden, the Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens in Paris, where her maid used to take her to play, were far nicer.
Doing her best to keep her head up, she entered the nursery, a huge tiled room, the only adornment being a crucifix nailed to a wall. Here a dozen children of her age — Papa had been right — ranging in skin color from yellowish brown to off-white, boys and girls, all closely cropped, dressed in steel gray smocks, were grouped around a piano. As clean as new pins, even chubby in some cases, they nevertheless had the look of society’s rejects, a nobody-wants-
me-on-this-earth expression. They were singing with a long face:
Baa-baa black sheep
Have you any wool?
Yes sir! Yes sir!
Three bags full!
This was the music class, which she taught herself, explained the young woman seated at the piano. After giving Thomas a tender kiss, she clapped her hands to indicate class was over and stood up. The children surged to the back of the room, where a group of African women rigged out in blue veils and long white nurse’s aprons was waiting for them.
The stranger approached with a smile.
“So you’re Ludivine? My name is Celanire. Something tells me we’re going to do great things together.”
Ludivine was no fool, unlike Thomas, who was staring at Celanire, besotted. This smile clinging lopsided to a set of cruel ivory teeth hung like a piece of frippery on a carnival puppet. It wobbled from side to side. Even so, she was impressed by her beauty. Here too her papa had been right. Not a classical beauty, which Charlotte had bequeathed her — an aquiline nose, a domed forehead, a finely drawn mouth. No, Celanire possessed the beauty of the devil! A thick black braid snaked down her back, as if it had a life of its own. You could not take your eyes off a wide blue ribbon studded with a tiny golden heart wound tight around her throat. What did it conceal underneath? You sensed some terrible, terrifying secret.
“She looks like her mother,” Celanire remarked with a semblance of emotion.
Thomas seemed surprised. How could she know? She had never met Charlotte. Celanire was not disconcerted. She explained in a mysterious tone of voice that she had visions and premonitions. In her dreams she could see people who were going to die. Or even those already dead. The day Charlotte disappeared, she thought she saw her standing under her window in the flower beds of dahlias, busy admiring the Home. She was dark, wasn’t she? Like an Italian with green eyes. She was wearing a pastel-colored dress, and since she had lost so much weight in Africa, she wore her wedding ring on her middle finger.
Thomas was stunned by the accuracy of her description.
Ludivine went and joined the other children at the back of the room. They made way for her as she approached, then closed in around her, as if to signify they had adopted her. They began halfheartedly to play with modeling clay. The supervising nurses paid scant attention to their charge, talking earnestly among themselves, and never stopped giggling. They were watching Thomas and Celanire, who, shoulder to shoulder, were playing a piece for four hands. For Celanire was an accomplished musician. She sang like a nightingale and was capable of playing Beethoven sonatas to perfection as well as enchanting the listener with her recorder. The nurses seemed to find the sight hilarious. Thomas finally took leave of Celanire, standing to attention and clicking his heels in military fashion before kissing her hand most civilly. Then he lightly brushed his daughter’s forehead with his lips and drew the sign of the cross. Ludivine swallowed back her tears, for her papa’s was the last familiar face she was to see. When he had disappeared, Celanire signaled to one of the nurses to take her by the hand up to a room on the second floor. A dormitory — rows of identical twin beds tightly stretched with bedspreads in yellow and green African cloth. Beside each bed stood a yellow wardrobe painted with a green number. On the wall, a crucifix like the one on the ground floor.
The nurse assigned her bed and wardrobe number 16. She removed her white chiffon dress and slipped on a smock. Then, armed with a pair of scissors, she began snipping one by one the curls of her mop of black hair until her head was completely shaved. When they went back down, the nurse led her to a table in a refectory as austere as the classroom and the dormitory. Children and adults alike stood, head lowered, in front of their place. On a platform Celanire was saying grace.
Despite the prayers that tumbled out of her mouth, she looked the very picture of sin. She was so hot she could have set a church font ablaze. Ludivine swallowed back her tears. One of the nurses placed a ball of yam foutou on her plate and sprinkled it with chicken kedjenou. She realized she was very hungry, and the sight of the chicken kedjenou made her mouth water.
Ana had gotten her used to such food, and now she had a natural liking for these spicy dishes and their rough, barbaric taste.
6
In the end Bingerville recovered in next to no time from the death of Charlotte. Too many major events followed the tragedy, one after the other. On the French side, Karamanlis finally managed to commit suicide, by drowning. The Father Templar died from a heart attack. Their beloved Father Rascasse left for the colony of Oubangui-Chari. No sooner had it been built than it was announced that Bingerville was going to lose its rank as capital of the colony to Abidjan-Santey. What had been the point of so much trouble and effort? For the Africans, their concerns were all too clear: corvée and taxes had been increased, and then there was the news that Tanella, Mawourou’s murderer, had been acquitted by the court in Dakar and was returning to the Ivory Coast. Acquitted! The jury had decided she had acted in self-defense. No doubt about it, the white man’s world was walking on its head! In short, it wasn’t long before everyone had something else to think about. In the markets, the gin bars, the factories, the trading houses, and the offices, in the residential districts as well as the poto-poto neighborhoods, conversation turned to other things.
One morning, a messenger brought Hakim another letter from Celanire. She apologized for harping on the subject. What must he think of her? But she had learned — nothing was a secret in Bingerville — that he had fallen out with Betti Bouah. Under the circumstances, wouldn’t he like to reconsider her offer, to which, in fact, he had never replied? Sadly enough, Celanire was speaking the truth. Betti Bouah and Hakim could no longer bear the sight of each other. Betti Bouah realized that Hakim was a very different person from what he had imagined. When it was a question of badmouthing the French, Hakim was only too ready. But when it came to working as hard as they did, he was nowhere to be seen. He had demanded a five-day workweek, plus weekends off as was the custom in England and the colonies of the Crown. He insisted on being paid a commission on his sales. And that he was entitled to two days off for the feast of Tabaski, since he had declared himself Muslim. Naturally, Betti Bouah had not given in to any of his demands, and Hakim had sent him a stinging letter, calling him an exploiter. Betti Bouah had got a laugh out of that. Exploiter! Here was a new word! Apparently the traditional chiefs were just as much exploiters as the whites. Ever since, the two men had ignored each other and limited any contact to the business of palm oil. No more hot chocolate at four in the afternoon, no more discussions on “pacification,” no more exchange of books. Hakim thought of writing a letter, this time a letter of resignation. What held him back was that once his pride had been satisfied by this act of bravado, there would be nothing or nobody to help him fill his belly. The mission would no longer want him as Mr. Philosophizer. So he would have to return to Soudan, and in order not to starve to death, he would have to live off his grandfather or one of his uncles on his mother’s side.