Kannjawou Read online

  THE LITTLE PROFESSOR WAS BORN ELSEWHERE. Up high, is what Wodné would say—Wodné, who divides the whole land into two regions: down below, up high. It’s a very simple kind of geography, an implacable one, which he applies to humans, too. Those from down below. Those from up high. He claims that it’s a mistake to want to cross the border. That once you’ve changed sides, it’s impossible to return. Every human should live in their own place, shouldn’t force their destinies by entering a world that belongs to other people. Sophonie sometimes comes back from the bar where she works with stories about the customers. Wodné never listens to them. “The customers’ problems aren’t the same as those of the servers. The Whites. Or the almost-Whites. It’s a bar for the occupiers and their assistants. For those who are connected.” I can’t say that he’s wrong to point out these differences. And it’s true that the money that the clients in the bar drink down is procured by our poverty. The bar is called Kannjawou. A beautiful name that means a big party. But Burial Street isn’t invited. You have to pay to go to rich people’s parties. When poor people come close, all the rich have to do is raise the prices to discourage them. Sophonie is the only one in the neighborhood who goes to Kannjawou. And Popol and me, who accompany her on Wednesdays because her shift ends very late. But she doesn’t enter through the main door. Just like the servants at the little professor’s house in the old days, who didn’t have the right to use the main entrance. From time to time, the little professor consents to talk to me about his childhood. His father was a notary public at a time when, although they weren’t exactly rich, the notaries were Latinists and scholars who wove quotations from Bourdaloue or Montesquieu into their conversations. Montesquieu at the dinner table every evening. Quotations followed by exegesis. And his mother had taught him table manners: it’s not the mouth that goes to the fork, it’s the fork that raises to the mouth. He laughs about it and admits to having disappointed his parents a little by choosing to be a professor, a difficult career path. He believes that the blame lies with novels. He read many of them during his childhood. Too many, perhaps. They allowed him to imagine something else, a world, a light, beyond the rules of deportment, procedural flaws, Jesuitism. He still reads them and lends me as many as I want. I go to his house to borrow them, or he brings them to me. Novels. It’s one of the things that connect us. Him, an almost-rich man who in his childhood had the luxury of choosing which of his two parents he liked better, who lives in a neighborhood where flowers still grow, in a two-story house with a guestroom, who possess a car he rarely uses, and a library in which there are more books than there are tombs in the first section of the great cemetery that encloses our street. And me, a little guy from Burial Street who had only his brother Popol for a parent, who has never eaten to satisfaction, who has never been taught the art of holding a fork. In his childhood, he read to appease boredom. For me, it was often to appease hunger. The truth is, whether you’re nobody’s son or a notary’s son, you need a lot of sentences and characters in order to build up a sort of land in your head, filled with hiding places and refuges. With all due respect to Wodné, who hates when people move, our heads are full of travel. The little professor and I—he in his bedroom belonging to the son of a notary, where his mother would come in to tuck him in and turn out the light, and I on my sidewalk curb or in the little house without a shower or a bathroom that I share with Popol—we have been, on occasion, swordsmen and astronauts, rebellious and passive, inventors, knights in shining armor, prison escapees, poets and mercenaries. It doesn’t matter if our reasons are different; the little professor and I have walked far in the world of books, where we’ve met many people whose destinies have haunted us, just like those of the living.

  THOSE LEAFING THROUGH THE PAGES OF THIS JOURNAL MIGHT PERHAPS FIND NOTHING OF INTEREST.

  Nothing happens. Nothing, in any case, that’s worth the trouble of telling. An occupied country is a lifeless land. I could write down that the old bookbinder only gets by thanks to the work that the little professor and a few scholars bring him. That he doesn’t see very well anymore and that he no longer can control his movements well, so that when he hands the books over, his few clients notice that the title doesn’t match the book. I could write down that the cobbler couldn’t find any customers and had to close up shop. That the Halefort gang works at a frenetic pace, robbing corpses with the speed of a machine. That matches are still played at the stadium, and powerful but clumsy players sometimes take shots that pass over the bleachers and take off towards the cemetery. That our two major neighbors, the stadium and the prison, have opposite destinies: the bleachers at the stadium don’t receive many people anymore, while the prison never empties out. To the contrary, in fact: its population never stops growing. All that is true. And more things, too. But an occupied country is a land without a sky or horizon, where it would be wrong to believe that as long as there’s life, there’s hope. Everything that I could write down in this journal would only be an expression of despair, or of a fight for survival. At dawn on Burial Street, the windows look out onto sad faces. Women step out into the street to sweep in front of their houses, moving mechanically. They exchange greetings that are just as mechanical, and sometimes they sing laments sadder than funeral chants. The Occupation is dead calm. The city has become a vast prison, in which each prisoner seeks his own sliver of life, mistrusting others. Not everyone is given the power to make a detour and think about something other than their own survival. Sophonie and the little professor are my heroes because they are capable of such detours. Sophonie is a whole family unto herself, and always has been. The bread for Joëlle and their father, Anselme, that’s all her. The idea for the Center for kids, that was all her. Managing conflicts among our group of students and youth, that’s all her. The self-confidence that Popol has acquired, and the useful and modest plan of action he’s developing, that’s all her. I’m angry with myself for preferring Joëlle to her, at least with my eyes and my body. You can love two people at the same time, but maybe not in the same way. Ever since childhood, I have loved Sophonie with too much respect, and Joëlle with too much indulgence. In the shadows. In the solitude of my notebooks. And when I have wanted to love them for real, hoping to hold their hands or try to kiss them, Popol and Wodné have held me back. In the group, I am the little one, the youngest. And the scribe. Mam Jeanne encourages me. Write about your rage, the passing time, the little things, the country, the lives of the dead and the living that inhabit Burial Street. Write, little one. I write. I take note. But we won’t get rid of the soldiers and make the water run again with words. Yesterday they attacked protestors again with rubber bullets and tear gas. Perhaps one day, it’s they who will get rid of us.

  THE LITTLE PROFESSOR HAD TO MAKE A LARGE DETOUR IN ORDER TO COME TO US.

  One day, in the courtyard of the humanities college, he heard Popol talking about the cultural center that we had created for the neighborhood youth. When you’re faced with political failure, you can sometimes take refuge in songs and poems. The Center gives us the feeling of being alive and of being able to take some kind of action. Popol was talking to a professor who was a sort of mentor to several students. A loudmouth who sometimes supported our protests without actually marching with us, who’s never given anything to anyone other than undeserved excellent grades to his students. He was born on a street like our own. There are a lot like him who teach at the college. Who play at being progressive without particularly wanting to relive their pasts. They have no pasts, for that matter. The loudmouth was born at age thirty during his first trip abroad. His scholarship gave birth to him. While abroad, he learned that all our misfortunes—poverty, the Occupation—come from a chronic deficit of “scientific thought”. “You’ve created a cultural center for the neighborhood youth? Is your approach based on scientific thought, or is it another one of those folkloric initiatives that’s useless for modernity and development?” All of his sentences begin with “scientific thought.” He never visited our Center. It
was too small for him. He was busy preparing poses and expressions in front of his mirror and inventing an accent that existed for only his mouth. The loudmouth specializing in “scientific thought” never came to Burial Street. But one Saturday we saw the little professor arrive with boxes of books. Stunned but polite, Popol took him on a tour of the premises. Things here are all so small, decayed, or wobbly that it’s almost ridiculous to give them names: studio, bedroom, meeting room. Here, other than the great cemetery, which looks like what it’s called, the names we give to things never correspond to their realities. Our premises! It’s a passageway between two houses. Not even a corridor. A clearing between walls, sheathed with four little bits of sheet metal. Mismatched chairs. Holes in the walls. A few books on a lopsided shelf. A non-place transformed into a discussion space, despite the heat when it’s sunny and the leaks when it rains. As decoration, there’s a faded banner that says “Down with the Occupation,” some children’s drawings, and a badly aged photo in which you can barely make out the features of Charlemagne Péralte.* Only his mustache is still visible.

  “Is it true that his grave was dug deeper in the earth than the ones in the great cemetery?”

  “Yes. We have to talk about these things: no grave has ever been dug with so much anger. Deep like an abyss. As though it was to drown his body in the bowels of the earth. But you can’t bury legends with a pickaxe.”

  “So we’re hanging up his photo. And no one is allowed to mess with his mustache with ink or pencil. Anyway, we don’t have ink or pencils.”

  It’s Hans and Vladimir who are speaking like that. Two of the cleverest kids, and also two of the most skillful when it comes to throwing stones. They’re famous for having broken the windows of a military truck. Mam Jeanne threw a party in their honor, with cake and liquor. They welcomed the little professor on behalf of the others, sealing the deal with a handshake. Childhood also has its leaders. And in order to choose them—unlike fake wise men who hesitate and dither—they’re smart enough to elect their friends and to get to the heart of things quickly.

  THE CHILDREN CHOSE THE LITTLE PROFESSOR RIGHT AFTER HIS FIRST VISIT.

  The next Saturday, he came back. In his shirtsleeves, with a larger reproduction of the Péralte photo, pencils, and colored paper. He helped Popol repair the shelf and install a few more. Then he read to the children.

  “Hey, little professor, are you coming back?”

  He told them that he would come back. Ever since, Burial Street has sort of become his street, too, and everyone calls him the little professor. He comes every afternoon. In the evenings, he and I ponder ages and paths. Wodné, who presides over the association and takes his title very seriously, is trying to find out the little professor’s hidden motives and advises me not to trust him. Why would a professor—the son of a notary, the heir to such a beautiful house—want to extend friendship to guys from Burial Street? I don’t know why. Or there is a major reason why. Without a doubt, he comes to see Joëlle. Sometimes they wind up talking, and she can’t see the expression in his eyes when he looks at her. Everyone sees how he looks at her. The children. Mam Jeanne. Even the old bookbinder, who doesn’t see much of anything anymore. Wodné sees it, too, and he can’t stand the tenderness and dazzlement in the little professor’s eyes. “Sensible hatred is a formidable weapon,” a great French philosopher once wrote. Wodné has hatred. It’s grown stronger over time. What does the little professor want? No doubt he has strayed from his path, like many others. Or his heart is leading him blindly. Allowing his footsteps to take him where they may. Without thinking any further than the children’s happiness and our evening conversations. Without planning anything. Like Sophonie, who still hasn’t learned to protect herself. She works. Takes correspondence courses, volunteers for organizations that protect women’s rights, takes care of Anselme. Some people are just there. As they are. In real life. And there are others whose very presence is a lie. An illusion. Effective when it fools the whole world. Ridiculous when it fools only the illusionist. Like that loudmouth who was born in a rural area and rolls his Rs in front of the mirror, who sings the praises of the occupiers’ scientific minds and plays at being brave when he’s got nothing to fear. There are also those who put off their existence until tomorrow. When the circumstances are right. At the university, there are many professors and students who repeat that phrase: when the circumstances are right. Are you going to the protest? When the circumstances are right. Will you help us start an organization with some people from the neighborhood? When the circumstances are right. What should we do to send the occupiers away? Wait until the circumstances are right. I don’t go to the university anymore. I’m pretending to work on a thesis about the history of the great cemetery. But I see too well how it happens. I’ve already written many papers. That’s how I earn a living. For rich people’s kids, who prepare for their futures by paying me to write their assignments for them and then put their names on them. It can be useful to know how to put sentences together. I don’t make out too badly. For the poor kids, those from Burial Street or neighborhoods like our own, I do it for almost nothing. But I’m not thinking about the future. No need to have a diploma to see how the circumstances for unhappiness were right a long time ago, and are still right. No need to have a diploma to know that the titles are worth more than the knowledge, and there’s a war on among those of us from Burial Street and similar neighborhoods to be the first to obtain the title of master or doctor and to flee without looking back, without ever looking back to watch the others running behind us. I don’t have any ambition. Living? To find a little bit of happiness from day to day. The little bit you’re able to find. To see the children laugh. To contemplate Joëlle in all her beauty. To walk at night with Popol and Sophonie. To drink tea at Mam Jeanne’s. To chat in the evenings with the little professor. Deep down, I don’t need very much. To write things down in my notebooks. Could it be possible that at my age, the time of wanting has already passed?

  MAM JEANNE MAINTAINS THAT YOU WILL ALWAYS GO WRONG AT SOME POINT IF YOU MAKE TOO MANY PLANS. It’s good to follow your instincts, without claiming that your actions will fit logically into a vision of the future. Mam Jeanne doesn’t say anything that she’s not able to illustrate with examples. In this case, she’ll point out what happened to the sad dead people who were victims of bad speculation. When the cemetery was attracting as many rich people as a tourist site, wealthy and considerate parents would leave tombs in the great cemetery for their young or still-unborn children to inherit. A property title, sometimes given to a lawyer for safekeeping or put away in the trunk of family valuables, bestowing the right to a plot vast and deep enough to accommodate several generations in the best corner of the cemetery, at the end of a pathway lined with flowers. The calculation seemed accurate. The number of living people was increasing rapidly, and since all were someday going to die, you could assume that the total chaos that ruled over the city would also one day take over the cemetery. People walking all over it. Makeshift beds that they’d trade off occupying, sleeping only half the night. A perpetual racket that didn’t bode well for the dead’s repose. Rich people don’t like crowds. To shelter themselves from the barbarous invasions, they had to put up protections around their territory. Fences, concrete, lawns. Providing for their descendants. But by the time their heirs were born, lived, and died, they discovered the flowers that had once lined the pathways had dried up. The royal blue had faded, and you could see the sad color of the stones underneath the paint. A thousand rainy seasons had drowned the gravel and the lawn in a dirty sea. Of the little palace that had been built to serve as their last dwelling, only a dilapidated ruin remained, isolated in a swamp. The rich people that are buried today in the great cemetery at the end of Burial Street are considered to have come down in the world. If they had been able to choose without betraying their families, they would have rejected their own burial plans and followed the example of the nouveaux riches who fled the old city, even in death, and paid for
graves in the new cemetery. The one further north. The beautiful cemetery that sits atop agricultural land bought from peasants. Too far away for pedestrians, and lit up at night like a Christmas tree.

  MAM JEANNE IS RIGHT. Sometimes things change so fast that it would be wrong to imagine you could have thought about them ahead of time. The cemetery at which our street ends used to be called the outer cemetery. Today no one calls it that anymore. Houses have sprung up on the hilltops, replacing trees. Humans, unlike trees, don’t have their feet incrusted in the earth. They only know how to walk on top of it. And so the earth takes its revenge. Each human step brings up dust. On windy days, big specks of it blow down from the hills, leaving a white powder on the ladies’ black hats and the gentlemen’s dark jackets. During our childhood, our gang of five used to like to climb up to the tops of the hills to look at the dead people that were furthest away. And the stadium. And the two cathedrals, both the old one and the new one. And the Tax Directorate building. We had the city at our feet. Two cities: the one that we knew, and the one we could only imagine. We are from a city in which multiple forbidden towns cross paths. In our ramblings, we would sometimes come across a neighborhood with gates as high as prison walls and dogs that barked loudly and stayed at their houses. We knew then that we had gone beyond the boundaries of our own city. You don’t enter the other half of the city with five people at a time. It’s a solitary path, and you can’t follow it without betraying your own intentions. We didn’t know this. We were the gang of five. I had borrowed this phrase from something I’d read and thought that it described us well. We were the right age. Even if we didn’t have a scholarly father lost in his work. Even without a father at all, except Joëlle and Sophonie’s father Anselme, who had told fortunes to earn a living before falling ill and who swore that one day he would take back the land that had been stolen from him in Arcahaie. Anselme was not aging well. Gout and delirium. The girls had to mother their own father. But childhood is rebellious, and you can get revenge on the real world by dreaming up your futures. We dreamed up the future. Joëlle spoke of the handsome gentlemen who would take her far away. Wodné and Popol sketched out landscapes in their heads. Wodné wanted skyscrapers and highways. Popol thought that Wodné’s landscapes were lacking in soft colors and imagination. Sophonie said that you should never wait around for dreams to come true, nor leave your responsibilities to someone else. If she wanted to leave, she wouldn’t need anyone to serve as her guide. She would bring back flowers from her long walks, which she kept alive in pots that she would place on the windowsill of Anselme’s bedroom. The four of them talked all the time about changing the world. The courses of study they would have to follow. “It takes knowledge to change things.” The actions they would need to take. They mentioned the names of the heroes who would serve as their examples. As for me, I drank up their words. Other than that, I was lost in my novels and I came out of them only to ask myself a question to which I still don’t know the answer: which of the two sisters was my favorite? Joëlle was the imp who wasn’t afraid of anything. She had learned everything very fast. Faster than the others. By the second grade, she’d already caught up to them and was the best in her class. I loved hearing her discuss things on the same level as the others. Especially with Wodné, who always cheated when he was losing and then looked very sad, as though he were going to die, when someone beat him. Sophonie brought me books that she borrowed from the middle school library and from her wealthier friends. She was already almost a young woman, with curves and breasts. Joëlle was still only an idea. A skinny little thing who walked fast, forcing us to keep up with her. But I was a reader of novels, and like many characters in those novels, I had a hard time choosing between what was and what would be. Between the potential and the possible. I used to go ask Mam Jeanne if I could love two people at the same time. Also, why the children of Burial Street, unlike the children I met in my novels, never had more than one parent. Or had no parents at all. Sophonie and Joëlle had only Anselme. Immacula, their mother, had died when Sophonie was four and Joëlle was still a baby. Wodné, who lived with his aunt, had a mother who lived in the countryside. Popol and I didn’t have parents at all, and we hadn’t for a long time. It was the same for the kids who came to the Cultural Center. One out of two parents in the best of cases. It was one of Sophonie’s ideas, the Center. For the kids. They didn’t have parents, but we could at least give them a place to make friends. And to dream up the future, like we used to. Children have things to tell each other, too. Sophonie went to see Mam Jeanne to tell her about her idea. Mam Jeanne thought it was a good one. “Young people did things like that during the first Occupation. Some good people came from it. Not all of them. For some people, however much you expose them to the best, they’ll always choose the worst. But let’s create this Center for kids.” She organized a fundraiser and then gave us the money that she had collected for us to buy the first books. Wodné wanted instructional texts that would serve as introductions to civic education and social consciousness. Sophonie preferred equal amounts of everything. Why couldn’t poor children descend twenty thousand leagues under the sea, travel in a hot air balloon, and fight with swords to avenge their friends? If you don’t have dreams, why would you want to fight for them in the real world? Mam Jeanne settled the argument in favor of an even split between dreams and reality. She also went to see the owners of the houses on either side of the corridor, who engaged every day in a war of abuse and trash. Put a stop to your arguments over a strip of land that’s of no use to you. Handshake. Done deal. She passed on the message that nobody would throw their trash into the corridor anymore. Frantic lovers would have to content themselves with a tomb or the little passage behind the cobbler’s workshop. Or the workshop itself, since old Jasmin never opened it anymore, except to air it out. It had been a long time since anyone had brought him shoes to repair. Mam Jeanne had convinced everyone by threatening to pour cat piss on their heads. It’s a practice that goes back to the first Occupation. Her first victim had been a Marine who had ventured onto our street one night. “It’s already too much that they’re screwing over our living. But they’d better leave our dead the hell alone.” She has a technique for getting cat piss into a container. She’s had a long series of cats, whose names she inscribes on a seventy-five-year-old almanac that she’s never dreamed of taking down from the wall. The latest one is Loyal, who will die soon. The collaborators, those show-offs—many of them have earned their dose of Loyal’s piss. No one wanted to ignite the wrath of Mam Jeanne, and everyone brought what they could for the Center. The cobbler, the old bookbinder, the fried-food vendors, the unemployed… Even Halefort, the leader of the grave robbers, showed up with his gang. They brought sheets of metal and even did the handiwork themselves voluntarily. After all, during the day, grave robbers are ordinary citizens, and there’s nothing to stop them from contributing to the life of the community.