Kannjawou Page 3

  TODAY THE GANG OF FIVE NO LONGER EXISTS. Sometimes we go get a beer together, but the atmosphere is always tense, and what’s the point of repeating an unpleasant experience over and over? Perhaps there’s nothing worse than reaching adulthood in an occupied city. Everything you do comes back to that reality. Friendship requires a foundation of dignity, something like a common purpose. We’ve now lost the future, our common interest, always hypothetical. We live in a present of which we aren’t the masters. Every uniform, every administrative procedure we have to undertake, every news report reminds us that we are subordinates. Julio still doesn’t like shaved heads, but he met someone—I don’t know how—who works for the civil mission. He fell in love with his long hair. The officer with the long hair sometimes comes looking for him in the evenings. The scrawny little boy we used to make fun of at school has become a young man with fine features and gentle manners. It works pretty well for Julio to resemble a young girl. The little professor and I watch him climb up into the diplomatic service’s armored vehicle. From her balcony, Mam Jeanne pretends not to see anything. I think she hasn’t managed to decide on which attitude to adopt regarding Julio’s love affairs. These things are never straightforward. Julio has changed. He smiles. And a smile is a good thing for a boy who used to live in the silence of his little room and the solitude of his desires, never laughing, never talking, who had no friends, who feared assault from those whom he loved. We all change. And you can’t always tell if it’s a change for the better or for the worse. Joëlle became the most beautiful of all the girls. She could choose whoever she wanted to be her lover. Strangers stop their cars when they see her on the street and invite her to hop in, or else they just take the time to look at her without asking for anything and then go back to what they were doing before. Mam Jeanne criticizes her for not knowing what to do with her beauty. And I continue to love her in contemplative silence. I miss our conversations. Before, she used to be full of theories and ideas. We would try to solve the world’s problems from my sidewalk curb. Now, we only talk to each other once in a while. That’s another thing I share with the little professor. We spend a lot of time looking at Joëlle. That’s another reason why he comes to the neighborhood. And when we’re discussing the tragic or bland fates that befall the heroines in our novels, she’s the one we’re really talking about, although we don’t dare refer to her by name. She’s with Wodné, who made his first suicide threat to her when he was eighteen. He walked around in the street with a vial that he claimed was filled with poison. We were all very frightened. Except Sophonie, who saw his actions as only the first instance of emotional blackmail. Sophonie has become a young woman with a strong body. She stopped going to college when Anselme’s illness reached an advanced stage. She’s a waitress at Kannjawou. Anselme is now confined to bed and isn’t all there anymore. In the evenings, after washing him and laying him down in clean sheets, his eldest daughter sets a glass of water on the bedside table, kisses him on the forehead, and says to him quietly as she’s leaving, I’m going to Kannjawou. He hears only the last word and believes that she’s planning a big party for him in the countryside where he grew up. The old man’s eyes begin to shine, and they say, Bring me. It will be the most beautiful of kannjawous. But exodus has replaced kannjawous. The people who lived there had enough of breaking their backs over a land that no longer gives them anything, so they left. And no one ever returns to the countryside. It’s not like in the legends that they used to soothe us with during our childhoods. The old people would tell us that the dead, tired of resting, would rise, take a little tour of the town, revisit the places they used to go, quickly grow weary of the world of the living, and return to take their places again in their tombs. The countryside is a tomb, and no one wants to be buried there alive. The countryside is like an old woman who’s been abandoned by all her descendants and who prattles on, all alone. The countryside is a place for hiking and parking for the Occupation soldiers, who watch over the goats and the cacti and who piss and shit in the rivers. They say that there are some who escape from their barracks to see the goats up close and embrace them, for lack of human lovers. The countryside is the evangelical missions, the pastoral part of the Occupation, who sell their god to the farmers in exchange for wheat and flour. The country-side is home to Halefort’s cousin, who’s known as Windward Passage. Seven times he took to the sea. Seven times the American Coast Guard brought him back. Today, he’s chosen to live in prison, and prefers never to come out if his other option is to return to the countryside. The countryside is a cemetery even vaster than ours, where humans, animals, and plants watch themselves die.

  THERE IS NO LONGER A GANG OF FIVE. Our attempts to go out together always turn out badly. Wodné doesn’t drink alcohol and wants Joëlle to follow his example. There’s a silent command in his eyes, and Joëlle, half bravery and half cowardice, orders a beer that she doesn’t end up drinking. She’s more beautiful than ever, but she’s lost her impishness. Ever since Wodné’s suicide threat, they share a need for oaths that’s more solid than a wall. They’ve each finished their degree and want to continue with their studies. Soon it will be each for themselves in the race for a scholarship. That frightens Wodné. He’s afraid of the wall collapsing. Out of the five of us, he’s always been the most alone, ever since childhood. Living with an aunt who does nothing except pray and groan. Joëlle and Sophonie, Popol and me—we all came in pairs. Someone to argue with. To laugh with. He didn’t have anyone. And one day he came up to Popol and extended his hand. That’s how it is on Burial Street. When you can’t be alone any more, you choose a brother. A friend. In that way, we’re imitating the people who come to the cemetery to visit the grave of someone they hadn’t known before. A sort of post-mortem adoption. A stranger, chosen because of the flowers on his grave. Or because his name had a nice ring to it. Or just by letting chance dictate which tomb to stop in front of, this one rather than that one. And then they pray for the soul of the departed. You have to pray for someone, to connect with someone in order to feel less alone. Wodné was so lonely that one day, he came towards Popol, took a spinning top from his pocket, and said: Do you want to play with me? They’ve played together ever since. At friendship. At climbing onto the roof of Mam Jeanne’s house to fly kites. At activism and social consciousness. At being students, enrolling in the same university in order to take the same courses. But Wodné was so alone that even after he’d found companionship, he still felt loneliness. And the fear that comes along with it. And he clings to them, like glue. He acts as if he owns the people who are close to him. If you come too close, I’ll bite. Sophonie never forgave him for Joëlle’s tears during his first supposed suicide attempt. They barely speak to each other anymore. He barely speaks to me any more, either. He doesn’t like my sources of revenue. The students from private universities who sometimes give me their essays to write. I meet up with them at the Champ-de-Mars. They won’t come all the way down to Burial Street. Usually, the exchanges take place at the Place des Héros. I started during my senior year of high school. Ever since then, I’ve technically coauthored several theses, whose signatories have bragged about their knowledge in front of fancy committees. I don’t take these accomplishments seriously—they’re just to make ends meet. They allow me to learn about a wide variety of subjects, like the relationship between fiction writing and historical writing, or the difference between positive law and common law when it comes to cohabitation. Information, perhaps, for future novels. Wodné doesn’t care for it. I don’t know what offends him the most: that I’m doing work for people who are more fortunate than we are? That I’m speaking to them, which according to him is already too much complicitness? That a reader of novels is getting mixed up in scientific work? That what I write gets high grades from the most senior members of the college faculty? That in doing so, I’m proclaiming that I’m different from him? He and Joëlle form a radical couple who disapprove of many things. They refuse to speak to those who don’t come from Burial Str
eet, like we do. To those who aren’t enrolled in any given humanities program. To those who belong to another generation. To those who don’t define themselves as “militants.” To those who belong to other groups of “militants”. This makes for a lot of people they won’t speak to. And Wodné doesn’t forgive me for my friendship with the little professor. They’re a united couple. But only when they’re together. When Joëlle is alone and comes to chat with the little professor and me, she acts much less dogmatic, and her eyes have some of the liveliness they did when she was a reckless child. The old spark appears there, making her seem younger. Mam Jeanne is right: everything is in the eyes. In the eyes of the little professor, when he’s looking at Joëlle, I can see praise and admiration. The rapture of someone who is looking at all the beauty in the world. In Joëlle’s eyes, the happiness of being loved. The marvelous reflection of her own light. As for me, I don’t count. We’ve known each other for forever. She’s used to my gaze and doesn’t find anything new in it. But the little professor came from far away to love her. As though he had wandered for a long time, as though everything he had lived before was only a long road that led him to her. I suppose that it’s a nice surprise, someone who comes to you and says, I am happy that you exist, apparently without asking for anything in return. Wodné still criticizes me for reading too many novels. It bothers him if I lend one to Joëlle. But sometimes people come to copy exactly the thing they hate. More and more, he has come to resemble Pasha, the character from Doctor Zhivago who speaks only in clichés and reprimands. We are all in books, living proof that the characters you find there really do exist. That by stripping off the disguises, you end up seeing who is who. The little professor and I spend a lot of time establishing the resemblances between living people and characters from novels. But the little professor never mentions Wodné. Out of tact.

  THE PROBLEM IS THAT I HAVEN’T YET BEEN ABLE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT WODNÉ AND HIS “MILITANT” GROUP ARE FIGHTING AGAINST, NOR WHAT THEY STAND FOR. They only associate with each other, and their world is so small that there’s no room for any actions that include other people. When Sophonie had the idea for the Center, they weren’t crazy about it, even if Wodné did want to take charge of it right away. The gang of five didn’t really have a leader. And freedom is a form of distance. With time, Wodné created his own gang. They’re preparing. Everything they do is preparation. For what, I don’t know, but it will never happen. Two years ago, Popol and Wodné got in a fight. Both of them had bruises on their faces for months afterward. I know that it was Popol who threw the first punch. The whole street was shocked. The cobbler, the old bookbinder, the fried-food vendors, all of them tried to intervene. People called it blasphemy, sacrilege. It was as though Peter and Paul had thrown aside the Gospel and started hitting and kicking each other. Mam Jeanne had to come down into the street to put an end to the brawl. I never did ask Popol why he had broken his rule: never initiate an act of violence. With my brother, too, silence is part of our life. Popol has never been a talker. During our childhood, I used to annoy him by wanting to discuss what I’d read with him. At the end of a novel, I’d run to him to talk about the characters that had pleased or bothered me. About the hatred or affection that I’d come to feel for this or that one. What did he think about a son who abandoned his inheritance? A lover who couldn’t choose between rebellion and safety? He’d respond that he wasn’t the right person for that type of conversation. That he trusted me to find out for myself. He hasn’t changed. Still talks very little. Keeps his thoughts secret until they become actions, the meaning of which is always very clear. Wodné called a meeting so that he could rant about the poisoned chalices of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals. Sophonie wasn’t there. Everyone was waiting for Popol’s reaction. He contented himself with gathering the children together and helping them organize the books that the little professor had given them. End of meeting. Since he works a lot, I often correct his papers for him. I’m heavy-handed when it comes to syntax errors. Sometimes he asks me to revise my corrections. Not to be forgiving, but to be fair. We—the gang of five—were lucky enough to discover the power of language when we were very young. We stumbled upon words very early. But not all the boys and girls from streets like Burial Street had this experience. With all due respect to Wodné, who likes to think of us as the wretched of the earth, we’ve already gone to places that the others never will. Through words. Even without the extensive details and stories that fuel Monsieur Vallières’s ravings, even if for many subjects we’ve only skimmed the surface: however modest it may be, we have a place in the private club. We can discuss with the little professor, contradict him, correct him. We’re learning how to become the little professor, and Wodné never misses an opportunity to show him that we, too, can talk about serious philosophy and cultural revolution. I appreciate Popol’s silences. All those words that have become our passports, all those words that have made us the intellectual beneficiaries of the neighborhood—we haven’t yet learned how to make good use of them. For us. For the little kids of Burial Street. Mam Jeanne often tells us about the fortunes and misfortunes of the little kids like us who came from nothing, claiming to serve every good cause so that they could cash in on all of them. This or that elected official who had sworn by individual liberties and social justice before his election, and then afterwards opposed programs designed to fight illiteracy, confiding to those close to him the secret of his politics: if everyone from his hometown finally learned to read, what would become of him? We don’t know what to do with all these words. Halefort drinks a lot. The self-righteous and superstitious people from the neighborhood avoid him and tell their children not to respond to his greetings. They tell themselves that a graverobber attracts death, and a man who knows only how to desecrate tombs isn’t worth their acknowledgment. Halefort has a son with a woman who comes from a neighborhood even poorer than ours. The boy sometimes comes to see him. I suppose it’s whenever there’s nothing left to eat in the dumpster where he must live. Halefort will then give him whatever he has, and if he sees us pass by he asks us: “You guys, who know how to read, what are you planning to do so that my son won’t become a graverobber?” Popol grows quiet and waits to speak until he has an answer. Maybe he waits too long. Wodné quickly came to understand the power of making a fuss. If you start off by yelling, you’ll end up on top.