Kannjawou Page 6

  THINGS WITH THE LITTLE PROFESSOR HAVE GONE BAD. Not between him and me. We’re connected by the ways in which novels often end badly. He tells me again and again that I’m too old for my age because very early on, I started looking at things and people with the goodwill of a voyeur, without any greed. The little professor and I form a club of readers for life. But things have gone bad between him and Burial Street. It had all started out well, though, with an invitation addressed to the gang of five. It was Joëlle who had talked to him about our past. He invited us to have a drink with him in a dance bar that he had found in a neighborhood between our own and Kannjawou. A little bar that brought us out of our routine of frequenting bars near the cemetery without disorienting us too much. Whenever people who aren’t from the same background want to go out together, it’s a pain to find a neutral place in which everyone will feel at ease. Wodné turned the invitation down, just as he turns down everything that he hasn’t come up with himself. Joëlle hesitated, or pretended to hesitate. Fleeing us. Fleeing Wodné. Maybe even fleeing herself. Joëlle sometimes acts exactly the opposite of the little brunette, with the same results. One killing herself running after a bastard who doesn’t love her back. The other fleeing a man who worships her, whom she loves only when she dares. When the evening arrived, Sophonie took her by the hand and the two left their house together. Popol and I waited for them before going to meet the little professor on College Street. Joëlle hadn’t wanted him to come all the way to Burial Street in his car. For Wodné’s gang, getting into a private car was an act of treason. It’s true that it doesn’t happen to us very often. On Burial Street, private cars are a rare commodity and more of a source of problems for their owners than a real means of transport. There’s no place to park any car that can still move enough to get it in and out of the garage. The cars that don’t move anymore have taken all the good places, and every day they lose another part—a headlight, a turn signal, a door, a tire—until they’ve become abandoned carcasses that clog up the road. Burial Street, a cemetery of cars leading to the great cemetery. Joëlle instinctively seated herself in the passenger seat next to the little professor. She asked him to drive around a little, in no particular direction. When they’re given access to things of which they’ve been deprived, adults often become children again. There was no hurry. The bar could wait. We don’t often have the chance to get into a car just to drive. Our drives are exact, in crowded vehicles that smell of sweat and chicken. The little professor and I launched into a conversation about the great road novels we’ve read. And we suggested to the others that we play a game that we’d started playing: which novel characters did they think this or that person we knew resembled? And which characters did they think they themselves resembled? They cheated. Joëlle asked the little professor which character he thought she resembled. He hesitated before naming the heroine of an Italian novel he’d often talked to me about, which I had finally read to make him happy. Sophonie refused to play and predicted that one day I would write a novel about Burial Street with characters that resembled us: novels should take their inspiration from the living. Popol stayed mute. He had a question for the little professor. He wasn’t very comfortable. It was at the restaurant that he asked him, after a clumsy waitress had taken our orders. Why did the little professor’s generation, which had gained so much promising momentum early on, have such a weak grip on reality? They had read everything, attacked the political problems head-on. And today, the country is occupied. Lying face down. And they had become arrogant or melancholy young-old people who cried about the past or went off in search of pointless titles of glory. With Popol, you put your finger right on the wound. Bring things into the light. And then you see what will happen. “Maybe it’s a mistake to think about the big things at the expense of the little ones. We often forgot about life in the moment. Fighting in the hopes of an eventual kannjawou, we didn’t think about the immediate reality. The ideal should be something that you can live day-to-day, but we didn’t know that. We were busy preparing for the future. Without understanding that people need to be happy in the present, and that you can’t keep asking them to wait. And then there was the violence that destroyed so many lives, causing survivors to think only about fear and memories. It was Monsieur Laventure who recruited me. I worked on creating pamphlets and manifestos. We were hard on those who hadn’t chosen to fight. Too hard, maybe. We wanted to change the world, but we only loved ourselves. We were hard on the militants, too. Whether you said yes or no, you were judged. I judged. I was judged. Only the idea of revolution impressed us. Nothing else. We loved the future without loving the living. We loved badly. But nonetheless it all started with love.” Listening to him, I realized that the little professor had had his own Wodné period. I had a hard time imagining him like that, controlling and authoritative, so sure of his own actions and views that he would turn them into law, banishing any peer or subordinate who lacked sufficient zeal from the tribe of the righteous. But, apparently he had been like that. Maybe his love for Joëlle was his repentance. Then we talked about lighter subjects. Funnier ones. Talking about love, we told him about Ursule, the old couturier from Burial Street who had spent the first half of her life spying on other people’s love affairs and the second half hiding in silence without daring to leave her house. The first Ursule had tattled on young women to their parents: “Pay attention to your little one, yesterday evening I saw her—or rather, I saw them—I would even say I saw everything.” She invented lovers for women who didn’t have them, running a dreadful gossip column of all of Burial Street’s real and fictitious love affairs. Bringing into the light of day matters of the body and heart that should have remained a secret. Putting a premature end to affairs that hadn’t yet ended, in such a way that the women reproached the men of having boasted. “If you find things to brag about before we’ve even slept together, then the day when it really happens, my whole life will be on display for everyone to see.” We didn’t know what it was, but we loved love. One evening, Ursule was at her window. On the lookout. Searching for an illegitimate couple that she could denounce at the market. A line of five little devils all dressed in white were leaving the cemetery. They stopped in front of her house, underneath the window where she was keeping watch. They lit a circle of black candles, placing a little coffin in the center. Ursule closed her window and didn’t open it again for weeks. Only Mam Jeanne had understood who the demons were. Sophonie had had the idea. Wodné had gotten the candles from a housekeeper who worked for a high-ranking freemason. Popol had built the little coffin with a slab of wood and some nails purchased at the Salomon market. The girls had pilfered the sheets from Mam Jeanne’s closet. The gang of five. At Mam Jeanne’s request, we finally apologized to Ursule, who re-opened her window but stopped getting mixed up in other people’s love affairs, except to offer special prices to the girls. The little professor told us a story that was as good as Ursule’s, about an aging bookbinder whose last name was Booz, whose business had been going well. At that time, the well-to-do protected their books. Notables and even ministers brought work to him. Everyone knew his personality was like that of an old bear, and it didn’t make him very friendly with the neighbors. In the evenings, you could see him sitting on his balcony with a severe expression, sipping chamomile tea. His next-door neighbors had an only daughter who was going out with all the young men in the neighborhood. One day, to everyone’s astonishment, without asking for her parents’ opinion, she donned her prettiest dress, went over to the old man’s house, and told him, “I will be your wife.” She never went out after that, except to run errands and take a walk on Sundays with her husband. In the evenings, both of them would sit on the balcony sipping their tea; the old bookbinder had discovered the art of smiling, and taught his craft to his young wife. Their first child reconciled the couple with the wife’s parents, and when the old man died, his widow kept the workshop alive and became just as famous as her husband was. People came from everywhere to bring their books to “
Madame Booz.” He had been luckier than our old bookbinder on Burial Street, who—according to what the old folks said—had never had a lover, nor any children.

  YES, YOU WOULD HAVE TO START WITH LOVE. The bar didn’t resemble Kannjawou at all. The dance floor was darker, more hidden. Kannjawou doesn’t suffer from lack of light. Power doesn’t hide itself away. It displays itself, asserts itself. And the Occupation officials and the rich bourgeois kids want to be seen by each other. “We’re in our own little world,” as they say. Other than the little brunette, who likes to hide in shadowy corners. After we’d reminisced, Popol and Sophonie went to dance. Joëlle asked the little professor to dance, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t know how. She persuaded him, saying, “It’s no big deal. I’ll allow you to step on my feet.” I stayed at the table alone, watching the only server and the other customers. No representatives of the foreign forces. Or maybe junior members. Local staff. Middle managers. Chauffeurs. Guides. In an occupied country, there’s a good chance that any given working person is a junior member of the Occupation. Maybe also resisters. How can you know who is who, and who is what? A man older than everyone else at his table was talking loudly, his voice already nasally, clouded by alcohol. Every bar has its own Monsieur Vallières. Popol and Sophonie didn’t miss a single dance. Between the courses he taught and the program he was enrolled in at the university, and her volunteer work and job at Kannjawou, the two of them didn’t have much time to just be young. Just this once. From time to time I went out to give Joëlle and the little professor the chance to be together. We stayed at the bar for an hour. Popol and Sophonie preferred to walk back. Joëlle wanted to drive for a bit longer; she was talking more than usual. About the damn thesis that she couldn’t manage to complete. About the academic environments in which being a woman wasn’t easy. About Sophonie, who had made so many sacrifices. About Wodné, whom she loved and would never leave. He was her history, her childhood. And at heart he wasn’t as tight-lipped or as hostile as he seemed. “Remember how he loved to laugh when we were kids. How he would shout that he had missed us when he came back from a trip to the countryside to see his mother.” Yes, I remember. That he used to attach the tails of lizards and dragonflies to a piece of string and would walk down the street dragging the beasts behind him like spoils of war. I remember, too, that he would interrupt me when I was reading to demand that I explain what was so enjoyable about it; he wanted to share my enjoyment but could never quite manage it. I remember that he and Popol were an inseparable pair, although they were never alike at all. Too many differences drive you apart. And distance isn’t like a trench that you can cross by filling it in with earth. I remember that I loved him very much. He was a brother from the same street, a member of the gang of five. Now, the only part of him I love is what we used to be. And I don’t know what he loves. One day I’ll ask the little professor how old he was when he started losing friends. How long he acted like Wodné before unclenching his teeth. Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t hear when Joëlle asked me if I wanted to leave them alone. For real. And wait for them at the end of Burial Street. Yes, of course. The little professor stopped his car and I got out. Joëlle opened her door. She came towards me. She pulled me close to her. “I love Wodné, but I think I love him, too. Wodné is my own history. The one into which I was born. As for him, I don’t know. He’s somewhere else, and yet he’s so close. Tonight, I want this somewhere else. Do you remember?” “What?” “The middle of the wind. That’s love, too. Going to see the middle of the wind.” I walked aimlessly in the streets. The question that Joëlle was asking herself, the one she was living—I’ve been asking myself since childhood. Even Mam Jeanne, who knows the answers to a thousand kinds of problems, hasn’t known how to help me. Why choose between the two sisters? It’s enough just to love the fact that they exist. I went to get one last beer at the outdoor bar on the Place des Héros. Wodné and his gang were there. He left them and came over to sit with me. “A beer?” “No, thanks. You know I don’t drink.” Then he talked about profiteers, predators, social classes and age groups, and his thesis, on which he worked without a break whenever he didn’t have a meeting. About certain ideas from Western liberalism about the status of women and the use of art when it doesn’t line up with our morals. About my ability to write papers, which meant that I definitely would have finished before the others if I had chosen to continue, even though I was younger and a bit of a dilettante. About “us,” Joëlle and him, an inseparable couple. “Joëlle is me. We wouldn’t exist without each other, we’re fighting the same battle.” He talked for a long time. He’s always had a loud voice and can’t stop himself from shouting. I looked around at the other movements of the night: drunks and prostitutes, and the damn armored vehicles of the Occupation forces, which came and went, came back again and left again. In the end, their whole mission consisted of killing time. I noticed that Wodné hadn’t talked about people living in sheet metal houses or tents. As though all this only happened between Kannjawou and Burial Street, not anywhere else. Nor had he said that simple thing, the most human of confessions: I’m hurting. It was only when I got up to leave that I saw that he was crying. I said to myself that if one day I did write a novel about the gang of five and Burial Street, like Sophonie wanted me to, I would have to find the strength to do justice to Wodné. He may well have hated the lizards and dragonflies and the professors that he wanted to become, but all the same, he was crying.

  LOTS OF PEOPLE AT KANNJAWOU. All the regulars and some newcomers. A new wave of Occupation personnel must have just arrived. As well as the people who have returned from vacation. After the violence of winter, a little bit of heat does you good. Monsieur Régis had some more chairs and tables put in the courtyard. On the dance floor, it’s madness. If poverty and bankrupt states and governmental issues didn’t exist, we might have considered inventing them just so that we could watch the Kannjawou customers eat and dance. Monsieur Régis is helping out the servers. For lack of a better option, some young foreigners have joined Monsieur Vallières at his table. They turn their backs to him completely when he starts mourning the end of epistolary literature, which was a true wonder, from the apostle Paul to Pliny the Younger to Les Liaisons dangereuses. But in these hurried times, all the fine things seem to be coming to an end. He had tried to write to his wife and children. In response to his letters, they had, without him knowing, hired a psychiatrist, an old classmate, who had come to his shop to ask him questions under the pretext of a friendly visit. Monsieur Vallières kicked the psychiatrist out, reminding him that when they’d been at school he hadn’t understood even the simplest of lessons. With such a track record, how could he possibly claim to understand the complexities of the human mind! He asked him to explain to his family of philistines that he was still in charge of their affairs. All they could do was wait. They called a family meeting. “And I saw in their eyes that they couldn’t hide their impatience. That’s exactly what they were doing: waiting.” I listen, from my perch on the wall. I watch. The little brunette passes in front of us like a fury, pulling Marc towards the exit by his guayabera. He follows her. You can see in his eyes that he’s worried about his outfit. Inside, he had let her pull him, smiling, but once they arrive outside he firmly pushes the little brunette’s hand away, runs his other hand over his guayabera to make sure it has not been torn, and sighs with relief, caressing the material nearly hurt by her grip. “You’re crazy. Never speak a word to me again.” “Bastard!” “You’re crazy. I didn’t promise you anything.” Harsh, cold eyes. And before he turns to return inside, return to the dance floor, to other bodies: “If you learn to calm down, maybe one day I’ll be willing to see you again.” And the guayabera passes in front of us again. The made-to-measure smile. And the other one still outside, in tears, who climbs up into her service vehicle, starts it quickly—too quickly—in a screeching of tires that drowns out the music. And Sophonie, who busies herself going from one table to the next. Two beers, one whisky on the rocks. One
beer, two whiskys on the rocks. One whisky on the rocks, two beers. One steak tartare, two coarse-salt fish. A coarse-salt fish, two steak tartares. The customers are as impatient as Monsieur Vallières’s family. It’s never those who don’t have anything who want everything, right away. It’s those who have a little. A little a lot. Who already have a lot. Already far too much. Those who already know what it means to have. A little bit of wealth. A little bit of power. A little a lot of wealth. A little a lot of power. Sophonie’s mind is elsewhere. Several times over the course of the evening, her eyes have wandered off in search of the little brunette. She had motioned for us to follow the couple when they went out into the street, fearing that the argument would turn to violence. Wodné would have objected, saying that it wasn’t our responsibility as people from Burial Street to put an end to a fight between a Haitian playboy and a helpless Occupation employee. But I can hear Sophonie telling him that a man hitting a woman will always be injustice. And, shit, we aren’t robots, after all. Compassion, are you familiar with it?