For A Long Time, Afraid Of The Night Read online

  You hear the flow of rushing water. It’s the Nyabarongo River. In the green foliage your eyes make out green oranges and medlar fruit. You open them greedily, seeds burst in your hands and run over your fingers. You eat even the thick skin, it’s solid and reminds you of the consistency of bread. Birds exchange brief tirades across the branches. You spit out the medlar pits, which remind you of the baskets filled to the brim your grandmother used to carry on her shoulder. Her arms seemed so long that you thought they were extendable, then she’d bend her back to the level of the table and slip the basket off like goods they unload from a ship onto the pier.

  You wipe off your suitcase, the seeds have stained the leather. Your movement remained visible on the glossy skin, a circular arc you’re sketching with the fleshy part of your fingers to entertain yourself. Without a pencil, you draw a house, a tree, and some people lying on the ground with their arms spread wide. You know very well what’s happened in your village, for the cries could still be heard from the banana fields. Gunshots pierced the clouds before vanishing in the distance. Your suitcase was filled with clothes randomly tossed in, some food and a flask that belonged to your father filled with water. You didn’t go back home after the shooting, your grandmother had given you very specific orders, and you followed them.

  Your stomach hurts, rumblings followed by intense pain, sharp as knives. Instinctively, you think of crawling inside your suitcase. Your pains echo in the darkness. Your fingers still smell of the bitter orange. You fall asleep, cradled by the rustling of the water, together with the song of the birds merging with the foliage.

  Calling each student’s name out loud Suzanne returns their papers. One by one they come to get their copy. Suzanne congratulates them and graces the most deserving ones with a smile.

  Seeing Arsène approach, Suzanne whispers softly:

  ‘Well done! Keep it up, just like that!’

  Arsène suppresses a shy smile and murmurs a thank-you. He tries to hide the pride that is still visible at the corner of his mouth. Suzanne sees no one but him while doing her best to look only at the other students. Arsène’s suitcase fascinates her, it’s awakened her desire to write. Reading his paper, she quickly understood that a deep connection linked him to his object. Suzanne knows it’s a delicate matter to work on secrets, that memories can be impenetrable.

  This kind of work involves endurance and patience, she is quite aware that the result will depend on her approach, that she’ll need to show as much rigor as kindness, as much pressure as informality.

  Pulling herself together, she writes the details of the second exercise on the board. After the object data sheet comes the second stage: the story of the object.

  She uses the words ‘fiction’ and ‘reality’ to state the meaning of the work from the onset. After a few minutes, Suzanne presents the outlines.

  A story includes several stages:

  the initial situation,

  the disruptive element,

  the resolution of the problem,

  the final situation.

  Using her fingers, Suzanne confidently defines her criteria for quality. The class is captivated.

  ‘I want short sentences, I’ll be very demanding where punctuation and spelling are concerned. I suggest you use paragraphs. Avoid any repetitions, please, and for heaven’s sake reread your work. Any questions?’

  Not a sound from the class.

  ‘I’m at your disposal if you have any trouble, that’s my role, that’s what I’m here for. Thank you all and I’ll see you next week.’

  With memories taunting you in the middle of the night, your sleep is disrupted. You turn over and over in every direction, looking for the perfect position in which to find oblivion again. The streetlight illuminates your room, the linoleum gleams in the night like the surface of smooth water. Not a sound other than the leaves of the chestnut tree ruffled by the wind. You know every noise in the apartment. The wind blows through the metal window frames and seems to be murmuring things—indecipherable messages—into your ear. You are safe here in France, in this twelve-meter square room, just as you were in your suitcase at the time.

  You tell yourself you’ll never manage to write the saga that is yours. Having arrived in France with the help of a humanitarian organization, you buried your story, submerged in memories of hunger and thirst. Adopted by a couple of teachers, they welcomed you with great sensitivity. Not to be separated from your suitcase, you slept in it for seven nights, as the new bed terrified you. A wisp of Rwanda was still breathing across the tattered leather. Paule, your adoptive mother, double-folded a quilt so you could sleep inside it more comfortably, during the night you no longer closed the lid, not having to protect yourself from wild animals or any insects now. On this new continent the night was bright, the stars had vanished. All you had to do was sniff your suitcase to smell again the scents of your homeland and your clammy fear. Sometimes it seemed you heard things thronging inside it as if the landscapes of your birthplace had followed you right into this Parisian apartment building, across a sea, highways, railroads, and the parking lot right below your window where cars were parked at an angle to the curb. You fall asleep with arms and legs spread wide like a puppet, you who had been forced to wedge each limb into this restricted space for nights on end. You no longer dreamed, no longer spoke.

  Your adoptive parents showed you the basics: mandatory shower and toothbrushing. Each morning nice new clothes were waiting for you on the chair in your room. You started school a week after your arrival, the teachers were instructed not to make any demands on you. The evening before you started, Paule explained to you that unfortunately you could not take the suitcase to school with you, that you had to leave it in your room, but she assured you that it wouldn’t disappear while you were gone. You didn’t answer, you still hadn’t found the meaning of words again, but you acquiesced by nodding your head to let her know you understood. You put your head on her arm, easing your burden a little. The movement wrung her heart as she encircled you with two plump arms.

  You were both looking at the suitcase without saying a word. Later, in the middle of the night and half-asleep, you slipped between the sheets of the bed that had been waiting for you for more than a week. Legs tightly together and arms close to your body. You remembered sleeping whole nights through head-to-foot with your little brother who would kick you unintentionally. Here there was no need to whack your face to chase away the flies. There were no insects in this new country, just gray birds, and well-bred dogs and cats.

  Stretched out on your belly, something was missing that kept you from falling asleep. So, with a decisive gesture you pulled the suitcase toward the bed, brought it close and stuck your hand inside. It made you feel safe to be in unbroken contact with its skin, in a few seconds you fell asleep, your arm dangling off the bed.

  Upon waking, your adoptive parents were whispering in the hall, a fusion of words and smiles; they were watching you from the doorway, observing this first step, this first sign. By sleeping in this bed, you had accepted them into your life. But having your hand stay in contact with the suitcase indicated that you would never forget what had happened in your life before this one.

  The medlar pits are so smooth that you keep sucking on them. They’re littering the ground, you’ve cleaned out the tree. You have stomach cramps, you’re in pain, and there’s no end in sight. The water from the brook hasn’t helped much, searing spasms plague you like invisible opponents. Then, too, the suitcase quieted your pain, you stopped moving, you went back inside your cocoon with your hands crossed.

  That night you slept for a very long time. Your eyes opened just a crack at the thunderous noise and racket of something that was shifting your suitcase, with jerky intermittent moves. The exterior thing didn’t think of simply opening the lid, it was pushing, hammering at the corners, growing exasperated and uttering muffled growls. Then it would stop for a while before starting up all over again. When the thing was no longer touching the
suitcase, you could feel it circle around you at great length like a wild animal around its prey. Suddenly it threw itself on the suitcase, which stood firm. You heard it get worked up, claw at the lid and lose patience. Then, no sound anymore, dead calm. You heard the brook, the birds. It went on for a long time. You wanted to see but pushing the lid open with your hand terrified you. Your hand was shaking, you didn’t want to regret making a move, but curiosity was stronger than anything else.

  You opened it a few millimeters without making a sound, your eyes at the level of the gap. You knew exactly where to look, the presence was a few meters away, on the edge of the brook, in the full sun while your suitcase was lying at the foot of the tree. You plainly saw a wild animal from the back, standing guard, sniffing the air and blinking, a beautiful lioness, motionless, with only her tail moving. You breathed in the outside air through the slit.

  Hours went by, endless hours with regular intervals in which to see whether the lioness has finished napping. Parched, you were dying to drink the water from the brook. No pride around, she was all by herself. You heard a noise, she’d gotten up, stretching first her front, then her hind legs. She drank water from the brook, just a few big licks were enough to quench her thirst. Then she left. What surprised you was that she hadn’t come back to prowl around the suitcase again. She simply left after sleeping alongside the stream. You gradually opened the lid, eyes searching the area without blinking. Then you, too, ran to the brook to drink.

  What would you have done without this suitcase? Your survival depended on it entirely, it was your roof, your walls, and your floor. All sweaty, you washed yourself in the cool water, got rid of the citrus juice that stuck to your fingers. That’s when you told yourself you should probably keep living there. You were secretly hoping they would find you and bring you back to your village. It was all very confusing, you felt as if you were on a desert island right in the middle of the ocean.

  Keeping busy underneath the tree, you spent your afternoon tying branches together, putting down stones to mark the boundaries of your rest area. The circle wouldn’t protect you from anything, but it was symbolic of a territory that had become yours, you who’d roamed around in isolation for days. The enclosure was the response to a strong survival instinct.

  For two nights you stayed under the open sky in this dwelling, circling around the same perimeter. During the day you were the only living thing, but at night you sensed the presence of swarming fauna, coming to drink at the brook. Curled up inside your suitcase, you’d hear bodies pacing up and down the shore’s dry land. Birds would come and sit on the lid, pushing down on the leather inside, you’d chase them away with your fists. You were no longer afraid of anything. Besides, what could you still be afraid of?

  At daybreak, the animals had left their footprints, which you’d obliterate with your feet. You no longer tolerated anyone on this terrain. Shouting at the perching birds had incurred their wrath and, one after another, they were now mocking you. It was time to give the suitcase a thorough washing. The brook was within arm’s reach, but you didn’t know that leather and water don’t get along so well. You plunged it into the stream, the water swept away your sweat, your tears, your hunger, your thirst, and your forgotten nightmares. The leather tightened upon the contact with the water: the soft skin hardened and shrank. It felt like a wet animal, a big humid cat. You set it down on a hot stone directly in a ray of sunlight. The corners inside retained some stagnant water that smelled like you. The suitcase had become an extension of you.

  Suzanne is walking along a sidewalk not far from the school. Her steps are slow, too slow compared to those of the other passers-by. The street slopes, the base of the Haussmann-style building drawing a diagonal. She stops and stands transfixed for a few seconds. She knows this building very well, she lived there for the first eleven years of her life, on the third floor, with five windows that looked out over the street. Together with the sixth floor, the only one to have a long balcony covered with a thin layer of zinc.

  Suzanne stays there, motionless. The door is shut, Suzanne would like to go in but it’s a building without any access, a fortress closed off from memories.

  She’s about to leave the area, turning her back on a slice of her life when the door suddenly opens. She knows this sound better than anyone else: a click followed by a little metallic jingle where the bolt is. Someone comes out, the other enters. Suzanne steps across the threshold of the carriage door and from afar looks at the courtyard and its former stables. What she feels is unfathomable. Crossing into this passageway is rekindling buried recollections, the same automatically repeated motions of long ago. She recognizes the guardian’s lodge, her mailbox. Everything comes back to her, a jumble of memories submerging her into a strange inner state. The stone floor of the hallways is the same, the courtyard’s cobblestones as well, in thirty years nothing has changed: she could still have been living here yesterday, things remain. Suzanne would like to enter the building but is confronted by the intercom that shows only unfamiliar names.

  She tells herself it’s probably time to leave, better not to awaken too many memories. She hesitates, then finally presses the button with two initials: ‘L. B.’. She’s getting ready to stammer some random words, embarrassed to break the silence of the middle-class apartment when someone opens the door for her without asking who’s there. Suzanne sets foot on the blue-and-gray tiles of the entryway, on the left finds the first hiding place she had as a child. The carpeting on the stairs is red and green just as she remembers it. She has to climb two floors to come back to what she’s never stopped calling her ‘home’, the house of her father when he was still able to smile, drink, and speak. Suzanne goes up and with each step thinks she’s coming a little bit closer to happiness, a joy that makes her heart beat louder.

  Suzanne feels dizzy, to keep her balance her hands touch the banister. She’ll stop on the first landing to recover, all that will be left then is thirty steps to reach the floor in question. A couple comes down in silence, a ruckus echoes in the stairwell, Suzanne greets the couple solemnly. Thirty steps to catch up with thirty years of absence. Each step is one year without her father, the first ones being the hardest, she marks the pause with every step; the nighttime tears come back to her, the anxieties at dawn, the boredom, her hard and fast complexes, the deep sleep on school mornings. Suzanne struggles not to weep and yet the tears flow without a sign on her face, the emotion engulfs her. A woman comes down the stairs, dressed in black and a purse in her hand, she puts a hand on Suzanne’s shoulder as if to comfort her.

  The door to the apartment is open, people all dressed in black seem to be there to offer condolences, not talking but murmuring. Suzanne wipes her tears, gets ready to tread upon the ground of her childhood; the door opens slightly as she comes through, there’s a crowd. With lowered head she greets the reverential faces, a nod followed by a barely audible hello. Suzanne makes her way through, making herself even more unobtrusive. She’s escorted to the reception rooms, the fireplaces haven’t moved, the moldings guide her to an adjacent room, the darkest one in the apartment.

  Despite the dense crowd, Suzanne feels completely alone, silhouettes fade away one after the other, the murmuring disappears. All she hears is the wind in the chestnut trees. She remembers going at top speed through the living room when the front door would open, and her father would finally be home.

  ‘I won’t be able to write your story, Madame.’

  Suzanne asks him why. Arsène answers without looking at her, both hands playing with an eraser he’s rolling between his fingers.

  ‘I have a personal history with this suitcase and it’s painful for me to talk about it…’

  ‘I understand, Arsène, but do you want to tell us the story or not?’

  Arsène thinks, sighs as if torn between his desire to reveal his secret or keep silent about it forever.

  A long silence follows.

  ‘I’ve never told it to anyone before,’ Arsène replies, �
��not even to my adoptive parents.’

  Suzanne caresses Arsène’s hands tenderly, seeks his elusive gaze, but his lowered head prevents her from finding it. Arsène’s right leg is twitching non-stop.

  With an abrupt movement he puts his hands over his eyes, sighing deeply. Then he stares at her and without blinking asks:

  ‘Would you be willing to write it for me, Madame?’

  Suzanne is stunned, looking for words.

  ‘I’ll tell you my whole story in every detail from the beginning. I’ve not forgotten anything about that journey. Please understand that it’s already an accomplishment for me to talk about it to you, but I feel totally incapable of writing it.’

  ‘I’ll help you, Arsène, you can count on me. We’ll do it together. We’ll have to meet on a regular basis, once a week outside of school hours. Thank you for your trust in me.’

  ‘Thank you, Madame, how about starting right away?’

  ‘Yes, if you’d like, we have half an hour.’

  As if captured by an irresistible need to talk, Arsène is already starting to mumble things under his breath in a confessional tone. Suzanne catches his words, watching his lips recount the horror. As he talks, his hands unfurl in the air. He’s suddenly as loquacious as he’s been stingy with his words until now. Suzanne doesn’t miss a single one of them. The narrative grows so intense that her notes become less frequent.

  She can’t curb the flow of memories buried inside him for so many years. Arsène provides very precise details, he hasn’t forgotten a thing. Suzanne listens to it all, feeding her own memory as if his remembrances were hers.

  As you pass through the school’s hallway you can see them through the window talking but motionless. In the classroom it’s as if time has stood still.