Dirty Feet (8 page)

BUT THE
photographer would not be put off and often repeated, “Who are you, Askia?” As if the answer to that question would somehow affect their relationship, as if a few clarifications would make him more familiar, less distant in the eyes of his friend. As if, in order to take part in the Wedding of the worlds, it was necessary to know who you were. It was necessary to be something or someone. Otherwise the king of the Wedding would reach out his hideous hand into the hall of festivities and banish you from the fete. Like the paws of that big bouncer who had shoved him away from the entrance of the discotheque where he had ventured one night when he was feeling blue. “You won't get in if you don't follow the dress code!” the bouncer had bellowed.

“Who are you, Askia?” The question took him back such a long way it was impossible to say for sure whether any of it was real. Back to the country roads and city streets, the foursome advancing through the fog, in the sweltering days and cold nights: he, his father, his mother, and the donkey, which eventually gave up the ghost. From Nioro du Sahel they had gone down to the Atlantic coast, leaving behind the most badly parched lands, but the beast had used up its last ounce of strength. It died as they came out of a muddy ravine. Had it been able to cover a few more roads, it would have found water and grass in the north of the country where they landed one grey dawn.

For a solid week they rested by the roadside. His mother, Kadia Saran, sold her medicinal roots and they were able to buy food. The terrible harmattan of 1967 was blowing itself out, its cutting edge growing duller on the skin. So they pushed on towards the plateaus, the centre of the new country that was to become theirs, and arrived in a village where the hospitality with which they were received surprised them. Askia thought the reason they had been shunned along the way was because those they encountered hadn't much to offer strangers, or because the strangers to whom they had offered shelter and yams turned into outright thieves after nightfall. But he would never comprehend the reason for their exodus. Perhaps the cause was not the sparse rainfall or the swarms of locusts, as he had supposed. Instead it may have been what his mother mentioned one day. A matter of humiliation, according to the mysterious words she alone knew how to wield. She said, without elaborating, that his father, a Songhai prince, had been humiliated by his own people. Or possibly it was that he had wanted to avoid humiliation. Why? His mother, closing the chapter, said, “Such things are best forgotten, Askia.”

In the village of the plateaus they were given shelter by Chief Gokoli. An abandoned hut at the entrance of the community, near the perimeter of an old cemetery with crumbling tombstones. An unhoped-for refuge after the Sahel and the roads of flight. They did not go out for three days, but the chief had fruit and boiled yams brought to them. Three days in the adobe hut. And when on the fourth day they walked down the main road of the village, they were called “Dirty Feet.” It was said they had trekked over many roads from the Sahel. The feet of the man in the turban and his family were caked with dirt and bleached by the mud and dust of all the roads they had tramped over. They had been subjected to heatwaves, rains, the monsoon, and the harmattan. It was the harmattan that was to blame for their cracked heels, their parched, creased skin. And in the creases there was dirt, a mixture of sweat and earth. The voices on the main street whispered:

“Can it be that their feet are dirty because they could not stop walking?”

“Well, they were able to stop, as you can see.”

“They've stopped in our village!”

“Because they can't or won't go any farther.”

“Farther is the coast, the sea.”

“And amidst the waves there's a malevolent god who ensnares gullible souls with an enticing call to voyage. His name is Pontos.”

“A call.”

“Enticing.”

“Over there, across the ocean, it will be like the Kingdom of Heaven. You will live in a palace that looks out onto everlasting pleasures. To speak in more practical terms, you will no longer be hungry.”

“A call.”

“Alluring.”

“And when the gullible creatures embark on the waves, the divinity of the seas devours them.”

“These people are not gullible.”

AT THE BISTRO
he did not drink. He waited for Petite-Guinée, who had promised to take him to Sidi's building. He leaned against the counter, not wanting to sit down and yield to the temptation of a drink. Or cajole the barman so that he would play Miles Davis again for him. Or try to follow the notes as they rose towards the ceiling through the whorls floating up from the smoky corner of a pair of lips. Or ask for another drink to drive the first one deeper into the maze of his doubts. He did not want to drink at all, because on this night he had to remain absolutely clear-headed.

Petite-Guinée came out of his cellar through the hatch located behind the bar. He was wearing a leather jacket and a grey cap. They took the metro. Fifteen minutes later they emerged from the belly of Lutetia in front of Sidi's building. Petite-Guinée glanced around quickly, waited a few moments, then headed straight towards the entrance of the building. Askia stayed by the metro staircase. Petite-Guinée pulled a tool from his pocket and began to work the lock of the makeshift door that must have been installed after the fire. The lock quickly gave way, which erased any remaining doubts Askia may have harboured as to the old man's background and skills. Petite-Guinée waved him over and closed the door behind them, and with the help of a flashlight that he had slipped into his jacket pocket, they went straight up to the loft.

The scene was grim. The steps were slippery with a fine layer of ash, the walls were sooty, and a strange odour permeated the air. One had the distinct impression of being in the mouth of a mine shaft. They went up. Askia was surprised by the stamina of his friend, who never paused to catch his breath. The loft finally came into view. Astonishingly unencumbered. The pillars were oddly clean. The beam of the flashlight swept over the walls, starting from the nearest corner to their left and then covering the entire space, as if seeking to shed light on the mystery of every surface in the dark loft. Secrets. Things and beings buried in the shadows: a precious casket, a man hidden behind the concrete partitions.

They followed the lighted arc curving and moving back and forth in the space and the silence of the walls. In front of them the Songhai frescos, three-quarters destroyed. Petite-Guinée sighed and carried on with his inspection. The meddling flashlight illuminated the shadows, the secrets of that corner on the right, where a rustling noise made them both jump. The shadow leaped forward, brushing against Petite-Guinée's jacket before scurrying away. Askia dashed after it into the black hole of the stairway where it had disappeared. When he finally got outside, the shadow was turning the corner of the first street on the right. He glimpsed something falling from the flounces of her long white dress, little pieces of cardboard that turned out to be train tickets bought in various cities, some far away — Matera, Coimbra, Naples, Saragossa — others nearer — Marseilles, Nantes . . . 

Petite-Guinée came out behind him and shut the door. He said there was nothing up there but mysteries and shadows. Among the tickets that had fallen from the shadow's pocket, the one from Nantes seemed ancient, printed in another century, at the beginning of the mass insanity that had cast people out on the road. Beings belonging to Askia's kind, when other niggers named Sidi were bartered for a double-barrelled shotgun and expelled from Ouidah, Saint-Louis du Sénégal, to be shipped as slaves and deported ultimately to Virginia.

A FIELD IN
Virginia, the journey's endpoint, where the curse could finally be played out. Collapse in the weariness and emptiness of the body of Sidi's great-great-great-great-grandfather, who bore the same forename, which on arriving in Virginia he was forced to relinquish in exchange for the ludicrous moniker of Waldo. Meanwhile, another Sidi put out to sea in Guinea as the manservant of a shipowner and ended up loading crates in Nantes before the slave ship weighed anchor for the trading posts of Gorée, Joal-la-Portugaise, Assinie, Coromantin, Winneba, Fort Saint-Antoine, Mitumbo, Saint-Georges de la Mine, and Gwato, where the voyage began again.

In the entrails of the slave ship, Sidi the slave ancestor hoisted a heavy bale on his back, climbed up on the deck, and found himself facing a lady who was standing on the wharf in the shade of a tiny parasol. Salt breeze. Grey waves. The two individuals eyed each other. Surreptitiously. Around them, a beehive of activity. Traders and shipowners, the noise of unloading and, farther along, beyond the docks, shuttered buildings and silent streets. The lady with the parasol saw this man, Askia's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, and felt certain urges. She saw herself being fucked by the fury of the ancestor, who meanwhile wondered how it would be to venture into the belly of the parasol, if it would be like exploring the open forest of his Keidou, the generous one, with whom he had fathered a clutch of kids before being captured in the Gulf of Guinea early one cynical morning.

He set his bale down on the deck and began to arrange crates as the parasol looked on. Steadily. She followed his movements, his heavy chest bending over, crashing into a body she imagined was her own, stretched out on the deck.

Eventually she walked away, and the ancestor, watching her out of the corner of his eye, saw her disappear into the corridors formed by the large crates and barrels arrayed in blocks in preparation for loading. He left the deck and followed her. Caught sight of the edge of the lady's white dress just as she turned a corner. Hurried over and found her on the floor of desire, a big crate full of boards, her genitals offered up like a crêpe.

“My name is Camille,” she told him before squeezing him between her thighs. Soon, crying out, he poured the water and butter of his pain into Camille's crêpe. And inside Camille's crêpe he sowed the blighted seed that, centuries later, would continue to people the suburbs with dirty-footed bastards forever railing against the skies.

It happened on the docks of Nantes, and afterwards the parasol and the ancestor returned to their respective spheres.

IT WAS LATE
when Askia and Petite-Guinée returned from their fruitless excursion into the ruins of the loft. Midnight had come and gone, and a breeze nibbled at their faces, prompting them to hurry over to Montmartre, where Petite-Guinée wanted to show something to his friend — his intimate country tucked away in the depths, where he believed he had resolved the question of his constant urge to run away. Somehow Askia found the tranquil, silent winter night beautiful. They went back to the bar with the understated facade where the wooden door stood out against the grey beige of the roughcast. The old man said they would go down to the cellar. Askia was under the impression that, as usual, Petite-Guinée wanted him, his only public, to see a drawing in his workshop.

They slipped behind the bar and went through the hatch that led to a stone staircase whose steps had become polished over the years. Askia shivered when he touched the slightly damp walls. He could not get used to it, even though this was not the first time he had come this way. They reached the first landing, where to the right there was another opening: the cellar door, behind which Petite-Guinée painted his pictures. But the master of the house passed this door by. They continued to descend and arrived at the very bottom, in front of a third door. Petite-Guinée inserted a massive iron key. It opened the moment the timer on the stairs shut off the lights, plunging them into pitch-darkness. The old man swore at the timing device, which must have been malfunctioning. But he nevertheless managed to feel his way to the corner of the wall directly inside the entrance, and a dusty fluorescent light filled the space.

It was a minuscule room, measuring no more than eight square metres. The ceiling was very low, the walls were porous, and the floor was covered with red slabs. In the middle stood a large wooden table that at one time must have been a family dining table. On it were little cards, that is, photographs. Petite-Guinée, who had not spoken for many minutes, said, “I want you to look, Askia.”

“. . .”

“And to appreciate this little room where I've installed my country.”

“. . .”

Askia focused on the table. On it were photos of girls and boys who were barely adolescents. Portraits of children. On the back of each picture was a given name:
Kadia
,
Feyla
,
Chinga
,
Cabral
. Askia didn't get it. The events in the photos meant nothing to him. Petite-Guinée, who was close behind him, spoke up. Those children's faces, he said, their smiles — he had stolen them. In 1969. That year he was in Biafra. On which side? On both. He had worked for the rebels and the government. In arms. It was exciting to have signed contracts with both sides. Because he saw that none of it made any sense, that in time the anger would cool down, and during that time the arms dealers and mercenaries would stuff their pockets. He hadn't invented the Biafra War, nor the ones before and after. He needed to tell himself this to be able to go on, to convince himself that he wasn't more of a shit than anyone else. To pass the time between deliveries he would take a few pictures of the landscape and the children. Because they were beautiful, the little ones. His lens stole the innocence of their faces ravaged by war. He figured that later the pictures would help him decide to stop. Did he become attached to the faces, the land, the countries that weren't supposed to mean anything but contracts, deliveries, such-and-such, a place on his job list? He said that Africa was a passage. For him, for those who'd come before him, for those still going down there and those yet to come. New warlocks come from near or far would pass by there again to re-colonize the niggers.

In the country of his cellar he tried to put an end to the torment of his soul. Askia looked once again at the pictures of the children. Petite-Guinée had gone quiet. Tired out. They climbed back up the stone stairway.

“Askia, it's boiling inside me and I can't control it.”

“The emotions?”

“Whenever I go down to look at those photographs. It hits me in the gut and galls my skin every time.”

At the bar he served them both a whisky. Outside, through the gap between the curtains, Askia caught a glance of the white shadow spying on them, perhaps trying to retrieve her train tickets.