Mai at the Predators' Ball

 

 

W
hat Dieudonné the Haitian might have said to Petites Cendres was this, love, my friend, love before every last bell has tolled for you, but perhaps he said nothing after all being the discreet friend and doctor that he was, and what else could he have said that Petites Cendres didn’t already understand, yes there were bells ringing out for the fast and shameless life he led, bells heralding the ecstasy of love that was sure to come his way, not deathly bells whose tones fell leaden through the air, no, jubilant ones rejoicing in the pleasures of this earth, and Petites Cendres would always be sated and content now that Yinn, the new owner of the Porte du Baiser Saloon, had come on the scene, and Petites Cendres found himself cradled in the respect and protection that Yinn and his husband Jason afforded him, never to be humiliated, rejected, or abased again, this was the sacrosanct patron that stood watch over Petites Cendres, Yinn girl and boy, goddess of shining days, the completeness of night that crept up on Petites Cendres, prince of Asia, on those fiery nights when he took Yinn in his arms, or was that just vain dreaming too, standing in for all the nights spent waiting for Yinn in the green pool of the sauna, Temple of Obscure Divinities, a calming, breathless dream that would not allow a cell in his body to sleep, yes you’ve got to fight said Dieudonné, and which demon should I take on first asked Petites Cendres, indolence replied Dieudonné with a hint of evasiveness, aware he was already neglecting Petites Cendres for the other patients in his infirmary, not a second to lose my friend he said, and if I were you I’d stop everything, really, the hash, the cocaine and I’d stop it tonight, Yinn was working his way through the lines asking if anyone had seen Fatalité today or yesterday, long and lean Fatalité their greatest star, nope haven’t seen him these past two nights, that’s way too long said Yinn, I haven’t seen him for two nights either since he went out roaming the sidewalks advertising the show with ribs you could see beneath the street lamp as though he’d melted into the folds of his robe, that’s two nights Yinn said, way too long and he doesn’t live far from here, maybe one of you should go and see, last time I saw him he was headed that way over to the second-floor veranda, his skinny legs going slowly up the steps, come on somebody, say you will said Yinn, I told him I didn’t want to, hell no and why me, Fatalité, no way uh-uh can’t do it, then Yinn said Jason should go, two nights, nope way too long, we’re brothers aren’t we, yes we are I told Yinn, the ineffable look of those slant blue eyes asking if I’d seen Fatalité, where and in what shape, okay so where then, nothing like this weirdness has hit the Saloon for so long I don’t really want to know, still I could see him walking and walking, and where to with that strange gait and his crown of pink feathers reaching up high from strands of brown hair into the night sky the way it always did, Jason, that’s who I’ll send, Yinn said to Petites Cendres all wrapped up in himself, inside that emaciated body inside a black curtain, a fan of plumes waving from his head thought Petites Cendres, so perhaps Dieudonné said only this to Petites Cendres, love, my friend, love before every last bell has tolled for you, and asked him if he’d ever seen his friend Timo again, no never saw him, not ever, see my dear friend Dieudonné, as the Reverend Ézéchielle likes to say, impenetrable are the ways of the Lord, undecipherable too, but his ghost drifts through my mind all the time, starting at the Saloon and going all the way to his door, up the steps to the veranda with a measured pace, one at a time, and there’s Fatalité’s apartment shining in the raw light, always lit day and night, his perch from time to time, you might say, Yinn had designed Fatalité’s outfit, same as everyone else’s, a flamboyant display each evening, strong legs under velvet garters, and Yinn caressed their round butts, here a split skirt, there a hint of a breeze on their backs, saying it’s cool, but step outside to the waiting limo so they can see you all over town, flamboyant display in swishing lingerie, incredible outfits brushing skin the better to reveal Yinn’s creations, sitting in the limo recalling Fatalité upright in one too like a gigantic flower waving to passersby and lobbing necklaces perhaps a little too indifferently, that detached-looking hand waving by itself, no smile surfacing on the hollow cheeks, Yinn and Jason married at last, I could make Yinn my wife too and no one would know thought Petites Cendres, steal a ring and, well two husbands, that wouldn’t be overdoing it, I’d tell him no more hashish and no more cocaine if I were you Petites Cendres said Dieudonné, you and your flighty friends, said Reverend Ézéchielle, don’t suppose you at least pray once in a while in those saloons and dives of yours, pray for your brother Fatalité eh, why not, a candle in the wind, they say that at two in the morning there was no waking him up any more, one of the best girls, honest Reverend, Jason was the one who told us over at the Saloon, Fatalité, Fatalité, she won’t open her eyes, she won’t wake up, oh my God she’s going, call an ambulance, no way Fatalité’s going out in a body bag, no said Yinn’s male Jason, we’d heard him singing in the saloon, those very words,
you’ll see, a setting sun’s going to shroud us all
, we should have listened to what he said, Yinn’s husband his man, one candle, two under the golden coat of the setting sun, gentle, really gentle and asleep, I’ve got to say, at two in the morning, Fatalité, well no more sunlight for him, whatever, Fatalité’s never waking up again. Mai thought about all those fathers and daughters in all those ballrooms, so glad her father wasn’t one of those fawning predators perched on the soft necks of their girls, each in her white dress with a white rose in hand, listening to her doting father’s breath stifled in devotion, hysterical with rage against modern culture, these girls free and wild, no they mustn’t, not his child’s freedom, they were called debutante balls, balls of abstinence and purity, eleven to sixteen and here they were under grotesque trusteeship, bare-shouldered dresses, nascent throats beneath fathers’ swollen lips exhaling chaste predatorship, for them these treasures of virtue, these little girls enshrined as virgins in medallions to which they alone possessed the key till their wedding day, and their very own right up to that night, each small body firmly gripped by a fatherly hand, oppressed, intact, scattered numberless about the ballroom with mothers and uncles all elegantly conspiring, waltzing with Daddy, tomorrow’s squeaky clean generation, culture and chaos laundered out of them from head to ovaries, then with their taboos relaxed, the young turned themselves into pathetic offerings assorted with words like
condoms
or
Viagra
never to be breathed by their fathers, themselves slaves to unutterable desires while their daughters lick their ice cream desserts ready to zero in on anyone who can comfort them after the ceremony, the roses, the good wishes, Papa I’ll always be pure Papa, what good fortune, what a privilege that Mai’s father was not one of them, taking part only as far as writing to denounce such stultifying control and scandalous rites in the ballrooms of the sacrosanct, clubs of forced abstinence that stunted their very growth, nor would these be the first to grow up inside the bubble of a lying fable invented by cowardly fathers preferring not to see their daughters reach full bloom or be breached by pregnancy or sexual diseases, what else had he told Mai, he told her once that each of us had her own destiny including her, did she recall Lola in the hobo’s sleeping bag, though her father saw in Mai only his Mai, not what she truly was, he loved his kids too much to see anything else, yet never could he have been one of those ballroom dads at the rituals of purity and abstinence he hated so much, for our kids’ lives are not ours to own he said, just look at how they up and leave like Samuel to New York or Vincent to Boston, already starting his medical studies, and you my little Mai, you too will be far away in college soon, oh no our kids’ lives are beyond our control, and what a mirage it would be to hold on to them, Mai thought how little her father knew her as she listened to him, really no more than the ballroom fathers as they loomed protectively over their daughters’ virtue, contemplating the pure lines of their faces and thinking nothing would ever change their offspring, fixed and expressionless under the stiffness of their necklines, Mai’s face of course lied every bit as much as theirs in angelic retardation, out here on the highway you could hear the humming of the engine, Papa I want those jeans with stars stitched onto the pockets, I want them Papa, Mai said, remembering the nightmares of the night before, nighttime in the dream as well, and she wondered what she was doing at home with her parents and someone knocking at the door, him, the man from the cemetery, his huge shadow sliding over the walls, a white hen beneath his cape, and saying
you remember me, don’t you, He-Who-Never-Sleeps, see this hen, I can snap its head off with my thumb, and those white pigeons were my doing too,
all in a dream, the pigeons cooing and the hen dying, when she awoke, she thought she was alone in an empty house, but what was she doing back here at home, and where were her parents anyway, it was a lie, she must still be dreaming, the shadow of He-Who-Never-Sleeps with his straw hat sliding across the wall, a fifteen-year-old doesn’t yell for Daddy, so don’t tell anyone but I hate both of them, Marie-Sylvie de la Toussaint and her brother, why couldn’t they just go back to Haiti, a girl that young just has to keep quiet about such things, Jason I phoned him a few times and Fatalité’s cellphone had this echo to it, just kept on ringing, and this echo, hello, it’s me Fatalité, hey Fatalité it’s me, do you want to get together tonight, hey hello Fatalité a night you’ll never forget, hello, this is Fatalité speaking
,
Fatalité’s laugh, fatal grating music, hey guys, it’s me Fatalité, just leave me your name, Fatalité for the love of fate, destiny and Jason this was his cellphone and his words, Fatalité Fatalité who here is gonna want me, battered cream-skinned girl, I’ll go listen to you sing Fatalité, yes I saw you with your hand on Yinn’s hip, you’re in love, boy what a dolled up corpse you’re going to make, cream everywhere, yes I saw you two, you’re in love, and the more I look at you Fatalité, the more alone I feel, it didn’t use to be that way but experience wears you down, kills you, here I’m leaving you a syringe, you’ll see, g’night Jason and g’night Yinn, what they do with what’s left of us, you’ll have to pay ’cause I’m broke Yinn, I know you told me always to have some cash on me just in case, just in case, Fatalité is what I am, look I don’t like to ask but will you leave my lamp on 24/7 so people won’t forget me, I’m sorry Yinn but you’ll have to dip into your savings too, I love you brother, adieu Yinn, that’s what he left on his cellphone, words coming in rushes, broke . . . I haven’t got a thing . . . then nothing as though he just ceased to be, hello, it’s me Fatalité, Dieudonné confirmed it was all over, Fatalité confided to him only yesterday, the epidemic’s back and they’re all ignoring it Doctor, but you know Dieudonné, you see the plague victims every day, in the office and the infirmary, they just don’t want to know, Doctor, you’d have to yell and scream and still they wouldn’t listen, I really liked this kid, Dieudonné said to Petites Cendres, are you taking your meds Petites Cendres, by everything that matters, don’t ever forget we have no one to care for us but ourselves, don’t bother looking round, there’s no one in charge but you, okay Doctor, I don’t need telling again, I’m fine, don’t worry about me, replied Petites Cendres feeling hounded on all sides, with Fatalité’s last words engraved on his brain, Dieudonné was leaving bag in hand, I’ve got to be up early tomorrow to drive the girls to school, not staying out all night like you, see Petites Cendres, Fatalité’s shown you where it can get you, yeah, yeah Doctor, say no more was his answer, I do most of my work at night, that way customers don’t see the spots on my face, why don’t you just go and sleep my friend said Dieudonné, any sleep you can get is good, so Petites Cendres tried to change the subject by complaining that Yinn had to pay for all this, but that was all he could say about what he felt except that Yinn was so kind it tormented him, beauty and kindness, probably irreconcilable, or perhaps Yinn’s beauty was only inside and spilled out all the brilliance of his spirit on us all, his indefinable blue gaze, so much so that next morning Petites Cendres felt he’d seen Yinn act like a leader after being so feminine onstage the night before, pink-sequined bikini under a long navy blue fake-fur coat like a dressing gown, a majestic queen in high heels, now a tough guy, practically a brawler, onstage at the cabaret telling everyone what to do, repeating what Jason had said down there on the dock, when we get there it will be sundown, it doesn’t matter we’ll walk right to the end in special groups, walk even if it gets dark early in winter and we’ll still all be there together, his voice thickening when it pronounced Fatalité’s name, his sister will be there, he had a sister you know, and she’ll be there, and they’ll step forward into the streets together, Petites Cendres thought to himself, with Yinn in the lead, this time dressed with restraint as a boy in a red vest, cargo Bermudas, and sandals, the bouquet of orchids with round bulbous flowers he held to his chest would surely be as heavy to bear as any crucifix, we’ll go right to the end of the dock, Yinn with Fatalité’s sister — nobody even knew he had one — crying for her big brother, no, none of us knew, and yes the bouquet of orchids for a cross, ashes beneath them, walk said Yinn, let’s walk, his voice firm, the show has to go on again at ten, and Fatalité wouldn’t want us to let people down Yinn said, I wonder thought Petites Cendres, does he remember bathing Fatalité that same day when he said laughing, you’ll see, Yinn, I’ll be there for the show tonight, no promising I’ll stay till dawn like the rest of you of course, but you’ll see, Yinn, I’ll be there, oh so you’re soaping my back with gloves on to protect your artist’s hands, eh Yinn, eh, go on my friend, I’m that infected kid from Africa, I’m Rosinah Motshewwa and I’m twenty-nine, and you’re from some humanitarian association in South Africa bathing me, washing me, Rosinah, and my two brothers are unemployed, I have one small child, that’s right it’s me, do you see those lesions beneath my staring eyes, and you’re holding my head so I don’t give way to panic, you see it in my eyes, on my trembling lips that hurt so much, I actually saw Rosinah in a newspaper and I thought how alike we were, she and I, you and your rubber gloves bathing me, washing me, go ahead my friend and don’t think for a moment I won’t be there with you tonight, and Yinn, leading the procession, knowing the sun was hidden behind thick February clouds, was revisiting the scene of Fatalité’s bath, eyes wide with panic as Fatalité took on the name of Rosinah Motshewwa, twenty-nine — better rest, you’re hallucinating, Yinn helped him stretch on the bed, maybe a beer would do you some good, Jason could bring you a cold one, then just have a nap, I’ll be right here with you tonight; Fatalité’s my name, Fatalité, and I’m twenty-nine, Yinn there at the head of the procession, and what was he thinking, walk, keep walking, we’ve got a show advertised for ten and tonight we’re taking up a collection, nobody realized how flat broke he was, can you believe it, Yinn in a red vest and orchids pressed against his chest heavy as a crucifix thought Petites Cendres, Yinn told them all as they walked along, remember those songs he loved, and Yinn sang them into the teeth of the February wind,