The Heart of the Leopard Children (9 page)

Waking out of her drowsiness, Mireille started on Kamel, criticizing his attitude, his way of speaking, she's had enough of hanging out with guys like him! But it must have been written somewhere that that night was ours. For I had no problem taking her home. Oh Mireille, in the quiet of the night, our kisses were each time more intense, hands all over the body, liquid desire, you undressed me, possessed by an aching hunger for pleasure that had to be satisfied. Her skirt pulled far up on her stomach, Mireille melts into love and holds me tight. Confined in the car, overwhelmed by desire, the culmination of our union, it was our very first time!

On the vacant lot, Kamel kept rolling his joint while he asked Drissa why he'd had an argument with Carole. Drissa should not have let her take off with that son of a bitch Ludovic. All Drissa had to do was say the word and he'd go right over and beat the shit out of him. The only response Drissa had was to get high, take a long puff that kept him propelling far away up into the gentle, peaceful night air, a sensation of warmth and lightness, an ephemeral but absolutely reassuring caress. They found a sort of communion in the crackling of the marijuana as it continued to burn out as they passed it back and forth between them. The body releases, relaxes, softens, thousands of images of happiness and simplicity flood the mind. Time passes easily and life finally feels good.

Mireille invited me inside her, guided me with her hands resting on the small of my back. At first I let her set the rhythm of my movements. Once the pain had passed, she let herself go completely. I stripped her and made passionate love to her. She sat on the back seat with me in front of her, almost standing in the middle of her body, my hands stuck to the speakers, my chest on her face, distorted from all the convulsions and panting. The cramped space of the car yielded the sunniest meadow.

Kamel and Drissa were no longer talking on the vacant lot. They'd stretched out, just letting their salutary hallucination run its course from head to toe, a wild feeling in the night, nothing else existed, blood and bones were forgotten, had melted away, and a beautiful light embraced the whole area. There was no more country, no past, no future. They just simply felt really good.

A minute, an hour or more, perhaps less, time no longer mattered. Barely coming down off his trip, Kamel decided it was time to take care of the fucking cop car, but Drissa could no longer hear him, he was on his own planet, a big smile on his face.

Fast asleep, Mireille was holding me tight against her chest when Kamel approached us. She'd asked me not to pull out. I was enjoying the pleasure of feeling her body loosening up. She held me for a long
time in her arms, maternally, sighing deeply, alternating kisses with gentle caresses of my hair. We'd barely fallen asleep when Kamel surprised us. Hey love birds, I've got work to do! He had the decency to step away so that we could quickly get dressed, still intoxicated from our lovemaking. Our first time was so beautiful that we never spoke about it. Words can so easily spoil what belongs only in memory.

Mireille, my darling, my love, my peace, this irreplaceable magic, when I'm dozing off, my face against your breast.

My sleep is disturbed by loud bangs and faraway screams that gradually come closer and eventually surprise me. Earlier, I heard the dreadful howling of a desperate woman. She was screaming hysterically, refusing to believe that her husband had left her. Where had he gone? What will become of their little Marie? She's going to wait for him no matter what. This is all just a nightmare, a bad joke. She insists that someone take a phone and call him right away! Other tremulous voices try to console her, they are truly sorry. Some even join her in her sobbing. I imagine her struggling, stuck in some kind of a trance. I would love for her to come and join me in my hole so we can share our pain. She's looking for the son-of-a-bitch, the real piece of shit that he is. You have to be a real monster to do something like that, and since I understand her all too well, let me be the one to call for help, so that they can free me and put an end to the injustice and reign of these ferocious beasts. She's screaming at the top of her lungs, and I'm going out of my mind in my cell. Our mutual distress forms a singular disturbing body. Madam, I don't know you but I feel as though I already love you. We're already joined together for eternity in this revolt of those skinned-alive, confined to a life of incomprehension that we have had to give up on, accept to never know who we are, and never truly understand the meaning of our actions. You're already crying for the life you had with your husband and that you now have to mourn. I have also lost. The anguish of absence.

A few minutes later, a deafening blow to the body followed by the sound of a bone snapping. It's me that they're beating. Let me sleep
and remember. I'm so exhausted. It feels like a bunch of them are hitting me and roughing me up; or are some of them actually trying to protect me? It's a ballet of confusion between the uniforms, all the insults, the calls to order. Murderer, he was a family man, he left behind a wife, a young baby who will never know him, all because of you, we're going to crush you and bleed you dry like a pig.

I can also sing songs, blues filled with gallons of broken hearts. If you took the time to listen to me just for one minute, I could mesmerize you with funeral tunes that would make your soul cry.

I'm like a boat caught in a storm, my body at the mercy of forces greater than me. They're dragging me all over the place, to the right, to the left, up, and down. Stop. Let the courts do their job. Strangely enough, I don't feel any pain. I kind of like these sudden chaotic moves, they lull me in their own unique way. I get to escape from everything.

I enter into the body of the ancestors, when as a child, one morning I almost drowned in the turbulent waters of the Congo River. I suddenly found myself surrounded by this fierce, uncontrollable body of liquid, torturing and consoling me all at the same time, a warm and bitter sensation, torrid and deadly. My eyes keep opening and closing, frightened at the lure of the void. Life is so ludicrous that I sometimes wish it could just be over, I could take off for a whole new experience, head toward the end and finally rid myself of all this dead weight. The problem is I'm actually afraid to leave it all behind.

Once, when they were swimming among friends, the ancestor decided to take the challenge out of sheer bravado and dive into the capricious and dangerous waters. A group of about six or seven cheerful boys who'd been playing and had gotten all hot and sweaty, and one of them suggested they all go swimming. No one wanted to admit that they were afraid of the river; the fact that it was prohibited was enough to motivate them. Some of them jumped in right away. The ancestor was among the last ones to get into the thick liquid green mass. The idea was to swim against the current for about ten meters and meet up by the floating weeds. The bravest among them
had already come to the surface and started to tease him. Further downstream, the rapids were dangerously rumbling their call, or might it have been the cry of those who had drowned, all of those souls forever detained in the intricate winding paths of the rocks?

Watch out, they whispered. He had now gone beyond the view of the riverbank. The red and black sky became his universe; deadly fright his only companion. He was swimming and drowning, abandoned to the capricious and hazardous temperament of the waters. He was getting tired, his screams stifled among the enormous bubbles. The hand of death held him in its grip. Disoriented, he gave up all hope. The course of the river was about to triumph.

This aquatic journey lasted a few minutes, ebbing and flowing between the visible and invisible worlds. At times, he was a prisoner ready to return to the great universe of those spirits who had gone on before. At other times, when his head came up above water, he had a chance to fill up his lungs with vital oxygen, nourish himself with the light of day, scream, and call out for help. Standing on the bank of the river, the boys who finally realized the impending disaster did not hesitate to take off as fast as their legs could carry them.

The ancestor had no difficulty recognizing the beauty of a life well led, a life of peace and calm, filled with mystical beings. A universe of peace, fairness, and serenity. During this perilous journey, the fragility of men, their multiple essences came before him in the form of a mysterious figure, an image worn by time. A sign from above, he was fighting so that his eyes and the meaning of the message in his gaze could conquer the flow of the currents. An old man, whose hair had turned white over time, was supporting him. Barely able to hold himself upright but determined on maintaining his dignity with the help of a cane, this man implored the dead to leave him to continue on with his life. In that very moment, he was named a herald so that he could wear, alongside his flesh and his blood as a man, the breath of the leopard under his skin.

I'm drowning and reviving over yonder. Everything is getting mixed up again, the water coming downstream from the cascade,
the brawl that my head, my arms, and my legs are having a hard time taking refuge from. I'm just letting myself go. Flow, pain, I'm opening my arms up to you, bring me days of hope. At that moment, a branch falls right into the palm of my hand, I cling to it, a miracle has happened. The departure that I'd finally accepted is receding and I can now gather up whatever strength I have left to courageously drag myself over to the roots, solidly planted at the riverbank hundreds of years ago. I can hear a melancholic farewell song rising up from the depths of the rapids. The heart of the shipwrecked victims has brought me back to life. They are watching over me while I doze off, after having cried for so long over my unforgettable pain and anguish. I'm in turmoil. I've been in a thunderstorm for generations, it's written on my body. Finally I can sleep soundly.

I can remember my first steps on French soil. I was so enchanted. It was the month of January. That very first leap of a child coming out of the airplane and my disappointment when I realized that in the world I had dreamed about for so long, it was raining, cold bad weather, gray skies, punctuated by disturbing mechanical sounds. I'd imagined a gentle sun, a wonderland, covered by an immense glass dome under which White people ran around, living together in harmony. I'd imagined that they had succeeded in creating a world of profound humanity, alleviated of most material preoccupations.

Almost immediately, I was greeted by the harshness of the cold. It gripped me in the face, froze my fingers with a stinging sensation, all terribly painful, a horrible surprise when I opened my luggage. There I was, a shocked, whining child. I lost my way trying to get back home. Since that time, I have slowly settled into jails of differences.

What are you? Chinese? I smile with my old fear of light-colored blue eyes, they remind me of raw flesh, not to speak of that angular nose, pointed like the arrows of warriors on the day of the parade celebrating Independence. As a child, I was always immensely sad to see these people condemned to suffer just so they could breathe like the rest of us. Luckily Mireille was there, sitting next to me in kindergarten. She would grab my hand that was clinging tightly to
our teacher's hand. Together we would pace up and down in the courtyard.

Amazing Mireille. She instinctively understood the pain of exile, and yet we were only five years old! She would wear short “little girl” dresses, and I never missed an opportunity to notice her poorly fitted white cotton panties that left her pink buttocks exposed. Mireille also came to my rescue during the
galette des rois
cake celebration.
²
I had no idea what was going on, neither the language nor the tradition. I had bitten into the bean and they all screamed in chorus, it's him, he has it, he has it! Enthusiasm and reproach can get mixed up in the mind of a person who doesn't know what's going on. I started crying my heart out. Mireille cleverly positioned herself with authority right next to me and passed her frail arms around my waist. She was my queen right from the beginning, my personal savior in adversity.

School is important! The words of the ancestor kept resonating in my tiny chest to the point that I couldn't stop stumbling. Don't forget that this is not your home. You have the burden of being a foreigner. You have to be better than the White man otherwise he'll hate you. Luckily, Mireille's little hand was there to hold mine, swinging it joyfully up and down. She gave me blue, green, and so many tons of red to have the courage to withstand so much.