The Story of the Cannibal Woman

TWELVE

Fiela, he always forgave me, I who was not beyond reproach, who, I confess, had been unfaithful before. Did you ever cheat on Adriaan?

For it was at the very moment when Stephen had shown her so much indulgence and kindness that she had cruelly wounded him. At the very moment when, thanks to him, she ventured out once again into life without crutches. As if she had wanted to assess the strength she had regained by hitting the person dearest to her heart.

One evening, she was fed up with eating out of a tray on her knees in her room in front of a dreary television, despite its 126 channels, and decided to join the guests in the living room. She was amazed at their warm welcome. As if they were glad she was healed and back on earth. As if Stephen had been right when he claimed they loved her but never dared show it. It was the usual clique: specialists from the English and Comparative Literature Departments, with or without their spouses — at the mercy of that frightful species, the babysitter — favorite students, and Fina. Not only had Fina and Rosélie made up, but during those dark days Fina had proved to be her most loyal friend, wrapping her in tenderness and consideration. Stephen was fluttering around a stranger, obviously trying to charm him and include him in his crowd of admirers. When she came up, he hurriedly introduced her in his usual way:

“My wife, Rosélie.”

Smiles. Handshakes.

Love at first sight seems to belong to the outmoded props of melodrama. Today, most adults no longer believe in it any more than children believe in Father Christmas. Yet, that evening, Rosélie discovered its vitality and its powers.

Born and raised in Manhattan, Ariel was the son of a mestizo father, whose parents were an Amerindian from Colombia and a Japanese woman from Hawaii. His mother was the daughter of a Haitian and a Polish Jew whose parents had narrowly escaped the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. He spoke five languages fluently, each with the same foreign accent. He had so much mixed blood in him that he was unable to say which race he belonged to. What’s more, he was handsome. A handsomeness that was not particular to any one people, as if every category of human had harmoniously combined to create him. His skin was copper-colored, his thick hair curly black, and his full eyebrows perfect arcs above his eyes. Oh, the eyes, those windows of the soul, large and luminous, though somewhat languishing.

After a while, Ariel and Rosélie felt the need to get away from the hubbub of these irksome individuals desperately discussing Ridley Scott’s latest film, the tribulations of the Palestinians, and the famine in Ethiopia. To be alone together! The only refuge left was Rosélie’s studio, where only close friends were admitted. Yet, here she was letting in this man she had only just met.

Ariel inspected each canvas as a connoisseur and delivered his verdict. In his opinion, she was influenced by the German neo-Expressionists. Her painting was so violent, somber, and virile whereas she appeared so feminine and gentle. So she too liked monkeys, those miniature humans with the eyes of a clairvoyant. Did she know the story of that señora in Cuba who housed all sorts of chimpanzees in her palace? Had she ever visited Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul in Mexico City? No? The power of art that forges a dialogue through time and space!

In fact, he was a friend of Fina’s. He ran a community arts center in the Bronx called La América in honor of José Marti, his hero. La América was unlike any other center. First of all, classes and supplies were free. Knowledge should not have to be paid for. Second, it had as its motto the phrase by Montaigne “An honest man is a many-sided man.” Although the center was mainly frequented by Latinos, given its location, it also attracted a fair number of young African-Americans, Caribbeans, and Asians. In fact, there was a bit of everything: old people of both sexes and every color who, after a life of hard work, were indulging in the delights of creativity, junkies endeavoring to replace one passion with another, the idle rich wanting to invent an occupation, the destitute trying to forget their destitution, atheists, and religious fanatics. All of them learned the essential truth, which may sound simplistic, that Art is the only language on the surface of the planet that can be shared without distinction of race or nationality, the two scourges preventing communication among men. At the end of the year Ariel would organize an exhibition and sale of his students’ work, the only materialistic activity permitted in this temple of spirituality where profit was spurned. Connoisseurs came from every country in South America. One year a group arrived from Japan, and another year some Senegalese traveled from Kaolack. The Spoleto Festival regularly bought several paintings. A few months earlier The New York Times had devoted an entire page to him: “Ariel Echevarriá, a man of globality, not globalization.”

Ariel ardently begged her to join him in this major project of his and teach painting (free) at La América.

Normally Rosélie would have rejected such an offer, with or without payment. The prospect of dealing with thirty undisciplined and quarrelsome students would have scared her off. But the times were not normal. It was the dawn of a new life.

Elie, the model husband, had gone to fetch the midwife. The baby girl presented well. Soon she would emerge from Rose’s womb, not as a pale, skinny newborn that only her mother’s milk and devotion would keep on this side of the world, but as a strong, beautiful child, ready for life’s adventures. Rose sang to her the barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann:

Belle nuit, succède au jour,

A nos douleurs, fais trêve.

Confused, Rosélie had trouble finding her words. Yet Ariel, who could already read her thoughts, knew that her silence meant she accepted. He then asked her when she could come to La América to meet the students and begin her mission.

On the other side of the bay windows, the slow procession of cars streamed along Riverside Drive while the mosaic of illuminated skyscrapers glittered in the distance. Nobody could say how this tête-à-tête would have ended if Fina, out of curiosity, hadn’t pushed open the door. She clapped her hands when she heard of Rosélie’s plans. Wasn’t this what she had been hoping for all these years? By breaking her dependence on Stephen, she would be able to prove to herself and everyone else her unusual talent. At the same time the expression in her dark eyes, almond-shaped beneath the knot of Frida Kahlo — like eyebrows, indicated she was not fooled as to the nature of Rosélie’s feelings, that she was overjoyed and offered her complicity.

Once the guests had left, however, Stephen ridiculed her plans with his usual verve. He was not venal. But why would she work for nothing? This volunteer work masked the regrettable exploitation of man by man, glorified in the name of Art. Did she realize the boredom and exhaustion involved in teaching? Besides, she wasn’t qualified to teach. Every man to his trade and there’ll be no complaints. As for this Ariel, he was an ambiguous individual. It was rumored he swung both ways. Where did the money he invested in the center come from? Some people accused him of having close ties with the drug world. More seriously, though, La América was based on an absurd utopia, a childish premise straight out of one of John Lennon’s songs.

And the world will be one.

Men, women, and children of every country, of every color, workers or not, unite under the banner of Art. To think that we all have a budding talent just waiting to be tapped, how naive can you get! Some are born talented. Some are geniuses. Others are nobody at all. He had gone with Fina to an exhibition of the students’ work at La América. Pathetic! But nobody dared tell the truth to the Bronx. Tell the truth and run.

Rosélie did not contradict Stephen but did as she pleased. The next morning, no sooner had he turned his back than she went out, much to Linda’s dismay. For months she hadn’t breathed in the smells of New York. The city was in a festive spring mood and Nature was singing like Charles Trenet:

Y a de la joie!

Partout, y a de la joie!

The sun was laughing at the blue corners of the sky. All along Broadway the cherry trees were budding, waist deep in a splash of forsythia blooms. She took her seat in a bus that, cleaving the city, climbed up and up toward the Bronx, taking on an increasingly somber, increasingly humble, and increasingly hospitable humanity as it slowly progressed. When a black kid sitting next to her placed his hand on her knee in a friendly gesture, she felt that the contact that had been broken, through no fault of her own, had been renewed again after all these years.

To tell the truth, La América was a nondescript place. It was a former lunatic asylum, a two-story brick house topped by a small tower called the Turret of the Raving Mad where they used to lock up patients in straitjackets. It now housed Ariel’s apartment. The Center was located in a secluded alley, behind a shabby plot of grass, cluttered with various transportation devices used by teachers and students alike, such as bicycles, roller skates, and skateboards, for they loathed technology and gas pollutants as much as they hated material gain. Rosélie soon noticed that at La América Art and Politics made strange bedfellows. The teachers, most of them refugees disowned by their governments, felt no gratitude toward their American savior. They constantly criticized U.S. foreign policy, and at the slightest pretext would demonstrate in the street, brandishing banners and defying the police. A march against the U.S. intervention in Somalia emptied the Pottery and Sculpture Department for weeks on end.

Professionally speaking, Stephen was right. Rosélie had no qualifications to teach. A classroom is a bit like a circus arena in which the lion tamer risks being devoured by his cubs at any moment. Rosélie, however, had no intention of taming anyone. She tolerated everything, imposed nothing, and thus liberated their creativity. Furthermore, as she had never known how to use words, she listened. For hours on end, sitting in her tiny office after class, she was almost carried away by the torrent of students’ stories. Mothers battered by depraved husbands. Sisters drawn and quartered. Brothers robbing, raping, and murdering. Cousins dead from an overdose. Or else their bodies riddled with bullets by the police or rival gangs. Young boys and girls just out of prison or detoxification centers. Orphans killing themselves to feed their siblings. A fifteen-year-old taking care of her handicapped parents all on her own. By comparison her life seemed privileged. Even the quarrels between Rose and her Don Juan of a husband paled in comparison. Insipid. Despite her low regard for literature, she was dying to put these dramatic tales on paper and submit them to a major publishing house on the Left Bank, thus revealing the other side of the American Dream, the distress and abject misery hidden under the clichés: “the most powerful nation in the world” or “the triumph of democracy.” But they would accuse her of exaggerating and lapsing into pessimism and despair.

People prefer schmaltzy stories. Exotic tales from the Caribbean. Once-upon-a-time stories. Spicy perfumes.

Life is marvelous. If you haven’t noticed, you haven’t hung your plow upon a star. Arab proverb!

In short, it wasn’t long before the students at La América, like its director, were conquered by their new mistress.

“Love, the only love that exists,” wrote André Breton. “Carnal love, I adore, I’ve never stopped adoring your poisonous shadow, your fatal shadow.”

Rosélie and Ariel made love every day after classes in the Turret of the Raving Mad. I leave it up to you to imagine the scene.

This lasted a month, six months, perhaps a year. They lost track of time.

One morning — the memory of it shut out by her conscience still haunted her — this guilty happiness came to an end. Very suddenly. It was winter: a winter of ice and frost common to New York. The voracious beast had blown down from Canada, leaving a whirlwind of snow in its wake. It had frozen at dawn and the slippery crust on the sidewalks glistened in the timid morning sun. Wrapped up to their eyes, passersby groped their way along. At La América, students and teachers were crowded in the yard. The amazing news was on everyone’s lips: Ariel had been arrested.

The pigs had picked him up at dawn. They accused him of having ties with drug dealers and laundering money on their behalf. La América was closed. Classes suspended.

Rosélie collapsed into the arms of Stephen, who once again said not a word of reproach.

What can passion be compared to? To a hurricane, David, Hugo, or Belinda, that swoops down on the island and ravages it entirely. There is nothing you can do about a hurricane except wait for its fury to pass. And that’s what he had done. He had tried to warn her, to whisper that Ariel was a shady character. But had she been listening? Rosélie’s chagrin was mixed with a feeling of humiliation. So she had fallen for a crook, one of those petty criminals that America produces by the thousand, a crony of Manuel Noriega’s. The papers are full of their pitiful exploits. Because of him, she had hurt the best of men, the most perfect of companions. For although Stephen hadn’t breathed a word, it was obvious he had suffered. He who was so fussy about his appearance, maniacal to the point of ironing his shirts himself and sending a suit back to the cleaners three times because of a crease in the trousers, now wore a shapeless pullover and a wrinkled pair of jeans. His hair curled down over his collar. His face was gaunt and haggard. He hadn’t written one line or given a paper for months. He skipped through his classes.

Fina asserted just the opposite. While struggling to keep her weight down along the frozen paths of Riverside Park, she maintained that Ariel was an idealist, crazy about Art, with his head in the clouds. It basically boiled down to a political conspiracy. The State Department had wanted to destroy La América, a den of subversion. As for his swinging both ways, that was pure slander. Dozens of beauties could honestly swear that Ariel was a lover of women. Despite all her efforts, she couldn’t manage to convince Rosélie to take the train to a prison in upstate New York. It’s in B movies that lovers exchange tearful looks through the glass of the visiting room.

Ariel was freed after three months. No charge could be held against him. La América’s books were in order. Its respected donors included a Saudi prince, a Kuwaiti, and a descendant of Winston Churchill.

The Center reopened its doors. But the enthusiasm had gone. Teachers and students alike had fled. In the empty classrooms there remained only a dozen students and two teachers: a Spanish anarchist, master in the technique of azulejos, and a Japanese communist, enamored of Gothic painting.

Using Fina as a go-between, Ariel sent Rosélie a series of enigmatic and passionate letters begging her not to confuse those who adored her with those who used her as a screen. She didn’t answer. Not that she didn’t love him anymore. On the contrary, when she thought of him, her entire being melted. Water poured from every part and every orifice of her body. And then she couldn’t stop dreaming of the world they had hoped to build at La América. A world enamored of Art, diversity, and tolerance. Nobody would have to shoulder a prefabricated identity any longer, like a deadly garrote strangling the neck. A black woman could curl up in peace beside her white man. But the idea of hurting Stephen was unbearable. Never again. She’d rather die.

This enraged Fina.

“You’re sacrificing yourself for nothing! For nothing!” she maintained.

For nothing?

“Is it Stephen you’re calling nothing?” she choked each time Fina said it.

Fina was seething, but didn’t answer.

One afternoon, beside herself, she stopped dead in the middle of the park and began yelling at all the echoes:

“Yes! Your Stephen is de la mierda. Do you hear me? De la mierda!”

As a good Latina, Fina had accustomed Rosélie to cut-and-dried expressions such as coño, carajo, and other curse words. But the friendship between the two women was unable to survive this one. They stopped seeing each other. Shortly afterward, Fina slammed the door on the university and went back to Venezuela, where she made a name for herself as a moviemaker. She made an autobiographical film of her childhood as an alienated bourgeois. Her only link with the people was her black grandmother, who was a magician and storyteller. About the same time, Ariel, in a more somber mood, retired to a plot of land inherited from his parents in Jérémie. The only access was by boat. It was an arid and bare piece of land where only columnar and hedge cactus grew. At night their gangling shapes could be taken for silhouettes of the dead who often wandered around in the dark. In Haiti, such things surprise no one. They call it marvelous realism. See René Depestre. Ariel tried to re-create an art school on the lines of La América. Unfortunately, in this famished country, people are ravenous for dollars. Unable to muster any volunteer teachers, he had to close the school. He ended up marrying Anthénor, pet name Sonore, the peasant woman who cooked him his pork griot and sweet potato bread. He gave her nine children, three of whom died as infants.