The Story of the Cannibal Woman

TWENTY

At six forty-five the sound of the telephone ringing drew Rosélie from her bed. It was Inspector Lewis Sithole.

He did not apologize for calling so early, for he had an excellent reason. As he had predicted two days earlier, Bishupal had decided to squeal, as they say. Mrs. Hillster was right, he wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Even less Stephen. It wasn’t him. It was Archie Kronje. It was an incredible story. Archie had got it into his head to blackmail Stephen. He had asked him therefore to bring three thousand U.S. dollars in cash and to meet him in front of the Pick ’n Pay. But he misjudged him. Stephen had in fact gone to the appointed meeting empty-handed, in a fighting mood and threatening to inform the police of his drug dealing. The quarrel had turned vicious and Archie had fired. The murder weapon apparently was at his poor mother’s, wrapped in a towel hidden under a pile of sheets.

Fiela, Fiela, you have shown me the way. To be done with life. Living is a bitter potion, a purgative, a calomel I can no longer swallow.

For days on end Rosélie abandoned her consultations and remained in her room, virtually from morning to night and night to morning, lying prostrate on her bed. Despite the increasingly bitter cold, she kept the windows wide open in order to counter the feeling of suffocation that was creeping over her. She never closed her eyes. On a clear night she could count the stars, which twinkled for hours on end, then suddenly were snuffed out like candles on a birthday cake. The moon was the last to disappear, swaying on its swing until dawn. But when the nights were ink-black, she would watch the air slowly whiten, the sky turn gray, and the silhouette of Table Mountain loom up, pachydermatous, like an elephant emerging from the bushes. First of all, only the natural elements of the decor came to light: the clouds, the pines, and the rocks. Then the humans appeared. The first tourists took up their positions around the cable-car station. A new day was dawning.

Andy Warhol said that we would all be famous for fifteen minutes of our lives.

Rosélie had not foreseen that the Cape Tribune, The Observer, and other dailies and weeklies would snatch up her story so that thousands of readers who had never heard of her could relish it. That photos of Stephen, Bishupal, Archie, and her — my God, what do I look like, am I really so ugly? — would be splashed over the front pages. Admittedly, the details were juicy.

The honorable professor of literature, the specialist of Joyce and Seamus Heaney who was writing a critical study of Yeats and had made a name for himself in college theater productions, murdered a few months earlier, was in fact leading a double life. No doubt about it, nowhere is safe nowadays, and the university’s no better than the church. After the pedophile priests and bishops, here are the professors slumming it. My God, whom can we trust our children with? What do these false mentors teach them? Vice, nothing less. The papers reeled off fictionalized biographies of Stephen. They had readers believe that this admired, respected, and celebrated professor had secretly accumulated a series of dirty tricks. In Africa, his well-placed connections had got him out of a tight corner. But in New York, where love is a many splendored thing, a minor had filed a lawsuit and Stephen had had to leave to flee a prison sentence.

These unfortunate circumstances, however, had a positive side to them. The journalists had discovered that the companion of this modern-day Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Rosélie Thibaudin, originally from Guadeloupe, a Caribbean island under French domination — some still are, a smattering of islands, two or three pieces of confetti on the ocean — who was totally unaware of her partner’s misdemeanors — how blind can you get, women are so stupid — was a painter. Misfortune often works like a magnet. Anxious to get a closer look at this poor dupe, people made a beeline for Faure Street. They hadn’t counted on Dido’s presence of mind. Thanks to her, the house had become a trap. Not only were they wasting their time — Rosélie was invisible, wrapped in her grief, far from prying eyes — but they weren’t allowed to leave until they had visited her studio. Although they had hoped for better, her paintings were so dark, so unattractive, in other words, not at all exotic, they were obliged to dig deep into their pockets. Dido was the one who fixed the price, admittedly depending on the person, and tolerated no excuses. She took her job as manager very seriously. That’s how she not only sold two paintings to Bebe Sephuma, attracted like everybody else by the smell of scandal, for her house in Constantia, but also dragged out of her the promise of simultaneous exhibitions, one in Cape Town and the other in Jo’burg. That evening, taking a bowl of soup up to Rosélie, she counted up with satisfaction the day’s takings and remarked:

“You see, some good always comes out of evil. It’s a law of nature.”

Rosélie, who could only see her life in ruins, had trouble making out the contours of good.

She was ashamed and she was hurting.

Sometimes she had the strength to leave her room, leave the bed that everyone had scorned, and climb up to her studio. Her canvases gave her a cool reception.

We are tired of waiting, they complained. We’ve done nothing to hurt you. Can’t you understand that we’ll never betray you, like your men have done, one after the other? We’ll always be faithful to you.

She tried to explain. Pain and shame had swooped down on her, wreaking havoc on her, obscuring her convictions. She must get control of herself and think things through.

Did she really want to leave Cape Town? To go where? And find what? The indifference of Paris? The emptiness of Guadeloupe? Who was she? Who did she want to be? A painter? A clairvoyant? She invariably ended up losing hope in her wrecked life.

That morning she got dressed very early so as not to keep Papa Koumbaya waiting. Despite Dido’s efforts to dissuade her, she had made up her mind to pay Bishupal a visit.

“What do you hope to get out of that little bastard?” Dido fumed. “You’ll just hurt yourself even more, that’s all.”

I hope to understand.

Understand what?

What is there to understand?

Inspector Lewis Sithole, who was now a daily visitor to Faure Street, thought along the same lines.

“She’d do best to put all that behind her,” he repeated to Dido, who highly approved.

Behind me? It’s a vicious circle: If I haven’t understood, even if I can’t forget, how can I manage to grin and bear it? And start off again along life’s bumpy road.

As unlikely as it may seem to those who know the age-old hatred between blacks and coloureds, Dido and Lewis were having a love affair. Rosélie, in fact, was the culprit. Through drinking endless cups of coffee in the kitchen, lamenting on life’s unfathomable machinations, Lewis and Dido had grown closer together. Lewis, who owned a secondhand Toyota, had offered to drive Dido home to Mitchell Plains. First he had stayed for dinner and then the night, when he had performed as well as any other.

Blushing like a virgin, Dido confided in anyone within hearing distance:

“He’s not very handsome, but he’s got a heart as good as gold.”

She was now planning to rent her house and move in with Lewis in an ultramodern apartment block built by the police in False Bay. Her relationship with the Inspector assured her all the papers for free and firsthand knowledge of criminal cases. That’s how she learned that Bishupal’s defense was proving difficult. Beneath his angelic looks, he had a stubborn streak. He refused to follow the strategy advocated by his lawyer, once again a young fellow officially appointed to the case, but we know now we have to be careful of young lawyers officially appointed to the case. He refused to dissociate himself from Archie or accuse him. On the contrary, he claimed responsibility. He had approved the murder committed by his friend. He had even bought the gun.

The street emerged livid and shivering from the torment of the night. Rosélie was hurt.

How little I count! Whereas I had hit rock bottom, the world hadn’t budged. The gingerbread facades of the pastel-colored Victorian houses hadn’t moved. The bougainvillea glowed red against the wrought-iron railings. In the gardens the roses continued to perfume the air, which shimmered from their scent.

At the same time, she felt the unwitting exhilaration of being alive.

Floating through the streets, the warm, heady smell of the ocean, like that of tar, tickles my nose. The familiar hand of the wind stings my face.

Already up, armed with secateurs, Mrs. Schipper was inspecting her bushes, branch by branch. As usual, she did not deign turn her head in the direction of Rosélie and the Thunderbird. Had she read the editorials in the newspapers or watched television? Was she informed of the latest details of the tragedy that had been played out on her doorstep? Had she commented on the facts with her relatives and friends?

And what about the domestics arriving for work? And the night watchmen ending their guard duty? Furtive comings and goings. A murmur of respectful greetings.

“Goeimore!”

Nobody had shown any sympathy for Rosélie. Deogratias had continued to meditate the Beatitudes and snore as usual. Raymond had stopped visiting, yielding to evidence and reason. Only Dido and Lewis Sithole remained loyal, attentive to her every need.

The latter had given her a flag tree with salmon-colored flowers, which he planted himself at the foot of the traveler’s tree.

While awaiting his sentence, Bishupal was being detained at Pollsmoor, a former political prison now reserved for juvenile delinquents. The highway was already congested with all types of gleaming cars, full of people going about their business in the pursuit of money. Papa Koumbaya, who had said nothing when his hero Stephen bit the dust, continued to drone on as usual. She closed her ears. Under her tightly shut eyelids she watched a series of images file past. The worst thing is trying to imagine the unknown. To visualize a truth patched up like a photo torn to pieces and stuck together again.

She understood now why during the last summer vacation Stephen had left her alone in Wimbledon on the pretext of a colloquium on Oscar Wilde at the university of Aberdeen. She remembered how surprised she had been. In the middle of summer? He hadn’t even troubled to reply, stuffing his traveling bag determinedly. He had entrusted her to Andrew. In the evening they used to go and watch old films by Luis Buñuel. Since neither of them could cook, they would have a pub dinner. Despite his sullenness and silence, she was convinced he was a friend, whereas his only allegiance was to Stephen.

Pollsmoor Prison comprised an endless number of buildings linked by covered exercise yards. It was a hive of activity humming with police cars, vans, and scooters, and Rosélie had to show the pass Inspector Lewis Sithole had obligingly got for her over a dozen times. She finally found herself in a rectangular visiting room with cream-colored walls. As usual, there were very few whites. Only blacks. Mothers, yet again, recognizable by their tears and their looks of distress, were seated in front of glass partitions. You had to press a button and speak into a kind of ear trumpet. A dozen black and white police officers were pacing up and down, scowling and fingering their guns.

When Bishupal entered, flanked by a guard who shoved him to his seat, Rosélie had trouble recognizing him. He was dressed in oversized striped pajamas. His mane of silk had been ruthlessly shaven and his bare head appeared enormous, the color of old ivory, dappled in black. His emaciated face seemed to be just two huge eyes and he looked like a concentration camp survivor. All that, however, couldn’t deprive him entirely of his beauty, grace, and juvenile appeal. Rosélie felt a pang of jealousy.

“Why are you here?” he murmured savagely. “I didn’t want to see you. Then I told myself we have to get it over with. I had to come and tell you.”

Rosélie realized this was one of the few times she had heard his voice, pleasant, deep-sounding, and slightly nasal. Up till then he had only spoken in monosyllables with her:

“Here!”

“Thanks!”

“Many thanks!”

The perfect employee at the Threepenny Opera. The perfect poet’s apprentice. Who was he, in fact?

In its generosity, the Cape Tribune had depicted him as a depraved individual. He apparently lost his modest job at the Nepalese embassy because he sold his favors for visas. According to the paper, it was a lucrative business. Although the path to Kathmandu is less traveled nowadays, the rush has gone, but there are still tourists anxious to admire the Bhimsen Tower.

Following that, he is said to have prostituted himself.

Where exactly was the truth? It probably wavered somewhere between these two extremes. Rosélie thought she could read between the lines a story of solitude, naiveté, and dashed hopes.

She had prepared a little speech. But as usual the words disobeyed her. They fled in confusion left and right, and she remained silent, a sob sticking in her throat like a fishbone.

“He never loved you,” he said slowly, his eyes sparkling through the glass partition. “Never.”

She wasn’t expecting such spitefulness, which destroyed everything she had imagined.

“Neither me. Nor anyone else,” he continued. “He was only in love with himself. Stephen had no heart.”

“And you, did you love him?” she managed to stammer.

“There was a time I worshiped him,” he said without any emotion.

He leaned closer to the partition and hammered out between his clenched teeth:

“He got what he deserved. If we had to do it again, we would. Archie had the balls to do it. I lacked the courage.”

She heard herself burst into tears. He stared at her with the same coldness, then went on:

“Don’t feel sorry for us. There’s no point at all feeling sorry for us.”

There was silence.

“Even if we get fifteen or twenty years, we’ll be thirty-three, thirty-four when we get out. We’ll still have a life in front of us.”

He threw himself back and cruel-heartedly let out:

“For you it’s over with.”

The words burned through her.

“Why do you hate me?” she groaned.

He stood up in exasperation and motioned to the guard that the visit was over.

“You’re mistaken. I don’t hate you. I’ve no time for you. Don’t ever come back.”

He walked away, determined, resolute, and yet so helpless, so pathetic in the uniform that was too big for him, that Rosélie was heartbroken.

The interview hadn’t lasted five minutes.

Rosélie regained her room and returned to her bed with the window wide open to the chill and din of the city. She had always thought New York a noisy city. Cape Town was even noisier. At times its cacophony deafened her.

How can you possibly take your life when there are no barbiturates at hand? Go into the Pick ’n Pay and look for rat poison on the cleaning shelves? No Madame Bovary—type ending. The thought of Emma’s atrocious suffering took away all her determination. You cut your wrists like Fiela with a razor blade? She hadn’t the courage to do that either. How do you go about it? You lie down and wait for the end fixed by God. That’s what Rose did, nailed to her bed, slowly suffocating in her own fat.

Shortly before noon, Dido pushed open the door and announced mysteriously with a strangely overjoyed expression:

“Get dressed. You’ve got a visit.”

A visit? You know full well I don’t want to see anybody.

Dido insisted in the same enigmatic way:

“It’s not a reporter. It’s not a busybody either. He says he’s a friend of yours.”

A friend? How many friends do I have in this country? In Guadeloupe? In the whole wide world? Nobody loves me. Yet out of curiosity she got up, slipped on some clothes, and went downstairs.

A man was waiting for her in the living room. A white man. Tall, with a slight paunch, a full head of black hair, gray eyes, and tanned cheeks.

Where have I seen him before?

“Don’t you recognize me?” He smiled. “My name’s Manuel Desprez. But everyone calls me Manolo because I play the guitar in my spare time.”

It was like a record she heard for a second time. The memory came back to her. Tea at the Mount Nelson some months ago. Another professor! I hate the lot of them through having frequented them too much. This one teaches in the French Department. But English, French, Oriental Studies, they’re all the same. Same arrogance. Same conviction they belong to a superior species. The intellectual species.

I hear there was a major debate on Café Creole, a monthly program on Guadeloupe television, about the role of intellectuals. Nobody could come up with an answer and one person dared say they were useless.

But that’s another story.

“I didn’t come earlier,” he explained, “because I was sure you preferred to be alone during all this media fuss. I waited a little while, but you were always on my mind.”

His tone seemed sincerely sympathetic. She was so seldom treated to such feelings that Rosélie felt a lump in her throat. She almost burst into tears. He noticed it and clasped her to his chest and his scent of Hugo Boss.

“Have a good cry if you feel like it. In my family they tell me my shoulders are very comforting.”

She moved away, grimaced a smile, and stammered that no thank you, she’d be okay.

“Would you like me to take you to Clifton?” he proposed. “I know a place where they serve mussels and an excellent white wine. You’d think you were in Brussels.”

That too I’ve already heard somewhere before. It’s awful how men lack imagination.

Okay, let’s go to Clifton! She followed him to the door under the approving eye of Dido.

Once again Nature showed its indifference toward man’s affliction. Sunlight, radiant but freezing, flooded the streets. The sky was like a silky blue scarf dappled in white and spreading to infinity. The ocean immersed everything with its bitter smell of salt. The highway was still gleaming with cars full of carefree people. How unjust happiness is! Dispensed to some, denied to others. With no explanation.

The Sea Lodge at Clifton was a trendy restaurant for the natives. Few tourists. At this hour it was packed. Every head looked up and Rosélie rediscovered, like a familiar dress mislaid and forgotten, the contempt of a dozen pairs of hostile eyes. A white man with a Kaffir whore. Manuel Desprez seemed not to have noticed and was arguing with a waitress for a table on the terrace. Perhaps he was secretly excited by all these looks? Like Stephen? When they had been seated he took her hand across the table, to the fury of their neighbors.

“What you need is a change of air,” he asserted. “To travel. I’ve been invited to a guitar festival in Cadix. Would you like to come with me?”

She gave no reply, preferring to ask point-blank the same blunt question she had asked Dido.

“Did you know?”

He blushed, and this juvenile flush made him look thirty years younger.

“I suspected,” he confessed in a low voice. “Like everyone else. Quite a bit of gossip went round the department. There was a lot of whispering among the students and profs.”

That hadn’t prevented them from naming Stephen teacher of the year and giving him the complete works of Dollar Brand, knowing his love of jazz. He must be having a good laugh at their hypocrisy where he is now.

But what about me in all this? Wasn’t I being the most hypocritical? What did he think of me?

“Stephen loved you immensely, never doubt it,” he added awkwardly.

Really? Two days ago, someone well placed to know what he was talking about told me the complete opposite.

“Yes,” he insisted. “All those who knew him, who frequented him, knew it. He never stopped talking about you. He was very worried about you. He said you were hypersensitive, a tormented soul. All he wanted was to protect you.”

And yet he’s the one who finished me off, who killed me. Nothing unusual.

Each man kills the thing he loves.

“Let’s go to Cadix,” he repeated agreeably. “I’m the perfect traveling companion, discreet and obedient. I’ll do everything you want. If you like, I’ll just carry your cases for you.”

“Fanm tonbé pa janmin dézespéwé,” says the song from Guadeloupe. Bishupal, with the impertinence of his young age, was mistaken. The life of a woman is never over. There is always a man to help her continue on her path. Salama Salama had avenged her for the boredom and solitude of her adolescence. Stephen had prevented her from having a nervous breakdown after Salama Salama abandoned her. Faustin had brought her in from the cold after Stephen’s death. This Manuel was offering to console her for both Stephen’s and Faustin’s betrayal. But, in fact, all these providential rescuers were not helping her at all. All they did was distract her from herself. All they did was distract her from what should be the focus of her preoccupations. Her painting. What would her life have been like if in Paris she had not met Salama Salama, who had deafened her with his reggae music? If in N’Dossou she had not met Stephen, wrapped up in Seamus Heaney and Yeats? And Faustin in Cape Town, yearning for his nomination? She would probably have focused on herself. She wouldn’t have relegated her painting to the back burner and put her life on the line. She would have fought tooth and nail to perfect it and impose it.

She looked at Manuel Desprez. No doubt this fifty year-old, in good shape, three hours a week at the Equinox health club, an hour’s walk every day plus swimming, would make any woman happy in bed and an excellent lover. But she wouldn’t go with him to Cadix, prelude to a new affair of the heart or sex or both, which, in the more or less short term, would end in disillusionment. Yet another one. Furthermore, she no longer had the courage to go through everything she had gone through all these years and once again suffer exclusion and incomprehension. The mixed couple is a strong wine for strong constitutions. The fainthearted should abstain.

She had already wasted too much of her time.

Suddenly, she saw her future clearly mapped out for her in a straight line for the remaining years of her life.

Fiela, all things considered, you didn’t set an example. You chose to die. But it’s not a question of dying. It’s a question of living. Clinging to life. Obstinately.

She wouldn’t leave Cape Town. Suffering is equivalent to entitlement. She had earned this city. She had made it hers by reversing the journey of her ancestors, dispossessed of Africa, who had seen the isles loom up like a mirage to the fore of Columbus’s caravels, the isles where the cane and tobacco of their rebirth would germinate.

I shall no longer wear my heart out with loving. Why don’t we pay more attention to love songs and ballads? They hold the truth. When I was small, Rose, who still sang, though in a somewhat strangled voice, had one song she used to sing constantly. Listening from the cradle, I should have heeded the words:

Ah! N’aimez pas,

N’aimez pas sur cette terre!

Quand l’amour s’en va,

Il ne reste que les pleurs.

(Oh! I beg you not to love / not to love on this earth! / When love goes / Only tears remain.)

She looked at Manuel again, his handsome, considerate face, and said firmly:

“I won’t go with you to Cadix. I’ve never liked traveling. It was Stephen who forced me and I obeyed. Now I want to do as I please.”

He didn’t admit defeat and smiled.

“Then I won’t go either. I too am a stay-at-home. I’ll come back and see you, if you let me, and we’ll listen to Bach’s cello suites. Do you like Bach?”

After Verdi, Johann Sebastian Bach?

Rosélie dashed up to her studio, taking no notice of Dido idling on her kitchen doorstep like a madam curious for news. The windows had remained wide open. The five o’clock afternoon sun was pouring in, frigid. For those familiar with nuances, however, its glare was tarnished. Darkness was already lurking like a hungry beast prowling in the background. Gradually, Table Mountain would be defeated by the shadows of night and it would relinquish its watch over Cape Town. Then, from just about everywhere — the townships, the shantytowns, and the wastelands stretching to infinity — would emerge the cohorts of frustrated lovers who, unable to possess the city by daylight, took advantage of the night to ravage its body, finally vulnerable, accessible, and prostrate.

Rosélie carefully selected a canvas: forty-three inches by fifty-one. She fixed it to the wall. Grabbing a crayon, her hand drew in rapid, precise strokes a pair of eyes in the very middle. The eyes that had so impressed her. Drooping, half-slit eyes glowing between heavy lids. For those eyes, the surrounding world did not count. Only what boiled inside mattered and that remained a mystery. The entire face would be built around these eyes. Then, one by one, she unscrewed the tubes of paint, choosing the colors she liked: red, black, blue, dark green, and white. She squeezed them against the palm of her hand, spreading their contents onto her palette. She felt the dull sensation of her insides impatiently preparing to give birth. Finally, she approached the square of canvas where that impenetrable gaze held hers, and resolutely, she began to paint.

Fiela, is that you? Is this me? Our two faces have merged.

This time, she knew what her title would be. She had found it even before she had started. It had welled up from deep inside her on the crest of a raging tide: Cannibal Woman.