Blue White Red: A Novel

Part Two: Paris

PART TWO Paris It seems that the gates of hell border those of heaven. The great joiner designed them in the same coarse wood. —Abdellatif Laabi, Le Spleen de Casablanca RUE DU MOULIN-VERT (14th arrondissement, Paris) MARcEL BONAVENTURE ERIc JOcELYN-GEORGE chÂTEAU-ROUGE (18th arrondissement, Paris) ThE REAL ESTATE AGENT ThE ITALIAN cONFORAMA ThE WORKhORSE PRÉFET SEINE-SAINT-DENIS This page intentionally left blank I MUST REMEMBER ThOSE DAYS. It’s a must. I mustn’t let myself be distracted by a single dark cloud of forgetfulness. Everything flows in the slowness of memory. The past is not just a worn-out shadow that walks behind us. It can get ahead of us, precede us, bifurcate, take another path and get lost somewhere. We must find it, lift it on our shoulders , and get it back on its feet. I must remember. As if it were yesterday. As if I were reliving those moments back then, with the candor of the débarqué. The eyelids finally open up on those days, on those nights. Try harder. Resist easy abandonment, abdication, and resignation. Somewhere the clarity of rebellious truth awaits me, truth that refuses to lie low . . . I spent hours flagellating myself to punish these limbs, this head, these eyes, these ears that led my good judgment astray and abandoned me like cowards to my fate. To flagellate myself wasn’t a solution either. Tranquility does not reconquer the spirit until a man takes responsibility for his actions. I would simply like to find a passage, a way out of this abyss. I am not pleading for memory to help in order to beg for some sort of absolution. What was done is done now. All my thoughts are in motion, on their feet in Indian file. Alain Mabanckou 84 What concerns me is to direct their march such that they are not derailed on the slope of regrets . . . I must remember those days. Those days so long ago. So near. Those days that brought me here. Me, Marcel Bonaventure. You heard me right. Marcel Bonaventure . . . I say this name because over time I became accustomed to it, even though it isn’t my name. In reality, I don’t know who I am anymore. here, one has an infinite ability to split oneself in two, to no longer be what one was in order to be what the others would like you to have been and even sometimes what they would like you to be. Of course, under the circumstances, they’re right. One can’t do otherwise. This is how one builds one’s own fortress. I don’t dare say one’s own grave because I’m counting on getting out of here, no matter what happens. Use another name. Forget his name because that’s necessary for the cause. Distance yourself from the ordinary world, the everyday world. Be on the margins of everything. Me, Marcel Bonaventure, I vow and reavow that up until the day that I landed on French soil, that Monday, October 15th, at dawn, my name was still Massala-Massala. The same name repeated twice. In our dialect, that means: those who remain, remain, those who stay will stay. The name carried by my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandparents. I thought the name was eternal, immutable. I thought the name reflected the image of a past, of an existence, of a family history , of its conflicts, its rifts, its grandeur, its decadence, and its dishonor. Yes, I thought that the name was sacred. Not something to change like clothing to dress appropriately for any given party. A name like that is not taken without knowing where it came from and who else besides you carries the name. But what is a name in our little world onto ourselves, here, far from our homeland? The name, a label on merchandise, a passport that opens borders, a permanent pass. The name is worth nothing. Blue White Red 85 The name carries no history whatsoever for us . . . I am Marcel Bonaventure—that, I’ll remember. No matter what becomes of me. I can’t cross that name out of my memory anymore. I carry it like I carry the name Massala-Massala. I’m no longer just one person. I am several at the same time. Someone in the street says the name Marcel Bonaventure? I turn around. It...