The Silence of the Spirits
140
The Silence of the Spirits
140eBook
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Overview
What are the limits of empathy and forgiveness? How can someone with a shameful past find a new path that allows for both healing and reckoning? When Clovis and Christelle find themselves face-to-face on a train heading to the outskirts of Paris, their unexpected encounter propels them on a cathartic journey toward understanding the other, mediated by their respective histories of violence. Clovis, a young undocumented African, struggles with the pain and shame of his brutal childhood, abusive exploits as a child soldier, and road to exile. Christelle, a young French nurse, has her own dark experiences but translates her suffering into an unusual capacity for empathy, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Christelle opens her home and heart to Clovis and presses him to tell his story. But how will she react to that story? Will the telling start Clovis on a path to redemption or alienate him further from French society? Wilfried N'Sondé's brave novel confronts French attitudes toward immigrants, pushes moral imagination to its limits, and constructs a world where the past must be confronted in order to map the future.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253029072 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/07/2017 |
| Series: | Global African Voices Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 140 |
| File size: | 441 KB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Wilfried N'Sondé was born in 1969 in the Congo (Brazzaville) and grew up in France. He is widely considered one of the shining lights of the new generation of African and Afropean writers. His work has received considerable critical attention and been recognized with prestigious literary awards, including the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Senghor de la création littéraire.
Karen Lindo is a scholar of French and francophone literatures and currently teaches and translates in Paris.
Dominic Thomas is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE SILENCE OF THE SPIRITS
*
Marcelline took me by the hand and lay down next to me. Once again we were fused. She took her time to tell me her story. I listened attentively and cried while kissing her hands because the traumas of war and the endless disillusionments had definitively shattered her dreams for happiness. All these disappointments had undermined her trust in humanity. My sister had decided to live in a holding pattern, as a recluse, and limit her interactions to the bare minimum.
During these periods of solitude, she implored Mother Earth, the temperamental Majesty that had created all that we see and that we cannot see in this world, to find me again, the only glimmer of joy and purity that remained anchored in her memory. The goddess's benevolence had made it possible for her to visit my spirit. Once she had unburdened herself, she was finally able to feel relieved, and with a smile on her face, Marcelline let me go, leaving behind a vague feeling of sensual pleasure on my shoulder. Bitterness too. Because she had survived at the expense of her body and soul.
*
I woke up, weighed down by my sister's story, confused, with a faint image of her, smiling, radiant, more beautiful and happier than ever. Her silhouette gradually disappeared into a mist.
When the mist before my eyes had dissipated, I recognized Christelle's body beside me. Together, we were bathed in the warmth and bright red daylight gradually increasing, filtered by the curtains. Half naked, she lay on my torso, both ofus stretched out beneath a beautiful disorder of white sheets, clothing, hastily removed the night before, now scattered about, our legs intertwined in a delicate touch.
Her full head of red and silver hair flowed off the pillow we were sharing and spread out lightly across my chest and belly. I was surprised to see her fingers wrapped around my arms. Even while she was sleeping, she had entwined herself with me. Christelle must have been holding me like this for most of the night.
Her head had melted perfectly into the curved angle of my shoulder and neck. Her thick, wavy mane of hair hid my face a little. She let herself go, relaxed and slept, serene. Watching her filled me with that ineffable feeling of peace and warmth that I had discovered while lying beside her.
I could not get enough of her milky white skin, with freckles that had blended in with other spots that had come in over time. I watched the slow and steady movement ofher breathing through her nose. I was amazed at how our night of love together had left her feeling so carefree.
Christelle was snoozing. I clumsily ventured a hand into the depths near her hips, a timid journey toward the tender part of her belly, into the small of her back, to the territory beneath a thin, soft, transparent duvet that awakened from my caresses. Christelle quivered and sighed deeply. Careful not to offend me, she gently removed my fingers, once they made their way toward the moist mystery just above her thighs.
"I'm good like this — come closer, come next to me!"
*
She had murmured the words in a whisper. Lovingly, Christelle pressed a wet kiss on my mouth and another one in the palm of my hand, which she delicately placed between the mattress and her warm breast. My lover turned toward me and gave a hint of a smile. She pulled me into her movement so that her back gradually married perfectly the shape of my belly.
*
From the sofa bed where we had our first embrace rose a languorous dance of warm, moist scents, perfumes of stirred senses, colorful fragrances, an irresistible magic that rekindled our desires.
Relaxed, feeling free in my embrace, she fell asleep again. I touched her silky shoulder with my lips and the tip of my tongue. I will be her brother and her guardian. I will redeem the errors of my ways thanks to our shared happiness! Christelle kept her eyes closed, and the rounded, prominent curves of her body pressed against my skin. Amid all the tenderness after all that intensity, I felt unburdened, and I sighed too, promising to always watch over her so that she will never have to suffer!
*
After our frantic, painful lives, Christelle and I were learning to relax. We were taking a break to take care of each other's wounds. Two loners, still cautious, kissing and touching each other, offering a hand to each other. Hope, a kind of intoxicating giddiness, had given our tragedies a run for their money and was beginning to feel like love.
*
Christelle had taken me in by chance during a suburban train ride. She admitted to having rescued me out of compassion as you might do for a wounded animal suffering on the roadside. She had forgotten her own worries, escaped from her own labyrinth of anxieties and boredom to take care of me, an illegal immigrant, far more destitute than she.
*
After her shift had ended on the day we met, she had rushed and taken a quick shower, dressed quickly so that she would not miss the bus. She arrived out of breath, but it had been too late. Disappointed, she decided to head to the train station on foot, enjoy a iittle walk and take advantage of the afternoon. After all, what was the rush? No one was waiting for her at home. She strolled along the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, congested with pedestrians and cars. As she was crossing the Pont d'Austerlitz, she saw me for the first time. She was immediately moved by my deep sad expression. Christelle thought I might have been lost in a dream. With my fist beneath my chin, I was peering at all the frozen garbage being carried along by the Seine on that February day. Christelle saw me as a man alone in the middle of nowhere, cowering into his skin, wishing his head would disappear into his shoulders. Today, when she remembers how poorly I was dressed, she smiles. She had felt an incredible sadness for me.
*
Christelle casually continued on her way to Gare de Lyon. She was welcomed into the anonymous, hurried mass of commuters, whose eardrums are overwhelmed by the chaotic concert of announcements and information spewing out of loudspeakers, accompanied by the noise of shoes beating the floor in a steady rhythm. In this familiar setting, Christelle acted by instinct, walking as she usually would, head down, back slightly bent, accustomed to the mask of rush hour on exhausted faces with no smiles that kept moving past her. An interminable parade of features, colors, clothes, sizes, thousands of destinies meeting for a fraction of a second, blank stares colliding for an instant and then ignoring each other forever. Every day, Christelle heard the depressing echo of these silences. She kept walking, her pace dictated by the hustle and bustle of the crowd. Dazzled by the overpowering, blinding neon lights, she squinted and then looked up to verify the times. Always on the move, a prisoner of the rapid chaotic swell. Impossible to stop herself. The clickety clack of train stations going by at an unheard-of pace on the display panel until it suddenly stopped on a destination, a number or a letter indicating the platform. At the shrill sound of the train horn, a human tide would converge on the same escalator. Christelle participated in this merciless mad rush twice a day. It worked. Everyone just got swallowed up by cars in haphazard gulps, a chaotic ballet of automatons, exhausted from their daily work.
The crowd carried Christelle to the train that was waiting for her. Accustomed to the routine, she was among the first to enter and quickly find a seat. Discreet, never wanting to disturb anyone, she found a seat in the middle of the car, farthest away from the draft. She sat with her back to the direction in which the train was traveling. She sank all the weight of her exhausted body onto the seat, ready to savor the ever-so-slight feeling of getting away.
She was surprised when she recognized the melancholic young man she had passed on the Pont d'Austerlitz much earlier.
I was sitting in front of her, terrified, with even more pain and bitterness in my expression. She saw that I was frightened! Christelle carefully scrutinized my tormented face and my pupils, dilated from anxiety, then closed her eyes.
*
The day on the bridge, a broken soul, I was not dreaming. Squinting beneath the setting sun, my gaze had simply gotten lost in the river's filth. Horrible images of war and flames were rumbling deep down inside me. At times, I was thinking of Marcelline and the rare honeymoon hours of our childhood, my lips on her shoulder, the tender taste of the first quivers that are never spoken. These treasures with her, I secretly cherished them. Her absence was making my heart bleed, constantly reminding me of what I had become, a pathetic reflection of humanity, inconsequential, a shipwrecked victim of happiness ... An illegal alien!
An infinite silence in my soul, an abyss, beyond fear and doubt, a sharp pain in the gut, immense uncertainty, worse than a feeling of malaise. Emptiness, absolute despair.
Every day, I kept a low profile in Paris, walking with my head down and staring at my feet to avoid looking in front of me. I had forgotten all about the dream, which risked ending up in bureaucracy, a file with some numbers stamped on it. I was running away, heading nowhere, to avoid being detained, confined behind bars, with wrists and ankles handcuffed, accused of having tried everything, defied every unimaginable danger, flirted with death a thousand times, suffered everyone's contempt, and all I wanted was simply to live! A misdemeanor of hope, a crime of dreams, of better days! The last few months, I had been living a nightmare with no future in sight. From early morning until late afternoon, I spent sleepless nights in insalubrious places, ten or more of us occupying a few square meters. The misery I was carrying around was especially noticeable in my resignation and lack of self-esteem.
I wandered for hours on foot or bicycle in the scorching July heat or during the worst November days. Unnoticed. I saw walls everywhere, even inside me! I had escaped my country in filthy clothes, there where you were dying slowly but surely, anywhere, at any given moment! In Paris, I had become yet another anonymous soul among the worst dregs of society, broken, to be swept away by any means, in an airplane or to a camp, with police vans, police officers with clear consciences, clubs, and despised by everyone. An illegal immigrant.
*
The day I met Christelle, I had spent the afternoon on a public bench. As usual, I was basically staying out of sight to avoid the looks that made me feel like a pariah. I was waiting it out, trying to escape by blending the unbearable images of my past with the gray sky and the concrete, with the cacophony of the deafening metallic sounds of the street. I was fighting a losing battle against the cold, this venomous, loyal daily companion, distilled by this world that never failed to close its doors to me and had nothing to offer me. Sitting on the bench, I would occasionally caress the cold change for the meal of the day, a baguette or a tin of sardines, that I held firmly in my hands, buried in my pants pockets.
That same morning, a former militia comrade had asked me to move out after having put me up for almost a month. His wife refused to keep bumping into me in the apartment during the day. She was afraid I would frighten their children. For her, I was an animal at bay, today in chains but potentially extremely dangerous. Illegal, I had neither friend nor fellow countryman. I had basically left at the crack of dawn, one foot in front of the other, my expression more somber than ever, absent, alone on the streets of Paris, excluded from happiness, wearing dirty, holey socks.
*
On the bridge, I gathered whatever courage I had left to confront the test of the train station, filled with patrol officers and anti-riot officers, residence permits, criminal investigation operations! I was so anxious, my stomach was knotted up and my jaw was clenched. I waited for darkness to fall so that I could sneak my way into the crowded Gare de Lyon and take a train heading to a shelter for homeless people way out in the suburbs.
Once I entered the huge concourse, my pulse was racing at my temples, literally like a furnace in my head, totally obsessed with the idea of not standing out. The mere sight of the blue of a police officer's uniform immediately set off a terrible panic in me.
My muscles stiffened suddenly when I saw a police roadblock about ten meters in front of me. Plainclothes cops, with cold penetrating gazes, orange armbands that read police, examining the crowd suspiciously, randomly choosing candidates for an ID check.
A rush of adrenaline exploded in my chest. Completely derailed by fear, I found the courage to turn back and head in the opposite direction, away from the crowd, as discreetly as possible. I quickly took off, wandered, and got lost several times. My brain was bubbling over with anxiety, to take off, disappear into the racket of the early evening rush hour. My stomach and throat were seized with cramps. Butt in gear. Do not get caught. My knees wobbled beneath the weight of my fear, and my legs were trembling. Leave this corridor as quickly as possible, t oward wherever!
In my distress, I had to hold on to the fight for life with the tenacity of a pesky insect, stand up to the law, be a nuisance, live regardless!
Overcome by a strange intuition, I instinctively got on a train. Convinced that I had become invisible by blending into the crowd, I took a seat next to a window, which would not close properly.
A cold draft gripped me once the train took off, all the more unpleasant because it was mixed in with the scalding heat rising up from beneath the seat. With my hands buried in my pockets, I tried to wedge my body into the soft spot the seat offered. I kept twisting and turning and finally gave in to the discomfort, unable to really relax. I have always been able to live peacefully with suffering.
Busy watching other passengers, on the lookout for a ticket inspector or a police officer, my attention finally zeroed in on the woman sitting in front of me.
*
Christelle let herself get carried by the rhythm of the moving train, in spite of the bumpy ride and the sudden violent shaking caused by trains going in the opposite direction. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth revealed an expression that was difficult to read, a mixture of fatigue and sadness. I looked at her for some time. While staring at her, my breathing gradually slowed and my pulse stabilized. In her simplicity, this woman had touched me. I managed to get a whiff of her scent, a blend of cleanliness and cheap perfume. This universe pleased and comforted me. Seduced, I kept taking her in, her pale face and red hair highlighted with gray strands.
The base of her nostrils was red and irritated, left over from a bad cold. I noticed creases at the corners of her eyes. Christelle's melancholic features moved me, and I was surprised by my reaction. She enveloped me in a whole new feeling, full of sensitivity and kindness.
I looked at her delicate hands, the skin worn from work, but their wrinkles had not made them ugly. Some of her fingers gripped the collar of her coat, and the others held on to her scarf. Melancholy suited her somehow. She was sitting gracefully in her seat, in a way that I had rarely seen in my turbulent life. In her sleepiness, her lips somewhat pursed, she was undoubtedly trying to dismiss, at least for a while, the boredom and lassitude that accompanied her everyday life. She was so amazing to me that I forgot my own fears and began to dream.
*
Christelle inspired words I had never known, inaudible exchanges between couples I saw walking through the city at the end of the day, hand in hand, immersed in a passionate discussion. I envied them especially when they were kissing. Secretly, I admired the women laughing their hearts out, throwing their heads back while in the arms of their beloved. Her lover passes his hand through her hair, they look each other intensely in the eyes, a quick, gentle kiss, she rests her head delicately on his shoulder.
I have always experienced happiness as a spectator, like one who intrudes on its beauty, a poor ignorant bastard. I was never the good friend, invited home to dinner, or the guy you presented to your mother.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Silence of the Spirits"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Actes Sud.
Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword / Dominic Thomas, xiii,
The Silence of the Spirits, 1,