Men (23 page)

That was the end of the film shoot. There was a party for the men at the Kribi casino. The next day he was not to be seen. Perhaps he was not even in his hut; she couldn't hear the fan. And the guard had left, disappeared, gone back to the forest.

Perhaps she knew. Of course she knew. That there would be no more nights. It was obvious from the fact that she went walking on the beach the following day. Poco-Beach—the name is meaningless. The local name is Mohombo. Paradise, coconut palms and smooth sea, a potholed road. He had told her that he would take her there, but he had stayed on the river; no one could get him to leave that boat. There was a spot for her in one of the pick-up trucks with Welcome and Olga, and Hilaire and his family, Germain and his sisters, and M'Bali, his wives and his children, but not Tumelo, who could not be found. It was all being dismantled, already. Welcome and Olga could no longer stand each other. But Welcome was not even calling her ‘Miss Chinese' anymore; he looked depressed. Bits of the set turned up, they were taken to pieces, sent away, resold, stolen, shared
around. It was all coming to an end; the different orbits were set in motion again: Olga off to another film, Vincent to Singapore, the Africans staying put. She was heading in the direction of Kouhouesso. Welcome was returning to Lagos, to the Nollywood studios, where he would find work. As for the others, who could tell? The fate of a homosexual make-up artist in black West Africa—who could tell?

Equatorial Guinea was a green line under the rain. The river was wide here, shimmering, and the rain was a speck over there. The Ntem River was nicknamed the Little-Congo. Still, it was not the Congo. A motorised canoe, loaded fit to sink, was carrying a pyramid of fuel barrels. A single shot from Guinea and the guy would disintegrate, for the equivalent of—she mused, her head empty—what must be the cost of the perfume she had given her mother for Christmas. The film crew got their supplies through him. Otherwise there was nothing, nothing at all. The mangroves seemed to have been coated halfway up their roots in some white pesticide mixture. At the low-tide area, the silt beach was cleared beneath the sentry box of the customs official who spent his days here, alone. It designated the centre of Poco-Beach, as it were. The central business district, let's say. He liked to chat, understandably. He had not been paid for two years, and did a bit of wheeling and dealing in butane on the side.

The sea was in the shape of a wave, beneath the horizon, at the point where the green receded. A grey-white
rip current. The mouth of the river, the Earth opening up, the whole expanse extraordinarily wide and flat, spreading, held back from non-existence by a few suspended molecules. On this side, the encampment of Nigerian fishermen. On the other side, the sea, shacks, the silt turned to sand, the mangroves turned to coconut palms. She stirred up spider crabs and sand fleas with every step.

The rain was moving in, the rain from the equator. There was a rainbow like a whale's spurt, forming a bridge over to Guinea. One day, a long time ago, she had given a book to her son, at her mother's place, a book about a little travelling rainbow. He had never wanted her to read it to him. Her mother had told her that it was a bit childish for a ten-year-old boy. Here the sun rose every day at 6.18 a.m. precisely, and set exactly twelve hours later, at 6.18 p.m. Nights as long as days. An eternal equinox. It would drive you crazy, she thinks.

Poco-Beach, on the side with the shacks, was a scrap left over from the Africa of the film shoot: three bungalows that were almost elegant, a canteen on stilts, almost-western toilets, an isolated beach. There was a bit of money left, for a small party; the luxury four-wheel drives would be returned tomorrow in Douala; the more valuable material would be loaded into containers for Hollywood, via Panama. Jessie had left ages ago. The big shindig was over. Now it was time for the Africans to party.

POCO-BEACH

She was walking; there she is walking on the beach. While the meal was being prepared. Years later, there is still a photo, taken on her iPhone by Olga. It was the beginning of photos sent by phone: a slender figure, long legs and a small bust, in a blue and gold Hermès sarong, a big straw hat, Chanel sunglasses, bare feet. In the end, it could have been anyone, any old white person of childbearing age, wearing high-end fashion accessories and corresponding to the beauty criteria of the year 2008. An ad for Poco-Beach. Ten minutes later she went for a swim. He had just arrived. She wanted him to see her, for him to say again ‘a real little fish'. After leaving her sarong on the sand with her hat and glasses, she dived into the waves. She was wearing her pretty bikini. She was the only one swimming. A game of beach
volleyball was starting up. Everyone was in their swimming costumes except Olga, who was staying out of the UV rays.

Welcome, in swimming shorts, was good-looking but odd. From a distance, you couldn't help noticing it: unlike most human beings, his face was lighter than the rest of his body. He was two-tone. Skin-whitening creams. A fake Michael Jackson look.

M'Bali was making gestures, difficult to interpret but somewhat alarming. ‘
Mami wata
,' he said. Sharks? Opposite, on the horizon, there was only the oil rig and the surveillance boats around it. Germain, Hilaire, his wife and children, Welcome, Saint-Omer, Kouminassin, Abou, Glueboy, Thadée, Favour, Idriss, and Ignatius of the blowpipes, and even Patricien's wife studying in Yaoundé—it was as if they were all on hold, in slow motion on the beach.
Mami wata
, no one was happy about it. The spirit of water, lascivious and feminine, which wants all of you and takes it. Before swimming, you had to exorcise the spirit of the sea. Kouhouesso was laughing. All the same, he didn't come in for a swim. She returned to the water's edge. She remembered Malibu, the illusion that he was hers: come on,
splash
, in the water, come on, Kouhouesso,
splash
in the setting sun… He pulled his arm away; stop it, he said—so cold, so sharp. She realised he did not know how to swim.

There was a screening of the rushes. As if performing an exorcism, the Bagyelis made gestures at the images portraying their own deaths. Afterwards, everyone laughed,
everyone drank. There were some leftover blowpipes. They had a mock battle, harmless arrows rained down. Fish on the grill. Palm wine flowing. They chewed on kola nuts and drank beer. The sun set directly over the oil rig and the sky blazed. A huge sound system had been brought in from Kribi, but the electricity kept cutting out, the same phrase of music was on repeat,
kiri kiri mabina ya sika,
the catchy, sad guitar of Docteur Nico was the essence of the Congo, the lost Congo of the rumba, of the merengue, all the things she knew absolutely nothing about and to which Kouhouesso had led her, and, melancholy, they danced barefoot in the sand, in their ideal Africa, their Africa of coconut palms, of black people all together, of kind white people, with Asia, with Olga, with America and cinema, and petroleum flowing like water without oil spills, gold and ivory decorating palaces without genocides, and diamonds sparkling on girls' fingers, all girls, an Africa where everyone loved each other, and danced, with Welcome and his painted mouth, come on friends,
kiri kiri mabina ya sika,
the Africa of electric guitars with wah-wah pedals, the Africa of Hawaiian shirts, of Sapeur-suited fashionistas and high-heeled shoes, the post-independence Africa photographed for all time in its stucco sunlight, the Africa of the band, African Fiesta.

The film shoot was over. The Africans were looking into the distance. Gazing offshore, as if witnessing their own absence in countries where they had no place. That was all it was, in the end, a film; it was already over. Back to
disappointment. The future did not last long. Eight weeks of eating protein every day, eight weeks to gain another eight weeks, two months of future for the village, sacks of rice and palm oil. Kouhouesso had left them a Toyota and a generator, and diverted some Company money to pay for typhoid vaccines, twelve euros for the vaccine times one hundred and fifteen children, and as many boosters in a year, which could be stored at the right temperature, or not, in Siphindile's fridge.

‘To be African has no meaning, except to be frightened of losing what you have.' Kouhouesso was drunk. He was hugging her but he was also hugging Olga. He said, ‘It's okay, girls.' He said, ‘How will we do it? Do you fancy a threesome?' The way he spoke, she heard
treesome
. More tree business? Olga got angry, so she realised it was a proposal for the three of them and, even knowing he was drunk, she felt hurt, yes. She felt like crying. Favour was the one who had retained her dignity; she was looking at them with her superior air, with the same look as on the first day: unscathed, untouched. Favour Abebukola Moon. A future star. There was no escaping it.

Patricien was not dancing. Patricien was not drinking. There had been…an incident. On the track heading towards the rubber plantation, in one of the displaced-persons camps. A little girl had been hanged. The mother had died giving birth to the newborn boy and the little girl, six years older, had been accused of devilry. One group of camp inmates,
against the wishes of the rest, had hanged her by the feet to extract a confession. She had been left there, dangling from a rubber tree. A cousin ran to tell Siphindile; he ran across the whole plantation, ignoring the guards, straight through the rows of trunks. Siphindile told the witch, who said, ‘I don't get involved with those people.' He ran to see the only official in his sentry box on Poco-Beach. He even tried to find Kouhouesso, but he was not on the boat or answering his phone. When he found Patricien, who knew the Kribi police, it was too late. And anyway, those people in the camps—they are violent-violent, those people like problems,
yikes.

In the plane on the way back she read the French papers. The Angoulême museum had reopened. Sebastien Loeb had won the Rally Mexico in a Citroën C4. The city of Lyon was celebrating the bicentenary of Guignol. A large cannabis network had been shut down in the Saint-Étienne region. A high-school student of African origin who stabbed his female teacher had been imprisoned for thirteen years. The Brown Western Spadefoot toad had been declared an endangered species. For the first time a woman was president of the board of directors of the École Polytechnique. A public prayer of reparation was recited by militant anti-abortionists outside Timone Hospital. The court case concerning human growth hormones was continuing. Idriss
Deéby, in Chad, pardoned the French charity workers who had falsely claimed a number of children were orphans. A Chinese freighter carrying 4300 tons of tropical wood from the Congo had been intercepted off Ouistreham. On the internet, a social network called Facebook, driven by its American success, had launched in France. A French paracetamol manufacturer was moving offshore, to India. Lazare Ponticelli, the last survivor of World War I, had died at the age of 110. The Greens had lost half of their votes in Paris. The disabled community of France were demonstrating for a pension increase. According to a survey run by the Catholic church in the region of Nîmes, 44 per cent of the respondents said they did not necessarily believe in God, 65 per cent thought that one can be a Christian without belonging to a particular church, and 56.5 per cent maintained that God existed. The Chtis community claimed it was insulted by a banner displayed during a soccer match in Lens. Alain Bernard beat the world 50-metre freestyle record. The social security deficit was not increasing. In Cherbourg, Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled the construction site of the nuclear submarine
Terrible
(weight 14,200 tonnes, length 138 metres, diameter 12.5 metres, maximum speed 25 knots). Gold was trading at $1000 an ounce. The parents of Maddie, the girl kidnapped in Portugal, proclaimed their innocence. A senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, won the presidential primary in Mississippi. A Japanese satellite was sent into orbit by the space shuttle
Endeavour
. Bombings in
Russia. Riots in Yerevan. Violence in Sudan. Elections in Malta and in Sri Lanka. A base camp was swept away in the Himalayas, a survivor reported: ‘All of a sudden it was dark. I realised we must be under an avalanche.'

At Roissy she was shocked by the countless number of white people. Soft, pink, speckled skin, plucked chickens, walking serious-serious.

There she is collecting her bags, the correct label: all the bags look the same. There she is pulling on a big sweater. It's April and she's shivering. There she is walking towards the line of taxis. She is going to have a rest at Daniel and Lætitia's place; there will be fresh bread on the table, baguette; the little Christmas tree will have been dismantled. Then she will take the train to Clèves and recharge her batteries, as they say, with her parents and her son.