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Fiction

On the Fourth Day

By Koulsy Lamko
Translated from French by Alexis Pernsteiner
Koulsy Lamko sees through a fellow exile’s serene front.

He arrived on a golden-yellow tricycle and offered to tow me. Frail sexagenarian, sickly thin frame, angular face, his craggy skin suggesting an old case of the chickenpox. A lightly broken-in cowboy hat made him look like a worn-out pistolero straight out of a Sixties Western. “Hop on board my taxi!” he said. I declined the offer, suggesting I walk beside him while he rode the tricycle. The man invited me to dine. Difficult to refuse such a priceless invitation given the relentless rain.

Triumphal entrance amid a line of women and teenagers waiting under the awning in front of the property. Impressive: the concrete dwelling, its stairs decked with flowers, that no doubt housed the twenty souls squeezing around me. Apparently, three generations lived together between the impeccably clean, lavender-blue walls. Dinner was frugal: grilled corn soup, a piece of fried chicken, and the inevitable tortilla, this one especially delicious with its hot taste of fresh corn. The conversation, for its part, was lively: a ballet of questions from all sides: a compulsive hunger to know, which I strongly appreciated. As I told of my village, I slowly came to life. Then we segued to our stories of exodus. Words struggled on their way toward our lips. The man didn’t really want to talk, seemed to have turned the page—dog-eared, crumpled from having been consulted so many times, scanned, read, reread, scrutinized, spelled out over stormy and famished nights. I changed my line of attack and pointed out that his house stood out from all the others in the area. And that it was rare to see such a big house, with multiple stories, in a village. He replied, his face serene, that it was a gift from God, who had observed his vagrancy and taken umbrage. He had lived in more than thirty dwellings, each more improbable than the next: nests in tree foliage, wooden huts, adobe houses, straw cabins, tents in plastic or burlap, hutches from barrels or cardboard, shelters of found sheet metal. At last he had a real, well-ventilated concrete house with lots of light that wouldn’t let a single drop of rain pass through ever again. One day perhaps he would leave it; all it would take was another catastrophe in his life, another war on his heels . . . Then he would leave this place. Obviously. But in the meantime, he considered the building a gift, an act of grace.

Guatemala was back on his lips: soldiers thirsty for blood; houses burned to ashes, people hunted, fetuses torn from mothers’ wombs; his mother-in-law’s breasts artistically slashed off by the mass of soldiers. Life was suffering and purgation. He figured, when it came down to it, that the earth was the same everywhere, that men were the same under the equinoxes and solstices, no matter differences in skin color. “Your country is wherever you feel good.” Still, he waited for sleep, snug in his bed, to go to the place where one’s dreams are unbound.

He insisted on accompanying me back on his tricycle. I accepted his offer reluctantly; I would have preferred to save him the trouble of towing more than his own weight. He made it a point of honor. He left me at the door of my house. I collapsed onto my bed, overcome with the blues, a burning melancholy in the pit of my stomach. Exile is a chain of errancies; its nature is not sedentary. And while errancy has been applauded for its enriching virtues, it is also a succession of repeated deaths, a chopping up of life’s fluid time into shards of existence, the gaze torn between the idyllic and the tormented, between one’s childhood country and an impossible resettlement in another land. Exile is a slow death, a life on reprieve, a life spent waiting . . . Splicing oneself onto a strange root successfully is a miracle. Unless one possesses the properties of mistletoe and can grow on a tree whose roots are not one’s own. Slowly but surely, exile erases us from the memory of our land. And the day when we try to go back to our country, to set foot there, by chance, for a sun, a moon, we realize that our land has abandoned us; it has turned its back on us, doesn’t recognize us anymore, has disowned us. And we hem ourselves into the illusion that we abandoned it, left it for fallow, in order to keep loving it, in spite of everything . . . to keep living the convulsions of our death in homeopathic doses. Those who force people to leave against their will know very well that they are committing murder; without appearing to, they manage to execute their plans, because they act legitimate and argue that they haven’t gotten their hands dirty with others’ blood. Involuntary exile is a suicide.

When he left me, the man with the golden-yellow tricycle, owner of the lavender-blue house, gave me a vibrant, brotherly, energetic handshake. As if he saw in me his own condition, a double lost in the maze of the self. As if he’d guessed that I’d understood him, beyond the lie of happiness regained in his giant, gleaming house, a lie that, in front of his vast progeny, he was forced to serve me in abundance. How else could he have been?

From Les racines du yucca. © by Koulsy Lamko. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2014 by Alexis Pernsteiner. All rights reserved.

English French (Original)

He arrived on a golden-yellow tricycle and offered to tow me. Frail sexagenarian, sickly thin frame, angular face, his craggy skin suggesting an old case of the chickenpox. A lightly broken-in cowboy hat made him look like a worn-out pistolero straight out of a Sixties Western. “Hop on board my taxi!” he said. I declined the offer, suggesting I walk beside him while he rode the tricycle. The man invited me to dine. Difficult to refuse such a priceless invitation given the relentless rain.

Triumphal entrance amid a line of women and teenagers waiting under the awning in front of the property. Impressive: the concrete dwelling, its stairs decked with flowers, that no doubt housed the twenty souls squeezing around me. Apparently, three generations lived together between the impeccably clean, lavender-blue walls. Dinner was frugal: grilled corn soup, a piece of fried chicken, and the inevitable tortilla, this one especially delicious with its hot taste of fresh corn. The conversation, for its part, was lively: a ballet of questions from all sides: a compulsive hunger to know, which I strongly appreciated. As I told of my village, I slowly came to life. Then we segued to our stories of exodus. Words struggled on their way toward our lips. The man didn’t really want to talk, seemed to have turned the page—dog-eared, crumpled from having been consulted so many times, scanned, read, reread, scrutinized, spelled out over stormy and famished nights. I changed my line of attack and pointed out that his house stood out from all the others in the area. And that it was rare to see such a big house, with multiple stories, in a village. He replied, his face serene, that it was a gift from God, who had observed his vagrancy and taken umbrage. He had lived in more than thirty dwellings, each more improbable than the next: nests in tree foliage, wooden huts, adobe houses, straw cabins, tents in plastic or burlap, hutches from barrels or cardboard, shelters of found sheet metal. At last he had a real, well-ventilated concrete house with lots of light that wouldn’t let a single drop of rain pass through ever again. One day perhaps he would leave it; all it would take was another catastrophe in his life, another war on his heels . . . Then he would leave this place. Obviously. But in the meantime, he considered the building a gift, an act of grace.

Guatemala was back on his lips: soldiers thirsty for blood; houses burned to ashes, people hunted, fetuses torn from mothers’ wombs; his mother-in-law’s breasts artistically slashed off by the mass of soldiers. Life was suffering and purgation. He figured, when it came down to it, that the earth was the same everywhere, that men were the same under the equinoxes and solstices, no matter differences in skin color. “Your country is wherever you feel good.” Still, he waited for sleep, snug in his bed, to go to the place where one’s dreams are unbound.

He insisted on accompanying me back on his tricycle. I accepted his offer reluctantly; I would have preferred to save him the trouble of towing more than his own weight. He made it a point of honor. He left me at the door of my house. I collapsed onto my bed, overcome with the blues, a burning melancholy in the pit of my stomach. Exile is a chain of errancies; its nature is not sedentary. And while errancy has been applauded for its enriching virtues, it is also a succession of repeated deaths, a chopping up of life’s fluid time into shards of existence, the gaze torn between the idyllic and the tormented, between one’s childhood country and an impossible resettlement in another land. Exile is a slow death, a life on reprieve, a life spent waiting . . . Splicing oneself onto a strange root successfully is a miracle. Unless one possesses the properties of mistletoe and can grow on a tree whose roots are not one’s own. Slowly but surely, exile erases us from the memory of our land. And the day when we try to go back to our country, to set foot there, by chance, for a sun, a moon, we realize that our land has abandoned us; it has turned its back on us, doesn’t recognize us anymore, has disowned us. And we hem ourselves into the illusion that we abandoned it, left it for fallow, in order to keep loving it, in spite of everything . . . to keep living the convulsions of our death in homeopathic doses. Those who force people to leave against their will know very well that they are committing murder; without appearing to, they manage to execute their plans, because they act legitimate and argue that they haven’t gotten their hands dirty with others’ blood. Involuntary exile is a suicide.

When he left me, the man with the golden-yellow tricycle, owner of the lavender-blue house, gave me a vibrant, brotherly, energetic handshake. As if he saw in me his own condition, a double lost in the maze of the self. As if he’d guessed that I’d understood him, beyond the lie of happiness regained in his giant, gleaming house, a lie that, in front of his vast progeny, he was forced to serve me in abundance. How else could he have been?

From Les racines du yucca. © by Koulsy Lamko. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2014 by Alexis Pernsteiner. All rights reserved.

Au quatrième jour

Il vint sur un tricycle jaune d’or et proposa de m’y remorquer. Sexagénaire frêle, la silhouette d’une minceur maladive, le visage anguleux, la peau burinée comme si elle avait fait les frais d’une varicelle autrefois. Un chapeau de cow-boy légèrement enfoncé achevait d’en faire une espèce de pistolero éreinté et égaré des westerns sixties. « Montez, c’est le taxi ! » me dit-il. Je déclinai l’offre, lui proposai de marcher à son côté pendant que lui pédalerait sur le tricycle. L’homme avait proposé de m’accueillir à sa table. Difficile de refuser une invitation aussi précieuse, n’en déplaisait à la pluie qui se lâchait sans vergogne.

Entrée triomphale au milieu d’une haie de femmes et d’adolescents postée sous l’auvent au seuil de la propriété. Impressionnante, la demeure de béton aux escaliers fleuris et qui devait engloutir la vingtaine d’âmes qui se pressait autour de moi. Apparemment, trois générations cohabitaient entre ces murs bleu lavande d’une impeccable propreté. Le dîner fut frugal : une soupe de farine de maïs grillé, un morceau de poulet frit et l’inévitable tortilla qui ici gardait la saveur goûteuse et chaude du maïs frais. La conversation, elle, fut bien nourrie : ballet de questions de part et d’autre : une boulimie de connaître que j’appréciai fort. Je racontai mon village et peu à peu m’animai. Puis nous glissâmes vers nos récits d’exode. Les mots peinaient dans leur trajectoire vers les lèvres. L’homme n’avait pas vraiment envie de parler, semblait avoir tourné la page cornée, froissée, tant de fois consultée, parcourue, lue, relue, décryptée, épelée par les nuits d’ouragan et de diète. Je changeai d’angle d’attaque et lui fis observer que sa résidence en imposait à toutes celles qui se dressaient alentour. Et que c’était rare de rencontrer une si grosse maison à étages dans un village. Il répondit, le visage serein, que c’était un don de Dieu, qui avait longtemps observé ses nomadismes et qui s’en était offusqué. Des logements, il en avait connus plus de trente, les uns aussi incongrus que les autres : des nids en feuillages d’arbre, des huttes en bois, des maisons en banco, des cases en paille, des tentes en plastique, en toile de jute, des cages en tonneau, en carton, des abris en tôle récupérée. Enfin il en avait une vraie lumineuse, aérée, en béton, qui ne laisserait plus jamais passer une seule goutte de pluie. Peut-être un jour la quitterait-il encore ; il suffirait d’un autre cataclysme dans sa vie, d’une autre guerre lâchée à ses trousses… Il s’en irait de là. Forcément. Mais en attendant il considérait la bâtisse comme un don, une grâce divine. Le Guatemala lui revint sur la lèvre : les soldats assoiffés de sang ; les maisons calcinées, les courses-poursuites, les foetus arrachés au ventre des mères ; les seins de la belle-mère artistiquement découpés par la soldatesque. La vie ne fut que souffrance et purgation. En définitive, il estimait que la terre était la même partout, les hommes les mêmes sous les équinoxes et les solstices malgré les couleurs de peau différentes. « Là où tu te sens bien, c’est bien là ton pays. » Cependant, il attendait l’heure du dernier sommeil pour rejoindre le pays où l’on fait des rêves illimités au creux du lit.

Il tint à me raccompagner sur le tricycle. J’acceptai quelque peu contrarié, moi qui voulais lui épargner la peine de charrier plus lourd que lui. Il en faisait un point d’honneur. Il me laissa à la porte de mon habitation. Je me jetai aussitôt sur le lit, le blues au bord du coeur, une mélancolie brûlante dans le creux de l’estomac. L’exil n’est qu’une série d’errances ; il n’a pas de vocation de sédentarité. On a beau célébrer l’errance et ses vertus enrichissantes, elle n’en est pas moins une succession de morts répétées, un saucissonnage du temps fluide de la vie en morceaux d’existence partagés entre un regard idyllique et tourmenté, braqué vers le pays de l’enfance et l’impossible réenracinement dans un autre terreau. L’exil est une mort lente, une vie en sursis, une vie en attendant… C’est un miracle que de faire racine sur une autre bouture que la sienne. À moins d’avoir les vertus du gui pour croître sur un arbre dont on n’est pas en même temps la racine. L’exil nous efface de la mémoire de notre terre, lentement mais sûrement. Et le jour où l’on ose revenir au pays, y poser le pas, par hasard, pour un soleil, une lune, l’on se rend bien compte que c’est notre terre qui nous a abandonnés, nous a tourné le dos, ne nous reconnaît plus, nous a reniés. Et dire que nous nous enfermons dans l’illusion de l’avoir abandonnée ou mise en jachère pour continuer à l’aimer malgré tout… pour continuer à vivre les soubresauts de notre mort à dose homéopathique. Ceux qui forcent les gens à partir contre leur gré savent très bien qu’ils commettent un assassinat ; ils parviennent à réaliser leur dessein sans en avoir l’air puisqu’ils peuvent montrer patte blanche, arguer qu’ils n’ont pas la main souillée du sang d’autrui. L’exilé involontaire est un suicidé.

L’homme au tricycle jaune d’or propriétaire de la résidence bleu lavande avait eu une poignée de main vibrante, fraternelle et vigoureuse en me quittant. Comme s’il avait redécouvert en moi sa propre condition, un double perdu dans les dédales de soi-même. Comme s’il avait deviné que je l’avais compris au-delà du mensonge du bonheur retrouvé dans son immense et rutilante bâtisse, mensonge qu’il fut obligé de me servir abondamment en présence de sa nombreuse progéniture. Comment en aurait-il été autrement?

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