explosion at the bedside of a smoking lung patient in the wing where her broken bones were set, followed by a fire and a chaotic evacuation, Marie-Jeanne Maes’s undoubtedly stout heart stopped.
They’d been neighbours for just a few months when the tragedy occurred. After the funeral, Willem shut himself up in his house until Alphonse and Cat invited him to dinner. From then on he came round at least once a week. After he’d supplied them with a crate of old soap, a harlequin the size of a seven-year-old child, a device weighing a ton that could vacuum-pack sandwiches, a polished shell casing to serve as an umbrella stand, and the painted head of a sphinx, Cat gently relieved him of the notion that he had to bring them a gift every time.
On this occasion Willem has a book with him, Alphonse notices, but it doesn’t look as if he intends it as a present.
‘There’s not one Hun, not even a doctor at the universities of Berlin or Munich, who can come close to the beauty and grandeur of a Senegalese!’ Willem pontificated, one finger in the air like a dry twig and one eye cast askance at the book. Alphonse’s raised eyebrows seem to please him. ‘Premier Clemenceau. In 1914. You can say what you like about France, and the tirailleurs sénégalais were certainly cannon fodder, but at least the French regarded their African troops as human beings. That’s one side of the story, anyhow.’
‘At least they regarded their cannon fodder as human,’ Alphonse grins.
Willem nods. Since the arrival of his new neighbour he’s been concentrating specifically on the fate of the tirailleurs sénégalais in the First World War, and since the death of his wife they’ve become an obsession.
‘To the Germans they were apes, a threat to white women, whose interest in them betokened a lack of historical awareness. That says something about attitudes to women, of course. Always a threat to the social order. They undoubtedly had a lower level of education, women in those days, but education and intelligence are two different things. Just look at Marie-Jeanne: she left school at fourteen, but think how much I learned from her.’
Alphonse leans back in the sofa. Willem has become the widower of a saint, and as such his ability to cope is increasing. His indignation at the treatment of Africans in the First World War seems to comfort him somehow, or at least to distract him from sorrows of his own. In the early weeks of mourning there were so many tears that Alphonse didn’t know what to do. They were the answer to every question, the response to every joke. This is a great improvement. Anyhow, he likes listening to the polite, West-Flanders-accented Dutch of this elderly French teacher. He never has to strain to understand, as he does when conversing with some of his clients. Willem stresses every syllable, carefully articulates every consonant, even if it’s a substitute for another.
‘The Germans had every reason to dehumanize the African troops, of course. That way they could think of the French as fighting a war by impermissible means. For their part, the French had to keep repeating how brave, strong, and loyal the tirailleurs were. “Faithful children” is how they were seen. Certainly not the image many of those black soldiers had of themselves.’
‘Would you like to join me for breakfast? I haven’t had any yet. I’ve got raisin bread.’
‘From which bakery?’
‘Moeyersons.’
‘In that case, yes. There’s not enough salt in the bread from Gaudesaboos. And the image they had of their colonizers changed too, of course, as a result; they suddenly found themselves watching the French face a more powerful foe.’ He peers past Alphonse, as if he can see it all happening right now on the fields beyond the curtains. ‘All those young lads who’d known nothing but sun, who were then made to come and get their feet frozen off in a conflict that had nothing to do with them. I know I’ve asked you before, but wouldn’t you like to take a trip with me to see the graves of the tirailleurs sénégalais? There are some on this side of the French border. If there’s one thing I want to do before I’m called to another place, it’s to make a full inventory of those graves, those names.’
‘I’d like that,’ says Alphonse. ‘But not in this weather.’
He feels like staying indoors all day. He’s moved many times, but only recently he walked through this rented house one morning and had the feeling it was a good house, handsome and sound, that without noticing he’d come home. Since then he’s been enjoying the strength and solidity of the walls, the way they keep the warmth in, the rain out.
He turns on the computer and opens Skype. His mother is online and he calls her with the kind of happy nostalgia he always feels. The sound that accompanies the request for contact is cleverly chosen: first a few expectant tones ending in a question mark and then, when someone on another continent surfaces, something like expanding bubbles of air. There’s Dakar. The inside of the ground-floor apartment where she lives now.
‘Hello, son,’ she says, in Jola, a language he speaks almost exclusively with her and his sister these days. ‘You’re getting fat.’
‘Hello mother. These are muscles.’
He ought to fend off the things clients serve up to him, especially the cakes. Her red headscarf stays neatly in place as laughter tosses her head backward. There’s a lot of noise around her, as ever.
‘Everyone in need of you again?’ he asks.
‘Some are here to ask advice, others pretend to be but just walk from the back door to the front door because it’s the quickest way from that street to this. As long as they knock first, it’s fine by me.’
‘How is everything?’
‘Aunt Agnes died.’
Her younger sister. ‘When did that happen?’
‘Three days ago. We buried her the same day. She’d been ill for some time.’
‘But you should have rung me!’
‘What would you have done?’
‘Sent money for medicines. Commiserated.’ He has few memories of this particular aunt, who went to live in a village in Casamance and kept her distance from the rest of the family. Agnes’ most striking characteristic was her ability to combine surliness with a huge appetite for life. The eccentricity harboured by most members of the family was wilder in her. She worked as a beekeeper, the only female beekeeper in Senegal, and the only lengthy conversation she ever had with him was entirely about propagating bees. She made him taste the honey they made. He must have been about sixteen. His aunt was younger then than he is now.
‘Aunty hasn’t gone. The atoms that held her body together are free now. They no longer have to collaborate to keep one person intact. It’s like unravelling a sweater; stitch by stitch the shape it was trapped in dissolves. And all those billions of atoms get absorbed into something else: a snail’s house, a mango blossom, and her own bees. She’ll throw herself into a river and flow to the sea, become a smooth shell on the waves, the feathers of a rising osprey and the wind blowing through them. In that boundlessness she’s happier now than she can ever have been as a person.’
His mother tells some beautiful stories. He finds it hard to move on to ask about Ebola, but he does nonetheless. There’s no news. Senegal is surrounded by neighbouring countries with a growing number of cases but for now it’s been spared. Sceptical voices whisper that this need not necessarily be the truth.
The hours that remain disappear in music. He takes the bass guitar in his hands, the familiar smooth wood, the thick strings
