Maryse Conde: The Story of the Cannibal Woman

At seven in the morning the sun was well in control and came knocking stubbornly on the thick wooden shutters. Dido pushed open the door and tenderly kissed Rosélie, then set down the tray containing the newspaper and the first cups of coffee on the dressing table. In a rustle of paper she opened the Cape Tribune and went through it page by page, licking her lips, exclaiming greedily whenever a crime was much too juicy, while sipping her brew of “bull’s blood,” the jet-black coffee that she flavored with vanilla sugar and lemon peel.

Every morning therefore Rosélie wallowed in happiness at being served in bed like a sultana in a harem or a princess in a fairy tale:

“You can’t call that coffee,” she loved to grumble. “All that stuff you put in it loses the real taste, takes out the bitterness.”

Raised on watered-down coffee, she then added:

“So I would like it less strong.”

Used to her complaints, Dido made no reply and folded the paper. She was now ready for the day, cheered up by the coffee and her fill of horrors. A father had raped his daughter; a brother his younger sister; some intruders a chubby eight-month-old baby in its stroller. A man had slit his concubine’s throat. Masked thieves had robbed four streets of houses. Dido tied a beige scarf around her salt-and-pepper mane of hair and slipped on a pair of shapeless gray overalls. But her mauve flowery skirt flared out a good ten inches underneath, her eyelids were daubed mauve and green, and her mouth dribbled with red lipstick. She looked like a transvestite, a drag queen! Out of the two women she was the one who corresponded most to people’s idea of a pythoness, a sorceress, a soothsayer, or a healer, call her what you like.

“Rosélie Thibaudin, medium. A cure for the incurable,” proclaimed the rainbow-colored cards printed at a discount on Kloof Street and distributed to the neighborhood shops.

Dido got the idea after cogitating furiously for a week. Once Stephen was gone, Rosélie was left without any means. All she knew how to do was paint. Painting is not like music, playing the piano, the violin, or the clarinet. A pianist, a violinist, a clarinetist can always give lessons to children and get paid by the hour. Painting is like literature. No immediate gain or utility. If the cards had read “Rosélie Thibaudin, painter” or “Rosélie Thibaudin, writer,” nobody would have taken any notice. Whereas now the customers flocked in. She chose fifteen who seemed reliable. In order to make a good impression she had emptied the shelves of a nook upstairs and called it her consultation room. She had decorated it with an effigy of Erzulie Dantor, purchased during a voodoo exhibit in New York; an African fertility doll in dark wood, a souvenir of her six years spent at N’Dossou; and a reproduction by Jerome Bosch, one of her favorite painters. She had also hung one of her compositions on the wall. A pastel drawing without a title. She had great difficulties finding a title. She classified her canvases 1, 2, 3, 4 or A, B, C, D, leaving Stephen to find a name, something his imagination excelled at. During her séances she lit candles and perfumed the room with incense. Sometimes she topped off the atmosphere with a disc of Zen music bought in the Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo. There are no inferior jobs. What could she have done besides being a medium? At least Stephen had bought the house in both their names, so nobody could evict her. She had disgraced the whole neighborhood. Imagine a Negress living on Faure Street! Parading on the wrought-iron balcony of a Victorian house, taking her meals on the patio between the traveler’s tree and the bougainvillea, and luring a procession of clients of her color with her dubious commerce. As far as they could remember, pre- or post-apartheid, the only blacks spotted this side of Table Mountain were domestics. A few years earlier, when she had climbed out of the mover’s truck with her white man, the neighbors had already been scandalized. They had found out that this newcomer, Stephen Stewart, was not one of their own. His father was English. His parents had divorced. His French mother had raised him over in France in Verberie. In a certain respect this aspect of his heredity explained their outrage. The French have tainted tastes, for their blood is tainted and over half are mongrels. All nature of people have climbed over their borders, pitched camp, and settled down in their midst.

Dido set down her cup and, looking important, exclaimed:

“I’ve found a client for you. A good one! He’s French-speaking from one of those countries, Congo, Burundi, or Rwanda, in any case one of the three. His name’s Faustin Rumiya or Roumaya or Roumimaya! You know me, I’m not much good with names. He’s some important guy who got on the wrong side of his government. He is suspicious of everything and everyone. So for his first consultation you’ll have to come to my place.”

Yet another immigrant story! In this country everyone’s got one up his sleeve; some are comical, others ridiculous or grotesque, each one more unlikely than the next. Deogratias the night watchman introduced himself as a former professor of political science from the state university in Rwanda. A miraculous survivor of the genocide in which his papa, his mama, his pregnant wife, and their three daughters had all perished. In fact, this lie might very well be true given his solemn expression, his liking for Greek and Latin words and overelaborate speeches. Zacharie the vegetable seller: PhD from Congo Brazza who had fled the civil war with his wife and seven children. Goretta the hairdresser, specializing in braids and weaving, was in fact the lead dancer in a traditional troupe from Zimbabwe. Warned beforehand by her lover, a minister who was crazy about her body, she had hid under a truck tarpaulin and traveled miles of laterite to escape the firing squad. What crime had she committed? We will never know. Rosélie inquired nonchalantly what this one was suffering from.

“He can’t sleep!”

She had treated a good many cases of this sort. The ability to sleep, contrary to reason, is a faculty most unfairly meted out. For the slightest reason humans lose their sleep and agonize all night long, their eyes riveted on the hands of a clock. She walked over to the bathroom.

Her first appointment was at nine. She noted down everything in a spiral notebook in South Sea Blue, an ink she had been particularly fond of since school.

Patient No. 3

Népoçumène Gbikpi

Age: 34

Nationality: Beninese

Profession: Engineer

Here was a tragic story that resembled her own. Népoçumène, a telecommunications engineer, had been away on business in Port Elizabeth. On his return home he had stumbled on his wife’s lifeless body lying in a pool of blood at the door of their apartment. Perhaps raped. Murdered for a wretched handful of rand the couple kept deep in a chest of drawers.

As for Stephen, he had been working on his latest passion: a critical study of Yeats. At midnight he had gone out to the corner Pick ’n Pay store to buy a packet of Rothmans light in the red pack. Some thugs had murdered him for his wallet.

For some reason or other this version of the facts did not satisfy the police. In fact, Stephen’s wallet had never left his back pocket. It had remained intact. There was no question of robbery.

“Perhaps the thieves had been disturbed before grabbing the wallet.”

“Disturbed by whom?”

“Security guards. Pick ’n Pay customers. Other thieves. I don’t know. Who’s leading the investigation?”

“According to the cashier, Mr. Stewart did not enter the Pick ’n Pay. He was killed at the other end of the sidewalk.”

Inspector Lewis Sithole, with the surprising slit eyes of an Asian, nodded his head. His opinion was that Mr. Stewart had not gone to the Pick ’n Pay to buy cigarettes but to meet somebody.