Andreï Makine - Human Love

Two days later they brought his mother to the house. Elias had no time to think about his prayer being answered, for the woman they deposited on the low bed, like a thing, bore little resemblance to his mother. It was as if a blade had sliced this slender shaving of humanity off that solid mass of prisoners. Her arms, shrunk to the outline of the bones, were no longer black but gray. One of her collarbones was broken and stuck out from beneath a filthy bandage. Her mouth seemed very narrow, greatly extended, on account of the line of dried blood stretching her lips at the corners. The crook of her arm, which Elias touched with his brow, remained cold.

They had got rid of her because the authorities did not want a known opponents wife to die in prison. After months of massacres they were trying to calm things down, wipe away the blood, portray themselves to international opinion as humanitarians. The Americans, whose aircraft had been bombing insurgent camps several weeks previously, were now beginning to talk about democracy, decolonization…

At the end of the second night the bird became fren-ziedly agitated in its cage. Elias got up, held it in his hands, tried to calm it. But the creature escaped, flew toward the doorway, perched for a moment on the half that stood open, then vanished into the darkness. His mother died before sunrise while he was away drawing water from the Cuanza. As the dawn came, the river was tinged with pink, and it was almost possible to believe that the world existed for the joy of the living.

A week later Father Anibal, accompanied by two seminarists, came looking for Elias. Troubled by the memory of the young African he had driven away with blows of his stick, he decided to repair the damage. Elias listened to the priests proposals (commands, in fact, which simply had to be obeyed), but his thoughts returned to the pages of a book his mother had read to him long ago in their house in Luanda: a youth who had strayed was set back on the right path by a priest, and all at once a radiant horizon of promises opened up before him… The next day Elias was admitted to the Mission, the boarding school where he would live and study for four years. His own horizon would be the glorious title of assimilado . Which signified, as he would very soon learn, that he, a negro, little different from a monkey, could one day gain entry to the whites world.

HE STUDIED FEROCIOUSLY, with the obstinacy of a drug addict forever obliged to increase the dose in order to shut out memories. At his age he already had a whole world of blood and death to forget.

Besides, while he had not yet acquired his title of as-similado , it was in his interests not to stray too far from the Mission, for once outside it he reverted to being “a cheeky young African strolling about in the city of the whites.” It was better not to leave the cocoon while preparing, like a pupa, for his metamorphosis into a civilized man.

By the age of fourteen he spoke French and Spanish, in addition to Portuguese, and could read Greek and Latin. He sometimes surprised Father Anibal by quoting from philosophers whom the latter had never read and, occasionally, never even heard of. One day the priest completely lost his temper. They were talking about the history of the church, and Elias alluded to Pope Célestine V, the papal monk who abjured the luxury and pomp his predecessors had surrounded themselves with, a humble man who paid for it with his life. A man who, if he had been living today, would not have tolerated the brazen wealth of some and the poverty of others… Father Anibal flew into a rage, waving his stick; Elias even thought he was about to strike him. “You ve been cramming your poor black head with too many things. You Ve got it all topsy-turvy. Célestine is a saint. And the church needed warriors to bring the word of God to tribes like yours! If we’d not converted you to Christianity, you’d still be living in trees!”

He was a hot-tempered man, Elias knew, but one who bore few grudges and quickly repented of his choleric outbursts. The next day, to make up for it, Father Anibal took him to a reception given by the city authorities. In the great hall decked out with Portuguese flags, Elias stood apart from the elegant dresses and colorful uniforms, close to the window, through which the breezes from the Cuanza wafted in. The guests who caught his eye must have wondered whether they were looking at a servant or a youth of mixed race who had come with his white progenitor. They’ve noted that I no longer have my monkey’s tail, thought Elias with a smile. And they’re telling themselves that in a few more years I may have learned how to eat with a fork…

Watching the coming and going of uniforms, he remembered the yellow room in the long building on piles. It was probably one of these military men who had gone there on a certain evening to couple with a beautiful black woman. The white women among the guests were mainly short and thin, or else extremely fat, in which case they complained noisily about the climate. Each and every one of them clasped her glass in a particular hold that amazed him: reminiscent of a raptors talons, a firm, voracious grip. He reflected that to get to where they had got to in life, they had doubtless needed to be endowed with these tough, clawlike finger-joints. There were also some people of mixed race in the company. They were dressed with greater care than the whites and seemed continually on the alert. They practically stood to attention when spoken to and replied in a Portuguese so correct that It lacked all savor, articulating every syllable as people do after being cured of a stammer.

“And that’s the best that could ever happen to me,” thought Elias, as he studied their smooth, rigid faces, their uneasy eyes. Yes, with superhuman application, and by means of countless acts of servility and hypocrisy, he had a fair chance of joining the envied ranks of the people of mixed race – of living in constant fear of losing his status and sinking back to the level of a negro, of having to be whiter than a white.

That evening, after the reception, Father Anibal honored him by inviting him to his garden. They sat in wicker armchairs with cups of tea in their hands. The father was in an excellent mood, that of a jovial parish priest who has drunk good wine, attended a fashionable gathering, and been appreciated for his eloquence. “You see,” he was saying to Elias, “God so loves His creatures that He even allows them to commit evil. Yes. So great is God’s love, that He even grants them this freedom. And that’s why wars, famines and crimes occur.” He doubtless regretted losing his temper the day before and now wanted to show off his doctrinal skills. As he talked about the wars and famines tolerated by God, he had a benign and dreamy air.

I could become a priest, too, Elias said to himself. And he pictured a fine presbytery, a garden like this one, ablaze with bougainvilleas but, most of all, this serenity: nothing happens here that is not the Lord’s will. Then he suddenly knew that this God was hateful to him because he allowed his creatures to smash a woman’s collarbone. That slender broken collarbone was enough for him to reject this world and its creator!

Elias felt this so violently, choking on such a sob in his throat, that the priest, who had just fallen asleep in his armchair, woke up, as if the consistency of the air had changed. He shook himself, yawned, patted his dog, which had come to rub itself against his knees. “My old friend Boko’s been limping for the past couple of days. Take him to the vet tomorrow, all right?”

The police stopped Elias very close to the house of Antonio Carvalho, the vet. He had to explain himself. As he continued on his way Elias remarked to himself, with that sharp irony that would greatly assist him in life: “Boko s an assimilado already”