The Lights of Pointe-Noire

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For a long time I let people think my mother was still alive. I’m going to make a big effort, now, to set the record straight, to try to distance myself from this lie, which has only served to postpone my mourning. My face still bears the scars of her loss. I’m good at covering them over with a coat of fake good humour, but suddenly they’ll show through, my laughter breaks off and she’s back in my thoughts again, the woman I never saw age, never saw die, who, in my most troubled dreams, turns her back on me, so I won’t see her tears. Wherever I find myself in the world, it takes just the cry of a cat alone at night, or the barking of dogs on heat, and I’ll turn my face to the stars, recalling a tale from my childhood, of the old woman we thought we could see in the moon, carrying a heavy basket on her head. We kids would point her out just with a tilt of the nose, a lift of the chin, convinced we mustn’t point at her or utter the slightest sound, or we’d wake next morning and find we’d been struck deaf or blind, or even with elephantitis or leprosy. We knew, of course, that the miracle woman had no quarrel with children and that the dread diseases she could inflict on peeping toms were punishments reserved for adults who tried to glimpse her naked when she went for a swim up there in the river of clouds. These perverts were encouraged by a handful of charlatans who said that if you saw the old woman without her clothes on it brought blessings on your business and good luck in your everyday life. Now we never really expected things to go all that well, which is probably why we closed our eyes, lying there in the damp grass, so she wouldn’t think we were after the same thing as the grown-ups.

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