Black Bag

Ashraf Jamal

When he clears his office he puts the videotapes in a black bag. The letters on the bag read CDG, a clothing company. He’d bought her a dress at the CDG branch in Antwerp when he’d stopped to see his mother and sisters en route back from a conference in Arles. Two years later he still has the bag. She’s cut the dress, destroyed everything he’s given her, which of course means that everything must be replaced. Which it can’t be. Nothing can be replaced. Certainly not the moment when he sees the dress and knows it is hers. Green silk for her black skin. La Negresse Verte.

She jeers at his love for her. You European men, she says, always collecting. Nothing stops her from perceiving herself as a collectable. A curio. He has grown tired of her jeering. She does not believe in his love. Why should she, when the moment he elects to marry her is the moment he stops the relay of black women who visit his bed. Always his bed, not theirs. What does he know of their beds, their lives? This is the question she asks of him. What do you know of me, where I come from, who I am? The question does not stop the marriage. The reception occurs at the Hohenort in Constantia. The wedding photos too have been destroyed. She holds nothing sacred. A barbarian, he says one night, the boys asleep, the two of them screaming at each other over the badminton net.

He continues packing. She, he knows, is affecting his work. The book on Nerval has stalled indefinitely. He used to be able to work at home, but she has taken to invading his study. She does not read French. What is the good of books that no one can read? If she understands nothing, no one else will. An implacable and brutal logic. A barbarian’s logic. He does not admit then, as he does now, that the goad harbours a degree of truth. The monographs he writes are by no means bestsellers. Her word, her measure in the value of words. Not that she reads – she doesn’t. She knows nothing of books. She doesn’t even read the newspaper. When she pages through a magazine, it is the pictures that draw her. What women wear. She does not care for the agony column. She does not bother with features on couple therapy, adoption, venereal disease. She pauses when she finds information on beauty products that pertain to her skin colour, the texture of her hair. She slips the dresses off the images of white women. The flesh of a white women is a rack that divides her from what she wants.

He thought then that is what he she wanted. He knows now that he wanted to think this. Had he too grown tired of the pliability of the women who visited his bed? Did he think that in her he’d found his equal? The word is absurd. As absurd as the sentiment he affixes to it. He thinks of the two of them screaming on either side of the badminton net. The neighbours complained the next morning. Who could blame them? The indignity of it all still galls him. No peace at home, precious little at work. At least the term is coming to a close, his headship of the department too. Not a particularly good administrator, he thinks. If he were to believe her, he is not good at anything at all. Her claim does not convince him. And yet her jeering and scorn has taken its toll. He thinks he has had enough. He knows of course that such a state is impossible. One never has enough. But now the notion consoles him. It lends congruence to this process he undertakes, this closing shop.

While arranging his books and packing them into boxes he alights on a posthumous collection, Chatwin’s Photographs and Notebooks, a rare volume in English in a library devoted to French literature. He is interested in Chatwin’s travels through Africa, the link with Rimbaud. He opens the section devoted to Chatwin’s travels in Mauritania, lingers.

They are black here

Mica black

Obsidian black

And their mouths are stone hard

When you pay for their mouths

Stone hard and pink at the edges.

But the African back

Expanse of volcanic dunes

Black and rippling

And the rump

And the walk

Both sexes are irresistible.

He does not share Chatwin’s taste for boys. But this is immaterial. He lingers on the words, obsidian, mica. He knows the stone hard mouths. They are mouths he has paid for. Her mouth. Can he blame her resentment now? He knows he cannot. When he first sees her in a dry-cleaning shop he is smitten. He discovers her name, where she lives, that she is a single mother. One day he suggests taking her and the boy to the Boswell Wilkie Circus. Neutral ground. They go early. Six am. He is an insomniac. The decision has little to do with the fact that he does not sleep. He wants the boy to see the tent erected, the performers as ordinary folk, the animals being fed. It is the same, she will discover, with everything he approaches. Always at dawn when the moments hidden from view reveal human toil, the rigours concealed in art. This, she has learnt all too well, is how he approaches the hearts and minds of the artists he has made his province. Nerval, Mallarmé, Proust. This, he thought then, is how he would approach her.

He drives from his house in Rhondebosch to the flat in Lavender Hill she shares with her mother, two sisters, her son. She too has sisters. Driving towards her he discovers no lavender, no hill, but a flattened expanse of dune and scrub. Sea air has corroded the window frames, eaten through the untreated concrete blocks. A labour camp, he thinks, no worse than the tenement blocks on the outskirts of Paris. A breeding ground for resentment. La Haine. He wills the scent of lavender, it will not come. He imagines her in a taxi heading for work in Wynberg, a white enclave. He thinks of her, incorrectly, as a victim of history. In time he will learn that she is no one’s victim. Her ignorance redeems her. Her mockery too. But then, on that morning driving to the circus in Green Point, she is quiet, pliant. The boy sleeps. He is ten years old. She, how old was she when he was born? Barely sixteen he imagines. The boy is pale. A white man’s boy. She reveals nothing of the father. This occurs later. Then, in the Volvo, the roof opened, he glances, imagines her as the mother of their child. He does not think, then, of divorce. He does not imagine her stripping him of everything, even his pension. Then he sees only her beauty, her mouth with its pink edges. Mica, obsidian.

He shuts the book in the cardboard box. A fool, he thinks. He. Chatwin. Fools both. To think that he and she could become equals. What was he thinking of? How could he have invited her into his life? What does she know of Mallarmé and Nerval? Nothing, clearly. Ten years later nothing at all. Then again, what does she truly know of his life? Everything, he realises now. He looks at the black bag, the contents as thick as three volumes of an encyclopaedia. Twelve videotapes. She found them hidden behind his books in his study at home. She had the key made when he’d said he’d had enough of her barging in, disturbing him. She’d thrown the videotapes in the bin. He’d rescued them. They’d screamed at each other across the badminton net. She’d had enough of his perversity. Her word. A word he dwells upon now. Perversity. Perversion. Pervert. Is this what he is? Perverse? She cannot imagine a man with a serial affection for black women. It’s degrading, she says. Beneath me. It is not he she thinks of but herself. What is she? Who is she? A white man’s whore? The words sail through night. The neighbours listen. Do they smirk? Do they say fool, stupid fool? And why does he care for what they think? The girls get younger and younger, she says. The men stay the same. Always a white man, a black woman. Never a black man, a black woman. A black man, a white woman. She’s watched each and every video. Is that what you do when you do it to me? Is that what I am? He feels her pain acutely, he cannot absolve himself. Why, she asks, why not a white woman? He can find no answer. What is wrong with you? Here he dwells. Confronted with her pain, he believes there must be something wrong. How explain the obsession? Her word. It is true that white women do not move him. Why? She is not alone in asking the question. There is his mother, his sisters in Antwerp. When he takes her there with the two boys – they have had a son – the mother, the sisters, look and look. Unlike her first son the second is dark, as dark as her. His son’s hair, like hers, is intemperate; it will not yield to a white man’s comb. This is what the mother and the sisters see. They look at her, at him. They want to know why he has brought them here to the cobbled streets of Antwerp. She, he knows, wonders too. They are married, it does not matter. She is the white man’s whore, the white man’s concubine. He doesn’t prepare her for his mother’s and his sisters’ disgust. He leaves her stranded, naked. She, he knows, sees through their mocking affection. She screams to be back home. She wants nothing of his life. A mistake, he well knows, dragging the family to Antwerp. Why mix obsession with marriage, why procreate?

He is outcast. At forty-nine this is not what he would have wished. A bad administrator. She placed the divorce papers on the lap-top in his study. He knows he’ll give her what she wants. He does not care enough to withhold anything. Silence is better. The secretary appears at the door. Flaxen. Old. She has never given him the respect that is his due. Does she know of the black bag? Is the secrecy of his longing all too evident? She too regards him as a bad administrator, of this he is certain. Does she wonder what he is doing in Africa? Does she use the word he hates so much? Decadent. A state of moral and cultural deterioration. He replaces the a with an e. Decedent. A deceased person. Is that what she sees? Someone dead?

The secretary hands him three supplementary exam papers. He’ll evaluate them tonight. He knows the grades before he has even marked them. He knows the examinees. He feels their judgement too. Out of touch, he’s heard them say. Insensitive. They think he is homosexual because he does not care for them. Women and their instinct! Women and their overweening regard for themselves! They do not care for his disregard. Especially when they are pretty, which they are, which even he has acknowledged. What kind of a French man is he? Why won’t he soften the procedure of learning? Why is he such a stickler? They forget he is Belgian, not French. They know nothing of his love for mica, obsidian. The flaxen haired secretary does. She has made it her business to know things. He persists: Has she opened the black bag? Has she read the titles of the films? Did she instinctively know what the contents were? Better Recherche du temps perdu, Fleurs du mal!

He slips the exam papers in his briefcase. He tells the secretary he’ll be home for the remainder of the week. He does not tell her that some day soon it will not be his home. His only concern is his son. There, at least, eternal love has lodged. The boy’s French is coming along well. He has a zest for the world the mother renounces. He imagines the son with him in Reunion. He has a job offer, if he wants it. He has tried each and every university in France. No one will have him. The fact that he has published with Gallimard means little, next to nothing. Do they know he has abandoned Europe? Is he the second son – in truth if not in fact – divested of all claim to rightful ownership, compelled to seek his fortune in the colonies? What fortune, then, has he found? A profession he has grown to detest. A wife who will not have him. A son, young as he is, who dreams of the École Supérieure. At least, he thinks, at least something of him will survive if she’ll allow it. Much as he wills this dream he doubts its fruition. Here, at least, he must make his stand. He has evaluated the rights a husband and a father have. Absurd though this country is, it has acknowledged that right, a father’s right. The boy has an EU passport. The mother too. But what good is the European Union when no university will have him? If not him, then the boy. Surely she will allow the boy his freedom? He is not certain. Nothing about her is certain. Aggressive, yes. Resentful, yes. But certain? What can she know of certainty? Her family votes for the National Party. And she? Does she vote? He doubts this. While she is made of history she does not invest her faith there. The ANC are fools, she says. They understand nothing. And she? What does she understand? Enough to know that she doesn’t have to work for a dry cleaning company. Enough to know she can take him to the cleaners!

He thinks he’ll take the job in Reunion. The prospect of island life appeals to him. The irony of the name – Reunion – does not escape him. He knows he is done with the mainland. Done with Europe. Done with Africa. The boy will come with him. It will be his one proviso. Will he succeed? Here, for the first time, he prays. He is not a man given to prayer. He is a man of little faith. He believes he has known love. It is mica, obsidian. He knows he’ll love his son always. But what of the other boy? Has he not learnt to love him too? And what of the mother, the one who will not have him? What of her? Is he such a thing of scorn? Inadmissible. Admissible no longer. Surely no mere black bag could divide them? Then what? Has he been asleep all these years? Ten. A decade. Decadent. Decedent. He has always been drawn to the resonances of words. A book is a teacup. Words are leaves. When he looks at the book of his life, what does he see? The question stalls, will not go away, will not be answered. She recommends a therapist before she gives up the ghost. He surprises himself by taking up the suggestion. He thinks she is surprised too. She says nothing. She does not want him to regale her with confession. She is not his altar. Better the white man’s whore than his black Madonna. He respects her decision to cede all love, all faith in her. It is not in her that the answer lies. She knows this. How, he does not know. But she does. Her stone mouth tells him so. How could he think he could vault the contract between them? How could he have ever believed he could soften her mouth? Reunion ... the word will not go away. Not only ironic, he thinks now, but obscene. Her deeds, her words, possess no irony. They are not obscene. Is this why he will not fight her? But what of the boy? What will he do to keep the boy? He realises now that there is nothing he will do. In the art of war he is a novice. And she? He can find no word to match her skill. So much for equals.

He shuts the door to the office. The number on the door will remain the same, the nameplate will change. A good thing too. During his headship he has displayed little skill in generating a student body. In South Africa French is not the language of trade. Better if he were a specialist in Chinese! He well knows France’s investment in South African culture, in cultural exchange. But culture, as she well knows, means little if not nothing. And exchange? What exchange could possibly exist when distrust and faithlessness divide the world? Trade, that’s what counts. He knows this well. He has been a devoted consumer. Did he care for the hard mouths? No. Was it his own gratification alone that mattered? Again no. Then what, what has he been doing here? He passes the secretary. A chain dangles from her over-large spectacles. She, he thinks, is asking the same question. What is he doing here? It does not escape him that this was also Chatwin’s question. He hands her the keys to the office. Someone else will move the boxes. In his hand he holds the briefcase, the black bag he presses to his chest. He does not care that the CDG bag is reinforced, the seal zip-locked. He knows the treachery of plastic. The secretary gazes at the bag he holds to his chest. Her suspicion, he realises, is mixed with concern. She actually cares! In turn he smiles broadly. He wishes her well over the Christmas season. He even asks after her heart. She happily informs him of her travails. He makes a mental note to ask questions of this nature in the future. Questions that gratify, that bind. Union. Reunion. Clutching the black bag to his chest he thinks of an island. A piece of land surrounded by water. A detached and isolated thing.