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T.Wignesan
At first,
emboldened by the presence of his friend and the newness of the situation in
his drab and uneventful life, he crossed his legs and held high his proffered
glass of cognac, enveloped in un faux air
de bonhomie. Gradually, as the afternoon wore on and his possibilities of
legally remaining in the country were being mercilessly stretched on the
dissecting table of his particular plight under the cognac-stained hands of the
highly placed administrative judge, he uncrossed his legs and an air of being
in unfamiliar surroundings overtook him.
"You
have no choice, you know," declaimed the judge, speaking as though he had
himself the unsavoury task of having to eject the clandestine “immigrant” from
the country, his coarse raspy voice issuing from him in stultifying blasts; any
attempt to speak meant that he had to assemble the words in his throat in
groups of three before he forced them in one go past his buccal cavity, giving
his speech the effect of a man unwilling by nature to talk but happily finding
in a glass of cognac the means by which to loosen his vocal chords.
"Either you leave by yourself, and that too immediately, or you let the
authorities deport you."
He eyed the middle-aged Madagascan from above
the rim of his octagonally-chipped chunky glass as he drank down in gulps the
remaining thinning cognac on the rocks. He smacked his lips and looked round at
yet another of his forced "friends", a former asylum-seeker - I say
forced because his own elite Public Administration ENA-school peers were
somehow forced to send some “friend” of a “friend” to him for help - whom he
had also tried to help get established in the country without much success.
These “friends” could very well have been channelled through some NGOs or some
Catholic secours group or the
inevitably secretive Freemasonic fraternity. And all those he tried to help
sooner or later invariably found themselves trekking forth and back to his
place over months or years without in any way finding their situation being
improved. Some even complained of their plight worsening in his hands. In any
case, an immigré's plight could not
worsen beyond the degré zero of not
having the right papers which simply meant the right to reside permanently in
the country, in other words the right to obtain and keep down a job for life,
even if the job was not worth holding up as an insignia of one’s own
self-respect.
The judge
made it a point of sending his newly-acquired wards around to all sorts of
people with letters and visiting cards neatly filled with his curiously
old-style writing as on ruled-paper steady hand, a gesture which inspired hope
for one's insecure situation while imbuing confidence in the man who willingly
placed unsealed envelopes in their hands. Almost every letter or card was
inscribed with the cryptic words: Et Dieu
vous rendra... So, the asylum-seekers always came with their hands full - a
bottle here, a bottle there and whatever went with it in gift-paper wrapping
though this by no means was called for or even hinted at. Sooner or later, all
became his friends, a virtue that needs to be stressed since he received them
all, cordially, in his Parisian apartments in the eighth arrondissement within shouting distance of the presidential
The
Madagascan, a fair-skinned forty-five-ish man of medium height and
solidly-packed build, sat apprehensively on the edge of the imitation red
round-backed and cushioned Louis the-something period bright gold chair and
looked into his glass; the ice-cubes took time to melt even in the heat of the
September afternoon. Outside the partially opened windows and the strictly
drawn grey-golden velvety curtains, the grinding sound of the streams of
traffic on the périphérique was only
now and then subdued by the resounding salvoes of declamations issuing from the
administrative judge. His wife in a tartan skirt and beige pullover sat almost
as if she was a part of the settee. From time to time, she would get up to
refill the glasses, or simply to go out of the room, the double-folding doors
of the lounge opening into a long corridor on either side of which several
locked doors stared at you making you wonder whether electronic eyes surveyed
you as you passed towards the lounge. Whenever she reappeared, it was only to
make specific signs to her husband who obviously enjoyed receiving the
distressed and the forlorn who hoped to gain his influential assistance.
"What
else can I say? You know it all now. This country has been spoiled by you know
whom since the war. Things were different before. I could have myself written
to the president. Now, things are different. I feel like I'm living in a
foreign country. My letter wouldn't even get referred to the President’s human
rights counsellor. All the key posts: les
chefs de cabinet and les conseillers
spéciaux are given to you know whom!"
He took
another gulp from his glass, got up and strode in his thick pink leathery
dressing gown to the mantelshelf to deposit his glass, and there stood with his
back to the empty fireplace and surveyed the scene before him. Two foreigners,
one in an irregular situation, and the other with only temporary papers, both
of whom he could have helped if he really had wanted to. With him, things were
never always straight, that is, either this or that for a choice. If you went
to him for help, he would never refuse it, but he would drag things on until
you would yourself wonder what he was doing about you. Sooner or later, you
would begin to ask yourself if he wasn't after all cooking up something to
cause your case to backfire. On the face of it, he would give you his card and
over his name, he would inscribe the words:
en cas d'appel par la police française, prière de contacter..., or he would
after a few spaced-out visits to him with appropriate presents (these by no
means were a must, just a gesture of courtesy for he was certainly not, on the
face of it, corruptible) write you a letter of recommendation, ending with the
words: je me porte garant de
Monsieur...So-and-So.
Tiana sat
now with his knees stuck together, his empty glass still cluttered by some ice
cubes clinking as it passed from hand to hand, much like a spin bowler about to
come curling down the turf or pitch at the umpire’s end. His bulging eyeballs
kept rolling under his lowered lids, and he seemed to be concentrating on
something a few feet away from where he was seated. It was only when the judge
had asked him twice - with an interval in between when everybody present stared
at Tiana in silence - whether he wanted another drink that it became evident he
wasn't quite there, altogether. The trouble was, one couldn't make out either
whether he was straining under the influence of the alcohol he had consumed
since the morning. True, he had had only half a tumbler up to then, but there
was no telling when he might have already begun the day with some
well-concealed bottle back in his aunt's place.
'Won't you
have another drop,' urged the judge solicitously and added, 'one for the road.'
He wasn't quite prepared to continue the private audience, though every
occasion for him to expound on the country's plight in the presence of
foreigners was for him an opportunity not to be missed. Just at that moment, as though someone wound her up, his
wife came out of her wax-work pose,
perspiration suddenly bursting forth from her forehead in beads, and exclaimed,
glancing furtively at her husband:
'Don't you
think it's about time to give the place a coup
de balai?'
She had
misjudged her own husband, he who had judged thousands of refugee appeals and
was only too well learned in the woes of immigrant clandestine misery. It must have been for the ten-thousandth time
she misjudged him.
'Hold your
damn tongue, you wench!' he yelled, the loose flesh on the sides of his lined
and craggy mouth trembling. 'Haven’t you any consideration for our guests?' He
glared at her, as she made to gather up the stray glasses. 'Put them back...leave
them where they are and serve our honoured guests another round of whatever
they want.' Perspiration ran down her neck and wet her pullover tightly drawn
over her low wobbly breasts. She dared look up only once at her magisterially
fired husband, her beady buttonhole eyes growing red, her cauliflower earlobes
pulsating blue and black. Instantly, almost as if she was reacting from habit
after innumerable tirades from her choleric husband, she lifted a decanter from
the trolley, conveniently placed in front of the settee and held it tilted over
Tiana's glass. The Madagascan whose papers, except for his passport, were long
in "a state of irregularity", as the French were wont to put it for
similar cases, snapped out of his reverie and brought his glass up to the mouth
of the decanter. He watched dazed as the golden liquid cascaded through the
dwindling ice-cubes.
'Some
ice-cubes to go with it?' Tiana nodded,
his face registering a blend of self-abased gratitude. The judge's wife reached
into a wooden bucketful of ice-cubes, buttressed by bands of polished aluminium
– the cubes still emitting a thin cloud of frozen fizz as she lifted the lid -
and brought out two cubes with silver forceps and carefully let them slip into
the half-filled glass of cognac. Tiana looked up and flashed his irregularly
arranged teeth at her, heaving his shoulders and expelling a sigh at the same
time. She caught a whiff of his breath and quickly withdrew to serve the other
guest. The judge who was watching the proceedings with a straight face seemed
satisfied that his wife had made amends for her faux pas and had proffered the appropriate excuses in his presence.
He came up to her for a refill, the muscles of his face relaxed, but she couldn't avoid settling back
into the settee with a morose and sulking mien, her eyes narrowing to the point
of being invisible.
'As I was
saying, my country since the war has gone to the dogs.' He took his position
before the fireplace which commanded the entire lounge by its near-wall-length
breadth and proceeded to declaim his thesis; his gravely voice grated less by
then. 'The war has made a difference. Before the war, everything was French,
this, the capital, the
'I'm not
surprised any more that the French might even abandon the capital some day. I
mean, only the other day a visiting dignitary announced rather dejectedly that
walking around
'And then,
just think...' He took another gulp and lit an unfiltered cigarette. His wife
appeared to want to calm him down and/or to warn him of smoking, but he bade
her down with a flapping hand stuck halfway out. She obeyed; reassured, she
settled further into the settee. The two foreigners followed the gestures and
movements with interest, and their eyes rested for a while on the demure and
beat-looking wife. 'Just think' he resumed, clearing his throat in such an
unrestrained raucous manner that the two Asians appeared quite put out. 'Every
asylum seeker eventually asks for nationality. Now, how easy all this is. You
have a country and a people somewhere else. You owe allegiance to them. You
come here because you say there back where you come from, your own people won't
let you live. Then, we let you in and let you live. You take out citizenship
papers, presumably because your refugee papers won't let you even go on a visit
to your country. Then, as a citizen of my country, you go back to your country,
you establish contacts, you make all sorts of deals, and soon enough, you bring
a wife over, then, you are trading in goods coming from over there, then, you
bring over parents, children, siblings and you produce all sorts of papers:
diplomas, certificates, driving licences and, God only knows if they are
authentic, and before anybody is in a position to verify the truth of things,
you are voting us down and buying up our homes and businesses. And then, you
need only listen to the talk of the representatives of this newly-ordained four
million-odd citizens - they all speak of home as somewhere else and rise up in
anger and raise their voices as soon as we criticise the goings-on in your
former countries. Who do you owe allegiance to?' The high civil-servant's face
turned red and within a minute perspiration dripped from his temples and chin
and nose. The two asylum-seekers hung their heads in despair. The judge's wife
appeared to commiserate by the way she looked at the brown men. 'That's what I
mean when I say the country has gone to the dogs: there are too many people
over here who owe allegiance elsewhere. Am I not right?' He looked hard at
Devadasan who was so unsettled by the tirade that he laid his glass down
carefully on the table and clasped his hands together and kneaded his fingers
until he felt cornered by the judge.
'I don't
know, Monsieur le Juge, I really
don't know.'
'What do you
mean, you don't know. Aren't things the way I'm putting them across?' Devadasan
felt he was obliged to placate the judge.
'I don't
know if the situation is the same for everybody coming over here seeking
asylum, but...but I can assure you a good many of us feel very strong
affection…er…er..ties for the place while living here.'
'What ties?
Explain, what ties?'
'I don't
know...er...for instance, during the Tournoi
des Cinq Nations or the European or World Cup football matches or...or...
the Roland Garros, I mean, every time the French are playing, I can assure you,
we are rooting for the French players and not for...'
'Hey,
that's a good one. You know why you are cheering for us? That's because your
countries never can get into these matches. And if they did, I wonder who you'd
be yelling for? And as for Roland Garros, don't tell me you are not for the
occasional Asiatics or Blacks who make their fleeting appearance in the event?'
'Still, I
must say we feel very disappointed when the French are defeated.'
'Well,
that's nice to know, but it's not good enough by a long shot.'
'Excuse me,
Monsieur, when the French won the
Davis Cup, we shed tears.'
'Of joy or
of sorrow?'
'What's
that, Monsieur.'
'Were you
happy or sorry?'
'Very
happy, Sir.' Tiana also nodded his head
vigorously in assent.
'If asked,
would you go to war, would you take up arms against your own country or
people?' The two brown men looked at each other and flinched.
'How, Sir?
You mean kill my own people?'
'Kill,
rape, massacre, torture, destroy, pillage, whether young or old, robust or
infirm.'
'I don't
know, Sir. I don't think my people will want to invade your country, Sir.'
'But, if
they do, what will you do?'
'There's
not a chance that will happen, Sir.'
'Quelle connerie! You want me to swallow
that! Here we are, already in a state of siege and you want me to believe that. Alright, go to the thirteenth arrondissement. You've been there, of
course?' Devadasan nodded reluctantly, for he must have sensed what was coming
next. 'What do you see there? A
He coughed
vigorously and swallowed. Then he cleared his throat and sucked in his breath.
‘I'd rather say there's no end to the hell this poor old country of mine has to
put up with. And after all that, you say there's no invasion. You know, this
chap, this extremist aristocrat Le Pen who is crying out at every rally for an
end to immigration, for mass deportation of clandestine immigrants, for giving
the country back to the French, I wonder now whether he is not the only person
who is telling the truth. There are after all too many politicians and
highly-placed civil servants with divided loyalties - one leg here and one leg
somewhere else. You see what I mean? Now, if something like this happens in
your country of origin, what would you think? What would you do?'
The judge's
face was growing less red now. He had struggled through his tirade in some
obvious pain. He had to get it out, at least once and for all. All the previous
visits of the asylum-seekers were taken up with necessary paper work and
interrogations in an attempt to get down to the facts of their circumstances.
Now, the time had arrived when there was hardly anything that could be done.
Besides, the semi-retired judge was getting too old, and his crony buddies were
no more like him in the centre of power or in a position of influence. There
wasn't much he could do either, even while he was actively serving the State.
So, the time was ripe for him to make his farewells. And he had made them
without suffering a stroke himself. His paleness and trembling hands were a
sure signal for him to find a seat. He gained the comfort of his armchair, drew
his feet under him, while his wife covered his legs with a tartan striped
blanket. Soon, she busied herself with the emptying of ashtrays and the
retrieving of empty glasses. The asylum-seekers took their leave in silence,
their outstretched hands hardly being seized by the judge who regarded them
from over the rim of his glasses. The wife accompanied them to the door and
without much ceremony closed the door after them, while some members of the
family entered without a word being exchanged.
The two
brown men, dressed in their best clothes for the occasion: jackets,
ironed-readymade trousers, polished leather shoes, borrowed ties hiding weary
collars, made their way in beaten silence down the marble stairways, great big
thick embossed glass-doors, carefully laundered flowering gardens, and finally
through huge black and gold-tinted spiky, heavy iron gates with trelliswork of
symmetrical branch designs on either halves. When they were out in the
boulevard, they breathed almost as if for the first time since the judge had
begun his tirade.
'The damned
connard!' Devadasan cursed as if to
relieve himself of an unbearable burden on his neck and shoulders and shook his
body and stamped his feet. Tiana was taken aback. He had never seen his friend
who was a good ten years older than him in such a state - aggressive and
swearing. They, then, walked along in silence towards the Miromesnil tube
station without uttering a word. The silence proved too burdensome for Deva.
‘You know,
I wonder why we ex-colonials ever come to the countries which in the first
place colonised us.’ They stopped and looked at each other, an undercurrent of
words welling up beneath their humiliated faces that they found hard, it seemed,
to relax. ‘If only…if only…’ uttered Deva, his breath stuck in his chest.
‘Still I don’t begrudge the judge. He’s okay. He does feel for us, I’m sure.
How many would even bother to receive us in their homes?’
‘What we
do? Where go? Where home?’ Words seemed steamrolled on Tiana’s tongue.
‘The
trouble is, the trouble is… our own kind. These buggers raised them on their
standards, taught them their tricks… how to tie everybody in knots, use and
overuse the colonial no-trial detention laws, keep us down with threats, weed
out the rebellious who wouldn’t suffer their corrupt games… court the
treacherous lot amongst us by favouring them with unearned posts…
AAAAAhhuhhh! If only…You know, Tiana,
our leaders all over the former colonies are just those guys who learnt the art
best from their masters, these…these master collaborators; these… these turds
who ape them and continue to lick their backsides at every turn.’ Deva appeared
to be out of breath as his arms thrashed about him while walking. ‘No wonder, a
new generation brought up on local ideals, local standards, local schools,
universities and institutions are beginning to voice their contempt. Even if
the new-found values aren’t worth cherishing, they are different; they are
ours. And then the time will come…it sure must come… when all of our children’s
children will have grown weary of the apes who continue to preserve their Old
Masters’ Voices…’ Deva shut up just as abruptly as he had begun his
fumigations. They walked in silence. Tiana glanced at his fuming friend.
‘If this
people no come to my land first, I sure no come here now.’
‘You damn
right, Tiana! Just tell them that next time. They say we come here to take
their jobs, their wives, their daughters, their houses, their cities, but who
came to our places centuries ago to shell our homes, rape our girls, steal our
wives, sodomise our boys, shortchange our kings, swipe our lands, plunder our
treasures, shackle our minds, and substitute our gods? Who? Ask them that the
next time.’
This
encounter with the judge had upset Deva beyond his own perception of himself,
and yet he felt trapped by the judge’s demeanour and rhetoric.
‘Okay,
okay, I’ll grant all the good they have done for us, all the mechanisation and
modernisation that have given us a headstart. And democracy, too, even if our
apish leaders have twisted it all up as instruments for fortifying and
institutionalising self-power.’ Tiana didn’t quite appear to follow his friend
in his thoughts. He queried blandly with his eyes to no avail, it seemed.
‘Okay, I’ll grant also the infusions of cultural advancements through advanced
educational systems also. And technology…you think Asians could have thought up
their own nuclear missiles and bombs? Uh? All by themselves?’ Deva stopped and
looked at Tiana in the eyes, his hand restraining Tiana’s coat sleeve.
‘You know
what Tiana, they got our minds. That’s what’s gone out of us!’
For once
Tiana seemed to react. The blood rushed to his cheeks as he listened. He may
not have understood all of Deva’s rhetoric but he got the jist alright, it
seemed. His fallen crumpled face resumed its fair flushed colour ever since the
judge’s tirade demolished his self-composure.
‘Just for
the right to breathe on this earth we have to be thankful.’ Deva held his
breath again. ‘Where can you go after being kicked out by our own shitty lot
set up by these very same peoples? The turds!’
Passers-by
gave the two glaring looks. The French of foreigners who had not learnt the
tongue from classrooms attracted no end of attention by itself.
‘You know
one thing, Tiana, at least that Le Pen fella is honest. He says what he feels.
As for the others, who knows what they really think has anything to do with
what they say. And if they mean what they say.’ Tiana shook his head in assent.
‘For us, just to live is to want to be humiliated!’ Deva shut up with
that.
There were
policemen and policewomen in black uniforms standing distractedly in the
pavements in front of huge black or dark green painted doorways under Roman
arches in rows after rows of solid limestone and marble five or six storey
centuries-old staid beige blocks skirting and hovering over their minute
stuttering selves, and they seemed only too well aware of their own
insignificance. They simply didn’t belong here; they had been brought down for
the upteenth time to the level of feeling they hadn’t even a right to walk the
pavements. And they didn’t seem to care either. What could be worse than being told
off in their own faces? How many times had they been told off by the very
liberals who had come out of their way to help them? When
the helper turns against the helpless, there’s a point of self-abasement from
which one can never recover, for one is incapable of riposte. Gratitude has to be carried beyond the point
of shame and feelinglessness. And out there, there in the former now
so-called independent colonies friends of these two envied them their place in
high-tech high-fashion
‘If only…if
only there was a place…a neutral place to which we can go and forget all this
hell.’ Deva shook his head. They kept their eyes riveted on the pavement.
Ash-gray
pigeons soared and fluttered up to gables and eaves of the five-storey
buildings and down to the roads where an old lady with a shopping-wheel-cart
was offering baguette crumbs to the
birds. Sparrows flitted all around in fear, not daring to share the treat while
she stood nearby. A magpie swooped down flapping and folding its white wings
and hopped on both feet with its sharp black long tuft of a tail in an upward
tilt and the sparrows reached for the cover of a leafy linden tree. A huge
puffy brown stray cat entered the scene, and the pigeons and magpie flapped
loudly away into the distant scaffolding on a building facade. Now and then,
black Citroens pulled up alongside the guarded doorways, accompanied by
helmeted police escorts with outsized white gloves on wholly black
motor-cycles. Some official cars descended down entrances to guarded doorways
which parted on sight. Pedestrians moved about the pavements, entering and
leaving cafés and supermarkets, oblivious of the high authority residing in the
place.
It looked
to them such a harmless place, and yet the two of them knew that it would be
from there - if ever it came to it - that papers would be signed for their
expulsion. They knew too that, right then perhaps, from behind one of the iron
railinged and white curtained windows some high official of the Interior
Ministry might be aimlessly following their movements, the same man or woman
who could with a flourish of his or her pen put an end to their misery, a
miserable plight that was to hound them for the rest of their lives. They knew
too anyone seeking asylum had first to go through hell, just waiting in a kind
of wasting limbo, in penury and destabilising fear for about at least a couple
of years, and then, whether one was made a stateless person or a refugee go
through an anxiety-infused and inducing period, and if one was successful or
simply fortunate enough in getting his working papers, the long arduous climb
up to a way of life in the most harrowing of circumstances would begin, and by
the time one was relatively safe money-wise, one's life would be at an end,
bolstered only by the pills one had to take to keep from slipping back to
square one. There'd hardly be a moment one may spare to live one's life. And
then, halfway through the process, the regrets would begin to set in: should
one have done better to have stayed home and have one’s mouth shut up for good?
Too late to find out the truth of the alternatives.
They stood
at the entrance to the metro station, for they were not going in the same
direction. Gusts of dust and stray papers and ribbons swirled about them. They
zipped their jackets close, but first Devadasan pulled his tie out in disgust
and shoved it inside his trouser pocket. Tiana followed suit.
'Which way
you going, man?'
'Donno,
which way you going?'
'Me, I'm
going to my A.N.P.E. See if I can get some temporary night work.'
'Which way
that?'
'Have to
take the direction
'Donno.
Donno what to do,' Tiana threw up his arms and heaved a sigh, expelling his
breath with his mouth wide open. His teeth were in a bad way, yellow and broken
in places and empty in others.
'What you
going to do if things don't work out, man? Think of returning?'
'Donno,'
said Tiana dejectedly, his eyes narrowing while he shook his head from side to
side.
'You got
the jinx, man. That's for sure. Me, at least, I got some help and I got this
paper saying I'm a stateless person. So what, stateless, refugee, so what.
Gives me time to think and reorganise.'
'Donno.'
Tiana's face deadened and grew pale. 'I donno what to do. Just donno what to
do. Stay, go back, what difference do it make.'
'You better
go to your embassy and try and get your passport in order, at least,' urged
Devadasan. 'Have you got any money left from your last job?'
The mention
of the illegal travail noir job got
Tiana in a state. He darted looks up and down the sidewalks, and then eeked out
a tentative smile and backed out of giving a straight answer by smirking.
'Here's
some, not much but it could take you through the week, and then, we'll see. Do
you think your aunt can do something through her friend at the ministry?'
'No
idea.' Tiana shook his head
distractedly. The thought of his aunt obviously brought up other memories,
other domestic incidents which weren't too pleasant and of which they had
spoken on very many occasions. 'No idea, Devan. Have no idea.'
They stood
for a while looking at each other. Right at that moment, three late-teens
school-girls in worn-out and punctured jeans passed them, giggling. They
followed them with their eyes until they went out of their field of vision. One
girl, before the linked-arms trio disappeared, turned round to look at them.
They fidgeted. It seemed their insides were burning up and were being skewered.
The feel of warm flesh was a long un-recallable memory that continued to bait
them. They looked at each other again, and the hint of a smile edged itself on
either face.
'Back home,
I could just go up to a hotel and for a mere thirty francs have one like that.'
'Here, just
free,' said Tiana and clicked with his tongue in his cheek.
'If you are
willing to take the risk, that is.'
'Aaaah,
donno,' another breath-expelling sigh escaped Tiana's open mouth. 'Donno what
to do...donno…donno what to do.'
There were
not many people on the pavements. Some older men and women with frail-looking
metal shopping handcarts and some well-dressed men striding to some
appointment, it would seem. A few feet away from where they were standing, a
Municipal garbage truck pulled up. Two Maghrebin-looking middle-aged men and a
youngish dark Tamil hanging on the open rear of the truck jumped down and
proceeded to grab a pile of discarded cartons full of rubbish and wooden crates
crammed with rotting vegetables and fruit with their bare hands. Even before
they could deposit the lot in the grinding back of the truck, it began to pull
off. They ran after it, chucked the last cellophane bags of choice rubbish in
and clung on to the railings. Within minutes, an Indian or Pakistani in a
bright yellow and red overall appeared on the road and proceeded to sweep the
discarded or accidentally dropped remains of the rubbish pile down the gutter
which was running with slimy slushy water. Across the road, a middle-aged white
in a clean greenish-yellow uniform was riding his huge motorised machine made
for sucking up dog-shit on the pavement. The two brown men watched the
motor-cycle-wonder stick out a brush from underneath its huge metallic shell
and swipe up lumps of turds that some distinguished lady's manicured poodle
elegantly deposited on the pavement while passers-by had to check themselves in
their hurry to catch a train.
'I must get
along.' It seemed they were reluctant to part. Both of them were still fuming
from being subjected to the tirade. A handsome Mediterranean-looking woman
probably in her mid-twenties, in a muslin white long-sleeved fluffy blouse,
sporting a purple-spotted thick sackcloth, folded and hooked by an oversized
brassy safety-pin and a leather belt into a skirt, stopped a couple of yards
away from them, lifted her left foot and crossed it on her right knee, showing
sleek muscular calves. With her right hand she ran her forefingers and palm
across the sole of her elegant black low-heeled shoe. Then she brought her palm
up to her nose over her lips and sniffed at it several times in obvious doubt.
Then, she brought her foot down, straightened up and descended the metro stairs, her tightly drawn chignon
over her nape bobbing in unison to the twitch of her buttocks. The brown men
looked at each other and shook their heads in unbelief. 'I'm taking the A line from Auber,' said
Devadasan, suspecting that his friend wasn't too keen to be left alone. Tiana
feared being checked for his papers in the metro.
They sat
opposite each other on flapping seats in the centre of the coach, an easy place
to survey a police checking team boarding on either end of the coach. Every
time the doors opened, they looked out to check the platform as well. A
stunning blond girl in her late twenties or early thirties stomped in and stood
between them while caressing the sleek, steel bar planted in the centre like a
fire station slipdown getaway. Within seconds, they had forgotten to keep an
eye out for the police. The strapping lass, conscious of their ogling eyes,
gave both of them a straight look in the eyes and then a conniving smile. They
were both sizing her up, practically taking her apart for about two stations
from Chatelet, when they heard someone saying, 'Tickets, please' down the aisle,
along the cushion-backed seats compartment. Tiana jumped, the small pad flapped
against the back of the cushioned seat. Tiana's eyes rolled and he sweated
profusely, all within a minute. Devadasan joined him quickly and asked if he
had his ticket with him. Tiana searched his pockets. His state of frenzy
increased his fumbling, and when the traffic inspectors approached the couple,
Devadasan stuck his season ticket in front of them. They didn't even look at
it. One of them was in the process of checking the blond girl's ticket, and he
went back with it to consult a colleague. The train pulled into a station.
Devadasan grabbed Tiana by the arm and said: 'Here's where we get off,' and
pulled him through the throng of passengers massing before the doors.
'What happened to your ticket? You had one
with you. I saw you go past the turnpike with it.'
'Yeah,
donno. I look in pockets. Donno. Must have dropped it.' Tiana kept digging his
hands again and again in the same places and was beside himself with fear.
'Okay.
Okay, let's get out quickly.' They rushed out. 'That was a close miss, man.
Just imagine, just for a lost metro
ticket you could have been deported like a common criminal.' They looked at
each other and shook their heads in relief. The air became thinner and less
depressive as they approached the
Just before
they took leave of each other, Devadasan could not help sermonising yet once
again his Madagascan friend in order that he may feel disposed to accepting the
idea of returning to his country.
'Don't feel
too bad if you have to return to your island. I realise there's really nothing
there for you to go back to, but, at least, there's the family, and besides you
have to - I have to - all of us have to have a love life. If you don't have it
now, when are you going to have it? When you are sixty-five or seventy? I know it's difficult, especially since you
have royal blood in your veins, but, just think, if you are deported you'd have
to be escorted to the plane handcuffed. Only the other day, a Sri Lankan
suffered a heart attack on the plane just as the police thrust him into the
plane against his wishes.' Devadasan studied
the distinctively typical Mongoloid Dayak features of his tortured face.
'If only your ancestors didn't take it upon themselves to set sail from the
They shook
hands standing under a tree by an artificial lake. Ducks moved on the water
like toys. Children threw crumbs and other pieces of leftover vegetables into
the water. Women sat on benches and knitted or talked or talked and knitted
with prams at their sides. The sun shone more brightly in the park. Devadasan
watched Tiana amble away, looking furtively around him all the time as he
strode through the uncut grass, across the unmarked open macadam in front of
the castle, past the swirling traffic into the first road on the left.
Some six
months must have transpired before they met again, by chance in the street. It
was four in the morning. Devadasan was returning from the Chinese restaurant
where he was the all-purposes-man, even doing the cooking occasionally.
'I very
hurry,' he said. 'Got job. Pay not good, but got job.'
'How much?'
'Just smic.'
'Doing
what?'
'Doing
everything. Soja factory. Bean sprouts. Dirty work. Excuse me, Devan, late
already. Chinese boss sure scold me.'
'Okay,
Tiana, call me Sunday.'
'Not possible, work Sunday also.' Tiana
was already waving to him from some distance away.
'Call me
when you can. Okay?' Tiana shook his forearm vigorously
as if to say "yes".
They saw
each other again one such morning in April. A thunderstorm was pounding
'What
terrific thunder,' volunteered Devadasan after a few minutes of listening in
quiet.
'True,
true,' rejoined Tiana.
'I wonder
how long this is going to last.'
'What
that?'
Just then
there was a flash of lightning as Tiana turned to avoid the blinding light.
'Hey,
Tiana, you here?'
'Ah, I
think you here, but not sure, Devan. How nice.'
They
slapped each other on the arms and looked up at the sky waiting the few seconds
before the thunder rolled and broke some miles away.
'Hey,
Tiana, what you doing now? Working still in soya factory?'
'Yeah. Hard
work. Dirty work. Boss Chinese very, very hard, man. No sleep much. Get up
three. Begin work four. Today, sure late. Boss cut pay.'
'Still you
must be really rich now. I thought when I saw you first, you had difficulty
walking. Your pockets must be loaded with two hundred franc or five hundred
franc bills.' They laughed. 'So, how does it feel to be rich?'
'No, man,
not rich. Money come, money go.'
'Why don't
you save all of it, or nearly all of it?'
'Can't.
Must pay Aunt Lal two thousand for room. Then, clothes, shoes, train, bus, very
costly.'
'How much
have you saved?’ Tiana held his breath. ‘Comeon, tell me, how much?'
'Not much.
Just a few thousand.'
'You've
been working for nearly a year and all you got is a few thousand?'
'Yeah.'
Tiana had a way of avoiding taking stock of the situation if it hurt. He merely
lowered his eyelids and kept silent.
'You've got
to save more and give up the job soon. The longer you stay in it, the greater
the chances of being caught. Seven days a week on buses and trains - you are
bound to knock into a police patrol or something.'
Tiana
merely looked down at his hands which were twitching.
'Got to
keep working. Must save. Can't return country without money.'
'Then,
don't waste money on clothes.'
'You no
understand. Must buy clothes. Must have expensive clothes. Otherwise, can't
return.'
'Why?'
Tiana
merely looked at his friend.
'Okay,
okay. I understand, but why do you have to pay your aunt?'
'She ask
money.'
'Don't give
it to her, the wench. You do all the work at home, I know. You clean, you wash,
you cook, you repair, you look after the children - you know how much that
would cost her? Next time, tell her to pay you. You understand?'
Tiana
merely affixed a vacant look. Then, he smiled. He trusted his friend. He had no
other friend.
'Must go.
Late already.'
'Wait till
it stops raining...' Before Devadasan could restrain him, Tiana had already
dashed across the road, waving goodbye.
They didn't
see each other for quite a while after that. Four or five months must have
elapsed. As their paths never crossed again in the thirteenth arrondissement,
Devadasan who was still employed in the Chinese restaurant - only this time as
the assistant to the chef - went looking for him one Sunday afternoon. He
called and they met downstairs in a vacant building chantier.
'No more
work. Patron change workers. He take
other worker.'
Devadasan
felt bad, seeing his friend dejected, but Tiana had put on weight and was
looking quite fit, perhaps like the athlete he was in his younger days.
'You know,
Tiana, you must be careful these days. Even the Centre Right is in a menacing
mood now that the general elections are approaching. They don't want to be
outdone by Le Pen. If they keep harping on the immigration issue, the people
are bound to be disabused with the present setup. Not that the Left are any the
kinder towards us. Only that if the Right gets into power, they are bound to
enact some new law or introduce some new measures to curb immigration and make
deportation of those without papers here a certainty...'
'I go back
sure.' Devadasan's eyes lighted up.
'Good
thing, man. When? When are you going back?'
'Oh, donno,
but go back, sure. Aunt Lal not happy with me. She sure kick me out.'
'Damn her.
Damn the bitch. Now that you're not working anymore, of course, she must want
you out. Good thing, you've decided to go back. Only hurry up, man. Get going
quickly.'
After some
small talk about women and girls in the neighbourhood and a few laughs, they
parted feeling better. Devadasan knew how much Tiana liked to drink. Since they
couldn't go into a café somewhere, he brought him a bottle of whisky. He knew
he wasn't doing the right thing, for the bottle might only reawaken his
addiction, but then he must have thought that, since Tiana had some money, he
could also if he wanted to procure the same and excused himself for the
thoughtless gesture.
The next
time they met, the elections were over, and the Right had come in with an
overwhelming majority. Devadasan was fuming when he heard that, for no reason
at all - except perhaps for an extremely remote possibility of seeing the
immigration laws eased - Tiana had not made a move to leave. It was obvious he
was hitting the bottle with a vengeance, or rather taking refuge in it.
'Donno.
Donno, Devan, donno what to do!' was his classic reply. Devadasan wasn't sure
any more if he really wanted to leave. His aunt was making life impossible for
him and even threatened him a couple of times with having him denounced to the
police. The police had received instructions, it seemed, from the new Interior
Minister to have at least some three hundred and fifty thousand clandestins rounded up and deported
without much ceremony. The hunt was on. Everywhere groups of uniformed
policemen-and-women had their eyes peeled, or so it seemed. Around the building
where Tiana was hiding out, there suddenly appeared police vans, and identity card
checking ensued for all the darker-looking pedestrians and motorists. Cordons
were sometimes set up and police proceeded to weed out clandestins like in a big-game hunt with beaters. Tiana was
terrified. His brain just wouldn't function any more. Ever since he heard of
the Sri Lankan's infarctus in the plane, he was nervous. He wasn't at all
certain if he could leave without being spotted and arraigned or something like
that. His aunt, too, became nervous ever since Devadasan told her on the phone
that if Tiana got caught, she might be in for some trouble for having harboured
an illegal immigrant.
'Donno.
Donno what to do! Sais pas. J' sais pas quoi faire!' He shook his head dismally.
'First
thing, stop drinking so much.'
'I try,
but...Mostly one bottle rouge. That's
all. I swear.'
'You don't
have to swear and all that but concentrate on leaving. I told you before. I
checked. If you have a valid passport and a plane ticket to your country, you
can leave. Nobody is going to stop you. At least, that's what I think. If they
don't let you leave, I'll write a letter to Le Pen and tell him what happens.
He's sure to come himself to escort you to the plane.'
Tiana
smiled.
'Honest, I
checked. You don't need a visa de sortie.
That's what they told me at the Prefecture.'
Tiana shook
his head. It was obvious the image of being handcuffed and deported drove
terror into him. Only the other day, the weekly Express carried a pic of a beautiful Sri Lankan girl, bound hand
and foot, being hoisted into a plane by five policemen in uniform, her panties
in full view of the passengers.
'When go
back home must take plenty, plenty things...presents.'
'Oh, forget
about presents. For whom?' He looked at Tiana who was trying to refuse the
urging. His breath was short and his face strained. 'Okay. Okay, I understand.
I'll see what I can do.'
It took
some time for Devan to finally accept the ruse about expensive clothes, the
excess cash in hand and the presents which was Tiana’s way of saving face. It
was a way of saying that he had been to
Some time
had elapsed after the elections, and it was a fact that the new Rightist
government was in earnest about weeding out the clandestins. The laws about illegal employment had already been
tightened under the previous socialist majority: employers engaging clandestine
labour were to come under severe punishment – nothing less than confiscation of
their property. Yet, it was difficult to tell what was really going on in
Tiana's head. Devadasan worked on him, talked to him often on the phone,
encouraged him to leave by warning him that all that he had in this country was
the right to watch the tele. He kidded him
with a jingle: "Ici, on n'a pas
d'idée, mais on a la télé!"
Gradually, it seemed Devadasan's
chipping away at his final wall of resistance and the livid and terrifying - to
Tiana - description of the process of deportation began to work some reaction
in Tiana, especially since it became clear to him that his aunt who could not
look forward to any more handouts from him was absolutely determined to put him
out in the street. The real reason was that she had decided to take on a haus-gast, that is, a man to sleep with
without having to go out for it.
'Sure, I go
back,' he said dismally once after being exhorted to by Devadasan.
'When?'
'Soon.'
'You mean
after the World Cup Finals next year?'
Tiana
merely eeked out a toothy smile.
'Listen,
Tiana, you are not going to drag this on till you're an old man, I hope. Last
time, you said, you couldn't go back empty-handed. Now that that is remedied, you can't say you
don't want to go back in the middle of a television series.'
Tiana
seemed to suspect that his only friend was losing patience with his
dilly-dallying.
'Don’t
worry, I go. N’inquiet pas pour moi!'
Devadasan didn't much like the expression, but he was willing to overlook small
things so long as Tiana left without too much hemming and hawing.
Some time
elapsed. Weeks, months. Devadasan had been so very busy, he lost count. When he
called, he was surprised to hear Tiana's aunt expound the new situation and the
fresh developments.
'He can't
just simply leave. They'll arrest him at the airport and then there'll be an
investigation to ascertain why he didn't leave when he was asked to get out of
French territory some ten years ago.'
'What good
would that do?' exclaimed Devadasan.
'I agree,
but, you know, the investigation could ricochet on me.'
Devadasan
wasn't too keen on continuing the conversation. They were civil with each
other, that was all, but the way she had treated Tiana, without gratitude for
all that he had done for her - looking after the apartment and the kids for
nearly a decade and that, too, without remuneration, excepting food and the
occasional pocket money - made her his sworn enemy.
'I'll see
what I can do. I'll see that judge again about this airport problem.' After the
usual civilities, he hung up.
He called
back to say, the judge was willing to
accompany Tiana to the airport and see that he got through alright.
'Ah, that's
wonderful,' she cried, but it didn't appear that she was convinced. 'When? When
can he come?'
'He says to
go ahead and book the ticket and inform him of the date of departure.'
She wasn't
too reassured but she had no choice. She wanted Tiana out. He wasn't of any
great use to her any more. The children had grown up, and they spent much of
their time with their father, not much liking either the intrusion of a white
foreigner in the household. She had already set up house with a man of her
choice.
'I don't
much like going around to Devan's place,' she said in Malagasy, but Tiana was
adamant. He had insisted, time and again, that if Devadasan didn't also come
along, he wouldn't go. So she had no choice. She took the narrow roads to
The day
Tiana set out on the long trek home, the sun was high in the heavens raining
hell on
'Weekenders
perhaps on the way to the country or provincials on the way to a Saturday-night
spree on the town,' ventured Devadasan as a means of breaking the torrid
silence reigning in the old Renault 4 GTL. Tiana's aunt appeared tensely
hunched over the steering wheel. Tiana himself sported a vacant look. He looked
at everything that his side of the window offered.
'Perhaps
the holiday traffic for August has begun. Schools have closed in certain
areas,' said Devadasan distractedly in a lame attempt to break the ice. Nothing
doing. Neither responded. Just then the car overtook two lanky sun-tanned blond
damsels, their thighs and buttocks and busts practically unconcealed, striding
on the pavement. Both Tiana and Devadasan followed them voraciously and then
their eyes met. A smile crept into them. Tiana heaved yet another of his
breath-expelling sighs. Devadasan was thankful, it seemed, for the open windows
and the rush of air the car ushered in.
'Hey,
Tiana, you better undo your tie and take off your jacket. You'll be roasted by
the time we get to the airport.' Tiana's aunt also stirred.
'I told him
also. But he won't listen. He says he's got his wallet and keys and things in
the jacket.' Tiana's aunt at last ventured out of her huddled silence. She cast
a sidelong glance at him sitting beside her. Devadasan was huddled behind with
two leatherbags crammed to the full.
'I only
hope he is there.'
'Who?'
asked Devadasan.
'Him. Your
great magistrate friend.'
'Oh, him. I
hope so, too.' Tiana looked at Devadasan. Apprehension gripped his face.
'Now, how
do I get on to the autoroute?'
'Go through
the Centre Commercial. That's right;
take a left turn there and then the right leading to the centre. Then go round,
take a left and you'll see all the signs. You'll have to take the Bagnolet
autoroute first.'
'I'm
already confused. You better direct me.'
When they
got to the point where the signboards were posted, they were caught in a
traffic jam. The police post at the junction of the entrance to the autoroute
was busy with motorised traffic police. Just where the traffic pulled out to
turn right into the autoroute, a police checkpoint was established, and they
waved certain cars into the vacant space in front of the post. As soon as Tiana
and his aunt saw what was happening, alarm sirens screamed through their eyes.
'I can't
turn back. It's a one way lane. What shall I do? What?' Both Tiana and
Devadasan looked all around frantically.
'Jump out
Tiana. There's no other way,' urged Devadasan.
'He's got a
plane to catch. He'll lose his ticket.'
'If he gets
caught here, he's finished, don't you see.'
'Not just
him, me too.'
'What d'
you mean, you too?'
'My driving
licence is not valid.'
'What the
hell...look, say you have forgotten it at home, or say you lost it.'
'They are
not going to believe that!'
'Of course,
they will. They've got other things to do. Besides they'll only give you a fine
and ask you to produce the licence some time later.' He paused and added,
'That's what I think they'll do. What choice have you got? If they find out
you've been driving around without a licence, not only you'll get it hot, Tiana
here won't make it to the airport.'
'I got a
licence. What do you mean, driving around without a licence?'
'Well, just
now, you said you haven't got a licence.'
'I didn't
say that. I said my licence is not valid.'
'Okay,
then, there's no problem. What's the problem?'
'The
problem is that my licence was issued in
'Ohh! So
you have in effect no licence. Well, then, do what I tell you. If Tiana ran out
of here, what's the guarantee he's going to make it to the airport in time?
There's a good chance he could get into one or many police controls before he
gets to the airport.'
'Ask him.
It's his decision.'
Tiana looked
at both and shook his head.
'So, you
want to stay in the car and take a risk. Okay, but I'm not going to pay the
fine with my money. You have to give it to me before you go. Err...er...what am
I saying? I'll still have to produce the old licence, and I'll be in for it. No
more driving and a police court sentence on top of it. Who knows what I have to
pay there! Nothing doing, I say.'
Just then
the lights turned green again, and she had to move ahead. The police let all
the cars ahead of hers go by and waved the old Renault aside. You could almost
hear their hearts beating. All three occupants looked so tense and wide-eyed,
the policeman who approached the car had no difficulty spotting their frenzy.
He was joined by two other plainclothesmen who bade them get out. The men were
frisked and the car was inspected from boot to engine.
'Where's
the carte grise? You don't have a
technical inspection vignette stuck
here.' The uniformed policeman pointed at the top righthand corner of the
windshield.
'What vignette?' groaned Tiana's aunt. The
policemen held their silence.
Tiana
produced his passport and the air-ticket.
'He has to
catch a plane this afternoon,' coaxed Devadasan.
'Anybody
asked you any questions?' One of the plainclothesmen appeared to be put out.
The heat of the day spared no one, especially those heavily attired. He checked
Devadasan’s papers and said: 'You can go. Your papers are in order. The other
two, you and you, get inside the post, there,' he commanded in a gruff voice.
Tiana looked at Devadasan, his eyes widening, his face already in a sweat.
Tiana's aunt was whimpering and scolding Tiana in her own lingo.
'Bring your
luggage in,' ordered the plainclothesman.
Devadasan
stood at the junction outside, his hands dug in his pockets and fidgeted as the
two Madagascans were escorted inside the low white-washed prefabricated
building. In the space that the front door opened into, there were a few tables
over-laden with files and papers at which sat a bespectacled man and two women;
the younger of the two women was most probably a typist as she was in the
process of typing. The other two were on the phone.
'Sit down
there and give me the keys to the bags.' The plainclothesman was curt, the
white of his eyes were completely bloodshot. Tiana handed him the keys
mechanically. He followed every movement with livid eyes. The bags he had
arranged and rearranged for weeks, all the items and clothes he had deftly
placed in a way to accommodate them all were then being ruffled or displaced.
The plainclothesman, obviously an inspector or some sort of superior officer,
had great difficulty zipping them back into place. Tiana volunteered to help
but he waved him down. In any case, the contents were rumpled and that was
enough to get Tiana into a tight state. He had obviously run through his mind,
for the upteenth time, the scene of the
opening of his bags to a waiting crowd back home and the elegant and
nonchalant way with which he would casually distribute the carefully arranged
presents, or flap out and straighten his own clothes on hangers, followed by
eager, admiring eyes. He had rehearsed every action over and over again in his
mind for years it seemed.
'This
fountain pen is for you, Shirley. That bottle of Black Label for your husband,
Mina. Where is he? Not come back from work yet?'
'Ah, one
and a half litres!'
'Yes, I
couldn't possibly bring through the customs two of those. Here's some
'What
expense! You're spoiling him. He won't go to work tomorrow.'
The officer
then took Tiana's aunt's statement about her licence and papers, typed it all
down and asked for her signature. She broke into tears and recanted.
'I really
forgot. I was so busy the first two years after my arrival, I just forgot.'
'That's
some twenty-six years ago, and you've been driving around without the proper
papers.'
She shed
some more tears and held her head in her hands. Her lumpily stocked body shook
all over from time to time, and she burst out in her native tongue in the
direction of her nephew. Her manner alternated between sheer aggression and
pitiful pleading when she reverted to French. Tiana sat crouched on a bench
with his back to a wall.
'Now, your
papers,' signalled the officer. Tiana jumped up, his face a sickly white. The
pupils of his eyes turning from time to time upwards, revealing waxing
moon-crescents beneath.
The officer
went through every page and posed one question after another to verify his
identity. Then, he wanted to know when he came into the country.
'You mean,
you came here some fifteen years ago and yet you don't have an identity card?'
Tiana
studied, it seemed, his shoes, not daring to look the officer in the eyes.
Then, he called the middle-aged woman, gave her the passport and air-ticket and
whispered something to her. She looked at Tiana, and then at his aunt, her eyes
dilating, and she disappeared into another room. The officer got on the phone
and was busy with another matter. When the woman emerged from the room, she
looked hard at Tiana and handed some perforated sheets of folding paper to the
officer. She pointed to some lines with her forefinger. The officer looked up
at Tiana.
'Where's
the letter from the Prefecture requesting you to leave the country?'
Tiana
looked totally crestfallen. He took out a soiled envelope and extracted a
rumpled folio-size paper. He was reluctant to hand it over.
'Comeon, I
haven't got all day to read just one letter.'
Tiana
hesitated. The woman came forward and took the letter from his hands and handed
it to the officer.
'Please, Monsieur l’Inspecteur. Please, my nephew
has to catch a plane this afternoon from
'Sit down,'
said the officer to the now broken-looking Tiana. Tiana's aunt began crying
again. 'And YOU, you shut up or I'll... You’re getting on everybody’s nerves
here.' She shut up, drying her tears with a thin flowery hanky that she rolled
up into a ball as it got soaked with her tears. 'So, you've been here for some
seven years since this letter without...without papers.' He looked daggers at
Tiana. He gave some instructions to the woman who quickly went out of the front
door. She re-emerged with a couple of uniformed policemen.
'Take this
man into custody immediately,' yelled the officer.
The armed
policemen grabbed Tiana by the arms and shoulders, and the officer rose to put
him in handcuffs. Tiana's aunt wailed. The officer yelled at her, and she shut
up, though tears poured forth profusely. The two armed policemen sat on either
side of Tiana on the bench. The inspector got on the phone and attempted to
contact some official at the Prefecture in
He was gone
for a full two hours. When he came back, he looked fresher. Perhaps he had had
his lunch, a snooze, a shower and certainly a change of clothes.
'Please, Monsieur l'Inspecteur, can he go now? If
he doesn't leave immediately, there's absolutely no chance he can catch his
plane.' Tiana's aunt who seemed less agitated begged the plainclothesman-chief
of the post. He disregarded her appeals, though he didn't shout at her any
more. The other employees and uniformed policemen ate their long baguette sandwiches, filled with ham,
cucumber slices and salad dressing, and
drank a couple of chilled cans of beer or fruit juice each while the boss was
away.
He grabbed
the phone and dialled again the numbers for the Prefecture and the Ministry of
the Interior, and he was told that the officials were still at lunch and could
only be reached around three. The officer busied himself with some paperwork
while the others since his re-appearance were doubly absorbed in work of sorts.
An electric fan swivelled and ruffled the papers on the tables; a few sheets
now and then wafted to the ground.
'Where are
my paper-weights? Damn, I told you not to remove them,' the officer cursed. The
middle-aged woman quickly rose and brought over to his table two cast-iron
paper-weights which she placed on top of a pile of papers. He glanced at Tiana
who sat immobile on the bench between the uniformed policemen, the sullen look
on his face hardly betraying the turmoil he must have been going through
inside. Whenever he lifted his head to heave a breath-expelling sigh, it was as
if he hadn't eyes: only the whites of the eyes showed. Then, he would settle
down, wrapped in an air of moroseness alternating with sulkiness.
The officer
then decided to call the Commissioner for the commune. He didn't like doing that at all. The chief of the
district was bound to yell at him. He was most likely having his siesta. He
called anyway and the call was rerouted back with firm instructions: Arrest the
Madagascan and hold him over under garde
à vue till Monday. The officer put the phone down and bit his lips,
screwing them up at the same time. The two policemen took their jackets off.
Despite the swirling electric fan, the place was unbearably stifling. The
inspector turned to his typewriter on a side table, fixed three pages of a
printed form with carbon and began to type. From time to time, he shot a question
at Tiana. The latter merely nodded in assent. When he had finished, he pulled
the batch of papers from the old heavy typewriter in one screeching go.
'Alright,
sign here,' he said. 'Take his cuffs off, but first empty his pockets' he
ordered. Tiana sat still. They emptied his pockets and placed the contents one
by one on the table: wallet, some change, a bunch of keys, two packets of
chewing-gum. Then, one of the policemen said: 'What's this?' He felt something
like a wad bulging under his shirt. He unbuttoned the shirt and tugged at a
sewn piece of cloth slung over his naked torso and tugged it out. The officer
ripped it open. What seemed some tens of thousands of francs in hundred and two
hundred franc bills spilled from the carefully folded and sewn bandoleer.
'What the
hell is this?' cried the officer. 'Black market money? Have you paid your taxes
on this?' He looked hard at Tiana and appeared to be particularly pleased. 'Or
is it the ill-gotten gains of le travail
noir?'
The expression
on Tiana's face was a total blank. As it was related later, he never appeared
to be more at ease.
The two
policemen rose. One of them proceeded to unlock the cuffs. When one hand - his
right hand - came free, Tiana grabbed the handle of the revolver sticking out
in the holster of the other standing policeman and in a fraction of a second
unbuckled the weapon and pushed the policeman with the keys backwards onto the
table where the officer was seated. It happened so unexpectedly that neither had
had time to react. Tiana pointed the gun at the policeman and bade everybody
raise their hands. His aunt yelled something in Malagasy and then tried to
soothe him, by saying in French:
'Things
will arrange themselves. Don't worry. Put the gun down. Everything will be all
right, no?' She looked at the officer and the latter nodded assent.
All that
Tiana said was: 'Excuse me, Tante Lal', and he shot her in the face. Then, he
turned the gun on the policemen and shot them in the chest. Both fell, crumbling
to the floor. With his left hand, he extracted the other policeman's gun, and
just as the officer pointed his gun at him, Tiana quite coolly fired with both
the guns. The officer tumbled backwards, splashing blood on the two screaming
women. The middle-aged man at the table near the door made a dash for the door.
Tiana turned on him and shot him in the thigh just as he got out and he fell
rolling down in the motor-pool. Devadasan had not heard or could not quite
distinguish the gunfire from the traffic noises outside. As soon as he saw
Tiana emerging from the prefabricated building, he advanced towards him, and
then stopped in his tracks. He couldn't believe what he saw: Tiana armed and
striding towards him. When the latter reached him standing on the raised
pavement of the road, Tiana stood some three yards away and said: 'Excuse me,
Devan, my friend,' and shot him in the abdomen. Then, he coolly, turned on the
policemen across the road checking vehicles and gunned two of them down. He
crossed over, picked their guns and proceeded to shoot the fleeing motorists: a
whole family - father, mother and three children. More and more occupants of
the cars fled. Some cars tried to turn around in the one-way lane. Others
rolled over the mid-road raised culvert and headed into the commercial centre.
A
traffic-police car on patrol just then pulled into the entrance to the post.
They got out, guns in hand and crouched around their car. One of them turned to
the bleeding Devadasan and asked him if he was all right.
Devadasan
had his hand over the gushing gunshot wound.
'Don't
move. Lay still. What happened?'
Devadasan
pointed his left hand in the direction Tiana had taken and said: 'AMOK!'
'What's
that? What did you say?' asked the incredulous policeman, gun in hand.
©
T.Wignesan 1993 & 2002 [from the collection: mere deaths and the mostly
dead , ISBN 2-904428-12-7]
Glossary of Terms & Notes
"Meng-âmok [a Malay verb] is to make
a sudden, murderous attack, and though it is applied to the onslaught of a body
of men in war time, or where plunder is the object and murder the means to
arrive at it, the term is more commonly used to describe the action of an
individual who, suddenly and without apparent cause, seizes a weapon and
strikes out blindly, killing and wounding all who come in his way, regardless
of age or sex, whether they be friends, strangers, or his own nearest
relatives."
from Frank Athelstane SWETTENHAM. Malay Sketches.
Afrique francophone: French-speaking
arrondissement: district
baguette: long
(about two feet) encrusted white bread, the staple of the French table
carte grise: vehicle
ownership papers
centre commercial : shopping mall
chantier: building
construction site
commune : municipality
connard: silly bugger or jackass
coup de balai: ( literally) clean sweep, meaning here: “vacate the place”
en cas d’appel par la police
française, prière de contacter…: « in the event of (this
gentleman) being apprehended by the French Police,
please
contact (the undersigned)
degré zero: rock
bottom
Et Dieu vous rendra…: “ And God
will reward you!”
Gai Paris: Gay
Paris (not of course meaning: Homo
garde à vue : imprisonment
after arrest in a police station for a maximum of 48 hours
haus-gast : ( German for) house guest, meaning a
lodger-lover brought in by the woman
of the house
ici on n’a pas d’idée, mais on a la télé: “here one hasn’t any ideas but
then there’s the tv”
immigré : immigrant
je me porte garante de Monsieur…:
I serve as guarantor for Mister…
Quelle connerie!: « What
bloody/damned stupidity/bullshit ! »
les chefs de cabinet : under-secretaries of ministries, i.e. , the principal administrative
functionary to the CEO or Minister
les conseillers spéciaux : special advisers
Maghrebin: inhabitants
of the North African coast’s
metro : Underground
or Tube
Monsieur: Mister
Monsieur l’Inspecteur : Police Inspector
Monsieur le Juge: (literally) Mister Judge, or otherwise :
« Your Honour »
Patron: Bossman,
employer
périphérique: ring
road (round the centre of
rouge: literally
“red” but generally used for red (
secours: rescue/ help
Tournoi des Cinq Nations: Five-Nations [
Rugby
Tournament ; for about three years now,
has been admitted to the club
travail noir:
black market work, illegal employment punishable under French law
vignette: car
technical control certificate, renewable every two years for vehicles over
five years of age