THE REVELATION

A story by Albert Russo (2750 words)

exerpted from his novel THE BLACK ANCESTOR -
Imago Press, Arizona, 2009 (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.)


One mid-afternoon, walking back from school - there was nobody home, and everything was quiet in the backyard, for Tambwe had gone to run some errands with his bicycle, whilst Amelie, at that still early hour, was doing the usual rounds of her servant acquaintances in the neighborhood - I was surprised to hear repeated knocks at the kitchen door.
It was uncle jeff, paying me an impromptu visit on his way from Saint-François de Sales. He was wearing his satchel over his shoulders and his hair was slick with perspiration. He usually came to see me during the weekend, when he had no special task to accomplish, like his boyscout outings, or his driving lessons.
“You didn’t expect me, uh!” he exclaimed, with a toothy smile. “Just wanted to see if everything was ok with my favorite niece.”
At once astonished and thrilled, I said: “Uncle Jeff, you’re sweating as if you’d run ten kilometers. You must be terribly thirsty. There’s some orange juice in the fridge. Or would you rather have a glass of cold beer?”
“That’s sweet of you, Leodine.” he replied, somewhat short of breath. “Let me first go freshen up in the bathroom, then if you don’t mind, I’d like you to pour me a big glass of filtered water.”
A few moments later we were both standing in my room and I showed him some of my new toys, the recent pictures I had colored, and especially the magnificent gypsy doll which my mother had brought me from the boutique - that was, of course, the present I was most proud of. The first instant he saw the doll, he had a strange look in his eyes. Then he nibbled at his thumb, the way he used to, when something bothered him.
“You don’t think it’s pretty?” I asked him, with a pinch of disappointment.
“Oh yes,” he said, clearing his throat, as if his voice were still breaking, “it’s indeed very lovely. As long as you like it, that’s what counts.” To which he added, “As a matter of fact, you should always listen to your heart and not mind what others say, for some people will want to harm you. I’m sure you’ve had that kind of experience with jealous schoolmates.”
The tone of his voice had become suddenly grave and low-pitched and I couldn’t fathom why. Then, setting himself by my side on the bed, he looked at me with his piercing gray eyes and said: “There’s something important I should tell you, Leodine. I kept it to myself for a long time, wondering whether you’d be ready to hear it, for you’re still a teenager, but then I’ve decided to finally approach you on this delicate subject. No one, except Granny, Granpa and your Mom, knows about it.”
I’d never seen uncle Jeff so serious, he even had wrinkles on his forehead. I stared at him, open-mouthed, expecting some bad news in which I was surely implicated.
“It was during the night of All Saints’ day; I had gotten up to go to the toilet, when I heard my parents discuss in their bedroom. They were sort of whispering, but since my sisters, at this very late hour, were probably fast asleep, and everything was so quiet in the house, I pressed my ear to their door and listened to what they were saying. They were mentioning your late daddy, Gregory McNeil, for they had just received a letter from your grandmother in America, telling them that one of your ancestors had been a freed slave and that since you were growing into a young woman, you should know about it.”
I stared, bewildered, at my uncle Jeff, then croaked: “There were slaves in the family? How did that ever happen, and where did they come from?”
Putting on his cocker spaniel look, full of compassion, he went on: “Actually, it concerns your great-grandmother. She was apparently very beautiful and of ... African origin.”
“You mean, she was black!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, but not black black, more like Lena Horne, you know, that actress you liked so much in the musical we saw together, a few weeks ago, at the Cinema Rex. You remember, don’t you? You were so thrilled by the movie, you wanted to see it a second time, that very same evening.”
I suddenly had the feeling something was being wrenched from the pit of my stomach, or was it higher? This error of appreciation added to my state of disarray. It felt as though I had slowly been drained of all my blood and that in its place poison was being injected. What was so disconcerting was that, within the same body, another person seemed to have slipped in, turning me into a sudden stranger, as if it no longer belonged to me.
“My father was ... colored?” I uttered with disbelief in a squeaky voice, adding, in the same breath, “Yet, on the photographs, he doesn’t look it ... he just had this natural sunny tan all year round, like most of the Italians or the Greeks, we know here ... and they’re not colored.”
“This should remain between you and me, people don’t have to know about it. Not even my own sisters,” he said, resting his wide, ink-stained hand on mine.
The kindness of his tone and his gentle touch, instead of having a soothing effect on me, triggered a savage outburst of tears. This news was a hundred times worse than the horrible nightmares that not so long ago rocked my sleep, for here, I was living them in broad daylight, and I wouldn’t dare appeal to my mother or my grand-parents for help, as I used to, when we still resided in the large family house. Could one in the first place be comforted for having black ancestry?
“My God, this means that I too am ...” I muttered, unable to complete the sentence, for the awesome truth had just pierced through my consciousness. It couldn’t be possible, there had to be a mistake, I went on mutely, even trying to erase the word “mulatto” from my mind, as if it were a disease.
“You don’t have to worry, Leodine, you’re so light of skin, nobody could ever guess,” Uncle Jeff said. “Did you know that the Empress Josephine de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s first wife, was of mixed blood?” he added, to reassure me, “And so was Alexandre Dumas, who wrote ‘The Three Musketeers’.”
These words had only a half-soothing effect on me, for what Uncle Jeff was mentioning here concerned historical or famous personalites, whereas I was neither, and what’s more, mulattoes in the colony bore the tinge of sin. I often noticed how differently the few girls of mixed blood, frequenting Institut Marie-Jose, were treated by their so-called peers; if the latter were not openly insulting, they would pass sneaky remarks at them or snub them altogether.
In my class there was a colored girl - her name was Yolande -, with whom I sometimes spoke, keeping a low profile, in order not to attract the attention of the others; whenever they noticed us, however, they would cast us the sort of glance that could be either condescending or downright scornful, as if we were doing something wrong. That, on top of which, Yolande was quite pretty, made some of them seethe with jealousy; they would snarl behind her back or even pull out their tongue and make faces as if to say: “Who does she tink she is, anyway!”, in spite of the fact that the girl was rather shy and withdrawn, in her manners as well as in the way she dressed.
Now that my uncle had told me that terrible thing about my ancestry, I was in an even greater doubt and asked myself whether I shouldn’t stop frequenting Yolande, lest the other girls should divine that we had, she and I, something in common in our genes. Mixed blood, my God, just the thought of it made me shiver.
Had they known it from the start, would my grandparents have allowed my mother to marry Gregory McNeil? I’m positive that they wouldn’t. But why do people make such differences, for goodness’ sake, aren’t we all equally God’s creatures?
A score of questions which would never have crossed my mind before, were now popping up like weed. The words ‘tainted blood’ and ‘unclean’ were persuing me night and day, to the point that I felt them literally creep under my skin, when I was considered a well-groomed and even fastidious child. For the first time of my life, I felt dirty inside, and no bath, no mouth wash, no perfume, be it the most delicate or the most expensive, could shirk that impression. I would look at myself in the mirror with much more insistance than in the past, scrutinizing every single feature of mine as if through a magnifying glass. My hair was still of that light auburn shade, with gleams of gold, and it still had the same silky quality, which so pleased my grandmother, who liked to twirl her finger around my locks, my eyes had kept its lovely blue-green hue that in turn evoked the sky or the shoals of an unspoilt lagoon. As if I were being tricked by some ghostly entity, I would then focus my attention on the beauty spots that sprinkled my face, to make sure that they wouldn’t betray me. Sofar, I had considered them an advantage - didn’t they enhance one’s personality, like that of the beautifully delicate English actress, Deborah Kerr? Yet now, I was trying to hide those freckles with powder, or even blush, which I borrowed from my mother’s dressing table, without her knowing it, of course. The result was less than convincing, inasmuch as one of my classmates approached me with the following sneaky remark: “I hope you haven’t caught the measles, it’s very contagious, you know.”
“Oh, it’s not that at all!” I retorted, shocked, at first, unaware that she was mocking me, then, as I realized my mistake, I said, sketching a maudlin smile, as I pulled out a handkerchief to wipe out the stains, “I thought I’d try some make-up. I think you’re right, it doesn’t suit me.” I improvised.
She stared at me dubiously then shrugged her shoulders, as if to say: “Some people really have weird tastes!” and walked away towards the playground.
I stopped fiddling with those beauty spots, which didn’t prevent me from hating them all the more. They reminded me of the chocolate-tinted mark my gypsy doll bore on its left cheek, it was so becoming against the background of her dark complexion. With the difference that her skin was almost as brown as that of Amelie, and in their case, it looked natural.
I now felt constrained behind the bars of an inner cage, which could, by a sleight of hand, become visible to all, and this probability, even if it were just by flashes, kept haunting me. Should I begrudge Uncle Jeff for having slipped open the closet to my eyes or my mother who would have kept it shut until after I’d completed secondary school and left the Congo? And what of my grandparents, whose attitude towards me hadn’t changed? Deep down, was it pity they felt for me, added maybe to a sense of revulsion?
How easy it is to fall from a pedestal! Those very same people who had always pampered you, appeared all of a sudden suspicious in their motives. What you took with lightness and nonchalance until now had an aspect of severity and you expected a backlash at any moment.
A chapter of my childhood had just been turned and the sweetness of it had been stolen forever from me, as if I no longer had the right to taste the little and innocuous pleasures of life without reservation, like jumping rope, playing marbles, going to the movies on weekends, or simply enjoying an ice cream soda, let alone sharing the whims and the coquettry of my peers. I would acquire the impression that when previously they had just vied with each other for wearing the newest sandals, the most striking hair clip, or for flaunting an LP record of their favorite singer under your nose, they would start sizing me up with a gleam of nastiness in their eyes and I would then feel terribly spare, as if they had the capacity of reading my thoughts, or worse, of spotlighting that monster hidden in my body. I had ceased to play the games of seduction which, even though I never really found them palatable, helped me not to alienate myself from that ‘sisterly’ community.
I sometimes hear that the truth comes out of the mouth of children, but very seldom that they can be mercilessly cruel with each other. Are they really more tolerant than their elders, or is it that they get lost more easily in their own games, and that the second their attention is distracted, they remember to show you their claws? The child is a very conformist animal and he becomes collectively menacing as soon as he notices that you don’t look or don’t act like him.

THE LETTER
My darling Astrid and Leodine,

It is my wish that this letter reach you as late as possible, for I intend to take care of my lovely wife and our precious daughter, and, God willing, of her future brothers and sisters, for a very long time to come. But we never really know what destiny has in store for us. I survived this last horrible war unscathed, for which I shall forever praise the Lord. And something tells me that He keeps a protective eye over me. Nevertheless, I have asked my parents to hand you this letter, in case I should leave this planet before you, my dear ones. Strange, will you think, for someone who has a myriad plans for his family, until at least the year 2000, and who not only wants to be their initiator but also to see them accomplished, surrounded by his grandchildren. So much for an inveterate optimist!
Yet, it behooves me to let you in on an important fact, which, if it won’t be directly apparent in my beloved daughter, might come out in her brothers and sisters, or, much later, with a greater probability, in her own children, for genes have an uncanny way of manifesting themselves. You should consequently know that my great-grandmother was black. She was light-skinned, for an African woman, but it was both her beauty and her human qualities which attracted my ancestor, to the point where, in order to marry her, he had to confuse the issue before the civil administration of the time, going so far as to invent an identity for her, claiming that she was an Anglo-Brazilian aristocrat.
For reasons which may seem selfish and cowardly, I never told you this, my lovely Astrid. I was crazy about you from the first minute our eyes locked, and there was no way that I would let you go to another man. Had your parents learnt about this side of my family, they would never have accepted me as their son-in-law. The white folk, whether they hail from Europe or from America, not to mention those who have settled temporarily in Africa, are loath to mix with other races, as if by doing so, they would lose their honor as well as their soul. And I am not referring specifically to the nazis or to the members of the Ku Klux Klan, here, who share the same horrific values. This view is unfortunately much more widespread, even among the so-called liberal population. Mankind will have to wait generations before acknowledging that we all originate from the same source. But since our present society isn’t ready yet for this truth and since the color of one’s skin is still so prevalent in its choices, I thought it futile and even dangerous for my family, to engage in a personal battle against the majority. This is why I refrained from divulging it. Will you forgive me? No, not for inheriting my genes - I feel no shame about them -, but for having hidden this fact from you, to ward us off that long-standing plague which is called racial discrimination?
So, here, my darlings, is, as far as I know, the missing link to our family history, for I didn’t deem it necessary to go farther back into our genealogical tree.
With all my love and indefectible affection, whatever the circumstances.

Your Greg

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 18.11.2009

Alle Rechte vorbehalten