WHO AM I NOW?

a story by Albert Russo 2900 words)

exerpted from his novel THE BLACK ANCESTOR -
Imago Press, Arizona, 2009

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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


Seeing how disturbed I was, in spite of her soothing words, my mother decided to read me the letter, a few days after I had disclosed to her what my uncle Jeff had told me about our ancestry, and, of course, I did not denounce him. She believed that, by doing so, this painful chapter would be closed. Didn’t I have the proof of her good faith, since, she, now, like my late father, eons ago, wished to spare me unnecessary suffering?
She cursed, without being able to conceal her immense disappointment, what she believed to be a horrendous twist of fate and that I came to know about it; she repeated that she would have waited at least till I reached womanhood, or the eventuality of my getting married, which would be in the distant future, before relaying the news to me.
This, I deemed to be a second and even more treacherous blow, the fact that from now on I would have to stop ‘bothering’ my mother with my existential quandaries. It thus became urgent that I find someone else with whom I could share my condition, or else I would choke, or perhaps commit some foolish act.
At first, I logically thought of Uncle Jeff, and more than once, I rushed to the phone, about to call him. But something kept me from doing it. Was it because he was a boy, almost a young man, and that a sense of shame suddenly crept within me, now that I would be getting my first periods? My mother had, very tactfully, prepared me a week before, so that I wouldn’t be alarmed. Then I knew not why, I began to relate that most intimate region of a young girl’s body to the fact that I was of mixed blood. And I came to the conclusion that they were both sigmata which I would carry for the rest of my life. The notion of menopause was totally stranger to me, for in those early days, it wasn’t appropriate to mention it, let alone the fact that many women couldn’t even name it when it happened to them.
That is when the name of Yolande started popping up ever more insistantly in my mind, at first like some discomfort that you have surreptitiously become aware of, such as a blemish on your forehead which soon gives way to a pimple, and which you try to hide nonchalantly with a lock of hair, an innocuous gesture of coquettry that develops into a tic, then into an obsession. And the pimple grows into an ugly boil.
Days of indecision passed, which stretched to one then two weeks, and seemed never ending. Who should I turn up to, my uncle, Yolande, my grandparents - Granny, being her sweet affectionate self as always and her husband, as jocular and teasing as ever -, the Maclean twins? I hesitated between those who already knew and my schoolmates whose reaction to the news was unforseeable. The dilemma haunted me.

I finally set my cap at Yolande and, gathering what courage was left after so much dithering, I told her, one afternoon, as we were stepping out of the school grounds, as if I feared that even the Institut’s palm trees could eavesdrop. She listened, without turning a hair, and with that undecipherable placidity, which could so unnerve me. Did I detect a twitch of the lips? After a moment of silence, during which I started hating myself for having let out the skeleton, she took me in her arms and murmured:
“If you want, you can look upon me as your big sister. Would you like that?”
At a loss for words, I nodded affirmatively. Her reaction was so plain and unexpected, that for a second, I gazed at her with a feeling that oscillated between disbelief and disappointment. I had the impression that my life had toppled once again, and that was all she had to say? Disconcerted, I stared at her questioningly. But she brushed my puzzlement away, changing the subject, as if what I’d just told her was the most banal thing in the world.
“How about if you came to my place, instead of going straight home?” she offered.
I don’t know why, but I was convinced that she lived on the outskirts of town, and not in the privileged quarters where the Europeans usually resided, and that thought scared me. I was looking for an excuse, but, as if reading my mind, she said:
“My house is on Avenue de l’Etoile, near the Cathedral, you know, just behind the Governor’s Palace. By bicycle, it’s only a ten minute ride from your place.”
My heart was beating wildly and, like an automaton, I followed her. Was I not going to compromise myself irretrievably, now that I had accepted her invitation? I begrudged her for being so detached, so lackadaisical about the whole thing, when I felt the rush of a blaze inflame my chest and which could in a jiffy spread to my whole body. And Yolande kept babbling on in her monotone - an image suddenly flashed in my mind, she was like those rubber trees, from which the natives, in the Interior, would remove the latex, and the deep cuts they just inflicted on them would heal almost instantaneously.
Had I made a terrible mistake in confiding in this girl, since she was so different from me? What stood behind that attitude of hers, so tame and mellifluous? Was it resignation, condescension, or maybe slyness? I suddenly had the urge to scream it all out, but she would then think I was mad or it might scare her. I thus resolved to keep this poisonous ferment to myself; renewed doubts started billowing in my solar plexus, they would then twist and disentangle like the many tentacles of an octopus. In any case, it was already too late and I would have to accommodate myself to a situation for which I was solely responsible.
God Almighty, was it possible that I should feel still lonelier, doubly isolated? This sentiment grew the more alarmingly as a thought crossed my mind which would torment me for years to come: I must never have children, for, even if I should one day marry a white man - until now it was unimaginable to even conceive that my future husband be of another race - the secret of my genes would explode in broad daylight. Hadn’t Uncle Jeff told me that they would appear again after one or more generations, coloring the skin, and that I ought to consider myself lucky that I showed no sign of them? I hadn’t realized at first the impact his remark would have on me. If I weren’t convinced of the genuine affection my uncle bore me, I could have taken these words for an offense, not to say a threat, for someone ill-intentioned could have used it as blackmail.
This too - the fact that I refused the idea of ever becoming a mother -, I would have to hide from Yolande, she, especially, where her origins were so visible. At that moment, I asked myself whether the Lord hadn’t created the different races purposefully, as well as the religions, in order to sow discord among humankind.

I stood flabbergasted, when Yolande introduced me to her mother, whom she went to fetch in ... the backyard shack, behind the vegetable garden, which lay separated from the lovely corbelled house where she and her father resided on Avenue de l’Etoile. My dismay increased - or should I admit to being quite shocked -, when she addressed her in Kiswahili, peppered with Portuguese words.
I didn’t know how to behave, for all of this appeared at once so matter of fact and, when you stopped to think of it, terribly incongruous, almost unbelievable.
The lady, or should I say, the servant - she seemed to combine the two roles very naturally -, greeted me with the words “Yambo, Mazelli”, whilst I hesitated to extend my hand to her. But I needen’t worry, since she disappeared in a jiffy, running to the kitchen.
“She will prepare our afternoon snack”, explained Yolande, “in the meantime, I would like to play for you a couple of records a friend of my father’s has just brought from overseas. Let’s go to the sitting-room.”
They were Portuguese and French novelties, among which, a song by Amalia Rodriguez, and another one by Gilbert Bécaud. As we were listening to the latter’s romantic refrains, Yolande’s mother came back to us, holding a large tray, laden with goodies: two big glasses of frothy chocolate milk, Marie biscuits, marble cake and four generous slices of home-made ginger bread, not to mention the basket of mangoes and bananas, scattered with a variety of nuts, which already stood at the center of the table, waiting for us.
Yolande played Amalia Rodriguez’ record a second time and I must admit that, even though I couldn’t figure out what she was singing, except that I recognized the word ‘Lisboa’, her deep, raspy voice gripped me inside my very marrow. As for my hostess, she sat entranced as if she had just seen the Virgin Mary. There was a sudden angelic quality to her features, which alternated with a quivering melancholy smile. When the needle of the record player stopped, she told me that I had just listened to the queen of fado, Portugal’s most revered singer. It was the first time I had noticed how bright Yolande’s eyes were, they resembled two beacons tearing the morning mist.
Thus did I learn how she and her father had emigrated to the Belgian Congo, from her native Angola, when she was but a child of three, and how he had set up his bicycle shop under the Da Silva flagship, on Karavia Avenue, which separated the European residential quarters from the Cité Indigène where the black workers lived.
The business, which was soon enlarged to include a repairs annex, prospered rapidly, thanks especially to the numerous Congolese customers, whose principal means of transportation was the bicycle, and to a lesser extent, to the growing number of white pupils and students who rode to school - the few non-Africans you saw on bikes were either considered excentrics or white trash you had better nothing to do with. Her father owned the sleek black Chevrolet which stood in the garage, but also a Ford station wagon, used as the shop’s delivery van.
Yolande said nothing concerning her mother who had gone back to her chores, but I was burning to know more about that family so out of the mainstream, I could never imagined even existed.
Unlike Amelie, ever so exuberant and ready to crack a joke, Yolande’s mother had an affable smile, albeit shaded as if by a veil of gloom. It appeared that her childhood too had been lulled by the sounds of the fado. It wouldn’t be right, however, to claim that she looked unhappy or that she expected some kind of deliverance. After all, she had her daughter close by and she could shower her with all the love and the care she was capable of. Wasn’t that the proof positive of her maternal attachment? And whenever she felt homesick, she could turn to her sister and the latter’s family, at the Cité Indigène.
It was Yolande who first broached the subject of her cousin, who was three years older than she.
“I’d like you to meet Mario-Tende,” she said, with a tinge of pride in her voice, “He’s very bright, you know, and if he had our luck, he would be studying right now at the Saint-Francois de Salle Catholic school for boys, garnering all the prizes for excellence. I regularly pass him my favorite books, as well as Paris Match magazine and the weekly Echo du Katanga, once my father has read them. He devours every line in print that falls under his gaze, including the advertisements and the obituary columns.” adding, a little less euphorically, “Not that the mission school he attends is bad, but of course, it can’t compare with the quality of teaching we get.” I thought she was going to say “we, us Whites,” for there was a pause in her phrase.
This introduction concerning her cousin was at once intriguing and disparaging to me, for I caught myself sliding along a path I had neither premeditated nor desired to follow. Then, as if a lightning bolt had torn through my being, I rapped out:
“He’s darker than you, isn’t he? That is why he wasn’t admitted at Saint-Francois.”
“In a way, yes,” muttered Yolande, taken aback by the brutality of my remark, “but it’s not that simple. He is considered totally African and, he couldn’t get, like me, a special permission, even he too, is a mulatto. But since you and I have now become sort of bosom friends, I shall tell you the truth. Mario-Tende is my cousin as well as my half-brother.”
Either I was getting very stupid or my ears were jumbling her words into hogwash, and I blurted:
“But how do you folks manage? I mean, wouldn’t it have been easier, and wouldn’t you have been happier, had you all remained in Angola? Oh, I shouldn’t be so inquisitive,” I said, biting my lip, “It’s none of my business, I’m sorry. Anyway, I have to go home.”
Yes, I couldn’t bear to stay another minute in that house, in the company of that girl, whose life was such a puzzle but, who, nevertheless, seemed to be taking everything in her stride, very calmly. It had been all so much easier before Uncle Jeff came and told me that story involving a black ancestor.
I was in such a hurry to leave, that I collected my homework papers and my books and shoved them helter skelter in my schoolbag, walking away like a thief. I noticed the slight hurt on Yolande’s face, as I rushed out of the verandah, without so much as thanking her.

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 18.11.2009

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