After
“I ran through the school gates and jumped on my bike without looking back, five kilometers down this road more familiar than even my mother’s voice, and which was suddenly evasive, distant, like a laminated picture under a transparent film.”
SEPTEMBER 19, 2024
This beer cap rolling around in my mouth, little crown of corrugated metal, dented by a bite, its contour serrated with points, the top polished and the enamel smooth against my tongue, the underside rough, and the way the taste lingers — warm pocket change, hay and hops — the way it reminds you of bitterness; this Heineken gold piece stamped with a red-star tumbles against my teeth and I press it to my palate like a covert host. It’s noon, the prairie crackles, a great silence reigns, the sky is strewn with photometeors, I’m dragging a large black plastic garbage bag, and before me, the flattened trampled grass marks out a lighter stretch in the vegetation, a vast basin where the stones that encircled our firepit last night are still warm.
It’s a mess. Torn open chip bags, beer bottles, cans, and juice boxes, pizza boxes smeared with grease and melted cheese, slices of melon, cherry pits, masses of cigarette butts, marshmallows fallen in the dirt, a pink rubberband, a balled-up T-shirt that stinks of vomit, empty tobacco packets, charred stones, and this huge pile of flaky greyish ashes studded with bits of charcoal. Last night there were fifteen of us here rolling in the grass, dancing around the fire, drinking and smoking; some played astronomer and named the stars, tracing constellations with an index finger, others made out quietly in the shadows, and some sang shamelessly — but above all, we shouted. Shouts that didn’t sound anything like the ones you let loose at summer concerts in the fairground, or like the ones hollered out in stadium stands on game days or in buses coming back on winning nights — shouts that weren’t trying to stand together, to raise up a compact mountain range that would fill space and affirm its power; and these shouts had nothing to do, either, with cries of joy — of this I’m certain: we were relieved, hammered, devoured by terror, but we were not joyful.
So yes, yesterday: the final exam results. Lists posted in the school courtyard by late morning, the first shouts ringing out — high, excited, impatient squeals — those of us who rushed forward and those who stayed back, ostensibly taking their time to finish a cigarette (could they really care so little about what came next: repeat a year in this big country high school, or move on elsewhere, could they really just go on puffing like that, relaxed?) and me in the midst of all this, caught up in the movement of the crowd and then crushed against the results sheets, winded, nose pressed to the paper, finger sliding down each line, eyes ricocheting from name to name, and suddenly that strange howling that drilled through my throat, the clamor growing louder around me, names being called out, repeated louder into cell phones, the parents — the mothers — waiting off to the side in the parking lot behind the wheel, the relief, the tears and, spread from mouth to mouth, the conjugation of the verb “to get” in the present indicative — I got it, you got it, she got it, we got it — because in the end, everyone in the group got it, aside from Max, who dropped out in April, and Vinz, for whom all this is total bullshit.
I wanted to find my own clear voice again, the voice of a graduate getting ready to leave home, but instead of heading out onto the terrace and waiting in the sun with a smoke, cigarette held up behind my ear, star of the day, I went up to my room, closed the curtains and lay down shivering in fetal position on my bed.
I ran through the school gates and jumped on my bike without looking back, five kilometers down this road more familiar than even my mother’s voice, and which was suddenly evasive, distant, like a laminated picture under a transparent film — the old roads of silent stones stretching out from too-black pavement, the garden-level pavilions, the façades in pale pink or salmon, the narrow rooftops, the piles of cinderblocks, here and there an inflatable pool for kids, a couple of dogs behind the fence, a trio of scrawny trees, but always a garage through which you enter the house; next, the crops appear, corn and sunflowers, and the further you get from the village, the more the countryside sows ruins: abandoned garages, tobacco hangars padded with ivy, tractors rusted to the color of Coca-Cola, cisterns devoured by ruderal flora, deserted farmhouses, poor and sagging houses, real hovels. I was thinking this was the last time I would make this trip, that I would never do it again, but instead of exulting, mouth open, taking off like a rocket, bye-bye countryside, something began to form in the pit of my larynx, a hitch, a scratch — I thought I had swallowed a bug and even stopped on the side of the road to spit. No one was home at my house. I took a long drink from the tap, leaning over halfway into the sink, then tipped my head back and stared at the ceiling as I gargled. I wanted to find my own clear voice again, the voice of a graduate getting ready to leave home, but instead of heading out onto the terrace and waiting in the sun with a smoke, cigarette held up behind my ear, star of the day, I went up to my room, closed the curtains and lay down shivering in fetal position on my bed, eyes open, and in the bluish half-light, my room, too, looked strange to me, the walls withdrawn, far off — it was the room of the girl I no longer was, the girl I had ceased to be, and this was how my mother found me when she got back at lunchtime — curled up in a ball. What’s wrong, are you coming down? I sat up and answered that I had felt tired all of a sudden, stress, the pressure of waiting for the results — I was lying: I had been sure I would pass — and I went downstairs.
They were there, all three of them, standing in the kitchen with the bottle of champagne open on the counter — my father, my mother, and my brother Abel who suddenly felt the urge to say something, make a toast to me, mark the occasion, so we all stiffened and fell silent, eyes on him, attentive — my mother surprised but beaming because he was taking the initiative, embarking on a solemn proclamation; he got into position, lifted his glass to the height of his cheek, and that’s when I noticed that he’d changed, had put on a clean shirt, thirteen going on fifteen, lanky, lunar, and this way he had of smiling with the corner of his mouth, how pleased he was to surprise us, and I felt the pain in my throat come back, the flood of emotion, but then he grew overwhelmed, too — knowing that from now on it was over, I was going to leave — and he choked up on the first syllable, lips drawn back around a sound that repeated, again and again, insisting, but couldn’t manage to draw out the next sounds behind it, towing the word along, the sentence, the proclamation he had risked, and the flow of his words was annihilated with the first breath as though the dozens of sessions with the speech therapist, the muscle development of the vocal tract, the breathing exercises, as though all method had evaporated, language had fled my brother’s mouth, and this absence resonated in the room; my father stood with his arms crossed, pressing his glass to his chest, eyes on the floor tiles, lips closed, probably fighting to not finish the toast himself — the toast that was now becoming an ordeal, because at this point Abel was treading water, couldn’t even begin his declaration, and the meaning of his words, his loving intention, all this was running towards me, speeding, while he himself remained far behind, and the more he tried to catch up, to be in synch, the more I heard the chaos that was drowning his palate, phonemes catapulted against teeth, ricocheting off each other and now forming something like an impenetrable cork — g, g, good, g, good — his sentence was emerging so slowly it was making me crazy, and sometimes he even went backwards, going back to ram that goddamn first syllable again that was blocking the way, and I stared at him with all my might to encourage him on, nodding my head emphatically, sharp little blows in the atmosphere at each of his attempts, because it seemed like he was butting into a wall to try and find the way out, an opening, his face twisted in a grimace now, distorted, cheekbones tense and trembling with each attempt, temples damp, and his black gaze so intense he could have disintegrated the old birdcage in his line of sight — good, good, good luck to my b, b, b, to my b, b, to my big s, s, s, sister — I couldn’t stand it anymore, I wanted to unstop that mouth, put my brother out of his misery, so I opened my own and moved my lips to mime the articulation of the word that wouldn’t come — I didn’t let out a sound, but still my mother, just by her very presence and the explosive tension in her body, ordered me to stop that right away, to shut it and wait, because Abel wasn’t giving up. The champagne splashed from his flute with each effort but still he persisted, and when he had finally spoken his whole sentence, reeling, shirt and fingers splattered with champagne, triumphing over language like a storm — farewell to my big sis who passed, she’s off to college at last — we drank as though nothing had happened.
It was still light out when they pulled up in the yard, one full car and a few scooters driven bareheaded, Naples-style, extra passengers riding sidesaddle on the luggage racks. Everyone was there, the light was green, strangely dark, like the light inside a tropical greenhouse, I was wearing a pink cotton dress with thin straps and a pair of sneakers, and the air was heavy. A few minutes later we were walking behind the car that drove slowly along the road and then we entered the meadow — more than three hectares in one piece — with our load of logs and bottles, sleeping bags and blankets, chips and cookies, chicken sandwiches, hard liquor and an envelope of something to smoke, and then our gang stepped into the circle my father had mowed for us and set to work building the fire, a few guys offered to get it going, fought with each other, wasted matches, one of them asked me for some paraffin cubes, and in the end it was me who dug the pit, set up short dry logs in a cross, added pieces of crates and kindling, and lit the fire with Vinz’s lighter.
One by one, we each stepped into the darkness, then reappeared walking quickly towards the flames and stopped in front of the others to let out our scream — of terror, excitement, despair, anger, or pleasure: pleas, barks, and vociferations.
Against my mother’s advice (she had asked him to leave us alone), my father came by around eleven o’clock to see if everything was okay. Hey there, graduates. He shook everyone’s hand, congratulated each one, joked with Max who put on a good face while I murmured through gritted teeth, okay Dad, that’s enough, leave us alone, it’s our graduation night, but he pretended not to hear, comparing the exams to a rite of passage, and then bummed a cigarette from Vinz — here, pass me a smoke, would ya — he took a couple drags, then flicked the filter into the fire, and just before he disappeared into the night, he tossed out this curious incitement to the company at large: make as much noise as you want. And then the music built up, we all pressed in together, seizing this last opportunity, this final chance, because at dawn we would disperse, everyone would be off into their life. In the orangey glow of the flames, our skin took on the gleam of fruit, some of us dripping, some singing in chorus, some rolling a quick joint, and only a few of us cried, mouth of the can jostling against our lips. And then Vinz, who was twenty, the oldest of the gang (which is what gave him his prestige), stood up in his red T-shirt and jeans lacerated across the thighs, and proposed, as a game, that everyone let out a scream. What the hell? Noëlla frowned. For once we’re allowed to holler, gotta take advantage, he said, laughing. I thought of Abel, who’d had so much trouble uttering his declaration, and stopped listening to Vinz who was now telling the others how screaming had been banished from society, eliminated from our lives, confined to a few particular spaces — when you scream, you tip over onto the animal side, that’s the problem, he concluded, making his eyes big and round and letting out the ooh oohs of a primate.
The strange ritual began when the fire had thinned to an incandescent vertical spiral of great beauty: one by one, we each stepped into the darkness, then reappeared walking quickly towards the flames and stopped in front of the others to let out our scream — of terror, excitement, despair, anger, or pleasure: pleas, barks, and vociferations. You should try the primal scream too, Vinz whispered in my ear as he flicked his cigarette into the fire. I looked at him, startled, whatever, but he got caught up in it: pretend you’re being born — let out a powerful cry, and that’s it, you’re reborn, no more sadness, sweet deal! Oh yeah, sure. When it was my turn, I stepped out into the shadows, and I went far, walking through the tall grasses, feeling the paths made by the deer, the trenches where the wild boar had urinated, copulated, where the sows had given birth, I walked diagonally towards the cistern, and the air was insanely dense, bugs stuck to my damp skin by the dozen, mosquitoes sucked my blood, I felt the pulse of the meadow, its wild vibration, and I listened for a long time, apart from humans, close to the animals, and then came back to the party which, from far off, resembled a flare, and screamed in my turn — I shouted, I yelled until my voice broke, and then I fell asleep.
It sounded like monkeys, that’s what my mother said this morning as she flipped through an old issue of National Geographic with her long thoughtful hand, we could hear you from here and you know what? You would have thought it was chimpanzees. I had just come down to the kitchen — when I woke up that morning I discovered I was mute, my vocal cords not stirring anymore, and so I was unable to contradict her other than by a wheeze, a skeptical pout, a shrug. I sat down across from her and while she wandered again through the dog-eared pages marked with blue ballpoint pen, I observed her long, angular, expressive face, her dark hair hastily twisted atop her head with a pen or a chopstick, her large cambered eyelids and blond, feathery lashes. Before going out I lifted the cover of her magazine, certain that I would find, inside the golden-yellow frame of this American monthly she must have pored over hundreds of times, the photo of a young blond woman in her thirties, sitting in the foliage among primates — Jane Goodall, 1965. The woman who speaks to chimpanzees. Then my mother got up, imperial in her purple robe, and handed me the garbage bag.
I reach between the warm grasses that trap the detritus, fingers shaping the primitive grip (a suspicious grip, vaguely disgusted), the meadow hums, a bitter scent emanates from the ground, heady, humidity of baked mulch. I collect the burned-down matches and hairpins, an earring, a pillowcase, a flyer for canoe rentals at the river, a broken knife and a pack of contraceptive pills, a banana peel, a phone case, chicken carcasses — smooth, whitish bones, so perfectly cleaned you would have thought they’d been regurgitated from the mouth of a fox. A dry snap off in the brushwood — I lift my head: a sparrowhawk shoots from the woods and rises into the sky in ascending flight, and I instinctively turn towards the cistern, to the north: there’s Abel, in the lichen, this is where he always goes to sing, and maybe he’s watching me now, too, as I pace across the plot with this black bag swinging in the hot air, this bag I fill with remnants, remains, these small things.
This text is an excerpt from Canoes by Maylis de Kerangal (Published in English by Archipelago Books, Translation Copyright © 2024 by Jessica Moore)
✺ Published in “Issue 20: Lessons” of The Dial
