Popping on my screen, a spreadsheet listing the publishers I’ve submitted the manuscript of Witnesses, my fifth novel, to. The yellow cells show, for each of them, the expected date of a reply — if any comes at all. The greyed-out lines mark the ones whose deadlines have passed without a word, or those that sent a polite rejection. Below that first list, another one of magazines I’ve submitted a short story to, and below that second one, South African, Canadian and British publishers to whom I’ve sent my translated work. Yellow cells, greyed out lines, a dreadfully long list. I read few weeks ago that only one manuscript out of three thousand finds a publisher in France. And just now, I’ve come across another deeply depressing statistic: fewer than 5% of fiction writers in the U.S. earn more than $5,000 a year from their books. Enough to feed my anxiety. To pass the time — and because, though my head is brimming with ideas, new stories, new characters I already love, I refuse to start writing another novel until something finally shifts — I enrolled in a “explore creative writing” course on MIT’s brilliant OpenLearning platform. And here’s how the instructor ends her final lesson:

"Élise opens her eyes, and closes them. Opens and closes again. She is not ready. Not recognizing the room where she just spent the night, after so many months on the run, is overwhelming. Her eyelids still closed, she breathes and listens. She wants to hear and smell, she takes the time to feel every sensation in anticipation of the day they will come for her, and when everything - sounds, scents and sights - will be locked away forever. She exercises each of her senses with care and diligence. It is a gentler way to enter the morning, less brutal than an image forced in front of her eyes. The mattress she's lying on slightly smells of rot. From the next room she grasps the sweet, rancid bouquet of a cold porridge mingled with the metallic scent of burnt aluminium. The breakfast pan will be washed later. The house is silent. The light curtain covering the window of her room sways gently. A whiff of air loaded with a sour stench, enters the room from the street. Urine. Then, a dull, painful sounding shock followed by the high-pitched whine of a dog. Surely the one that just pissed, punished with a kick. From there, it is like the opening of a symphony concert. One after the other the instruments announce themselves before blending in the harmony of sounds, and the early morning din of the street takes shape behind Élise's still-closed eyes : the soft impact of a half-inflated soccer ball bouncing off the tip of a schoolboy's shoe on his way to school. The thundering bang of that same ball landing on a metallic roof. The furious scream of an old woman, followed by a teenage laughter and the clacking of his shoe soles on the asphalt as he flees. From a little further up the street, Élise recognizes the song of trickling water surrounded by lively, playful female voices. The water flow sounds like it is fretting over hard plastic, a bucket probably. Then, as the bucket fills up, the noise softens. The female voices amplify, the bucket must be full. The flow stops, and among the voices calling out Élise hear empty plastic containers clattering against each other. The flow resumes, crashing to the bottom of another bucket first then gradually muffled by the rising water, followed by the chattering of voices joining the choir : exclamations, the water stops, the plastics clatter, the water runs, and the chatter resumes. Further on, a tampered exhaust pipe roars for no reason, tires screech in an idiotic skid. A hammer strikes a metal sheet. A man calls out to another. She's in Ocean View."

Someone had to do it - dec 2024

 

This text is the preface of my novel "Que quelqu'un le fasse !" (Someone has to do it!). Elise, the main character is a terrorist for some, an avenger for others. She is my sister, my warrior and my amazon, and she is born from the memory of the events told in this preface.

Gaborone, Botswana, December 2021.

I was impatiently preparing for the Christmas holidays: two weeks in Cape Town with the kids followed by a thirty-five kilometer hike with my daughter and her friends in the Cape of Good Hope national park. I was feeling happy to have gone through the first year of an unwanted move to Botswana without too much difficulty, was overwhelmed with happiness at the prospect of my fiftieth birthday celebration scheduled three months later and was satisfied of my progress in writing my fourth novel, this very one. CNN regularly was reporting the hearings of Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial. Maxwell was the companion of Jeffrey Epstein, an American billionaire pedophile. For decades, she had groomed teenage girls for him to rape. Like everybody else, I was listening in disbelief and horror. One morning, sitting in front of the screen, a very vague thought germinated in my mind, as if something familiar that was impossible to name was waking up deep inside me. It faded away. Then it reappeared a few days later. Slowly, the thought was growing, occupying more space in my mind. It was both unpleasant and impossible to identify, like an unexplained muscle pain felt in the morning wondering what movement one could have done the day before to cause it, or an itch for which one finds no trace of a bite bug. The days passed, and while I continued to follow the court case, the thought became more oppressive. Something had happened to me, something related to Epstein. But what, that didn't make any sense. Eventually, it began to clear up. Images, more and more distinct, started to come to me. The sea, the house, the room, and eventually, you. Your filthy face, your vicious fingers, your voice. The process took about a month. In Cape Town, during the long-awaited Christmas holidays, I knew exactly. First I saw a house. At Le Francois or maybe Le Robert, one of these two coastal villages of the island of Martinique. I saw the road that led to the bay, I felt in my muscles the memory of a scuba dive. Then I remembered what had brought me there: the argument with my parents, the high school awards, a party weekend. I was seventeen years and three months old. You, maybe forty. The results of the baccalaureate, the end of high school exam in the French education system, had been released the day before. A day that one doesn’t forget. I had gone to find out about the results with my friends Alexandre and Pauline, confident but of course with my heart a little tight. Then I returned home, just when the family was about to sit down for lunch. In the kitchen my parents were getting ready to bring the dishes to the table. I announced my score, as modestly as possible – we were not the kind who brag – hoping for a hint of enthusiasm, a tiny recognition. “I passed. With honors”, I said. My father, his eyes staring at the bowl of rice salad, said: “That is the least you could do.” My mother didn’t pronounce a word. They grabbed the dishes and we sat down to eat, all nine of us. My baccalaureate was not a subject.The diving club where I used to spend every Saturdays, and often Sundays, for two years, was organizing a weekend on the East coast of the island. The club had rented, or perhaps had been lent, a villa for two days of diving and partying. The start of the long summer holidays, the exploration of new diving sites and the baccalaureate awards were all reasons to celebrate. This small associative club had a particular importance for me. Not only was my passion for the sea born there, but it also represented a place of freedom. My happy place. I was a good diver and despite my young age, was given many responsibilities there: I would check the equipment before and after the dives, clean them, initiate novice divers to the sport. The atmosphere was always joyful, I felt good there. Safe. It was a breath away from home, from the suffocating omnipresence of my brothers and sister and my parent’s severe rules. My parents had categorically refused that I participate in the diving weekend making the weeks preceding it particularly conflicting. Leveraging on my honors, I insisted one last time, and, weary of the fight, they eventually let me go.Had you taken part in the morning dive? I don't remember. I do know, however, that you were sitting at the big table where all the divers were having lunch. The memory of the meal had come back to me. Delicious. Grilled chicken, rice, lemon and chilli. You were not one of the regulars at the club, your face was unknown to me. I remember you as a little old man. But what does old mean for a seventeen year old girl? Your features appeared to me with great clarity. Small and blue eyes, like marbles. Fine hair, a little long, a little neglected. You had a big belly, not huge, but big enough to be disgusting to the teenager I was. You were ugly, ruddy, and had drooping shoulders. I remember perfectly the feeling of fatigue, this pleasant weariness of the muscles numbed by the pressure of the sea water after the dive. The meal was over and I remember saying "I'm going to take a little nap" and slipping into a room I had spotted in the morning when I arrived, looking for a place to leave my backpack. I had closed the door behind me. There was a single bed, and large dark red or brown tiles on the floor. The room was cool. A ray of light was entering through a window, or a hole in the wall rather, like a long rectangle high up closed from the outside by a mosquito net. I had taken off my pareo and was lying down on the bed in my one-piece bathing suit. Probably the one I wore in the morning for the dive, still powdered with salt from the ocean. Lying on my back, I remember hearing the voices and laughter from the lunch table just outside the room. I was feeling good, slowly falling into sleep. And the door opened ajar. Immediately, I felt scared, I can't say why, a woman's instinct. I recognized you and pretended to be asleep, hoping to hear "Oh sorry, I didn't know you were there" and for the door to close, but already knowing deep down that it wouldn't happen. I remember hearing my heart beating in my chest, very hard. The door did close, but with you inside the bedroom. You approached the bed. I kept my eyes closed, unable to move. I knew. I was a virgin, a child, but I knew. You stood up next to the bed, I was paralyzed with terror, arms along your body, legs stretched out, all straight. You didn't say a word. You put your hand forward. You touched my thighs. I couldn't scream, I was too scared, too ashamed, my whole body was paralyzed. You touched me, closer and closer to my sex. Between my legs, you pushed the fabric of my bathing suit. Your fingers pushed inside me. You raped me. It lasted a very long time. My muscles were so tense they hurt. I remember my panic: if I have a cramp, I will scream, and if I scream, what will happen? You said, "You like it, huh? ". And then you took your fingers out of me, suddenly, I felt an acute pain. And you left the room without a word. I heard your chair scrape the floor just behind the door, and your voice joining the laughter and the conversation of the group. I stayed motionless for a long time, my legs and arms stiffened to the point of pain, my eyes staring at the ceiling in the half-light of the room. I didn't even dare to touch the elastic of my bathing suit and put it back in place. When the voices died down, I managed to get up. I left the room and walked to one of the scuba diving instructor I knew and trusted. I told him what you had done to me, he got very angry. I remember him calling you, taking you to the garage. I remember hearing a fight and then a car speeding off. Yours. And it all ends there. That same day, I forgot everything. That weekend, you, the house, absolutely everything, for thirty-three years. First, I felt disbelief. Then, when faced with the precision of my memories denying had become futile, astonishment. And finally, panic.
Like all women, I had experienced the daily misogyny and the accepted sexism of our patriarchal societies. Of course, I had my #metoo, lots of them. All sadly trivial, some scarier than others, some more humiliating than others, but nothing too abnormal. Nothing really serious. In fact, I was one of the privileged ones. I was one of those who had been lucky and was all the more aware of it because I have been living in countries where violence against women reaches unsustainable levels and where rape is so common it hardly shocks anyone. It is surely that which, coupled with my fierce will to doubt my own memories, that fueled an immense stupefaction. Me, the lucky one, the one who, because she was so privileged, had the strength and felt the duty to take care of the more damaged ones, you had raped me. For a few days, the feeling of disbelief stuck. Then I minimized. You had not been brutal. I had not become anorexic; I have never hated my body. You did not prevent me from loving men. You had penetrated me only with your fingers, it was perhaps not so serious. I checked a thousand times the legal definition of what you had done to me: you raped me when I was seventeen. Yes, it was serious, it was very serious. And this panic that had taken me, I could not ignore it. These memories were a wave and were about to engulf me. I knew I had to react, catch my breath, but how? You had raped me when I was seventeen, it was unbelievable but it was true, and I just couldn't get past that. My heart was drowning and my brain was no longer functioning, as if cast in concrete. I was living, laughing, eating, but I was as paralyzed as on that bed thirty-three years earlier.
Finally one evening I managed to speak. Two guardian angels listenned to me, hugged me and guided me. I sat at the table of the living room of our small apartment on the nineteenth floor, in Cape Town. The night was falling and the city was lighting up. The next day I was going hiking. My backpack was ready, my daughter and her friends would pick me up at six in the morning. The first lines came out with pain. You didn't deserve my attention, my evening, my paper and my pen. Writing to you was making me nauseous. And then, like my tears, the words flowed. I wrote ten pages; I told you all. You see, I have not forgotten a thing. I read my story several times, loud. I folded the sheets, slipped them into the top pocket of my backpack and fell asleep, nested in the sky of Cape Town. The next day, I felt the weight on the ten pages in my back for the entire exhausting and glorious first day of the hike. When we reached the chalet we would occupy for the night, I let my hiking companions prepare the barbecue outside and retired to the small kitchen. There I burned the ten pages, I burned you. I collected your ashes on a small plate and went out behind the shelter, out of sight of the team. I walked two or three hundred meters. The site was breathtakingly beautiful, set on the flank of the cliff of Cape of Good Hope. On the right, False Bay and the Pacific Ocean. On my left, the Atlantic. The wind had risen, pure, powerful. The ground was rocky, covered only with small succulents with thick, juicy leaves. I found a flat spot covered in sand. The sun was setting over the ocean. The air was getting cold. I could only hear the wind and see the sky exploding in reds and yellows. I knew what I had to do. I hesitated for a moment; you didn't deserve such a beautiful grave. And then I thought that indeed, it was there and nowhere else, because so far from everything, no one would ever find you. I was going to make you die alone. No one would ever hear your cries covered by the Cape of Good Hope wind. Nature was going to take everything away, you and my pain. I dug and buried your ashes. Then I trampled on your grave, spoiled it with tears and spit. And I joined the group. They pretended not to notice my red eyes, we dined happily, slept like babies and left the next day to unroll twenty-five kilometers of dunes, plains and rocky slopes. My bag was lighter.
The next day, with my muscles still sore from the hike and my feet full of blisters, I went to this tiny bay surrounded by large flat rocks where we used to picnic in the evening with the children during holidays, watching the sun set. The sea was freezing, the sky was a little gray, cloudy. I entered the water, she hugged me, cold and soft. Like an invincible shield of my body that you tried to dominate, of this very body you never had. I took my time, bathed twice. When I got home, I felt a new strength. Physical. You see ? I burnt you, I buried you, and I drowned you. At the exact point where two oceans mingle with an incredible power and where the purest air on the planet blows. You had no chance. Six months have passed. It would be vain to hope that everything will go back to the way it was. I have crossed your path; this I cannot change. Yet the extraordinary mechanism that protected me from you for three decades was right. Right to think that, while #metoo had made us all prouder, while I was writing this novel and living very close to the most beautiful place on earth: it is time, the stars are aligned, she's ready. I was. I know now and I survived you, stronger than ever. You, who wanted to dominate me, how ironic. Of course, I am more wary of men. I try not to hate them, but I'm on alert. I feel the danger more acutely, and more than ever I feel the pain and terror of women, those things left unsaid, theirs cracks and their wounds. How many pigs, I keep wondering, how many pigs like you have I come across without knowing it?
The anger has faded. The questions remain, still feeding my disbelief. I was a child. Mature maybe for my seventeenth. I loved reading, I enjoyed debates and the company of adults. I was independent, a bit of a leader. I loved the sea and dancing on zouk music, I loved my bike and my friends. I had two months of vacation left on the island before the start of my university years in Paris. Real life was just starting. I had just graduated with honors, I had dived in the morning and I wanted to take a nap. Just a nap. And you, you watched me excuse myself from the table. For two or three minutes, surrounded by your friends who were finishing the spicy chicken, you told yourself that you were going to get up, enter the room and push your fingers inside me. You did it. Then you came out of that room and you sat down at that same table. Maybe you had a coffee, or a rum. Why? This question will always remain with me. Did I annoy you, you miserable little man in your miserable little life, did you want to silence my freedom, my youth, did you want to soil the life that was awaiting me? Or am I looking too far, did you only see in me an easy prey, without consequence, to satisfy your vice? I will never know. Did you rape other women, other girls? Do you have a wife, did you lie to her all your life long or does she know, like Ghislaine Maxwell? Do you have sons? Do they know who you really are, are they too, like daddy, pigs?
Out of duty for all women, I will write. Because, tremble with fear you and your brothers, women are no longer silent, I may speak. Even if it means saying words that have nothing to do with me, that sound so incongruous, so out of place. Even if I'm afraid of embarrassed smiles and "sorry" and worst, of being told that I shouldn't have gone to this weekend.
Don't get me wrong. I will not forget you. I will never forgive you. If by some extraordinary chance my path crosses one of your friends, or a descendant, I will speak and watch them drown in shame. If one cursed day our paths cross, I will kill you. But I won't look for you. I don’t want to know your name, or if you are dead or alive. I have better things to do. You had no place in my life for thirty-three years of oblivion, you won't have any more now. Élise is in charge; all is fine.

Mourning an animal is a complicated affair. One must hide the pain, and when is not bearable, play it down and apologize. Quickly wipe tears away and with a little forced laugh say: sorry, there are so many worse things, it was just a dog. My dog died on the 30 March. Yes, she was just a dog, but she was my dog and I loved her. The pain reflects that love. It's not defined by the canine or human nature of the departed loved one. I knew I will have to hide my pain, so I wrote the day after. Jade, 14 years old, canus africanus. An African dog, the kind who knew in her genes that life is merciless. Who wanted me to tell her about those city dogs who are not allowed chicken bones while she would crush them faster than they disappeared from our hands, just for a laugh. Who devoured every bowl at full speed, always on alert, as if it was her last meal. Brutal even while playing, growling even at us, after all these years by our side, when we tried to help her climb into the car. Canus africanus, so mixed that we could see in her everything we wanted to see: a Jack Russell nose, greyhound legs, fox ears, a hyena jaw and deer eyes. On a Saturday, fourteen years ago, the four of us visited the SCPA in Gaborone to choose a dog. To consolidate our new family of a slightly anormal kind, a little wobbly, made of heavy baggage, new beginnings and long distances. A dog to be here, always, when we come back. To be our stability. The children immediately spotted her, happy little white ball with green eyes. Green as jade. "That one, we want that one." Found in a gutter while she was barely two or three weeks old, the veterinarian explained. But – there was a but – she was the only dog in the kennel not eligible for adoption, because she was so adorable that the SCPA team had decided to keep her. We came home disappointed but the children did not flinch: it was her and no one else. And we went back the next day. Please Mam, she will be fine with us, we promise you, please… And so Jade came to our life.And she indeed has been our stability. Welcoming us, with the same joy, the same circles at full gallop, the same songs (Jade could sing) whether we came back from a school term abroad or from a simple day of work. Listening, slighlty confused, to those on the phone asking : “and Jade, how is she? Can you put the speakerphone on, I want to talk to her” ? She consoled so many of our sorrows. She listened to our secrets. She reassured us licking our noses and protected us from the bad guys with her terrible teeth. She loved our friends. She was here. She saved me - maybe not my life, although … we will never know - but at least from serious injuries, when eight years ago three dogs, enraged by a cruel master and who had escaped from their prison threw themselves at me. She must have heard my cries for help, and from the end of our street I saw her coming at them who were already surrounding me, and attacking them one by one, with an indescribable rage. They fled and I got away with two fairly superficial bites. Brave Jade. "She is little weird Jade, though" has been heard many times at home. She had imaginary friends, or enemies, invisible to our eyes. She often would lie just next to her empty bed, staring at it, growling. Obviously, someone was occupying it, and she didn't like it. She feared cows because she believed them to be equipped with superpowers, capable of launching terrible electric shocks from a distance. A trauma due to a shock, real that one, from an electric fence surrounding a herd of cows. No explanation ever convinced her, it was the cows, she was sure of it. She wouldn’t eat pork. Never, not even a slice of bacon. We have never understood if it was religious belief, a friendship with a pig in a previous life, or simply a matter of taste. She didn’t like having her name pronounced with a French accent. She got high once. From a forgotten space cake in our fridge. "Here look, the kids forgot some brownie, I'm giving it to Jade, she’ll love it"... as for a dessert, she stared at the vines in the dark for a good twenty minutes, animated by a strange swaying... High Jade. She crossed South Africa. Pretended to be vineyard owner, and fought cobras. She chased antelopes and guinea fowls, was our running mate in the vineyards and at the time of the harvest, loved biting on rape grapes still holding on their vines. Then she crossed the country in the opposite direction. She would never leave my side. At my feet when I was working at my desk, on my yoga mat the minute I unrolled it, and authoritatively kicking open the bathroom door when I dared closing it. We are together, her eyes were telling me, have you forgotten? She was deeply loved. I don't think it would have been possible to love her more. And she loved us the same. She died yesterday morning. She was cold and there was a fear in her eyes that I did not know. We had understood, she and us. We laid a blanket over her shaky body. A pillow under her head, and we sat next to her, rocking her gently, whispering her thousand nicknames, reassuring her with our caresses. And she left. Did she tell herself, closing her eyes for good, that it was really her luck that her parents became vegetarians six years ago? And also, that she was almost there: in our bed. Didn't I declare for twelve years "No, not the sofa, no dog hair on the sofa!" » to finally capitulate, even happy to rub my feet on her coat watching a good serie…. The bed was duable, she knew it. Her last bastion to conquer. Jade. I wondered this morning what was the use of getting up if you weren't there, raising your head off your bed when the alarm clock rang and watching us wake up with adoration, as if you were discovering us for the first time; then go outside, stretch for a long time in the grass, feel life tingle your paws with delight, inspect the morning smells, take off running, patrol the garden in search of sign of the annoying cat, ask me for a bone pretending that you haven't already received one, and finally lie down, like every morning, at my feet. A big storm just broke out. Late, unusual for the season. Is it you Jade ?