Month after month, without fail, she delivers her pieces on time, without mistakes, headline and copy in place. Still nothing to report, says Claire. She comes to Christian Voubert’s attention because in an account of the annual reunion of veteran soldiers in a mountain village there is a word that he had never come across in French in his life before and that he had looked up in the dictionary: “Like a griot, Sylvain H. rose to his feet. Strumming on his guitar, he softly sang the old Resistance song: Le Chant des Partisans.”
Griot: traveling poet and musician in black Africa, repository of the oral culture, said to be in communication with spirits.
The editor had been moved by this sentence, as if he, too, had been there at this village, where, as Anita had written, the women wear “blouses decorated with flowers that never fade,” as if he, too, had heard the song. And for the first time in many years he had thought about his own father.
And he told himself that Anita was not a woman like the rest … By degrees, with the passage of these trial months, all the faults he had imputed to her were disappearing. The very same causes resulted in different effects, different clichés, different empty phrases.
Foreigner: a fresh eye on the region, relish for the French language.
Young mother: a welcome sensitivity.
Married to an architect whose office is just around the corner from the town hall: a woman attentive to the aesthetics of the region.
Having lived in Paris: experience.
Native of a remote island: sensitive to the region’s own strong identity.
A year or more had passed. Christian Voubert had decided that she had proved herself.
That Tuesday, when Anita walks into his office at 11:17, Christian Voubert tells himself that something about her has changed, but he cannot put his finger on it. She looks him straight in the eye.
“So, how’s it going out in the territory, Anita?”
“It’s going well. Everything’s going well.”
“Yes, I think everything’s going very well indeed. Yours is not obviously the work of a stringer. I’ve had several phone calls from people pleased with your work. I like getting phone calls like that.”
Anita remains silent, her hands resting on her knees. She is thinking back to her argument with Adam the night before. Now that Christian Voubert has congratulated her on her work he will tell her he has nothing to offer her, for the moment.
“Good. Now, Anita, this Friday there’s a cultural evening with music from the island of Réunion and a concert by a singer of, hang on … ma … something.”
“Maloya?”
“Yes, that’s it. I’ve never heard of it. They want to add this music into the UNESCO cultural heritage program and I thought that, as you come from that neck of the woods … It’s quite close by, isn’t it, Mauritius?”
“Yes, it’s very close.”
“There you are. I thought you could do an article for the arts page on Saturday. You’d do a long piece, let’s say nine hundred and fifty words in total, about this traditional music. What it is. The history of the thing, its development, and how it’s part of the French cultural heritage, all that. We need two separate sections, one on the concert itself, perhaps a picture of the singer, I can’t remember his name, and another on the business of adding this music into the cultural heritage. How does that strike you?”
“It’s an excellent idea.”
“Good, but take care, Anita. The account of the concert has to be written the same night. You’ll have an hour, an hour and a half at the very most, to do it. Do you think you can manage that? Yes? Very good. Claire will give you the details better than I can. If it goes well, you’ll have other opportunities like this. Does that suit you?”
“Yes, Monsieur Voubert. Thank you.”
“Good. You can call me Christian.”
For the first time since she walked into the office she smiles at him (something that lights up her soft face and makes her eyes shine) and Christian Voubert has to restrain himself from coming around his desk to throw his arms about her.
As she is leaving he realizes that she is no longer wearing on her wrists those colored bracelets that tinkled gently as she moved. A pity. They suited her well.
Anita does what she generally does: she selects three topics from the board, discusses them with Claire, drinks a coffee and consults the archives. Once outside she begins running toward the beach, laughing. She feels as if her joy were trailing a great glittering train behind her and that this could carry the whole town with it: that young woman in a long skirt drinking coffee on a café terrace, that man in a gray jacket walking briskly along, the old lady in sneakers pulling her shopping cart, the girl in a tight-fitting dress smoking in front of her swimsuit store, the ice cream man in his striped jersey sitting on his stool, the balloons all ready, waiting for the children, the carousel, at a standstill, surrounded by a protective net, the people strolling on the promenade, the old men on the benches, the dogs, the cats at windows, the profusion of plants with mauve flowers all along the coast road, that strip of sand, the azure blue sea, the spring sky.
Later, stretched out on the sand, her eyes closed, her heart now beating regularly, she begins to dream about next Saturday, when Adam collects the newspaper after his run. He will be bathed in sweat, he will come leaping upstairs four steps at a time. Despite their quarrel, despite all he had said to her, predicted, advised, this first article will please him. Yes, he will say, you were right to persevere. They will be happy. They will be proud. They will feel filled with the courage and energy they need to live this life of theirs. It
