Unbelievable. And yet here I am, years later, still alive, inhaling the scent of wisteria and earth, waiting for my new family to come home.
I’m no longer called Melody. One day I saw an old film poster in a cinema. The night I checked in to a hotel room, I used the name Adèle. I took it from the poster.
I once read a story about a man who tore off one of his arms in order to escape from a mountain ravine. I’ve read about animals that bite off one of their paws to get out of a trap. Could it be that I have this same animal instinct for survival within me? I’ve killed the Melody within me and Adèle has caused me to be reborn …
Today I’m sitting in a house in the outskirts of a forest on the shores of the Atlantic. A little while ago I saw a grass snake and for the first time in ages I thought about my mother. And only yesterday, to soothe a sudden rise in the child’s temperature, as I was giving her some medicine, I murmured a prayer. My childhood and my old ways are coming back to me. Outside, a wind has arisen, it’s starting to rain. I can hear the first drops falling on the leaves. I’m thinking about Melody now. I can say this today. I can write it. I’m thinking about my old self. I’d like to say a proper goodbye to her and tell her story. Deep inside me, I haven’t changed very much.
CHAPTER 2
My childhood, my adolescence. Hours, days, months, years. At 6:00 every day the kettle starts whistling. On Friday afternoons the shirts are starched. On Saturday evenings the shoes are polished as we listen to the radio. My oldest brother gets married. Six months later the younger one decides to go off to Australia. At midday on Sundays my mother cooks her famous curried fish with grilled eggplants. One Christmas Eve my father dies in his sleep in his fifty-seventh year and at 6:00 every morning the kettle goes on whistling.
At sixteen I was accepted into a secretarial school. I was an average student, except at typing. At typing I excelled. I didn’t have many friends, no boyfriends. Why did I find it hard to form ties? Where did this nervousness come from?
When I left school I got a secretarial job at the bank without difficulty. My mother was so pleased! At night such silence reigned in my room that I could hear my own heart beating, and my mother breathing noisily in her sleep—her regular puh puh puh. What I didn’t know was that every one of those moments was to be cherished. I didn’t know that we ought to give thanks for light, for warmth, for the blood flowing in one’s veins, for smiles, for hot meals, for a glass of cold water, for a beating heart. I didn’t know.
I met Ben at the bank. My life took on new dimensions, just as my body did in my teens. It gained in harmony, joy, and laughter and I changed. I began to make plans. I stopped being afraid of the unbelievable. I forgot about my uncle’s fate. I forgot that if you walk in the light too much in the end you go blind.
I’d like to rewind the course of my memory without pausing anywhere. Go back to the first time I set eyes on him, when I didn’t yet know who he really was, the husband he’d be, the father he’d be. When I didn’t know how to read his looks, his gestures, understand his silences.
I’d like to describe him to you, how he looked, his hair, his clothes, his hands, his mouth. But I can’t manage to think about him as a stranger. I think about the way he smiled when we were married. I think about the fine white kurta that he wore for his morning meditation. I think of his hands. I think of his mouth kissing me for the first time. I know I ought to be closing my eyes. I can see his are already closed, but I’m looking at this big mouth as it approaches mine and I catch sight of a brown beauty spot on his amazingly pink lower lip, and oh, I melt. I think about our wedding. In the very church where my father’s funeral mass had been held. The benches were packed. All those aunts and cousins and uncles, all that organdy, silk, satin, lace, guipure, polyester, jersey knit, and all of it in a joyful swishing and flouncing. The singing rose and fell like a glorious, joyful ocean swell. I think about the two of us there, rising above all our faults, our class, our birth, promising to aim high, to do better.
CHAPTER 3
Ben worked as a cashier at a bank. It was one of the island’s leading banks for what, in those days, were known as little folk. People who did not use ATMs, and could not understand bank statements printed out by machines, people who did not know how to make out a check. They needed to talk to someone who used a pocket calculator, who understood temporary difficulties, the good times and the bad. So you’d see a whole line of them passing through, fishermen, farmers, market vendors of fruits and vegetables, dressmakers, embroiderers, hardware dealers, and mechanics.
Ben and I were very happy. We’d bought our Fiat, and some furniture. We were the perfect example
