The Story of the Cannibal Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

commiseration, the circle of teachers gasped:
    â€œNo, you must be joking!”
    The more generous-hearted proposed collecting donations. The idea didn’t meet with general approval: giving money or a check, it’s humiliating. The gesture might hurt her.
    Before Stephen, few people had taken Rosélie’s ambitions seriously. Elie would throw a fit whenever he saw her wasting her time messing about with paint instead of revising her math or science for the baccalaureate. If she couldn’t be a lawyer, he’d like her to be an economist. No Guadeloupean can boast of a daughter as economist at the World Bank. As for Rose, who was never short of compliments, she whined for an explanation:
    â€œWhat does that represent, darling? Is it a person, a tree, or an animal?”
    Those members of the family who had visited the Louvre museum in Paris once or twice shook with hysterical laughter. She thinks she’s that painter who was fascinated by Tahiti and also spent time in Martinique. What was his name?
    In the eyes of Salama Salama, Rosélie’s penchant for painting was incomprehensible and exasperated him. Stephen’s behavior was radically different. She hadn’t been with him for three months before he began to take charge of her affairs, as he did with everything else. She lacked technique because painting is like singing, cabinet making, or masonry: it’s not something you make up, it is governed by rules. So he got her admitted to the National School of Beaux Arts, the latest gift from France to N’Dossou, a place of extreme material poverty but spiritually very rich. The two are not incompatible. On the contrary. The Antillean proverb is mistaken when it claims: Sak vid pa kienn doubout . In other words, those who have an empty belly are only preoccupied with filling it. Not at all, they are devoted to the creation of Beauty and Spirituality. A French government minister had inaugurated the school in great pomp a few months earlier. The director was a friend. Stephen had no trouble whatsoever.
    N’Dossou’s entire population is no bigger than a district of Manhattan. Moreover, the entire country numbers fewer than a million inhabitants. The dense forest and fevers have got the better of it. The rumor quickly spread through the residential areas and suburbs that Rosélie had no business being where she was.
    Favoritism! Favoritism!
    Especially as she had no talent. Her paintings lacked that opacity generated by cultural authenticity. The professors, too busy saving up for their retirement, made no effort to defend her. Wounded by the criticism, Rosélie found no consolation in receiving her final diploma. Locked in her studio rented by Stephen in the Riviera IV district (everything an artist could wish for), next to the Afrika recording studios, she couldn’t touch her brushes for weeks on end. Nobody could reassure her that she was anything but a conscientious student. She would have liked words of encouragement from painters as different as Modigliani, Wifredo Lam, and Roberto Matta to admit her into their magic circle.
    Am I nothing more than one of those tlacuilos , Indians from Ixmiquilpan who filled the Spanish with so much admiration?
    Stephen in no way influenced Rosélie. He merely expressed his approval. Why did she always get the feeling he behaved like a doting daddy?
    You know, those parents who consider their little darling’s daubings a masterpiece, frame it, and hang it on the wall.
    He encouraged her to expose at the French Cultural Center, run by a friend of his, in between a sculptor from Niger and a watercolorist from Togo. The few visitors wrote admiring comments in the visitor’s book on the creativity of Francophone artists. Stephen hosted a dinner for the only two journalists in the country who specialized in painting. Since the evening was devoted to the arts, he also invited his inseparable Fumio. Fumio was a Japanese artist who