The Night is an ideal setting for stories. It embodies one of the protagonists of Marie Ranjanoro’s novel Feux, Fièvres, Forêts (Fires, Fevers, Forests, Laterit, 2023), set in the months following the 1947 Madagascan uprising against the French occupation of the Grande Île [Great Island]. The following extract, which we wanted to include in this issue corresponds to the entirety of chapter 13 of the book. It was translated from French by Marie herself.
I can’t say if I slept. I barely remember nights without dreams, sighs, and ghosts. Ever since the house, for years, centuries maybe, night has become a long whisper filled with the dead women’s breath, with disembodied Ivo, singing her funeral song. A thousand chimes tear my brain, a thousand arms slip under my eyelids, make my skin shake and swell like a lamba under the wind. They play tales and sayings from the past, the future, in their own tongues, mimicking what has been, and what could be. My nights, thus pierced by their noises, are nothing but an endless cacophony, only quieted by dawn, when at last, I can sink, drowsing in the pale green tinged morning. I can’t say if I slept, but now I feel, curled up in the darkness, that I awaken. All of me, finally, trembling with obsession, stung by Ivo in my back and my flanks, assaulting me:
“Voara, Voara, come find me.”
In the coffee plantation, the workers, finally asleep, hum heavily like a rising tide. I gaze upon them with envy. If only my eyes could close, if only my thoughts could extinguish – cease, just for a night, an hour, a single minute of peace. But I know: I will not find peace until Ivo has found hers. My sleep is but her hurling soul, denied a burial. Ivo, where are you, cursed child? It is time. With a rustle barely louder than the breeze, the bushes of my hiding place quiver, as Ivo leads us through the sleeping bodies – me, and behind me, the long procession of women who keep singing: a song to lull the dead and sew shut the eyelids of the living at our feet. I brush against their warm bodies, their smooth, sun-darkened skin, their muscles sculpted by toil. What beauties, these full, rounded bodies, brimming with the fierce vitality of mortals. Blissfully unaware, smiles on their lips, sated by the bad rice left by the masters – the broken rice from the old harvests. What do they dream of, these people? Of meat in their stews? Of lovers with tender flesh? Of a house with a dry floor and sturdy beams? I envy their small dreams. I envy their short, simple, and full lives. Sometimes, cradled against a mother’s breast, I find an infant. He too has spent his day beneath the coffee trees, strapped to the strong back of a picker. Plump and healthy, and yet, he has known and will only ever know this life of servitude. Barely alive, and already subdued. So I look toward the masters’ house, where they too sleep, though their fate diverges so starkly. How strange and different the sleep of the powerful must be. How does one sleep when one has taken possession of the land, of its yield, and of those who work it? How does one sleep in the house that makes one a master? While outside, those who are made submissive by the very outside itself also sleep. Thus, there is truly an inside and an outside. I gaze at the house, and its shadow draws me in – a grave black tear in the fabric of reality, streaked with the red glow of dying embers. Outside, the workers sleep still, drunk on exhaustion. Inside, the masters sleep just as soundly, full, and content with their power. As for the house, it remains ready and awake. At the foot of its stone steps, I hear it breathe. Ivo cackles her wicked laugh:
“Are you afraid, Voara?”
But she knows – the brat – she knows, for she too inhabits this body trembling with ecstasy. This pulse, beating the rhythm of an obsessive melody; this chest heaving so strongly it makes the wound throb; these nails digging into my palms, pale from the grip – it is not fear. It is not the katy. It is neither hunger nor anger nor insomnia. This blood pounding in my temples is the anticipation that knows it will finally be fulfilled. And in the night, facing each other, the house and I – like wild beasts – we size each other up.
“Voara, come here.”
It is not Ivo who speaks. Nor is it the women, who, strangely, have fallen silent and disappeared into the thick night. So, perhaps, it is me – repossessing for a brief moment my own voice. Or perhaps it is the house itself. Somewhere, within the planks torn from the oldest, hardest trees of the forest, in the guilty whisper of curtains and tulle, in the conquering stomp of boots on its floors, in the screams of furious little girls, this house has acquired a voice. And with that tone made of wood and the clamor of the dead and the living, I hear it calling me:
“Voara, come.”
How small the house seems tonight. I prowl through the conspiratorial darkness, around the white fences and the bushes of flowers wilted by the rain. Through its windows with their black panes – blind abysses drowned in oblivion – the house watches me. Ivo, where are you? Near the servants’ houses, a patch of loose soil stains the grass like a greasy mark. Is this your grave, my Ivo? I dig frantically with hands that have become paws, with fingers turned into claws – those of a burrowing animal, vile and filthy. But the still-warm, soft earth yields only trash: chicken carcasses, fruit peels, greasy paper. Nothing. Nothing but my warm body, stubbornly brimming with this life that refuses to extinguish. Behind me, I can still feel the mocking aura of the house, waiting, relishing the sweet taste of my despair. Cursed house, what have you done with her? Nowhere, no trace of Ivo. Not in the earth, nor in the pits, nor among the hunched gony, slumped like dozing hosts, heavy with the burnt scent of coffee beans. Not beneath the dry rustle of discarded woven crafts. But inside me, frustration swells – a hunger unlike any before, a void full of rage, of tears, and of craving. The steps of the porch lick at my dirt-streaked feet. Soon, the veranda unrolls its red, glossy surface beneath my stride. The glass doors are ajar. The muslin curtains tremble as I invite myself into this intimate space, heavy with the scents of wood and spice. The floorboards creak under my weight, the furniture sighs softly as I graze it, the chairs murmur faint complaints. Every object in this house responds to me as if to a master, and I enjoy in silence the audacity of finding myself in here, while all around us, the white beasts slumber in their foaming beds. Everything is muffled by the night and the heavy presence of those who sleep. At this hour, only beasts and ziny are awake. Ivo, which of us is the beast, and which the ziny?
“Voara!”
On the floor, washed blue by the moonlight, a glow ignites the darkness. Over there, a lamp is lit – another besides me watches over the sleep of men. Ivo fades as I slide toward the room. The door is open onto an unmade bed, and in the rumpled sheets lies an obscene and grotesque creature, breathing. The monster has the head of a little girl, barely weaned, her round face and baby teeth. Her small nose wrinkles at the sight of me, her large brown eyes widen, framed by long lashes. Her shaved hair brushes the pillow, her mouth a plump fruit, bursting into a startled pout. This head extends from a massive, pale, naked, and hairy body. Of it, I see nothing but the white flesh, legs, buttocks, and back, speckled with reddish spots. The sunburned neck disappears beneath the child’s head. With a pudgy hand, she presses a finger to her lips, meaning hush. Then, in a choreography she commands with precision – crucial and terrible – she extricates her slender body, slips free from the monster’s embrace, and climbs down from the great white bed. She says nothing as she passes me in the doorway, heading toward the garden. Her rounded forehead barely reaches my waist. This divine, tiny being disappears behind me, and I approach the unconscious monster, now decapitated of its small child’s head. The acrid stench of his sweat mingles with the reek of cane alcohol, searing my nostrils. But stronger still is the greasy odour of the kerosene lamp, burning as it emits wisps of black smoke.
“VOARA!”
Ivo screams through the muffled cotton haze that smothers sounds and things. At last, I can hear her. I am hypnotized by the blue flames licking at the dark pattern of an oil stain on the bed. Around it, a great yellow flower blooms – the fire has reached the bedframe and the wooden walls. Such fine carpentry, varnished, dry, and crackling despite the rainy seasons. The man has not even woken.
Poisoned by alcohol, sunk deep in the limbo of his sated sleep – his heavy, lustful slumber – the man dies before he can even move. He does not smell the kerosene on his pillow, the oil slicked across his gleaming skin, or the searing bite of flames devouring his pale flesh. His lungs must now be smeared with soot, his throat clogged with greasy, translucent smoke. Drowned by fire. Asphyxiated. His sleep and his silent death excite the abysmal void inside me. No trace of Ivo anywhere, of her body, or of the little girls sacrificed in those great white beds. In his death, there is no repentance, no glory, no shame. The man has died as he lived – in serene indifference, in the perfect contentment of his position as a master, reigning, unchallenged. That is all he will ever receive for his crimes. He died satisfied, in the safe and reassuring dimness of his bed, his room, his domain. He departed victorious, while I crawled here – insidious, indigent, wretched. I destroyed this house that ended up possessing me. Twice I came here, two nights in secrecy and shame. But he reigned here in daylight, in full knowledge of his actions, in plain view of all. For there is nothing above the white masters. All we have are these weak insurrections, acts of vandals, of outlaws. All we will ever have are these scraps of fury – tiny, futile aggressions against the great white flesh that crushes us. Scraping our nails against the tombstone. I scream again. I rage. The flames lick at me eagerly, feeding on my powerless fury, kissing my ridiculous fists like those of an enraged child. The fire takes the mosquito nets, the nylon melts like sugar, climbing toward the ceiling and the windows. A pane of glass shatters, stretched by the heat. Its sharp sound stirs a memory I cannot quite grasp.
“VOARA!”
This time, I hear it. My body suddenly fills again with the consciousness I had abandoned. Ivo, is it you who screams, or is it I from this burning throat? My lungs convulse, expelling mucus laden with ash. I must get out. Inside the house, the beautiful white objects have all turned black – charred, stained with soot. The fine wood of the walls, the floor, the furniture – too precious for mere coal – this fine hardwood will burn for a long time. The stuffing of the cushions ignites more fiercely than the driest kindling. The delicate things of muslin, quartz, porcelain perish in silence, softly. Everything is gold, fire, and flamboyant. Everything bursts into crackling red bouquets like the branches of a bottlebrush tree. The portraits of the vazaha ancestors, always cruel in their brass frames, always scowling, are now liberated from their impure lineage. They too will become black, ash, nothingness. The corners of the photos curl, shrink inward, and dissolve into oblivion. The master now stands alone, unbound by ancestors or descendants. I have erased his past, his future, his potential, and his existence. He has returned to the nothingness – swallowed, vanished. I have aborted him, and he will exist no more. This is what I leave behind me, burning, as I cross what remains of the house’s threshold. Nothing but the strange fuel of a body that no one will search for. As the night linger, the humidity of the air pours its balm over my smouldering skin and parched mouth. The workers are still asleep, and the wind has risen. The house is in flames. From the bedroom, the fire has climbed – dogged – along the panelling, mosquito nets, curtains, and the pretty embroidered doilies. Sparks flutter and reach the roof of the storeroom nearby, the servants’ and foremen’s huts, the shelters, hearths and roasters. Like a false dawn, the torching house raises a heat, smoke and noise that finally rouses the workers. They yawn, stunned by the sight of the enraging blaze. Their sleep-swollen eyes blink, like a cloud of fireflies in the night. Fully awake now, yet still motionless. Some stand, others sit, many remain lying down, barely propped up on an elbow, all silently observing the catastrophe. They have moved back just enough to avoid the smoke, but no one calls out “fire,” no one rushes to fetch water or attempt to save the inhabitants. It is too late anyway. What can be done? Throw oneself into the blaze to add to the death toll? The fire will burn. The fire will extinguish itself. It will not even dare spread. The forest is too far; the house will perish alone. Alone under the gaze of a thousand eyes. Nonchalant wisemen, the witnesses sometimes pass around a bottle of cane liquor or a roasted cassava root. It is over; the house has burned. The house has erased itself, along with everything inside and out. When dawn finally breaks, the miserable stilts still rise above the charred ruins. That bundle of kindling has collapsed upon itself, and by now, the crowd is fully awake. The incident is already being discussed like a meal long consumed. So, what will you do now? I have a sister working in the rice paddies two hours’ walk from here. They’re hiring. I’ll return to my village; my father’s too old to herd the zebu alone. My zafy is now weaned; I’ll take care of them now that my daughter is going back to work. Life goes on, its stream of concerns more pressing, more immediate, more tangible than a burned house, now belonging to the past. The house has burned. Inside, its master perished, and with him, the system of forced labor that bound the workers to the plantation. As the crowd disperses, breaks fast, or chats, no one spares a glance for the soot-blackened figure retreating into the forest. Dawn has come, raw, sharp, and blinding. I have no refuge left but where daylight cannot tread. I am now only a being of shadows and night. ■
GLOSSARY ///
Gony: large bag formerly made of fabric or jute, now plastic fiber, used for transporting goods, spices, or cereals.
Katy: khat, qat, or kat, a shrub or small tree (a type of spindle tree) from the Celastraceae family, native to Yemen and Ethiopia. Its cultivation has spread to much of southern and eastern Africa. It is consumed by locals in these regions who chew its leaves for their stimulating and euphoric effects, similar to those of amphetamines. In Madagascar, it is found almost exclusively in the northern regions.
Lamba: traditional clothing, which varies in design, weaving, and wearing styles depending on the region. In the northeastern part of Madagascar, it consists of a simple printed cotton cloth tied around the waist.
Vazaha: refers to a white person or European but also conveys the notion of power, including Malagasy administrative authority.
Zafy: grandson or granddaughter.
Ziny: from the Arabic “djinn,” meaning demon, spirit, or malevolent genie.