Dirty Feet - Edem Awumey [1]
Still, he did want to see the photos, and the girl said that he could, but not right away. She would be away from the capital for one or two weeks, working on a project.
Askia’s travels had begun because of another of Kadia Saran’s mysterious pronouncements: “Our family is under a curse to depart again and again, to tramp over thousands of roads until we are exhausted or dead. Look at yourself, my son, endlessly wandering through the night in your taxi.” It was hard to understand his mother and her words. All Askia knew was that his line of work obliged him to rove the streets. Yet in his flight across the pavements of the North he wanted to verify whether or not his machinery, programmed for roaming, could stop.
A dog and its mistress passed in front of him on the sidewalk. He recalled that as a child he would spend his days at the garbage dump in Trois-Collines, the squalid tropical suburb where he had landed with his mother. There he would mingle with dogs that he did not like. In particular the one belonging to old Lem. Its name was Pontos.
2
102, RUE AUGUSTE-COMTE. A newly refurbished four-storey building. Askia rang the doorbell. On the ground floor, to the left of the entrance, a window opened. He supposed this was the apartment of the concierge, someone — perhaps an old lady — banished to the desert island of this apartment, stationed there to challenge visitors with a thousand questions and drive away troublemakers. But it was not an old woman who greeted him. A man in his fifties thrust his head out.
“I have an appointment with Mademoiselle Olia,” Askia said.
“The full name, please?”
“Olia.”
“A given name doesn’t tell me very much.”
“She has brown hair.”
“That doesn’t tell me much either. Which floor does she live on? You have an appointment? I wasn’t told anything. Sorry, I can’t help you.”
And the concierge shut his porthole. Askia lingered on the sidewalk. He was not angry. He simply thought this photographer, the passenger who had promised to show him portraits of his father, had had some fun at his expense. He headed across the street towards the Jardin du Luxembourg. The railings were hung with an exhibition. Pictures suspended in the sky of another world — still shots from a film: Himalaya. L’enfance d’un chef. Images from a far-off world, hung on the park fence. The large boards displayed people walking in various seasons. Like him. The wind hammered at his neck. He raised his coat collar and strolled several times around the fence and the pictures. The crowd began to thin out. The night engulfed the landscapes on display. The night overtook him. He decided to go home.
She came up behind him, surprising him in his dialogue with the faces on the boards. He followed her back across the street. She keyed in the code at the entrance to her building. They took the stairs opposite the door. The brass of the handrails and the sheen of the red carpet glimmered in the faint light of the hallway. They climbed the stairs, she in front and he at her heels. She stopped when they reached the top floor and slipped the key into the lock of the double door. He went in behind her.
The place was small, attractive, new. The front door opened onto a room that served as both living room and kitchenette. A sofa draped with an ash-coloured sheet faced the door. Behind the sofa was a bookcase with four shelves in the same white as the walls. He scanned the contents of the shelves: books, bibelots, an earthenware ashtray and bowl, a tiny square box made of wood.
Inserted among the books was a very broad bird feather that stirred with the slightest breath of air. The books lined the backs of the shelves while the bibelots were placed in front. On the wall around the shelves were some photos. He studied them. There was a noticeable connection among the faces on the wall. He had once leafed through a tome on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and had no trouble identifying