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By Root 312 0

the outlines of a concrete, palpable, sustained mass. Solid to the touch and the eyes. He wanted to reproduce the concreteness of a landscape or a human face, a pattern that would take over from the cracking, the shattering, the interior chaos he was experiencing. He was a mess because he had never been able to untangle all the roads that he carried within. He wanted to see something linear and solid on the canvas: a stone house by the side of a perfectly straight road, a picture reflecting a standard existence, smooth and unbroken. The kind that Petite-Guinée would have wanted for himself. A life exactly like all the others. But for Askia it was the life of the mercenary, the pilgrim, the conqueror that was standard. An adventure like all the others in every respect. Since the Exodus, the Hegira, the Crusades, the yellow, white, or black gold rush. And all the invasions yet to come. The latest illegal alien, coming dirty-footed from the South to dig for bread-gold in Lampedusa, New York, Montreal.

Petite-Guinée swept his brush over the canvas. It scurried over the rough outlines, searching for shapes. He drew some haphazard lines but was soon disappointed. There emerged bits of architecture, demolished faces, shards, a stretch of road obstructed midway by a large black hole, debris, fragments of some unidentifiable ruin. In the loneliness of his nights, Petite-Guinée practised the art of exploding forms, destroying lives and roads. It could not be said that the colours on the canvas amounted to no more than an impression, an idea of failure, a concept, an elaboration. There was truth there. The debris on the canvas was necessary, like the remnants of a life or of a failure that spoke the truth. His own. The basic setting of his painting was a roadway littered with the shards and rubble of lives. He grew despondent and eventually dropped his brush.

Askia left without saying a word and went back to his cab. A calm night. The girls on Saint-Denis were shivering. No customers in sight.

He drove towards Boulevard Haussmann, Gare Saint-Lazare. Two blocks away, the flames of a fire. The air was burning. A scarf of smoke choked the globular moon, hanging from the edge of a gutter. He thought of a chapter from Revelation. Pictured the remains of lives that would drop onto the sidewalk in front of the blazing building. As in Petite-Guinée’s painting. Pictured the remains of a body once big, bits of toes worn out from tramping over the pavement, a shred of cotton once an article of clothing, the turban shrouding Sidi Ben Sylla Mohammed’s exile, his retreat. He pictured Sidi dead.

12

IN THE SHADOWS of Paris. His taxi crossed paths with fire engines. He prayed there would be a few skins left for them to save. Zero customers. He switched on the radio. The news report mentioned boatfuls of illegal African migrants grounded on the Canary Islands. Men and women come to find deliverance in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Tomorrow he would turn on his radio again and there would be new boats, another story of flight, and the next day yet another chapter with people running away, and so on in the days, weeks, months to follow, until their feet gave out and the nomad sky ended.

At Les Invalides he picked up an old gentleman who had hailed him from under a lamppost he had been leaning against. The man wore an impeccable suit, spoke courteously, sprinkling his sentences with phrases such as would you be so kind and forgive me when explaining his destination. The man kept his eyes on him constantly. For a brief moment he seemed to hesitate, concentrating on the driver’s face. Two bikers in leather jackets passed them before running the red light fifty metres away. Life is short, brother, so why slow down? A few seconds waiting at the traffic light. It turned green. Green, the go-ahead, and the man too went ahead:

“You know, I like skins.”

“. . .”

“I’ve been around the world and around skins. The flesh.”

“. . .”

“Kuala Lumpur, Phuket, Macao, São Paolo . . .

They were young. The skins.”

“. . .”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way,