The One Facing Us: A Novel by Ronit Matalon

Author:Ronit Matalon
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2013-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

Missing Photograph: Uncle Sicourelle, the Port of Douala, Cameroon, 1972

That’s Uncle Sicourelle standing there like a man. “Stand up straight, Jacquo,” Marcelle commands from behind the camera. “Not like a great big sack, mon Dieu, like a man.”

The plaza is clear, bright, and empty. It is early morning and the sharp light shines down mercilessly, with no reticence or restraint. Blinded, the uncle is squinting, his face scrunched up. He looks like a ferret, with the mean, skeptical, narrowing of his eyes, his thick eyebrows, and the frown that sends little wrinkles down to his chin.

He has gone outside with Marcelle, leaving the rancid office against his will. “There isn’t enough light in there. How am I supposed to take your picture without any light?” says Marcelle. “Your office is like a tomb.”

He is always happy when she comes to Douala and even happier when she leaves. She makes his head spin, he complains. Now, obedient, he mechanically folds his arms behind his back: he always holds himself that way, like the master of the house, or an overfed sloth, or just an old man worrying amber beads, enjoying them out of eye’s reach. One flap of his thin white shirt is lifted by the sea wind, revealing low-slung pants with a partly unzipped fly and a waistband folded down to accommodate the bulging belly.

“Suck your stomach in, Jacquo,” Marcelle pleads.

He cannot hear her because of the wind. “What?”

“Your stomach. Hold it in.”

He ignores her. “Hurry up or I’m going.”

Marcelle shuts one eye, pressing the other, wide open, against the lens. “Quel type!”

She takes a step back—she wants to capture the sign hanging over the air vent above the great steel door—then stops. “Your name,” she says. “Why isn’t your name up on the sign?”

“What am I, a clothing store?” he says, exasperated. “Next you’ll want me to put a tag on every fish I catch.”

A burst of laughter from Marcelle. “I’ll tell that one to Henri—he’ll die.”

The uncle’s face softens a little; he likes her appreciation. His self-love is too wary and discriminating to show itself easily, to be bought cheap. But despite his gruffness and humility, seemingly against his will, he is more than happy to bathe in admiration; he likes being talked about.

“Maybe we’ll put your name up there, Marcelle,” he goes on, encouraged by her laughter. “We’ll write in big letters MARCELLE, CAMEROON FISHERIES.”

* * *

She visits twice a year, bringing nouvelles de la famille, cheese, dried fruit, anise candies, escargots, choice sausages, her own homemade quince jam, and chocolates. Like an excited child, he stands over her as she opens her bundles. “What did you bring, what’s in there?” he demands impatiently, squatting down beside her on the floor amid the torn wrapping paper and empty boxes, searching through the pile. She prolongs the pleasure the way one holds a candy on the tip of one’s tongue; each item is proferred with an endless story full of twists and subplots, jokes and digressions, references to things someone told her or she read in the newspaper.

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