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recognizable by their antiquated dress, were chatting. Rosélie hurried on to avoid being struck down by their looks, then remembered with a start that she was alone. Stephen was no longer walking beside her, arm in arm, or ostentatiously placing an arm around her shoulder. They would not turn their heads in her direction. She no longer irritated, she no longer gave offense. She had become invisible. Sadly, she had to choose between being excluded or being invisible.
    Invisible woman!
    On Faure Street, Deogratias had already unrolled his mat at the foot of the traveler’s tree, but was not lying in that favorite position of his, on his left side, his checkered flannel blanket drawn up to his eyes. Myths die hard. Most experts agree that Deogratias’s ethnic group, the “descendants of a pastoral people,” are not really Negroid. Look at their height, their slender figure. Look at their aquiline nose in particular. A nose says everything. Deogratias had a flat nose. This did not prevent him from undergoing the same fate as his brothers of taller stature. He was waiting for Rosélie with a piece of news that made his Adam’s apple jump up and down. A fellow countryman had just arrived in Cape Town. A former government minister. What could he be up to? Rosélie ignored his excitability. Except for his speeches on the South Africans’ xenophobia, his only subject of conversation was the need to hunt down those who had destroyed so many lives, bring them before the international court of justice in Arusha and organize trials that would echo round the world like those at Nuremberg. This was the price to pay for Africa’s salvation. Together with Dido, Deogratias had been one of Rosélie’s first patients, well before she had thought of setting up business on her own. When Stephen had hired him, Deogratias was suffering from terrible nightmares. At times, lying under the traveler’s tree, he struggled with invisible torturers while his screams tore through the dark. Rosélie had taken care of him. She had been about to lose hope when his salvation came in the shape of Sylvaine, a young immigrant from the same ethnic group whom he had met at church. Sylvaine promptly gave him a daughter; the couple baptized her Hosannah in a shout of gratitude to the God who had reunited them. Although Rosélie had been extremely shocked, Stephen, as usual, had been more understanding.
    â€œWhat do you expect him to do? Spend his life lamenting the dead? In the end, it’s always life that wins.”
    After a quick look at the university housing, Stephen had dragged her on a house hunt. They both fell for the house on Faure Street. Of course, all those who knew Cape Town advised them not to live in the center of town. Much too dangerous! Worse than the Bronx! Worse than Harlem! But Harlem is no longer Harlem ever since Rudy Giuliani launched his trigger-happy police. To prove it, Magic Johnson has invested there. The center of town is worse than anything you’ve ever known. But Stephen was taken with so much space: ten rooms, a balcony, and a garage. Rosélie had fallen in love with the tree. With arms outstretched, it shouted to be let free in its little patch of lawn, and she got the impression the years had rolled back. A traveler’s tree! A silent witness to her games at Papa Doudou’s. She would huddle in its heart and the swarm of cousins would grouse they couldn’t find her.
    â€œWhere on earth is she?”
    The triangular trade had been reversed. Before arriving in Cape Town, the Christ-Roi had anchored at La Pointe, where it had replaced its ebony cargo with other species. The magic of the long-lost tree, of Nature, the smell of the mighty ocean parading as far as the eye could see, and the everlasting distress of her people like a canker in the midst of so much beauty cast a powerful, equivocal spell, a magical, perverse philter against which she was helpless. A