“You, Claire, are condoning vice,” she will tell me in a shrill and exasperating tone. “Just why did you pick her of all people? An unwed mother!”
You would think maturity has no part in our mental evolution. Jane Bavière was once a friend, and I have decided to reestablish our old ties. I have abandoned her long enough. I believe I have offered sufficient applause for our proper bourgeois nonsense. I am rising up against it now. There is nothing else to do. Is it because I think that she, too, has had her share of bad luck? No matter, when I am with her, I can relax. I am not yet able to confide in her, but what she has confided about herself, with a spontaneity I envy, is a most meaningful lesson about life. She is as serene as Félicia, just as happy. And I had thought that anxiety, suspicion, and bitterness were the wages of scandal.
“Criminal!” Eugénie Duclan once yelled at her. “You have murdered your mother and father.”
Her son is grown up and already ten.
“And Jane?” Mme Camuse asks again without pity. “Still living in sin, is she?”
I wish I had Jane Bavière’s courage. A kid would bring some purpose to my life. A kid would offer solace for everything. At least, that’s what I think. After all, if I reached this goal, wouldn’t I be disappointed? Is that really what I most aspire to? Aren’t I fooling myself by gnawing on my own unhappiness, on this idea that I’m a failure? I’m too afraid of scandal to try it. I’m afraid of others and this fear is the guarantee of my so-called honesty. I prefer to indulge in artificial joys. I nurse a doll in secret. I play mommy, at my age. I try to fill my existence with this effigy that smells of glue. I convince myself that I love her and sprinkle her with cologne and powder to better fool myself. I bought her a little bottle. Ah! The ploys I invented to avoid Annette’s suspicions! She sold me the doll herself, at the Syrian’s, and the toy bottle too.
“Who is it for?” she asked me.
“For a goddaughter in Port-au-Prince. You don’t know her.”
“Who will deliver it?”
“Someone.”
I’m no chatterbox. She contents herself with my monosyllabic answers and keeps quiet.
Shut in my room, I hold Caroline tight. I am sometimes tempted to breastfeed her. How I wish milk would flow from my breast! I make her lie next to me and caress her dead black hair. I want her to be demanding, I want her to need me. Only small children can really need help and affection. That’s why we are moved by those who resemble them. I wonder if Jean Luze is capable of crying.
He takes his seat at the table again and looks at Annette with indifference. She’s lost her charm and has become forlorn, when she was always so cheerful. She shows her despondence, it’s awkward. In the evening, Félicia makes an appearance on her husband’s arm.
“Good evening, Annette,” she says, simply.
“Good evening, Félicia.”
There is no doubt about it. She possesses an uncommon moral force that briefly arouses my admiration.
We eat and the conversation revolves around trivial things. We return to the topic of the Feast of the Virgin, the devotional scenes, and the procession.
“Apparently, Madame Camuse will not present a display this year,” Félicia says. “The nuns are preparing one in the entrance of their school. A manger as usual, unfortunately.”
“With a big doll lying on straw,” Annette concludes with a yawn.
Annette is neither pious nor chaste, everyone knows this and she is turning our world upside down with her makeup and her low neckline. She is much too fashionable for this narrow community. She recently pinched Father Paul’s cheek and called him a handsome old man. Fortunately, this happened at home.
Jean Luze is neither more distant nor more friendly toward her than a brother-in-law would be.
“Cigarette?”
He holds out his case. Annette’s cigarette shakes in her hand. She gets up from the table pretending that he’s not offering her a light. She gives herself away. Jean Luze’s attitude is as perfect as hers is false. She suffers and he has simply gone back to being himself.
There is a disturbing vitality in me, made even more dangerous because I’m holding it back. I am like a cunning bedbug lurking in a furniture crevice. I patiently wait to suck the blood of my prey. Jean Luze is my prey now. If he wants, for his own peace and quiet, to settle for his lukewarm marriage, I will manage to prevent him from doing so. For now, he’s on all fours trying to make it up to his wife. He immerses himself in their dull daily routine. But he’s going to get bored with it. I am going to be a great help to him in this matter and a lot more skillfully this time around. I realize there will be much to do. How he hurried back to nestle himself against Félicia’s chaste body! She is so proper, Félicia, so careful, so sensible! I imagine their embrace. I know all there is to know about perfect coitus in theory. I know several pages from Lady Chatterley’s Lover by heart. The book does not leave my nightstand: it’s my aphrodisiac.
Despite the cataclysms, my eyes see the immutable dawn, sky and sea in their colorful splendor. Indifferent to our misfortunes, a merrymaking sky parades in the soft colors of daybreak, and far away the sea, calm, serene, sprawls like a silvery blue sheet of oil. I breathe them in, absorb them with brand-new pleasure, a pleasure so childish it treacherously takes me back to the past. I hear my father’s voice echoing like a drum, the neighing of horses. I hear my mother talking and I hear Augustine, whom my mother has beaten, crying. I hear the piano under my clumsy fingers and my teacher, Mlle Verduré, yelling: “From the top, Claire, take it from the top!” The streets are cheerful. On the doorsteps, groups of men gather. Smoking the day’s first cigar, they share the political news gleaned from Port-au-Prince. The doors of the stores are open. European boats unload their merchandise on the pier, which teems with people of all classes. Vendors walk under our windows calling for their customers. “Madame Clamont,” they say, “I’ve got them here, your rice and beans, chickens and vegetables.” And my mother comes downstairs, leaning on Augustine, and sits on the porch to haggle. What has happened to Mme Bavière’s gorgeous store? And Duclan’s, where they sold French wines, liqueurs and boxes of chocolate of the best French brands? Ruined. One after the other, they went bankrupt. And the Syrians, like vultures, rushed for their remains and bought them up. They’re holding up well, the Syrians. They can compete with Haitians in any weather. “Unfair competition!” my raving father used to insist. “They’ve taken shelter under the wing of the European powers to benefit from their protection…”
“Down with the Syrians! Death to the Syrians,” added Dr. Audier and the other merchants. But it wasn’t the Syrians’ fault if my father lost his coffee fields before his death. His ruin can be chalked up to his fixation on becoming head of state someday. His lands were sold, piece by piece, to pay for ten years of campaigns. And my mother, who watched our dowries fall into the hands of his party activists, would weep in feeble protest.
There are people who let a fortune slip through their fingers and it’s usually not because they are particularly generous. Did he do the right thing, my father, in playing the millionaire in order to stun the masses while satisfying his ambition? It’s all coming back… But I am keeping memory at bay. I could yield to it, to be sure. But for now, I am engrossed only with the present.
Each morning, the Syrians open their stores to reveal displays that have been restocked by the American freighter. Their customers are Calédu, M. Long, the prefect, the mayor, and the few of us who can still afford the luxury of a few ells of fabric. M. Long’s boat supplies them duty-free, people say, because the inspectors have been bought. What’s more, they have also acquired American citizenship, though they barely speak a word of English. “It’s a gang!” Dr. Audier protests, but more and more weakly. With eagle-beak noses pointing from their crafty faces, the “Arabs,” as the common people call them, smile and take root in the country. Jacques Marti predicts their departure.
“The Syrians will throw their sacks on their backs and s
tart on foot for their homeland. Famine is upon us,” he screams, while pacing down the street in big off-balance steps. “We will walk on our knees and we will eat the rocks on the road. Satan rules the town and God has turned his face from us…”
Calédu is getting annoyed. Mme Camuse is right. He will soon accuse Jacques of subversive activity and will have him locked up. He doesn’t like preachers of misfortune and this one is playing his part as only a madman can.
People quickly peer through their blinds.
Everything here happens on the sly. We hide even when we speak.
“Go on, go on, Jacques,” they hiss softly, “tell us about Satan, tell us what he’s like.”
And to their great joy he screams and gesticulates:
“Big, tall, black, with horns, enormous horns, that’s how he is. You be careful, brothers!”
Laughing children surround him.
“Jacques! Jacques!” they cry, throwing stones at him, “are you crazy? Tell us if you’re crazy…”
He runs straight to the police station, and Violette, a prostitute from the stinking back alley, blocks his way.
“Go home,” she advises softly. “That’s better now.”
She takes his hand and he lets her. He seems very happy to walk arm in arm with her.
“Hey there,” Mme Potiron cries out and smacks her rear, “you found yourself a woman, business is good!” [8]
Her whole body shakes in vulgar laughter.
Behind the blinds of my window, I stare at Violette. She is young. She is beautiful. She is free. She spits on us and she is right. I would switch places with her right now.
Leaves are falling from the trees, dancing and swirling in the air before landing flat on the ground. Insomnia has gotten me used to the living breath of the night. I distinguish the sound of each insect or lizard, the movement of each star, every quiver of the earth. I am naked in my bed, damp with sweat, palpitating with desire. A man’s arms hold my body prisoner. He takes me. Is it possible that, a moment later, nothing of this remains? Not a scrap of memory. Oh! The loneliness of suffering! I get dressed and I tiptoe to Annette’s room. She is weeping in the dark. I knock. A voice hoarse from weeping asks who it is. I answer and she opens. I’m no trouble, I am the big dolt, life has rolled off my back without leaving a trace. She starts weeping again in my presence, then says to me:
“What do you want?”
I look at her without a word, then she throws herself on my shoulder.
“If you knew, Claire…”
Be quiet! Don’t waste breath talking, I was telling her in my mind. I know what you feel and I share it. The soul is cumbersome. It wants to meddle in everything. It creates bonds to torture us. Memories are ghosts, at least those that mark us. You are like a flower battered by the wind. I want it to carry away your vulgar joys and lift you into a great deadly whirlwind…
“I want to die! I want to die!” she suddenly cries out, with a passion that stuns her.
She rests her haggard, questioning eyes on me. My words have come out of her mouth. How tired she looks. How this love is wearing her out! Her morale is so weak! Jean Luze is not the man for her. The feeling he inspires in her is so strong that she is wasting away. Will she die of it? Too bad! I need her as an intermediary. I am old. I must smell rancid down there, clutching this starving, virgin sex between my legs.
Cry with me. It won’t last long, you’ll see. Trust your charms. You’ve got everything you need to seduce him. You can pierce his armor. He’s proved that much to you. You have to persevere. You are experienced. At fifteen you had a mind of your own, and you were already scrambling for a male. You stole my first fruits. I am going to torture you, torture you both, until I hear you beg for mercy…
“It’s your birthday next month. I will throw a little party. Invite anyone you want…”
“You’re talking to me as if I were a kid,” she protests.
My offer seems childish, but my goal, hardly. I want Annette to get her act together again, I want her to dance and laugh before Jean Luze’s very eyes. I will bring her to the limit of what she can endure. Suffering does not move, it provokes pity or annoys. I, usually so stingy, have now made up my mind to blow a lot of money on this party.
Morning, noon and night, the couple is with us, more united than ever. Félicia revives as her stomach grows more deformed. She is as serene as a statue. Jean Luze eats with a healthy appetite. He doesn’t smoke at the dinner table anymore under the pretext that the smell of tobacco bothers his wife.
“Pregnancy suits you nicely,” he tells her with a kiss.
Each time he shows her affection in my presence, I hate her for settling so easily for this bourgeois, measured feeling she inspires in him.
I swear I will shake him out of its tepid indifference. I will light his fuse. It won’t be too long. I will melt his ice. He looks at us too sweetly, all smiles. I like to see that dimple dig into his chin and his lips curl above his teeth.
The church bells have been ringing incessantly since morning. There I am, dressed as a Daughter of Mary. I look like a nun in the dress Jane Bavière made for me. I can’t reproach her; the worker always tries to please the master. I am the one who insisted on the long sleeves and the high collar. I look rather good, compared to the others in the procession. What a hideous cohort of shriveled old maids! All the same, I am the best among them. All old maids stand out. At least, the real ones do. Not those who, like me, were once torches and have become embers. The tangled webs of veins on their limbs, their pursed lips and darting glances, give them away. The dissatisfaction in their faces is unmistakable. Looking at them, I can’t feel so proud of my part, though I am the leading lady in this spectacle. This pious banner seems heavy to bear. Children’s heads crowned in white are moving in front of me; eyes cast down, they throw handfuls of flowers from their baskets. All the balconies are decorated, and garlands of artificial flowers made by the nuns sway slowly between the trees in the street. This is a festival for the young in which we should not be taking part. The Virgin, radiant, resting on a pedestal carried by four young men, is proof of this. We belong in the ranks of penitents. In the procession, we stand out like grumpy owls [9] in a flock of turtledoves. This is the last time in my life that I will make such a spectacle of myself. We sing Father Paul’s choral arrangement while we wait. “May God above shower us with the goodly rain of His sweet blessing and may His Holy Name be blessed.” Up above, the blows of axes rain upon the trees. It seems to lend rhythm to our hymn. The prefect and the mayor, clad in their gray wool suits, sweating blood and water, watch the procession go by and cross themselves before the Holy Sacrament. Calédu and M. Long stand outside the door of the Cercle. The priest blesses them all. Jacques the madman comes running.
“The gates of hell have opened their mouth to devour you,” he screams, flailing. “God has cursed us. He has opened the gates of hell upon us…”
The singing dies down. Calédu frowns. He brings a whistle to his mouth, and Jacques the madman screams again, pointing at him.
“Look out, Father, a demon!”
Calédu rushes up and grabs him by the collar. Face contorted in hate, he starts slapping him.
“Quiet, you!”
“Satan!” Jacques yells.
Then Calédu pulls his revolver from his belt and shoots the lunatic point-blank. Jacques falls to his knees without a protest.
The procession stops abruptly. In the silence, you can only hear the crying of the children in the first row. Some of the nuns clutch their rosaries in their shaking hands. Others clench them convulsively. We are standing, bodies stiff in a kind of hypnotic trance. But Jacques, red with blood, begins to crawl toward us, scraping the earth with his nails. Holding his head up, he moves slowly, painfully Dr. Audier, sweat pouring down his face, takes a step toward him, but a bullet whistling near his feet nails him to the ground, terrified.
The pharmacist twirls his hat in his hands mechanically. He spins it faster and faster as
if his movements are not in his control. The women have hidden their faces in their kerchiefs; the nuns, eyes turned to heaven, drone a Pater Noster. The beggars lying on the ground are watching the scene without moving.
I see Joël Marti turn his head to the right and to the left, as if looking for help. With bulging eyes, he points at his brother, who has just collapsed face-first on the ground. He wants to go to him. Someone holds him back.
“Don’t move,” Calédu yells.
He steps back, smoking gun in his fist, as we remain frozen in place.
Father Paul then whispers something to the choir children, and in an instant, he is surrounded by a halo of incense. Raising the monstrance over his head, framed by the choir children, he walks up to Calédu.
“And now,” he says, “I ask for your permission to perform my priestly duties.”
The buzz of prayer becomes more intense.
Still walking backward, the commandant makes an impatient movement with his left hand to indicate his total indifference, and disappears around the corner.
This was the signal for a mad dash. The trembling nuns gathered their students. Men, women, and children rushed home. Dr. Audier and his wife followed me into our living room. We then told the entire story to Jean Luze and Félicia, whom we had awakened from their nap.
Crowding behind partly opened blinds, we watched Joël Marti, who was weeping over the body.
Jean Luze glanced at Dr. Audier’s sweaty face.
“Are you sure he is dead?” he asked. “That there is nothing more that can be done?”
“I will find out later.”
“Later!” Jean Luze cried out, “later indeed, while you stay here trembling with fear!”
“Hush! Calm down, dear,” Félicia said softly.
“It’s none of my business. It’s not up to me to stand up to your district commandant. This is your home, not mine. It is not the responsibility of a passing stranger to reform a place where he does not belong.”
Love, Anger, Madness Page 6
