Love, Anger, Madness

by Marie Vieux-Chauvet

  “No doubt my eyesight is going,” was the excuse I tried to make.

  By what miracle had I seen this plant sparkle at the touch of water? Ideas are powerful, mysteriously so. Doesn’t everything, good and bad, have its own smell? I have always compared people to pure or rancid things, depending on what I associate them with. I have to admit that when it comes to Jean Luze the comparisons are more and more flattering Temperaments made of whole cloth displease me. I don’t like the born killer or the long-suffering saint. There is both violence and gentleness in this man, strength and weakness. Could he, frail and pure as he is, appease this swamp of desires that at times reduces me to a sordid little beast?

  ***

  This morning, Annette announced her plans to marry.

  “What?” Félicia cried out, but caught herself quickly. “I congratulate you, Annette,” she added, lowering her eyes.

  “Good for you,” Jean Luze said simply.

  “Do you like Paul?”

  “You’re marrying him, not me, right?”

  His tone seemed equivocal, as if he was nursing some rancor. Or is he, like us, simply unhappy about this match?

  “Claire,” Annette told me afterward, “get ready to spend a tidy sum. What I want is a really beautiful lace dress. And you, Jean, what will you give me? At the store there is a gold bracelet I like.”

  “It’s yours,” he replied simply.

  “Find a way to order my trousseau from another town. Even the Syrian stores are going bankrupt here and all you can find is junk,” she added.

  “Monsieur Trudor,” Jean Luze suggested enigmatically, “travels often enough to Port-au-Prince. Surely he could do a favor for his future daughter-in-law.”

  “Now, that’s a terrific idea,” Annette replied.

  Félicia waited for Annette to leave, then looking irate she said to me:

  “A black man! A black man in our family. And one of the lowest sort! Can you believe this?”

  “My God!” Jean Luze said, stroking her hair indulgently, “there is no need to get worked up about this.”

  “It’s not so much the color of his skin that I mind, but his vulgarity and especially his father,” she stammered, a little ashamed of herself.

  The wedding preparations have turned the house upside down. Annette comes in from time to time with lingerie that she displays on the dining room table for us admire: bras, nightgowns, slips, nothing is left out. And Jean Luze must give his opinion. He knows about such things, she insists, he’s traveled a great deal.

  She opens her arms, buoyant and charming.

  “Oh, if only I could go away, far, far away!”

  She leans toward Jean Luze.

  “Tell us some stories,” she begs him. “What was your life like? What did you used to do? You must have been with so many women…”

  He gets up. A little too abruptly.

  “I don’t like telling stories,” he said coldly, “and I never had much time to carry on with women…”

  He walks away. I look at Félicia. Her eyes follow him with concern.

  “He never talks about his past,” she says slowly, “never…”

  “Not even to you?” Annette asks.

  “Not even to me.”

  She gets up.

  He has confided in me though. Does he trust me so much that he would honor me with secrets he keeps from his wife? Or is it that he can let himself go with an old maid, telling her snippets of his life from time to time precisely to spare the one he loves, to keep her away from what’s past in order to preserve present love and future joys for her? Too bad! I will still have secrets to share with him, a painful, miserable past that I will help him bear. How I wish I could be sure he has never really confided in Félicia…

  The baby is still quite ugly. He snores softly in his crib. Félicia fusses over him like a mother hen. She would hide him under her wings if she had any. Since his arrival she has never trusted me with him. On the other hand, I’m the one who washes the bottles and who keeps track of feedings. I have always had a supporting role in life. I resign myself to it more and more poorly. I will never love this kid. He is so small I have trouble believing he will ever grow up. He’s all phlegm. I have no desire to take him in my arms. His nose is always clogged with mucus and his skin is still peeling.

  “My beautiful darling,” his mother whispers to him, “my cutie!”

  ***

  It’s started again. This morning, Calédu bludgeoned several peasants. He’s furious. I watched the whole scene from behind my shutters. Other eyes in the neighborhood were spying too. I saw curtains moved by trembling hands, eyes glowing behind other blinds; I heard whispering to the right, to the left, and piercing the whispering at almost regular intervals, Calédu’s swearing, the peasants’ cries of pain and protest: they went on strike against M. Long to demand a better price for their wood. In response M. Long unloaded an electric saw from the boat docked in the harbor for the past two hours, and the commandant made the peasants haul it themselves. It was taking too much time to chop the trees down with axes, and M. Long was in a hurry to buy all of the mountain wood at the price he had fixed. One of the peasants kept talking despite the blows:

  “Don’t give in!” he yelled. “Hang on, and if I die, don’t forget you must stick together.”

  He was taken to the prison dying…

  I clutch my doll against my chest. Alone in the dark, I gaze at the moon and attempt a smile. Desire is fading. I feel purified. I hear the church clock chime the hour. Another sleepless night washes away and the day rises without pity and lines up behind the other days of my life. My wrinkles deepen and my features wilt. Old age is coming soon. Oh, I want to live, to live before it’s too late! Suddenly, I am starving for tenderness more than ever. My own is being wasted and I would like to give it to someone. I open the window. Dawn rises fragrant with the night sap oozing from the trees. I imagine Jean Luze lying next to Félicia. She sleeps with her back to him. He is alone like me. Alone with his memories and the heavy past he drags after him like a ball and chain. I see him. He is thinking, one hand behind his head, the other twisting a pajama button. I’m wrong, he’s in the living room. His favorite melody reaches me, muted. He is with Beethoven. Why did he flee his bedroom? What comfort does this music bring him? What’s going on inside him? I open my door carefully. He is there in his bathrobe, head in his arms, bent by what pain I don’t know. I gently close my door again and go to the window: another man is walking in the street, his face turned toward my house. A lit cigarette betrays the jerky movements of his hand. Who is this man watching?

  This solitary patrol beneath my window reveals either love or hate.

  Today Jean Luze’s brow is lined with concern. He smokes endlessly and walks up and down the dining room. We are alone. Félicia is in her room and Annette has not come home yet. I steal a glance at him but can’t bring myself to question him. Meanwhile, he suffers, I know it. He stops in front of me, looks at me for a second and draws a long puff from his cigarette.

  “You know what Monsieur Long suggested to me yesterday?” he said. “No, it’s loathsome. He wanted me to doctor the books so that he could prove he paid the peasants three times more for the wood than he had. Naturally, I would get my cut. It’s really a gang and the Syrians are in on it too. I saw proof of this recently…”

  He seems beside himself.

  “I may be stupid,” he adds, “but I can’t compromise, I refuse to get rich that way. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, I see that now. After all, robbery and exploitation are the rule these days. Monsieur Long chose a foreigner as his accountant. He knows full well why. Because, after all, how is this any of my business, he must tell himself. But he forgets that a man, no matter where he is, takes his ideas and convictions with him. I slaved hard all my life. I’ve never had to get involved in any racket. That’s more than I can bear. By working for Monsieur Long, I feel I’m committing a dishonest act against you. An American friend offered me this position and I ac
cepted it. Simple as that. You think you’ve seen it all and then you see this kind of corruption and realize you don’t know anything about life.”

  “Quit, Monsieur Long,” I said to him very simply.

  “Do you want me to live here at your expense? Do you think that could be a solution for me? No, the only thing I can imagine is leaving. I’m waiting for my contract to expire before talking to Félicia. She’s so fragile, so emotional!”

  He gets up and looks at his watch:

  “It’s already six o’clock! Excuse me, Claire, I have to get dressed, and thanks for being a friend to me…”

  I didn’t have the strength to throw myself in his arms to confess my love. What he had just said about Félicia held me back. It’s that naïve, childish, delicate side of her that he must love. For him, I’m the eldest, the experienced woman who has made her choice, who didn’t marry in order to remain independent. He would never believe that I have suffered so much from being this way that I now doubt myself. He comes to me like I am a sister, he opens his heart, what more can I ask for? If only he knew that my experiences are merely secondhand, if only he knew that romantic love would make me melt! What would he do then? Can he really think there have been men in my life? Having seen how Annette lives her life, can he even imagine that other women have grown old without ever having had a single affair, traumatized and shriveled? He talks about himself and I keep quiet. All I have ever known how to do is keep quiet.

  “Augustine!” I shouted to take my unhappiness out on someone, “what are you waiting for, set the table!”

  “I won’t stay in this hole,” Annette blurted out this morning. “I will leave. They want to stop Paul from marrying me. They’re telling him all kinds of stories about me. The biggest cowards among them are sending him anonymous letters. As if they had nothing better to do. But he will marry me, I swear…”

  She is reaping the nastiness she has sown. She is forced to deal with others for the first time in her life and is just appalled.

  How can I convince her that only the most base people of any social class pay attention to gossip? It would be imprudent and useless.

  “They don’t exist for me,” she shrieks. “Why are they meddling in my affairs?”

  The young Trudor dines with us that evening. Annette is so ravishing he can hardly eat. She leads him into the living room. Later, after the Luzes retire to their room, I catch him kneeling before her. He is caressing her slowly, deeply, his mouth on her breast. Then he pushes her back and buries his head between her thighs. She moans and finally lets out a little muffled cry almost like she’s in pain. He wants to take her but she pushes him away. She pulls down her skirt impatiently and strokes his hair. He will have her only on their wedding night. She’s not as harebrained as she seems. She knows how to make a man do her bidding.

  Jane Bavière made me a blue dress to wear on the day of the baptism. After all, the godmother shouldn’t look too dumpy. The baby is a month old. His limbs are growing, to my surprise. He is not as skinny as before. He bleats and stares at the ceiling with eyes that look like his father’s. I can’t stand to hear him cry. I’m a little obsessed with keeping track of his mealtimes. It’s odd. Could this be love?

  Tomorrow is the baptism. The godfather has given me perfume that I hate and flowers that I put in a vase in the living room. Let’s hope he will remember to tie his laces and close his fly.

  Félicia is having me arrange an elaborate menu. Really, how inconsiderate! There is only salted fish and cornmeal at the market. And of the lowest quality. The chickens are scrawny and prohibitively priced, vegetables nonexistent. Augustine returns home every market day babbling: “It’s death,” she says, “death!” It’s an expression she likes and she uses to sum up any grim situation. Too bad, we will serve them fish every which way and nothing but fish.

  The Trudors, their whole clan, naturally have to be there. I also invited Mme Camuse and Father Paul. This time, Jean Luze did not add M. Long’s name to the guest list and I managed to get Annette to accept that we will exclude Calédu. Whatever happens happens!

  At the table we are a fairly disparate group. Mme Camuse is very distinguished in a high-collared black dress. And Father Paul, looking dapper, coughing loudly, a real wine enthusiast and gourmand; Mme Trudor, a black woman as sinewy as her son and as her thin, short, bald husband; Félicia, whose pallor looks green (Jean-Claude has taken to crying at night), and Annette, her long black hair floating on her shoulders, radiant with health; Paul Trudor, silent and gloomy; and Jean Luze, cordial and affable, a man of the world, I must say. Paul’s sister, some kind of idiot clucking like a mother hen, is sitting next to me. She has a devious manner I don’t care for. It seems the Trudors aren’t very good at bringing up their offspring either. Mme Camuse’s demeanor has me on tenterhooks. She’s watching the Trudors too closely. Her eyes turn from the wife to the husband, from the husband to the children; stiff-lipped, she follows their every gesture: M. Trudor scrapes too hard with his spoon and his wife forgets to wipe her lips before drinking. I avoid Mme Camuse’s looks and eat in silence. Dr. Audier, seated next to his wife, is listening to Father Paul’s rather tedious stories about the old days.

  “Young Haitians laugh at the past,” Dr. Audier says. “Once upon a time, the past nurtured, gave hope and courage.”

  “What do you expect,” Jean Luze answers softly. “All young people have learned to look toward the future and, in the process, they strive to forget the past.”

  “Is it that easy?” Father Paul asks him.

  “To forget the past? Yes and no. In any case, forgetting is necessary. In a country’s history the example of others, even if they were heroes, can’t help anyone. Contexts change. The struggle becomes different…”

  “You are right,” Mme Camuse butts in, more thoughtlessly than ever. “And you seem to speak from experience. However little you know our country, what is happening here must have enlightened you. You’ll be astonished to hear that, not so long ago, we lived opulently…”

  “Opulently, really!” Jean Luze exclaims skeptically.

  “Oh!” Annette adds suddenly. “Today I saw a beggar swallow a raw fish. It seems he caught it by diving headfirst into the sea.”

  “Only some of you lived opulently,” M. Trudor emphasizes, ignoring Annette completely. “You’ll tell me that nothing has changed or that the situation has even gotten worse; all that’s happened is the roles have been reversed. As the Haitian proverb goes: ‘Today it’s the hunter’s turn, tomorrow the prey’s.’ As for the beggars, only the hurricanes are responsible, isn’t that right?”

  No one responds. Jean Luze grimaces involuntarily. Mme Camuse fixes an imperceptible smile, tilting her head with a more than aristocratic bent, meant to challenge the vulgarity of the “prey” to which the prefect and his family belong.

  “And they were selfless, your heroes,” Father Paul continues vehemently, following his train of thought. “I don’t mean to criticize anyone, but I once knew men worthy of admiration, who put country before coin.”

  “Selfless, who isn’t?” Mme Trudor cries. “Bureaucrats are so badly paid that they can boast of serving the Republic for peanuts. Isn’t that so, Julian?”

  “You don’t get things done by choosing poverty,” M. Trudor declares again. “You do it with this”-he taps his belt where a weapon is concealed-“and with some of that”-he slowly rubs his fingers together.

  “Hmph!” Father Paul grumbles.

  Jean Luze tactfully changes the topic of conversation. Turning to Paul, he asks if he enjoys reading.

  “Yes, detective novels,” he admits frankly.

  “Well, now, that’s very good,” Mme Camuse nods with a mocking smile.

  And turning to Jean Luze:

  “My dear sir, would it be indiscreet to ask you how you like it here?”

  “My work keeps me here, Madame,” he replied coldly.

  “You see, I was just going to say,” she adds with some uncertainty. “Ch
oosing this Haitian province wasn’t the right thing for a man like you. How did you end up here, I wonder?”

  “I go where work calls me, Madame. Unfortunately, I don’t have an estate.”

  “Bah!” Mme Camuse says softly with her usual eloquent little toss of the head, “but nevertheless you’ve managed to find happiness here.”

  “Yes,” Jean Luze answers, again without looking at Félicia, “that’s true.”

  “The Europeans adore us. I’ve heard that back in colonial times, Frenchmen deserted their wives for the beautiful mulatto girls,” Mme Camuse recounts. “I, for one, am a direct descendant of noble French colonials of the name de Camuse. But what can you expect, time has rubbed away the full name as it rubs away everything else. All you can do is adapt to the new and minimize the damage. Hmm!…”

  We were having coffee now. Father Paul, all red from too much food and drink, stroked his belly with a satisfied expression on his face and went so far as to accept a glass of anisette, declaring:

  “We better ‘push’ that coffee, Monsieur Luze, we better.”

  This loosened up the guests, who were tense because of his overly frank remarks, the prefect’s awkward rebuttal and Mme Camuse’s tactlessness.

  We moved to the living room. Félicia decided to comment on the fact that Vera had not said a word during the meal and seemed rather shy.

  “Our little girl? Well, she’s only fourteen,” Mme Trudor answered. “Who isn’t shy at that age?”

  “One can be shy at any age,” Annette answered. “Take Claire, for example.”

  “Don’t confuse shyness and reserve,” Jean Luze quickly added. “Claire is not talkative, that’s all.”