He leans over Félicia to examine her.
“Do you recognize me?” he asks.
She opens her eyes and nods.
The examination is unpleasant, even painful. Dr. Audier takes Jean Luze aside and says to him:
“I recommend a few injections to give her enough strength to withstand an abortion.”
“An abortion!”
“It’s better that way, trust me. Your wife has a fibroma and has lost a lot of blood…”
“I’m putting her in your hands,” Jean Luze answered, completely unstrung, “or maybe it would be better if I left for Port-au-Prince with her? Your hospital is so poorly equipped, and I don’t want to reproach myself should anything go wrong.”
“The sooner the better,” Dr. Audier advises, only too happy to get rid of a new victim.
He hands a prescription to Jean Luze and turns to me:
“Pack your bags, Claire,” he tells me. “Félicia must get to Port-au-Prince without wasting any time and you must go also because of the baby.”
The cigarette was getting restive in the corner of his wet lips.
Without responding, I took the bags from the closet and filled them and ran to Jane’s house to let her know of our departure.
Félicia has been at the Saint-François-de-Sales Hospital since last evening. The car ride took eight hours. I watched Jean Luze clutching the wheel as he avoided the potholes; I listened to him swear at the state of the road; and I silently wiped Félicia’s clammy brow as she rested her head on my lap, saying to myself:
Might she be wise enough to drop dead without my help?
Now, with Jean Luze in my arms and my eyes on the operating room door, I wait. Jean Luze is in such anguish he can’t keep still. I am convinced my love will make him forget Félicia quickly. In the meantime, his distracted look seems to cancel us out, his son and me.
The door finally opens and the surgeon appears. Jean Luze rushes to meet him.
“It went very well,” he says. “She’ll pull through. I’ll be back later this evening.”
“Claire!” Jean Luze cries with a sigh of relief, “we can finally rest easy!”
I have to get used to this thought, I have to get used to the suffering it means for me if I don’t want to be crushed by it: Félicia is going to get better and we will return home and she will take back her place beside her husband, beside her child.
Here I am in a hotel room, making the most of this slight respite life has given me. I have no curiosity about this city that I haven’t seen in so long. In other words, I cling to my idée fixe, I hold on to my obsession, I remain indifferent to the tumultuous buzzing of cars and to the bustle inside the hotel. Soon I will be alone again. Won’t my past come to the rescue? Where are my old unhealthy habits? Where are the objects with which I fooled myself and that I was careless enough to destroy? My hands are empty, emptier than before. I am alone with my fear, alone with my suffering that stands there ready to spring and finish me off. Would I have the courage to kill Félicia? Ah! These long sleepless nights when even the air you breathe resounds with a life of its own, when each hour falls on the heart like a tolling bell! How these nights have furrowed my face and aged me!
Félicia is definitely better. She doesn’t need me. Jean Luze watches over her like a nurse by her bedside day and night. The red roses he gave her bloom on her table. She is beautiful in her blue silk shirt. Who tied that ribbon round her hair?
“Claire,” she says in a soft distant voice, “I’d like to hold my child.”
I hand her son to her.
A debilitating defeat. I no longer have the strength to delude myself. I know that for him I am an able and devoted sister-in-law who runs his household and whom he rewards once in a while by confiding in me or with a modest gift. He has never thought of me as a woman. This fact tortures me. I would perform heroic feats if it got his attention. Wouldn’t it be heroic to throw myself at him and confess my love?…
We are about to go home. The suitcases are packed and I am waiting for the Luzes by the hotel entrance with Jean-Claude in my arms. The days to come will be agony! I will see them kissing, caressing each other, living together in their room. They will make me a witness to their love, they will share their plans with me, convinced they are making me happy when I am in torment. How will I bear this without falling apart?
Jean Luze, I was telling myself, do you have any idea what I am capable of? Do you know what kind of a monster this starving being can become when its hunger is so sorely tempted but left unquenched? You have been most reckless with me. You have given me a son and you are now taking him back after shutting the doors of your love in advance. For you didn’t let me do or say anything. Wretch! You’re the one who’ll be my scapegoat. Do you understand? Your indifference will be a springboard for that sterile rebellion of which you yourself have spoken. That’s the easiest explanation for my distress. You will relieve my conscience of the hard truths that assail my mind. Self-discontent, that is the venom that feeds malice.
Félicia is recovering very slowly from the exhaustion of that awful trip and I myself feel rather bruised from the lurching and the weight of my sister and her son lying on top of me. Jean Luze is right. I have sacrificed too much. I am going to think about myself a little more and make a final decision about my future. My glance is more evasive than usual. I am afraid someone will see my disordered thoughts. I take care not to reveal anything. Am I going to wear this stifling mask until the end of my life?
We’re home again! It wasn’t hard to leave behind those petty memories back in my hotel room and at the hospital. Our little town has been shaken by the disappearance of Jane and her child. What’s happened to them? Nobody knows. I curse that trip to Port-au-Prince. If I had been here, things would have happened otherwise. This is the last time Calédu attacks one of my friends. What will happen to Jane and her child? Some people say they saw them passing through around midnight escorted by the armed beggars. Joël and Jean Luze whisper mysteriously to each other and seem to hide something from me. Are they working together to get rid of Calédu? Was Jane helping them? And the men who were seen going into her house, were they Joël and his friends? Three questions I am as yet unable to answer. But I am sure of one thing: the commandant only arrested Jane so that I might throw myself at his feet and beg for mercy. I would rather see Jane and her son die. I would rather die myself.
I’m listening to the screams. Are they coming from Jane and her child? I clench my fists and gnash my teeth. A kind of mysterious tremor stirs the town like the hushed sound of a wing slowly gliding over our heads. This shudder that courses through me cannot be merely personal, I know this now. Like me, all of them must be secretly working to free themselves from the constricting fear. I am not alone. All of them are here around me, and we suffer together, minds fixed on our impending deliverance.
Félicia is spoiling herself. The fate of Jane and her son scarcely seems to move her, since she has taken shelter so completely in Jean Luze’s love. She has everything and I have nothing. I don’t think I envy her, however. Envy is not enough to explain the dreadful hatred I feel for her. This woman is my enemy. She has placed herself in my way, she has blocked my horizons, she has thwarted my destiny, stolen my happiness as Annette did seven years ago. But this time I have decided to defend myself. With Félicia gone, I am sure Jean Luze would be mine more than he is now hers. I would destroy in him the very memory of the past. When you overestimate yourself, you are lying to yourself out of loyalty. All because you are aware you’re being duped. You draw strength and courage from your false idea of yourself. What terrible disappointment awaits me behind this veil of lies? Could I gather the shattered bits of my old self? I live the life of an unsung lover. I believe I am more ardent than Messalina, more seasoned than Cleopatra, more romantic than Emma Bovary. [26] And I want Jean Luze to prove it to me. I am approaching narcissism. My abnormality repels me. I see it as a defect.
Tonight I will bring him to my r
oom and confess my love. He must reveal me to myself.
I couldn’t take the first step. Twenty times I left my room to go to him, all in vain. I could never do it. Making advances is beyond me.
***
Being alone scares me right now. Here I am, like a poisoned rat [27] in the house. Jean Luze is now in the habit of going out alone with his son. He goes and sits in our little town square and stays there a long while, holding him. Now I have hours of free time. I even avoid going to the kitchen. Nothing matters except this bitterness consuming me, simmering on a low flame. It’s dangerous. The thought of the crime haunts me. It alternates strangely with the outrage that engulfs me when I think of Jane and her son.
I’ve been spending too much time stroking the dagger Jean Luze gave me. In monstrous daydreams, I see myself plunging it into Félicia’s breast without hesitation.
Today, Jean Luze filled his wife’s room with flowers. They don’t need me anymore and unconsciously make me feel it. Here they are, all three of them in their own little world. The Luze family no longer wants an interloper around.
“We have imposed upon you far too much,” Jean Luze told me. “You should take it easy now.”
Félicia looks good thin. She looks like a child with that ribbon in her hair. There really is something disarming about her, both childish and serious. I caught her crying the other day, head buried in Jean Luze’s shoulder.
What is it that’s bothering her? Is she afraid for him? It’s true that he’s become too involved, that he opens his heart too much to his friends. They came back last night and stayed up until eleven, whispering in the living room. Now Jean Luze is infected. He’s become as much an armchair politician as we are. He, too, had better watch out that his words are not repeated lest Calédu take offense! Pierrilus never leaves Jane’s door. Could I be mistaken? I believe I saw Joël and Jean Luze speaking to him through the picket fence.
I have too much free time and my imagination wanders out of bounds. I explore every nook and cranny of my mind. What a terrible swarm of shapeless larvae! When the larvae become thoughts, they are born monstrous. My head is bursting. I am looking for a thousand pretexts to sneak into their quarters. I seek suffering. It alone can wrest me from this act I have not yet dared to commit. And yet I am in something close to a paroxysm of suffering. Can it get any worse without crushing me?
“Go to your godmother for a minute,” Félicia says, handing me her son.
I carry him under the trees, my eyes fixed and mortified, refusing to kiss him, surprised at my hostility toward him. I struggle against terrible temptation, but I feel like I am moving under the whip into the incandescent flames of a diabolical world. I am prey to insomnia again. I feel lost, as if stranded in the center of the earth. I toss in bed, blood rushing to my temples, throat dry. My life goes by as uselessly as ever. The thankless chores of an old maid disgust me. Supporting roles are no longer enough for me. The taste of victory has left its mark on me. I have held happiness. I know every line in its face. I cry rolled up in a ball. I feel tiny, shriveled up by pain. I cling to the crime as if it were a buoy. It alone can save me. I struggle, but it has me in its claws. I know I will yield in the end; I am caught in a spiral, committed body and soul in a merciless contest. I mask the struggle. I am like an animal on a leash with its head turned away from the route it must follow.
There is a knock at my door and Jean Luze comes in.
“Don’t stay in the dark,” he tells me. “It will make you more depressed. I realize that you are worried about Jane and her son. I realize this…”
I turn on the light without responding.
“You know, Claire, I have made a decision,” he continues. “We are leaving soon and I’m taking Joël with me. I haven’t been able to do much for all of you until now, unfortunately. But I will at least save this young man by getting him out of here. What about you, do you want to come with us? I mean it.”
“No, thank you,” I answer.
He nervously dug his fingers through his hair and lit a cigarette:
“You really don’t want to?”
“No, thank you,” I repeated.
“I am sorry to hear that, Claire. We’ll think of you often and your godson will learn to love you from afar. I’m really sorry you don’t want to come along…”
To hear that conventional little sentence in his mouth! Anger, resentment, outrage, rumble within me. He gives my arm a friendly squeeze and leaves.
I see the Audiers’ cat prowling around our house. He brushes against the wall with his tail in the air, his hypocritical gaze half concealed by his blinking eyelids. He has gray fur like an old man. His meowing has often woken me up at night. He is Augustine’s worst enemy, often stealing food whenever she is the least bit careless. I have an idea. I will use him as practice. I will kill him to see what happens, to know what it feels like, how much strength one needs to get it right.
Joël is alone with Jean Luze.
They are listening to music in the living room. I hear them talking in hushed voices. There is a quiet knocking at the door of the dining room and I see Joël run to it. He invites Pierrilus, the one-armed beggar, to come in, and takes a package from him that he conceals when he notices me.
“Careful!” Jean Luze cries.
Doesn’t he trust me anymore? I feel so humiliated it seems to me I no longer exist. He looks through us. He doesn’t see us anymore, except when we interrupt his interminable discussions. He looks at us in a cold, impenetrable, and disconcerting way. With utmost silence, I put down the bottle of rum and glasses he asked for. Félicia never dares to interrupt him. Finally, she suffers, she too! She has become a harmless rival. As affectionate as he is with her, as solicitous as he is, I know now that he never loved her.
In any case, her death will push him to me. I can only master him through grief. With her gone, I will once again be mother to his son. There will be intimacy between us again.
Here I am sitting in bed, dagger in hand. I contemplate and caress it. Its tip is sharp and its finely chiseled handle is slightly curved. Where does this weapon come from? What is its history? The main thing is whether or not it can kill someone with a single blow. Will I have to witness some drawn-out agony if I miss? Will I have the courage to strike several times to make sure the deed is done? I have considered everything. I will leave nothing to chance. The Audiers’ cat will be my guinea pig. I will plunge the dagger in his back as practice. I don’t want Jean Luze to have to worry about anything. Suspicion will initially fall on him. I will stage things so that the police shift their investigation and conclude that it was suicide. Invoking her upcoming departure, I will ask Félicia to inscribe a moving note on the bottom of that family photo taken on the day of Jean-Claude’s baptism, something along these lines: “Adieu, Claire, I leave you here with everything I love.” The police will not see through this because their plate is full: the police only care about politics.
After killing Félicia, I will put the dagger in her hand. They will say: “She committed suicide because she couldn’t bear to leave the country, poor Madame Luze!”
The cat is dead. I followed it, lured it with fresh fish, raised my hand high and struck. From my window, I look upon its dead body. It collapsed in the yard beneath my window. Its legs are already stiff. Its lips, curled in an awful grin, reveal sharp white teeth. “Good riddance!” Augustine will exclaim when she sees it. And Mme Audier will mourn it in good form, lamenting the demise of this sly and deceitful animal she never thought to feed in its lifetime.
Before it dropped dead, the cat looked at me. This is what I can’t forget: its eyes. Pathetic! A cat! Nothing but a cat! And yet I’m gnawed by remorse. Is it because in my eyes it was innocent?
The thought of crime haunts me. It is eating away at me. I feel as weak as a convalescent. What am I waiting for? Sleep has fled from me. I think of Jane. I think about her little one and I want to scream.
I am ready; Félicia is alone in her room. I am going to go
in. In the meantime, I practice killing her in my head.
My teeth chatter. I bite my fist. I’m nauseous, sick to my stomach. My mind is blank. No, no! I mustn’t admit that I will never have the courage to kill Félicia. I will die instead of her. It is time for me to put an end to these desperate struggles. I’m burning up. Is it fever? So much the better! Come, delirium. It will give me a taste of death in life. I am used to burying myself all on my own. These plunges into the void are comforting. I hope they will spare me from reality’s torments. Thanks to them, I’ve become familiar with the idea of death. It doesn’t frighten me. I have my very own coat of mail, my own shell and insulation: my imagination.
Blood hammers my temples. Hammer blows raining on metal, my head bursts, blood runs down my face. There is some on my sheets, my shirt, on the floor, everywhere. No, it’s not true. I’m the one seeing red. From anger. I’m angry with myself. I overestimated myself and seeing my cowardice makes me sick.
I am nothing but a heap of mutilated flesh. I’m the one dying, murdered. The dagger buried somewhere in my body. I don’t know where exactly. Ah! The hemorrhage of despair! Oh, to disappear! If only I could disappear without leaving a trace. It’s impossible. One doesn’t disappear that way. I exist. I am free, face-to-face with myself. I must act and this time I must not fail. Will I be up to it? Yes. My pride is intact. It will back me. The moon smiling in the sky scoffs at me. Its serenity reminds me of Félicia’s. Flashes from the past! The long and tedious unreeling of the sad film of my life…
Contradictory feelings claw at each other within me. I am seething with them. My heart is in shreds. What can be done without passion? The lukewarm are like reptiles: they crawl on all fours or drag themselves about. I don’t envy them. I’d rather croak standing. Who says suicide is an act of cowardice? That’s just an easy excuse to resign ourselves to living with our disgust, filthy puppets that we are with a hole in our stomachs to be filled three times a day! At last, like some vigilante, I’ve accosted life. I imagine grabbing it by the collar. I am deciding my own fate. I juggle my own existence! I’m drunk! I clench my fist tightly. And there it is, life, trapped in there. How easy it was to vanquish! I was the stronger one. Oh, I feel like laughing! Life is nothing. We can deal with it as one power deals with another. It’s just that our weapons are not comparable. Life dug a gaping hole beneath our feet to frighten us. Life bent us under a degrading dictatorship. With every step we bump up against the points of its bayonets. Life keeps stabbing us in the back. I am going to settle the score with it once and for all. I am sick of hanging my head and trembling. I look at my furrowed face in the mirror. I discover, to my surprise, that my face is asymmetrical: left profile, dreamy and sweet; right profile, fierce and sensual. Is this me or is this how I see myself? My hands also suddenly seem dissimilar, the one made for action seems thicker, heavier. Why this taste of venom in my mouth?…
Love, Anger, Madness Page 18
