Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  The woman sat on her heels and briefly embraced the child, then rose and looked at Virgilie's leg. "I can't believe it," she said.

  "But you saw other such children, the time you came to visit her." The one time, Lee thought. The one time in two long years.

  "I never thought such a miracle could be for her."

  The classroom silence had become a rising wind of whispers, and Madame Gautier turned to her pupils. "Virgilie has come back," she said. "You may have a few minutes to talk with her, if you wish, while I speak with this lady."

  The whispers ceased; the silence returned. The child from the city smiled timidly and took a step forward, then stopped in confusion. The school children were staring at her stockinged legs as though they had never seen stockings before, but no one had moved.

  Virgilie turned frightened eyes upon Lee and received a nod of encouragement. She turned to face the children again. Her faint "Hello" was all but inaudible.

  There was no answer. Lee laughed and said, "My goodness! Have you all lost your tongues?" Then she saw the expression on the aunt's face, and her laughter died. "What is it?" she asked in a low voice. "What's wrong here?"

  The woman gazed at the floor. "It is the Chef de Section, the father of the little boy who drowned that day. He has always blamed Virgilie for his son's death. When he heard she was coming back, he began saying terrible things."

  "What terrible things?" All the softness had fled from Lee's voice. Her eyes were blue ice.

  "That he will not allow her to live here again. Not ever. That he will drive her out."

  Lee turned to look at the children—at the small, still figure of Virgilie standing resolute before them. She turned back. "I'll speak to this man," she said, and her lips thinned on the words. "Take me to him, please!"

  "Should we—should we leave the children alone?"

  "They can behave themselves for a short while. Give them something to do."

  Madame Gautier spoke to them. It was necessary for her and Nurse Lee from the Kelleher Hospital to go at once to the village, she said. The children were to study their reading lesson in silence. She led Virgilie to a desk at the rear of the room and gave her a book. Then she and Lee hurried down the path and over the bridge.

  It was the largest and by far the best house in the village, Lee noted, and Virgilie's aunt timidly introduced the man who opened the door as "M'sie Deltier, our Chef de Section." At sight of their wet clothes Deltier frowned, but he reluctantly invited them to come in and be seated. The chairs were mahogany, rubbed to a high polish. The mahogany-framed pictures on the walls were color prints from calendars. Metellus Deltier himself was plump and pompous and wore a bow tie and a starched white shirt.

  "What can I do for you?"

  "Tell me why you blame Virgilie for the loss of your son," Lee said quietly.

  He sat straighter on his chair, his mouth and nostrils twitching. "That is my own affair, if you please!"

  "And mine, M'sieu Deltier. Because I have brought the child back here and must decide what to do about her."

  He gripped his knees and glared. "Very well. The two children were together at the river that day. Marc was forbidden to play there. That one knew it, yet let him stay!"

  "How old was your son at that time, M'sieu Deltier?"

  "He was four."

  "And Virgilie was barely six. Did you expect a girl of six to be your son's guardian? Virgilie had gone to the pool to look for crayfish. When Marc showed up there, she told him to go home. She was trying to reach him when the tree came under the bridge and struck her. The same tree swept your boy away. I have talked to Virgilie many times about this, because it was more on her mind than her own suffering. I know she has told me the truth of what happened." For Lee this was a long speech. She folded her hands and waited.

  The speech she received in return was even longer, and she knew at the end of it that there was nothing to be gained by continuing the conversation. She stayed only in hope of solving the mystery of Deltier's bitterness.

  In the end she solvedit. Deltier's wife had been visiting a friend in a nearby village that day, as she was today. Neglecting his responsibility as a father, he had let the boy wander from the house. He himself was to blame for his son's death.

  Lee stood up. "M'sieu Deltier, I pity you," she said. "You must find your conscience a great burden. But it is your burden, no one else's—certainly not Virgilie's."

  "She will find out whose it is!" he shouted.

  "No, m'sieu. You will."

  The two women walked back along the village street, which was now ankle-deep in red mud. Martin, Lee thought, would be tearing his hair out, wondering where on earth she was. The rain fell, determined to drown all creation.

  "What will you do?" Virgilie's aunt asked. "How will you reason with such a man?"

  "I don't believe he can be reasoned with."

  "If my niece tries to stay here, he will order the whole village to have nothing to do with her!"

  "And the whole village will obey him?"

  "We dare not do otherwise. He represents the government here—the government of Papa Doc. If we disobey, he will call on the Tonton Macoutes to punish us."

  Lee thought about it, and her mouth quivered. Was there any way to right the wrong here? Should she have pleaded with the man instead of letting herself be angry at the injustice of his bitterness? After all, he had lost a son.

  But he was a wicked man, trying to use an innocent six-year-old as a scapegoat. How would Carey have handled him?

  She thought she knew.

  At the bridge over the stream she halted. They had been at Deltier's house nearly an hour. The rushing water, dark with red earth, was level with the planks now—more than level where the boards dipped at midstream. Clutching the flimsy handrails, Lee hesitated.

  "Can we manage it, do you think? It doesn't look very safe." She had to speak loudly to be heard.

  Madame Gautier looked in panic at the swirling flood and drew back. "No, no! We can't!"

  "But we can't leave the children alone, either. Is there some other way over?"

  "No other way. No!"

  "Well, then, we have no choice, do we?" Lee said, and started across.

  But her weight bent the planks and drove them deeper into the stream, where a stronger current surged against them. The bridge swung sideways and began to shake. White-faced, she stepped back.

  At that moment the first of the children came shouting down the path. The classroom clock had told them it was lunchtime. Had Lee not stepped forward again with an upraised hand, they would have run onto the bridge.

  "Go back!" she ordered. Her voice, when it had to, could crack like a whip. "The bridge is not safe!"

  They stopped. Struck silent by the force of the river, they gazed in awe at the red water rushing past their feet, then at Lee. Others came down the path until all of them stood there on the bank—even Virgilie, who had to descend the slippery trail with care and so was last.

  Again shouting "It is not safe!" Lee stepped onto the bridge to show them. "Go back to the school and wait!" she ordered.

  Reluctantly they obeyed, looking back at the bridge as they climbed. In the schoolyard, despite the rain, they stopped to discuss the situation. Some cried. Some were for going down again and risking the bridge before the river got higher and carried it away.

  "That would be foolish," Virgilie said. "You might be on it when it went. We should stay here, as Nurse Lee said. The river can't reach us here, and if the bridge is washed away, we can walk out through the stream when the rain stops and the water goesdown." She spoke with her hands on her hips as La Petite Directrice sometimes did. But except for a curious glance or two, they ignored her. She was not one of them. She didn't belong here and would never again live here. The Chef de Section had said so.

  The rain drove them into the school, finally, but the argument continued, a score of shrill voices clamoring to be heard at once.

  "If we don't go now, it will g
et worse!"

  "We may have to stay here all night!"

  "She's crazy, that white woman!"

  "What does she know about our river?"

  The shrillest voice, the one most touched by panic, belonged to a girl named Nina Deltier, older than most of the others, older than Virgilie. She was a daughter of the Chef de Section by a woman other than his wife—a daughter who did not live under his roof but was still his seed and therefore important. When she ran to the door, the others followed.

  "Wait!" Virgilie said. "Why can't we sit down and sing some songs?"

  They looked at her in amazement. "Songs! You must be out of your head!"

  "But I know some you haven't heard," she pleaded. "I could teach them to you. Listen to this one." She began to sing. She had a high, clear voice that filled the room and drove out the frightening sound of the rain. But it could not still the voice of Nina Deltier, shrilling at them to seek safety in flight.

  Virgilie, though, had moved toward the door while her singing momentarily held them. She blocked the doorway now, her hands clenched at her sides and an inner struggle showing on her face. "Wait," she said again. Then, reaching deep into her pride for the words, "Would you like to see my leg?"

  Their curiosity held them. Their faces were suddenly all eyes, and there was no sound in the schoolroom but rain sound. Silent herself, Virgilie stooped to take off her shoe and stocking, and then straightened to face them.

  "You see"—the words came with defiance—"it looks like a real one, even if it isn't." But only the voice was defiant. The mouth it came from quivered. The tears from her eyes were a rain more terrible than that outside.

  The children crowded closer—not to reach the door she guarded, but to gaze in awe at the leg, to test its strangeness with their fingers. "Does it hurt?"

  "Can you take it off and put it on again?"

  "Can you run on it?"

  The questions beat against her like hurled stones until she thrust out her hands.

  "I can do anything you can do! I'll show you!"

  She marched about the room. She ran for them. "You see?" She climbed to a bench and stepped from that to a desk and stood facing them. "There's nothing I can't do! Nothing!"

  The rain was forgotten—almost.

  "If you don't want to learn any songs, I could tell you what happened to me in the city," she said. The city, to them, was a storybook place, a tale of magic told by their elders in lamp lit mountain homes at night. "I could tell you how it feels to get a new leg like this and learn to use it, and—and everything."

  They waited. At the rear of the room the girl named Nina Deltier whined about the river, but was ignored now and at last was still. The others watched the child on the desk.

  "I'll sit down now, if you will," Virgilie said. But she sat on the edge of the desk where, after they had lined themselves on the benches, they still had to look up at her.

  Her face crinkled in concentration for a moment, as it had in the station wagon when she had told Lee about the village. "You know how I got hurt," she began, "and how Papa Lenke tried to make my leg better but couldn't, and how I was taken to the hospital. Well, when I woke up there, Nurse Lee, who I now love very much, was looking after me . . .”

  It was nearly dark when the rain stopped, and altogether dark by the time the river subsided enough to permit a safe crossing. By then, more than Lee and the aunt waited at the bridge. The parents of the school children were there, and so was Martin.

  Lee would have crossed first when the bridge seemed safe, but Martin restrained her. "Me," he said and would not listen to her protests. The planks held him. From the other side he beckoned with a lantern. But Lee, when she reached him, took the lantern from his hand and led the procession up the path.

  There were lamps at the school, yellowing the windows and thrusting lanes of light across the sodden yard. The door was open now, and as Lee marched toward it, she heard the children's voices as before. But they were joined in song this time, not in recitation. The song was one La Petite Directrice taught her handicapped children at the school in the city.

  Lee stopped, lifting a hand to halt those behind her. Putting down her lantern, she took the arm of Virgilie's aunt. "Come," she said firmly. "The rest of you wait a moment, please."

  Drawing the woman with her, she advanced toward the doorway until they could look in. Virgilie sat on a desk at the front of the room, swinging her arms as she led the singing, swinging her legs too—perhaps without being aware that she did so. Every eye in the room was on her, and every voice soared with hers—even the voice of Nina Deltier.

  The song came to an end. Laughter rang like bells in the room. "Teach us another, Virgie!"

  "The one about the parrot!"

  "Let's do them all again, Virgie!"

  At Lee's side, the aunt whispered in a voice of awe, "I can't believe it."

  But Lee had been long enough in the Haiti of Papa Doc Duvalier to know that what was happening here was nothing on which to build a future. Not with an angry and bitter Metellus Deltier in the background, needing a scapegoat for his conscience, and a spineless aunt who stood in terror of him. Quietly she said, "But I am going to take her back with me, Madame Gautier."

  The woman turned quickly in amazement. Or was it inrelief? "What?" she gasped.

  "Virgilie will never be happy here. These same children will turn on her when your guilty Chef de Section cracks his whip.

  There will be no way for you to help her—no way at all. That brave little girl will find herself shunned and alone, with a broken heart. So—with your permission, of course—I will take her back with me."

  "To live where?" the aunt whispered.

  "With some family that will love and appreciate her, when I can find one. But first with my husband and me and our little girl."

  The aunt's eyes widened even more. "How can you say such a thing without even asking your husband first?"

  "How can I say such a thing? Because I know my husband. Now come, please. Martin is anxious to leave, and we have to find out if Virgilie will agree."

  The singing ceased as they stepped into the room and went together to the desk on which the child sat. The aunt stood silent, noticeably relieved now, while Lee gently but anxiously explained the situation to Virgilie.

  She need not have worried. "I know how it would be if I stayed, Nurse Lee," the child said calmly. "My friends here have been telling me. It would be terrible for everyone."

  "Well then, darling . . . say good-bye to them. And to your aunt. And we'll go."

  The child said her good-byes. The aunt even shed a few tears. Then Martin lifted the little girl in black stockings to his shoulders and carried her down the hill to the bridge and across the river to the village. And with Lee at his side they made a triumphal march of their departure from Malrouge as they strode through the village to where the station wagon awaited them.

  It was after midnight when they reached the school in Port-au-Prince. But Carey had night duty at the hospital, and Lee was able to phone him.

  She explained what had happened. "Darling, can we keep her? For a while, at least?"

  "Of course."

  "She's a wonderfully brave little girl, darling. You should have seen her!"

  "Lee, I said 'Of course.'"

  Lee laughed her first happy laugh in hours. "So you did, didn't you? All right, Dr. Aldred, sir. We'll be at home when you get there. And Carey—"

  "Yes?" he said softly.

  "Thank you. Oh, thank you! I love you with all my heart."

  2

  "You'd like to do it, wouldn't you?" Cliff asked.

  He was already in bed, lying on his back with his hands clasped behind his head. Luari sat on a bench in front of the mirror, doing something to her long, black hair. As always, she was so lovely in her nightgown that he could not keep his gaze off her.

  "Do what, Cliff?" she said to his image in the glass.

  "You know what I'm talking about. I saw you and Terr
y in the garden this afternoon. He was pleading with you again, and you were shaking your head."

  "Oh, that."

  "Don't say 'Oh, that.' It isn't going to go away, you know. He'll keep after you till coffee grows on guava bushes."

  "And I'll keep on saying no." She turned from the mirror to look at him—solemnly, with love in her eyes—and he noticed for the second time that day that her pregnancy was beginning to show. Not very much yet, of course. But she normally had such a flat little tummy, and now there was a hint of swelling. "Cliff," she said, "I'm content here at Glencoe. I'm happy here. If I were to become a singer, I'd have to go on tours and all that sort of thing.”

  "Uh-uh." He shook his head as emphatically as his position on the bed would permit. "I've talked to Terry about that. He says you wouldn't. Unless you wanted to, of course. He says your records would sell themselves."

  Luari stood up. "You've talked to him?"

  "Honey, don't you see I had to? We all know something's been troubling you. You used to sing around here all the time. Now you almost never do."

  Luari continued to stand there in her nightgown, frowning at him. Was it really that obvious, the problem she was having with Terry Connor's insistence? All she had tried to do, really, was sort of melt into the woodwork a little when Terry was around, so he would stop pressuring her. Earlier on, of course, when Alison was grieving so over the loss of Milly Reid's friendship and Lyle was walking around like a zombie after his breakup with Desmond, she just hadn't felt like singing. But that was in the past now, and all kinds of songs were back in her head. She'd had to concentrate on not letting them out.

  "Honey?" Cliff had been calling her that since their marriage. It was not a Jamaican term of endearment and at first she had not liked it much, but he had solemnly explained that it suited her because honey was also the color of her body, and he loved every inch of that. As early as their wedding night, she had discovered he was a very loving man.