The car drove away in a cloud of dust and petrol fumes.
Later, as the afternoon cooled, the women made ice cream, using an ice bucket and an old American mixer that was filled with condensed milk.
Afternoon became evening, and the mosquitoes rose up from the mangrove in their endless search for blood.
44
Pro Patria
Light poured through the high, stained-glass windows. The church of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul was crowded. There were a lot of soldiers in damp uniform. Some wore kepis, others wore flat berets pulled down on the side. The air smelled of flowers and wet clothes. A middle-aged woman knelt beside Anne Marie. Eyes firmly closed behind dark glasses, a dress that had been drenched by the rain. Water trickled down the closed umbrellas and formed meandering rivulets on the slabs of stone.
The organ was overhead, in the gallery of steel girders.
The light from the windows bleached the image on the color television sets. A set had been placed on a shelf at each pillar. As the priest moved down the aisle, a score of electronic images moved in eerie unison.
The bishop gave the sermon. He was a local man with a dark skin, a receding hairline, and a gentle, almost effeminate manner. Anne Marie had once met him at a garden party at the residence of the Sous-Préfet. He now went from the far side of the altar, genuflected, and climbed the winding stairs that led to the cast-iron pulpit. He placed his hands on the edge of the pulpit. The congregation sat down. Those people standing in the aisles shuffled their feet and crossed their arms.
“A wife has lost her husband. A mother has lost her son. Many of you have lost a comrade and a friend.” The bishop spoke into the microphone and the thin voice echoed round the church and off the high roof of steel. “The Church has lost a child.”
Anne Marie’s feet were damp.
The rain had worked its way through the leather. Her best pair. Distractedly, she scratched at her hand. She tried to concentrate on the sermon. At the front of the church, she recognized the Préfet in tropical uniform and black epaulettes, heavy with gold braid. His hair was as white as the uniform.
Beside the Préfet, their heads turned attentively toward the pulpit, sat the local dignitaries. The thin face of the mayor of Pointe-à-Pitre, mayors from the other towns, officials from the Chamber of Commerce. Anne Marie recognized a député. And in the row behind him, wearing a black suit, sat Jacques Calais, accompanied by his nephew, Armand.
The women wore black dresses.
The image moved on the television sets.
“He gave his life selflessly for his country, without any thought for himself.”
A woman stood in the front pew; a black veil covered her head. Her shoulders were bowed.
“Today we mourn the loss of a young soldier. He has left this world to go from here to a new, brighter and happier world.” The bishop raised his hands. “We are sad; we feel the emptiness of our loss. We miss the man—he was young, he was full of life, he was innocent. We miss our friend.”
The microphone picked up the soft sobbing of the widow in black.
“We miss the soldier who placed duty above self-interest, devotion above egotism, love of others and of his country before love of himself.”
45
Rain
Only the tortoises seemed to be enjoying the sudden change in the weather. They had clambered out of the water and up the sides of their artificial rock. They gazed with obsidian eyes at the circles of falling raindrops across the surface of the pond.
Anne Marie went up the stairs of the Palais de Justice.
Trousseau looked up and smiled.
The office was somber. He had closed the shutters and the lace curtains—dirty and needing to be replaced with the other set that was somewhere in one of the trunks in the rue Alsace-Lorraine—hung limply against the wood.
Trousseau sat behind the typewriter. His glance went from her face down to her shoes.
“My best shoes,” she said, “and it starts to rain.”
Trousseau ran his finger along the thin line of his moustache. “Getting married, madame le juge?”
“I must be at the funeral in twenty minutes.” She looked at her watch. “In fifteen minutes.” She paused to catch her breath. “I wanted to ask you to get hold of Lafitte. I’ll be needing to speak with him.”
“You’ve heard the news, madame le juge?”
“About Giscard’s speech on the radio?”
He shook his head. “The local news.” Trousseau stood up and brushed past her. He unfolded the newspaper that lay on her desk. He pointed to the headline on the front page. A LETTER FROM THE ASSASSINS.
“What is it?”
A dry laugh in his throat. “From the independence people.”
“MANG?”
“MANG is a political party—they could never admit to committing acts of violence.” He shook his head. “But it’s probably the same people.”
She put down her handbag and looked at the paper.
“You’re wearing perfume, madame le juge.”
“I always wear perfume,” Anne Marie said. Aware of the rudeness in her voice, she added, “Van Cleef and Arpels. You like it?”
Trousseau returned to his typewriter without answering.
There was an article on the front page. The letter itself was reproduced on the middle pages: “An open letter to the widow of officer René Bruant.” A photograph of the hole in the side of the plane; another photograph, badly reproduced in somber blacks and grays, of Madame Bruant. She wore dark sunglasses and was being supported by a young officer in uniform.
“It’s going to be a grueling funeral for the poor woman,” Anne Marie said, taking the center pages. She folded them carefully before putting them in her handbag.
Trousseau did not look up. “They’re scared.”
“Why?”
“They never intended to kill anyone.” Trousseau counted on his long fingers. “It’s Monday today—it’s taken them nearly four days to claim responsibility.”
“They still haven’t claimed responsibility for killing Calais.”
Trousseau rubbed his moustache again. “The mulattos hate the whites—but they also hate the blacks.”
“They hate all of us?”
“All the whites—you, madame, and all the minions of the occupying colonialist regime.” Trousseau nodded to where the newspaper was folded in her bag. His face creased into a large smile. “You’ve got to leave before the end of the year. Before the thirty-first of December—because if you don’t, the armed forces of the People’s Republic of Guadeloupe’s going to put you all under the ground.” He laughed. “My wife and I, we’ve already booked our flight.”
Trousseau’s laughter accompanied her down the stairs of the Palais de Justice.
46
Bally
Odile held out her umbrella. “I’ve got my car.”
Anne Marie, grateful for the protection, moved under it. Like a shower of stones, the rain battered against the taut, black fabric. “Not a BMW, I’m afraid—but at least it’s better than walking.”
“Bally.” Anne Marie had to walk fast to keep up with her sister-in-law. “My best shoes—and I’ve only worn them once.”
Water bubbled along the gutter and eddied about the wheels of the cars; even the crest of the road was covered by a sheet of fast-moving rainwater.
Odile gave her the umbrella and unlocked the car—a Fiat with rust that formed orange acne along the once-white paintwork.
“The BMW’s for Freddy’s mother—not for his wife.”
Anne Marie climbed in beside Odile. The surface of the road was visible through the holes in the floorboard.
“With this weather, it’s probably best to take the ring road.”
Odile was an aggressive driver. She sat upright behind the wheel, and the beauty spot on her nose moved as she spoke. “You’d better open the window, Anne Marie. The exhaust pipe’s dropped off. Don’t want you or me dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
A grim smile. “It would bring too much joy for Mamie.”
They went past the hospital, up the curving slip road and onto the four-lane highway. It was not yet ten o’clock, but the traffic was heavy, composed mainly of lorries.
The wipers were not fast enough for the sheets of tropical rain that transformed everything into surrealist shapes.
“And it’s not even the rainy season yet.”
The window misted on the inside.
Anne Marie slipped off her shoe and looked at the sole.
“The boss said we could take the morning off—but I wanted to come.”
Anne Marie turned. “Your boss?”
“Kacy.” The beauty spot quivered.
They reached the turning for Le Raizet. Without slowing, Odile pulled into the exit lane and headed back into the city. The car went through several puddles. At the traffic lights, Odile turned right and bumped the car up onto an unsurfaced sidewalk that was fast being transformed into yellow mud. “We can walk the rest,” she said as she got out. She added, “Freddy didn’t get home until midnight last night.”
“Neither did Jean Michel.”
“You went home with Casimir?”
Anne Marie opened the umbrella, and together the two women hastened through the deserted market. Ginger roots, green limes and mangoes lay out on the stone benches, protected by thick plastic sheets. “He tried to kiss me.”
“They’re all interested in just one thing—until they marry you.”
Cars were cluttered about the entrance to the cemetery. The black hearse was empty. Two men in uniform stood by the gates, beneath a shared umbrella. Their eyes scarcely moved as Anne Marie and Odile went up the narrow strip of road.
The path rose steeply between the neat rows of gravestones.
The cemetery was laid out on the edge of the hill. At one time, in accordance with Napoleonic law, it must have been beyond the limits of Pointe-à-Pitre. Now it looked onto the grey skyline of the drab city housing projects.
Low clouds rolled across the sky.
The family tombs, with their plastic, tawdry flowers and their factual epitaphs, were heavy marble boxes stuck on the slope of the hill.
On several headstones, there was an embedded photograph of the loved one who had been laid to eternal rest in the ground beneath. Men from the city, with collar and tie; buxom mothers and the serious faces of children. They stared out tirelessly at the living world and at the falling rain.
Odile nodded to several people who were already coming down the path. They were detaching themselves from the crowd that had formed around a fresh tombstone.
The rain hammered down on a sea of umbrellas, onto other, exposed mourners, onto the kepis and epaulettes and onto the damp gravel underfoot.
“There he is—look!”
“Who?” Anne Marie turned.
“Kacy.” Anger and a kind of excitement in her voice. Odile moved her head to one side and raindrops splattered onto her cheeks.
Anne Marie followed her glance. She saw a small man without hat or umbrella. Dark eyebrows and hunched shoulders. He had the thick wavy hair of an Indian. His skin was dark—almost jet black. Rain ran down his face.
“A bastard, too.”
“Why?”
“A little bit of power and they treat you even worse than the whites—and now there’s talk of half of us getting the sack.” Bitterness in her voice. “He can run around in a Jaguar—but lately he’s been telling everyone he’s got financial problems. So I’ll probably lose my job before long.” Odile turned sharply and almost caught Anne Marie’s eye on the metal tip of the umbrella. “You work for the police, don’t you?”
There was a bareheaded officer standing before the grave. His head was lowered in prayer.
A priest swung the incense holder while a little boy held an umbrella above his head.
“Ministry of Justice.”
“Then perhaps I should tell you.”
“Tell me what, Odile?”
The officer carried a large wreath in his hands. His uniform was turning dark with rainwater.
“About a phone call at the office.”
“Well?”
A slight hesitation. “Kacy works in construction. He’s got a fleet of bulldozers and lorries. Excavation work, leveling, putting down foundations. Has a reputation for bidding low offers—very low offers. Goodness knows how he does it. But on several occasions, it’s landed him the best jobs.” Odile shrugged. “What do I care? I get my salary, and I mind my own business.” She ran a hand across her forehead. She looked tired.
Over the pounding of the rain against the umbrella, she went on. “A lot of Pointe-à-Pitre used to be underwater until it was filled in by us. And in Gosier, there’s been a building boom in the past few years. We’ve been involved in the construction of four of the five new hotels there. And each time, the final cost’s been way over Kacy’s initial bid.”
“Interesting.”
“Nobody seems to mind. The hotels get built, we keep our jobs and Kacy has his Jaguar, a villa in the Grands Fonds. He’s a supporter of Le Moule football team, and when they got into the national quarter finals a few years back, he could afford a weekend in Paris—just to see his team defeated.” She paused. Her lips were quivering at the corner. The beauty spot trembled. “He’s got a mistress. A little girl at the Chamber of Commerce who’s supposed to be one of Giscard’s favorites when he comes here on his Christmas visits.”
Another wreath, the dark leaves glistening, was placed before the tombstone.
“You know about Raymond Calais?”
Abruptly Anne Marie turned to look at her sister-in law. She said, “He’s dead.”
“They were friends, or at least, Kacy and Calais used to work together.”
“Why would Kacy work with Calais?”
“SODECA.”
“What’s that?”
“Société d’économie mixte pour le développement de la Caraibe.”
Anne Marie shook her head, not understanding.
“A consortium—part private, part state-owned—with responsibility for developing land and getting it ready for the builders to move in.” Odile gestured toward the sprawling high-rise towers of Pointe-à-Pitre. “All that used to be inhabited by people living in shacks. SODECA bought them out, dried out the land, and then prepared it for the big building companies.” Odile was watching her employer and there was repressed anger in her voice. “Raymond Calais phoned up. I was in the office and I took the call. Kacy was downstairs talking to the drivers, so I put the phone down and I went out to tell him he was wanted.”
The widow was kneeling before the tomb. Beside her, the Préfet held an umbrella that protected her from the rain. Her head was bowed, her hands clasped together.
“ ‘You’re wanted on the telephone,’ I said. ‘Who is it?’ he asked me and I told him.”
The widow wore gloves.
“Kacy got angry. Went off the handle.”
“With you?”
Odile shook her head. “He said, ‘Calais? Haven’t they murdered that white bastard yet?’ And that was on Friday. The following Tuesday I heard about Calais’ death on the radio.”
A single bugle began to play the Last Post.
47
Fairy tales
“I want all possible data on Kacy.”
“Kacy?”
“My informant tells me the accountants have been in. Monsieur Lafitte, see what information you can get out of them.”
“What’s the company called?”
Anne Marie rubbed the back of her hand. “Travaux et Terrassements Antillais. It’s just possible there’s a connection between Kacy and Calais’ death. A possibility I should look into.”
Lafitte was sitting on the far side of the desk, his hands clasped between his knees and his eyes on the floor. “Madame le juge, I thought you’d dropped the Calais affair.”
“Whatever made you think that?”
He looked up. He had the dull eyes of
a faithful dog. “Because of the other juges d’instruction.”
She frowned. “Other judges?”
“I just thought.…”
Anne Marie interrupted him. “I’m still very much in charge of the Calais dossier, Monsieur Lafitte. And for the time being, I don’t think anybody’s seriously envisaging taking it out of my hands. Certainly not the procureur.”
Lafitte studied the polished mahogany floor.
“No need to remind you the Code goes to considerable lengths to ensure the freedom of action of the juge d’instruction. It’s absolutely essential the investigating judge have complete freedom in preparing a dossier. That freedom is sacrosanct—and not even the procureur himself has any power over it without the written permission of the Ministry of Justice.”
“It’s just that I heard that.…”
“Sacrosanct, monsieur l’inspecteur, and anything you might have heard to the contrary is tantamount to fairy tales.” She accorded him a tight smile.
The blinds had been drawn against the driving rain. The office was dingy, the lace curtains were dirty. Anne Marie’s lamp cast its yellowish circle of light onto the desk. Trousseau was behind the Japy typewriter, pretending to take no notice of the conversation while he compared lists of figures. Occasionally he muttered under his breath and ran a finger along the line of his moustache.
“You understand?”
“Yes, madame le juge.” For a second they looked at each other, then Lafitte turned his eyes downward to the mahogany floor again.
“You have any information on Hégésippe Bray?”
“Nothing from Basse-Terre.” Lafitte gave a shrug. “We still haven’t had an answer from Paris.”
“Monsieur Lafitte, Bray’s been dead now for over a week. I need this information.”
“Paris doesn’t answer.”
“Well, phone them, for goodness sake.”
“We’re supposed to use the telex.”
“Use the telex, use whatever you want, Monsieur Lafitte. Throw a bottle with a message into the sea—do what you have to. Put the taxpayers’ money to some use. Anything, Monsieur Lafitte. I need the records on Hégésippe Bray—and eight days is already too long. I need them now.”
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