Windward Heights

by Maryse Conde

  On the slave ship that carried her to the land of her deg­radation a sailor took his pleasure with her, and when she got to Guadeloupe she gave birth to a little girl the color of curdled milk whom her new master, Amédée de Linsseuil, christened “Snow” as a joke. I don’t know much about my ancestors except that they toiled, suffered and died on this plantation where I myself am toiling, suffering, and where I shall die when the Good Lord calls me to Him. For my generation the end of slavery means nothing. It’s the same sadness, the same wretchedness we’ve been chewing on for as long as we can remember.

  I’m sure I’d have suffered less if I had found a man to pull me up, even a very black man, “kongo” or “blue” as we say. But men don’t even give me a second look. They say I’m too tall, that I’ve got nothing up front and nothing behind and making love to me would be like a dish without salt or hot pepper. That hasn’t stopped several of them from taking me by force on the ground in the savanna, but afterward, when I wanted to see them again, they laughed in my face.

  “Yellow girl, who do you think you are? Have you looked at yourself?”

  To tell the truth, since Maman died, I walk alone through the potholes of life.

  I didn’t want to look after Cathy Gagneur or rather Cathy de Linsseuil (although everyone called her jokingly Mam Razyé behind her back), for I knew she was capricious, brazen, with no education and no manners, the very image of her papa, a mulatto who thought the world of himself and died like the dog he was. But I was the one the master chose. Ever since I was little, the master has been good to me. He likes the way I walk with my eyes lowered, the way I never raise my voice and the fact I don’t have any friends or family to gossip with. He knows it won’t be me who’ll go prattling about whether there was any blood on the white embroidered linen sheets on his wedding night.

  A few days before the wedding he called me in. I lowered my eyes out of respect. Even so, deep down, I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t have that contented and assured look of a man about to take possession of the woman he desired. Quite the opposite. He seemed worried, tormented, like a cat on a hot tin roof. He was pacing up and down his study, wringing his hands. A Bible lay open on his table, with its pages crumpled and dog-eared, as if he were constantly searching for consolation in the words of the Lord, the only ones you can count on not to lie.

  “Listen to me,” he advised me. “Ever since she was ill, her health has remained fragile and her temperament whiny. But through gentleness and love we’ll work wonders with her, you’ll see.”

  I assured him of my devoted services.

  In early April, Cathy de Linsseuil entered the house of Belles-Feuilles in her princess’s gown, under her veil pinned by a diadem of orange blossom, without even a glance at the servants lined up on the front steps. As if she had forgotten that in times long ago, her ancestors had climbed out of the same boat as ours and toiled under the same sun before catching the master’s eye and earning the bitter favor of carrying his illegitimate children. She passed in front of us without so much as a look and went straight up to her room. I went and introduced myself and helped her get ready for the ball. I perfumed her and made up her face, for she had the color of a corpse.

  As early as the next day I saw that what people said about her was no exaggeration. She swore like a heathen and flew into fits of rage I had never seen in anyone. More than once, in her anger, she raised her hand against me. But the master was right, there were moments when she chattered away and was as touching as a little girl. I’m not quite sure how, but my heart quickly grew fond of her.

  I listened to her while she talked about her maman, who died when she was three; that’s why she was like she was, as hard as a breadnut. She also talked about her papa and her brother, but never mentioned Razyé, as if she didn’t have the strength to pronounce his name. She only mentioned the master’s name to praise his goodness and generosity. Tears filled her eyes when she murmured: “No other man comes near him.”

  But I knew that her heart and her body lied and that he didn’t give her what she needed. In the morning when I entered her bedroom I would find her already awake, propped up against her pillows, brooding and dissatisfied. I would lay down the breakfast tray in front of her on which I had arranged the cassava cakes, litchi jelly and a tall glass of coconut milk. I tried to get her to laugh by searching for the key to her dreams.

  “You dreamed of a fishing boat? A journey! Perhaps you’ll leave for France with Monsieur.”

  “Pregnancy? You’ll be granted everything you wish! What would you like in your secret heart?”

  She became even more melancholic.

  So I would stop and untangle her silky locks, so long, so different from my picky-picky hair. At siesta time I told her stories until she dropped off to sleep and I watched her slumber with pearls of sweat around her mouth. In the evening, before going to bed, when I gave her her bath, I let the perfumed water run down her shoulders and her breasts with large aubergine-colored nipples that bore the mark of her black blood, to the soft folds of her belly. She spread her thighs and my hand delved into the most secret spot of her body. Cathy was my mistress, but she was also my lover, she was also my child. She was the woman I wanted to be. I worshipped her and sometimes I hated her. That’s why I told her what Razyé was doing behind her back. Out of compassion, I wanted her to know the truth, but I also wanted to hurt her and remind her she was nothing but a woman like the others, like all the others: cheated and deceived by the man she loved.

  It was one late afternoon. The day had been overcast and blustery as it often was at this altitude. The clouds hung low and heavy like a lid. That’s why I don’t like Basse-Terre. Its climate is not suited to my melancholy nature. I need the laughter of the sun and its sparkle to warm my heart and body.

  Everyone thought that Irmine was taking a siesta in her room, whereas in fact I had seen her tiptoe up to the attic.

  The master was reading or sleeping, one or the other. Cathy was sticking her needle into her tapestry with her head down. Poor Cathy! Ever since her jaunt the day we arrived she had tried to be well-behaved, reading, embroidering or playing with the children. Darkness had stolen down from the mountain slopes and crept over the carpet in the living­ room in a layer of black. Soon I would have to light the lamp and dress Cathy for dinner. When I made up my mind to tell her what I knew, she listened to me open-mouthed, her eyes wide with astonishment and already a trace of pain.

  “Are you sure?” she stammered. I nodded.

  “Sure as can be. No later than yesterday I was walking behind them and saw them rubbing up against each other like dogs in heat behind a turpentine tree. After that they went deeper into the woods and I couldn’t follow them. A short while ago I saw Irmine creep up the stairs to Razyé’s room.”

  “He can’t be in love with her,” she breathed. “It’s impossible! Even if I heard it from his own mouth, I would know he was lying. So why is he doing this?”

  “Perhaps he wants to marry her for her money?” I proposed.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Marry her? Are you out of your mind? The Linsseuils would never accept a negro. They’d throw her out, they’d disinherit her, as simple as that, and that wouldn’t get him very far!”

  Then she went silent, furrowed her brow, looked up and staring right through me, added: “Perhaps he wants to take his revenge on Aymeric? Drag his sister into the mud out of pure spite? But what has Aymeric done to him? I’m the guilty one!”

  Suddenly, she jumped up.

  “Are they upstairs?”

  And as quick as ever, she dropped her tapestry and ran out of the living room.

  What was going on in that room in the garret? I waited, trembling and praying to the Good Lord for over an hour. Then I heard cries and shouts. Finally the door opened and Cathy entered dragging in Irmine, flushed, dishevelled and in tears.

  �
��I haven’t done anything!” she groaned. “I swear!”

  But Cathy wasn’t listening and repeated: “I’m going to tell your brother. I’m going to tell him. Aymeric!”

  At all this commotion, Monsieur de Linsseuil finally came out of the bedroom, already dressed for dinner in his dove­ grey suit and stiff high-collared shirt, more of a heavenly Cherub than ever, only whiter and blonder.

  “What is going on now?” he asked irritably.

  At the same moment Razyé made an appearance. How can I describe the contrast between the two men? Never had I noticed how the master’s nickname suited him so well. He looked like a choirboy who serves at high mass on Sundays, or else a lamb that sucks his maman’s teat, or a red-eyed, twitchy-nosed rabbit in its hutch. As for Razyé, he was a volcano, a hurricane, an earthquake, a nigger stud with his iron spike pointing between his legs.

  “Aymeric!” Cathy cried like a fury. “I’ve just caught your sister in Razyé’s room and she is incapable of telling me what she was doing there. Ask her! Ask her!”

  But instead of interrogating his sister, Aymeric turned on her, shouting: “All this is your fault! You’re the one who imposed on us the company of a good-for-nothing, a scoundrel!”

  Beside himself with anger, he walked over to her and apparently was about to lay his hands on her when Razyé stopped him.

  “Well, this lamb now threatens like a bull. Lay one finger on her! Lay one finger on her, do you hear, and I’ll cut you to pieces.”

  Thereupon with a single prod he sent my master sprawling on the carpet and, taking Irmine by the arm, marched calmly toward the door. At that moment it was as if Cathy went mad. She threw herself onto him and hammered her fists against his chest. Getting no reaction, she ran to the door and put her arms out to bar the way.

  “Where are you going with her?”

  He pushed her gently but firmly aside, and she shouted to her husband, “Do something instead of lying there like a wimp. Oh! I always knew you weren’t a man!”

  Aymeric de Linsseuil lay prostrate on the floor, oblivious to what she said, and Razyé walked out with Irmine clinging to his arm.

  It was around midnight when Cathy fell ill with the fever. The moon was high and round in the sky when the sweat came gushing out of her body and soaked the bedsheets. She sat up, erect, took off her nightgown and tried to tear it to pieces. Then she suddenly fell back on her pillows, sat up again, fell back, all the time talking off the top of her head, repeating over and over again: “Lucinda, don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

  Finally I got scared of her senseless chatter and decided to call the master. I thought he was locked in his room, but however hard I knocked and hammered on the wooden door, there was no answer. How could he be sleeping at such a time? As I was walking back across the living room, a voice came out of the dark and made me jump.

  “What do you want?”

  I lit the lamp and took fright. All dressed and as pale as Lazarus stepping out of the grave, the master was sitting in an armchair. Suddenly he looked like an old bag of bones, lugging on his back all the suffering and weariness of the world.

  “She,” I panted, “Cathy . . . Madame . . . is unwell.”

  He looked me up and down.

  “And me, do you think I’m well? I’m more than unwell, I am dead.”

  “In the name of God,” I insisted, “who created us creatures on this earth, come and see her.”

  He made as if to get up and then slumped back down in his armchair.

  “No, I bet there’s nothing the matter with her and she’s simply playing the spoilt child. If she sees I’m not running to her like her dog Pompom, she’ll get over it.”

  Beside myself with anger, I returned to the bedroom.

  Cathy had thrown her nightgown on the floor and was standing in front of the wide open window. At this late hour of the night, a cold breeze was blowing in from the mountain and wrapping her in its chill. In the moonlight her body appeared as lovely as a miracle, but her face was that of a madwoman. Her hair floated around her head like strands of seaweed. I picked up the blanket she had thrown to the floor and tried to wrap it around her. She burst into tears in my arms.

  “If he leaves again, I’ll never get over it. Never, I tell you.”

  Monsieur de Linsseuil was finally convinced that his wife was in a serious condition, beyond hope perhaps, and he brought her back to the Belles-Feuilles plantation.

  Even if the Good Lord is cruel enough to keep me alive until the age of a hundred and seven, I shall never forget that journey in a closed carriage which lasted a whole day and a part of the night. Because of Cathy the horses ambled at a walking pace, and I had the feeling I was inside a hearse, holding the icy cold hands of a corpse in mine. With eyes closed, Cathy remained motionless. Sometimes she was silent and the only sign of life was her heavy breathing. At other times she started to ramble again. Between her bouts of tears, the master dampened her temples with bay­ rum, had her inhale tinctures of benzoin and asafoetida or else spooned drops of orange-blossom water between her lips.

  Around ten in the evening the carriage trundled over the bridge crossing the Salee River and I recognized the harbor in La Pointe from the smell of mud and saltfish. From there on the horses quickened their pace and we were soon home.

  As we rumbled up the drive, I saw with amazement that all the lamps on the ground floor were lit. It was because a family meeting was being held. Madame de Linsseuil, the mother, had just received a letter from Irmine that was being passed round. Some of the Linsseuils were offended. Some were crying. Others talked of going to fetch the guilty party so that her fate might serve as an example to all those who were tempted to imitate her and soil the whiteness of their sheets with a nigger.

  Postmarked from Dominica, Irmine’s letter went as

  follows:

  I know you will never give your consent to our marriage and I am not asking you for it. Besides, what’s the use of marrying? There’s no need for a priest and his blessing to unite two beings who desire each other. The man you so slandered and denigrated is better than the best of you. His soul is whiter than yours. You are not worthy to tie his shoelaces.

  I hate you, you and your society, who had nothing better to do than invent bondage, the bondage of blacks and the bondage of women.

  It wasn’t my business. I had my patient to look after. With the help of two servants, I carried my treasure up to her room. Cathy’s cerebral fever lasted two months. Once again it wasn’t Doctor Louisor with his white folks’ medicine that saved her. It’s no use at all, white folks’ medicine. You need the science and power of our gods from Africa. Aymeric went to fetch Mama Victoire in her cabin behind the church in Le Moule and brought her back to the house—a small, black woman dressed in mourning, vested with powers from places even she did not know of. Mama Victoire refused to live in the great house and set herself up in the servants’ quarters. Every morning she was up before first light and was bent in prayer under one of the man-jack trees in the park. She didn’t eat the food of ordinary humans but cooked migans,country stews, that she seasoned with magic words. I did everything she bade me do. I went to search for plants in the savanna or by the seashore, I put them out to dry, I ground their roots, I made decoctions, I prepared poultices and potions. With our combined forces Cathy got better, together with the child she was carrying, for she was pregnant. But merciful Lord, the sickness carried off her senses. When she regained consciousness, she seemed to have forgotten everything that had happened at Dolé-les­ Bains. She had become a little child again, living her life from one minute to the next, and the big belly that stuck out in front of her seemed shockingly absurd.

  It was about this time that a rumour started to spread around the neighborhood. Razyé and Irmine had returned from Dominica, where Razyé had increased his wealth by gambling, and they were living with Justin and his son Justin-Marie at l
’Engoulvent. Those who claimed to have seen them said that Irmine was a sorry sight when she came to church. Looking like a poor wretch in rags, her skin had blackened under the sun and her hair no longer saw a comb. She took care of Justin-Marie like a nursemaid, and what’s more, waited hand and foot on the two men. Other malicious gossips went so far as to assert that these two souls of the damned put her in their bed and took their pleasure with her. As a result, she would be incapable of naming the papa of the child peeping through in her belly, for she too was pregnant.

  I have never wasted my time listening to the malicious gossip of niggers, who only know how to bad-mouth, and I certainly would never have paid attention to such wicked lies if one Sunday in October a little boy smelling of ylang­ ylang hadn’t handed me a letter that a person had given him for me after mass.

  “A person! What person?”

  The boy fled without a word, his dry flaky heels touching the seat of his patched trousers.

  Like all the servants at the house I had learnt to read and write, since the master never stopped repeating that only education would make us forget Africa and set us on the road to improvement. So I locked myself in my room under the roof and unfolded the thin sheet of paper.

  Dear Lucinda,

  L’Engoulvent, 13th October, 189-

  How many wrongdoings we commit during our time on this earth! When we are faced with death we shall only have the Good Lord’s mercy to count on! I have greatly offended my brother and all my family. I refused to listen to Cathy and called her all sorts of names. Now I’m in agony. I’m burning with a question that I turn over and over in my mind without finding an answer. Is Razyé a man? Did he come out of a woman like you, like me? Is it blood that flows in his veins? Or is it pus like the devil in the Ti-Marie story? Does the milk of human feeling water his heart? Sometimes I tell myself he’s a fiend from Africa, as evil as a bloodsucker, eager to destroy the happiness around him.