by Maryse Conde
“Go home to your maman immediately.”
The girl did not move. Dorisca gave her an almighty slap. First of all because she deserved it. Secondly to bring her back to her senses. Etiennise reeled from the shock, recovered her wits and as a result started to cry silently.
“Go home, I’m telling you,” Dorisca said in a softer voice. “And keep your mouth shut. You were in your bed all night. I’ll say that around eleven in the evening I came up to bring his medication as usual and found him the way he was.”
“Is he . . . ?” Etiennise groaned. Dorisca nodded.
“Not far off, anyway.”
On hearing this, Etiennise cried even harder. Dorisca pushed her firmly out the door. Now that she was alone she wasted no time. She quickly blew out the candles that had almost entirely melted, and scraped the hardened wax off the mahogany furniture. She put away the objects used as candleholders, whisked away the flowers drooping in their vases and straightened out the sheets on the bed, witness to an unfortunate struggle. In short, she tried to return the room to its innocuous appearance as a sick room. When she had done her best she went over to Justin-Marie, and for the first time felt her heart moved. So young! So handsome! Here was another one who could have had everything he wanted, if life had let him. Some are calling out for death, who merely turns a deaf ear, while for others she is in too much of a hurry to come. What a shame the green fruit falls to the ground before it is ripe!
8
Mabo Sandrine’s Tale
The great house was still asleep and us servants were drinking our coffee in the kitchen when Madame Marie came in to announce the news: Justin-Marie had died suddenly at Papaye. Her eyes were all watery when she announced it, because just the name of the dead person makes some people cry. Perhaps too she was thinking of her little Angele whom the Good Lord had called to Him the other week and her heart was all upset. The others around me started to whimper in order to please her and pretend they felt compassion. It was quite a cacophany of sighs and “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” As for me, my eyes stayed dry. I cannot pretend I felt sorry, for ever since he turned up here with his superior airs and his old clothes in a battered suitcase there was no love lost between Justin-Marie and me. When he tried to order me around like he ordered everyone around, I told him: “Enough of that, slavery’s over” and turned my back on him.
So I shrugged my shoulders and remarked to Madame Marie: “You’ve got a lot of salt water to waste on almost a stranger.”
She knew my ways. Yet she looked at me sorrowfully and exclaimed: “Almost a stranger? The child of the brother of my husband’s first wife? You ought to say your rosary ten times for what you’ve just said.”
Then she added sadly: “Poor unhappy Aymeric has fallen ill, he torments himself so. He thinks he is the guilty one.”
Guilty of what! Of having inflicted on his family a boy who could neither say Good Morning, Please nor Thank You to anybody and looked at you like a horse that has thrown its rider? He started out being all sweet with my Cathy. But she soon put him in his place.
I was born the month they announced the abolition of slavery. That very month. For weeks the news had been whispered around the cane fields and at the sugar factory. By the river where the women washed their laundry. Even in the cabins where they shelled their Congo peas. But the old people on the plantation, who had already heard such stories before, shook their heads. They recalled what had happened before to those who had taken it at face value and thought themselves equal to other men. One fine day fleets of ships had sailed into every port, then Bonaparte’s soldiers had hung clusters of blacks and mulattos from every available tree. Those they did not hang they stuck their bayonets through and left them to rot in the fields with their guts hanging out. So their advice was to remain low and carry on as if nothing had happened. Carry on as if nothing had happened? No way! The smell of freedom had gone to their heads! The most apathetic turned furious. As for those who were already boiling over like milk in a pan, they went crazy. There was no counting the number of blacks who were whipped or thrown into jail.
Finally, one morning, Monsieur de Linsseuil together with Monsieur Alix, his father, accompanied by the steward holding a big open register and two overseers, assembled all the blacks in the factory yard. He then told them the great news and gave every one of them a name. That’s how Isaumar, my papa, came to be called Saturne. Isaumar Saturne. That’s about all I know of him: his name. And that he wasn’t very black, he was tall, as tall as a coconut tree, with fine hair that he got from some grandfather planter. So as soon as he heard the words A pwézen nég lib, the words of freedom, he rolled his few belongings into a bundle, picked up his guitar and disappeared in the direction of La Pointe. Maman never saw him again with her own two eyes. And yet she was pregnant, on the verge of giving birth. And she had four other children, all of them his. But men are like that, there’s no understanding them. Maman cried her heart out. But she had no choice but to stay where she was on the Belles-Feuilles plantation with my brothers and sisters and me, who arrived before I was due because of all the grief my papa had caused her. Only too pleased because Monsieur de Linsseuil took pity on her and kept her on as laundrywoman. Only too pleased because twice a year, instead of a wage, he bought new clothes for her children. Only too pleased because we always had a slice of breadfruit at midday.
At the age of five I staggered around carrying wood. At seven I was beating the laundry on the rocks of the River Blanche. At ten I was fanning the fire for the cook and stirring the sauces. At eighteen, my knees in soapy water, I was scrubbing the miles of floor in the great house. Then when they noticed I had a calming effect on the children, even the most mischievous among them, they put me in the service of Monsieur Aymeric to take care of little Cathy.
Monsieur Aymeric has been very good to me. He had me taught how to read and write as he does for everyone who works for him. At the beginning of each month he deposits my wages in the bank to see me through my old age. But a master is a master. You can’t love him. Sometimes the hatred I have for him stirs in my stomach and surges up to my mouth, fetid like the spit of a toad. It flows out in fiery abuse like lava from a volcano, as sharp as the blade of a knife. People who hear me are shocked.
“Sandrine, ka ki pasé?” they ask.
An animal is inside me and won’t let go. That’s how one evening I sneaked out with a group of workers on the plantation to listen to Jean-Hilaire Endomius at Petit-Canal. It was the year before the Socialists won almost all the local elections on Grande-Terre, much to the anger of the white Creoles. The meeting was being held in the school run by the monks in a room decorated with the flag of the Republic. There were people everywhere. Those who couldn’t find a place inside were perched in the branches of the mango trees. Posters on the wall shouted slogans that I managed to decipher without too much difficulty, much to my satisfaction. “Education is Our Children’s Future” or else “Forward to Honor, Glory and Wealth like the Others.” Jean-Hilaire Endomius looked like one of those bulls from Puerto Rico that clear the streets and wharves when they lumber down off the boats and gallop tail up, mooing and storming to the slaughterhouse. He was so black he was blue, all dressed in white, which made him look even blacker. It was as if he dressed like that on purpose to show that the time when the black man was ashamed of his color was over. He was surrounded by several men whom you didn’t even notice. All you could see was him, and Razyé sitting on his left with his eyes half-closed. If you asked me what Jean-Hilaire Endomius said exactly, I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that his speech went into my ears and then spread through my body like a guildive rum. I could feel my heart throbbing, my muscles relaxing and my blood rushing. I shouted, stamped my feet and clapped my hands like a young girl. Lord, why must I already be sixty? I shan’t be here to see the sun rise on that new world where finally the blacks shall be the first and the whites the last like the poor and the rich in the
Kingdom of Heaven. Why is it I have to be a woman? There’s no age for a man. If I was a man, I’d be up and following these Socialists. They say they set fire to the cane fields. Well, I would have lit the fires with them. While the room rollicked and roared, Razyé did not say a word. I was told that at political meetings he always behaved like that. He didn’t speak, he didn’t shake hands, he gave no embraces, contemptuously considering all this a waste of time. As a result, women pressed around him like flies around a honeypot. He took his pleasure with them without even looking at them.
I went upstairs to wake my Cathy, whom the death of her little sister had brought home for a few days. When she’s here it’s as if dew was watering the dryness of my heart. That child, who is not of my womb, though I have watched over her since she could only crawl, since she held my hand to stand up, whom I have bathed, combed and coddled, that child is all I possess. I wish her a good life. And yet when I think about it, I see her situation as hopeless. I see her alone, forever alone in life. What boy of her class would ever want to marry her? She’s no longer got a dowry and as a result, she’d never find anybody even in the lower classes to make her his wife. She can only desire those who will never want her.
On the first step of the stairs I bumped into Doctor Vercors coming down, two furrows across his forehead, looking concerned. After having greeted him, I asked him laughingly: “Madame Marie says the master’s sick?”
His sickness is a constant joke. Ever since I’ve worked for the family I’ve always seen Monsieur Aymeric laid out sick for no reason at all. If it’s not a cold that somebody else wouldn’t even notice, he comes over hot and cold without a temperature or a sweat, goes down with the colic or a headache. In the kitchen there’s always a goat-weed or worm-bush tea simmering on the stove.
Doctor Vercors stopped and looked me in the eyes.
“There’s no beating about the bush with you, Sandrine. Get Madame Marie to understand that Monsieur de Linsseuil’s condition is serious.”
“Serious?” I repeated, astonished. “What do you mean by serious?”
“I told him to take precautions,” Doctor Vercors murmured, in an even lower voice. “Apparently he ignored them, and he’s been in prolonged contact with that tubercular boy.”
All in a fluster, I went into Cathy’s room where she was sitting on the bed. She turned her head toward me as I came in and said coldly: “I already know the news. The twins came and woke me up. Justin-Marie is dead.”
“It sounds as if you don’t care at all,” I remarked, opening the curtains.
She too didn’t beat about the bush.
“I hated him,” she declared.
I went and sat down next to her on the bed and began to undo her thick, black hair, damp as the undergrowth, that’s becoming curlier and curlier, even frizzy, as she grows out of puberty.
“What’s he done to you? You never told me,” I asked.
She thought for a moment.
“Everything he did was calculated. He told me I was beautiful and asked to kiss me on the mouth. But it wasn’t me he was looking at. It was my class, my background. While his papa was burning the cane fields of the white Creoles, he was trying to seduce their daughters. That’s all it was. It was even more ludicrous because he only had to take one look at me to see that I’m not a real Linsseuil.”
I was speechless.
“What are you talking about?” I stammered. “Have you gone completely crazy?” She shook herself free and begged me once again: “Tell me about Maman.”
Once again I could find no answer. Besides, what did I know, except the stories and gossip? The one who did know was Lucinda Lucius, who left for the cemetery last year. There was nothing but gossip and rumour. After a long silence, she resumed vehemently, as if angry.
“Well, I’m going to tell you what I know, what I’ve guessed from piecing together your embarrassed looks, your meaningless words and your smothered laughter. She was a mulatto girl as poor as a church mouse who was madly in love with a black boy even poorer than herself. She sacrificed all this love to call herself Madame de . . . to own acres of cane fields, a sugar plantation, a bank account and horses in a stable. I’m not going to reproach her, because she punished herself. It was the death of her. But I don’t want to end up like her. Two or three years more and I shall leave here. This is not my real place. Where? I don’t know yet. But far, far away. Do you hear me Sandrine? Far away.”
Suddenly she started to cry. I took her in my arms. But I felt that from that moment on I could do nothing for her ever again. Nothing. Gone was the time when I could run with an arnica compress every time she had a bruise on her forehead or a scratch on her knee. She was now a grown-up person and life was waiting for her with its load of suffering.
Life’s not a masked ball or a léwòz, you know. Far from it.
After a while she quietened down. Like a child she sniffled, dried her eyes on the sheets, then declared as if she were taking an oath: “I shall never try and find the name of my true papa. It’s not my business. It was my maman’s secret and I respect that. And after all, I don’t want anybody else except the man who has loved me since I was a child.”
“But what makes you think . . .” I protested.
She interrupted me.
“I have two eyes to see what nobody wants to see. Now come and bathe me.”
We went into the washroom without saying another word. The servants had already filled a tub with warm water, and with a bundle of scented leaves I rubbed this body I had known since childhood. It’s true that deep down her color had always surprised me. But I put it down quite simply to her mother’s family. African blood is treacherous. It’s deep-rooted. It circulates in secret, then reappears one day at the moment when you least expect it. Out of the blue, her Bambara ancestress had decided to take her revenge.
“I suppose the wake will be at Razyé’s?” she asked, while I wrapped a towel around her. “Will we have to go to that individual’s?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t think so. It seems your papa is laid out sick.”
She smiled and I didn’t dare worry her further. But I remembered the creases on Doctor Vercors’s forehead. Good Lord, may he be mistaken. Don’t add to the list of our misfortunes!
9
The Farewell Ceremony
Since the body had been transported from Papaye to La Pointe in a torrid heat, it had begun to decompose. On its arrival at the Place de la Victoire the stench was such that Irmine had to give orders to nail down the coffin as quickly as possible. The undertaker had arranged to cut out a glass square in the coffin lid that permitted a last look at a face that was seriously decomposing. Blisters were swelling on his forehead, his lips seemed swollen and his eyeballs seethed with a thousand shapes of emerging life.
Lilies drooped their heads in bottles wrapped in colored paper. A few white roses were strewn over the funeral couch, and Irmine had brought down her picture of the Infant of Prague. Apart from her, Hosannah, the children, and two or three neighbors who came to pay their respects for a few minutes out of pure politeness, nobody attended the wake. Even the vultures, the name given to those who adored death, its smell of candles and De Profundis, were conspicuous by their absence. It was better that way. For Razyé, who was always such a miser, had agreed only to a third-class funeral without organ, harmonium or choir, and had refused to pay one cent more. In his words, Justin-Marie had betrayed them. You’d think he’d gone and died at the Linsseuils’ on purpose.
Curiously enough, Irmine wasn’t far from thinking the same, but she couldn’t bring herself to let a boy whom she had cherished leave without a glass of rum, a bowl of thick soup or even a vegetable broth. So she felt obliged to accept Hosannah’s offer and borrow from her meagre savings, a humiliation that added to her grief. She stood in her patched dress, head down and hands joined, her hair combed any old how, her bo
dy deformed by her recent pregnancy, and it looked as though it wouldn’t be long before she was under the earth herself. As for the children, especially the youngest, they had that self-conscious behavior those of their age adopt in the presence of death. Although frightened, they couldn’t help giggling at a shadow, at a large cricket sizzling its wings in the candle or a lizard wriggling and drawing its knife as it perched on the coffin.
Only Razyé II, looking down from his fifteen years, had an expression appropriate for the circumstances. He held the open Bible level with his face and in a deep voice recited the Psalms that Hosannah drawled after him. He did not read very well, for his education was far from over when his father’s miserliness had taken him out of school and apprenticed him to a blacksmith in Les Abymes. It had condemned him to wearing a pair of trousers and shirt in coarse blue drill like the ones worn by country folk—too short, too tight and so worn out by constant washing you could see through them. Yet his strength and beauty burst out from his clothes like the sun breaking through grey clouds. He was not really sad, for he had never liked Justin-Marie very much. It was not simply a mundane question of rivalry between brothers of the same age. It went deeper than that. He resented this orphan, taken in out of charity, for having claimed all of Irmine’s affection as well as everything Razyé seemed capable of feeling as a father. But now that Justin-Marie was leaving them after such a short, unfulfilled stay on this earth, he realized that love and hatred are never far from each other and one can even be mistaken for the other. Moreover, since he was alive and the other dead, cramped in a coffin, he was avenged and felt ready to forgive him for all the snubs inflicted on him. He, on the other hand, had come on earth to stay—hot-blooded, thick-haired, heart throbbing and his member erect. The other week, because of his handsome face, a prostitute on the Mome-à-Cayes had taken his virginity free of charge and he had felt like God Almighty. So there were moments, despite the sadness of the occasion, when his voice resounded triumphant and Irmine in her grief looked up at him. Her feelings for Razyé II were not easy to decipher. He was her first son. He looked too much like his father for her heart to mistake one for the other. She never knew whether she felt like insulting him or embracing him, rejecting him or holding him in her arms. She was constantly aware of his growing virility. Watching him grow up, as strong as a tree, she imagined that one day or another he would end up making love, and that tormented her no end. In short, for many reasons, she was always impatient with him and had a firm hand.
