Windward Heights

by Maryse Conde

  It was a few years later, at the age of eighteen, when I performed what people called my first miracle. In the village of Goyave. I had continued my initiation with Désiré Pulcherie, the man with three balls, and I had started to acquire a name for myself. They came to fetch me in the middle of the night. Pitch dark. Not a single star in the sky. Dogs howling everywhere. You could feel the spirits flying above the white rayo in flower. To say the woman was sick was an understatement. Death was already clutching her throat and nobody could mistake the rattle she made. The wretched white doctor had given her an injection of camphor oil in her left buttock and fled without even asking for payment. When I placed my hand on her forehead it was already cold. Quite casually, I started to parley with death who was filing her claws near the window.

  “Now let’s have a little talk, you and me! You win every time. Nobody ends up alive. So can’t you wait just a little bit longer? Come back in a few months or even a few years? Her youngest son is only two. She’s still feeding him. For pity’s sake.”

  For some reason the bitch listened to me and buggered off elsewhere. The blood returned to the woman’s cheeks. Her face trembled, warm and pliant under my fingers. Her man kissed both my hands.

  When I had reached the peak of my reputation, Razyé came to see me. Like everyone else in Guadeloupe, I had heard he was like a hurricane and an earthquake combined and worse than both of them put together. I knew that he had gone through every gadézaft and kimbwazé on the island like a rider exhausting his mount. But he had the same obsession as me. Despite all I knew, I never stopped asking myself questions. How long does the passage of Death last? What is the space that separates two reincarnations? Why is it that we always come up against a threshold? Can we meet again those who have walked away from us and can they come back and remain with us? I could only catch a fleeting glimpse of Delia, the wife I lost, like the tail of Halley’s Comet in the sky. I have never been able to hold her in my arms, even less make love to her. Every time I’ve tried to touch her, she has escaped me. And that’s why I took Razyé’s money and worked tirelessly for him with so little result. The people who say I stole it are liars.

  That evening, when I saw him arrive, I knew what was bringing him. But once again I had no answer for him. At a loss, I had consulted other seers who had all shaken their heads in a quandary. I tested the realm of probability, calculated the hours of birth and death. The fact that Aquarius and Pisces crossed in the sky at equidistant angles opened up a host of possibilities. I didn’t know what to conclude. Was one the same as the other? Was the other the same as one?

  I was about to give Razyé a good shot of rum to sweeten the pill when I noticed that he had had enough to drink. His eyes were small and red like two hog plums. His breath smelled of bile. So I had him sit down under the picture of Petro, with his three necklaces, next to three lighted candles, one above the other, and sheepishly, I confessed my ignorance.

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell you whether it’s her or isn’t her come back to drink the waters of wretchedness on our earth.”

  Without a word, he got up and disappeared into the night.

  I never saw him again.

  Part Three

  Marie-Galante

  1

  O! Island in the Sun

  Situated about twenty miles from La Pointe, the island of Marie-Galante, christened thus by the Genoan with the name of one of his three caravels, was first nothing but the haunt of giant lizards who during the day lazed in the sun and once night had fallen, crept down into the clayey hollows. The Amerindians used it to grow crops but never stayed long, just long enough for a season of howing, sowing and harvesting. Once this was over they quickly returned to Guadeloupe in their outriggers hollowed from the trunks of trees. You can still find mixed in with the sand and soil a host of ploughing instruments, pestles, mortars, flints, axes and whetstones. For a long time the history of Marie-Galante could be summed up as a series of killings and massacres by the Carib Indians, attacks by the English and revolts by the slaves together with all kinds of natural disasters—hurricanes, earthquakes and fires—reducing man’s efforts to nothing. On this piece of limestone, as flat as your hand, shakily secured to a volcanic platform, criss-crossed with faults and gashes, edged by steep cliffs, many nationalities have clashed, from the French and the British to the Dutch hounded out of Brazil. But all of them linked hands to enslave the African and grow rich at the expense of his sweat in the fields of indigo, cotton, coffee and tobacco. For sugarcane was a latecomer to Marie-Galante.

  In 19-, at the time when our story takes place, Marie-Galante began to merit the name it has been known by ever since: “the island that’s dying.”

  One or two miles from Saint-Louis, behind the Massicot mill, on the land of an abandoned great house, the Republic had installed a one-room schoolhouse where reading, writing and arithmetic were taught together with a little French history and geography. For a number of years no child had crossed its threshold and nobody could remember when the last teacher, a former student of the Ploermel Brothers, had left on a boat for La Pointe with no hope of return. Everything was in a state of neglect.

  Between the great, cracked limestone flags in the old playground, yuccas with their clusters of white flowers, prickly pears and columnar cacti grew undisturbed as tall as a man over the top of the razyé scrub and the Dominican acacias that had quickly become a scourge for the planters. This state of affairs had come about because the region bristled with charcoal ovens and when they were not at sea or in the cane fields, the inhabitants of Saint-Louis had only their precious logwood in mind. A cart of seven hundred kilos of logwood could produce up to six or seven bags of charcoal that were loaded onto the barges in Saint-Louis or the creeks of Vieux-Fort and sold at a high price in all the markets of Grande-Terre. In a time of sugar crisis, it was at least a way of making a living.

  So it came as something of a surprise when, as the last clouds of the rainy season scurried over to Dominica, the people of Saint-Louis heard it noised about that the school was to reopen its doors after such a long time, and that all the children of school age were to be enrolled or else the gendarmes would come knocking at their door. The thought of having to cut out shirts and trousers from jute­ flour bags and above all of doing without the help of their offspring during the cane harvest did not exactly please the parents. So they scowled at a group of workers from the town hall who were busy whitewashing the three-room, wattle cabin, pompously called “the schoolmaster’s house,” and scrubbing and filling the jar for rainwater that leaned up against one wall.

  On the morning of 28 September, exactly four days before classes were to begin, an ox cart drew up in front of the schoolmaster’s place, driven by a fellow from Grand-Bourg nicknamed Romero, because of his female conquests, and out stepped a slim young girl all dressed in black, carrying a kind of cage housing a cat whose fur was as black as her clothes. (It was Romero who took charge of her two heavy wicker baskets.) A young girl! Could she be the schoolteacher? Since when were girls capable of reading and writing and teaching children? The inhabitants of Saint-Louis would not have been more flabbergasted if they had seen Lucifer himself settle down among them. A few hours after she arrived in the village, the young girl wedged a conch shell in her door and went into Ma Tétéche’s shop to introduce herself and ask gracefully if there was someone to cook her meals and do her washing, since she could do neither. She tried to speak Creole, but those present could hear it was not her mother tongue and that it was proper French that was used to coming out of her mouth and was desperately trying to gain the upper hand. Ma Tétéche looked her up and down. What sort of a girl was this? A girl who could neither cook nor wash. Where did she come from? Who had brought her up?

  She was very, very young, they remarked, not too light­ skinned, but just a little too pretty, with a mass of unruly black hair brushed into a chignon. Around her neck hung a locket on a black v
elvet ribbon. Those who could read were able to decipher the initials C.L. intertwined, with a small “de” between them. Once Ma Tétéche had grudgingly given her the name of a certain Romaine who was looking to hire her services to feed the illegitimate child she had brought back from La Pointe, she set off without wasting any more time. The two women must have come to an agreement, for shortly afterward they could be seen crossing the village again, one behind the other in the direction of the market. Good Lord, a nice pair they made! One fruit already fallen and the other not far behind!

  During the days that followed, everyone was dying to ask Romaine about her new mistress. But she kept mum and did not breathe a word. Nobody even knew the name of the baby’s father. So they spied.

  They did not see very much.

  The young girl hardly left home. At most she appeared at the door to call her cat: “Minou, Minou,” when it strayed a little too far into the razyé undergrowth, tail in the air. Or else she came out to water a clump of hibiscus and a red rosebush she had planted on the left and right side of her front door. Sometimes, but not very often, she walked as far as the old Desmarais factory and stared at the ruins, as if they brought back memories. Every evening she left her candle burning until late into the night and, remarking on the glow behind her shutters, the night owls wondered what she could be up to. On the third day Romaine put out her first wash to dry and what pretty undergarments she proudly hung on the line! Scalloped, lace pantalets and petticoats, the likes of which had never been seen on Marie-Galante! Embroidered camisoles and loose blouses! Fine cambric handkerchiefs! In short, a whole wash that smelled very much of a noble birth! General curiosity was at its height. Where did this girl come from? What was her name?

  The day before classes were due to begin, she instructed Romaine to sweep the school, dust the benches and desks while she hung pictures on the walls. First of all, there was a lovely lithograph by Evremond de Berard depicting an old sugar plantation and its windmill. In the foreground, the pond and the vats, a big heap of cane trash, and the gutter for the molasses. In the background, the mill and the black shack alleys. In the second picture men and women were working in a cane field. A woman was bending over to tie up a sheaf and the ends of her headtie reached down to her neck like two wings. Finally, in the third picture, a girl and two boys were stripping stalks of sugarcane with their teeth. The next morning, dressed and ready at seven, the new schoolmistress was standing at the door to greet her pupils. She separated them, lining up on her right the youngest with tearful eyes on their first day at school, and on her left those who were already droning into their reading books. At noon, both groups went home starry­-eyed and told their inquisitive parents her name was Mademoiselle Cathy.

  Cathy could never get over the death of Aymeric.

  She could hear his voice. He was always in her thoughts. She saw him at every moment of the day. It was as if a painted canvas was being waved by invisible hands in front of her eyes. Her heart, a stranger to ill-feeling, hardened with hatred when she thought of Justin-Marie who had contaminated him with his sickness, and of Razyé, who had ruined him, then cast a shadow over his last days.

  Everything had happened so quickly.

  In October he had felt too weak to face up to his responsibilities and no longer left his bed. In November he had experienced his first haemorrhage, bleeding through the mouth and nostrils. In December he was dead. Like a saint, asking forgiveness from his children and praying. The sickness had melted the flesh off his bones and he was thinner than a young boy. In a way he had found his youth again. He had asked to be buried beside his Cathy in the tomb that stood on the headland at l’Engoulvent. But Marie, who had always respected his wishes, had rebelled for the first time. To her mind, this unjust request erased the twelve years they had lived together, especially during his sickness when she had watched over him and taken care of him with unselfish devotion. So she had refused to grant him his wish, and Aymeric had been laid to rest in the Linsseuil vault in Petit-Canal, beside his father, his mother and his grandparents. The ceremony had been simple and moving and the choir of pupils from the Catholic school of Saint-Joseph de Cluny had sung the Requiem aeternam, the Dies Irae, the Lacrimosa and the Pie Jesu from the Requiem by Dvořák, a Czech composer whom Aymeric adored and listened to over and over again on his gramophone. The day after the funeral, the tears had not yet dried on the family’s cheeks when the notary informed them that Aymeric had left virtually nothing in his will. Honest and conscientious, he had sold the Dargent factory as well as almost all his estate in order to pay off his debts and provide a pension for his workers and house servants. All he had managed to save was the great house, minus the land, like an island in the middle of its park. While the Linsseuils procrastinated, appalled by this sudden encounter with poverty, Cathy quickly made up her mind. In a way, her father’s death gave her the chance to achieve what she really wanted. While he was alive she would never have had the courage to break his heart and leave Belles-Feuilles to lead the life she desired. As for the other members of the clan, she was liberating them; she was relieving them of the burden of her presence, for, except for the twins, nobody knew exactly how to treat her, especially now that puberty had darkened her skin unacceptably. The family was constantly in a quandary, divided between the remnants of their affection and the horror she represented.

  For some years a teachers’ school for young women had been annexed to the girls’ college in La Pointe. Thanks to the Linsseuils’ connections, she had obtained a scholarship from the local authorities. Then, without too many regrets, she had kissed mabo Sandrine, her little brothers and sisters, especially her goddaughter, Elodie, goodbye and spent two years behind barred windows learning how to teach French, History, Geography, Mathematics, Science and how to sing to keep up your spirits.

  En avant, jeunes filles, Aux demiéres bastilles!

  II y a trop longtemps que les hommes

  Occupent les premiers rangs.

  Nous voulons prouver que nous sommes

  Les égales de ces tyrans.4

  Saint-Louis on Marie-Galante was her first position, and she was not unhappy to see the sea unfurl behind her to separate her completely from her life as a spoilt child. Her older brothers, Déodat and Isidore, had nevertheless accompanied her to the boat. They both bore a grudge against Aymeric. They criticized him for not having stood up enough to Razyé and the Socialists, and in the end caring more about his negroes than his own children. He had guaranteed a pension for his workers. Bravo! But what about his sons, now that they didn’t have a cent to their name? They had no inclination to study for years and years to become civil servants. So what was left? Marry some richly endowed mulatto girl, prepared to do anything to whiten her blood? Many of the white Creoles were now indulging in that little game, and the priests working as go-betweens had their surplices full of the right addresses. Listening to them whine and wail, Cathy believed that girls have more self-esteem and endure better the whims of fortune.

  Yet Cathy thought she was braver than she was, she who had never really seen the face of poverty. When, after an endless crossing, she landed on this scorching hot, rocky plateau, she couldn’t believe her eyes. The island was recovering from a killer cholera epidemic while a plague of swine fever was raging through the pig population. Men, women and children were covering their scrawny bodies as best they could with rags made of jute or, for the luckier ones, canvas flour sacks. The markets were empty except for piles of charcoal, weevilled cassava flour and Congo peas as hard as stones. Razyé, who was a regular visitor to the island, had left a wake of mischief. Because of him, gangs of thugs, drunk on alcohol, had plundered the plantations. Many of the white Creoles had been scared into selling their land to the Crédit Fonder. Since the three factories that had replaced the sugar houses were constantly disrupted by strikes and social unrest, their owners threatened to close them down and leave for France, which would have put a good many h
eads of family out of work. In short, poverty loomed up everywhere: in the feverish eyes of the children, in the emaciated cheeks of the mothers and in the toothless gums of the fathers. With their little lice­-infested, scabby heads leaning on their wooden desks the children slept, mouths open. They slept from hunger and only awoke if a juicy piece of meat came within reach in their dreams. Their arms and legs, as spindly as guava twigs, swelled up with boils and carbuncles that burst in a foul-smelling pus. Cathy was not the daughter of Aymeric de Linsseuil for nothing. She had spent her entire childhood amidst the odor of charity and good deeds. First of all she thought of setting up an infirmary like the one at Belles-Feuilles and healing all this suffering with tincture of arnica, methylene blue or a glass of milk. Then she quickly realized that it would take more than her entire pay. Despite the mighty declarations from the local authorities who praised them for being “soldiers of progress, distributing the bread of intelligence,” the primary schoolteachers of Guadeloupe were paid a pittance. They had been waiting for years for the wage increase voted by the colonial authorities. So she decided to use another remedy that this time would cost nothing. Since she could not fill the bellies of her pupils with food, she would fill their ears with words of affection and their hearts with love.