by Maryse Conde
Part Five
Guadeloupe
1
Return to My Native Land
To be back in your home town after a long absence. To be back in the places you played, bowled a hoop, rolled marbles in the storm channel. To be back in the streets you roamed coming home from school with a satchel strapped to your back. The place where a bully punched you in the ribs. Leaving behind the harbor lamps, First-Born walked along the wharf in La Pointe beneath the shiny-leaved Indian almond trees. At such a late hour the warehouse shutters were lowered. Everywhere was deserted. Only the reek of salt-fish crept along the pavements. Only the rats squealed and feasted on the piles of rubbish that stood guard at every crossroad. Intrepid cats came to taunt them and there were some unholy fights, some unholy war cries in the dark. Drifting over from the Saint-Antoine market, just two or three streets away, was the smell of rotting vegetables that he breathed in like a perfume, the scent of his long lost island. Owing to the squalls, the Elizabeth Regina had arrived late. It only bumped against the wharf in La Pointe at around two in the morning. The passengers, whom nobody was waiting to greet any longer, had jostled for the rare tilburies that were still hanging around. The less fortunate who were on foot set off at a quick pace, squinting fearfully into the night, for La Pointe had recently become a lair of brigands. The front pages of the newspapers were full of stories of robberies committed at all hours—sometimes even in broad daylight—by bands of blacks deserting the plantations. As usual, the police kept their arms folded. Only First-Born strolled along as if he were afraid of nothing and had all the time in the world. For him, to be back in La Pointe was nothing short of magic. All at once, fear had flown, the memory of Cathy weighed a little less on his conscience and he felt more refreshed than he had for three years. He felt like waking Anthuria, who had fallen asleep again, and whispering, “Look! Look! We’re home!”
Instead of branching off toward the Darse and the Place de la Victoire, he plunged into the labyrinth of shop-lined streets, as silent and black as an oven. He wanted to yell at all those asleep behind their heavy wooden doors and lowered shutters that he was back, and he should be fêted like a prodigal son. He arrived in front of the cathedral of Saint Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, at anchor in the square. The great double wooden doors were closed. But he could hear the rustling of the bats nesting in the eyes of the stone saints. What a pity he had never been to church! He remembered having slipped in sometimes to spit in the font. It was a great cause of grief for Cathy that he had never made his First Communion or been confirmed, and didn’t know a single word of the prayers. In the early days he took delight poking fun at her, with inflammatory talk against the Good Lord whom he held responsible for the enslavement of the black man, the arrogance of the white Creoles and for all of life’s misfortunes. But she cried so much he had stopped his games. Yes, deep down she had remained the daughter of Aymeric de Linsseuil, born and bred on the Belles-Feuilles estate. She thought she had broken with her class, whereas in fact it was ingrained deep inside her. He remembered there was a juicy mango tree that grew in the garden of the presbytery. How many plans he and his brothers had concocted to lay their hands on the mangoes and fill their half empty bellies! Alas, they had never managed to outwit the priests, who kept watch while walking in the yard and pretending to read their Bibles. He went up to the iron gate, reliving the cravings of his childhood. It was then, looming up behind his back, that a carriage as sinister as a hearse lurched level with him. Not a sound came from the hoofs of the horse as it trotted, head lowered, its nostrils snorting over the cobblestones. The reins hung loosely from the hands of the coachman, who sat motionless, apparently in a deep sleep. The man and beast passed by and were silently swallowed up by the night under the sandbox trees. He stood transfixed, then was gripped by a superstitious fear. He had just encountered the horse of death. Lan-mo. It was her. Death had snatched his Cathy from him. What else did she want from him? Years had gone by since he had news of his family. Was he going to find them as he left them? Was his maman alive? Or had she died from Razyé’s abuse and blows? He had not forgotten how worn out, pale and shattered she looked when he left. He clasped Anthuria closer to him and began to run. His footsteps echoed in the silence and sent cats, dogs and vermin scattering.
It came as a shock, for first of all he did not recognize the house on the Place de la Victoire and wondered if his eyes were not playing tricks on him. An architect, who had spared no cost, had transformed the dilapidated construction where he had revelled in his childhood games. He had replaced its lovable weatherbeaten wood with rectangular stones. He had driven a straight line of French windows through the ground floor. He had made it taller, adding a second floor girded by a pretentious balustraded gallery. In a final flourish he had topped it with a juvenile roof of pink tiles. Its color, too, had been changed. An off-white paint, with a matching green on the frieze and the door and window casements, was daubed all over it from top to bottom. In the yard where he used to fly his kite with Gengis there was a profusion of plants. A vine and a passion fruit twined over an arbour around a blue-tiled, ornamental pool. Cleaned and restored, the house looked like an old woman who wanted to make herself look young.
The first thing that occurred to First-Born was that his parents had sold it and moved. He had already started to walk away, without knowing exactly where to go, when a doubt made him turn back. His hand rang the bell and very quickly a light went on in a window on the first floor as if someone had been waiting for that sound night after night to jump out of bed and run to the front door. In a moment Irmine and Hosannah appeared in the yard, the latter holding a lighted torch above her head.
He believed his father to be indestructible, carved out of an ironwood that was imperishable. And now he was gone. He felt an immense void deep inside and realized that his only reason for coming home had been to find him. Throughout his life he had measured himself against his father’s contempt. The fear of him and sometimes the idea of hating him had fashioned his inner self. To his surprise, he found himself dry-eyed. Perhaps Cathy had carried off all his tears. He turned to face his mother, amazed that she could have survived him, so exhausted it was obvious she wouldn’t last much longer. Without sparing him any detail, she had described the wake and the funeral: It was, he suspected, her way of reproaching him. He, her first son, had left her all alone at such a time. Did he realize that for three years she had not known what sleep meant? She lay, eyes wide open, under her mosquito net and imagined all the traps he might have fallen into. In her dreams she saw him dead, with no one to watch over him, and woke up with a start, wracked with grief. He was the reason she had started praying to God again, making novenas and pilgrimages, attending vespers and saying her rosary. At last her tears dried on her cheeks. Amid much excitement she gave him news of the family. His brothers attended a Jesuit school in Bordeaux. Cassandre was at the nuns’ boarding school in Versailles. She had played the piano for the governor and kissed the hand of His Grace the Bishop.
All this convinced him that there was no place for him in the life she was building for herself. He was too old to go back and wear his trousers out on a school bench, too set in his ways to learn a trade and not naive enough to pretend he could start his life over again. He was not more than twenty and yet he was already older than an old bag of bones.
“If your father could see this,” she concluded, all excited. “He would be so happy. Everything I do is for him.”
Would he be happy? She had already disguised him as a model father, fussing over his offspring. He who had been nothing but indifferent and savage. First-Born could not understand what he was feeling. Poor Irmine exasperated him. She appeared insignificant and petty to him. He could not help asking her reproachfully: “Why have you turned the house inside out?”
She launched into an endless explanation of which he didn’t understand a word. Suddenly she stopped and cried:
“But what about
you? Tell me about yourself!”
Himself? What was there to say? Nothing. Three times nothing. No fortune gained. No marvellous discovery. No new lands opened up. He was no conquistador, no Herman Cortes offering Mexico to the king of Spain. But she didn’t wait for his answer and pointed to Anthuria, still snuggled in his arms.
“Who is her maman?”
Something told him to lie. He felt he should be careful not to mention Cathy’s name.
“It’s a woman,” he merely murmured, vaguely. “An English woman I met in Roseau. She died, unfortunately, giving birth.”
Irmine put on an appropriate expression and parted the wraps around the infant. Suddenly she started to cry.
“It’s his very image!” she stammered.
First-Born looked at his daughter’s brown cheeks and was amazed. He had always thought Anthuria was the picture of Cathy.
“Give her to me,” she begged.
He obeyed reluctantly and she began to devour the child with kisses.
So Razyé was dead and the island was going cold-heartedly about its business. The Socialists clung on to the municipality of La Pointe and won the major towns. They also held the General Council. But the lot of the black folks was no sweeter. The cane fields continued to go up in flames. The Lebanese hawkers were now making a fortune. Italians off the steamships were chiselling jewels at the back of their shops and the Indians were demanding the right to vote.
Good Lord! What next?
First-Born stared at the ceiling.
Beneath him the sheets were as soft as the mattress. Like the rest of the house, the bedroom had been entirely redone. The walls were painted pale green. Above a six-drawer mahogany chest there was a watercolor of La Darse and the Place de la Victoire. The golden trunks of the sandbox trees stood out against the blue of the sea where boats with white sails raced. Children and dogs ran along the paths bordered with flowers, while in the foreground two lovers were walking arm in arm. Antimacassars festooned with lace were draped over the backs of two rocking chairs. A cupid held up the pink globe of the lamp he had left alight. This sugary decor sickened him.
“I cannot stay here,” he said out loud.
He had not been able to stop Hosannah and Irmine competing with each other for Anthuria, and Irmine, considering herself more entitled than her rival, had laid the child to sleep in a cradle next to the head of her bed. It was the first night he had slept away from his daughter and he felt dispossessed. He resented the two women plotting like two old wives, reducing him to a male role and hence a nonentity. Hosannah and Irmine had prattled on about blouses to be embroidered, bootees to be knitted, arrowroot pap and rice water to be perfumed with orange blossom. Even more serious, they had plotted to take Anthuria to see Father Angebert to get his blessing before the christening ceremony.
First-Born sat on the bed and looked around him, as frightened as if a hurricane were approaching.
He had taken the decision to return home for Anthuria’s sake, and now it was proving to be a bad one and the return had all the makings of a catastrophe. He realized he was much more like his father than he had ever imagined and that now he was gone, he could not put up with the rest of the family. It had become the same as any other. The house he had grown up in had changed beyond recognition. His mother was a stranger to him—even Hosannah. They had woken up Fréda in the middle of the night for him to kiss, and he had not recognized his little sister with her round face and simpering ways, wrapped in a night dress with a lace front. He stood up, got his feet caught in the carpet, stumbled against a stray pouffe and had the feeling he was suffocating.
Where could he flee this time?
On opening the window to get some fresh air, he clearly saw his father’s face outlined against the black painted canvas of the night. Razyé’s expression was the same as it always was: hard and sombre, transformed by the hint of a smile that seemed to be scoffing at him: “My poor unfortunate boy. Is this why you came home? What are you going to do now? If I have any advice to give you, it’s to go back where you came from. Or go somewhere else. As quickly as you can. From where I am, I can see what sort of a life is in store for you, mapped out for you in advance, and I can see you turning into a bourgeois complete with gaiters and a paunch. Soon they’ll find you a girl to wed, white enough to lighten the race, and the sins of your youth will be forgotten . . . Is that what you want?”
2
Return to l’Engoulvent
For years, people in the area hastened their step or made a great detour so as not to be in the vicinity of the graveyard at l’Engoulvent when night fell. Those who lingered in the neighborhood at that hour told of unnatural occurrences. In an instant the sky would darken as if a storm were approaching, while shadowy shapes slithered along the ground. At the same time cries and wails, as persistent and delicate as those of babies, rose up on one side, while opposite there were the bass tones of a man’s voice lamenting and yelling lewd words. Some people claimed to have seen silhouettes in a strange light as bright as day wandering side by side, passing each other, blindly searching for one another. A sad and frightening sight! No doubt the corner was inhabited by spirits for whom “eternal rest” was far from meaning “peace,” and who might very well turn their anger on the living. It was therefore with great surprise they learned that Razyé’s boy—after so many years abroad—had returned to such a place to live. And with a small child into the bargain! People said the boy must be cracked in the head. It ran in the family. But since jobs had become as rare as gold nuggets in the riverbeds, a number of former plantation workers, tired of letting their cutlasses and hoes go to rust, went over and offered their services to First-Born. Like Justin Gagneur before him, he had them clear the tangle of scrub and thornbushes that covered the savanna around the house and plant it with vegetables. He also hired a woman to do the cooking, a woman as black as night called Graziella, who didn’t know what Sundays and holidays were and sang from morning to night like God’s nightingale as she banged her pots and pans.
Was it out of miserliness that First-Born didn’t touch a thing at l’Engoulvent, so sorely in need of attention after all the years it had remained uninhabited, soaking up the sun and the rain? The walls remained cracked, the roof infested with bats and rats, and the beams gnawed away by termites. As for the iguanas, they continued to sleep in the yard in their scaly sheaths. First-Born chose for himself Justin Gagneur’s old bedroom that looked out over the savanna, at the trees flattened by the fury of the wind and beyond the cliffs, the ocean that dashed to the four corners of the horizon, tucking up its muslin petticoat. The workers who toiled to make tomatoes, lettuce and carrots sprout from the stony soil quickly saw that every minute of First-Born’s life was devoted to his daughter. He bathed her, powdered her, doted on and coddled her, and himself cooked her sweet potato and arrowroot pap. He placed her cradle in his bedroom and while she slept serene and radiant on her pillow, he would place his ear to her chest every five minutes to see whether she was still breathing. Shortly before dusk he would take her in his arms and walk with her to the edge of the cliff. The child looked straight out to sea, and without batting an eyelid, watched the soaring birds. Sometimes she uttered cries inviting them to play with her. Then she closed her eyes and, nostrils flaring like a grown up’s, she breathed in the scent of the breeze as it blew back to earth. When darkness started to fall, First-Born slowly walked back to the house where Graziella was waiting for them, singing in front of a great bath of leaves and water warmed by the sun.
No visitor crossed the threshold of l’Engoulvent. Except for Irmine. Every Saturday morning, the day had scarcely time to slip on its light when she climbed down from her tilbury. The first few times she did not come alone. She had Fréda or Cassandre, when she was home from school, accompany her. The sulky looks of disdain the two girls cast around them indicated that they had not come of their own free will. Soon, under one pretext or
another, their visits were few and far between and then stopped altogether. After having handed Graziella the baskets lovingly filled with all sorts of victuals by Hosannah, Irmine swooped down on Anthuria in order to examine her every aspect. She sharply criticized the way First-Born and Graziella were looking after her. Were they powdering her with moussache flour from cassava to give her a lovely skin? Were they smoothing her hair with palma-christi oil? When she finished her inspection, she headed for the graveyard. She spent hours and hours there, without drinking or eating, as if her body no longer counted, praying, crying, daydreaming, planting lilies or trumpet flowers in pots, changing the water in the flower vases, scraping the wax with the point of a knife, fixing the candles in their holders and rethreading the pearls on the crosses and wreaths. All this time she spoke out loud and rambled on monotonously to an invisible listener about the routine of her days.
First-Born never accompanied his mother to the graveyard. Once, when she wanted to take the child there, he had gone into a fit of rage. It was as if something there frightened him. The letters intertwined in stone—cathy de linsseuil—razyé—had given him the proof he had been looking for. So the bad-mouthers hadn’t just bad-mouthed. And the bad-talkers hadn’t just bad-talked. He had guessed rightly. This reunion in death proved it: Cathy de Linsseuil and Razyé had loved each other. First-Born had once been furious at what the power of money and the vanity of women could do, and time and again approved his father’s vengeance. Oh yes, he had been right to put Guadeloupe to fire and the sword. Then one night, while he was listening to Anthuria sleep, with the window open on a sullen crescent moon, a thought had slipped into his heart. Razyé—Cathy de Linsseuil. Cathy de Linsseuil—Razyé. Who would ever know the truth behind this sombre love story? Who would know the fruit it had borne?
