“Five hundred dollars!… I forbid you to return there.”
“I have to.”
“What does that mean?”
“That I’m old enough to stand up for myself.”
“Alas, my poor pumpkin! They’ll devour you before you can say how do you do.”
“I’m not afraid of them.”
“You talk like a child.”
“I’ll ask Paul to wait for me outside.”
“And if you take your time coming out?”
“He will come get me.”
“So they can tear him to pieces? Rose, you’re smart enough and you’ve seen enough to understand…”
“But, Mama, what is it that you want?” the young woman cried out with impatience. “That we fold our arms and wait to get old and die like you?”
Her mother closed her eyes and bit her lips before answering.
“You really think I feel that old and close to death?”
“Look, how should I know? Forty-year-old women put up with everything! But us young girls, we have to have our say, we have to fight even if it’s over nothing. Maybe that’s because we still have our strength, because life hasn’t yet knocked us around. Even though we know that life isn’t all peaches, we want to struggle with it, see where it will take us, just to test our strength. Do you understand?”
“I was young too once. I beg you, my little girl, think twice about what you’re about to do.”
“Don’t try to frighten me, Mama, don’t do that.” She threw her book on the bed and got up.
“Don’t you feel like it has to be done? For Paul, if only for Paul.”
“Don’t go, Rose, don’t go…”
With these words she ran away, and Rose heard the door to her room close behind her.
She sat on the bed, eyes fixed in front of her. Her senses were recording every sound as faithfully as a tape recorder. From beyond the other side of the stakes, she could hear the men in black talking and walking around, and she shuddered in horror at the memory of the Gorilla whose hairy hand had touched her knee. If he ever touches me, I’ll die, she told herself.
When, at lunchtime, a truck dumped its first load of stones with a crash under the trees in the garden, they rushed to the dining room window. Under the watchful eye of the men in black uniform, twenty beggars dressed like convicts in striped shirts were digging around the stakes with picks, while twenty others mixed mortar.
“They are building a wall to cut us off from the land,” the father said calmly.
Paul, who in the past two days had only left the house to buy cigarettes, grew pale and bravely plunged back into his book as if he wanted to break all connection between himself and the noises outside that seemed to grow more intense minute by minute. The invalid asked to be brought to the window and stared at the trees with his strange, precocious and burning eyes:
“We’ll still see the oaks, wall or no,” he cried out. “It’ll never be as tall, never.”
Interrupting his reading, Paul looked at the invalid, his brow wrinkled as he considered a thought that this childish statement had randomly inspired in him. How difficult it is to escape, no matter how hard one tries, he thought. The noises outside entered into me, as did the voices of the grandfather and the child. They pursue me in my sleep and torture me. Now I know that, just like human beings, things have their own lives. Despite the screen that my will has imposed, I hear the noises of the picks and trowels, the heavy pounding of the stones. They ring in my brain, relentlessly. I have to get away from here, make myself forget for a moment. Neither Papa nor Rose will be able to accomplish anything. They can fool themselves all they want. Why was Rose crying? It’s the first time I’ve seen her like that. What is she up to? What about Grandfather? Why is he always whispering to the child? We have split up into two factions. And maybe Mama and I are in a third without realizing it. Is this what it means to take courage? To live. To go on living. When life, from birth until death, is nothing but fraud! No, the cheating doesn’t start until later! From earliest childhood, pure and carefree, until death. That’s why, despite his whims and moods, Claude has never known childhood. And Grandfather, who has found a friend in him, doesn’t know why he loves him. Why did they come on our land? Why this punishment? Why this curse? Is it to force us to take stock of our cowardice that life tests us? Or, rather, is it to help us find ourselves? I have to stop thinking about them and come out of my state of prostration. Otherwise, I’ll become sick. See Fred again. Don’t take no for an answer, get back on the team, find a girl ‘willing to love me. That’s it, love, love! Yes, but which girl? Anna, Dr. Valois’ daughter. Beautiful, wise, intelligent. Is it possible for so many qualities to be gathered in one woman? Rose? A big question mark for me lately. She carries on like I don’t know what. If I get to know Anna, won’t I find that she crumbles under my very eyes like the others? So narrow-minded of me! I’m just like Grandfather and he doesn’t even know it… Can’t listen to any of this anymore. Got to get away! Forget! Forget!
The sentences coming out of him displaced those scrolling under his eyes in the book. From the window, the mother watched the wall go up. She had undone the top of her blouse and was breathing with difficulty. She remembered that one morning she had noticed a bird perched on her window. The presence of the man sleeping deeply at her side as she counted the hours from dusk to dawn reinforced her feeling of loneliness. And the bird had suddenly popped up as if answering her call. It stared at her with its round eyes and tilted its head to the right and then to the left as if mocking her. He has something to tell me, she had thought childishly. He came all the way here to show me what freedom is. For a good minute or so they had stood there looking at each other, each of them absolutely still. Then the bird twittered and flew off on swift wings trilling its happy song. Alone again, she had invented touchingly naïve myths to console herself: a leaf whirling in the wind, a butterfly whether black or alive with color, the hooting of an owl or the graceful song of a nightingale, everything seemed pregnant with meaning.
CHAPTER NINE
“Tell me what your father was like,” the invalid asked the old man that day.
“Very tall, very strong and very dark-skinned,” the grandfather answered. “He dressed like a peasant, in a long coarse blue tunic and sandals.”
“Tell me how he became master of this land.”
“It could only have been thanks to a miracle,” the grandfather said, “and woe to those who don’t believe in miracles, for God’s hand guides our actions. All right, listen carefully to my story: One day, my father went to Port-au-Prince to sell his cattle. His horse carried him three days and three nights, accompanied by goats, cows and sheep and the barking dogs that herded them. For the country was wealthy and business was booming in those days. Have you ever seen sheep?”
“No, Grandfather.”
“They disappeared at the same time prosperity did. In the hill country, they say the malfinis, eagles with a taste for mutton, devour them at birth. See how they hover over our land.”
The grandfather pointed to a patch of sky right above the oaks where big black birds flew slowly, grazing the branches, diving beak-first, cawing and greedily eyeing the ground below.
“Grandfather, they look like the men in uniform who have taken our land.”
The grandfather lit his pipe, which he had been filling since he mentioned the sheep. He wedged it into the corner of his mouth and pulled on it until it caught.
“Then what happened?” the child asked.
“Then,” said the grandfather, “your great-grandfather arrived in Port-au-Prince surrounded by his sheep, his goats and his cows, and was on his way to the house of a very rich man who had long been buying his cattle, when he met a peasant on the way who said to him:
“‘My master will trade these parcels of land for your animals. Say yes and you won’t be sorry’
“‘Will he permit me to choose these parcels freely?’
“‘Yes, indeed. And you
will become a great landowner in one of the loveliest quarters of Port-au-Prince.’
“So my father followed the peasant. In exchange for three cows, eight goats and twelve sheep, he got a tiny piece of land. Look over there, under the first oak.”
“I see,” said the child.
“My father had a rough life back in the countryside. Early to rise, late to bed, he was tireless caring for his animals, and each time he brought them here he got another piece of land. When he had enough, he had this house built where he set up my mother and me, for I was old enough to go to school. My mother was expecting a second child and father continued to go back and forth between the country and the city at the cost of his health.”
“Why?” the invalid asked, looking into his eyes. “Why was it so important for your father to leave the countryside and acquire this land?”
The grandfather lowered his head without answering.
“Was he ambitious?” the child asked insistently. “He must’ve liked this nice neighborhood, didn’t he? You recently told me that your mother was ambitious too. Does God love ambitious people?…”
“Listen to the end of the story,” the grandfather interrupted a bit impatiently… “Where was I? Ah! Yes, I remember. My mother was expecting a second child…”
“What was your mother like, Grandfather?”
“A bit like you. You know, all the girls of Fonds-des-Blancs are more or less light-skinned. Look at your father, he’s different from me. Haitians are so mixed that there are all kinds. And that’s what makes us a very beautiful people. But let’s go back to our story… One evening, my father came back just in time to hear my mother’s cries of pain and watch her die, the child still clinging to her insides. I was your age then. He called me to him and told me: ‘Well, death seems to be knocking on our door. If something was to happen to me, I want to be buried here, on one of the plots of land I acquired by the sweat of my brow. If your children or the children of your children are in need, I give you permission to divide them up and sell them. But swear to me that, as long as you live, you will not sell the piece of land that covers my bones…’ And I can still remember how I made that oath in tears.”
“So you are now bound by two oaths,” the child said to him. “We have to act as quickly as possible. When will we start going to his grave to summon him?”
“Soon, once you have learned to crawl perfectly. Because I won’t be able to carry you. I’ll be carrying an ax and a knife. The same weapons my father used to get rid of the man who had sold him these lands and then thought he could take them back just because he was wealthy and powerful.”
“So he killed him?”
“Yes. To protect what was his.”
“They didn’t go after him?”
“No. Because God keeps an eye on the wicked, and sooner or later they must pay for the wickedness they do. Listen: when the rich and powerful wallow in lawlessness, they think they can smother the voice of justice and they forget the ever-watchful eyes of God. The judges had been bribed by the crook. They were all going to split up the plots of land. But my father, brave and intelligent, killed the crook and took the land titles to an honest lawyer who had him acquitted by threatening to expose the scandal.”
“So you don’t have those papers anymore?”
“I do,” the grandfather answered.
“Give them to a good lawyer like your father did.”
“Times have changed, my child, and the voice of justice has been quiet for a long time. Judges don’t fear scandal and advocates for good causes no longer dare raise their voices.”
“They are afraid?” asked the child.
“They are afraid,” the grandfather replied. “Wherever violence and crime rule, everyone is afraid, even the executioners and the criminals.”
“I want to fight for justice and for peace. Do you think that, even without feet, one can still fight, Grandfather?”
“Haven’t I promised you that you will die a hero one day,” the grandfather answered…
… That evening the father went out. He had returned right after his office closed and told his wife he was going out and would be back after dark. She had watched him furtively as he got dressed, eaten up by jealousy, curiosity and worry. From whom was he going to borrow five hundred dollars? Who was he going to seduce with that cologne? Was the woman who had stolen him from her that rich? What she felt was not exactly jealousy. No, this rather lukewarm reaction was more like a vaguely loving scorn. After all, she was the one who had sprinkled fragrance on the handkerchief she handed to him.
He got out of the car after a half-hour ride and paid the driver. These dates were costing him a pretty penny, but how could he complain? It was already night and one could barely make out the house at the end of the path lined with boxwood. The bitter perfume of the white flowers he picked on his way stirred his blood and he quickened his step. She opened her arms to welcome him and he held her tight.
“Each time you come, I’m always up, waiting,” she said, “as though I knew you were coming.”
He lifted her and carried her to the living room sofa, cluttered with colorful pillows he had seen her embroider with her beautiful expert hands. The Japanese kimono she was wearing traced her narrow hips. He leaned in and kissed her voraciously.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
Revived, seductive, charming, Louis Normil underwent a transformation.
“Look,” she said, freeing herself, and ran to the armoire, opening it to take out a beaded dress that sparkled in the lamplight.
“I made it myself,” she said proudly. “Would you like me to wear it for our little supper tonight?”
“Yes,” he murmured.
She undressed in front of him and slipped her sun-kissed skin into a dress that made her look like an Oriental princess.
An old black woman, who had been in her service since she was a child, came in to announce dinner. They went into the living room, where a princely table had been set. At the end of the meal, she lifted her glass, saying:
“I drink to our love.”
Beneath her many guises she played any role she liked, trusting in no one. Condemning marriage as a dull and revolting institution, she congratulated herself for having managed to resist the temptations of bourgeois life, and in this handsome grife, so self-effacing and impoverished, she saw the flickering shade of Armand Duval. [31] She nevertheless snuggled up tamely into this affair and avoided displaying herself in the company of her lover, supposedly for his wife’s sake. Since even the wealthy may come to feel insecure, she suspected that her gentlemen callers lusted after her fortune more than her beauty. Orphaned very young, she had been raised by her old maid, who had learned to look away and keep her mouth shut, for since her early youth she had been drawn to mature and even graying men in whom she sought the paternal affection she had been weaned from too early. Her father, a government minister in all the past regimes, who had the wisdom to amass a tidy fortune during his political career, had died when she was only ten.
“You are my father, my lover, and my friend at the same time,” she had once said to Louis Normil. “That is a lot to discover in a single man.”
Once they were in bed, having had their fill of love, he tried in vain to bring up the topic of money. Finally giving up hope, he used a back door.
“Have you learned what happened to us?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“Some men in uniform have set up camp on our land.”
She gave a start as if stung.
“When? Why? What have you done or said to make this come upon you? Your children? Who have they been seeing? That kind of curse doesn’t just fall from the sky out of nowhere…”
He had the painful feeling that she was more frightened than saddened by their misfortune. She lit a cigarette with trembling hands.
“Have you taken any steps? Do you know anyone powerful enough to help you?” she added with forced calm.
“Yes, a l
awyer. He has demanded five hundred dollars and I don’t have it.”
“Why didn’t you just say so, darling!” she said with relief. “Wait.”
She opened the armoire, grabbed a wad of bills that she put in an envelope.
“I would love to slip in a love note but you’re liable to leave it lying around.”
“I’ll pay you back, Maud.”
“But of course.”
He didn’t like her overly conciliatory tone, agreeing with him before he even said anything. And then the fear he had aroused in her upset him. Would she, like everyone else, fear being seen with him? This distracted him, and he forgot that he had promised himself to make her sign a receipt. He got up and got dressed. She stayed in bed, smoking, eyes half-closed, silent and suddenly so distant that he understood that his news had just destroyed the smooth course of their affair. He had dressed too quickly and only realized his tactlessness when he was done.
“You’re leaving… already?”
It seemed to him that there was a slight involuntary irony in her question.
“I’ll stay as long as you wish.”
He was too troubled. Despite himself, he was already thinking of the drama in store for tomorrow. He could see Rose going to the lawyer’s office, see her trembling before the short man with the gorilla hands who would be there, no doubt about it, and he decided right then to bring the money himself to the attorney.
“Would you like a ride home?”
He glanced at his watch and leaned in to kiss her.
“Would you please,” he replied.
The minute he had opened his mouth to talk about his problems, the evening had been ruined. Suddenly he had discovered that she too was afraid. She too was contaminated. This despite her wealth, despite the self-appointed isolation in which she lived and its assurance of some kind of protection. Perhaps he had only taken refuge in this affair to feel stronger! he realized to his surprise. Until now he had thought that she at least could allow herself to live with contempt for the permanent threat that had been hanging over all their heads like a curse for some time now. A threat made manifest in all the obvious signs that he had refused to interpret in order to preserve his peace of mind and that false congeniality into which he had withdrawn once and for all. One recollection he thought long dead suddenly arose in his memory. About six years ago, he was going home after stopping by the home of a colleague when the noise of gunfire interrupted his stroll. He hid under the porch of a house and waited there trembling for a long while. Then, without any hesitation, he walked over the dead body of a man lying in the street and ran home with his head down. The next day, he read in the newspaper an article about the accidental death of an unfortunate father of blessed memory. How many along with him had witnessed this murder? How many had been careful to keep silent? Just like him. Right after that, there was Maud to comfort him and help him forget. But she had just disappointed him, and he felt as if he had been rejected from her life. Her reactions had not been those of a woman in love. And he was struck by an inadvertent recollection of several remarks she had made about self-serving friends who only cared about her fortune. Bah! When everything is settled, I’ll sell off one of the lots if I have to and pay her back and everything will be forgotten…
Love, Anger, Madness Page 23