Pride's Folly

by Fiona Harrowe

  Torg said, “I think this is it.”

  We looked down an avenue of gigantic European chestnut trees that must have been planted over a century earlier.

  Harry led the way. It gave me an odd feeling to be riding under those trees, the transplanted symbols of another age, another country, so loftily at home in an alien, tropical land. The wind sighed through the leafy branches, and a few nuts fell with a plip-plop sound. We came to an an overgrown circular driveway, and there on the far side was the house—or what remained of the house. Built in the style of a seventeenth-century French chateau, it faced us with blank, broken windows and smoke-blackened walls. A cracked, crenellated tower rose from the wrecked, chimneyed roof. At the base of the house, hillocks of rubble sprouted saplings and tendriled vines. The doorway was partially hidden by a climbing rose, its red blossoms open to the midday sun.

  We rode up to the heavy mahogany door, a lion couchant escutcheon carved into its panels, still visible. Harry hesitated, then pushed it open.

  “It’s not locked,” he murmured in surprise.

  We followed him inside.

  A bird gave a piercing cry and flew out from one of the shadowed corners, circling in winged frenzy under the high, charred ceiling, finally disappearing through a window. At the farther end of the littered, terrazzo-tiled hall, a spiral staircase, its wooden bannisters eaten away, swept up into a gutted gallery.

  “What happened?” Harry asked Torg in a dazed voice.

  “Burned and looted, most likely, in the uprising of 1804.”

  If the house had been in the jungle lowlands, it might have disappeared altogether under a welter of lianas and fig trees. But here on the plateau, the walls and shape of the rooms, the remnants of furniture, the stone-hooded fireplaces, and fragmented, frescoed cornices remained.

  In what I assumed had been the grande salon, a rotting carpet covered with dead leaves and animal droppings still lay on the floor. Against one wall leaned a rosewood harpsichord, its keys ripped out and its caved-in top supporting a fallen portrait. I went up to it and brushed the accumulated layers of dust aside. A painting of a bewigged man with a thin blond moustache and gray eyes looked out at me. I wondered if he was Jean-Pièrre’s ancestor, if he was the man who had founded Les Domaines. Had he escaped the angry mob gathered in torchlight at his doorstep, the black slaves who had clamored to set his house afire? During the bad times, Torg said, some of the white landowners and their families had been led to safety by trusted slaves. How did this blond man relate to the Yankee cavalryman who, as Harry told it, was a darkie? Perhaps the bewigged gentleman in the portrait had taken an octoroon wife or a black mistress. Or maybe Jean-Pièrre’s forebears had ousted their blond master and laid claim to Les Domaines as their own.

  “This house must have an interesting history,” I said.

  “Well,” said Harry, looking around, “it’s mine now.”

  “You aren’t thinking of living here?” I asked. “It would take a great deal of money to make this house fit for human habitation.”

  “I’m going to make me a pile out of the coffee.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Torg said.

  “Why not?”

  “Hadn’t you noticed? The land all around here is full of squatters.”

  “The hell you say! It’s mine—they’ll just have to get off.”

  “That may not be possible, Mr. Page,” Torg said.

  “ ’Tis possible, damn it! I’ll get shut of them, you’ll see.”

  Torg scratched his chin. “You may not know this, Mr. Page, but President Salomon passed a law saying that all squatters who farmed coffee for the last twenty years could claim ownership.”

  “I don’t give a damn what this Haitian darkie says—this plantation is mine!”

  Harry was not an avaricious man. I don’t think he saw himself as being cheated of wealth. What he had here was a dream—his own land, a position of comparative power and respect where he would no longer be a humble storekeeper. His pride was involved.

  “Perhaps we can work something out,” I said. “I think the first thing to do is to go back to Port-au-Prince and see if these people are legally entitled to the property. Either way we might be able to arrange some sort of tenant-farming agreement.”

  “You go,” Harry said. “I’m stayin’ here.”

  “Harry ...”

  “Now, don’t fuss. I ain’t aimin’ to git into trouble. I’ll have a poke around, tidy up a bit here.”

  I looked at Torg. “I don’t see any harm in it,” he said. “I’ll have a talk with some of the people down below. See what the temper is.”

  “Suit yourself,” Harry said.

  When Torg came back, he told us that the peasants who had settled on the estate believed they had a right to the land. However, they didn’t mind Harry’s living in the chateau.

  “They seem amiable enough,” Torg said. “Most of them have never seen a white man.”

  “Did you tell them they’re on my property?” Harry asked.

  “I thought we’d better wait until we had more information.”

  “I don’t like to be ornery, Torg. But a right is a right, information or no.”

  “Well . . . yes. In the meanwhile I got one of the women to cook for you.”

  “That was right nice.”

  We left him some supplies—blankets, tinned food, a machete, rum, and tobacco.

  “Now, don’t you go worry in’ ’bout me,” he said, cheerful again. He clapped me affectionately on the shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”

  Halfway down the row of tall chestnuts I turned in the saddle. He stood there, dauntless, grinning, waving his straw hat.

  Chapter 24

  Torg had a house in La Coup just above Port-au-Prince and he invited me to stay with him. I welcomed the chance. The city seemed even fouler of smell and more heaped with rubbish than I remembered.

  My first task was to verify, if I could, the peasants’ claims to Harry’s inherited estate. Torg had procured their names for me and offered his assistance as interpreter. Again I was grateful to him, since I had no wish to call upon M. Duval.

  But there was still the rum distillery, so I could not avoid him entirely. He had gotten my forwarding address from the hotel, and some days after my return I received a letter from him. It seems he had made a large shipment of rum, and a sum of several hundred gourdes (the Haitian currency) awaited Harry. Would I come to his office at the distillery, Tuesday at noon? Perhaps we could have lunch.

  Since there seemed no polite way to refuse, I agreed to meet him. After he and I had finished our business, we adjourned to the Maritime Club. There, much to my surprise, Aurore joined us.

  “Bonjour, Papa. Hello, Monsieur Morse. So good to see you,” she said, sinking into a chair. With an airy wave of her hand she dismissed her turbaned servant, whose arms were laden with packages. “Such a tiresome morning. Papa says I spend too much money, but he exaggerates.” She smiled and patted her father’s hand affectionately. “By the by, do you like my new bonnet?”

  She turned her head in profile for us to admire it, a feather-trimmed, bell-crowned creation.

  “Très jolie,” her father said approvingly. “Very pretty.”

  Sitting there, eating langouste et riz, watching her as she smiled and talked, I wondered if I had imagined that night, the drums, her naked body. In the daylight, with the sun filtering through the shutters and people chatting all around us, it did not seem that Aurore could be anything except what she appeared: a well brought up girl having lunch with her father and a friend.

  “Perhaps Monsieur Morse would care to come to my birthday party tonight?” she asked, looking at me but without coquetry.

  I was tempted. The evenings were so long and dull.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, staunchly pushing temptation away. “I promised Torg I would have dinner with him.”

  “Oh,” she said, “why not bring him along?”

  “I’ll ask. Thank you for the
invitation.”

  Perhaps if Torg had been at home that night I might have maintained my resolve to stay away from Aurore. But he went out shortly before six, saying the cook had instructions to get my supper. He did not tell me where he was going. Except for the bare facts—his place of birth, the jobs he’d had, his length of stay in Haiti—Torg was very secretive about his life. He once told me he had been married and that his wife had died. He never mentioned any children. I wondered if he had a noir mistress somewhere, or perhaps a comely mulâtre.

  The evening promised to be a long one. I had read everything of interest in Torg’s library, all but a volume called The Annals of Jamaica, by George Bridges. It was sluggish going, and on page ten I found my head nodding. Rousing myself abruptly, I got up and looked out at the night. The sky was aglitter with stars and the bay below silvered with moonlight. It was only eight o’clock. I sat down again, picked up the book, mechanically read a line without any idea of what it meant, put the book down, and got to my feet again. It was too early to go to bed.

  I thought of the party at the Duvals’. By now supper was over or nearly so. Perhaps they were toasting Aurore, twenty-one, two? As old as time, as young as Eve.

  Aurore.

  The leaves outside the verandah rustled, the insects sang. Was that the distant boom of a drum? No—only the waves breaking on the shore. But the sea was too far away. There it was again! A drum, definitely a drum.

  I moved to the open window. The bay, the stars, the rustling leaves, that faraway hollow beat and throb. If I went up the hill for an hour or two what harm could there be? I would watch what I drank, converse with Duval, and speak to Aurore only as courtesy demanded. Should I go?

  I stood for a few minutes, debating. Then suddenly, coming to an impulsive decision, I went into the bedroom and began to change my clothes.

  The birthday party was in full swing by the time I reached Belle Vue. M. Duval espied me hesitating on the threshold of the salon and came forward to greet me. “You have eaten, Monsieur?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, I’m late.”

  “It’s quite all right. Come in, come in. A glass of champagne?” He snapped his fingers and a waiter appeared.

  “I wanted to pay my respects to Aurore.”

  “Of course.”

  She was sitting on a low, damask sofa surrounded by a bevy of young bloods, like a queen at a soirée. Indeed, she looked very regal with a gold coronet on her dark hair, diamonds at her throat, and a gown of cream satin embroidered in gold and threaded with pearls sheathing her supple, full-breasted body.

  She smiled when she saw me. “Get up, Faustin!” she ordered the handsome mulâtre sitting at her side. “Let Monsieur Morse have his turn.”

  “No, please don’t disturb yourself,” I protested.

  “Nonsense!” Aurore’s eyes twinkled. “One would think I was going to eat you. Monsieur Morse.”

  At this, the small gathering of admirers laughed uproariously.

  She patted the place at her side. “Come, don’t be shy, Monsieur.”

  She smelled of sandalwood and myrrh, the perfume of Sheba. Though the cut of her gown showed the tops of her curved breasts, there was no evidence of an ouanga, the love charm.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said in a low voice, looking directly into my eyes.

  “I’ve only been away ten days.”

  “How can you say ‘only’?”

  I did not answer.

  She looked up at her admirers. “Well, now, who will be the first to bring me another glass of champagne?”

  They scrambled off, stumbling and bumping into one another.

  She laughed.

  “Do you always tease your suitors?”

  “Not always. I never tease you.”

  I tried to look away from those gray eyes with their dark pupils, but they held me. “Did you think of me at all when you went into the mountains?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She was lovely. And those cool and silky breasts that could fit so deliciously into a man’s hand were impossible to ignore.

  “Ah, Aurore! Here you are!” A glass of champagne was offered to her by one of the young men. “Are we going to dance tonight?”

  “Mais, certainement.”

  She rose and took my arm. “Have you seen our ballroom? Come along, then.”

  We went across a foyer and down a wide passage hung with oil paintings. A double door stood open at the end, and the squeak and plunk of violins tuning up could be heard.

  The room was already full of people standing about in groups. Most of them were young and most mulâtres, although there were a few noirs and several whites, including an older man in gold-braided epaulettes, introduced as the Swedish military attaché and a British minister and his wife. It was a glittering assembly, one that would have found itself at home in the finest ballrooms on Nob Hill: women in Parisian gowns of satin, peau de soie, and tulle, their arms, throats, and ears flashing with jewels, partnered by gentlemen in black tailcoats and narrow trousers.

  Aurore and her father circled the room, dancing the first dance, a waltz. Afterward there was a rush toward Aurore, but she tapped her fan on the foremost young man’s chest and said, “I’ve promised Monsieur Morse.”

  She was light in my arms, her waist slender, her feet obediently following mine as I led. Looking down at her, at the high cheekbones, the short but finely chiseled nose, the full lips, and sultry brows, I wondered what strange mixture of ancestry had gone into her making. Somewhere in the dim, dark past there must have been a Zulu prince, and later a French marquis choosing his concubine from the prettiest of his slaves. Perhaps a swashbuckling Spanish pirate had forced her great-great-grandmother. The best had come together in this bronze nymph. Yet there was something in the tilt of the head, in the depths of the eyes, in the cobralike cheekbones, in the swaying of that sensuous body, that hinted at cruelty, at a suppressed yet exquisite savagery.

  I wanted to go on dancing with her all evening, until dawn—forever.

  “Papa will wonder,” she said when I murmured my wish in her ear.

  Had she said that before? I couldn’t remember.

  “Come to the summerhouse,” she said. “I’ll meet you there after the others have gone.”

  “I can’t,” I told her. “There is Torg.”

  “Ah ...”

  Was there ever a sigh that promised more?

  Without quite knowing how, I was there, in the summerhouse, embracing her in the moonlight, Aurore, undressing her, slipping the satin from her shoulders, kissing the golden breasts. Her body emerged from the underpinnings, the lacy chemise, the corset, like a flower slowly opening, petal by petal. I knelt at her feet and pulled the last garment down around her ankles. She kicked it aside with a small laugh.

  I embraced her legs, kissed her knees. She stood above me like a goddess, her fingers trailing in my hair.

  “Cher, cher, Page” Her low contralto voice pronounced my name in French, the soft “g” like a caress.

  I slid my fingers up her inner thighs and she caught my wrist.

  “You are very bold, tonight, mon cher”

  “Why shouldn’t I be when I wish to give you pleasure?” I wanted to bring her to a fevered pitch, to make her moan and beg for release. “My exquisite temptress.”

  Lifting her, I sat her on the edge of the bed and knelt between her legs. Burying my head in her naked lap I covered her soft-skinned belly with quick little kisses. Her thighs quivered, then separated, and I found the warm place between, coaxing and stroking with my tongue. She gasped, gripping my shoulders, digging her nails into the cloth of my coat.

  “Page . . . don’t . . . please . . . !’’

  But I continued tormenting her, the taste of her honeyed desire, her breath-catching pleas, her legs pressed to my head, sending the pounding blood to my temples.

  Suddenly she arched her body, clutching my hair as tremor after tremor shook her.

  When I started to rise, she pu
lled me back, leaning forward, laying her head on my shoulder. Then she pushed my coat back and I shrugged out of it. Together we undid my shirt, trousers, underclothes. It took but a few seconds, and then I stood naked before her.

  “You have the most beautiful body I’ve ever seen.’’ Her fingers curled around my roused manhood. But when I reached down to bring her into my arms, she eluded me, swinging herself backward on the bed with a tinkling laugh.

  “I thought you didn’t tease!’’ I reminded, not without some heat.

  “I can’t help it. You are so teasable.’’

  I lunged for her, catching her arm in a bruising grip, pulling her from the bed to her feet. Crushing her to my chest, I kissed her, straining my mouth upon hers with a hunger triggered by my arousal and her artful coyness. She did not resist, did not fight me, but pressed her naked body to mine, fitting herself into my aching loins.

  I brought her down to the floor, splaying her legs apart with my knees, and entered her. She rose to meet me with a sensuous twist to her hips, wrapping her arms about my neck, her hands caressing the straining muscles of my shoulders and back. My pulsing, swollen organ sliding into the moist warm sheath threatened to bring me to immediate climax. But I forced myself to go slowly, moving in and out, withholding for a moment, brought back on imperious command. She moaned beneath me and at the last her sharp teeth clamped into the flesh of my shoulder as I exploded into shattering climax.

  I spent the night with her, a night of numbing passion. She was inexhaustible, inventive, mistress of a thousand variations, each designed to pleasure me, a Scheherazade of uninhibited love. Insatiable, I could not get enough of her.

  But in the morning when she had gone, I woke with the brassy taste of guilt on my tongue. As the bright sun gradually flooded the garden and the parrot raucously inquired, “Avez-vous faim? Are you hungry? Are you hungry?” a sober resolve asserted itself. Like the man clutching an aching but cleared head after a bout of heavy drinking, I promised myself: no more, never again. I was through with such wild orgies.