“I stayed because there was a new move to import American machinery for the sugar. And because of de Gaulle—but of course, that was later, much later.…”
There was a light tap on the door and the secretary came in. She had long hair dyed blonde and pulled back in a ponytail. The woman was wearing stockings. Pale breasts pushed against the restricting material of her bustier. A small face, bright lipstick, and unflattering, pendulous earrings.
“I need your signature, Monsieur Calais. Just had Puerto Rico on the line.” She spoke in a high-pitched voice, giving Anne Marie a sideways glance. She bent over the desk beside Jacques Calais and placed an open folder in front of him. “About the two bulldozers for Guadex Spa.”
“Ah.” Calais took a pair of glasses and looked at the document. The girl stood beside him. She was young and she wore a ring. Anne Marie saw that the woman’s hand gently brushed against the larger, tanned hand of Jacques Calais where it lay on the desk.
“San Juan wants you to ring back.”
“Later.” He signed, closed the folder, and handed it back to the secretary. He looked up at her. She was very close beside him. “Thank you, Colette.”
Colette eyed Anne Marie. “Your friend is outside, madame. Seems to have grown bored with the harvesting machine brochures.”
“Kindly tell my greffier I shan’t be much longer.” Anne Marie added, “Mademoiselle.”
The girl nodded imperceptibly, turned on her heel and the click of her shoes followed her out of the office. She closed the door.
“An excellent secretary.” Jacques Calais’ eyes looked over the top of the half-frame glasses. “Colette’s the best I’ve ever had.”
38
de Gaulle
“You were talking about de Gaulle, Monsieur Calais.”
Jacques Calais returned the glasses to their case. “De Gaulle?”
“You stayed on in Guadeloupe.”
“That was later. It must’ve been in ’58.”
“When de Gaulle came to power?”
He nodded. “There was a new attitude toward us—toward all that remained of the French Empire. New schools, new hospitals, and at last, new roads.” He smiled. “Before de Gaulle, we were jealous of the English islands—Barbados and Trinidad. De Gaulle changed all that. The result, I suppose, of what had happened in Indochina and Algeria. Most Békés don’t like de Gaulle, you know. During the war, we were with Pétain and de Gaulle was a dirty word. But by 1958, there’d been too many wars, and de Gaulle didn’t want to see a repeat of Algeria in the Caribbean. Winning our hearts and minds. About this time that we started getting all these people posted from Paris. Good for business—good for everyone.”
“Except the sugar industry.”
“Sugar was going to die.”
“But your brother stayed on.”
“What choice did Raymond have? He saw the need to invest in new machines. Fortunately, I was there to help him. I got the equipment from America, and through me, Raymond was able to make considerable savings. He’s never really had money—he’s always had to put it back into the land. And he’s got expensive hobbies.”
“The villa? The maid? The cars? His standard of living—where did he get the money from?”
“He’s been known to gamble,” Calais said simply. “The estate still pays its way—but to pay for the machinery, he had to sell land.” He clicked his tongue. “There were other problems for him, too. Problems that all the planters have to face. Mechanize and you put people out of work. At least there were never any threats against Raymond, to my knowledge.”
“Threats?”
“Like against the other planters. A dying breed. The factories have virtually all closed down, and any Béké with any sense has moved out of sugar. Those who stick to sugar are in trouble. You take Dominique Blanche—been up against it for the last ten years. A mulatto but all the workers say he’s white because they’re convinced he exploits them deliberately. He’s got a Mercedes Benz—and that’s about all. Most Békés send their children to France, but Blanche has to send his children to school here. He can scarcely afford a maid. He’s had at least ten strikes in as many years. Once they even tried to kidnap his daughter. Took her and held her for an afternoon until the gendarmes arrived. Two Indians were thrown in jail—Indians are always the ring-leaders. They had to be let out.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise, madame le juge, there would’ve been an insurrection.” He laughed. “Back in 1952, four laborers were shot dead during the riots in Le Moule. Guadeloupe’s always been a powder keg. Barricades in the streets and cars set on fire? It’s just not worth it. The Indians were set free.”
“Where was this?”
“In Goyave. Things have calmed down a bit now with the possibility of work on the new bypass road. But soon that will be finished and then there’ll be more problems. No alternative but to mechanize.”
“Who hated your brother?”
“Raymond wasn’t unpopular. Of course, it’s always hard to tell with the locals—they can give you a bright smile, and at the same time, behind your back, they’re cursing you and sticking pins in little effigies.” He laughed.
“And Michel, the Indian?”
“I wouldn’t worry about Michel if I were you. Half-mad—and completely harmless.” Jacques Calais frowned and was silent for a moment, as if trying to remember something. “My brother was a difficult man. Difficult but there were things you couldn’t help respecting about him. He was much closer to Maman than to Father. He could get angry and threaten to kill you—and I think he was capable of it, too—with that big face of his getting bigger and redder and angrier.” Jacques Calais’ own face seemed to soften with the recollection. “When we were kids we often fought. Two years older than me, and when you’re little, that can make a lot of difference. Yet Raymond could be tremendously loyal—and he was also very protective.” He hesitated, as if embarrassed. “In many ways, my brother was very innocent. Blustery, of course, but that was really just a way to hide things—just appearances. In his heart, he was an innocent. That, too, he inherited from Maman—a good heart. He was capable of tremendous loyalty.”
“But he had enemies?”
“In Guadeloupe, there’s always somebody who’s jealous of you.”
“Tell me why your boat was blown up, Monsieur Calais.”
“Goodness knows.”
“A lot of people know that the boat belongs to you.”
He did not respond.
“Is there anybody you suspect?”
“It’s only a boat. It is not a human life.” His eyes remained on hers; then he said softly, “You have children, madame le juge?”
“A boy.”
He breathed in and his nose was pinched. “A wife and children. And now I would be a grandfather. I’d have somebody to talk to, to share my life with. There’d have been a purpose to it all.” He tapped the desk. “Instead, I thought it would be possible to wait. I thought things’d change, and that while I was waiting, I could go off and learn a skill. To earn money. Now I’ve got money—more money than Papa ever knew, money that I can spend whenever I want. So when I was fifty-five, I indulged in a little birthday present for myself. A boat, a nice boat.” He added, “And nobody to share it with.”
There was a workshop manual open on the desk before him.
“Raymond had less money than me. But he had a family—a wife and children.” The eyes looked at Anne Marie and they glistened. “He didn’t have a boat.”
“Who blew your boat up?”
“I don’t care.” He glanced around the room before continuing, “What do I need with this office? With this job? With all the cars that are out there in the showrooms and in the garage? What good are they to me?” With the back of his hand, he rubbed his eye.
Anne Marie looked down at her hands.
“I should’ve married her, damn it. I was weak, and like a fool, I thought the best solution was to get away for a few years. I left her�
��and how was she to know that for every day since, every day of my life, I was going to think about her? I was going to love her just as much thirty-five years later as I did on the day we first met? She got married—and it was the right thing to do. All my fault—I was weak. I didn’t have the courage to break with my family and marry a mulatto woman. Too afraid of what Maman would think. I knew she’d never forgive me for marrying a woman who wasn’t white.” Jacques Calais ran a hand across his chin. “I still love her—a grandmother, damn it, and I still love her.”
39
Funeral
There had been a time in Paris when Jean Michel had taken her regularly to the cinema to see an endless diet of American films. He loved Westerns. Anne Marie had asked him why he refused to see anything French. Jean Michel merely shrugged. “There’s always a funeral in a French film,” he had said. They were waiting to buy tickets for The Magnificent Seven at the Cinéma Champollion in the rue des Écoles. “And it’s always raining.”
Anne Marie wished that it would rain now.
Trousseau had parked the Peugeot beneath the shade of a thick gum tree, but the sun was still overhead and moving slowly. It was very hot inside the car.
The walls of the cemetery were on the far side of the road; they were now covered with posters and red graffiti hostile to the French colonial presence—FWANSÉ DEWO. The gates were closed with padlock and chain.
“What time’s this funeral at?” Anne Marie asked for the third time.
“Half past two.” Trousseau did not look up from his religious book.
They should have eaten something more substantial than a sandwich and a bottle of Pepsi Cola. Anne Marie did not feel very well. She rubbed at the back of her hand.
Lafitte turned up at a quarter to three. He parked his car—a rack for cycles on the roof—and then got into the Peugeot. He shook hands and smiled warmly. He was carrying a large camera around his neck. There were cases for various lenses.
Anne Marie said, “Two cars on the sidewalk and a zoom lens. You don’t think somebody might get the impression we’re watching them?”
“They’ll all have their heads down in sorrow and prayer.”
Anne Marie was silent. She thought about her meeting with Suez-Panama that morning. She had done her best for the old man, she told herself; there was no need to feel guilty.
Anne Marie now sat, looking out of the window, staring at the movement of the traffic. From time to time, she turned her head toward the distant steeple of the church that rose up through the foliage of breadfruit trees and the tin roofs of Morne-à-l’Eau. A fall in the temperature by several degrees would have been welcome. There were a couple of clouds away to the north, but they promised no relief from the stifling heat. Anne Marie was sweating profusely. She was hungry. With the tips of her fingers, she scratched at the back of her left hand.
Lafitte laughed. He was chatting with Trousseau. Anne Marie was surprised to see them getting on. She had always believed that Trousseau shared her dislike for Lafitte.
“You believe in all that?” Lafitte asked.
Trousseau shrugged.
A bus went past and the hot fumes enveloped the car. Anne Marie looked at her watch for the third time in five minutes. Another half hour and if by then the procession had not turned up, she would ask Lafitte to take her to the airport. She wanted to be in time for the arrival of her father-in-law on the Paris flight.
She could now feel the perspiration running down her body. Her skirt was badly rumpled.
“Spoons? Why spoons?”
Trousseau put his head to one side. “It’s another local belief. People think that it will bring them luck.”
“Luck?”
“Put a spoon on the steps of the Palais de Justice, and the judge will come down favorably on your side.”
Lafitte laughed. He had picked up the West Indian habit of putting his hand to his mouth.
“Or you can sacrifice a toad.”
“Monsieur Trousseau, the handwriting.”
The two men turned in surprise.
“The handwriting,” Anne Marie repeated. “Monsieur Trousseau, I want you to get a copy of the note.”
“The note, madame le juge?”
“The suicide note—the note Bray’s supposed to have left.”
“The procureur has it.”
“Then get it from him.”
“You think he’ll give it to me?”
“I need to have the handwriting tested.” She took the photograph from her handbag. “Get it, Monsieur Trousseau.”
In the photo, the woman stared with sepia-tinted eyes. “A mon petit Hégésippe … celle qui t’aime toujours.” A Creole woman with an intelligent face, unafraid of the passage of time. At the bottom, scrawled in a different hand, “Je suis Hégésippe Bray.”
Anne Marie pointed to Hégésippe Bray’s faded signature. “I want the writing checked against this.”
Without conviction, Trousseau took the photograph and tucked it carefully into his pocket. He did not glance at the photograph of the woman in madras.
“Here they come at last.”
Lafitte had raised the camera and placed the long, dark snout of the lens against the edge of the rear window. “Not many mourners.” The hum of the camera’s winding mechanism.
Anne Marie turned to look.
Her vision of the accompanying cortege was largely blocked by the hearse. It was an American car with a wide radiator of chrome that glistened in the afternoon light. A couple of men, both in blue uniform and peaked caps, were walking slowly in front of the car. They carried wreaths. Another man hurried forward to unlock the gates to the cemetery.
The traffic toward Pointe-à-Pitre was blocked.
“Probably been better if the poor bastard had never come back to Guadeloupe.” Lafitte lowered his head to look through the viewfinder. “For all the good it did him.”
The stupidity of Lafitte’s remark caught on the edge of her raw nerves.
“Madame Suez-Panama,” Lafitte announced. He continued to press the shutter. “And that’s her son with her.”
Marcel Suez-Panama walked with his arm supporting his mother. He had tidied himself up, shaved and put on a dark suit and a clean shirt. Both he and his mother held handkerchiefs to their faces. The old woman moved forward unsteadily, as if unsure of her black shoes and the raised heels. A large black hat with a broad brim and a black veil hid part of her face.
“That must be your Indian, madame le juge.”
He had laced up his boots and tied the laces into large bow knots. He wore a shirt and a crumpled pair of dark trousers. Although he had brushed the long, greasy hair, Michel looked out of place. Without a machete, his hands seemed empty. He walked with his distinctive, stiff-legged gait. A smile hovered at his mouth. He raised his head to look at the trees.
Anne Marie took another glance at her watch. Another ten minutes and with luck, she could be just in time for the plane.
The air had started to cool.
“There’s Armand Calais representing the Calais family.” Lafitte indicated with the camera. “I’ll take a few shots.”
“Carreaux has got a nerve.” Trousseau’s voice sounded offended as he tapped Lafitte on the shoulder. “Get a good profile on our friend Philippe Carreaux.”
The American car drew past. It was followed by a handful of mourners. At the back of the cortege, and only a couple of meters in front of the impatient, blocked traffic, a man was walking with his head bowed. Light-skinned and good looking. He held his hands loosely clasped in front of him.
“Paints graffiti on the walls and when he gets caught red-handed.…”
“Who is he?” Anne Marie asked.
Lafitte said, “They’re afraid to put him in jail. Afraid there’ll be another insurrection in Pointe-à-Pitre.”
Trousseau shook his head. “When Philippe Carreaux becomes the first president of the independent Socialist Republic of Guadeloupe, believe me, madame le juge, I’ll be on the first
plane out of here.”
Lafitte turned to look at her and gave Anne Marie one of his bland smiles, “Philippe Carreaux, university lecturer and president of the Mouvement d’action des nationalistes guadeloupéens,” he said. “The MANG.”
40
Panhard
“Sixty years of marriage, the old bastard.”
“I like your grandfather.”
“A vulture,” Jean Michel called from the bathroom. “Only interest is money. Doesn’t talk about anything else.”
“He’s still your grandfather.”
The sound of the tap running. “He never bothered about us when we were children.”
“Your father loves him enough to come back from Paris just for the diamond wedding anniversary.”
“He always exploited Papa.”
Her wedding ring lay in the empty cigar tin on the dressing table. She picked it up and tried to slide it along her finger. The itching had gone, but the skin was still swollen, and the ring would not slide over the numb flesh. Anne Marie placed the ring back in the cigar tin. “That’s no reason for not visiting him. And anyway, your mother’s expecting us to take her to the church.”
Jean Michel turned off the tap. “You know why?”
“Why what?”
“Why he’s ashamed of Papa—because Papa has dark skin.”
“Your grandfather’s always been very nice to me.”
“A vulture—and as deaf as a post. That old man smiles and nods—but he hasn’t heard a word you’ve said. Ask him about his health, and he complains about the price of tomatoes.”
“I don’t blame him complaining about the price of tomatoes at twenty-eight francs the kilo.”
It was Sunday morning.
Anne Marie felt relaxed. Her skin had been toned up by a chill shower. Her hand did not hurt—just a slight feeling of nausea in her stomach.
“Only a few more years on God’s Earth—and all he cares about is the price of tomatoes.”
Anne Marie stared at herself in the mirror. “Why did you marry me, Jean Michel?”
“Eh?”
She raised her voice. “What did you want to marry me for?”
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