Sweat ran down her back. Bile and the chalky taste of pills lay on her stomach. Dr. Bouton had smilingly assured her that these pills would have no deleterious effect upon the fetus. The taste rose up in her throat, and she was afraid she was going to vomit.
It rained for over half an hour.
Not a car went past. Just the station, the shadowy petrol-pumps, and the spiky leaves of the casuarina trees lit up by the regular blinking of the Honda’s lights.
At a quarter past midnight, the rain ceased as suddenly as it had started.
Anne Marie took her hand from where it lay on her belly and turned on the headlamps. The road was awash with swirling floodwater. The sky had cleared; on the far side of the bay, Pointe-à-Pitre and the airport lights twinkled serenely. At sea, a banana ship rolled beneath the red beacons on its masts.
Anne Marie opened the window, and the cool air chased away the mist from the screen and the rear window. In the mirror, not more than sixty meters away, on the same side of the road, she saw another car turn on its lights.
Anne Marie pulled out onto the wet tarmac, taking the direction for Trois-Rivières. She drove slowly between the eddies of swirling rainwater.
In the mirror, the car followed.
She drove through Petit Bourg and Goyave. The towns appeared bedraggled—waiting for a new day and the sun that would dry everything. That would heal everything.
The other car was still in her mirror.
Just after the first road sign for Trois-Rivières, Anne Marie came up behind the somber silhouette of a large cart. She raised her foot on the accelerator. The road was too narrow for her to overtake.
The cart was being pulled by a team of oxen. In her yellow beams, she could make out the legs of the animals beyond the wooden frame. The chassis was weighed down with a load of cane. The driver—a man in white clothes, a pith helmet, and his head held at a strange angle—sat on the high board, a whip in his hand. She could not see his face. He was very tall.
Anne Marie slowed down to walking speed.
In the mirror, the following car had disappeared.
When she reached the long, straight stretch of road beneath the royal palms, she changed into second gear, gathered power, and carefully pulled out onto the crown of the road. She did not want to frighten the oxen.
It occurred to her as strange that cart and oxen should be on the road so late at night. Strange also the load of cane, when the sugar harvest was already long over.
There were no lights on the rear of the cart.
As the Honda came abreast of the driver—Anne Marie was traveling at twenty kilometers per hour—she turned her head to look at him.
The man was smiling and he raised his hand to wave. He was tall, taller than any man she had ever seen before.
Beneath the helmet, he had white hair. High, Carib cheekbones. His blue eyes were bright—very bright—as if lit up from within. There were no teeth but as he opened his smiling mouth—he was calling to her—Anne Marie saw the pink triangle of his tongue.
Then she saw the deep scars that marked Hégésippe Bray’s misshapen, broken neck.
68
Moon
“Fabrice!”
Anne Marie kissed her son, putting her arms about his narrow shoulders and hugging him.
“Eight years and.…” He scratched his head with the handle of the spade. “Eight years and.…”
“Have you eaten?”
“Eight years and two months—eight years, two months, and ten days.”
The white beach was scattered with dry sponge. Fabrice’s naked back was hot beneath her hand. “You should put on a T-shirt.” She looked around for a beach mat, a towel, and some clothes. There was nothing.
“That’s right, Maman. Eight years and two months and ten days.”
“What on earth are you talking about, doudou?”
“If you had to walk to the moon. You remember, don’t you? That’s how long it would take.” He folded his arms with satisfaction.
Anne Marie kissed his forehead, which tasted of salt; grains of sand glistened in the hairs of his eyebrows.
“Papa helped me—we used the calculator in the hotel. But that’s without sleeping.”
“Where’s Papa?”
“If you walked all the way—and you didn’t stop to sleep.” He added, “Which is cheating, really—because you have to sleep. Four hundred thousand kilometers.”
It was hot on the beach and there was no shade. A girl in a pink bikini was smoking while she read. She sat beneath a large parasol. Young, firm thighs shone with suntan oil.
“Where’s Papa, doudou?”
Fabrice shrugged. “Over there.”
“Where?”
“You’re blind, Maman.” Fabrice sighed. He pointed out to sea, out beyond the bay, between the two promontories where the sail of a single windsurfer emerged and then vanished beneath the swell. It appeared again. The sail heeled over into the wind and the white board skimmed across the water.
“Papa said you would be coming. Maman, did you come on the plane?”
“I came over on the ferry.”
“I bet you were sick.” He looked up at her and wrinkled his nose in amusement.
“A little.”
“Want to make a tunnel with me?” He put his hands on his hips. A pile of plastic cyclists lay between his brown feet. “I’m doing the Tour de la Guadeloupe, and you can play if you want.”
“I haven’t eaten breakfast yet.”
“Can we go to the hotel and have some ice cream? Papa lets me eat ice cream. He says I can.”
She took his hand. “We’ll see, doudou.”
“And yesterday, in the plane, the pilot let me sit beside him in the cabin.” He stopped and tilted his head to look at her. He held her hand to his hot cheek. “Maman, your hand is better.”
69
Fontainebleau
Nothing had changed at the Hotel Fontainebleau. Not the table and the chairs, not the flowerpots standing like sentinels to protect the hotel from the advancing beach. The Byrhh ashtrays were the same.
The open terrace was as she remembered it. Even the serving girl had not changed or aged. She did not recognize Anne Marie, but Anne Marie recognized the woman’s kind face. It was like rediscovering an old friend and for a few moments, Anne Marie sat watching her, remembering the way she walked, the sound of her shoes on the tiles, her gentle voice, the lilting accent of the Saintes.
A young woman, only a few years out of adolescence, with a gold ring on her finger. With Jean Michel, she had flown down to the Saintes and had stayed at the Fontainebleau in a bright, clean room that looked out over the vast bay, the precipitous sugar-loaf mountain and the green covered hills that reminded her of her Mediterranean. Marvelous breakfasts with fresh fruit brought from the mainland—bananas, grapefruit, and green oranges. During the long, sun-washed hours of the day she went snorkeling. Fish she had never seen before—striped, indolent fish that moved slowly through the clear water and the white coral.
Jean Michel soon got bored. He complained about the lack of food. There was little else other than fish, caught by the local fisherman in their bright boats, red and a vivid blue. And there was nothing to do. He did not enjoy lying on the beach. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m already brown enough.”
Anne Marie was appreciative of the cool winds that blew. And she felt healthy. Not since leaving Algeria in 1958 had she felt so well, so fit. Nor had she been so attractive as during the honeymoon.
They spent most evenings in Terre de Haut.
A television was placed on the sill of the town hall, and when evening fell, the set was turned on and the villagers—the children sitting cross-legged and the adults on the cement benches—watched the programs with innocent pleasure. Frantically they applauded the French team in Jeux Sans Frontières just as they applauded the arrival of Yul Brynner and his mercenaries in the dubbed Western.
Anne Marie was reminded of Algeria. People walking backward and
forward along the main street, the girls hand in hand, the men quietly smoking. The children were often barefoot, and the women wore fashionable high heels.
Anne Marie fell in love with the Saintes, with the flowers, with the lemon trees, the café bâtard and the wild cinnamon. They formed, these forgotten islands, a terrestrial paradise, a corner of another, long-forgotten France, old-fashioned and peaceful, existing on the far side of the globe. A part of the old Empire that knew nothing about insurrection, anti-colonialism and the murder of innocents.
Anne Marie drank her coffee, and the recollection of past happiness caused her eyes to water.
Fabrice stood up. His narrow swimming trunks had slipped down to reveal much of his backside.
“Come and finish your ice.”
The little boy ran to the steps that led to the beach. “Here comes Papa.”
Despite her anger and fatigue, Anne Marie could feel the same excitement that she had known when they had first met.
“I was expecting you, Anne Marie.”
“So Fabrice tells me.”
Jean Michel smiled and he kissed her cheek. His face was cold from the sea. He sat down and they looked at each other. He seemed pleased with himself.
“You wanted to escape?”
“I don’t think there’s much future for me in Guadeloupe.”
“There are gendarmes in the Saintes, too,” Anne Marie said.
“And juges d’instruction.”
“Did you really have to bring Fabrice with you?”
“He’s my son as well, you know.”
Fabrice turned to his mother then to his father. He scrutinized the two faces carefully.
“Soon you’ll be leaving your son, Jean Michel.”
“Perhaps you will start looking after him properly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Instead of leaving him with my mother—so that you can play at Perry Mason and earn your fat colonial salary.”
“Who’s going to pay for the food and rent if I don’t work?”
“Anne Marie, you know you don’t care about the boy.”
She raised a finger in accusation. “You love the child—but you leave him when you feel like wandering off with your pretty young cousin. And with your childish, voodoo curses, you terrify me until I can’t sleep.” She closed one eye and squinted. “Your curses and your voodoo coffins.”
Fabrice asked, “What curses?”
“Go and play.”
“What curses, Maman?”
“Go and play when I tell you to.” Anne Marie slapped his leg. “Learn to obey your mother.” The blow was harder than she had intended and the red wheals appeared immediately on his young skin. “Go to the beach. Your father and I must talk.”
“You shouldn’t hit him.”
Fabrice’s eyes quickly filled with tears. He made no sound. He dropped the spoon back into the bowl of ice cream, slipped from the chair, and walked across the terrace. As he moved past her, she brushed his soft hair in an act of contrition.
At another table, a man coughed.
“You shouldn’t hit him,” Jean Michel repeated.
“Perhaps you should set him an example. I have all the responsibility.” She spoke through clenched teeth. “Don’t make me angry, Jean Michel—not more angry than I already am.”
“The coffin was nothing to do with me.”
“Then who put it there?”
He looked down at the tile floor of the open terrace.
“Who did it? For God’s sake, tell me.”
“My brother.”
“Freddy?”
He nodded without looking at her.
“Why?”
“I need a cigarette.” Jean Michel turned in his seat—he was wearing a damp T-shirt that stuck to his torso—and called the serving girl. “A packet of Gitanes, mademoiselle. Without filters.”
“What on earth would make Freddy want to do a thing like that? Didn’t he realize the effect? For heaven’s sake, he’s the child’s uncle. Does he hate Fabrice? Tell me, Jean Michel. Why?”
“Of course he loves Fabrice.”
“Why terrify me?”
“I didn’t know you believed in voodoo.”
The girl brought a packet of cigarettes and a book of matches.
“Why did Freddy do that? Why the threat?”
“Perhaps he doesn’t like you.”
“Of course he does. Freddy’s always been nice to me. Always so willing to help. You know I like Odile—I went to the funeral with her. I like Freddy. He helped us with the flat.”
“It’s what you represent that he hates.”
“That entitles him to scare me to death?”
Jean Michel tried to smile. “Freddy only confessed yesterday—and I nearly struck him.”
“You should have killed him.”
“He’s my brother.”
“I’m your wife.”
Jean Michel shrugged.
“What did he do it for?”
“He wants you to let the matter drop.”
“The matter?” She lowered her voice. “You mean the killing of Raymond Calais? What on earth for? What does he care about Raymond Calais?”
Jean Michel opened the packet of Gitanes and took a cigarette. “Do you want some more coffee?”
“Why does your brother want me to drop the enquiries?”
“As long as there is a doubt about Calais’ death, people’s attention will be attracted toward the movement for independence—and toward the idea of an independent Guadeloupe.”
“That’s foolish.”
“Calais’s death, foolish or not, was publicity for the MANG.”
“You belong?”
No answer.
“You belong, don’t you? You look for a job with Le Domien, but all along you’re with the MANG.”
He shook his head slowly. “There never was any job with the Le Domien in Basse-Terre.”
She smiled coldly. “I know.”
“You know?”
“On Monday, I was in Basse-Terre. I could have gone along to the offices of the Le Domien. I could have made enquiries. You were supposed to be having your famous interview. But I didn’t go—because I knew you wouldn’t be there. So I bought a pair of shoes and a handbag instead.”
“How did you know?”
“I’m a woman—I know when you’re lying. You’re like a little boy, Jean Michel, and I didn’t need to know why you were lying. You’ve always lied to me. Just as you lied to me in Paris all those years ago about the girl with the headscarf. Just as you lied to me about the princess from the Cameroon.”
He lit a cigarette and smoked in silence.
Jean Michel used to have an old Panhard coupé. In the afternoons, the roof was always down, despite the chill spring weather of Paris, and the back seat was packed tight with grinning friends from the islands. Invariably sitting beside Jean Michel was a girl, with a skin of alabaster and a scarf round her head like the actress Pascale Petit.
Anne Marie drank her coffee.
Later the girl brought a fresh pot and another plate of croissants.
“Guadeloupe’s a police state. That’s what you can’t understand, Anne Marie. Nazi Germany or Brezhnev’s Russia or Iran—the same thing, only more subtle, more sophisticated. Controlled by a colonial power that owns the radio and television and the only newspaper.” He added, “It was Freddy’s idea.”
“You’re beginning to bore me.”
“The only debate left open to us is violence. Violence and frustrated graffiti on the walls.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “What alternative do we have?”
“You’ve never grown up, Jean Michel.”
“Can’t you see what France has done to Guadeloupe? Or perhaps you don’t care?”
“France is a democracy. There’s no need for bombs and bullets.”
“You call this a democracy?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Giscard and his local flunkies make quite sure we remain well-behaved. They give u
s cars and supermarkets. They give us a civil service. But do they give us our dignity?”
Anne Marie said nothing.
“We’re not slaves anymore, and we ask for more than just the flimsy tinsel of the big French consumer society. We want dignity—and our right to self-determination.”
“With bombs?”
“What else when we’re not allowed to speak freely?”
Anne Marie turned away and looked through the trees. Fabrice was back on the beach and somehow he had persuaded the girl in the bikini—she did look a bit like Pascale Petit—to play with him. He was laughing, pleased to have an adult taking notice of him.
“If I had wanted to watch TV,” Jean Michel had remarked when Anne Marie suggested they sat down among the children in front of the public television, “I could have stayed in Paris.” He spent a lot of time phoning his mother from the hotel.
Toward the end of the second week, they decided to cut their stay short. They took the boat back to Trois-Rivières.
For the last five days of their honeymoon, they had stayed with Jean Michel’s mother in the rue Alsace-Lorraine.
It had rained almost every day.
“You impose French laws,” Jean Michel was saying.
“Me?”
“You, the French, you impose laws that have nothing to do with us, you ruin our economy with your bloated salaries.” He laughed. “And like everyone else, you’re manipulated by the Békés.” He lit another cigarette, and his wife saw that his hand trembled. “Guadeloupe needs France—and Giscard needs the Békés. And now with the elections coming up next year, Giscard’s got to be sure that the overseas départements—including Guadeloupe—vote for him. So France keeps the money pumping in, and everybody’s happy.”
“You had better hope he’s defeated next May.”
“Bread and circuses for the simple-minded West Indians—that’ll keep them quiet.” Jean Michel clicked his tongue. “You don’t care about Guadeloupe, do you?”
“Jean Michel, I don’t care about you—it’s as simple as that. But I care about my son—and I care about his future.”
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