by Maryse Conde
Cathy, shattered, found herself back on the street. The realization of her sin broke her soul. She was the one who had sent Romaine to her death. It was as if she had killed them, mother and child. From whom did she inherit this hot temper that led her to take actions she would regret? Not Aymeric, of course, who only had one answer for evil. Once again she thought of her mother, whose real nature nobody had ever wanted to reveal to her, and she caught herself hating her. It was from her she inherited this violent temperament she could not get rid of. They said there was no physical resemblance. But the resemblance was inside her, invisible and all powerful under her skin. She started to run, as if to escape an assailant who would catch up with her whatever she did.
Out of breath, she arrived in front of Ma Tétéche’s shop just as Asturias was coming out.
The shape of her belly, as round as a calabash under the folds of her dress, left no doubt as to her condition. Her face bore the faded, worn-out mask of pregnancy. Cathy slowed down to a walk. She and First-Born had kept their distance until now. Evening after evening they sat on the same bench and solemnly acted out being mistress and pupil, their heads bent over the same math problems and the same natural science lessons. At the end of the month, by way of payment, he would bring her a basket of fresh eggs, a skewer of tench or goatfish or else a bundle of pakala yams that melted in the mouth. Their eyes never met. Their hands never touched. Sometimes the words trembled on their lips, but they held them back, convinced the rest of the world shared their conviction that they were made for each other, as if the same blood flowed in their veins, that they were as close as brother and sister separated at birth and there was nothing they could do but calmly wait for the inevitable moment when they would be one.
Asturias was not one of those brazen hussies who take offense and scornfully eye their rival or cast aspersions. She knew full well she was no match for such a pretty and educated demoiselle who, to the surprise of everyone in Saint-Louis, honored First-Born with her favors. Girls of her status were born to be seduced, taken and abandoned with a belly. That’s how it’s been ever since the world began spinning like a top. So she merely addressed a reluctant greeting to Cathy and flashed her a look of hatred and pain that alone was worth all the attestations of paternity.
That look sank into the heart of Cathy, who started to run again without knowing exactly where she was going, and those who saw her run like the wind past their doors came out to see what was happening. The last person to have run like that was Eudora on the afternoon that Gelbrant, her husband, fell from the top of the coconut tree and broke his back. Nobody had been able to stop her and they found her smashed to smithereens on the rocks.
Cathy left the town and took the same direction as Eudora. But arriving at the Fort, she stopped. They called the “Fort” the blackened remnants of an edifice on a cliff-top built perhaps by the first settlers to trade with the Carib Indians. From here there was a view over the immense circle of the sea and the islands of Les Saintes sparkling in the glow of the setting sun. Cathy dropped to the ground, oblivious to the thorns sticking into her calves and buttocks. The sight of this hypocritical sea that had rolled so many men, women and children in its folds, filled her with terror. How like herself it was. One day as calm as could be, the next in a raging fury. She had wanted to kill Razyé. She had killed Romaine. She was on the point of committing a third crime; because of her an innocent, fatherless child was going to enter this world and a poor wretch was going to find herself all alone with just her two eyes to cry with. Wherever he was, Aymeric must be ashamed of her. For his sake, she tried to make some serious resolutions. When First-Born came for his lesson, she would not let him in or sit down. She would make him understand where his duty lay. He would listen to her, standing in front of her, head lowered, in that somewhat awkward manner of his. Then one day, amidst the din of church bells, she would attend his wedding. At the same time she wept even harder, for she knew that all that was a trick of her imagination. Nothing could undo the knot that tied her to First-Born, body to body and heart to heart.
When she stood up, the beast of the night had swallowed her surroundings. She groped her way back to the town, guiding herself by the great cross on the church that stood out blacker than the night. Behind the cabin doors, nightmares had begun to torment the little children. Crouching under leaves, toads and insects took heart from their own concert of shrieks.
6
Death of the Wolf
Hosannah opened the living room door, carrying level with her face the large lamp she lit at the very last minute to save paraffin. The night was now as black as it could be. Dinner would soon have to be served—dasheen and a few cheap cuts of goat meat she had cooked in a colombo curry. But hardly had she entered the room that always had a musty smell about it, even when aired, than the sight of Razyé sitting erect and motionless in the dark red armchair, with his hands spread on his knees, made her jump and almost fall over. What terrified her was an expression she had never seen during the ten years or so she had worked for the family. He was smiling in the dark and this smile, or rictus rather, was more frightening than a grimace. She laid her hand on her heart and said in a whisper: “Good Lord, why are you sitting like that in the dark?”
He did not seem to hear her. First of all, what was he doing in the house at such an hour? Usually he was up on the Mome-à-Cayes with one of his mistresses, drinking rum, playing cards or doing goodness knows what else. Good Lord! The more she looked at him, the more he looked to her like a soukougnan, a bloodsucker. Was he human like the rest of us? Hosannah turned on her heels and scrambled up the stairs to alert her mistress. Irmine had at last got Fréda off to sleep and settled down to her regular evening read of a few pages of David Copperfield that one of the children had borrowed for her from the school library. The story of this unfortunate little boy, scarcely more unfortunate than her own children, engrossed her. Yet she turned the pages very slowly, half a dozen each evening, for too many sad thoughts clouded over the print in the book. Her mind was in torment. What had become of Razyé II? She did not know what had gone on between father and son. One day the boy had disappeared and Razyé had simply forbidden his name to be mentioned. A few days later, Razyé II had sent her a badly written, incoherent letter that provided no explanation. He reiterated his affection for her, yet blamed her for not having loved him in return and assured her she would soon hear of him in Guadeloupe. Since then, not a word. Hosannah had heard that he was hiding either in Dominica or on Marie-Galante. It was also rumoured he was quietly making a fortune from smuggling rum in the region of Basse-Terre, and owned a great house and seventy-five acres.
Irmine listened to Hosannah and was not surprised at what she heard. For some time she had found Razyé changed, especially since his return from Marie-Galante with a bronchitis that he refused to treat. He no longer went out, and stayed for days on end silently locked in the attic without drinking or eating. Only the thick smoke from his pipe curling under the door proved he was still alive. Sometimes, however, she heard him talking to himself in a loud voice. At other times he would grind his teeth so violently the noise could be heard all over the house. He would clamber downstairs, making a great din, then immediately go back up again. A few nights earlier she had been terrified by a dream. He had passed on. She had been entrusted with the inscription on his grave, but knowing neither his age nor his birthplace, she had been unable to come up with anything. What’s more, “Razyé” was his only name and he had no Christian name or family name entered on the civil registers like other human beings. She had opened her eyes in the predawn hours and found him lying full-length up against her, as if he needed her warmth. Yet when she timidly placed her hand on his shoulder, he had jumped up and gone back to his room.
She ran to the living room.
Razyé was still sitting enthroned in the dark red armchair, staring at the colorless paper on the wall opposite him. It was as if he had seen someth
ing underneath the tawdry reproduction of a Vue du Moule by Clémence Genelés de Sourville that she had pinned up. She went over to him and took his hand, which for once he did not snatch away.
“Would you like to eat something?” she proposed. He did not answer.
“A little coffee or hot tea?” she insisted. “How many days has it been since you’ve not taken anything?”
After a while he turned his head toward her and asked, almost distraught: “Are we alone here, just the two of us?”
The strangeness of the question made her shiver. She looked around her and stammered: “Of course we are. Except for our loyal Hosannah.”
The “loyal Hosannah” stood huddled up and seemed on the verge of fainting. He went back to contemplating the wall, moving his eyes from right to left as if he were following the movements of an invisible ray, then suddenly he stood up to his full height and without another word left the room. The heels of his boots could be heard pounding the flagstones in the yard and then the pavement.
Irmine’s dinner was a sad affair. Could Razyé be sick? Could he be losing his head?
Seated around the table, the children were making their usual din, behaving badly, smearing themselves with food, fighting and laughing at the top of their voices. Gengis was whispering in Cassandre’s ear that a snake was waiting for her, coiled under the sheets of her bed, and the little girl was screaming in anticipation. Irmine looked at them. Their egoism amazed her. They seemed to have clean forgotten their elder brother, who had been gone for three months. Yet they had seemed genuinely fond of him and always returned the affection he deserved. He was loving and protective. Cassandre, in particular, had a soft spot for him. She would roll up like a cat at his feet when he played the clarinet and shower him with kisses to show her appreciation. When finally the children went up to their bedrooms, she did the same. Yet it was almost eleven and she could not get to sleep. Nightmares kept her awake. She would walk into a room and there would be her own wake or one of her children’s. She would stroll in the countryside and the earth would open up under her feet and swallow her.
At midnight, the rain that had let up since the storm began to pour down again. It hammered on the roofs, lashed the house fronts and seeped through the louvred windows. Soon the wind joined in and there was a great commotion as it broke the branches of the sandbox trees on the Place de la Victoire. Then it began to roar through the streets and shake the houses.
Razyé returned home around three in the morning, much to her relief. Usually, he stumbled on every stair, but that night he was not drunk and he climbed with a steady step. After a while, however, she heard him utter such deep sighs and call out the name of Cathy in such a way that her anxiety returned. She quietly climbed up to his room. The door was open and dozens of candles burning on an altar with gaudy, pagan images, flasks, calabashes, nails and tin objects lit up the room like daylight. In the heat they emitted, Razyé’s face was covered in sweat. He seemed out of breath and beside himself. His bloodshot eyes shone with an unbearable fever.
“What time is it?” he asked in a strange, nasal voice.
Recalling the stories of her mabo in which the spirits all spoke though their nose, she stammered in fright: “Almost four in the morning.”
Deep down, she told herself she was wrong to be afraid.
She had made love with this man in front of her, had borne his children. She knew he was only a human being, a little more desperate, a little more lonely than the rest. He looked straight at her.
“I haven’t written my will yet,” he declared. “All these possessions I’ve wrongly acquired, I want to get rid of them.” She had the courage to look up and protest.
“Get rid of them? Think of our children. They’ve never done you any harm. Our boys must study, our girls must have dowries for a suitable marriage.”
He paid her no attention and continued.
“The priest won’t come, that’s one good thing. But I don’t want any wake. No flowers, no candles, no wreaths. I want only one thing: to be buried next to her in the graveyard at l’Engoulvent. You, Hosannah and the children can come with me if you like. But I don’t want anyone else. Certainly not the Socialists.”
All this was said in a measured tone, almost with a smile, and this gentleness was more terrifying than his usual savagery. It was as if he were already dead and his ghost were dictating his last wishes. Irmine told herself she ought to send for a doctor, and at the first break in the clouds she dispatched Hosannah to fetch Doctor Bellisle, the only doctor she knew who would accept credit. He was not long in coming, languid-eyed, with a carefully trimmed beard and small black leather case. But however hard he knocked on Razyé’s door, the latter wouldn’t open. He apologized very politely from inside in his new manner, repeating: “I assure you I don’t need you. My body is not suffering from any sickness.”
The doctor went back down the stairs. He took the opportunity to examine Cassandre and Freda who were playing hopscotch in the yard, found them well-developed for their age, blooming and in good health. He found Irmine, thin and anaemic, however, gave her a prescription for iron and recommended she eat fried ox blood. Around ten o’clock the rain started up again, drumming even harder on the tin roofs. Once again the storm channels overflowed and streamed around the slope of the Morne de Massabielle while the waves soaked the sacks of sugar in the warehouses on the wharf. The shutters in Razyé’s room creaked on their hinges and at each gust of wind let out a dismal sound.
At noon, Hosannah and Irmine could no longer put up with the noise. They climbed up to the attic, stuck their ears to the door and, hearing not a sound, managed to break the lock by shoving their shoulders against the door.
The rain had extinguished the candles and soaked the altar. Razyé was lying on the floor in the middle of the room, his shirt unbuttoned on his hairy chest. No trace of a wound could be found on his body. Irmine leaned over him, sobbing. She pushed back the hair over his forehead, and under the long black strands he was staring, wide-eyed, as if he had really tried to discern the indiscernible.
Death has the privilege of being a great leveller.
When the news of Razyé’s death had gone the rounds of La Pointe, people saw that he was as mortal as they were and they began to denigrate him. Nobody knew the name of his papa. Nobody knew the name of his maman. He hadn’t spent one day at school. Reading and writing meant nothing to him. He was a miser and a womanizer. The women who had made love to him now claimed he never changed his linen and that they were bothered by his smell. Everyone remarked that, despite his diatribes against the white Creoles, he had taken one of their women as his wife, whom he hid from prying eyes. And lastly, he had been a servant to the Socialists, their slave and nigger. When they ordered him to cut, he cut. To axe, he axed. To burn, he burned, full stop. When he accompanied them on their political rallies, his mouth opened no wider than a blowfish. He had never been heard to improvise in French-French one of those hypnotic speeches à la Jean-Hilaire Endomius.
All night long, tongues wagged disrespectfully in the Company rum shops and bars where the bone of the dice and the domino is struck against the wood of the tables. In the early morning, Razyé, who had been over six feet tall while alive, had now been cut down to a few inches.
You only get one maman and one papa. So Irmine hoped that the announcement of Razyé’s death would bring Razyé II out of his hiding place and that he would turn up at the house on the Place de la Victoire in tears, his heart filled with grief and remorse. But the clouds of the night turned white, the sun warmed the schooners and barges in the harbor, and darkness returned and still there was no Razyé II. They couldn’t wait any longer. With a heavy heart she sent Hosannah down to the two employees from the undertaker’s who were biding their time in the yard. They brought the coffin down and placed it in the first carriage, while the family squeezed into the one behind. Irmine had not dared disobey her husb
and, even dead, and had bought neither rum nor candles. She had left the coffin in the attic and intended to spend the night with him in tears and prayers, in the sole company of Hosannah and her eldest boy. She had reckoned without the Socialists, who insisted on saying farewell to the man who had done so much for their cause, and between the street and the garden, the ground floor and the top floor there was a constant stream of men in buttoned mourning coats, their faces sweating under their top hats. Jean-Hilaire Endomius, detained, sent a wreath of gardenias and white frangipanis she could not refuse, like all the others they brought her. Finally, the attic was turned into a temporary morgue and throughout the night she found herself crying on the shoulders of strangers who, head bared, repeated: “Ah, he was one hell of a man. One hell of a man, I’m telling you. We won’t see one like him for a long time to come.”
At eight o’clock the next morning the procession set off. They hadn’t jolted along more than a few yards than the horses released a golden, sweet-smelling heap of dung that made the children burst out laughing. Despite their mourning attire, they had not known quite how to behave since the death of Razyé. Now, spared his scornful remarks and his constant savagery, they had the feeling of being liberated. Hosannah had told them they would now wear patent-leather shoes, dress in silk poplin and eat, like white folk, the choicest morsels, chicken every day off Limoges porcelain plates. And yet the red eyes and grief-stricken expression of their mother affected them. And then this silent, sombre and brutal father had been part of their lives, like the alleys on the Place de la Victoire, the cathedral bell that woke them for mass at dawn and the big dilapidated house they were going to leave, according to Hosannah, where other children would come and play other games.
The coachman cracked his whip over the horses’ backs, but to little effect. They ambled down the rue Frebault. They crossed the Canal, swollen with muddy waters from the previous night’s rain. They trundled past the almshouse and through the ever-open gates of the cemetery on the Mome-Miquel. The growing crowd of idle onlookers stopped, made the sign of the cross and wondered in surprise what sort of funeral this was, with no choirboys swinging incense, no priests chanting in Latin. Then they headed for Les Abymes on the road that wound in and out, white under the sun, between the pink cedars, the Santa Marias and the turpentine trees.