by Maryse Conde
Apparently the prisoner had awoken.
• • •
Standing high on the square in front of the church, Father Bishop was watching Cathy’s back. Where could she be going in such an ungainly manner, swaying like a crab walking sideways?
Father Bishop was one of those who was not bothered by her resemblance to First-Born. It was a fact that they had the same staring, wistful eyes, the same thick, black hair, the same domed forehead and the same furtive smile over an uneven set of teeth. But if his twenty years of living in Roseau had taught him one thing, it was that the tropical humus produced a society whose roots and branches were so intertwined, so twisted and interlocked that falling in love and sharing a bed with a half-brother or an unknown first cousin was no surprise. What’s more, African, European and Indian blood had mixed in almost equal proportions in every inhabitant. So nothing was really surprising.
He had tried to fathom out Cathy, but for the past year he had never heard her admit through the confessional curtain to anything but peccadilloes. If she had sinned, it was unknowingly. He had ended up seeing her as the very picture of a good soul, anxious and finicky. Once, out of curiosity, he had made enquiries about First-Born, who seemed a useless character, a real good-for-nothing. While he respected neither Sundays nor religious holidays and never set foot inside the church, every evening he could be seen darting into The Last Resort, that infamous place frequented by men like himself. Strangely enough, according to rumour, he drank neither absinth, rum nor even Guinness. He merely rambled on about his maman and especially his papa, drowning the glasses of the other customers with his tears. According to him, his papa was some big boss that all of Guadeloupe respected. He was a great leader of men and so on and so forth.
In the end Father Bishop had kept his suspicions to himself and shrugged his shoulders. In the most muddled situation, the Good Lord always recognizes his own.
2
Season of Migration
A caesarian?
First-Born looked at Cathy. A butterfly of the night had spread its wings over her forehead and cast a shadow over her features. Her eyelids were wrinkled, her nose pinched tight and a large mauve circle outlined her mouth. He knew, without the doctor saying one barbaric word more, that death was whispering at her ear and moving in. Their short life together, at first so gentle then so bitter, made his heart ache, and he began to cry like a child. He had given her nothing of what she had hoped for and now she was leaving.
He seized her warm, listless hand, and at the moment when he least expected it, thinking she was already far away, within reach only of her regrets, she opened her eyes wide, looked at him and smiled. This smile dealt a blow to his heart. It was like the one she gave him on their wedding morning, when she had finally handed over to him everything she possessed. First-Born, who believed neither in the Good Lord and His saints nor the devil in his hell, and whose only fear on this earth was his father, would have made love before they got married. But Cathy insisted that, wherever he was, Aymeric could see her and she could not inflict such a wound on him. She therefore waited before giving herself to him until they made their vows before the mayor and the priest. The memory of this little ceremony, during which he had inscribed a completely fabricated name in the marriage register and pretended to honor the Good Lord, had tortured First-Born for a long time. What a scoundrel he was! But suddenly he got the impression that Cathy’s smile, as knowing as a mother’s, also signified forgiveness. Forgiveness for what he had wanted to hide from her. Forgiveness for what he never had the courage to confess to her, but in the secret of her heart she had guessed all along. Relieved, he pressed his forehead to the rough canvas sheet and whispered in her ear.
“So you knew?”
It seemed to him that she brushed his shoulder.
“You knew I was his son, the first of his loins,” he continued. “Don’t hold it against me. You hated him so much I never had the strength to tell you the truth. Sometimes, the words trembled on the edge of my lips and almost escaped me. Every time, I stopped them, held them back and swallowed them because I thought of your anger. What words would you use to insult me? How could you look into the eyes of the son of your father’s assassin? Yes, I am his first son. I bear his name: Razyé. Not that he ever loved me. He always preferred his white-skinned bastard, that tubercular hypocrite Justin-Marie. When I was little, I soaked my pillow every night. In his eyes I never existed. He came home, shoved us aside and never noticed what I had invented to please him. That’s why I became what I am. The school dunce: every day, the dunce’s cap and made to stand in the playground; later on, the animal and womanizer. There was a time when I hated him. I had in mind several ways of finishing him off. He had a gun he kept loaded in his study and I dreamed of lying in wait for him one evening in a corner and killing him as soon as he appeared in the yard. Parricide at midnight. Or else I burnt him like a rat in a sugarcane field. Afterward I would stow away on a boat and go into hiding somewhere. In Cuba, which they say is so white, or Jamaica, so black with Maroons, or Puerto Rico. Sometimes I even landed in the United States of America. I walked the streets of New York. I looked into the eyes of the Statue of Liberty before making my fortune on Wall Street . . . Today I no longer bear him a grudge. I pity him rather.
“Nobody ever loved him. Except for Irmine, my poor maman, and us, his children. But that love didn’t count for him. If in life you don’t receive the love you dream of, you can’t give any in return. That’s how it is. It was your love that saved me from damnation. Your love, so sweet, so even-tempered. I often got the impression I was bored in your company. I didn’t realize we were bound to each other beyond passion.”
At that moment one of the sisters came over, the wings of her cornet floating around her very white, worn face. She pulled out a screen around Cathy’s bed and in a mealymouthed voice said: “You should leave now, my son. The doctor will soon be here. At least he’ll try to save the child.”
First-Born shivered, hearing his intuition confirmed. Soon he would be alone. He went out into the yard.
Under the canopy of tall mango and mammy-apple trees, the hospice of the Sisters of the Visitation was an old wooden building with a faded zinc roof. It was built in the years following the Discovery, when the frail sisters arriving from England forgot their fevers and the fire in their bellies to treat the wretched Indians for the sicknesses that had landed with the caravels. Since then, however hard they patched it up, however many wings they added, it remained too small to house those suffering from the new epidemics that wreaked havoc on black and white alike—yaws, dengue fever, tuberculosis and dysentery. To the left of the actual hospice was a small chapel built of logs, like the chapels you imagined in the Canadian Far North. They had never celebrated mass there, even though the sisters changed the water daily for the flowers on the high altar. Only the parents of the sick came to pray here and beg for divine mercy.
It now had a pitiful appearance. The tiles on the floor were broken. In the niches, the statues of the saints had crumbled—a headless Anthony of Padua stood with one hand in the air and the remains of a fresco peeped through the dirt on the walls. First-Born, who had practically never set foot inside a church, sat down in a pew behind one of the regulars, bent over in prayer. He asked himself why she was condemned. Surely Aymeric was punishing this guileless child for having loved the son of his executioner. At other times he told himself she was atoning for a more serious fault that she had committed without knowing. But his mind refused to take him in this direction. He tried in vain to recall the words of the Hail Mary and remained sitting there, his head between his hands, too wretched to measure his suffering. At some point a hand brushed his arm. It was Ada who, he knew, had become close friends with Cathy.
“Has the baby been born?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“No! One of the sisters told me they were going to have to do a caesari
an.”
Ada’s eyes grew round with fright.
“You mean they’re going to cut her belly open? Cut it open with a knife like a pumpkin?”
He nodded and without saying another word she knelt down beside him, stinking of the fish she sold in the market. Soon he heard her crying.
Why was she condemned, his poor, gentle Cathy? Even if she was guilty of loving him, it wasn’t her who had made the first move. She seemed only interested in explaining fractions and theorems to him when, one afternoon with her back to the blackboard, he had pressed up against her. She had accepted his kisses and pledges of love. Then, without too much enthusiasm, she had followed him to Dominica which, in his opinion, would have more opportunities to offer than Marie-Galante.
“In Saint-Louis,” he claimed, “I’ll never be anything more than the apprentice to Tonin, the blacksmith, whereas in Roseau . . .”
And all because he felt so good in her company. At peace.
Never had he felt such well-being. No passion, no aggressiveness. No great desire even. He did not want to make love to her so much as to lose himself in a conversation that would last for the rest of their lives. After a while, Ada stirred beside him.
“Well, I have to be going now,” she said. “Don’t stay here all alone. Come with me.”
He followed her.
Ada lived at Three Estates, a group of motley cabins in the middle of a clearing recently hacked from the forest. They crossed through Roseau then set off on a road that zigzagged up the mountain. Through the fringes of the coconut trees they could see the golden sand of the beaches, the sea wavering between blue and grey and the sparkling sails of the fishing boats. The world was going about its daily business. Its beauty continued to shine and Cathy was going to lose her life. To die. Why?
Ada’s children were playing around the cabin while keeping an eye on the heaps of fish smoking on the fires of bay rum leaves. She called them over and proudly introduced them one by one.
“Five! I’ve got five!”
Five? He felt a pang of jealousy. Then they entered the cabin, clean but rough and bare, except for a few pieces of crude furniture. Ada began to boil some water for the tea.
As she was setting out the cups on the table she stopped in front of First-Born and suddenly said: “If it’s a girl we’ll call her Anthuria. That’s what she told me.”
First-Born sat down on the edge of his bed. Despite the chill of the night, sharpened by the breezes blowing in from the sea, he was in a sweat, and his cotton shirt stuck to his shoulder blades. A pain tore through his chest. It was as if a piece of him had been torn out, like the rib from Adam’s side, and he was sitting there with a gaping hole. He almost suffocated.
To his left the sky was white. The curve of night stretched away and the birds in their rumpled feathers flew off into the arc of day.
Cathy had passed on, he was sure of it.
• • •
She was lovely! From the delicately curled shell of her ears you could see she would not be light-skinned, but dark like father and mother. Very dark. Her black hair already grew thickly over her perfectly round skull and hid her domed forehead. Her little face had none of those swellings and puffiness that usually disfigure the newly born. On the contrary. Her skin was as velvety soft as a sapodilla, coco plum or sweet plum ripe for picking from the branch. He ventured to stroke her tiny hand that lay with clenched fingers on the sheet, like a flower bud, and her warmth flowed into him.
Behind her cradle, the bed stood empty.
Some mindless stretcher-bearers had just carried off Cathy’s body to the basement, where carpenters were indifferently carving out her last dwelling place in pinewood. Then, without wreaths or flowers, they would take her to church. Father Bishop would bless the coffin and they would make room for her in the graveyard next to St.Mary’s. It was a great favor they were doing this child of God for she wasn’t just a foreigner, she was destitute and had never been seen to place a farthing in the collection plate.
To his great surprise, First-Born felt no longer desperate, but almost triumphant. It was like the havoc wreaked by a hurricane. His garden was ruined. His house smashed to pieces and his belongings scattered by the wind. But there remained a precious asset—the life of his daughter. The sister who had finished saying her rosary asked him: “What name do you want to give her?”
When she heard his answer she made a face.
“What sort of a Christian name is that?”
He didn’t answer and she walked away, putting his silence down to his grief or his stupidity.
“When can I take her with me?” he called out to her.
“It’s the doctor who’ll decide,” she said piously. Outside, the morning was damp.
First-Born entered The Last Resort. Not to drink—he never drank and Cathy who had so many other things to reproach him for had never caught the smell of rum on his breath. All he had ever done was pick up a girl and follow her home to bed. The memory of these uncouth creatures, when he himself had a jewel at home, now made him ashamed. Yet even in those moments it was not vice he was after. It was the warmth of other human beings and the smell of their company. To begin with, the regulars at The Last Resort had given him a cool reception. They did not understand who this Guadeloupean was, too light-skinned to be black, too black to be a mulatto, and destitute into the bargain. Then they realized he spoke Creole and since he was never drunk, he never drew a knife on anyone. So they adopted him.
At this early hour there was nobody in the bar except for a few rum guzzlers for whom only the level of rum in their bottles counted. Sam, the owner, was taking advantage of the calm to do his accounts. He looked up from his slate and exclaimed: “I heard about your wife! It’s a real shame! How old was she?”
Twenty. But what was the meaning of that? That there’s an age for dying? Sixty? Eighty? Ninety? We are always too young to die.
“Take heart!” Sam said with compassion.
Then, as he could find no other gesture of consolation, he placed a glass of rum on the counter. Without thinking, First-Born emptied it. But it had no more effect on his throat than a trickle of cold water. Around eleven the regulars started to arrive and on seeing the tragic figure, adopted appropriate expressions. The great Clay, who in his spare time was somewhat of a storyteller, began to improvise, half in sadness, half in mockery.
“I’m telling you ladies and gentlemen, life is not a bowl of arrowroot. In actual fact, she’s a real bitch. Two lovebirds, one male and one female, flew over from Guadeloupe to take refuge with us here in Roseau. What had they done to fly as far as here? Nobody knows, I don’t know and it’s none of my business. All I know is that they made their nest in the branches of a silk-cotton tree, and all day long anyone who passed by could hear their cooing and warbling . . .”
Distracted for a moment, First-Born returned to his thoughts. He had failed Cathy. Of her own accord she had given up the silks, the luxury and the hordes of servants of her childhood in the hope of living a nobler life. But he had been incapable of giving her what she desired. Would he fail Anthuria as well? How could he give her the care she deserved if he was nothing but a pauper?
All his life First-Born had never been concerned with material things. He had grown up with a belly full of wind, without a decent shoe or shirt to his name in the house of a father hoarding millions. As a small boy, he had carved kites and carriages out of avocado stones. Later on he devoured the few dog-eared books in the school library. He was rich with the immensity of his dreams. Suddenly he realized that he was one of the wealthy. How much money, ill-gained, was Razyé hiding in the Banque de France et des Pays-Bas? How much land had he stolen and how many victims had he plundered?
It was then that First-Born made a resolution he had always refused to make. He had to go home. Claim his inheritance. Not for himself, who had nothing left of a life worthy of th
is name to live. For her. For Anthuria. In a flash, the terrible face of Razyé loomed up in front of him. He almost lost courage. Then he felt himself fortified with an unknown feeling. He felt strong enough to fight, to hit below the belt, to kill even, if need be.
Wasn’t he a papa now?
The great Clay playfully continued.
“In the end all that cooing and warbling came to the ears of Death—Madame Death—and got her temper up. You know how she is? She can’t stand people being happy. So she took her cutlass and wap, slashed our lovebirds in two.”
With the others, First-Born began to clap his hands in unison.
3
Ada the Fishwife’s Tale
He didn’t even say thank you.
I breastfed his child with the milk for my boy. It was thanks to me she didn’t go the same way as her maman and isn’t lying under the casuarinas at this very minute. Yet not a word of thanks came out of his mouth. Could I expect anything else from a fellow like that?
I’ve been selling fish in the market in Roseau for years. Its smell is all over me. In my clothes. In my hair. In my skin. In my bed. It’s why men never stay long with me. They start out taking advantage of me. They play all sorts of games. And then, out of the blue, they start criticizing me and one after the other they leave, swearing: “Oh no, I can’t stand your smell any longer!”