by Maryse Conde
But I don’t need men. I’ve got enough on my hands with my strapping young rascals. Sometimes I tell myself I’m fortunate because, as I see it, real fortune is not a bulging purse. Real fortune is a virtue you acquire when you’re a baby and even before that, when you’re still in your mother’s womb. That’s what I used to tell Cathy, to stretch the corners of her mouth and smooth the creases on her forehead.
People had no great liking for her. Behind her back they gossiped that under her superior airs she was surely not First-Born’s wife and that they must be living together like everybody else. Perhaps it was true, but it wasn’t my business. I never liked poking my nose into other people’s dirty linen. Why did I grow fond of her? Because she wasn’t like anybody else I knew. The first time I met her was in the waiting room at the hospice. She was wrapped in a flowery shawl and sitting with her hands together underneath the black wooden crucifix. At first I thought she was praying and then on a closer look I could see she was crying. The tears streamed silently down her cheeks and she was shaking like a leaf. It made my heart bleed: someone who wasn’t from here—you could see that before she even opened her mouth and could tell from her poor English and shaky Creole—so pretty, so young. I went over to her and before I could even ask her she looked at me and murmured: “I’m pregnant.”
I scolded her.
“And is that why you’re crying? Don’t you know that a child is a blessing from the Good Lord?”
She cried even harder. At that moment Doctor Richardson, a good fellow with a generous heart, though he is English, put his head round the door and asked: “Ada, take her home will you?”
I clasped her hands as cold as ice and asked her: “Where do you live?”
She looked at me in a daze.
“Where do you live?” I repeated.
Still not a word. So I put my arm under hers to support her and we went out into the yard.
Dusk is my favorite time of day, when the breeze gets up. The fishermen return to the shore with a good or bad catch, depending on the luck of the day. Above their heads the sky darkens once the sun has disappeared. Its heat has baked and baked the earth for hours, giving it the smell of a loaf hot from a wood-burning oven and making it into a crispy crust underfoot. I repeated my question. But the wretched girl, leaning on my arm, was incapable of telling me anything. So I set off for Three Estates where I have my cabin.
It’s no palace, my cabin, under its roof of palm fronds and perched on four stones. But I built it all by myself, with the help of my boys. At Christmas, the poinsettias in front of the door are scarlet. At the end of the dry season the flame trees cover it with patches of color. Behind it grows a magnolia tree always pink with blossom. I made Cathy some tea with leaves of soursop for serenity and dreamless sleep, with citronella for strength, with lemon for its aroma, and I added three peppercorns to warm her blood. While she drank, a little color flowed back to her cheeks. She finally stopped crying and began to talk, or rather talk off the top of her head in three languages, telling me stories I could make neither head nor tail of, mentioning the name of her papa, her mabo, her brothers and her servant, a certain Romaine, time and time again.
Since it made her cry again, I advised her: “Forget all about that. You mustn’t keep harping on the past. What’s done is done. Look ahead of you. Think of your child.”
What had I said in the hopes of comforting her! She collapsed, stammering: “I’m expecting a child. Good Lord, have mercy!”
That’s how I came to know her.
Our age, our lives had nothing in common. Our paths were not meant to cross. But solitude pushed her toward me. She came to see me every day at Three Estates and I became like a maman to her. It was Patience, my eldest daughter, who showed her how to weave baskets from carata. It was me who took her to sit in the market and taught her not to put customers off with her sad expression. But all my affection could not stop her from taking the road to her final resting place. I never stopped working one single day when I was pregnant with my children. As soon as I gave birth, I bound my belly with a strip of cotton and went back to selling in the market. She was sick all the time with her pregnancy. I felt it wasn’t normal. So one evening I drank a tea made with leaves of elebiana that grows in the dankness of the forest, and I saw that it was her child that was eating her up alive. It was her growing child that was draining her blood, her lymph and the fluids of her body. I would have liked to know more so that I could have helped her. Unfortunately, when I tried to take her to see Alice, who is in constant touch with the spirits and can find the answer to every problem, she refused. She told me she didn’t believe in all that nonsense. I did what I could for her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do much. A little tea, a few massages and back rubs. I knew full well it wasn’t enough and that one day she would leave us and never return. While I parted her black hair with a comb she would say: “I am the daughter of tainted blood. Maman? Better not speak of her. As for my real papa, Ada, I’m so frightened I’d rather not know.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“And me? Do you think I know who my papa is? That’s how our men are. They sow and they sow, but never bother about the plant that sprouts.”
Other times she would sigh: “I wish I were your child. Out from the womb of a hardy, stout-hearted woman like yourself with both feet on the ground. My mother had her head stuffed with dreams and longings. Where did that get her?”
“What are you talking about?” I retorted. “You think we black folks are better than other people? I can prove the opposite.”
She didn’t answer, as if she didn’t understand what I was saying.
When she first arrived at the house she would sit down in a corner and write in a notebook with flowers on the cover and squared pages like a school exercise book. How I would have liked to write like her! I think that if I knew how to read and write my life would have been different. Alas, I never set foot inside a school. My brothers went to classes at Bas-Thorton where we used to live when we were young. They can sign their names and read the pages of a newspaper. My sister and myself, we don’t know anything. We helped Maman sell in the market and do everything there was to do around the house. I watched admiringly over her shoulder the letters she drew and she told me: “If I didn’t have this, my diary, I think I’d be dead already. I write everything, everything down here.”
I made a face and teased her.
“Everything? I wonder what you can find to write. Not many things go on around here.”
“I mean everything that goes on inside me,” she murmured.
That set me thinking. What goes on inside me? I don’t know. It’s as if there’s a forest I’ve never got to the bottom of. During the last months of her pregnancy she didn’t write anything, as if she had spent all her strength. She left her diary lying around. It was lying on the floor when I picked it up and gave it to her husband with the few things she had. I shall see her sitting there until my dying day. She would swing to and fro in the rocking chair, her great belly lying in her lap as if it weighed too much, her face melancholic and blank. Her hair was falling out in handfuls. Her youth and beauty were fading and I could do nothing for her. She who always had something to say sat in silence, her fingers mechanically weaving the carata, and then she murmured: “What lies at the end of this long corridor? No one can say . . . I’m not even sure I shall find her again.”
Hearing her I knew full well she was thinking more and more of her maman. But I pretended not to understand and told her a silly story to make her laugh. At least smile. Because laughter, she didn’t know what that was. I don’t think she ever knew.
When she went into labor, it was to me she came for help. I was the one who took her to the sisters at the hospice, whispering words of comfort. But it was obvious she no longer wanted to go on living.
Some women complain all the time about their men and never spare you a fight, a s
cene or the cussing. She never mentioned First-Born once, but I knew that the wound was eating her heart out.
He’s gone. He set off to sea with the child I had grown to love as much as I loved her, without even a thank you for all my trouble. He left her behind, all alone among strangers; with nobody to weed her grave, to light candles and set flowers on it on All Souls’ Day. It won’t bring him happiness.
I don’t need any elebiana to see that at his age his life is already over. He’s going to spend the rest of his life in solitude, without a soul to warm his heart. Contrary to what he hopes, Anthuria will be no consolation. Just the opposite. That child will lead him a real song and dance. Besides, children never are a consolation. They come to live their lives, not to brighten up their parents.’
The way he left was the way he really was: a good-for- nothing.
She never stopped saying that the curse of God was on her for some terrible sin she had committed; for some person she had killed. I didn’t even listen to her. For me, it was all nonsense, rambling, senseless words. What killed her was her husband’s indifference, the nights he spent away from home and the number of women he took. Everyone can testify to that.
Despite all my pain and all my anger, today is a day like any other. The sun is already high in the sky. As Christmas approaches, the poinsettias are painted in a lovely scarlet color and behind the house the scent of the magnolia in bloom hangs heavy in the air. It’s time to go down to the seashore and take my load of fish from the hands of Ethelbert. Then I’ll set off for the market. I’ll take my usual place so that, mourning or no mourning, my customers will find me where they’ve always found me, year in and year out.
At six, darkness will fall upon us all at once, without warning, as it always does. The market will empty and the famished dogs will tear apart the meat carcasses lying forgotten in the butchers’ booths. I’ll set off for Three Estates. Slowly climbing up behind the royal palms, the moon will light the way. At home the children will have lit the oil lamp. Patience will have put the root vegetables to boil with a piece of salt pork. Before we eat, we will make the sign of the cross and thank God for what He hasn’t given us.
4
Farewell to the Beloved
The long strings of rain fell in tangles on the ground. In order to pay for his seat aboard the steamship Elizabeth Regina, First-Born had borrowed the price of a ticket from Sam, the owner of The Last Resort. Sam hadn’t given much credit to his story of a millionaire papa and had little hope of seeing his money again. But he had taken pity on him and told himself that the Good Lord, who never forgets anything, would take into consideration this good deed when he got to Heaven.
On the wharf the weather added to the usual commotion. Sheltering under jute sacks, the coal women were digging into piles of fuel and completing their job of filling the steamers’ holds. Passengers climbing down from their carriages handed their baggage to the porters. Then, holding their umbrellas with both hands, they ran up the rope gangway that sagged like a liana. First-Born had been careful to look neither right nor left. He settled into a corner of the second-class saloon, determined not to engage in any conversation. But the passengers around him, intrigued by the bundle he was clutching to his heart, were scared off by his expression and clothes of deep mourning and had no intention of speaking to him. Through the portholes the houses of Roseau looked like a child’s toys.
Clasping his precious burden with one hand, First-Born drew out of his pocket with the other the object that Ada had handed over to him, together with an unfinished cross-stitch embroidery, some balls of wool and embroidery materials. It was an ordinary, squared-paper notebook, with a stiff, flowered cover, which Cathy must have bought for a few pennies at the shop opposite the church that was also a haberdasher’s. She had written in her schoolteacher’s handwriting, carefully respecting the down and the up strokes:
This diary belongs to Cathy de Linsseuil
Address: 14, Oaks Road, Roseau.
On deciphering these lines, First-Born was first of all gripped with an irrational anger and jealousy. He held between his hands the proof of how little he counted in the life of his wife. She had not changed her name. Daughter of Aymeric de Linsseuil she was born. Daughter of Aymeric de Linsseuil she would remain. Daughter of a so-called good white man, the model master who in fact was nothing but a hypocrite and a common thief of women. After a while, however, his anger subsided. He recalled the knowing little smile on Cathy’s lips before she died and another thought superimposed itself with a forceful certainty. She had not been fooled by his deceit. She had guessed all along that the name Sabrimol was a product of his imagination. Even more serious, she had guessed who was hiding behind it. Now it all became clear. All at once a series of incidents that in his cocksureness he had not noticed at the time flooded his memory and convinced him that Cathy was not the naïve person he thought she was. She used to take pleasure in having him recount his childhood memories, pretending to be interested but at the same time casually interrogating him. Very often his answers muddled up who he was supposed to be and who he really was. That was how one day when, feeling homesick, he had talked about Cassandre, her funny little faces and her chatter, and she had interrupted him right in the middle of his story.
“So you’ve got a sister! I thought you were an only child?”
Another time she looked him straight in the eyes and asked: “Sabrimol? Where does that name come from?”
He had launched into a complicated explanation. It was a name from . . . La Désirade. Yes, La Désirade. His mother came from Marigot. And he had gone on to describe the island he had only ever seen from the windows of l’Engoulvent. She hadn’t said anything, but he felt that he hadn’t convinced her.
Suddenly the siren wailed and the ship swayed like a dancer about to launch onto the dance floor. It rolled to one side and then rolled to the other. Some passengers pressed up against the portholes so as not to miss seeing the departure. Others, little heeding the bad weather, ran to the ladder that led on deck. First-Born was about to do the same when a hand held him back.
“You’re not thinking of going outside in the rain with the baby?”
It was a woman of a certain age, soberly attired, without rings or a necklace, in a Creole dress with a black and blue leafy pattern. Only a tranblant pinned back the folds of her madras head-tie. As First-Born hesitated, she swept up Anthuria, who went on sleeping, and declared with authority: “It so happens I was taking care of children before you were even jumping around on this earth. In my neighborhood they called me manman tou moun, everybody’s maman.”
Reluctantly, he let her have her way. He did not like to be separated from his daughter. She had become his obsession. He watched her sleep. He combed her hair. Twenty times a day he changed her nappies or put his hand under her infants’ clothes to check her skin temperature.
Very quickly Roseau had disappeared from sight. Even the outline of the mountains was already fading to grey, and it seemed to First-Born that in a flash a chapter of his life had been blotted out and there was nothing he could do about it—the most painful chapter, the most memorable chapter, in a word, the most precious. Nothing was real any longer: neither Sam, Ada nor Cathy. All he had was Anthuria to remind him that he hadn’t been dreaming. On his cheeks his tears mixed with the rain and the salt of the spray.
Enormous waves washed over the deck. As far as the eye could see, the ocean swelled with the mouths of monsters that seemed determined on swallowing the ship. In trying to escape them the vessel heaved, cavorted and flung its passengers now starboard, now portside. These sudden lurches brought much delight to a group of white schoolchildren in blue and gold uniforms whose two masters had trouble keeping control. First-Born managed to keep his balance and wedged himself against a lifeboat.
What did she know? Had she guessed his true identity? He took the diary out of his pocket again and gazed at it.
But when the time came to make this apparently simple gesture, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He felt uncomfortable, as if he were about to do something wrong. When he was little he used to creep along the landing of his mother’s bedroom and through the keyhole watch Irmine undress. After having coveted this forbidden body he stood ashamed, swearing he would never do it again and convinced that he was a godless child. Cathy had divulged to this diary the emotions and feelings she did not want to share with him. She had not only mentioned him, but probably everything that was cause for distress. Her mother. Herself. Their exile. Perhaps she had revealed aspects of her character she preferred to hide, and who knows if another Cathy would not emerge as he turned the pages? If he read her diary, all the memories he kept of her might be drastically changed.
Holding the ship’s rail with one hand, he walked to the bow of the Elizabeth Regina, to the point where the waves are torn apart and churn back against each other. The wind wrinkled his eyelids and the salt burned his lips. Crested cranes lifted off from the funnels and flew back to the shore, their yelping cries as sad as farewells. He looked one last time at the notebook and its childish warning.
This diary belongs to Cathy de Linsseuil.
Address: 14, Oaks Road, Roseau.
Without hesitating, he threw it overboard. For a few minutes the diary floated on the surface of the water, wings spread like a bird, then it dived into the foam and vanished amidst the swirl of the waves.
Whatever Cathy’s secrets might have been, he would never know their monstrosities.