Some of us yelled to the delegates that they had to go back to the negotiating table and force those men to give us the raise we’d demanded.
Were those guys trying to stall, making us lose even more workdays, just to refuse to pay us? Were they trying to force us into starvation so we’d have to go back to their work sites, humiliated? Did they think we were totally ruled by our stomachs? No, we wouldn’t give up! Anger started coursing through our bodies, through our already hoarse voices, spreading silently and more dangerously through the men who were silently pacing nearby, who weren’t afraid of anything.
The delegates were able to calm us down some. The meeting with the bosses wasn’t over yet; it didn’t do anybody any good to get so worked up; you had to understand what they were proposing, think it over, analyze it to see exactly what they were trying to accomplish.
There’d soon be a meeting at union headquarters; people who wanted to go could leave right now, eat somewhere in town.
Somebody yelled, “Eat? With what?”
But we left all the same, went to the docks along the Darse or into the crooked streets around La Place. I was by myself; Potiron had gone straight to headquarters. All I bought was a fistful of cod beignets wrapped in paper. The woman selling the fritters said we shouldn’t go looking for death from those bosses. What was she saying? Things were pretty calm.
While I was eating my beignets on a bench on La Place, I spied the boy who talked to Potiron and me that morning. He sat down next to me. He was really very young, maybe sixteen or seventeen.
“Those white guys—they’re gonna walk all over you. You won’t get a thing. Negotiate, march, demonstrate in the streets, you’ve done all that. It’s not enough anymore.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re on our territory here. This is our place. We’re here all day long, all evening too. We don’t have anything else to do. And we don’t intend to work on the docks, being porters, masons—those shitty jobs that are the only ones guys like us can get. It has to stop.”
I knew what he was talking about, but I was also wondering how he got by if he didn’t work and spent all his time on a bench on La Place.
“Don’t you have family, boy?”
“If I didn’t have family, I’d be eating wind, boug an mwen.”
It took me back to the time I lived with my parents, like him; those early days when I didn’t have a job, days filled with tension between my family and myself, days when I got up and tried to run away from my mother’s sadness, my father’s bad mood. I found a way to get all the way out to Gosier, going through Grands-Fonds. I needed to be far from everything I knew. I didn’t want to be a pig farmer.
Working the land? Not for me, never. Get out of that; get away from everything! In Gosier I could look at the sea, but even there I wondered what kind of horizon I could have, where my exit was.
My only answer was to return home at noon to my mother’s sarcasm: “You always manage to come home just in time for lunch.”
Luckily, I hardly ever saw my father. Or we would have killed each other in that house. So, yeah, the trowel, cement, bricklaying, construction sites—that’s all that was left at the end of three months spent in total confusion.
I didn’t know where to direct my anger, except towards the people I loved most—my mother, father, little sister. And even though I’ve managed to get married, build a good house with a tin roof with my father’s help and the neighbors’ too, and had a pretty little girl I’m crazy about, the anger has never really gone away.
But I didn’t tell that kid I understood what he was saying; I didn’t confide I was hoping we could resolve things, get what we’d asked for, without violence; I didn’t tell him I was afraid. I just sat calmly on that bench, squeezing my cold beignets to get some of the oil out, ready to eat them—despite having completely lost my appetite.
I didn’t see the kids leave school, but I heard them come back and it got me thinking: Okay, this is it. It’s 1:00 p.m., time for negotiations to start up again. The children will study as they always do and then they’ll go home tonight, but at the end of the day, something will have changed.
Watching the little kids pass by somberly in the afternoon sun, knowing they were so close, well, it was like they were protecting us. There was no way a prefect would give orders to fire on workers so close to a school, so close to little children.
I couldn’t even imagine the idea; it was absurd, vile.
We started waiting again, and the sun shone down on us even more brutally—that hot afternoon Lenten sun. The groups hanging around grew steadily bigger and bigger. It looked like the guys who’d finished work had joined in.
Potiron was back on La Place, and he came over to me. He whispered, “It looks bad, real bad. Seems like those men want to play hardball. Give us nothing. They’re just offering crumbs, and I heard one of them said we’d go back to work when we were hungry enough. That’s what they always say. Always. Why should we be surprised?”
Me, too, I’d gone back to work for Absalon because I had to take care of my family, even though I’d wanted to see if I couldn’t be hired by someone else. I gave in to my wife and to my own fear, the fear I’d ingested with mother’s milk, the fear my father gave me as an inheritance, the fear that leaves us with so many sayings, expressions, and proverbs, like “You can’t trust another nigger”—the worst fear of all, the one that enrages you, leaves you gasping for air.
That’s the rage that suddenly swept through town, the rage the kid on the bench had made me feel. The same rage that launched the stones, the bottles, the conch shells—everything the boys hanging out at La Place had stockpiled there.
I threw stones as well, my arm moving up and down. And before I knew it—I didn’t even know why or when—things exploded.
The gendarmes were ready for it. It hadn’t taken much time for them to get to the Chamber of Commerce, to guard the building, to guarantee the safety of the men who went to ground inside or those they evacuated like an army of sick chickens dropping green shit behind them. Their guts must have turned to jelly: the negroes were revolting, a revolt from the beginning of time, a revolt they understood as much as we did—those confronting us and those like my boss, wedged in between, trying to keep the hate and fury coming from both sides at bay. So much hate, so much fury we couldn’t talk—just simply talk and convince each other to come to some kind of fair solution to address the needs of some and the obligations of others.
The gendarmes were getting into formation when I saw the little Absalon girl slip into an alleyway. A door opened and an old lady let her in. What was that child doing there? I couldn’t worry about it; at least she’d found shelter.
I continued to throw stones, breathed in the tear gas they’d unleashed on us. They’d moved back some, and we moved back as well.
11.
The market ladies must know something terrible is about to happen. The ones who manage to take off are in such a hurry they leave fruits and vegetables behind.
I don’t know why everybody is scrambling, walking so quickly, speaking so loudly. That’s what scares me: I don’t know why people are running and where I’m supposed to run to.
When I look over my shoulder, at La Place, I see a lot of policemen. I mean, they look like police because they’re wearing blue, but they have shorts like gendarmes and helmets like soldiers.
Everybody rushing past me asks what a little girl is doing there: “Ka timoun-lasa ka fè la?”
That’s exactly what my brothers and sisters say when they think I’m misbehaving.
But I want to see; I want to understand what’s going on. I’m wondering if you’re still there, Papa, if you’re with the ones running to hide, with those who’re screaming about how everything’s going to hell, or in the group trying to leave the meeting, the one they talked about on the radio this afternoon, a group protected by the police.
Some boys are throwing stones and bottles. The gendarmes are hurling
little bombs. They make a dull noise and release smoke that burns my eyes.
“Gaz! Gaz! Lakrimo!”
I don’t know what it is, but it sure stings my nose, eyes, and throat! I run into the narrow alley where I hid my book bag, and an old lady yells at me, “Get out of here!”
Can’t she see all the commotion on La Place? I tell her I have no other place to go.
I know I’m being rude, I do know, and the old lady seems to understand how scared I am. I calm myself down and tell her I’m okay, but that I’m going to stay with her until the gendarmes go away.
12.
Everything went to hell at once; the shots stunned us. “They’re firing; they want to kill us.”
“Yo ka tifé fizi! Yo vé depann nou!”
A body collapsed right next to me, a body whose movements I’d been seeing in flashes, the same gestures as mine: bend over, pick up, throw, shove aside the smoking casings falling in front of us.
I was afraid it was Potiron—I hadn’t seen him for a while—but it wasn’t him.
That body just crumpled. He was bleeding; his eyes had rolled back in his head, and he was looking at me, stupefied.
I had to get him out of there. A complete stranger who just happened to be next to me and who I had to try to pull out of an ambush.
Some gendarmes were backed up in front of the Chamber of Commerce, others on La Place de la Victoire in front of the subprefecture; others chasing men who were running away towards the Dubouchage School, probably trying to get to Carénage.
I didn’t know where to take the wounded guy.
A few fishermen were watching the events unfold from their boats, looking on in disbelief.
I think it was one of them who pointed to a transporter whose delivery cart was loaded with vegetables, probably the husband of one of the vendors who’d come to pick her up. We hauled the guy onto the seat, and the driver, a good man even if scared out of his mind, took off in the direction of rue Duplessis and the Ricou Hospital.
I watched them leave and went back to La Place.
The fighting kept up forever. I lost track of time. There were only shots, screams, stones flying in every direction.
The men who were fighting the gendarmes had no intention of quitting. The gendarmes were certainly not going to stop; they had their orders.
I saw the kid I’d talked to, saw him fall, killed by a bullet right to the head, and I understood we were no match for them: bare hands facing firearms and trained military men.
So I headed up rue Bébian, which would take me to Chemin des Petites Abymes. I wanted to make sure the Absalon kid got home safe. I was worried about her. I hadn’t seen her leave that house, a kind of modest cottage on rue Bébian. I wasn’t alone in the street: people were talking everywhere, out of breath, running; they were talking about what they’d seen. All over town word was circulating, even reaching the outer districts, so that people who hadn’t left their houses would eventually hear that an enormous bullet, larger than anyone around here had ever seen, had blown open the leg of a quiet and easygoing man everybody knew. He’d fought in Algeria, had been in the war, and defended the French flag and France’s honor—a country that, in Guadeloupe, now only had blood on its hands. Another guy had been killed on rue Frébault, but nobody knew him. Maybe he came from another township. They described him: a redhead with green eyes and bushy hair. The stories of children were mixed in with the stories of men who’d taken shelter in the Michelet High School, but who’d been chased out by panicked teachers. “Must have been whites,” some angry voices shouted, or “half whites,” others said. And people showed their colors, frankly and brutally: “The whites killed the blacks, well now the blacks will kill the whites.”
“Blan tchouyé nég, nég ké tchouyé blan.”
Urgency, fear, anger, vengeance—everything I’d felt when I’d been throwing stones, bottles, and conch shells was being felt by a lot of other people.
I found the spot where I’d seen the little girl enter the cottage and called out her family name, “Absalon! Absalon!” I didn’t even know her first name. There were so many of those kids; their names all sounded the same.
The old lady opened the door and I yelled, “Where’s the child? I want to take her home.”
The kid recognized me and started screaming, probably because I was covered in blood. But I reassured her, “Come on, look here, I’m taking off the shirt and I’ll bring you to your house. We’re going to go by the back way. You’ll hold my hand and we’ll get through, as if everything that’s happening has nothing to do with us. You understand?”
She said okay.
She wasn’t afraid.
The gendarmes had moved towards the center of town, to rue Frébault and rue de Nozières, so we crossed in front of her school and took all the little alleyways between houses, paths I knew like the back of my hand. We cut through courtyards; some streets were calm, completely free of the turmoil that had taken over downtown.
We hurried down a road close to Massabielle Church, a little sloping path paved with stones. I could tell from how she was holding my hand she was scared. Several times, I had to carry her in my arms to get us through a difficult patch, but she held on tight. Like she was my own little one.
We made it to a narrow passage next to Delbourt Bakery on rue Vatable and that’s when she said to me, “We’re here. That’s Mademoiselle Potrizel’s school.”
And it was true. We were only a few meters from the boss’s house. The entrance was shut. I rang. Madame Emmanuel came out and opened the door.
When she recognized me, bare chested and sweaty, and she saw her little girl holding my hand, she paled and started to shake, but I was able to reassure her.
We went in. Her brother, Émile, had made it home from Carnot High School and had told his mother what was happening in town.
I washed up a little. Madame Emmanuel loaned me one of the boss’s shirts, and I left to find a bus to take me back to the countryside, far from this insanity. There was no point trying to find anyone else now. Now was a time to lie low.
13.
The old lady lets me in.
She doesn’t have a balcony; her room looks onto a courtyard paved with white stones. Limestone. (Right, Papa?)
We sit down in her room and wait together.
She murmurs, “I heard a mess of noise, but I didn’t even know what it was. What’s going on? Have they decided to wipe out our race?”
I answer that it’s because of the construction workers’ strike, and I tell her that even my papa’s workers didn’t come to work on Thursday.
“Oh my child, I don’t know anything! I never even leave this house. Where do your parents live?”
“Near rue Vatable.”
“How will you ever get home? You can’t go through La Place, if that’s where people are fighting. You’ll have to take rue Frébault and boulevard Chanzy, but you can stay here, and when things calm down, you can go.”
“I don’t want to be outside when it’s nighttime. I want to go home to my Mama this afternoon. She’s going to worry.”
We wait a long time and the old lady’s very nervous.
When it seems to have quieted down outside, I get ready to leave, but I hear a voice yelling my name, “Absalon, Absalon!”
The lady and I are afraid to open the door, but finally she thinks if somebody knows my name, he must know my parents and he can take me to them.
When she opens the door, we see a man covered in blood. Both of us scream, but then I recognize one of my father’s workers. It’s the one who came and took our radio, who threatened to kill Papa. But I remember that Emmy and Émélie said it had all been cleared up. Maybe he’s not mad at Papa anymore and he’ll take me home.
He’s talking quietly, trying to calm us down.
“Look, I’m taking off the shirt and I’ll take you to your parents. We’ll go the back way. Give me your hand and we’ll just walk on, as if everything that’s happening has nothing to do wit
h us. You understand?”
I say okay. I’m afraid of him, afraid of running into gendarmes, but I really want to go home.
He takes a lot of little paths I’ve never seen before and brings me to Mama, who was already worried because at my school they told Émile I hadn’t come back for the afternoon.
Mama hugs me close and I cry a little.
“They’re going to kill everybody, Mama. They’re going to kill everybody.”
14.
It’s my turn, me, Justin. I insist on taking the floor before we finish this story. There’s no way Guy-Albert should be the only person to speak in this figure! To begin with, I’m the child’s uncle. But more importantly, I represent the recent dead: the ones killed today.
A stray bullet, right in my gut. Dead almost immediately, no fuss.
At the point where I felt life definitively leaving my body, what I remembered was shame, and my father, who died of apoplexy.
I saw flashing by me the time I worked the way my father wanted, until a kind of implosion carried him away.
I should have been focusing on the moment, held on to life, screamed no, I won’t die without holding my new baby once in my arms, my eleventh, but the first one I want to dedicate myself completely to. Instead of that, I saw the offices, the cane fields, the Baillif Distillery where I had my first job, right up till that god-awful business—that man whose body was partially chewed up in the machines, a man drained of his own blood.
There I was in my role of docile assistant accountant, responsible for paying the widow just what the man had earned for the month he hadn’t completed, and not a cent more, nothing to take care of his family’s future. The boss saying, “Justin, we’re paying for the casket, that’s already enough.”
I remember how the head accountant laughed, “Don’t bother to buy an oak one. He won’t be able to appreciate it.”
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