Love, Anger, Madness

“No. One is enough. Bugger me!” Simon protests. “Have a little courage. We’ll be able to get out of here soon. We’ll go to the shore, to Saindor’s…”

“He’s dead,” I say.

“Dead!” Simon cries out.

“They killed him,” Andre says.

“When?”

“Didn’t you see his body in the street? Right in front of the door.”

“When did this happen?”

“A few days ago.”

“Bugger me! If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were crazy.”

“Unfortunately we are,” I reply.

“You’re making me fucking nauseous with your devil stories,” Simon screams. “I’m already drunk as a skunk, and you’re fucking making me nauseous with your devil stories!”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Andre sighs. “They’re going to hear him.”

“Shit! I’m drunk as a skunk! When I’m drunk, there’s nothing to do, you know, I have to scream.”

And he screams.

“The devils will hear you,” Andre whispers in a weak voice.

“Let them come,” Simon roars.

This is no call for rebellion

Just a poor drunk white man with his full white moon in the air

Like so… staggering about [59]

he recites with sweeping gestures, getting his arms tangled in the barricade.

“Don’t know if you noticed,” he says, suddenly calm again, “but I just butchered Prevert.”

“In two places,” Andre answers.

“What is he doing against the wall?” Simon asks Andre.

“He’s spying on Cecile,” Andre answers.

“Clever man!” Simon exclaims. “She’s beautiful, eh? She inspired one of my poems. Listen:

Young goddess of bronze and amber

Black woman of sun, adorned in tender grace.”

“Leave Cecile out of it,” I say.

“Jealous?”

“Leave her alone. That’s all. Sleep.”

They both yawn and Simon stretches, touching the ceiling. They lie down on the ground and yawn again. Finally I’ll be alone! I am waiting for them to start snoring before returning to my post. Cecile’s light is on. There are figures coming and going behind the curtains. Young goddess of bronze and amber, as Simon said. She’s mine. He’s wasting his time. I hated him during that moment when I heard him speak of her beauty.

Nothing must distract me from my goal. I know they’ll come back. I need silence and solitude. I won’t open up to Simon anymore. He wouldn’t understand. He’s made me waste enough time. My battle plan is perfect. I am ready for the great offensive. They’ll be back, I can feel it. They must be there, lying low somewhere waiting for a signal, some order coming from I don’t know where but which they will know how to interpret. A few lights tremble in the distance and the vague silhouette of the Grand-rue emerges as an extension of these lights. Grand-rue, dear to my heart, lined with beautiful multistory houses crowned with hat-shaped gables! Tall houses with wraparound balconies and white brick verandas! Grand-rue’s business district, and high-society Grand-rue where my love lives. I have kept the stone that was wrapped with her billet-doux, as a charm. I press the stone against my lips while watching for her behind her window. The guys are sleeping and snoring. I can think a little now. I like neither the color of the sky, nor this split lip smiling between the clouds trying to pass for the moon. The air smells of hypocrisy and treason. There are no more dead in front of the church since Father Angelo buried them, but there will be others tomorrow, alas! If we remain barricaded in our houses there will be fresh ones each time God makes the sun rise, until the complete annihilation of the town. Am I the only one to conceive of a battle plan? How can we join forces? How can we establish contact with others who like me are organizing the Resistance? Simon fought his war. He may curse it now, but he’s done it and he can live at peace with himself. What’s going on right now is none of his business. I’ve hurt him, insulted him for nothing. He’s right to feel detached from it. I will ask for his forgiveness. The grave responsibility that falls to me, and which I will proudly assume with courage, weighs heavily on my shoulders. I can always daydream, happily wallow in the past, spy on Cecile’s graceful and comforting silhouette, but I can’t escape from the noose slowly tightening round my neck. I will never sleep another night even if I were to live a hundred years. Am I hungry? I’ve gotten used to sleeplessness and hunger. Everything leaves me indifferent, except struggle and love. For one follows from the other. I will have Cecile’s love if I defeat the devils. The corpse shrinks day by day, hour by hour. The worms are finishing their work. No one to remove it from sight. Father Angelo himself has forgotten to inspect this alley. Our back alley where only the near-beggars live! My shack! Flattened at the feet of Grand-rue’s tall houses! My shack crawling like an earthworm beneath Cecile’s flowered balcony! My darling black mother, you earned it with the sweat of your brow and it means something to me. Had you told me: eat and drink, I would have eaten and drunk. I’ve lost my good angel since your death, since the mysterious disappearance of my evil-eye bead, since I starved the loas with which you entrusted me in my apathy, since I stopped kneeling before the crucifix, since I stopped prostrating myself before the holy tabernacle! I tried in vain to remain the trusting and pious child I had been. I kept my fists closed tight around my treasures. One day, I looked in my hands and they were empty. Whose fault, Mama? After your death, life jumped on my back and rode me like a horse. I galloped under the whip through deserted fields, through merciless cities, panting, sweating, feet bruised, nostrils dilated. The commandant raised his bludgeon and beat me. He raised his feet and trampled me. He spit in my face, called me a mulatto bastard, me, your son. He is black like you, my black mother, but he took me for the real thing, an eighteen-karat mulatto, as they call them around here, one of those beautiful, pretentious men, their heads covered with smooth hair and filled with prejudice. Is it for my chicken-shit color that they persecute me? Is it because of this rotten coconut color that I can’t go left or right? Simon says one has to forget this absurd issue of skin color and race. If that’s right, then why did the commandant call me a mulatto bastard? Setting aside the question of color, since as far as whites are concerned I’m a black man, why did the commandant think calling me a mulatto would be an insult? Do I call him black? This label, for it is used as a label, singles me out, makes me feel uneasy in my own skin, like a transplanted animal that’s forgotten its native country. Are the devils also versed in discrimination? Against whom do they bear a grudge? Did they attack us only to side with some of us against the others? Or are they trying once and for all to drown that old quarrel in a general bloodbath? No matter how diabolical, their intervention would then have a salutary result. In that case, why did they spare Jacques? Why did they spare Simon? Representatives of the two extremes of which I am a product. I am cunning. I’m a clever man, as Simon says. And Andre and Jacques will be my shields in case of extreme emergency. I will keep them near me with jealous care. I’m not that desperate. I will take action without committing suicide. Now I’ve caught the thread of my thought firmly. There, standing before the wall, my eye to the hole, I understand that neither food nor sleep is necessary for a man to behave like a man…

“It smells like a prison around here,” Simon wakes up and exclaims.

“Maybe it’s the chamber pot,” Andre answers, rubbing his eyes.

“Prison! It was so filthy!” Simon says again. “I would rather deal with an army of devils than go back there.”

“Don’t talk about them,” Andre advises quietly.

“About whom?”

“The devils,” Andre answers.

“But where are they? Your devils. You haven’t told me yet.”

“Don’t joke about them,” I caution him.

“We’re old friends, aren’t we, Rene? I’m not used to holding back anything from you. So! These devils of yours, me, I don’t believe in them. I’m an atheist, don’t forget that. And an atheist accepts neither the idea of God nor the