We eat and the conversation revolves around trivial things. We return to the topic of the Feast of the Virgin, the devotional scenes, and the procession.
“Apparently, Madame Camuse will not present a display this year,” Felicia says. “The nuns are preparing one in the entrance of their school. A manger as usual, unfortunately.”
“With a big doll lying on straw,” Annette concludes with a yawn.
Annette is neither pious nor chaste, everyone knows this and she is turning our world upside down with her makeup and her low neckline. She is much too fashionable for this narrow community. She recently pinched Father Paul’s cheek and called him a handsome old man. Fortunately, this happened at home.
Jean Luze is neither more distant nor more friendly toward her than a brother-in-law would be.
“Cigarette?”
He holds out his case. Annette’s cigarette shakes in her hand. She gets up from the table pretending that he’s not offering her a light. She gives herself away. Jean Luze’s attitude is as perfect as hers is false. She suffers and he has simply gone back to being himself.
There is a disturbing vitality in me, made even more dangerous because I’m holding it back. I am like a cunning bedbug lurking in a furniture crevice. I patiently wait to suck the blood of my prey. Jean Luze is my prey now. If he wants, for his own peace and quiet, to settle for his lukewarm marriage, I will manage to prevent him from doing so. For now, he’s on all fours trying to make it up to his wife. He immerses himself in their dull daily routine. But he’s going to get bored with it. I am going to be a great help to him in this matter and a lot more skillfully this time around. I realize there will be much to do. How he hurried back to nestle himself against Felicia’s chaste body! She is so proper, Felicia, so careful, so sensible! I imagine their embrace. I know all there is to know about perfect coitus in theory. I know several pages from
Despite the cataclysms, my eyes see the immutable dawn, sky and sea in their colorful splendor. Indifferent to our misfortunes, a merrymaking sky parades in the soft colors of daybreak, and far away the sea, calm, serene, sprawls like a silvery blue sheet of oil. I breathe them in, absorb them with brand-new pleasure, a pleasure so childish it treacherously takes me back to the past. I hear my father’s voice echoing like a drum, the neighing of horses. I hear my mother talking and I hear Augustine, whom my mother has beaten, crying. I hear the piano under my clumsy fingers and my teacher, Mlle Verdure, yelling: “From the top, Claire, take it from the top!” The streets are cheerful. On the doorsteps, groups of men gather. Smoking the day’s first cigar, they share the political news gleaned from Port-au-Prince. The doors of the stores are open. European boats unload their merchandise on the pier, which teems with people of all classes. Vendors walk under our windows calling for their customers. “Madame Clamont,” they say, “I’ve got them here, your rice and beans, chickens and vegetables.” And my mother comes downstairs, leaning on Augustine, and sits on the porch to haggle. What has happened to Mme Baviere’s gorgeous store? And Duclan’s, where they sold French wines, liqueurs and boxes of chocolate of the best French brands? Ruined. One after the other, they went bankrupt. And the Syrians, like vultures, rushed for their remains and bought them up. They’re holding up well, the Syrians. They can compete with Haitians in any weather. “Unfair competition!” my raving father used to insist. “They’ve taken shelter under the wing of the European powers to benefit from their protection…”
“Down with the Syrians! Death to the Syrians,” added Dr. Audier and the other merchants. But it wasn’t the Syrians’ fault if my father lost his coffee fields before his death. His ruin can be chalked up to his fixation on becoming head of state someday. His lands were sold, piece by piece, to pay for ten years of campaigns. And my mother, who watched our dowries fall into the hands of his party activists, would weep in feeble protest.
There are people who let a fortune slip through their fingers and it’s usually not because they are particularly generous. Did he do the right thing, my father, in playing the millionaire in order to stun the masses while satisfying his ambition? It’s all coming back… But I am keeping memory at bay. I could yield to it, to be sure. But for now, I am engrossed only with the present.
Each morning, the Syrians open their stores to reveal displays that have been restocked by the American freighter. Their customers are Caledu, M. Long, the prefect, the mayor, and the few of us who can still afford the luxury of a few ells of fabric. M. Long’s boat supplies them duty-free, people say, because the inspectors have been bought. What’s more, they have also acquired American citizenship, though they barely speak a word of English. “It’s a gang!” Dr. Audier protests, but more and more weakly. With eagle-beak noses pointing from their crafty faces, the “Arabs,” as the common people call them, smile and take root in the country. Jacques Marti predicts their departure.
“The Syrians will throw their sacks on their backs and start on foot for their homeland. Famine is upon us,” he screams, while pacing down the street in big off-balance steps. “We will walk on our knees and we will eat the rocks on the road. Satan rules the town and God has turned his face from us…”
Caledu is getting annoyed. Mme Camuse is right. He will soon accuse Jacques of subversive activity and will have him locked up. He doesn’t like preachers of misfortune and this one is playing his part as only a madman can.
People quickly peer through their blinds.
Everything here happens on the sly. We hide even when we speak.
“Go on, go on, Jacques,” they hiss softly, “tell us about Satan, tell us what he’s like.”
And to their great joy he screams and gesticulates:
“Big, tall, black, with horns, enormous horns, that’s how he is. You be careful, brothers!”
Laughing children surround him.
“Jacques! Jacques!” they cry, throwing stones at him, “are you crazy? Tell us if you’re crazy…”
He runs straight to the police station, and Violette, a prostitute from the stinking back alley, blocks his way.
“Go home,” she advises softly. “That’s better now.”
She takes his hand and he lets her. He seems very happy to walk arm in arm with her.
“Hey there,” Mme Potiron cries out and smacks her rear, “you found yourself a woman, business is good!” [8]
Her whole body shakes in vulgar laughter.
Behind the blinds of my window, I stare at Violette. She is young. She is beautiful. She is free. She spits on us and she is right. I would switch places with her right now.
Leaves are falling from the trees, dancing and swirling in the air before landing flat on the ground. Insomnia has gotten me used to the living breath of the night. I distinguish the sound of each insect or lizard, the movement of each star, every quiver of the earth. I am naked in my bed, damp with sweat, palpitating with desire. A man’s arms hold my body prisoner. He takes me. Is it possible that, a moment later, nothing of this remains? Not a scrap of memory. Oh! The loneliness of suffering! I get dressed and I tiptoe to Annette’s room. She is weeping in the dark. I knock. A voice hoarse from weeping asks who it is. I answer and she opens. I’m no trouble, I am the big dolt, life has rolled off my back without leaving a trace. She starts weeping again in my presence, then says to me:
“What do you want?”
I look at her without a word, then she throws herself on my shoulder.
“If you knew, Claire…”
“I want to die! I want to die!” she suddenly cries out, with a passion that stuns her.
She rests her haggard, questioning eyes on me. My words have come out of her mouth. How tired she looks. How this love is wearing her out! Her morale is so weak! Jean Luze is not the man for her. The feeling he inspires in her is so strong that she is wasting away. Will she die of it? Too bad! I need her as an intermediary. I am old. I must smell rancid down there, clutching this starving, virgin sex between my legs.
