Love, Anger, Madness

His eyes darkened. He was reliving the pieces of his life he preferred to keep to himself.

“But don’t you find hatred between compatriots to be even more horrid?” the doctor asked softly.

“What do you think France went through in 1789?” he retorted. “And let me stop you before you say that our cutthroats fought for an idea, for an ideal. What does all your suffering amount to? Maybe the goal escapes me. That’s why I’m afraid to put myself forward, to side with one party against another. Where does this hatred between you come from?”

“It is the end result of a long sequence of historical facts,” Dr. Audier declared, combing a hand through his white silky hair. “The hatred became swollen and toxic, and had to be punctured in the end like an abscess.”

“Without a scalpel?”

“You always need a scalpel to drain an abscess,” Dr. Audier added. “I am seventy years old and I have lived through plenty of things in this country. Our past is full of rebellions, we have seen days beyond description during which everyone, like the musketeers of old, demanded revenge for the least insult. Weapons were lightly drawn and men braved death just as lightly. I am more or less the last man of a dead generation. Maybe we deserve what we are going through.”

“Do you feel so guilty that you would just casually absolve those who persecute you?” Jean Luze asked.

“My dear young man, I have enough experience to know when to keep quiet and to keep the full range of my thoughts to myself.”

“Forgive me, I did not mean to pry”

“Don’t apologize. You are not so much curious about what I think, but about what could have brought us to hang our heads and resign ourselves.”

He opened the door of the living room and studied the street.

“Look!” he said. “Caledu is rounding up the poets. They dared pay their respects to an executed suspect and he’s using the occasion to get these so-called conspirators. Well, and take a look here: Monsieur Long is standing in front of his factory. He’s watching as if he were a mere spectator. And yet I wouldn’t be surprised if he was intimately involved.”

“Aren’t you exaggerating somewhat?” Jean Luze asked, skeptical.

“Look at things a bit more carefully and I am sure you’ll see I’m right,” Audier answered.

Felicia smiled, more serene than ever.

“He’s crazy,” she later explained to her husband, “his wife said so. In times like these, many of us need a scapegoat to excuse our own cowardice. The only guilty ones are these blacks who have been sent here to make us submit. They only associate with Monsieur Long because they hope to make money. As if money were everything!”

“Oh my wife, my dear wife,” Jean Luze said, “you are such a sectarian!”

“What do you expect?” she said to him, “you can’t snap your fingers and erase the mark of your entire upbringing.”

Down at the very end of Grand-rue, in that miserable back alley full of old rickety shacks, mothers wept as they watched their sons being handcuffed.

The days went by. The people’s misery grew. To each his own lot. Selfishness becomes our way of life. We wallow in cowardice and resignation. Here I am, more than ever in love with my sister’s husband, and I want to think of nothing else but this love. It is turning into my refuge, my consolation. Felicia is again so sure of herself, so confident in her man, that she embraced Annette on her birthday. They gave her perfume and rice powder. Drench yourself in perfume and powder, I’m not afraid of anything anymore, Jean Luze’s smile seems to say. We’ll see.

These last few days, I have seen Annette lie in wait for him in vain, at the top of the stairs, in the living room, by the door of her room. He has managed to foil her schemes without even noticing them. She does not know what else she can come up with to seduce him. Yesterday, she came out of her bedroom in a bathing suit she made herself and, under the pretext that she was unable to close the bra, she placed herself in Jean Luze’s capable hands. She met with a friendly tap on the shoulder and the following words:

“There you go!” was the entire outcome.

I hated him at that moment. I felt as if all this trouble was for nothing.

He is more elusive than ever. His attitude is outrageous by its very excess of correctness. You had me once, but I won’t fall back in your nets, he wants Annette to understand. This is neither a game nor flirtation on his part. In one fell swoop, he has swept memory clean. What is desire, then, if it cannot be rekindled once it’s been satisfied? How would I handle being pushed away? Was life trying to spare me until now by keeping me away from these kinds of disappointing realities? Am I provoking it by desperately throwing myself into an adventure with no exit? My feelings for this man have taken so much space in my life that I can’t free myself from them. Nothing seems to move him. It could make a woman lose her mind. Annette had Bob kiss her right before his eyes to provoke him. He gazed at them with sweet indolence, like an angel, which was worse than a slap in the face.

Bravo for Father Paul! Bravo for Eugenie Duclan! It rained yesterday. A torrential deluge that lasted four hours. The weather hasn’t improved since. Fat dirty gray clouds hang like rags in the sky. We wade through the mud puddles like pigs. The potholed streets have become ponds. The indifferent ship loads the wood piled high on the pier. Business on that end is booming. M. Long, red as a rooster, manages the operation himself. The peasants have faces like whipped dogs. They sulk and hold out their hands for their payment as they look away into the distance at the devastated hillside. Huge white patches have spread on the mountain like leprosy. Immense rocks stick out of its sides like gravestones. They stand there, dressed in union blues, barefoot, their halforts [10] across their shoulders, faces twisted with displeasure.

“Our land is finished,” one of them says. “We cut down too many trees.”

“I said don’t do it! Don’t do it!” cries another. “We should have created a coalition and refused all offers. But black hill folk [11] never stick together. They are weak with the white men and the bourgeois. Here comes the rain again and our land is finished. The American is getting rich and the others with him. They are all against us.”

The mayor and the prefect accompany M. Long to the office, a small building with the following inscription: LONG & CO., EXPORT CORP. This is where Jean Luze spends long days bent over paperwork. He knows all of their secrets. Senior accountant, such is his title, and he keeps track of the numbers, his handsome face bent over their books.

No one suspects him. He’s a white man. And a white man can only side with M. Long. He hears them talking. And he learns a great deal from the time spent with them.

I watch for Jean Luze from my windows. It is four and he should be returning from work. I’m holding the paper knife he gave me yesterday, saying:

“You spoil me, so I’ll spoil you too. No, it’s true, you’re a grand girl. Look at this, it’s from Mexico. It’s a dagger. One of the best. Something to remember me by.”

“Are you leaving?”

“One never knows!…”

He’s not happy. How can we possibly hold on to him? If he leaves, what will become of me? How do we change things here? For the first time in my life, I shall redouble my efforts toward the common cause. I will transform this place into the piece of paradise he has yearned for.

I’m playing my last card. Tonight is the ball in honor of Annette’s birthday, which was three days ago. For this, I have overcome my repugnance and made the most awful concession. The commandant, the mayor, the Trudors and their son Paul, who is home on vacation, will be among our guests. I think I may have shaken Caledu’s hand without realizing it.

Many guests, Corrine Laplanche among them, were already in the living room when Annette made her entrance in a blue dress that revealed her shoulders down to her back.

In my opinion Corrine Laplanche is as distinguished as any society lady. Pretty in a tasteful, long-sleeved dress of white crepe, she leaned toward me to say:

“I am Corrine Laplanche, Elina Jean-Francois’ daughter. My mother often spoke of you. You were schoolmates, I think.”

I shook her hand with a smile.