It’s started again. This morning, Caledu bludgeoned several peasants. He’s furious. I watched the whole scene from behind my shutters. Other eyes in the neighborhood were spying too. I saw curtains moved by trembling hands, eyes glowing behind other blinds; I heard whispering to the right, to the left, and piercing the whispering at almost regular intervals, Caledu’s swearing, the peasants’ cries of pain and protest: they went on strike against M. Long to demand a better price for their wood. In response M. Long unloaded an electric saw from the boat docked in the harbor for the past two hours, and the commandant made the peasants haul it themselves. It was taking too much time to chop the trees down with axes, and M. Long was in a hurry to buy all of the mountain wood at the price he had fixed. One of the peasants kept talking despite the blows:
“Don’t give in!” he yelled. “Hang on, and if I die, don’t forget you must stick together.”
He was taken to the prison dying…
I clutch my doll against my chest. Alone in the dark, I gaze at the moon and attempt a smile. Desire is fading. I feel purified. I hear the church clock chime the hour. Another sleepless night washes away and the day rises without pity and lines up behind the other days of my life. My wrinkles deepen and my features wilt. Old age is coming soon. Oh, I want to live, to live before it’s too late! Suddenly, I am starving for tenderness more than ever. My own is being wasted and I would like to give it to someone. I open the window. Dawn rises fragrant with the night sap oozing from the trees. I imagine Jean Luze lying next to Felicia. She sleeps with her back to him. He is alone like me. Alone with his memories and the heavy past he drags after him like a ball and chain. I see him. He is thinking, one hand behind his head, the other twisting a pajama button. I’m wrong, he’s in the living room. His favorite melody reaches me, muted. He is with Beethoven. Why did he flee his bedroom? What comfort does this music bring him? What’s going on inside him? I open my door carefully. He is there in his bathrobe, head in his arms, bent by what pain I don’t know. I gently close my door again and go to the window: another man is walking in the street, his face turned toward my house. A lit cigarette betrays the jerky movements of his hand. Who is this man watching?
This solitary patrol beneath my window reveals either love or hate.
Today Jean Luze’s brow is lined with concern. He smokes endlessly and walks up and down the dining room. We are alone. Felicia is in her room and Annette has not come home yet. I steal a glance at him but can’t bring myself to question him. Meanwhile, he suffers, I know it. He stops in front of me, looks at me for a second and draws a long puff from his cigarette.
“You know what Monsieur Long suggested to me yesterday?” he said. “No, it’s loathsome. He wanted me to doctor the books so that he could prove he paid the peasants three times more for the wood than he had. Naturally, I would get my cut. It’s really a gang and the Syrians are in on it too. I saw proof of this recently…”
He seems beside himself.
“I may be stupid,” he adds, “but I can’t compromise, I refuse to get rich that way. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, I see that now. After all, robbery and exploitation are the rule these days. Monsieur Long chose a foreigner as his accountant. He knows full well why. Because, after all, how is this any of my business, he must tell himself. But he forgets that a man, no matter where he is, takes his ideas and convictions with him. I slaved hard all my life. I’ve never had to get involved in any racket. That’s more than I can bear. By working for Monsieur Long, I feel I’m committing a dishonest act against you. An American friend offered me this position and I accepted it. Simple as that. You think you’ve seen it all and then you see this kind of corruption and realize you don’t know anything about life.”
“Quit, Monsieur Long,” I said to him very simply.
“Do you want me to live here at your expense? Do you think that could be a solution for me? No, the only thing I can imagine is leaving. I’m waiting for my contract to expire before talking to Felicia. She’s so fragile, so emotional!”
He gets up and looks at his watch:
“It’s already six o’clock! Excuse me, Claire, I have to get dressed, and thanks for being a friend to me…”
I didn’t have the strength to throw myself in his arms to confess my love. What he had just said about Felicia held me back. It’s that naive, childish, delicate side of her that he must love. For him, I’m the eldest, the experienced woman who has made her choice, who didn’t marry in order to remain independent. He would never believe that I have suffered so much from being this way that I now doubt myself. He comes to me like I am a sister, he opens his heart, what more can I ask for? If only he knew that my experiences are merely secondhand, if only he knew that romantic love would make me melt! What would he do then? Can he really think there have been men in my life? Having seen how Annette lives her life, can he even imagine that other women have grown old without ever having had a single affair, traumatized and shriveled? He talks about himself and I keep quiet. All I have ever known how to do is keep quiet.
“Augustine!” I shouted to take my unhappiness out on someone, “what are you waiting for, set the table!”
“I won’t stay in this hole,” Annette blurted out this morning. “I will leave. They want to stop Paul from marrying me. They’re telling him all kinds of stories about me. The biggest cowards among them are sending him anonymous letters. As if they had nothing better to do. But he will marry me, I swear…”
She is reaping the nastiness she has sown. She is forced to deal with others for the first time in her life and is just appalled.
How can I convince her that only the most base people of any social class pay attention to gossip? It would be imprudent and useless.
“They don’t exist for me,” she shrieks. “Why are they meddling in my affairs?”
The young Trudor dines with us that evening. Annette is so ravishing he can hardly eat. She leads him into the living room. Later, after the Luzes retire to their room, I catch him kneeling before her. He is caressing her slowly, deeply, his mouth on her breast. Then he pushes her back and buries his head between her thighs. She moans and finally lets out a little muffled cry almost like she’s in pain. He wants to take her but she pushes him away. She pulls down her skirt impatiently and strokes his hair. He will have her only on their wedding night. She’s not as harebrained as she seems. She knows how to make a man do her bidding.
Jane Baviere made me a blue dress to wear on the day of the baptism. After all, the godmother shouldn’t look too dumpy. The baby is a month old. His limbs are growing, to my surprise. He is not as skinny as before. He bleats and stares at the ceiling with eyes that look like his father’s. I can’t stand to hear him cry. I’m a little obsessed with keeping track of his mealtimes. It’s odd. Could this be love?
Tomorrow is the baptism. The godfather has given me perfume that I hate and flowers that I put in a vase in the living room. Let’s hope he will remember to tie his laces and close his fly.
Felicia is having me arrange an elaborate menu. Really, how inconsiderate! There is only salted fish and cornmeal at the market. And of the lowest quality. The chickens are scrawny and prohibitively priced, vegetables nonexistent. Augustine returns home every market day babbling: “It’s death,” she says, “death!” It’s an expression she likes and she uses to sum up any grim situation. Too bad, we will serve them fish every which way and nothing but fish.
The Trudors, their whole clan, naturally have to be there. I also invited Mme Camuse and Father Paul. This time, Jean Luze did not add M. Long’s name to the guest list and I managed to get Annette to accept that we will exclude Caledu. Whatever happens happens!
At the table we are a fairly disparate group. Mme Camuse is very distinguished in a high-collared black dress. And Father Paul, looking dapper, coughing loudly, a real wine enthusiast and gourmand; Mme Trudor, a black woman as sinewy as her son and as her thin, short, bald husband; Felicia, whose pallor looks green (Jean-Claude has taken to crying at night), and Annette, her long black hair floating on her shoulders, radiant with health; Paul Trudor, silent and gloomy; and Jean Luze, cordial and affable, a man of the world, I must say. Paul’s sister, some kind of idiot clucking like a mother hen, is sitting next to me. She has a devious manner I don’t care for. It seems the Trudors aren’t very good at bringing up their offspring either. Mme Camuse’s demeanor has me on tenterhooks. She’s watching the Trudors too closely. Her eyes turn from the wife to the husband, from the husband to the children; stiff-lipped, she follows their every gesture: M. Trudor scrapes too hard with his spoon and his wife forgets to wipe her lips before drinking. I avoid Mme Camuse’s looks and eat in silence. Dr. Audier, seated next to his wife, is listening to Father Paul’s rather tedious stories about the old days.
“Young Haitians laugh at the past,” Dr. Audier says. “Once upon a time, the past nurtured, gave hope and courage.”
“What do you expect,” Jean Luze answers softly. “All young people have learned to look toward the future and,
