in the process, they strive to forget the past.”
“Is it that easy?” Father Paul asks him.
“To forget the past? Yes and no. In any case, forgetting is necessary. In a country’s history the example of others, even if they were heroes, can’t help anyone. Contexts change. The struggle becomes different…”
“You are right,” Mme Camuse butts in, more thoughtlessly than ever. “And you seem to speak from experience. However little you know our country, what is happening here must have enlightened you. You’ll be astonished to hear that, not so long ago, we lived opulently…”
“Opulently, really!” Jean Luze exclaims skeptically.
“Oh!” Annette adds suddenly. “Today I saw a beggar swallow a raw fish. It seems he caught it by diving headfirst into the sea.”
“Only some of you lived opulently,” M. Trudor emphasizes, ignoring Annette completely. “You’ll tell me that nothing has changed or that the situation has even gotten worse; all that’s happened is the roles have been reversed. As the Haitian proverb goes: ‘Today it’s the hunter’s turn, tomorrow the prey’s.’ As for the beggars, only the hurricanes are responsible, isn’t that right?”
No one responds. Jean Luze grimaces involuntarily. Mme Camuse fixes an imperceptible smile, tilting her head with a more than aristocratic bent, meant to challenge the vulgarity of the “prey” to which the prefect and his family belong.
“And they were selfless, your heroes,” Father Paul continues vehemently, following his train of thought. “I don’t mean to criticize anyone, but I once knew men worthy of admiration, who put country before coin.”
“Selfless, who isn’t?” Mme Trudor cries. “Bureaucrats are so badly paid that they can boast of serving the Republic for peanuts. Isn’t that so, Julian?”
“You don’t get things done by choosing poverty,” M. Trudor declares again. “You do it with this”-he taps his belt where a weapon is concealed-“and with some of that”-he slowly rubs his fingers together.
“Hmph!” Father Paul grumbles.
Jean Luze tactfully changes the topic of conversation. Turning to Paul, he asks if he enjoys reading.
“Yes, detective novels,” he admits frankly.
“Well, now, that’s very good,” Mme Camuse nods with a mocking smile.
And turning to Jean Luze:
“My dear sir, would it be indiscreet to ask you how you like it here?”
“My work keeps me here, Madame,” he replied coldly.
“You see, I was just going to say,” she adds with some uncertainty. “Choosing this Haitian province wasn’t the right thing for a man like you. How did you end up here, I wonder?”
“I go where work calls me, Madame. Unfortunately, I don’t have an estate.”
“Bah!” Mme Camuse says softly with her usual eloquent little toss of the head, “but nevertheless you’ve managed to find happiness here.”
“Yes,” Jean Luze answers, again without looking at Felicia, “that’s true.”
“The Europeans adore us. I’ve heard that back in colonial times, Frenchmen deserted their wives for the beautiful mulatto girls,” Mme Camuse recounts. “I, for one, am a direct descendant of noble French colonials of the name de Camuse. But what can you expect, time has rubbed away the full name as it rubs away everything else. All you can do is adapt to the new and minimize the damage. Hmm!…”
We were having coffee now. Father Paul, all red from too much food and drink, stroked his belly with a satisfied expression on his face and went so far as to accept a glass of anisette, declaring:
“We better ‘push’ that coffee, Monsieur Luze, we better.”
This loosened up the guests, who were tense because of his overly frank remarks, the prefect’s awkward rebuttal and Mme Camuse’s tactlessness.
We moved to the living room. Felicia decided to comment on the fact that Vera had not said a word during the meal and seemed rather shy.
“Our little girl? Well, she’s only fourteen,” Mme Trudor answered. “Who isn’t shy at that age?”
“One can be shy at any age,” Annette answered. “Take Claire, for example.”
“Don’t confuse shyness and reserve,” Jean Luze quickly added. “Claire is not talkative, that’s all.”
“Indeed, Claire has never liked to talk a lot,” Father Paul agreed.
Mme Camuse’s eyes went from Jean Luze to me.
“Her reserve may be the result of too strict an education,” she said. “I knew Monsieur and Madame Clamont, they were rather stern. Weren’t they, Claire?”
“Yes, indeed…”
“And there is something else,” Dr. Audier slipped in. “Psychological complexes, for example.”
“Complexes!” Jean Luze exclaimed.
“Can you imagine, my friend: for a long time Claire had a complex about not being her sisters’ equal, about not being as white and pink as a lily.”
I quicked turned in the direction of the Trudors. Fortunately, they were at the other end of the living room. I gave Dr. Audier a reproachful look and caught one Jean Luze was giving me. It was so strange and unsettling that I lost my composure and spilled anisette on my skirt.
“You dope!” he hissed at me later when we found ourselves alone. “You big dope, back then you must have been the most beautiful of the three Clamont sisters!”
Oh God, now look at him, just like Mme Camuse, talking about me in the past tense.
How mysterious a human being can seem to the very eyes spying on him. Even the secrets he tells you are at best partial revelations. How can you really know what’s going on inside Jean Luze?
Very reluctantly he agreed to give Annette away at the altar. On the other hand, he was quick to give her that gold bracelet she lusted for and he got two kisses on the cheeks for it. The house bubbles with effervescence. She is getting married tomorrow and the gifts keep flowing. The lace gown, courtesy of M. Trudor, which cost me an arm and a leg, is spread on an armchair in the living room, as is the veil adorned with orange blossoms.
“You’ve put on weight since the baby,” Annette says to Felicia. “You have to try to eat less.”
Jean Luze involuntarily looks at his wife. Does he realize the extent to which she’s lost her looks? Another washed-out white woman like all the others he has known. Annette looks at Felicia sternly, shakes her head, looks Jean Luze straight in the eye, and then walks off with an irresistible and provocative syncopation of her hips. Now there’s a Haitian girl who could tempt a saint. Despite her light golden skin, nothing about her could make anyone confuse her with a white woman.
The next day I strapped Felicia into a corset, which didn’t make her any thinner. We left the baby with Augustine and went to the church.
A pressed and powdered crowd jostled inside. Not exactly the “cream of society” as Mme Camuse would point out, elegant and old-fashioned in her long black dress and the feathered hat she wears only for special occasions. Annette glittered on Jean Luze’s arm. Two maids of honor dressed in pink walked before them. Then came the groom on Felicia’s arm, M. and Mme Trudor, Dr. Audier and his wife, Eugenie with her pharmacist, who was dragging his partially paralyzed leg, the mayor dressed like the prefect in his eternal gray suit and black hat, and others from Port-au-Prince whom we did not know, friends of the Trudors. On my way to church I noticed Jane Baviere standing by her door with her son, and Dora peering through her blinds. The sight of them unnerved me. I had not dared invite either of them, thereby acquiescing to the rules of good society and the established order.
The crush of people at church had prevented me from staring at Jean Luze to my heart’s content. I noticed only his distant and chagrined expression as he walked Annette to the altar. He seemed so miserable that I thought he was jealous.
“Look how furious Jean looks,” Felicia whispered to me. “I had to scold him to make him do this. It bothers him to put himself on display.”
Was she as sure of herself as she seemed?
Back home, as the guests gathered in the living room, champagne flutes in hand, the commandant arrived. He greeted only Annette and Paul Trudor and remained standing, his back to the wall. Our eyes locked. He slowly walked up to me and hissed:
“So our hatred is mutual,” he said to me.
But his expression seemed to belie his words.
I started to tremble while my eyes clung to his lips, his teeth, his hands. I saw him smile, so I turned my back
