those beautiful days? We would eat what we liked, weren’t afraid of anyone, and we were happy.” (She lowered her voice.) “He may have crippled me but my soul has no master save the Lord, the Lord alone.”
Her stubbornness made me smile.
“I won’t hang my head before him either anymore,” I promised.
“They’re constantly spying on me, Claire!” she continued. “Night and day, they’re tapping on my door, it’s unbearable! They’re watching me as if I were a ringleader. Look…”
She opened the doors to the backyard: behind the fence beggars standing on tiptoe were trying to figure out what was going on inside her house.
“They’re all armed,” she whispers. “I’m going to flee to Port-au-Prince. I have already written to friends and told them everything.”
“To whom did you entrust your letter?”
“To Madame Camuse. She promised to get someone reliable to deliver it for me.”
The beggars posted in the street followed me to my door with their eyes. Two of them even escorted me. Was it out of weakness or fear that I opened my bag and gave them money?
Can it be that I am the most cowardly of all the women here?
Somewhere in the sky there is a ring of stars. I can’t sleep. Intense and mysterious is the night! It resembles my inner life. A few stars play hide-and-seek. I see them run and chase each other in a corner of the sky. A luminous dot under the trees on the street awakens my curiosity. Someone is still there smoking and walking alone. I recognize Caledu’s silhouette. He can’t sleep either. I feel like running up to him to dig my nails into his eyes and drag him blind and bleeding along Grand-rue.
I look after Felicia like a mother. I kneel down to make her drink her soup. I am at her feet…
I always thought that one would become generous if one became rich by chance, but I’ve learned that plain happiness can make you good as well. Everyone has his own idea of happiness. Suffering has made me modest, so for now I am content with life’s charity. I even tremble at the thought of getting too ambitious, for fear of spoiling everything. Felicia’s presence is so negligible that it doesn’t bother me. I treat her like a sick child. How could I be jealous of this wretch? I am Jean-Claude’s mother, really, just as I am Jean Luze’s wife. This idea brings me so much joy that I would like to share it. I would like to play the Beethoven concerto at full volume. I want to set the house ablaze with music. Felicia impatiently asks me to lower the volume; the concerto annoys her. This brings me back to earth. She does exist. She is between us. Right now, she is listening to Gisele Audier’s gossip. The woman chatters like a magpie.
“Me, my dear,” she says, “I am against all these women who disregard the prescribed laws of society and claim to be independent. Lately, it seems like anything goes, it’s disgusting. In the old days, it wasn’t like that. We’ve let our youth off the leash. They’ve become depraved. I would never name names but I know of very young girls who won’t say no to anything. You’ve probably found out by now what kind of life Jane Baviere leads. It’s appalling. She entertains men after nightfall. Many have been seen going there. Who are they? We don’t know that yet. No one has recognized them. They come at night and knock on her door. Eugenie Duclan saw them one evening. So has Madame Camuse. Maybe she invites the prefect, and the commandant. She won’t be able to keep her secret for long. The entire neighborhood is watching her. Oh! But we’ll learn their names soon enough! It’s just like what happened with the Grandupre girl. You know, I was the first to see that she was sneaking into Old Mathurin’s house, the old pervert. I told the whole neighborhood and Madame Grandupre beat Agnes until there was blood.”
My God! How I would like the right to slap her to make her keep her mouth shut! And how mean they are, despite everything that’s happened…
It was barely five in the morning and Jean-Claude woke earlier than usual and was crying in his crib, when there was a knock at my door.
I opened up and Jean Luze came in.
“Why is he crying?” he asked me. “Is he sick?”
“Our little gentleman has probably soiled himself and wants to be changed.”
He leaned over the crib at the same moment I did and our heads touched.
He smiled and lifted his face to look at me.
“Settle down your son,” he said.
“My son!”
My emphasis must have struck him because he quickly straightened.
“Isn’t he? Claire, isn’t he?”
He must have been affected by my loosened hair, the neckline of my dressing gown revealing my cleavage, because he exclaimed as if he were seeing me for the first time:
“You look awfully good like this!”
I was busy changing Jean-Claude.
“You look awfully good like this!” he repeated. “You must have been a splendid girl, and I wonder why you didn’t make a life for yourself. Dr. Audier mentioned those complexes, but I’m still skeptical. Perhaps you were disappointed in love. It’s none of my business,” he went on despite my silence, “but I think you have everything it takes to make a man happy. Claire! Are you listening to me?” He took Jean-Claude in his arms and fell on my bed:
“That godmother of yours, she never answers your question,” he added. “That’s how she discourages nosy people.”
Barefoot, in pajamas and on my bed, he unsettled me so much that I could barely look at him. I went to the kitchen to look for the child’s bottle and when I came back I found him smoking and thinking, lying beside the baby.
“Are you so unhappy with your lot?” he asked me.
“Why do you ask me that?”
“You look a little desperate sometimes…”
“Me!”
“Yes, you. And now you’ve fallen into the habit of sacrificing yourself, and people take advantage. It’s not fair…”
I bristle at his pity and interrupt him.
“All of that doesn’t matter.”
“But of course it does.”
He put his hands on my shoulders in a friendly and affectionate way.
“You have a hard time accepting things, Claire,” he went on, “and you live in a state of perpetual revolt. You’ll end up miserable all your life, like me. I’d like to help.”
“You!…”
The word came out of my mouth like a scream.
He dragged a few puffs from his cigarette without looking at me.
“You are like me,” he added, “I see it more and more every day. I happen to know the reason for those lines in your forehead. You have to forget Caledu, you must calm your sense of outrage. Do you know what happens to people like us? Do you know what they can expect?”
And in a halting voice, as if he was pulling the words out of himself, he said:
“I was only eighteen when I went to fight against the Germans. My father died the year before and I left my mother and sister back home. We were poor; they needed me. I only had one desire: to kill Germans and avenge us. I left and was dispatched to the trenches, into the thick of the fighting. A cold rage kept me going and I slaughtered Germans at point-blank range. I kept track of how many in a notebook, and in four years I killed about fifty. I was gravely wounded and sent to the hospital clutching my own guts, dying. Back home, I learned that my sister and my mother were both dead, and I found work far away from my country, seeking in vain to forget and to heal my soul. I had done what everyone calls my duty, but to this day I am still convinced that the war robbed me of my mother and my sister, who both died of anguish and poverty…”
“There won’t be another war,” I said.
