“Pack your bags, Claire,” he tells me. “Felicia must get to Port-au-Prince without wasting any time and you must go also because of the baby.”
The cigarette was getting restive in the corner of his wet lips.
Without responding, I took the bags from the closet and filled them and ran to Jane’s house to let her know of our departure.
Felicia has been at the Saint-Francois-de-Sales Hospital since last evening. The car ride took eight hours. I watched Jean Luze clutching the wheel as he avoided the potholes; I listened to him swear at the state of the road; and I silently wiped Felicia’s clammy brow as she rested her head on my lap, saying to myself:
Now, with Jean Luze in my arms and my eyes on the operating room door, I wait. Jean Luze is in such anguish he can’t keep still. I am convinced my love will make him forget Felicia quickly. In the meantime, his distracted look seems to cancel us out, his son and me.
The door finally opens and the surgeon appears. Jean Luze rushes to meet him.
“It went very well,” he says. “She’ll pull through. I’ll be back later this evening.”
“Claire!” Jean Luze cries with a sigh of relief, “we can finally rest easy!”
I have to get used to this thought, I have to get used to the suffering it means for me if I don’t want to be crushed by it: Felicia is going to get better and we will return home and she will take back her place beside her husband, beside her child.
Here I am in a hotel room, making the most of this slight respite life has given me. I have no curiosity about this city that I haven’t seen in so long. In other words, I cling to my idee fixe, I hold on to my obsession, I remain indifferent to the tumultuous buzzing of cars and to the bustle inside the hotel. Soon I will be alone again. Won’t my past come to the rescue? Where are my old unhealthy habits? Where are the objects with which I fooled myself and that I was careless enough to destroy? My hands are empty, emptier than before. I am alone with my fear, alone with my suffering that stands there ready to spring and finish me off. Would I have the courage to kill Felicia? Ah! These long sleepless nights when even the air you breathe resounds with a life of its own, when each hour falls on the heart like a tolling bell! How these nights have furrowed my face and aged me!
Felicia is definitely better. She doesn’t need me. Jean Luze watches over her like a nurse by her bedside day and night. The red roses he gave her bloom on her table. She is beautiful in her blue silk shirt. Who tied that ribbon round her hair?
“Claire,” she says in a soft distant voice, “I’d like to hold my child.”
I hand her son to her.
A debilitating defeat. I no longer have the strength to delude myself. I know that for him I am an able and devoted sister-in-law who runs his household and whom he rewards once in a while by confiding in me or with a modest gift. He has never thought of me as a woman. This fact tortures me. I would perform heroic feats if it got his attention. Wouldn’t it be heroic to throw myself at him and confess my love?…
We are about to go home. The suitcases are packed and I am waiting for the Luzes by the hotel entrance with Jean-Claude in my arms. The days to come will be agony! I will see them kissing, caressing each other, living together in their room. They will make me a witness to their love, they will share their plans with me, convinced they are making me happy when I am in torment. How will I bear this without falling apart?
Felicia is recovering very slowly from the exhaustion of that awful trip and I myself feel rather bruised from the lurching and the weight of my sister and her son lying on top of me. Jean Luze is right. I have sacrificed too much. I am going to think about myself a little more and make a final decision about my future. My glance is more evasive than usual. I am afraid someone will see my disordered thoughts. I take care not to reveal anything. Am I going to wear this stifling mask until the end of my life?
We’re home again! It wasn’t hard to leave behind those petty memories back in my hotel room and at the hospital. Our little town has been shaken by the disappearance of Jane and her child. What’s happened to them? Nobody knows. I curse that trip to Port-au-Prince. If I had been here, things would have happened otherwise. This is the last time Caledu attacks one of my friends. What will happen to Jane and her child? Some people say they saw them passing through around midnight escorted by the armed beggars. Joel and Jean Luze whisper mysteriously to each other and seem to hide something from me. Are they working together to get rid of Caledu? Was Jane helping them? And the men who were seen going into her house, were they Joel and his friends? Three questions I am as yet unable to answer. But I am sure of one thing: the commandant only arrested Jane so that I might throw myself at his feet and beg for mercy. I would rather see Jane and her son die. I would rather die myself.
I’m listening to the screams. Are they coming from Jane and her child? I clench my fists and gnash my teeth. A kind of mysterious tremor stirs the town like the hushed sound of a wing slowly gliding over our heads. This shudder that courses through me cannot be merely personal, I know this now. Like me, all of them must be secretly working to free themselves from the constricting fear. I am not alone. All of them are here around me, and we suffer together, minds fixed on our impending deliverance.
Felicia is spoiling herself. The fate of Jane and her son scarcely seems to move her, since she has taken shelter so completely in Jean Luze’s love. She has everything and I have nothing. I don’t think I envy her, however. Envy is not enough to explain the dreadful hatred I feel for her. This woman is my enemy. She has placed herself in my way, she has blocked my horizons, she has thwarted my destiny, stolen my happiness as Annette did seven years ago. But this time I have decided to defend myself. With Felicia gone, I am sure Jean Luze would be mine more than he is now hers. I would destroy in him the very memory of the past. When you overestimate yourself, you are lying to yourself out of loyalty. All because you are aware you’re being duped. You draw strength and courage from your false idea of yourself. What terrible disappointment awaits me behind this veil of lies? Could I gather the shattered bits of my old self? I live the life of an unsung lover. I believe I am more ardent than Messalina, more seasoned than Cleopatra, more romantic than Emma Bovary. [26] And I want Jean Luze to prove it to me. I am approaching narcissism. My abnormality repels me. I see it as a defect.
Tonight I will bring him to my room and confess my love. He must reveal me to myself.
I couldn’t take the first step. Twenty times I left my room to go to him, all in vain. I could never do it. Making advances is beyond me.
Being alone scares me right now. Here I am, like a poisoned rat [27] in the house. Jean Luze is now in the habit of going out alone with his son. He goes and sits in our little town square and stays there a long while, holding him. Now I have hours of free time. I even avoid going to the kitchen. Nothing matters except this bitterness consuming me, simmering on a low flame. It’s dangerous. The thought of the crime haunts me. It alternates strangely with the outrage that engulfs me when I think of Jane and her son.
I’ve been spending too much time stroking the dagger Jean Luze gave me. In monstrous daydreams, I see myself plunging it into Felicia’s breast without hesitation.
Today, Jean Luze filled his wife’s room with flowers. They don’t need me anymore and unconsciously make me feel it. Here they are, all three of them in their own little world. The Luze family no longer wants an interloper around.
“We have imposed upon you far too much,” Jean Luze told me. “You should take it easy now.”
Felicia looks good thin. She looks like a child with that ribbon in her hair. There really is something disarming about her, both childish and serious. I caught her crying the other day, head buried in Jean Luze’s shoulder.
