keeps stabbing us in the back. I am going to settle the score with it once and for all. I am sick of hanging my head and trembling. I look at my furrowed face in the mirror. I discover, to my surprise, that my face is asymmetrical: left profile, dreamy and sweet; right profile, fierce and sensual. Is this me or is this how I see myself? My hands also suddenly seem dissimilar, the one made for action seems thicker, heavier. Why this taste of venom in my mouth? …
Granting myself a final and supreme bit of vanity, I’ve put on my nicest nightgown, untied my hair and got in bed. Everything has to be perfect, it’s a point of honor. I feel wrapped in cool air. Am I hesitating? Ah! Cowardice, how full your disguises! The dagger is in my hand. I am preparing for death. The rough touch of my sheets is gone. I am gliding in silk. So sublime. Can this be me walking ecstatically, draped in crimson, toward that strange land of shadows? The fever is rising. Now I am buried in a shroud of flowers. I am spewing mist. I’m pierced by the freezing air. I am an iceberg pushed by the wind across the vast expanses of the sea. In the end this bitch of a life is not such a bitch when the heart has even the slightest reason to hope. Yes, but what about me, do I have some reason to hope?
I lift the weapon to my left breast, when the cries of a riotous mob shake me out of my delirium. Stretching out my arm with the drawn dagger, I listen. Where are these cries coming from? Now my attention is turned away from its goal. Life, death, do they depend on chance? I hide the dagger in my blouse and I come down. There are so many beggars that their stench overpowers me. The street is lit by the peasants’ torches. They are hollering, “Down with Mister Long,” and walking toward the American. He immediately aims a submachine gun: twenty fall. Caledu and his officers rush to the police station. They apparently intend to reestablish order by shooting in the air. I have the impression a bullet came from Jane’s house. Pierrilus draws his gun from his rags and aims at Caledu, and others do the same: three policemen fall to the ground. The bullets whizz by me, coming, I am now sure, from Jane’s balcony: I recognize Joel and Jean lying low behind the balusters. Uniforms are strewn on the ground. The commandant retreats as he fires. He is afraid, alone in the dark, hounded by the beggars he himself armed. He is moving backward toward my house. Does he realize that? Behind the blinds of the living room, I watch and wait for him.
I take my dagger from my blouse and open the door partway. He is on my veranda. I see him hesitate and turn his head in every direction. He is within reach. With extraordinary strength, I plunge the dagger into his back once, twice, three times. The blood spurts. He turns around, gripping the door, and looks at me. Is he going to die here, under my own roof? I see him stagger away and fall stretched out in the street, right in the middle of the gutter. The beggars, led by Pierrilus, fling themselves on his body like madmen.
No one has seen me, except perhaps Dora Soubiran, whose house is so close to mine. I cautiously close the dining room door. I hear Jean-Claude crying and Felicia talking. The wild cries of the beggars grow more intense. Behind the blinds glow hundreds of anguished eyes.
Jean Luze appears with a smoking gun. I hear Joel Marti holler:
“To the prison! Free the prisoners!”
A vast clamor rises in response.
Jean Luze grabs my hands. One of them still holds the dagger red with blood.
“Like an animal, he died like an animal,” I slowly articulate.
“You killed him? You? So you’re the one who got him? Oh! Claire…”
He squeezes me in his arms, almost smothering me. His cheek against mine, his breath in my ear.
“If you only knew how tired I am!”
Was it I who said these words? Was I the one who gently, very gently, pushed him away?
I leave him. He follows me with his eyes without moving. I go in my room and double-lock the door. Here I am on my bed, contemplating this blood on my hands, this blood on my robe, this blood on the dagger…
From the window, I catch a glimpse of the torches wavering in the wind. The doors of the houses are open and the entire town has risen.
ANGER
Part One
CHAPTER ONE
That morning, the grandfather had been the first to come down to the dining room. Hidden behind a half-open door, he was observing a corner of the yard, eyes wide with fear, ears pricked up.
Men in black were driving stakes around the house. Their uniforms gleamed with sweat in the sun of what was still morning. Their decorations, weapons and hammers reflected intermittent flashes of light; and the grandfather told himself they looked like plundering birds of prey walking around like that, bent over.
The last steps on the stairs creaked, startling him out of his thoughts. He quickly wiped his face as if to erase the fear that had been imprinted there, and turned his head toward his son:
“Men in black uniforms are on our land. They’re driving stakes all around our house,” he said to him.
“Stakes!” the son cried out.
“Look!”
With a hand that was still firm, he drew him behind the door and pointed to the back of the yard:
“Look!” he said again.
At the sight of the men in uniform, the son mumbled a few unintelligible words that betrayed panic checked by immense willpower.
“They’ve been here since dawn,” the old man added.
His beard trembled. The son, afraid his father would burst into one of his terrible fits of anger, looked at him intently, annoyingly calm.
“Take it easy, Papa, above all keep calm.”
The top of the stairs creaked this time, just before a nineteen-year-old boy of athletic build all but tumbled down into the living room.
“Good morning!” he said.
And turning toward the table:
“Where’s Melie?” he asked. “Has she decided to let us go without food this morning?”
He broke off, pricking up his ears, and before anyone could stop him he threw himself at the door, flinging it wide open.
“What’s going on? What are they doing at our place?”
“They’re driving stakes,” the old man said tersely.
“What right do they have?” the son protested.
“They’re here to bring us news of the death of our freedom,” the grandfather answered. “Don’t you understand that?”
He fell silent when he saw the maid. She entered slowly, dragging her feet with ostentatious innocence, and as she set the table she hypocritically observed the side of the yard where the men in black were working.
“At the very least we should ask them what they’re doing on our land,” the young man declared, “or else it will look like we’re afraid.”
“Keep still, Paul!” the father shouted, trying to rouse himself. “You see exactly what they’re doing: they’re planting stakes to keep us from our property.”
A heavy silence descended, which was especially uncomfortable for the maid, who now avoided lifting her eyes, her lips tight, features lifeless, like a statue hewed from the black stone of African antiquity.
Except for that moment when he had reprimanded his son, the father always spoke in a neutral, monotonous
