And when she was gone:
“You’re going to ruin everything,” she continued. “Papa is right, we have to catch them with honey. As for me, I’m letting you know right now that I will make every effort to save this land.”
She walked up to her brother and looked straight in his eyes.
“Don’t you want to get out of here? Didn’t you want to study architecture, or have you forgotten all about that? Would you rather waste your time and your youth, until you end up wearing one of their uniforms? Because from now on, if you want to live in peace, you’ll have to fall in behind them.”
She was pleading with him now.
“I’m begging you, Paul, be patient, let me and Papa take care of this, that’s all we ask, that you let us take care of it…”
She saw him turning his head as if searching for an available target, and then his fist struck the wall of the pantry. The grandfather watched him with unfeigned astonishment, and the invalid cheered him on. Paul took him on his back and galloped with him through the house.
“You’ll make them turn tail, you will,” the child whispered when he stopped, out of breath.
The mother had closed her eyes. Something weighed on her heart and made it beat irregularly, slowly, then quickly. And as she listened to it creaking like a rusty old tool, she said to herself:
“As if this were not enough, my God!” she cried out loud.
Once more, the silence seemed to them so profound, so ominous, that they felt as though they could inhale it together with the air. The birds frolicked on the palm branches and their cheerful chirping seemed to punctuate and underscore the horror. She ran to the window. As soon as she saw the men in their black uniforms, she lifted her handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry. Then, they left the room one by one as if repelled by the tears she had been unable to hold back.
CHAPTER THREE
“Grandfather,” said the invalid, “tell me a story.”
“A long, long time ago,” the grandfather then began, “my father, having left the countryside to go to Port-au- Prince, learned that thieves had been trespassing on his land while he was away. At the time, many men rode horses and my father had a horse called Grand Rouge and he galloped like no horse in this world ever knew how. My father, who was in the cattle business, lived in Cavaillon with Mother, a beautiful and ambitious young peasant girl from Fonds-des-Blancs. He returned home right away, and calling the steward, he asked him: ‘Is it true that thieves came on my land to take my fruit?’ – ‘Yes,’ the steward answered. – ‘What did you do?’ my father went on. – ‘I whipped them and they left faster than they had come.’ – ‘With some of their loot?’ my father asked. – ‘No, sir, without any loot’ – ‘I travel often,’ my father went on, ‘if my son ever yields to the temptation of picking a single fruit from the neighbor’s garden, I order you to whip him too.’ My father only owned a quarter of this land. A thick gate separated the rest of the property. One day, the steward caught me over the gate, my pockets full of fruit. ‘If you so much as taste one of these fruits, you’ll be a thief and in a whole lot of trouble.’ And he made me turn back, roughly pulled the fruit out of my pockets and threw them back into the neighboring property. The next day, I heard the gallop of my father’s horse and I woke up, breathless with fear. I heard my father call the steward. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked. – ‘Everything’s all right,’ the steward answered. The thieves returned, raiding our land and taking the few fruits that were ours. The steward managed to catch one of them. He tied him to a tree before our very eyes and whipped him until he drew blood. ‘You see how close you came to this,’ he told me afterward. ‘Don’t ever covet the goods of others.’”
The mother got up slowly, put down her needlework, walked over to the old man and spoke into his ear.
“Look at him, Grandfather,” she whispered, “just look at him.”
The child was clenching his fists and grinding his teeth.
“Who will flog those who have taken our land?” he said without paying any attention to the mother. “Is there no longer a steward who can do it?”
“Alas, no!” the grandfather answered.
“Why not?”
“Because there are ups and downs in the life of a people. As the arrow rises, it gives birth to heroes; when it falls, only cowards come into the world. No steward would agree to stand up to those who have taken our land.”
The child was sniffling, and the grandfather guessed he was crying though there were no tears rolling down his cheeks. He told himself that his crippled and sickly grandson was the faint beginning of the next era of heroes and that the arrow had begun its slow ascent only eight years ago.
CHAPTER FOUR
As usual, the father returned from work at lunchtime. He brushed his wife’s forehead with a kiss, greeted the others with a wave of his hand and took his seat. At the end of the meal, he looked at his watch and Rose did the same. They got up and went to the door the grandfather had more or less barricaded. At the same time, they heard the noise of a powerful engine as a truck full of men in black uniform entered the property. Twenty men jumped out of the truck and began unspooling a long wire.
“They’ve starting surveying the land,” Rose said in a weak voice.
“Shut this door,” the grandfather yelled.
Paul leaped out of his seat and without a word began to climb the stairs at a run.
“I want to see! I want to see!” the child cried out.
“No,” the grandfather replied. “Let’s go in our room to pray.”
The mother took the child herself and set him down in the old man’s arms.
“Because me, I believe in miracles,” the grandfather said, looking at the mother ostentatiously.
“Prayer impedes despair and thereby frees the soul. Do you know the story of the alcoholic who didn’t know he should have prayed?”
“No,” answered the invalid.
“It’s an interesting story and one worth telling.”
He walked by the mother and her eyes followed him, full of hatred.
Yes, she hated him right now as much as he must have hated her. Why such hatred between them, she sometimes wondered. For what did he reproach her? It could only be her father’s misbehavior. A poor failed artist who had tormented his violin for thirty-five years without ever being able to get a proper note out of it. He had started drinking one night when he had tried in vain to play a Chopin waltz. She had seen him start to cry and then break his bow. That evening, she had waited up for him for a long time only to see him come home staggering.
He drank from despair. He died from despair. How could God, if he existed, hold that against him? And what right did the grandfather have to judge? Maybe she should just see him as a foolish old man and forgive him. At the beginning of her marriage, she had almost loved him. She had come to his house, trembling with emotion, daughter of an alcoholic who died under atrocious circumstances, as everyone knew. He had given her a piercing look and she lowered her head very humbly. His gaze seemed to say: “Don’t think you are honoring us with your presence, mulatto girl. Your father was nothing but a mulatto alcoholic and I went to school with people like him at the Saint-Martial Seminary.” He wasn’t kind, she had soon understood this. He was created in the image of a God of his own senile invention, a God he threw in your face at the worst moment, like blows from a club, savoring every twitch and heartrending cry. At times she could feel his forever-accusing eye, and she had come to understand that there would never be any love between herself and that God. Where was the grandfather’s God? Why hadn’t He
