already done away with injustice and bloodshed?
She lifted her head and noticed their neighbor on the right, Mme Saint-Hilare, an impotent old mulatto woman who had her chair positioned in front of her window so she wouldn’t miss out on what was going on in their house. If God exists, could it be that He spies on His creatures the way this old woman does? she wondered. She waved to Mme Saint-Hilare, who quickly lowered her head, pretending not to see her. It’s like we have the plague now! she realized, as her heart jumped in her chest. “Necessary trials!” she whispered, imitating the grandfather’s sententiousness. “Sadism!” she added. With that God you only earn your stripes through suffering. And the grandfather used to say that misery awaits those who have known happiness on earth! What could this demanding God want from His creatures? Oh, no! She wanted nothing to do with Him. She dreamed of another God, full of compassion and love, who would have pity on His creatures, would spare the innocent and punish the guilty. In solitude she had learned to pray in her own way, and at times a kind of peace would descend upon her, the sudden and mysterious comfort that comes from the certainty of divine protection.
She went up to check on Paul, who had locked himself in his room, and as she passed by the grandfather’s room she stopped to listen.
“Saints in heaven,” he was reciting.
“Chase away the demons,” the invalid said in response.
“Saints in heaven.”
“Smite the demons.”
Now she could hear their voices reciting the Pater Noster. She knocked on the door to her son’s room. He made her wait before letting her in and greeted her from under his sheets.
“Are you feeling sick?”
“No… why?”
She put her hand on his forehead and felt him burning.
“Yes, you are, you have a fever.”
“Ah… that’s what I thought. My mouth feels ashy.”
He sat up, grabbed the books lying on the bed and held them out to his mother.
“Lie down,” she said.
“No, it’ll pass. I don’t want to stay in bed anymore.”
“Being a little sick isn’t the end of the world,” she answered in a willfully abrupt manner. “Go on, stay in bed. It’s probably the flu.”
He obeyed her, sulking, and she tucked him in and sat beside him.
There was noise in the yard that could be heard through the window. Someone on the other side of the stakes barked out orders that were followed by a whistle blowing and the crackle of bullets. Paul sat up nervously.
“It’s nothing,” the mother said, “stay in bed.”
“Who were they shooting at?”
“At the birds. You know they like killing them.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and forced him back in bed.
“You haven’t been playing soccer lately?”
“No.”
“Where’s Fred? He doesn’t come by to see you anymore?”
“No.”
She had the horrible sensation of a foreign presence in the room. She turned her head toward the window and grew quiet.
“Don’t waste your time,” she continued with effort. “Study on your own until then.”
“Until when?”
“Until things get settled.”
She regretted these last words and lowered her eyes as if she were guilty of something. This nineteen-year-old man was as lucid as she was and it was tactless to treat him like a baby. By doing so she risked losing his friendship, which meant so much to her and which she had done so much to keep alive. She spoiled him in secret, like a wily Apache, slipping him money she had saved through great sacrifice. “Your stingy old man won’t know about it,” she told him with a complicit wink. She often went into his room to confide in him, to talk about the father, about his illicit nightly outings that could only have one purpose. He had protested, not being able to imagine this serious and mournful fifty-year-old man wrapped in a woman’s arms, but then one day he had seen him, suddenly young again, talking to a strange young woman in a car, and he had begun to have his doubts. But out of a kind of masculine solidarity, he had refused to betray him, although he became less affectionate and effusive with him.
“I’ll make you a rum punch,” she said to him.
“With lots of rum, please.”
“With lots of rum,” she acquiesced obediently.
She went downstairs to warm the milk into which she then mixed an egg yolk and some rum. She tasted it and added more rum.
Melie looked at her without saying anything. The small slanting eyes in her black face glowed with mean- spirited joy.
“Madame Louis, your father-in-law told me to make sure no one touches this bottle,” she finally said in a honeyed voice in her drawn-out Creole.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Madame Louis, but he told me, ‘Melie, if anyone in this house drinks that rum without my permission, I’ll hold you responsible.’”
“Well, you will have to tell him that Monsieur Paul is ill and needed it.”
“Yes, Madame Louis, I will tell him. Monsieur Paul has the flu?”
“And a fever.”
“You’re right, then. What the grandfather was afraid of is someone drinking the rum for no good reason. He doesn’t like drunkards. That’s what he told me, Madame Louis. I’m going to boil a lemon for Monsieur Paul. But I’ll need money to buy it because I can’t just go pick one anymore… You understand?”
She pointed to the garden.
“Yes,” was all the mother said.
The hammering resounded as she stepped onto the landing. She looked through the window and saw two men nailing a notice to an oak trunk. She went into her son’s room, where she found him sitting and listening, trying to understand the sounds he had heard. He took the cup from his mother’s hand and drank down the scorching punch in one gulp.
CHAPTER FIVE
The mother waited until the house was asleep and cautiously got out of the bed where her husband was sleeping. She threw on a dress and felt her way down the stairs. Outside, the beaming moon promenaded across the sky. Suddenly it was veiled by a cloud and all was plunged in darkness. The mother walked up to the stakes and stopped there. She looked at the notice, white as a tombstone, and read these words: NO ENTRY. She stood there a moment, motionless, staring at the trees, which seemed more massive in the darkness. A light gust of wind shook their branches and an owl hooted, as if awakened from its slumber.
“Who goes there?” a voice shouted.
A gigantic black silhouette rose up.
She involuntarily stepped back as a cry of terror escaped from her lips. She saw him, his eyes full of hatred, laughing silently, and she trembled. He drew his gun and pointed it at her: “Want to do it with me, mulatto girl? Want to do it?” she heard. She raised her hands to the sky and shouted, no, no, and ran back home. A bullet whistled past her ear. She threw herself to the ground and crawled to the kitchen door. As soon as she was safe,
