Love, Anger, Madness

she closed her eyes and put both hands to her heart. Her fear and the shortness of her breath made the rattle in her chest unmistakable this time. She remained that way for several minutes, head tilted, listening to her heartbeat; then, opening her eyes again, she found herself at the sideboard, opened it and grabbed the bottle of rum. She took great swigs straight from the bottle and put it back in its place. The father was still sleeping. She went to bed, pulled the sheets over herself, hoping the feeling of the covers would comfort her. She touched the shoulder of the man sleeping beside her, and he grumbled, surly in his slumber. Such loneliness! she thought. In vain she tried to sleep, and dawn found her with her eyes on the ceiling and her arm across her forehead.

At that moment, she heard cautious footsteps brushing along the stairs. The steps were getting closer, halting to the rhythm of a pendulum, and the stairs creaked just as regularly, just as mechanically. She got up and opened her bedroom door: Rose was standing before her disheveled, eyes smeared with tears and shoes in hand.

“Mama! You scared me,” she exclaimed in a hushed voice.

“Where were you?”

“Mama, please. I’m twenty. I’m not a baby anymore. Surely you know that.”

“My God!” the mother said, closing her eyes.

“No need for drama, please. I know what I’m doing. Go, go get some rest,” the young woman added in a whisper.

Her mother left her and returned to her bedroom. The father was awake. She sat on the bed and, hiding her face in her hands:

“Rose spent the night out,” she said without looking at him. He coughed, hoping he had misunderstood, and rubbed his eyes:

“Where was she?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“How should I know?”

“We’ll have to ask her,” he added, weighing his words. “Maybe she was with some friends, at a party. We’ll just have to ask her.”

At eight, Rose was sitting at the table like everyone else, bathed, made up, and so fresh one could swear she had stayed in bed all night.

“In the name of the Father and the Son,” the grandfather began before breaking his bread.

The others, except for the invalid, ate as they watched him do this.

“Oh, by the way,” Rose said in an offhand manner, “I had forgotten to tell you about it earlier, Papa, but I was invited out last night and it was too late by the time I remembered. I didn’t want to wake you and Mama, so I just snuck out.”

“Next time, you’ll let us know beforehand, won’t you?” the father said calmly.

“Of course, Papa.”

He had two new anxious wrinkles between his eyes.

“I have to run. Come on, Rose, we need to see that lawyer this morning.”

They got up and left immediately.

“My father is using his daughter to try to sway the lawyer. It turns out he’s a shrewd strategist,” Paul explained quietly. “There he goes taking Rose down the wrong path.”

“A little respect for your father, my grandson,” the grandfather shouted, interrupting him.

He pulled on his goatee and lowered his voice:

“You can’t lead anyone down the wrong path. A dog is born good or bad and the same thing goes for a human being.”

“In that case, we aren’t responsible for anything,” the young man added in a voice that invited no reply.

“We do bear responsibility for having been chosen as carriers of evil,” the grandfather said, finishing his thought.

“Ah, well, in that case!”

“That’s the law, grandson.”

“The law! What law?”

“Divine law,” said the invalid, having followed every word of the conversation. “Grandfather says God has chosen me to become a hero.”

“If you keep stuffing his head with such ideas, you’ll make him go mad,” the mother reproached him.

Her red eyes had dark circles around them. Her father’s eyes, she’ll end up an alcoholic just like him, because it is written that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, and fear of Him banishes sin, but she fears nothing in life and life will win, grinding her down just as it did her father until his bitter end.

“Teach your daughter to fear God,” he advised sententiously “even if you don’t fear Him yourself. That’s my advice to you.”

He hadn’t meant to complete his thought out loud and had spoken almost despite himself. He saw her shrug and reply:

“For what could God reproach her?”

“You think she’s so innocent?”

“Yes,” she answered with dignity, “I think she is.”

“God willing, you’re right,” the grandfather replied simply. “God willing, you’re right.”

CHAPTER SIX

… That afternoon, the grandfather had the maid bring the invalid to church. Once he found a seat, he took him on his knees and sent Melie back to wait on the porch. From his pulpit, the Haitian priest delivered a sermon that displeased him because he spoke of obedience and acceptance not of the laws of heaven but of what passed for law in the kingdom of this world.

“We must learn to submit,” the priest was saying. “We must learn to resign ourselves, for nothing happens on earth without God’s will.”

A few people turned to stare at the grandfather. And for a moment he had the unpleasant feeling that the sermon was directed at him. “Should I, too,” he felt like shouting, “Should I, too, resign myself to having my father’s grave profaned and his bones dug up?” He knew the priest would reply: “Yes, if such be God’s will.” And therefore he had gone astray, for rebellion and vengeance swelled within him. Jesus chased the thieves from the Temple with a whip, and my father imitated him. Was he wrong? he wondered. No, and even when he stuck a knife in the back of that incorrigible thief who had managed to bribe the judges and get the law on his side, he was right that time too. After all, since when did a man, a real man, allow what is his to be taken away against his will? And the grandfather wanted to spit in the faces of all these curs, beginning with his own son. He left the church irate, the invalid in his arms. If the Church was on the side of the thieves, he might as well pray at home from now on. And God would in the end understand that the Church had sunk into corruption.

Jacob called out to him just as he was opening his house gate. He would not have stopped but the heavy silence that followed the sound of his name made him turn his head to make sure he had heard right. Jacob was standing in a doorway and gesticulating like an old puppet. The grandfather wondered what this mute commotion was all about. He entrusted the invalid to the maid and went to his neighbor’s. Mme Saint-Hilare craned her head, her features contorted by the effort. She saw Jacob’s door open and the men embrace.

“I’ve been waving to you for the past five days. My old friend, my dear old friend!”

“Yes,” the grandfather replied, “but five days ago you would have come over when you wanted to talk to me.”

“Alas, I haven’t been well. My sciatica. I can barely walk.”

And indeed, he was dragging himself about wearing horrible dust-green slippers on his feet.

“I wanted to send a note with the maid but she refused to take it to your house.”

“Why not?”