“Because of the… the men who set themselves up on your land. She claims that one of her brothers was executed by them.”
Only then did the grandfather realize that his friend sounded as though he had lost his voice. That was especially striking, for Jacob had a stentorian voice that he had never been able to control. Often during their endless card games the grandfather would scold him because he frightened the nervous invalid and sometimes startled him awake during his nap.
“The neighborhood is stunned,” Jacob continued. “The Demarquis don’t dare step outside, and Madame Saint- Hilare has been ill, suffering from shock. In any case, thank God you are all in one piece… Dear friend, I just wanted to give you a piece of advice: play dead, forget about the land. Life is more precious than property. If you are not too afraid to venture out this evening, come by for a card game. I’ll leave my door open. No one will see, no one will know.”
The grandfather thanked him, repressing the urge to insult him. Just as he was about to open the door, he saw him perform a silly little hop, belying his condition. He then put his hands on his back, grimaced and smiled sheepishly.
“Take care of that sciatica,” the grandfather advised, scowling at him, “and thanks for the invitation.”
Their cowardice is sickening, and their friendship is pathetic. God be praised for letting him probe their souls and see into their true feelings. For he had believed in them. Not without pain did he recall the long walks he had taken with Jacob, their babble after the invalid would fall asleep, the meals shared casually. When his only daughter died, Jacob grew so desperate that the grandfather didn’t dare leave him alone. They had followed the hearse arm in arm, and when the grave had been closed, Jacob sobbed on his shoulder. Of course, sometimes two men go around together without any real feelings for each other. But he, Claude Normil, had never been able to treat someone he despised as a friend. He was disappointed, for there is nothing worse than misplacing one’s trust in another at an age when experience should have armed you against misapprehensions and illusions. How naive he had been to believe for a single minute that a Syrian could feel sincere and disinterested friendship for a black man! He knew now that as long as a human being could still open his eyes, even at the bottom of a ditch, he would still have a lot to learn from life. “Pusillanimous and pathetic!” he added, and made for the bedroom where the child was waiting for him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rose went with her father to the lawyer’s on the appointed day.
There were a dozen people in a room that was furnished with only a few dusty chairs. Standing with her arms crossed, an outrageously made-up woman in a black tight-fitting dress gazed in agony at the young man in livery who stood watch over the door. A toothless, trembling old man approached and beseeched him in a respectful whisper. The guard froze the old man in place with his look. He trembled even more and emitted a sort of submissive falsetto chuckle as if he agreed with the guard. The other clients were farther off, likewise standing and casting furtive glances at the empty chairs. When they saw Rose and her father sit down, they exchanged winks of admiration that turned to mockery when the guard opened the door and had the woman in black go before them. There was a grumble of protest. So the woman turned around and said: “I’ve been here for two days and haven’t even sat down, isn’t that right, sir?” The guard looked at Rose and for a brief moment an elusive smile loosened the fixed expression on his face.
The woman in black remained inside over an hour. The trembling old man had looked at his watch with a desperate grimace and left the room. Sitting beside his daughter, Louis Normil was getting impatient and anxious. What new lie was he going to have to come up with to explain his absence at the office? On account of the harsh reprimands he received, he was losing the prestige he enjoyed among the other employees. They probably knew all about his predicament and went out of their way to let him know they knew.
“Well then, my little sheep, getting sheared are you?” one of his colleagues had recently asked.
Overexcited from all these thoughts, he stood up and went toward the guard.
“I would like to remind you, sir,” he said, “that this is my third appointment. I’ve been waiting for two hours. Can I expect to be admitted?”
The guard leaned toward him without looking at him, his eyes on Rose, who was yawning and wriggling in her chair. At about eleven, a peephole high up on the wall opened up and eyes appeared behind it, noticed by no one save Louis Normil. The guard tilted his head to listen to someone talking to him from the other side of the door and immediately said:
“Monsieur Louis Normil.”
Rose got up, gestured at her father, and, shrugging her shoulders, went through the door that the guard held wide open. For a brief instant she waited for her father, who hesitated as if he had suddenly thought to run away. He was awkwardly trying to free himself from the other clients standing close enough to smother him. A myopic woman came so close to him to see who he was that her glasses touched his chin.
“Let the gentleman pass,” the guard said.
Rose held out her hand to her father and the door immediately closed behind them.
A stocky man, his eyes hidden by enormous black glasses, poked up his head over a pile of papers. Next door, one could hear voices whispering and the clicking of typewriters. A screen behind the lawyer’s table imperfectly concealed a leather couch and a coffee table with cold leftovers on top of it.
“Come in,” the lawyer said.
And he pointed to two armchairs a good distance from him, in which Rose and her father sat down. Louis Normil held out his hand to the lawyer, who did not seem to have noticed. He had the unpleasant and aggressive look of a starving bulldog. He tilted back in his chair, lifting a leg and resting it over one of the supports.
“How may I help you, sir?” he said in a slow, slightly nasal voice.
Ill at ease, Louis Normil decided on an almost familiar, friendly tone, and reminded the lawyer they had been schoolmates.
“I guess one could say we’ve been childhood friends,” he concluded.
The lawyer seemed to search his memory in vain for a convincing truce of this, and his large flabby lips became creased in distaste.
“Right… right… school, you say. Well, maybe. But I can’t seem to recall, though really I wish I could, ever being invited to your house. Childhood friends, that’s saying quite a lot. Our lives have been so different.”
“Different!” Louis Normil exclaimed, flabbergasted by the turn the conversation was taking.
“You were raised in the well-to-do neighborhood of Turgeau, and I behind the cemetery, right? Is there no difference?” he suddenly yelled.
Then, softening his tone:
“For a time, rich blacks played the same role in this country as rich mulattoes did,” he continued. “Your father was as contemptuous and full of social prejudice as your Turgeau neighbors. I only have to look at you to know that what I am saying is true. And now, actually, I think I do remember: I was a good student and you failed pathetically at your baccalaureate exams: yet you ate to your heart’s content while I did not. I envied you and you knew nothing about it, but, well, maybe that’s the secret of my success. You too would have worked really hard if you were envious of someone.”
“I don’t see…” Louis Normil mumbled, disconcerted.
“But that’s not the point of your visit,” the lawyer cut in. “How can I help you?”
Until then he had paid no attention to Rose. She looked at her father who, having lost face, mumbled as he outlined his situation. The lawyer listened without batting an eye, and when he finished speaking, became quiet and said:
“Do you know what you are asking me to do?” he replied in a low voice so altered that Rose shivered. “This affair demands time and considerable expense and the least stumble could cost me my head. First, I’ll have to resort to approaching… certain highly placed”-he hesitated to say the word-“figures who will judge whether you do or do not deserve to have your property restored to you. Next, I’ll have to act with extreme caution so as not to upset those who have decided to seize your land.”
“But the land belongs to us!” Rose cried out. “My father was hoping to sell it so that my brother and I could go
