Love, Anger, Madness

when she shows more courage than I do?”

“Mama!”

“She dared to confront these wild beasts for your sake, for our sake, and we should scorn her for it?”

“I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!”

“Calm down, Paul!”

There was barely a year’s difference between him and his sister and they had been friends since childhood. “My sister! My sister!” he kept repeating to himself, as a bitter taste filled his mouth. “Rose Normil! The lovely Rose Normil. Paul’s sister, don’t you know her?” people used to say. And he would smile without answering, smile with pride. The way she carried her head high with her nose in the air as if the whole world smelled funny to her! “I am going to kill him,” he said again, and imagined an enormous knife sticking out of the back of the little man with gorilla hands as he thrust it in to the hilt.

The next day, he went to Dr. Valois’ house and saw Anna again. He had to wait for some time as she was helping her father at his clinic, where she was a nurse. When she came out, pure and beautiful in her immaculate smock, all that weighed on his heart seemed to melt. She exists, you simply have to remind yourself that such women exist in order to reconcile yourself with life, he told himself. As for my mother, poor woman, my father has neglected her so much that she’s fallen in love with Dr. Valois. I saw it in how she looked at him. And that’s normal. Absolutely normal. Exactly like his daughter, he’s seductive in a way that’s not just a matter of looks but something deeper. And this thing that one feels in their presence is like an intoxicating per-fume. They are solid and impermeable. Their nature is like an immutable boulder planted in the earth for thousands of years. A dangerous proposition. Anna! If I should smash my forehead into her, it would open up and drain all the blood from my body. And I would die of it. Good! What do I care! Death for the sake of death!

They stayed in the living room chatting for a long time. Not once did she bring up the question of the land, and she seemed to have forgotten he had left her on the day of the fair without saying goodbye. All the better, he thought then. He had come to her for a bit of happiness and comfort. And miraculously, he felt happy and comforted. A few minutes before he left, Dr. Valois came out to shake his hand.

“I will come by your house soon,” he promised. “I’ve been very busy and neglected my little patient. How’s Claude? Still has that temper of his?”

He, too, said not a word about the land. You’d think he knew nothing about it. Paul went home, his soul lighter, as if bathed in clear light. Such tact! he told himself. How they went out of their way to avoid embarrassing me or hurting my feelings! How I love Anna!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The wall rose a meter above the ground. But when she looked at it the mother felt as if it was higher than the house. A horrible nightmare had just torn her from her slumber and she sat up, breathless and shivering: she had just seen her children chained to a multitude of poor starved souls, walking skeletons, half-naked, feet bleeding. The invalid on Paul’s back was crying, but she could not budge and saw them moving farther and farther away even as the sound of the rattling chains grew more intense. Hand on her heart, she looked at the man sleeping by her side. Was she going to die in this bed helpless? She leaned toward him and called him quietly, but he didn’t move. So she got up and walked to the window. Her keen senses picked up the acrid smell of the stonework and the still- fresh cement, as well as that of the leaves and flowers of the lemon trees that covered the grave. She left the window, cautiously opened the door to the bedroom and felt her way downstairs. She had no trouble finding the bottle of rum in the cupboard. She brought it to her lips and took one gulp after another. She coughed and immediately felt the warmth of the alcohol spreading through her. I want to feel drunk, she told herself. For the first time in my life, I need to feel drunk! She drank again and went upstairs clutching the handrail. From time to time she would burst into a choked laughter, grotesque and loathsome.

She walked into the bedroom and fell on the bed. Everything spun before her and her arm came down clumsily on her husband’s face. Startled, he woke up and saw her with her mouth open, wild-eyed, and he smelled rum on her breath.

“You were drinking?” he asked her, his eyes wide with the surprise, and then shoved her away, overwhelmed with disgust.

She fell back in bed and then got up staggering. She made a clumsy dash for the window and, leaning out, began to throw up in silence. She remained in this position as long as he said nothing.

“You were drinking?” he repeated. “Walking in your father’s footsteps. But what got into you?”

She straightened up slowly and turned around. Without answering, she took a pitcher of water that was on her bedside table and poured herself a glass.

“I’m thirsty,” she finally said.

“What got into you?”

“How should I know?”

She sat on the bed, hand on her heart, which was beating at a wild, irregular rhythm.

“It helps,” she added. “For a moment, I forgot about it all, you, me, the children and everything else. When I’m intoxicated I become my double. In any case, I’ve learned one thing at least: I’m still capable of laughter.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“That’s just it! For a brief moment I was crazy. That must be what people who fall into drink discover. Madness! Madness!”

She erupted in a short-lived cackle that, because this time it was conscious, became atrociously desperate. They were speaking in hushed tones, and in the darkness he saw her as a shadow veiled in a transparent nightgown that traced her nipples.

“Come on, go back to bed,” he ordered. She lay down with her back to him, only to get up again a short while later.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said, “sleep, don’t worry about me.”

He said nothing in response and pretended to sleep. But she knew he was awake this time and that he was tormented because of her, and she felt a dark sense of satisfaction. Standing at the narrow window, she saw the sky gleaming beneath a multitude of stars. Its splendor made the profound darkness of the yard even more sinister by contrast. The flowers are falling from the oak trees already, and so are the lemon flowers, she told herself. And suddenly, in the light of the new moon, the grave appeared, white in the midst of the mass of trees. Something moved a few paces from the stakes and she saw the outlines of a man and of an animal clumsily moving around with strange little hops. A shiver ran through her and she heaved over, hands reaching out, mouth open as if about to cry out.

“How long has this been going on?”

It took her a moment to understand.

“When did you start drinking?”

She got up slowly, her eyes still filled with the spectacle in the yard, and looked over at this man she had forgotten buried under the sheets, his head resting on a pillow.

“I’ll keep doing it,” she said dryly. “I’ll keep doing it.”

“You will die like your father. Wasting away from drink.”

“You have to die from something.”

“Spare your children at least.”

“My children! What children? They are already dead. Don’t you know that? Don’t you see that?”

“Quiet!”

“What’s a drunk mother to them after what they’ve been through? They couldn’t care less. Rose already stinks of death.”

“Quiet!”

He jumped on her and grabbed her by the throat.

“That’s it! Kill me! Kill me!”