He loosened his fingers and noticed their livid faces in the mirror.
“My God!” he whispered, imitating her inadvertently.
They went back to bed, each pulling on the sheets as if they could separate themselves from each other that way. In the distance, the crazed barking of a dog broke and accentuated the horrible silence. A slight gust shook the trees and fresh air flowed into the room along with the strong smell of the soil and the trees.
She heard the stairs creaking, footsteps on the landing whispering and the closing of the grandfather’s door. But she didn’t budge. And if there’s such a thing as fate, she told herself, then what can I do about it? Let things run their course, wait, let others act, then wait a little more. In other words, resign myself. I can’t do anything, nobody can do anything. That’s the really hopeless part about it. Should I fold my arms and wait? Or fly off the handle and end it all? In any case, choosing will resolve nothing. Caught like rats in a trap.
She thought she saw the father’s shoulder tremble, and fixed her eyes with curiosity upon this body so close to hers. What would he do if she suddenly touched him?
With that thought, she could see herself again when she was twenty, in her wedding gown, kneeling before a priest blessing their joined hands. Meaningless gestures but, when they were young, gestures that seemed to guarantee a future full of happiness. Her illusions had faded one by one and in the void carved out by their loss, old age slowly traced its way. The illness that would keep old age from overstaying its welcome made its presence felt, and she watched for it now without dread and even with a certain desperate complicity! Will I die at their hands or will I be good and dead on my own soon enough? she wondered again. Will my eyes be the first to close or will life force me to watch my children go in the ground one after the other, even though I already have one foot in the grave? Would she play such a dirty trick on me? A dying mother outliving her loved ones! My existence hangs by a thread, I know that, and yet I may have to see them all die. Sinking into her sweat-soaked pillow, fingers clutching the left side of her chest, she lay still and listened to her groaning heart and thought: We think we can fight back, but that’s all wrong. Rose and Paul don’t know it yet. They’re too young and don’t know it yet. They convince themselves otherwise out of pride. They tell themselves: we’re fighting back, we’re doing something, we’re making decisions, but they’re just drunk with their own words. There was a time when I too was drunk with my own words. But that’s over. I’m not moved by illusions anymore. I’ve come to be sufficiently acquainted with these criminals to learn that you can’t fight fate. We’ve been delivered over to their hatred, bound hand and foot. Utterly lost. Every last one of us. Rose dishonored! And Paul fixing his own demise!… No, I can’t go on living knowing all this and unable to do anything to save them. My God! My God!… If only I could leave it all in Your hands! To feel Your presence when misfortune strikes, to have the humility to kneel, beat my chest, and accept this as fair punishment! But I can’t, I can’t…
She saw the massive trees suddenly dashing themselves forward in a great leap as they smashed their thick branches against the roof of the house. The sky grew murky roiling with shapeless waves of blackening clouds. She gasped for air. Twitching feebly she passed out with the sensation of rough hands over her mouth and nose.
The mother went out early that afternoon. She walked for a long time under the sun, worn out from fatigue and fear. What she had decided to do was beyond her strength, she knew that, just as she knew nothing would stop her from doing something, even if it killed her. Doing something for absolutely no reason, perhaps, but still doing something, such is what life demands from human beings. Faint whiffs of hope would stir up illusions she had thought quite dead. So this is what helps, she told herself as she walked. So this is why suicide cannot be the normal culmination of a human life. I am going to try to do something. I’m going to try to believe that I can still make myself useful. She looked at the sky, the trees, the flowers, the people, as if she were seeing them for the first time. She opened her handbag and put money in the hands of beggars; confronted with a skeletal mother and her four starving, crying babies, she took stock of her own sufferings and found them acceptable. Men in black uniform accompanied by women bejeweled like princesses in luxury cars sped by at extravagant speeds, horns honking; several others on foot greeted them with respect, lifting hand to helmet in salute, beggars groveling at their feet. How had she climbed this steep slope without any help? At the top of the hill she could see the gigantic outline of a fortress protected by cannons, their charred muzzles like forbidding tunnels from a distance. A deafening drone swelled around her, which she mistook for engine noise. A dreary siren began to wail. What she saw then took her breath away: hundreds of thousands of men were emerging from every corner of the mountain. They gathered in close ranks, every one of them in boots and a helmet, and again the same drone. This time she understood it was no engine noise but the blurred voices of hundreds of thousands of mouths, all of them yelling in unison: “Hail to the chief of the Blackshirts!” The mother was shaking but bravely and slowly started climbing up the rocky roadside. Soon, she was on all fours. She could hear her heart pumping blood through her neck and in her temples but forgot to listen for the rattling in her chest. Breathless, she climbed, fell, got up again, then crawled flat on her stomach. “My God! My God!” she pleaded. She climbed higher and higher as her nails broke and her hands bled on the rocks. She could see them more or less clearly. They were a compact mass that reminded her of the cluster of trees in the yard in the dark. She still had a long way to go and the slope kept getting steeper and the fortress more and more out of reach. Suddenly she was unable to breathe, and, closing her eyes, she felt her strength draining out of her. She rolled back down, slowly at first, then faster and faster, and finally she lost consciousness. When she opened her eyes and found herself at the foot of the hill again, she yelled: “I want to get up there, I have to see their leader, I have to talk to him, I have to tell him what’s going on. He must not know how badly those he has armed and dressed in black abuse their privileges. He’ll learn the truth from my lips. My God! Help me! Help me!”
This time, she was startled by the unmistakable noise of an engine. She turned around: a truck approached, loaded with men in black. Terror rekindled her strength and she crawled up to hide behind a tree. She opened her handbag, found a handkerchief to wipe her face and hands, and brushed the dust off her dress. She walked slowly, head down, arms folded on her breast, and then she turned toward the hill. She stood for a while like that, gazing at the fortress. “No one besides them will ever get inside,” she heard herself whisper.
She had barely emerged from the deserted road when she was snagged by a delirious crowd shouting and singing a Carnival merengue. The drums beat to the step of the masked dancers. Dressed in yellow, the whippers led the parade, cracking their long lashes; then came the Indians walking with open arms, shaking their wigs and feathers. A group of half-naked devils with scarlet horns threatened the spectators with their gilt pitchforks. Two rows of giant laughing heads ran ahead of a queen of great beauty dressed in pink tulle blowing kisses to the crowd atop a float depicting the fortress in miniature. Other groups dressed in sparkling colors went into contortions, bottles in hand, drunk off clairin [33] and drums.
The first day of Carnival and I had forgotten all about it! the mother said to herself. She moved forward, pushed and roughed up by the crowd, trapped in its froth. As she struggled in vain to get away, a “braided-ribbon” crew materialized behind the queen’s float. Hundreds of beggars in rags followed in its wake, arms in the air, swarming to the sound of a huge, colorful ribbon-draped drum pounded by crew members lurching to the rhythm. The ribbons swayed and interlaced to the beat of hips and feet. Eyes closed, delirious, the crowd shouted more and more, possessed by the drumming. Nothing existed anymore: not anger, nor fear, nor despair. The throng granted itself a reprieve through these ancestral rituals that, for the moment, offered a deceptive sense of freedom. Drumming, tafia, [34] music, song, dance, cries, erotic ferment, all of it helped let off steam, like the idea of being possessed by African gods in voodoo ceremonies.
The mother finally managed to get away from the crowd. She slowly walked the nearly deserted streets to her house. The grandfather was sitting on the veranda with the invalid.
“Did you see the Carnival?” the child asked. “Are there a lot of people there?”
“Yes,” she answered simply.
“Did you see any nice masks?”
“Yes,” she said. “The beggars were the only ones without masks.”
