Love, Anger, Madness

my sister’s side. Only the sensation of power makes the uniform seem like something compulsory. The weak feel strong only with their hand around a gun; the same goes for lesser beings. Only free will can truly fortify an individual. Will I keep on seeing him though I despise him? Will I ditch my old teammates for their pandering? They avoid uttering Rose’s name in my presence, but all I have to do is watch them when she’s there: all they do is bow and scrape and cast furtive glances. They don’t even dare turn and speak to her openly. She is taboo. Thanks to the Gorilla. An off-limits whore. I will kill him and then I will die. I’m not thinking of the others. My act will spell disaster for all of us, I know that. No matter how my cowardly father tries to play the poor innocent and say that I was reckless, he’ll get it too. Unless I miss my target. For as long as he’s alive, he’ll be stuck on Rose, and as long as he’s stuck on Rose, we’re under the protection of his guns. Maybe they’ll manage to buy proof of my madness and have me locked up! Who will protect me? Who will have the courage to shout the truth? My mother? Yes, that’ll be the day she shows her claws. Faded but not dead. Just hearing how she defended her daughter makes one suspect that a spark would be enough to set her ablaze. Just seeing how she stared at Dr. Valois. Bottled up, yes, but not empty. Rose! Rose! It’s been five years since I saved her from death. I dove into the open sea and brought her back to shore unconscious. We became friends. She’s as loyal as a man. She didn’t give me away that night she caught me under the oaks with Jacob’s maid. A great girl.

Anyway, nothing has changed. They are still on our land. Is the Gorilla as powerful as he is said to be? Or is he fooling Rose? Maybe from the beginning his goal was to help himself, with the lawyer’s help, to the land and to the girl. How do I know he didn’t always have his eye on my sister! I will kill him and then I will die. My mind is made up. Convincing myself of this fills me with a sense of dignity. These thoughts cleanse me, they cleanse all of us. Corruption stops at our door, at least as long as I’m alive, the vengeance I nurture inside gives me comfort, keeps me from resigning myself to our degradation. It doesn’t matter if it takes me months to carry it out. A long line of hotheads, my mother once said to me. And it’s true. All of us brooding with God’s holy fury, and Grandfather doesn’t know it. We are all alike. Cast from the same mold, and Grandfather doesn’t know it. Or is he pretending he doesn’t know it in order to justify his preference for Claude? He doesn’t like my mother: she doesn’t fly off the handle enough. He only believes in external appearances and refuses to see through the thick veil of propriety. What about Rose’s propriety! I’ve called her a whore a hundred times to myself. They’ve killed her. She no longer turns on the radio. She’s forgotten her old habits. No more dancing, no more laughter, no more dramatic outbursts as smoke screens so she can be left alone to do as she pleases like anyone else.

On the other side of the stakes, their black uniforms draw my eyes like a magnet. Drenched in sweat, dripping, bent by the sun, rifles on their shoulders. Are they happy? Are they fulfilled by the weight of a weapon on their shoulder? Wearing a uniform would put an end to our torment. No, I couldn’t. It would burn my body. And what if the point of all their tricks was to force me into their ranks, do I have the right to refuse and sacrifice my family? They spy on me and they can feel my hatred. They’ll go all the way until I kneel and beg for mercy and applaud their crimes. And that I could never do. I belong to a small unarmed opposition group. Does Rose think she will get somewhere by giving herself to the Gorilla? Tell me, little sister. I’ll summon the strength to listen to you without exploding. What have they done to you? Don’t be afraid that I’ll roar like a lion. I will keep my mouth shut, taking every precaution before I kill him. They’ll never know where the shot came from.

Dr. Valois comes by too often lately. Does he know my mother is in love with him? He brought Claude’s wheelchair and is teaching him to use it. He put the child’s thin hands on the wheels, looked him in the eye and said: “Go on, push!” And Claude pushed, bursting into laughter. Still, it must be hard on the old floorboards of the living room. Anna was smiling, sweet, affable, serene. Too late. She rushed to Claude when he almost fell clumsily trying to go faster. Concern? Flattery? Rose wasn’t there. They haven’t uttered her name. I saw Anna’s questioning eyes catch mine, and I turned away. My mother’s clothes and hair were elegant but she still looked like she was dying. Grandfather hardly opened his mouth and pulled on his beard intermittently with thinly suppressed rage. He smells something is up. Does he perceive things even more deeply than I do? Is that why he’s so intolerant, because he can see more than others can, see into the revolting inmost depths of each of us? Can he sense it, the noxious smell, the pollution and dread perversity of our passions? And the sick kid, his behavior so strangely precocious! They share terrible secrets. Claude’s figured it out. He’s smelled something on Rose that is unknown to him and that he finds disgusting. A man’s smell. Gorilla sweat. Gorilla semen. I’ll kill him. Claude rolled his chair to the radio and turned it on and Rose got up. “No,” she said in an adamant voice, “no, I’ve got a headache.” A funeral! It feels like a funeral in here, but she’ll never admit that. She’ll never dance again. It’s over. Dr. Valois stepped in. He said gently: “Why not, Rose? Why not?” And he turned on the radio. She glanced at him quickly, very quickly, and said: “Actually, yes, why not?” And Anna said: “So you don’t like to dance anymore, Rose? You have to hold on to what you once loved, try, try to hold on.” “But of course I still like to dance,” Rose answered, “why shouldn’t I?” She found the courage to get up and started spinning and spinning before us. And then she stopped, looking dizzy, and stared at me blankly. “Come, come dance with me, Paul, come on, come on. Won’t you give your sister a dance? Come on, come on. What are you, sulking? Naughty boy! Well, then go, dance with Anna. A sister is just a sister, now go get Anna to dance.” “Let him be,” Anna said, “come on, let him be.” And I could see that my mother had gone pale, hand on her heart, wobbling. “What’s wrong, Laura?” Dr. Valois cried out as he rushed to her.

She pushed him away and walked slowly, with difficulty, to the window, a tense hand on her heart. He doesn’t know it, but this heart, her heart, is full of him. Blessed be whatever brings him here, she must tell herself, blessed be whatever awful thing brings him here so often. “I would like to examine you, Laura, lie down on the sofa. I need to examine you. You don’t look well.” He opens his bag and she lies down. He keeps his diagnosis to himself. This heart, so full of him, is about to burst. Will he say something? Could he betray her? Suddenly they, too, are sharing a secret. Don’t say anything, Dr. Valois! my mother’s eyes begged. I will never betray you, Laura, but you are crazy, crazy, and my job is to take care of you. Of course, I’ll do whatever you say, doctor, but don’t say anything. You see very well that they have enough to deal with, so, for my sake, please don’t say anything.

Grandfather flew into a rage when he discovered the empty bottle. “Who finished the rum? Who drank it?” he yelled. And Melie, her lips drawn in a hideous grin, stared at my mother without answering. “It was me,” my father answered, lowering his head. “Since when do you drink for no reason, son?” Grandfather asked. “I needed a drink,” my father answered. Grandfather smashed the bottle on the wall of the pantry and my mother put a hand to her heart, a gesture that’s becoming more and more automatic. “No one will be getting drunk in my house, no one,” Grandfather kept yelling. Dr. Valois tried in vain to calm him. I was ashamed because Anna was there and I lowered my head. Outside, the birds flew chirping from tree to tree. Claude says: “They’re not killing the birds anymore. Why were they killing them, Grandfather?” “When you give weapons to the weak, they’ll shoot at anything; when you give weapons to scum, they only want one thing: to prove to themselves how powerful they’ve become; when you arm idiots, they’ll murder their son or father to try to justify the important role you’ve given them. Do you understand?” “Yes,” the child answered, “so they want to kill all the birds and all the children, mulatto and black alike.” Grandfather took the invalid in his arms and went away with him. Jacob was watching for him from behind his half-opened door: he didn’t wave back to him.

Mme Saint-Hilare, the frail neighbor next door, had grown tired of us. She had her armchair moved so that she now has her back to us. All we see of her is the tortoiseshell comb in her white bun. Contempt? Does she know of Rose’s affair with the Gorilla? After all, the men are always around, patrolling our property night and day. Nothing has changed. Guard duty on our yard! Right over our great-grandfather’s grave, covered in lemon flowers. Standing guard, rain or shine. Although it’s pretty obvious no one will venture past the stakes, they continue to terrorize us by shooting down birds. When I kill the Gorilla, they’ll murder innocents to set an example. They’ll be too happy to take the bait. Should I be giving them reasons to murder? But finding a better, more devious and refined means of revenge-not easy. They leave nothing to chance. It will be long and painful. Swallow my rage, appear resigned, play along. Machiavellian. If that’s what I have to do to get somewhere, so be it. Didn’t I rejoin the soccer team! Tiny steps toward submission. I’ll find my pride and my rage crumbling and I’ll be bowing and scraping like the others. Let him through, he’s in uniform! Look how handsome he is in his nice black uniform! Right, left! Right, left! Raise high the banner of death and armed force. We’ll get every last one of them, I’ll leave a trail of terror.

Stick him up against the tree. No, don’t bother tying him. He won’t move. He’s too scared. Bam! There he goes. The traitor. Throw his body in the truck. Bravo! Paul Normil, you are worthy of your uniform! I will stand at attention and present arms. If the beggars want to eat, let them come to basic training. One, two! One, two! Yes, but the problem is they’re too feeble and keep dropping dead. One less recruit. Throw his body in the truck. No pity. Our cause knows no pity. A place for those who have been hungry humiliated, frustrated for so long that they’ll throw