Love, Anger, Madness

“This is just the beginning,” the father sniggered.

And all of them looked at him like they didn’t recognize him.

He went up to his room and stayed there by himself, standing at the window where he kept staring at the three bodies. In the course of that night, his wife saw him suddenly sit up in bed and start struggling with some invisible being. “I’ll kill you, you bandit, I’ll kill you,” he mumbled. She put her hand on his forehead, which was burning; she made him to go back to bed with a few comforting words.

The next day, he got up very early, got dressed and went to the lawyer’s.

This time Louis Normil was the one who refused to shake the hand of the lawyer, who was smiling hypocritically. He listened as the man delivered a bogus summary of his latest efforts.

“Success is certain,” he concluded. “Your daughter has followed my advice and managed things so intelligently that I believe the matter is settled…”

“You’re lying!” Louis Normil declared in a loud voice. “And I have the authority to say this. You’re lying! You gave advice to no one. It was all settled without your help. Don’t try to play me. That’s not going to work anymore.”

The lawyer went from black to ash gray. Louis Normil thought the man was going to pass out when he lowered his head and closed his eyes. At last he was able to vent his rage at one of them. He had a sadistic desire to see this man, who had so frightened him only a few days before, tremble. A wolf among wolves, that’s what you have to become to defend yourself these days, he told himself.

“Forgive me,” the lawyer mumbled humbly.

“In any case,” Louis Normil continued in the same tone, “I’m not here to talk about my daughter but about the five hundred dollars you were paid. What are you waiting for before you give me a receipt?”

“But of course, of course, what was I thinking?”

Trembling, the lawyer looked for a piece of paper on his desk and obligingly wrote up the receipt.

“Here you are, dear friend, and I apologize for not having thought of it sooner.”

Louis Normil gave the lawyer a savage look, and left him without another word.

In the evening, he returned to Maud’s and gave her the receipt:

“You see,” he said, “I wasn’t lying to you.”

She looked at him with hooded eyes through a thick cloud of smoke from her cigarette.

“Don’t get yourself in a bind just to pay me back,” she advised with an odd smile.

“No,” he cried, “I’m telling you you’ll soon be reimbursed.”

His troubles had exhausted him and their embraces suffered. I’m the one who can’t stand marriage, she told herself, and now he’s become a regular husband! She gave him a colder and colder reception, not going out of her way as she once did to please him, and barely made an effort to persuade him to stay. This change had not escaped his notice, and he wondered about it anxiously, going so far as to accuse himself of having neglected her. He had no idea that the echoes of Rose’s ordeal had already reached her and that she was angry with him for accepting such a dishonorable situation without a fight. He should have killed him, she thought, unforgiving, he should have killed him. He confided his troubles strictly to her, told her about the Gorilla, about how they met at the restaurant.

“I’m using him to get what I want, so what do I care what other people think,” he concluded, trying to absolve himself in her eyes.

“Are you not aware that your daughter has sold herself to this man?” she asked him bluntly.

He lurched as if she’d stabbed him.

“Don’t talk about her,” he said, choking on his words.

“Ah! So you’re aware of it but look the other away. I can’t bear the thought of it.”

“I said be quiet.”

“Who’s going to help you face the truth if not me?” she cried.

“I won’t allow anyone, anyone to…”

“I judge you, I do,” she continued pitilessly.

“Oh, no, you can’t do that. You have no right. Do you know what it’s like to deal with them? Have you ever seen them up close? Have you heard how they talk, how they threaten?”

She shrugged.

“I’ve had to drink from this chalice to its bitter dregs,” he confided in her. “Pity me instead of pointing the finger.”

He took his hat and she went to get the car from the garage. Neither of them said a word during the entire ride. Before going their separate ways, she offered him her lips but he refused to kiss her.

“I didn’t think you ever could insult me like that,” he reproached her. “I may not be the bravest man, but I am not so lacking in character that I don’t see what’s behind your harshness. I will only return to your house to pay you back. Farewell, Maud.”

“So I tell you the truth and you hold it against me?” she asked, astonished by this almost violent reaction that had suddenly revealed another man.

“What I hold against you is that you don’t love me enough to understand me. We can’t control others, Maud. What can a father do against his own daughter?” he replied sadly. “And what can we do against the people who’ve taken our land and persecute us?”

He went home to find his wife in bed. He stood at the window for a long time, facing the sky, his eyes on the indifferent, twinkling stars so far away. And beneath the sublime majesty of that night, the weight of his misfortune, their misfortune, filled him with rebellion. “Why? Why?” he heard himself murmur just as he had when he was eight and his mother died. Maybe for too long we lived tranquil and carefree lives in the midst of others’ tears and lamentations. To accept crime even if you don’t participate in it is still criminal. In that case, I’ve been a coward and a criminal my entire life. Now I am being punished for thinking that because the flames of hell didn’t reach me, I could warm my hands over them. I looked at the others writhing and twisting their faces in pain without losing my peace of mind, and today, here I am deep in the midst of the flames along with all those I love! My entire life, all I could do was keep my head down and resign myself. And now they’ve come to teach me hatred and rebellion. Their presence is nothing but calculation on the part of fate. Their numbers are swelling and others will bear what we have borne. Misfortune has fallen upon us and will soon spread everywhere. Once all of us feel its heavy hand, maybe then we’ll understand what solidarity and courage mean. In the old days, my mother would start crying whenever my father yelled. She did nothing but tremble and weep before him. Maybe I get it from her. And me, do I know who I am? I’m fifty and still asking myself such a question. I can strut, stand up to the Gorilla, play the cynic, but I know that deep down I am dreadfully afraid. Ah! The pain of it! They forced me to kneel, held me by the hair and rubbed my face in the mud. And hatred found its way into me. I play their game. I play my role to perfection. Accolades for me! I wallow with them in immorality, without shame or remorse. And for that too, I will have to answer. But what should I do? I am alone against them all. It’s an unequal struggle.

He reached the bed and lay down carefully. When the memory of Maud suddenly came rushing back, he realized with some surprise that he had forgotten her, as if she had been submerged in his painful daydreaming. For before she came along, there had been children and this woman lying by his side.

He closed his eyes and the silence of the night immediately took hold of him. There was a slight moaning in the mother’s breath. A kind of whimper to the rhythm of a mute, irregular beat. He leaned over her and listened to her heart. Was it possible that he had been sleeping all this time next to this poor woman without suspecting she was ill! This crumbling heart accused him. He was responsible for this. He called out to her softly and she breathed a deep and painful sigh as she turned around and mechanically curled up away from him on the part of the bed that had been hers for the last six years.

The next day, upon waking, he looked at her as he had not done in a long time. In the last six years, he had only noticed the morsels of her flesh that were still tempting, expressions and movements that would start up the machine of memory without really moving him. And he would leave to bring to another the tenderness he didn’t offer her. How was it that he began to detach himself from her? He had no serious grievance against her. On the contrary. Was it, in fact, precisely because he knew she was so easygoing that he cheated on her? He had chosen her because she was the quiet girl, distant and serene: would he now reproach her for these very qualities?

“We’ll go see Dr. Valois together,” he promised her. “You look thin and worn-out. We need to take care of you.”