That morning, the grandfather had been the first to come down to the dining room. Hidden behind a half-open door, he was observing a corner of the yard, eyes wide with fear, ears pricked up.
Men in black were driving stakes around the house. Their uniforms gleamed with sweat in the sun of what was still morning. Their decorations, weapons and hammers reflected intermittent flashes of light; and the grandfather told himself they looked like plundering birds of prey walking around like that, bent over. What ghastly uniforms, and what right do they have, driving these stakes into my land? he said to himself.
The last steps on the stairs creaked, startling him out of his thoughts. He quickly wiped his face as if to erase the fear that had been imprinted there, and turned his head toward his son:
“Men in black uniforms are on our land. They’re driving stakes all around our house,” he said to him.
“Stakes!” the son cried out.
“Look!”
With a hand that was still firm, he drew him behind the door and pointed to the back of the yard:
“Look!” he said again.
At the sight of the men in uniform, the son mumbled a few unintelligible words that betrayed panic checked by immense willpower.
“They’ve been here since dawn,” the old man added.
His beard trembled. The son, afraid his father would burst into one of his terrible fits of anger, looked at him intently, annoyingly calm.
“Take it easy, Papa, above all keep calm.”
The top of the stairs creaked this time, just before a nineteen-year-old boy of athletic build all but tumbled down into the living room.
“Good morning!” he said.
And turning toward the table:
“Where’s Mélie?” he asked. “Has she decided to let us go without food this morning?”
He broke off, pricking up his ears, and before anyone could stop him he threw himself at the door, flinging it wide open.
“What’s going on? What are they doing at our place?”
“They’re driving stakes,” the old man said tersely.
“What right do they have?” the son protested.
“They’re here to bring us news of the death of our freedom,” the grandfather answered. “Don’t you understand that?”
He fell silent when he saw the maid. She entered slowly, dragging her feet with ostentatious innocence, and as she set the table she hypocritically observed the side of the yard where the men in black were working.
“At the very least we should ask them what they’re doing on our land,” the young man declared, “or else it will look like we’re afraid.”
“Keep still, Paul!” the father shouted, trying to rouse himself. “You see exactly what they’re doing: they’re planting stakes to keep us from our property.”
A heavy silence descended, which was especially uncomfortable for the maid, who now avoided lifting her eyes, her lips tight, features lifeless, like a statue hewed from the black stone of African antiquity.
Except for that moment when he had reprimanded his son, the father always spoke in a neutral, monotonous voice, in sharp contrast to the old man’s mute nervousness and the young man’s more exuberant manner. The grandfather looked from his son to his grandson. While the silence lasted, he kept staring at them with such insistence that a casual observer might have thought him senile.
“Evil has come upon us. We will have to fight to defeat it,” he finally said.
“Above all, we’ll have to act with caution,” replied the father, who had been waiting for the maid to leave before breaking his silence. “We’ll get a very good and very clever lawyer who knows how to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and we’ll need to follow his advice to the letter.”
“And if he declares, as I predict he will, that it’s a lost cause and that we have to accept this?” the grandfather asked.
“Well, then we’ll have to accept it.”
“I will never abandon my land to these thieves,” the grandfather yelled, walking toward his son, who quickly jumped to close the door. “My father sweated to acquire it, and I will not abandon my land to these thieves.”
He regained his composure with difficulty, pricking up his ears despite himself.
One could no longer hear the hammering. This unexpected silence coming from outside, as if in response to his anger, seemed so ominous to the old man that he pressed both hands on the table, bending his spine as if threatened by some immediate danger. The grandson crossed his arms, and knitting his brows, looked at his father; the latter seemed to have gone beyond plain fear. Huddled up, every muscle tense, he looked like a lion tamer locked in a cage with wild beasts and expecting to see them pounce and tear him to shreds at any moment.
“If they come, especially if they heard us, you’ll have to keep quiet and let me do the talking,” he begged in a voice so low that he could hardly be heard.
He clenched his teeth and the muscles of his face tightened.
The three of them stood like that for a long time. Then the young man looked away from his father, lifted his shoulders and walked to the door, opening it a second time.
“They haven’t moved,” he said with forced casualness.
And he sat at the table for breakfast. He pushed away the omelet that Mélie had prepared and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Maybe, like my father said, we’ll have to accept it,” he said.
Hearing these words, the grandfather, his eyes bloodshot, left the table and went out on the porch. Thumbs in his suspenders, he paced up and down for a long time, then stopped, suddenly slouching: all around him stood the houses of the neighborhood, that old quarter of Port-au-Prince where he had grown up in comfort thanks to his father, a peasant who had managed to make it in the bigoted world of bourgeois blacks and mulattoes by dint of honest and sheer tenacity. He earned his position by the sweat of his brow, as the grandfather loved to declare to his son and grandson, and their name was respected to this day. A farmer from the market town of Cavaillon, the old patriarch-intelligent, crafty, tireless in his task-dreamed of a different life for his son. This house, this “big-house” as he called it in Creole, had been built at the end of Lysius Salomon’s rule, [28] and while everyone was finding their way into the troubled waters of politics, he had remained steadfastly committed to his business. During the 1887 currency adjustment that linked the Haitian gourde to the American dollar, he was able to accumulate a small fortune.
The colonial-style wooden house looked like all the established houses in the neighborhood. Rising up between courtyard and garden, they were decked with railed balconies and hat-shaped gables, and stood in the midst of sprawling properties planted mostly with fruit trees, mahogany and oak. Here and there, a few modern buildings lay flat and square at their feet, their scale limited by lack of land. Looking at them, the grandfather began to regret not having sold his properties, as others did, to the nouveaux riches and given the money to his children.
Humiliated by his father, a true Haitian black man who insisted on serving his loas <strong>[29]</strong> faithfully he had renounced the religious vocation he had been drawn to very early on. Once he was orphaned, he had also refused to rent the house, refused to leave the neighborhood, though he had no income to live on. After all, who else would take care of his father’s grave? For forty years, he had made do with the income from the sale of his fruit to the local peddlers who would come around to haggle with him.
Every day during harvest, he went to the garden and paid a few young black men to climb up the trees with sacks on their backs. Down came coconuts lopped off by machetes at the stem, and from furiously shaken branches the most lovely mangoes in the country rained down, and in this fashion he earned enough to condescend to accept the fifty gourdes [30] the peddlers gave him each month.
The stakes planted thirty meters from the house plainly separated it from the land-encircled it, in other words. Now the porch was the only means of egress. The grandfather thought he could see a whole host of dark silhouettes under the oaks and he nervously searched his pockets for his glasses. But there was nothing moving save the leafy branches of the trees on their hundred-year-old trunks. The freshly whitewashed grave of the ancestor stood out under the green of the lemon trees he had planted himself. Being a stubborn and superstitious peasant, he had demanded to be buried in that spot, swearing to look after his lands in death as well as he had while he was alive. And his son, who was only twenty then, could do nothing but obey.
“I will get him out of his grave,” the grandfather whispered. “I will get him out of his grave.” And angrily he began to pull on his wiry goatee.
Across the street, in a newer-looking house with stone walls and picture windows, he saw his friend Jacob, a Syrian who got rich quick selling American fabric. At dawn he had already caught him watching from behind the shutters, and he chased away an unpleasant thought that had been running through his mind from the moment he stepped on the porch. He guessed he was being watched by many eyes and he feigned indifference, walking around as casually as he did every morning, trying not to look at the houses next door. He returned to the dining room where his son’s wife, a light-skinned mulatto woman, had in the meantime come down and was eating. He sat down across from her in silence, crossed himself and mumbled a prayer.
“Claude isn’t up?” she asked him.
At that very moment, a sulky young voice called for help. The grandfather, pushing away his chair, went up the stairs and returned carrying a scrawny eight-year-old child with a pale yellow face and two immense, burning black eyes. A young woman, putting the last touches to her outfit, followed them. The grandfather had the child sit while the young woman served herself café au lait and drank it standing. She was a brunette with long thick hair that curled up around her head and fell back in a ponytail on the nape of her neck. Her dark skin gleamed gold in parts of her face, especially the cheeks, which made it seem like discreet makeup.
“Sit down, Rose,” her mother said.
Paul was watching her lap up the melted sugar in her cup and thought she looked like a pretty cat with its face deep in a dish.
She’s thin and fetching. Only a black woman can manage to be both thin and fetching: must have something to do with the shape of her rear end, he told himself. And he remembered how she had slapped his rich and smug friend Fred for having tried to kiss her. Thin, fetching without knowing it, but serious. Probably not an easy girl, he thought again. And he looked away from her, not without a feeling of pride.
“In the name of the Father, the Son,” the grandfather began again for the child. “Let us pray that God spares us and let us ask Him to inspire us so we may defeat the evil within us and around us.”
And as he spoke, his gaze rested on his daughter-in-law, who visibly avoided it.
“Eat, Claude,” she said to the child.
Breaking off some bread, she gave him some.
“Let me be, Mama, I’m not a baby anymore,” he protested impatiently.
And he smiled at the grandfather who treated him like a man.
“You promised me a story,” he said to him.
“Have I ever been untrue to my word?” the grandfather asked him.
The boy spilled a little coffee on himself, and the mother quickly wiped his mouth.
“Be careful, sweetie.”
“I am not a girl, only girls are called sweetie,” he retorted without mercy.
“Fine. From now on I will only call you Claude.”
“Yes, Claude, that’s our name, grandfather’s and mine.” He gestured to the old man, who took him in his arms as he rose.
“Let’s go in the garden,” he begged.
“No, not today.”
“But I love to be in the garden with you when you tell me stories and give me things to read. Besides, it’s high time to pick the fruit or else they’ll rot.”
“I know, but today we won’t go to the garden. We’re going to sit here and listen to the church bells. Since it so happens that my story is all about bells.”
The child was normal down to his thighs. At the end of his scrawny legs were two atrophied feet whose angled shape reminded one of lobster claws. He was usually dressed in long shirts that concealed his handicap; but on the day of his eighth birthday, he demanded pants and socks which, according to his mother, was something the grandfather had suggested. For the latter, she was still persona non grata. She would always be little more than the daughter of a mulatto drunk who died prematurely from delirium tremens. He had objected to this union from the beginning. On the eve of the wedding, he had made a terrible scene before his son, shouting: “They’re a bunch of defectives, you’ll regret this.” And the invalid was born to prove him right. It was strange then, at least according to the others, that he preferred that little mulatto, born late, ungainly and in fragile health, but whose character resembled his more than his own son’s did. He was pleased to see him tear his hair out or bite his fist at the slightest frustration. “Except for the color of his skin, he’s my spitting image,” he beamed ecstatically, paying homage to the capricious laws of heredity, for he retained a sort of admiration, sustained by the memory of his fearsome father, for the black men of substance and courage from a bygone age.
“Have you warned your mother and your sister, Paul?” the father asked abruptly. “Did you warn them that under no circumstances should they venture beyond the stakes?”
“No,” the son answered tersely.
“Stakes? What stakes?” the mother asked, looking at her husband.
Rose rushed to the door.
“Who put these stakes up on grandfather’s land?” she cried. “What’s happened?”
“Hush!” the father said quietly, “watch the little one. He’ll be so heartbroken when he learns we won’t be able to take him for walks under the trees.”
“When did this happen?” Rose mumbled.
“My God!” the mother moaned.
She got up and went to look outside. When she saw the pieces of wood encircling the house, she closed her eyes, feeling as though a huge crowd was pressing against her, pushing her down an airless hole. She put her hand on her heart and opened her mouth, gasping for breath. Her still-young face became hollow, heavy, suddenly torn apart.
“My God!” she repeated, her eyes searching for the grandfather.
He was standing in a corner, the child in his arms, and she could see his beard trembling. The little invalid, tense and pale, lowered his head.
“What are they talking about, Grandfather?” he asked, as if refusing to understand.
“You heard very well,” Paul answered mercilessly. “They have seized our land.”
“They? They, who?” said the child in an insistently cheerful tone.
“No one knows,” Paul answered. “They wear black uniforms and carry arms. And they have helped themselves to our land. That’s all we know.”
“Is it true, Grandfather?”
“It’s true.”
“I want to see them! I want to see them!”
The grandfather carried the invalid to the door.
And seeing them:
“If I had legs,” he cried, “I would pull up all these stakes.”
“And what if the men in black shot at you,” Paul asked, “what would you do? Huh? What would you do?”
“I would kill them, kill them all.”
He burst into convulsive sobs, tore his shirt with his teeth, tore his hair, while his deformed feet dangled like two broken toys.
“Take him away, Grandfather,” the mother begged.
She leaned her head on the door and could smell the hot sap rising from the coarse trunks and the lighter fragrance of their fruit. The lemon flowers, blown by a sudden breeze, covered the grave of the ancestor under a white blanket, leaving it sheltered in the privacy of this immaculate shroud.
“They will desecrate his grave,” she whispered. “They will dig up his bones.”
She went back to her room and put some order there absentmindedly as if her actions escaped her control. After listening for a moment, she turned the key in the lock; then, throwing herself on the bed, she burst into nervous, jerky laughter that sounded like painful grunts.
“Teach me to walk,” the child said to the grandfather.
“All right,” said the grandfather.
And he bent down to put him gently on the ground, on his stomach.
“Do you remember the story of the Indian chief who wanted to chase the white man out of his country?”
“Yes,” the child answered.
“How did he approach the enemy without making noise?”
“He crawled.”
“Well then, do as he did.”
And he began to crawl on his chest and elbows across the floor of his room.
“Look, I’m going faster and faster, look, Grandfather.”
“In a few days, you will crawl as well as that Indian chief.”
The old man leaned down and took the child in his arms again. He stood before the window, facing the almond tree whose leaves touched the roof.
“There they are!” the child cried out, and his eyes became so feverish that they fogged up with tears.
Thirty meters away, several men in black uniforms stood guard with fixed bayonets. A golden-feathered bird streaked across the sky like lightning and lit on an oak branch, trilling its sweet song. One of the men reached for his weapon and shot it. The grandfather felt the child shaking.
“Swear to me that you won’t let them stay on our land, Grandfather, swear it.”
“It will be difficult, you know.”
“Swear it.”
“They’ll kill us.”
“Swear it, Grandfather, swear it.”
“I swear to you.”
The sound of their voices was rising with the wind that feebly shook the leaves of the almond tree.
It was eight in the morning and it was time to come down for breakfast. They had already heard the father’s footsteps, the mother’s weary tread, and the galloping of the young people. When they came into the dining room, they found the family sitting at the table and Mélie circling around them. She rushed forward and wanted to take the invalid in her arms but he curtly refused.
“Did you sleep well?” his mother asked him.
“Yes. And I always sleep very well. Don’t I, Grandfather?”
“Dr. Valois thinks you’re big enough that a wheelchair would be useful to you,” his mother added.
“What’s a wheelchair like?”
“It’s like a little car. You steer it and it takes you where you want to go.”
“I think it will be fun.”
He gave the grandfather a surreptitious look.
“But you know, Mama, I believe that I’ll soon be walking by myself.”
The mother lowered her head and bit her lower lip. In the intervening silence two gunshots could be heard.
“They’re killing the songbirds,” the child sighed.
The father grew pale and Paul clenched his fists.
“Have you gone to see that lawyer?” his grandfather asked him.
“I have a meeting with him this morning.”
Taking his hat, the father got up as soon as he said this.
“Come on, let’s go, Rose,” he said.
“Where is she going?” the grandfather asked.
“She’s coming to the lawyer with me.”
“Why?” Paul asked him.
Embarrassed, the father coughed without answering, and the grandfather suddenly scowled and began to tug at his beard.
“I think they’ll show more consideration if Papa is with a lady. That’s all,” Rose said.
She got up and, arching her legs and waist, grabbed her handbag.
“Don’t wiggle your ass too much,” her brother advised, scowling like the grandfather. “It could cost you dearly.”
“If we’re successful, I’ll expect you to speak to me otherwise,” she answered, diving at him and pulling on his hair playfully “Do you know what could happen to you without my ass-wiggling? Rotting here and never discovering what a bench in an overseas university feels like.”
“Settle down,” the grandfather yelled, hitting the table with his fist.
The child immediately imitated him.
The mother closed her eyes, then opened them and looked at her husband for a moment. A slight grimace of disgust disfigured her lips. She lit a cigarette that Rose took from her hands with a smile.
“Come on, Papa, let’s go,” she said.
The mother lit a second cigarette and looked at her husband again.
“You are always right about everything,” she said to him slowly. “You’ve always been right, but this time you better be careful, be very careful.”
She watched them leave without adding another word. Pushing away his chair, Paul got up from the table. He remained standing across from his mother, looking at her for a long time in silence.
“If I was strong like you!” the invalid sighed, staring at him with admiration, “if I was strong like you!…”
The young man spread his legs and leaned over the child.
“What would you do?” he whispered.
And when no answer came:
“What would you do?” he yelled.
And he left, slamming the door.
Although the house was rather isolated because of the land around it (Jacob being their only immediate neighbor on their side of the street), he immediately felt as if he was being watched by the whole neighborhood. He walked quickly without looking around him. “If they think I’m afraid, they’re wrong,” he told himself. And with broad strides, he kept putting more and more distance between him and the house. He reached one street, then another, and walked to the house of his friend Fred Morin, who was on the soccer team with which he had been training for two years. He noticed Mme Morin’s face seemed strained, unusually so. He felt like he was standing before a stranger he was seeing for the first time. She nevertheless invited him to sit and called her son. Fred shook his hand and inquired what was new in a voice that seemed as false as his mother’s. Mme Morin had slowly pulled in the front double doors. A gust of wind opened them slightly and she glanced over anxiously.
“What brings you here?” Fred whispered shyly and, as soon as he had spoken his eyes returned to the door, behind which whispering could be heard.
He got up so clumsily that he knocked over an ashtray. He went to lock the door this time and instead of returning to his seat, he remained standing before Paul, looking round for his mother and grinning so falsely and stupidly that Paul also got up.
“I’m making you uncomfortable,” he whispered in a choked voice. “They are on our land and you know it. As far as all of you are concerned, we’ve been marked and therefore best avoided.”
“I don’t understand you,” Fred answered in a cynical tone.
They stood facing each other for a second without Fred daring to add another word.
He had come to talk to him about the soccer team, about the next game they were to play against the international players expected the next week, and he had been hoping for a warm welcome to free him from his anxiety.
“I’m making you uncomfortable,” he simply repeated and opened the door himself.
As soon as he had, he bumped into a crowd of people who had gathered on the porch and who now closed in to have a better look at him in their curiosity.
“That’s him!” was what he heard. “That’s Normil’s son!”
He walked away quickly barely avoiding the cars that seemed to brush past him on purpose and from which unknown heads leaned out. A woman’s voice called to him. He stopped and recognized Dr. Valois’ daughter. He was about to join her when a stream of cars separated them. He waited. When the cars had moved off, she was gone, and in the spot where she had been standing a moment before were three men in black. He couldn’t help being startled and doubled back to a stone bench covered by the shade of the flamboyant trees.
He let himself collapse there.
“They’re multiplying then!” he heard himself say out loud.
He had rested for a few minutes when he heard their boot steps. He shot up like a coiled spring. Wanting to run away, he almost crashed into them before quickly walking backward and withdrawing behind the trees. Thousands of men in black uniforms, black boots and shiny helmets were marching to the sound of fanfare. Preceded by two men bearing banners painted with skulls and weapons, they walked in tight ranks, cheered on by the crowd. A horde of emaciated beggars waved their arms wildly, screaming and cheering.
How long, he thought, how long will I have to see and hear them?
Upon returning home, he was astonished by the hopeful shiver that came over him when his father and sister appeared in the living room.
“What did the lawyer tell you?” the grandfather asked his son without preamble.
“He wasn’t able to see us,” the father answered pathetically.
“So they had no consideration for my sister,” Paul pointed out with a sardonic chuckle.
Rose avoided responding, but she slipped her father a look so strange and mysterious that her brother was unable to interpret it.
The door to the dining room was closed, so the noise from outside was muffled. They ate in silence, slowly, as if forcing themselves, abandoned to a common anguish that each of them inwardly rejected, sensing a heavy invisible presence spying on their every move. Paul called for the maid, who didn’t answer. He got up to get the water pitcher from the pantry and saw her near the stakes serving water to the uniformed men. She was bowing and smiling filling glasses, breaking up ice. He waited for her to return, and, taking the tray from her hands, smashed the glasses on the floor.
“Oh! Monsieur Paul,” she said in dismay.
The noise brought the family to the pantry.
“She let them drink out of our glasses,” he muttered, trembling with rage.
“But,” the father said, casting an anxious glance at the maid, “if they are thirsty and ask for a glass, isn’t it more reasonable to serve them?”
The invalid curled up in the grandfather’s arms as if he were in pain. He stared at his father with immense black eyes that took up most of his face and suddenly brandished his fist in his direction.
“Not in our glasses, Paul is right, not in our glasses.”
“You can go,” Rose yelled at the maid, who was giving them an ugly look.
And when she was gone:
“You’re going to ruin everything,” she continued. “Papa is right, we have to catch them with honey. As for me, I’m letting you know right now that I will make every effort to save this land.”
She walked up to her brother and looked straight in his eyes.
“Don’t you want to get out of here? Didn’t you want to study architecture, or have you forgotten all about that? Would you rather waste your time and your youth, until you end up wearing one of their uniforms? Because from now on, if you want to live in peace, you’ll have to fall in behind them.”
She was pleading with him now.
“I’m begging you, Paul, be patient, let me and Papa take care of this, that’s all we ask, that you let us take care of it…”
She saw him turning his head as if searching for an available target, and then his fist struck the wall of the pantry. The grandfather watched him with unfeigned astonishment, and the invalid cheered him on. Paul took him on his back and galloped with him through the house.
“You’ll make them turn tail, you will,” the child whispered when he stopped, out of breath.
The mother had closed her eyes. Something weighed on her heart and made it beat irregularly, slowly, then quickly. And as she listened to it creaking like a rusty old tool, she said to herself: It can’t take this anymore. One day, it will stop.
“As if this were not enough, my God!” she cried out loud.
Once more, the silence seemed to them so profound, so ominous, that they felt as though they could inhale it together with the air. The birds frolicked on the palm branches and their cheerful chirping seemed to punctuate and underscore the horror. She ran to the window. As soon as she saw the men in their black uniforms, she lifted her handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry. Then, they left the room one by one as if repelled by the tears she had been unable to hold back.
“Grandfather,” said the invalid, “tell me a story.”
“A long, long time ago,” the grandfather then began, “my father, having left the countryside to go to Port-au-Prince, learned that thieves had been trespassing on his land while he was away. At the time, many men rode horses and my father had a horse called Grand Rouge and he galloped like no horse in this world ever knew how. My father, who was in the cattle business, lived in Cavaillon with Mother, a beautiful and ambitious young peasant girl from Fonds-des-Blancs. He returned home right away, and calling the steward, he asked him: ‘Is it true that thieves came on my land to take my fruit?’ – ‘Yes,’ the steward answered. – ‘What did you do?’ my father went on. – ‘I whipped them and they left faster than they had come.’ – ‘With some of their loot?’ my father asked. – ‘No, sir, without any loot’ – ‘I travel often,’ my father went on, ‘if my son ever yields to the temptation of picking a single fruit from the neighbor’s garden, I order you to whip him too.’ My father only owned a quarter of this land. A thick gate separated the rest of the property. One day, the steward caught me over the gate, my pockets full of fruit. ‘If you so much as taste one of these fruits, you’ll be a thief and in a whole lot of trouble.’ And he made me turn back, roughly pulled the fruit out of my pockets and threw them back into the neighboring property. The next day, I heard the gallop of my father’s horse and I woke up, breathless with fear. I heard my father call the steward. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked. – ‘Everything’s all right,’ the steward answered. The thieves returned, raiding our land and taking the few fruits that were ours. The steward managed to catch one of them. He tied him to a tree before our very eyes and whipped him until he drew blood. ‘You see how close you came to this,’ he told me afterward. ‘Don’t ever covet the goods of others.’”
The mother got up slowly, put down her needlework, walked over to the old man and spoke into his ear.
“Look at him, Grandfather,” she whispered, “just look at him.”
The child was clenching his fists and grinding his teeth.
“Who will flog those who have taken our land?” he said without paying any attention to the mother. “Is there no longer a steward who can do it?”
“Alas, no!” the grandfather answered.
“Why not?”
“Because there are ups and downs in the life of a people. As the arrow rises, it gives birth to heroes; when it falls, only cowards come into the world. No steward would agree to stand up to those who have taken our land.”
The child was sniffling, and the grandfather guessed he was crying though there were no tears rolling down his cheeks. He told himself that his crippled and sickly grandson was the faint beginning of the next era of heroes and that the arrow had begun its slow ascent only eight years ago. Hundreds more must have come into the world the same time he did, he thought, and with feet and legs as well as a brave soul. A day will come when they will grow up and the birds of prey will have to account for their deeds to every last one of them.
As usual, the father returned from work at lunchtime. He brushed his wife’s forehead with a kiss, greeted the others with a wave of his hand and took his seat. At the end of the meal, he looked at his watch and Rose did the same. They got up and went to the door the grandfather had more or less barricaded. At the same time, they heard the noise of a powerful engine as a truck full of men in black uniform entered the property. Twenty men jumped out of the truck and began unspooling a long wire.
“They’ve starting surveying the land,” Rose said in a weak voice.
“Shut this door,” the grandfather yelled.
Paul leaped out of his seat and without a word began to climb the stairs at a run.
“I want to see! I want to see!” the child cried out.
“No,” the grandfather replied. “Let’s go in our room to pray.”
The mother took the child herself and set him down in the old man’s arms.
“Because me, I believe in miracles,” the grandfather said, looking at the mother ostentatiously.
“Prayer impedes despair and thereby frees the soul. Do you know the story of the alcoholic who didn’t know he should have prayed?”
“No,” answered the invalid.
“It’s an interesting story and one worth telling.”
He walked by the mother and her eyes followed him, full of hatred.
Yes, she hated him right now as much as he must have hated her. Why such hatred between them, she sometimes wondered. For what did he reproach her? It could only be her father’s misbehavior. A poor failed artist who had tormented his violin for thirty-five years without ever being able to get a proper note out of it. He had started drinking one night when he had tried in vain to play a Chopin waltz. She had seen him start to cry and then break his bow. That evening, she had waited up for him for a long time only to see him come home staggering.
He drank from despair. He died from despair. How could God, if he existed, hold that against him? And what right did the grandfather have to judge? Maybe she should just see him as a foolish old man and forgive him. At the beginning of her marriage, she had almost loved him. She had come to his house, trembling with emotion, daughter of an alcoholic who died under atrocious circumstances, as everyone knew. He had given her a piercing look and she lowered her head very humbly. His gaze seemed to say: “Don’t think you are honoring us with your presence, mulatto girl. Your father was nothing but a mulatto alcoholic and I went to school with people like him at the Saint-Martial Seminary.” He wasn’t kind, she had soon understood this. He was created in the image of a God of his own senile invention, a God he threw in your face at the worst moment, like blows from a club, savoring every twitch and heartrending cry. At times she could feel his forever-accusing eye, and she had come to understand that there would never be any love between herself and that God. Where was the grandfather’s God? Why hadn’t He already done away with injustice and bloodshed?
She lifted her head and noticed their neighbor on the right, Mme Saint-Hilare, an impotent old mulatto woman who had her chair positioned in front of her window so she wouldn’t miss out on what was going on in their house. If God exists, could it be that He spies on His creatures the way this old woman does? she wondered. She waved to Mme Saint-Hilare, who quickly lowered her head, pretending not to see her. It’s like we have the plague now! she realized, as her heart jumped in her chest. “Necessary trials!” she whispered, imitating the grandfather’s sententiousness. “Sadism!” she added. With that God you only earn your stripes through suffering. And the grandfather used to say that misery awaits those who have known happiness on earth! What could this demanding God want from His creatures? Oh, no! She wanted nothing to do with Him. She dreamed of another God, full of compassion and love, who would have pity on His creatures, would spare the innocent and punish the guilty. In solitude she had learned to pray in her own way, and at times a kind of peace would descend upon her, the sudden and mysterious comfort that comes from the certainty of divine protection.
She went up to check on Paul, who had locked himself in his room, and as she passed by the grandfather’s room she stopped to listen.
“Saints in heaven,” he was reciting.
“Chase away the demons,” the invalid said in response.
“Saints in heaven.”
“Smite the demons.”
Now she could hear their voices reciting the Pater Noster. She knocked on the door to her son’s room. He made her wait before letting her in and greeted her from under his sheets.
“Are you feeling sick?”
“No… why?”
She put her hand on his forehead and felt him burning.
“Yes, you are, you have a fever.”
“Ah… that’s what I thought. My mouth feels ashy.”
He sat up, grabbed the books lying on the bed and held them out to his mother.
“Lie down,” she said.
“No, it’ll pass. I don’t want to stay in bed anymore.”
“Being a little sick isn’t the end of the world,” she answered in a willfully abrupt manner. “Go on, stay in bed. It’s probably the flu.”
He obeyed her, sulking, and she tucked him in and sat beside him.
There was noise in the yard that could be heard through the window. Someone on the other side of the stakes barked out orders that were followed by a whistle blowing and the crackle of bullets. Paul sat up nervously.
“It’s nothing,” the mother said, “stay in bed.”
“Who were they shooting at?”
“At the birds. You know they like killing them.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and forced him back in bed.
“You haven’t been playing soccer lately?”
“No.”
“Where’s Fred? He doesn’t come by to see you anymore?”
“No.”
She had the horrible sensation of a foreign presence in the room. She turned her head toward the window and grew quiet.
“Don’t waste your time,” she continued with effort. “Study on your own until then.”
“Until when?”
“Until things get settled.”
She regretted these last words and lowered her eyes as if she were guilty of something. This nineteen-year-old man was as lucid as she was and it was tactless to treat him like a baby. By doing so she risked losing his friendship, which meant so much to her and which she had done so much to keep alive. She spoiled him in secret, like a wily Apache, slipping him money she had saved through great sacrifice. “Your stingy old man won’t know about it,” she told him with a complicit wink. She often went into his room to confide in him, to talk about the father, about his illicit nightly outings that could only have one purpose. He had protested, not being able to imagine this serious and mournful fifty-year-old man wrapped in a woman’s arms, but then one day he had seen him, suddenly young again, talking to a strange young woman in a car, and he had begun to have his doubts. But out of a kind of masculine solidarity, he had refused to betray him, although he became less affectionate and effusive with him.
“I’ll make you a rum punch,” she said to him.
“With lots of rum, please.”
“With lots of rum,” she acquiesced obediently.
She went downstairs to warm the milk into which she then mixed an egg yolk and some rum. She tasted it and added more rum.
Mélie looked at her without saying anything. The small slanting eyes in her black face glowed with mean-spirited joy.
Why does she also hate me? What have I ever done to her? the mother wondered.
“Madame Louis, your father-in-law told me to make sure no one touches this bottle,” she finally said in a honeyed voice in her drawn-out Creole.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Madame Louis, but he told me, ‘Mélie, if anyone in this house drinks that rum without my permission, I’ll hold you responsible.’”
“Well, you will have to tell him that Monsieur Paul is ill and needed it.”
“Yes, Madame Louis, I will tell him. Monsieur Paul has the flu?”
“And a fever.”
“You’re right, then. What the grandfather was afraid of is someone drinking the rum for no good reason. He doesn’t like drunkards. That’s what he told me, Madame Louis. I’m going to boil a lemon for Monsieur Paul. But I’ll need money to buy it because I can’t just go pick one anymore… You understand?”
She pointed to the garden.
“Yes,” was all the mother said.
The hammering resounded as she stepped onto the landing. She looked through the window and saw two men nailing a notice to an oak trunk. She went into her son’s room, where she found him sitting and listening, trying to understand the sounds he had heard. He took the cup from his mother’s hand and drank down the scorching punch in one gulp.
The mother waited until the house was asleep and cautiously got out of the bed where her husband was sleeping. She threw on a dress and felt her way down the stairs. Outside, the beaming moon promenaded across the sky. Suddenly it was veiled by a cloud and all was plunged in darkness. The mother walked up to the stakes and stopped there. She looked at the notice, white as a tombstone, and read these words: NO ENTRY. She stood there a moment, motionless, staring at the trees, which seemed more massive in the darkness. A light gust of wind shook their branches and an owl hooted, as if awakened from its slumber.
“Who goes there?” a voice shouted.
A gigantic black silhouette rose up.
She involuntarily stepped back as a cry of terror escaped from her lips. She saw him, his eyes full of hatred, laughing silently, and she trembled. He drew his gun and pointed it at her: “Want to do it with me, mulatto girl? Want to do it?” she heard. She raised her hands to the sky and shouted, no, no, and ran back home. A bullet whistled past her ear. She threw herself to the ground and crawled to the kitchen door. As soon as she was safe, she closed her eyes and put both hands to her heart. Her fear and the shortness of her breath made the rattle in her chest unmistakable this time. She remained that way for several minutes, head tilted, listening to her heartbeat; then, opening her eyes again, she found herself at the sideboard, opened it and grabbed the bottle of rum. She took great swigs straight from the bottle and put it back in its place. The father was still sleeping. She went to bed, pulled the sheets over herself, hoping the feeling of the covers would comfort her. She touched the shoulder of the man sleeping beside her, and he grumbled, surly in his slumber. Such loneliness! she thought. In vain she tried to sleep, and dawn found her with her eyes on the ceiling and her arm across her forehead.
At that moment, she heard cautious footsteps brushing along the stairs. The steps were getting closer, halting to the rhythm of a pendulum, and the stairs creaked just as regularly, just as mechanically. She got up and opened her bedroom door: Rose was standing before her disheveled, eyes smeared with tears and shoes in hand.
“Mama! You scared me,” she exclaimed in a hushed voice.
“Where were you?”
“Mama, please. I’m twenty. I’m not a baby anymore. Surely you know that.”
“My God!” the mother said, closing her eyes.
“No need for drama, please. I know what I’m doing. Go, go get some rest,” the young woman added in a whisper.
Her mother left her and returned to her bedroom. The father was awake. She sat on the bed and, hiding her face in her hands:
“Rose spent the night out,” she said without looking at him. He coughed, hoping he had misunderstood, and rubbed his eyes:
“Where was she?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“How should I know?”
“We’ll have to ask her,” he added, weighing his words. “Maybe she was with some friends, at a party. We’ll just have to ask her.”
At eight, Rose was sitting at the table like everyone else, bathed, made up, and so fresh one could swear she had stayed in bed all night.
“In the name of the Father and the Son,” the grandfather began before breaking his bread.
The others, except for the invalid, ate as they watched him do this.
“Oh, by the way,” Rose said in an offhand manner, “I had forgotten to tell you about it earlier, Papa, but I was invited out last night and it was too late by the time I remembered. I didn’t want to wake you and Mama, so I just snuck out.”
“Next time, you’ll let us know beforehand, won’t you?” the father said calmly.
“Of course, Papa.”
He had two new anxious wrinkles between his eyes.
“I have to run. Come on, Rose, we need to see that lawyer this morning.”
They got up and left immediately.
“My father is using his daughter to try to sway the lawyer. It turns out he’s a shrewd strategist,” Paul explained quietly. “There he goes taking Rose down the wrong path.”
“A little respect for your father, my grandson,” the grandfather shouted, interrupting him.
He pulled on his goatee and lowered his voice:
“You can’t lead anyone down the wrong path. A dog is born good or bad and the same thing goes for a human being.”
“In that case, we aren’t responsible for anything,” the young man added in a voice that invited no reply.
“We do bear responsibility for having been chosen as carriers of evil,” the grandfather said, finishing his thought.
“Ah, well, in that case!”
“That’s the law, grandson.”
“The law! What law?”
“Divine law,” said the invalid, having followed every word of the conversation. “Grandfather says God has chosen me to become a hero.”
“If you keep stuffing his head with such ideas, you’ll make him go mad,” the mother reproached him.
Her red eyes had dark circles around them. Her father’s eyes, she’ll end up an alcoholic just like him, because it is written that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, and fear of Him banishes sin, but she fears nothing in life and life will win, grinding her down just as it did her father until his bitter end.
“Teach your daughter to fear God,” he advised sententiously “even if you don’t fear Him yourself. That’s my advice to you.”
He hadn’t meant to complete his thought out loud and had spoken almost despite himself. He saw her shrug and reply:
“For what could God reproach her?”
“You think she’s so innocent?”
“Yes,” she answered with dignity, “I think she is.”
“God willing, you’re right,” the grandfather replied simply. “God willing, you’re right.”
… That afternoon, the grandfather had the maid bring the invalid to church. Once he found a seat, he took him on his knees and sent Mélie back to wait on the porch. From his pulpit, the Haitian priest delivered a sermon that displeased him because he spoke of obedience and acceptance not of the laws of heaven but of what passed for law in the kingdom of this world.
“We must learn to submit,” the priest was saying. “We must learn to resign ourselves, for nothing happens on earth without God’s will.”
A few people turned to stare at the grandfather. And for a moment he had the unpleasant feeling that the sermon was directed at him. “Should I, too,” he felt like shouting, “Should I, too, resign myself to having my father’s grave profaned and his bones dug up?” He knew the priest would reply: “Yes, if such be God’s will.” And therefore he had gone astray, for rebellion and vengeance swelled within him. Jesus chased the thieves from the Temple with a whip, and my father imitated him. Was he wrong? he wondered. No, and even when he stuck a knife in the back of that incorrigible thief who had managed to bribe the judges and get the law on his side, he was right that time too. After all, since when did a man, a real man, allow what is his to be taken away against his will? And the grandfather wanted to spit in the faces of all these curs, beginning with his own son. He left the church irate, the invalid in his arms. If the Church was on the side of the thieves, he might as well pray at home from now on. And God would in the end understand that the Church had sunk into corruption.
Jacob called out to him just as he was opening his house gate. He would not have stopped but the heavy silence that followed the sound of his name made him turn his head to make sure he had heard right. Jacob was standing in a doorway and gesticulating like an old puppet. The grandfather wondered what this mute commotion was all about. He entrusted the invalid to the maid and went to his neighbor’s. Mme Saint-Hilare craned her head, her features contorted by the effort. She saw Jacob’s door open and the men embrace.
“I’ve been waving to you for the past five days. My old friend, my dear old friend!”
“Yes,” the grandfather replied, “but five days ago you would have come over when you wanted to talk to me.”
“Alas, I haven’t been well. My sciatica. I can barely walk.”
And indeed, he was dragging himself about wearing horrible dust-green slippers on his feet.
“I wanted to send a note with the maid but she refused to take it to your house.”
“Why not?”
“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 naïve 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.
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 abroad.”
He slowly turned his head toward her, and she had the unpleasant impression that he was undressing her behind his glasses.
“You wanted to leave, you say? Aren’t you happy here, Mademoiselle?”
“Yes… of course… but we would have preferred to finish our studies elsewhere.”
“What do you have against our universities?”
“Well… nothing.”
Suddenly he turned away from her and began impatiently riffling through the pile of papers in front of him, then grabbed an ashtray and rapped twice on his desk.
A third invisible door to the right opened and a typist walked in carrying a notepad on which she had already started scribbling a few lines.
“Mademoiselle, please type this up,” the lawyer said to her. “On this day, February eighth, 19-, according to the petition of Monsieur Louis Normil, residing in this town, it has transpired that he has been unjustly dispossessed of his land…”
“Forgive me, but I don’t believe I used the word unjust,” Louis Normil added with a distressingly flattering smile.
“Strike that word, Mademoiselle,” the lawyer ordered, imperturbably calm, “it has transpired that Monsieur Louis Normil has been dispossessed of his land… and an investigation is under way to determine whether these invaders…”
“I never uttered that word either, counselor…”
“Strike that, Mademoiselle… whether parties established on said land hold legal documents in accordance with statute.”
The secretary flashed a crooked smile, then suppressed a chuckle.
At that moment there was a loud knock on the door and before the lawyer was able to answer it, a small skinny man wearing a black uniform came in, his bony and disproportionately long hands dangling at the end of his arms like the paws of a gorilla. The lawyer leaped out of his armchair and rushed toward the little man, bowing very low.
“How are you?” he asked, his fat lips open in an affable and welcoming smile.
With his two hands the little man lifted the weapons hanging on his belt and sat one buttock on the edge of the desk.
“Sit in the armchair,” the lawyer gushed, “you’ll be more comfortable there.”
“That’s all right, that’s all right,” the little man answered, then crossed his booted legs and turned his head toward Rose, staring at her quietly.
“It just so happens, my dear friend,” the lawyer continued in his slow nasal voice, but this time in a congenial tone. “It so happens I was just thinking about you…”
Putting a light hand on his shoulder, the lawyer discreetly motioned to follow him behind the screen. They whispered for a moment, and when they reappeared Rose found the short man shamelessly ogling her again.
“Yes,” he said in response to a question the lawyer had probably asked him during their tête-à-tête. “Yes, that might work. Tell him so and present the conditions quite plainly. She’s not bad. As you know, I’m hard to please and I’ve been disappointed before. I don’t want to come out on the short end of this.”
At that, he burst into loud hysterical laughter that shook his whole body. He left the room still laughing and as he passed by Rose he brazenly brushed her knee with his hairy hand.
“Let’s go, Papa,” she said, feeling as though there were suddenly less air in the room.
“Now, now,” the lawyer intoned with his nose, “I see the little miss is in a hurry to leave us.”
“So then, counselor,” Louis Normil added in an attempt to break the grotesque and sensual atmosphere.
“Five hundred dollars up front,” the lawyer cut in. “And I am so sure that we’ll get our due process that I won’t ask you for more until the end of the trial. Send the money with this nice young woman by next week.”
“It will be my pleasure to bring it myself.”
“My dear, I have a soft spot for pretty people, and I really don’t like to be contradicted. I will only take the money from your daughter.”
“Fine, sir, goodbye, counselor. Come, Rose, let’s go.”
She wobbled on her legs and clutched her father’s arm.
“Must be the heat,” the lawyer said idly.
And he purred for a little while as if inwardly savoring a voluptuous idea.
This time, he said goodbye first and opened the door for them himself. He rubbed his hands as he watched them leave, though his lips were twisted in a hateful rictus.
In the hallway Rose breathed easier, even though it wasn’t ventilated any better. Her father grabbed her arm and whispered:
“Don’t you say a word, wait until we’re outside.”
They both staggered as they reached the street under the mocking eyes of the guard.
“My God!” Rose groaned. “My God!”
“Yes,” was all her father said in response.
They went home together because it was about one and time for lunch. They found the family sitting at the table, eating in silence. As soon as they came in, they were greeted by anxious eyes. They sat down and Rose casually heaped her plate with food.
“I’m starving,” she said, looking her brother straight in the eye.
Before putting any food in her mouth she suddenly burst into tears. Getting up from the table, she covered her face with her napkin and ran upstairs.
“What’s the matter with her?” the invalid asked.
“Nothing,” the father answered, “a little tired. We had to wait a long time at the lawyer’s.”
“And so what happened?” the grandfather asked.
“It worked out. The lawyer thinks there’s a good chance we’ll recover our property.”
The father knew how to find the five hundred dollars. He hadn’t given his word lightly. For the last six years, he had been seeing a very rich young woman who had often proven her devotion to him. He would go and tell her everything. She lived just outside of town. Maybe she didn’t know about any of this. He would pay her back as soon as he had taken care of things. So firm was his intention that he decided he would refuse to accept the sum without an IOU. He would drop by that very afternoon, after the office closed, and then return late at night in the car she drove like a madwoman on the deserted roads that led to her house. Was it because he had seen his wife day in and day out for the last twenty years that he was unable to desire her? He knew very well he had little cause to be unhappy with her save for that lack of spontaneity that made her ever the same, always a bit taciturn and plump, idle and wistful. Her nonchalance surfaced even in their physical relations, and he sometimes had the awkward feeling she submitted to them only out of duty. Was he sure of this? Had he tried to understand her? Did the coldness she affected conceal a mute reproach, some deep-seated and unexpressed grievance? Sometimes he wondered, was he blameless? He had been too flattered by the interest he aroused in this thirty-year-old heiress to linger on such questions. And to absolve himself he came to believe that all she wanted was to live in peace and that he spared her as much as possible. Levelheaded, modest, he had never boasted of this affair. Did his mistress love him? On that subject, too, he avoided self-examination. It was enough for him to hold her in his arms and hear her ramble on about love for him to feel fully a man, fully happy. He had once condemned adultery and was now astonished to find himself basking in it without remorse. The rare moments of happiness can be found only in love, he noted, and discovered that in the arms of his mistress his passion was still intact, that in the warmth of a new sensation he could forget the small humiliations he bore at the customs office where he worked as a simple inspector. In life, mediocrity usually destroys a man’s ideals and ambitions; you cease to believe in yourself, he had said to himself one day, so you might as well forget yourself in a woman’s arms. For her, I am a kind of god able to please her sexually, and that makes me feel alive…
The mother had gotten up. He calmly looked at this body of hers, still desirable, reassuring himself that she thought herself old. She stood by the window watching the stakes, nervously smoking a cigarette. Though she had her back to him, he had the impression that she was following each of his movements with sustained attention. Her thoughts were palpable to him and he thought, She’s angry at me, no doubt about it. And he understood that should she break this silence with a single word, he would no longer be able to lie to himself. At that precise moment, she turned around:
“Never again,” she said. “Never again will Rose go with you to that lawyer, you hear me, never again.”
There was such force in the measured tone of these words that he looked at her stunned.
He saw a grimace of disgust on her lips and he felt ashamed. The other woman is the one lying to me, he told himself, disconcerted. I may be a good lover, but I am not a man.
“That’s what I was telling myself,” he answered. “These lawyers’ offices have become veritable brothels.”
“You didn’t know that?” Paul shouted at him.
“No,” he replied, “I didn’t know that.”
The invalid began to fidget in his chair and would have fallen out if his mother hadn’t rushed to him in time.
“Calm down, come, come,” she urged. “Come, I’ll put you to bed.”
“I don’t want to go upstairs,” he protested. “Rose is crying and I don’t like to hear people crying.”
“Let him be,” the grandfather then said.
“He really hears too much for his age,” the father murmured.
“Grandfather says that heroes are predestined and that those who are predestined are beings set apart,” he pronounced in a superior little tone.
“Give us a fucking break with your heroes,” Paul retorted, looking him up and down.
“Oh, if you only knew, if you only knew… But I won’t tell you.”
“Come with me,” the grandfather said.
And getting up, he took him in his arms and carried him to the porch, from which one could hear them whispering.
The mother went to Rose’s room. She was lying on her bed and calmly reading a book, which she closed.
“I don’t know what came over me,” she said. “I have no idea”-she laughed in mild amusement-“probably just nerves…”
“You don’t need anything?”
“No, thank you.”
“And there’s nothing you want to tell me?”
“No, why?”
“I thought maybe you’d had a shock at the lawyer’s office, that you’d seen or heard things you might have found unpleasant.”
“No. He just insisted that I bring him the five hundred dollars he wanted from Papa.”
“Five hundred dollars!… I forbid you to return there.”
“I have to.”
“What does that mean?”
“That I’m old enough to stand up for myself.”
“Alas, my poor pumpkin! They’ll devour you before you can say how do you do.”
“I’m not afraid of them.”
“You talk like a child.”
“I’ll ask Paul to wait for me outside.”
“And if you take your time coming out?”
“He will come get me.”
“So they can tear him to pieces? Rose, you’re smart enough and you’ve seen enough to understand…”
“But, Mama, what is it that you want?” the young woman cried out with impatience. “That we fold our arms and wait to get old and die like you?”
Her mother closed her eyes and bit her lips before answering.
“You really think I feel that old and close to death?”
“Look, how should I know? Forty-year-old women put up with everything! But us young girls, we have to have our say, we have to fight even if it’s over nothing. Maybe that’s because we still have our strength, because life hasn’t yet knocked us around. Even though we know that life isn’t all peaches, we want to struggle with it, see where it will take us, just to test our strength. Do you understand?”
“I was young too once. I beg you, my little girl, think twice about what you’re about to do.”
“Don’t try to frighten me, Mama, don’t do that.” She threw her book on the bed and got up.
“Don’t you feel like it has to be done? For Paul, if only for Paul.”
“Don’t go, Rose, don’t go…”
With these words she ran away, and Rose heard the door to her room close behind her.
She sat on the bed, eyes fixed in front of her. Her senses were recording every sound as faithfully as a tape recorder. From beyond the other side of the stakes, she could hear the men in black talking and walking around, and she shuddered in horror at the memory of the Gorilla whose hairy hand had touched her knee. If he ever touches me, I’ll die, she told herself.
When, at lunchtime, a truck dumped its first load of stones with a crash under the trees in the garden, they rushed to the dining room window. Under the watchful eye of the men in black uniform, twenty beggars dressed like convicts in striped shirts were digging around the stakes with picks, while twenty others mixed mortar.
“They are building a wall to cut us off from the land,” the father said calmly.
Paul, who in the past two days had only left the house to buy cigarettes, grew pale and bravely plunged back into his book as if he wanted to break all connection between himself and the noises outside that seemed to grow more intense minute by minute. The invalid asked to be brought to the window and stared at the trees with his strange, precocious and burning eyes:
“We’ll still see the oaks, wall or no,” he cried out. “It’ll never be as tall, never.”
Interrupting his reading, Paul looked at the invalid, his brow wrinkled as he considered a thought that this childish statement had randomly inspired in him. How difficult it is to escape, no matter how hard one tries, he thought. The noises outside entered into me, as did the voices of the grandfather and the child. They pursue me in my sleep and torture me. Now I know that, just like human beings, things have their own lives. Despite the screen that my will has imposed, I hear the noises of the picks and trowels, the heavy pounding of the stones. They ring in my brain, relentlessly. I have to get away from here, make myself forget for a moment. Neither Papa nor Rose will be able to accomplish anything. They can fool themselves all they want. Why was Rose crying? It’s the first time I’ve seen her like that. What is she up to? What about Grandfather? Why is he always whispering to the child? We have split up into two factions. And maybe Mama and I are in a third without realizing it. Is this what it means to take courage? To live. To go on living. When life, from birth until death, is nothing but fraud! No, the cheating doesn’t start until later! From earliest childhood, pure and carefree, until death. That’s why, despite his whims and moods, Claude has never known childhood. And Grandfather, who has found a friend in him, doesn’t know why he loves him. Why did they come on our land? Why this punishment? Why this curse? Is it to force us to take stock of our cowardice that life tests us? Or, rather, is it to help us find ourselves? I have to stop thinking about them and come out of my state of prostration. Otherwise, I’ll become sick. See Fred again. Don’t take no for an answer, get back on the team, find a girl ‘willing to love me. That’s it, love, love! Yes, but which girl? Anna, Dr. Valois’ daughter. Beautiful, wise, intelligent. Is it possible for so many qualities to be gathered in one woman? Rose? A big question mark for me lately. She carries on like I don’t know what. If I get to know Anna, won’t I find that she crumbles under my very eyes like the others? So narrow-minded of me! I’m just like Grandfather and he doesn’t even know it… Can’t listen to any of this anymore. Got to get away! Forget! Forget!
The sentences coming out of him displaced those scrolling under his eyes in the book. From the window, the mother watched the wall go up. She had undone the top of her blouse and was breathing with difficulty. She remembered that one morning she had noticed a bird perched on her window. The presence of the man sleeping deeply at her side as she counted the hours from dusk to dawn reinforced her feeling of loneliness. And the bird had suddenly popped up as if answering her call. It stared at her with its round eyes and tilted its head to the right and then to the left as if mocking her. He has something to tell me, she had thought childishly. He came all the way here to show me what freedom is. For a good minute or so they had stood there looking at each other, each of them absolutely still. Then the bird twittered and flew off on swift wings trilling its happy song. Alone again, she had invented touchingly naïve myths to console herself: a leaf whirling in the wind, a butterfly whether black or alive with color, the hooting of an owl or the graceful song of a nightingale, everything seemed pregnant with meaning.
“Tell me what your father was like,” the invalid asked the old man that day.
“Very tall, very strong and very dark-skinned,” the grandfather answered. “He dressed like a peasant, in a long coarse blue tunic and sandals.”
“Tell me how he became master of this land.”
“It could only have been thanks to a miracle,” the grandfather said, “and woe to those who don’t believe in miracles, for God’s hand guides our actions. All right, listen carefully to my story: One day, my father went to Port-au-Prince to sell his cattle. His horse carried him three days and three nights, accompanied by goats, cows and sheep and the barking dogs that herded them. For the country was wealthy and business was booming in those days. Have you ever seen sheep?”
“No, Grandfather.”
“They disappeared at the same time prosperity did. In the hill country, they say the malfinis, eagles with a taste for mutton, devour them at birth. See how they hover over our land.”
The grandfather pointed to a patch of sky right above the oaks where big black birds flew slowly, grazing the branches, diving beak-first, cawing and greedily eyeing the ground below.
“Grandfather, they look like the men in uniform who have taken our land.”
The grandfather lit his pipe, which he had been filling since he mentioned the sheep. He wedged it into the corner of his mouth and pulled on it until it caught.
“Then what happened?” the child asked.
“Then,” said the grandfather, “your great-grandfather arrived in Port-au-Prince surrounded by his sheep, his goats and his cows, and was on his way to the house of a very rich man who had long been buying his cattle, when he met a peasant on the way who said to him:
“‘My master will trade these parcels of land for your animals. Say yes and you won’t be sorry’
“‘Will he permit me to choose these parcels freely?’
“‘Yes, indeed. And you will become a great landowner in one of the loveliest quarters of Port-au-Prince.’
“So my father followed the peasant. In exchange for three cows, eight goats and twelve sheep, he got a tiny piece of land. Look over there, under the first oak.”
“I see,” said the child.
“My father had a rough life back in the countryside. Early to rise, late to bed, he was tireless caring for his animals, and each time he brought them here he got another piece of land. When he had enough, he had this house built where he set up my mother and me, for I was old enough to go to school. My mother was expecting a second child and father continued to go back and forth between the country and the city at the cost of his health.”
“Why?” the invalid asked, looking into his eyes. “Why was it so important for your father to leave the countryside and acquire this land?”
The grandfather lowered his head without answering.
“Was he ambitious?” the child asked insistently. “He must’ve liked this nice neighborhood, didn’t he? You recently told me that your mother was ambitious too. Does God love ambitious people?…”
“Listen to the end of the story,” the grandfather interrupted a bit impatiently… “Where was I? Ah! Yes, I remember. My mother was expecting a second child…”
“What was your mother like, Grandfather?”
“A bit like you. You know, all the girls of Fonds-des-Blancs are more or less light-skinned. Look at your father, he’s different from me. Haitians are so mixed that there are all kinds. And that’s what makes us a very beautiful people. But let’s go back to our story… One evening, my father came back just in time to hear my mother’s cries of pain and watch her die, the child still clinging to her insides. I was your age then. He called me to him and told me: ‘Well, death seems to be knocking on our door. If something was to happen to me, I want to be buried here, on one of the plots of land I acquired by the sweat of my brow. If your children or the children of your children are in need, I give you permission to divide them up and sell them. But swear to me that, as long as you live, you will not sell the piece of land that covers my bones…’ And I can still remember how I made that oath in tears.”
“So you are now bound by two oaths,” the child said to him. “We have to act as quickly as possible. When will we start going to his grave to summon him?”
“Soon, once you have learned to crawl perfectly. Because I won’t be able to carry you. I’ll be carrying an ax and a knife. The same weapons my father used to get rid of the man who had sold him these lands and then thought he could take them back just because he was wealthy and powerful.”
“So he killed him?”
“Yes. To protect what was his.”
“They didn’t go after him?”
“No. Because God keeps an eye on the wicked, and sooner or later they must pay for the wickedness they do. Listen: when the rich and powerful wallow in lawlessness, they think they can smother the voice of justice and they forget the ever-watchful eyes of God. The judges had been bribed by the crook. They were all going to split up the plots of land. But my father, brave and intelligent, killed the crook and took the land titles to an honest lawyer who had him acquitted by threatening to expose the scandal.”
“So you don’t have those papers anymore?”
“I do,” the grandfather answered.
“Give them to a good lawyer like your father did.”
“Times have changed, my child, and the voice of justice has been quiet for a long time. Judges don’t fear scandal and advocates for good causes no longer dare raise their voices.”
“They are afraid?” asked the child.
“They are afraid,” the grandfather replied. “Wherever violence and crime rule, everyone is afraid, even the executioners and the criminals.”
“I want to fight for justice and for peace. Do you think that, even without feet, one can still fight, Grandfather?”
“Haven’t I promised you that you will die a hero one day,” the grandfather answered…
… That evening the father went out. He had returned right after his office closed and told his wife he was going out and would be back after dark. She had watched him furtively as he got dressed, eaten up by jealousy, curiosity and worry. From whom was he going to borrow five hundred dollars? Who was he going to seduce with that cologne? Was the woman who had stolen him from her that rich? What she felt was not exactly jealousy. No, this rather lukewarm reaction was more like a vaguely loving scorn. After all, she was the one who had sprinkled fragrance on the handkerchief she handed to him.
He got out of the car after a half-hour ride and paid the driver. These dates were costing him a pretty penny, but how could he complain? It was already night and one could barely make out the house at the end of the path lined with boxwood. The bitter perfume of the white flowers he picked on his way stirred his blood and he quickened his step. She opened her arms to welcome him and he held her tight.
“Each time you come, I’m always up, waiting,” she said, “as though I knew you were coming.”
He lifted her and carried her to the living room sofa, cluttered with colorful pillows he had seen her embroider with her beautiful expert hands. The Japanese kimono she was wearing traced her narrow hips. He leaned in and kissed her voraciously.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
Revived, seductive, charming, Louis Normil underwent a transformation.
“Look,” she said, freeing herself, and ran to the armoire, opening it to take out a beaded dress that sparkled in the lamplight.
“I made it myself,” she said proudly. “Would you like me to wear it for our little supper tonight?”
“Yes,” he murmured.
She undressed in front of him and slipped her sun-kissed skin into a dress that made her look like an Oriental princess.
An old black woman, who had been in her service since she was a child, came in to announce dinner. They went into the living room, where a princely table had been set. At the end of the meal, she lifted her glass, saying:
“I drink to our love.”
Beneath her many guises she played any role she liked, trusting in no one. Condemning marriage as a dull and revolting institution, she congratulated herself for having managed to resist the temptations of bourgeois life, and in this handsome grife, so self-effacing and impoverished, she saw the flickering shade of Armand Duval. [31] She nevertheless snuggled up tamely into this affair and avoided displaying herself in the company of her lover, supposedly for his wife’s sake. Since even the wealthy may come to feel insecure, she suspected that her gentlemen callers lusted after her fortune more than her beauty. Orphaned very young, she had been raised by her old maid, who had learned to look away and keep her mouth shut, for since her early youth she had been drawn to mature and even graying men in whom she sought the paternal affection she had been weaned from too early. Her father, a government minister in all the past regimes, who had the wisdom to amass a tidy fortune during his political career, had died when she was only ten.
“You are my father, my lover, and my friend at the same time,” she had once said to Louis Normil. “That is a lot to discover in a single man.”
Once they were in bed, having had their fill of love, he tried in vain to bring up the topic of money. Finally giving up hope, he used a back door.
“Have you learned what happened to us?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“Some men in uniform have set up camp on our land.”
She gave a start as if stung.
“When? Why? What have you done or said to make this come upon you? Your children? Who have they been seeing? That kind of curse doesn’t just fall from the sky out of nowhere…”
He had the painful feeling that she was more frightened than saddened by their misfortune. She lit a cigarette with trembling hands.
“Have you taken any steps? Do you know anyone powerful enough to help you?” she added with forced calm.
“Yes, a lawyer. He has demanded five hundred dollars and I don’t have it.”
“Why didn’t you just say so, darling!” she said with relief. “Wait.”
She opened the armoire, grabbed a wad of bills that she put in an envelope.
“I would love to slip in a love note but you’re liable to leave it lying around.”
“I’ll pay you back, Maud.”
“But of course.”
He didn’t like her overly conciliatory tone, agreeing with him before he even said anything. And then the fear he had aroused in her upset him. Would she, like everyone else, fear being seen with him? This distracted him, and he forgot that he had promised himself to make her sign a receipt. He got up and got dressed. She stayed in bed, smoking, eyes half-closed, silent and suddenly so distant that he understood that his news had just destroyed the smooth course of their affair. He had dressed too quickly and only realized his tactlessness when he was done.
“You’re leaving… already?”
It seemed to him that there was a slight involuntary irony in her question.
“I’ll stay as long as you wish.”
He was too troubled. Despite himself, he was already thinking of the drama in store for tomorrow. He could see Rose going to the lawyer’s office, see her trembling before the short man with the gorilla hands who would be there, no doubt about it, and he decided right then to bring the money himself to the attorney.
“Would you like a ride home?”
He glanced at his watch and leaned in to kiss her.
“Would you please,” he replied.
The minute he had opened his mouth to talk about his problems, the evening had been ruined. Suddenly he had discovered that she too was afraid. She too was contaminated. This despite her wealth, despite the self-appointed isolation in which she lived and its assurance of some kind of protection. Perhaps he had only taken refuge in this affair to feel stronger! he realized to his surprise. Until now he had thought that she at least could allow herself to live with contempt for the permanent threat that had been hanging over all their heads like a curse for some time now. A threat made manifest in all the obvious signs that he had refused to interpret in order to preserve his peace of mind and that false congeniality into which he had withdrawn once and for all. One recollection he thought long dead suddenly arose in his memory. About six years ago, he was going home after stopping by the home of a colleague when the noise of gunfire interrupted his stroll. He hid under the porch of a house and waited there trembling for a long while. Then, without any hesitation, he walked over the dead body of a man lying in the street and ran home with his head down. The next day, he read in the newspaper an article about the accidental death of an unfortunate father of blessed memory. How many along with him had witnessed this murder? How many had been careful to keep silent? Just like him. Right after that, there was Maud to comfort him and help him forget. But she had just disappointed him, and he felt as if he had been rejected from her life. Her reactions had not been those of a woman in love. And he was struck by an inadvertent recollection of several remarks she had made about self-serving friends who only cared about her fortune. Bah! When everything is settled, I’ll sell off one of the lots if I have to and pay her back and everything will be forgotten…
He was unable to fall asleep. His wife had her back turned to him and lay there like a corpse. But he was also sure she was awake. He leaned over her and noticed that her eyes were indeed open.
“You’re not asleep?”
She immediately changed her position and he saw she was crying.
“What’s the matter, Laura?”
She shrugged and huddled up in a corner of the bed.
“And you have to wake me up on top of it,” she reproached him dryly.
He mumbled something that she did not understand, so she pulled up the sheets to cover herself and pretended to sleep.
They both stayed that way, motionless, back-to-back. That’s all she could think to say to me, he thought bitterly. The brute! Nothing can bother him, he’s already sleeping, she was telling herself at the same time. They had both finally plunged into a deep sleep when a terrible noise from the yard woke them. They rushed together to the window to witness an onslaught: a truck and two motorcycles driven by men in black uniform parked under the oaks; about twenty men stepped out of the truck while the two on the motorcycles started them again and roared full speed across the property. Skirting the stakes, they entered the yard and stopped. Ten men, their weapons displayed across their shirts, walked up to the veranda and knocked on the door to the living room, which Mélie opened wide for them. The father saw his wife clasping her hands, disheveled, disfigured by fear. Lifting up the mattress, he slid the money beneath it and threw on his clothes as quickly as he could. From the stairs, he looked at the others.
“I’ll go down by myself,” he said firmly.
“Open up in the name of the law,” they heard.
“Yes, coming,” the father answered and went down.
He took the stamped papers handed to him and quickly ran his eyes over them without understanding a thing. The weapon that one of them had pulled from his belt to point to his temple-telling him “Sign here!”-left no room for discussion. He looked for a pen, was given one by the same man and signed. After which, the maid, opening the living room door again, said goodbye to them with a big devious smile and watched them walk away before closing it. In the blink of an eye the family was downstairs.
“What did they want?” the grandfather asked.
“To make me sign some papers.”
“What papers?”
Louis Normil shrugged.
“They didn’t give me time to read them.”
“But, Papa!” Rose exclaimed.
The grandfather put down the invalid on a chair and walked over to face his son in silence.
“I did what was best, Father, believe me.”
“Hell and damnation!” the grandfather yelled.
“Shut the door, Paul!” the father ordered.
“Hell and damnation,” the grandfather repeated in the same tone. “So then you tremble at the sight of them?”
“And who doesn’t tremble at the sight of them?” Louis Normil replied calmly.
“I don’t!” the grandfather yelled again. “Do you know what you just did? You have just signed papers recognizing that we were never the rightful owners of this land, that’s what you’ve done.” He was fuming with such rage that his goatee was wet from the spray of his words. The father looked at the others and said:
“With or without signed papers, the power is in their hands, Father, and you know this as well as I do. I did what was best, I swear…”
He stopped talking, felt around in his pocket and added:
“Now all that matters is not to waste any more time; I am going to that lawyer’s.”
“To waste your time completely,” Paul blurted out sarcastically.
“So what do you want me to do?”
He was caught unawares by the blood frothing in his veins. His ears were hot but he mastered himself and went upstairs to get the money.
Outside, he calmed himself and his features once again returned to their nice, calm, masklike stillness. He ran into two of his colleagues, who started whispering once they caught sight of him, and he waved to them without getting a response. It wasn’t yet eight and the lawyer’s doors were still closed. He walked past them, not wanting to seem impatient, and came back fifteen minutes later to find the guard opening them. The latter didn’t seem to recognize him. He wanted to follow the guard inside, but the trembling old man who had left the room when his patience had run out last time now jumped in front of him and, pushing him aside, sneaked in first. A bit out of breath, the old man rushed to a chair and was about to sit down when he saw the guard and changed his mind. So he remained standing, all sheepish, hat pressed against his stomach. Five other clients arrived and got behind him into a tight queue, nose to nape. “You’d think they were in a penitentiary,” thought Louis Normil, who had settled himself comfortably into a chair. He thought these people were clients who couldn’t pay the lawyer in any way besides flattery and he felt the money in his pocket with satisfaction. So he was more than a little shocked when he saw the toothless old man pulling out his wallet and taking out a twenty-dollar bill, which he slipped the guard with a conniving wink. The peephole opened and an eye slithered into its frame. As if awaiting this signal, the guard opened the door and had the old man go in. The others executed a sharp ballet step forward that brought them closer to the guard.
“Settle down,” he told them with a look of disapproval, like a schoolmaster talking to his students.
“But they pushed me,” the first one whispered humbly.
The old man’s visit didn’t last ten minutes. He reappeared, fidgeting and trembling more than ever.
“An arm and a leg!” he was heard mumbling. “Costing me an arm and a leg!”
Seeing the guard motion to another client to go in ahead of him, Louis Normil understood that the exact time of his appointment had no significance and that he would again just waste his morning waiting if he remained glued to his chair. So he went to line up behind the other four clients, having firmly decided not to give up his place to anyone. Two hours later, he was finally able to get into the lawyer’s office.
For a long time, the latter looked at him in silence, without even moving, as if he wanted his immobility to prove to Louis Normil the futility of his endeavor.
“Really now, sir,” he said in a nasal voice, “what do you want from me?”
Louis Normil took the money out of his pocket and patted it between his palms:
“To bring you this,” he said. “Didn’t you ask me for five hundred dollars?”
“What right have you to present yourself without an appointment?” the lawyer yelled.
“But,” Louis Normil stammered, disconcerted.
“There is no but,” the lawyer continued. “I remember making an appointment with your daughter, not with you. Take this money back with you.”
Louis Normil felt his father’s anger rising in him. The shock was what saved him. He instinctively tilted his head to take his leave of the lawyer and made for the exit. He thought he caught a glint of mockery in the guard’s eyes, but he paid him no mind and went to work. It was about eleven and, to excuse his absence, he pretended he had been unwell and had to go see his doctor. The two employees he had run into earlier exchanged a quick look and smiled sardonically. The atmosphere of the office was heavy, smothered in layers of unbearable silence worsened by the sudden arrival of the director.
He was a reddish, paunchy mulatto who carried himself like a Jesuit and spoke to his employees in an insufferably soft voice. His myopic eyes, encircled by glasses, rested unforgivingly on Louis Normil.
“Late again, Normil,” he said, discomfited, as if he wanted the other employees as witnesses. “Is it your health that is the source of the problem?”
“Precisely,” Louis Normil uttered, his tone a bit forced. “I wanted to see you to apologize. I am currently being treated by my doctor.”
“In that case, why not take a few days off! We’ll find you a substitute. How long will your treatment last? A month? Two months? You mustn’t neglect your health, take as much time as you need.”
“Thank you, sir,” Louis Normil answered, convinced that they wanted to get rid of him discreetly. “I am grateful for this, but fortunately I should be done with my doctor by tomorrow.”
The director coughed and left quickly as if he had made a sudden decision.
Louis Normil again felt the five hundred dollars in his inside pocket and tried to occupy his mind with work. Papers were piling up on his desk. Despite his best intentions, he couldn’t manage to focus and absentmindedly tried to look busy under the scrutiny of a neighboring coworker. “If I lose my job,” he kept repeating to himself, “if I lose my job.” And these words caused him such despair he began to shake and sweat.
“Are you all right?” the employee staring at him asked.
“Yes, yes,” he answered and continued shuffling papers around, pretending to be busy.
At the end of the workday, he went home and found the family sitting at the dinner table. No one asked him anything this time, but Rose tried to make eye contact and he shook his head with discouragement. He got up before the others did and went up to his room to put the money back under the mattress. Actually, why not in the armoire? he wondered. But he left it there, finding that hiding place more reassuring than any other. He washed his face, changed his jacket, and decided right there and then to go see his mistress, driven by the humiliation of owing her money and the need to dispel the awful misunderstanding that had dimmed their last evening together. She’ll advise me, women have amazing ideas, he said to himself to conceal the real reason for his impatience. I’ll tell her all about that bastard sending back the money and insisting on seeing Rose again. On the landing, he bumped into Rose, who was going upstairs.
“So, Papa?”
“He refused to take the money,” he admitted.
“Don’t you think I’m big enough to take care of myself?”
“Don’t get involved in this.”
“Papa!”
“Don’t get involved in this,” he repeated and rushed downstairs without looking at her.
She slowly opened the door to the bedroom, lifted the mattress, took the money and slipped it in her bag.
The next day, for the Feast of Saint Peter, there was a street fair on Place de Pétionville. Small colorful lamps decorated the trees beneath which the church ladies had set up their stands. An orchestra played a lusty merengue [32] by the lawn where a few couples were already dancing. Vendors with trays of goods on their heads hawked their wares to passersby but ran off and set up on the sidewalks after they were chased away by the monks for whose benefit this feast was held. The gendarmes kept at bay a horde of beggars haunting the vicinity. Once in a while the beggars would elude the watchful eye of the police and scamper to show off their scrofula or their maimed limbs and plead for alms.
When a fanfare sounded, cutting off the orchestra, the crowd was suddenly silent and listened attentively. Men in uniform emerged like an immense black wave, rushing right into the square. Upon seeing them, the beggars yelped with joy breaking free of the police, who no longer dared interfere, they crowded round to cheer on the men.
“Long live the Blackshirts!” they cried.
A voice ordered: “Halt! At ease!” and they broke ranks. Arrogant, chests bulging, hands on their weapons, a few of them with their arms draped imposingly around young girls. The atmosphere changed, as if everyone were suddenly whipped by a mad whirlwind: the church ladies, who a moment ago had been fanning themselves quietly at their counters, were standing and laughing nervously as they dug into bags of confetti; girls went into electrified contortions on the dance floor; their partners resembled robots gone wild, mechanically crashing to the ground with every blast of the saxophone. The frenzy ended with the sound of bullets. Shots were fired in the direction of a man with his hands up. His path was blocked. The men in uniform caught him and dragged him to a tree where they tied him up.
“Let me go,” begged the man. “I haven’t done anything, I only said I was hungry. Let me go.”
“What right do you have to be hungry? Are you trying to foment rebellion?”
“Music!” another voice ordered the orchestra.
And as the musicians attacked a new merengue, the men took aim and riddled him with bullets.
No one in the anxious crowd dared move another muscle. A fanfare sounded and smothered the orchestra once more; the flag rose, the boots regrouped. The monks untied the man’s body and placed it atop a pile of others in a truck driven by an undertaker in a black uniform. The monks motioned wildly as they returned, trying to restore the peaceful and cheerful atmosphere that had been decidedly broken by the arrival of the men in uniform.
“The fair’s not over, the fair’s not over,” they shouted, rolling up their robes and striding briskly around the square.
Paul squeezed Anna Valois’ hand tightly. He felt her trembling.
“You want to go?”
“Yes.”
He led her away, but a few steps later, they bumped into Fred Morin, who raised his glass and said: “Let’s party! Let’s drink to happiness!” They were immediately surrounded by a group of young people.
“Let’s go, Paul,” Anna begged.
“Why? What’s the matter? The party’s just started,” Fred exclaimed.
He seemed drunk and the fun-loving smile flickering on his lips could not erase the expression of fear dilating his eyes.
Paul took Anna’s hand to leave with her but the circle of young men blocked his path.
“You’re not about to ditch your friends,” a player on his team protested. “You’ve abandoned us and here we are glad to be with you.”
There was nothing natural about their words and gestures. They looked like bad actors suddenly pushed onstage and asked to perform a difficult role.
Involuntarily, they kept turning their heads in the same direction. Paul followed their gaze. He was startled to see Rose talking to a man in a black uniform sitting in the backseat of a car, the driver impossible to make out save for a patch of hair. The man in uniform leaned over, opened the door and Rose got in next to him as the car took off. Paul wanted to run after it, but his teammates blocked his path a second time.
“Leave me alone,” he yelled.
“Don’t do anything crazy,” the youngest on the team, who was only sixteen, advised him.
His hand fell on Paul’s shoulder and his nails slowly dug into his flesh.
“Don’t tell us you didn’t know,” Fred Morin said to him, forcing an increasingly false smile.
“Didn’t know what?”
“All right,” said another. “If you don’t feel like talking about it, that’s your business. But let’s set up our next practice. You’re our best player and we want to keep you.”
“Just like that, huh!” Paul answered, staring at them angrily. “I’d give anything to know why you’ve changed your mind. Eight days ago, I got the distinct feeling I was somewhat undesirable. Is it because my sister got into that car… you think that…”
“Lucky man,” Fred Morin said to him as he wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
He freed himself with a shrug and looked at Anna. She lowered her head. So then, she agreed with them. Or did she avert her eyes to spare his feelings? He fought off the desire to lay into them with blows and curses. He looked again at Anna and took off running. For a long time, he walked aimlessly through the city and only went home at nightfall. He found everyone in the living room except for Rose. He didn’t utter a word, but when she came back an hour later, he got up to meet her:
“Harlot!” he spat in her face. “I saw you!”
She turned to him with a face that was serene, almost wooden.
“You saw me, did you, so what? Is that how you thank me for trying so hard to save this land despite being afraid?”
And she started playing out the scene.
“He says to me, ‘Get in, Mademoiselle, so glad I ran into you, I’ll take you to the lawyer myself. He’s an old nutcase who gets strange ideas in his head, refused to take the money from your father, I know, because he wanted to see you again. He lost a daughter your age and you remind him of her.’ So he really did give me a ride to the lawyer’s, who promised that everything would be settled by next month. From now on, we can consider the case resolved. No, really, they’ve been very polite, very respectful, and I swear they are a lot less frightening up close than from afar.”
“You smell bad,” the invalid said suddenly.
“Me!” she said, taken aback, arms wrapped around her own waist, legs drawn together as if soldered shut.
“You don’t smell like yourself, you smell bad, go away, go away.”
“You be quiet!” Paul said to the invalid through clenched jaws.
“I’ll be quiet if I want to. And if I could stand on two feet, I would flog her.”
The grandfather got up, took the child in his arms and walked past Rose as he made for the stairs.
She slowly went up after them and pulled the door to her room shut. She fell to her knees, doubling over, head nearly touching the ground, arms crossed on her stomach as if it ached. Then she took off her clothes, holding them using the tips of her fingers in disgust, and ran to the bathroom.
When the mother went into the bedroom, she was resting, dressed in a clean white nightgown, lying on her side, eyes closed and breathing evenly. She looked at the girl pensively for a moment and then went to her son’s room.
“She slept with that dirty dog,” he said with revulsion.
“I will never believe that.”
“That’s it, keep lying to yourself, keep seeing only what others tell you, and the rest of your life they’ll keep telling you the moon is made of green cheese.”
“No one has ever fooled me, you know that, not even your father.”
“So why do you refuse to face the truth?”
“As long as she won’t say anything about it, I won’t accuse her. What right do I have to judge my daughter 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!
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!”
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 <strong>[33]</strong> 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.”
“And was there a queen, and floats?”
“A very beautiful queen atop a fortress.”
“They reign like lords and masters!” the grandfather grunted as if talking to himself.
She stared at him in silence, then went to knock on Rose and Paul’s doors.
Where are they? she asked herself when no one answered.
The father was also gone.
She looked at herself in the mirror for a minute, brushed her face with her hand, sighed and sat on the bed, staring blankly at nothing.
So she had failed just as all of them would no doubt fail. Or would she start over tomorrow and then again, every single day until she died? Wasn’t it her role to shower her children with love, to quietly help them conquer their terror, to shut her eyes and let them take action, all with the conviction that they too would meet with failure? Just make their lives a little easier, cover their heads with maternal hands that they could grasp in their distress or hide their weeping faces in. To attempt again what she had done today, wasn’t that, in truth, giving in to the pride of a death justified by them and by her? Should she run straight into suicide, cut short the days she had left? For they would surely murder her, she knew that much. They’d shoot her before she could even open her mouth to speak.
She could hear the distant, muffled echoes of Carnival. She tilted her head and listened to her heartbeat. It was panting, breathless, worn out like an old animal on its last legs. I have to go easy on it, she finally told herself, go easy on it so I can outlive all of them; there, that’s the point of my life. To shoulder their sufferings, extend my days and live on to carry my cross and theirs…
Doubt has worked its way into me. It’s horrible. I’m having doubts about Anna now. Dr. Valois came by with her last evening. All of a sudden, they’ve become overly generous, overly kind. I don’t like that. They had found out like everyone else did, and like everyone else they had avoided us. Why this sudden shift? If I have doubts about Anna and Dr. Valois, I’m screwed. I saw how they embraced Rose! She stood frozen as they kissed her, like she hated them. She seems to hate the whole world. She stares at everything strangely now, as if inwardly watching an awful performance. Mama was all aflutter looking at Dr. Valois, but he paid attention only to Claude. “So, you’ve made up your mind about the wheelchair? Yes, it’s expensive and times are tough. But a doctor can give a wheelchair to a patient who’s been good and who listens, can’t he? Have you been good, Claude? Have you done as you’ve been told? How often did you lose your temper since my last visit? Calm down, Laura, let’s not make a fuss, really it’s nothing, I won’t hear of it, I don’t require gratitude for this. I’ve looked after this child since he was born, haven’t I? Well then!…” And he shook his handsome head and beamed his irresistible smile. His daughter’s smile. No, it can’t be… And yet, they did let two weeks go by without visiting. They behaved like everyone else. So that means Rose’s story, everyone knows it. The Gorilla must have spread the word, talked about her, laughed about how… Whore! Dirty whore! But he’s the one I’m going to kill. Who cares what happens after that. I’ll find him and I’ll kill him. Here in the drawer I’ve hidden a knife bought specially for this purpose. I will sink it into his back without a second thought. All this flattery around Rose! She’s becoming powerful too, thanks to the Gorilla. Where do these men come from? Who is their leader? They suddenly showed up in the country and have taken over without any of us being able to put up a fight. Have we become that weak and spineless? We live in terror, trampled by thousands of boots. Everyone knows they have a leader but no one has ever seen him. He confines himself in his fortress and paces about there, they say, like a lion in a cage, waiting for reports from his spies. Maybe we deserve this, and as always the many innocent will pay for a guilty few. Had we become that rotten? I know that we’ve been wallowing in error and concupiscence for a long time now, and personally I was hoping for a change. But not in this direction. I aspire to feel like a real man, a free man. Not like a recruit. For now only the beggars are recruited; they know it and outdo each other hoping to earn a weapon. First they come for the easy recruits, but I know our turn will come. All brought together under the banner of death and armed force. How do you fight them? Streaming from the deepest backwaters of the country, or from another planet, only history can judge them. Maybe some of those who are younger than me will stand up to them one day. After all, nothing lasts forever. We have to hope, otherwise life would have no meaning. They’ve been watching us carefully and have already arrested the most stubborn. The apathetic ones better watch out. Will I resist the temptation for long? Everything would be so simple. Twelve years of study, passing two baccalaureates with distinction, all of that to come to this. What do they have to offer me? Should I buy my rank and a few medals by offering up shameful denunciations? Use all my skills to elbow others off the ladder as I move up? For no doubt even among them there are big fish and small fry and that’s what will bring them to ruin. And I am afraid to face the fact that, no matter what you do, man is a wolf to man. More than anyone else I know, I have the desire to stand firm and fight for a good cause. But not with weapons. With my ideas. My hand extended in brotherhood, offering a fresh and sober example. I would follow anyone who passed austerity laws to halt runaway decadence and the vanity of unchecked ambition; I would support whoever could abolish hunger and poverty prison cells and torture, who would treat every man as a man and include everyone in the national dialogue. If I decide not to belong to any party, if I wish to remain free, then let that choice be mine. Alone and unarmed, I want the right to plead for justice and freedom and to shout from the rooftops that which I believe to be the truth…
I spent the day walking around the city. I saw flowers, landscapes, stretches of sky all done up like the faces of pretty girls. All of it brought tears to my eyes, as if the magnificence of this country was suddenly something flung in my face. Then I ended up on a deserted square where they were training some scrawny, sickly men, all of them following orders, eyes fixed, lips stiff as they goose-stepped with rifles on their shoulders. I saw one of them collapse. Two men rushed over. Lifting him up, they took him out of the ranks. After which the drill continued. I recognized beggars we used to give alms to. They were still gaunt and skeletal, but were now sustained by the hope of becoming powerful in their turn. I know very well that death is nothing to be scared of, that once you tame it, its grimace will turn into a smile. I started to look it in the eye yesterday. Anna! Anna! I will take refuge in her to save myself from myself. Her smile came too late for me, she came too late. She reached out to me two weeks late, isn’t that enough to kill all my trust in her?
Rose has been out every night for the last ten days. She’s gotten thin, so thin, and no one is concerned. “Dirty coward!” I feel like shouting at my father. But then when I see my mother, all I can do is keep my mouth shut. She looks like she’s dying. Grandfather has become taciturn and his beard quivers all the time in a terrifying way. I have the feeling he’s plotting something infernal. We are all plotting something infernal, I’m convinced. What we are going through is so revolting that we can only escape from ourselves by rehearsing thoughts of vengeance. In my case, I know what it’s going to be: I will kill him and then I will die. How? I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is to gather my resolve and overcome my repugnance for the idea of killing and dying. I have a perfect plan. Everything looks so easy when it happens in the sealed cupboard of our skull. Who isn’t a hero in his own head?
My father’s face has returned to lifelessness: he knows he won’t get fired now. In any case, he really managed to set up Rose. Was he naïve when he cast her to the vultures? Perhaps he’s seething with remorse, rage, hatred! It would drive you to despair to admit to yourself that nothing lives behind that impassive mask. Has he noticed Rose’s new face? Frozen, dead, that’s right, dead. What have they done to her? No, I don’t want to know. Not now, at least. It’s too soon.
Fred Morin and the others came by. I’m exasperated by their growing friendliness. In an unforgivable moment of weakness, I yielded to their overtures and I’m back on the team now. We played for two hours this afternoon. Two of the players told me they were planning to become Blackshirts. Fred Morin is right behind them, that’s for sure. Something in his eyes gives him away. I can already picture him in his uniform, his shyness a thing of the past, trying to pass for a big shot, earning his stripes, and throwing himself between the Gorilla’s legs to replace him by 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 Mélie, 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 themselves on plots of land like birds of prey. Shame on anyone who stands in their way. Shame on anyone who doesn’t understand that nothing can stand in the way of them sinking their claws into what they decided must be theirs at all costs.
Yes, but me, I am a young black man who passed two university entrance exams brilliantly and who’s drawn to study architecture. I want my peace and quiet. I want my freedom. I want the right to choose and decide for myself. Maybe the two things would go together, maybe the uniform I would wear outside of school would assure me high grades in school and permission to live how I want, to do whatever appeals to me. I am not so sure, though. Now, that would be an interesting experiment: university benches filled with two hundred, three hundred students in architecture, medicine, all Blackshirts. Why not?
Dr. Valois? Who’s to say he’s not playing along so they’ll leave him alone? He and his daughter, pretending to applaud. No, no, no. They were indifferent to what’s happening to us! And now this sudden attentiveness!…
I’ve been practicing knife throwing against the almond tree. The only tree that still belongs to us now, since it stands right in front of our door, just off the street, the only entrance permitted the virtual prisoners that we are. It turns out I have unusual skills. The trunk of the almond tree is riddled with wounds. I am wasting my rage and rebellion on it. Every day for two hours, I strike it mercilessly, from afar and from up close. I am really astonishingly skillful, even in the dark. Not once have I missed my throw. Ready for the circus. Paul Normil, Knife Thrower! I’ll frame Anna’s body with twenty knives without a nick. Blindfolded, I’ll trace her outline head to toe. Paul Normil, Champion Bladesman. From whom did I inherit such a talent? A man can learn a lot about himself as his life unwinds. He is what circumstances make him, as they say. Could my father kill him? He’s nothing but a coward. Good for nothing save playing at Jesus. Good at holding out his left cheek after being hit on the right. The beggars have learned how to handle guns, and here I am dabbling in knives. Is there anyone who owns a firearm besides the men in uniform and their spies? I will slip on the uniform to kill the Gorilla. That way I will get hold of a weapon with which to defend myself. I’ll give a military salute and they’ll think: another one of us. My boots will crush the invalids, the indifferent, anyone who hasn’t joined up, anyone too suspicious to be invited to join, the impotent ones like my father who are scorned and hounded.
Palm shadows move and rustle beneath my feet! I walk over them with heavy steps, leaving my house far behind, leaving the others behind. Cutting myself off from everything! Forgetting my parents, imagining no one in the world will shed tears over me. Rose, skin and bones. My mother and her dim, suffering eyes! My father’s shoulders sagging with shame! A heavy thing, shame. Harder to bear than a ton of scrap iron. Coward! You threw your daughter to the wolves.
I sat on a bench nestled under the trees, on the edge of that little square where I like to loaf, and opened my textbook. It must have been eleven in the morning. A group of kids coming back from school filled the square, running, chasing each other, carefree. Immersed in their play, they paid me no mind. It made me miss childhood. Memories rose up, disappeared and reappeared. Grandfather said: “Not one sheep left in the country but the birds of prey are everywhere.” Did the little one understand that? He searched the sky for the heavy black wings of the malfinis circling above the oak trees, their beaks aimed at the ground. It’s true that it’s been a long time since we’ve eaten lamb. Will I kill him? Could I? Or just kill myself, that would certainly be easier. You’re born either a killer or a suicide. I tread upon tree shadows looking for my elusive self. Lazy. The self that likes books, the self that wants to be an architect. There are choices. Everything is here. But first, take out one of them, just one. Watch his blood spread like a red sheet over his black uniform! And after that, live my life. A lie. That won’t be enough. I’ll stagnate like the water in this stinking ditch, green, no strength to move, never realizing myself. Despair is like an itch; you satisfy it for a moment and then it returns. A useless gesture! I think too much. I’ll end up going soft, sinking into a refusal to act. Tell me what they’ve done to you, Rose, and I’m sure I’ll find the strength. But you won’t talk. You’ll take your secret to the grave, your mouth sealed with dirt. Full of spite, I trample the tree shadows. I can’t stand their serene indifference, their imperturbable mechanical movement. I’ve returned to the bench where I was sitting before. A blind man held out his hand to me and I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep under the slanting ray of sunlight hitting me full in the face. What’s the point of giving alms to one invalid when ten thousand others go hungry. I’ll walk through our front door and present myself in uniform, weapon on my belt. And Grandfather will cry, “Get out of here this instant, you bird of prey!” I’ll present myself in uniform, weapon at my side, and my mother will clutch at her heart in shock and horror. I’ll say to Rose: “Sell the land and leave.” She will shriek: “Why have you done this? Why have you done this?” A complete waste. Her sacrifice would have been a complete waste. Unless maybe she enjoys it? Dirty whore! No, she’s skin and bones, I don’t want to point the finger at her. What man hasn’t wanted her? It’s a brother’s job to look after his sister. “You’re from another era,” Fred Morin once said to me. I had a dollar in my pocket. In broad daylight, I went to some dive and paid a woman. She was afraid of me and kept her eyes closed, saying: “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” I left her to wander aimlessly through the streets. I saw cars rushing past and beggars running after them. They were almost throwing themselves under the wheels, holding out their hands, stinking and emaciated. A car for every man in uniform, that comes to thousands. I too will have one, and ride around with my women and my family. I returned to the bench in the square and opened my book again. I have to study, I must. I heard the shots and I hid behind a tree as if I were guilty. The fugitive ran past me, then saw me and stopped. I retraced my steps and he followed quietly a few paces behind me, not saying a word. I could hear him panting as I sat back down on the bench. So I took a look at him. He was about my age and his clothes and shoes were clean. The sweat streaming over his face was enough to give him away if the people who were after him were to find us together. I said to him:
“Sit down and wipe your face.”
“I don’t have a handkerchief,” he said to me.
Taking mine from my pocket to give it to him, I felt the point of the knife pricking my chest. Not far from us, we heard the sound of the boots, and he instinctively drew near me.
“What did you do?” I asked him.
“What do you think I could have possibly done to deserve execution,” he replied. “Don’t you know they kill for the sheer pleasure of it?”
I handed him my textbook. “Keep your head down. Read quietly.”
He did what I said. The sound of boots faded and we could hear the whistle blow for the squadron to regroup.
“Thank you,” he said to me as he gently slumped back. Then, resting his head on the back of the bench:
“I’m falling asleep, I’m falling asleep,” he said again.
And he quickly closed his eyes.
Why did I stay behind to keep a lookout as he slept? Lunch had come and gone by the time I returned home. I had left the stranger asleep, and the next day I learned that a student had been executed on a bench in the middle of a public square. That day, Fred Morin came by and I refused to see him. I locked myself in my room, afraid I’d come unhinged if anyone spoke to me. I felt as if I had lost a friend. I was in mourning. Horrible pain, part remorse, part rebellion, gripped my heart. Why? Why? I kept asking myself. Why had they murdered him? Why? Why? What was he guilty of? Did he refuse to offer his sister? Rose! My very own sister! Defiled! If I want to kill the Gorilla, I have to face facts. As for Grandfather, he’s filled with silent hatred toward her, as though she were the enemy. I fear the day he’ll ask to be served in his room in order not to share his meals with us. Skin and bones. So gaunt. I’ll kill him, I can feel it…
I wanted to see Anna again before doing anything. I have a pretty good idea what will happen to me, so I might as well feel a bit of joy before I go. It was seven in the evening and she was alone in the living room. She looked at me and began to sob.
“Are you angry at me, Paul?” she said to me. “What did I ever do to you?”
She tried to take my hands but I pulled back.
“Well, speak, say something!” she shouted.
I couldn’t. I tried to take her in my arms, but I was held back by something stronger than myself. A long line of hotheads. Never trusting anyone. My mother is right.
She mumbled:
“I don’t know why you’re like this. I don’t. I love you and I don’t know why you’re putting me through this. Is that fair? Or is it that you don’t love me anymore?”
I left and could hear her crying:
“Paul! Paul!”
I’ll return to her house with a weapon on my belt and that’s the day I’ll know the truth. I’ll know why she and her father act like there are no men in black on our land. I’ll go all out, even if it means losing her, or death. I prefer losing her and dying on top of it than to have to doubt her…
My mother’s getting drunk. I saw her staggering upstairs. She looked at me with her dying eyes and then began to laugh miserably. A bloody throat clearing itself of crushed glass. A great open mouth rattling in agony. She’s going to cough up her heart. Rose, who was coming in just then, ran past us and shut her door behind her. My mother pointed at her, bent in two by the awful laughter that contorted her mouth. Then she suddenly fell silent, went to the window on the landing and leaned over as if she were about to fall. I looked past her: a shadow was slowly moving through the yard, accompanied by a completely white crawling, jumping thing. The shadow bent down to the ground and then stood up with the thing in its arms and walked over to the stakes. I heard my mother laugh. She wasn’t the one laughing, someone else was laughing in her. She turned around and said: “Paul, son, nothing and nobody can stop destiny.” She opened the cupboard and took out a bottle of rum that was three-quarters empty. Someone else laughed in her again, and after pointing her finger at the land, she staggered into her room. My father wasn’t there. I heard him come home an hour later. I stood up and went out on the landing. I saw light coming from Rose’s room and pushed open the door without knocking. She was on her knees beside her bed, head sinking into the pillow, breasts flat against the mattress.
“You might as well come in and close the door,” she whispered.
She remained on her knees on the floor, and I looked at her profile, not daring to move. Gaunt and beautiful, eyes swollen with tears.
“You’ll get to leave, I promise you that much.”
I grabbed her and struck her in the face.
“I never asked you to help me.”
“You have to get out of here, you have to.”
“I don’t want you to worry about me, you hear me?”
She threw herself on the bed and curled up under the sheets with her back to me.
“It’s not that much trouble, believe me,” she said again.
When I heard these words I left her and went to my room, sat at my desk staring into the darkness. And the sweat from my forehead drenched my eyes and burned like tears.
The lawyer had me come in right away and was very considerate. That’s because I was with the uniformed man I had met in his office, toward whom he had seemed so respectful and attentive. The lawyer reached for the five hundred dollars, but the uniformed man gave him such a savage look that he very quickly dropped the money on a corner of his desk as though he’d made a mistake.
“We have a deal?” said the man in uniform.
“We have a deal,” the lawyer replied.
Then he turned to me:
“You may begin by taking off your clothes,” he ordered me as if he were requesting a simple secretarial task.
After that, he left the room and closed the door. The lawyer had spoken to me beforehand and I knew what to expect. I began taking off my clothes and once I was half-naked, the man in the uniform pulled me sharply by the arm to drag me behind the screen.
“You’re not going to struggle, you’re not going to cry out,” he instructed me. “Because if you do, you’ll be sorry.”
He pounced on me with his long hirsute hands, tearing off whatever garments I had left.
“Lie down,” he said, “lie down, spread your legs and put your arms out like a cross.”
I refused to obey, so he threw me on the sofa.
“You’re going to ruin everything,” he hissed, “if you resist, I won’t be able to do anything. You have to do what I say, without hesitation, otherwise it’s no go, you understand? I can only be a man with pretty saint’s faces like yours, a defeated martyr with a pretty little face. Do what I say, do it or get out of here. But remember that no one else will ever be able to do anything for you and you will lose your land. On the other hand, if you are cooperative and do what I ask, then I promise, I swear to you on all that is most holy to me that you will have my protection and will have restitution of your property.”
As he was talking, he slowly opened my legs and splayed out my arms in a cross. He leaned over me for a moment, moaning slowly, his breath short, oppressed. He stared at me like this for some time, and then I saw his horrible hand approach my body and touch it ever so lightly with a kind of unbearable, sick curiosity.
“That’s it, don’t move, stay like that.”
Leaning over me, he caressed me, sniffing me like an animal, and a little later, popped the buttons off his uniform and stood naked before me.
“You’re a virgin, right? You didn’t lie to me, did you? This is going to hurt, hurt a lot, but I don’t want to hear a word, got it? Not one word.”
He was dripping with sweat and I felt defiled.
He rammed himself into me in one rough terrible thrust, and immediately groaned with pleasure. I bit my fist in pain and disgust. He got back up.
“You have the prettiest martyr’s face I have ever had. I have a feeling I’m going to like you. If you let me have it my way, we’re going to become good friends, great friends.”
He gave me my clothes without another word. Then he showed me the door, saying:
“I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll see you every night for a month. If you’re faithful, I will personally give you back the papers your father signed.”
It hurt so much I could barely walk. I took a car and went home. I saw him again the next day, but not at the lawyer’s. He drove me out of town to a grotesquely and richly furnished house where the only bedroom had wall-to-wall mirrors. Once I was naked, he threw himself on me so brutally that I cried out. He immediately let me go.
“I’ll open you up until my entire fist goes in,” he shouted.
I could see his reflection in every mirror, unsightly and frightening.
What’s it to me? I would have brought dishonor on myself only if I enjoyed it as he did, but he slept with a corpse. A corpse, and he has no idea. That’s my revenge. “Feels good, no?” he asked me anxiously. And with my closed eyes I seemed to acquiesce. What’s it to me! A month will go by quickly. I won’t tell a soul, I’ll do whatever he wants. He’s made me bleed five times and I haven’t cried out. My cooperation knows no bounds. I have come to tolerate the horrible things without which he can’t feel like a man. “I’ve killed ten men point-blank,” he confessed to me, “and here I am trembling with desire before your little saint’s face. But women who turn me on are hard to come by.” His awful hands on my body! Inside my body, shamelessly probing my flesh. What do I care! I am dead. I could laugh, watching him moan over a dead body. “Your idiotic father,” he informed me, “came to beg me to spare you. He was crying and crying. You get your martyr’s face from him. And your brother? What’s he waiting for before signing up? He’s not against us, is he? No, no, calm down, I know very well he wouldn’t dare. Do you know what I was before I became this figure of authority protecting you with his powerful hand? No, I won’t tell you. You might run out of here and you mean a great deal to me. Wait. I’m going to lock the door… A flea-ridden beggar, that’s what I was. Yes, my beauty, a beggar, despised, shunned by haughty little saint’s faces like yours. And now, spread your legs. Wait, I’ll undo your hair. It makes you look even more like a saint. I love the saints. A long time ago, when I was little, I would go sit in church for long hours and gaze at them. Put out your arms in a cross. You’re pale. You look like you’re suffering. You’re perfect. That’s it, suffer in silence.”
You’re going to get out of here, Paul. My brother, my friend, so proud, so studious, so noble! The smell of death is upon me. Our baby brother knows it. I am dead. Has my mother realized it? It must be awful to bury your child, but even more awful to see your child die little by little without being able to do a thing to save her. We’re caught in a vicious circle. Everything’s changed, everything’s suddenly upside down since they took over our land. They are a blight upon us. Cursed, we’re cursed and Grandfather knows it. That’s why he prays, that’s why he steps out at night with Claude. I won’t say a word. At least let everyone be free to do what they need to do. As for me, I’ve tasted hell and it no longer frightens me. I’ll get somewhere, and Paul will leave. A few more days, just a few more days and this ordeal will end. My stomach hurts. I should go see Dr. Valois but I’m afraid of what he’ll think of me. And to think I once slapped Fred Morin for kissing me! I knew I would come to this, I knew it. To make sure he wouldn’t be the first, I had offered myself to Dr. Valois, but he pushed me away.
“You are too young, you have no idea what you’re doing,” he cried.
He wanted to run away, but I grabbed him.
“Don’t be ashamed that you love me,” I said to him. “Don’t be ashamed of that.”
“But I am ashamed,” he replied.
And he’d taken me in his arms, pulled me against him.
“Go now, Rose, go.”
“You have to do it, you have to.”
“No, Rose, never.”
“Don’t you get it?”
And I had stayed with him until dawn, crying, pleading, but he wouldn’t touch me.
That night, when my mother found me on the landing, she feared the worst. And yet, I felt almost purified. Once this torture is over, I’ll have even more innocence and chastity to offer him. The soul, not the flesh, is the true seat of virginity, so I don’t know what lovemaking feels like. I have erected a wall between my body and my soul, a granite wall. When our property is returned, Paul will be out of danger. As for me, I no longer fear danger. I’ve come through the straits. Not only do I face danger, I swim in it with abandon, fully Paul doesn’t yet know where he’s heading, what awaits him, the forces watching him and perhaps already circling round him. And truly, I’ve convinced myself that I’m dead. He knows nothing about being an actor. I’ll put the same amount of talent into my resurrection act. He’s helpless in the face of this tragic unfolding of events, and I’ve foolishly convinced myself I’m pulling the strings. In the face of the element unleashed, I will be a force of nature. Should I fail, I’ll tell myself I was tempted by this role, that if I gave in, it was because I had a taste for it or out of weariness. Look how I’ve moved a killer with my sweetness and submission. Can it be that easy for me to draw on my own strength, and are my resources really infinite? When death comes, will I be able to welcome it with indifference, playing my role until the bitter end? Thirty days is a long time! But what can time do to me, since I’m already dead! I was about to kiss Claude and he said to me: “No, don’t come close, you don’t smell like flowers anymore.” I had put on perfume in vain. How could he know? Once upon a time, he loved me. He stroked my hair, undid my ponytail and buried his face in my tresses, saying: “They smell like wet oak blossoms.”
The hoarseness of his voice makes him only sound older, and sometimes his precociousness frightens me. The final stretch of his life. Soon, the final stretch of all of our lives, I’m sure of it. He has returned in this crippled form to fulfill his destiny. Going from rough draft to hero. So many messy rough drafts around me! And what a messy rough draft I am! Only the hope that I will return to this earth gives me comfort for having to die one day. God owes it to Himself to finish His work, even if He has to redo it a hundred times. I am messing up this life with my obvious bad faith. It’s because I’m sure I’ll die soon. I’ll die and then I’ll come back. Is this my first life? I’m often overcome by fuzzy and mysterious memories, as if the gestures and actions of a past life weighed on my present one. Although I was a virgin, nothing about sex astonished me. I succumbed to indecency like a loose woman. If it had been another man in my arms instead, Dr. Valois for example, I would have been frightened. Far beyond the city, walking down a shady, tree-lined and deserted road with a river flowing beside it, I stopped, eyes on the luminous water, feeling its familiar and comforting coolness on my hands. Sweet nostalgia welled up in my heart as a mist of memories rose from the depths, slowly becoming clearer: I had been to this place before; that house, those trees, that river, I knew them. I had taken a walk under those trees and lived in this house. I was breathless with anguish as if a piece of myself still lived there, forever separated from me. Mutilated, but all the same walking the hard road to perfection. I can’t wait to die. Dead! I forgot, I already am. Murdered, martyred and canonized. I won’t have suffered in vain. Grandfather’s sterile rebellion, Paul’s mute despair, my mother’s terror, my father’s horrible, humiliating situation, are all reasons to fight. Of all of us, my father suffers the most. Head of the family, the man still responsible for the honor and the future of his children, forced to bow and scrape and kiss the feet of his torturers. I can see how he bears all this and how he suffers! I would never have thought he had the courage to face the Gorilla. Slapped a hundred times a day. Tortured a hundred times a day. Face stained with spit and yet always calm. Such shame! What shame! Not on us but on them, our persecutors. Every one of us suffers like Christ, but none martyred as spectacularly. “You with the martyr’s face, the saint’s face.” Me! That’s what he likes, that monster, that fleabag I have felt the very depths of horror. Thanks to him I have hit rock bottom. Submissive, too submissive for a virgin. Was I a virgin? An accomplice? Aren’t I getting used to it, aren’t I trying to enjoy it too? Damning thoughts hunting me down night and day. Not once have I missed a meeting, not once have I been late.
And yet I feel a burning pain when I try to move after these ordeals, and I have to make an effort to walk. I continue to rush downstairs so as not to worry my parents. Not a single day did he spare me. Tonight, he was crazy. He screamed, he sniffed and licked me like a beast. Then he thrust his fist into my body and watched in ecstasy as the blood poured out of me. Vampire! Vampire! I saw him sipping and getting drunk on my blood like wine.
From the beginning, I knew what to expect. Since these men showed up on our land, I knew it would come to this. A sixth sense? No matter how far away things are, I can recognize their scent. I have been able to detect the tenacious and intoxicating perfume on engravings of oriental flowers; and I’ve sneezed from the dust raised by the hoofs of a ranch horse stamping in a movie. My mother would say: “Have you caught cold?” “No,” I would say, “it’s all that dust.” “What dust?” my mother would ask. And I would point to the screen with my finger. But I have also dilated my nostrils at the majestic sight of the heavy falls at Niagara: they smelled of rainwater along with something else I can’t quite put my finger on. I scrape and scrape, deep into the very entrails of the earth. I dig and dig, and already know the warm humid flavor of its grayest roots, the musty stench of everything that crawls upon the buried bodies.
It was six years ago that my mother first put her hand on her heart. And that day, I heard it beat more heavily, more irregularly, as if performing hard labor. The day her heart stops beating, I’ll know before she does. “My God! My God!” she sighs, her fingers gripping her dress above her stomach. If Grandfather weren’t so old, if he weren’t so preoccupied with the little one, he’d realize a great many things. But he sees only Claude. Actually, we’re all alike, but each of us plays at hiding from one another in different ways. The little one has detected an indecent smell on me. There must be something unsettling and innocently perverse in me, and only the fact that I’ve been forced stops me from climaxing in this man’s arms. If I could free myself from this, I would probably make a partner worthy of him. Yesterday, he knelt in front of the bed and gently wiped the sweat on my brow. “I would like to please you,” he said to me. “I’m very ugly, but I would like you to at least enjoy it when I caress you.” He closes his eyes halfway and cries out: “You’re so beautiful, my saint!” He has a strange look that then becomes transformed and softens in pleasure. He gave me a tour of his house. I could smell the dogs before I saw them. I drew back and he grabbed my wrist and dragged me over to the huge cage where he locks them up as if they were wild animals. “I had them brought here from overseas,” he told me, “see how fierce they are?” They were foaming with rage: “You see, there’s only one way to get respect in this world: be like them,” he added. He doesn’t realize these are the affectations of a despot, surrounding himself in such luxury.
“Do you like making love, my saint, do you like luxury and jewelry?”
I said nothing. I don’t think I have ever opened my mouth after what I’ve seen except to moan or sigh in pain. I think that’s what he prefers from me; according to him it makes me look even more like a martyr. But am I the martyr I say I am, that I’ve convinced myself I am? I anticipate his desires. My submissiveness is nauseating. I undress and lie there with my legs spread, arms splayed in a cross, and wait. Torture! What torture! He has said to me: “If you wish, I will keep you till death do us part.” He’s learned to read my eyes and he anxiously monitors my every expression. “You like that, huh?” he cried out, although I was moaning in pain, “you like that too!” Still no response from me. “Rose, my little sister!” Paul used to call me. And he would carry me on his back so I wouldn’t have to walk on thorns. Once he was offended when a peasant surprised me as I was taking off my rain-drenched dress to wring it out. “Quick, hide, Rose!” he said to me. His eyes were full of tears. What does it matter if I give my body to the eyes and kisses of a monster, as long as I can save him. He’ll get out of here. Alone. As for me, I will slip down the slope of easy affairs, discreetly of course, very discreetly, with my saintly face. I’m full of self-pity. Is my fate so appalling? More than a few husbands probably behave just like this man. Vices sanctified by the sacrament of marriage. In any case, I have lost my innocence. Was I ever innocent? I understood the ugliness of life too early and it aged me. Jaded without experience, I’ve been like this since childhood. Like Claude. He can guess too many things as well. The day Anna began hating me because of the sewing box her father gave me, I felt it; just as I knew she’d torn my dress on purpose despite the innocent look on her face. I was only fifteen when I was already toying with Dr. Valois. That sensuous Normil force! Hits hard! Hell had its eye on us for some time and now we’re deep in it. The stakes have traced the infernal vicious circle, and maybe the hands that planted them are less guilty than ours. We are reaping what we sowed, the curse of our ancestors will disappear with our line. We must be hated and loved to the same extreme. I admire my father’s moderation, he’s the only one who stands out among us. How could Grandfather love him? Keep the sheep far away from us, for we would devour them. We, too, belong to a race of wildcats and raptors, that’s why we struggle so fiercely against those who’ve taken our lands. And the history of our property is quite murky. I heard my mother and father talking about it when I was six years old.
My mother was saying: “Grandfather insults me, he calls my father a drunk and a good-for-nothing; if I were mean I’d throw in his face what people say about his father.” “And what do people say?” my father asked. “They say he murdered a man to secure ownership of the land.” “Oh Laura, repeating such wild rumors?” my father replied. And my mother lowered her head.
One day, I had fallen asleep under the oaks. A man came to me in a dream wearing a bloody shirt that he took off to show me two gaping wounds on his back, and he said to me: “Look, he stabbed me with his knife to make his own justice. I will get my revenge when I put a weapon in the hand of one of his descendants, who will kill a man just as he did.” As he was talking, I detected his dull, atrocious stench. The smell of death, of clotted blood and rotting flesh. The memory of him has never made me feel uncomfortable, but I know he’s waiting there, two stones away from the ancestor’s grave. If Paul doesn’t leave, he will kill someone and I don’t want that. None of us will ever kill again. Grandfather must think that we deserved to be punished, that our tormentors were guided by a divine hand. The curse weighs on us and he knows it, but he rebels out of pride. It’s up to me to pay for this so that my children and Paul’s children can be free of it. Acquit myself without balking and be done with it. I’ve lived long enough with the superstitious fear of this curse falling on my brother’s head. He doesn’t deserve that. I struggle with the conviction that justice is not on our side. What right do we have to property? What gives us the right to such privilege while others wallow in poverty? The poverty of the people my peasant ancestor must have exploited, the misery of the poor who looted his garden and whom he had whipped without mercy, the poverty of the beggars taking on the uniform, the poverty of the man avenging himself through me for having been rejected by the women he desired. Suppose one day I too was forced to beg, to feel humiliated, would I not be proud to see Paul in a uniform with a gun on his belt? I don’t know. It’s difficult to put myself in others’ shoes, and I am still too well fed to understand what misery and hunger can make you do.
Human beings have an eerie resemblance to certain animals. I was struck by my resemblance to a panther I saw in a movie once. Same features, same fierce gaze veiled by false gentleness, same supple neck beneath an elegant head with wide, quivering, sensual nostrils. He, on the other hand, looks like a dog. One could easily mistake him for a gorilla, but that’s not the case. His hands are misleading since they’re long and hairy, but he’s just a dog; a poor dog craving affection who turns into a wolf as a result. A beastly couple, made for each other. A lascivious and insatiable panther! I will tear my impure body with my nails. A dog biting simply to defend himself, a poor dog used to kicks, who barks and bites to prove that he’s something other than a dog. “Are you tired, my saint, are you tired?” he says, and tenderly wipes my forehead. How can he get it so wrong when it comes to me? He’s ugly and that pains him. I will tear my impure body with my nails and I will die of it. The stench of a wildcat in my sweat. An animal stench in our sweat, all of us. Man is just an animal hemmed in by a narrow conscience; this is why it is his lot to suffer. The struggle between mind and beast tears at him from within. A tragic fate, a relentless struggle where the mind rarely wins. God has toyed with us…
I caught Mélie with one of them. She was underneath him and was saying: “Kill him, kill them, you’re the strongest, kill them, they deserve to die.” Does she sleep with them only out of hatred for us? Who is naïve enough to believe that you can win a servant’s heart with kindness? Inferiors only fear and respect you if you dominate them. Wearing one of my dresses, she spies on us, fornicates with the enemy and calls for our heads. A horde of beggars and ignoramuses finding salvation in crime! Is it their fault? Women and men together in uniform, women and men bearing arms, women and men marching, denouncing, murdering? Is that what awaits Mélie when she puts on a uniform? I can see her goose-stepping, rifle on her shoulder. I can picture my mother’s face when she sees that spectacle, imagine my mother seeing her son in uniform, rifle on his shoulder, goose-stepping next to Mélie. “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” <strong>[35]</strong> she would cry out. The anguished question of a poor creature to Him who had promised her everything and had taken away everything, taken it away from a woman without a father, who has never had a father, and who is growing old alone as she waits for death.
The rocky road climbed abruptly, its sides shaded by almond trees, their leaves this time of year jutting from their branches like huge red tongues. Their dancing shadows traced strange arabesques on the ground. The sun hid behind a cloud and everything took on a new cast, bathed in filtered light. Paul climbed up the slope and arrived at the field where Fred Morin and the others were waiting for him. They ran to meet him, and lifted him up despite his protestations, carried him off in triumph. He struggled, meting out kicks and punches that the others took in stride. When he managed to get free, he faced them with his teeth on edge, hateful, fists up.
“If any one of you touches me I’ll smash your teeth in!” he shouted at them. “Bastards! You dirty bastards!”
He was yelling as loud as the grandfather would have, and he saw them draw back in perplexity, their shoulders drooping.
He ran his hand through his bushy mane and left without a word. Never again, never again, he kept saying to himself. He stumbled down the slope, retracing his steps.
They gathered around him almost immediately.
“What have we done to you?” Fred Morin asked him. “Why are you running away from us?”
“Let’s shake hands before you go, Paul, we’re begging you,” another said.
He watched them kneeling at his feet and he spit on the ground.
“Is it true you’re going to join the Blackshirts soon?” asked the youngest in the group, who was only sixteen. “If that’s true, put in a word for us with your sister’s friend. He’s important, mention us to him. We’d all like to wear the uniform. And when they give us weapons we’ll be feared and get some respect.”
A car went past them, slowed down, backed up and stopped. In the backseat was a man in a black uniform whom they all recognized. The man stuck his head out the window and looked at Paul for several long moments, then called him over with a flick of his long hairy hand: he wouldn’t budge. The man waited for some time, still leaning out the window; then he slapped the driver’s shoulder, gave him an order, and the car took off.
“Are you insane?” Fred Morin whispered.
A shiver ran through Paul. He gave Fred Morin a withering look, spat on the ground a second time and left. The grandfather was talking quietly with the child on the porch. He walked past them and into his room, opened the drawer, took the knife and tucked it inside his shirt, and went out again. He walked for an hour aimlessly and found himself almost randomly in front of the customhouse where his father worked. He pushed the door and went in. Someone he didn’t know greeted him and asked if he could help him with something.
“I’d like to speak to my father,” he replied.
“And who is your father?”
“Monsieur Normil.”
The employee’s expression changed immediately. He smiled with deliberate friendliness and hastened to admit Paul into the first room, where two typists were at work.
“Come on through, please come on through.”
He saw his father at his desk. He was sitting in a rocking chair and was talking to a tall, very elegant man in a nicely cut dark suit. The man was bowing before him without daring to support himself and, not knowing what to do with his hands, ended up swaying back and forth as though he were walking.
Louis Normil tilted back in his chair, his crossed knees nearly reaching the height of his chest. From on high he looked at the man planted in front of him.
“My dear Monsieur Zura, how could I forget you?” he was saying. “Are you not my superior, rankwise? The key thing is to make an appointment so that we can meet at the notary. I am setting aside one of my best properties for you, I promise. It’s already well planted with trees and, believe me, the neighborhood is pleasant and clean. Trust me, this is an exceptional deal for you.”
M. Zura thanked him and went away without noticing Paul. Looking at the typist who was working across from him, Louis Normil saw that she was staring at something just behind his chair. He suddenly turned around.
“You!” he exclaimed, catching sight of his son. “What can I do for you?”
Paul looked at his father for a moment, then shrugging:
“Nothing,” he answered.
“But come here. Do you need me?”
“No, I was passing by, so I walked in.”
“Are you sure there isn’t something you’re not telling me, some bad news?”
He went pale as he uttered those words, and Paul saw him looking for a place to rest his hand or elbow on the table.
“No, Papa, no, really, it’s nothing.”
He suddenly left his father and made for the exit. He strolled until lunch and found the whole family home. The grandfather and the invalid mingled their mumbling voices in prayer. He took his seat and ate in silence.
“Claude, have you had your bath today?”
“Yes, Mama, Grandfather bathed me as usual.”
“What happened to your hands?” Rose exclaimed. “They’re covered with scratches.”
“I was playing with branches and they had thorns,” he said coldly.
“What branches, what thorns?” Paul asked skeptically.
The mother looked at the invalid’s hands at length and then at the grandfather. He was slowly chewing his food, distant and indifferent to what was going on around him. Indeed, he didn’t seem to hear the child who now turned to him.
“Grandfather,” he insisted, pulling on his sleeve. “Didn’t I get these scratches from the thorns? Grandfather?”
The grandfather came back to himself and, turning to the child:
“What, who doesn’t believe you?” he asked. “And why would you lie? We only lie out of fear. And who could you be afraid of at this table?”
“In any case,” the mother added, “it would make sense to dress these scratches before they get infected. Come with me, Claude.”
She rose and took the invalid in her arms. He sought the grandfather’s eyes, ready to protest at the least sign of encouragement.
The mother took the child upstairs into her room. She opened his hands and dreamily stared at the bright little wounds.
“Are there more, Claude? Do you have scratches anywhere else?”
“Anywhere else? No, Mama. Why would I have scratches anywhere else? I was just playing with the branches, not rolling around on top of them.”
He laughed nervously, resting his overly large, sleep-deprived eyes on his mother.
“There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m telling you, nothing.”
His deformed feet dangled lifeless at the bottom of his pants. He was dressed in white and the long sleeves of his shirt concealed his scrawny arms.
“It’s much too exhausting for you,” the mother gently said to him, “too much for a sick child who barely eats anything. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He frowned and his gaze suddenly became severe and distant.
Fearing a tantrum, the mother did not dare insist.
At that moment Jacob came in. He had brought a deck of cards that he cheerfully spread out on the table.
“So, shall we resume our game, old friend?” he said in a jovial stentorian voice that immediately filled the house.
“No,” the grandfather answered laconically.
“You don’t want to play with me?”
“Yes.”
“And what are your reasons?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Come! Come!” Jacob said in a conciliatory tone. “You’re not going to give me the cold shoulder just because my sciatica kept me home for a few days. It wasn’t for lack of wanting to see you, I swear.”
“Don’t swear.”
“Often I waved to you and you never bothered to wave back. And you’re the one who’s upset, really now, should you be the one to be upset?”
“Jacob,” the grandfather replied ominously, “take care lest God’s holy fury rise up in me, and get out.”
“But for what reason?” Jacob insisted.
“I tell you again that there is no reason,” the grandfather yelled. Jacob picked up the cards spread on the table and left without daring to say another word.
“Is it really true that there’s no reason why you’re chasing away your friend?” the child asked.
“There are reasons, little one, good ones, I’d even say very good ones. But never show blood to the person who wounded you. You would only be making him lie to absolve himself.”
The grandfather’s comments probably reminded the invalid of several unpleasant recollections about his mother, for he immediately sought her out and gave her an evil look. She forced me to lie to her, he was telling himself. She forced me to lie to her. He leafed through his picture book, then lifted his head. Transfigured, he stared at the front door, at a vision of heartrending clarity.
The mother had her back to them, facing the window opened wide onto the trees fragrant with fruit.
“Grandfather!” he called quietly. “Grandfather!”
The old man quickly turned his head, stood up and took him in his arms.
For all these days, he had been patiently, cruelly, preparing him for the visitation of the late ancestor. Did he even believe in it himself? In the depths of his soul, legends he thought he had forgotten had been reawakened. Legends he was desperately using as the only weapons available to the revenge-obsessed believer that he had become.
“No matter what you see,” he whispered, “don’t give yourself away. Keep calm, little one.”
The child batted his lashes, his face growing horribly pale. He leaned his head on his grandfather’s shoulder and shivered.
“He is there,” he gasped, “I see him. He’s dressed in a high-collared jacket and a big straw hat. Just as you described him.”
“What is he doing?”
“He’s looking at us. He’s standing by the door and looking at us.”
The mother starting walking in that direction. The grandfather had to restrain the invalid. He was panting, eyes wide, mouth dry. The mother pulled the doors shut and returned to where she’d been standing.
“Good night,” she said. “Sleep well, Claude.”
They heard her walk upstairs, the grandfather clutching the child tightly, asking him:
“Did she lock him inside the house?”
“No. He saw her coming, so he stepped back and disappeared.”
“Ah!” said the grandfather. “The main thing is he has answered our call.”
“His feet were bleeding as if he had traveled a great distance, and he was looking at us with sad, heavy eyes. Are you sure we were right to disturb him? Grandfather, were we right?”
“If even the dead refused to hear God’s voice and come to our aid,” the grandfather replied, “then what would become of us, my child?”
The first day of the month of March! the father said to himself. Alone, lying in bed fully dressed, he was filled with thoughts. An hour ago, he had given his wife part of his salary, saying: “Buy some clothes for the children and some medicine too: they need it.” The mother took the money without thanking him and got dressed to go out. Now he was alone and thinking things over. Twenty days had gone by since their property was invaded.
Stooped with age, he was developing a plan of incredible audacity, one worthy of the terrible adversaries he desired to confront. “Find your enemy’s weak point, and you shall be victorious,” he was repeating to himself. That sentence, found somewhere in a book he had forgotten, now resurfaced from the depths of his memory to guide and help him. He was going to risk his life, put it all on the table, he knew that, but he wanted only one thing: to save Rose and Paul at least. Cradling his heavy head with his hands locked behind the nape of his neck, brows frowning, eyes fixed on an invisible spot, he was lost in thought. Sweet, sentimental and importunate memories kept interrupting his dark daydream and he yielded to them, recalling the good old days of happiness and peace, now lost. Slices of his life unfolded before his eyes, and he relived them with depressing intensity and a vague feeling of remorse. How happy we were then! he was telling himself. Despite his father’s hostility toward his wife, despite the birth of the crippled child, how happy they were! In comparison to what they were going through now, everything had really seemed perfect! Of course there had been quarrels between him and his wife, the old man’s fits of anger, the mother’s heartrending tears when she saw the deformed feet of her third child, but on the other hand there had been so many compensations: the perfect harmony between Paul and Rose, studying together at the same table, their heads bowed under the lamp, the grace of their growing bodies, transforming before their very eyes! How had he neglected the opportunity to appreciate all of that? How indifferent he had been about the party the mother had organized to celebrate the children’s twin success in their philosophy exams! He had used an important meeting as an excuse not to attend and had taken advantage of it to spend the night with his mistress. Now he could see the scene in every detail-first the mother’s tears of joy the pride in the grandfather’s eyes that he tried to conceal by declaring haughtily: “That’s no reason to drag in the whole the neighborhood.” But at lunchtime, the old man had taken two envelopes out of his pocket and handed them to Rose and Paul:
“Go on, enjoy this wonderful day, my children.”
The night of the party, he had returned from his mistress around midnight to find the grandfather dancing with an imposing matron, to the delight of the guests. He went up to his room to compose a face in the mirror; the face of a serious man whose tired features revealed that he was still absorbed by his pretend business meeting. He had noticed his wife dancing with Dr. Valois, Anna and Paul off by themselves in a corner of the living room, Rose dancing by herself, her whirling hair in her eyes, and the invalid, who had refused to go to bed, lying on the sofa, smiling. Could it really be that this was just six months ago?
As he got up from the bed, he again saw Rose dancing by herself, her face happy and carefree, hair in her eyes, and as if to convince himself he suddenly said out loud: “It’s not possible, there’s just no way she gave in to the Gorilla.” Everyone around them seemed to have no doubt it was true, but this was nothing but wickedness on their part and sheer boasting on the part of the Gorilla. M. Zura put so much stock in it that he had suddenly begun to flatter him to get on his good side, outdoing himself trying to be friendly. Thus Louis Normil was becoming despite everything, a power broker, and he vowed to use that to his advantage. He had approached the Gorilla only once, in tears, to beg him to spare Rose. It was on that day, upon the unexpected reaction of this uniformed man, that he discovered hatred. The echo of demonic laughter that greeted his tears had suddenly awakened it inside of him. He had raised his head and dried his tears to look at the other man for a brief instant. But that instant had been enough to prove to him that he was capable of killing as calmly and quietly as the most ruthless murderer. This discovery had terrified him then, but he’d gotten so used to it that he grew cynical and now played the great man of the hour, honored and protected by the authorities, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“They guard our yard night and day,” he assured M. Zura in a loud voice. “The trees are full of fruit and thieves are everywhere. We want to sell it but there is so much demand we’re afraid of making people jealous.”
This meant that he was increasingly pestered by his boss, who now wanted to be included in the list of buyers.
He rarely went home for lunch now. He went to bars and public places in the company of the director, always surrounded by uniformed men.
“Your daughter’s friend is very powerful,” M. Zura had whispered to him once he thought he could speak as a friend. “His protection is rare and enviable.”
“What do I care!” Louis Normil felt like shouting. “He’s a murderer moonlighting as a thief!” But he had controlled himself enough to offer a friendly smile.
“So, that’s you, you’re the girl’s father!” a man in a black uniform cried out that day as he shook his hand.
He went along with it, accepting the familiar slap on his shoulder, as several colleagues stared at him coldly with poorly concealed disgust. Who are they to judge me? he thought. Are they going to get me out of this mess? And weren’t they the same ones treating me as if I had the plague? He accepted such encounters and would only be seen in the company of the most decorated, most highly visible men in black uniform, and in their presence would praise the generosity of his daughter’s protector, swearing that he would one day show his gratitude.
“My word, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a father so admire his daughter’s lover,” one of them declared.
He couldn’t go on after that and felt his courage flagging. He left them and called a car. He sat down, took off his hat and burst into tears. The driver turned around and saw him holding his arms out, hands gripping the back of the seat in front of him, his chest heaving with such deep and convulsive sobbing that the driver cried out:
“Really now, sir, why are you crying like that? These times we’re living in are no joke, it’s true. I’ll tell you, sometimes I start shaking for no reason when I see the Blackshirts and hear the things they say. But to cry like that! Ah! That, no!…”
He grew quiet and felt ashamed, put his hat back on, and sat with his head down, handkerchief over his mouth. So she did it, he told himself, so she really did it! And as he repeated this to himself, he realized that he had known for a long time.
The next day, he was at a restaurant with M. Zura. He was joined by several men in black uniform that he didn’t know, and when they were introduced to him and heard his name they nodded and gave him a friendly smile. He was raising his glass to his mouth when he saw the Gorilla walk in. The sight of him so repelled him that he felt like fleeing so he wouldn’t have to shake the man’s hand. But he fought the urge and, like M. Zura and the others, stood when the Gorilla approached. The reception given this man, scrawny and fattened with weapons, astonished him even as it convinced him of his popularity and power. M. Zura was the first to leap out of his chair to greet him. The others, stiff as posts, stood at attention, clicking their heels together loudly. Then they surrounded him, all of them talking at the same time. An immense man who looked like a boxer put a hand on the Gorilla’s shoulder in a familiar way, and he looked so diminished and ridiculous in contrast that two waiters by the door started whispering to each other.
“Where is the reward I was promised?” the Boxer asked as he leaned toward the little man and put his mouth against his ear. “I gave you five traitors I caught plotting in your midst. Where is the reward I was promised?”
“Can’t you wait a little?”
“I need that land.”
“And you’ll get it, but you need to wait. There are still a few formalities to wrap up.”
“Bull!” the Boxer answered impatiently. “You’re always doing whatever you want.”
He straightened and stuck out his chest, looking so menacing that the little man capitulated.
“Give me a few more days,” he snarled.
“Don’t forget me, please,” another begged humbly. “You promised to reward me, and I too want a piece of land.”
“I’ve been waiting a year,” another protested, “and I’m still paying rent.”
“So stop paying rent,” the little man said coldly. “I’ll protect you in court.”
Visibly unhappy, he tried in vain to escape this horde harassing and suffocating him. Standing on his toes in a desperate attempt to get a little air, he said in a cutting voice:
“And now, gentlemen, let me through.”
The group parted and the little man found himself in front of Louis Normil, who was sitting quietly with his drink. He hesitated, then took a few steps to the table, holding out his hand.
“Pleased to meet you,” Louis Normil said, returning his greeting. “I actually wanted to see you again so we could talk alone.”
He saw the Gorilla’s long hairy hands shaking. From fear or rage? Louis Normil thought. Someone in the room frightens him, but who? He turned around and caught the Boxer looking at the Gorilla. And suddenly he was filled with new strength. The Gorilla had taken a handkerchief from his pocket and was patting his face as he stared at Louis Normil with distrust.
“Did you want to talk alone so you could start crying again?” he asked impertinently.
“The time for tears has come and gone,” Louis Normil said, and burst out laughing.
“Come, then. I’d like to have a talk with you as well.”
With a hand on one of his guns, he walked to an isolated table, called for a waiter, and turning toward Louis Normil:
“What can I get you?” he asked.
“A whiskey-and-soda,” Louis Normil replied.
“Two whiskey-and-sodas,” he ordered.
And leaning toward his interlocutor:
“What do you have to say to me?”
Louis Normil took the glass the server had just put on the table, raised it, and raised his voice to say:
“To Rose’s health!”
“Ah,” the dumbstruck man said, “if that’s how you’re taking it…”
And then he started laughing, his eyes on Louis Normil, whose face suddenly hardened for a fleeting instant.
“My daughter cares for you,” he said with a frozen smile that pulled at his lips but left the rest of his face unmoved. “So I look the other way…”
The man in uniform had taken a sip of liquor and seemed to reflect for a moment.
“I’ve gotten quite attached to her,” he confided to Louis Normil, who clutched his glass tight enough to break it. “I’ve been moved by how sweet and gentle she is. I find myself getting so impatient whenever I’m expecting her. Perhaps I’ll marry her someday. I’m not promising anything, but perhaps I’ll marry her someday.”
“I would be flattered,” he responded, unflappable.
His voice was low, almost hoarse. He lowered his eyes, afraid to give himself away, and fought off the desire to leap at the Gorilla and strangle him. His clenched jaw jutted out and he grew nauseous from the effort to remain calm. As sure as my name is Louis Normil, he thought, you will die by my hand.
“But,” the Gorilla added as if suddenly himself again, a mean and cunning rabid dog, “was it to talk about your daughter that you wanted to speak to me alone?”
“My son would like to wear the uniform,” Louis Normil replied very quickly, “and I was counting on you to recommend him to your people so he receives special consideration.”
“Now there’s a wise decision!” the Gorilla exclaimed. “I admit I was a little suspicious of him. He’s distant and avoids greeting me. I’m always wary of malcontents since there are so many around me. Our organization has set things up to satisfy everyone, but they’re insatiable. You look to me, such as I am, but I am only a cog in an immense machine. The one who gives us our orders is like God, invisible and all-powerful. We get our orders and we carry them out. That’s all. We often know nothing about the reasons for the things he asks of us and we just blindly obey. Your son holds me personally responsible and quite imprudently swells the ranks of the group of malcontents.”
“Maybe he thought you wouldn’t let him join,” Louis Normil added very quickly.
“Don’t try to play me,” the Gorilla protested. “He has reasons to be unhappy after we took his land and his sister. You were the first to be struck. Soon, all those who’ve been resisting will feel our heavy hand on their heads.”
He looked intently at Louis Normil as he spoke but was unable to decode his enigmatic face. Normil answered with aplomb:
“I know your reputation, you are feared and respected. Under your protection, my son will go far quickly.”
“Hey, hey, you’re laying it on a bit thick now, aren’t you…”
The Gorilla leaned over to him as he glanced at the uniformed men who had formed a circle around him, and whispered:
“They’re always pestering me and I can’t make them all happy at the same time. I have a tough job: that’s the price I pay for my position. Go tell them that your land still belongs to you, and you and I will figure an arrangement. You seem reasonable and you do what you’re told. Your daughter cares about you. I like people who do what they’re told. You know what, why don’t you handle these sales for me? Rid me of these birds of prey and you’ll get a nice cut.”
“All I want is to help,” Louis Normil affirmed, astonished by this turn of events.
“But remember, don’t double-cross me, eh, or you’ll regret it. I promised your daughter that I’d return the papers you signed, and I will keep my word. If you keep yours, everything will be fine and you’ll make good money. But the important thing is to make sure these people leave me alone.”
“You mean you’re authorizing me to sell these properties on your behalf and mine?”
“That’s exactly right. I would never dream of giving away free land to these vultures and ending up looking like a Simple Simon.” [36]
“I understand,” Louis Normil said and got up to leave.
Seeing this, the Gorilla hung on to him and insisted that he eat with him. When he was able to free himself two hours later, he felt so weak and in such pain that he dragged his feet all the way home. With a bitter taste in his mouth, he went up to his room and got in bed, refusing all food, and buried his face in the sheets as he brooded over his conversation with the Gorilla. He couldn’t help being haunted by obscene images of this runt fornicating with his daughter, and he was filled with cold rage. He kept furtively looking over at Rose, listening to her conversation with rapt and morbid attention as if hoping that she’d suddenly shout that she had played a dirty trick on the Gorilla, that he had never touched her. He let her kiss his forehead and watched her leave for her date and waited up for her late into the night, listening, agitated and appalled.
Nevertheless, as soon as the next day, under the authority granted by a powerful figure, he began advertising and selling the properties. Stone-faced and resolute, he avoided M. Zura and set up a meeting with the potential buyers, all of them Blackshirts, at the notary’s office selected by the Gorilla.
The next morning, a sharp altercation erupted among the uniformed men posted on the land. Their voices became violent and threatening and soon there was gunfire followed by yelling and screaming.
“The birds of prey are devouring each other!” the grandfather exclaimed. “God predicted that ambition and greed would lead to their demise and now his prophecy is coming true.”
“I want to see!” cried the invalid. “Someone take me to the window.”
Three bodies in black uniform lay on the ground, where they were being examined by other men in black with rifles on their shoulders.
“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.”
She looked at him astonished.
“What’s gotten into you? Do I really look like I’m at death’s door?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Dr. Valois examined me recently.”
“What was the matter?” he asked with real anxiety.
“Oh, I wasn’t feeling well, that’s all. Happens to everybody, doesn’t it?”
“And Dr. Valois was sure there’s nothing wrong with you?”
“Nothing physical. It’s all these worries, these awful worries eating away at me.”
He looked at her and realized she was lying They were two steps away from each other and he could see her nostrils quivering. She closed her eyes and he tenderly put a hand on her shoulder.
“We have to remain hopeful, Laura. We have to.”
“All I know how to do is lie to myself.”
“Without hope, what will become of us?”
“Yes,” she said, “what will become of us?”
She shook herself free and went down to the dining room. Rose was still in bed and they had breakfast without her. Louis Normil caught Paul’s insistent gaze, full of contempt and insolence, and it made him shudder.
“How many parcels of land have you already sold for the Gorilla at a handsome profit?” the young man burst out, the words hissing in his teeth like insults.
“Son, let’s hope I will be able to sell them,” he answered, trying to sound natural, “since at least then I’ll make some money out of it. I just told your mother that only hope can help us. There’s a horde of vultures circling these properties. I am simply trying not to lose everything, that’s all.”
“And in the meantime, you’re making deals with them too,” Paul continued. “One way or another, they’ll manage to buy off each and every one of us.”
He laughed so horribly that the invalid looked at him with open-mouthed curiosity.
“You just laughed like a demon when he catches a condemned soul in his claws,” the grandfather added softly in a voice so gentle it didn’t seem like his own.
“My father has become friends with our persecutor,” Paul cried.
Louis Normil turned pale and his shoulders sagged with utter exhaustion. The grandfather dropped his fork, his beard trembled.
“If this is true, my son, leave my house, don’t impose your presence upon me, I’m not dead yet,” he said.
The father lowered his head in guilt.
“Paul!” the mother called out in painful reproach, and shut her eyes.
“Paul misunderstood me,” the father articulated in a soft and measured voice. “He is very young and he misunderstood.”
At that moment, Rose bounded down the stairs and sat down in her chair. Pushing out his chair, Paul got up from the table, his brows glowering over hardened eyes.
He watched the Gorilla for two days, walking the streets with the cold blade of his knife caressing his skin through his shirt. He walked a formidable distance in vain, watching cars, searching buildings and public places. He went home seething with rage, refused to sit at the dining room table and told his mother to get out of his room. In the evening, he got up, waited for the father to leave, and asked his mother for money. He rented a car and parked it along a dark section of the driveway to the house. As soon as he saw Rose leaving, he threw on a jacket, carefully brushed his hair and went into the street. Standing at the gate, he watched her walk away then, once she was far enough, he got in the car and started it. He had followed her from a distance for five minutes when she suddenly stopped. He braked and waited. Five more minutes went by, then ten. Suddenly he recognized the Gorilla at the wheel of his car. The door opened and closed behind Rose. For half an hour, the two cars drove a short distance through town, then along a deserted road where the houses, sunk deep at the end of long driveways, became more and more rare. The place was so dark he could barely see what was in front of him. He carefully drove down the driveway and arrived in front of the house. A bright light was shining through the window of one of the rooms framed by a wrought-iron balcony where he could make out two silhouettes in profile. The dogs began to bark furiously, breaking the silence, and the light suddenly became brighter as if another, more powerful bulb had been turned on. The two shadows vanished as if suddenly snatched by some unseen force, and shortly thereafter he saw the Gorilla at the window. Paul touched his knife through his shirt. “Blast it all,” he heard himself whisper, “if I only had a gun!” He hunched down and crept to the garden, right across from the window. He crouched and poked his head up. In the middle of the room there was a bed where Rose lay naked. Two bulbs hung bright as daylight above her. He saw her with her legs spread open, arms out in a cross, head turned to the side, motionless as a corpse, and he nearly screamed. He felt the knife, unbuttoned his shirt and held the blade between three fingers. He got up slowly, his left hand breaking a small tree branch that was in his way. He saw the man’s body slowly sit up and then start to retreat. He threw the knife, gleaming quick as lightning. He heard it hit something hard and fall below the window with a metallic sound.
“Shit! I missed him,” he said out loud.
The Gorilla had thrown himself on the ground. He saw the man crawling to the balcony and immediately bullets flew past his ears, followed by the furious barking of dogs. He fled the bushes, listening to the gunfire as it faded. Around him, nothing moved. He saw all the lights dim one by one, got back in the car and returned home, where he locked himself up in his room.
Two hours later, he heard Rose groping her way upstairs, not daring to turn on the lights.
There’s nothing left but to finish her now, he thought, picturing her again on that bed. Why all that light on her drawn and quartered body? I need to finish her off, for my sake, for her sake, for us. He sobbed, biting his pillow with all his teeth, lying in bed with his clothes on, refusing sleep.
At dawn, he left his room and cautiously went downstairs, avoiding Rose and the others. He filled up the tank, drove like mad to Carrefour and stopped in front of Anna Valois’ house.
Monsieur Florentin Douboute (aka the Boxer)
6 rue de l’Enterrement
En Ville
Monsieur,
You are about to be duped. Meet me at the office of Notary X at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, at which time twelve bills of sale will be drafted to the benefit of your boss. I’ve noticed your strong face and build. I am certain you will know how to defend yourself and demand the reward that should by all rights be yours.
A just man, who wishes you well
Sitting at his desk, Louis Normil sealed the letter, telling himself: Who would have thought I would be able to hold my own one day, howling with the wolves! Taking his hat, he excused himself before his colleagues and went to post the letter. On the envelope he scrawled the address in misshapen letters in an unrecognizable hand.
At lunch, he hid behind a door when M. Zura came by, and left the office alone to go to a meeting he had set up with the men in black.
“Until tomorrow, then, see you at the notary’s,” he said, clinking glasses with them.
The next day, at exactly eight o’clock, a remarkably distinguished-looking mulatto received them in an air-conditioned room, furnished with clear but subtle taste. Distracted, he played with a huge signet ring on his left ring finger. Louis Normil had been sitting across from him for ten minutes and hadn’t once been able to make eye contact.
“I see,” he said, after listening to Normil, “you wish to sell land that once belonged to your father. You are currently in possession of papers that show you have the right to dispose of said property through an inter vivos transfer? Is that correct?”
“Yes. This land is situated on the Turgeau heights and is of untold value. In all, I have a dozen lots planted with fruit trees, at an estimated value of a thousand dollars each. This gentleman,” he said, indicating the Gorilla, “is the only one who didn’t balk at my asking price.”
“He’s an expert in these matters and is quite aware that you could get a lot more than that,” the notary added in a neutral tone, “but in times like these times, a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.”
The Gorilla cracked his long hairy fingers with growing impatience. He scowled at the notary and said:
“Get to it. I have no time to waste.”
“All is ready, Commandant, I’ve seen to everything in advance.”
The notary frowned slightly, put on his glasses and opened a folder.
The title of commandant, which the notary had slapped onto the little man, startled Louis Normil, who couldn’t help staring at the decorations hanging on his black shirt. The notary smiled at that and stubbornly kept his eyes down.
“And are there actually any buyers who are hesitant?” he asked without changing his expression.
The Gorilla took a wad of bills from his pocket and handed it to the notary. The latter counted them, and then held out the folder:
“Sign here, if you would, Commandant.”
The eleven other uniformed men were talking among themselves at the other end of the room.
“Gentlemen,” Louis Normil said as he got up, “I don’t mean to pressure you, but I swear you’re passing up a terrific opportunity to become property owners in one of the nicest parts of the country.”
They rushed over all at once, grumbling, put down their money and signed.
“There now, that’s done,” the notary said with a sigh of relief. “It’s all for the best. Gentlemen, you’ll come by again to pick up the deeds to your property.”
“That’s all?” the Gorilla asked, standing up abruptly.
“That’s all, Commandant,” replied the notary.
“Why not give us those papers right now?” one of the buyers asked shyly.
“Because, simply put, they are not ready,” the notary answered. “Come, come, gentlemen, let’s not be so suspicious. Look at how your own boss has every confidence in us.”
“Fall out!” cried the Gorilla, stiff as a post. The men in uniform stood at attention with their heads down. The notary then took the fat wad of bills and handed it to Louis Normil.
“Goodbye, sir, goodbye Commandant, always at your service, Commandant,” he said, carrying himself like an actor onstage.
Putting the money in his pocket, Louis Normil tried to make eye contact with the notary and saw that his amused and sardonic glance was now fixed on the Gorilla.
“Who is he?” Normil asked the Gorilla once they were outside.
“Oh! A great man, a most worthy gentleman. My father was once his servant. Now he is at my service. He has the reputation of never betraying a professional secret, and thanks to him I’ve closed quite a few deals.”
“Deals like this one?” Louis Normil asked with an innocent smile.
“Like this one,” the Gorilla answered cynically. “One has to make a living, right? But to go back to the notary, he’s a masterly fellow. Smart, very smart, and he knows where the bodies are buried. One of these days, I fear he’ll regret having been so accommodating.”
Louis Normil shuddered.
“Should I return the money to you?” he asked, putting his hand in his pocket.
“Are you crazy?” the little man nearly screamed. “Wait until we’re in a safe place. Here’s my car. Come.”
As he opened the door, the Boxer, who had been waiting in the area, put his hand on his shoulder and said:
“I guarded that land day and night. I want my share.”
“Take your hand off my shoulder,” the Gorilla cried in fury as he shook free and reached for his weapon.
The Boxer took three quick steps back and with the skill of a cowboy, took out his gun and fired. The Gorilla collapsed.
My work here is done, Louis Normil told himself. And, taking advantage of the general panic, he made his way through the crowd and disappeared.
The most urgent thing was to put the money in a safe place. So he went home and this time hid it in the drawer of his night table, under a stack of books. Then he went back to the office, where he found M. Zura in a state.
“Have you heard the news, Normil?” the latter asked him. “Your friend was assassinated.”
“By whom?” Louis Normil exclaimed, feigning surprise.
M. Zura rolled his worried eyes and lowered his voice:
“By one of his henchmen, and they’re going to execute him to set an example.”
“Such an extreme measure won’t revive our poor friend,” Louis Normil added, looking devastated.
“What a horrible misfortune! Isn’t it?” M. Zura added. “And now, they’ll be on their guard. Look at all these trucks full of armed men. They know who did it, but they still have to deploy in all their gear just to give us a good scare.”
Louis Normil looked at M. Zura’s shaking hands, took his hat, excused himself and decided to go straight to the immigration office while he was still popular there.
“It’s Monsieur Normil,” said an employee respectfully when he saw him. “Why don’t you go ahead and take care of Monsieur Normil.”
“Let’s make sure Monsieur Normil doesn’t have to wait,” another cried.
“Long live the leader of the Blackshirts!” the first employee shouted.
“Long live the leader of the Blackshirts!” the others repeated in chorus.
“Long live the leader of the Blackshirts!” Louis Normil affirmed obligingly.
What do I care! he thought, as long as I’m able to save my children, the rest doesn’t matter!
We’ll remain, the rest of us, to pay whatever it is there is to pay, he also told himself as he got the passports. I’ll stop at nothing to save Rose and Paul. He went home and found his wife in their bedroom.
“Everything is ready” he announced. “The children will leave tomorrow.”
“My God!… How did you do that?”
He opened the drawer of the night table, lifted the books and took out the money.
“This money will never pay for what we’ve lost morally,” he whispered in a choked voice. “Never, even if they were to let us live, we’ll never be the same. Do you understand?”
She closed her eyes.
“And us?” she asked. “What will happen to us?”
“Us!”
He got up from the bed where they had been sitting side by side and went to the window. He looked at the black stains of the uniforms beyond the stakes and frowned.
“Us!” he began again.
And unwilling to lie to her, he said nothing. Did she understand the meaning of his silence? She stood behind him with a hand on his shoulder:
“Have you told Rose and Paul?” she asked, to tear him from the dreadful thoughts he dared not utter.
“No. Where’s Rose?”
“She hasn’t left her room.”
“Let her rest.”
At lunch, there were only four of them sitting at the table. Rose had locked herself up in her room. No one spoke of the Gorilla’s murder. There was an unusual commotion on their property, with a significant number of uniformed men pacing around, armed to the teeth. Most of the houses in the neighborhood were sealed and silent as graves. It seemed as if their terrified inhabitants had run for cover.
I will attend the Gorilla’s funeral tomorrow, the father told himself. I will play my part to the very end, until the children leave. After that, whatever happens, happens!
The sun was setting as he left the room. He ran into Rose at the door to the living room.
“Where are you going?” the father asked, obstructing her path.
“How can you ask that, Papa? I’m going out, that’s all.”
“Come, I need to talk to you.”
“Tomorrow, Papa, I have to go.”
“I have to talk to you,” he bellowed with such authority that she was dumbstruck and turned around.
“I’ll come to your room, go,” he added more softly.
She looked at him in fear, saw the time on her watch, then ran past him and made for the street.
“Rose!” he yelled.
He saw light in Paul’s room and went up. He opened the door quietly. The young man was sitting with his eyes on the ground, his arms on his chest, somber and stern.
“Get out of here, Papa, get out,” he said quietly.
“I have to talk to you.”
“We have nothing to say to each other.”
“Here is your passport and Rose’s and the money for your studies. More than you’ll need, a lot more because you’ll have to attend to your sister’s health. I have reserved seats on a plane for tomorrow. That’s what I had to say to you, my son.”
He hesitated for a moment, then walked slowly to the door.
“Papa!”
“Yes, son,” he replied without turning around.
He felt two shivering, ice-cold hands grasping him from behind, moving up over his face.
“Papa, Papa!” he heard again.
And the hands wandered madly over his face, seeking the embrace that would halt them. So he held these hands in his and stood there without moving, his son’s icy hands in his. Against his own weakened body, he felt the twitching of his son’s, robust and powerful.
“Calm down,” he advised, “you have to stay calm.”
He freed himself and led Paul to the bed, where he made him lie down. Lifting his son’s feet onto the bed, he looked at him pensively, then abruptly left the room. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, which he wiped with the back of his hand. Walking by the grandfather’s closed door, he heard the invalid whispering. He went to his room, got undressed and lay in bed next to his wife.
“Rose went out?” she asked him.
“Yes,” the father said.
“I’m going to use this time to pack her bags.”
He held her back by grabbing her hand.
“Wait until I’ve spoken to her, Laura. Wait until she comes back,” he said.
He kept his anguish to himself, counting the minutes until he suddenly sank into a deep sleep, his wife’s hand in his.
Paul stayed up waiting for Rose to return. Eyes fixed on his watch as it marked ten o’clock, he was startled when he heard the stairs creak. There she is! he told himself and held his breath. Fifteen minutes went by and he didn’t move. Finally he got up, left his room and put his ear to Rose’s door. He heard nothing. He knocked and no one answered. “Hell and damnation!” he whispered, “but I really did hear steps on the stairs!” He steadied his nerves and broke down the door with a firm right shoulder. Two bullets sounded not too far from the house, then two more.
“They’re shooting!” the mother screamed from her room.
The father appeared, haggard, supporting the mother who was about to faint. She pointed at the grandfather’s room.
“See if they’re here,” she said, her face deathly pale. “Make sure they’re not both outside.”
Paul opened the door, saw there was no one there, and rushed downstairs.
“No, not you, not you!” the mother screamed.
And she fell to her knees, arms folded on her chest screaming: “My God! Have mercy on us!”
Paul had already reached the yard, followed by the father, who was nervously pulling up his oversized pajamas.
Two bodies lay against the wall where they had probably been thrown, the child’s head resting at the grandfather’s feet, facing the house.
Paul bent over the bodies, looked across the property and hollered:
“Murderers! Murderers!”
Teeth clenched, he waited, but nothing stirred. So he put the invalid’s body in his father’s arms and lifted the grandfather onto his back.
Rose walked into the bright living room without a sound. Around the sofa, she could make out her father, her mother and her brother looking at two bodies lying beside each other. No one looked up when she came in and she didn’t say a word. The church bell tolled twelve times as she counted patiently, heels together, motionless, as if struck dead. In vain she waited for somebody to make a move, to know what to do, to know whether to speak, cry or scream, whether to clutch at the bodies and call out to them. Her legs were wobbly and she took a few steps back, moving with difficulty, like an automaton, as she slowly made her way upstairs. She recognized Paul’s footsteps behind her and went into her room, leaving the door open. He closed it behind them. They looked at each other in silence. Then Rose lifted her hand and stroked his face. He felt as if she were fighting off some sort of terrible exhaustion and that at any moment she would collapse before him, flimsy and disjointed like a puppet.
He watched her stagger.
For a brief instant, he could see the student who had fallen asleep beside him on the bench in the public square. He thought: Worn out, they’ve worn her out as well. He rushed and caught her on his shoulder. Then he put her in bed and sat by her side to wait for her to wake up. Dawn came and only then did he learn that Rose was dead.
<a l:href="#_ftnref28">[28]</a> Lysius Salomon’s rule: president of Haiti, 1879-88.
<a l:href="#_ftnref29">[29]</a>loas: See note 6 on p. 375.
<a l:href="#_ftnref30">[30]</a> fifty gourdes: One gourde = $0.20, according to the author; this was true when Haitian currency was pegged to the U.S. dollar (1913-89) (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref31">[31]</a> Armand Duval: In La Dame aux camélias, the 1848 novel (later adapted into a play) by Alexandre Dumas fils, Duval is the penniless lover of the dying heroine (trans).
<a l:href="#_ftnref32">[32]</a> merengue: Haitian national dance.
<a l:href="#_ftnref33">[33]</a>clairin: See note 5 on p. 375.
<a l:href="#_ftnref34">[34]</a>tafia: cheap rum distilled from molasses and refuse sugar (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref35">[35]</a> Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani: according to Mark 15:34, Jesus Christ’s words on the cross, meaning “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref36">[36]</a> Simple Simon: “Gros-Jean comme devan”: an old expression referring to Gros Jean, a dumb sucker forever tricked and abused, featured in La Fontaine’s fables and in Rabelais.