Jean Luze looked at her coldly, as if making an effort to conceal his disapproval, his contempt! He does not love her, it’s unmistakable. It’s true she has been acting like a little whore. Beautiful as she is, a man like him will never love her. And yet, how many love affairs he must have had! Maybe that’s what has made him choosy. All the easy conquests probably made him wary. He knows what he can expect from women. Maybe that’s why he picked the blandest of the three, the least interesting sister.
It was two in the morning and I was in deep sleep when someone knocked on my door. It was Jean Luze. Worried and distressed, he begged me to come help Félicia. She was wet with sweat and writhing in pain.
“We need Dr. Audier,” I said to him.
Jean Luze left, and in silence I put away the clothes draped on the furniture. Félicia moaned, crying and calling out to me:
“It hurts, Claire, oh how it hurts!”
A moment later, Dr. Audier, hurrying as much as his bent little feet and paunch permitted, was leaning over my sister.
“She’s in labor,” he declared to Jean Luze.
“But she’s only seven months along!” Jean Luze exclaimed without hiding his anxiety.
Audier tilted his head before responding:
“Many a powerful man was born before term!”
Jean Luze bent over his wife. He pressed her against him with infinite tenderness and wiped her brow:
“Be brave,” he said to her.
“Boil some water, Claire,” the doctor ordered me, “and have some clean linen ready.”
And turning to Jean Luze:
“You leave the room,” the doctor said softly. “She’ll hold up better if you are not here. The husband’s presence always complicates things.”
“Claire, don’t leave her,” he begged me.
“What’s going on?” Annette yelled from the landing.
“Félicia is having the baby,” Jean Luze answered.
“The baby!” she exclaimed, appalled.
I ran to the pantry to wake up Augustine. We boiled water and we took out sheets and bath towels from the armoires.
“Poor Madame Luze!” Augustine sighed. “How she suffers!”
Does she love us? Does she at least love my young sisters, who came into the world and grew up before her very eyes? In a prominent family, what is the place of a house slave who called the babies mademoiselle and conceded to their every whim for fear of being beaten? Jean Luze is more polite and respectful to her than we are.
She came and went, her black face sullen, responding to Félicia’s moans.
“Here, Mademoiselle Claire,” she told me, “here is the boiling water; it must be taken to Madame’s room.”
Holding Félicia’s hand, wiping her sweaty face, I felt my heart contract with bitterness: she was the one bringing Jean Luze’s son into the world.
In the living room, he and Annette were alone. That thought helped me forgive Félicia, who, instead of me, was about to bring the man I loved one of the greatest joys in his life.
The labor was turning out to be difficult. I stayed by Félicia’s bedside until six in the morning. Jean Luze was so nervous that he was not able to eat anything. Annette suddenly started acting mysteriously. I can’t tell if something’s happened between them.
Before my eyes my sister’s body was drawn and quartered. She was moaning and screaming as I patiently wiped her forehead.
“Claire! Claire!” she cried, hanging on to me.
Toward seven o’clock, she let loose an awful hoarse scream, and Dr. Audier, leaning in, cigarette at the corner of his mouth, welcomed the child onto the great mahogany bed where my mother had given birth to her three daughters in his care.
“It’s a boy” he told me.
He was so ugly I was sure I could never love him.
“And Félicia?” Jean Luze asked, opening the bedroom door.
“Everything went well,” Dr. Audier replied. “Wait a little before coming in.”
The child breathed feebly, half-purple. The doctor slapped his bottom and plunged him in warm water. He wriggled, then screamed.
“Give me some cotton, Claire,” Audier said to me. “I need a lot of cotton.”
He made him lie on a thick layer of cotton bedding and wrapped him in a blanket.
“He’s small,” he added, “keeping him warm will help.”
The news about the baby is alarming. Audier can’t promise anything. Félicia of course knows nothing. She is more serene than ever, patiently drawing milk from her swollen breasts with a pump. She got up today for the first time, doctor’s orders, and she took a few steps around the room. Jean Luze forces himself to smile for her. Fortunately, she’s noticed nothing! What a temperament! She’s stuffed with straw. She’s a scarecrow. I know this man’s every expression and can predict every reaction. How can she not sense his mortal fear? She eats with great appetite while he barely touches anything, though I myself take the trouble to prepare his favorite food. For him, Annette is as nonexistent as I am. He doesn’t even see her anymore. He lives in perpetual anguish, an anguish so overwhelming that it steals him away from me. He doesn’t even listen to music. He doesn’t care for anything. Yesterday, when he was in the living room smoking a pipe, I went in on tiptoes to put a Beethoven concerto on the turntable. He hardly listened for a minute, before getting up to worry over the baby still swaddled in cotton and more ugly than a little monkey.
Being spurned is making Annette sick. She seems to suffer as much as I do. She worries me. I forced her to live too intensely. She is not used to suffering and it has torn her apart: she looks like a madwoman in her eccentric dresses and her excessive makeup. She doesn’t eat anymore. Jean Luze doesn’t even seem to notice her absence at the dinner table. The tension is straining my nerves. Does his whole world consist of Félicia and the little runt she gave birth to?
There are guests in the living room. Eugénie Duclan and her pharmacist are among them. It so happens I have a prescription from Dr. Audier for Félicia. I give it to Charles Farus, who adjusts his glasses to decipher it. He shakes his head: no, he doesn’t have this medicine; it will have to be sent for from Port-au-Prince. Then what’s the use of your pharmacy? I want to scream at him. There they are, just about all of them, and all anxious to find out whether Félicia is dead or alive, how big the baby is. It’s obvious they are seeking entertainment and especially gossip. One can tell by their faces. They must be counting months, figuring out the dates. Jean Luze tries his best to be pleasant. They seem intimidated and even flattered to be shaking his hand. An inferiority complex? A foreigner has always represented the height of perfection in our eyes. He has always had the reputation of being rich, happy, knowing everything better than us. He opens our eyes on new horizons and unveils a mysterious, unknown world to us.
Eugénie Duclan offers her arm to the partly arthritic Charles Farus. Things do seem to be going swell for them. I have a feeling that soon we will see this forty-year-old sister go down the church aisle with this pharmacist, who, thanks to illness and old age, will end up using her as a nurse at the store.
“So, the news is good?” Eugénie insists.
“The news is good,” Jean Luze affirms.
“God be praised!”
“God be praised!” he acquiesces, imperturbable.
She is dressed in a starched skirt that makes her look like a puffed-up turkey. He is wearing a greenish alpaca suit and is clutching a grimy panama hat.
“Oh for the love of God,” Jean Luze sighs after their departure. “It’s like they stepped out of a painting from another century.”
That makes me smile.
Then, Mme Camuse comes. She disregards the doctor’s orders and walks right into the Luzes’ room without even a present in her hand.
“You! You, Félicia Clamont, my own goddaughter! I would have never thought! Madame Audier has taken it upon herself to spread the news that you got married pregnant, my girl.”