This morning, Annette announced her plans to marry.
“What?” Félicia cried out, but caught herself quickly. “I congratulate you, Annette,” she added, lowering her eyes.
“Good for you,” Jean Luze said simply.
“Do you like Paul?”
“You’re marrying him, not me, right?”
His tone seemed equivocal, as if he was nursing some rancor. Or is he, like us, simply unhappy about this match?
“Claire,” Annette told me afterward, “get ready to spend a tidy sum. What I want is a really beautiful lace dress. And you, Jean, what will you give me? At the store there is a gold bracelet I like.”
“It’s yours,” he replied simply.
“Find a way to order my trousseau from another town. Even the Syrian stores are going bankrupt here and all you can find is junk,” she added.
“Monsieur Trudor,” Jean Luze suggested enigmatically, “travels often enough to Port-au-Prince. Surely he could do a favor for his future daughter-in-law.”
“Now, that’s a terrific idea,” Annette replied.
Félicia waited for Annette to leave, then looking irate she said to me:
“A black man! A black man in our family. And one of the lowest sort! Can you believe this?”
“My God!” Jean Luze said, stroking her hair indulgently, “there is no need to get worked up about this.”
“It’s not so much the color of his skin that I mind, but his vulgarity and especially his father,” she stammered, a little ashamed of herself.
The wedding preparations have turned the house upside down. Annette comes in from time to time with lingerie that she displays on the dining room table for us admire: bras, nightgowns, slips, nothing is left out. And Jean Luze must give his opinion. He knows about such things, she insists, he’s traveled a great deal.
She opens her arms, buoyant and charming.
“Oh, if only I could go away, far, far away!”
She leans toward Jean Luze.
“Tell us some stories,” she begs him. “What was your life like? What did you used to do? You must have been with so many women…”
He gets up. A little too abruptly.
“I don’t like telling stories,” he said coldly, “and I never had much time to carry on with women…”
He walks away. I look at Félicia. Her eyes follow him with concern.
“He never talks about his past,” she says slowly, “never…”
“Not even to you?” Annette asks.
“Not even to me.”
She gets up.
He has confided in me though. Does he trust me so much that he would honor me with secrets he keeps from his wife? Or is it that he can let himself go with an old maid, telling her snippets of his life from time to time precisely to spare the one he loves, to keep her away from what’s past in order to preserve present love and future joys for her? Too bad! I will still have secrets to share with him, a painful, miserable past that I will help him bear. How I wish I could be sure he has never really confided in Félicia…
The baby is still quite ugly. He snores softly in his crib. Félicia fusses over him like a mother hen. She would hide him under her wings if she had any. Since his arrival she has never trusted me with him. On the other hand, I’m the one who washes the bottles and who keeps track of feedings. I have always had a supporting role in life. I resign myself to it more and more poorly. I will never love this kid. He is so small I have trouble believing he will ever grow up. He’s all phlegm. I have no desire to take him in my arms. His nose is always clogged with mucus and his skin is still peeling.
“My beautiful darling,” his mother whispers to him, “my cutie!”
It’s started again. This morning, Calédu bludgeoned several peasants. He’s furious. I watched the whole scene from behind my shutters. Other eyes in the neighborhood were spying too. I saw curtains moved by trembling hands, eyes glowing behind other blinds; I heard whispering to the right, to the left, and piercing the whispering at almost regular intervals, Calédu’s swearing, the peasants’ cries of pain and protest: they went on strike against M. Long to demand a better price for their wood. In response M. Long unloaded an electric saw from the boat docked in the harbor for the past two hours, and the commandant made the peasants haul it themselves. It was taking too much time to chop the trees down with axes, and M. Long was in a hurry to buy all of the mountain wood at the price he had fixed. One of the peasants kept talking despite the blows:
“Don’t give in!” he yelled. “Hang on, and if I die, don’t forget you must stick together.”
He was taken to the prison dying…
I clutch my doll against my chest. Alone in the dark, I gaze at the moon and attempt a smile. Desire is fading. I feel purified. I hear the church clock chime the hour. Another sleepless night washes away and the day rises without pity and lines up behind the other days of my life. My wrinkles deepen and my features wilt. Old age is coming soon. Oh, I want to live, to live before it’s too late! Suddenly, I am starving for tenderness more than ever. My own is being wasted and I would like to give it to someone. I open the window. Dawn rises fragrant with the night sap oozing from the trees. I imagine Jean Luze lying next to Félicia. She sleeps with her back to him. He is alone like me. Alone with his memories and the heavy past he drags after him like a ball and chain. I see him. He is thinking, one hand behind his head, the other twisting a pajama button. I’m wrong, he’s in the living room. His favorite melody reaches me, muted. He is with Beethoven. Why did he flee his bedroom? What comfort does this music bring him? What’s going on inside him? I open my door carefully. He is there in his bathrobe, head in his arms, bent by what pain I don’t know. I gently close my door again and go to the window: another man is walking in the street, his face turned toward my house. A lit cigarette betrays the jerky movements of his hand. Who is this man watching?
This solitary patrol beneath my window reveals either love or hate.
Today Jean Luze’s brow is lined with concern. He smokes endlessly and walks up and down the dining room. We are alone. Félicia is in her room and Annette has not come home yet. I steal a glance at him but can’t bring myself to question him. Meanwhile, he suffers, I know it. He stops in front of me, looks at me for a second and draws a long puff from his cigarette.
“You know what Monsieur Long suggested to me yesterday?” he said. “No, it’s loathsome. He wanted me to doctor the books so that he could prove he paid the peasants three times more for the wood than he had. Naturally, I would get my cut. It’s really a gang and the Syrians are in on it too. I saw proof of this recently…”
He seems beside himself.
“I may be stupid,” he adds, “but I can’t compromise, I refuse to get rich that way. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, I see that now. After all, robbery and exploitation are the rule these days. Monsieur Long chose a foreigner as his accountant. He knows full well why. Because, after all, how is this any of my business, he must tell himself. But he forgets that a man, no matter where he is, takes his ideas and convictions with him. I slaved hard all my life. I’ve never had to get involved in any racket. That’s more than I can bear. By working for Monsieur Long, I feel I’m committing a dishonest act against you. An American friend offered me this position and I accepted it. Simple as that. You think you’ve seen it all and then you see this kind of corruption and realize you don’t know anything about life.”
“Quit, Monsieur Long,” I said to him very simply.
“Do you want me to live here at your expense? Do you think that could be a solution for me? No, the only thing I can imagine is leaving. I’m waiting for my contract to expire before talking to Félicia. She’s so fragile, so emotional!”