He gets up and looks at his watch:
“It’s already six o’clock! Excuse me, Claire, I have to get dressed, and thanks for being a friend to me…”
I didn’t have the strength to throw myself in his arms to confess my love. What he had just said about Félicia held me back. It’s that naïve, childish, delicate side of her that he must love. For him, I’m the eldest, the experienced woman who has made her choice, who didn’t marry in order to remain independent. He would never believe that I have suffered so much from being this way that I now doubt myself. He comes to me like I am a sister, he opens his heart, what more can I ask for? If only he knew that my experiences are merely secondhand, if only he knew that romantic love would make me melt! What would he do then? Can he really think there have been men in my life? Having seen how Annette lives her life, can he even imagine that other women have grown old without ever having had a single affair, traumatized and shriveled? He talks about himself and I keep quiet. All I have ever known how to do is keep quiet.
“Augustine!” I shouted to take my unhappiness out on someone, “what are you waiting for, set the table!”
“I won’t stay in this hole,” Annette blurted out this morning. “I will leave. They want to stop Paul from marrying me. They’re telling him all kinds of stories about me. The biggest cowards among them are sending him anonymous letters. As if they had nothing better to do. But he will marry me, I swear…”
She is reaping the nastiness she has sown. She is forced to deal with others for the first time in her life and is just appalled.
How can I convince her that only the most base people of any social class pay attention to gossip? It would be imprudent and useless.
“They don’t exist for me,” she shrieks. “Why are they meddling in my affairs?”
The young Trudor dines with us that evening. Annette is so ravishing he can hardly eat. She leads him into the living room. Later, after the Luzes retire to their room, I catch him kneeling before her. He is caressing her slowly, deeply, his mouth on her breast. Then he pushes her back and buries his head between her thighs. She moans and finally lets out a little muffled cry almost like she’s in pain. He wants to take her but she pushes him away. She pulls down her skirt impatiently and strokes his hair. He will have her only on their wedding night. She’s not as harebrained as she seems. She knows how to make a man do her bidding.
Jane Bavière made me a blue dress to wear on the day of the baptism. After all, the godmother shouldn’t look too dumpy. The baby is a month old. His limbs are growing, to my surprise. He is not as skinny as before. He bleats and stares at the ceiling with eyes that look like his father’s. I can’t stand to hear him cry. I’m a little obsessed with keeping track of his mealtimes. It’s odd. Could this be love?
Tomorrow is the baptism. The godfather has given me perfume that I hate and flowers that I put in a vase in the living room. Let’s hope he will remember to tie his laces and close his fly.
Félicia is having me arrange an elaborate menu. Really, how inconsiderate! There is only salted fish and cornmeal at the market. And of the lowest quality. The chickens are scrawny and prohibitively priced, vegetables nonexistent. Augustine returns home every market day babbling: “It’s death,” she says, “death!” It’s an expression she likes and she uses to sum up any grim situation. Too bad, we will serve them fish every which way and nothing but fish.
The Trudors, their whole clan, naturally have to be there. I also invited Mme Camuse and Father Paul. This time, Jean Luze did not add M. Long’s name to the guest list and I managed to get Annette to accept that we will exclude Calédu. Whatever happens happens!
At the table we are a fairly disparate group. Mme Camuse is very distinguished in a high-collared black dress. And Father Paul, looking dapper, coughing loudly, a real wine enthusiast and gourmand; Mme Trudor, a black woman as sinewy as her son and as her thin, short, bald husband; Félicia, whose pallor looks green (Jean-Claude has taken to crying at night), and Annette, her long black hair floating on her shoulders, radiant with health; Paul Trudor, silent and gloomy; and Jean Luze, cordial and affable, a man of the world, I must say. Paul’s sister, some kind of idiot clucking like a mother hen, is sitting next to me. She has a devious manner I don’t care for. It seems the Trudors aren’t very good at bringing up their offspring either. Mme Camuse’s demeanor has me on tenterhooks. She’s watching the Trudors too closely. Her eyes turn from the wife to the husband, from the husband to the children; stiff-lipped, she follows their every gesture: M. Trudor scrapes too hard with his spoon and his wife forgets to wipe her lips before drinking. I avoid Mme Camuse’s looks and eat in silence. Dr. Audier, seated next to his wife, is listening to Father Paul’s rather tedious stories about the old days.
“Young Haitians laugh at the past,” Dr. Audier says. “Once upon a time, the past nurtured, gave hope and courage.”
“What do you expect,” Jean Luze answers softly. “All young people have learned to look toward the future and, in the process, they strive to forget the past.”
“Is it that easy?” Father Paul asks him.
“To forget the past? Yes and no. In any case, forgetting is necessary. In a country’s history the example of others, even if they were heroes, can’t help anyone. Contexts change. The struggle becomes different…”
“You are right,” Mme Camuse butts in, more thoughtlessly than ever. “And you seem to speak from experience. However little you know our country, what is happening here must have enlightened you. You’ll be astonished to hear that, not so long ago, we lived opulently…”
“Opulently, really!” Jean Luze exclaims skeptically.
“Oh!” Annette adds suddenly. “Today I saw a beggar swallow a raw fish. It seems he caught it by diving headfirst into the sea.”
“Only some of you lived opulently,” M. Trudor emphasizes, ignoring Annette completely. “You’ll tell me that nothing has changed or that the situation has even gotten worse; all that’s happened is the roles have been reversed. As the Haitian proverb goes: ‘Today it’s the hunter’s turn, tomorrow the prey’s.’ As for the beggars, only the hurricanes are responsible, isn’t that right?”
No one responds. Jean Luze grimaces involuntarily. Mme Camuse fixes an imperceptible smile, tilting her head with a more than aristocratic bent, meant to challenge the vulgarity of the “prey” to which the prefect and his family belong.
“And they were selfless, your heroes,” Father Paul continues vehemently, following his train of thought. “I don’t mean to criticize anyone, but I once knew men worthy of admiration, who put country before coin.”
“Selfless, who isn’t?” Mme Trudor cries. “Bureaucrats are so badly paid that they can boast of serving the Republic for peanuts. Isn’t that so, Julian?”
“You don’t get things done by choosing poverty,” M. Trudor declares again. “You do it with this”-he taps his belt where a weapon is concealed-“and with some of that”-he slowly rubs his fingers together.
“Hmph!” Father Paul grumbles.
Jean Luze tactfully changes the topic of conversation. Turning to Paul, he asks if he enjoys reading.
“Yes, detective novels,” he admits frankly.
“Well, now, that’s very good,” Mme Camuse nods with a mocking smile.
And turning to Jean Luze:
“My dear sir, would it be indiscreet to ask you how you like it here?”
“My work keeps me here, Madame,” he replied coldly.
“You see, I was just going to say,” she adds with some uncertainty. “Choosing this Haitian province wasn’t the right thing for a man like you. How did you end up here, I wonder?”
“I go where work calls me, Madame. Unfortunately, I don’t have an estate.”
“Bah!” Mme Camuse says softly with her usual eloquent little toss of the head, “but nevertheless you’ve managed to find happiness here.”