Agnès Grandupré grew up under quarantine. She was erased from our lives, and I sometimes forgot she even existed. I caught a glimpse of her only at mass, where her arrival always provoked whispers and distraction. Gaunt, her feverish eyes glued to her prayer book, she held herself straight, chin proudly held high; her reserve was moving. It had been long since she had stopped visiting old Mathurin and she led a dignified and modest life. But society, spiteful and querulous, always seeking sacrificial victims, never forgave her. Her parents themselves had fueled the scandal by punishing her so spectacularly, for fear people would say they weren’t raising her right. “That nasty little Grandupré girl next door,” Mme Duclan called her. And even Mlle Verduré, whom I had once caught kissing my father at the piano and who was unmarried at thirty-five, would raise her eyes to heaven and cry out: “And she dares hold her head high!” This young woman’s tragic face seemed to conceal something other than vice. One day Georges Soubiran recited poems of such infinite sadness and refinement, and then admitted they were by Agnès. He was an orphan. Dora’s parents, with whom he lived, accused him of having spoken to Agnès and ordered him to break up with her. He packed his bags and left in response. Mathurin took him in. This time the scandal went too far and became the talk of the town. Agnès and Georges were in love and met at Mathurin’s for several days. The Granduprés almost beat their daughter to death and locked her inside the house. Tonton Mathurin stood in the middle of the street hurling insults at the “idiots and provincial bourgeois,” barged into the Grandupré house and went up to Agnès’s room. She was in bed, burning with fever. He knelt at her bedside and spoke to her softly. Then he got up and asked the flummoxed Granduprés for Agnès’s hand on behalf of Georges Soubiran.
“He is poor, and she is not rich either. I have money enough for both of them. They will not be in need,” he announced to them.
Then he went down to the street again.
“I am a black man,” he shouted, “and I spit in your faces. Dreadful are you who see evil everywhere. You soil every noble feeling with your stifled and bastardly minds. I am certain that God spits on this province as I do, and the day will come when you shall feel the weight of His mighty and avenging hand.”
Curious onlookers gathered on the veranda and crossed themselves piously. Eight days later, Dr. Audier was woken up in the middle of the night. He only had time to throw on a robe as his servant led him by flickering candlelight to the Granduprés’. Agnès was already coughing up blood, and she died in Georges Soubiran’s arms, holding old Mathurin’s hand.
Her parents seemed to be in a daze. Sitting by the coffin of their only child, they watched a procession of heads go by that only yesterday had been turned away from them. Then Mathurin rose:
“We will bury Mademoiselle Grandupré without you,” he shouted. “Let her at least rest in peace.”
And Mme Grandupré, suddenly feeling her pain, ignored my mother’s outstretched hand.
I looked at Agnès, so pale and white that I envied her. Her hands were clasped on her chest, and Georges Soubiran was kneeling near the coffin in tears. I wish I died in her place, I told myself. Pursing her lips, my mother then pushed me aside and we left the Grandupré house. I stole away from home and followed the funeral procession up to the cemetery. Standing beside the freshly dug grave, Georges Soubiran recited one of Agnès’s poems and swore that her name would be forever engraved in literature…
The terrible political news that reached us that evening by way of a few passengers off the British boat prevented my parents from punishing what they called my insubordination. It was July 27, 1915, a dreadful date that would forever destroy my father’s political ambitions, ruin his good health and lead him straight to his grave.
The next day, we were still in bed when we were startled by Dr. Audier’s voice calling for my father.
“Clamont! Port-au-Prince is up in arms. The Palais National was attacked and the political prisoners were shot.”
“Where did you hear this?” asked my father, looking haggard, his hair disheveled.
“From a student, Justin Rollier. He arrived on horseback last night.”
Then Laurent arrived, out of breath, to announce that President Sam had been assassinated.
“They broke into the French embassy where the president had sought refuge. They murdered him. His body was mutilated and dragged in the streets… Ah Clamont, I can’t go on, I really can’t…”
“What?” screamed my father. “Speak, Laurent, I beg of you.”
“The Americans!”
“What? What about the Americans?”
“Their troops have landed at Bizoton. They are taking every key position in the capital.”
“Laurent! Come now!” my father said as gently as possible, “have you lost your mind?”
“Alas! No, Clamont.”
He didn’t notice Dr. Audier gesturing in protest behind my father’s back. He brought in Justin Rollier, still covered in mud from his long trip on horseback.
“Tell him, Justin. Tell Monsieur Clamont what you saw with your own eyes.”
He noticed me at the door of my room in my nightgown and he stuttered in embarrassment. I quickly shut the door, threw on my robe and went down to find Augustine in her quarters.
“Up already, Mademoiselle Claire?” she exclaimed in astonishment.
“I’ll have my coffee here.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle.”
“Give me some bread and butter, too.”
“There, Mademoiselle… I’ll see if Mademoiselle Félicia is up now, and then I’ll come back to get a tray for Madame and Sir.”
I heard a scream and rushed upstairs: my father lay on the ground before Justin Rollier, and Laurent was helping Dr. Audier undress him.
“By God,” the doctor muttered, “I tried to tell you to keep quiet. To give this kind of news to such an excitable man without preparing him, just madness!”
“Lord! Lord!” was all Laurent could say.
My mother ran up in her nightgown and began screaming as well.
“Stay calm, Madame Clamont,” Dr. Audier said. “He’s just passed out, that’s all. Consider the child you are carrying.”
And turning to me:
“Claire, take your mother back to her room and send Augustine here with a basin and some towels.”
Despite several bleedings, my father died the same day. Six months later, my mother gave birth to a little girl as white as Félicia. She held her out to me and said: “Raise her, my daughter, like your father raised you, and take your sisters under your wing to keep them from sin.” Three years later, she died as well, of an unknown disease that Dr. Audier was inspired to call… lassitude.
In the meantime, one morning the American Marines arrived on our shores, taking control of the police station, the Customs House, the Public Works and the Sanitation Department. They dismissed some and appointed others. They built a new hospital, dug new gutters and cleaned up the town. All the “little soldiers” disappeared, as did the district commandant and his bicorne hat. They were dismissed for reasons of health and were replaced by others selected by a low-ranking American officer according to their physical build. We also learned that there was to be a new police force. This was an occupation, with all the humiliations and benefits an occupation brings for a poor, undisciplined, indebted people, their strength sapped by all of its internecine struggles. Dr. Audier flatly refused a position as head of the new hospital. M. Bavière and M. Duclan, mayor and prefect respectively, submitted their resignations. All those on the payroll of President Dartiguenave’s government [23] were lumped together by our nationalists and labeled “dirty collaborators.” The years went by. Some died, others were born. The Syrians reinstalled themselves in our town, and little by little we got used to the khaki uniforms worn by the Americans and our policemen. We familiarized ourselves with certain American expressions like “goddamn” or “son of a bitch.” Then there was the uprising: the Marchaterre Massacre, [24] the student strike, and finally, in 1934, the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Students returning from Port-au-Prince told us how they witnessed, with tears in their eyes, the restoration of our flag over the barracks built by Leconte, where it hadn’t flown since 1915… But let’s return to what my life was like during that stretch of time.