The corner grocer is the latest victim. I just learned this from an overexcited Mme Audier. This somewhat undermines Dr. Audier’s diagnosis regarding Calédu’s attacks against the bourgeois class. Mme Potiron’s little grocery has literally been pillaged.
“The agenda is not the same this time,” Dr. Audier explained to Jean Luze. “Believe me, Madame Potiron will not be tortured. The armed beggars have to eat, don’t they? Jacques Marti’s murder, the arrest of the poets, the arrest of the grocer, all reveal the excessive zeal of a soldier hoping to attract the attention of his superiors and earn distinction. But the torture inflicted on a certain category of women conceals something else.”
“What do you mean?” Jean Luze asked.
“Well, simply that our commandant must have often been humiliated by our beautiful bourgeois women and is now avenging himself in his own fashion.”
“Class again!” Jean Luze said, frowning.
“And color. I don’t think I need to tell you that in this black nation, color prejudice is as subtle and dangerous as in the United States.”
“Have the blacks in this country suffered that much?”
“To be honest, yes,” Audier confided, lowering his head.
“Does that really mean Calédu needs to act like a savage?” Félicia then said. “We’ve tried to accommodate his sensitivities. We opened our doors to him. What more can he want?”
“For you to welcome him as a friend, perhaps,” Dr. Audier answered, “or for one of our beautiful ‘aristocrats’ to agree to marry him.”
“Oh no! Never that!” Félicia protested. “The concessions to which we’ve stooped are quite enough. And besides, who but Annette could be to his liking? All we have left is a bunch of old hags.”
“Félicia, dear!” Jean Luze said, “take it easy, this topic always upsets you.”
“I hate them, I hate them,” she stammered, Jean Luze’s hand on her cheek. “Annette’s marriage has already lowered our standing. I kept quiet. I put up with everything. But it was horrible…”
“Now do you see what I mean?” Dr. Audier asked, shaking his head at Jean Luze. “I wasn’t exaggerating, as you can see.”
“Yes, but between us,” he answered, “Calédu and the others in power do nothing to make themselves likable. One is a vulgar criminal and the others are vile upstarts ready to do anything to fill their pockets. Surely there must be men of a different caliber somewhere in this country.”
“Well, you are beginning to get it, then, and for once you have come to the heart of the matter,” Dr. Audier said jubilantly “Do you think, my friend, that people worth their salt would act like Calédu or like Monsieur Trudor? They have been chosen precisely because of what they represent.”
“Yes. But their abuses can only make things worse.”
“They have found an opportunity to take revenge, to have their turn at humiliating us…”
And suddenly turning toward Mme Audier, who hadn’t said a word:
“You, my wife,” he said, “what did you once tell me after I invited Dr. Béranger for dinner?”
“That I had never seen blacks at my parents’ table,” she answered impatiently.
“And the same was true for the Clamonts,” Dr. Audier continued, “and for the Camuses, the Duclans, and the Soubirans, the same was true for all of us.”
“Too bad the commandant is a criminal,” Jean Luze then said, looking straight ahead, “because otherwise I might sympathize with him. In any case, he has made himself the representative of hatred and violence and no honest man could agree to absolve him.”
“By no means,” Dr. Audier concluded. “He has gone about it altogether badly. They should all go to hell!”
And seized with panic, he sprang to the door, opening it slightly in order to inspect the street…
Yes, maybe they’re right to behave the way they do, I then told myself. Yes, maybe I would be just as covetous if I were in their shoes, and just as ruthless. One thing remains true: hatred only breeds hatred.
Calédu recently spit in my path with contempt. His armed beggars are aggressive and act as if they were great leaders in their rags. They track us down like wild beasts. We walk around like beaten dogs, tails between our legs and noses to the ground. Terrorized and tamed by flea-bitten bums and upstarts. How humiliating!…
Last night’s dream disturbs me stilclass="underline" I was alone, standing in broad daylight in the middle of an immense arena framed by stands filled with agitated, terrifying crowds. They were screaming and calling me out and pointing at me with their fingers. What were they accusing me of? I ran, ashamed of my nakedness, looking in vain for a dark corner where I could hide, when suddenly I saw a stone statue before me. At that moment, the crowd’s cries became deafening. The statue, with its enormous phallus stiffened in a voluptuous and painful spasm, was of Calédu. The statue came to life and the phallus wagged feverishly. I threw myself at its feet, submissive and rebellious, hardly daring to look up, my thighs shut tight. I heard cries: “Kill, kill!” The crowd was cheering on Calédu to murder me. Cold metal caressed the skin of my neck as ferocious laughter replaced the screaming of the suddenly silent spectators. The weapon sank slow and deep into my flesh. For a long time I remained immobile, frozen in terror. Then, rising, I walked in a thick mist, my hands in front of me, beheaded, with my head dangling on my chest. Dead and living through my death…
Such nightmares are familiar to me now. How many times have I been chased by mad bulls, by low beasts, monsters, all wanting to rape or kill me? When I was a little girl, I often dreamed that my father had been transformed into a roaring two-legged creature with a lion’s mane, whipping me as I searched in vain for the key that would release me from his cage!
We were invited to spend the day at the Trudors’. Jean-Claude could have been my excuse to stay home but Félicia wants to take him along because of the beach.
“I know you,” Annette said to me, “no last-minute cancellation. I’ll go get you myself if the Luzes come without you.”
So, whether I liked it or not, I had to go.
The prefect’s modern villa is the only beautiful building in our area. It looks ostentatiously out of place beside our old buildings with their twenty doors and windows and their balconies and gables, which instantly evoke the original history of a fabulous past. If, as Mme Trudor said the other night, her husband serves the Republic for peanuts, then he must also have discovered a gold mine. In the midst of their chandeliers, silk curtains and carpets, you forget all about the beggars and become convinced you have been transported into another world. It is less hot today. The sea is before us. The water is so calm that one can look on its sandy depths undulating as far as the eye can see. Under a veranda covered with bougainvillea in bloom, Mme Trudor is frantically arranging a monumental buffet, and she greets me with enthusiasm.
“At last, an intelligent person who can help me with this,” she says to me. “These servants can be so dumb!…”
Does she think, as I do in fact, that my place is in the pantry? In any case, I’ll be kept busy and that’s fortunate. I feel ill at ease beside these half-naked women. Félicia has put Jean-Claude down on some cushions at her feet and Annette is cooing over him, posing in adoration. Jean Luze is chatting with M. Trudor, drinking whiskey on the rocks. He seems pretty cheerful. The sight of so much female flesh must not be unpleasant for him. I catch him staring somewhat frequently at a tall bimbo with tanned skin, a very fashionable girl from Port-au-Prince staying with the Trudors and playing the ingénue. He goes inside to get changed and comes back in bathing trunks. Mme Trudor and I are the only ones not swimming. It would amuse me to see her half-naked. It doesn’t flatter me to be paired with her. Do they think I don’t have a good body? Even Annette doesn’t have my sculpted abdomen. Félicia wears a more decent bathing suit, probably to hide her bulges. She doesn’t suffer from false shame; she’s lucky that way.