“You,” he says to me, “are a pearl among women.”
It’s been a month since I added anything to my journal. I have had neither the time nor the desire. My life is so full! I have a son and a man. My door is open all day long to Jean Luze. Why would I need an outlet? I live fully.
Félicia is four months along and her morning sickness is getting worse instead of better. She is wasting away even as her belly grows larger. Her cadaverous appearance is hard to look at. Dr. Audier gives her daily injections because she throws up the little she eats. She kicked out Jean Luze from their room the other day because she claimed he smelled of tobacco. Is she also allergic to love? Abstinence will make him easy prey.
Annette comes to the house almost every day. She is splendid in her maternity blouse. Triumphant, she continues to torture Félicia.
“Poor sweetie,” she cries out, kissing her, “you look so awful! It’s a crime! Your husband shouldn’t get you pregnant!…”
This in the presence of Jean Luze.
With mimicry impossible to reproduce she recounts Eugénie Duclan’s wedding. She imitates the pharmacist’s stiff walk and Eugénie’s childish posturing.
“And she had the gall to wear a crown of orange blossoms in her hair. It just made her look even older. Nothing draws one’s attention like contrast. What a dreadful display! At that age one should have the decency to have a simple wedding.”
Youth is pitiless, and with good reason!
I saw Dora Soubiran fall. She was walking with legs spread apart, a basket on her arm; she stumbled on a stone and fell. I ran down the stairs. I gave her my hand in the middle of the street and walked her home. Calédu happened to go by just then. He stopped. I did not look at him. Eyes glinted behind drawn blinds. Charles Farus stood behind his counter with his eyes wide and his hand over his mouth. Several beggars blocked our way.
“Let us through!” I shouted at them impatiently.
I led Dora inside her house and we stayed there a long time stirring up old memories.
“Watch out for the commandant,” she whispered suddenly, “watch out for him.”
“I will come back every day,” I replied firmly.
“Watch out for him,” she repeated.
Suddenly she began to shiver as if she were cold.
“With each blow, he would yelclass="underline" ‘snobs, you bunch of snobs, mulatto snobs, I’ll make cripples of all of you, you snobs…’”
She hid her face in her hands and sobbed.
“He hates us! Claire, he hates us!”
The cause of this hatred is beyond her: she has never understood much about politics and her suffering is of the most useless, most unfair variety that Calédu has ever inflicted on anyone.
The whispers from behind the blinds followed me home. Why was I afraid? And how little effort it takes to be rid of that feeling!
“Do you remember,” she said to me the next day, “our wonderful evenings together in the old days, back in those beautiful days? We would eat what we liked, weren’t afraid of anyone, and we were happy.” (She lowered her voice.) “He may have crippled me but my soul has no master save the Lord, the Lord alone.”
Her stubbornness made me smile.
“I won’t hang my head before him either anymore,” I promised.
“They’re constantly spying on me, Claire!” she continued. “Night and day, they’re tapping on my door, it’s unbearable! They’re watching me as if I were a ringleader. Look…”
She opened the doors to the backyard: behind the fence beggars standing on tiptoe were trying to figure out what was going on inside her house.
“They’re all armed,” she whispers. “I’m going to flee to Port-au-Prince. I have already written to friends and told them everything.”
“To whom did you entrust your letter?”
“To Madame Camuse. She promised to get someone reliable to deliver it for me.”
The beggars posted in the street followed me to my door with their eyes. Two of them even escorted me. Was it out of weakness or fear that I opened my bag and gave them money?
Can it be that I am the most cowardly of all the women here?
Somewhere in the sky there is a ring of stars. I can’t sleep. Intense and mysterious is the night! It resembles my inner life. A few stars play hide-and-seek. I see them run and chase each other in a corner of the sky. A luminous dot under the trees on the street awakens my curiosity. Someone is still there smoking and walking alone. I recognize Calédu’s silhouette. He can’t sleep either. I feel like running up to him to dig my nails into his eyes and drag him blind and bleeding along Grand-rue.
I look after Félicia like a mother. I kneel down to make her drink her soup. I am at her feet…
I always thought that one would become generous if one became rich by chance, but I’ve learned that plain happiness can make you good as well. Everyone has his own idea of happiness. Suffering has made me modest, so for now I am content with life’s charity. I even tremble at the thought of getting too ambitious, for fear of spoiling everything. Félicia’s presence is so negligible that it doesn’t bother me. I treat her like a sick child. How could I be jealous of this wretch? I am Jean-Claude’s mother, really, just as I am Jean Luze’s wife. This idea brings me so much joy that I would like to share it. I would like to play the Beethoven concerto at full volume. I want to set the house ablaze with music. Félicia impatiently asks me to lower the volume; the concerto annoys her. This brings me back to earth. She does exist. She is between us. Right now, she is listening to Gisèle Audier’s gossip. The woman chatters like a magpie.
“Me, my dear,” she says, “I am against all these women who disregard the prescribed laws of society and claim to be independent. Lately, it seems like anything goes, it’s disgusting. In the old days, it wasn’t like that. We’ve let our youth off the leash. They’ve become depraved. I would never name names but I know of very young girls who won’t say no to anything. You’ve probably found out by now what kind of life Jane Bavière leads. It’s appalling. She entertains men after nightfall. Many have been seen going there. Who are they? We don’t know that yet. No one has recognized them. They come at night and knock on her door. Eugénie Duclan saw them one evening. So has Madame Camuse. Maybe she invites the prefect, and the commandant. She won’t be able to keep her secret for long. The entire neighborhood is watching her. Oh! But we’ll learn their names soon enough! It’s just like what happened with the Grandupré girl. You know, I was the first to see that she was sneaking into Old Mathurin’s house, the old pervert. I told the whole neighborhood and Madame Grandupré beat Agnès until there was blood.”
My God! How I would like the right to slap her to make her keep her mouth shut! And how mean they are, despite everything that’s happened…
It was barely five in the morning and Jean-Claude woke earlier than usual and was crying in his crib, when there was a knock at my door.
I opened up and Jean Luze came in.
“Why is he crying?” he asked me. “Is he sick?”
“Our little gentleman has probably soiled himself and wants to be changed.”
He leaned over the crib at the same moment I did and our heads touched.
He smiled and lifted his face to look at me.
“Settle down your son,” he said.