“Call Jean for me,” Félicia sometimes asks. “I am so sick I don’t have the strength to love him.”
Without jealousy I watch him sit beside her and kiss her hand or stroke her hair. I have never caught him touching her as if he were in love with her. Despite himself, he treats her like a sick child. He pities her, not me.
“It’s the pregnancy,” he says to comfort her, “you have to wait a bit. It will be over soon. You’re already four months along…”
Such tenderness!
“Jean is nothing but an ethereal being,” Annette told me yesterday. “I bet he’s a shabby lover. I would definitely cheat on him if I were his wife. And I am grateful that life has worked out the way it has.”
I don’t believe a word of what Mme Audier and Father Paul say about Jane. Even though Félicia frowns on it, I visit her and Dora regularly. Dora and those crazed eyes of hers! Jane, stooping over her sewing machine, working late into the night, and seeing no one but me! I will never abandon them again. Jane’s son often talks to Pierrilus, the one-armed beggar who sleeps under our veranda, the only one beaten by Calédu for complaining-he dared ask for his wages-but probably not the only one to hate him for his smug indifference to their plight. Does he think it’s enough to arm them against us, is he so stupid as to believe this will comfort them as they starve?…
Félicia keeps getting worse. She is skin and bones. I forbid myself to think of her death; but she looks too much like a woman condemned. How often I have done away with her in my mind! I did so to give flight to my dreams, to stuff myself with illusions. What perfect crimes, what unmitigated betrayals we store up in ourselves! Only deep within do we have the courage to really live, and that’s a good thing. I am the one who dresses Félicia, the one who feeds her. She has been handed over to her worst enemy. Today, Félicia threw up her soup. She can’t keep anything down. Jean Luze came home just as she suffered a mild fainting spell, during the course of which she lost blood. Jean Luze left to get Audier and came back alone.
“What do we do?” he asks. “Audier’s not home.”
Félicia is pale as a corpse. Jean Luze is kneeling by her. He calls her name, then runs off again. Félicia seizes on this as an opportunity to faint again. I rush to the medicine cabinet to get a bottle of alcohol. I return to find Félicia moaning. Where is Jean Luze? I don’t want to be alone with her. Finally, the door opens and Jean Luze walks in with Dr. Audier.
He leans over Félicia to examine her.
“Do you recognize me?” he asks.
She opens her eyes and nods.
The examination is unpleasant, even painful. Dr. Audier takes Jean Luze aside and says to him:
“I recommend a few injections to give her enough strength to withstand an abortion.”
“An abortion!”
“It’s better that way, trust me. Your wife has a fibroma and has lost a lot of blood…”
“I’m putting her in your hands,” Jean Luze answered, completely unstrung, “or maybe it would be better if I left for Port-au-Prince with her? Your hospital is so poorly equipped, and I don’t want to reproach myself should anything go wrong.”
“The sooner the better,” Dr. Audier advises, only too happy to get rid of a new victim.
He hands a prescription to Jean Luze and turns to me:
“Pack your bags, Claire,” he tells me. “Félicia must get to Port-au-Prince without wasting any time and you must go also because of the baby.”
The cigarette was getting restive in the corner of his wet lips.
Without responding, I took the bags from the closet and filled them and ran to Jane’s house to let her know of our departure.
Félicia has been at the Saint-François-de-Sales Hospital since last evening. The car ride took eight hours. I watched Jean Luze clutching the wheel as he avoided the potholes; I listened to him swear at the state of the road; and I silently wiped Félicia’s clammy brow as she rested her head on my lap, saying to myself:
Might she be wise enough to drop dead without my help?
Now, with Jean Luze in my arms and my eyes on the operating room door, I wait. Jean Luze is in such anguish he can’t keep still. I am convinced my love will make him forget Félicia quickly. In the meantime, his distracted look seems to cancel us out, his son and me.
The door finally opens and the surgeon appears. Jean Luze rushes to meet him.
“It went very well,” he says. “She’ll pull through. I’ll be back later this evening.”
“Claire!” Jean Luze cries with a sigh of relief, “we can finally rest easy!”
I have to get used to this thought, I have to get used to the suffering it means for me if I don’t want to be crushed by it: Félicia is going to get better and we will return home and she will take back her place beside her husband, beside her child.
Here I am in a hotel room, making the most of this slight respite life has given me. I have no curiosity about this city that I haven’t seen in so long. In other words, I cling to my idée fixe, I hold on to my obsession, I remain indifferent to the tumultuous buzzing of cars and to the bustle inside the hotel. Soon I will be alone again. Won’t my past come to the rescue? Where are my old unhealthy habits? Where are the objects with which I fooled myself and that I was careless enough to destroy? My hands are empty, emptier than before. I am alone with my fear, alone with my suffering that stands there ready to spring and finish me off. Would I have the courage to kill Félicia? Ah! These long sleepless nights when even the air you breathe resounds with a life of its own, when each hour falls on the heart like a tolling bell! How these nights have furrowed my face and aged me!
Félicia is definitely better. She doesn’t need me. Jean Luze watches over her like a nurse by her bedside day and night. The red roses he gave her bloom on her table. She is beautiful in her blue silk shirt. Who tied that ribbon round her hair?
“Claire,” she says in a soft distant voice, “I’d like to hold my child.”
I hand her son to her.
A debilitating defeat. I no longer have the strength to delude myself. I know that for him I am an able and devoted sister-in-law who runs his household and whom he rewards once in a while by confiding in me or with a modest gift. He has never thought of me as a woman. This fact tortures me. I would perform heroic feats if it got his attention. Wouldn’t it be heroic to throw myself at him and confess my love?…
We are about to go home. The suitcases are packed and I am waiting for the Luzes by the hotel entrance with Jean-Claude in my arms. The days to come will be agony! I will see them kissing, caressing each other, living together in their room. They will make me a witness to their love, they will share their plans with me, convinced they are making me happy when I am in torment. How will I bear this without falling apart?
Jean Luze, I was telling myself, do you have any idea what I am capable of? Do you know what kind of a monster this starving being can become when its hunger is so sorely tempted but left unquenched? You have been most reckless with me. You have given me a son and you are now taking him back after shutting the doors of your love in advance. For you didn’t let me do or say anything. Wretch! You’re the one who’ll be my scapegoat. Do you understand? Your indifference will be a springboard for that sterile rebellion of which you yourself have spoken. That’s the easiest explanation for my distress. You will relieve my conscience of the hard truths that assail my mind. Self-discontent, that is the venom that feeds malice.