I take my dagger from my blouse and open the door partway. He is on my veranda. I see him hesitate and turn his head in every direction. He is within reach. With extraordinary strength, I plunge the dagger into his back once, twice, three times. The blood spurts. He turns around, gripping the door, and looks at me. Is he going to die here, under my own roof? I see him stagger away and fall stretched out in the street, right in the middle of the gutter. The beggars, led by Pierrilus, fling themselves on his body like madmen.
No one has seen me, except perhaps Dora Soubiran, whose house is so close to mine. I cautiously close the dining room door. I hear Jean-Claude crying and Félicia talking. The wild cries of the beggars grow more intense. Behind the blinds glow hundreds of anguished eyes.
Jean Luze appears with a smoking gun. I hear Joël Marti holler:
“To the prison! Free the prisoners!”
A vast clamor rises in response.
Jean Luze grabs my hands. One of them still holds the dagger red with blood.
“Like an animal, he died like an animal,” I slowly articulate.
“You killed him? You? So you’re the one who got him? Oh! Claire…”
He squeezes me in his arms, almost smothering me. His cheek against mine, his breath in my ear.
“If you only knew how tired I am!”
Was it I who said these words? Was I the one who gently, very gently, pushed him away?
I leave him. He follows me with his eyes without moving. I go in my room and double-lock the door. Here I am on my bed, contemplating this blood on my hands, this blood on my robe, this blood on the dagger…
From the window, I catch a glimpse of the torches wavering in the wind. The doors of the houses are open and the entire town has risen.
ANGER
Part One
CHAPTER ONE
That morning, the grandfather had been the first to come down to the dining room. Hidden behind a half-open door, he was observing a corner of the yard, eyes wide with fear, ears pricked up.
Men in black were driving stakes around the house. Their uniforms gleamed with sweat in the sun of what was still morning. Their decorations, weapons and hammers reflected intermittent flashes of light; and the grandfather told himself they looked like plundering birds of prey walking around like that, bent over. What ghastly uniforms, and what right do they have, driving these stakes into my land? he said to himself.
The last steps on the stairs creaked, startling him out of his thoughts. He quickly wiped his face as if to erase the fear that had been imprinted there, and turned his head toward his son:
“Men in black uniforms are on our land. They’re driving stakes all around our house,” he said to him.
“Stakes!” the son cried out.
“Look!”
With a hand that was still firm, he drew him behind the door and pointed to the back of the yard:
“Look!” he said again.
At the sight of the men in uniform, the son mumbled a few unintelligible words that betrayed panic checked by immense willpower.
“They’ve been here since dawn,” the old man added.
His beard trembled. The son, afraid his father would burst into one of his terrible fits of anger, looked at him intently, annoyingly calm.
“Take it easy, Papa, above all keep calm.”
The top of the stairs creaked this time, just before a nineteen-year-old boy of athletic build all but tumbled down into the living room.
“Good morning!” he said.
And turning toward the table:
“Where’s Mélie?” he asked. “Has she decided to let us go without food this morning?”
He broke off, pricking up his ears, and before anyone could stop him he threw himself at the door, flinging it wide open.
“What’s going on? What are they doing at our place?”
“They’re driving stakes,” the old man said tersely.
“What right do they have?” the son protested.
“They’re here to bring us news of the death of our freedom,” the grandfather answered. “Don’t you understand that?”
He fell silent when he saw the maid. She entered slowly, dragging her feet with ostentatious innocence, and as she set the table she hypocritically observed the side of the yard where the men in black were working.
“At the very least we should ask them what they’re doing on our land,” the young man declared, “or else it will look like we’re afraid.”
“Keep still, Paul!” the father shouted, trying to rouse himself. “You see exactly what they’re doing: they’re planting stakes to keep us from our property.”
A heavy silence descended, which was especially uncomfortable for the maid, who now avoided lifting her eyes, her lips tight, features lifeless, like a statue hewed from the black stone of African antiquity.
Except for that moment when he had reprimanded his son, the father always spoke in a neutral, monotonous voice, in sharp contrast to the old man’s mute nervousness and the young man’s more exuberant manner. The grandfather looked from his son to his grandson. While the silence lasted, he kept staring at them with such insistence that a casual observer might have thought him senile.
“Evil has come upon us. We will have to fight to defeat it,” he finally said.
“Above all, we’ll have to act with caution,” replied the father, who had been waiting for the maid to leave before breaking his silence. “We’ll get a very good and very clever lawyer who knows how to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and we’ll need to follow his advice to the letter.”
“And if he declares, as I predict he will, that it’s a lost cause and that we have to accept this?” the grandfather asked.
“Well, then we’ll have to accept it.”
“I will never abandon my land to these thieves,” the grandfather yelled, walking toward his son, who quickly jumped to close the door. “My father sweated to acquire it, and I will not abandon my land to these thieves.”
He regained his composure with difficulty, pricking up his ears despite himself.
One could no longer hear the hammering. This unexpected silence coming from outside, as if in response to his anger, seemed so ominous to the old man that he pressed both hands on the table, bending his spine as if threatened by some immediate danger. The grandson crossed his arms, and knitting his brows, looked at his father; the latter seemed to have gone beyond plain fear. Huddled up, every muscle tense, he looked like a lion tamer locked in a cage with wild beasts and expecting to see them pounce and tear him to shreds at any moment.
“If they come, especially if they heard us, you’ll have to keep quiet and let me do the talking,” he begged in a voice so low that he could hardly be heard.
He clenched his teeth and the muscles of his face tightened.
The three of them stood like that for a long time. Then the young man looked away from his father, lifted his shoulders and walked to the door, opening it a second time.
“They haven’t moved,” he said with forced casualness.
And he sat at the table for breakfast. He pushed away the omelet that Mélie had prepared and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Maybe, like my father said, we’ll have to accept it,” he said.