“What would you do?” he whispered.
And when no answer came:
“What would you do?” he yelled.
And he left, slamming the door.
Although the house was rather isolated because of the land around it (Jacob being their only immediate neighbor on their side of the street), he immediately felt as if he was being watched by the whole neighborhood. He walked quickly without looking around him. “If they think I’m afraid, they’re wrong,” he told himself. And with broad strides, he kept putting more and more distance between him and the house. He reached one street, then another, and walked to the house of his friend Fred Morin, who was on the soccer team with which he had been training for two years. He noticed Mme Morin’s face seemed strained, unusually so. He felt like he was standing before a stranger he was seeing for the first time. She nevertheless invited him to sit and called her son. Fred shook his hand and inquired what was new in a voice that seemed as false as his mother’s. Mme Morin had slowly pulled in the front double doors. A gust of wind opened them slightly and she glanced over anxiously.
“What brings you here?” Fred whispered shyly and, as soon as he had spoken his eyes returned to the door, behind which whispering could be heard.
He got up so clumsily that he knocked over an ashtray. He went to lock the door this time and instead of returning to his seat, he remained standing before Paul, looking round for his mother and grinning so falsely and stupidly that Paul also got up.
“I’m making you uncomfortable,” he whispered in a choked voice. “They are on our land and you know it. As far as all of you are concerned, we’ve been marked and therefore best avoided.”
“I don’t understand you,” Fred answered in a cynical tone.
They stood facing each other for a second without Fred daring to add another word.
He had come to talk to him about the soccer team, about the next game they were to play against the international players expected the next week, and he had been hoping for a warm welcome to free him from his anxiety.
“I’m making you uncomfortable,” he simply repeated and opened the door himself.
As soon as he had, he bumped into a crowd of people who had gathered on the porch and who now closed in to have a better look at him in their curiosity.
“That’s him!” was what he heard. “That’s Normil’s son!”
He walked away quickly barely avoiding the cars that seemed to brush past him on purpose and from which unknown heads leaned out. A woman’s voice called to him. He stopped and recognized Dr. Valois’ daughter. He was about to join her when a stream of cars separated them. He waited. When the cars had moved off, she was gone, and in the spot where she had been standing a moment before were three men in black. He couldn’t help being startled and doubled back to a stone bench covered by the shade of the flamboyant trees.
He let himself collapse there.
“They’re multiplying then!” he heard himself say out loud.
He had rested for a few minutes when he heard their boot steps. He shot up like a coiled spring. Wanting to run away, he almost crashed into them before quickly walking backward and withdrawing behind the trees. Thousands of men in black uniforms, black boots and shiny helmets were marching to the sound of fanfare. Preceded by two men bearing banners painted with skulls and weapons, they walked in tight ranks, cheered on by the crowd. A horde of emaciated beggars waved their arms wildly, screaming and cheering.
How long, he thought, how long will I have to see and hear them?
Upon returning home, he was astonished by the hopeful shiver that came over him when his father and sister appeared in the living room.
“What did the lawyer tell you?” the grandfather asked his son without preamble.
“He wasn’t able to see us,” the father answered pathetically.
“So they had no consideration for my sister,” Paul pointed out with a sardonic chuckle.
Rose avoided responding, but she slipped her father a look so strange and mysterious that her brother was unable to interpret it.
The door to the dining room was closed, so the noise from outside was muffled. They ate in silence, slowly, as if forcing themselves, abandoned to a common anguish that each of them inwardly rejected, sensing a heavy invisible presence spying on their every move. Paul called for the maid, who didn’t answer. He got up to get the water pitcher from the pantry and saw her near the stakes serving water to the uniformed men. She was bowing and smiling filling glasses, breaking up ice. He waited for her to return, and, taking the tray from her hands, smashed the glasses on the floor.
“Oh! Monsieur Paul,” she said in dismay.
The noise brought the family to the pantry.
“She let them drink out of our glasses,” he muttered, trembling with rage.
“But,” the father said, casting an anxious glance at the maid, “if they are thirsty and ask for a glass, isn’t it more reasonable to serve them?”
The invalid curled up in the grandfather’s arms as if he were in pain. He stared at his father with immense black eyes that took up most of his face and suddenly brandished his fist in his direction.
“Not in our glasses, Paul is right, not in our glasses.”
“You can go,” Rose yelled at the maid, who was giving them an ugly look.
And when she was gone:
“You’re going to ruin everything,” she continued. “Papa is right, we have to catch them with honey. As for me, I’m letting you know right now that I will make every effort to save this land.”
She walked up to her brother and looked straight in his eyes.
“Don’t you want to get out of here? Didn’t you want to study architecture, or have you forgotten all about that? Would you rather waste your time and your youth, until you end up wearing one of their uniforms? Because from now on, if you want to live in peace, you’ll have to fall in behind them.”
She was pleading with him now.
“I’m begging you, Paul, be patient, let me and Papa take care of this, that’s all we ask, that you let us take care of it…”
She saw him turning his head as if searching for an available target, and then his fist struck the wall of the pantry. The grandfather watched him with unfeigned astonishment, and the invalid cheered him on. Paul took him on his back and galloped with him through the house.
“You’ll make them turn tail, you will,” the child whispered when he stopped, out of breath.
The mother had closed her eyes. Something weighed on her heart and made it beat irregularly, slowly, then quickly. And as she listened to it creaking like a rusty old tool, she said to herself: It can’t take this anymore. One day, it will stop.
“As if this were not enough, my God!” she cried out loud.
Once more, the silence seemed to them so profound, so ominous, that they felt as though they could inhale it together with the air. The birds frolicked on the palm branches and their cheerful chirping seemed to punctuate and underscore the horror. She ran to the window. As soon as she saw the men in their black uniforms, she lifted her handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry. Then, they left the room one by one as if repelled by the tears she had been unable to hold back.
CHAPTER THREE
“Grandfather,” said the invalid, “tell me a story.”
“A long, long time ago,” the grandfather then began, “my father, having left the countryside to go to Port-au-Prince, learned that thieves had been trespassing on his land while he was away. At the time, many men rode horses and my father had a horse called Grand Rouge and he galloped like no horse in this world ever knew how. My father, who was in the cattle business, lived in Cavaillon with Mother, a beautiful and ambitious young peasant girl from Fonds-des-Blancs. He returned home right away, and calling the steward, he asked him: ‘Is it true that thieves came on my land to take my fruit?’ – ‘Yes,’ the steward answered. – ‘What did you do?’ my father went on. – ‘I whipped them and they left faster than they had come.’ – ‘With some of their loot?’ my father asked. – ‘No, sir, without any loot’ – ‘I travel often,’ my father went on, ‘if my son ever yields to the temptation of picking a single fruit from the neighbor’s garden, I order you to whip him too.’ My father only owned a quarter of this land. A thick gate separated the rest of the property. One day, the steward caught me over the gate, my pockets full of fruit. ‘If you so much as taste one of these fruits, you’ll be a thief and in a whole lot of trouble.’ And he made me turn back, roughly pulled the fruit out of my pockets and threw them back into the neighboring property. The next day, I heard the gallop of my father’s horse and I woke up, breathless with fear. I heard my father call the steward. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked. – ‘Everything’s all right,’ the steward answered. The thieves returned, raiding our land and taking the few fruits that were ours. The steward managed to catch one of them. He tied him to a tree before our very eyes and whipped him until he drew blood. ‘You see how close you came to this,’ he told me afterward. ‘Don’t ever covet the goods of others.’”