“Sit down and wipe your face.”
“I don’t have a handkerchief,” he said to me.
Taking mine from my pocket to give it to him, I felt the point of the knife pricking my chest. Not far from us, we heard the sound of the boots, and he instinctively drew near me.
“What did you do?” I asked him.
“What do you think I could have possibly done to deserve execution,” he replied. “Don’t you know they kill for the sheer pleasure of it?”
I handed him my textbook. “Keep your head down. Read quietly.”
He did what I said. The sound of boots faded and we could hear the whistle blow for the squadron to regroup.
“Thank you,” he said to me as he gently slumped back. Then, resting his head on the back of the bench:
“I’m falling asleep, I’m falling asleep,” he said again.
And he quickly closed his eyes.
Why did I stay behind to keep a lookout as he slept? Lunch had come and gone by the time I returned home. I had left the stranger asleep, and the next day I learned that a student had been executed on a bench in the middle of a public square. That day, Fred Morin came by and I refused to see him. I locked myself in my room, afraid I’d come unhinged if anyone spoke to me. I felt as if I had lost a friend. I was in mourning. Horrible pain, part remorse, part rebellion, gripped my heart. Why? Why? I kept asking myself. Why had they murdered him? Why? Why? What was he guilty of? Did he refuse to offer his sister? Rose! My very own sister! Defiled! If I want to kill the Gorilla, I have to face facts. As for Grandfather, he’s filled with silent hatred toward her, as though she were the enemy. I fear the day he’ll ask to be served in his room in order not to share his meals with us. Skin and bones. So gaunt. I’ll kill him, I can feel it…
I wanted to see Anna again before doing anything. I have a pretty good idea what will happen to me, so I might as well feel a bit of joy before I go. It was seven in the evening and she was alone in the living room. She looked at me and began to sob.
“Are you angry at me, Paul?” she said to me. “What did I ever do to you?”
She tried to take my hands but I pulled back.
“Well, speak, say something!” she shouted.
I couldn’t. I tried to take her in my arms, but I was held back by something stronger than myself. A long line of hotheads. Never trusting anyone. My mother is right.
She mumbled:
“I don’t know why you’re like this. I don’t. I love you and I don’t know why you’re putting me through this. Is that fair? Or is it that you don’t love me anymore?”
I left and could hear her crying:
“Paul! Paul!”
I’ll return to her house with a weapon on my belt and that’s the day I’ll know the truth. I’ll know why she and her father act like there are no men in black on our land. I’ll go all out, even if it means losing her, or death. I prefer losing her and dying on top of it than to have to doubt her…
My mother’s getting drunk. I saw her staggering upstairs. She looked at me with her dying eyes and then began to laugh miserably. A bloody throat clearing itself of crushed glass. A great open mouth rattling in agony. She’s going to cough up her heart. Rose, who was coming in just then, ran past us and shut her door behind her. My mother pointed at her, bent in two by the awful laughter that contorted her mouth. Then she suddenly fell silent, went to the window on the landing and leaned over as if she were about to fall. I looked past her: a shadow was slowly moving through the yard, accompanied by a completely white crawling, jumping thing. The shadow bent down to the ground and then stood up with the thing in its arms and walked over to the stakes. I heard my mother laugh. She wasn’t the one laughing, someone else was laughing in her. She turned around and said: “Paul, son, nothing and nobody can stop destiny.” She opened the cupboard and took out a bottle of rum that was three-quarters empty. Someone else laughed in her again, and after pointing her finger at the land, she staggered into her room. My father wasn’t there. I heard him come home an hour later. I stood up and went out on the landing. I saw light coming from Rose’s room and pushed open the door without knocking. She was on her knees beside her bed, head sinking into the pillow, breasts flat against the mattress.
“You might as well come in and close the door,” she whispered.
She remained on her knees on the floor, and I looked at her profile, not daring to move. Gaunt and beautiful, eyes swollen with tears.
“You’ll get to leave, I promise you that much.”
I grabbed her and struck her in the face.
“I never asked you to help me.”
“You have to get out of here, you have to.”
“I don’t want you to worry about me, you hear me?”
She threw herself on the bed and curled up under the sheets with her back to me.
“It’s not that much trouble, believe me,” she said again.
When I heard these words I left her and went to my room, sat at my desk staring into the darkness. And the sweat from my forehead drenched my eyes and burned like tears.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The lawyer had me come in right away and was very considerate. That’s because I was with the uniformed man I had met in his office, toward whom he had seemed so respectful and attentive. The lawyer reached for the five hundred dollars, but the uniformed man gave him such a savage look that he very quickly dropped the money on a corner of his desk as though he’d made a mistake.
“We have a deal?” said the man in uniform.
“We have a deal,” the lawyer replied.
Then he turned to me:
“You may begin by taking off your clothes,” he ordered me as if he were requesting a simple secretarial task.
After that, he left the room and closed the door. The lawyer had spoken to me beforehand and I knew what to expect. I began taking off my clothes and once I was half-naked, the man in the uniform pulled me sharply by the arm to drag me behind the screen.
“You’re not going to struggle, you’re not going to cry out,” he instructed me. “Because if you do, you’ll be sorry.”
He pounced on me with his long hirsute hands, tearing off whatever garments I had left.
“Lie down,” he said, “lie down, spread your legs and put your arms out like a cross.”
I refused to obey, so he threw me on the sofa.
“You’re going to ruin everything,” he hissed, “if you resist, I won’t be able to do anything. You have to do what I say, without hesitation, otherwise it’s no go, you understand? I can only be a man with pretty saint’s faces like yours, a defeated martyr with a pretty little face. Do what I say, do it or get out of here. But remember that no one else will ever be able to do anything for you and you will lose your land. On the other hand, if you are cooperative and do what I ask, then I promise, I swear to you on all that is most holy to me that you will have my protection and will have restitution of your property.”