Back then I had a neighborhood friend who brought me a packet of sugar pilfered from his aunt’s boutique every night. He was often beaten for failing to memorize his catechism lesson or for not doing his math homework. The bastard son of a white man passing through the region, he had straight hair and blue eyes. He lived as the quintessential pariah in the community. And he was usually addressed by the pejorative nickname “wicked manioc-eating white boy.” As for me, I never picked on him. Time and again, in fact, during any number of full-blown fistfights and ferocious hand-to-hand combats, I smashed in the face of whatever troublemakers had gone after him for no reason. Things went on like that for two years, which seems like an eternity to me today. Battling the same little adversaries. United in the same turmoil. Divvying up the booty from our petty thefts. Playing hooky together. And, above all, hating that toothless old aunt who all too often struck my friend with a bull pizzle.
This went on until the day he caught a bad flu, having gone out in the rain to run an errand for that miserable aunt. He didn’t last long. He died one afternoon in May, the month of beautiful flowers. Or at least that’s what I heard people saying that afternoon. I was on my way home from school. But I didn’t yet understand the truly tragic and macabre nature of death. It was only the following day that I came face-to-face with the brutal reality of this separation, when my mother made me put on my white suit — to accompany my friend on a long trip, she said. His final journey. At the cemetery, the coffin was placed next to a deep, freshly dug hole in the ground. When the cover of the casket was lifted so that we could take one last look at the embalmed little cadaver, the toothless old aunt started whimpering, morbid and inconsolable. And there I saw my innocent childhood companion laid out. His eyes open. Like those of a fish. Apparently, it had been impossible to close his eyelids, stiffened by the cold of the morgue. People let loose piercing cries. But me, I looked into his open bluish eyes. Fish eyes. Unmoving. And I understood right away that death is a deep sleep with eyes wide open. A dream perhaps. A dream with no awakening.
It was a horrific shock for me when, using a series of interwoven ropes, they slipped the tiny closed coffin — gloomily nailed shut, hermetically sealed — into the dark ditch and began covering it with quickly thrown handfuls of brown earth. My blood turned to ice in my veins. Tears ran into my mouth. A taste of salt mixed with mucus. It was then that I felt the pain of ultimate separation. But when I think about it today, I still can’t bring myself to forgive that old aunt for taking away my first friend and for having poisoned — with the whip, with insults, with mistreatment — the short life of a kid who was no worse than any other. An innocent who never got the chance to count ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty years alongside me. To live other joys. Other sorrows. Other pain. All that he would have lived with those blue eyes of his. Open like those of a fish.
Ah! My son! sighs old Marguerite, thinking of Raynand. From the first cry of infancy, we mothers are never again fully alive. The child leaves our body and takes with it a part of us that we can never reclaim but that we’re forever attached to, that we’re forever drawn to despite ourselves. The split between mother and son is only superficial. If the child is hurt, it is our own flesh that bleeds. If he takes risks, our hair stands on end and anguish rips apart our entrails. If he suffers from the smallest thing, we cry our eyes out to the very last tear. If he dies, we shut down completely, trapped despairingly in an infernal interior prison. The terrible suffering of the snake that bites its own tail. Should senseless people see fit to crack open our hearts, split open our bellies, they’ll still find there the bed of love where the child once slept, always freshly made. The umbilical cord never breaks between mother and child. There is no blade capable of cutting the ties that bind the two …
Marguerite is brought out of these reflections by the arrival of a stranger.
She gets up from her low chair. Places the coffee grinder on the white wood table.
She moves toward the stranger, wiping her hands on her calico skirt.
— Hello, Madame, says the stranger, brusquely.
— Hello, Sir, responds Marguerite, nervously.
— Are you Raynand’s mother?
— Yes, Raynand is my son. Did you need him for something?
— I’d like to speak with him, yes.
— Raynand has been out for a while now. He’ll surely be back in a moment or two. Would you like to wait for him?
— No, that won’t be necessary, responds the gentleman, annoyed.
— What was it you wanted to speak to him about? You might leave him a message, even a word or two.
— That wouldn’t be the same thing, no. Nevertheless, continues the stranger, tensely emphasizing each word, I’ll ask you to let him know that Gaston — Gaston, in person — came to see him. He’ll understand what that means. If he isn’t crazy, he’ll understand very well.
— But what’s going on? What has he done to you? I’m his mother — certainly I have the right to know. Monsieur Gaston, please tell me.
— Well, all right! Tell him to stop hanging around Solange. Around her house. Tell him he isn’t wanted. That if this continues he’ll have real worries. Big problems. It’s a short trip from stubbornness and imprudence to death. So tell him he should be careful not to go stomping around in my garden.
Gaston departs angrily. Appalled, hand to her chin, Marguerite doesn’t know what to think. She had already told Raynand to let go of this thing with Solange. This old love story. And now things were getting complicated. Completely stupefied, dragging her feet in their leather slippers, she goes back to her coffee grinder. The bag empty, she crumples into the low chair. Anxious. Anguished. Raynand must leave — it’s the only solution. He must leave and make his life elsewhere, before his roots push any deeper into this cruel soil, before his branches become prisoner of this mess of vines that will only drink up his sap and make of him a pile of dried-out fibers! Ah! My child, a green tree that hasn’t even borne fruit as yet! Why? Why do they want to strip from me my nine months of torment? My painful pregnancy. The pain of my sleepless night at the hospital. Childbirth. The profound tearing. The sharp ripping of my belly. The twisting of my guts. Painful pushing forward of life. Who would steal from me my eleven months of breast-feeding? All the clothes washing. My patience. My tears. My hopes. All those dreams that are exactly as old as my child.
— So, Mama, have you finished grinding the coffee? says Raynand, coming through the door.
— Not yet, darling, responds Marguerite in a voice marked with melancholy tenderness.
— But what’s wrong, Mama? You seem like you’ve been crying. What happened while I was gone?
— Somebody named Gaston came to see you. He was furious and made threats against you. It has something to do with Solange.
— So that’s it, then — we aren’t free? Since when can’t a person go for a walk, wander around?
— Try to understand, my darling. You’re not yet even fully recovered. You’re still ill. And I’m just sick about it. It wasn’t long ago that I nearly died of shock when Paulin brought you here, bones broken, face swollen with bruises.