Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [23]
I caught Josiane’s wrist and twisted it until a little cry of pain burst from her lips. I badgered her with questions.
“Who are you? Who is your mother? Who do you put up in this hotel? Where are the other guests? Who are you working for?”
She was turning blue with pain under my grip. It hurt me to manhandle her, but I had to save my skin first. She gasped out: “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I only work here. Ow! You’re hurting me.”
I felt like slapping her. All compassion left my soul. I just kept squeezing her wrist harder.
“I won’t let you go until you answer all my questions. Got it, you little bitch? Who are you, you and your mother?”
She was groaning with pain but said nothing. I squeezed her wrist harder still and kept on pushing her with questions.
“Who does the cooking, and the wash, and the cleaning up here? Why is the rest of the house dead? What is hidden behind all that?”
Josiane’s silence was incredibly irritating. I was foaming with rage. This little woman thought she could manipulate me through sex, lead me to the scaffold by my prick. I was going to teach her a lesson she’d never forget. I let go of her wrist and slapped her very hard. I thought I’d broken every bone in my hand. Her head was wobbling, she looked like a puppet. She fell to her knees and I kept badgering her.
“Where do you get the electricity from? I haven’t heard a generator and I don’t see any other system, how do you make electricity? Answer me, for Christ’s sake, or I’ll strangle you!”
Kneeling on the floor, she tried to look into my eyes. Maybe she thought she’d move me. Her lower lip was already swollen; blood was gushing out of a crack in it. At last she spoke. It was hard to understand her words.
“I’m telling you, I swear. I don’t know anything … My mother takes care of everything!”
A tear flowed down her cheek. I wanted to continue my questioning. I raised my hand to hit her again, but my energy was rapidly disappearing. I was out of breath, my heart was about to burst in my chest, as if I’d run a hundred miles. I had exhausted my last stock of energy. I was being paralyzed by a will stronger than my own. My arm fell to my side. All I could do was drag myself to bed and sit down. Josiane realized I couldn’t budge; she understood my exhaustion. She kept on crying softy as she spoke to me. I could hardly make out her words, which seemed to drift over to me from so far away.
“I don’t know the people who live here. They’re all men but you can’t see them. They’re sent here by the high command. The electricity that powers the hotel comes from draining their energy and willpower. They don’t last long. That’s all I know. You’ll become like them too, until you’re just a breath. You never should have set foot in this place. Never.”
That’s all I heard. I couldn’t hold my body up anymore. I sank back into the pillows and passed out.
I felt better in the morning, although still very weak. When I looked at myself in the mirror, all I could see was a silhouette, a blurry image. My car was no longer in front of the hotel. On a hunch, I searched for my weapon in the chest of drawers where I was sure I’d left it the night before, next to my police badge. They had disappeared too. I smiled. I couldn’t care less about all that anymore. I didn’t give a good goddamn. It really relaxed me to not worry about a thing. All I was thinking about was having a good breakfast in the dining room on the ground floor, at my table, number 6. And above all, enjoying a big cup of that good, strong, scalding coffee my dear hostess had served me the day before.
I was calmly eating breakfast at table 6. Banana