Krik_ Krak! - Edwidge Danticat [32]
The old man took a gulp from a bottle filled with rum and leaves and limped towards the yard where the fight was taking place.
The roosters were whimpering. The battle was near its end. There was another loud burst of cheers, this one longer than the last. It was the sound of a cheerful death. One of the roosters had lost the fight.
Princesse was on her way to keep an appointment with Catherine, a painter from Guadeloupe. A row of houses in Ville Rose was occupied by a group of foreigners. Princesse had met a few of them through the teachers at her school. The students in her class were rewarded for good grades by being introduced to the French-speaking artists and writers who lived in the ginger-bread houses perched on the hills that overlooked Ville Rose's white sand beaches.
Catherine was reading on the beach when Princesse called down to her from the hill.
"Madame," Princesse said, calling upon her phonetics lessons in order to sound less native and more French.
Catherine put down her book and threw a thigh-length robe over her bathing suit as she ran up to the house. There, she kissed Princesse on both cheeks as though they were meeting at a party.
Catherine was only twenty-seven years old but looked much older. She sunbathed endlessly, but her skin stayed the same copper-tinged shade, even as it became more and more dried out. Of any black person that Princesse knew, Catherine spent the most time in the sun without changing color.
Catherine already had her canvas and paint set up on the veranda of her house. She liked to paint outdoors in the sun.
"Relax, chérie," she assured Princesse. "Just take your own time to become comfortable. Heaven and earth will be here long after we're gone. We're in no rush."
Princesse slowly removed the checkered blouse of her school uniform, followed by a spotless white under-shirt she wore to keep her blouse from getting stained with sweat. She had breasts like mushrooms, big ones that just hadn't spread yet.
Catherine began to sketch as Princesse took off her skirt. It was always hardest getting Princesse to remove her panties, but once Catherine either turned around or pretended to close her eyes, they were gone in a flash.
"Now we work," Catherine said to Princesse as the girl reclined on a white sheet that Catherine had laid out for her on the floor of the veranda. Princesse liked to sit beneath the rail of the veranda, hidden from the view of any passersby.
One day Catherine hoped to get Princesse to roam naked on the beach attempting to make love to the crest of an ocean wave, but for now it was enough for her to make Princesse comfortable with her nudity while safely hidden from the sight of onlookers.
"It's not so bad," Catherine said, making quick pencil strokes on the sketch pad in her hand to delineate Princesse's naked breasts. "Relax. Pretend that you're in your bed alone and very comfortable."
It was hard for Princesse to pretend with ease as the sun beamed into her private parts.
"Remember what I've told you," Catherine said. "I will never use your name and no one who lives in this village will ever see these paintings."
Princesse relaxed in the glow of this promise.
"One day your grandchildren will walk into galleries in France," Catherine said, "and there they'll admire your beautiful body."
There was nothing so beautiful about her body, Princesse thought. She had a body like all the others who lived here except she was willing to be naked. But after she was dead and buried, she wouldn't care who saw her body. It would be up to Catherine and God to decide that. As long as Catherine never showed anyone in Ville Rose the portraits, she would be content.
Catherine never displayed any intention of sharing her work with Princesse. After she felt that she had painted enough of them, Catherine would pack up her canvases and bring them to either Paris or to Guadeloupe for safekeeping.
Catherine stopped sketching for a second to get her-self a glass of iced rum. She offered some to Princesse, who shook her head, no. The