Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [100]
“So you don’t have those papers anymore?”
“I do,” the grandfather answered.
“Give them to a good lawyer like your father did.”
“Times have changed, my child, and the voice of justice has been quiet for a long time. Judges don’t fear scandal and advocates for good causes no longer dare raise their voices.”
“They are afraid?” asked the child.
“They are afraid,” the grandfather replied. “Wherever violence and crime rule, everyone is afraid, even the executioners and the criminals.”
“I want to fight for justice and for peace. Do you think that, even without feet, one can still fight, Grandfather?”
“Haven’t I promised you that you will die a hero one day,” the grandfather answered …
… That evening the father went out. He had returned right after his office closed and told his wife he was going out and would be back after dark. She had watched him furtively as he got dressed, eaten up by jealousy, curiosity and worry. From whom was he going to borrow five hundred dollars? Who was he going to seduce with that cologne? Was the woman who had stolen him from her that rich? What she felt was not exactly jealousy. No, this rather lukewarm reaction was more like a vaguely loving scorn. After all, she was the one who had sprinkled fragrance on the handkerchief she handed to him.
He got out of the car after a half-hour ride and paid the driver. These dates were costing him a pretty penny, but how could he complain? It was already night and one could barely make out the house at the end of the path lined with boxwood. The bitter perfume of the white flowers he picked on his way stirred his blood and he quickened his step. She opened her arms to welcome him and he held her tight.
“Each time you come, I’m always up, waiting,” she said, “as though I knew you were coming.”
He lifted her and carried her to the living room sofa, cluttered with colorful pillows he had seen her embroider with her beautiful expert hands. The Japanese kimono she was wearing traced her narrow hips. He leaned in and kissed her voraciously.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
Revived, seductive, charming, Louis Normil underwent a transformation.
“Look,” she said, freeing herself, and ran to the armoire, opening it to take out a beaded dress that sparkled in the lamplight.
“I made it myself,” she said proudly. “Would you like me to wear it for our little supper tonight?”
“Yes,” he murmured.
She undressed in front of him and slipped her sun-kissed skin into a dress that made her look like an Oriental princess.
An old black woman, who had been in her service since she was a child, came in to announce dinner. They went into the living room, where a princely table had been set. At the end of the meal, she lifted her glass, saying:
“I drink to our love.”
Beneath her many guises she played any role she liked, trusting in no one. Condemning marriage as a dull and revolting institution, she congratulated herself for having managed to resist the temptations of bourgeois life, and in this handsome grife, so self-effacing and impoverished, she saw the flickering shade of Armand Duval.4 She nevertheless snuggled up tamely into this affair and avoided displaying herself in the company of her lover, supposedly for his wife’s sake. Since even the wealthy may come to feel insecure, she suspected that her gentlemen callers lusted after her fortune more than her beauty. Orphaned very young, she had been raised by her old maid, who had learned to look away and keep her mouth shut, for since her early youth she had been drawn to mature and even graying men in whom she sought the paternal affection she had been weaned from too early. Her father, a government minister in all the past regimes,