Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [102]
He was unable to fall asleep. His wife had her back turned to him and lay there like a corpse. But he was also sure she was awake. He leaned over her and noticed that her eyes were indeed open.
“You’re not asleep?”
She immediately changed her position and he saw she was crying.
“What’s the matter, Laura?”
She shrugged and huddled up in a corner of the bed.
“And you have to wake me up on top of it,” she reproached him dryly.
He mumbled something that she did not understand, so she pulled up the sheets to cover herself and pretended to sleep.
They both stayed that way, motionless, back-to-back. That’s all she could think to say to me, he thought bitterly. The brute! Nothing can bother him, he’s already sleeping, she was telling herself at the same time. They had both finally plunged into a deep sleep when a terrible noise from the yard woke them. They rushed together to the window to witness an onslaught: a truck and two motorcycles driven by men in black uniform parked under the oaks; about twenty men stepped out of the truck while the two on the motorcycles started them again and roared full speed across the property. Skirting the stakes, they entered the yard and stopped. Ten men, their weapons displayed across their shirts, walked up to the veranda and knocked on the door to the living room, which Mélie opened wide for them. The father saw his wife clasping her hands, disheveled, disfigured by fear. Lifting up the mattress, he slid the money beneath it and threw on his clothes as quickly as he could. From the stairs, he looked at the others.
“I’ll go down by myself,” he said firmly.
“Open up in the name of the law,” they heard.
“Yes, coming,” the father answered and went down.
He took the stamped papers handed to him and quickly ran his eyes over them without understanding a thing. The weapon that one of them had pulled from his belt to point to his temple—telling him “Sign here!”—left no room for discussion. He looked for a pen, was given one by the same man and signed. After which, the maid, opening the living room door again, said goodbye to them with a big devious smile and watched them walk away before closing it. In the blink of an eye the family was downstairs.
“What did they want?” the grandfather asked.
“To make me sign some papers.”
“What papers?”
Louis Normil shrugged.
“They didn’t give me time to read them.”
“But, Papa!” Rose exclaimed.
The grandfather put down the invalid on a chair and walked over to face his son in silence.
“I did what was best, Father, believe me.”
“Hell and damnation!” the grandfather yelled.
“Shut the door, Paul!” the father ordered.
“Hell and damnation,” the grandfather repeated in the same tone. “So then you tremble at the sight of them?”
“And who doesn’t tremble at the sight of them?” Louis Normil replied calmly.
“I don’t!” the grandfather yelled again. “Do you know what you just did? You have just signed papers recognizing that we were never the rightful owners of this land, that’s what you’ve done.” He was fuming with such rage that his goatee was wet from the spray of his words. The father looked at the others and said:
“With or without signed papers, the power is in their hands, Father, and you know this as well as I do. I did what was best, I swear …”
He stopped talking, felt around in his pocket and added:
“Now all that matters is not to waste any more time; I am going to that lawyer’s.”
“To waste your time completely,” Paul blurted out sarcastically.
“So what do you want me to do?”
He was caught unawares by the blood frothing in his veins. His ears were hot but he mastered himself and went upstairs to get the money.
Outside, he calmed himself and his features once again returned to their nice, calm, masklike stillness. He ran into two of his colleagues, who started whispering once they caught sight of him, and he