Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [106]
“You smell bad,” the invalid said suddenly.
“Me!” she said, taken aback, arms wrapped around her own waist, legs drawn together as if soldered shut.
“You don’t smell like yourself, you smell bad, go away, go away.”
“You be quiet!” Paul said to the invalid through clenched jaws.
“I’ll be quiet if I want to. And if I could stand on two feet, I would flog her.”
The grandfather got up, took the child in his arms and walked past Rose as he made for the stairs.
She slowly went up after them and pulled the door to her room shut. She fell to her knees, doubling over, head nearly touching the ground, arms crossed on her stomach as if it ached. Then she took off her clothes, holding them using the tips of her fingers in disgust, and ran to the bathroom.
When the mother went into the bedroom, she was resting, dressed in a clean white nightgown, lying on her side, eyes closed and breathing evenly. She looked at the girl pensively for a moment and then went to her son’s room.
“She slept with that dirty dog,” he said with revulsion.
“I will never believe that.”
“That’s it, keep lying to yourself, keep seeing only what others tell you, and the rest of your life they’ll keep telling you the moon is made of green cheese.”
“No one has ever fooled me, you know that, not even your father.”
“So why do you refuse to face the truth?”
“As long as she won’t say anything about it, I won’t accuse her. What right do I have to judge my daughter when she shows more courage than I do?”
“Mama!”
“She dared to confront these wild beasts for your sake, for our sake, and we should scorn her for it?”
“I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!”
“Calm down, Paul!”
There was barely a year’s difference between him and his sister and they had been friends since childhood. “My sister! My sister!” he kept repeating to himself, as a bitter taste filled his mouth. “Rose Normil! The lovely Rose Normil. Paul’s sister, don’t you know her?” people used to say. And he would smile without answering, smile with pride. The way she carried her head high with her nose in the air as if the whole world smelled funny to her! “I am going to kill him,” he said again, and imagined an enormous knife sticking out of the back of the little man with gorilla hands as he thrust it in to the hilt.
The next day, he went to Dr. Valois’ house and saw Anna again. He had to wait for some time as she was helping her father at his clinic, where she was a nurse. When she came out, pure and beautiful in her immaculate smock, all that weighed on his heart seemed to melt. She exists, you simply have to remind yourself that such women exist in order to reconcile yourself with life, he told himself. As for my mother, poor woman, my father has neglected her so much that she’s fallen in love with Dr. Valois. I saw it in how she looked at him. And that’s normal. Absolutely normal. Exactly like his daughter, he’s seductive in a way that’s not just a matter of looks but something deeper. And this thing that one feels in their presence is like an intoxicating per-fume. They are solid and impermeable. Their nature is like an immutable boulder planted in the earth for thousands of years. A dangerous proposition. Anna! If I should smash my forehead into her, it would open up and drain all the blood from my body. And I would die of it. Good! What do I care! Death for the sake of death!
They stayed in the living room chatting for a long time. Not once did she bring up the question of the land, and she seemed to have forgotten he had left her on the day of the fair without saying goodbye. All the better, he thought then. He had come to her for a bit of happiness and comfort. And miraculously, he felt happy and comforted. A few minutes before he left, Dr. Valois came out to shake his hand.
“I will come by your house soon,” he promised. “I’ve been very busy and neglected my little patient. How’s Claude? Still has that temper