Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [121]
And yet I feel a burning pain when I try to move after these ordeals, and I have to make an effort to walk. I continue to rush downstairs so as not to worry my parents. Not a single day did he spare me. Tonight, he was crazy. He screamed, he sniffed and licked me like a beast. Then he thrust his fist into my body and watched in ecstasy as the blood poured out of me. Vampire! Vampire! I saw him sipping and getting drunk on my blood like wine.
From the beginning, I knew what to expect. Since these men showed up on our land, I knew it would come to this. A sixth sense? No matter how far away things are, I can recognize their scent. I have been able to detect the tenacious and intoxicating perfume on engravings of oriental flowers; and I’ve sneezed from the dust raised by the hoofs of a ranch horse stamping in a movie. My mother would say: “Have you caught cold?” “No,” I would say, “it’s all that dust.” “What dust?” my mother would ask. And I would point to the screen with my finger. But I have also dilated my nostrils at the majestic sight of the heavy falls at Niagara: they smelled of rainwater along with something else I can’t quite put my finger on. I scrape and scrape, deep into the very entrails of the earth. I dig and dig, and already know the warm humid flavor of its grayest roots, the musty stench of everything that crawls upon the buried bodies.
It was six years ago that my mother first put her hand on her heart. And that day, I heard it beat more heavily, more irregularly, as if performing hard labor. The day her heart stops beating, I’ll know before she does. “My God! My God!” she sighs, her fingers gripping her dress above her stomach. If Grandfather weren’t so old, if he weren’t so preoccupied with the little one, he’d realize a great many things. But he sees only Claude. Actually, we’re all alike, but each of us plays at hiding from one another in different ways. The little one has detected an indecent smell on me. There must be something unsettling and innocently perverse in me, and only the fact that I’ve been forced stops me from climaxing in this man’s arms. If I could free myself from this, I would probably make a partner worthy of him. Yesterday, he knelt in front of the bed and gently wiped the sweat on my brow. “I would like to please you,” he said to me. “I’m very ugly, but I would like you to at least enjoy it when I caress you.” He closes his eyes halfway and cries out: “You’re so beautiful, my saint!” He has a strange look that then becomes transformed and softens in pleasure. He gave me a tour of his house. I could smell the dogs before I saw them. I drew back and he grabbed my wrist and dragged me over to the huge cage where he locks them up as if they were wild animals. “I had them brought here from overseas,” he told me, “see how fierce they are?” They were foaming with rage: “You see, there’s only one way to get respect in this world: be like them,” he added. He doesn’t realize these are the affectations of a despot, surrounding himself in such luxury.
“Do you like making love, my saint, do you like luxury and jewelry?”
I said nothing. I don’t think I have ever opened my mouth after what I’ve seen except to moan or sigh in pain. I think that’s what he prefers from me; according to him it makes me look even more like a martyr. But am I the martyr I say I am, that I’ve convinced myself I am? I anticipate his desires. My submissiveness is nauseating. I undress and lie there with my legs spread, arms splayed in a cross, and wait.