Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [123]
Human beings have an eerie resemblance to certain animals. I was struck by my resemblance to a panther I saw in a movie once. Same features, same fierce gaze veiled by false gentleness, same supple neck beneath an elegant head with wide, quivering, sensual nostrils. He, on the other hand, looks like a dog. One could easily mistake him for a gorilla, but that’s not the case. His hands are misleading since they’re long and hairy, but he’s just a dog; a poor dog craving affection who turns into a wolf as a result. A beastly couple, made for each other. A lascivious and insatiable panther! I will tear my impure body with my nails. A dog biting simply to defend himself, a poor dog used to kicks, who barks and bites to prove that he’s something other than a dog. “Are you tired, my saint, are you tired?” he says, and tenderly wipes my forehead. How can he get it so wrong when it comes to me? He’s ugly and that pains him. I will tear my impure body with my nails and I will die of it. The stench of a wildcat in my sweat. An animal stench in our sweat, all of us. Man is just an animal hemmed in by a narrow conscience; this is why it is his lot to suffer. The struggle between mind and beast tears at him from within. A tragic fate, a relentless struggle where the mind rarely wins. God has toyed with us …
I caught Mélie with one of them. She was underneath him and was saying: “Kill him, kill them, you’re the strongest, kill them, they deserve to die.” Does she sleep with them only out of hatred for us? Who is naïve enough to believe that you can win a servant’s heart with kindness? Inferiors only fear and respect you if you dominate them. Wearing one of my dresses, she spies on us, fornicates with the enemy and calls for our heads. A horde of beggars and ignoramuses finding salvation in crime! Is it their fault? Women and men together in uniform, women and men bearing arms, women and men marching, denouncing, murdering? Is that what awaits Mélie when she puts on a uniform? I can see her goose-stepping, rifle on her shoulder. I can picture my mother’s face when she sees that spectacle, imagine my mother seeing her son in uniform, rifle on his shoulder, goose-stepping next to Mélie. “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”8 she would cry out. The anguished question of a poor creature to Him who had promised her everything and had taken away everything, taken it away from a woman without a father, who has never had a father, and who is growing old alone as she waits for death.
Part Three
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The rocky road climbed abruptly, its sides shaded by almond trees, their leaves this time of year jutting from their branches like huge red tongues. Their dancing shadows traced strange arabesques on the ground. The sun hid behind a cloud and everything took on a new cast, bathed in filtered light. Paul climbed up the slope and arrived at the field where Fred Morin and the others were waiting for him. They ran to meet him, and lifted him up despite his protestations, carried him off in triumph. He struggled, meting out kicks and punches that the others took in stride. When he managed to get free, he faced them with his teeth on edge, hateful, fists up.
“If any one of you touches me I’ll smash your teeth in!” he shouted at them. “Bastards! You dirty bastards!”
He was yelling as loud as the grandfather would have, and he saw them draw back in perplexity, their shoulders drooping.
He ran his hand through his bushy mane and left without a word. Never again, never again, he kept saying to himself. He stumbled down the slope, retracing his steps.
They gathered around him almost immediately.
“What have we done to you?” Fred Morin asked him. “Why are you running away from us?”
“Let