Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [126]
“Good night,” she said. “Sleep well, Claude.”
They heard her walk upstairs, the grandfather clutching the child tightly, asking him:
“Did she lock him inside the house?”
“No. He saw her coming, so he stepped back and disappeared.”
“Ah!” said the grandfather. “The main thing is he has answered our call.”
“His feet were bleeding as if he had traveled a great distance, and he was looking at us with sad, heavy eyes. Are you sure we were right to disturb him? Grandfather, were we right?”
“If even the dead refused to hear God’s voice and come to our aid,” the grandfather replied, “then what would become of us, my child?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The first day of the month of March! the father said to himself. Alone, lying in bed fully dressed, he was filled with thoughts. An hour ago, he had given his wife part of his salary, saying: “Buy some clothes for the children and some medicine too: they need it.” The mother took the money without thanking him and got dressed to go out. Now he was alone and thinking things over. Twenty days had gone by since their property was invaded.
Stooped with age, he was developing a plan of incredible audacity, one worthy of the terrible adversaries he desired to confront. “Find your enemy’s weak point, and you shall be victorious,” he was repeating to himself. That sentence, found somewhere in a book he had forgotten, now resurfaced from the depths of his memory to guide and help him. He was going to risk his life, put it all on the table, he knew that, but he wanted only one thing: to save Rose and Paul at least. Cradling his heavy head with his hands locked behind the nape of his neck, brows frowning, eyes fixed on an invisible spot, he was lost in thought. Sweet, sentimental and importunate memories kept interrupting his dark daydream and he yielded to them, recalling the good old days of happiness and peace, now lost. Slices of his life unfolded before his eyes, and he relived them with depressing intensity and a vague feeling of remorse. How happy we were then! he was telling himself. Despite his father’s hostility toward his wife, despite the birth of the crippled child, how happy they were! In comparison to what they were going through now, everything had really seemed perfect! Of course there had been quarrels between him and his wife, the old man’s fits of anger, the mother’s heartrending tears when she saw the deformed feet of her third child, but on the other hand there had been so many compensations: the perfect harmony between Paul and Rose, studying together at the same table, their heads bowed under the lamp, the grace of their growing bodies, transforming before their very eyes! How had he neglected the opportunity to appreciate all of that? How indifferent he had been about the party the mother had organized to celebrate the children’s twin success in their philosophy exams! He had used an important meeting as an excuse not to attend and had taken advantage of it to spend the night with his mistress. Now he could see the scene in every detail—first the mother’s tears of joy the pride in the grandfather’s eyes that he tried to conceal by declaring haughtily: “That’s no reason to drag in the whole the neighborhood.” But at lunchtime, the old man had taken two envelopes out of his pocket and handed them to Rose and Paul:
“Go on, enjoy this wonderful day, my children.”
The night of the party, he had returned from his mistress around midnight to find the grandfather dancing with an imposing matron, to the delight of the guests. He went up to his room to compose a face in the mirror; the face of a serious man whose tired features revealed that he was still absorbed by his pretend business meeting. He had noticed his wife dancing with Dr. Valois, Anna and Paul off by themselves in a corner of the living room, Rose dancing by herself, her whirling hair in her eyes, and the invalid,