Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [130]
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next morning, a sharp altercation erupted among the uniformed men posted on the land. Their voices became violent and threatening and soon there was gunfire followed by yelling and screaming.
“The birds of prey are devouring each other!” the grandfather exclaimed. “God predicted that ambition and greed would lead to their demise and now his prophecy is coming true.”
“I want to see!” cried the invalid. “Someone take me to the window.”
Three bodies in black uniform lay on the ground, where they were being examined by other men in black with rifles on their shoulders.
“This is just the beginning,” the father sniggered.
And all of them looked at him like they didn’t recognize him.
He went up to his room and stayed there by himself, standing at the window where he kept staring at the three bodies. In the course of that night, his wife saw him suddenly sit up in bed and start struggling with some invisible being. “I’ll kill you, you bandit, I’ll kill you,” he mumbled. She put her hand on his forehead, which was burning; she made him to go back to bed with a few comforting words.
The next day, he got up very early, got dressed and went to the lawyer’s.
This time Louis Normil was the one who refused to shake the hand of the lawyer, who was smiling hypocritically. He listened as the man delivered a bogus summary of his latest efforts.
“Success is certain,” he concluded. “Your daughter has followed my advice and managed things so intelligently that I believe the matter is settled …”
“You’re lying!” Louis Normil declared in a loud voice. “And I have the authority to say this. You’re lying! You gave advice to no one. It was all settled without your help. Don’t try to play me. That’s not going to work anymore.”
The lawyer went from black to ash gray. Louis Normil thought the man was going to pass out when he lowered his head and closed his eyes. At last he was able to vent his rage at one of them. He had a sadistic desire to see this man, who had so frightened him only a few days before, tremble. A wolf among wolves, that’s what you have to become to defend yourself these days, he told himself.
“Forgive me,” the lawyer mumbled humbly.
“In any case,” Louis Normil continued in the same tone, “I’m not here to talk about my daughter but about the five hundred dollars you were paid. What are you waiting for before you give me a receipt?”
“But of course, of course, what was I thinking?”
Trembling, the lawyer looked for a piece of paper on his desk and obligingly wrote up the receipt.
“Here you are, dear friend, and I apologize for not having thought of it sooner.”
Louis Normil gave the lawyer a savage look, and left him without another word.
In the evening, he returned to Maud’s and gave her the receipt:
“You see,” he said, “I wasn’t lying to you.”
She looked at him with hooded eyes through a thick cloud of smoke from her cigarette.
“Don’t get yourself in a bind just to pay me back,” she advised with an odd smile.
“No,” he cried, “I’m telling you you’ll soon be reimbursed.”
His troubles had exhausted him and their embraces suffered. I’m the one who can’t stand marriage, she told herself, and now he’s become a regular husband! She gave him a colder and colder reception, not going out of her way as she once did to please him, and barely made an effort to persuade him to stay. This change had not escaped his notice, and he wondered about it anxiously, going so far as to accuse himself of having neglected her. He had no idea that the echoes of Rose’s ordeal had already reached her and that she was angry with him for accepting such a dishonorable situation without a fight. He should have killed him, she thought, unforgiving, he should have killed him. He confided his troubles strictly to her, told her about the Gorilla, about how they met at the restaurant.
“I’m using him to get what I want, so what do I care what other people think,” he concluded, trying