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“That body has started to stink,” he says. “It’s making me sick. Why don’t they pick it up?”

“Do you know him?”

“Who?”

“The dead man.”

“It’s probably Saindor, he runs the bodega by the sea.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I owed him five piastres.”5

“And I ten.”

“Poor guy!”

“Yes.”

“They murdered him right under your very eyes?”

“Just about.”

“He screamed before he died.”

“Shrieked.”

André sticks two fingers into his stomach and a terrible belching pours out of him. He suddenly hiccups. He must be starving.

I watch Cécile’s house through the hole. I see her behind her curtains. She’s looking at my house. Is she worried about me? I quickly tie a handkerchief to a wooden ruler and slip it through the hole. I wave the handkerchief. Cécile’s window opens a little and she leans her head out to make herself visible and then disappears. I quickly withdraw my white flag and start pacing around the room, anxiously.

“Who were you making signs to?”

“To Cécile.”

“You’re still thinking about her?”

“I love her.”

“But she will never love you. She’s rich and you are poor. People like that, they’re snobs.”

“She did accept my poem.”

“She was laughing.”

“What does that prove?”

“She was making fun of you.”

He swallows more clairin and slams his glass on the table.

“It’s them, they’re the ones responsible for this. They made a big bonfire where every piece of kindling was soaked with hatred. They lit the fire and fanned it.”

“So write a poem about hatred.”

“Jesus preached love.”

“Then write a poem about love.”

I push him to the table blocking the door and give him paper and pencil. He begins to cry quietly, head in his arms.

“I can’t, I can’t write, there’s too much hate all around me.”

“Write, God damn it! Destroy hatred and sow love with your poems.”

“Don’t you remember, René? The market women who went down the hills at dawn, baskets on their heads! We would wait for them on the road to lift their skirts. And their endless chatter. And the rhythm of their rumps! The smell of the donkeys loaded with produce. The fragrance of the mangoes, quenepas drying under the quenepa trees that reminded us of Madame Fanfreluche’s imported plums, which Brother Justinien made us try one Christmas! Dawn to dusk, all the smells of the day! There isn’t a single scent, not even the smell of the fresh catch struggling in the fishermen’s nets, that I don’t miss right now! …”

He gets up and walks to the wall.

“Oh! The smell of the sea! Put your nose against the hole in the wall. Can you smell it? … To live here, locked up, waiting for death … This torment reminds me of something. We were once locked up somewhere, but where? …”

“Keep quiet!”

“Let me get out of here.”

“No.”

“I want to go.”

He starts trying to unblock the door and I grab him roughly.

“You’ve got to settle down,” I tell him.

He sits on the floor and starts crying again. There’s a large purple scar on his black forehead. He scratches it absentmindedly and wipes the blood that comes out with his shirtsleeve.

Is his presence going to complicate things for me? In any case, as I push up against his weakness, I feel like I’m going toe-to-toe with someone, like I’m being brave, not merely moldering away in resignation. Having to protect this being from himself increases my own instinct for self-preservation tenfold. Alone, I would have succumbed and resigned myself. Depressed and starving I would have welcomed death with open arms, with joy Only rebellion can nourish courage. Why did he start talking to me about Cécile? I want to live just to prove to him that she loves me too. I don’t want anyone’s pity. Once I free the town, Cécile will give me her hand. My name will ring out to the four corners of the earth. Have you heard of René? The great René who defeated the devils? Have you read his poems? I will beat the devils. What is courage if not a mixture of rage and despair? My stomach is growling from hunger and, at the same time, anger. I can feel it fermenting in my gut, this anger. When