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“They’re cutting down the trees,” says Mme Camuse again. “Listen to the sound of the axes.”

“Bam, bam, bam!” screams the madman. “Satan is knocking at the town gate. Bam, bam, bam! …”

“Shh …” Joël says to his brother.

I leave Mme Camuse. In the street, I run into Calédu. He greets me but I pass without turning my head, haughty, contemptuous, pretending not to see him. Nothing escapes me, though: not the beggars clinging to him, nor their pleas, nor the kicks he gives them to make them let go, nor their reproachful faces, the hatred in the eyes of one decrepit old man shivering feverishly by the gutter.

I feel like getting a new dress. I feel like being beautiful for the Feast of the Virgin. Such things can happen to women my age, too, even to old maids. I will have Jane Bavière, our neighbor on the left, make it. It’s time I helped her—number one, out of bravado, and, number two, to annoy Félicia. I can imagine the exchange:

“You, Claire, are condoning vice,” she will tell me in a shrill and exasperating tone. “Just why did you pick her of all people? An unwed mother!”

You would think maturity has no part in our mental evolution. Jane Bavière was once a friend, and I have decided to reestablish our old ties. I have abandoned her long enough. I believe I have offered sufficient applause for our proper bourgeois nonsense. I am rising up against it now. There is nothing else to do. Is it because I think that she, too, has had her share of bad luck? No matter, when I am with her, I can relax. I am not yet able to confide in her, but what she has confided about herself, with a spontaneity I envy, is a most meaningful lesson about life. She is as serene as Félicia, just as happy. And I had thought that anxiety, suspicion, and bitterness were the wages of scandal.

“Criminal!” Eugénie Duclan once yelled at her. “You have murdered your mother and father.”

Her son is grown up and already ten.

“And Jane?” Mme Camuse asks again without pity. “Still living in sin, is she?”

I wish I had Jane Bavière’s courage. A kid would bring some purpose to my life. A kid would offer solace for everything. At least, that’s what I think. After all, if I reached this goal, wouldn’t I be disappointed? Is that really what I most aspire to? Aren’t I fooling myself by gnawing on my own unhappiness, on this idea that I’m a failure? I’m too afraid of scandal to try it. I’m afraid of others and this fear is the guarantee of my so-called honesty. I prefer to indulge in artificial joys. I nurse a doll in secret. I play mommy, at my age. I try to fill my existence with this effigy that smells of glue. I convince myself that I love her and sprinkle her with cologne and powder to better fool myself. I bought her a little bottle. Ah! The ploys I invented to avoid Annette’s suspicions! She sold me the doll herself, at the Syrian’s, and the toy bottle too.

“Who is it for?” she asked me.

“For a goddaughter in Port-au-Prince. You don’t know her.”

“Who will deliver it?”

“Someone.”

I’m no chatterbox. She contents herself with my monosyllabic answers and keeps quiet.

Shut in my room, I hold Caroline tight. I am sometimes tempted to breastfeed her. How I wish milk would flow from my breast! I make her lie next to me and caress her dead black hair. I want her to be demanding, I want her to need me. Only small children can really need help and affection. That’s why we are moved by those who resemble them. I wonder if Jean Luze is capable of crying.

He takes his seat at the table again and looks at Annette with indifference. She’s lost her charm and has become forlorn, when she was always so cheerful. She shows her despondence, it’s awkward. In the evening, Félicia makes an appearance on her husband’s arm.

“Good evening, Annette,” she says, simply.

“Good evening, Félicia.”

There is no doubt about it. She possesses an uncommon moral force that briefly arouses my admiration.

We eat and the conversation revolves around trivial things. We return to the topic of the Feast of the Virgin, the devotional scenes, and the procession.

“Apparently, Madame Camuse