Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [27]
“Are you really that afraid to die?” he asked that evening of Dr. Audier, who accepts these insults in the detached manner of an experienced old man putting up with an impetuous son.
“You still haven’t understood a thing,” the doctor replied. “Fear is a vice that takes root once it is cultivated. It takes time to recover from it.”
Jean Luze shrugged.
“Who can boast that he has never been afraid?” he shot back at Audier. “At least you have been spared from war. As for me, I bear its mark on my body and soul forever.”
His eyes darkened. He was reliving the pieces of his life he preferred to keep to himself.
“But don’t you find hatred between compatriots to be even more horrid?” the doctor asked softly.
“What do you think France went through in 1789?” he retorted. “And let me stop you before you say that our cutthroats fought for an idea, for an ideal. What does all your suffering amount to? Maybe the goal escapes me. That’s why I’m afraid to put myself forward, to side with one party against another. Where does this hatred between you come from?”
“It is the end result of a long sequence of historical facts,” Dr. Audier declared, combing a hand through his white silky hair. “The hatred became swollen and toxic, and had to be punctured in the end like an abscess.”
“Without a scalpel?”
“You always need a scalpel to drain an abscess,” Dr. Audier added. “I am seventy years old and I have lived through plenty of things in this country. Our past is full of rebellions, we have seen days beyond description during which everyone, like the musketeers of old, demanded revenge for the least insult. Weapons were lightly drawn and men braved death just as lightly. I am more or less the last man of a dead generation. Maybe we deserve what we are going through.”
“Do you feel so guilty that you would just casually absolve those who persecute you?” Jean Luze asked.
“My dear young man, I have enough experience to know when to keep quiet and to keep the full range of my thoughts to myself.”
“Forgive me, I did not mean to pry”
“Don’t apologize. You are not so much curious about what I think, but about what could have brought us to hang our heads and resign ourselves.”
He opened the door of the living room and studied the street.
“Look!” he said. “Calédu is rounding up the poets. They dared pay their respects to an executed suspect and he’s using the occasion to get these so-called conspirators. Well, and take a look here: Monsieur Long is standing in front of his factory. He’s watching as if he were a mere spectator. And yet I wouldn’t be surprised if he was intimately involved.”
“Aren’t you exaggerating somewhat?” Jean Luze asked, skeptical.
“Look at things a bit more carefully and I am sure you’ll see I’m right,” Audier answered.
Félicia smiled, more serene than ever.
“He’s crazy,” she later explained to her husband, “his wife said so. In times like these, many of us need a scapegoat to excuse our own cowardice. The only guilty ones are these blacks who have been sent here to make us submit. They only associate with Monsieur Long because they hope to make money. As if money were everything!”
“Oh my wife, my dear wife,” Jean Luze said, “you are such a sectarian!”
“What do you expect?” she said to him, “you can’t snap your fingers and erase the mark of your entire upbringing.”
Down at the very end of Grand-rue, in that miserable back alley full of old rickety shacks, mothers wept as they watched their sons being handcuffed.
The days went by. The people’s misery grew. To each his own lot. Selfishness becomes our way of life. We wallow in cowardice and resignation. Here I am, more than ever in love with my sister’s husband, and I want to think of nothing else but this love. It is turning into my refuge, my consolation. Félicia is again so sure of herself, so confident in her man, that she embraced Annette on her birthday. They gave her perfume and rice powder. Drench yourself in perfume and powder, I’m not afraid of anything anymore, Jean Luze’s smile seems to say. We’ll see.