Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [30]
Toward midnight, Annette was drunk enough to demand that Jean Luze dance with her. He begged off, then, encouraged by Félicia, he accepted. Once again, there he was holding her in his arms. I focused my attention on this graceful vision and found in it a version of the hatred the commandant inspired in me. I scrutinized Jean Luze’s impassive face. Forgetting herself, Annette closed her eyes. I suddenly saw her grab his head in order to kiss him on the lips. He drew away quickly, and stared at her unsmiling:
“Are you out of your mind?” he said.
She bowed her head just as I did.
From that moment, nothing mattered to me anymore. There I was in my corner, incapable of thought, incapable of desire, half-dead with depression and despair. I saw people walking, heard them talking, all of it in a dream. Nevertheless, for a brief instant I caught Calédu’s eyes on me; I rose and left our guests for my room, double-locking the door in my rage.
I couldn’t sleep a wink. On account of what Calédu said. Who told him about us? Are we losing our pride and our solidarity to such an extent that we betray one another out of fear? Who was so indecent as to stir up the ashes of the past? To resurrect after so many years the bloody incident at Lion Mountain? Don’t they realize they are giving our enemies ammunition against us? Ammunition they will use to humiliate, shame and force us to capitulate even further. As for me, nothing will make me bow my head. I will never yield. Even if they club me, even if they torture me as they did Dora, I will hold my head high. I alone will never give in. I refuse to make my peace with this. I refuse to get used to this. I would rather stand with our old dodos and acquiesce to Mme Camuse though I dislike her behavior. Did they have to appoint such hateful and spectacularly criminal people to reform our backward little town? We’re on, Commandant! Whatever you may think, you are up against a strong opponent. Our hatred is mutual. Bless this love that imprisons me, praise be to Jean Luze the Frenchman who enthralls me so much that nothing matters apart from my love. You may be all bluster strutting about like a walking arsenal, but I’m smart enough to hide my game and look harmless to you. And therein lies my strength. I am patient, whereas you, like all fools, are impulsive. I wrap myself in the dignity of an old family line, as I nurse my serpent’s venom. You spread your cruelty, I know how to hide mine. You bite, I sting—stealthily, my eye trained by a bourgeois education, imbibed like mother’s milk, which makes me the most cunning of enemies. I wait for my moment. Because for now, love saves me from hatred.
Every evening, Annette comes home from Bob Charivi’s store more or less drunk. No matter how much I pull on the bridle, she completely escapes my control. I stopped by her room during her absence and saw a bottle of sleeping pills on her table. She drugs herself to sleep. I slosh about blindly in the darkness of my thoughts. I frighten myself. Seeking distraction, I pay a visit to Mme Camuse. I find her in bed, Eugénie Duclan by her side.
“It’s nothing,” says Mme Camuse, “a bad flu.”
At her request, I run out to get some turpentine at Charles Farus’, and we rub it on her back and chest. She then clamors for cat’s-tongue tea,13 recommending that I close my eyes when I pick out the three leaves to boil, as prescribed by local superstition.
“A terrible epidemic is upon us!” Eugénie Duclan sighs. “The rain will not cease. God has heeded our prayers, but the sun cannot dry our puddles. Yesterday, six children died of typhoid-malaria. There is no more medicine at the hospital and no nurses either.”
Mme Camuse shifts in her bed.
“We must pray, call upon our blessed dead to help us, our land is in agony,” she tells us.
She turns to me and takes the boiling tea.
“Claire,” she says to me, “have you been to your parents’ grave? It looks