Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [55]
“Mathurin,” my father barked. “How dare you speak? You, the immoral one, shunned by society …”
“What society are you talking about, Clamont? The one made up of stubborn people like you who boast of being white and who close their doors in the faces of worthy black men? Have you forgotten your grandmother, Clamont, the black woman whose loas you still serve?”
“I have forgotten her in fact,” my father replied, pale with wrath.
“There is your eldest daughter to refresh your memory. I thank God for arranging things so well.”
A crowd gathered. Some listened smiling to Mathurin’s words, others like Laurent and Dr. Audier pulled my father by the sleeve to drag him home.
“He’s just a crazy old man,” Laurent whispered to him.
Hidden behind their blinds, the ones who dared not show themselves tried not to miss any of the spectacle. I saw their glowing eyes, heard their cruel muffled laughter, comments, judgments, against which my father could scarcely defend himself. My fear of him died that day. I had seen him blush before my eyes, shaken and beating a retreat. A vague premonition alerted me to the falseness of our situation, and I was surprised to find myself agreeing with Tonton Mathurin deep inside.
The next day, six masked men broke into Mathurin’s house and took him away. He came back three hours later, his clothes torn, his face bloody: he had been dragged into the woods and horribly beaten. He found my father, walked up to him and spat in his face.
“Coward!” he yelled. “You are not yet sitting in the presidential chair and you are already abusing your powers, you hypocrite. Look, all of you, I have spit in your candidate’s face.”
My father ran home, took down his rifle and fired at Mathurin, whom he fortunately missed. There was a rush to disarm him, and to calm him down and settle his bad blood my mother gave him two spoonfuls of castor oil that he swallowed without raising an eyebrow.
That evening, I thought for a long time before falling asleep … I remembered Mathurin’s insults, and realized that we had not once invited to our house the parents of Alcine Joseph and Élina Jean-François, two very smart black girls my friends and I knew at school. And the word prejudice became heavy with meaning for me …
A few days later, a French boat in our harbor supplied our merchants: glassware, lingerie, wines, liqueurs, clothes, jewelry graced the display windows, and my mother, spending our last reserves on my father’s advice, bought some linen and a new piece of crystal she was planning to exhibit at her next party. Three linen blouses embroidered with lace and ribbons were added to my trousseau, and the night before the party my mother spread on my bed a frilly white silk dress, black leather slippers and a beaded velvet purse. We had sent out many invitations and my father, who was to leave for Port-au-Prince on the French boat in three days, invited the officers on board that he knew. Dora’s twenty-year-old cousin Georges, a pianist and a talented poet, was to play contredanses and waltzes.
The coffee harvest was at hand. My father paid a quick visit to the farmers and came back happy to report that there would soon be sacks full of coffee and then of money.
“I rule like a lion king over my land,” he said laughing. “The peasants are afraid of my ‘voodoo spells’ and they never steal from me.”
Was he a good enough actor to play at voodoo to keep his naïve farmers in check? I couldn’t answer that question.
It was July 3, 1915. A choking heat fell on the town. There was no breeze that morning to dry the sweat off the brows of our “little soldiers” pacing up and down the streets with rifles on their shoulders. Political discussions were rife and the news that arrived with