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“Business is bad,” he replied.

And in the look he gave me I thought I saw bad faith, verging on hatred.

I then tried to win them over. I brought clothing for their wives, rum for the men, I went to their homes with candy for the children, cleverly trying to buy their devotion by spoiling them. I learned the hard way that it wasn’t enough, because the next year I got even less money from Louisor.

It was around then that a German named M. Petrold settled here. He bought up coffee, shipped it on a German vessel and began to grow wealthy. Soon, there was a rumor he was trying to set up his own factory and was eyeing Lion Mountain and wanted to buy it. I went to see Dr. Audier for advice.

“I’m not getting anything from the farmers anymore and I’m struggling to make ends meet,” I admitted to him.

“Are you thinking of selling what’s left of Lion Mountain?” he asked me.

“Yes, if the German gives me a good price. All we have left is about sixty acres, but the factory is worth its weight in gold.”

“Do you authorize me to speak to Monsieur Petrold on your behalf?”

“Please do so, Doctor, I need help.”

To ruin the peasants and get my revenge on them, I set the price for my coffee myself that year and gave preference to M. Petrold.

“Who fixed the price of their coffee at twelve centimes? Who is the greedy swine pushing us into bankruptcy?” the peasants yelled the next day at M. Petrold’s door.

Concealed in my room behind the blinds, I could see the peasants raising their fists at my house.

“You don’t want to sell?” M. Petrold was saying to them. “So go home with your coffee. If Lion Mountain is selling coffee at twelve centimes, why should I pay you more?”

“Maybe Lion Mountain has a secret way of breeding money,” one peasant shouted, “some big secret that put the Lion and his wife in their grave. But thank God, we’re still kicking, and Lion Mountain will have to answer for this wicked deed.”

My father’s farmers paid with their lives for my brilliant idea, because about twenty planters armed with machetes descended on our land and slaughtered them. The next day, sitting stiff and straight on my horse, I saw with my own eyes the bloody bodies of our farmers, their wives and children, all hacked to pieces. The killers were caught and the rural administrator brought them to jail. The police, represented by a soft, inexperienced young lieutenant, could not prevent retaliation. No one dared openly attack me, the daughter of a great despotic and merciless landowner, but I was responsible for everything and everyone knew it. I finally received the young lieutenant, who questioned me about my coffee plantation.

“My farmers were stealing from me. So I sold my coffee to Monsieur Petrold at a price that was too low. That’s all,” I explained, “and they took it out on my farmers.”

“You are a terrible businesswoman,” he replied. “To avoid such incidents in the future, get some advice before doing anything.”

I thanked him, and almost in spite of himself he added:

“It seems as if things will get more complicated. To get revenge, the peasants have sent emissaries to Port-au-Prince. They bought the silence of the rural administrator, and what was initially a matter of private order seems to be taking on terrible proportions.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged and left without adding a word.

Eight days later, a terrible hurricane flattened the coffee, tore the roofs off houses and drowned the cattle. For forty-eight hours, the skies were dark. Heavy black clouds, thick and suffocating, rolled along the horizon. A thin rain mixed with wind lashed the paving stones and by the end of the day began to whistle and scream, swelling the sea and flooding the rivers.

“Hurricane coming,” people cried from one window to the next.

Two hours later, all the doors were boarded up. I called for Demosthenes to shut himself in the house with us but he was gone. Augustine, my sisters and I were left to listen to the lamentation of the trees uprooted by the blasts of wind, the whistling of the roofs