Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [65]
“At last, an intelligent person who can help me with this,” she says to me. “These servants can be so dumb! …”
Does she think, as I do in fact, that my place is in the pantry? In any case, I’ll be kept busy and that’s fortunate. I feel ill at ease beside these half-naked women. Félicia has put Jean-Claude down on some cushions at her feet and Annette is cooing over him, posing in adoration. Jean Luze is chatting with M. Trudor, drinking whiskey on the rocks. He seems pretty cheerful. The sight of so much female flesh must not be unpleasant for him. I catch him staring somewhat frequently at a tall bimbo with tanned skin, a very fashionable girl from Port-au-Prince staying with the Trudors and playing the ingénue. He goes inside to get changed and comes back in bathing trunks. Mme Trudor and I are the only ones not swimming. It would amuse me to see her half-naked. It doesn’t flatter me to be paired with her. Do they think I don’t have a good body? Even Annette doesn’t have my sculpted abdomen. Félicia wears a more decent bathing suit, probably to hide her bulges. She doesn’t suffer from false shame; she’s lucky that way.
Gleaming with sweat, M. Trudor prances among the ladies, happy to play the pasha in his luxury villa. He gives Jean Luze a tour of the house, waving his finger in the air.
“You are an intellectual, one can sense that. Come, I will show you something you will appreciate.”
He takes him to the library to let him admire his books. One gets the feeling that they are sitting there for show. Perhaps they have never been opened.
After they leave, I take a look around the library: it’s actually a very good one. I gaze for a moment at the nude body of Salammbô25 embraced by a colorful snake on a morocco leather cover; I quickly scan a few familiar titles suddenly made less appealing in their pompous finery, and then sneak away to mingle with the others outside.
During dinner, the girl from Port-au-Prince turns to Jean Luze. They go around the buffet together chatting. She offers to guide him; there she is, picking out dishes he points to with his finger. I look for Félicia. She is cradling Jean-Claude and sipping a cool drink.
They say people are always disappointing the more you get to know them. Is it because I hope to be disappointed that I watch Jean Luze’s every move? Everything I have seen of him has only increased my admiration. Even his harshness toward Annette is justified in my eyes. Repression has given me the nose of a good hunting dog. I can smell the squirming of others’ thoughts merely by dilating my nostrils. Despite reassuring appearances, my nose tells me things aren’t going well for Félicia.
She who is generally so confident now seems to give off something nervous and unstable. She always remakes others in her own image. Even after the scene she witnessed with her own eyes, she still somehow sees Jean Luze as a man without weaknesses, a man Annette provoked in vain. In the same way, she also refuses to admit that Jean-Claude has worn her out. He must be the best baby in the world for he is her son. Despite the sleepless nights, she insists that he only cries when he’s hungry. I shudder to see her being so stubborn as to banish the thought that he could get sick.
More nonexistent than ever, I continue to keep my vigil. I am so dull that I have become colorless. In any case, that’s the only way to escape being bad-mouthed. At least they have left me alone. Even Father Paul gives me communion without confession, as it were. He could cite me as an example in his sermons. Does he really believe in purity? I would call purity a total ignorance of the torments of the flesh or else the triumph of the will over them. If this victory can, according to religion, save the soul, how can one explain the sexual stirrings of a woman who has lived in eternal chastity.
I can hardly imagine my life outside this house. It shelters all the sad memories of my childhood