Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [69]
“But I’m not talking about Jean,” Annette protests hypocritically. “What makes you think I am?”
Félicia’s lips are trembling. She has to restrain herself in order not to make it obvious she knows Annette is just a woman scorned. That’s my view of her as well. In any case, she’s getting her revenge on Félicia. The way you take revenge defines you: she does it in a petty, boorish way.
Showing up an hour late, Paul is greeted with cries of joy at the living room door. Annette looks around to make sure they are alone, and then changes her tone and expression:
“I don’t believe you and your business meetings,” she says angrily, “I don’t believe it.”
I can see the day when she comes to regret this union, and when Paul will reproach her in good Haitian fashion for not being a virgin on their wedding night.
The recruitment agents have arrived. They are lodged all over town and have set up shop in Mme Potiron’s former store. Hundreds of peasants pass through in single file, and are accepted or rejected depending on their health and age. Apparently some of them go so far as to purchase work permits from doctors who are exploiting the situation. Dr. Audier refused to issue health certificates to three patients with tuberculosis, but they left with the others anyway. In the distance, the abandoned mountains rise impassive. The recruiters are leaving tomorrow and the peasants are already piling into the trucks with sacks on their backs.
“Where are you going?” people ask them.
“Off to cut cane in the Dominican Republic.”
“For money?”
“Of course! Do we look like we would sweat for nothing in some white man’s country?”
“What do you have to do to get hired?”
“Go sign up at the desk. And if your health is no good, pay someone and you’ll get a spot for sure.”
“Will we come back rich at least?”
“Who knows. We’re going to try our luck.”
The mountains continue to empty out, growing even more impassive.
It’s amazing that the trade of our compatriots could leave us so cold.
“They’re going to seek their fortunes elsewhere,” Mme Audier told me. “They’re better off than we are.”
Félicia is steadfast in her principles. I am not unaware of this, but I go to Jane’s more and more often.
“You’re going too far, Claire,” she told me recently, “and you are setting a bad example for Annette. Don’t you think?”
“Jane needs help,” I responded.
“Fine, give in to your soft heart, send her some work, but don’t see her so often. Soon there will be gossip about this friendship, you know our little world.”
Father Paul went after me as well. I ran into him just as I was just about to go inside Jane’s home.
“What do you want in that girl’s house, my child?” he asked me.
“She’s making dresses for me.”
“Félicia is right. You are getting dresses made for yourself quite often these days. I don’t need to tell you these visits worry your sister and that she’s the one who alerted me. I hope there is nothing untoward in your relations with Jane Bavière.”
He leaned on his walking stick and looked like the grim reaper under his black robe. I’m not young anymore, and he should have realized this. But he had known me to be so fainthearted and timid that he refused to believe I’d changed.
“What do you mean, Father?”
“Life has denied you certain pleasures, my child; try not to seek them in sin.”
“There is no call for such vile accusations,” I answered, shaking with rage.
“I am a priest, I am fulfilling my priestly duty in protecting you from yourself …”
I interrupted him impertinently.
“Yes, but I don’t like priests who preach slander by example.”
“You are defending those who live in sin so bitterly that you have forgotten yourself in this case. I don’t recognize you anymore. Don’t you know that men visit her at night?”
I turned my back on him and went to knock on