Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [75]
Félicia keeps getting worse. She is skin and bones. I forbid myself to think of her death; but she looks too much like a woman condemned. How often I have done away with her in my mind! I did so to give flight to my dreams, to stuff myself with illusions. What perfect crimes, what unmitigated betrayals we store up in ourselves! Only deep within do we have the courage to really live, and that’s a good thing. I am the one who dresses Félicia, the one who feeds her. She has been handed over to her worst enemy. Today, Félicia threw up her soup. She can’t keep anything down. Jean Luze came home just as she suffered a mild fainting spell, during the course of which she lost blood. Jean Luze left to get Audier and came back alone.
“What do we do?” he asks. “Audier’s not home.”
Félicia is pale as a corpse. Jean Luze is kneeling by her. He calls her name, then runs off again. Félicia seizes on this as an opportunity to faint again. I rush to the medicine cabinet to get a bottle of alcohol. I return to find Félicia moaning. Where is Jean Luze? I don’t want to be alone with her. Finally, the door opens and Jean Luze walks in with Dr. Audier.
He leans over Félicia to examine her.
“Do you recognize me?” he asks.
She opens her eyes and nods.
The examination is unpleasant, even painful. Dr. Audier takes Jean Luze aside and says to him:
“I recommend a few injections to give her enough strength to withstand an abortion.”
“An abortion!”
“It’s better that way, trust me. Your wife has a fibroma and has lost a lot of blood …”
“I’m putting her in your hands,” Jean Luze answered, completely unstrung, “or maybe it would be better if I left for Port-au-Prince with her? Your hospital is so poorly equipped, and I don’t want to reproach myself should anything go wrong.”
“The sooner the better,” Dr. Audier advises, only too happy to get rid of a new victim.
He hands a prescription to Jean Luze and turns to me:
“Pack your bags, Claire,” he tells me. “Félicia must get to Port-au-Prince without wasting any time and you must go also because of the baby.”
The cigarette was getting restive in the corner of his wet lips.
Without responding, I took the bags from the closet and filled them and ran to Jane’s house to let her know of our departure.
Félicia has been at the Saint-François-de-Sales Hospital since last evening. The car ride took eight hours. I watched Jean Luze clutching the wheel as he avoided the potholes; I listened to him swear at the state of the road; and I silently wiped Félicia’s clammy brow as she rested her head on my lap, saying to myself:
Might she be wise enough to drop dead without my help?
Now, with Jean Luze in my arms and my eyes on the operating room door, I wait. Jean Luze is in such anguish he can’t keep still. I am convinced my love will make him forget Félicia quickly. In the meantime, his distracted look seems to cancel us out, his son and me.
The door finally opens and the surgeon appears. Jean Luze rushes to meet him.
“It went very well,” he says. “She’ll pull through. I’ll be back later this evening.”
“Claire!” Jean Luze cries with a sigh of relief, “we can finally rest easy!”
I have to get used to this thought, I have to get used to the suffering it means for me if I don’t want to be crushed by it: Félicia is going to get better and we will return home and she will take back her place beside her husband, beside her child.
Here I am in a hotel room, making the most of this slight respite life has given me. I have no curiosity about this city that I haven’t seen in so long. In other words, I cling to my idée fixe,