• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“If you only knew how tired I am!”

Was it I who said these words? Was I the one who gently, very gently, pushed him away?

I leave him. He follows me with his eyes without moving. I go in my room and double-lock the door. Here I am on my bed, contemplating this blood on my hands, this blood on my robe, this blood on the dagger …

From the window, I catch a glimpse of the torches wavering in the wind. The doors of the houses are open and the entire town has risen.

ANGER

Part One

CHAPTER ONE

That morning, the grandfather had been the first to come down to the dining room. Hidden behind a half-open door, he was observing a corner of the yard, eyes wide with fear, ears pricked up.

Men in black were driving stakes around the house. Their uniforms gleamed with sweat in the sun of what was still morning. Their decorations, weapons and hammers reflected intermittent flashes of light; and the grandfather told himself they looked like plundering birds of prey walking around like that, bent over. What ghastly uniforms, and what right do they have, driving these stakes into my land? he said to himself.

The last steps on the stairs creaked, startling him out of his thoughts. He quickly wiped his face as if to erase the fear that had been imprinted there, and turned his head toward his son:

“Men in black uniforms are on our land. They’re driving stakes all around our house,” he said to him.

“Stakes!” the son cried out.

“Look!”

With a hand that was still firm, he drew him behind the door and pointed to the back of the yard:

“Look!” he said again.

At the sight of the men in uniform, the son mumbled a few unintelligible words that betrayed panic checked by immense willpower.

“They’ve been here since dawn,” the old man added.

His beard trembled. The son, afraid his father would burst into one of his terrible fits of anger, looked at him intently, annoyingly calm.

“Take it easy, Papa, above all keep calm.”

The top of the stairs creaked this time, just before a nineteen-year-old boy of athletic build all but tumbled down into the living room.

“Good morning!” he said.

And turning toward the table:

“Where’s Mélie?” he asked. “Has she decided to let us go without food this morning?”

He broke off, pricking up his ears, and before anyone could stop him he threw himself at the door, flinging it wide open.

“What’s going on? What are they doing at our place?”

“They’re driving stakes,” the old man said tersely.

“What right do they have?” the son protested.

“They’re here to bring us news of the death of our freedom,” the grandfather answered. “Don’t you understand that?”

He fell silent when he saw the maid. She entered slowly, dragging her feet with ostentatious innocence, and as she set the table she hypocritically observed the side of the yard where the men in black were working.

“At the very least we should ask them what they’re doing on our land,” the young man declared, “or else it will look like we’re afraid.”

“Keep still, Paul!” the father shouted, trying to rouse himself. “You see exactly what they’re doing: they’re planting stakes to keep us from our property.”

A heavy silence descended, which was especially uncomfortable for the maid, who now avoided lifting her eyes, her lips tight, features lifeless, like a statue hewed from the black stone of African antiquity.

Except for that moment when he had reprimanded his son, the father always spoke in a neutral, monotonous voice, in sharp contrast to the old man’s mute nervousness and the young man’s more exuberant manner. The grandfather looked from his son to his grandson. While the silence lasted, he kept staring at them with such insistence that a casual observer might have thought him senile.

“Evil has come upon us. We will have to fight to defeat it,” he finally said.

“Above all, we’ll have to act with caution,” replied the father, who had been waiting for the maid to leave before breaking his silence. “We’ll get a very good and very clever lawyer who knows how to