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Upon returning home, he was astonished by the hopeful shiver that came over him when his father and sister appeared in the living room.

“What did the lawyer tell you?” the grandfather asked his son without preamble.

“He wasn’t able to see us,” the father answered pathetically.

“So they had no consideration for my sister,” Paul pointed out with a sardonic chuckle.

Rose avoided responding, but she slipped her father a look so strange and mysterious that her brother was unable to interpret it.

The door to the dining room was closed, so the noise from outside was muffled. They ate in silence, slowly, as if forcing themselves, abandoned to a common anguish that each of them inwardly rejected, sensing a heavy invisible presence spying on their every move. Paul called for the maid, who didn’t answer. He got up to get the water pitcher from the pantry and saw her near the stakes serving water to the uniformed men. She was bowing and smiling filling glasses, breaking up ice. He waited for her to return, and, taking the tray from her hands, smashed the glasses on the floor.

“Oh! Monsieur Paul,” she said in dismay.

The noise brought the family to the pantry.

“She let them drink out of our glasses,” he muttered, trembling with rage.

“But,” the father said, casting an anxious glance at the maid, “if they are thirsty and ask for a glass, isn’t it more reasonable to serve them?”

The invalid curled up in the grandfather’s arms as if he were in pain. He stared at his father with immense black eyes that took up most of his face and suddenly brandished his fist in his direction.

“Not in our glasses, Paul is right, not in our glasses.”

“You can go,” Rose yelled at the maid, who was giving them an ugly look.

And when she was gone:

“You’re going to ruin everything,” she continued. “Papa is right, we have to catch them with honey. As for me, I’m letting you know right now that I will make every effort to save this land.”

She walked up to her brother and looked straight in his eyes.

“Don’t you want to get out of here? Didn’t you want to study architecture, or have you forgotten all about that? Would you rather waste your time and your youth, until you end up wearing one of their uniforms? Because from now on, if you want to live in peace, you’ll have to fall in behind them.”

She was pleading with him now.

“I’m begging you, Paul, be patient, let me and Papa take care of this, that’s all we ask, that you let us take care of it …”

She saw him turning his head as if searching for an available target, and then his fist struck the wall of the pantry. The grandfather watched him with unfeigned astonishment, and the invalid cheered him on. Paul took him on his back and galloped with him through the house.

“You’ll make them turn tail, you will,” the child whispered when he stopped, out of breath.

The mother had closed her eyes. Something weighed on her heart and made it beat irregularly, slowly, then quickly. And as she listened to it creaking like a rusty old tool, she said to herself: It can’t take this anymore. One day, it will stop.

“As if this were not enough, my God!” she cried out loud.

Once more, the silence seemed to them so profound, so ominous, that they felt as though they could inhale it together with the air. The birds frolicked on the palm branches and their cheerful chirping seemed to punctuate and underscore the horror. She ran to the window. As soon as she saw the men in their black uniforms, she lifted her handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry. Then, they left the room one by one as if repelled by the tears she had been unable to hold back.

CHAPTER THREE

“Grandfather,” said the invalid, “tell me a story.”

“A long, long time ago,” the grandfather then began, “my father, having left the countryside to go to Port-au-Prince, learned that thieves had been trespassing on his land while he was away. At the time, many men rode horses and my father had a horse called Grand Rouge and he galloped like no horse in this world ever knew how. My father, who