Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [33]
She blinked and answered quickly, ‘I don’t say I don’t believe, I say I don’t know, I know what I see with my eyes and I never see it. Besides I ask myself is this place like they tell us? Some say one thing, some different, I hear it cold to freeze your bones and they thief your money, clever like the devil. You have money in your pocket, you look again and bam! No money. Why you want to go to this cold thief place? If there is this place at all, I never see it, that is one thing sure.’
I stared at her, thinking, ‘but how can she know the best thing for me to do, this ignorant, obstinate old negro woman, who is not certain if there is such a place as England?’ She knocked out her pipe and stared back at me, her eyes had no expression at all.
‘Christophine,’ I said, ‘I may do as you advise. But not yet.’ (Now, I thought, I must say what I came to say.) ‘You knew what I wanted as soon as you saw me, and you certianly know now. Well, don’t you?’ I heard my voice getting high and thin.
‘Hush up,’ she said. ‘If the man don’t love you, I can’t make him love you.’
‘Yes you can, I know you can. That is what I wish and that is why I came here. You can make people love or hate. Or … or die,’ I said.
She threw back her head and laughed loudly. (But she never laughs loudly and why is she laughing at all?)
‘So you believe in that tim-tim story about obeah, you hear when you so high? All the foolishness and folly. Too besides, that is not for béké. Bad, bad trouble come when béké meddle with that.’
‘You must,’ I said. ‘You must.’
‘Hush up. Jo-jo my son coming to see me, if he catch you crying, he tell everybody.’
‘I will be quiet, I will not cry. But Christophine, if he, my husband, could come to me one night. Once more. I would make him love me.’
‘No doudou. No.’
‘Yes, Christophine.’
‘You talk foolishness. Even if I can make him come to your bed, I cannot make him love you. Afterward he hate you.’
‘No. And what do I care if he does? He hates me now. I hear him every night walking up and down the veranda. Up and down. When he passes my door he says, “Goodnight, Bertha.” He never calls me Antoinette now. He has found out it was my mother’s name. “I hope you will sleep well, Bertha” – it cannot be worse,’ I said. ‘That one night he came I might sleep afterwards. I sleep so badly now. And I dream.’
‘No, I don’t meddle with that for you.’
Then I beat my fist on a stone, forcing myself to speak calmly.
‘Going away to Martinique or England or anywhere else, that is the lie. He would never give me any money to go away and he would be furious if I asked him. There would be a scandal if I left him and he hates scandal. Even if I got away (and how?) he would force me back. So would Richard. So would everybody else. Running away from him, from this island, is the lie. What reason could I give for going and who would believe me?’
When she bent her head she looked old and I thought, ‘Oh Christophine, do not grow old. You are the only friend I have, do not go away from me into being old.’
‘Your husband certainly love money,’ she said. ‘That is no lie. Money have pretty face for everybody, but for that man money pretty like pretty self, he can’t see nothing else.’
‘Help me then.’
‘Listen doudou ché. Plenty people fasten bad words on you and on your mother. I know it. I know who is talking and what they say. The man not a bad man, even if he love money, but he hear so many stories he don’t know what to believe. That is why he keep away. I put no trust in none of those people round you. Not here, not in Jamaica.’
‘Not Aunt Cora?’
‘Your aunty old woman now, she turn her face to the wall.’
‘How do you know?’ I said. For that is what happened.
When I passed her room, I heard her quarrelling with Richard and I knew it was about my marriage. ‘It’s disgraceful,’ she said. ‘It’s shameful. You are handing over everything the child owns to a perfect stranger. Your father would never have allowed it. She should be protected, legally. A settlement can be arranged and it should be arranged. That was his intention.’
‘You are talking