It’s the second time I’ve seen a dead body, but it’s the first time I’ve been to a wake. I thought wakes didn’t exist anymore. I thought they were things old people rambled on about like “When Sorin was governor” or “When I was a child,” things that only lived as misty memories in their heads.
When Maman Dinah’s mother died, my grandmother on my mother’s side, my parents took me with them to Saint-Martin. There was no wake. We arrived by plane mid-morning and a car drove us to the house of the deceased. There were flowers everywhere. The coffin had been set in the middle of the living room in a sort of metal box and my grandmother was lying at the bottom, all sickly and shriveled up, her eyes half-open and her skin whitened by her long illness. Maman Dinah started to cry and Papa said to her:
“What’s the point of crying? That won’t bring her back to life.”
Everyone had been waiting for us. The undertaker’s assistants took the coffin out of the metal box. You could see her old, withered face. Somebody said:
“Oh, we must close her eyes!”
Maman Dinah cried even louder, then she kissed her. Then it was Papa’s turn. I rushed out and went and hid in the kitchen under the sink. From there I thought I heard Papa mutter angrily: “Where’s that boy got to?”
I closed my eyes. I stayed a long, long time under the sink on my knees among the buckets and wet floorcloths. I was scared. I was hot. Finally it was Marty the servant girl who found me. Very softly, she said:
“You can come out now. They’re sealing the coffin. There’s no need to kiss her.”
I went back to the living room where nobody took any notice of me because they were all crying. The undertakers were using their blowtorches amid the smell of fire and molten metal. At one point, Papa saw me and asked:
“Where were you? Coward!”
For once, Maman Dinah took my defense.
“Leave him alone!” she said.
At the cemetery there were seashells and conch shells painted white, arranged around graves dug into the earth. There were also some impressive tombs, as big as houses. Grandmother’s was one of those. There were photos sealed into the marble with names underneath that I couldn’t read. I wasn’t scared any longer. When we got back to Rivière au Sel, Papa started to call me “chicken” and tell everybody that I had refused to kiss my grandmother. He started saying I was afraid of everything, that Minerve was to blame, the servant girl who nursed me into this world, because she was filling my head with stories about witches, people in league with the devil and people who turn into dogs. It’s not true. It’s been ages since Minerve stopped telling me stories of that sort. She’s become a Seventh-Day Adventist and is very religious. She reads the Bible in her kitchen:
“Now, he told them, remove the foreign gods among you and turn your heart to the Eternal, the God of Israel.”
That’s why Papa brought me here. So that I would see a corpse and behave like a man.
People say that Francis Sancher didn’t have a proper suit and that they had to run up this skimpy black one double quick and buy this tie that is strangling his neck.
It’s awful! Since we all have to end up dying, I wonder what’s the point of being born. Of being a pretty baby like Quentin, Mira’s son.
When Mira gave birth, it was dark. There was no wind that evening. A great silence had fallen from the mountains at dusk. All you could hear was the screech of a few crickets that the servant girls had shut in by mistake and the barking of the dogs in the garden that the watchman had unleashed. I couldn’t get to sleep and was thinking of Mira, alone in her room, never seeing anybody, except for Maman Dinah who walks her, leaning on her arm, to the old ornamental pond near the ylang-ylang, when I heard shouts. It was Maman Dinah on the telephone:
“Quick, doctor! She’s just lost her waters!”
Lost her waters? What did that mean? I had the impression the Gully had overflowed its banks and was going to rush through the middle of the house, its cold, frothy water carrying drowned toads, goats and dogs. Then Maman Dinah called the servant girls who sleep up in the attic during the week:
“Minerve! Sandra! Cornélia!”
They galloped down the stairs.
I was scared. I went out onto the veranda. In the dark I saw the red glow of Aristide’s cigarette as he leaned against a pillar.
“Did you hear?” I said. “She’s going to give birth.”
“I can hear as well as you can,” he shouted. “Clear off!”
So I went into the garden and sat on the steps of the old ornamental pond.
It seems that when Papa was little the pond was full of clear water that came down from the mountains and wound through our garden. The servant girls used to fill their jars from it, because they say you didn’t need a Frigidaire in those days. Then a planter diverted the water for his banana grove and the pond has been dry ever since. Just a little moss and lichen at the bottom.
Quentin, Mira’s son, was born exactly at midnight. That means he’ll be dealing with the spirits.
I wonder if other boys hate their father like I do. I wish he would die. I wish it was him stretched out in front of me instead of Francis Sancher, who also did a lot of harm around him.
In fact, although every day I heard so on and so forth about Francis Sancher, I only saw him once in flesh and blood. It was well before Mira went to live with him and before Quentin was born. As soon as we’d heard he was a Cuban, Papa declared there were too many foreigners in Guadeloupe and that he should be deported with all those Dominicans and Haitians. Lucien Evariste, our French teacher, however, promised us he would invite him to speak on Radyo Kon Lambi because he must have fought in the Sierra Maestra with Fidel. Lucien Evariste said that we too needed a revolution and a Fidel, but that alas it would never come about. Consumer society has rotted the hearts of the Guadeloupeans, the way sugar has rotted the teeth of the Polynesians.
The one and only time then that I met Francis Sancher was the day I had been punished because my algebra homework had been so terrible. I had stayed behind to redo it in the prep room, which stinks of urine and shit because it’s next to the WC’s that are always blocked up. So I missed the half past five bus. Instead of waiting for the six o’clock bus, all alone in front of the school that is so close to the cemetery you can see the black and white squares on the tombs, I took a short cut by Grande-Savane. From the top of the hill you get a view of the bay. Over the top of the sea grapes I could see some French French windsurfing and the sea was spotted with red, green and purple. They looked like hot air balloons. Aristide used to take us to the sea and teach us how to float on our backs. He’s forgotten about us now. He’s even forgotten about his greenhouses. Even though he’s got some new orchids, all striped, that they call scorpions. It seems they eat insects. I stepped into the woods. I like the green shadow between the trunks which is the color of moonlight. Here I’m not afraid because I know each tree by its name. I call them and they kneel down for me to climb on their backs and whip them with a branch. We travel through space. Suddenly I saw this man, this stranger, sitting on the root of a tree doing nothing. I guessed at once who it was and said politely:
“Good evening, sir!”
He got up and began to walk beside me, asking me questions, while his giant, ogre’s feet crushed ferns and flowers.
“What’s your name? How old are you? Are you getting along all right at school?”
It irritated me the way he talked to me like a baby.
“No, I’m not,” I said dryly. “My father says I shall end up carting manure like the Haitians.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Your father shouldn’t say such things. The Haitians are a great people. I’ve met them in America, Angola and a lot in Zaire!”
Immediately, he caught my interest, because I too want to see the world when I grow up.
“Have you visited all those countries?” I asked.
He laughed, but his laugh sounded as sad as a rusty bell in a deserted house.
“Yes, I’ve been around quite a bit. I’ve drifted here and there. I’ve seen the mess ideas of good and evil, justice and injustice, oppression and exploitation can do.”
I didn’t like what he said. I didn’t say anything, but even so he sensed I didn’t agree. He put his arm around my shoulder and said:
“Are you interested in politics?”
His arm weighed as heavy as a dead branch.
“Well, a little,” I answered.
He burst out laughing.
“Really? Let’s sit down a while and I’ll tell you about politics.”
I hesitated, but he dragged me towards a tree stump.
“Have you ever heard of Carlotta?”
“Carlotta?”
“No, of course not, it was before you were born. It was Operation Carlotta that won me over. I was young, I thought it a way of making amends. Father Luandino Vieira, who had held me over the baptismal font, suggested I do it. He told me: ‘Atone for your sins, turn over a new leaf. Go forth and clothe those who are naked. Heal those who are suffering.’ We arrived by way of Coral Island and if only you could have seen the joy and jubilation! All that cannon fodder cleaning their Soviet guns!”
On hearing all that bla-bla-bla I said:
“Excuse me, sir, but I have to go home now.”
But he held me back. His hands were like claws!
“We quickly became disillusioned. I was one of the first. The wounded in the trucks were calling for their mothers and everyone was in a state of bewilderment. So one night I went straight ahead and left and that’s how I became ‘Curandero.’ What do you say here? Doktè fèye?”18
I remained silent. I just wanted to leave.
“You too, I bet,” he went on, “you’d like to defend the oppressed. But whatever you do they’ll hate you. They’ll sniff out where you came from and hate you for it. And then there’s nothing more savage, you know, nothing more basically despicable than a person who’s been downtrodden and then freed from his chains …”
I didn’t want to hear another word. I wriggled free and began to run. He started to run behind me, but I was faster. I didn’t stumble over the buttress roots and I knew how to hold on to the shingle vines.
I could hear him shout:
“Wait for me! Why don’t you wait for me?”
But I flew like a bird.
At one point I missed my footing and rolled on the moss. I leaned against a tree trunk to catch my breath and then I saw Xantippe standing a few steps away watching me. My blood froze in my veins as it does every time I see this soucouyant.19 I don’t know how I got up again. I fled away under the canopy of mountain olives that whispered: “Faster! Faster!”
In the clearing I found myself out of breath face to face with Mademoiselle Léocadie Timothée, who was toddling along taking the evening air and, in the same quavering voice as Monsieur Seguin’s goat, said:
“Don’t run like that! You’ll catch a hot and cold from opening the fridge door to get a glass of iced water when you get home.”
I continued to run as fast as my legs would carry me and got back home. I went and sat on the steps of the old ornamental pond and cried hot tears. Why? Because Francis Sancher had told me a lot of nonsense?
I’ll tell Lucien Evariste that just because Francis Sancher is a Cuban doesn’t mean he fought in the Sierra Maestra.
Yes, Francis Sancher was just as bad as Papa and I can’t understand why Mira came to the wake. People will say she has no respect for herself.
Poor Quentin! He’ll have no souvenir of his father. Not even a photo. We’ve got plenty of family pictures. Right back to great-grandfather Gabriel. He was a white planter from Martinique who married a Negro girl. His family disowned him because of that and he came to live in Guadeloupe. That’s my favorite photo. He’s wearing spectacles and a musketeer’s mustache. She’s got a pleated madras kerchief and a thick choker. When I grow up I’d like to do a terrible thing like that which would make Papa furious.
But what?