“Oh, forget about love, forget about love,
On this earth,
When you’ve lost your love,
You’ve got nothing but tears!
Oh, forget about love, forget about love,
On this earth,
When you’ve lost your love,
You’ve got nothing but tears!
I took my heart
And gave it to a wretch
To a young man without feeling,
To a young man without love.”
My mother would sing this song as she combed her jet-black hair, curiously flecked with auburn. She drew a part from the top of her forehead, then with dollops of Roja brilliantine and water, so that it wouldn’t twist around the comb like the vines of the passion fruit, she would bring it sensibly over to cover her ears. As a finishing touch, she would dust off her shoulders with a small, ivory-handled brush, dab Soir de Paris on her neck and go off to sit behind the till in my stepfather’s shop. She used to close the cash register at half past twelve exactly and return at two. She was born in Philipsburg of Dutch blood20 and hated the inhabitants of Marigot, whom she called “crude and coarse, like their masters, the French.” When she was young her father had sent her to study in Amsterdam and she was always telling me about the Rijksmuseum and its wonderful Rembrandts, the lazy, shimmering water of the canals and the reflection of the stern façades of the stone houses between the barges. Instead of studying pharmacy, however, she had a child, none other than me, by an Indonesian student, whom she described as the son of a sultan, but who in real life was no doubt poor and just as lonely and as lost as she was, shivering under those sunless skies. Her father had her brought back to the island and was only too happy to marry her off to my stepfather, a prosperous businessman, but a widower, burdened with five children, who made her suffer enormously. So when Loulou Lameaulnes came visiting with his high forehead and thinning hair, wearing a starched, white drill suit, she summed up the situation immediately and said to me:
“He’s got three good-for-nothing boys and an illegitimate girl. All he’s looking for is a servant to take care of them. A servant, that’s what you’ll be!”
I didn’t listen to her, because you never listen to your mother, and at that time, Loulou had dreamy brown eyes. My stepfather liked Loulou because he spoke with authority:
“The Guadeloupe of yesteryear died a natural death. Those who put blinkers over their eyes, those who still believe in sugarcane are crazy. My great-grandfather Gabriel deserves a statue. He was the first to see the light and set up these nurseries. They laughed at him. ‘You can’t eat flowers, Monsieur Lameaulnes,’ they said. And after that the nurseries were always inherited by those who were thought to be no good, like my poor father, like myself, like Aristide after me. Let them say what they like! Soon there will be the Single European Market and I shall sell my flowers as far away as England. Yes, my flowers will decorate the table of the Queen of England. Her Majesty the Queen. I’ve already got my slogan: ‘The Lameaulnes Nurseries: an earthly paradise for flowers.’ ”
After he left, my stepfather nodded his head.
“There’s a man who knows what he wants.”
When I arrived at Rivière au Sel I was in a state of joy. I didn’t hear the women untangling their hair on their porch whisper:
“There goes the girl from Saint-Martin, there goes the girl from Saint-Martin.”
I didn’t see the children shy away when I fondled them. I wanted to work at the nurseries. All those flowers, all those plants whose scent and color made me feel dizzy! But Loulou was against it.
“The Lameaulnes ladies have always had enough to do at home.”
So I stayed at home with my servants, my children, and gradually this house made of wood at the edge of the dense forest, deprived of light and sun, a paradise dripping with lover’s chains and anthuriums, this house became my prison, my tomb. My youth flew away. At times, it seemed I was already dead and my blood had already frozen in my veins.
It’s been years since Loulou slept in my bed. Once darkness has fallen I lock my door and curl up like a fetus between my sheets.
It’s on nights when the wind gets up, when it throws branches and unripe fruit to the ground, when it flattens the cabins and sends sheets of tin roofing flying, that I tremble the most. My prayers to God remain unanswered. I call for help to all those who loved me but are now gone. I imagine my father, brown-skinned and distinguished like pandit Nehru; my mother, the gentle Lina, her eyes always brimming with tears. They respond to my call. They sit at my bedside and comfort me, telling me the stories I heard when I was young:
“At that time—I’m talking of a long, long time ago, a ‘once upon a time’ time—it was the moon that was in charge. Every morning she leaned out of the sky and looked at the earth, saying: ‘If you ask me, we need a river here. A row of royal palms there. A bush of red ixoras over there.’ And her will was done.”
I listen to them, I listen to them and finally sleep carries me off around five in the morning, when the sun’s rays are already coloring the louvered shutters and the servant girls are moving about in the attic.
Nobody knows that I am to blame for the tragedy that has just drawn to a close. But I am, and nobody else.
The misfortunes of the children are always caused by the secret sins of the parents.
It was the servant girls I first heard talking about Francis Sancher. Cornélia was telling Gitane how he had been looking everywhere for a carpenter and had come to ask Marval, her husband, to help him. She said that Marval wouldn’t do anything of the sort, not for all the gold in Guyana. That same day at lunch Loulou shouted he ought to be deported with the Dominicans and Haitians. To this Aristide retorted that he was only too happy to have the Dominicans and Haitians do the work at the nurseries that no Guadeloupean deigned to do. As usual they started to argue and a torrent of abuse flowed out of Loulou’s mouth.
After lunch, when Dodose Pélagie brought me a recipe for sweet potato pie, she complained that her unfortunate son, Sonny, spent all his time at Francis Sancher’s.
In the end, curiosity got the better of me and I went to see for myself what the man who was putting Rivière au Sel into such a commotion looked like.
A man was chatting with Moïse the postman. Very tall. Very strong. Bent over, he was a head taller than Moïse and broader by both shoulders. Despite its being a cool evening, he was bare-chested and you could see the hard outline of his pectorals above a forest of jet-black hair that contrasted with the gray mane on his head. His arms were bicolored. Almost black up to the elbow, then golden above. I couldn’t help thinking:
“Oh, Lord! Imagine a hunk of a man like that in your bed night after night!”
At that very moment he turned towards me and his eyes plunged into mine as if he were reading my thoughts. I wanted to hurry on by, but I was nailed to the spot in front of the hedge of rayo. He greeted me.
His face was of a rich, roasted corn color. His eyes held the promise of long journeys. His mouth, that of never-ending kisses. After so many years, I had ended up forgetting that I was a woman and I was frightened of the desires that were flaring up inside of me.
I ran home as fast as I could. But that same evening, with doors and windows shut tight, he came and joined me. And the night after and the night after that …
Thanks to Francis Sancher, I no longer saw nor heard Loulou. He could pass me by, do what he liked with my servants up in the attic above my head, give orders, shout insults, I no longer cared about all that. Sometimes, I had sudden misgivings and went down on my knees to ask the Good Lord to forgive me. However, as soon as dusk descended I forgot my remorse and was carried away by my dreams.
One night, after we had made love, I remained clinging to his side like seaweed and we talked in the dark. I told him about Loulou.
“Does it make sense to you? What have I done to him? Why did he bring me all the way from Philipsburg to treat me the way he does? Haven’t I got light skin? Isn’t my hair black and curly? Haven’t I given him three lovely boys? I haven’t committed any crime. Shouldn’t he treat me rather like the Holy Sacrament?”
He covered my face with kisses.
“My little angel, that’s how we are, we men! Neither the skin nor the hair have anything to do with it. The white women in French France suffer the same. It’s the fate of all women. We’re born torturers. But you’re still young and beautiful. Why do you put up with it? Why don’t you leave?”
Leave? Where would I go?
How long did this paltry happiness last?
The night Mira ran away I waited for him in vain. The following night I did the same. Then Moïse came to tell us that she’d gone to live with him. With Francis Sancher! Mira’s like my daughter. When I arrived at Loulou’s I loved her at first sight, a wild little thing with a bleeding heart. I too grew to understand her and I prayed, I prayed to the Good Lord He would pardon her sin, however horrible it was, and send her a savior to deliver her from her jail.
Why did she have to take Francis Sancher from me? Precisely the man who was an oasis in my desert?
Hatred burnt up my heart, like the savanna in the dry season. I called down misfortune on her, and Satan, who is always on the lookout, heard me, for she came back with her belly, her shame and her pain.
I am the cause of all this distress. I am and nobody else. Since she didn’t suspect anything she confided in me. But instead of arousing my jealousy the story she told me brought water to my eyes:
“I was never happy with him. Even when his body was on top of mine, I knew his mind was wandering in regions I could never reach.
“Sometimes I would lose my temper with him.
“ ‘Don’t I exist in your two eyes?’ I said to him. ‘Speak to me!’
“He shrugged his shoulders.
“ ‘About what? I no longer have bow, spear or arrow. I’ve lost all my combats. Soon I shall lose the last, the combat of life.’
“He crossed over to the window and murmured:
“ ‘Can’t you see him lying in wait for me?’
“I went up to him and replied:
“ ‘I can’t see anything but a trail of fireflies zigzagging in the dark.’
“Or: ‘All I can see is Xantippe looking for his rabbit feed.’
“ ‘You have two eyes to see nothing with.’
“When I told him I was missing my blood, he became gentle, almost tender. I told myself it was the miracle of the baby. It’s been known to happen before.
“Every morning he made me drink a tea that he had concocted himself with leaves he went and picked amid the dew, and roots he left to macerate in alcohol. He maintained it would give me strength. But in fact I felt weaker and weaker. I vomited blood and phlegm. Sometimes I fell into a state. One evening he gave me a very bitter herb tea, and sleep carried me off at once. My spirit left my body, peacefully, peacefully. It seemed I had come back to live in the shady womb of my mother, Rosalie Sorane, with her teeth of pearl. I was floating, swimming with happiness in her uterine sea and I could hear far away the sad, muffled sounds of a world I had made up my mind never to enter. Suddenly, I was stabbed with a terrible pain. I woke up and saw him leaning over me. He was brutally opening my legs with one hand, and with the other he was trying to stick a long, sparkling needle into me. When he realized I had woken up he began to whine and stammer: ‘That child must never open its eyes to the light of day. Never. An ill omen is upon him as it is upon me. He’ll live a life of calamities and he’ll end up dying like a dog as I shall soon do. I have come here to end it all. To come full circle. To put the finishing touches, you understand. Return to square one and stop everything. When the coffee tree is riddled with greenfly and only bears black, stony fruit it has to be burnt.’ ”
A sad story that I compared to my own life. I’d believed he was different but this man too was nothing but a murderer. A torturer, he had said it himself. An insidious feeling, something I’d never felt before, a sense of revolt, was growing inside of me. I kept turning over and over again a question he had asked me. Why do we put up with it? Yes, why? I asked myself, day and night.
One evening Aristide gave a loud kick at the bedroom door and shouted:
“Do you know who he’s got in his bed that’s still warm from the last person? Oh, he hasn’t wasted much time! Vilma, Vilma Ramsaran!”
It was there and then that I made up my mind.
Around me the women are praying:
“I counted the dead happy because they were dead, happier than the living who are still in life. More fortunate than either I reckoned the man yet unborn, who had not witnessed the wicked deeds done here under the sun.”
I have made a decision. I’m going to leave Loulou and Rivière au Sel. I’ll take my boys with me. I’m going to look for the sun and the air and the light for what’s left of the years to live.
Where will I find them? I don’t know yet. What I do know is that I’m going to look for them.
20 The island of Saint-Martin is divided into the French side and the Dutch side.