Maryse Conde - Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? - A Fantastical Tale

“You said Celanire Pinceau?”

“That’s right, Celanire Pinceau. Celanire was my mother’s name, whose memory Ofusan wanted to honor. Not that Mother treated her very well. Behind her back she called her ‘tar girl.’ May God bless her soul!

“In the meantime my friend Dieudonné instructed Mangouste to go and interrogate Madeska, who knew a thing or two about children in the region with their throats slashed. Mangouste stumbled into a house of despair. Madeska had just fled, abandoning women and children. Every day now for years he had gone for a dip in the sea at the same spot. He would lay his clothes under the same almond tree. Since he couldn’t swim, he never went very far. That very morning, much to their surprise, the fishermen had seen him hoist his fat body and potbelly into a fishing boat and row frantically in the direction of Montserrat. What was he running away from? That was anyone’s guess.

“All these signs hinted to us, Dieudonné and me, that Celanire had not been sent by the Good Lord, but by Beelzebub himself. As for me, I was wondering how we were going to get rid of her, especially as I had brought her back to this world. Unless murder was committed, there didn’t seem to be an answer. And there was my wife going into raptures over her, embroidering baby clothes, decorating her bedroom, gurgling silly names, and looking so much younger. I didn’t dare tell her what I suspected.

“I have to say that Celanire was a beautiful baby. The older she got, the more beautiful she became. She was so lovely that once they tried to steal her. One day the nursemaid was walking her along the seafront when a young girl came up and begged her to let her cuddle the divine little angel in her arms, which she naively accepted. The young girl then ran off and almost got away. People said that Celanire looked like me, only darker, since it is always said children take after their adopted parents. Like Frankenstein, I soon came to loathe the creature I had created. Don’t ask me why. I took a dislike to everything about her. Above all, I couldn’t bear to look at her obscene scar, purplish as an infibulated labium, which was a constant reminder of what I had done! I asked Ofusan to hide it, and she got into the habit of tying silk or velvet ribbons around the child’s neck. The terrible thing was that despite this aversion, which I had trouble hiding, Celanire took a special liking to me. Her chuckles and gurgles were directed at me, something that Ofusan suffered agony over. Because, oddly enough, the child never showed her any affection. This gave Ofusan the opportunity to invent another excuse to torture herself. If nobody loved her, it was because the ancestors, her maman and her papa, had put a curse on her. She had to make peace with them again and ask their forgiveness. She subsequently concluded she had to return to her mountain home. The way of life there was less corrupt. She could bring her daughter up in a healthier environment. I have to confess that I exploded on hearing this litany of insanities. One morning, when I couldn’t take it any longer, I told her in no uncertain terms that if she wanted to go back to her boon-docks, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. And above all to take her Celanire with her! I could do without her even more. Stung to the quick, she decided to leave the next morning. Okay, I said, just like that. Good-bye, farewell, and good riddance!

“The following day I lost her.

“The next morning she went to the market to inform her own people she was returning home when a dog, a huge Cuban hound, like those used to hunt down the maroons in olden times, black, as big as a calf and strong as an ox, leaped on her, clawed her face, and sunk its teeth into her neck. She died on the spot while the hound, its chops dripping with blood, vanished before anyone could make a move. It’s this second crime I am paying for today. The cur is me. I killed Ofusan as clearly as if I had been the one commanding it to sink its jaws into her throat. And the saint got her revenge, because I found myself lumbered with this child I couldn’t stand and who was to be my downfall. If I had had any sense, I would have left her at the Saint-Jean-

Bosco orphanage. Or else with a scalpel I would have undone my surgical masterpiece and sent her back to the hell she deserved. I couldn’t, because of Ofusan. In memoriam.

“My friend Dieudonné Pylône began to get suspicious. That dog, that Cuban hound, had nothing to do with the scrawny, mangy pack of stray dogs that roamed the market. None of the sellers or customers had ever seen it scavenging the garbage. Where did it come from? Was it really an animal? Wasn’t it rather an evil spirit? I was unable to help him solve the mystery.

“Ten years went by. My friends urged me to remarry. In their opinion, I couldn’t raise a young girl all on my own. Many a young wench made eyes at me, for without boasting, I was still a handsome man. A full head of curly hair, a good set of teeth. But I wasn’t interested. At the age of thirty-three I had finished with sex. Women of the night or well-bred young girls, it was all the same to me: nothing interested me any longer. I kept clear of making medical experiments. I immersed myself in politics. With no success, as I’ve already told you. That scumbag Agénor de Fouques-Timbert beat me twice. Even so I made a name for myself electioneering against assimilation, which all the other parties at the time were hankering after.

“Looking for someone to take care of Celanire, both as a nursemaid and a bodyguard, for that crazy woman was still prowling around her, I hired a certain Melody. Knowing myself as I did, I hadn’t hired her because of her references; she didn’t have any. It was because she was so ugly and cross-eyed that even the devil couldn’t have made me make love to her. That woman, in whom I confided everything, became so devoted to me that I ended up treating her like a close member of the family until that day when she dealt me the coup de gr ^ ace.

“In 1894 Celanire was ten years old. Still just as pretty and, as they kept telling me, just like me but blacker! She was a child with a most pleasant nature. Happy, cheerful, and amusing, inventing all sorts of stories. Not scatterbrained, however, extremely intelligent. Top of her class. At home she would pester me with questions I couldn’t answer: ‘Why don’t girls get more schooling and why are they considered inferior to boys? Why do men cheat on their women? Why do they beat them? Why are there so many illegitimate and unwanted children with no maman or papa?’ Contrary to the custom at the time, I told her outright she was an adopted child whom I had operated on to save her from dying. Sometimes I caught her looking at her monstrous scar in front of the mirror. Her eyes would brim with tears, as if she were wondering who her real parents might be. She had got it into her head that they must have given her away because they were too poor to raise her, and this afflicted her deeply. She swore that when she was older she would do everything to find them and build them a palace for their old age. In fact, she was beyond reproach. For most families, she would have been their pride and joy. But my feelings toward her hadn’t changed. It was something beyond my control; I couldn’t stand her. She had the loathsome habit of constantly calling me ‘darling little Papa,’ pestering me with her little treats, entering my surgery without knocking with cups of hot chocolate and slices of marble cake, kissing me on the neck, and rubbing herself up against me like a cat. Every evening, when she was tucked up in bed, I had to read her a story and end it with a kiss, and this was a pretext for all kinds of unbearable cuddling and fondling on her part. Precocious as she was, she had her first period early that year. And she would chatter about it right in the middle of a meal in front of the guests, as if it were our little secret. ‘Darling little Papa, I’ve got the curse…I can’t go swimming today!..Darling little Papa, I’ve got stomachache, you know why?…Darling little Papa…’