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

“I was livid. From one day to the next, a boil as big as the knob on a cane swelled up on her groin. I had no other choice but to examine her, and she openly offered herself to me. You think I’m lying? I swear I’m not. Too many loose women have swooned in front of me for me not to know their little game, and this child was doing it to perfection. It happened one morning in her room. I was wondering whether to lance her boil when she began to roll her eyes, wriggle, uncover her budding guava breasts, and guide my hand into the most inappropriate places. In response to my protests, she moaned: ‘Darling little Papa, take me. I love you so much!’

“Disgusted, I dealt her two slaps; I had never laid hands on her till that day, and rushed down to my surgery. My patients commented on how I looked. I felt sicker than they did. What was I going to do with Celanire? How could I get rid of her? At lunchtime, she didn’t come down. Melody, whom I always believed to be on my side, announced she had a fever. At dinner, same thing. At night, I couldn’t get to sleep. I tossed and turned. I could hear her moving about over my head and talking to Melody. Suddenly I was frightened, like a homeless person who knows the hurricane is heading straight for him. I was right, because two days later the police came to handcuff me in my surgery in front of my flabbergasted patients. Dieudonné Pylône preferred to resign rather than be mixed up with this masquerade.

“Me, Dr. Jean Pinceau, I was accused of sexually abusing Celanire, my adopted daughter. Melody, my faithful Melody, was a witness for the prosecution. Alarmed by the child’s behavior of crying for no reason and losing her appetite, she described how she had plied Celanire with questions. After weeks of her insisting, the child ended up telling her the truth. Encouraged by Melody, Celanire finally went and revealed everything to the police. When I heard Melody churn out all that nonsense, I got the impression I was dreaming. Worst of all, the jury believed every word of it!

“My trial lasted over a year. I became a cause célèbre, the subject of conversation of every bourgeois and country yokel, every white, black, and mulatto. If you read the papers from Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Guiana for the year 1894, I made front-page news. Few of the columnists called me a common pedophile. Instead, they reported my career record: brilliant student in France, successful medical experiments, an antidrug crusade, and unmatched devotion to my patients. Ah! Dieudonné was a loyal friend during these tough times!

“Because of me, he left the police force, became the head of my defense committee, and had petition upon petition circulated. But it wasn’t easy for him. Because of the color of my skin! As a mulatto, I’m too light-skinned. The masses would have mobilized for a black. Nobody felt like defending a guy whose class is traditionally an ally of the white Creoles. Dieudonné adamantly repeated that I was not being sentenced for rape, which was a ridiculous accusation for anyone in his right senses. Who was this Melody whose testimony was so damning? A real mystery. Before she worked for me, no decent family had hired her. Nobody on Grande-Terre or Basse-Terre had ever set eyes on her. What I was paying for, Dieudonné asserted, was my nationalistic stand. During the last electoral campaign I had openly canvassed for the end of French tutelage. Poor guy, he did what he could. He had no idea that at meetings the presence and encouragements of a cheering crowd has the effect of a rum punch, and you say anything that comes into your head. At heart, I’ve always been a bourgeois, a small-time bourgeois.

“My family didn’t want her, as you can imagine; they were scared of her. So the court entrusted Celanire to the sisters of Saint-Joseph-de-Cluny, who sent her to the Sisters of Charity in Paris for her education.

“After I was sentenced, I was transferred to Grande-Terre. From Grande-Anse a prison cart took me to Petit-Bourg, where, shackled hand and foot, I embarked on the sailboat linking the town with La Pointe. Along the Lardenoy wharf Dieudonné had managed to muster a few demonstrators shouting ‘Free Pinceau!’ But most people had come out of curiosity to gaze at the likes of a future convict. There were a good many high-society ladies under their lace parasols who looked me up and down. The jail at La Pointe was the most revolting place you could imagine. Obviously it was nothing compared to what we saw in the penal colony, but believe me, it wasn’t a pretty sight. It was the first circle of hell. This is the last. The prisoners were piled in eight or ten to a cell, where in the dark the mosquitoes had the feast of their lives. Once a day the guards gave them a ration of green bananas. Once a month they were lined up in the yard, given a piece of rough soap, and hosed down. The rest of the time they fought as best they could not only with the mosquitoes, but also with the rats attracted by all this filth. No need to tell you that with so much diarrhea, the holes for doing your business were filled to overflowing. I can’t begin to describe the stench! Oddly enough, in the high-security area we were slightly better off — only four individuals to a cell. I found myself with a Chinese guy who had hacked a woman to pieces, a black who had raped his sixty-year-old mother before slitting her open, and an Indian who had sent his father’s head flying with one swipe of a cutlass. In the evening all these poor devils wept like little children. All shouted they were innocent and gave their own version of their story. They then sodomized each other by way of consolation. Nobody could escape it. I even ended up rather liking it.

“On Christmas Day, 1895, I sailed on the Biskra for Guiana in a raging sea. All around me my traveling companions were vomiting left, right, and center. Although I had never been known for aggressive or disruptive behavior, they locked me up in a blazing hot cell, one they reserved for violent prisoners, right above the boilers. Throughout the entire voyage I was unable to stand upright, which explains why to this very day I walk hunched over, bent in two. On arrival they began by thrashing me, considering it arrogant on my part to ask to be transferred to the camp at Saint-Louis to treat the lepers. They didn’t understand I felt like a leper myself. Birds of a feather flock together.”

“So you haven’t heard from Celanire since she was a child? You’ve no idea what became of her once she left Guadeloupe?”

“No. The last time I saw her was at the courthouse in Grande-Anse with Melody, when her mouth uttered those outrageous things which everyone took to be gospel truth. Even I was troubled by what she said. I began to wonder whether my sex, which has always had a mind of its own, had not won the better of me. Perhaps unknowingly I had gone up to her room and committed the horrors she accused me of. After all, how could an innocent mind invent such terrible things? Where would she have got such ideas? What Satan had put them in her head? Then I regained my senses. I was innocent. Celanire must be twenty-four or twenty-five by now. I imagine she is capable of driving the most serious, the most virtuous, guy out of his mind. I am positive she continues her mischief making, and I tell myself I am somewhat to blame. If I could have loved her, if, when Ofusan died, I had been there for her, treated her like my daughter, it might have curbed her wicked instincts. At the end of the day, perhaps all she needed was a little love from me.”

“Unfortunately,” murmured Hakim, “you couldn’t be closer to the truth. I have met her, your Celanire. Far, far from here. In Bingerville, in deepest Africa. It’s her, it’s the same person you’re describing, there’s no mistake about it. Her beauty you’ve described so vividly, her black-black skin, her long, oiled hair, the terrible scar around her neck, especially that scar. You can’t forget that scar once you’ve seen it. It haunts you. It must be terrible for her not to be able to get rid of it. It’s funny, Celanire talked about you all the time in the most affectionate terms. ‘Darling little Papa’ here and ‘darling little Papa’ there. She claimed you were dead, and she had never managed to get over it. She also described her island of Guadeloupe, which, in her eyes, was the most perfect place on earth. She swore she would return there one day to clear up some unfinished business. I dread to think what exactly, since she wreaks evil wherever she goes. I know for sure, without being able to prove it, that she is the cause of my suffering. It’s her and nobody else who has brought down misfortune on my head. Tonight, my friend, I’ll tell you my story, and you can judge for yourself.”