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

Soon the traditional words reverberated:

Yé krik, yé krak

Yé mistikrik, yé mistikrak

A pa jistis à nonm ka konté

Ta là, sé la jol i té yé

Kan mem, sé té an mal nèg

Se té an nèg doubout.

These loyal followers of Papa Doc refused to let his body be thrown into the communal grave as if he were a common mortal. They found enough money to buy him a burial plot and erected a tomb, which they covered with black-and-white flag-stones, in the very middle of the cemetery on the promontory at Saint-François reserved for high-ranking officials. It’s odd that in his book on the penal colony Albert Londres does not devote one line to Papa Doc, who was a real character in his time and left his mark on people’s memory. To prove it, even to this very day, the descendants of the convicts have not forgotten him, and every All Saints Day his tomb is lit with candles in his memory. In 1960 a delegation of nationalist militants traveled from Guadeloupe and laid claim to the corpse. Taking up the arguments of Dieudonné Pylône, they asserted that Papa Doc had in fact been banished as a political opponent. According to them, he was one of the first to have demanded independence for Guadeloupe. But the colonial authorities categorically refused to accept their request, and the delegation returned home empty-handed.

Ever since, the Guadeloupeans, who come to let off steam at the carnival in Cayenne and admire the costumes of the touloulous, have made the graveyard a place of pilgrimage and laid fresh flowers on their compatriot’s tomb.

1

In early June 1906, the inhabitants of Guadeloupe were as stunned, flabbergasted, and topsy-turvy as if on the morning after a hurricane they had emerged onto their verandas to discover the extent of the disaster — not a leaf to be seen, not a tree with branches, the land brown and scorched by the brine carried by the rain. Some of them couldn’t believe their eyes and had to put on their spectacles twice. But the news was well and truly there, spread across page 3 of the most widely read daily, Le Nouvelliste .

SOCIAL CALENDAR

The new governor of the colony, Monsieur Thomas de Brabant, arrived yesterday from Marseilles on board the SS Elseneur. He was accompanied by his wife and daughter, the young Ludivine. May we remind our readers that Madame, née Celanire Pinceau, is a native of our small island, from Grande-Anse to be exact. She left in her tenth year under dramatic circumstances that few Guadeloupeans have forgotten. Interviewed on her arrival, she simply expressed her joy at setting foot once again on a land of which she had vague childhood memories.

A murmur went up across the island. Incredible, but true! Celanire, Celanire was back! What could possibly bring her back to her native land? Didn’t she know what her compatriots were like? Didn’t she realize they would be quick to dig up the cadaver of a rape that had made such a scandal at the time, and gorge themselves again and again on its stinking carcass? Although she had become the wife of the governor, both she and her husband would find themselves sullied. Unless she had come back to put the finishing touches to all the evil she had already committed? In any case, this return was a bad omen. Nevertheless, nobody was more troubled than the police commissioner of the Arbre-Foudroyé district in Basse-Terre. It was as if the news had dragged him out of a deep sleep.

Unable to work, Matthieu Dorliss stood up and went over to the window. He wasn’t looking at the garden. He wasn’t looking at the square either, with its mango trees loaded with fruit, or the church, with its miniature replica of the grotto at Lourdes, complete with miraculous waters. He was reliving the past. They used to call him Mangouste. When he was the tenacious, idealistic, lanky sixteen-year-old assistant to Dieudonné Pylône. When Dr. Jean Pinceau, the first physician of color from Guadeloupe, who was more than a brother to his boss, had been sentenced ignominiously to serve ten years as a convict. Unable to prevent the sentence, Dieudonné had resigned from his job and reconverted to trading tropical hardwood. There was absolutely no doubt that his feeling of helplessness had hastened his premature death a few years earlier. Matthieu recalled the promise he had made to him on his deathbed, a promise he had never been able to keep — to find out Celanire’s identity and clear the name of a just man.

Racked with emotion, he went out.

In Basse-Terre the deepwater harbor had still not been developed due to the negligence of the Conseil Général, and the ships remained anchored offshore, surrounded by a flotilla of small craft. Matthieu strode on, oblivious to the tremulous greetings of people who recognized him and the authority he represented.

It had been ten years since he had last been involved in this murky affair. He had received an anonymous letter. As a rule the police do not pay much attention to anonymous letters. They know it is a favorite tool of cowards, malicious minds, and madmen! But in this case the writer claimed what Dieudonné Pylône had always suspected, i.e., that Pisket had sold her belly to Madeska at the request of Agénor de Fouques-Timbert. The white Creole, who wanted to get into politics, had sacrificed the infant at the beginning of September 1884. But if that were true, in a manner of speaking it merely deepened the mystery of Celanire, who was very much alive, despite her patched-up neck. What belly had she come out of? Unless…unless Pisket’s daughter and Celanire, saved from death at the last minute by Dr. Pinceau, were one and the same person. Here the brazenness of his thoughts made Matthieu gasp.

When he arrived home in the Redoute neighborhood, a servant woman handed him an invitation: Governor Thomas de Brabant and his wife requested the pleasure of his company at a reception. Celanire was not wasting any time!

In the eyes of those who saw them for the first time, Thomas de Brabant and Celanire made a surprising couple. As a rule, husband and wife are expected to be well matched. It is even said that after living together for a certain time, they begin to look alike. But Thomas had aged prematurely; his paunch was squeezed into the brocaded poplin of his governor’s uniform, his bald head hidden under his flat cap, and he was constantly dabbing his oozing red eyes. Celanire was at the peak of her charm. But let us not jump to the hasty conclusion that because they were ill-assorted they did not get along together. They expressed their adoration for each other at every moment. They fondled each other, held each other’s hand, and whispered in each other’s ear. To the great surprise of those who had not seen her for fifteen years, Celanire had changed very little. Grown hardly any taller, she had maintained the figure of a young girl — hardly any fatter either. Her cheeks were still velvety from childhood, and her eyes kept their juvenile sparkle. Her admirers compared them to stars, diamonds, carbuncles, and other clichés. The fact remains, however, that it was difficult to sustain the look in those gleaming eyes of hers.

That evening she had boldly revived the Directoire fashion, and her breasts hovered on the edge of her bodice like two birds eagerly awaiting flight. The inevitable ribbon wound tightly around her neck was held in place by an amethyst clasp of the same color. Following in her wake was a young girl of about ten, tall for her age, with a solemn face as white as the broderie anglaise of her dress, and very black hair tied with a bow on her neck. The reader will have recognized Ludivine. Celanire devoured her with kisses, squeezed her hand, called her “my darling little pet” at the slightest opportunity, and seemed in every respect to be the affectionate stepmother, which was especially embarrassing, as the girl looked perfectly exasperated by this billing and cooing.