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

In the meantime, Amarante stared at the dark curtain of trees beyond the illuminated podium. Darkness had locked the palace in its grip and would not let go for some time. Not until throngs of seabirds, messengers of dawn, had begun to flock across the sky. Darling little Celanire, darling little Celanire. That evening she had been revealed to her, and her beauty struck her like the flash of a frigate bird. Svelte yet strong. Good-humored but serene. Knowing what she wanted in life and determined to get it. The glow in her eyes betrayed the passion burning deep down. Was it so that they could meet that fate had brought Celanire back to Guadeloupe?

2

Three months after her arrival Celanire opened an academy of music, Au Gai Rossignol, in an old building in the Carmel district. Polite society began by disapproving. In fact, besides the violin, piano, and recorder, students were taught the seven rhythms of the ka drum; besides the “Hallelujah Chorus” in Handel’s Messiah or the barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann, students were trained to sing Creole melodies such as “Doudou, Ban Mwen Lanmou.” Then snobbery got the upper hand. In next to no time the bourgeoisie elbowed their way in under the low entrance to enroll their offspring. After a few weeks Celanire was on first-name terms with a good many of these bourgeois mamans who compensate for the absence and cheating ways of their husbands by fussing inordinately over their progeny. It wasn’t long, we have to say, before these ladies had other things to think about besides their kids. They rediscovered their youth and began to get a life for themselves. Off they went again to dances, cotillions, and banquets. At carnival time they organized a procession of floats. They formed an association under the recent law of 1901 and named it Lucioles. Henceforth, in addition to the picnics, excursions to the sea, the river, and other amusements, there was a whirl of cultural afternoons, evenings, and retreats. They read short stories, they recited poetry, they performed short plays. Members of the Lucioles association even went so far as to create a publishing house. Unfortunately, to our knowledge, it never published anything more than some illustrated calendars and Fulgurances, a collection of poems by Elissa de Kerdoré, now out of print. Today there is every indication that Celanire opened Au Gai Rossignol solely as a means to draw closer to Amarante, whom she had noticed during the reception at the Governor’s Palace.

Amarante was not an easy conquest. Her Wayana education had made her virtuous, preoccupied with the concerns of her fellow men. In the Redoute neighborhood where she had lived since her marriage, there was no counting the number of poor children who called her Godmother and on New Year’s Day lined up on her doorstep for their present. Noon and night her maid would take food to the bedridden, abandoned by their families. Amarante never forgot she descended from a dynasty of feisty women. Her ancestor, Sankofa, leading a battalion of Maroons hiding out on the slopes of Les Mamelles, had pelted the French soldiers climbing up for the attack with a rain of flaming branches. She also wore herself out every day walking to a one-class school for Indian children at Monplaisir. Celanire sent her one of those flowery letters she was so good at and offered her an exorbitant wage so that she could devote herself to her favorite pastimes of music and singing. Up till then Amarante had tenderly cherished her papa, her maman, her brothers and sisters, and respected the husband they had chosen for her.

Suddenly, she discovered passion, turmoil, desire, and the burning need for another person. In her distress, she read the letter out to Matthieu. She was counting on his nose to sense something suspicious in this offer, to prevent her from accepting it and thus save her from herself. Unfortunately, Matthieu saw here an opportunity to get closer to the mysterious Celanire and begged Amarante not to refuse. Some people make their own bed of misfortune.

So Amarante left her little Indians and the school at Monplaisir. From that day on her life was transformed. Accustomed to a husband preoccupied with himself, she now spent her days with an attentive, considerate, and thoughtful person. Celanire’s company was a delight not only because of her good-heartedness and intelligence but also because of her good humor and vivacity. At the Gai Rossignol the hours flew by like minutes. No sooner had classes begun than the bell for recreation would ring. Celanire communicated to Amarante her love for classical music, especially Vivaldi, and in their mezzo-soprano voices they sang together the Lauda Jerusalem . When they didn’t have classes, they strolled together in the governor’s gardens and lunched têteà-tête on the veranda before retiring for a siesta and savoring even greater moments of delight. The only blot on this idyll, Amarante noticed, was that Celanire did not miss Ofusan, her adopted mother. Not only was there no treasured memory of Ofusan kissing her or leaning over her cradle, but Celanire seemed to harbor a grudge against her. Amarante decided she would right matters. But every time she broached the name of the deceased, Celanire would hurriedly change the subject. If she insisted, she sensed her companion’s irritation. What could have opposed mother and child during their short life together? It was unfair; only “darling little Papa” got Celanire’s attention. She embellished him with all sorts of virtues, and it was hard to believe that this highly educated, highly trained doctor, noble crusader against drugs, and nationalist politician, had taken advantage of her like the first uncouth nèg kann to come along.

That particular year, the month of September was midwife to a number of hurricanes. Thank goodness, they spared Guadeloupe and spread their desolation elsewhere. One of them, however, wreaked havoc on Montserrat. Sometimes heaven is unrelenting: a few months earlier the tiny island had been two-thirds destroyed by the eruption of its volcano, Chances Peak. The population, terrified by this second blow fate had dealt them and thinking themselves cursed, took to the sea in makeshift boats. Those who did not sink to the bottom of the ocean were washed up along the windward shore of Guadeloupe. The distress of these poor wretches was such that the governor, Thomas de Brabant, ordered the military to erect tents along the seafront and urged every Guadeloupean who could to help these brothers in their misfortune. Regretfully, however, although the seafront became a popular stroll for the bourgeois, who noised their sorrow in front of the tents, gifts in kind like cash were rare — so rare that Celanire decided on her own initiative to organize a collection and sail to Montserrat with the booty: barrels of fresh water, sacks of rice and French flour, and cases of saltfish and smoked herring. At that time it was quite an expedition getting to an English island. So Thomas chartered an old schooner called (don’t laugh) the Intrépide for his wife, Amarante, and the domestics accompanying them. For three days the Intrépide, with timbers cracking, pitched and heaved and rolled with the swell of the waves. With the exception of Celanire, standing bolt upright in the prow, breathing in the air, all the other passengers were as sick as dogs. Finally, one morning, the island loomed up over the horizon, and presented a harrowing sight. The flames from the volcano had first of all scorched the earth, then the pouring rain had loosened the crater, burying hundreds of individuals. For days the moans of the dying had cast a pall over the island. Human arms and legs, corpses of rotting animals, patches of tin roofs, and uprooted trees emerged from tar-colored ponds and craters of mud. Packs of mangy dogs, herds of hogs, and worse still an army of rats driven frantic by the flood following the hurricane, roamed all over the place. In Plymouth, the capital, every shack had been blown away, and only the ruins of Fort Barrington remained.