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

“Let’s not get excited. Believe me, they’ve got it coming to them!”

Colibri, who knew the road by heart, didn’t need to be whipped to gallop at breakneck speed to Grande-Anse, sniffing the air of the sea, which had already melted into the falling darkness. The Fouques-Timbert Great House stood on top of the Morne Reclus. It was an edifice built entirely of wood, surprisingly modest in appearance, since the family had never liked throwing money down the drain. Succeeding generations had added a drawing room here, a bedroom there, and even a washroom and a terrace. To house his seven sons, Agénor had added an attic divided into small bedrooms and a playroom.

Ji had been waiting in vain for Agénor for hours in the small drawing room. He used to love Asian girls and was one of the few white Creoles to frequent a tiny dance hall in Bélisaire, in the heart of the Chinese quarter. There the girls were as slender as lianas, and he would wrap them voluptuously around his body. After having desired Ji passionately, he now practically never looked at her. He had fallen out of love simply because a thousand signs indicated she was losing her youth. Her skin was wrinkling. Her flowing hair was thinning. Her joints, once supple, were now growing stiff. Familiarity made him impervious to her simpering airs of a Siamese cat, which once excited him, and he went upstairs to put away his 10 percent commission in the chest of drawers in his bedroom. This is where he stashed his money. He no longer trusted the banks ever since the Crédit Colonial had informed the police that his money had gone to help Pisket. It almost got him into serious trouble. After that he went down to the dining room, where the rest of the family joined him at table, and began handling his heavy silverware without uttering a word. His sons, who were frightened of him, lapped up their soup, heads lowered. Only Ji attempted to fill the silence with her chatter. Previously, her twittering amused him and prevented him from confronting his solitude and sadness alone. Now he could no longer bear it, and with one glance he silenced her. The meal lasted thirty minutes exactly by his pocket watch.

Agénor had never shared his bedroom with anyone. He made love to his women in an apartment on the second floor, then returned to his modest, poorly furnished bachelor quarters under the roof. For years, his nightmares kept him tossing and turning on his bed all night long, and the only way to get a little sleep was to get drunk.

His servant would set down beside the bed, next to the candle, which remained flickering until dawn, a box of cigars from Bahia, a goblet, and two carafes of rum. Apparently, that evening Agénor was unusually restless; he upset the carafes over the bed, soaking the sheets with rum. Then he dropped the candle. Hence the blaze. In a manner of speaking, the tragedy needed no explanation. It was the speed with which everything went up in flames that was inexplicable. In less than thirty minutes there was nothing left but a heap of ashes. In the time it took for the servants sleeping in the outbuildings to wake up, slip on some clothes over their nakedness, and start working the pump, absolutely nothing was left of a man, a family, and a Great House that had once commanded respect.

Agénor did not describe his final moments to anyone — and for good reason. So we shall never know what he saw at the last minute. Perhaps he didn’t see anything at all and plunged headfirst into the void. We don’t know either whether at the last moment he remembered Elodie or Ji, their consenting bodies pressed up against his, the cool breeze from the sea, or the taste of rum aged in oak casks. In short, we shall never know whether he left the here below with a heavy heart.

The whole of Guadeloupe, from Basse-Terre to La Pointe, was traumatized by the event, and crowds poured in for the wake. Death always takes you by surprise, but this one confounded people’s imagination. A man they thought as solid as a locustwood tree and immortal as a genippa snuffed out in next to no time!

The female relatives transported whatever could be transported. They laid ten little sacks side by side in a single mahogany coffin, not knowing whether the ashes they had scooped up came really from the bodies or the furniture or perhaps something else, and Sanfoulanmò, the son who had been spared, led the mourners in tears. He had loved his family. His brothers. His half-sisters. His papa especially, however brutal he had been. Even Ji, whose hands had sometimes felt as soft as a mother’s on his face. And then he found himself without any liquid assets, since all the money had gone up in smoke with Agénor. To cover the cost of the funeral he had had to mortgage two coffee plantations up at Vieux-Habitants. In his despair he contemplated selling the property and leaving for Brazil, where at least there was a future.

Agénor was too important a personality in the colony for the governor and his wife not to show their compassion.

So Thomas in full uniform and Celanire in a black taffeta dress showed up at the wake around midnight. Not a single jewel on her. Not even a pair of Creole earrings. As bare as a high altar during Lent. Around her neck a leather choker ornamented with guilloche hid you-know-what. She entered, head lowered under her black mantilla, and religiously knelt down. Yet anyone who had two eyes to see with, like Matthieu, was struck by her elated expression. They guessed that beneath that exterior she must have been in a festive mood. She had just laid her worst enemy to rest. When she looked at the coffin and its dismal contents, a fiery glow burned at the back of her eyes. You sensed she could burst out singing the Ninth Symphony’s “Ode to Joy.” She fought back a smile that was trying to curl up the corner of her lips. When she recited the prayers for the dead with the mourners, her voice rang out triumphant, despite herself. Matthieu was in agony. He realized that however hard he sniffed and snorted, snorted and sniffed, he would never prove Celanire’s identity. The mystery would always remain unresolved. He would never be able to make more than assumptions that everyone would poke fun at. He would never know what drop of sperm had fertilized an egg to produce nine months later a little girl who would bring so many trials and tribulations into this world. He could say and do what he liked; this affair would always make him look a perfect fool.

6

On July 14, 1909, Governor Thomas de Brabant and his wife gave an unforgettable reception, one of the most grandiose they had ever given, to celebrate Bastille Day and commemorate their second year in Guadeloupe. Every guest mustered present for the invitation. Yet it was whispered just about everywhere that the governor was a dead loss. This one had made no major improvements — no roads, no bridges, no public works projects. If it weren’t for his wife, Guadeloupe could forget him, as she had done for so many others. The wife’s accomplishments, however, were unparalleled, to say nothing of her intellectual activities and her constant efforts to convince the Guadeloupeans that they had a duty to defend their culture while opening up to the rest of the world. Not to mention her charitable works — orphanages, dispensaries, old people’s homes, soup kitchens, and shelters for the homeless. Despite this dazzling list of achievements, those who came into contact with her claimed she was surprisingly bitter. Elissa de Kerdoré was the first to be driven to despair. The vivacious, chattering Celanire, who was always prepared to fill your head with ideas and projects, had become taciturn. She had lost interest in everything. Nothing seemed to amuse her — neither writing contests, plays, nor concerts of traditional or classical music. Some weekends Elissa would wait for her in vain on the island of Fajoux. Once she had had to award the Prize for Creole Poetry without her. Even more serious, the sizzling Celanire had become lukewarm in love and reacted so little to any caresses that for a while Elissa wondered whether Amarante had not come back to take her away. On this point her spies had reassured her — Amarante had gone back up to the Wayanas and was composing music. Celanire never stopped sighing that she had got absolutely nowhere in Guadeloupe and had not achieved what she had come to do.