Dany Laferrière - Heading South

TEN MINUTES LATER.

“Missie is outside, Charlie. She wants to talk to you.”

“No problem.”

They go out.

“It’s all your fault, Hansy,” Missie says, just short of tears.

“What happened?”

“Everyone is saying I’m fighting with June over this. . imbecile. You have a wicked, wicked tongue.”

“Would you be good enough to tell me why you called me out here?” Charlie asks politely.

Missie turns on him.

“I want you to go back in there,” she says breathlessly, “and tell everyone that I have absolutely no interest in you whatsoever, and that I do not intend to fight over you with June.”

“You’ll have to run all that by me again, because I didn’t understand any of it. And you talk too fast,” Charlie adds with a half-smile.

She glares at him angrily.

“I could never feel anything for a person like you.”

“What do you mean by that?” Hansy asks.

Charlie signals to him to stay out of it.

“But Hansy, I don’t even know him. He isn’t a member. .”

“No, I am not a member of your charmed Circle. I know that. My mother is a governess and my father is a gardener. . In other words, they’re servants. . They work not far from here. .”

“And you dare to come in here?”

“Missie!” cries Hansy. “Don’t you see how exceptional this fellow is? You’re right, he’s not at all like us. He has no desire to hide his origins, or his identity. . There’s not a single member of the Circle who hasn’t been vague about his life from time to time. We’re always lying about something, hiding our suffering, our desires, our fears. . A man who can proclaim his agony like this fellow does is a prince, I tell you, a prince.”

“Will you please leave us alone, Hansy?” Missie says.

Charlie and Missie watch Hansy move off towards the brightly lit building.

“Do you know why I’m here?”

“No, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” Missie says, resuming her customary ironic tone (“acid-tongued Mis-sie,” as she is known).

“I happened to be in the area, and I saw you crossing the street, on your way to play tennis. And I said to myself, ‘That’s her. I want her. She’s the one!’ That’s the only reason I came here tonight.”

Missie looks at him, nearly choking.

“Me! You! Why?”

“That’s the way it is. I want you. . I want to hear you moan. . and I will. .”

Missie continues staring at him, transfixed.

“I’m in no hurry,” Charlie says calmly.

And he leaves. Before Missie can even think of anything to say, he’s at the gate of the Bellevue Circle. The meeting place of the privileged youth of Pétionville. Missie feels that she can no longer stop herself from retching. She bends over between two parked cars and vomits huge, yellow streams on the green grass.

She stays outside for a long time, watching the others dancing. She sees Hansy come out to look for her, but really, she doesn’t feel up to talking to anyone. She runs between the luxurious cars parked anyhow on the lawn. She wants nothing more than to go home and shut herself up in her room. She hears Hansy calling, over and over. “That asshole has made me run away from my own friends twice in one night,” she thinks, continuing to flee. A luminous white dress in the moonlight. Just before reaching the villa, she stops one more time to throw up.

TWO O’CLOCK in the afternoon. Someone knocks on the door to Charlie’s miniscule room.

“Come in, it’s open.”

Hansy comes in.

“What did you do to Missie?”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s gone completely bonkers. . She came to my place at nine o’clock this morning. . Nine o’clock! I was barely awake! She wanted me to find you. We looked everywhere. I don’t know what happened between the two of you, and it’s really none of my business, but I think it must have been serious. .”

“Where is she, Hansy?”

“She’s downstairs in the car. I’ll go tell her to come up, shall I? I’ll stay down there.”

Charlie dresses hurriedly. He starts tidying up the room, then changes his mind at the last moment. He decides to wait for Missie sitting on his narrow, iron bed.

She comes in.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Excuse me for bothering you at home like this, but I didn’t sleep last night.”

“Ah!”

“I don’t understand what right you have to think of me that way,” she says coldly.

“And that’s why you came here, so I could explain it to you?”

A long moment of silence.

“It’s because I’m afraid of voodoo.”

He bursts out laughing.

“Is that it? Really?”

He laughs again, falling back on the bed.

“No,” he says, “I don’t use voodoo for things like this.”

“What, then?”

“It’s a question of blood.”

“Blood?”

“Yes. My blood wants to mingle with your blood.”

Missie’s lips begin to tremble.

“I don’t understand.”

“What I mean is that it’s out of control. . It has nothing to do with religion, or race, or even sex.”

“Well, if that’s true, then it has nothing to do with me, either,” she says, moving towards the door.

“If it had nothing to do with you, you wouldn’t have come here.”

She stops suddenly, like someone who has been shot in the back just as she was about to rush down the stairs.

CHARLIE IS LYING on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He can lie like this for hours.

“Can you lend me ten bucks, Charlie?” says Fanfan, coming into the room.

“Where do you think I could get hold of ten bucks?”

“Come on, Charlie, this is serious. I’m caught short. I’ll pay you back first thing next week.”

Charlie gets up and opens a drawer.

“Here. But you absolutely have to pay me back on Monday.”

“Thanks, old pal, you’ve saved my life. . By the way, how did things go last night at the Bellevue Circle?”

“As you suggested, I played the sincerity card, and so far it seems to have worked. . I met that girl, Missie Abel. .”

“Wait, I know that name. . Isn’t she the ambassador’s daughter?”

“His niece.”

“What happened?”

“She was here, just before you walked in.”

“Ah, my friend, you’re playing in the big leagues.”

Fanfan pushes Charlie until he falls back on the bed.

“Listen, Fanfan, you haven’t understood what I’m saying.”

“You’re going to tell me what it’s like to pork a rich girl!” Silence.

“No, Fanfan, she just dropped by to tell me that we’re from two different worlds.”

“In her eyes you’re nothing but a dog.”

“That’s it.”

Longer silence.

“I’ve got to go, my friend. . Don’t worry about your money. I’ll have it here Monday without fail.”

Fanfan misses a step on the stairway.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! And shit!”

TWO DAYS LATER. Two o’clock in the afternoon.

Charlie climbs heavily up the steep stairs to his room. Missie is waiting for him at the top.

“Have you been here long?”

She gives him a beseeching look.

“Did Hansy drop you off?”

“I took a taxi.”

He opens the door and lets her go in first. She enters and sits on the only chair. Charlie remains standing. She sits there without saying a word. Then suddenly she jumps up.

“Goodbye.”

She races down the stairs at the risk of breaking her neck. He listens for a moment, hoping she’ll reach the bottom in one piece. Then he sits in the chair she has vacated, and waits.

He waits.

Two hours go by. She comes back. He hears her feathery tread on the stairs. He tells himself that her feet would do well to get used to climbing those stairs, because they’re going to be climbing it many times a day from now on. A small knock at the door.