Marie Vieux-Chauvet: Love, Anger, Madness

I understood a bit late that the act of love is like any other physiological need of a human being. Just as late, I realized the stupidity of social classifications based on wealth and color. I became skilled at unmasking the social climbers, the hypocrites, guessing that behind their saintly little airs these artists spun the most elaborate embroideries of copulation. I have fun imagining such and such a couple going at it. And they appear to me either ridiculous or deliciously titillating, depending on whether their coupling seems grotesque or gracious.

The shade from the trees creates a refreshing oasis under my window. I see Jean Luze and Annette come in. He brought her home today. And Félicia welcomes them with open arms. She threw up five times today, she tells her husband as he kisses her absentmindedly The smell of the food on the table drives her away. I am the one who serves Jean Luze. He eats slowly, keeping his eyes on his plate. Annette laughs because he almost spilled his drink. Her laughter rings like a chime on crystal, and her eyes, slanted like butterfly wings, shine as brightly as her teeth. This is torture for Jean Luze. He excuses himself and gets up. She calls him back to ask for a cigarette. The way she pronounces his name! Like a song on her lips. She pauses on its one-syllable note and holds it. She looks into his eyes as she lifts her cigarette to his lighter.

“Thank you, Jean.”

“You’re welcome.”

The tone is polite but it reveals a bad mood thinly veiled.

“You seem upset.”

“Me?”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing at all.”

She goes up to the living room, puts a record on the turntable and starts dancing by herself. The needle squeaks.

“I beg of you, don’t damage my equipment.”

He is watching her without paying any attention to me.

A crowd gathers in the street: speculators, traders, farmers, managers, wholesale dealers and retailers grab each other by the collar and seem ready to eat each other alive. The noise is deafening. They accuse each other. Each blames the other for his losses or his ruin. How careless. Have they forgotten about the commandant and his men ensconced at the Cercle? They will pick them up tonight with nary a word, simply accusing them of subversive activities. Jean Luze is standing near me by the dining room door, which opens onto the porch. We look on.

“What’s the matter with them?” he asks me.

“They’re fighting.”

“As usual. And the tragedy is that no one seems to understand the real problem.”

He has an ironic little laugh, almost silent.

In one booth, a scale once used to weigh coffee sways like a cripple. Piles of sacks lie empty on the ground, a few coffee beans scattered around. Some beggars run toward us with their hands out. Jean Luze winces in disgust.

“It’s awful!” he says.

And really, they do stink.

A cop pulls apart these growling dogs and beats the more stubborn ones. A beggar in rags with a face devoured by hunger looks at us furtively.

“They are getting their heads bashed on top of it,” Jean Luze mutters through clenched teeth.

He has already learned to be cautious.

The beggar raises his arm to scratch his head and reveals a gun, secured to his waist by a rope.

It’s one of Commandant Calédu’s spies. The police chief is known to be a sadist. He loves to whip women, and once in a while he has them arrested just like that, one or two at a time for his pleasure.

With my own eyes I have seen Dora Soubiran, my childhood friend and our neighbor, walk out of jail after being accused of sedition. She is a completely harmless zealot who insists-perversely or not-that God is her only supreme leader. Calédu loves to be feared and to be shown that he is feared. Especially when the one in question is Dora Soubiran, scion of the late César Soubiran, former director of the lycée, schooled in Paris, former parliamentarian, who served as an ambassador in previous administrations. Dora Soubiran looks down her nose at him. She refuses to understand the march of history, its twists and reversals. So one evening, he came to get her himself. She followed him down the street, saying her rosary as people lay low in the dark behind their half-opened shutters. She came back two days later, haggard and unrecognizable, followed by the taunts of the beggars roaring with laughter to see her walk with open legs like a cripple. We hear her sob at night. No one dares rescue her. She’s a suspect. One of those who has been marked by Calédu, a man chosen expressly by the police to tame this little town famous for its arrogance and prejudices.

In three days it will be my birthday and they want to throw me a party. I don’t care for it. I have no interest in being on display. I’ll still make a cake, so no one will say that I’m a cheapskate… “A chocolate cake,” Annette adds with a comically avid expression, “just like you know how to make.” Yes, but where will I find the chocolate? Well, she’s going to have to make do with what’s on the table. She is brimming with life. She must be temptation itself for Jean Luze. He eyes her greedily, unwittingly. With every subtle movement, her long legs trace riveting arabesques. His courage and will are wearing thin. Félicia has not left her room in two days. They must feel as if they’re alone, more uninhibited. Is Annette really going to overcome Jean Luze’s resistance? He often gives her these long looks that make me tremble. Maybe I’m getting more out of all that he gives her. I’m getting more than she is. What a miracle!

“Monsieur Long gave me two bottles of whiskey,” Jean Luze announces. “I’ll invite him to the party.”

“Fine,” nods Félicia.

“What about the commandant?” Annette asks.

“No,” I protest forcefully.

“Oh! You know,” she says coldly, “we are no longer living in the days of our dear parents. Prejudice is out of fashion.”

“This has nothing to do with prejudice,” I reply.

“We should still have him over once in a while,” prudent Félicia adds cautiously. “What good would it do to turn him against us?”

“Everyone receives him,” Annette insists, “even Madame Camuse. If he sours on us, what then?”

“Do you have something against him, Claire?” asks Félicia. “Of course what happened to Dora is most appalling. But she has always been heedless…”

“He’s not a bad guy, you know,” says Annette. “He has his orders. He can’t ignore them. In any case, he’s a handsome soldier. He’s a wonderful dancer and always brings gifts for the ladies. Just the other day, he brought back a magnificent necklace to Corrine Laplanche from Port-au-Prince.”

“Well, it’s normal for someone like Corrine Laplanche to accept his presents, but not you,” Félicia retorted.

“Why?”

“Because your name is Annette Clamont.”

“That’s rubbish,” Annette cried. “Corrine Laplanche is better educated than all the Clamont sisters put together. The only difference is that her parents don’t belong to good society, as you so often like to say, that’s all. And anyway, her mother, Élina Jean-François, was a classmate of Claire’s… Isn’t that right, Claire?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“I won’t bother asking why you didn’t befriend her,” she added. “Well, me, I choose the people I like wherever I happen to meet them, without giving any thought to their table manners. The only thing I ask of them is that they have qualities that I don’t have and can’t help but admire.”

My sentiments precisely. Did I put those words in her mouth?

“That’s very good, Annette,” Jean Luze offers approvingly, looking at her with interest. “You are not as harebrained as you like to seem. You should read more, for your own good…”