Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?: A Fantastical Tale

Guadeloupe: 1906–1909

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.

There was a crowd of guests. All the colony’s officialdom; white Creoles, yellowed and wrinkled as parchment; mulattos, waved and brilliantined, done up in their Sunday best; blacks puffing up their chests out of timidity at finding themselves in such a place; old people who had lived through the events of the past; young fellows who knew of them only through hearsay — all had been in a hurry to come and examine Celanire at close quarters. They were surprised to find her in such good spirits, so natural, and not at all ashamed of past events. The evening had a piquancy about it that was usually lacking in receptions of this kind. This could no doubt be ascribed to the extraordinary charm of the hostess, but also to some amazing innovations. First of all the buffet: neat little rum punches, codfish and tannia fritters, crab patés and spicy black pudding. But above all the band — the cabaret sort, not the type of official receptions. A saxophone, a guitar, and a singer churning out beguines. Even the people who deep down considered such music vulgar couldn’t help humming the familiar songs, and this brightened up the atmosphere considerably.

Matthieu had come with his wife, Amarante. Three years earlier he had married this sixteen-year-

old Wayana beauty in the hope of shaking up conventions. The Wayanas had been forced off the slopes of the Soufrière volcano and made to settle along the seashore. They were ordered to send their children to school to recite “Our ancestors the Gauls” like everyone else. But nothing had changed, and they continued to be despised and labeled nèg mawon. An exception was made for Amarante because she possessed a voice powerful enough to split a rock, an organ with a remarkable range and sweetness. In actual fact, few people had ever heard her, for in her modesty she only sang for a privileged few. Matthieu and his wife had come to the governor’s reception for different reasons. Bracing himself once again, Matthieu had not forgotten he had promised to avenge poor Jean Pinceau. As for Amarante, she was bursting with curiosity. The story of Ofusan, little Celanire’s adopted mother, who for the love of a mulatto from the flatlands had turned her back on her people’s traditions, had become a legend among the Wayanas. The Wayanas attributed the arrival of the baby in her life to her sudden death. For them there was no doubt the infant harbored an evil spirit! Amarante therefore stared at Celanire with amazement. She was not expecting so much juvenile charm and seduction. She was almost prepared to believe it was the Good Lord Himself who had sent her to lighten our darkness. A feeling she had never felt before crept into her and set her heart pounding while, spellbound, she couldn’t keep her eyes off Celanire. Matthieu was oblivious to this, relying on the reactions of his nose. Literally. Ever since he was small, he only had to open wide his nostrils and sniff hard for smells to tell him the hidden truth. At the age of four, he had discovered a thief among the guests at a wedding who had tricked his way in. Amarante poked fun at him and claimed he sniffed even in his sleep, even while making love. He was gazing around the room when among the ocean of black, white, and cream-colored faces, the features of Agénor de Fouques-Timbert, president of the Conseil Général for almost twenty years, emerged. Despite old age, which was creeping up on him — he was over sixty — despite debauchery and depravity, Agénor remained a handsome man. As wiry as a guava tree. Not an ounce of fat. Not one white hair. A corn-colored beard and mop of hair, and patches of blue sky in lieu of two eyes. He had scandalized the most broad-minded by burying the mother of his eight boys at eleven in the morning and setting up house with a Chinese whore, young enough to be his daughter, at three in the afternoon the same day. Agénor stared at Celanire with a look that aroused the curiosity of an already intrigued Matthieu. As if, among all those present, Agénor was the only one to know who she was. How could he prove that she was well and truly the survivor of his sacrifice, Matthieu frantically pondered?

There were a number of leads in this affair that had never been followed up. They had never interrogated Madeska’s wives, now destitute, who would surely reveal all his secrets in exchange for something to eat, nor questioned his children. His eldest son, Zuléfi, used to follow him everywhere. Even though he was a kid, he must have seen something! Why, for instance, did he give up the family tradition of mischief making and become a traveling preacher, living off the charity of his followers? Matthieu swore he would go and get a closer look. He took hold of Amarante’s arm and, surprisingly enough, still unforewarned by his nose of her infatuation for Celanire, went out onto the veranda.

The Governor’s Palace was set on an elevation halfway between the ocean and La Soufrière. As dusk fell, mist rolled up from the sea while the vapors and humidity of the massive volcano behind lay heavy as a clamp. In other words, the evenings were freezing. It was an ungainly wooden edifice all on one level, similar to a plantation great house with a steep sloping roof and clapboard walls. Plans for it to be replaced by a building of reinforced concrete, more fitting for its function, were constantly toyed with by the administration. Yet still no decision had been made, and the governors complained of the discomfort for themselves and their families. They would have to wait for many long years and for the architect Ali Tur before things changed. In fact, at the time, the principal merits of the place were its gardens, a dozen acres of outstanding beauty where the rarest of tropical trees grew. Lit by flares, a podium had been erected in the very middle of the lawn. A dozen drummers dressed in white short-sleeved shirts conspicuous against the darkness of the night were seated in a semicircle behind their instruments. The guests, already disconcerted by the beguines, wondered if they were going to start beating the gwo-ka drums. They could not believe their ears when Celanire, who had leaped onto the podium, began praising the merits of cultural traditions, of which the gwo-ka drum was the poto-mitan, in an eloquent, articulate speech. Why be ashamed of it? Why be ashamed of Kréyol, our Patwa mother tongue? The guests liked her singsong accent, which was so Guadeloupean, but not what she was saying. Kréyol, a language, whatever next? However, if they had learned how to listen, they would have noticed that Celanire’s words were empty of meaning or emotion. She paid no attention to what she was saying. She had climbed up to where she stood to be seen by everyone, to thumb her nose at her guests and mock them:

“You came to get a good look? Well, take a good look. Look at me. Take a long, hard look. I’m going to drive you to distraction. I’m going to shake Guadeloupe to the core.”

When she had finished speaking, the guests exchanged scandalized looks. They would remember Governor de Brabant’s first reception for a long time to come! Only Thomas clapped in hearty approval. His face, drained by laudanum, beamed in beatitude like a parent attending a school play in which his child has the star role. His Buddha-like countenance, however, hid an agile mind. He considered his wife to be a kind of artist or poet who operated in the realm of fiction. Anything could be true, as anything could be false, in what she said. Above all, he made no attempt to distinguish fact from fiction in what she did. In Bingerville she had amused herself playing topsy-turvy with people out of sheer fun. She had returned to Guadeloupe for far more serious reasons — to find her real parents, to discover those who had abandoned her. Wasn’t that only natural? Thomas was prepared to swear that Celanire was the best of wives. She was cheerful, full of good humor. You were never bored in her company. She adored Ludivine. He liked to think that she was fond of him in her own way. Since laudanum had purged him of any carnal desire, the frenzy of their early years had passed, and he was content with their virtually platonic relationship.

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.

About a hundred ragged victims of the disaster, all that remained of a population of over a thousand, were assembled on the shore and hurled themselves onto the victuals. It required the firm hand of Celanire to restore law and order. Then the newcomers settled into the few remaining houses in the village of Sotheby. Celanire was welcomed by a certain Melody, whose roof had miraculously survived these natural calamities. Melody greeted her enthusiastically like a beloved long-lost friend and served up a callaloo soup thick with spinach and ham bones. Amarante, exhausted by the journey, withdrew to the bedroom, got into bed, and fell fast asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

When she awoke, she was still alone in bed. The moon was smiling through the louvered shutters as if to say she had nothing to do with the evil forces of the elements. Gilded clouds gamboled around her. The cool night air was fragrant with the scent of gardenia. Where could Celanire be? Amarante got up and took a few steps in the dark. The hovel was divided in two by a printed calico curtain. In what served as a dining room, around the glow of a hurricane lamp, Celanire was still conversing with Melody. Amarante had been too tired to take a good look at Melody on arrival and was only now getting her first glimpse. As black as the bottom of a calabash blackened from the cooking fire. Cross-eyed. A mole embossed on her cheek as big as a birthmark. Teeth as pointed as a warthog’s. She was gazing at Celanire in adoration, clutching her hands, and smiling at her in raptures with those formidable teeth. As for Celanire, she never stopped talking, as usual. Finally the two women stood up. Melody grabbed the lamp, and preceding Celanire, stepped out into the night.

Amarante went back to bed, unable to fall asleep. Where were Celanire and Melody going at this hour of the night? From where did they know each other? The darkness and strangeness of the place made her feel even more frightened. She recalled what the Wayanas used to whisper. Celanire was the child of evil spirits and spread misfortune to those around her. She was worse than a soukouyan, an old hag in league with the devil who preys on victims until the light of day and gorges herself on fresh blood. The hours passed. Gradually insects and buffalo frogs grew silent. The sky turned white. The roosters began to crow. The dogs began to bark. The commotion of the day, so different from that of the night, started up again. Despite the warm air, Amarante shivered under her sheets. Finally, around six in the morning, the door creaked open, and Celanire came and slipped into bed. As soon as she felt her beloved up against her, all her imaginings seemed unworthy of a person endowed with common sense. Celanire had an answer for everything. Melody? She had been her nursemaid when she was a child, and you couldn’t wish for anyone more affectionate and warmhearted, despite her looks. She hadn’t seen her since she was ten, although she knew she lived on Montserrat. What a joy to embrace her at last! They had gone out intending to conceal the victuals from thieving hands. What a mortifying sight had met their eyes! There were signs of a cholera outbreak. Some of the storm survivors had taken refuge in trees, others in the mangrove. The latter had survived by drinking brackish water and swallowing oysters buried deep beneath the roots of the mangrove trees. The adults had made it through, but they had had to bury the children, and the mothers’ despair was unbearable. There were miracles, though. They had discovered a ten-month-old baby playing quite contentedly in a puddle. He had no doubt been dragged for miles by the mud from the volcano. Nobody knew where his parents were, and for him, the tragedy had turned into a game. Ah, sometimes the Good Lord doesn’t know what He’s doing. How were they going to treat the diarrhea, the cholera, and malaria?

On waking Melody had prepared a breakfast that contrasted shamefully with the surrounding misery: soft-boiled eggs, creamy vanilla chocolate, fruit, and toasted dannikits. Celanire’s appetite always seemed phenomenal to Amarante. That particular morning, she excelled herself and devoured enough to feed an entire family. The looks Melody gave Amarante as she fussed around Celanire made her feel so uncomfortable, she choked. Finally Celanire began organizing the rescue operation. For almost a week they had to climb up and down dizzying cliff faces under a scorching sun, cross arid savannas, and stumble along the edge of gaping precipices. Everywhere lay rotting corpses in various states of decomposition for which they had to dig graves.

The day of departure arrived, and the Intrépide returned the way it had come. They passed boats of fishermen casting their nets, oblivious to the perils of the ocean. The old schooner increased its speed over the quietened waters, and at the end of the second day the shacks of Guadeloupe came into sight, some of them clinging to the green blanket of the volcano like children clutching their mother’s apron strings. As they neared the wharf, they saw a crowd had gathered: Thomas de Brabant, the governor, the mayor of Basse-Terre with his tricolor sash, His Grace, Bishop Chabot of Guadeloupe, in his purple robe, a group of schoolchildren dressed in white, including Ludivine, supervisors done up to the nines, and the members of the Lucioles association in their silks and jewelry. They couldn’t help but notice the flowing mane of curls of Elissa de Kerdoré. Everyone applauded when Celanire set foot on dry land as fresh in her blue polka-dot dress and matching kerchief around her neck as if she had just come back from a picnic. There were speeches and more speeches. A little girl presented Celanire with a bouquet of canna lilies, roses, and anthuriums. Then Thomas pinned to his wife’s breast the medal of the Ordre National du Mérite Social. While he hugged her to him, applause broke out once again.

For Ludivine, all this seemed nothing more than a masquerade. She did not know why her stepmother had risked her life going to sea. But she had no doubt whatsoever that Celanire couldn’t care less about the trials and tribulations of the population on Montserrat. Going from the expression on her face, the gleam in her eyes, and the trembling on her lips, she guessed that Celanire was getting enormous fun out of all these ceremonies in her honor. Ludivine knew her father was blind regarding anything to do with his wife. Were the rest as blind? Every single one of them? What was the point of having eyes if they couldn’t see? Ludivine was convinced Celanire was responsible for her mother’s death, but she did not believe in African superstitions. She had her own logical explanation. Not content with being Thomas’s mistress, Celanire dreamed of marrying him. So she had bribed the houseboys to mix into Charlotte’s favorite drinks, from her morning fruit juice to her evening cup of chocolate, those herbs that slowly but surely secrete a mind-debilitating substance. And one day the poor woman, completely off her head, left her home far, far behind, lost in a flesh-eating forest like Tom Thumb without a pebble or a bread crumb to find her way home. Ludivine almost burst into tears in front of everybody, just thinking of her poor maman. The older she got, the more her love for her mother and the desire to avenge her grew. But she was crushed by a feeling of helplessness. She swallowed back her tears as best she could. The ceremony was over, and turning their backs to the sea, the pupils set off back to town.

Stupid Amarante standing there, gazing at Celanire in adoration! When Celanire had finished with her, there would be nothing left for her to do but sink into a watery shroud like the widow Desrussie.

3

The heat of the day was over. It was still barely daylight. Clouds of fireflies already streaked through the air. You sensed that night was in a hurry to stuff into its bag of mourning the green of the cane fields, the deep blue of the sea, and the gray of the sky. The crater of the volcano had already disappeared in the dark, and its slopes were cloaked in mist.

Agénor de Fouques-Timbert hated the place he was going to — the Bois-Debout Great House at La Regrettée, abandoned for over thirty years. Unfortunately it was always there that Mavundo, his trusted mischief maker from Santo Domingo, arranged to meet him. He whipped Colibri, who restlessly snorted the air. The horse lumbered down the slope of the Morne du Calvaire, quickened its pace across a series of savannas, and stopped abruptly as soon as they came in sight of the Great House. An alley of royal palms, a hollow facade like a trompel’oeil, and the remains of the washhouse walls — that was all that was left of one of the most magnificent mansions in the region. After having carried away the furniture, the rugs, and the family portraits, thieves had gone to work on the bricks and roof tiles, leaving not one stone standing. On the other hand, they hadn’t touched the slave shacks, and their dingy quarters stood intact at the foot of the Great House buildings like a mangy herd. Their doors gaped open onto mounds of beaten earth once used as beds or tables, as well as the wretched shelves still fixed to the wall. Once separated, the two graveyards now merged into each other: the masters’, with its arrogant marble tombs and wreaths and crosses of pearl, the slaves’, where under the nettles and sensitive plants, the only signs of a tomb were the white bones of conch shells. The two chapels had also fallen into ruin, overrun by the creeping leaf of life. Agénor was suffocating in the stifling atmosphere. Even after so many years the place still recalled the groans and lamentations of those long buried, the tears they had shed, and their unanswered pleas and prayers. The smell of this suffering humanity seemed to cling to the branches of the trees.

Colibri had come to a standstill, frightened by all these ghosts looming around him, and only when Agénor whipped him on did the horse reluctantly amble off again.

Mavundo was waiting for him in the old slave chapel. He was a puny, reptilian, red-skinned individual who outwardly appeared perfectly ordinary but inwardly concealed an immense cunning. He commanded a multitude of dwarves hidden in the wind and scattered to the four corners of the globe. Thanks to them, he could see and hear everything. He had studied with the great Rwaha of Ethiopia and lived seven years under his wing in Addis Ababa. Agénor understood from the expression on his face that he was about to announce something terrible. He was right. Mavundo had just learned from one of his dwarves that Madeska had died on Montserrat, where he had been living as a recluse outside Plymouth. His death could be attributed neither to the volcanic eruption nor to the hurricane. The dwarf had found his body, his belly slit open with his guts oozing out, in the very middle of the mangrove swamp. The racoons had made such a good job of mauling his face and neck that his new wife, a young girl from Montserrat, had trouble identifying him. At the end of the day, therefore, the spirits had finally caught up with him. After all these seemingly peaceful years, they were now embarked on the road to war.

In fact Agénor had been expecting this news for the past twenty-five years and accepted it with resignation, almost with relief. When he had decided to go into politics some years earlier, his father-in-law, who had always considered him a despicable fortune hunter, had shrugged his shoulders in disbelief. He wasn’t the only one. The whole of Basse-Terre scoffed at the idea. Too many people saw him as a poor-white country bookie, barely capable of growing sugarcane. So he swore to himself he would surprise them. He got the idea of asking Madeska for a human sacrifice as the best way to win the support of the invisible spirits. The mischief maker’s family had been close to his from time immemorial despite the difference in color. Madeska couldn’t possibly turn him down. As a wise precaution, they had come to an agreement. He was never to meet the belly donor, a certain Pisket. Madeska, who was on intimate terms with her best friend, a certain Madone, took the matter in hand. The deal between the mischief maker and the bòbò had cost him a fortune. What’s more, in order to carry out the rites that had to be performed every week of the pregnancy up to the final sacrifice, Madeska wanted the girl to be entirely under his control. They had had to find lodgings close by and open a laundry in her name so as not to arouse suspicion. Madeska had just informed him that the birth had gone according to plan and the sacrifice would take place that very night, when suddenly, badabim, badaboom, in rolls misfortune blacker than the ass of a Congo! As a rule Madeska left the sacrificed newborn deep in the woods, haunted only by raging wild animals. This time, goodness knows what got into his head to set the newborn down right in the middle of the Calvaire crossroads. Not surprising that wretched police commissioner Dieudonné Pylône stumbled onto it and that meddling Dr. Pinceau got the idea of patching things up! What happened when a sacrifice was misappropriated? Agénor had prudently waited a few days before going down to ask Madeska for details. Alas, when he had finally made up his mind, the bird had flown! The mischief maker had split. Sobbing their hearts out, his wives added that they hadn’t a cent to their name and had fifteen children to feed. Worried out of his mind, Agénor had gone to consult a well-known Nago soothsayer who read the grains of sand on the shore. He hadn’t minced his words. Darling little Celanire had become a darling little devil. Dr. Pinceau had done exactly what he should not have done. He had brought her back to life! Moreover, he would pay dearly for his foolishness and would be one of her prime victims. In fact, snatched from death, the baby would become even more formidable. You see, what is difficult for a spirit, good or bad, is to be reincarnated. Thanks to her docile little body, the evil spirits, starting with Ogokpi, the superdemon, would be able to parade freely among humans. Right up to her death, they would use her to commit any crime that caught their fancy and any mischief that came into their heads. Furthermore, convinced they had been swindled, they would savagely take their revenge on all those who had participated in the aborted sacrifice. Madeska thought he could save his skin by crossing the ocean. A waste of time — the spirits would catch up with him whenever they wanted, wherever he was. Likewise, they would hunt down every single one of those who had been involved in the affair, one by one.

Confronted with these dire predictions, Agénor had spent half his fortune protecting himself. His head bursting, he sometimes wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to give up. Lie down and sleep. Lie down and die. Be reunited with the mother of his children. Once again the fools had got it all wrong. That cross-eyed hunchback, who had become a laughingstock, was the only woman he had loved with all his heart. Before sinking into the void, she had given him a smile that meant “Don’t take too long! Remember, I’ll be waiting for you.”

He knew that one day his learned assembly of mischief makers, sorcerers, magicians, soothsayers, houngans, mambos, obeah men, kimbwazé, marabouts, and dibias would be of no use and he would die in torment. When he had set eyes on Celanire again at the Governor’s Palace and met her gaze, he knew his time was finally up. How odd! After all these years, he had recognized her. Twenty-five years earlier he had been unable to contain himself. He who never set foot inside a church, he had gone over to the cathedral of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul at the hour of mass to get a closer look at darling little Celanire, the miraculous baby who was the talk of Grande-Anse. Standing on the steps, Ofusan was cradling her in her arms, showing her off like the Holy Sacrament, and everyone kowtowed in front of her. The infant, only a few weeks old, was dressed ostentatiously in silks, satins, and lace, the way mothers proudly deck out their offspring. A large lace bow frothed around her neck. When he leaned over her, with the pretense of a smile, the baby looked up. Then she eyed him scornfully with her unrelenting gaze, as if to say, “So there you are. Yes, I’m still alive, no thanks to you. I’m in no hurry to settle our business, I’m going to take my time.”

He had gone inside the church without really knowing what he was doing and fallen on his knees in front of the statue of Saint Anthony of Padua, a saint he loathed, with his tonsure, his missal, and his silly expression. For the first time in his life he was shaking with fright, as helpless as a child!

Poor Mavundo! Since learning of Madeska’s death, he had gone to a lot of trouble. He had worn out his dwarves. Now he was giving Agénor wangas, potions, powders, unguents, and lotions of his own making. He lit candles in a circle around him. He made scarifications in the fleshy parts of his arms and thighs and inserted amulets. He whirled around and drew circles in the undergrowth. Agénor looked at him in pity. He knew full well all this agitation was a waste of time. His days were numbered. When the mischief maker had finished aping around, Agénor paid him generously and climbed back onto his horse. Delighted at leaving, the animal, now with wings on its hooves, flew through Grande-Anse and galloped without stopping until they reached the Fouques-Timbert plantation. On leaving La Regrettée, Agénor did not notice the flock of egrets scatter in a commotion behind Colibri’s rump. He did not realize that what had scared them was another bird, attired in black plumage like a frigate bird or a buzzard. During the conversation between Mavundo and Agénor it had kept its distance, perched motionless on the branch of a guava tree, observing the scene with its cruel, round eyes. Once the conversation was over, it had taken flight, following Agénor and Colibri from afar, its wings spread wide like the arms of Christ on the cross.

When Agénor arrived home, the bird wheeled around for some time above the estate, as if it were deciding on where to settle. Then it made up its mind, swooped down on a magnificent mahogany tree, and nestled among its shiny leaves.

4

Every Sunday at three in the afternoon, the fatal hour of the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the same scene never failed to occur. Zuléfi, Madeska’s eldest son, his tall body draped in a white robe, took up his position on the seafront. Behind him, the crumpled fabric of the waves and the silhouette of the ships leaving for Veracruz. Above his head, the yellow eye of the sun that seemed to mock his antics. A few feet away, Hosanna, his wife, and their six children, dressed in the same white, rang their bells and harangued the tired, poor, and huddled masses, who were convinced there was a curse on the black race, to draw closer to the Master’s Envoy. Oh, yes! The black race had suffered in the holds of the slave ships. It had suffered in the sugarcane plantations. Its blood had reddened the earth. Its sweat had drenched it. First and second slave emancipations alike had changed nothing. They were still eating out of the same bowl of misery. And they would continue to do so. And for what reason? Because they were paying for unspeakable crimes, vile and horrible acts, acquired while they were in Africa and perpetuated in Guadeloupe — human sacrifices, fornication with animals, and depravity of all sorts. But those who reasoned along these lines, preached Zuléfi, were not entirely within reason. The Good Lord knows no curse. God forgives. He forgives everyone, even those who are black of skin, vile, and crouching in the gutter. If they learned to ask for forgiveness, the black race would be rewarded with a wondrous thing. In the afterlife they would be equal among nations.

Difficult as it may seem to believe, this sermon had a considerable following. As early as Saturday morning folk from La Pointe crowded onto the bridge leading out of town, and the procession set off in the direction of Basse-Terre. Crowds poured in from the Leeward Coast, from Deshaies, Vieux-Habitants, even Sainte-Rose, plus a few fanatics from the Grand Cul-de-Sac. By noon the seafront in Basse-Terre was swarming with people: women and more women, but also men, even teenagers. While they waited, they sang psalms, some sitting on the ground or small benches, others standing, drawing themselves up to their full height. The more the priests thundered from their pulpits against Zuléfi, the more the politicians scoffed at his “naive rhetoric,” the more the crowds kept coming. After the sermon in Creole, which usually lasted two good hours, Hosanna and the children passed around the small wicker baskets for people to give what they could — from brand-new bills to penny coins. Then came the solemn moment of communion. Zuléfi asked the Good Lord to fill the bread twists with His presence before handing them out. Every time there was an incredible commotion. There was never enough to go around. People elbowed their way through the crowd, clawing and fighting like the possessed, and one wondered why the Good Lord did not simply repeat the miracle of Canaan and the multiplication of the loaves.

That Sunday, the three o’clock sun was especially harsh. The worshippers sheltered as best they could under parasols, bakoua hats, pieces of toweling, and jute sacks. Now that the hurricane season was over, the experts predicted a volcanic eruption, given the baking heat. Folk who slept on the volcano’s slopes had been woken by rumbling noises. Up by the Yellow Baths, it stank of sulfur. Ashes had blackened the bed of the river Galion. Zuléfi himself dripped great drops of sweat. Though he looked as if he were lost in prayer, he was watching every movement among the crowd and could have described every one of his congregation. When he saw Matthieu arrive, he was not surprised. He had been expecting this visit for the past twenty-five years. He knew that one day some smart police officer would think of interrogating him, now that his father was gone. Yet so convinced he was of divine indulgence, he was not scared of mortals. Matthieu’s impeccable behavior never betrayed the real reason why he was present. Like everyone else, he knelt down in the scorching sand. Like everyone else, he sang the psalms. During the sermon he devoutly placed his head between his two hands. He struck his breast twice as hard demanding the Lord’s forgiveness. However, he did not budge for communion and merely watched as his fellow disciples filled themselves with the presence of God. As the crowd dispersed, he stood up, dutifully made the sign of the cross, then walked over to Zuléfi with a look that meant, Now it’s our turn.

Zuléfi had often imagined this moment when he would be able to get this weight off his chest and confess.

“Who put you onto me? You must have been surprised that I, the child of a mischief maker, raised amid vice and magic, suddenly took refuge in the Good Lord. You want to know why?

“Because one day the scales fell from my eyes like Saul on the road to Damascus. The stench of my sins and those of my father grabbed my nostrils. I can’t tell you which smelled the worst. All I know are those that wake me up in the middle of the night. I, Zuléfi, committed the mother of atrocities — I performed human sacrifices. It’s no use telling me I was still a little boy. I was twelve. I understood perfectly well what I was doing. And to be honest with you, I had already dabbled in the waters of women. My father’s ancestor landed here in 1640. He came from the kingdom of Abomey. He was a Yavogou from a noble family and one of the court’s highest dignitaries. The Yavogous are not merely princes. They can see and talk with the spirits, like I’m talking to you at this very minute. The invisible world holds no secrets from them. That’s why they alone perform the supreme sacrifice — the human sacrifice. When it comes to the annual celebrations and royal funerals, they are the ones who decide how many widows, slaves, virgins, and albinos must be sacrificed. On the death of a member of the royal family, they decide who must follow them to the grave. Once the sacrifices are over, as guardians of the spirit world, they knead the earth around the shrines with fresh blood. You can imagine that, coming from a tradition like that, my father wasn’t going to break his back under the sun cutting sugarcane. He used his powers to turn the heads of the Fouques-Timbert family. Fair’s fair. He helped them become the most powerful family of planters. In exchange, he and his family were virtually free.

“Like his father and father’s father before him, Madeska had inherited the lithalam, the name for the sacrificial knife made from a bull’s horn, so sharp that as soon as its tip touches the flesh, it slits the skin in two. Blood was its staple diet. From the age of seven I attended every one of my father’s sacrifices. Fowl, sheep, goats, bulls, humans — I didn’t miss a single one. But my favorites were the newly born. Every time I was fascinated by the incredible sight. My father would pray out loud, kneel down, then do what he had to do. With one stroke of the lithalam—it should never need two — he sliced the neck of the infant, no bigger than a quail’s. The blood gushed out in great spurts; at first bright red, then slowing to a black trickle. Finally, the baby uttered a muffled gurgle. Its eyes clouded over with a gray film and slowly faded into oblivion. For a long, long time afterward its body shook with violent convulsions. It was as if there were frogs hidden under its skin who were all trying to escape the agonized little body at the same time.

“When it was over, my father would grab the soul as it wandered around in a daze and shove it into a jar, which he stored in a shed behind our house, in case a reincarnation proved necessary. At the age of ten, I became my father’s official assistant. My job was deadly serious. The ceremony always began in the secret of midnight. My father would hand me the lithalam in its leather sheath. Reciting the prayers, I would draw it out and hand it to my father. Once the sacrifice had been performed, I would ceremoniously wash the blade dripping with blood, coat it with sacred unguents, and return it to its sheath. Then just before dawn I would carry the bleeding victim, still warm, wrapped in seven pieces of cloth and squeezed into a goatskin, to its final resting place. This would traditionally be the clearing at Malendure, way up in the depths of the forest near the Dead Tree Falls. There I laid it on a pile of earth with its head facing the rising sun. At its feet I set down the sacrificial food of smoked herring and ground corn cooked with no salt; I made a circle of ceremonial objects such as candles, nails, and a crucifix and recited the farewell prayer. Then I left without ever looking back. If I did, my two eyes would have been gouged out by the spirits come to feast on the victim’s body.

“That night a baby girl had gone under the lithalam. Everything had gone as planned. Just before sunrise I was about to set off for the clearing at Malendure with my bag when Virgilius came to fetch me. Virgilius was my best friend, the son of another mischief maker, somewhat less expert than my father. He had been looking for me since the day before. His cousin had been taken to hospital with a pleurisy. We could borrow his boat and take off for the island of Antigua. We’d been longing to go to Antigua for ages! I wanted nothing better, but what was I to do with my wretched load? It would take me almost a whole day to walk to Malendure and back. Then Virgilius had an idea. His father didn’t go to all that trouble, not him. He dropped his sacrifices off at the Calvaire crossroads, where he left his magic baths. I hesitated; then the longing to set off to sea got the better of me. I let him be my guide. When we arrived at the Calvaire crossroads, the sky was barely turning white. We hurriedly laid the baby on a mound of grass, set down the sacrificial food, scattered the nails, pieces of iron, and red rags, and rushed off as quickly as we could. We launched the boat into the water. The sun caught up with us around eight in the morning. I shall never forget the color of the sea at that hour. Green like the back of an iguana. We threw out our nets and drew them back in loaded with all sorts of fish — wrasse, largemouth bass, and porgies. We hauled in crayfish. When we returned to Grande-Anse the following night, the place was abuzz with talk about darling little Celanire, the baby girl found at the Calvaire crossroads by Officer Dieudonné Pylône. Miracle of miracles, Dr. Jean Pinceau, they said, had spent the entire day sewing her together again. A crowd had gathered in front of his door. My heart missed a beat. Terrified, I ran home. Maman and her cowives were in tears. Refusing to eat or drink, my father had locked himself in his prayer hut. He let me in. ‘You didn’t take her to Malendure, did you?’ he quietly asked. ‘You set her down at the Calvaire crossroads, didn’t you?’ All I could do was nod. ‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘I’m a doomed man. Ogokpi, the great demon, has broken his pact with me. He’s convinced I tried to trick him and rob him of what I promised him. My only chance of escape is to cross the ocean.’ I fell to my knees. My head felt as if it were about to burst. ‘Can I go with you?’ I begged him. He shook his head. The next morning he set off in the direction of Montserrat without troubling to say farewell to anyone. Not even to my mother, whom he loved more than any of his wives. I cried my heart out.

“At noon I went and stood in front of Dr. Pinceau’s door in the hope of catching a glimpse of this darling little Celanire. I stood there with the vague hope that, after all, it might be some other infant. I spent the entire day standing in the sun. But all in vain. Out of fear of infection for the baby, the doctor’s surgery was closed and nobody went in or out. In fact it was only several weeks later, on the day of her christening, that I saw darling little Celanire with my own two eyes. No doubt about it. In her yards of lace, English embroidery, velvet and silk ribbons, blouse, smock, and bonnet, it was the very same infant I had left naked, covered in blood, throat slashed, on a bed of guinea grass. Due to my thoughtlessness I had brought misfortune on all those I loved most in this world.

“I’ve heard that the woman they call Celanire has returned to Guadeloupe. She’s now a very important person. The governor’s wife. I know she has come back to take her revenge. But I’m not scared of her. She can only hurt my body. The Good Lord has shown me the way. There are no crimes that can’t be pardoned. Both Father and myself have gravely offended Him, that’s true. Yet I need only repent to appease His anger.

“With such faith I have been atoning for my sins for years. I have nothing more to confess.”

Zuléfi stopped there, for the words were spinning in his head. This was no place for such a confession. Tomorrow, in the darkness of the police station, he would get this weight off his conscience. Without another word he took the summons, murmuring many thanks, as if Matthieu had just done him an act of kindness. He would obey the law and tell the truth that he had kept secret for far too long.

With his mind at ease, Zuléfi set off for home with his wife and their children in tow. The children, sulky and tired out by the never-ending ritual, were dragging their feet, whereas their mother was overjoyed: it had been a good collection. The congregation’s contributions had filled all the little wicker baskets to the brim. They would be able to resole the younger children’s shoes and buy some white thread to sew the robes of the older ones. There would still be money left over to buy some pork she would salt herself. It was then she heard a great commotion and shouts:

“Baréye! Baréye!”

Snorting and foaming at the mouth, shaking its mane, a black horse was galloping down the rue du Sable. It had thrown its rider, who was hobbling after it, brandishing his whip, and was now stampeding down the middle of the road unbridled and out of control. In a frenzy it headed straight for Zuléfi, who was standing on the sidewalk, and rearing up, dealt him two mighty kicks full in the chest. Zuléfi collapsed in a pool of blood. The horse trampled him in its rage, reducing his chest to pulp, then continued its flight.

Oblivious to the tragic incident that was playing out at the other end of town, Matthieu walked away from the seafront. His nose itched more and more every day. Soon, he thought, he would discover who Celanire was.

He knew that on that Sunday the members of the Lucioles association were meeting just steps away from the seafront on the Champ d’Arbaud. For some time now Matthieu no longer recognized the woman he had married. She had become Celanire’s alter ego. Powdered and perfumed, she followed Celanire like her shadow and never missed a single dance, masked ball, reception, cotillion, banquet, or book club. Matthieu practically never saw her. They no longer took their meals together. She came home when he was leaving for work and began her day when he had finished his. They hadn’t made love for ages. When they did happen to find themselves side by side in a bed, she would push him away, feigning menstruation, headache, or fatigue — unusual affectations for such a docile wife.

The Lucioles association was housed in a magnificent edifice with a courtyard behind and a garden out front that a penniless white Creole rented to Celanire. Besides the copper-potted palms and the gilt mirrors, the hall was crowded with men and women, mulattos and blacks, all perfumed, pomaded, and powdered alike. The afternoon session was already well under way. Elissa de Kerdoré had finished her poetry recital, and they were now launching into opera. Matthieu recognized his wife’s voice singing Johannes Brahms’s Rhapsody for Viola, opus 53. There was something shocking about this sudden obsession for singing in public. And for singing this type of music. It might have been acceptable if she treated everyone to the Kilonko epics of the Wayanas! In a bad mood, Matthieu looked around for a seat. After a while Amarante bowed to the applause. Celanire, who had been standing at the foot of the stage, gazing reverently at the artist, dashed up the steps with her usual enthusiasm and handed her a bouquet of flowers. Another burst of applause. The two women embraced each other, then kissed.

There was something so shameless in the way they hugged, in the way their breasts rubbed against each other and their lips greedily sucked on their kisses, that Matthieu stood up in horror. Didn’t anybody else see what he saw? His nostrils itched like mad, and in a flash the truth exploded in a fit of sneezing. Celanire and Amarante were on the closest of terms. As close as husband and wife.

We should point out that at the start of the century female homosexuality in Guadeloupe was not something completely unknown. The lovely Elissa de Kerdoré championed the cause. Twice divorced, she had devised a theory that, for want of a publisher, she expounded on every possible occasion. In her opinion, heterosexuality was an obligation imposed by society. In fact, marriage was unnatural. The proof: it failed under every clime and in every country! If women followed their natural inclinations and kept to themselves, they would experience greater happiness, intimacy, and tenderness. There was more pleasure and voluptuousness to be had from the caresses of a woman than being screwed by a man. Moreover, she didn’t mince her words when censuring motherhood, that straitjacket in which women were imprisoned. Elissa’s discourse struck a sympathetic chord, especially among the women of the upper classes who deliberately sought out their doudous from the dregs of society and paraded them openly in public. Branches of the Zanmi association had been created at La Pointe, Basse-Terre, and Le Moule. Its members lived openly as couples, some of the partners dressed in men’s trousers and pepper-and-salt-striped twill frock coats, even wearing top hats. For the church, it was an abomination. The priests recalled the sacred duty of procreation and the virtues of motherhood. Alas, they were wasting their time!

Celanire and Amarante descended the steps arm in arm. Matthieu leaped to his feet. As he bounded toward them, Celanire pushed Amarante to one side and, shielding her with her body, confronted him with such an insolent expression that he stopped dead in his tracks. What could he possibly do in front of so many people? Hit them? Insult them? He turned and ran outside.

That particular Sunday evening the Champ d’Arbaud was crowded with people, for the weather was so glorious that the inhabitants of Basse-Terre, who much prefer to sit inside behind closed shutters, had consented to enjoy the fresh air. Children were bowling their hoops. The older ones were playing hop-scotch. Lovers strolled down the paths, gazing into each other’s eyes. Mothers were sitting on the park benches, whispering secrets and exchanging the latest gossip. In the shade of the mango trees, unsavory characters were hatching more mischief. Matthieu climbed into a carriage for rent stationed at a corner of the square and returned home to the Redoute neighborhood. He went to bed but was unable to fall asleep. The hours passed.

The guilty party arrived home in no hurry at the stroke of midnight. Matthieu, tucked up in bed under his mosquito net, heard the horse pulling a tilbury whinny, piss heavily, then leave in a clatter of hooves. Then he heard Amarante messing around in the washroom, indulging in her ablutions. Finally she came into the bedroom, protecting the flame of her candle with her hand. It had been a long time since Matthieu had really looked at his young wife. He had not noticed how much she had changed. He had married a young beauty, that was for sure, but shy, gauche, and demure so as not to attract the attention of strangers. Now she held her head high and was as succulent as a Kongo cane. She no longer shaved her head as smooth as a coconut in the Wayana tradition. She had let her hair grow, and straightened and curled it with a hot iron like the women of the upper class. For a moment he was jealous of this transformation in which he had no part.

Amarante slipped into bed, bade him good night as if nothing could be more normal, blew out her candle, and calmly turned on her side. It was then he grabbed her and immediately asked what was going on between her and Celanire. She shook him off and confronted him. Elissa de Kerdoré was absolutely right. Women are meant to live among themselves. Thanks to Celanire, she had discovered infinite bliss. And she didn’t mean simply a sexual or physical attraction, but an incredible communion of minds. Celanire and she had the same tastes, the same desires, the same dreams. They caught themselves sharing the same thoughts and doing the same things at the same time. As a result they had decided their liaison would no longer be kept secret. On the contrary, they would openly flaunt it. At this point, Matthieu couldn’t help snickering. She didn’t really think that Celanire was going to leave the governor, his prestige, and his money to live with Sappho on love alone? Amarante inclined her head and calmly repeated what she had just said. While she shamelessly described her vice, Matthieu gradually filled with anger. He might have forgiven her if it had been a man, a strapping stud, well equipped where it was needed! But horrors! Cheated on by a woman! Cuckolded by a female! His anger bubbled up, suffocated him, boiled over like a pan of milk forgotten on the stove, and he set upon Amarante. He kicked and pummeled her like a common drunkard, he who had never raised a hand to her. She received his blows and his punishment, eyes closed, like a martyr. He ended up throwing her to the floor and then fell upon her. She managed to shake him off and ran for the door. He thought about running after her, but a violent remorse lacerated his heart. He began to sob uncontrollably like a child while a torrent of abuse flowed from his mouth. He heard himself scream at her and throw her out. “Out, shameless hussy! I no longer want to set eyes on you! Never set foot inside my house again!” After this fit of anger, he collapsed onto the bed and burst into tears.

The sequence of events that follows is not entirely reliable. It is a collection of eyewitness accounts gathered here and there that we have pieced together. The next-door neighbors, surprised by the noise, since the Dorlisses were not in the habit of making a commotion, didn’t budge during the quarrel. Only the neighbor opposite picked up courage and peeped through the louvers and outer doors, despite the late hour. She saw Amarante leave the house with a look of defiance, holding a suitcase, and set off in the direction of the seafront. Two homeless people at a street corner comparing their lot saw her pass by and wondered where she could be going at this late hour with such a heavy load. Apparently she sat down on a rock at some distance from the road. After the splendor of the sunset, the night was a magnificent deluge of India ink. A sliver of a moon tucked into a corner of the sky had a hard time illuminating even its own nook. Reassured by the darkness, the cohort of invisible spirits was creating a terrible din. They capered along the shore and swung in the branches of the almond trees. Sometimes they even dived into the ocean from the clifftops, and you could hear a great splash, but not a ripple could be seen on the surface. Other times the spirits mischievously crept up close to Amarante, hissed into her ears, or clasped her neck with their icy cold hands. Just before dawn Amarante walked back to the road. A vegetable grower, lugging his dasheen and gherkins to the Carmel market, hoisted her up exhausted into his cart. He stacked her case among the crates of vegetables and pityingly noticed her swollen face. Another one who had been manhandled by the heavy hand of her husband! Nevertheless he respected her silence and did not pry. He set her down in the Colchide neighborhood where, like every battered wife, she would probably take refuge with her maman. But at seven in the morning, Dorisca, the fishwife, had bumped into Amarante at the coach station, where she took the first carriage to set off for the center of Basse-Terre. There witnesses saw her walk in the direction of the Gai Rossignol conservatory, whose doors were still closed. She remained for a long time, leaning motionless against the iron gate. At 8:30 A.M., Celanire arrived to give the first flute lessons. Nothing had transpired from the conversation the two women had. A student who had been there since nine claims that Amarante emerged from the office around 9:30 A.M., in tears and shaking. One hour later Celanire went to practice her singing exercises with Elissa de Kerdoré, who had just arrived and was smoking cigarette after cigarette under the mango trees in the yard. Several children can confirm that at ten Amarante lay prostrate in the garden, her heavy suitcase standing beside her. Others say she wandered like a lost soul through the neighboring streets. At the stroke of eleven they lost sight of her as she was swallowed up by the flow of women returning from market, the crowds of children running to school, the stream of workers and civil servants and politicians dashing for the Conseil Général.

What is absolutely sure and certain is that around six in the evening two boys who were flinging pebbles at the mouth of the river des Pères saw a woman walk into the water fully clothed. She strode out toward the open sea, purposefully threw herself into the water, and disappeared among the waves. The boys looked at each other and hesitated. They were afraid of Mami Wata, the water spirit, who had the power to lock up the fish in order to starve humans, drive foolhardy swimmers to their death by unleashing a raging storm, or attack them by changing herself into a shark. But their finer feelings got the better of them. Bravely they tore off their clothes and rescued the drowning woman.

5

When, after several long months in the hospital, Amarante had fully recovered, she did not go back to live with Matthieu. Celanire had given her the taste of another life. She felt a kind of shame when she thought of all those years depending on a man and all that care and attention lavished on him that she seldom received in return. She remembered how she would hurriedly get up at midnight to reheat his dinner and, on Sundays, warm his bathwater and cut his fingernails and toenails as if he were some Oriental potentate. In short, she had been his servant. She didn’t go home to her mother either. All those precepts they had rammed down her throat when she was young — Love thy neighbor, Return good for evil — bored her. What was the point of them? Did she deserve to be hurt and neglected like this? As a result of all those scandals, there was no question of her going back into the teaching profession. So she bravely rented an upstairs-downstairs house on the rue du Soldeur and hung a sign over the door that read, “Singing and Music Lessons.” But owing to the proximity of the Gai Rossignol and Celanire’s reputation, she was unable to attract sufficient numbers of pupils and soon lacked the basic necessities of life. She experienced hunger. Consequently, bitterness and resentment mixed with her love for Celanire. While Celanire wallowed in opulence, she had become the victim. Memories of their moments of passion together woke her up during her nights of solitude. If she lived to be a hundred, she would never get over the shock of hearing Celanire laugh that morning she had come seeking refuge, naively reminding her of her promise to live openly as a couple.

Her grief knew no bounds when some good souls informed her that Celanire had quickly got over her loss and was carrying on openly with Elissa de Kerdoré. It didn’t surprise her: she had always thought those two were made for each other — equally attractive, provocative, and diabolical, with that touch of nonchalance of the leisured class. At their initiative, the innocent little island of Fajoux, which is anchored in the crystal-clear waters off the Grand Cul-de-Sac, was transformed into Lesbos. A cohort of Zanmis set up tents and wattle huts, each with her one and only. They swam in their altogether, shamelessly baring the cups of their breasts, the curves of their buttocks, and their fountains of life. They barbecued red snapper and crayfish that they caught themselves. They brazenly caressed each other as they rolled in the burning blanket of sand. Owing to her official duties, such as inaugurating maternity homes, nurseries, and orphanages, Celanire had to stay in Basse-Terre and only joined Elissa on the island at weekends, when she would stimulate intellectual activities, such as never-ending verbal jousting and theatrical entertainments. She inaugurated a poetry competition in Kréyol, a language she had always encouraged. When Elissa, who hated Kréyol and considered it vulgar, criticized her for not speaking it herself, she retorted that the mouth does not always need to express what the heart cherishes. Sometimes Thomas de Brabant came with her, spending the night in the open so as not to get in the way of her lovemaking with Elissa. The fishermen, shocked by the copulation going on almost under their noses, quickly hauled in their nets, and it wasn’t long before there was a shortage of fish in Grande-Terre.

The priests frowned upon all this. But they didn’t dare protest. The governor’s wife had connections in high places. Bishop Chabot’s purple robe covered up for her. They had recently made a deal. The overpopulated orphanages that the church had trouble running had just been handed over to the colonial authorities. Celanire scrubbed and modernized them and hired a dozen girls, whom she sent to be trained in Lyons, where she had kept in touch with the missionaries. As for the orphans, some of them already sang in a choir and had performed at Saint-Pierre in Martinique.

Gripped by jealousy, Amarante began to harbor ideas for revenge. Old rumors came streaming back to her. It had been gossiped around that the young Celanire had been the cause of Ofusan’s death as well as the ruin of Dr. Pinceau. And goodness knows what else. Amarante, who had always been a sensible, down-to-earth person, grew frightened of all these shadowy figments she felt accumulating inside her.

One morning, to escape her inner self, she turned her back on Basse-Terre and set off for La Soufrière.

Three thousand feet up, the forest of Guadeloupe becomes stunted. Gone are the châtaigniers, the mastwoods, the mountain immortelles, and the red cedars. The earth is covered with a mass of purple-flowered, scentless bromeliads and white orchids streaked with cardinal-colored venules. Amarante, born and raised on the coast, just steps from the remorseless splendor of the ocean, discovered a landscape whose beauty is on a human scale. Here the sun can veil its face so as not to dazzle the newcomer, the sky clothe itself in gray, and the air grow soft with streaks of blue as cool as a mountain stream. Despite the advent of a new society following the abolition of slavery, a group of Wayanas clung stubbornly to the slopes of the volcano. Others had returned when they realized that nothing had changed down below. Down on the plain or high in the mountains, life always had the same bitter taste. The same bowl of misery was served wherever you were. To avoid being harassed by the gendarmes, the recalcitrant Wayanas had simply climbed higher and hid their wattle huts behind the camasey trees, whose leaves are embossed in greenish black. They slashed and burned plots of land. Then they cultivated whatever they needed to subsist—soukous yams that grow well high up, sweet potatoes, a little tobacco, and hemp, which the women wove like flax. If the leaf-cutter ants became too bothersome, they would abandon the plot and begin again farther up.

When Amarante loomed into sight at the end of the day, the yellow-and-white Creole dogs did not bark. On the contrary, they came and rubbed themselves up against her. After all she was still a Wayana for these years. Under the soap and rouge of the town, her skin had kept the smell of her people. According to Wayana hospitality, the guest is a gift from heaven. So no questions were asked. They gave her food and drink. When the night turned black, they hung a hammock for her on the veranda of the communal house. Amarante was delighted with this newly discovered monastic life, which her mother and father had experienced during their childhood and yearned for all their lives. She understood that happiness does not reside in a restless mind, as Celanire had taught her to believe. It resides in dispossession: wrapping oneself in a cloth dyed and woven by hand, washing oneself with the others in the icy waters of the gully, lighting a fire between four stones, cooking with the women, listening to stories under the lenient gaze of the moon. Only the insipid taste of the food bothered her, since for the Wayanas salt belonged to the gods and was not to be eaten by humans.

After a few weeks she became involved in communal activities. Although she hated scratching her hands planting, hoeing, and digging up sweet potatoes or yams, she took a liking to hunting. The Wayanas did not use firearms, coward’s weapons that kill from a distance. They hampered and fettered the animal with a lasso and fought with it close up, using a knife. When they finally got the better of their prey, they thanked the gods with a prayer and quartered the animal alive, then lay the chunks on a crisscross of young branches to cure them. Amarante also learned how to recognize each plant by its shape and its smell and began to read nature like an open book. All these activities purged her of her ill humor. She noticed that gradually she forgot the way she had been abandoned and betrayed, the love between Celanire and Elissa de Kerdoré, and all that nonsense that had caused her so much pain. She craved for a different way of thinking; she hungered for a new life.

One evening, in accordance with the Wayana tradition, a young man named Wole came and hung his hammock next to hers.

“No, I didn’t come here for that,” she sharply rebuked him. “I don’t want anybody. Men have shown me their limits and women their cruelty.”

Wole shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t generalize! You speak of a man who made you suffer, for he was set in his heart on satisfying his ambition. As for the woman you were infatuated with, everyone knows she was a demon. Didn’t she kill our noble sister Ofusan?”

Amarante, who had often heard such nonsense, burst out laughing.

“I’d like you to explain how a baby can kill a grown-up.”

Wole’s expression turned serious.

“You Wayanas from the town, your minds have been completely distorted. You always need to have an explanation. You need logic and reason! Do you want me to tell you what happened?”

In spite of her expression of disbelief Amarante was dying to hear the story of Ofusan. Wole collected his thoughts.

“Noble sister Ofusan came into this world in the black of midnight. She was such a lovely little girl that all those who were present at her birth were overjoyed. Yet Gongolosoma, our protector and god who followed us from Africa, looked worried and predicted she would cause serious trouble for those she loved. This turned out to be true soon enough. All through her childhood and adolescence she was rebellious, pestering, and disrespectful of the elders. So nobody was surprised when at the age of sixteen she left the mountain to go down and marry a mulatto in the plain, a ladies’ man and womanizer with the airs of a patriot. When she left she broke two hearts — her mother’s and that of Agboyefo, to whom she had been predestined by the elders ever since she was a baby. Mothers’ hearts are always prepared to forgive. But not the betrothed’s. Outraged, Agboyefo went and asked Chéri Monplaisir, the dibia, who resided down at Saint-Sauveur, to help him take his revenge. ‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Chéri Monplaisir. ‘I want her to suffer like I’m suffering today. Invent for her the most terrible of punishments. Make an example out of her. It’s not just me and her mother she has insulted. She has offended the sacred traditions of the Wayanas. She has preferred the white man’s gods to ours.’ Chéri Monplaisir began by requesting a white heifer without a single blemish on its body and three hens of identical color as a sacrifice. When Agboyefo returned three days later, the dibia was overjoyed. ‘Things are looking good. I’ve made a deal with the superdemon Ogokpi. He’ll take care of Ofusan.’ Ogokpi is the master of the seven circles of hell. One day, he swallowed his daughters by mistake and gorged himself on their blood. Ever since, he has been asking for sacrifices of children and babies. The younger they are, the happier he is. He adores newborn babies. As promised, he took care of Ofusan. During the seven years of their marriage her mulatto husband cheated on her with all the bòbòs in Grande-Anse and thereabouts. As a rule women console themselves for their husbands’ philandering with a litter of kids. But her home was filled with nothing but hot air. In her solitude, then, she almost went mad. So she fell headfirst for the bait Ogokpi sent her: a little girl as radiant as the new moon. Anybody in her right senses would have been suspicious: a newborn discovered with her throat slashed at a crossroads! But no, not her! She blindly adopted the child and made her the queen of her house.

“Celanire has always testified that ever since she was a baby, it was her foster papa she loved, whereas she couldn’t stand the maman. Ofusan had the most magnificent baby clothes made for her. Nothing was too good for her. But every time Ofusan finished rubbing her with lotion and dressing her up, Celanire would deliberately vomit all over her baby smock. Staring her straight in the eyes, she would fart and defecate such a foul-smelling custard of caca that the whole house stank. Ofusan could not help but notice this aggressive attitude and complained to her husband. But all he had in response was a series of mollifying clichés, such as, ‘Everyone knows little girls always prefer their papa.’ Gradually Ofusan got tired of being neglected. She was still young and lovely; she could make a new life for herself. When Celanire heard her talk of leaving her husband and going back up the mountain, she first of all fell ill to stop her from going. One fever after another. Diarrhea after diarrhea. This only made Ofusan even more determined; she concluded that the air in Grande-Anse did not suit her little girl. Moreover, she worried a lot. Once some crazy woman had tried to steal the child. Ever since, she always kept close behind her whenever they strolled along the seafront, or else stood standing for hours in front of the house. So Celanire took drastic measures. She summoned her protector to rid her of her stepmother. Ogokpi, the superdemon, ran to her rescue, and changed into a dog. He adores this type of masquerade. It was when he turned himself into a dog and sank his teeth into his great rival Beelzebub, drawing blood, that he took over the reins of hell. It was in the very middle of the market he hurled himself onto Ofusan. We know the rest of the story.”

While Wole had been speaking, the moon had made its appearance and was rubbing its round cheek against the branches of the candlewood trees. Amarante knew full well this was just a tale for young girls so that they didn’t run off with a husband of their own choosing. Yet it moved her to tears. She ran her hand over Wole, who placed it firmly in the right place.

Wole had attended the local elementary school in Basse-Terre and had been expelled for insubordination. He was now getting his revenge. Every morning he gathered the children around him and incited them to hate white folks who had led the ancestors into captivity and shipped them to Guadeloupe to slave in the cane fields. Although she appreciated the strength and force of this unexpected companion, who was a balm to her humiliated heart and body, Amarante thought these lessons narrowed the mind. Humans need more than just memories of yesterday and yesteryears. They need hope, poetry, and music! Her mother had naturally taught her old Wayana songs, but Amarante didn’t stop there. She remembered how Celanire had initiated her in other music. It wasn’t long before the natural cathedral of the woods echoed with children’s voices exuberantly singing the Regina Coeli and the Exultate, Jubilate. Even though Wole did not really like Mozart, the motets were so beautiful, he did not dare protest.

Soon, however, Amarante desired something more. She was no longer content with sounds collected by others. She asked those going down to the town to buy her exercise books, pencils, rulers, and erasers, and she began to compose. Up before dawn, lying on her stomach on the carpet of green, it was as if her past suffering and the discontent of her heart and body flowed out of her and changed into this precious, magical stream of sounds. She spent days on end like that forgetting to eat or drink. She no longer needed anything or anyone.

She was free. She had been healed.

Meanwhile, deprived of a wife who had always been beyond reproach, Matthieu suffered martyrdom. A slow degeneration set in. First of all he was seen downing glass after glass in the rum shops, where men of his standing wouldn’t be seen dead. Then he stumbled along the seafront at ungodly hours. His clothes became filthy. He discarded his frock coat and jacket for a shirt and twill trousers. He began to stink of sweat. His hair remained uncombed. His superiors sharply rebuked him for not taking it like a man. How could he lose face over a woman! They would have turned a blind eye if he hadn’t cornered anyone and everyone to churn out his spiel. He swore he could sense Celanire’s true identity. His mistake during all these years was having believed there were two children, whereas it was one and the same baby. Celanire was Pisket’s child. Don’t ask for any proof! He didn’t have any! And he never would. In this sort of investigation, instinct was convincing enough. He had arrived at his conclusion by supposition, deduction, and sneezing, and nothing would make him think otherwise. His stunned listeners endeavored in vain to get him to see reason. Imagine if such stories reached the ears of the governor, Thomas de Brabant! And if he heard that his beloved wife was the daughter of an unknown father and a bòbò! Nothing good could come out of angering someone with connections high up. But Matthieu continued to do exactly as he pleased. He wrote letter after letter to the Ministry of the Colonies, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry for Public Safety. He swamped the papers in France, Guadeloupe, and Martinique with open letters that never got published. Drastic measures had to be taken. He was retrograded to watchdog, stationed outside the schools. Unfortunately, he insisted on recounting his tribulations to the dumbfounded teachers and pupils. Then he mobilized his socialist colleagues at La Pointe. Always prepared to back the wrong horse, they went to a lot of trouble inquiring why this superior mind was being picked on.

They then had the idea of transferring him to Grande-Anse. There he could discreetly continue his investigation.

Matthieu arrived then in Grande-Anse at the height of the dry season. The heat was suffocating. The sea and the sky boiled in sulfur. The flowers of the hart’s tongue clinging to the slopes of the hills were scorched by the sun. He no longer recognized the place he had grown up in. Everything had been freshly daubed and painted. Under the influence of an invasion of rosy-cheeked Mormons from Salt Lake City, the bordellos had been transformed into respectable houses. The turpitudes of the Ginger Moon had slipped its memory, and it now housed a harmless mom-and-pop store on the ground floor. The Saint-Jean-Bosco orphanage had been turned into a college for whites, mulattos, and blacks. The seafront had been planted with royal palms and made into a promenade where families could take the air. Yet despite all these modern touches Matthieu could see that the people remained the same. Acquainted with the purpose of his visit to Grande-Anse, everyone wanted to help him. With the passing of time the memory of Ofusan was revered like that of a saint. Almost twenty years later they still lamented the fate of good Dr. Pinceau. If they could, they would do everything possible to help him reveal the identity of “darling little Celanire,” who without a doubt had caused the couple’s misfortune. But they didn’t have the slightest clue. No sooner had he moved in than Matthieu set to work. There was no doubt in his mind. Since he believed Celanire to be Pisket’s child, the first thing to do was to go back over her tracks. Here was a girl who was probably born in Grande-Anse, had grown up there, died, and was buried there, and yet nobody knew a thing about her. How come there was not a single friend to flower her grave? Not a single enemy to badmouth her? He focused his investigation on the Ginger Moon. Alas, however much he prowled around the upstairs-downstairs house, which could have come straight out of the French Quarter in New Orleans, he came up with nothing. The former owner, Carmen, had turned to religion before being called to God. As for the former residents, who had now settled down and had their own pew at church, it would be unwise to recall the time when they were bòbòs. Matthieu did not give up hope, convinced that finally he would get lucky. He took his meals in a cheap eating house inappropriately named the Delights of Gargantua.

One evening when he was about to rinse out the bad taste of codfish and rice with some white rum, the owner informed him that her mother would like a word with him. Under her cottony white hair combed into four buns, she must have been in her sixties. Everyone dutifully called her Mama Sidoine after the name of her late husband, a respected fisherman.

“In actual fact, my real name is Madone,” she said in a mysterious tone of voice.

As this did not seem to mean anything to Matthieu, she had to refresh his memory.

“Pisket’s good friend, the only one she ever had. She came back to die in my arms, that’s proof enough! Two people loved her on this earth. Me and her twin, Kung Fui.”

Matthieu lowered his voice and went straight to the point.

“Do you know the name of the child’s father?”

“Do I know it? Of course I do!”

She lowered her voice as well.

“It’s Dr. Jean Pinceau!”

Matthieu leaped to his feet, drew himself up to his full height, and shouted furiously, “À pa vwé! Manti aw! Manti aw! It’s not true! You’re lying!”

She eyed him scornfully.

“What’s got into you to shout like that! You really think some men are different from the rest? The best of them are not worth the rope to hang them with. All of them are scumbags. In fact few people know that Dr. Jean Pinceau was stinking rotten to the core. Everyone in Grande-Anse respected and worshipped him like the Holy Sacrament, whereas he liked the ladies of the night and was a regular visitor to the bordellos! At the Ginger Moon his favorite was Pisket, the dirtiest slut of them all.”

Matthieu was no longer listening to her, and was pacing up and down like a madman. The idol of his youth had bit the dust. So the paragon of virtue wallowed in vice. The slayer of opium eaters worshipped a drug addict. He recalled the fervor in his handsome face. He could still hear the brazen speeches of his electoral campaign: “Guadeloupe is not France, and France is not Guadeloupe. It is an entirely different country whose interests are in contradiction with those of colonialism.” Such bold words at the time! He tried to tell himself that this old woman was lying. But no, his nose sensed the truth. Ignoring him, she prattled on, coming out with everything she had kept bottled up inside her for too long, her hands deformed by arthritis resting on her knees.

“The poor girl was naive enough to believe that with all his money the doctor would at least promise to help take care of her baby. Despite their wicked ways, that’s what the white Creoles did when they had children with black girls. But all he could say was, ‘An pa sètin sé ti moun an mwen! Fo ou fin èvèye. I’m not sure it’s my child. Get rid of it.’ This upset Pisket, despite her shameless ways. She cried a lot, I know. But she didn’t let on to the doctor. When he offered to give her an injection for an abortion, she pretended to accept. And then she let Kung Fui make a deal with Madeska. When they left the Ginger Moon, they didn’t tell anyone where they were going, except me. You should have seen Dr. Pinceau that day. He was like a lost soul, a zombie. You’d have thought he’d go mad or die. He didn’t want any of the other girls as a consolation. You couldn’t help pitying him.

“I seldom visited Pisket at Bélisaire. People in our line of business don’t like going out in broad daylight. When the children meet us, they shout ‘Shoo!’ as if we were dogs or else ‘Zouelle, an bòbò!’ and respectable persons make the sign of the cross. And then visiting them wasn’t very pleasant. The Blanc Galop was a real hornet’s nest. Kung Fui had brought his inseparable Yang Ting with him, who was living with their sister, Tonine. But Pisket and Kung Fui couldn’t stand Tonine. They hurled insults and abuse at her. Sometimes even Pisket tried to hit her. Yang Ting would intervene, and there’d be a hell of a commotion. And then Madeska and Pisket didn’t get along. She complained that the mischief maker’s food was tasteless, since salt was taboo. Once a month he wanted to cut her, take her blood and bits of flesh. But what I really want to tell you is that you’re barking up the wrong tree in your investigation. Celanire, the governor’s wife, is not Pisket’s child. She couldn’t be! Seven months pregnant, and the child slipped out.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“But it’s true! The child slipped out! Pisket had a miscarriage. But Kung Fui was an artful one! I don’t know how he did it. All I know is that he and Pisket came to an arrangement.”

“An arrangement?” Matthieu yelled. “What do you mean?”

“Well, they found a belly for sale. Don’t ask me where or how, I haven’t got the slightest idea. I had my own troubles at the time: I ate some conger eel, which gave me blood poisoning. I spent three and a half months in the Saint-Félix hospital at death’s door. When I came out, Grande-Anse was in a hullabaloo. Madeska had vanished; the only talk was of ‘darling little Celanire,’ ‘darling little Celanire,’ the baby Dr. Pinceau had miraculously saved. They said she was so lovely, so beautiful, a woman had tried to steal her. One Sunday during mass I dashed to look at her in the arms of her foster mother. She gave me the shivers. A pink silk ribbon was tied around her neck. Her head reared up like a cobra’s, and she stared at people with her black eyes, gleaming like hot coals. As for Pisket, after her miscarriage, she disappeared for a while. I only saw her again the year after, when she came back to die in my arms. You won’t like what I’m telling you, I know. But it’s the truth. And the truth is hard to swallow.”

Matthieu got the impression his brain was about to explode. Large drops of sweat rolled down his back. Years of research and speculation to arrive at this. All for nothing. At the end of the day Celanire was not Pisket’s daughter. In despair he left.

To the east, along the rim of hills, Grande-Anse glowed red. At first he thought it was a figment of the fever that had set his mind ablaze. Then he realized the Fouques-Timbert plantation house was burning like tinder. At the very moment when Matthieu was watching in disbelief, the glow of flames had already reached as far as Antigua, dazzling the fishermen at Half Moon Bay, who hauled their boats up on the sand and, sensing some strange foreboding fell on their knees to recite the prayer for the dead. The flames could also be seen as far away as Nevis and Montserrat, whose inhabitants wondered where exactly could the fire be burning. Ever since a delegation led by Celanire had come to their rescue, they looked on the Guadeloupeans as their brothers and took an interest in their fate.

Agénor de Fouques-Timbert perished in the fire of his Great House like a common mortal. Not only did he lose his life, but Ji, his concubine, his two illegitimate daughters, and six of his seven legitimate sons were also lost. Only the wildest and handsomest was spared, since as usual he had spent the night out, and was nicknamed Sanfoulanmò ever since, because he had defied death.

The incident deserves a closer look.

On April 26, the feast of Saint Alida, Agénor was waiting in his office at the Conseil Général for the director of a highway construction company to pay him his commission. He received 10 percent on all the contracts in the colony and demanded it in cash. He loved the smell of money. The filthier the bills, the more dog-eared they were, the greater his delight, since they reminded him of his own rotten life. The director had arrived at six on the dot, carrying the money in a wicker basket. The two men barely greeted each other. They had nothing to say. The money did the talking.

Agénor had then mounted Colibri and set off for Grande-Anse. On leaving Basse-Terre, shortly before passing through the Colchide neighborhood, he met a funeral procession. Some wretch was being hauled feetfirst in a miserable cart rigged out in black rags. A few musicians shuffled along in front, blowing their brass instruments, and a ragged group of mourners brought up the rear. And yet Agénor, who had everything — women, children, land, property, and political power — envied the deceased. Lanmò. Death. Eternal rest. He couldn’t wait for Celanire to make up her mind. In his longing to see her in the flesh, he had gone to the carnival opening-night ball disguised as Nero, the emperor on whom he would have willingly modeled himself. Moreover, the crown of laurels and the Roman toga suited him. In his hands was a gilded wood lute, which he would have liked to fiddle as well.

Flanked by Ludivine, as sulky as ever, Celanire and Thomas were greeting their guests. Thomas was disguised as an Egyptian pasha, a costume that suited his paunch perfectly. Celanire was dressed as queen of the fairies, something out of The Magic Flute. It needed just a little imagination to guess the connection with her diaphanous, multicolored moiré dress, her golden crown, and the magic wand she brandished arrogantly like a whip. Agénor bent forward to kiss her hand, and when he looked up, he found himself level with her pair of eyes. There then followed a silent dialogue.

“What are you waiting for?” Agénor inquired. “If you want to take your revenge, take it.”

“Revenge,” retorted Celanire, “is a dish best eaten cold. Don’t you know that?”

“But why are you so angry with me? It was nothing personal. For me, I couldn’t put a face, a name, or even a sex to you. I simply needed a child. You’d do better to concentrate on your parents. Those two deliberately did you harm by handing you over to Madeska. You killed him, but he was only doing his job.”

“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.

Elissa was not the only one to be worried. Thomas de Brabant was not insensitive to his wife’s change of mood. So he set about arranging a grand tour for her in the New Year. As it also marked the fifth anniversary of their marriage, he was convinced it would do her a world of good. The plan was to travel through the countries of Latin America she had dreamed of visiting — the former empire of the Incas, Bolivia, Ecuador, and above all, Peru. She had become passionately interested in this far-off land while reading Flora Tristan. In her eyes, a few lines in Peregrinations of a Pariah marked the first link between sexism and racism, whereas the whole book was a powerful condemnation of slavery. Thomas had left nothing to chance. They would take the SS Veracruz from La Pointe to Caracas in Venezuela, then continue through the Andes by slowly and regally descending the rivers.

At the end of August, however, Celanire seemed to have regained her enthusiasm for life. She dashed from the governor’s residence to the bishop’s palace, and also paid frequent visits to the Sainte-Hyacinthe hospital, where she was allowed to consult the records. What could she be looking for day after day? One morning, in a frenzy, she begged Elissa to accompany her to Ravine-Vilaine. Ravine-Vilaine was a small village on the northern edge of the island that was fast becoming a place of pilgrimage. It would certainly have sunk into anonymity if it hadn’t produced a saint who was causing a great deal of excitement all over the island. Not only had this Sister Tonine received the marks of stigmata, reliving the crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but even after her death, she suffered little children to come unto her. By that was meant she gave a belly to sterile women who had dragged themselves through life on their knees to have kids. Some even went so far as to request she be canonized at Saint Peter’s in Rome. She would be the first saint from the Caribbean, which, to be honest, was not exactly a region of saints.

Ravine-Vilaine was a very special place. Neither sugarcane nor coffee had ever been grown there. Not a sugar or coffee plantation house had ever been built there. No bell or siren had ever sounded noon for a population of slaves. To survive, the inhabitants felled trees from the forest, sawed them up, and made charcoal, which they sold once a month in the towns along the coast. Elissa expressed surprise. Why were they going to such a hole? Was Celanire, who had so mocked motherhood, now going to pray for a belly? Celanire launched into one of her usual explanations, which explained nothing at all. Elissa knew, like Thomas de Brabant, that Celanire never told the whole truth. She had come to accept her friend as a teller of tales who changed the contents of the story as she fancied, like a novelist writing her autobiography, adding, deleting, lengthening, eliminating such and such a chapter, and clarifying such and such a fact as the mood took her. Africa? Going by what she said, sometimes it was a barbaric land where the women languished from sexual discrimination, sometimes a victimized continent that the European predators had hacked to pieces. Thomas de Brabant? Sometimes she confessed that the orphan she was had married him out of necessity, tired of trudging along life’s miserable path alone. Sometimes she claimed she adored him for his generosity and brilliant mind. He comforted her when her hopes had been dashed, for she had loved two men, two unsavory individuals who had scorned her. The first, whom she had revered as her master and creator, had denied her the affections of a father as well as the attentions of a lover. The second had held her heart and body in contempt.

Elissa, who let Celanire get away with anything, finally agreed to accompany her. They set off then on a long adventure. At Anse Médard they had to leave their carriage and hire the services of two guides in order to cross the pass of the Mulatière by mule, before descending deep into the valley and making their way through thick forest. The difficult journey had little effect on Celanire. On the contrary, she chattered away like a magpie and never stopped repeating that she had finally arrived at the end of the quest she had begun two years earlier. Quest? What quest? Elissa ventured. Celanire reminded her in no uncertain terms that she did not know who her biological parents were and that she was looking for them. Elissa, who had hated her own parents, especially her mother, and could not find peace with herself until she had put them far behind her, was ashamed of herself. Nobody can imagine what it’s like not to know your family tree. Apparently Celanire did not hold Elissa’s lack of understanding against her. She began to enthuse over the surrounding landscape: the intricate tangle of vegetation, the enormity of the trees, the size of the creepers, the vitality of the epiphytes, and the spears of sunlight that, in places, managed to pierce the forest canopy. When they arrived at Ravine-Vilaine, it was dark and raining — not those violent downpours common to the coastal regions, but a fine, misty rain that blurred the contours of the night.

Elissa was deep down a town dweller. She only put up with the island of Fajoux because of the sun’s burst of laughter over the sea. She immediately hated this darkness, this dankness, this jail of foliage. However hard you craned your head, you could never see the sky, barricaded by devil trees, candlewood trees, and immortelles, in turn gnawed by the leaf of life creeper and the wild pineapple. Celanire had reserved a room with a woman she claimed to have known in Basse-Terre, a certain widow Poirier, whose husband had been lost at sea two seasons earlier, and who had done the cleaning at the bishop’s palace. She was a handsome woman with teeth of pearl, and her verve was quite out of place in such surroundings. She told Celanire that some of the village women were waiting for her at the church. So without even opening their wicker baskets, Celanire dragged Elissa off down the main street — if we can attribute such a name to a path of beaten earth, a sort of forest track, which after winding a few yards among the guinea grass disappeared farther up. The huts along the way were all identical, a jumble of corrugated iron and wooden planks that looked as though they had been thrown together haphazardly. A group of poorly dressed women, as black as the charcoal they were selling, passionately kissed Celanire’s hands and dragged her inside the church. Elissa remained outside, waiting for them. Religion was a constant bone of contention between the two friends. Elissa, who had read all the philosophers, especially Voltaire, professed to be a free thinker, whereas Celanire firmly believed not exactly in the Good Lord and his saints but rather in Satan, evil, and the invisible spirits. She even went so far as to claim they were constantly present in her dreams. Celanire and the women finally emerged. Then one of them took the lead and led the group along the path to the little cemetery under a grove of casuarinas. No mausoleums or family vaults here. A series of humble graves at ground level, mounds of earth edged with conch shells and marked here and there with a cross.

One of them bore these words in crude letters:

Here lies a saint

Sister Tonine

?–1905

What the Women Told Celanire

Nobody could say why God had chosen Sister Tonine as a recipient of His greater glory; sometimes He reveals himself in mysterious ways in the most humble, the most destitute of His creatures. Illiterate. Wretched. Licked by life.

Nobody remembers exactly the year she came to live in Ravine-Vilaine. She arrived unannounced and slipped into a wattle hut whose owner had died the year before and left vacant. She had no means of her own to build a home. She had roamed around for years. She had been out in the rain during the rainy season and exposed to the sun during the dry season. It was the birds who first signaled her presence. They flocked out of the woods, obscuring the sky with their feathers — wood pigeons, turtledoves, hummingbirds, sugar tits, and ortolans. Seagulls and cormorants also flew in from the ocean, carrying on their wings the smell of the sea. All of them settled on the roof of her hut like heralds bearing good tidings. Then the children came flocking in, the tiny tots crawling on all fours. Then the women. Finally, slower than the rest, the men — especially unsociable and suspicious because of the climate and hard labor they are sentenced to if they don’t want to starve to death. And yet they too ended up adopting Sister Tonine. They squabbled over who would bring her dasheen or yams from their vegetable patch, an agouti or a wild pig they had trapped. The reason for this infatuation was that you couldn’t help loving the dear little woman. In her shapeless blue dress she was no taller or bigger than a ten-year-old. Black? Indian? Chinese? Rather a mixture of all three. Looking somewhat cracked, like those who have suffered no reprieve from life. In fact Sister Tonine sometimes sighed that the story of her life would break the heart of rocks, but she wouldn’t say any more.

The years went by in a never-changing routine. Every morning she would sing with the children. In the afternoon she visited the sick and the bedridden, describing to the dying the wonders that awaited them. Then back home she would recite prayers or sing hymns with the women. She only stopped at nightfall, when she would begin to talk of God and the afterlife. No visions of the apocalypse or torrents of imprecations, but sweet-sounding words that compensated for our daily lot of suffering on this earth. Men and women alike never tired of listening to her depict the Garden of Eden planted with the tree of life in the very middle, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, surrounded by a tangle of oleander and all sorts of sweet-smelling flowers. Every Maundy Thursday in the afternoon her torture began. On Good Friday, as she lay on her cot, the stigmata dug into her hands and feet, the wound pierced her left side, and the the crown of thorns lacerated her forehead with blood. She sweated, doubled up in pain, and sobbed all day Easter Saturday racked by unspeakable suffering. Then on Easter Sunday she would rise up like our Lord Jesus Christ and, haggard and drawn from the pain, go and kneel outside to start singing the Veni Creator.

This happened Holy Week after Holy Week. After several years the prodigy came to the ears of folk from the neighboring villages of Saint-Esprit, Maraudeur, and Vieux-Habitants. They would begin flocking to Ravine-Vilaine on Palm Sunday, sleeping under the trees in the surrounding woods. On Easter Sunday they would file back home in a procession chanting hymns to the glory of God. One year, Sister Tonine began to perform miracles. It started with Madame Eudoxie, the doctor’s wife from Saint-Esprit, whose novenas and husband’s know-how had never been able to produce a child during their twelve years of marriage. On Easter Saturday Madame Eudoxie wiped the sweat from Sister Tonine’s brow, begging her to inter-cede with the Almighty on her behalf, and one month later she missed her period. Nine months later she gave birth to a baby boy. The miracles continued with Madame Patient, the tax collector’s wife from Cantilène, who gave birth to twins on the eve of her menopause. Soon there was a crush of well-to-do women who came looking for a cure for infertility, since this class of women is more susceptible to this kind of affliction.

Sister Tonine had but one enemy, the priest at Saint-Esprit who came up to say mass at Ravine-Vilaine on Sundays at eleven. In his words, a creature who claims to imitate the Son of God and openly flaunt His stigmata is guilty of the sin of pride. Sister Tonine was a dangerous crackpot. Suspicious, he launched an investigation and came up with quite a few revelations. According to him, Sister Tonine was born at the other end of the island in the region of Port-Louis, which swarmed with mixed-bloods of every color as a result of the encounter of the three races of Europe, Africa, and Asia in the cane fields. While she was still a suckling, her parents had left her on the steps of the church, together with her brothers and sisters, and hung a sign around her neck with her name on it. Apparently the parents must have been Chinese or Indian, with a good deal of black blood, given the color of their offspring. Since the name wasn’t Christian, the priest at Port-Louis baptized her before taking her to the orphanage. Tonine excelled by her good behavior, learning her catechism by heart and abiding by God’s commandments. She served as an apprentice, then left for La Pointe. Then things took a turn for the worse. She met a shady character, a good-for-nothing, and from then on spent most of her time visiting him in jail. She followed him to Basse-Terre, where he must have been mixed up in some dirty business, and there it seems she had a baby girl who died at birth. She must have already been mentally deranged at this point, for she had trouble getting over the incident, which was certainly painful but nothing unusual in a place where hygiene left much to be desired and there was no neonatal medicine. She remained convinced that the child was alive, adopted by a well-to-do family, and insisted on getting her back. In fact, she saw the child everywhere. The priest managed to interrogate Dr. Médéric who on several occasions had treated her in his paupers’ ward at the Sainte-Hyacinthe hospital. Breaking the Hippocratic oath, the doctor told him he believed Tonine was suffering from Kirschenfeld’s disease, an ailment with symptoms of obsessions, hallucinations, fainting fits, and rashes. Armed with this information, the priest of Saint-Esprit didn’t require much more to gaily conclude that Sister Tonine was mad! He sent a report to the bishop, asking him to intervene. In a diocese like Guadeloupe there are so many problems to handle that the letter remained unanswered. So he took justice into his own hands and thundered against the poor woman from his pulpit. He showered her with contempt, heaping on insult to injury to such an extent that the villagers of Ravine-Vilaine revolted. They in turn wrote to the bishop and didn’t desist until Bishop Chabot dispatched the undesirable individual to France to purge his venom.

It was during the month of May that Sister Tonine fell ill. That year the rainy season had been so wet that the region, accustomed, however, to soaking up water, was transformed into a quagmire. The villagers were up to their knees in mud. If you didn’t watch out, you risked being sucked under. Frogs, toads, and snakes emerged from every hole and wallowed in the thick sludge. Sister Tonine disregarded Father Albertini’s advice. Come rain or shine she continued to carry the word of God to those who needed it. Not surprisingly, she caught a chill. She had never been very sturdy. All at once she seemed to shrink, shrivel, grow stooped, and become as gossamery as an angel. Her complexion was blemished by ashen streaks. A dry, persistent cough tore at her chest. Sometimes she spat blood. But she refused to take infusions or apply lotions and poultices and repeated to those who begged her to take care of herself that if the Good Lord had decided her time had come, she should not have the audacity to disobey Him. Soon she could no longer feed herself. In a panic the women sent one of their boys to fetch the doctor in Saint-Esprit. Alas, he was slowed down by the spongy terrain, the buttress roots, the weeds, and the undergrowth that had sprung up from the rain. He had barely reached the pass of La Mulatière when Sister Tonine passed away.

At that time there were no cards announcing the funeral. Yet the news spread by word of mouth like wildfire. People came from every town, from every village, from every hamlet and every locality, weeping as if they had lost their mama. Before leaving those who had loved her so dearly, Sister Tonine sprinkled a few last miracles. She thus made a present of a son to Mama Célariée, who hadn’t seen her blood for ten years and hadn’t been with a man either during the same period of time. People were surprised at first, almost in shock. Then they recalled the affair of the Virgin Mary and said among themselves that the Holy Ghost blows wherever he likes.

When the women fell silent, Celanire, her face in tears, turned to ask Elissa:

“What do you think of all that?”

Elissa shrugged her shoulders. Not much; she didn’t think much of the same old story she had heard a hundred times before. In Guadeloupe you could find a dozen stories, each one more surprising than the next, where ignorance, religion, and magic bickered with each other. At Vieux-Habitants a girl who had given birth to a baby boy on December 25 demanded he be called Jesus. At Calvaire, another preached with the voice of Our Lord Jesus Christ and was supposed to work miracles. She was said to have restored sight to a blind man and speech to a mute. A load of nonsense!

“But this woman really was a saint, don’t you think?” Celanire insisted, trembling with emotion.

Elissa burst out laughing. A crackpot who thought she was Jesus Christ in person! Listening to this caustic answer, Celanire pulled a sour face. She seemed to think twice about letting her in on a secret and, turning to the women, began conversing with them in a low voice. They listened to her in raptures while Elissa tapped her foot in exasperation. Finally the group broke up.

Meanwhile the night had deepened. The tallow candles and oil lamps glowed in the huts, where the women served a thin soup to the children. In the rum shops, the men slapped down their dominos with such force, it sounded as though they wanted to smash the wooden tables. Elissa tried to keep up with Celanire’s hurried strides. She sensed she had deeply hurt her, but she couldn’t understand why. What had she said? What had she done? Surely, knowing her as well as she did, Celanire couldn’t possibly hold it against her that she had not swallowed the gullible women’s tale and their ramblings about Sister Tonine’s sainthood.

They arrived back at the widow Poirier’s, where a hearty dinner was waiting for them. Celanire lingered in the dining room to chat with the widow Poirier while Elissa went to bed, tortured by troublesome thoughts. She had alienated her friend. But why? Emboldened by the dark, the rain was now stamping angrily on the zinc roof. The smell of humus and leaves from deep in the woods and the moans of wild animals in heat seeped in through the shutters. Suddenly the wind veered toward Montserrat.

Two days later in Basse-Terre, Celanire turned her back on Elissa. Both the doors to the governor’s residence and the Gai Rossignol were closed to her. The letters pleading for an explanation went unanswered. Up till then Elissa had never been abandoned, and had never been disappointed in love. Her epistles therefore were tinged with anger and hurt pride. She would perhaps have accepted matters if another had taken her place in Celanire’s favors. But her spies were adamant. The only person she saw in a tête-à-tête was Bishop Chabot. To find out what was going on, therefore, Elissa defiantly turned up at the Gai Rossignol and, catching Celanire unawares, locked herself up with her in her office for four long hours. What the two friends talked about never leaked out. Some pupils claimed they heard Elissa crying. What we do know for sure is that as a result of this conversation, the two friends were reconciled, and from that moment on Elissa attended every meeting with Bishop Chabot. The three of them studied plans for a mausoleum that Celanire wanted for Sister Tonine. As bold as ever, she had drawn an edifice of white marble inspired by the Taj Mahal. Bishop Chabot, however, had little liking for these pagan monuments. He preferred the tombs of the kings of France in the basilica at Saint-Denis. As for Elissa, she had no opinion. Celanire, Bishop Chabot, and Elissa, however, all agreed on the cathedral that should replace the humble log church at Ravine-Vilaine. The stones for the facade would come from the banks of the river Moustique. The high altar would be designed by a wrought-iron craftsman from Grande-Anse. The frescoes would be painted by a cousin of Elissa’s, a mulatto from Capesterre with the looks of an Inca. All this was to be financed by donations. Alas, despite the public display of devotion for Sister Tonine, this was not enough. Then something extraordinary happened: the governor levied a special “solidarity” tax that allowed the work to begin.

To supervise the building site, Celanire and Elissa left Basse-Terre and moved in with the widow Poirier, whom we have already met. Strange how the presence of Celanire wherever she went caused a commotion. It was as if she were back in Bingerville with Tanella and the widow Desrussie, where she was the only topic of conversation. The inhabitants of Ravine-Vilaine, at first well disposed toward her — Wasn’t she a firm believer in Sister Tonine’s sainthood? Wasn’t she turning their village into one of the jewels of Guadeloupe? — soon turned against her. A girl who cleaned for the widow Poirier declared that the three women were as intimate as husband and wife. Three Zanmis! Something unheard of in these parts! They spent their nights and siestas under the same mosquito net. They bathed together in the same tub, scouring each other’s backs with kisses. All day long it was a litany of sweet talk and brazen lovemaking.

Then something else cropped up! A hunter who had gone into the woods to catch thrushes and ortolans claimed that just before dawn he had come across Celanire apparently waiting, sitting under a wild cherry tree, her lips smeared with blood. At first he hadn’t recognized her and just stood there looking at her. Then it was only his presence of mind that saved him. With Celanire in hot pursuit, he had climbed to the top of an ebony tree. Apparently, she didn’t know how to climb trees and had paced up and down below in her rage. This little game lasted until the sun came up, when she scampered off back to Ravine-Vilaine.

Up against such gossip, the good that Celanire was doing went unnoticed. Yet she opened a kind of dispensary where, assisted by Elissa and the widow Poirier buttoned up in white-and-green-striped overalls (let us not forget Celanire likes uniforms!), she distributed basic medication free of charge such as asafetida, tincture of arnica, and paregoric elixir, and recommended infusions and poultices made from local plants. She also began evening classes for the women. She taught these women, whom society had forgotten, how to read, write, and count, and generally educated them, hammering into their heads her favorite slogan: “There’s more to life than serving a man like a slave.” She also taught them to sing Vivaldi a cappella.

In next to no time the cathedral in Ravine-Vilaine was completed. One had to admit it was an edifice fit to rival the most grandiose buildings on the island, and even in Martinique. In an exceptional gesture, Bishop Chabot, in all his pomp, left Basse-Terre on Advent Sunday, followed by a considerable crowd, to say mass there. He also chose this particular day to proclaim loud and clear the name of the new building: the cathedral of Sainte-Antonine, which popular belief soon transformed into Saint-Sister-Tonine. While Celanire sobbed in the front pew, her head on Elissa’s shoulder, her hand in widow Poirier’s, the bishop climbed up into the pulpit and delivered a poignant homily on the subject — death is a snare that only afflicts the unbeliever. The Providence and Goodness of the Lord are boundless. Likewise God gave His only Son to save the world, so He took Sister Tonine, but gave her daughter to save the wretched of Guadeloupe.

He didn’t say any more. And left everyone guessing what he meant!

In early February Celanire, Thomas, and Ludivine embarked on the SS Veracruz for their journey through the empire of the Incas. Elissa insisted on coming with them. She too had read the Peregrinations of a Pariah and greatly admired Flora Tristan. Moreover, she could speak Spanish. But Celanire absolutely refused. On the day of departure, under a floppy, wide-brimmed hat she wore a cream-colored wild silk ensemble and a burgundy fichu on which lay a heavy gold chain necklace weighing at least five hundred grams.

Ludivine, at the difficult age of fifteen, had momentarily lost her beauty. Only a pair of dark, velvety eyes remained that never took their gaze off her stepmother. Her hatred toward her had never relented. She told herself it might take her years, but she didn’t care, one day she would uncover the truth.

When the ship’s siren announced that visitors should disembark, Celanire and Elissa embraced, clearly demonstrating their passion for each other. Thomas looked at them tenderly and benevolently, like a father looking at his daughters, priding himself on their beauty. And it’s true they were beautiful, forming a perfect contrast, one black-black, the other almost white, one tall and the other short, both of them lithe and slender.

Ludivine, who considered Thomas to be a spineless individual, despised him for being so accommodating.