Heading South (20 page)

“Oh, don't be silly. He isn't even here . . . But you'll never guess what did happen, Christina . . .”

“I'm not even going to try . . .”

“I couldn't get into the washroom because that niece of Ambassador Abel's was in there being screwed by some man . . .” she blurted out in a single breath.

“How do you know it was her, Françoise?”

“She passed right in front of us on her way there . . . I recognized her because I've been to the Abels' a few times. Since his brother died he no longer has guests. And I've often seen her play tennis at the Circle.”

“She's a very good tennis player, but she's too aggressive, I think. She's a bit full of herself. June beats her regularly, and she doesn't like it one bit. In my opinion, she's a better player than June, but she doesn't win because she keeps losing her nerve . . . June uses a bit too much topspin, I think . . . I think she's changed a lot, lately . . .”

“But listen to me, Christina. I was standing there at the door, I could hear them as plainly as I can hear you. I was transfixed! I had no idea how well whatever goes on in that washroom can be heard outside . . . I shudder to think what I might have said myself when I've been in there . . .”

“What could you hear?”

“Everything! Everything, everything. Everything, I tell you . . .”

“Well, that must be what's shocked you. You've seemed very edgy these past few days. Are you sure you're not just a tad jealous, perhaps?”

“Why would I be jealous? I didn't even see who she was with. I have no idea what he looks like!”

“He must have come out of the toilet at some point, Françoise . . .”

“Do you think I stuck around until they were finished? I had Gérard give me the key to the upstairs bathroom and I went up there . . . Honestly, I didn't see them. But I heard everything. They must be crazy! It sounded like he was slitting her throat. She was making such a terrible noise, I've never heard anything like it before . . .”

“I'll bet he was sodomizing her . . .”

“Oh, that girl, she'll do anything. And with everyone here . . .”

“It was probably the only available place around, don't you think? . . . When you're desperate, I'd imagine any closed-off area will do . . . People lock themselves in bathrooms to shoot up, I've even seen it done here, so I don't see why they wouldn't fuck in them, too . . .”

“I don't agree, Christina . . . If you look hard enough for a proper place you can always find one. Surely she knows someone who lives nearby . . .”

“But suppose they just came here to have a quiet meal, and then all of a sudden . . . In a way, it's not much different than needing to pee . . .”

The stricken yet outraged look on Madame Saint-Pierre's face.

“But we're not animals! At least I hope I'm not,” she hastened to add . . .

“You never know until it happens to you, Françoise . . . Only those to whom it's happened can say for sure, and I doubt they're about to. I've noticed that around here everybody talks about everything except what's actually important to people. And certainly never to the people to whom it's important.”

“I won't spend my life in a place where I feel completely suffocated. You know? There are things I like about this place, but I find it all so secretive. Everyone is related to everyone else. Everyone keeps passing the ball to each other. They have affairs with each other, they play with each other, they even have each other's children. Husbands cheat on their wives with their sisters-in-law. Wives sleep with their fathers-in-law. In the end, everyone sleeps with everyone else.”

“That's why it's called the Circle, Françoise. I hardly go there anymore . . .”

“When I arrived here I was told that Jacqueline Widmaier threw these little so-called intellectual parties, where you could meet the popular young artists of the day. In reality, they were a kind of organized harem. She'd set up these very young people, painters or musicians or poets. Everyone knows that Jacqueline is no more a patron of the arts than you or I, but everyone pretends to swoon over her at those concerts and vernissages she arranges every month . . . I haven't seen you there very often, I must say . . .”

“I used to go at the beginning, but as soon as I figured out what they were I haven't set foot in the place . . . These days if I go at all to the Bellevue Circle it's either to meet someone or because Harry has an important game . . . He absolutely insists on my being there to watch. Oh, the vanity of our husbands!”

“Do you see that woman over there, at the table near the window?”

“Who? . . . Oh, her! . . . I've never seen her before . . .”

“She's a French journalist . . . I've heard a really amazing story about her . . . A friend of Jacques Gabriel's told me about it. She took part in a voodoo wedding without knowing that she was the bride. And Legba was the groom. Yes, you heard me: Legba. Can you imagine? A journalist comes here from Paris to write an article about Port-au-Prince, and ends up marrying a voodoo god. What a country! That's why I stay here. You get so totally disheartened that you want to hang yourself, and then you hear something like that! Where else can you see gods marrying mortals?”

“So what's she doing now?”

“Nothing . . . Since then she seems unable to leave the island . . . Every time she gets ready to go, something prevents her from getting on the plane . . . Jacqueline tells me she's really questioning everything about her life in Paris. She doesn't know whether she wants to go back there or not. Voodoo gods can change your whole existence. They're not much different from the gods of other religions, except that they act directly and instantaneously. You get the answers to your questions right away.”

“God, you seem to know a lot about it.”

“I took some courses in it a few years ago, in the ethnology department, with Dr. Louis Mars . . .”

“You never told me that! Look, she's leaving. What does she do for a living?”

“She works for a big Paris daily. Travels a lot. Writes trendy novels. Goes to museums, galleries, Paris boutiques, you know the kind of thing, but now she finds all that so vapid. Well, she isn't the first. I knew an Englishwoman once who came here and more or less the same thing happened to her. She didn't think she was interested in men, came here from London on vacation with her husband and kids, the whole shebang, and completely lost her head over the first farmer she ran into. She decided to move in with him . . .”

“You know some strange people, don't you? You should write a book . . . It would be a laugh . . .”

“I'm only warning you, my dear, that this isn't a country one leaves easily. Look at me. At first it was still possible, but after just two years it was already too late. This place is like quicksand: the harder you try to get out of it, the deeper you sink.”

Christina is watching a green bottle fly as it tries every possible way to drink from her glass without drowning. Finally it lands on the water's surface with its tiny feet. Madame Saint-Pierre stares fixedly in front of her. The two women sit for a long time without speaking.

THE WAITER HAS
just placed a dozen chicken thighs in a small wicker basket on the table. Christina signs the bill. June comes in. She greets her mother and Madame Saint-Pierre, wraps several pieces of chicken in a napkin, and begins to move off.

“What are you doing?”

“I've got an early game . . . Can you pick me up later at the Circle?”

“No, dear, I have to run a few errands before meeting your father.”

“My father! Who knows where he is now?” she says, with a knowing look.

Christina lightly bites her lower lip. Madame Saint-Pierre spears a chicken thigh and begins biting into it, which helps her pretend not to have heard June's remark. The girl gives her mother a hug and says goodbye to Madame Saint-Pierre as she heads for the door.

“Christina, you don't seem well . . . What is it? Is it June?”

Jacqueline Widmaier and her young musician say hello in passing.

“June has been constantly irritated for some time now.”

“Christina, don't tell me she's pregnant!”

“No! What are you trying to do, kill me? . . . No, it's all because of this boy we have working at the house . . . I don't know what to do about it . . .”

“What are you saying? You mean, with a servant!”

“Well, I try to tell myself, he's also a man, and if he's the one she's chosen to be with . . .”

“No, I can't let you do that! It's not possible!”

“Don't worry about June, Françoise. She may seem timid, but she's got a will of iron. If I tell her not to do something, she plunges right into it.”

“I know, Christina, but she's
your
daughter . . . She can't have a love affair with one of your servants. It's just not done!”

“It's my fault . . . I've never spent enough time with her. We raised her completely without guidelines. Our time in Port-au-Prince has always been a kind of holiday. When we're in New York we're in a totally regulated world. Everything is organized. It's a complete jungle. I spend all my time telling June not to smile at strangers in the subway, to look out for this and be careful of that . . . And then, we come to Port-au-Prince. We find this wonderful villa in a beautiful part of town. Nice people invite us to dinner every night. I let my guard down. I've raised my daughter like a savage. To her, a man is a man.”

“People here are very attuned to that. What does Harry say?”

“Are you kidding? Harry's so impulsive, he'd probably kill the young man.”

“So why not just fire him?”

“You know, I'm really afraid of what June would do . . . She's totally capable of going with him. At least this way I have a bit of control . . . I still haven't even talked to her about it . . . Sometimes I tell myself that all this fuss about social class is a load of crap . . . Why would it be better if she was sleeping with some little idiot who had a name? In any case, I don't make such distinctions. To me, everyone here is the same. They're all Haitians. What difference does it make if it's this one or that one?”

“You know, deep down you're a racist.”

They both laugh. The waiter brings the bill. A little back-and-forthing over who will pay it. This time, it's Madame Saint-Pierre who wins. Suddenly the atmosphere becomes cheerful. Which suggests it's time to leave. There is a lag in the conversation after all the usual subjects are exhausted, all the week's secrets gone over. When the heaviness of life has been replaced by the lightness of adolescence.

“I think I'll take up tennis again.”

“I'd really, really like to get a new life. Don't you ever feel as though there's another life waiting for you somewhere out there, that you're not quite in the right house, or the right social class . . . ?”

“Or the right century . . . I've always dreamed of living in the Renaissance . . . The balls, the brilliant conversation, the arts, the great patrons, Venice . . .”

“You know, I used to know a girl at university. Couldn't have been more of a wasp if she tried. Very Manhattan. She came down here before I did. We wrote to each other. When Harry was posted here I wrote to her right away, and she was the one who urged me to come. I've been trying to see her ever since I got here. I was told she didn't stay in Port-au-Prince for long, she went up to Artibonite, it's a province . . . of rice paddies.”

“I know. My husband was an agronomist.”

“That's where she met a peasant farmer, and ever since then she's lived in this village with her husband and son . . . growing rice. Can you imagine? This was a girl who spent all her time in museums, went to the theatre, to concerts, all that. I'm truly impressed by people like that, who can make such huge changes in their lives. A hundred-and-eighty-degree turnaround. Can you imagine doing something like that?”

“It's true there's something about this country . . . Maybe it's the voodoo, I don't know. Anything can happen. You get the feeling you're walking among gods.”

“Don't turn around just yet, Françoise.”

“What?”

“There's a thin young man who's been watching you for several minutes.”

Françoise freezes.

“Where is he?”

“Near the door.”

She looks, then turns back.

“It's him,” she whispers.

“I thought it might be.”

Françoise squeezes her napkin in her fist to stop her hands from trembling.

“You're shaking, Françoise! Good Lord! And with all these people here! This is not a good day for such antics . . . You go to the washroom, I'll go ask him to leave.”

A sharp cry: “No, are you crazy or what?”

Heads turn. She immediately lowers her voice.

“I'm sorry, Christina . . . I'm the one who's crazy.”

“So I see . . . Let's think about this calmly . . .”

“I'm going.”

“No, wait . . . I'll come with you . . . In your state I'd be surprised if you could make it across the room . . .”

Traffic

THE HIBISCUS HAS
been practically empty for the past two hours. There's no one in it except Albert and two young, uniformed waitresses. The tourists have all left. Ellen is the last to leave the hotel (her face set, wearing sunglasses and a small black dress). Albert drives her to the airport. They maintain a weighty silence during the drive, which Ellen breaks only when she has passed through immigration. She is curious about a remark the inspector made to her.

“He said, ‘A tourist never dies.'”

Long silence.

“What did he mean by that, Albert?”

“I'm sure I don't know, madame.”

“For once, will you call me Ellen? Please?”