The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe (7 page)

“Several people—people who don’t know you and I are in any way related—several people are more than unhappy about what you’re up to.”

She stood up. She had started trembling.

“People who can make life miserable for you.”

She laughed incredulously. “It’s not miserable enough?”

“Forget Dugain, Anne Marie.”

“Dugain?”

“You can’t do any good. Not now. The man’s dead and gone.”

Carême
, the Lenten drought, was now over and it had started to rain.

The rain cooled the air, but Anne Marie felt hot and sticky, with her blouse clinging to her back. She crossed the road, her eyes on the sudden torrents of swirling water that ran across the asphalt and fed the rising puddles. An Opel hooted at her, and she had to step back fast. Its spray flecked her skirt and drenched her shoes—red shoes bought in Caracas.

She walked across the no-man’s land between the road and the new multi-story car park. The white earth was wet but hard underfoot. Rain battered onto her umbrella as Anne Marie hurried toward the courier office.

The octopus lay heavy on her stomach.

Twenty years earlier, when Anne Marie, young and newly married, had visited Pointe-à-Pitre for the first time, this part of the city had been a ghetto of wooden shacks lined haphazardly alongside the ditches where mosquitoes and glow-moths danced to the rhythms of tropical poverty, and where late at night the trucks collected buckets of malodorous night soil. In time, the mayor had had everything pulled down, replaced by the new town hall, the post office and the social security buildings, concrete tokens of France’s determination to modernize the long forgotten colonial backwater.

(“
After a century of doing it wrong in Algeria and Indochina
,” Jean Michel said.)

Two young boys cycled past her. They wore baseball caps, shouted gaily to each other and were impervious to the rain that drenched their clothes. Each boy carefully balanced his machine on the rear wheel, while the front wheel was held in suspension in the damp air. The tires left tracks that were immediately washed away by the incessant rain.

They grinned, their smiles lit up by perfect white teeth. The rain ran down the glowing skin of their young faces.

For some reason this stretch of land, glistening now in the grey light of the afternoon clouds, had been left, overlooked by the politicians and the developers. Surrounded as it was by high rises, office blocks, the ugly parking lot and the walls daubed with impenetrable curlicues of graffiti, Anne Marie could have been in the suburbs of Paris or Lille.

The sweat trickling down her back and the monotonous croak of the frogs reminded her she was in the tropics.

“Continental Couriers Inc.
Expédition vers les Etats Unis, la Métropole et l’Europe
.”

Anne Marie pushed open the glass door and entered the office. The air was chill. She closed her umbrella and wiped the dampness from her face as she looked around.

“Can I help you?”

“I am looking for Madame Théodore.”

The woman stood up. “I am Madame Théodore.”

Average height, navy blue slacks, a blouse, a red and white scarf slipped through a gold ring at the neck. She set a half consumed cigarette in the ashtray and moved round the desk. She smiled. “You seem surprised.” Long hands and varnished nails.

Anne Marie returned the smile. “I wasn’t expecting a white woman. And you’re not wearing a wedding ring.”

“Because I’m no longer married, Madame …”

The two women shook hands. “Madame Laveaud. I should like to talk to you.”

“About sending a parcel to Miami or Tokyo? Or perhaps you want something to be in Paris by tomorrow morning. Because if you do, you’ve come to the right place and to the right person, but at the wrong time.” Madame Théodore glanced at her watch. “You’ve just missed the last Paris flight. Mid-morning Monday is the best I can
now do.” She nodded to the low chair in front of the desk. “Please be seated.”

Anne Marie sat down and set her elbows on the edge of the table. Madame Théodore sat down opposite her, returning the cigarette from the ashtray to her mouth.

“No parcel, I’m afraid.”

“A letter?” The grey eyes twinkled. “A flat rate up to two US pounds.”

“I’m an investigating judge.”

“How exciting.”

“Mainly routine, and it can be depressing.”

“Change jobs.”

“It’s not always depressing.”

A cough followed by a gesture of the right hand. “Join me in the wonderful world of private enterprise.”

“Not as easy as it sounds, Madame Théodore, when you live by yourself and you’ve got two young children to bring up. There are certain advantages to being a civil servant.” Anne Marie sneezed.

“Bless you.”

“Wet feet from walking in puddles.” She added, “And I’ve ruined my best Italian shoes from South America.”

“Use a car and you won’t get your feet wet.”

“I don’t enjoy driving in town.”

“Then it won’t be you I give a job to. Being a courier means driving back and forth between here and the airport—and spending most of the time in traffic jams. I’ve gotten to the stage where I have to smoke if I can’t get a decent intake of petrol fumes.”

There were filing cabinets, a fax machine, a photocopying machine and on the wall, a large, framed map of the world. The office was on the ground floor. Venetian blinds of coarse brown linen protected the office from the glance of passersby along the arcade outside. The carpet was synthetic, green and badly stained by the passage of feet.

Anne Marie’s umbrella had left trails of water.

“Madame Théodore, I haven’t come here to ask you for a job.”

“I guessed that.”

Anne Marie sneezed again.

Madame Théodore exhaled smoke through her nostrils. “You’re not going to arrest me?” The eyes flickered.

“Not for the time being.”

“How can I help you,
madame le juge
?”

“With information.”

“What sort of information?”

“Monsieur Dugain. He killed himself by jumping from the top of a building and I want to know why.”

“Dugain?” Madame Théodore looked away. “I only know what I’ve read in the papers.”

Anne Marie sneezed again. “You weren’t his mistress, Madame Théodore?”

Blood had gone to her face and neck. Madame Théodore stubbed her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, stood up and went to the door. She turned the key, then pulled the blinds, cutting out the grey light of the wet afternoon. She switched on the neon, which flickered hesitantly before filling the room with its impersonal whiteness.

“You are very direct.” She took another cigarette and lit it. She did not sit down. “Dugain’s mistress?” She shook her hair. She wore it in short, permanent waves, without any attempt to hide the greying streaks.

“You did know him, didn’t you?”

“Knowing someone doesn’t make me his mistress.” She breathed on the cigarette. “Where do you get your information?”

“Monsieur Dugain didn’t kill himself just because he’d been embezzling. I want to know why he died during a visit from the
police judiciaire
.” Anne Marie sneezed.

“Take some vitamin C if you’ve got a cold coming on.” There were small wrinkles at the corner of her mouth. Late forties, early fifties; her skin was not soft. Too much sun, perhaps, or too many cigarettes and too much work.

“I was hoping you could help me.” Anne Marie sneezed again. “Yours, his or anybody’s private life is of little interest to me personally.”

“You surprise me.” Madame Théodore leaned against the desk with
her arms folded in front of her. A few flakes of ash had fallen onto the blue serge of her slacks.

“I’m not very curious.”

“First time I’ve heard of an investigating judge not being curious.”

“You talk to many judges?”

A mocking curve at the corner of her lips. “What on earth makes you think Dugain and I were lovers?”

“I have a certain idea of justice.”

“Of course.”

(Once, Anne Marie had seen a young Arab—fourteen or fifteen years old—in the middle of Boulevard Foch. The boy had unfurled a French flag that he had smeared with excrement. Then, relying on the protection of his young age, he had set fire to the cloth of the flag, which, imbibed with petrol, was soon burning like a torch.

On a nearby balcony, a Frenchman had taken a rifle and had shot the boy through the head. Anne Marie could recall the sound of the man’s laughter. She could remember the headless child lying on the surface of the road.)

“I grew up in Algeria—my family left Oran in 1958, when I was still an adolescent. What I saw there made me decide on a career in law.”

“Noble feelings.” The blush had disappeared and a cloud of smoke masked the eyes. “That’s why you ask me who I go to bed with? I fail to see the connection.”

“I wish to save you any embarrassment.” A smile. “You must know there’s a rumor about Dugain’s death.”

“I gave up paying attention to rumors a long, long time ago.”

“A rumor the
police judiciaire
were responsible.”

Madame Théodore shrugged. “The papers say Rodolphe committed suicide.”

“You knew Rodolphe?”

“Not in the way that you think.”

Again Anne Marie sneezed.

“Who didn’t know Rodolphe Dugain,
madame le juge
?”

Despite the air conditioning, Anne Marie now felt hot. She ran a hand across her forehead. There was a tickling in her nose.

“Some coffee?” Madame Théodore’s features were still taut but the corner of her mouth softened, turned upwards in a smile. “You need a towel for those wet feet of yours.” She moved away from the desk and
went to the door. She put up the closed sign. “I might just have some vitamin tablets. And …”

“Yes.”

“Never buy cheap shoes, not even in South America. It’s a false economy.”

“I have children. Two very lovely little boys. And I left them.” She held the coffee mug between her hands. “No doubt I should’ve felt guilty. Everybody wanted me to feel guilty yet I didn’t feel anything. Not at the time.” She took a sip. “I had no choice.”

“After how many years, Madame Théodore?”

“The comedy had being going on far too long.”

“You still see them?”

“I swear that at the time I didn’t feel any guilt.” Madame Théodore paused, glanced at her hands, at the steaming coffee. “What’s done is done. There’s no new deal—not for a mother.”

Anne Marie repeated the question, “You see your boys?”

“The little one’s suffered and Jérôme is still not ready to forgive me.”

“One morning you walked out?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Madame Théodore laughed to herself. “If walking out can take three years. For three years I had this thing buzzing round my head and in the end, I knew it was either divorce or madness. I had to protect myself.” She shrugged. “Don’t try to understand—because you can’t.”

“He had other women?”

“I don’t need sympathy. I made my decision and I must live with it. Divorce or madness—or perhaps both.” A smoker’s laugh.

“Why did you leave your husband, Madame Théodore?”

“You need to know? That part of your job?”

“Since you’re talking about it …”

“All part of your not being curious?” She looked defiantly at Anne Marie.

“You’re not the only person who wants to do the right thing—and spends the rest of her time being plagued with remorse that only pretends to go away but’s always there, every night, lurking beneath the pillow.”

The sound of footfalls outside along the covered walkway, beyond the beige window shades. Passersby.

“Some things you cannot admit even to yourself.” Madame Théodore opened the lid of the packet that lay on the desk, and took another cigarette. She used a matchbook advertising
CONTINENTAL COURIERS INC
. The flame of the match danced at the end of the new cigarette.

“Another woman?”

“My ex-husband didn’t need women. If he did, perhaps I wouldn’t’ve felt the need to escape.”

“Why did you?”

“Escape from perfection.” She lit the cigarette. “He even washed the dishes, you know.”

“That’s when you got involved with Dugain?”

“Axel was perfect and he didn’t want fighting in front of his children. Not ours—his children. Ever the intellectual, he was determined to understand me. When what I most needed was his anger. Perhaps what I needed was violence. Anger’s a form of love, but instead Axel tried to understand. So cool, so detached, so wonderfully reasonable and he tried to analyze.”

“You left your husband for Dugain?”

“I thought I made myself clear.”

“There was an affair?”

“I’d love to know who told you I was his mistress.”

Anne Marie shrugged.

“This is a small island—and nothing goes unnoticed. A couple of times Rodolphe Dugain and I went to a restaurant together. He was married and so I could never be his mistress. There was never anything like that between us. Even if, like all the men here, he wanted to think he was irresistible to white women.”

“Your husband’s white?”

She nodded. “White—despite his skin. White, French and perfect. A marvelous, wonderful husband. That’s why I liked Dugain. He had his faults and perhaps I should have hated him. In many ways I did hate him.” She paused, breathed heavily on the cigarette. “But in his own way, Dugain was all right.” Again she made her rasping laughter. “You can understand that, can’t you? There was nothing about him that could’ve interested me.”

“Position and wealth? Power?”

“I wasn’t running away from one nightmare to get involved with another—from one father figure to another. At least Dugain was human. Egotistical, dishonest, an eye for the main chance—but human. With him, I never felt I had to be perfect.”

“Your husband’s older than you?”

She held Anne Marie’s glance. “He was born old.”

“How did you meet Dugain?”

“It doesn’t matter—suffice it to say that in his way he was nice to me. In his way.”