Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? (23 page)

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.

Sometimes Yang Ting thought of Guadeloupe as a woman he had loved but had given him nothing in return. He compared her to Paruera, the place where he lived, to Arequipa, the nearby town, and thought her fairer than anything around him. Neither the deep valley of the river Chili, nor the sparkling cone of the Misti volcano, nor the surrounding rim of snow-capped mountains, in his eyes could match the sweltering heat of Grande-Terre, the sugarcane plantations, the raging rivers, the banana groves, and the life-giving rain hammering on the zinc roofs at night. Ah! If only it were more tolerant, more open to others, that island would be a Garden of Eden! On the days he went into town, he didn't look twice at the seventeenth-century cathedral, the University of San Augustin, the Monastery of Santa Catalina, and all the Inca ruins that were the pride of Arequipa. The entire journey, in fact, had been based on a misunderstanding. After the death of Pisket, Kung Fui had remained stricken by grief. He had adored his twin sister, and she felt exactly the same way about him. Now that she was gone, life had lost its meaning, and nothing mattered anymore. Ever since the aborted sacrifice, Yang Ting had only one thing in mind—put as many miles as possible between himself and Grande-Anse. Nothing now was to prevent the crafty little devils in the police, headed by Dieudonné Pylône, from snooping around the Blanc Galop and discovering the contract entered into with Madeska. While Pisket was alive, any escape had been impossible. She had been in no condition to leave Grande-Anse to begin a new life elsewhere! Once she was dead and buried, everything had changed. Taking advantage of Kung Fui's pitiful state, he had decided to take control. He had been beguiled by a certain Aloysius, a braggart of a Frenchman, who worked out of La Pointe and offered contracts for Panama or land in Peru in the Colca Valley. Aloysius strongly advised him to go to Peru because of its large Chinese population. And, moreover, according to him, the Colca Valley was an extraordinary place. Cotton grew like a weed and you only had to bend over, pick it, and bag it to become rich.

But all that had been a scam. Nobody grew cotton any longer in this region of Peru. Finally liberated from slavery, the blacks had deserted the fields as they had everywhere else and were determined to have a good time in town. At Paruera, nature had reclaimed its empire, and all that the two companions had acquired with their inheritance was a hacienda in ruins under a roof of missing Spanish tiles standing desolate on barren terrain, spiked here and there with silk cotton and rubber trees. Furthermore, the nearest Chinese lived at least four hundred miles away. Kung Fui had very quickly sunk deeper into despair. At first, when he was not weeping for his beloved Pisket, he managed to put all his energy into clumsily wielding a pair of pruning shears and a machete alongside Yang Ting. After a few months, however, he no longer ventured out of doors. Soon he no longer left his room, no longer got out of bed, and remained addicted to his opium pipe. Left to his own devices, Yang Ting remembered the region of Port Louis where he had grown up. Refusing to give in, he set out to grow sugarcane instead of cotton. But he never managed to achieve his aim. On the haciendas of Peru, as on the plantations of Guadeloupe, the Chinese were feared and hated. The Indians didn't want him as boss. They wanted a white boss, a white with
sangre azul
who spoke Spanish. He was nothing on this earth. With the help of some day laborers hired for the job, Yang Ting was reduced to growing cassava, corn, a little rice from the Andes, and raising sheep and fowl that he sold in the market at Arequipa, squatting among the Indians, looking like one of them under his dirty poncho. On weekdays Artemisa, the mulatto woman, cooked for him, patched up his clothes, and occasionally warmed his bed. As long as he had been in good health, life had been bearable. But age plus the icy winds blowing down from the mountains began to wreak havoc and misery on his body. Finally he sold the hacienda for next to nothing. Then he piled all his belongings as well as what remained of Kung Fui into a cart and left for Lima.

Whereas at first the colonizers were only interested in gold and precious metals from the Andes, their designs gradually shifted to the coast, once a barren strip of land squeezed between sea and mountains. Lima embodied the heart of this transformation. In some ways the capital was a welcome relief for Yang Ting. In Paruera his few contacts had been with the Indians, who seemed to be in perpetual mourning, whereas here the noisy crowds of blacks, Chinese, and mixed-bloods reminded him of his hometown in Guadeloupe. There wasn't a single white family's house where people of color didn't rule as cooks, launderers, and gardeners. Huddled around the Plaza de Armas were the blacksmiths' workshops owned by the mulattos whose reputation ran the whole length of the coast, while the streets echoed with the cries of the
aguadores,
the water carriers, straight from the land of Africa. In the evening around the glow of oil lamps black women sold tamales,
anticuchos,
and a host of spicy foods of a dubious nature. But on the whole the city disappointed him. As a result of numerous earthquakes, there were few reminders of a time when it was once called the Ciudad de los Reyes. He found himself in a small town shivering and muffled up in every season in layers of fog. An icy drizzle constantly seeped in from the ocean, soaking the cobblestones, the hordes of stray dogs, and the baroque facades of the few colonial dwellings. Two steps from the Puente de Piedra, in a blind alley of the mestizo neighborhood they called a
callejón,
he bought a modest little shack with no windows and one door for an opening. It was built of clay and straw and covered with a traditional tin roof. He also purchased two dozen donkeys for transporting lime and bricks to building sites, and hired by the month two gangly
arrieros
who drove them along, whip in hand, cigar in mouth. He had lost his delusions of grandeur. What mattered was survival, and this trade, however wretched it seemed, was a lucrative one. Nevertheless, he felt even lonelier than before and at a total loose end. Gone was the time when he was up before dawn, laboring with his day workers, plowing, sowing, harvesting, as well as taking care of the animals. In Lima, while Kung Fui was killing himself with opium, he had all the time in the world to kill. In his idleness he developed a liking for bullfights. Every Saturday he went to cheer the fledgling black
capeadores
and fervently applaud the exploits of the black toreador, Rafaël Martinez. He also regularly attended cockfights and concerts. Several times a week he used to go as far as the ports of Chorillos and El Callao to gaze at that lifeless gray expanse that had the nerve to call itself a sea. Behind his back, beyond that mass of black mountains, lay another sea, this one warm and welcoming,
whose spray had solidified to give birth to his native land. Above all he got into the habit of spending hours and hours in the taverns, drinking
chicha
. His favorite was La Wiracocha, because of the singers who came in at midnight and captured the desperation of his heart with their gravelly voices. It was constantly filled with blacks and Chinese, driven half insane by alcohol and nostalgia for the lost paradise of their childhood homelands, those wicked stepmothers who had sent their children into slavery. Yang Ting, however, did not like talking about his early days. In Guadeloupe people had always treated him as an outcast from an orphanage and had never accepted the fact that his color made him just as much a Guadeloupean as the blackest of them. He spoke Kréyol, believed in people in league with the devil, and danced the
gwo-ka
. So where was the problem? In their opinion, Guadeloupeans could only be of African descent. He had been designated Chinese and as a result excluded once and for all! Leaving him behind like a bundle of dirty clothes, his papa and
maman
had vanished God knows where. He owed his life to the Christian charity of Madame Charmène Elysée. Madame Charmène Elysée was a vivacious mulatto woman who was not satisfied with taking care of her husband and twelve children. With the considerable fortune her white Creole papa had left her, she had opened an orphanage, which she poetically called the Drop of Milk. There she took in the countless fatherless and motherless infants picked up on the steps of churches, in streams, and at crossroads, yelling their hunger. It was among the litter of starved, abandoned, and wild little things who crowded into the refuge that he had got to know the twins Kung Fui and Pisket, as well as their little sister Soumathi. Helpers at the Drop of Milk were volunteers, well-to-do matrons, women friends devoted to Madame Charmène Elysée. Although they
were quick to hand out punishment, they were also kindhearted and proved to be acceptable stepmothers. Among their protégés, however, they had singled out Kung Fui and Pisket as their whipping boys, a couple of depraved, dirty little vermin. Hadn't they caught them at such a tender age doing filthy things in bed together! They preferred, by far, Soumathi, gentle and obedient, who had been quietly baptized Antonine, or Tonine. Although there was some truth in what they said about Pisket, who was a disagreeable, taciturn, and selfish child, giving off a smell to upset the boldest of noses, Kung Fui, on the other hand, was a most attractive young boy, full of brazen and comical ideas. He had quickly realized that sugarcane had been the black man's burden and downfall, and he had no intention ending up the same way. So at the age of fifteen he left Port-Louis and tried a number of trades at La Pointe. Housepainter, laundryman, bricklayer, hawker, powder monkey, carnival
moko zombie,
and kitchen boy. Each time people made it clear they didn't like his looks. As a result he went underground. He formed a gang with the ironical name of the Yellow Hand, which stopped at nothing in the way of robberies and even murder. It specialized in burning plantations. The blacks had sworn to bring the remaining white plantation owners to their knees and made lucrative deals with those who gave them a helping hand. Their method had been perfected down to the last detail. They waited for a moonless night. At eleven in the evening, when the countryside was fast asleep, they would invade the cane fields, pile heaps of straw in a number of different places, and set light to them. The flames would leap up in every corner, and bundles of sparks would explode in the darkness. Soon an orangey wall rose up to the sky, and no sight was more sublime. Obviously, the police thought otherwise, and Kung Fui as well as Ying Tang spent a
good deal of their time in jail. Finally they decided to make themselves scarce and went into hiding at Grande-Anse. There, Pisket, who had no other talent, found work in a bordello. After three months of hanging around half-dressed girls and their body odors, Yang Ting had had enough and went back to La Pointe.

Yang Ting couldn't help thinking of Soumathi—Tonine, if you prefer—as someone he had hurt. What had become of her? Gone crazy, probably. She had always been a bit cracked. She had accompanied him to the foot of the gangplank of the steamship
Tourville,
crying her heart out, pretending to take his promises at face value. Of course he'd soon send her the money for the fare, and then she would come and join them.

Soumathi—Tonine!

She had completely escaped his memory when at the age of twenty he bumped into her at a place called La Rose de Sable, a den for society's outcasts situated on the Morne Miquel, where they smoked opium, drank rum, and the desperate gambled in the hopes of winning their way out of a life of hell. Tonine was no longer the little sister victimized by her siblings, sniveling and skinny as a stray cat. She was hardworking and well behaved, an apprentice to a seamstress. Her virtue did him the world of good. Furthermore, she worshipped him like the Holy Sacrament and confessed that she had always kept a place for him in her heart ever since their time at the Drop of Milk. Flattered by her confession, he soon moved in with her in a tenement yard on the Morne La Loge. But he was not made to live on love alone in a shack! As soon as Kung Fui called him back to Grande-Anse, he realized this juicy contract was their chance of a lifetime. Agénor de Fouques-Timbert was loaded. They weren't going to relieve him of just a few crumbs of his fortune. They would get out of him enough to last for the rest of their lives. Tonine pleaded with him. The farther away they kept from sorcerers, diviners, and mischief makers, the better off they would be! Those people had formidable powers! And then she was a sentimental type. Selling, sacrificing your own baby, an innocent newborn! Yet another great idea of those two villains for whom jail was not good enough. Finally, when he threatened to leave without her, she had been so much in love with him that she followed him. As soon as they arrived at Bélisaire, he realized his mistake. Pisket and Kung Fui did absolutely nothing but spend their time lying in bed, drifting amid the smoke of their opium pipes. As for the money paid by Agénor de Fouques-Timbert, nobody ever saw the color of it. Pisket had locked it in a safe at the bank. All the work at the Blanc Galop fell on them. They had to soak, soap, and scrub the laundry, starch it, hang it out to whiten, and iron it. What's more, it was poor Tonine who had to run around with a heavy tray on her head, making the deliveries. Not a minute's rest! What kept Tonine going were the prospects for her child. If they ever got their share of the cake, they wouldn't have to worry about his future. For she too had become pregnant. Yang Ting, however, was far from being delighted and looked moodily at the calabash of her belly under her shapeless dresses. Why did they have to saddle themselves with another stone around their necks when they already lived so miserably? For the first time during their life together she stood up to him. Even if Kung Fui did break his word and didn't give them what he had promised,
tété pa jin two lou pou lestonmak
. The breasts are never too heavy for the stomach. She wouldn't ask anything from anybody and would expect nothing from anyone. She would work hard for her boy—for it would be a boy; she could feel it—and give him the instruction and education she never had.