Another Sun (29 page)

The corridor was empty and shadowless. Anne Marie had the impression of having been here before, at the same time, of doing the same thing.

There was no sign on the door. She entered without knocking.

“Ah, Madame Laveaud.”

The room was gloomy. “Where’s Azaïs?”

“He’ll be back soon.”

“Why does he want to see me? It’s nearly eleven o’clock.”

Dr. Bouton said, “Please sit down, madame le juge.”

“My husband’ll be waiting for me.” They shook hands perfunctorily. “Why does Azaïs want to see me?” She kept the anxiety out of her voice. “He insisted it was important. I was about to go to bed.”

The doctor shrugged. “Azaïs should be along any minute. He went out only an instant ago.” The light from the desk lamp bounced off the frame of his glasses.

Anne Marie sat down and looked round the dingy office. A large desk was caught in the pool of light from the lamp. A pile of open books, an ashtray full of cigarette stubs.

And a photograph.

Dr. Bouton sat down in the armchair opposite her. His narrow face was in the shadows. There were filing cabinets beyond the penumbra of the desk lamp. “He wanted a place out of the way.”

Overhead, a fan was rotating. A whispered, regular hum. She could feel the breeze of the artificial ventilation.

“He?”

“Azaïs’ real office is in Basse-Terre, of course.”

“Of course,” Anne Marie repeated. She leaned forward and took the photograph from the desk. “Where did Azaïs get this?”

Dr. Bouton shrugged. He was smiling at her from behind the glasses. The thin hands were clasped together on his lap; the small fingers formed a steeple to the church of his knuckles.

“And why are you here, Dr. Bouton?”

“Waiting, madame le juge. Just like you.”

The woman stared at her from out of the past—from the past
when Hégésippe Bray was still alive and still a young man.
Lucien le Marc, photographe, Fort-de-France
.

“You know who this is?” Anne Marie handed him the photograph, and he took it, turning it to get more light.

“Should I?”

“I’d like to know how this photograph got here. It should be in my dossier.”

“Perhaps Monsieur Azaïs’s studying the dossier.”

“The dossier’s in my office,
docteur
—where I keep all my files under lock and key.”

Dr. Bouton nudged his glasses upward onto the long forehead. “Let me have a look at your hand.” He frowned and took her left hand in his. “You really ought to do something about this before it spreads.”

“It’s going to spread?”

“You don’t want it going up your arms, do you, madame le juge?” He ran his fingers along the deformed, red flesh. “Urticaria.”

“You’re a doctor of medicine?”

“What do you think?” He was now standing up, holding his body to one side in order to get a maximum of light. “What does your general practitioner say?”

“I haven’t seen a doctor.”

“You must look after your health.”

She shrugged. It was cool in the office, but sweat was forming along her forehead. “Haven’t really got the time.”

He placed his hand on her forehead. “Too much time on your job—and not enough on yourself.” His hand was cool. Close to her, he smelled of peppermint. “Fever.”

“I’ll take some aspirin when I get home.”

“You ought to go to bed for a couple of days.”

“I’ve work to do.”

“Work can wait.”

“Hégésippe Bray couldn’t wait. He hanged himself—and it was my fault.”

The thin man chided her, clicking his tongue. “Do you sometimes feel nauseated?”

She shrugged.

He slipped his watch from his wrist and took her pulse. His eyes were on the dial. “Bray was an old man and he was going to die. Familiar smells turn your stomach?”

“Sometimes.”

“Loss of appetite?”

“I scarcely have time to eat.”

“A nice healthy slow pulse. You used to be an athlete?”

“No.”

Dr. Bouton moved away and went round to the far side of the desk. A smile softened the austere features. He picked up the phone.

Anne Marie let her head drop onto the leather backrest of the chair. Sleep—she needed to sleep. Her eyes burned. Steve McQueen’s dubbed voice. She thought of coolness. She thought of Europe.

Dr. Bouton said, “You need antihistamine for that.”

“Where’s Azaïs? I want to go home.”

His eyes turned away from Anne Marie, and he spoke into the mouthpiece, “Which chemist is on night duty?”

The voice scratched.

“Put me through please.”

For no apparent reason, tears had begun to form at the corners of Anne Marie’s eyes. “I want to go home.” The pain seemed to be drifting away, losing itself. She was tired.

“Bring it up, then.” Dr. Bouton then gave a series of names—trade names for drugs that Anne Marie had never heard of. “Good,” he said, and hung up.

Go home—not to the Cité Mortenol but to Sarlat-la-Canéda and the Quartier des Peches. Papa, her sister, Nassérine the maid. Among people who cared for her. Anything to get away from the heat and the humidity of Pointe-à-Pitre.

“You will have to see a specialist, you realize.”

She tried to open her eyes—she had closed them and now the eyelids were stuck together. Sleep between cool sheets, with Jean Michel beside her and Fabrice next door, while through the night the gentle rumble of trains pulling into the station. More tears of self-pity trickled through the closed lids.

“At least the ointment should relieve the itching. Some pills and some suppositories. And above all, rest, madame le juge.”

She tried to open her eyes, but the desk lamp burned her pupils. She could feel herself falling into sleep.

“A week’s rest—and you must try to forget about your work. It’s making you ill.”

She wanted to reply. She wanted to tell him that she must continue—not for her sake but for the sake of the old man.

“Hégésippe Bray is dead and you can’t save him. Be reasonable, madame le juge.”

Another tear. It ran into the hollow of her ear.

“After all, you’ve already had a child. A boy, I believe.” Dr. Bouton was smiling. “It’s not as if this was your first pregnancy.”

“A rifle. It’s in the boot of my car—if someone wants to go and fetch it.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Azaïs turned, and Anne Marie thought he was going toward the reception desk.

“I need to get home, Monsieur Azaïs. My husband’s waiting for me.”

“You needn’t worry about your husband.”

The woman with the cut cheek—the wound now caked with dry blood—watched Azaïs’ movement. The policeman sitting beside her continued to stare at his shoes.

“Careful, madame le juge.” Dr. Bouton held her arm gently but firmly.

Azaïs turned left and they went down the stairs and through a couple of swing doors. The smell of detergent was stronger than the smell of Dr. Bouton’s peppermints. Azaïs turned on the light. A short corridor, sawdust on the floor. The sound of scurrying legs—perhaps mice or perhaps cockroaches—moving at the approach of humans.

“It wasn’t Bray’s gun that killed Raymond Calais. He had his own twenty-two bore—a rifle he bought recently.” She spoke toward Azaïs’ back.

He did not turn. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the padlock on a door of packing-case wood.

“The Indian stole it.” Her voice was unnaturally high. “Which proves that Hégésippe Bray was innocent.”

“I wonder if you can identify this for me?” Azaïs turned on a wall switch and stepped back to let Anne Marie enter. The neon tube began to flicker until it gave off a cold, insistent light that illuminated a small, dusty room. “You didn’t recognize it on the beach at Gosier.”

Of course she could identify it. And even if she could not, the top coat of blue paint had been peeled away from the side of the metal trunk and there stood revealed the neat letters that Anne Marie herself had stenciled:

The hinges had been broken.

For a second, Anne Marie wondered whether the Chantilly lace curtains were inside the trunk.

Anne Marie knew where Jean Michel had taken Fabrice.

The headlights sliced a yellow wedge along the road. The wind rushing through the window cut out the sounds of night. No moon and the surface of the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin was dark as if flattened beneath a sheet of oil.

She saw the reflection of headlamps in the driving mirror and slowed down to a steady 90 kph.

Rain clouds rolled across the sea. Isolated drops fell onto the windscreen, and she saw the lights of Pointe-à-Pitre go out on the far side of the bay as the city was engulfed in a squall.

Then the downpour.

Heavy drops exploded against the windscreen and the wipers could not compete.

With virtually no visibility, she had no choice but to stop. Outside Petit Bourg she pulled the Honda onto the forecourt of a Texaco station. She switched on the warning lights and listened to the thunderous beating of tropical rain on the car’s roof.

Sweat ran down her back. Bile and the chalky taste of pills lay on her stomach. Dr. Bouton had smilingly assured her that these pills would have no deleterious effect upon the fetus. The taste rose up in her throat, and she was afraid she was going to vomit.

It rained for over half an hour.

Not a car went past. Just the station, the shadowy petrol-pumps, and the spiky leaves of the casuarina trees lit up by the regular blinking of the Honda’s lights.

At a quarter past midnight, the rain ceased as suddenly as it had started.

Anne Marie took her hand from where it lay on her belly and turned on the headlamps. The road was awash with swirling floodwater. The sky had cleared; on the far side of the bay, Pointe-à-Pitre and the airport lights twinkled serenely. At sea, a banana ship rolled beneath the red beacons on its masts.

Anne Marie opened the window, and the cool air chased away the mist from the screen and the rear window. In the mirror, not more than sixty meters away, on the same side of the road, she saw another car turn on its lights.

Anne Marie pulled out onto the wet tarmac, taking the direction for Trois-Rivières. She drove slowly between the eddies of swirling rainwater.

In the mirror, the car followed.

She drove through Petit Bourg and Goyave. The towns appeared bedraggled—waiting for a new day and the sun that would dry everything. That would heal everything.

The other car was still in her mirror.

Just after the first road sign for Trois-Rivières, Anne Marie came up behind the somber silhouette of a large cart. She raised her foot on the accelerator. The road was too narrow for her to overtake.

The cart was being pulled by a team of oxen. In her yellow beams, she could make out the legs of the animals beyond the wooden frame. The chassis was weighed down with a load of cane. The driver—a man in white clothes, a pith helmet, and his head held at a strange angle—sat on the high board, a whip in his hand. She could not see his face. He was very tall.

Anne Marie slowed down to walking speed.

In the mirror, the following car had disappeared.

When she reached the long, straight stretch of road beneath the royal palms, she changed into second gear, gathered power, and carefully pulled out onto the crown of the road. She did not want to frighten the oxen.

It occurred to her as strange that cart and oxen should be on the road so late at night. Strange also the load of cane, when the sugar harvest was already long over.

There were no lights on the rear of the cart.

As the Honda came abreast of the driver—Anne Marie was traveling at twenty kilometers per hour—she turned her head to look at him.

The man was smiling and he raised his hand to wave. He was tall, taller than any man she had ever seen before.

Beneath the helmet, he had white hair. High, Carib cheekbones. His blue eyes were bright—very bright—as if lit up from within. There were no teeth but as he opened his smiling mouth—he was calling to her—Anne Marie saw the pink triangle of his tongue.

Then she saw the deep scars that marked Hégésippe Bray’s misshapen, broken neck.

“Fabrice!”

Anne Marie kissed her son, putting her arms about his narrow shoulders and hugging him.

“Eight years and.…” He scratched his head with the handle of the spade. “Eight years and.…”

“Have you eaten?”

“Eight years and two months—eight years, two months, and ten days.”

The white beach was scattered with dry sponge. Fabrice’s naked back was hot beneath her hand. “You should put on a T-shirt.” She looked around for a beach mat, a towel, and some clothes. There was nothing.

“That’s right, Maman. Eight years and two months and ten days.”

“What on earth are you talking about, doudou?”

“If you had to walk to the moon. You remember, don’t you? That’s how long it would take.” He folded his arms with satisfaction.

Anne Marie kissed his forehead, which tasted of salt; grains of sand glistened in the hairs of his eyebrows.

“Papa helped me—we used the calculator in the hotel. But that’s without sleeping.”

“Where’s Papa?”

“If you walked all the way—and you didn’t stop to sleep.” He added, “Which is cheating, really—because you have to sleep. Four hundred thousand kilometers.”

It was hot on the beach and there was no shade. A girl in a pink bikini was smoking while she read. She sat beneath a large parasol. Young, firm thighs shone with suntan oil.

“Where’s Papa, doudou?”

Fabrice shrugged. “Over there.”

“Where?”

“You’re blind, Maman.” Fabrice sighed. He pointed out to sea, out beyond the bay, between the two promontories where the sail of a single windsurfer emerged and then vanished beneath the swell. It appeared again. The sail heeled over into the wind and the white board skimmed across the water.