Another Sun (8 page)

“Of being elected mayor? Virtually nil.”

Anne Marie looked sharply at Trousseau. “Why?”

“Raymond Calais was a Béké—and that alone excluded him. We don’t like whites, you know.” He shook his head. “They’ve always exploited us. Exploited us and despised us. The whites from France—the whites like you—you’re bad enough.” He turned and gave Anne Marie a long, thoughtful look. “You pretend to be broad-minded—after all, you’re from the mainland. You’re from France where people have got no time for stupid, old-fashioned prejudices.” He snorted. “Doesn’t stop you from thinking you’re better than us. We’re a lesser breed—and we all look alike.”

“You generalize, Monsieur Trousseau.”

“You’re better than the Békés.” He tapped his chest. “Otherwise I’d never have married a French girl. My wife’s from France.”

“A tax inspector, I believe.”

“Her skin is fairer than yours, madame le juge.”

“I had the misfortune, Monsieur Trousseau, of being born—like you—in the colonies.” She made a gesture of impatience. “Tell me about Calais.”

“The Békés hate us—they always have. They speak our Creole, and when they speak French, they have our accent. But they are ashamed of that, and they don’t want to have anything to do with us. They despise us because they are rich and we’re poor, because
we’re nothing but simple-minded folk whose ancestors were captured like animals in the dark continent and brought across the Atlantic to work as slaves.”

“You’re not Indian?”

The smile of amusement had disappeared from Trousseau’s lips; the eyes now gleamed coldly. “They speak Creole like us, but they send their children to the private schools and the white priests. In the three hundred years that they’ve been living here, as slave traders, as masters and now as respectable businessmen, they’ve done everything to keep their skin as white as the first day they came to Guadeloupe.” A tight, hard grin as he ran his finger along the moustache. “Oh, don’t worry—they’ll screw our women—they always have—and they’ll leave their half-breed kids for the mother to bring up. But when it comes to marriage,” he held up a thin finger, “when it comes to all their fine ideals and their Catholic values—then they forget the steatopygous black women and they marry among their own.”

“Steatopygous?”

“Got to keep the fair, Béké skin—even if it means marrying within the family and getting their pure chromosomes all mixed up. Better incest than black skin, better a deformed child—blind, deaf or retarded—than having the stain of black blood in the family.”

“What does steatopygous mean?”

He made a slapping gesture, and then the cabin grew dark as they went through a cloud.

“I don’t understand, Trousseau.”

“The Békés will defy God’s law rather than marry someone with black skin, madame le juge.”

“Who did Raymond Calais marry?”

“A stuck-up, arrogant English woman.” Trousseau looked down at the book, then at Anne Marie. He did not hide his irritation. “Raymond Calais had no chance of being elected because he was a Béké. That’s all. We don’t like Békés—nothing more subtle than that. And he was too stupid to realize it.”

“But he was a member of the
Conseil Général
. He represented Pointe-à-Pitre at a departement level.”

“He could get a few friends to vote for him.” The book slid from Trousseau’s knees onto the grubby carpet of the passageway.

“Who?”

“Traders and shopkeepers who hate blacks as much as he did and who are terrified one day we might take over. Being voted
conseill général
is one thing—being mayor of Pointe-à-Pitre is something quite different. Calais had absolutely no chance.”

“I was here during the riots.”

Trousseau frowned. “Against the English?”

“Against the immigrants from Dominica. Calais was one of the ring-leaders—and he had popular support.”

Trousseau shrugged. “Just another way of attacking the mayor—and nobody here likes the Dominicans. The pedestrian zone—he accused the mayor of letting it become a marijuana trading post for Dominicans and Haitians—a place where no self-respecting Frenchman would dare go. And when fighting broke out in the street and the rastas from Dominica were being hit over the head by angry demonstrators, Calais was making good political mileage.”

“How?”

“Calais liked violence—that’s why he had his band of armed men. That’s why he often hung around the port. But people aren’t stupid, madame le juge—not even my compatriots. You really think the people living in the slums—and even more so, those who have been recently re-housed into the new estates—you really think they had any sympathy for Calais? For a fat, wealthy Béké who modeled himself on Mussolini? A man who could buy any silly little girl into his car—and into his bed? They couldn’t stand him. But Raymond Calais was too stupid to realize even that.” Trousseau bent over sideways and picked up the book. “Calais always was stupid. A cocky, arrogant bastard, a womanizer—and everybody laughed at him. His father wanted to disown him. Old man Calais knew his son Raymond was incapable of running the Sainte Marthe estate.”

“Raymond Calais was rich.”

“Because he sold off a lot of land. Sainte Marthe was one of the oldest and most successful of the plantations—there are even people who maintain it existed before the English came here during the Seven Years’ War. Perhaps if his brother Jacques had been in charge he might have made it into the biggest sugar plantation in the French Caribbean.”

“Who did Raymond Calais sell the land to?”

“His father had started selling—but not on a large scale—to other planters. Raymond Calais sold to people who wanted to build. The only real economic boom in Guadeloupe’s been in the building industry. Over the last twenty years, there’s been a shortage of housing—of decent houses that will stand up to the hurricanes and earthquakes. Which explains why even a high-ranking civil servant like you—with the whitest of skins—is living in a city housing project. With all the money France pumps in, there are a lot of people who can afford to build. Hand in hand with the decline in sugar, there’s been a boom in agricultural land transformed into real estate.”

“Raymond Calais still grows sugar?”

“Sure.”

“Why?”

“So that he can take the subsidies that France hands out so generously.” Trousseau looked at the palms of his callused hands. “Sugar’s a lame duck—but France gives money so that there is not total unemployment. Our sugar’s not competitive—twice as expensive as the sugar coming out of Barbados or Jamaica.” He shrugged. “France subsidizes an ailing industry—and of course, the money goes straight into the pockets of the Békés. With the connivance of the local politicians—and the government in Paris which doesn’t really care one way or the other, provided Guadeloupe votes the right way at the time of the general elections. Or perhaps you have forgotten that de Gaulle’s margin in 1967 was equal to the number of votes cast in Guadeloupe. And all the while sugar continues to slump.”

“That’s why he wanted to be mayor?”

“Raymond Calais missed the boat. Most Békés saw the change coming—like his brother Jacques Calais—and many moved into commerce. Sugar’s dead. It will never be competitive again. Raymond Calais was just too stupid to see that.”

Anne Marie grimaced. “But why mayor?”

“He wanted power.”

The Twin Otter banked sharply, and glancing through the porthole, Anne Marie saw sunlight dancing across the surface of the sea.

“And his brother?”

“Too clever to want to hang around his older brother. A couple of years younger than Raymond, and like most Békés, Jacques Calais had got into import-export. In the early fifties, he managed to obtain the importer’s license for American General Motors. Now one of the wealthiest men in Guadeloupe.”

“The two brothers got on well?”

“The Békés form a caste. From the outside, they always appear united. And impenetrable.”

“Then Calais’ wife has nothing to worry about?”

Trousseau repeated sharply, “To worry about?”

“About money.”

“During the war, when old man Calais died, she brought all her wealth. There are some people who say that was why Calais married her. She comes from a rich family—one of those white families where you never know if they’re French or English. Families that have roots and relatives—and a lot of money—in all the islands. Not just in Martinique and Guadeloupe—but in the English islands as well. Trinidad and Dominica and St. Kitts.”

“Where’s she from originally?”

Trousseau shrugged. The cotton of the white shirt had been darned where the points of the collar had worn the fabric thin. “Who knows?”

“She works for Air France, I believe.”

Trousseau laughed. “She works in the central office of Air
France on Boulevard Légitimus—it gives her social security, it gives her the overblown salary of a civil servant.…”

“We’re all civil servants.”

“At least we work.” He looked at his palms again, then folded his arms. “A job at Air France gives her tickets at ten percent of their real price—for her and for all her family. So that they can fly regularly up to Miami and stash their money away safely in some American bank—thousands of kilometers away from the uncertain future of Guadeloupe.”

The plane lost speed. The warning lights came on above the cockpit.

Anne Marie did not feel well. She was sweating.

“The Békés look after themselves,” Trousseau said as he tightened the clasp of his seatbelt.

On their honeymoon, the young couple had spent most evenings in Terre de Haut. After the stifling heat of Pointe-à-Pitre, Anne Marie was appreciative of the cool winds that blew across the Saintes. And she felt healthy. Not since leaving Algeria had she felt so well, so fit. Nor had she been so attractive
.

At first sight Anne Marie had fallen in love with the Saintes, with the flowers, with the lemon trees, the
café bâtard
and the wild cinnamon. They formed, these forgotten islands, a terrestrial paradise, a corner of another, long-forgotten France, old-fashioned and peaceful, existing on the far side of the globe
.

The newlyweds had stayed at the Hôtel Fontainebleau in a bright, clean room that looked out over the vast bay, the precipitous sugar-loaf mountain and the green-covered hills that reminded Anne Marie of her Mediterranean, of Algeria
.

People walking backward and forward along the main street, the girls hand in hand, the men quietly smoking
.

A television had been placed on the sill of the town hall, and when evening fell, the set was turned on and the Saintois watched the programs with innocent pleasure. Frantically they applauded the French team in
Jeux Sans Frontières
just as they applauded the arrival of seven gun-fighters in the dubbed Western
.

Jean Michel, however, soon got bored. He grew more and more restless
at the Hôtel Fontainebleau. “If I had wanted to watch television,” he remarked when Anne Marie suggested they sit down among the children, “I could have stayed in Paris.”

He spent a lot of time phoning his mother from the hotel
.

In the bright sunshine, she looked like a little girl.

“A lost child,” Anne Marie thought, and she felt an unexpected sense of empathy for Cinderella.

Anne Marie hated crime scene
reconstitutions
. She hated seeing the accused re-enacting the past and reliving those moments which had led to arrest. Necessary and often useful, the playacting was also painful and very sad.

The woman from Dominica wore a painted dress made of cotton with an elasticized waist that had moved upwards, accentuating sagging breasts and poor posture. Her hair was coarse; it had been combed and woven into plaits. Her scalp was marked off into irregular squares, and from each square there hung a plait, anchored by an elastic band.

Thin arms hung loosely in front of her body, hands clasped. Anne Marie did not notice the handcuffs at first. They pinched slightly against Cinderella’s blemished skin. Another, longer chain went from the handcuffs to a bored gendarme.

The brown eyes watched the gendarmes and the movement around her. Cinderella appeared distant, almost unconcerned, as if what was happening about her—the white men in their uniforms, the cameras, the crowd—had nothing to do with her.

“Coconut radio.” Le Bras, the gendarme from Tréduder with the Breton accent, pointed to the large crowd that had gathered. People stood by the edge of the road and on the dry, white sand of the beach. “They saw you coming from the aerodrome, madame le juge.” He shrugged. “Cheaper than the cinema.”

“And we’re the bit part actors.” Perspiration had formed along the skin of Trousseau’s forehead and on the sides of his nose. He mopped at his face with a handkerchief. He had undone the top two buttons of his shirt.

Anne Marie rubbed gently at the back of her left hand.

The crowd grew larger. Children had begun to appear, working their way toward the front. They had the features of the Saintois—yellow hair, brown or hazel eyes and a golden tan.

Anne Marie raised her voice, “Give her the doll.”

The order was repeated, and a gendarme stepped forward to unlock the handcuffs. Cinderella rubbed at her wrists and the crowd fell silent. Another man approached her and placed a pink doll between her hands.

Trousseau was sitting beneath a sea grape tree where he balanced the typewriter on his narrow knees. He was looking at Cinderella attentively.

She did not move.

Her lawyer, a man in a suit that was too short for his legs, brushed past Anne Marie and took Cinderella gently by the elbow. He spoke in her ear, in a calm, reassuring voice, using carefully enunciated Creole, while his intelligent eyes remained on the juge d’instruction.

Cinderella nodded.

She began to walk. With small, hesitant steps across the sand, the doll held to her breast, she went to the entrance of the wooden hut that she had once inhabited. Her feet left indistinct footprints in the hot sand. She wore plastic sandals; on the right foot, the strap was broken.