Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? (21 page)

“What's got into you to shout like that! You really think some men are different from the rest? The best of them are not worth the rope to hang them with. All of them are scumbags. In fact few people know that Dr. Jean Pinceau was stinking rotten to the core. Everyone in Grande-Anse respected and worshipped him like the Holy Sacrament, whereas he liked the ladies of the night and was a regular visitor to the bordellos! At the Ginger Moon his favorite was Pisket, the dirtiest slut of them all.”

Matthieu was no longer listening to her, and was pacing up and down like a madman. The idol of his youth had bit the dust. So the paragon of virtue wallowed in vice. The slayer of opium eaters worshipped a drug addict. He recalled the fervor in his handsome face. He could still hear the brazen speeches of his electoral campaign: “Guadeloupe is not France, and France is not Guadeloupe. It is an entirely different country whose interests are in contradiction with those of colonialism.” Such bold words at the time! He tried to tell himself that this old woman was lying. But no, his nose sensed the truth. Ignoring him, she prattled on, coming out with everything she had kept bottled up inside her for too long, her hands deformed by arthritis resting on her knees.

“The poor girl was naive enough to believe that with all his money the doctor would at least promise to help take care of her baby. Despite their wicked ways, that's what the white Creoles did when they had children with black girls. But all he could say was,
‘An pa sètin sé ti moun an mwen! Fo ou fin èvèye.
I'm not sure it's my child. Get rid of it.' This upset Pisket, despite her shameless ways. She cried a lot, I know. But she didn't let on to the doctor. When he offered to give her an injection for an abortion, she pretended to accept. And then she let Kung Fui make a deal with Madeska. When they left the Ginger Moon, they didn't tell anyone where they were going, except me. You should have seen Dr. Pinceau that day. He was like a lost soul, a zombie. You'd have thought he'd go mad or die. He didn't want any of the other girls as a consolation. You couldn't help pitying him.

“I seldom visited Pisket at Bélisaire. People in our line of business don't like going out in broad daylight. When the children meet us, they shout ‘Shoo!' as if we were dogs or else ‘Zouelle, an
bòbò!
' and respectable persons make the sign of the cross. And then visiting them wasn't very pleasant. The Blanc Galop was a real hornet's nest. Kung Fui had brought his inseparable Yang Ting with him, who was living with their sister, Tonine. But Pisket and Kung Fui couldn't stand Tonine. They hurled insults and abuse at her. Sometimes even Pisket tried to hit her. Yang Ting would intervene, and there'd be a hell of a commotion. And then Madeska and Pisket didn't get along. She complained that the mischief maker's food was tasteless, since salt was taboo. Once a month he wanted to cut her, take her blood and bits of flesh. But what I really want to tell you is that you're barking up the wrong tree in your investigation. Celanire, the governor's wife, is not Pisket's child. She couldn't be! Seven months pregnant, and the child slipped out.”

“I don't believe it!”

“But it's true! The child slipped out! Pisket had a miscarriage. But Kung Fui was an artful one! I don't know how he did it. All I know is that he and Pisket came to an arrangement.”

“An arrangement?” Matthieu yelled. “What do you mean?”

“Well, they found a belly for sale. Don't ask me where or how, I haven't got the slightest idea. I had my own troubles at the time: I ate some conger eel, which gave me blood poisoning. I spent three and a half months in the Saint-Félix hospital at death's door. When I came out, Grande-Anse was in a hullabaloo. Madeska had vanished; the only talk was of ‘darling little Celanire,' ‘darling little Celanire,' the baby Dr. Pinceau had miraculously saved. They said she was so lovely, so beautiful, a woman had tried to steal her. One Sunday during mass I dashed to look at her in the arms of her foster mother. She gave me the shivers. A pink silk ribbon was tied around her neck. Her head reared up like a cobra's, and she stared at people with her black eyes, gleaming like hot coals. As for Pisket, after her miscarriage, she disappeared for a while. I only saw her again the year after, when she came back to die in my arms. You won't like what I'm telling you, I know. But it's the truth. And the truth is hard to swallow.”

 

Matthieu got the impression his brain was about to explode. Large drops of sweat rolled down his back. Years of research and speculation to arrive at this. All for nothing. At the end of the day Celanire was not Pisket's daughter. In despair he left.

To the east, along the rim of hills, Grande-Anse glowed red. At first he thought it was a figment of the fever that had set his mind ablaze. Then he realized the Fouques-Timbert plantation house was burning like tinder. At the very moment when Matthieu was watching in disbelief, the glow of flames had already reached as far as Antigua, dazzling the fishermen at Half Moon Bay, who hauled their boats up on the sand and, sensing some strange foreboding fell on their knees to recite the prayer for the dead. The flames could also be seen as far away as Nevis and Montserrat, whose inhabitants wondered where exactly could the fire be burning. Ever since a delegation led by Celanire had come to their rescue, they looked on the Guadeloupeans as their brothers and took an interest in their fate.

Agénor de Fouques-Timbert perished in the fire of his Great House like a common mortal. Not only did he lose his life, but Ji, his concubine, his two illegitimate daughters, and six of his seven legitimate sons were also lost. Only the wildest and handsomest was spared, since as usual he had spent the night out, and was nicknamed Sanfoulanmò ever since, because he had defied death.

The incident deserves a closer look.

On April 26, the feast of Saint Alida, Agénor was waiting in his office at the Conseil Général for the director of a highway construction company to pay him his commission. He received 10 percent on all the contracts in the colony and demanded it in cash. He loved the smell of money. The filthier the bills, the more dog-eared they were, the greater his delight, since they reminded him of his own rotten life. The director had arrived at six on the dot, carrying the money in a wicker basket. The two men barely greeted each other. They had nothing to say. The money did the talking.

Agénor had then mounted Colibri and set off for Grande-Anse. On leaving Basse-Terre, shortly before passing through the Colchide neighborhood, he met a funeral procession. Some wretch was being hauled feetfirst in a miserable cart rigged out in black rags. A few musicians shuffled along in front, blowing their brass instruments, and a ragged group of mourners brought up the rear. And yet Agénor, who had everything—women, children, land, property, and political power—envied the deceased.
Lanmò.
Death. Eternal rest. He couldn't wait for Celanire to make up her mind. In his longing to see her in the flesh, he had gone to the carnival opening-night ball disguised as Nero, the emperor on whom he would have willingly modeled himself. Moreover, the crown of laurels and the Roman toga suited him. In his hands was a gilded wood lute, which he would have liked to fiddle as well.

Flanked by Ludivine, as sulky as ever, Celanire and Thomas were greeting their guests. Thomas was disguised as an Egyptian pasha, a costume that suited his paunch perfectly. Celanire was dressed as queen of the fairies, something out of
The Magic Flute
. It needed just a little imagination to guess the connection with her diaphanous, multicolored moiré dress, her golden crown, and the magic wand she brandished arrogantly like a whip. Agénor bent forward to kiss her hand, and when he looked up, he found himself level with her pair of eyes. There then followed a silent dialogue.

“What are you waiting for?” Agénor inquired. “If you want to take your revenge, take it.”

“Revenge,” retorted Celanire, “is a dish best eaten cold. Don't you know that?”

“But why are you so angry with me? It was nothing personal. For me, I couldn't put a face, a name, or even a sex to you. I simply needed a child. You'd do better to concentrate on your parents. Those two deliberately did you harm by handing you over to Madeska. You killed him, but he was only doing his job.”

“Let's not get excited. Believe me, they've got it coming to them!”

Colibri, who knew the road by heart, didn't need to be whipped to gallop at breakneck speed to Grande-Anse, sniffing the air of the sea, which had already melted into the falling darkness. The Fouques-Timbert Great House stood on top of the Morne Reclus. It was an edifice built entirely of wood, surprisingly modest in appearance, since the family had never liked throwing money down the drain. Succeeding generations had added a drawing room here, a bedroom there, and even a washroom and a terrace. To house his seven sons, Agénor had added an attic divided into small bedrooms and a playroom.

Ji had been waiting in vain for Agénor for hours in the small drawing room. He used to love Asian girls and was one of the few white Creoles to frequent a tiny dance hall in Bélisaire, in the heart of the Chinese quarter. There the girls were as slender as lianas, and he would wrap them voluptuously around his body. After having desired Ji passionately, he now practically never looked at her. He had fallen out of love simply because a thousand signs indicated she was losing her youth. Her skin was wrinkling. Her flowing hair was thinning. Her joints, once supple, were now growing stiff. Familiarity made him impervious to her simpering airs of a Siamese cat, which once excited him, and he went upstairs to put away his 10 percent commission in the chest of drawers in his bedroom. This is where he stashed his money. He no longer trusted the banks ever since the Crédit Colonial had informed the police that his money had gone to help Pisket. It almost got him into serious trouble. After that he went down to the dining room, where the rest of the family joined him at table, and began handling his heavy silverware without uttering a word. His sons, who were frightened of him, lapped up their soup, heads lowered. Only Ji attempted to fill the silence with her chatter. Previously, her twittering amused him and prevented him from confronting his solitude and sadness alone. Now he could no longer bear it, and with one glance he silenced her. The meal lasted thirty minutes exactly by his pocket watch.

Agénor had never shared his bedroom with anyone. He made love to his women in an apartment on the second floor, then returned to his modest, poorly furnished bachelor quarters under the roof. For years, his nightmares kept him tossing and turning on his bed all night long, and the only way to get a little sleep was to get drunk.

His servant would set down beside the bed, next to the candle, which remained flickering until dawn, a box of cigars from Bahia, a goblet, and two carafes of rum. Apparently, that evening Agénor was unusually restless; he upset the carafes over the bed, soaking the sheets with rum. Then he dropped the candle. Hence the blaze. In a manner of speaking, the tragedy needed no explanation. It was the speed with which everything went up in flames that was inexplicable. In less than thirty minutes there was nothing left but a heap of ashes. In the time it took for the servants sleeping in the outbuildings to wake up, slip on some clothes over their nakedness, and start working the pump, absolutely nothing was left of a man, a family, and a Great House that had once commanded respect.

Agénor did not describe his final moments to anyone—and for good reason. So we shall never know what he saw at the last minute. Perhaps he didn't see anything at all and plunged headfirst into the void. We don't know either whether at the last moment he remembered Elodie or Ji, their consenting bodies pressed up against his, the cool breeze from the sea, or the taste of rum aged in oak casks. In short, we shall never know whether he left the here below with a heavy heart.

The whole of Guadeloupe, from Basse-Terre to La Pointe, was traumatized by the event, and crowds poured in for the wake. Death always takes you by surprise, but this one confounded people's imagination. A man they thought as solid as a locustwood tree and immortal as a
genippa
snuffed out in next to no time!

The female relatives transported whatever could be transported. They laid ten little sacks side by side in a single mahogany coffin, not knowing whether the ashes they had scooped up came really from the bodies or the furniture or perhaps something else, and Sanfoulanmò, the son who had been spared, led the mourners in tears. He had loved his family. His brothers. His half-sisters. His papa especially, however brutal he had been. Even Ji, whose hands had sometimes felt as soft as a mother's on his face. And then he found himself without any liquid assets, since all the money had gone up in smoke with Agénor. To cover the cost of the funeral he had had to mortgage two coffee plantations up at Vieux-Habitants. In his despair he contemplated selling the property and leaving for Brazil, where at least there was a future.

Agénor was too important a personality in the colony for the governor and his wife not to show their compassion.

So Thomas in full uniform and Celanire in a black taffeta dress showed up at the wake around midnight. Not a single jewel on her. Not even a pair of Creole earrings. As bare as a high altar during Lent. Around her neck a leather choker ornamented with guilloche hid you-know-what. She entered, head lowered under her black mantilla, and religiously knelt down. Yet anyone who had two eyes to see with, like Matthieu, was struck by her elated expression. They guessed that beneath that exterior she must have been in a festive mood. She had just laid her worst enemy to rest. When she looked at the coffin and its dismal contents, a fiery glow burned at the back of her eyes. You sensed she could burst out singing the Ninth Symphony's “Ode to Joy.” She fought back a smile that was trying to curl up the corner of her lips. When she recited the prayers for the dead with the mourners, her voice rang out triumphant, despite herself. Matthieu was in agony. He realized that however hard he sniffed and snorted, snorted and sniffed, he would never prove Celanire's identity. The mystery would always remain unresolved. He would never be able to make more than assumptions that everyone would poke fun at. He would never know what drop of sperm had fertilized an egg to produce nine months later a little girl who would bring so many trials and tribulations into this world. He could say and do what he liked; this affair would always make him look a perfect fool.