The Boiling Season (6 page)

“The Senator is in his office,” I said.

“The message is for you.”

At the front door stood a boy with a small folded note stained with grubby fingerprints. I recognized him as one of the urchins always loitering outside the Hotel Erdrich, and I realized the note must be from M. Guinee. I was hopeful, as I opened it, that the note would say he was at last fully recovered.

“Habitation Louvois is sold,” the note said. “Come immediately.”

Chapter Six

I
never knew the nature of the business that brought Mme Freeman to the island. I knew only that as a powerful executive with little time for exploring, she had not come out of any particular curiosity about the place. At the time of her arrival we were a republic under dictatorship, a tropic with little to offer even the most adventurous tourist. Anyone who did not absolutely have to be here—especially foreigners—had already fled. Embassies were clandestinely receiving enemies of the state desperately seeking asylum. M. Guinee later told me that Mme Freeman was the only guest at the Hotel Erdrich without a press pass, which meant she was the only one there who had not come to watch us crumble.

Nor did I know what it was that captured Mme Freeman's interest once she arrived. She could not have seen much, trapped as she was at the hotel, just as we were in Senator and Mme Marcus's home. By now the worst of the violence had ended, and a calm had settled in, but disfigured corpses were still being discovered each morning in dumps on the outskirts of the city, and no one trusted the government-run radio station's reports that life had returned to normal. The other radio stations—as well as the newspapers—were still closed by decree.

Somehow Mme Freeman remained oblivious of what was going on. Or perhaps just indifferent. Despite her considerable talents, it could not have been easy for her as a woman to have achieved the success that she had; perhaps she had grown to accept conditions such as these as the cost of doing business.

M. Guinee said he often found Mme Freeman strolling the hotel grounds, admiring the modest gardens. One afternoon he came across her seated on one of the stone benches beside the fountain, hands folded in her lap as she gazed at the treetops. They had spoken a few times before, always of insignificant things, especially about the weather and her continual astonishment that it never changed. She had always been pleasant, and on this afternoon, he told me, he would not have minded speaking with her again, but he knew it would be inappropriate for him to approach her without cause or invitation. The hotel had strict policies regarding interactions between staff and guests.

As it happened, however, Mme Freeman called out to him as he passed.

“What's the name of this tree?” she asked, pointing to a cluster of golden yellow flowers dangling from a branch above her head.

“It's a trumpet tree,” M. Guinee said. She nodded admiringly.

“As you can see”—he reached out for one of the blossoms—“its shape is like the bell of the instrument.”

“It's beautiful,” she said. “Everything here is beautiful. I've never seen flowers as wonderful as the ones you have here. At home in the States I have a rose garden I tend to myself. I won't let the gardener near it. The rest of the gardens are his, but that one's mine.”

She and M. Guinee spoke for a few minutes more, and—as M. Guinee would later describe it to me—he had already wished her good day and turned to continue on his way when suddenly he stopped. He said the idea struck him just like that, without any premeditation.

“Mme Freeman,” he said, turning back toward the bench, “I know of a place I think you would like very much.”

And so M. Guinee told her about the road to Saint-Gabriel, and about the stone wall and the estate beyond it, about the forty-five acres of unspoiled tropical rainforest, the last of its kind on the island. Of course, he did not suggest taking her there himself; such an idea would never have occurred to him. But so enchanted was she with his description of Habitation Louvois that, after they parted ways, Mme Freeman found the hotel manager and demanded M. Guinee be given the rest of the day off to do just that. Both the manager—himself a mulatto—and M. Guinee said it was impossible. A black native man and a white foreign woman alone together—never.

Of course, M. Guinee and his employer were each too well mannered to explain the reason.

“Perhaps my wife could escort you,” the manager suggested. “M. Guinee could tell her driver the way.”

Mme Freeman would not hear of it. “Either Mr. Guinee takes me,” she said firmly, “or I'll go alone.”

M. Guinee related all of this to me with a sheepish grin, as if to say, What can you do with a woman like this?

Seeing no alternative, the manager arranged for a car, and M. Guinee brought it around front. As Mme Freeman came down the steps, he hurried over and held open the door to the backseat, as he had seen the chauffeurs do many times before. But Mme Freeman had other ideas. Upon reaching the drive, she brushed past him and let herself into the passenger seat.

“Madame,” M. Guinee said, reopening the door she had just closed. “I'm afraid I cannot allow—”

Mme Freeman looked up at him over her sunglasses, fatigued and annoyed. “I don't understand what the point of all of this is. Am I to assume by all of these safety precautions that you feel some uncontrollable urge to do me harm?”

M. Guinee was horrified. “Of course not, madame.”

“And I think you'll agree I'm quite harmless myself,” she said. “So let's get on with it. We're wasting time.” She yanked the door from his grip, letting it slam shut between them.

M. Guinee never mentioned what they spoke of during the drive. It was the first time Mme Freeman had seen the countryside, and I imagine she was struck—and perhaps even shocked—by the sight of the peasants and their roadside shacks. Nor did M. Guinee provide me with the details of the tour he gave Mme Freeman upon their arrival at Habitation Louvois, but I suspect it was much like mine—descending down the drive to the swollen jungle below; cutting a swath through the weeds and thistle as they circled the manor house; her wonder upon stepping inside; the pools and fountains on the grounds; down the winding paths and stone steps to the villa; a brief walk into the preserve, to the point where the trails, long overgrown, finally disappeared.

Every tree, every structure, even the laundry room and stables, Mme Freeman declared “magnificent.” And yet, while M. Guinee acknowledged that she seemed awed by everything she saw, he said her awe was always tempered by a calm practicality. Businesswoman that she was, she appeared to be calculating what it all might be worth.

Of course, M. Guinee had been right about her. Even before they got back into the car to return to the Hotel Erdrich, Mme Freeman announced that by this time tomorrow the estate would be hers.

In retrospect, the fact that Mme Freeman, a wealthy white woman—a foreigner—would buy land in a black republic seldom acquainted with peace surprised me less than M. Guinee's confession that he had told her about it in the first place. Why volunteer such a secret? For that matter, why had he even shared it with me?

I asked him that on the day I received his note and went to see him.

“The moment I saw you in the lobby and came over to shake your hand,” he said, “I knew I would tell you.”

“But why?”

“I remember seeing you in that chair,” he said. “I must have watched you for a week before I finally spoke to you.”

“I cannot imagine what you saw that was so interesting.”

“There was a stillness about you,” he said. “It seemed you were waiting for something. And by that, I don't mean the Senator.”

I tried to remember that day in the chair in the lobby, but there had been so many others just like it, so many days notable only for their blankness. I had always wished to belong in such a setting, where handshakes and nods determined the fates of countless lives. But once I actually arrived there, I felt most of all an inclination to disappear. Were anyone to notice me, I knew I would be called out as an impostor. And so I often did everything I could to clear my mind of even my own presence, hoping to become as inconspicuous as an amber ashtray on a crowded table.

Still, I did not doubt M. Guinee's recollection. In fact, it seemed not unreasonable to suppose that there were numerous ways in which M. Guinee knew me better than I knew myself. So many of the people in my life—Paul, Senator Marcus, even my father—seemed to be endowed with a remarkable clarity about what they believed and who they believed themselves to be. I was all too well aware that the same could not be said of me. Maybe that was what M. Guinee saw, that I was waiting for that clarity of purpose to be delivered to me.

And now it had.

Whatever it was that he saw in me, M. Guinee evidently saw it in Mme Freeman too. The only thing left to do, after having introduced each of us individually to Habitation Louvois, was to introduce us to one another. And this he accomplished by convincing her to take me on as the manager of her new estate.

* * *

Even though M. Guinee's fever was now weeks behind him, traces of it remained—in the grayish pallor around his eyes, and in the way the red jacket with the Erdrich crest slipped slightly from his reduced shoulders. He was more easily winded now, as he made his rounds, his pace much slower, and I felt as though he were following me, rather than I him. When he had finally delivered the last of the manager's orders, we sat for a few minutes in a corner of the kitchen, where M. Guinee could safely rest, out of sight of his superior. Without his having to ask, one of the cooks brought him a cup of coffee.

“It's been this crazy for months.” As M. Guinee raised the cup to his lips I noticed his hand twitching slightly; the coffee rose to the rim and a few drops slipped away.

M. Guinee saw where I was looking and quickly lowered the cup, causing it to clatter and spill upon the table.

“There's no end to what these people need,” he continued, nodding in what I supposed was the direction of the club room, where the international press corps was at the moment gathered, adding still more drinks to their expense-account bar tabs.

“Do they drink this much at home?” he said. “Or is it something we drive them to?”

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

M. Guinee batted away his own question, indicating his lack of interest in an answer. “We had to buy more pillows,” he added. “Every one of them needs at least two pillows. What do they use them for? How many heads do they think they have? It's the same with towels. I've never seen anything like it. They go through three or four of them a day. How wet can a person get?” All of this he said with a smile, but the smile failed to hide the true depths of his fatigue.

“It's time,” he said, letting out a sigh as he slowly rose to his feet. “Let's not keep Mme Freeman waiting.”

M
me Freeman and her lawyers had needed a week to complete the sale for Habitation Louvois. It turned out the estate was owned by a family for whom M. Guinee had once worked. M. Guinee had never actually worked there himself; by the time he came to know of it, the place had been uninhabited for years. But he had gone there once with his employer to remove a few pieces of furniture that had been left behind. His reaction upon seeing the place, M. Guinee said, had been virtually identical to mine. So moved was he by the experience that he had risked his job—and who knows what more severe punishment—by stealing the key to the gate. It was an indication of the disinterest with which his employer regarded the property that he never noticed that the key was missing.

In the two decades that had passed since, M. Guinee had tried to visit Habitation Louvois at least once a year. But since coming to work at the Hotel Erdrich he had found it difficult to get away. When he decided to take me, nearly ten years had passed since he had been there last.

“If you kept it a secret all those years,” I asked that same day I received his note, “why did you suddenly decide to tell someone?”

“It wasn't sudden,” he said. “I'd given it a great deal of thought.” We were in his room, and he had gone over to the small table by his bed and opened its one small drawer, picking through the few objects inside until he found what he was looking for. He held the key out to me, saying, “There's very little I can pass down.”

“Maybe you should give it back to its rightful owner.”

“I've decided,” M. Guinee said, pressing the key into my palm, “that you are its rightful owner.”

“But why?” I said. “Why would they want to get rid of it?”

“They didn't know what else to do with it.”

“Isn't it enough just to preserve it?”

M. Guinee shrugged. “For who?”

I thought of my mother's stories about the long-lost island she would never get to see. For her, I wanted to say. And for everyone else who needed to believe that in this world such a place was still possible.

I
do not know what I expected in Mme Freeman. I had encountered few white people in my life, only the occasional reporter and a few ambassadors and visiting dignitaries at the Marcuses' parties, interactions largely limited to the refreshing of drinks. In my experience, white men were always distant, regarding me—when they regarded me at all—with annoyed distraction. Their wives, on the contrary, tended to be anything but distant. Undernourished and overpainted, they clung to their husbands' sides, twitching at every sudden sound and movement with the precautionary terror of rabbits. They would rarely hand over their wraps and purses when they arrived. Dinner became an excruciating ordeal, watching the women struggle to operate fork and knife without simultaneously spilling their belongings from their laps. Even before dessert was served, one inevitably saw them whispering into their husbands' ears that it was time to go.

M. Guinee found Mme Freeman in the club room, and as soon as we entered the room she rose from her seat with a smile.

Mme Freeman was a slight woman in what I guessed to be her late forties. Her hair was blond, but it appeared to be in the early stages of turning something else, brown or gray or silver. It swept across her head in a bold, purposeful wave, curling at the bottom so that it cupped her pearl-studded ears. She wore a cream-colored skirt and a matching jacket, trimmed with black and closed with brass buttons.