Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? (15 page)

They left Cayenne in total darkness under a delicate, lusterless moon that was emerging from its sleep. To reach the river, they first had to cross the banks of the Cayenne, then wade for miles with mosquitoes on their heels across a swamp, through soft mud strewn with tree trunks whose rotten stench grabbed them by the throat. It was almost daylight when they arrived at the spot where the Saramaka's pirogue was bobbing patiently, half hidden by the thick vegetation on the bank, to which it was leashed by two stakes. A whitish vapor wafted over the surface of the water, apparently dormant under its duvet. Soon the current picked up speed, and the boat sped along like an arrow. The Saramaka and Papa Doc, perfectly at home on this shaky, precarious craft, silently manipulated their paddles, and Hakim envied them their quiet assurance. Once the river slowed down, narrowed, and they glided between two sheer cliffs. Flocks of birds flew from one wall to the other. Then the waters widened again. At noon the sun pitched itself vertically, and all at once the smoldering sky burst into flames. In agony, Hakim slaked his thirst as best he could by drinking the river's muddy water in the cup of his hand. At one point, the Saramaka pointed out amid the mangrove trees a solitary hut standing on the bank, fringed with white sand and teeming with equally white birds.

“Mami Wata,” he cawed.

Hakim knew the legend. It existed in the Ivory Coast as well. A siren with long, shiny hair spends her days swimming in the river depths. At night she emerges and retreats to her house on the bank. There she sings song after song, so melodious they sound like a heavenly concert. But woe betide the traveler who hears her and approaches her house, for she throws herself onto him and drags him down to her watery palace, the better to devour him.

Toward the end of the afternoon they swung away from the center of the stream and finally landed. As they stepped out of the canoe, their feet sank into a sticky humus that stuck to their soles. They had to walk for a good hour before the ground became firm again. Daylight was fast fading. A bitter smell of bruised vegetation reached their nostrils as the Saramaka hacked their way through the poisonous flowers, the lianas and wild plants. At a bend in the path the village loomed up in a clearing. Hakim was not surprised to find the same charming appearance as the villages in the African bush! The ground was covered with fine sand. Large huts perched on stilts were arranged in a semicircle. All around the forest had been cleared and neatly planted with plots of tobacco and cassava. Now he was convinced it was the hand of Europe that defaced everything, blindly imposing its architecture and its discipline. There was only one dark side to the picture: surrounded by mourners, a dozen bodies lay unburied, waiting for the night to be carried to their final resting place. Without wasting any time, Papa Doc entered one of the huts. Hakim climbed into a hammock hung under a
carbet.
As night fell, the clouds of mosquitoes became bolder and joined the bats in flight. Insects and birds, emerging from every tree branch, chirped, warbled, and screamed. In the distance monkeys burst into laughter, while some animal howled in response. The music they composed was enough to frighten the most intrepid.

Hakim could not help shivering, as if he had caught a fever, and he wondered what had got into him to follow Papa Doc to such an inhospitable spot. Just then the Saramaka women, who had finished their cooking, brought him a copious dinner of haunch of venison and freshwater fish. Every one of them had an infant clinging to her side who was intrigued and frightened by this stranger. Hakim could not touch his meal. Instead, he greedily sucked rum from a bottle, something he seldom did.

He finally fell asleep.

Hardly had he done so than a young Saramaka woke him. In a daze, Hakim first thought it was Kwame Aniedo. The same jet-black skin, the same hair tied into small braids, above all the same smell, the smell he could not forget, a mix of sweat and vegetable fat. Then he realized his mistake. This one was darker, not so tall, slightly built, with filed teeth. Smiling, the young man placed a finger to his lips and motioned him to follow. He obeyed and stumbled to his feet. As fast as his senses returned, the more frightened he became. He was sure he would never forget that night. Sheer pandemonium! A sinister drumming was unable to cover up the screams of the women mourning. Pyres burned in front of the huts silhouetted against the dark backdrop of trees. Their eerie glow exaggerated the flickering shadows of the men and women who with heartrending wails were burning their dead. The young Saramaka left the village and fearlessly plunged into the forest. By magic, every noise stopped on their approach, and they walked on in muffled silence. Soon they reached the river, rippling with tiny iridescent waves in the darkness, and climbed into one of the small boats anchored among the mangrove trees. Straining with all his muscle power, the Saramaka paddled against the current, and after an hour they landed on the other bank. They cautiously set foot on dry land. Then suddenly the moon emerged from its hiding place and illuminated every nook and cranny of the landscape. Blinded by its glare, Hakim got the impression he was living a nightmare and thought he recognized the spot. The isolated creek. The wreath of mangrove trees. The wattle hut, its doors and windows mysteriously closed. It was the home of Mami Wata! The Saramaka, however, still smiling, motioned to him to wait and climbed back into the boat. He remained alone under this glare of moonlight, even more frightening than the dark, listening to the fading sound of water lapping as the boat disappeared into the night. He couldn't say how long he waited, standing motionless and paralyzed on the sand. Finally the boat returned, and he could make out two shapes. Next to the Saramaka was Papa Doc who did not seem to be afraid of being where he was. The only sign something was wrong was that Papa Doc, who had been so nimble up till now, almost stumbled as he set foot on the shore. When Hakim saw his friend, his terror vanished and his serenity returned. He knew what awaited him, and it was no coincidence they were both together in this place. The two of them were going to live their final adventure.

One morning some gold diggers paddling upriver discovered the bodies of Hakim and Papa Doc near a jetty. They were scarcely recognizable, swollen by their long immersion, drained of their blood by vampire bats, and half eaten by birds of prey and ants. They came to the conclusion that the two companions must have left Cayenne by night and tried to reach one of the villages along the river for one of those illegal card games, the only means for a convict to get cash to buy cassava flour, one or two liters of rum, cans of sardines, and, if they were lucky, some black-eyed peas. Unfortunately, on the way there, their boat must have overturned. Although convicts, both Hakim and Papa Doc were baptized Christians. The gold diggers brought them back to Cayenne, where the duty of the penitentiary administration was to find them a final resting place. They planned to throw them into the communal grave. But they misjudged popular opinion.

United in life, Hakim and Papa Doc were separated in death. Nobody was affected by Hakim's death; he was, after all, nothing but a convict like so many others, and had never made a name for himself. He seemed good only for growing flowers. Nobody understood why he was such close friends with Papa Doc and why he had followed him deep into the forest to their death. Papa Doc, however, was a living god to the hundreds of wretches he had cared for in the poor districts of Cayenne. As soon as they learned the news of his death, they marched to the penitentiary building and demanded the body. Then they carried his rough pine coffin to his shack on the Saint-François promontory. Meanwhile the Indian and Maroon villages along the rivers emptied, and long processions of canoes converged on Cayenne, swelling the crowds streaming toward the shack. Breaking with the legendary impassiveness of the Indians, the Galibi woman was weeping hot tears for her man. She was frantically talking with those of her tribe who had come to console her. There was something unnatural in his death, there was something mysterious about this business. Among the numerous Saramakas present at the wake, not one of them looked like the beanpole who had dragged Papa Doc off a few days earlier. None of them had heard of a terrible epidemic, neither on the Oyapock nor on the Approuague. The only three convicts from the French Caribbean, two from Martinique and one from Guadeloupe, obtained leave from Charvein, where the prisoners had forced the warders to fly the tricolor at half staff. They had never met Papa Doc. But his body was their property. After all, they were from the same island womb. Too bad if there was not enough rum or thick soup! They would make do with a wake, and the farewells would be heartfelt and passionate. One of them grabbed a flute, another a mandolin, yet another a guitar, and they played mazurkas and beguines from their native land. Then, with his tongue loosened by a little rum, one of them grew bold and improvised as a storyteller.

Soon the traditional words reverberated:

These loyal followers of Papa Doc refused to let his body be thrown into the communal grave as if he were a common mortal. They found enough money to buy him a burial plot and erected a tomb, which they covered with black-and-white flag-stones, in the very middle of the cemetery on the promontory at Saint-François reserved for high-ranking officials. It's odd that in his book on the penal colony Albert Londres does not devote one line to Papa Doc, who was a real character in his time and left his mark on people's memory. To prove it, even to this very day, the descendants of the convicts have not forgotten him, and every All Saints Day his tomb is lit with candles in his memory. In 1960 a delegation of nationalist militants traveled from Guadeloupe and laid claim to the corpse. Taking up the arguments of Dieudonné Pylône, they asserted that Papa Doc had in fact been banished as a political opponent. According to them, he was one of the first to have demanded independence for Guadeloupe. But the colonial authorities categorically refused to accept their request, and the delegation returned home empty-handed.

Ever since, the Guadeloupeans, who come to let off steam at the carnival in Cayenne and admire the costumes of the
touloulous,
have made the graveyard a place of pilgrimage and laid fresh flowers on their compatriot's tomb.

In early June 1906, the inhabitants of Guadeloupe were as stunned, flabbergasted, and topsy-turvy as if on the morning after a hurricane they had emerged onto their verandas to discover the extent of the disaster—not a leaf to be seen, not a tree with branches, the land brown and scorched by the brine carried by the rain. Some of them couldn't believe their eyes and had to put on their spectacles twice. But the news was well and truly there, spread across page 3 of the most widely read daily,
Le Nouvelliste
.

SOCIAL CALENDAR

The new governor of the colony, Monsieur Thomas de Brabant, arrived yesterday from Marseilles on board the SS
Elseneur.
He was accompanied by his wife and daughter, the young Ludivine. May we remind our readers that Madame, née Celanire Pinceau, is a native of our small island, from Grande-Anse to be exact. She left in her tenth year under dramatic circumstances that few Guadeloupeans have forgotten. Interviewed on her arrival, she simply expressed her joy at setting foot once again on a land of which she had vague childhood memories.

A murmur went up across the island. Incredible, but true! Celanire, Celanire was back! What could possibly bring her back to her native land? Didn't she know what her compatriots were like? Didn't she realize they would be quick to dig up the cadaver of a rape that had made such a scandal at the time, and gorge themselves again and again on its stinking carcass? Although she had become the wife of the governor, both she and her husband would find themselves sullied. Unless she had come back to put the finishing touches to all the evil she had already committed? In any case, this return was a bad omen. Nevertheless, nobody was more troubled than the police commissioner of the Arbre-Foudroyé district in Basse-Terre. It was as if the news had dragged him out of a deep sleep.

Unable to work, Matthieu Dorliss stood up and went over to the window. He wasn't looking at the garden. He wasn't looking at the square either, with its mango trees loaded with fruit, or the church, with its miniature replica of the grotto at Lourdes, complete with miraculous waters. He was reliving the past. They used to call him Mangouste. When he was the tenacious, idealistic, lanky sixteen-year-old assistant to Dieudonné Pylône. When Dr. Jean Pinceau, the first physician of color from Guadeloupe, who was more than a brother to his boss, had been sentenced ignominiously to serve ten years as a convict. Unable to prevent the sentence, Dieudonné had resigned from his job and reconverted to trading tropical hardwood. There was absolutely no doubt that his feeling of helplessness had hastened his premature death a few years earlier. Matthieu recalled the promise he had made to him on his deathbed, a promise he had never been able to keep—to find out Celanire's identity and clear the name of a just man.

Racked with emotion, he went out.

In Basse-Terre the deepwater harbor had still not been developed due to the negligence of the Conseil Général, and the ships remained anchored offshore, surrounded by a flotilla of small craft. Matthieu strode on, oblivious to the tremulous greetings of people who recognized him and the authority he represented.

It had been ten years since he had last been involved in this murky affair. He had received an anonymous letter. As a rule the police do not pay much attention to anonymous letters. They know it is a favorite tool of cowards, malicious minds, and madmen! But in this case the writer claimed what Dieudonné Pylône had always suspected, i.e., that Pisket had sold her belly to Madeska at the request of Agénor de Fouques-Timbert. The white Creole, who wanted to get into politics, had sacrificed the infant at the beginning of September 1884. But if that were true, in a manner of speaking it merely deepened the mystery of Celanire, who was very much alive, despite her patched-up neck. What belly had she come out of? Unless…unless Pisket's daughter and Celanire, saved from death at the last minute by Dr. Pinceau, were one and the same person. Here the brazenness of his thoughts made Matthieu gasp.

When he arrived home in the Redoute neighborhood, a servant woman handed him an invitation: Governor Thomas de Brabant and his wife requested the pleasure of his company at a reception. Celanire was not wasting any time!

 

In the eyes of those who saw them for the first time, Thomas de Brabant and Celanire made a surprising couple. As a rule, husband and wife are expected to be well matched. It is even said that after living together for a certain time, they begin to look alike. But Thomas had aged prematurely; his paunch was squeezed into the brocaded poplin of his governor's uniform, his bald head hidden under his flat cap, and he was constantly dabbing his oozing red eyes. Celanire was at the peak of her charm. But let us not jump to the hasty conclusion that because they were ill-assorted they did not get along together. They expressed their adoration for each other at every moment. They fondled each other, held each other's hand, and whispered in each other's ear. To the great surprise of those who had not seen her for fifteen years, Celanire had changed very little. Grown hardly any taller, she had maintained the figure of a young girl—hardly any fatter either. Her cheeks were still velvety from childhood, and her eyes kept their juvenile sparkle. Her admirers compared them to stars, diamonds, carbuncles, and other clichés. The fact remains, however, that it was difficult to sustain the look in those gleaming eyes of hers.

That evening she had boldly revived the Directoire fashion, and her breasts hovered on the edge of her bodice like two birds eagerly awaiting flight. The inevitable ribbon wound tightly around her neck was held in place by an amethyst clasp of the same color. Following in her wake was a young girl of about ten, tall for her age, with a solemn face as white as the
broderie anglaise
of her dress, and very black hair tied with a bow on her neck. The reader will have recognized Ludivine. Celanire devoured her with kisses, squeezed her hand, called her “my darling little pet” at the slightest opportunity, and seemed in every respect to be the affectionate stepmother, which was especially embarrassing, as the girl looked perfectly exasperated by this billing and cooing.

There was a crowd of guests. All the colony's officialdom; white Creoles, yellowed and wrinkled as parchment; mulattos, waved and brilliantined, done up in their Sunday best; blacks puffing up their chests out of timidity at finding themselves in such a place; old people who had lived through the events of the past; young fellows who knew of them only through hearsay—all had been in a hurry to come and examine Celanire at close quarters. They were surprised to find her in such good spirits, so natural, and not at all ashamed of past events. The evening had a piquancy about it that was usually lacking in receptions of this kind. This could no doubt be ascribed to the extraordinary charm of the hostess, but also to some amazing innovations. First of all the buffet: neat little rum punches, codfish and
tannia
fritters, crab patés and spicy black pudding. But above all the band—the cabaret sort, not the type of official receptions. A saxophone, a guitar, and a singer churning out beguines. Even the people who deep down considered such music vulgar couldn't help humming the familiar songs, and this brightened up the atmosphere considerably.

Matthieu had come with his wife, Amarante. Three years earlier he had married this sixteen-year-
old Wayana beauty in the hope of shaking up conventions. The Wayanas had been forced off the slopes of the Soufrière volcano and made to settle along the seashore. They were ordered to send their children to school to recite “Our ancestors the Gauls” like everyone else. But nothing had changed, and they continued to be despised and labeled
nèg mawon.
An exception was made for Amarante because she possessed a voice powerful enough to split a rock, an organ with a remarkable range and sweetness. In actual fact, few people had ever heard her, for in her modesty she only sang for a privileged few. Matthieu and his wife had come to the governor's reception for different reasons. Bracing himself once again, Matthieu had not forgotten he had promised to avenge poor Jean Pinceau. As for Amarante, she was bursting with curiosity. The story of Ofusan, little Celanire's adopted mother, who for the love of a mulatto from the flatlands had turned her back on her people's traditions, had become a legend among the Wayanas. The Wayanas attributed the arrival of the baby in her life to her sudden death. For them there was no doubt the infant harbored an evil spirit! Amarante therefore stared at Celanire with amazement. She was not expecting so much juvenile charm and seduction. She was almost prepared to believe it was the Good Lord Himself who had sent her to lighten our darkness. A feeling she had never felt before crept into her and set her heart pounding while, spellbound, she couldn't keep her eyes off Celanire. Matthieu was oblivious to this, relying on the reactions of his nose. Literally. Ever since he was small, he only had to open wide his nostrils and sniff hard for smells to tell him the hidden truth. At the age of four, he had discovered a thief among the guests at a wedding who had tricked his way in. Amarante poked fun at him and claimed he sniffed even in his sleep, even while making love. He was gazing around the room when among the ocean of black, white, and cream-colored faces, the features of Agénor de Fouques-Timbert, president of the Conseil Général for almost twenty years, emerged. Despite old age, which was creeping up on him—he was over sixty—despite debauchery and depravity, Agénor remained a handsome man. As wiry as a guava tree. Not an ounce of fat. Not one white hair. A corn-colored beard and mop of hair, and patches of blue sky in lieu of two eyes. He had scandalized the most broad-minded by burying the mother of his eight boys at eleven in the morning and setting up house with a Chinese whore, young enough to be his daughter, at three in the afternoon the same day. Agénor stared at Celanire with a look that aroused the curiosity of an already intrigued Matthieu. As if, among all those present, Agénor was the only one to know who she was. How could he prove that she was well and truly the survivor of his sacrifice, Matthieu frantically pondered?

There were a number of leads in this affair that had never been followed up. They had never interrogated Madeska's wives, now destitute, who would surely reveal all his secrets in exchange for something to eat, nor questioned his children. His eldest son, Zuléfi, used to follow him everywhere. Even though he was a kid, he must have seen something! Why, for instance, did he give up the family tradition of mischief making and become a traveling preacher, living off the charity of his followers? Matthieu swore he would go and get a closer look. He took hold of Amarante's arm and, surprisingly enough, still unforewarned by his nose of her infatuation for Celanire, went out onto the veranda.

The Governor's Palace was set on an elevation halfway between the ocean and La Soufrière. As dusk fell, mist rolled up from the sea while the vapors and humidity of the massive volcano behind lay heavy as a clamp. In other words, the evenings were freezing. It was an ungainly wooden edifice all on one level, similar to a plantation great house with a steep sloping roof and clapboard walls. Plans for it to be replaced by a building of reinforced concrete, more fitting for its function, were constantly toyed with by the administration. Yet still no decision had been made, and the governors complained of the discomfort for themselves and their families. They would have to wait for many long years and for the architect Ali Tur before things changed. In fact, at the time, the principal merits of the place were its gardens, a dozen acres of outstanding beauty where the rarest of tropical trees grew. Lit by flares, a podium had been erected in the very middle of the lawn. A dozen drummers dressed in white short-sleeved shirts conspicuous against the darkness of the night were seated in a semicircle behind their instruments. The guests, already disconcerted by the beguines, wondered if they were going to start beating the
gwo-ka
drums. They could not believe their ears when Celanire, who had leaped onto the podium, began praising the merits of cultural traditions, of which the
gwo-ka
drum was the
poto-mitan,
in an eloquent, articulate speech. Why be ashamed of it? Why be ashamed of Kréyol, our Patwa mother tongue? The guests liked her singsong accent, which was so Guadeloupean, but not what she was saying. Kréyol, a language, whatever next? However, if they had learned how to listen, they would have noticed that Celanire's words were empty of meaning or emotion. She paid no attention to what she was saying. She had climbed up to where she stood to be seen by everyone, to thumb her nose at her guests and mock them:

“You came to get a good look? Well, take a good look. Look at me. Take a long, hard look. I'm going to drive you to distraction. I'm going to shake Guadeloupe to the core.”

When she had finished speaking, the guests exchanged scandalized looks. They would remember Governor de Brabant's first reception for a long time to come! Only Thomas clapped in hearty approval. His face, drained by laudanum, beamed in beatitude like a parent attending a school play in which his child has the star role. His Buddha-like countenance, however, hid an agile mind. He considered his wife to be a kind of artist or poet who operated in the realm of fiction. Anything could be true, as anything could be false, in what she said. Above all, he made no attempt to distinguish fact from fiction in what she did. In Bingerville she had amused herself playing topsy-turvy with people out of sheer fun. She had returned to Guadeloupe for far more serious reasons—to find her real parents, to discover those who had abandoned her. Wasn't that only natural? Thomas was prepared to swear that Celanire was the best of wives. She was cheerful, full of good humor. You were never bored in her company. She adored Ludivine. He liked to think that she was fond of him in her own way. Since laudanum had purged him of any carnal desire, the frenzy of their early years had passed, and he was content with their virtually platonic relationship.