MARYSE CONDÉ
Carmélien spat out the last of the fish bones and piled them together with the others on the side of his tin plate. It was his favourite dish: a court bouillon of grey tench seasoned with green mangoes and lime juice. He had truly struck lucky twice by appropriating Bella. By day, he could never get enough of her cooking for she was a cordon bleu! At night, he could never get enough of her in person.
To think there was a time when she wanted nothing to do with him!
Now she was his slave. Her aquamarine eyes had looked him up and down when he first approached her, numb with fear: an obeahman, as black as the soil where he grew his dasheen, uneducated and speaking coarse country Creole, whereas she was the daughter of an elementary schoolteacher, who for years had successfully had her pupils pass the primary school certificate, and owned a shop by the name of the Silver Thimble where they sold thread for needle and crochet work, wool and cloth for embroidery. She was a respectable young lady. Moreover, she was said to be betrothed to Agénor Achillius, the mayor. But Agénor was married with four sons and did not appear ready for a divorce. Who knows what men promise a woman in order to seduce her and get her into bed!
It had been a Thursday, for some reason the wash day at Sangre Grande. As usual the washerwomen converged on the Ravine San-guine, soon to be transformed into a chattering aviary. The rocks, the Guinea grass and the scrub surrounding the trickle of water were covered with gaily coloured clothes laid out to dry. Since she had risen early and had been one of the first to begin her washing, whereas the other women were still preparing the avocado and codfish féwos for lunch, Bella was already carefully folding her washing, warmed by the sun, onto a large tray.
“Can I give you a hand?” he asked, repeating the same words he’d spoken when they first met.
But she didn’t recognize him. “Who do you take me for? Do I know you?”
Then she turned her back on him without further ado. The silly goose had no idea that a few months later she would go down with a fever and pass from this life to the next in five days, leaving her mother inconsolable.
“Ay, ay, ay, good Lord! Poor is me! The fruit has dropped before it’s ripe!”
Carmélien, however, did not give up. He would regularly set down on Bella’s veranda dasheen and eggplant from his garden or a calabash of freshly laid eggs, until one evening she emerged in a fury:
“If I catch you prowling around my house again, I’ll call the police!”
Carmélien went off without saying a word. He knew that one day he would have his revenge, even if he didn’t know how.
It’s not difficult to grab a dead person’s soul. All you need do is trap it when it leaves the body and begins its journey to the other side. Lock it up, for example, in one of those olive oil jars from Aubagne, used sometimes to embellish our Creole gardens, or else in a water barrel.
Afterwards, you can do what you like with it. The most difficult part is getting it to fit back into its former shape.
For Carmélien, who had learned it from his father, this had been child’s play. As soon as his beloved had taken to her bed, he left his commerce of dasheen and, struck with grief, took up residence under
a golden apple tree some distance from Bella’s house. From his hiding place, he could observe the comings and goings of the doctor in his yellow Twingo, the nurse on her bicycle, Agénor Achillius, his eyes swollen with tears, and relatives and friends in mourning. Even Bella’s father, a wealthy mulatto who lived in La Pointe and had never really cared much for his daughter, came to visit her.
When he saw the priest turn up, missal under his arm, Carmélien understood immediately and quickly made arrangements. It was as if his grief made him ten times more alert and energetic. He had had to spend hours at the graveyard digging up Bella. But the night was calm and it rained. Consequently, there were no annoying homeless seeking shelter among the tombs. Carmélien was scared stiff on seeing Agénor Achillius’s car in the parking lot, but apart from that, everything had gone off as planned.
Carmélien kept Bella in his shack’s only room, which was divided in two by a cretonne curtain to hide the bed and the wardrobe. Every morning, before turning the key in the lock and setting off for his patch of ground past the Savane aux Mulets, he had her swallow a concoction of bitter jujube roots, which increases dependence. But there was no need for it. Bella was no longer the old impertinent and turbulent Bella.
She seemed to be scared stiff of her new master and obeyed him without blinking. Illogically, Carmélien would have preferred her to resist and refuse, even shout and swear. Who can understand a man’s heart?
Instead, she would lie down docilely, take off her clothes and let herself be taken whenever he felt the urge. The only thing he didn’t manage to do was get her to keep her eyes open while they made love. She would squeeze her eyelids tight as soon as he came close. What’s more, since she did not utter a sound, he had the feeling he was penetrating a corpse.
Once he had his fill, Carmélien carefully put away the condiments, especially the salt which Bella was not allowed to touch, then washed his plate in the sink. He drew back the dividing curtain to see Bella curled up on the bed in her favourite position and leafing through the daily France-Antilles he had bought for her that same morning.
“See you later!” he groused, and he left without waiting for an answer.
The cabin he had inherited from his father, Nolencia, had been painted blue like every obeahman’s. Previously it had comprised four rooms and had a pleasing appearance, for Nolencia earned a good living. At the time the only hospital was forty miles away in La Pointe.
Consequently, Nolencia had never been at loss for work, acting as healer, curing the sick, the injured and the dying. It was no longer the case today, though, since free dispensaries were mushrooming. Three in Sangre Grande alone. Not forgetting the usual wickedness in the hearts of men only too keen to do harm and take revenge rightly or wrongly. But even here things had changed. There had been an influx of sects and churches. A group of Mormons had even travelled out from Salt Lake City. And the population remained silent, terrified of missing the everlasting life. If that wasn’t enough, some African marabouts with amulets and gris-gris had snapped up the remaining customers. One of them, Ali Samba from Senegal, had made a name for himself. He dealt the womanizers and every conceited male with the xala, a formidable dose of impotence which could only be cured with thousands of euros and constant consultations. He had soon become inseparable from the mayor, who realized all the benefits he could get out of him. Ali Samba did all the mayor’s dirty work. He had struck down the previous town council of Sangre Grande with a xala and consequently they, in a state of utter confusion, had committed one blunder after another and succeeded in electing Agénor.
If it hadn’t been for the patch of ground he had inherited from Victorine, planted mainly with root vegetables, Carmélien would have become one of the savage, stinking homeless who were now the scourge of Sangre Grande. As a result, the house had naturally suffered from this reversal of fortune. The hurricanes, Iris or Hugo, had swept away the corrugated iron roof, flattened the walls and smashed the veranda.
Today all that was left standing was one room fit to live in.
On arrival at the crossroads, Carmélien’s blood froze in his veins.
Agénor Achillius’s car was parked at this spot where it had no business to be, and the mayor, motionless, was reading a newspaper behind the
wheel. But he was obviously pretending. He was lying in wait. But for what? And for whom?
If he had listened to common sense, Carmélien would have run as fast as he could to his vegetable patch. He managed, however, to get control of himself and waddled off at his usual speed on his thick, crooked legs.
Where the asphalt stopped, the road became a white path, deep with ruts, which wound its way between fields of yams with their heads of greenery curling up their supports, of dasheen with leaves as big as elephant ears, of cassava and pot-bellied pumpkins. On the horizon the jagged silhouette of the Soufrière volcano was spitting out its white fumaroles. And way above, covering everything, was the great blue sky flecked with clouds.
But Carmélien’s heart remained oblivious to all this beauty. He sat down on the ground and lit a cigarette. His heart was still pounding.
There was no doubt it was him Agénor was watching. But why was he suspicious? Carmélien was not aware of having committed any fault.
While keeping watch under his golden apple tree, he had detected Bella’s soul, an unmistakable, sparkling firefly, heading for the afterlife.
All he had done was stuff it in his shoulder bag and run home to hide. So as to not arouse any suspicion, he had not gone to the wake ceremony or the funeral. He hadn’t put a foot wrong. And yet Agénor was watching him. Why? Had Bella mentioned him before she died? What could she have said? Had she complained of his advances? Quite innocent, to tell the truth! A few root vegetables and some fresh eggs! But women were good at exaggerating. Who knows how she had depicted him, and whether she had complained of sexual harassment, to use the expres-sion in vogue! His physique did not speak in his favour either. When he was small, they had nicknamed him “misbegotten freak”, and people openly made fun of him. His own father was ashamed of him. Only his mother worshipped him: a good, honest Guadeloupean maman with a heart of gold: chéri doudou or Ti nèg an mwen, she used to call him. She hadn’t died of illness, Victorine. Simply, one night, her old heart had stopped beating and she had left him all alone.
With a sigh, Carmélien picked up his instruments and returned to work. He worked until dusk when he could hardly see, for night falls quickly at this time of year: the season of gales and rain. He set off back home, keeping watch, looking right and left. But this time he saw nothing suspicious.
Bella had cooked dinner: a dish of pork with green plantains whose smell filled the room. But Carmélien didn’t feel like eating. He sat down beside her.
“Talk to me,” he whispered.
She stared at him in a daze.
“What do you want me to say?”
She had lost her pretty voice and spoke now with the nasal tones of the living dead.
“Tell me about yourself,” he persisted. “About your childhood, your school years, your mother and your father.”
She seemed so astonished that, disheartened, he got up and went to eat. He took the salt out of its hiding place and sprinkled it abundantly over his food.
A few days later, his xala broke out.
He had worked all day in his field as usual and had his fill afterwards with a pork Colombo. He had watched an American series on television, which as usual did not interest him: stories about cops and gangsters unlike anything in Guadeloupe. He was now lying on top of Bella, the moment he had dreamed of all day, when he felt his member shrink beneath him, growing smaller and smaller and limp as a turkey’s neck.
She stared at him in amazement. He tried over and over again, but each time the same thing happened. The same the following night and the night after.
After a week had gone by, he had to face facts. There was only one thing to do. What pained him most was Bella’s behaviour: she had learned again to smile, even laugh. She set down the dishes on the table in front of him in a mischievous manner. Did that mean she was jubi-lant because he could no longer make love to her.
One day, with a heavy heart, he set off for the town centre.
Ali Samba lived in Dr Arsène’s old house, an elegant wooden struc-ture whose ground floor previously had housed a geriatrics surgery.
The place was swarming with patients – men, more men, and nothing but men! There were even men waiting outside, crouched on their heels in the middle of the lawn, sheltering as best they could from the rain, for once again that year there had been very little sun.
Shortly before noon, Carmélien’s turn finally came, and he entered the consulting room. Ali Samba sat imposingly behind a huge mahog-any desk. He was a large black man, even blacker than Carmélien, dressed in a loose, flowing boubou. Carmélien sensed by Ali Samba’s look that he was throwing himself into the lion’s jaws, but it was too late to retreat. He began to speak, stumbling over his words.
Ali Samba interrupted him immediately.
“In French! Speak in French!” he shouted impatiently. “I don’t understand Creole.”
Carmélien thus had to attempt to express himself in that singular, complicated language that he had used only during his brief years at elementary school. He managed as best he could. When he had finished twisting his tongue and massacring his verbs, Ali Samba looked at him with amusement.
“Aren’t you Carmélien the obeahman?”
Carmélien mumbled a yes. It was then that Ali Samba burst out laughing.
“You’re not supposed to be in this way! It’s the biter who’s been bit!
The obeahman, obeahed!”
Carmélien was not in the least amused and stood up angry and humiliated.
“Where are you going?” shouted Ali Samba. He turned serious, sol-emn even. “You’ve done a woman a lot of harm. A lot. I know, in our country, we don’t respect women. The more we mistreat them, the more we cheat on them, the more we get them pregnant, the more pleased we are with ourselves.”
“I haven’t done her any harm,” Carmélien protested. “All I have done is love her. Is that a crime?”
Ali Samba did not answer but took out a blue phial from a cabinet and handed it to Carmélien.
“Eight o’clock every evening take a soup spoon full of this. When it’s finished, come back and see me. I’ll perform a small operation, and you’ll be cured.”
Why did Carmélien sense that Ali Samba was making fun of him again? He would never be cured, that’s for sure. Without saying a word, he took the bottle and returned home.
Bella was watching television. He ate his favourite lunch of fried fish, lentils and rice, with no obvious pleasure or appetite. His mother used to cook it for him when he was a boy, but it was evident Bella outdid her.
Once he had finished eating, he set off for his vegetable patch because he couldn’t bear seeing Bella almost happy, almost satisfied despite her subjection. He worked until dusk and returned home just in time to swallow a soup spoon full of potion from the phial Ali Samba had given him. He immediately collapsed; his blood froze in his veins, and his heart stopped beating. His brain, however, remained alert.
Large chapters of his childhood and adolescence ran through his mind. He recalled the first spirits he had created. Animals mainly: dogs and cats. Once he had been bold enough to deal with a calf. The lease of life of an animal is not that different from that of a human being, and you can trap it the same way. He gradually began practising more seriously. For his mother’s sixtieth birthday, he gave her two spirits. He took his revenge on the Desmichel brothers, who had cruelly made fun of him during his elementary school years and never lost an occasion to humiliate him. He had performed quickly and efficiently. Carmélien had been on the lookout for them as they came out of the rum shop where they regularly got drunk. He stabbed them in the back, then grabbed their souls. What a delight to see them transformed, docilely digging the soil or guarding animals like perfect domestics. All night long, Carmélien relived his life. A voice whispered to him that this stroll along memory lane would be his last.
He relived his first encounter with Bella. It had been a beautiful day, the sky a glorious blue. She had stepped out of the bus from La Pointe, a
comely chabine, winsome in her low-cut dress. She had her arms full of boxes of multicoloured thread, which tumbled to the ground.
He ran toward her and offered: “Can I give you a hand?”
This time she let him carry the unruly boxes, and he accompanied her to her shop. As they walked side by side he harboured the illusion that one day they could become friends. Lovers even. But when they arrived at their destination, she dismissed him, ordering him roughly:
“Put them there, thank you.”
In next to no time, he had found himself standing outside like a fool.
His recollections were interrupted now by Bella shaking him vigor-ously, and he opened his eyes.
“It’s eleven o’clock,” she said, suspicious. “Aren’t you going to work this morning?”
He attempted to get up, but his body refused to obey and he fell back onto the pillows.
“Would you like me to make a matété? I still have some crabs left.”
He shook his head.
During the hours that followed, he was wrapped in a fog. He was incapable of making the slightest movement, but he heard everything.
Every sound was magnified and amplified: a beetle that had flown into the room by mistake the evening before banged into the walls seeking a way out; a rat or a mouse scratched furiously in a corner. Then he heard a tinkling of bells. A bunch of keys! In his fuddled mind, he saw Bella, who had grabbed the set of keys he had hidden in a drawer and was running out the door. She was hoping to escape. But there she was mis-taken. Their destinies were linked. If he died, she would die too, for a zombie never outlives the person who has taken possession of her spirit.
Anger flooded his heart. What exactly was his crime? For having set his heart on Bella, who was too beautiful for him? Are love and desire only reserved for those men obsessed with appearances who destroy and cheat on the hearts of women? He, the ugly, black and awkward Carmélien, had been prepared to kiss the dust under Bella’s feet.
And that was the sad sight Ali Samba and Agénor Achillius came upon when they arrived at Carmélien’s that evening: Bella lying dead in
the garden, already emitting a foul smell; Carmélien dead on his bed, his eyes wide open.
Ali Samba lowered his eyelids, made the sign of the cross and exclaimed:
“That man was a monster.”
Translated by Richard Philcox