A long pause.
“Let’s get together soon and talk about it. .”
“My dear, you’re leaving me on tenterhooks. .”
“I’ll call you when we have more time to. .”
“How about tomorrow, at the Bellevue. . Harry has a tennis match. . We can have lunch together.”
“Great.”
“I can’t wait to hear all about it, Françoise. Really.”
THAT CONVERSATION took place exactly one week ago. Today, Christina feels a fever coming on, and she’s mentally preparing herself for a restful evening with a good rum punch and a good read, followed by a good sleep. At the last minute she decides not to go to her own bedroom, but goes instead into the guest room. It’s a pretty room, much smaller than the master bedroom, but well appointed and extremely comfortable. Christina likes taking refuge in this room because it reminds her of her university days, when she lived in a rooming house not far from Columbia U. She felt torn, at the time, between solitude and freedom. Or rather, she felt more at loose ends than free. She spent her time reading Virginia Woolf (even though she did her dissertation on Colette) hoping someone would come and knock on her door. Now she reads nothing but mystery novels or the latest Philip Roth (luckily he publishes about a book a year) to try to pamper the migraine that never gives her a minute’s rest. In any case, this room makes her feel like the free, young, solitary woman she was in the early 1960s. The guest room opens onto the verandah, where Absalom sleeps when Harry isn’t in the house. Absalom is the young man recommended to them by the Widmaiers. A total pearl, according to Jacqueline Widmaier. Polite, a good worker and above all intelligent. Sometimes Christina thinks about bringing him to New York when Harry’s posting is finished. He already speaks a bit of rudimentary English and understands everything anyone says to him. Harry is very fond of him because of his quick wit. The speed at which he grasps the most complex situations never ceases to amaze them. Absalom is already getting himself ready for bed. He has a room at the far end of the courtyard where he keeps his things, but Harry has asked him to sleep on the verandah when he has to come home late after a party, or after spending a torrid night with one of his Annaïses. That way Absalom can respond quickly to the slightest alarm. There are assassins and thieves everywhere these days. Christina smiles at the thought that no one knows she is here, because she decided only at the last minute not to go to the party. She hears June going down the stairs to get herself a glass of milk in the kitchen. She hears her daughter’s footsteps going back up the well-waxed stairs. Odd, she thinks, smiling, how clearly one can hear everything that goes on in the house from this little room. She’d never noticed it before. It’s like an acoustic trap. Through the half-opened window she can follow Absalom’s slightest movement on the verandah. In her room, June is listening to the Billie Holiday album they gave her for her seventeenth birthday. What a smart girl she is! she thinks, if a bit inscrutable at times. An Oriental calm. A steady flame in the eye of the storm. Christina pictures her daughter sitting in her room listening to the record and trying to decode the dazzling poetry in Billie Holiday’s songs of despair and longing. Absalom is also listening to music on a tiny radio he keeps beside his head. Haitian music. Very sensual, joyous, lively. Music made to dance to. Haitian music and painting took Christina’s breath away when she first came to Port-au-Prince. So different from the miserable lives the people here live. They may be starving, but they go on creating this joyous music, these fantastically colourful paintings, so filled with life. We Americans, on the other hand, who have everything, spend all our time moaning and groaning. Pessimism. The Haitian is the absolute opposite, she thinks, of the New York Jew. The Jew according to Woody Allen and Philip Roth. Modern America is like a fast-food restaurant serving up despair. Man cannot live on hamburgers alone, says the Bible. One (Woody Allen) brings out a film a year. The other (Philip Roth), a book. Our annual ration of angst. American angst. The starving poor. The despairing rich. But here we’re a long way from Manhattan. Despite its terrible misery, Christina recalls (with a rueful smile) how much she missed Manhattan when she first came to Haiti. Manhattan snobbery runs in her veins. The radical chic of the sixties, that was her era. The bright lights, the drive-by murders, the Yellow Cabs, the wet sidewalks, Cuban coffee, the happy hookers. Life in the fast lane, what could she say! At first she missed it all. Not so much, now. She remembers with an enigmatic smile that she could do up there in one day what it takes her six months to accomplish here.
“Where does the time go?” she asks herself, without trying to find an answer.
SHE WAS SO caught up in these thoughts that she hadn’t noticed a curious exchange taking place out on the verandah.
She listens.
“No, Miss June, I don’t want to lose my work. We can’t do this. . If Madame finds out, she’ll send me packing. .”
“There’s no one here,” June says dryly.
Christina is already bathed in sweat. June, her daughter, is forcing herself on a man. On their servant. Christina crawls across the floor to the window. Slowly, without making a sound, she raises her body. Cocks her head. Finally, she sees Absalom. He is lying on his back, and June is sitting astride him. A slight wind stirs the leaves of the magnificent tree that completely hides the verandah from the view of the neighbours.
Calmly, June removes her blouse. Absalom keeps his eyes tightly shut. June’s firm breasts. Their rosy tips: erect and stiff. Christina feels her skin prickling. With a shiver she thinks: “My daughter is in heat.” And she watches, fascinated. The whole game in slow motion. Time slackened. The terrific concentration in her face. June, her June, is coolly pulling Absalom’s trousers down to his knees. Now there she is avidly seizing his white-hot penis and sliding it peremptorily under her skirt. At the moment of contact she briefly closes her eyes. Her red tongue comes out to moisten her lips. And she settles herself astride Absalom, hard, without a sound. Time suspended. Her nostrils flare and contract, flare and contract, quicker and quicker. Time halted. And then the orgasm. Brutal. Christina watches her daughter’s pleasure, hears her squealing like a mouse caught in a trap. It seems to go on interminably. And at the precise moment when it appears to be over, it takes on new life. She comes again. An invisible bird calls from the leaves of the mango tree. June is riding Absalom like a stallion, galloping him. She comes again, her mouth open this time. She howls. A sound that could be either pleasure or pain. And again it starts. Desire seems to have given her fresh energy. An animal trying to bite her own tail. Desire at fever pitch. A strident cry, as though she wants it to end but can’t bring herself to stop. She is galloping, faster and faster. Higher and higher. For a fraction of a second Christina sees her pubic mound. Beads of sweat on her worried brow. Her serious little girl. Her lips parted as though she is making a tender and prolonged recitation. As though she is praying. Christina is crying softly. This life (Absalom’s penis) thrust into her daughter’s belly. A few jerking movements. She rears. Her breasts point to heaven. Mouth twisted. Long groans. She wants to shed her skin. The pain. More spasms. And everything stops. Her body lying stretched out on Absalom’s. Resting. An occasional shudder. Like a fish out of water. And then, with a sound like that of a marine mammal, her body begins to move again. Gently. This intolerable gentleness. Suddenly her eyes open wide, like those of someone waking up from a terrible nightmare. More sharp groans. And then she is screaming. Her body stiffens into a perfect arc. The veins stand out on her neck. “She’s going to hurt herself,” Christina suddenly thinks. But on her face there appears a pleasure so intense, so violent, so naked, that Christina lowers her eyes. A private moment. “I’ve never known anything like that,” she says to herself, sliding to the floor. She lies there crying for so long she eventually falls asleep, curled up in the fetal position.