“Dieudonné Pylône was right to be intrigued. He put Mangouste, one of his assistants, on the case; like his nickname, Mangouste was as cunning as a mongoose. He went and prowled around Bélisaire, but turned up nothing. The neighbors had never seen Pisket’s face, since she never went out, never even attended mass. One morning they had seen Le Blanc Galop all shut up. They couldn’t care less what happened to Pisket, Kung Fui, Yang Ting, Tonine, and the two employees. Dieudonné was about to close the case when the manager of the Crédit Colonial sent him a confidential memo stating that Pisket’s money had been deposited by a rich white Creole, a certain Agénor de Fouques-Timbert. What was the relationship between the bòbò and the planter? Dieudonné and Mangouste thought Agénor should be interrogated. But they were apprehensive. At that time the eyes of the whites drilled into ours. They finally picked up enough courage and set off for the plantation. The story of the Agénor de Fouques-Timbert family is part of the history of Guadeloupe. It was an open secret that the Fouques-Timberts had black blood in their veins. For that reason, some of the white Creoles refused to have anything to do with them. Nevertheless, they were perhaps the richest planters on the island. Not only did they escape bankruptcy following the abolition of slavery, but Agénor was clever enough to modernize and expand his sugar factory. He was the first to have replaced the so-called Père Labat system with modern sugar-making technology. Megalomaniac, he planned to invest in a large factory on the windward side of the island, which would rival that of Darboussier. To increase his fortune and his whiteness, he had no scruple marrying Elodie, the only daughter of Emmanuel des Près d’Orville, who was hunchbacked and so ugly that nobody wanted her despite all her papa’s money and estates on northern Grande-Terre. Even so, she gave him seven fine children, all boys. Nothing was lacking, except a position in politics. It nagged him like the urge to piss. One morning he began stomping for votes. With no trouble at all he was elected to the Conseil Général. At the time, you see, it was a lucrative affair. The Conseil Général was in complete control of taxation. It was there to protect the rich. Agénor’s secretary received Dieudonné and Mangouste on the doorstep and told them anything that came into his head. That Agénor was in the habit of making gifts to institutions and the underprivileged at Christmas. That he had Pisket on his list of charities. They didn’t believe a word of it, but they didn’t dare pursue the matter. And yet they sensed they were on to something.”
Hakim cleared his throat.
“And Pisket’s baby, your child, what became of it?”
“There’s nothing to prove it was my child! But I’m not a complete scoundrel. When they reappeared, I asked Kung Fui what had happened to Pisket’s pregnancy, since she was no longer in a position to answer for herself. He replied that she had had a miscarriage, which didn’t surprise me. Opium had become her only food, and her body was unable to nourish a fetus.”
“And what about Ofusan?” Hakim insisted.
“You oblige me to return to the scene of my crime. For pity’s sake, you’re making me live it all over again. Where we come from, our wives are used to being neglected and spending their nights all alone in bed while their husbands are out having a good time with their mistresses. If they have the nerve to complain, they are beaten. Ofusan was not used to that. She did not come from a society like ours, where the male is God incarnated. What’s more, she didn’t have a friend in the world. Nobody could say anything bad about her, that’s a fact. She was beyond reproach. At confession every Friday. On her knees at the altar every Sunday. Plus vespers, rosaries, and the month of the Virgin Mary. Despite all that, she was only barely tolerated at Grande-Anse. They never forgot her family were Wayanas, maroons, black as sin, who on weekdays sat in the market.
“One morning in early September, the seventh, the feast day of Sainte Reine — I can remember it as if it were yesterday — shortly after Pisket’s death my friend Dieudonné Pylône rushed into my surgery in a frenzy. He was carrying a kind of package in his arms. He unwrapped the bloodstained cloth and revealed a baby. A baby girl, a few hours old or a day at the most. A plump little body, her tiny almond slit between her thighs, her umbilical cord neatly cut under a scab of blood. But horrors, I’m not kidding, her head was hanging on by a thread. A blunt instrument — a machete, a cutlass, a butcher’s knife, or garden secateurs — had virtually sectioned it from her body. The baby had completely drained itself of blood through this hideous wound. Clinically she was dead. Her heart had stopped beating. Her encephalon showed no signs of life. Anyone else would have called a priest. But I saw the opportunity I had been waiting for. Defy nature and coax back life like a docile bitch into the body she had deserted. While I was frantically preparing my instruments, Dieudonné told me the story. He had been chasing a common thief in the infamous neighborhood of Bas-de-la-Source when he stumbled upon this mutilated baby at the Calvaire crossroads, lying amid rusty nails, pieces of iron, shards of mirror, and red rags. Visibly there had been a sacrifice. He had gathered up the little victim and dashed to find me.
“To give you a better idea, remember what happened forty years after the abolition of slavery. Society was still reeling, and you were witness to all sorts of horrors. Virtually nobody had profited from emancipation. It had ruined most of the white Creoles. As for the former slaves, none of the promises made them had been kept. No schooling, no work, just poverty. The indentured Indian workers who had replaced them were a dead loss. As for the Chinese, they were worse. They systematically bled the island dry with their robberies, their rapes, and their banditry. They had raided a munitions depot at Fort Saint-Charles and, armed and masked, would hold up and rob carriages, attack the great houses and homes of the rich. There was a thriving traffic in newborns. The black and mulatto women were fed up with letting their men have a belly for free. Those babies that were not left in orphanages were sold. Or else they were kidnapped, and for a small fortune the evildoers would perform human sacrifices for those who wanted to succeed in business or politics. Sheep, fowl, and black bulls from Puerto Rico were no longer enough. It had to be babies. Babies, and nothing but babies, and more babies. For instance, everyone knew where Madeska, the mischief maker who made the fortune of the most powerful politicians, got his money from. Oh, it was a dreadful time. You were ashamed to be a Guadeloupean.
“My eyes had never seen anything so hideous as this baby with her throat slashed. I set to work. The operation lasted seven hours. I had to reconnect the severed arteries, veins, nerves, and tendons. For that I used the sharpest needle and the softest catgut. Then I sutured the flesh. I grafted a strip of skin taken from her thigh onto the jagged suture that twisted around her neck. I was sweating profusely. My heart was thumping, but my hands were steady. I needed blood to irrigate my work. I transfused the blood from two chickens that I sent Ofusan to fetch as fast as she could. The whole time I felt that here I was at last emulating my hero Victor Frankenstein, and it spurred me on. I too was equal to the Creator, and when the child began to sneeze and cry I was overcome with pride. What I didn’t predict was that Ofusan, to whom I confided the baby for motherly care, became obsessed with her. In her solitude she looked upon the child as a gift from the Good Lord to console her for her barren womb. She begged me to adopt her. How could I refuse her? So we adopted her. Registered her officially as our daughter on September 24, the feast day of Saint Thècle, under the name of Celanire Jeanne Pinceau.”