Agénor was too important a personality in the colony for the governor and his wife not to show their compassion.
So Thomas in full uniform and Celanire in a black taffeta dress showed up at the wake around midnight. Not a single jewel on her. Not even a pair of Creole earrings. As bare as a high altar during Lent. Around her neck a leather choker ornamented with guilloche hid you-know-what. She entered, head lowered under her black mantilla, and religiously knelt down. Yet anyone who had two eyes to see with, like Matthieu, was struck by her elated expression. They guessed that beneath that exterior she must have been in a festive mood. She had just laid her worst enemy to rest. When she looked at the coffin and its dismal contents, a fiery glow burned at the back of her eyes. You sensed she could burst out singing the Ninth Symphony’s “Ode to Joy.” She fought back a smile that was trying to curl up the corner of her lips. When she recited the prayers for the dead with the mourners, her voice rang out triumphant, despite herself. Matthieu was in agony. He realized that however hard he sniffed and snorted, snorted and sniffed, he would never prove Celanire’s identity. The mystery would always remain unresolved. He would never be able to make more than assumptions that everyone would poke fun at. He would never know what drop of sperm had fertilized an egg to produce nine months later a little girl who would bring so many trials and tribulations into this world. He could say and do what he liked; this affair would always make him look a perfect fool.
6
On July 14, 1909, Governor Thomas de Brabant and his wife gave an unforgettable reception, one of the most grandiose they had ever given, to celebrate Bastille Day and commemorate their second year in Guadeloupe. Every guest mustered present for the invitation. Yet it was whispered just about everywhere that the governor was a dead loss. This one had made no major improvements — no roads, no bridges, no public works projects. If it weren’t for his wife, Guadeloupe could forget him, as she had done for so many others. The wife’s accomplishments, however, were unparalleled, to say nothing of her intellectual activities and her constant efforts to convince the Guadeloupeans that they had a duty to defend their culture while opening up to the rest of the world. Not to mention her charitable works — orphanages, dispensaries, old people’s homes, soup kitchens, and shelters for the homeless. Despite this dazzling list of achievements, those who came into contact with her claimed she was surprisingly bitter. Elissa de Kerdoré was the first to be driven to despair. The vivacious, chattering Celanire, who was always prepared to fill your head with ideas and projects, had become taciturn. She had lost interest in everything. Nothing seemed to amuse her — neither writing contests, plays, nor concerts of traditional or classical music. Some weekends Elissa would wait for her in vain on the island of Fajoux. Once she had had to award the Prize for Creole Poetry without her. Even more serious, the sizzling Celanire had become lukewarm in love and reacted so little to any caresses that for a while Elissa wondered whether Amarante had not come back to take her away. On this point her spies had reassured her — Amarante had gone back up to the Wayanas and was composing music. Celanire never stopped sighing that she had got absolutely nowhere in Guadeloupe and had not achieved what she had come to do.
Elissa was not the only one to be worried. Thomas de Brabant was not insensitive to his wife’s change of mood. So he set about arranging a grand tour for her in the New Year. As it also marked the fifth anniversary of their marriage, he was convinced it would do her a world of good. The plan was to travel through the countries of Latin America she had dreamed of visiting — the former empire of the Incas, Bolivia, Ecuador, and above all, Peru. She had become passionately interested in this far-off land while reading Flora Tristan. In her eyes, a few lines in Peregrinations of a Pariah marked the first link between sexism and racism, whereas the whole book was a powerful condemnation of slavery. Thomas had left nothing to chance. They would take the SS Veracruz from La Pointe to Caracas in Venezuela, then continue through the Andes by slowly and regally descending the rivers.
At the end of August, however, Celanire seemed to have regained her enthusiasm for life. She dashed from the governor’s residence to the bishop’s palace, and also paid frequent visits to the Sainte-Hyacinthe hospital, where she was allowed to consult the records. What could she be looking for day after day? One morning, in a frenzy, she begged Elissa to accompany her to Ravine-Vilaine. Ravine-Vilaine was a small village on the northern edge of the island that was fast becoming a place of pilgrimage. It would certainly have sunk into anonymity if it hadn’t produced a saint who was causing a great deal of excitement all over the island. Not only had this Sister Tonine received the marks of stigmata, reliving the crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but even after her death, she suffered little children to come unto her. By that was meant she gave a belly to sterile women who had dragged themselves through life on their knees to have kids. Some even went so far as to request she be canonized at Saint Peter’s in Rome. She would be the first saint from the Caribbean, which, to be honest, was not exactly a region of saints.
Ravine-Vilaine was a very special place. Neither sugarcane nor coffee had ever been grown there. Not a sugar or coffee plantation house had ever been built there. No bell or siren had ever sounded noon for a population of slaves. To survive, the inhabitants felled trees from the forest, sawed them up, and made charcoal, which they sold once a month in the towns along the coast. Elissa expressed surprise. Why were they going to such a hole? Was Celanire, who had so mocked motherhood, now going to pray for a belly? Celanire launched into one of her usual explanations, which explained nothing at all. Elissa knew, like Thomas de Brabant, that Celanire never told the whole truth. She had come to accept her friend as a teller of tales who changed the contents of the story as she fancied, like a novelist writing her autobiography, adding, deleting, lengthening, eliminating such and such a chapter, and clarifying such and such a fact as the mood took her. Africa? Going by what she said, sometimes it was a barbaric land where the women languished from sexual discrimination, sometimes a victimized continent that the European predators had hacked to pieces. Thomas de Brabant? Sometimes she confessed that the orphan she was had married him out of necessity, tired of trudging along life’s miserable path alone. Sometimes she claimed she adored him for his generosity and brilliant mind. He comforted her when her hopes had been dashed, for she had loved two men, two unsavory individuals who had scorned her. The first, whom she had revered as her master and creator, had denied her the affections of a father as well as the attentions of a lover. The second had held her heart and body in contempt.
Elissa, who let Celanire get away with anything, finally agreed to accompany her. They set off then on a long adventure. At Anse Médard they had to leave their carriage and hire the services of two guides in order to cross the pass of the Mulatière by mule, before descending deep into the valley and making their way through thick forest. The difficult journey had little effect on Celanire. On the contrary, she chattered away like a magpie and never stopped repeating that she had finally arrived at the end of the quest she had begun two years earlier. Quest? What quest? Elissa ventured. Celanire reminded her in no uncertain terms that she did not know who her biological parents were and that she was looking for them. Elissa, who had hated her own parents, especially her mother, and could not find peace with herself until she had put them far behind her, was ashamed of herself. Nobody can imagine what it’s like not to know your family tree. Apparently Celanire did not hold Elissa’s lack of understanding against her. She began to enthuse over the surrounding landscape: the intricate tangle of vegetation, the enormity of the trees, the size of the creepers, the vitality of the epiphytes, and the spears of sunlight that, in places, managed to pierce the forest canopy. When they arrived at Ravine-Vilaine, it was dark and raining — not those violent downpours common to the coastal regions, but a fine, misty rain that blurred the contours of the night.