To supervise the building site, Celanire and Elissa left Basse-Terre and moved in with the widow Poirier, whom we have already met. Strange how the presence of Celanire wherever she went caused a commotion. It was as if she were back in Bingerville with Tanella and the widow Desrussie, where she was the only topic of conversation. The inhabitants of Ravine-Vilaine, at first well disposed toward her — Wasn’t she a firm believer in Sister Tonine’s sainthood? Wasn’t she turning their village into one of the jewels of Guadeloupe? — soon turned against her. A girl who cleaned for the widow Poirier declared that the three women were as intimate as husband and wife. Three Zanmis! Something unheard of in these parts! They spent their nights and siestas under the same mosquito net. They bathed together in the same tub, scouring each other’s backs with kisses. All day long it was a litany of sweet talk and brazen lovemaking.
Then something else cropped up! A hunter who had gone into the woods to catch thrushes and ortolans claimed that just before dawn he had come across Celanire apparently waiting, sitting under a wild cherry tree, her lips smeared with blood. At first he hadn’t recognized her and just stood there looking at her. Then it was only his presence of mind that saved him. With Celanire in hot pursuit, he had climbed to the top of an ebony tree. Apparently, she didn’t know how to climb trees and had paced up and down below in her rage. This little game lasted until the sun came up, when she scampered off back to Ravine-Vilaine.
Up against such gossip, the good that Celanire was doing went unnoticed. Yet she opened a kind of dispensary where, assisted by Elissa and the widow Poirier buttoned up in white-and-green-striped overalls (let us not forget Celanire likes uniforms!), she distributed basic medication free of charge such as asafetida, tincture of arnica, and paregoric elixir, and recommended infusions and poultices made from local plants. She also began evening classes for the women. She taught these women, whom society had forgotten, how to read, write, and count, and generally educated them, hammering into their heads her favorite slogan: “There’s more to life than serving a man like a slave.” She also taught them to sing Vivaldi a cappella.
In next to no time the cathedral in Ravine-Vilaine was completed. One had to admit it was an edifice fit to rival the most grandiose buildings on the island, and even in Martinique. In an exceptional gesture, Bishop Chabot, in all his pomp, left Basse-Terre on Advent Sunday, followed by a considerable crowd, to say mass there. He also chose this particular day to proclaim loud and clear the name of the new building: the cathedral of Sainte-Antonine, which popular belief soon transformed into Saint-Sister-Tonine. While Celanire sobbed in the front pew, her head on Elissa’s shoulder, her hand in widow Poirier’s, the bishop climbed up into the pulpit and delivered a poignant homily on the subject — death is a snare that only afflicts the unbeliever. The Providence and Goodness of the Lord are boundless. Likewise God gave His only Son to save the world, so He took Sister Tonine, but gave her daughter to save the wretched of Guadeloupe.
He didn’t say any more. And left everyone guessing what he meant!
In early February Celanire, Thomas, and Ludivine embarked on the SS Veracruz for their journey through the empire of the Incas. Elissa insisted on coming with them. She too had read the Peregrinations of a Pariah and greatly admired Flora Tristan. Moreover, she could speak Spanish. But Celanire absolutely refused. On the day of departure, under a floppy, wide-brimmed hat she wore a cream-colored wild silk ensemble and a burgundy fichu on which lay a heavy gold chain necklace weighing at least five hundred grams.
Ludivine, at the difficult age of fifteen, had momentarily lost her beauty. Only a pair of dark, velvety eyes remained that never took their gaze off her stepmother. Her hatred toward her had never relented. She told herself it might take her years, but she didn’t care, one day she would uncover the truth.
When the ship’s siren announced that visitors should disembark, Celanire and Elissa embraced, clearly demonstrating their passion for each other. Thomas looked at them tenderly and benevolently, like a father looking at his daughters, priding himself on their beauty. And it’s true they were beautiful, forming a perfect contrast, one black-black, the other almost white, one tall and the other short, both of them lithe and slender.
Ludivine, who considered Thomas to be a spineless individual, despised him for being so accommodating.
Peru: 1910
1
Sometimes Yang Ting thought of Guadeloupe as a woman he had loved but had given him nothing in return. He compared her to Paruera, the place where he lived, to Arequipa, the nearby town, and thought her fairer than anything around him. Neither the deep valley of the river Chili, nor the sparkling cone of the Misti volcano, nor the surrounding rim of snow-capped mountains, in his eyes could match the sweltering heat of Grande-Terre, the sugarcane plantations, the raging rivers, the banana groves, and the life-giving rain hammering on the zinc roofs at night. Ah! If only it were more tolerant, more open to others, that island would be a Garden of Eden! On the days he went into town, he didn’t look twice at the seventeenth-century cathedral, the University of San Augustin, the Monastery of Santa Catalina, and all the Inca ruins that were the pride of Arequipa. The entire journey, in fact, had been based on a misunderstanding. After the death of Pisket, Kung Fui had remained stricken by grief. He had adored his twin sister, and she felt exactly the same way about him. Now that she was gone, life had lost its meaning, and nothing mattered anymore. Ever since the aborted sacrifice, Yang Ting had only one thing in mind — put as many miles as possible between himself and Grande-Anse. Nothing now was to prevent the crafty little devils in the police, headed by Dieudonné Pylône, from snooping around the Blanc Galop and discovering the contract entered into with Madeska. While Pisket was alive, any escape had been impossible. She had been in no condition to leave Grande-Anse to begin a new life elsewhere! Once she was dead and buried, everything had changed. Taking advantage of Kung Fui’s pitiful state, he had decided to take control. He had been beguiled by a certain Aloysius, a braggart of a Frenchman, who worked out of La Pointe and offered contracts for Panama or land in Peru in the Colca Valley. Aloysius strongly advised him to go to Peru because of its large Chinese population. And, moreover, according to him, the Colca Valley was an extraordinary place. Cotton grew like a weed and you only had to bend over, pick it, and bag it to become rich.
But all that had been a scam. Nobody grew cotton any longer in this region of Peru. Finally liberated from slavery, the blacks had deserted the fields as they had everywhere else and were determined to have a good time in town. At Paruera, nature had reclaimed its empire, and all that the two companions had acquired with their inheritance was a hacienda in ruins under a roof of missing Spanish tiles standing desolate on barren terrain, spiked here and there with silk cotton and rubber trees. Furthermore, the nearest Chinese lived at least four hundred miles away. Kung Fui had very quickly sunk deeper into despair. At first, when he was not weeping for his beloved Pisket, he managed to put all his energy into clumsily wielding a pair of pruning shears and a machete alongside Yang Ting. After a few months, however, he no longer ventured out of doors. Soon he no longer left his room, no longer got out of bed, and remained addicted to his opium pipe. Left to his own devices, Yang Ting remembered the region of Port Louis where he had grown up. Refusing to give in, he set out to grow sugarcane instead of cotton. But he never managed to achieve his aim. On the haciendas of Peru, as on the plantations of Guadeloupe, the Chinese were feared and hated. The Indians didn’t want him as boss. They wanted a white boss, a white with sangre azul who spoke Spanish. He was nothing on this earth. With the help of some day laborers hired for the job, Yang Ting was reduced to growing cassava, corn, a little rice from the Andes, and raising sheep and fowl that he sold in the market at Arequipa, squatting among the Indians, looking like one of them under his dirty poncho. On weekdays Artemisa, the mulatto woman, cooked for him, patched up his clothes, and occasionally warmed his bed. As long as he had been in good health, life had been bearable. But age plus the icy winds blowing down from the mountains began to wreak havoc and misery on his body. Finally he sold the hacienda for next to nothing. Then he piled all his belongings as well as what remained of Kung Fui into a cart and left for Lima.