The Restless. Gerty Dambury

them yet again for a fat apricot with a double pit. I couldn’t see myself with someone like that for a whole lifetime. He would’ve eaten the stars out of my eyes! So I said no—no wedding, and enough of working for them! Enough of being a maid for those folks! I left for La Pointe; I left Basse-Terre. Yeah, I’d been living with that family in Basse-Terre.

      That was what it was like in those days, and sometimes even worse. I was lucky. They were good but too good, a kind of goodness that weighs on you. You have to understand what it was. A kind of fake goodness, nicey-nice, where you always end up feeling guilty. You can’t live your own life with people like that. You’re always running, chasing after a sense of equality.

      6.

      We’re happy with our books, but it’s still a really strange day. Our teacher leaves the room; she abandons us after handing out our prizes. “Read silently; don’t make any noise. I’ll be back.”

      We behave ourselves. Nobody pinches anyone; nobody tries to grab someone else’s book. Absolute calm, as she likes to say. We even smile, to reassure her.

      “Of course, teacher, you can count on us.”

      “Have we ever not done what you told us?”

      “We’ll be good.”

      “I’ll make sure things stay quiet in this classroom!”

      But all this is making us sick to our stomachs. Nothing’s what it’s supposed to be on Wednesday, May 24.

      The truth is, when she leaves, we all start to whisper:

      “A week ahead of time.”

      “What are these prizes all about?”

      “Maybe she’s sick?”

      “Maybe she’s going to die.”

      “Stop saying stupid things.”

      “Doesn’t she seem a little uptight today?”

      “No hugs.”

      “And she got really upset.”

      “Like at the beginning of the month.”

      Tanya, yes, it’s Tanya who murmurs something: “I’m afraid.”

      Elizabeth yells, “It’s your fault, Moësa and Lycaon.”

      “What did we do?”

      “You had a fight in the courtyard.”

      “That’s history!”

      Papa, we call each other by our last names because we’re mad. Everybody’s mad. But why?

      Moësa and Lycaon protest, “It’s always our fault.”

      I don’t want us to quarrel. “Say you’re sorry, Elizabeth. You hurt their feelings.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “Now let’s just shut up and wait.”

      When our teacher returns, she has a tray in her hands and a basket full of bottles and aluminum tumblers in every color you can think of hanging from one arm.

      “Our concierge, Madame Parize, made a cake for us. For a little celebration, our last celebration together.”

      “Teacher, teacher, what are you saying?”

      “Stay calm, children. Calm down. I have to tell you something. The man who came this morning—”

      “That white guy!”

      “That’s not polite, Émilienne, don’t say ‘that white guy.’ It’s not because he’s white. He thinks that—”

      Elizabeth repeats, “That white guy.”

      Madame Ladal sighs and then says, “Children, I must leave you. I’m not sure when. But by the end of this month, for certain, I won’t be here with you any longer. That’s why I gave you your report cards and your books. They belong to you now, but I hope you’ll continue exchanging them among yourselves. Don’t ever lose your love for books.”

      7.

      Since I’ve been dead, I’ve noticed that on the way home from school little girls linger all by themselves on La Place de la Victoire, and nobody pays any attention to it. I notice, too, that their sadness, the tears running down their cheeks, doesn’t bother anyone, not even their mothers, who, after the first incident, tell themselves it’s just because fathers spoil their daughters.

      These days, the trees on La Place—the ones used to watching children play after they leave school, the ones who know their secrets—those very same trees, the sandbox trees on La Place de la Victoire whose carpels sound like the beautiful crowing of a rooster, lean towards one another and intertwine their leaves. Cock-a-doodle-do! I can feel that those trees—having borne the weight of hanged bodies for days on end—are anxious. They’re whispering that there’s a lot more than childish fancy to this story of the vanished schoolteacher; somebody should help investigate, help the little girl sitting alone in the dark who’s waiting for answers to all her questions.

      And I, too, ask if it’s possible in such a small country for someone to disappear just like that—not even one of those people that everybody hates (and by God who cares if they leave in chunks, devoured by dogs or carried off by the sea and reduced to a kind of sticky green algae that fish like to eat).

      No, we’re talking about a person some thirty-two children love. How is it possible not to care about that?

      Things really have changed these last two years, because in the old days, at the least sign—a door that’s still closed in the morning, an outside light that stayed on all night over an open door, the sound of coughing coming from a rear courtyard—we’d all run over to ask, “Hey, neighbor, what’s going on?” or “It looks like you’ve kept watch all night,” or “Marguerite, are you sleeping or what? Why haven’t you opened your door this morning?”

      Together we have to find out the reason behind the teacher’s disappearance!

      That child, poor little devil, thinks her father can explain the whys and wherefores of the matter. She’s planning to talk to a man who might not even give her the time of day, a show-off whose story she doesn’t even know, the story of a voyage that made him what he is today: somebody thirsty for social recognition, or rather, somebody who submits to the desires of the powerful. A man who always dreamed of being treated like a prince, and besides, wasn’t that exactly how it was with all his sisters scurrying around?

      A prince! Princes don’t really bother with lowly subordinates. Does the child understand that? A prince come to town to lose himself there after having left the bush behind, who sees himself as a maharaja emerging from the forest on an elephant’s back. That’s at least how his daughter imagines it! That child reads too many books. Elephants, princes and princesses, servants and slaves, everything gets all mixed up—books and reality.

      We need to get back to common sense: the child’s father may have used his own two feet to get to town, even if such a journey seems impossible, forty or sixty kilometers, maybe even more. But whatever the distance, it’s a lot to cover on foot if, in addition, you’re bringing with you a bunch of things that’ve been poorly wrapped—just newspaper and string. And nostalgia weighs a lot as well, and only gets heavier the closer you get to town, as home gets farther away, as the noonday sun makes even the trees and the shadows of their branches disappear. Sure, you did right by leaving at the crack of dawn, but the sun always catches up with you on the way. It’s honestly pretty cruel.