The Boiling Season (36 page)

Back at the courtyard, the crowds had already dispersed. Alone in front of the door, a fat, shirtless man wobbled out of his wicker chair. When he stood, he was even taller than René-Thérèse. There was no mystery about his function. Without needing to be asked, I turned toward the wall and raised my arms.

“Is this really necessary?” I asked.

“After what happened to Dragon Guy,” René-Thérèse said blandly, “we can take no chances.”

Having found nothing of interest in my possession, the thug stepped aside.

René-Thérèse pressed her fingers into the small of my back. “Go ahead.”

Like a cat in repose, Hector lay sprawled on Madame's chaise longue, the ceiling fan spinning effortlessly above him. I felt as if I were watching some crude parody of ancient Rome—an absurd emperor lost in self-reverence. Yet it was just as he said: there was no trace of sentiment. No sign of Dragon Guy. Even his brother's unworn shirt was gone from the wardrobe. There was nothing about Hector that did not belong here, and yet it appeared he had changed neither himself nor the room. All of Madame's belongings remained. It was as if the people in her photographs had become Hector's friends, Hector's family. There had never been a Dragon Guy. Still in its spot on the wall across from the sofa, Mme Louvois's painting somehow appeared more brightly lit than ever before. Had the evening sun that had been fixed above the bay for nearly two hundred years circled round to midday? What would Mme Louvois have thought of all of this? I imagined she might have been pleased—in a wicked sort of way—to see that her husband, having lost his island, was now losing his home as well. But what about the general's servants—his wife's models? Would they have welcomed Hector as their king?

“How did you get it to work?” I asked.

As if half asleep, Hector slowly turned his head and glanced up at the ceiling. Such problems as a lack of electricity could not be made to concern him. “You can't expect us to tell you all our secrets.”

For the first time I noticed we were not alone in the room. In addition to René-Thérèse there was an older man sitting at the table. He had eyes like melting ice cubes, cold and remarkably clear, with a faint halo of light, piercing blue. Around his neck he wore a string of white seashells. I had never seen him before, but I had the distinct impression that he knew me.

There was one other person, too. At Madame's desk a young woman was hunched over a tablet of paper. The scratch of her pencil was almost as steady as the fan.

“Good afternoon, Mlle Trouvé,” I said.

Her pencil came to a sudden stop. “Shall we continue, sir?” she said, turning to Hector. “We were almost done.”

Hector rolled back onto his side, head propped up on his folded arm. “Where did we leave off?”

Mlle Trouvé lifted the page. “ ‘I'm giving you one last chance to retreat.' ” Her voice was tired and flat.

Hector closed his eyes. I thought I saw his lips move, silently repeating the words.

René-Thérèse sat down on the sofa, leaning back and folding her long, thin legs beneath her, like a deckhand stowing unneeded sails. From a basket on the end table she selected a mango. As I watched her work at the peel, I realized she looked less like a widow than like a bored, idle girl.

“Just leave it there,” Hector said, nodding decisively. “There's nothing more to say.”

With Hector's eyes still cast upon the ceiling and René-Thérèse's on the fruit, Mlle Trouvé looked to the man in the shell necklace, who in turn nodded his assent. Only then did Mlle Trouvé put down her pencil, making it clear whose opinion it was that mattered.

With a long, creaking stretch, Hector rose from the chaise longue. René-Thérèse had worked the skin from the fruit and Hector sauntered over to her, snapping open the blade of a knife he had hidden who knew where. The mango lay cupped in her open palms, and Hector lifted it with a stab, raising the slippery fruit to his lips.

And then he turned to me with a smile. “It's good to see you again, monsieur.”

At the desk, Mlle Trouvé was collecting her things. I scanned her face for traces of the shame she must have felt at being used like this. Even I was surprised they could be so crass, exploiting the most moral and intelligent person they could find. Then again, given their success with Hector, why should they stop there?

The young woman's expression was perfectly blank, as if her greatest wish were to pretend none of this were happening. I could not blame her.

“Is this some sort of joke?” I said, shifting my gaze back to Hector. “Your brother is dead, and this is how you behave?”

Hector blinked for a moment in silence, as if struggling to get his eyes to focus. “This is no time for sentiment—”

“I heard that already,” I said, gesturing toward the stage. “But you seem to have plenty of time for acting like a buffoon.”

Mlle Trouvé started toward the door, and for a moment I considered following her.

Instead I took the rest of them in, one at a time. “Pardon my saying so, but you are fools. All of you.”

René-Thérèse and the man in the shell necklace received the news with curious indifference. All they seemed to care about was Hector's reaction. As if the boy and I were opponents on opposite ends of a tennis court, they turned to look at him. The ball was his now. They wanted to see what he would do with it.

There was no wicked return. No dramatic backhand. It was as if the ball had struck him square in the chest. Watching Hector's face fall, I realized it was more true than ever that I was the only one who truly cared for him. Army or not, I was all he had left.

“Do you not understand what will happen?” I said. “President Duphay knows you're here. They will come. You have children here. And women.”

A sneer slid across his face. “You're just afraid of what they'll do to your precious estate.”

In fact, it was only then that I realized I had not been thinking of the estate at all; I had been thinking of Hector.

I came forward and grasped his arm. “Please,” I said. “Don't do this.”

Hector lowered his eyes upon my hands as if they belonged to a leper. “What do we have to lose?”

“Everything,” I said. “We will lose everything.”

* * *

Below my balcony Hector's army assembled at dusk, and I do not know how so many men managed to make so little noise. It was as if they were gathered for prayer, rather than battle. And indeed, standing at the front of his nearly three hundred troops, Hector bowed his head. His men did the same.

And then Hector lifted his eyes, and he touched his hand to his heart. “Tonight,” he shouted, and his voice seemed to catch. “Tonight,” he tried again, “we will turn the moonlight red.”

Tonight they did not march up the drive. Instead they rushed past Hector like a waterfall over a precipice, screaming for blood.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I
n the morning, on the grass around the guesthouse, too numerous to count, lay the bodies of the injured and the dying and the dead, with nurses scurrying from one to the next in a futile effort to tell them apart. The men who were still among the living clung to their comrades' sides, offering encouragement and bonhomie. It was strange how even the faces of the grievously wounded cast a determined peacefulness, as if desperate to prove how pleased they were with how things had turned out. Despite the carnage, the mood was almost gleeful. It was just as Hector had said: for these men, bloodshed had become an end in itself. They were content to keep on fighting until everyone and everything was dead.

A
young woman with dreadlocks and a baby on her hip told me where to go, pointing down the path. Second on the right.

The sun had only just risen and the courtyard was empty, but I could hear voices coming from inside one of the villas. A man came out and emptied a tin cup into the dust, scratched his crotch, and then went back inside.

The villa I was looking for was the farthest from the path. The room was badly lit and became more so as my body blocked out the scant bit of rusty light that had been sneaking in the partially open door. Raoul lay on his back in bed, his unbuttoned shirt twisted and bunched around his waist and arms.

I knocked, and his eyes fluttered open. He struggled to rise up on his elbows.

“Who's there?” he said hoarsely.

“It's me.”

He pivoted slowly, laboriously swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “What time is it?”

“Early.”

“Is there water?”

On the desk stood a crystal vase smudged with dust and fingerprints. I poured the last of the water into a cup.

Hunched forward over his knees, Raoul gripped the side of the bed with both hands. He let go with one to take the cup. He drank slowly, but still some of the water dribbled from his mouth.

I placed the cup back on the desk, and when I turned around again I saw him struggling to get up.

“Take my hand.”

His body felt as slight as a blanket. As I helped him up and guided him, arm in arm, toward the door, I marveled at the ease with which we were able to slip into this intimacy, as we never had before. With everything else that had changed, perhaps it was only natural that this would too.

Once outside, he paused to catch his breath, leaning against the patio wall with his eyes closed.

“This sort of thing is meant for younger men.”

For a moment I did not know what to say. I was quite certain those were the first words he had ever volunteered in my presence.

“That's true for both us,” I said.

His expression was dubious. “You? You're still a young man.”

“I wish I felt that way.”

“Look at me.” He scratched his white-whiskered chin with his sleeve. “This is what an old man looks like. Do you feel like this?”

If I told him sometimes I did, I knew he would not believe me, and I was not about to put so unprecedented a conversation as this at risk.

He pointed toward the corner of the patio, where two bedraggled chairs squatted side by side in the shade.

“They've been working you too hard,” I offered as I helped him over, curious to see if he would continue.

Settling into the chair, Raoul chased away a yawn.

“Do you know,” he said sleepily, “I'd never been in one of these before. The whole time I was working here, I never went inside. A glance through the doorway once or twice. That was all.”

“You could have,” I said. “I wouldn't have stopped you.” Perhaps a lot would have been different, I wanted to add, if you had ever bothered to speak.

“Do you ever think about what it would have been like to be one of those people? Lying about all day like a lizard. Nothing to worry about but that your skin didn't burn.”

“I know what it was like,” I said. “I was there.”

He rolled his head toward me, squinting in my face. “I mean what it was like to
be
one of them, not just to
see
them.”

“It was paradise.”

“Was it?” He seemed not at all convinced. What did he know of paradise?

“You'll never understand what a paradise it was.”

He leaned back and closed his eyes, as if he were trying to conjure it up in a dream. I was almost sorry to have to interrupt.

“Raoul,” I said, “I need your help.”

He opened one eye cautiously.

“Talk to Hector,” I said. “He refuses to listen to me.”

“What am I supposed to talk to him about?”

“He's making a terrible mistake,” I said. “He's going to get hurt. He's going to get all these people killed.”

Raoul shared a bemused smile. “What did you expect him to do?”

“I expected him to come to his senses.”

Raoul sighed.

“He's just a boy,” I said. “He has so much potential.”

“For what?” Raoul scratched his head. “Did you think he would be just like you?”

Why not? Given the alternatives, would that be so wrong?

“This fantasy you and everyone else here is living,” I said, “it's not real. There isn't going to be a happy ending.”

Raoul looked at me as if that were the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. “It's no less real than what you were living before.”

“Not to me,” I said.

He shrugged, acknowledging the impasse. “I bet if you ask any of them, they'll tell you they like it better this way.”

“How would they know what it was like before?”

He regarded me with a strange, almost amused curiosity. “Do you really not know?”

“Know what?”

“They said you didn't, but I couldn't believe it.” He could see all over my face that I had no idea what he was talking about. “Look around you,” he said. “How could you not recognize them?”

“Recognize who?”

Raoul placed his hand on my knee. With the other he pointed to a man across the courtyard. I could not tell if it was the same one I had passed on my way in.

“He worked in the kitchen,” Raoul said.

“Where?”

“Where do you think? The hotel.”

I tried to make out his face, but there was no way to be sure. “He's too far away.”

“I could call him over,” Raoul said, raising his hand to wave.

“No.”

“Over there,” he said, pointing to another villa, “live two of your houseboys.”

“I don't believe it.”

“A couple of days ago at lunch I saw you sitting with one of your old drivers. Half the women around here were maids.”

“That's impossible,” I said. “I knew the drivers. I knew every single one of them. I may not have known all the others, but I couldn't be expected to know them all.”

Raoul shrugged.

“How would you know, anyway? You weren't here then. You never knew any of them.”

“Everyone knows.”

“I can't be expected to remember them all.”

“They remember you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I said, noting the unmistakable relish with which he related this.

“Like you said,” he replied with a shrug, “I wasn't there.”

I got up and walked over to the patio wall. From there I had a better view of the man who had supposedly worked in the kitchen. Even as I began to process what Raoul was telling me, I could not begin to shape it into any sense. If it was true, what did it mean? Whatever it was, something had clearly shifted beneath me, just as Raoul had known it would.

“They're lying,” I said, knowing they had tried to make me out to be some kind of monster. “Whatever they said about me was a lie. My only crime was expecting them to work.”

Raoul spread his arms to stretch. “It's getting late,” he said, glancing at the brightening sky above the treetops. “Claire should be here soon. She said she'd bring me some food.”

I had no memory of getting up. I was certain I never said good-bye.

T
he rest of the morning and the day, each in turn, lifted away, and evening lowered itself in their place. I found myself in my rooms, sitting stiffly at the edge of the bed, holding on like a man at sea, struggling to withstand the roiling waves. Even my office felt menacing, as if something unseen lurked in every corner.

Fully dressed and covered with a blanket, I still could not get warm. All around me mosquitoes buzzed with electricity, oblivious of the cold. If I was truly so despised, why had all of this remained hidden for so long? That question pressed against my skull like the weight of the ocean upon a sinking stone. Had Hector hated me too? What about Mme Freeman? For her, too, was I anything more than just a fool who did her bidding?

In my dreams that night I saw my father, and I awoke understanding I had been utterly abandoned, just as I had abandoned him.

A
s I sat alone eating breakfast the next morning, Marc came over to join me. Ever since my conversation with Raoul, I could not stop scrutinizing every face I saw, trying to divine in their expressions the grudges they held against me. But how could I know, now that I had lived with them for so long, whether I recognized them from the past or from the present? All I could see of Marc was Marc, the simple young man who never stopped smiling.

Leaning discreetly toward my ear, he said, “I've been thinking. You're right—it's time I went to find my family.”

I could barely summon the enthusiasm to nod.

“I'm going to start by finding the man with the boat,” he said, opening his hands before me, as if the plan lay written there. “He was the one I paid to take them. Someone will know his name and where he lives. He's probably still doing it. There's always a need for that kind of business. And I'll bet he remembers my wife. The picture I had is gone, but her mother will have another. Someone as beautiful as my wife is someone you don't forget. Especially not when she has a beautiful little girl, too. And I remember he had a son or a nephew—maybe he was a younger cousin—that worked with him. If I can't find the man himself, I'll find the nephew. He was the one I gave the money to, and I'm sure he could tell me where to start. Maybe I could even get him to take me there, to where he dropped them off. I know she wouldn't have gone far. She would have wanted to stay near the water. And she knew I would come for her. She'll be expecting me.”

“Of course,” I said, though I knew it no longer mattered. The exodus I had hoped for was no longer possible, not as long as Hector was willing to accept the cost of martyrdom.

“Do you think so?”

“Of course,” I said. “Of course.” But my mind was elsewhere. “Marc,” I added after a moment, “there's something I have to ask you.”

He raised his eyes distractedly.

“Did we know each other before?”

“Before what?”

“Before all of this.”

He seemed not to have any idea what I was talking about. “I don't think so, why?”

“I thought not.”

He nodded in agreement, as if he were just as pleased as me to have this matter resolved.

His eyes suddenly lit up again. “Why don't you come, too?”

“Where?”

“To find your wife. You should come with me.”

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

“Then when?” His eyes were nearly pleading. “You can't still believe she'll come back?”

In truth, I was no longer sure how to answer. “I don't know.”

“Come with me,” Marc said. “They might even be in the same place. They might even know each other.”

I was still thinking about what he had said before, about Madame not coming back. It was not the first time he had said such a thing, but for the first time the idea continued to linger, and I could not seem to push it away.

“No,” I said distractedly. “I think that's unlikely.”

“How can you know?”

“She's in the north,” I said. “My—
mine
.” I could not say the word.

He looked puzzled. “Have you heard from her? Did you receive a letter?”

“Yes,” I said, realizing my blunder. And then I said it again, as if to convince myself it was true.

“I'm so happy for you,” he said. Only then, as I watched the sadness overtake him, did I understand what I had done.

“It means the mail is starting to get through again,” I said, trying to undo the damage. “You'll probably hear from your wife soon. And then there will be no need for the man with the boat.”

He smiled weakly but he was no longer listening. It was as if he had heard me say,
Your wife is dead
.

Marc pushed back his chair and stood. Just like that, without intending to, I had added another enemy.

T
here were more than the usual number of guards at Hector's villa. Four of them sat at the edge of the stage, and by their movements I could see they were playing dominoes, but they had situated themselves in such a way that no one checking up on them from inside could see. When the moonlight caught me passing into the courtyard, they rose quickly, reaching for their guns.

“I'm here to see Hector.” After what had happened to Dragon Guy, I knew this was where he would be, not out on the streets.

“Is he expecting you?” one of them asked.

“No.”

I gave myself over to their rough hands.

Two lamps in distant corners of the sitting room glowed dully. In the dim light, little clouds of smoke circled each other like boxers waiting to strike. Madame's dining table had been moved to the center of the room, and around it I counted seven men in addition to Hector. With one exception, I was certain these were men I had not seen in all the time they had been here. Perhaps that was why I knew, beyond a doubt, that the four who looked familiar did so because I had known them before. Seeing them here now, with their cigars and their grimaces, I felt again as I had all those years ago when coming upon Senator Marcus and his colleagues in his study—as though I had walked in on something I was not supposed to see.