Free Another Sun by Timothy Williams

all the while sugar continues to slump.”
    “That’s why he wanted to be mayor?”
    “Raymond Calais missed the boat. Most Békés saw the change coming—like his brother Jacques Calais—and many moved into commerce. Sugar’s dead. It will never be competitive again. Raymond Calais was just too stupid to see that.”
    Anne Marie grimaced. “But why mayor?”
    “He wanted power.”
    The Twin Otter banked sharply, and glancing through the porthole, Anne Marie saw sunlight dancing across the surface of the sea.
    “And his brother?”
    “Too clever to want to hang around his older brother. A couple of years younger than Raymond, and like most Békés, Jacques Calais had got into import-export. In the early fifties, he managed to obtain the importer’s license for American General Motors. Now one of the wealthiest men in Guadeloupe.”
    “The two brothers got on well?”
    “The Békés form a caste. From the outside, they always appear united. And impenetrable.”
    “Then Calais’ wife has nothing to worry about?”
    Trousseau repeated sharply, “To worry about?”
    “About money.”
    “During the war, when old man Calais died, she brought all her wealth. There are some people who say that was why Calais married her. She comes from a rich family—one of those white families where you never know if they’re French or English. Families that have roots and relatives—and a lot of money—in all the islands. Not just in Martinique and Guadeloupe—but in the English islands as well. Trinidad and Dominica and St. Kitts.”
    “Where’s she from originally?”
    Trousseau shrugged. The cotton of the white shirt had been darned where the points of the collar had worn the fabric thin. “Who knows?”
    “She works for Air France, I believe.”
    Trousseau laughed. “She works in the central office of AirFrance on Boulevard Légitimus—it gives her social security, it gives her the overblown salary of a civil servant.…”
    “We’re all civil servants.”
    “At least we work.” He looked at his palms again, then folded his arms. “A job at Air France gives her tickets at ten percent of their real price—for her and for all her family. So that they can fly regularly up to Miami and stash their money away safely in some American bank—thousands of kilometers away from the uncertain future of Guadeloupe.”
    The plane lost speed. The warning lights came on above the cockpit.
    Anne Marie did not feel well. She was sweating.
    “The Békés look after themselves,” Trousseau said as he tightened the clasp of his seatbelt.

16
Honeymoon
    On their honeymoon, the young couple had spent most evenings in Terre de Haut. After the stifling heat of Pointe-à-Pitre, Anne Marie was appreciative of the cool winds that blew across the Saintes. And she felt healthy. Not since leaving Algeria had she felt so well, so fit. Nor had she been so attractive
.
    At first sight Anne Marie had fallen in love with the Saintes, with the flowers, with the lemon trees, the
café bâtard
and the wild cinnamon. They formed, these forgotten islands, a terrestrial paradise, a corner of another, long-forgotten France, old-fashioned and peaceful, existing on the far side of the globe
.
    The newlyweds had stayed at the Hôtel Fontainebleau in a bright, clean room that looked out over the vast bay, the precipitous sugar-loaf mountain and the green-covered hills that reminded Anne Marie of her Mediterranean, of Algeria
.
    People walking backward and forward along the main street, the girls hand in hand, the men quietly smoking
.
    A television had been placed on the sill of the town hall, and when evening fell, the set was turned on and the Saintois watched the programs with innocent pleasure. Frantically they applauded the French team in
Jeux Sans Frontières
just as they applauded the arrival of seven gun-fighters in the dubbed Western
.
    Jean Michel, however, soon got bored. He grew more and more restlessat the Hôtel Fontainebleau. “If I had