Free The Story of the Cannibal Woman by Maryse Condé Page B

over five hundred pounds and refused to show herself. She inched open the door to let in only three people—Father Restif, the loyal Meynalda, and good doctor Magne. No need to mention that she no longer sang. She performed in public for the last time at the birthday of a great-niece when everybody begged her to sing. Breaking with habit, she had sung in Spanish:
    Bésame, bésame mucho,
    como si fuera esta noche
    la ltima vez.
    Some people said that her deformity was the work of one of Elie’s mistresses, a certain Ginéta, whom he had promised to marry and then abandoned with her four little bastards and her two eyes to cry with—at that time they hadn’t invented the expression “single mother.” Most people refused to accept such a commonplace explanation. Abandoning women and children is nothing new under the sun, neither in Guadeloupe nor in the rest of the world. Elie was neither the first nor the last in his category. Yet, as far back as Guadeloupeans could remember, they had never seen such a sickness as the one that was ravaging Rose. They thought rather she was paying for her papa, Ebenezer Charlebois, the most corrupt of all the politicians, who, with the help of a Haitian obeahman and Nigerian dibias , practiced human sacrifice to ensure his reelection. At every All Saints Day, instead of candles, his grave was daubed with a mixture of excrement and tar in revenge; then the word “CUR” written in capital letters evened the score.
    Two years before he died, Elie had finally separated from Rose. He kept to his routine, continuing to drink his thirty-year-old Feneteau les Grappes Blanches rum with his friends in the living room before lunch. At half past twelve he was the first at table to devour a plateful of fried fish and lentils cooked in lard by Meynalda. At six in the evening he would join other friends at their meeting place, named the Senate, on the Place de la Victoire. No connection with that of the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. But he had taken up his night quarters in one of the family’s upstairs-downstairs houses on the rue Dugommier. There the bòbò women, not at all intimidated by his eighty years of age, rivaled in ardor and imagination to entertain and satisfy him. Yet Rosélie had no right to throw the first stone, she who was blissfully whiling away her days at the other end of the world with her white guy. Well, blissfully, in a manner of speaking! For the second person to whom she had never been able to offer peace of mind was herself. When you think about it, it’s not surprising. The cancer specialist doesn’t treat his own cancer. Nor the dentist his abscess. She had believed that Stephen would give her that strength of which he had more than enough to spare. Instead, his presence and protection had paradoxically sapped the little confidence she had in herself. Then, suddenly, he had left her on her own. The sly, insidious reproach embittered her heart.
    Half conscious, Faustin tossed and turned and moaned. She tightened the pressure of her hands on his forehead and neck, and he relaxed.
    In New York they had lived on Riverside Drive, steps away from the university where Stephen worked. An apartment with a view of the river. On the other shore of the Hudson they could see the high-rises of New Jersey, and in the evening, to their right, the luminous steel girders of the George Washington Bridge.
    Nevertheless, Rosélie couldn’t help regretting N’Dossou. And all those who had helped her. Dominique, first of all. Dominique, quadroon with a heart of gold, from Cayenne in French Guiana. When you are five thousand miles from home, the overseas departments merge into one. Guadeloupe and Guiana united! Dominique and Rosélie had been seated not far from each other at the annual banquet of the Overseas Départements Association. As a result of her many sentimental misfortunes, there was no love lost between Dominique and black