Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [44]
‘Christophine is an evil old woman and you know it as well as I do,’ I said. ‘She won’t stay here very much longer.’
‘She won’t stay here very much longer,’ she mimicked me, ‘and nor will you, nor will you. I thought you liked the black people so much,’ she said, still in that mincing voice, ‘but that’s just a lie like everything else. You like the light brown girls better, don’t you? You abused the planters and made up stories about them, but you do the same thing. You send the girl away quicker, and with no money or less money, and that’s all the difference.’
‘Slavery was not a matter of liking or disliking,’ I said, trying to speak calmly. ‘It was a question of justice.’
‘Justice,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard that word. It’s a cold word. I tried it out,’ se said, still speaking in a low voice. ‘I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.’ She drank some more rum and went on, ‘My mother whom you all talk about, what justice did she have? My mother sitting in the rocking-chair speaking about dead horses and dead grooms and a black devil kissing her sad mouth. Like you kissed mine,’ she said.
The room was now unbearable hot. ‘I’ll open the window and let a little air in,’ I said.
‘It will let the night in too,’ she said, ‘and the moon and the scent of those flowers you dislike so much.’
When I turned from the window she was drinking again.
‘Bertha,’ I said.
‘Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. I know, that’s obeah too.’
Tears streamed from her eyes.
‘If my father, my real father, was alive you wouldn’t come back here in a hurry after he’d finished with you. If he was alive. Do you know what you’ve done to me? It’s not the girl, not the girl. But I love this place and you have made into a place I hate. I used to think that if everything else went out of my life I would still have this, and now you have spoilt it. It’s just somewhere else where I have been unhappy, and all the other things are nothing to what has happened here. I hate it now like I hate you and before I died I will show you how much I hate you.’
Then to my astonishment she stopped crying and said, ‘Is she so much prettier than I am? Don’t you love me at all?’
‘No, I do not,’ I said (at the same time remembering Amélie saying, ‘Do you like my hair? Isn’t it prettier than hers?’). ‘Not at this moment,’ I said.
She laughed at that. A crazy laugh.
‘You see. That’s how you are. A stone. But it serves me right because didn’t Aunt Cora say to me don’t marry him. Not if he were stuffed with diamonds. And a lot of other things she told me. Are you talking about England I said, and what about Grandpappy passing his glass over the water decanter and the tears running down his face for all the friends dead and gone, whom he would never see again. That was nothing to do with England that I ever heard, she said. On the contrary:
A Benky foot and a Benky leg
For Charlie over the water.
Charlie, Charlie,’
she sang in a hoarse voice. And lifted the bottle to drink again.
I said, and my voice was not very calm, ‘No.’
I managed to hold her wrist with one hand and the rum with the other, but when I felt her teeth in my arm I dropped the bottle. The smell filled the room. But I was angry now and she saw it. She smashed another bottle against the wall and stood with the broken glass in her hand and murder in her eyes.
‘Just you touch me once. You’ll soon see if I’m a dam’ coward like you are.’
Then she cursed me comprehensively, my eyes, my mouth, every member of my body, and it was like a dream in the large unfurnished room with the candles flickering and this red-eyed wild-haired stranger who was my wife shouting obscenities at me. It was at this nightmare moment that I heard Christophine’s calm voice.
‘You hush up and keep yourself quiet. And don’t cry. Crying’s no good with him. I told you before. Crying’s no good.’
Antoinette collapsed on the sofa and went on sobbing. Christophine looked at me and her small eyes were very sad.