The Breadnut and the Breadfruit

I met my father when I was ten years old.

My mother had never uttered his name in my presence, and I had ended up thinking that I owed my life to her unbending will-power alone. My mother walked staunchly along life's straight and narrow path. Apparently she only strayed once to follow the unknown face of my father, who managed to seduce her before handing her back to a life of duty and religion. She was a tall woman and so severe she seemed to me to be devoid of beauty. Her forehead disappeared under a white and violet headtie. Her breasts vanished in a shapeless black dress. On her feet were a pair of plimsolls carefully whitened with blanc d'Espagne. She was laundress at the hospital in Capesterre, Marie-Galante, and every morning she used to get up at four o'clock to clean the house, cook, wash, iron and goodness knows what else. At twenty to seven she would open the heavy doors after shouting:

"Sandra! I'm off!"

Twenty minutes later, our neighbor Sandra hammered on the dividing wall and yelled: "Etiennise! Time to get up!"

Without further ado I would sit up on the mattress that I laid out each evening beside my mother's mahogany bed and reflect on the sullen day that lay ahead. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday were as alike as two pins. Things were different on Thursdays and Sundays because of catechism and Sunday school.

So when I was ten my mother bent her tall figure in two and came and sat down opposite me.

"Your father's a dog who'll die like a dog in the trash heap of his life. The fact is I have to send you to the lycée in Pointe-à-Pitre. I haven't got enough money to put you in lodgings. Who would lodge you, come to that? So I shall have to ask him."

In one go I learned that I had passed my entrance exams, that I was going to leave my island backwater, and that I was going to live far from my mother. My happiness was so overwhelming that, at first, words failed me. Then I stammered out in a feigned sorrowful tone of voice: "You'll be all by yourself here."

My mother gave me a look that implied she didn't believe a word. I know now why I thought I hated my mother. Because she was alone. Never the weight of a man in her bed between the sheets drawn tight like those of a first communicant. Never the raucous laughter of a man to enlighten her evenings. Never a good fight in the early hours of the dawn! Our neighbors in tears would walk around with bruises, bumps, and split lips that spoke of pain and voluptuousness. But my mother, she modeled herself along the lines of Saint Thérèse de Lisieux and Bernadette Soubirou.

At that time--I'm talking about the end of the 1950s--the town of Capesterre numbered a good many souls, how many I don't know exactly. Everything seemed drowsy. The teachers who had us recite "the River Loire has its source in the Mont Gerbier-de-Jonc," the priests who had us stumble through "One God in three distinct persons," and the town crier beating his drum "Oyez, oyez!"

Only the sea, a crazed woman with eyes of amethyst, leapt in places over the rocks and tried to take men and animals alike by the throat.

Three times a week a boat left Grand Bourg, Marie-Galante, for the actual island of Guadeloupe. It was loaded with black piglets, poultry, goats, jerricans of 55% rum, matrons with huge buttocks and children in tears. One late September morning my mother made the sign of the cross on my forehead, kissed me sparingly, and entrusted me and my few belongings to the captain. Hardly had we...