Love, Anger, Madness by Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Author:Marie Vieux-Chauvet [Vieux-Chauvet, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-58836-870-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOUR

As usual, the father returned from work at lunchtime. He brushed his wife’s forehead with a kiss, greeted the others with a wave of his hand and took his seat. At the end of the meal, he looked at his watch and Rose did the same. They got up and went to the door the grandfather had more or less barricaded. At the same time, they heard the noise of a powerful engine as a truck full of men in black uniform entered the property. Twenty men jumped out of the truck and began unspooling a long wire.

“They’ve starting surveying the land,” Rose said in a weak voice.

“Shut this door,” the grandfather yelled.

Paul leaped out of his seat and without a word began to climb the stairs at a run.

“I want to see! I want to see!” the child cried out.

“No,” the grandfather replied. “Let’s go in our room to pray.”

The mother took the child herself and set him down in the old man’s arms.

“Because me, I believe in miracles,” the grandfather said, looking at the mother ostentatiously.

“Prayer impedes despair and thereby frees the soul. Do you know the story of the alcoholic who didn’t know he should have prayed?”

“No,” answered the invalid.

“It’s an interesting story and one worth telling.”

He walked by the mother and her eyes followed him, full of hatred.

Yes, she hated him right now as much as he must have hated her. Why such hatred between them, she sometimes wondered. For what did he reproach her? It could only be her father’s misbehavior. A poor failed artist who had tormented his violin for thirty-five years without ever being able to get a proper note out of it. He had started drinking one night when he had tried in vain to play a Chopin waltz. She had seen him start to cry and then break his bow. That evening, she had waited up for him for a long time only to see him come home staggering.

He drank from despair. He died from despair. How could God, if he existed, hold that against him? And what right did the grandfather have to judge? Maybe she should just see him as a foolish old man and forgive him. At the beginning of her marriage, she had almost loved him. She had come to his house, trembling with emotion, daughter of an alcoholic who died under atrocious circumstances, as everyone knew. He had given her a piercing look and she lowered her head very humbly. His gaze seemed to say: “Don’t think you are honoring us with your presence, mulatto girl. Your father was nothing but a mulatto alcoholic and I went to school with people like him at the Saint-Martial Seminary.” He wasn’t kind, she had soon understood this. He was created in the image of a God of his own senile invention, a God he threw in your face at the worst moment, like blows from a club, savoring every twitch and heartrending cry. At times she could

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