The Return by Dany Laferrière Page B

again
    still humming her song about the sailors
    lost at sea to whom an angel appeared.
    I use the break to talk with my sister
    in the room at the back
    where it’s as hot as an oven.
    My sister is even more secretive than my mother.
    Seeing her constant smile it’s hard to imagine
    she lives in a country ravaged by dictatorship
    like a hurricane
    that has been punishing the island for twenty years.
    She tells me about her life at work where people call her a snob because she makes a point of buying a novel as soon as she gets paid and because she wears perfume to the office. The more she treats people with respect, the more they plot against her. As if she reminded them of that precious thing they have lost along the way: their own self-respect.
    My sister talks calmly
    without looking at me.
    She is like a little girl forgotten
    by her parents in the dark woods
    who wonders how long it will take
    before the pack catches up to her.
    Back at the house, she discovers her mother sitting on the gallery, silent and sad. My mother who was once so lighthearted. Of course I look after her expenses, but my sister has to face the travails of daily life. She’s forced to watch my mother’s health deteriorate, and struggle through her dark days: “I’m afraid one day I’ll be too worn out to go get her at the bottom of the well.” This time she looks at me, and I see the years of my absence written on her face. We remain silent for a time. Then slowly a smile blooms. The dark cloud has passed.
    Sitting in the darkened living room with my sister, I watch my mother go about her evening business. She inspects the kitchen down to the last crumb before lighting the lamp and placing it in the middle of the table. Then she scrapes the remains of the meal into a blue plastic bowl. Only then does she sit down to eat. That’s her ritual.
    Why is she eating from this plastic bowl when I sent her a new set of dishes? From underneath the sofa my sister pulls out the big box of silverware that has never been removed from its packaging. She doesn’t like it? On the contrary—it’s her treasure. She takes it out once a month and cleans it. In the lamplight, her face is serene. She is still beautiful. She is wearing her face for special days. As soon as you leave, my sister tells me, she’ll put her dark-day face back on.
    I am overcome with such a feeling of remorse.
    The feeling that everything is wasted.
    My mother, and then my sister.
    The women have paid the price in this house.
    I go out to see my nephew on the gallery. He was listening to the news on my mother’s transistor radio. I sit next to him. Do you ever dream? Yes, but I don’t remember. I used to dream every night when I was young, and every morning I would tell my grandmother my dream. Why? At the time, we would tell our dreams. Anyway, I always dreamed the same dream. Actually, I had two kinds of dreams. In the first, I had wings. I flew over the town. And I slipped through the window of certain houses to watch girls I was in love with sleep. My nephew laughs. And the second kind? I dreamed of the devil. The same thing every time. All of a sudden we heard a terrible racket. The devils were coming. We hurried to get inside before they showed up. You never knew that house, I say to my nephew. My mother talks about it all the time. It was a big house with lots of doors and windows. It feels like a century ago . . . We tried to close them. But the devils were everywhere. When we closed a door, they came in through the window. Nowadays, those devils have been replaced by real killers in the light of day. But I keep having the same dreams wherever I go. In hotel rooms all around the world. That’s the only thing that hasn’t changed with me. I have the same ritual: I lie down between white sheets, read a while, then turn off the light and drop into a universe full of devils. You should keep holy water in your suitcase.