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110 pages

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« After a much-appreciated meal, Clementine seemed to have renewed energy. “What's the next stop on our pilgrimage?” she asked. “Pilgrimage?” asked Christophe. Taking his hand in hers, Clementine said: “Do you know, Chris? I really feel as though I'm on a pilgrimage. I feel as though I have set out, not so much on a honeymoon as a voyage of discovery, discovery of myself, and discovery of my family. I have the strange feeling that everything was preordained and that the different pieces of the puzzle are just falling into place. Have you ever thought of life as a great jigsaw puzzle?” » Pushing through the Darkness is a novel about family life and its areas of misunderstanding, but also one about the Caribbean and its dramas, and the upheavals of history - a triple perspective which makes of this work a sensitive walk along the paths of Caribbean memory

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Espace Caraïbe

Nostalgie

Puzzle

Famille

Origène

Amérique

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Publié par	publibook
Date de parution	14 février 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782342159370
Langue	Français

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Pushing through the Darkness
Linette Arthurton Bruno
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Pushing through the Darkness

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Chapter one
The lone figure peering out from behind the glass-pane shivered a little as she pulled her shawl more firmly round her shoulders. There were days when she wished for the sun, the sun of the islands. In the distance she could see the sea. Seeing the sea always filled her with nostalgia, but it was a reminder, too, of departures and farewells – tales told throughout history of those forced to leave their homes and cross turbulent seas to take up a new life in distant lands.
She especially thought of that day when they were pulling out from Little Bay in Montserrat. All eyes were fixed on the receding landscape. Dejection and despair could be read on all the faces. For many, it would be a voyage of no return. Many would never see their island home again. One old lady kept repeating “History repeats itself” as though she no longer had any control over her thoughts or her words; as though she herself were History. The volcano itself was History. It was only following the pattern it had set out for itself several centuries before.
A sudden smile crossed Marguerite’s face as she turned away from the window. She thought of her son, Jonathan, the only person she knew who had not been thoroughly traumatized by all that volcanic activity. He was excited, he said, to be going out into the big, wide world. He had since joined the Navy and was sailing the seas. When he was little, he had always said “I want to be an explorer like Christopher Columbus.”
If Christopher Columbus were to be sailing in Caribbean waters today, Marguerite asked herself, would he sail past the island of Montserrat as he had done on that Sunday morning in 1493, or would he drop anchor and go inland to see for himself the ravage that the Soufriere Hills volcano had wreaked on that little British Caribbean territory? Would he think of the Montserrat mountain in Spain after which he had named the island, and would he implore the Black Madonna, whose shrine lies housed in that mountain, to intercede for the afflicted people of Montserrat?
The legend of the Black Madonna, as recounted by her grandmother, had always intrigued Marguerite. The statue, said to have been carved in black wood by St. Luke, was brought to Spain where it was hidden from the Moors in a cave. According to the legend, it was rediscovered by shepherds who saw a bright light and heard heavenly music which led them to the cave where the statue was hidden. All attempts to remove it proved fruitless, so it was decided that a shrine should be built on the spot where it was found. Thousands of pilgrims now climb that mountain to visit the shrine, and many miracles have been associated with the intercession of the Black Madonna, ‘La Moreneta’, her name in Spanish.
And so it was that whenever Marguerite’s soul was most ‘perplexed and weary’, her mind would turn to the Madonna and she would murmur: “Mother, tell me. What am I to do?” The thought of the Madonna had helped her to cope with her trials and tribulations following Hurricane Hugo in 1989. The Madonna had helped her get through the dark days after the eruption of the volcano in 1995. Now she felt more than ever in need of the Madonna’s help.
Settling down in Montpellier had not been easy, despite the fact that her in-laws had done everything to help them, but ever since the eruption of the volcano, her husband George had changed so incredibly. Two tragedies following one another so closely had got the better of him. After Hurricane Hugo he had picked up the pieces and tried resolutely to carry on. He had even succeeded in rebuilding the house of his dreams. But after the eruption of the volcano, something seemed to have snapped within him and he was no longer himself. His irritability and fits of temper had a disastrous effect on the whole family. It seemed as though after the horror of the hurricane and the vengeance of the volcano, they now had to deal with a frenzied father.
She would never forget that misty Sunday morning, when they came to wake her. When the ringing of the doorbell finally pierced her consciousness, bringing her out of her deep sleep, she got up and peered out from between the curtains. Two police officers were standing on the doorstep. She immediately sensed that something awful had happened and a chill of panic ran through her whole being. Slowly she descended the wooden stairs that led to the front door. The only thing she could remember the police officer saying was that she and her husband were to get dressed and go with them.
When she saw the flames and heard the shouts, she didn’t go any nearer but just stood there and stared; and the more intense the heat got, the colder her limbs became.
“The fire broke out in their room,” the police officer was saying. “The investigation has just begun, but we can’t rule out criminal activity, or even…”
Marguerite saw the police officer hesitate, and realized straightaway what he meant.
“Or even what? Finish you sentence, for God’s sake,” her husband snapped.
“Or even suicide. Did your daughter or your son-in-law have any reason for wanting to die?”
“Wanting to die on the day after their wedding?” asked George, spluttering with rage.
The police officer decided then to postpone the investigation. No corpse was handed over to them. It was impossible to find one. Underneath the hotel room, a particularly inflammable solvent had been stocked in a depot.
In the hours that followed, Marguerite moved as though in a dream. The family doctor had automatically prescribed sedatives for her and she was not sure of anything. She said nothing to anyone. On the site, she couldn’t, with those firemen fighting the flames and the policemen speaking so kindly to her afterwards. Then there was George. How lost and distraught he looked. Even in his fit of anger at the police officer’s questioning, she could detect the trembling in his voice like that of a small child.
Seeing George splutter with rage was nothing new. What was new was the emotion she could detect in his voice even at the height of his anger. For the first time she was seeing him a prey to deep emotion. She herself said nothing, could say nothing. But that was nothing new either. Even as a child playing in the sand, she would never protest when another child came along and took her spade away. She would just turn mournful eyes in her mother’s direction. The latter inevitably turned away, despairing of her daughter’s inability to react.
Marguerite’s thoughts went back to that day when George proposed to her. They had walked for hours while he talked to her about his future, of the great plans he had for ensuring that his project would make a difference in the lives of the people of the island they were to be going to. He held her hand as though he didn’t want her to get away from him, so she had just said yes. He didn’t hear her the first time and she had to say it again much louder. Her eyes were lowered. Then she felt his hands on her and she closed her eyes tight, just as she used to do as a child waking up from a nightmare.
She thought, too, of that day when George officially asked her father for her hand. She saw her father hesitate, sit up and look intently at his daughter’s suitor. He asked George a few questions to which the latter replied without an ounce of hesitation, as if he were before a jury. Then her father turned to her and asked “Is that what you really want?” She nodded, and he simply said “Then you have my blessing.”
Marguerite sighed as she thought of all that. She had never known what she really wanted from life, or had never been able to express what she really wanted. She had taken after her father, a mild-natured man, who detested conflict of any sort. Her mother was different, a real go-getter. The attraction of opposites, Marguerite thought. It struck her then that her own daughter, Clementine, had decidedly taken after her grandmother, who always knew what she wanted and always knew how to go about getting what she really wanted.
Had Clementine married Christophe just to get away from home? Had she decided to burn her bridges behind her? Those were the thoughts that troubled Marguerite’s bewildered brain for days. But she said nothing to anyone concerning the words that Clementine had whispered in her ear towards the end of the wedding reception. Clementine had pulled her aside and said “We’re not going back to the hotel, Mummy. We’re leaving, going far away from here.”
In view of the terrible scene that had taken place a few days before the wedding, Marguerite’s fears were to some extent justified. Clementine had always been strong-headed and a bit rebellious. As a kid, the story she liked hearing most was that of Mary Read, the famous (or rather infamous) female pirate of the Caribbean. Like Mary, she adored dressing up as a boy and said she wanted to tour the world as Mary had toured the seas, though not committing all the heinous acts of which Mary had been accused. She admired Mary’s guts and her bravery. In addition, Mary was known to be both feminine and attractive.
Clementine, too, had guts. Even as a baby, her father would say fondly of her “This one has guts!”, adding as she versed her waters on him the first time he took her into his arms “A real virago!