Heading South by Dany Laferrière Read Free Book Online Page B

incredible. Charlie would scoop up any woman who gave him a certain come-hither look (and did they ever really look at him any other way?), so that his miniscule room on Christophe Avenue became a kind of bordello. A new girl would arrive as the previous one was leaving, still fixing her hair. Sometimes they met in his bed. These days, however, he’s being more selective. He’s been known to turn down a staggering beauty and go home with a woman who is more fun to be with, or who makes him laugh, or even one who is downright ugly but has a certain charm, or an interesting walk, or even one who seems to have accepted the fact that no one will ever be interested in her. When he goes to a disco, no one, not even Charlie himself, has the slightest idea who he’s going to leave with.
    BEFORE WE GO too much further, you should know that Charlie’s parents are poor but respectable. His father threw him out of the house the day he quit school. He went to live with one of his cousins in Carrefour-Feuilles. Said cousin being an Adventist preacher, very strict, who prayed every night at nine o’clock, went to bed at nine-thirty, and didn’t let anyone in after ten. After a month of this monastic regime, during which he believed he was going insane, Charlie moved in with a friend who lives in Pacot. This arrangement didn’t work, either, since the friend’s young wife fell for him in a big way, placing him in an embarrassing situation. He found himself stuck between a benefactor and a woman for whom he felt no desire whatsoever. One of the cardinal rules in the lover’s social code is: never live under the same roof with a woman you’ve turned down. Once again, Charlie had to pack his bags. Eventually he found the miniscule room on Christophe Avenue, above a shoe store. He’d kept in touch with his mother and sister, despite their being absolutely forbidden from contact by his father: no members of the family (including uncles, aunts, and cousins) were allowed to so much as speak to him. “I have only one child,” he was heard to say, watching Rachel do her homework. Ever since discovering the great injustice done to her by nature in the matter of aesthetics, she had sought solace in her studies (it could have been worse: it could have been religion). But since her brother’s banishment, Rachel has stopped hating him. Especially now that their parents are getting old. They still work in service for the Abels, a rich family that owns many houses, including the villa in Bourdon. Madame Abel picks them up in the morning and brings them back each evening (a job she never leaves to her driver). Work at the Abels isn’t all that demanding, except for the stairway that becomes steeper with each passing year. They are good Christians who treat their domestics charitably. As far as cooking is concerned, the ambassador (François Abel was the Haitian ambassador to London during the Second World War) isn’t hard to please. His menu hasn’t varied in twenty years, except that for the past two years he hasn’t drunk so much as a glass of water after six o’clock in the evening. What the ambassador brought back with him from London (apart from a box of Cuban cigars given to him by Winston Churchill during an unforgettable meeting) was a sense of discipline, sartorial elegance and a heightened respect for the individual. Charlie’s elderly parents are therefore treated with the same respect that the ambassador would accord to his colleagues, astonishing in a country where domestics are often treated like slaves. To Charlie’s father, it goes without saying, the ambassador is a living god. Work is evenly divided in the Abel household, where it is believed (as one believes that Jesus is the son of God) that England is the most civilized country on the planet. Charlie’s mother works inside (kitchen, cleaning and telephone), while his father looks after things around