He worked at an old, handcrafted table scented with the herbs that had been chopped on its soft wooden surface. His paper became scented by rosemary and lavender, stained by guava berry. His art softened in the candlelight, and he saw objects as washed with blue and gold. He had taken paints and pencils from the store and had brought pastels and chalk with him from France. He drew over the boyish designs that had covered the walls and began to remake the world as he observed it now, as a man. His teacher had told him to embrace the landscape of his youth, as it had been the cradle of who he was as an artist, but also to see it through his current experience. Sometimes you must close your eyes in order to see, his teacher had suggested, therefore Camille imagined what he would see when the sun arose. The deep red of the mahogany trees, the brilliant shades of scarlet flowers, the emerald of the hills, the women in their muslin dresses on their way to work in town, passing by with the laundry they had washed in huge pots set over fires.
A waterfall was nearby, and he often went to drink and bathe there. One early morning, on his way back to the store, a place he thought of as his penance for the years of freedom he’d had in Paris, he got on his knees and drank deeply. When he started off again, he stumbled over something. He stopped, stunned by what he saw, but too curious to turn away. His mouth was still dripping water. The sun was warm on his back. He had come upon bones cast into the tall grass. A man’s remains, picked clean over the years by birds and mongooses and field rats. Some of the bones had been scattered by animals and weather, yet the skeleton still retained the shape of a man. From the position of the skull, it seemed he had been resting there, sleeping perhaps, out in the open country when he passed away. Camille lay down beside the bones so he might hear what the dead man heard. He listened to the drone of mosquitoes and flies, to the lulling sound of water in the nearby pool. He closed his eyes and dreamed he was the herbalist holding a baby, staring into its wide eyes, seeing his own death. Shadows from the clouds passed over him, and he remembered when he could not sleep as a babe, when he wanted to see the world so desperately he would not dare to blink.
He woke with a start in the middle of the day, alive and young. He was so grateful not to be a dead man, and to have the world to dive into. He was late for work, and he knew, as he ran back to town, he would be in trouble, yet again. He had not been able to steer clear of it since he’d been back. They said he’d changed, his sullen moodiness, his criticism of his family and the politics of the island. But perhaps he was only more himself, a man with his own opinions now, though his parents clearly considered him too young to have the right to act upon his needs and desires.
HE THOUGHT ABOUT HIS constricted life a few evenings later when he spied Marianna at the harbor. He’d been hoping to run into her. He was at a café when he saw her in the marketplace. A married woman wearing golden earrings, talking with her friends. She was as beautiful as ever, perhaps more so, but she wasn’t Marianna King anymore, the waiter told him when he asked about her current situation. Her married name was Morris. He thought back to when she knew him better than anyone. He caught her eye, but she had no expression, merely stared back as if he were a rude stranger gawking. She then avoided his glance and went on talking with her friends. A knife went through him. His brothers were right. He was no one. He kept an eye on Marianna all the same. When she left and started for home, he followed. Unlike Lydia, who had no idea she was being followed for months on end, Marianna sensed her stalker, and turned to face him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She sounded truly frightened. “Stay away from me.”
“It’s me,” he said, plaintive, once more the confused boy who’d sat beside her at school while she explained the Bible stories they were told by their teachers. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“That’s exactly why I’m telling you to stay away. We’re not children. We can’t do as we please. I have a husband.”
He felt like a fool. She must have known he was pained by her reaction, for her expression softened.
“Don’t you know what this place is like? Have you been away that long? Just because we went to school together, we don’t live in the same world. And we’re certainly not the same people we once were.”
He promised he would not seek her out, or follow her, or even greet her should their paths cross again, if that was what she wished.
“Who said anything about what I wish? I’m just telling you how things are, just like I always did. You should be grateful to me.”
MARIANNA WAS RIGHT IN saying he was not the same person he’d been when he left, and his family had been right as well. The world had opened to him, and as it was doing so he had closed the door on this island, which ran on rules he found heartless and inhuman. When he’d first returned from Paris, and asked his family to call him by his third name, Camille, so that he could at least keep something of his life in Paris, his brothers had mocked him. Be whoever you want, his brother Alfred said, just do your work. The family did as he wished, except for his mother, who preferred not to say his name at all rather than to change it. She referred to him as he, more a stranger than a son. He’s not happy with the food. He came in late for work. He disappeared. He does not wish to join us for dinner. And, when Camille refused to go to the synagogue—He no longer appears to be a member of our faith.