Aubergine

Aubergine
Lucy is terrified of airplanes. She is afraid of many things, most recently the fact that she is on her way to a foreign country with a man she hardly knows. Married to him. She is thinking about this, as the tiny plane rumbles and shakes its way towards the island. But, as usual on planes, she is mainly preoccupied with pictures of those moments just before the crash, and then the impact, where she's blown to bits. Because the plane is now over water, she's also thinking about floating around down below in the ocean, swimming with sharks, and possibly (most likely), being eaten alive. She can feel the perspiration dripping under her arms, along her sides and down her chest. She would like to scream, let some of her terror out, but her new in-laws are on the plane too, and she knows she has to restrain the impulse. .
The land coming up into view from below is a strange mixture of green and brown. Her new husband, whose name is Patrick, explains that this is what happens when people don't know how to re-terrace the land, chopping down trees willy-nilly and not bothering to replant. This is one of the many things he plans to teach them with his new degree in agronomy and zeal for instruction. He has grown up here, speaks the language, understands the people, and has, he has told her, rejected his claim as a favoured son living far away from the capital, in an enclave up on the mountain.
However, that's where they're going to be staying on this trip, because it can't be helped. He says it's the least he can do to make his parents happy for once, since they extended this invitation unexpectedly after his and Lucy's honeymoon on an island close by, and have also paid for it. She knows him well enough to know that not only does he want to show Lucy how he grew up, something he often complains about, he also wants to hear her own (and possibly unflattering) comments about it.
The family have diplomatic immunity, so when the plane finally lands, unlike the rest of the passengers' bags, theirs are not checked. As a naive middle-class girl (although she doesn't see herself that way at all, and thinks she's quite radical compared to her friends and family), growing up in a suburb, with no exposure to very much outside of her own narrow realm, Lucy is uncomfortable with special treatment and has a sinking feeling that there might be more to come. But right now she is on an adventure and will try to open her mind to new things.

Patrick's parents make her very nervous,and she feels awkward and uncomfortable around them. All thumbs. She felt that way at her own wedding, a time when for once in her life, surely, she should have felt happy and in control. Still, she doesn't hold grudges and has decided to make as good an impression as she can on this visit, despite her fears that her relationship with them is already doomed.

This is what she knows. Her new father-in-law is Austrian and unfortunately, has that chilly manner Lucy dislikes in people. Her new mother-in-law is, according to Patrick, some kind of French Creole aristocrat, a Catholic, and is essentially a snob. Her new father-in-law is Jewish, fled Hitler's Europe many years before this trip, and has never recovered from the events of those years. At the same time Patrick has shown her pictures of him recently cozying up to the dictator currently in power, and although Patrick sees this as hypocrisy, Lucy thinks maybe he just doesn't care about politics anymore, and simply wants to get along, and go about his life in peace without worrying about knocks at the door in the middle of the night.

She knows he chose this island, Haiti, because it was easy to get a visa to come here, and also because he was an archeologist and anthropologist, who had done his dissertation on this country, the first black republic in the world. Once established, he made it his life's work to protect the country's practice of voodoo, and despite his privileged position and his relative wealth, is very revered here; so much so, that the Haitians who practice voodoo, which is almost everyone (Patrick says she will hear the sound of the drums coming up the hills every night, but not to be afraid), have made him an honorary voodoo priest. Lucy can't imagine such a thing, but it's exciting and she can't wait to see the voodoo altar in the house, something Patrick mentioned on the honeymoon.

Lucy didn't discuss any of these things with her Catholic/Italian parents before or after the wedding, even the part about her new mother-in-law's family being all shades of black, from mulatto to jet. On one level she thinks that she wanted to shock them, although she feels badly about that now, (she has a habit of doing things impulsively and then regretting them later) and on another, pretended if only to herself, that it was such a trivial matter that it wasn't worth talking about. Most of the time she's not really sure why she does anything; there's no script for her life lying around somewhere that she can just pick up and follow. She is also the eldest child at home (there are six), and her parents are busy with other things, mainly trying to keep her Dad sober, dealing with him when he isn't, and praying that it won't happen again. Possibly this is one reason why she can be a little sly sometimes, in the guise of something loftier, when all she's trying to do is make her family pay attention to her. It also helps when she knows she won't be around after the fireworks go off.

She's actually afraid of confrontation, but she likes to strike the match. And sadly, there is the indisputable fact that despite her attempts to change him, in that hipppy-dippy way of hers, her father, a victim of his generation, is at heart still a racist and doesn't like Jewish people much either. But Lucy wanted to get married. Not so much for love, but to get on with her life, do something different, see the world. She is only eighteen after all. Still, she knows her parents deserve so much more than she's given them (like the truth), and she wonders what's the matter with her when she behaves so badly.

Her new husband has told her that the house where they will be staying, where his parents still live, used to be their country house, but since the government took over their city home and turned it into a clinic, it is now their permanent residence. The car they are riding in has just passed through this same sad, hot and dirty city, with its stench of open latrines, claptrap buses and colourfully clad women with baskets on their heads and sometimes, corn cob pipes in their mouths. Some of them seemed to be glaring at Lucy, probably because she's so blond and so white, but she found it unnerving.

As the car wound its way past them, she was glad they weren't making a stop. She knows at bottom she's a coward, afraid of too many things, and hopes that this will change. She is doing her best to control her nervousness in this foreign place, but is still more anxious than she can ever remember being, even on planes. When moments ago a wild throng of men, women and children had pounded on the doors and windows of the car, shouting words she didn't understand, their hands out, faces contorted with the effort of screaming and banging, she felt horrible and wanted to empty her purse and throw it out the window, give them whatever they wanted, so she didn't have to feel so guilty about driving in comfort with a full stomach and a new one-hundred dollar dress on. Her mother-in-law, whose name is Ghislaine (please call me by first name), noticing Lucy's reaction, told her they were just beggars, nothing to worry about, always begging, professional beggars, just ignore them, you can't help them. C'est tout. And with that, blotted her recently applied lipstick on a piece of scented tissue.

Soldiers are positioned at every intersection, khaki-clad black men with huge guns (machine guns?) at their sides. They are wearing wrap-around sunglasses, and like the women with the baskets and the pipes, glaring. Everyone is glaring. Lucy feels her heart skipping in her chest and wishes she could take a tranquillizer, although she has never done this in her life. But this, at last, is the "authentic," life she asked for, marrying this man (he is three years older than she is) who would whisk her away somewhere new and exotic, where she could re-invent herself, despite her fears. However, at the moment, new moons of perspiration are appearing under her arms on the new silk turquoise dress her parents gave her as part of her trousseau.

Up, up, the mountain they go - no guard rails here, and the driver has to stop when a car is coming the other way because the road is so narrow that only one car at a time can get by. Are they actually going to make it, or will her parents get a cable telling them their precious daughter (she's sure she will be precious once she's dead) was found at the bottom of a mountain?

Little girls in pretty dresses, carrying flower wreaths to sell, spring up like flowers themselves along the dangerous road, waving their wares at the car. Lucy is thinking that with one slip, the car, the little girls and the flowers will all be flying through the air. At another point further up, the car is actually passing through clouds, and Lucy feels like she can't get enough air. Maybe it's her period coming on, but between her fear of heights and all the sights she's seen so far, she feels like she's going to be sick.

Having survived the drive, the car and its occupants finally pull up in the driveway of the country house, and Lucy feels better. To her still somewhat childlike mind, the house looks as if it has been transported here from the pages of a fairy-tale book. It sits in the middle of a pine forest, and in bright red letters, the red contrasting with the green of the trees, there is something written in German across the top floor. Patrick tells her the house is also the home of the Austrian Consulate and that is what the script says. Lucy wants to know exactly what it is his father does in that role, and plans to ask him all about it once she calms down, changes into something white that won't show the sweat (just in case there are any more surprises) and has a quick wash.

Getting out of the car at last, the family is surrounded by smiling people dressed in white, large and tiny black people who swiftly unload all of the suitcases and boxes from the car and then quickly disappear. Lucy notices a black wrought-iron gate surrounding the house, and sees dozens, maybe hundreds, of little black hands and faces peeping through. They are holding wooden sculptures of some kind, but she doesn't know why. She will ask about that too.

Once inside, Ghislaine announces that lunch will be served in half an hour, and shows Lucy to her room. Patrick is busy chatting away in Creole with the servants who seem very happy to see him, hugging him and slapping him on the back. He has introduced her and they have looked at her with what she feels might be contempt, but have still welcomed her in a language she doesn't understand, although she did catch some of the French, when they called her "Madame Patrique." Apparently they see her as not much more than a rib attached to the boy/man she married, whom they have known since he was a baby, and probably know better than she does. Still, she has never heard of a woman being called by her husband's first name and it doesn't sound right.

The bell rings for lunch and the new family take their places at the table. White table cloths and silver, too much cutlery for Lucy's limited experience with formal dining, and more servants wearing white overcoats, fussing about and fawning over everything her husband, mother and father-in-law have to say, yet rarely giving her a glance.

"Why are you hiding your hand in your lap?" her mother-in-law asks Lucy. "Put your hands on the table where they belong." Her lovely mulatto face sags into a frown that will soon become a familiar sight. Everyone is speaking French, Lucy's best subject at St. Joseph's, so she tries a few words but Ghislaine quickly stops her in mid accent grave. "Ma Belle Fille. Tu ne peux pas parler bien le Francais. Please speak English, dear. Your French hurts my ears." Thank goodness she's changed into the white dress, Lucy thinks. More sweat. She's afraid to eat. Doesn't know what utensil to use, and although she is surreptitiously watching her husband to see what he is doing with his, she has lost her appetite.

"This looks lovely," Lucy says, "what is it called?" (trying to buy time while she figures out which fork or spoon to use).

"Aubergine, dear. My goodness, what a question." Again, the face lands in a sulk, clearly disappointed in the question, the fact that the servants are judging her new daughter-in-law, but mainly Lucy thinks, in her son's choice of wife. A Philistine, non-European of course, what could he possibly have been thinking? All of this is telegraphed to Lucy without a word and slings a poison-tipped arrow right at her heart.

Lucy picks up a small scrolled silver fork, and hands on the table, begins to eat. The dish is truly delicious. Eggplant mixed with what tastes like Parmesan and breadcrumbs baked as a casserole. She will make it for years to come, as a memento of this, her first real adventure, and how it changed the course of her life. Made her better. More compassionate. How she saw her life afterwards in terms of the extremes that she witnessed here - the poverty and the wealth, the love that she'd left and the coldness that she found, the right fork more important than the little hands and faces at the gate.

And although she will eventually learn to live as the wife of a diplomat's son, she won't want to be one. There will be a day when she speaks better French and finally speaks up and says, "No more. C'est tout."