There is no better role to play in the presence of the great than that of the fool. For a long time there was an official jester to the king, but there has never been an official wise man to the king. Me, I’m the fool of Bertin and many others, perhaps yours at this moment, or perhaps you are mine; a man who would be wise would have no fool, so anyone who has a fool is not wise; if he’s not wise he’s a fool, and perhaps, though he be king, his fool’s fool.
DIDEROT [37]
It was as if suddenly the earth, ravished and devastated by a horrifying cataclysm, had opened up to swallow us. People were running, shrieking. I leaped to open the door and, falling to my knees, looked outside. A taunting patch of tropical indigo sky caught my eye-an indigo stretched with water to the infinite horizon by the enormous brush of a tireless, austere and silent painter. Sky of Haiti, sky beyond compare, a custom-made frame for the giant mapou trees, for the unrelenting verdure of a landscape coddled by eternal spring. Bullets whistling by my ears quickly made me duck and close the door. Silence and trouble! Fearful silence. Deadly silence. Were they, like me, listening to their hearts leaping in their throats? The silence weighed like bricks upon us and we no longer dared move, lying low in terror, in our common terror where we clutched each other, invisibly, as if we were at the bottom of an airless pit. A stagnant agglomeration of cowards and curs! If only I could shake off my terror. I am going to shake off this repulsive terror of mine. They will see me show myself, a harmless poet and a dreamer, alone, in all the glory of our forebears, and offer my serene brow to their bullets. Lies. After many twists and turns, the poem crosses my field of thought and stops there as if to fool me about who I am. I am afraid. I’m stunned by the hammering of their boots. There they are walking past my house! I locked the front door and barricaded it with the old dresser rotting with wood lice, the four wicker chairs, the little pitch-pine table and the trunk where I keep my books and scraps of paper. I do all this, and yet by way of a peculiar doubling, I calmly go where I hear screaming, where I am certain the devils are committing murder. I avoid danger as I accuse myself of cowardice, loathing my own reactions. In the trunk, there are a few poems, unpublished, as are all of my poems about devils and hell. Enough of them there to get me pumped full of lead without anyone hesitating. No one until now has managed to describe them as well as I have, so intuitively. Before I even saw them, I pictured them booted, armed, dressed in resplendent red and black uniforms decorated with gold buttons. I understood the symbolic shorthand: incandescent flames burning at the bottom of an abyss out of which the damned, in a supreme and vile temptation, would see a rain of gold. Red, black, gold! Flames, abyss, ambition! No use trying. I can’t write. I will try to preserve in my memory this poem that keeps worrying at me.
Red, black, gold!
Flames, abyss, ambition!
Captivating colors of damnation…
By the glory of our forebears, I’m going to do it, kick the door open and walk up to them. Dessalines! Pétion! Toussaint! Christophe! [38] I call on all our indomitable heroes for help. On God Himself! Yes, God! Why not! I unhook the crucifix, piously, I who had forgotten all about it for so long, since the day poetry replaced everything for me, since the day I tried, shut away in my Haitian Parnassus, to create my own god, a truly Haitian god, half-white, half-black, a blend of Christ and Legba [39] in whom I took refuge, wings dangling, eyes closed to better carve my way through an entanglement of traps, reversals, life’s one hundred thousand humiliations; to hack a path to freedom with an imaginary machete through the thicket of campeachy mahogany, and oak, and climb the unreachable hill of dreams. I must no longer dream. I must face danger. With what weapons? I put the crucifix on the floor, pointing its face at the front door. I, who haven’t believed in miracles in so long, here I am, today, awaiting one from God. My poem in the French manner has suddenly left me. Sad and nostalgic Creole stanzas have replaced it, and two astonishingly violent verses spring out of my mouth. Trembling, I yell them out, lying on the ground, hands lifting the crucifix. Then I put it back down, piously kissing its feet.
My black mother, before you died you told me:
“Serve the family loas and pray God you’ll never be in anyone’s debt.”
But I despised the loas and avoided the thought of God. I was hungry too often, and a man praying on an empty stomach is spitting in his own face.
I feel weaker before the devils who have invaded our little town, more inclined to seek divine protection. You can stifle hunger! but the devils…
I pull the trunk toward me and open it. Beneath the dusty layer of books and papers, I find a pile of sacred objects for a voodoo shrine: marassas dishes, [40] candles dressed in the seven colors of the rainbow, little pitchers stuffed with dried leaves meant for protection, the miraculous amulets I wore on a red string around my neck as a child. My black mother, who didn’t know how to read and who sold trinkets at the market, slaved away to make a scholar of her son. I left Creole and voodoo behind by going to school, and she, who was never able to say a French word to me, would beam when she heard me recite lessons she did not understand.
What are the good French sisters at the Sainte-Marie-de-Dieu school doing right now? Or the good French brothers at Saint-Valentin High School? They are on their knees, interceding with God on behalf of the cursed town, beseeching Him to vanquish the devils, to slay and crush them. And what if evil were to triumph over good yet again? Might as well wheedle the loas and have them on my side as well.
I take out the things from the trunk with ceremonial respect and pour water on the ground, offering drink to the gods of Guinea; then, I fill the marassas dishes with cane syrup and surround them with amulets and pitchers. I have nothing else to offer them, neither liquor nor candy, and in my generosity risk croaking from hunger while I wait for the devils to depart. Having pleased the loas, I lie sated on the floor, hands behind my neck. A thin trickle of light comes through a hole in the boards and I jump up and paste my eye to it. I would have preferred the whistling of bullets to this all-pervading silent torpor. From this observation post I have a wonderful view of Cécile’s tall house, the white railing of her balcony, her potted carnations, her lace curtains. I seek in vain for signs of life there. Where is she? What is she doing? What has happened to her parents? Their devious maid, Marcia, a pretty black girl, used to smile at me and shout:
“Lost your mind, heh! crazy mulatto, lost your mind…”
But the only woman I ever had eyes for was her mistress. And she knew it. What did I care about the insults of a poor, ignorant black girl mad with scorn to the point of throwing stones at me and making the kids of the Grand-rue chase after me!
I was biting my nails, bemoaning the fact I had not sought the object of my desire sooner, when I heard a man cry out. He was doubled over and running away as fast as possible, straight in the direction of my house. I saw Cécile’s window open slightly. In the time I lost looking for her silhouette the man fell, riddled with bullets. Two tiny devils, their weapons slapping their backsides like tails, leaned over the body and smashed its face in with their red boots.
Cécile’s window was closed again. I plugged up the wall with a piece of soap and took off my sweat-soaked shirt. On the ground, the crucifix gleamed in the half light. I stretched out on the floor again. I am on the floor with all of them now. On the floor with Jesus. On the floor with the loas, for it is said that the spirit of the gods of Africa descends upon the offerings for nourishment. On the floor, like a pariah. I burned my last mat to get rid of the bedbugs busy eating me alive at night. Before being reduced to this, I knocked on every door: Mme Fanfreluche’s door, and M. Potentat’s, both with businesses on the Grand-rue, both passing for rich people around here. I knocked on every door, repeating myself like a parrot in a voice growing weaker and weaker from rising hunger:
“Please give me some work.”
They would whisper something to each other that I could not hear and would put a twenty-centime coin in my hand for an errand I had agreed to run. But what can a man do with a Haitian coin of twenty centimes?
I am thirsty! My water pitcher is half-empty I will need to ration myself. Ah, if only I had enough courage to go cross the yard to get some coal and the little stove and make a bit of coffee! Thank God for the day my mother had the good idea to buy me this chamber pot.
Here I am alone as I have never been. Alone with my memories, my regrets, my remorse. Why remorse? Is it always there? After my mother’s death, I reproached myself for cutting short my mourning, though I had shut myself in for a month, even refusing to see the good Dr. Chanel. The doctor was the only one, apart from Father Angelo and Brother Justinien, who made sure I did not die of hunger. But, like the Haitian saying goes, the good ones don’t last. And it is true that death always picks off the best. Dr. Chanel is dead. So is Brother Justinien. As for Father Angelo, just as good but now old, he can barely walk and, cassock or no, he does seem to live by begging just like me. For there is more than one way to beg.
To witness a man murdered makes you heavy with remorse. The body in front of my door is beginning to mean something to me. He haunts me. Was he running to me? Now I am standing in front of the wall, scratching away the soap to open up the hole again. Who is he? His clotted blood has stained his yellow shirt with large blackish blotches: the blood that gushed out red has become black. Black like the devils’ uniforms. Are devils black or white? Who am I, I who was born of a father mulatto enough to pass for white? Saffron skin, mahogany skin, sapodilla skin? No, rotten coconut skin.
“The color of farts,” as my mother used to say, “all mulattoes of your kind are the color of farts.”
This irresolute color with which I have trouble identifying makes whites lump me with blacks and blacks reject me as white. The mixed-blood race! Birds forever without branches, but of late especially unwanted.
When did I really begin to feel ill at ease? And for whose sin am I paying? They haven’t taken a good look at me, they haven’t seen my troubles, for the love of God!
The bloodbath that my friend Jacques, a poet like me, has predicted will come to pass. Although I still devour whatever palliatives life offers to help pass the time, it comforts me to think that if they should suddenly force open the door and step over the body of Christ to kill me, I would still know how to die bravely. That last jolt of pride, the guilty pleasure of a malcontent. Is death near? I have been letting myself sink into my past with too much complacency not to be frightened by it. It’s fishy. This brew of memories is unhealthy. Malcontent! An arresting word. An arrogant malcontent, like all artists.
Arrogant malcontents!…
I don’t want to write. At least, not as I have before. I feel as if I am coming out of my apathy and becoming self-aware. Cornered, hounded like an animal, I take stock of my powers in silence and in fear, and plunge to the very bottom of my being. To find what there? Ah! Lord have mercy! Spare me from clutching at nothing yet again. Look at my buddies. Poets like me. Their empty gizzards stuffed with crooked rhymes, just like me. Poetry! The endemic illness of young malcontents, desperately embracing beauty, hog-tied to the tempting rhymes of a loaned-out language, tossed about between Creole and French like those rowboats over there on the sea I can hear but not see crashing from my shack. My senses grow sharp in this silence intermittently punctuated by cries or the whistling of bullets. I no longer need to look in order to see: the sea is raging. Raging against the devils, against our resignation, against our cowardice, against us. I listen to it holler, scold, protest, refute. Furious, her waves lift abandoned sailboats and make them clatter like teeth. Silver and pink fish jump high in the air and cast stunned looks at the shore; gaunt dogs pace along the beach, nosy, searching through trash and bodies. Closer by, multihued birds shake off the rain, gliding indifferently, wings fixed between heaven and earth. Between squalor and splendor. They whistle and sing cheerful sunny songs, the strident songs of island birds; and their unbridled effervescence, wafting on the warm noon breeze, that Haitian noon usually suffused with the smell of dishes spiced with garlic and hot pepper, accentuates our torment, poor prisoners that we are. We are indeed prisoners. Brave is he who ventures out. Even the beggars have deserted the streets. They have probably dug themselves in somewhere in the mountains. Let’s hope hunger doesn’t turn them into snitches and drive them to make a pact with the devils, those who just yesterday were praying at the gates of the church, arms outstretched in a cross. The church too has closed its doors and, since morning, the bells have been quiet. Is Father Angelo afraid? Is Cécile afraid? Let me put my thoughts in order, let me draw a battle plan, and I will fly to your rescue… Where have I read this?…
My shack is in a back alley that opens on the Grand-rue. A nameless back alley in the slums where near-beggars of my kind live here and there. It is near the Grand-rue and is even more despised for it. A disgraceful appendix of that main street with its heap of self-styled aristocrats, baptized by high society, as they say. Shopkeepers, businessmen, exploiters, thieves in the guise of respectable citizens, bursting with every sort of prejudice, living like pashas in this provincial small town, which, due to the terrible roads that link it to Port-au-Prince, seems forever separated from the rest of the world.
This Haitian province sung over and over in my French rhymes, province that I love because my mother and I grew up here, suffered and slaved here, I will free you from the devils’ claws!
The past is forever vomiting up regrets. Life is like a heavy cart slowly, implacably grooving a path straight ahead of itself. I turned my head to look back and was seized by discouragement. Why didn’t I keep begging for work? Why didn’t I have the courage to declare my love to Cécile? I ran away from responsibilities out of fear of the future and now I may no longer have a future. I am alone, shut up like a rat in his hole, I am gnawing at my solitude with every last tooth. Look at my buddies. André, Jacques, Simon! Malnourished poets like me. Hunted by the devils like me.
I heard gunshots and then furious running. And this time I jumped to the barricade to unblock the door. I opened it wide and the fugitive saw it and flew into my house like the wind: it was André. We put back the barricade before embracing.
“What were you doing outside?”
“Looking for Jacques.”
“Where is he?”
“Left two hours ago. He jumped out the window and I haven’t seen him since.”
“The devils might have caught him.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Did he not also predict in one of his poems that the time of the devils would come?”
“My God!” André says, putting his hands together.
And he kneels to recite a prayer.
The devils opening the gates of Hell
Will escape by the thousands
Black, red, sparkling with weapons and gold…
a voice outside recites. We listen carefully attentive and curious.
Nature herself would if she could
Hide in a shroud of mourning
Death glides to our door without warning…
“Jacques!” André hollers.
He rushes to the door and I block his way.
“No, André.”
“Jacques!”
I put my hand over his mouth, grab his shoulder and push him against the wall.
“Look, I say.”
The devils, a dozen of them, escort Jacques, who walks slowly and indifferently among them, declaiming his poems.
“Do you see them?”
“Who?”
“The devils. They are all around your brother. Circling around him. Pushing him ahead.”
“Where?”
“There, at the corner of Grand-rue.”
“So he might get killed?”
“Something strange is going on.”
“What?”
“Devils though they are, it looks like they sense they are in the presence of a greater force, something that seems to overpower them.”
“I see Jacques!” André cries out. “People are cheering him on!”
“Those are the devils!”
“They’re going to kill him, René, they’re going to kill him,” André sobs.
“Do you see them?”
“No. But I am sure they’re going to kill him.”
I run to get a bottle of clairin that I had completely forgotten about, since no Haitian poet can drink and toast unless he is in good company. I pour two glasses and lift mine:
“To the defeat of the devils,” I cry out.
“Shhh!” André motions to me.
I point to the crucifix lying on the floor and abruptly pour the clairin down my throat. It sets my stomach ablaze like a torch.
“May God and the loas protect us,” André says.
I’m completely euphoric. André’s presence and the heat of the clairin spreading in my organs lift my courage and I feel capable of confronting a whole army of devils. In the blink of an eye, a crackle of bullets destroys my vague attempt at audacity.
“They killed him,” I say to André.
“Why did you say that?”
“Didn’t you hear the sound of the firing squad?”
“No.”
“You’ve always been a bit hard of hearing. Listen to the bullets!…”
“They killed him!”
“Alas!”
“Let me leave. Let me go get his body.”
“So you too can get killed!”
I force him to drink his clairin, helping him hold the glass to his lips wet with tears.
“He was only twenty” he laments.
“Drink, drink.”
Night falls. I look around through the wall. Nothing moves. Dimming its lights, the sun dyes the clouds orange and shrimp pink. And the clouds deserting the sky gather voluptuously around the sun, which suddenly abandons them and disappears behind the sea.
We slept only an hour or two on the floor. At dawn, I was already flat against the wall, drinking up the least signs of life from the town like a starving man. Nothing stirred. All around, immutable nature seemed to mock our anguish. I listened to the nightingales modulating their clever trills. They were singing perched on a palm tree. While the fronds of the palm tree swayed in the breeze outside, in my room I was suffocating from the heat. Oh! To be able to just get out and run with open arms to the beach, fill my lungs with air, throw myself in the salty water, dive in without taking a breath, to drown!…
“Is there no one in the streets?” André asks me.
“No. Not a breath of life. It’s a siege. Either we turn ourselves in or we die.”
“Do we have what we need to make some coffee?”
“The coal and the gas stove are at the other end of the yard. There are two of us now. One of us will keep a lookout and the other will go get them.”
“What if they catch us?”
“We’ll be careful. Stop shaking. You’ve already crossed yourself a hundred times since you’ve been here. There’s no more time for prayers, only action.”
His face is drenched in sweat. He is as thin as I am, and he looks so much like me we could be brothers.
“That body has started to stink,” he says. “It’s making me sick. Why don’t they pick it up?”
“Do you know him?”
“Who?”
“The dead man.”
“It’s probably Saindor, he runs the bodega by the sea.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I owed him five piastres.” <strong>[41]</strong>
“And I ten.”
“Poor guy!”
“Yes.”
“They murdered him right under your very eyes?”
“Just about.”
“He screamed before he died.”
“Shrieked.”
André sticks two fingers into his stomach and a terrible belching pours out of him. He suddenly hiccups. He must be starving.
I watch Cécile’s house through the hole. I see her behind her curtains. She’s looking at my house. Is she worried about me? I quickly tie a handkerchief to a wooden ruler and slip it through the hole. I wave the handkerchief. Cécile’s window opens a little and she leans her head out to make herself visible and then disappears. I quickly withdraw my white flag and start pacing around the room, anxiously.
“Who were you making signs to?”
“To Cécile.”
“You’re still thinking about her?”
“I love her.”
“But she will never love you. She’s rich and you are poor. People like that, they’re snobs.”
“She did accept my poem.”
“She was laughing.”
“What does that prove?”
“She was making fun of you.”
He swallows more clairin and slams his glass on the table.
“It’s them, they’re the ones responsible for this. They made a big bonfire where every piece of kindling was soaked with hatred. They lit the fire and fanned it.”
“So write a poem about hatred.”
“Jesus preached love.”
“Then write a poem about love.”
I push him to the table blocking the door and give him paper and pencil. He begins to cry quietly, head in his arms.
“I can’t, I can’t write, there’s too much hate all around me.”
“Write, God damn it! Destroy hatred and sow love with your poems.”
“Don’t you remember, René? The market women who went down the hills at dawn, baskets on their heads! We would wait for them on the road to lift their skirts. And their endless chatter. And the rhythm of their rumps! The smell of the donkeys loaded with produce. The fragrance of the mangoes, quenepas drying under the quenepa trees that reminded us of Madame Fanfreluche’s imported plums, which Brother Justinien made us try one Christmas! Dawn to dusk, all the smells of the day! There isn’t a single scent, not even the smell of the fresh catch struggling in the fishermen’s nets, that I don’t miss right now!…”
He gets up and walks to the wall.
“Oh! The smell of the sea! Put your nose against the hole in the wall. Can you smell it?… To live here, locked up, waiting for death… This torment reminds me of something. We were once locked up somewhere, but where?…”
“Keep quiet!”
“Let me get out of here.”
“No.”
“I want to go.”
He starts trying to unblock the door and I grab him roughly.
“You’ve got to settle down,” I tell him.
He sits on the floor and starts crying again. There’s a large purple scar on his black forehead. He scratches it absentmindedly and wipes the blood that comes out with his shirtsleeve.
Is his presence going to complicate things for me? In any case, as I push up against his weakness, I feel like I’m going toe-to-toe with someone, like I’m being brave, not merely moldering away in resignation. Having to protect this being from himself increases my own instinct for self-preservation tenfold. Alone, I would have succumbed and resigned myself. Depressed and starving I would have welcomed death with open arms, with joy Only rebellion can nourish courage. Why did he start talking to me about Cécile? I want to live just to prove to him that she loves me too. I don’t want anyone’s pity. Once I free the town, Cécile will give me her hand. My name will ring out to the four corners of the earth. Have you heard of René? The great René who defeated the devils? Have you read his poems? I will beat the devils. What is courage if not a mixture of rage and despair? My stomach is growling from hunger and, at the same time, anger. I can feel it fermenting in my gut, this anger. When it reaches my heart, I’ll see red and I will cut the throats of those within my grasp in cold blood. Look out, devils, lest my anger explode. They are like walking arsenals. A veritable jumble of rifles, revolvers, bayonets, spurs, brass knuckles, studded whips, [42] machetes, coco-macaques <strong>[43]</strong> and stiff cowhide whips. Imported weapons, local weapons, nothing is enough for them as they prepare for a victory already theirs.
Tonight, I will act alone. I will get André drunk and leave the house to haul the water and the coal. Once I’ve had a nice cup of coffee, I’ll feel better. Coffee appeases hunger and stimulates the nerves. I don’t want to fall asleep. Eating so little since my mother’s death has depressed me enough. Poor black woman who died, as she used to say, of raising her mulatto of a son like a prince! My palms are softer than the petals of wild orchids.
“Don’t touch that pot,” she would protest whenever I wanted to help. “I’ll wash it myself; leave that broom alone, you’ll get calluses. I’m not slaving away so you can end up a servant boy.”
She died the year I came home triumphantly to give her news of my successful completion of the exams for the second baccalaureate. “I can die now,” she had said. And die she did, too soon. I had learned to count on her and not on myself. What I knew was how to read the classics and to speak French like a Parisian.
“Good diction, very good diction,” Brother Justinien would say, rubbing his hands together.
I was already writing poems and reciting those by French authors and sometimes my own, but I didn’t know how to do anything else. “Lazybones!” they cried after me in the street. Lazy? I sometimes spent whole nights with my notebook, writing, crossing out, ripping it up to start again, over and over. Lazy? My mother left me her shack, the furniture now blocking the door, and her loas! Lazybones! I tutored a few students that Brother Justinien sent me, but nobody thanked me because I stank of clairin.
“Stop drinking, don’t drink anymore,” the good Dr. Chanel kept repeating to me. “You’ll ruin your health and your reputation.”
Why do they rebuke me for my one vice? If I’m doing my job properly, if I am conscientious in teaching their sons, stubborn asses interested in nothing, then why are they meddling in my private life? If I drink, it’s my business. Ah, I remember my first spree at Saindor’s, who had his place on the shore, before the devils murdered him. May he rest in peace! I was hunting a poem that was torturing me sadistically as it fled. I saw it run, turn around, thumb its nose at me, stroke my cheek, lean on my shoulder, look me seriously in the eye and burst out laughing. So I drank. I began drinking because of this poem I never wrote. I staggered down the Grand-rue in front of Cécile’s door, staggered before her maid Marcia, who laughed and got the kids to throw rocks at me. I never raised my eyes to see Cécile. My heart quickened with loud beating. I know how to be prudent. That prefect who sent me speeches to correct for a few piastres but still called me a loser in public, I will take his name to my grave. To my grave, the name of a certain popular writer who returned my poems with a slight look of distaste, telling me: “Poets are all the rage now, so keep writing, my dear, if you like.”
But I was soft and they knew it. They went at me ruthlessly. I have since witnessed the undeserved triumph of the grandiose and the mediocre. Machete in hand, I will climb the hill of dreams on my own. I will hew my way through the undergrowth of tangled creepers. Alone at the broken ground for the edifice that my hands would have been the first to trace, I will lift my face to the rising dawn, machete in my fist, soaked with sweat and blood…
I am getting used to this terrible silence reigning over our town. A town mired in terror! We have become the half-dead residents of a dead town. I am taking on the foul stench of the corpse outside. André snores, lying stretched out on the floor beside the crucifix. He has taken off his shirt and his prominent ribs stab at his skin. He looks so much like me we could be brothers. The room stinks. The chamber pot is full to the brim. I am suffocating. What are they waiting for to bury the dead? Where is the prefect? Where is the commandant in charge of the town’s security? Where is M. Potentat? Where is the mayor? Where are the police? Where are they all? Ah! Ah! Ah! So they too are afraid? Well, we’re no more cowards than they are, André and I. At least they have weapons, but us? Where are the church bells? I want to hear them ring. Poor Father Angelo! Your priests will be more useless than ever. We must fight the devils with equal force. This is none of your business. How is it our business, mine, André’s, Jacques’ and Simon’s? Unknown and malnourished poets. Poor unarmed poets abandoned to the cruelty of the devils. What was I doing the night before they came? I can’t remember. Something in the air must have announced this invasion. Something we didn’t know how to interpret. Perhaps the danger hovered over our carefree heads for a long time. What are we guilty of? What are we paying for? If Jesus was put to death, it’s because he offered something more. Where did I read that? What more have we said or done than the others? In history, details are always meaningful. Are we going to enter history? Once upon a time, voices would often rise out of the depths of my conscience that I would silence with blows of rhyme. Details. Yes, meaningful. What did these voices say? Did they reproach me for my indifference toward the rituals of my ancestors? Did they accuse me of laziness, treason, cowardice? Here I am, my nails scratching the varnish off my Latin education, clinging to the bosom of the superstitious terrors of my childhood. How much less dangerous it is to serve God! He has the patience of a forsaken lover, hanging around in case love rekindles to hold out his hand and forgive. Exacting loas! Insatiable loas of my ancestors!…
I went to open the trunk and I saw a rat lapping up the syrup in the dishes. I banished him with a kick and started laughing and screaming:
“Jesus, Son of God made man, lift up your hand over this town and cast out these devils.”
I’m delirious. It’s the hunger. The tension, too. When’s the last time I have either eaten or slept? And yet, I poured the syrup into the marassas dishes again and stopped up the rat hole.
André is asleep on his side now. He grunts and I go past him furtively I miss solitude. Decency is only necessary in the presence of a third party. And I don’t feel like being decent at such a time as this. Here I am looking through the hole studying the dead body again.
My eyes left him only when I saw Cécile’s curtains move. I wrote a poem in my head about her black eyes, her black hair, her brown plum-colored skin, and I told myself: “It’s true that she is beautiful and rich and will never be mine.” Nonsense! Fame awaits me. Wealth awaits me. I snuggle lovingly in the arms of sweet hope.
“Madame Magistral, may I speak to your daughter Cécile?”
“Cécile,” Mme Magistral will say, paying me no mind, “some beggar is asking for you. It’s that little mulatto, Angélie the trinket-peddler’s boy.”
And Cécile will appear, haughty, shouting in Creole:
“What do you want? Are you running an errand for Madame Fanfreluche?”
And I will run away, head down, Marcia scolding me.
Will they have the nerve to humiliate me, to keep being smug after everything we’ve suffered together? I’d rather the devils kill everyone. Let this town disappear! Let it be annihilated…
They’ve started again with the firing squad. It’s happening near the church. I wake up André. Now we’re both flat against the wall, looking through the hole.
“Beggars,” André whispers to me. “Never have I seen so many of them.”
“But those are peasants.”
“Oh!” says André.
The bullets crackle. A little girl runs from one house to the next. I see her fall. André doesn’t. It’s strange he didn’t see her fall. The sound of the bullets is terrifying. They whistle with a treacherously inconspicuous sound, a sound like nothing else in the world. Their whistling echoes in the distance for a long time, patiently, annihilating all other sounds, even the hoarse martial blast of the lambi <strong>[44]</strong> calling the peasants together for a coumbite, [45] even the rumbling of the rada drums calling hounsis <strong>[46]</strong> to the voodoo ceremony. Everything is drowning in a sea of blood. I would like to stare in the devils’ faces as they kill. From a distance, they all look the same in their uniforms. Neither black, nor white, nor yellow. Colorless! Like crime. Colorless! Like injustice and cruelty. You see nothing of them under their uniforms. Headless bodies. Faceless heads in golden helmets. Would I have the courage to stare at them even from behind the walls of my shack? They are anonymous, like stupidity and meanness. Their ugliness overwhelms me, demoralizes me. The way the surface of the face and its features decompose beneath the weight of sadistic cruelty-this is what I call ugliness. They enjoy killing too much. There are hundreds of bodies in front of the church. I hear another blast of bullets. These shots, I only understand this now, are their language, their voice. Here’s one of them now at the end of the street. I clutch at the wall and look at him. He’s just across from us. His face is cast in some kind of metal, like a blinding mirror in the sun. I close my eyes, suddenly feeling weak.
“What’s wrong?” André asks.
“Did you see?”
“Who?”
“The devil there, at the corner of Grand-rue.”
He throws himself on the floor and curls up trembling behind the trunk, hands clasped together.
No point talking to him. He only knows how to tremble and pray. His presence weighs on me. It seems to me that if I were by myself I’d be able to think of a solution more easily. His terror is contaminating me. I make vain efforts to turn inward, to focus. As in a dream, I feel like I am running after something that escapes me just as I think I am about to catch it in my hands. Oh! My God, the ugliness of that face! Could I ever forget it?
“Stop mumbling prayers,” I shout to André impatiently. “You’re not letting me think.”
“Hush! Lower your voice,” he begs.
I’m hunting down an idea. Surely it concerns the devils. To defeat them, but how? Fight them, but how? I’ve got it. I’m going to kill one of them, just one, I will slip on his uniform and then I will wedge myself among their ranks and keep my head down. An exterminating angel striking at hell’s minions with my blade! I will free the town from the devils’ clutches. God has designated me for this role. I will fulfill my destiny only when I obey Him. Each of us has a role to fulfill down here, otherwise how can we justify having been created? But one must not play dumb and blind, but obey. As for me, I have ears to hear with and eyes to see with, and I have heard and I have seen. What I experience cannot be merely personal. Will the others shirk responsibility? Are they going to close their eyes and ears like André? Until this very minute, I thought that the corpse was the source of the turmoil within me. But I see the light now. I feel lifted by an unexplainable force that paradoxically inclines me to great humility. I feel like a child who, one fine day, finally receives a long-coveted toy.
The body is teeming with ants, its eyes slowly disappearing into two deep orbits traced by the ravages of the merciless insects. I will stoically bear witness to its slow and irreversible decomposition.
Original sin is like a tattoo, we are cursed from the beginning. Where did I read that? Is this fair? If the devils have made ours their town of choice, it can only be because of original sin. What are we guilty of? Let each of us cry out: “Mea culpa, mea culpa,” and the devils will disappear. God has unleashed the devils upon us to punish us. Otherwise, how can we explain their power? God is tired of us. God spits in our face.
God tortures us so that the punishment will bear fruit once and for all. Who has not felt the icy finger of remorse weighing on his heart at least once? Hedonists, exploiters, frauds, spies, torturers, all kneel and cry out: “Mea culpa!” “It seems begging has become a profession,” was your response to the one who implored and held out his hand to you. “Leave me alone, lazybones,” you cried to the cripple.
And in your moneyed homes, you amassed expensive knickknacks from France or the United States, collected jewelry and baubles to adorn your wives so they could strut past the beggars while holding their noses.
What am I guilty of? Me?
Well before the devils came, I felt I was being spied on, as if a mysterious presence was watching my every move, sniggering whenever it heard me recite my verses. And yet, I am just a minuscule creature! To you, I am nothing but a wisp of straw. I am nothing but a poor ox resigned to the stake, pulling his rope out of habit, docile, with no great desire to leave the meager pasture where it is attached. A Haitian ox, born in poverty, used to his poverty, lowing in the sun, his empty gut growling. But so be it, whether or not you’re an ox at the stake, each and every one of us needs to account for himself. Life is nothing but a usurious loan, and we still have to pay back the interest someday. We’ve abused the terms of the loan and the devils’ judgment day is here. Purification through the flames of hell here and now, and the triumph of truth afterward. We will confess our crimes in public this time, shouting: “Mea culpa!”
The devils speak. Listen to their bullets. Our overgrown gutters are red with blood. Cursed be the towns where poverty becomes a stone-faced routine. Where it no longer arouses pity.
It is said that the innocent will pay for the guilty. Oh! Yes, wait a minute, my God, after all, nothing has been bestowed upon me since my birth save the blessed love of my mother. Contempt, humiliation, cheap shots have been my lot. Of course the crippled beggars are in worse shape than I am. Thanks to my good black mother, I have a shack for shelter and some ordinary furniture. All of them naked like veritable zombies, gaunt, skeletal; they must be dying of hunger somewhere in the hills, the crippled beggars. But the devils’ bullets muffle their voices…
What am I guilty of? I keep asking myself but there is no answer. And yet incomprehensible remorse pricks at my heart. I try to exonerate myself in my own eyes as best as I can. I am guilty: of accepting injustice without protest, of wallowing in opprobrium and immorality and behaving like Pontius Pilate, offering smiles for the well-heeled to flatter them, groveling like a dog, tail between my legs, to make myself small in the presence of power, guilty of trembling before the district commandant, of indifferently witnessing Saindor’s murder, guilty of secretly rejoicing over his death because I owed him ten piastres. What else could I do? My God! It’s hard to know, hard to understand, hard to decide. Poverty has annihilated me. I saw M. Potentat and his red carpets, yellow carpets, white carpets. I saw all of his wealth and I looked the other way in order to accept the alms he gave me in exchange for running an errand. His wealth goes back as far as yesterday. How has he been able to accumulate so much in so little time in such a poor country? I don’t want to think about it. Not yet. Even my thoughts make me shiver. M. Potentat has scads of spies at his disposal and they could be roaming, invisible, around my house. But no, I am forgetting the devils. The devils have driven away M. Potentat and his henchmen. They are not afraid of anything, the devils! They are not afraid of anyone. So then why are they armed to the hilt?…
I knew my father by sight and reputation.
“Look,” my mother said to me one day, pointing out a man as light-skinned as a white man with a soft felt hat on his head, beautiful polished shoes, and, on his arm, a beautiful lady who looked like she could be Mme Fanfreluche’s sister. “That’s your father.”
A great landowner, who also had buildings on the Grand-rue, he wouldn’t give me an inch of thread for a pair of pants. My mother had been brought to him when she was fifteen by some of the farmers who had settled on his lands and who wished to get in his good graces. These farmers happened to be my mother’s own parents. Poverty forces poor blacks to grovel like dogs before the rich. They offered him their only daughter as a house slave, making her a “restez-avec-monsieur” <strong>[47]</strong> in exchange for a plot of land to cultivate. One night, the “monsieur” jumped on the little house slave and raped her.
But in reality that’s nothing. There’s worse. The crippled beggars dug into the mountains somewhere, with neither food nor water, nor voodoo drums nor dancing, nor clairin nor tafia. [48] They’re extraordinary, Haiti’s blacks. Even when they’ve been reduced to their last extremity they cling to life like a cherished possession. The moment the devils leave town and someone beats the drum and distributes tafia, you will see them come down, thinner than living skeletons, whirling, drunk, lopsided, possessed, resurrected, transformed. Cocobés, <strong>[49]</strong> famine-crazed, flea-ridden, they ward off danger as best they can: with visits to the voracious houngans <strong>[50]</strong> who extort every last coin they’ve harvested in the course of a long day of going up and down begging, with prayers to every saint in heaven, with simples [51] and charms to protect them from evil spirits. Now go and try to get them to come out of the woods where they’ve hidden. The devils are there to settle their devil business; no one will get mixed up with this and pay for all the broken eggs. The beggars were the first to vanish from circulation. The devils would be clever indeed if they ever managed to smoke them out.
André, beside me, has a pitiful expression. He’s just discovered the marassas dishes and knows why the bottle of syrup is empty. But he doesn’t dare say anything. He too has his own loas and will not judge me. He is a mystic who lives in communion with a whole mass of things he sees in his dreams and even in broad day, their meaning depending on how he interprets each symbol. For now, despite his hunger, he cautiously keeps quiet in the presence of the gods of Guinea because it is said that they are greedy when it comes to offerings and libations.
“Why all this?” he asks me. “You don’t even believe in it. You have always boasted of being tough, one of those who turn neither to prayer nor to loas. Without faith what can this accomplish? Why did you lay Christ down on the floor? What do you expect from him, you who don’t believe in miracles?”
His pure and beautiful face makes me forget the ugliness of the devils. And also, he heals me from my fear.
“Put the Christ back where your mother left it and put the dishes back in the trunk. It’s bad luck to invoke God and the loas without believing in them. I drank religion with my mother’s milk. I grew up with a shrine of saints and loas in our bedroom. The fear of displeasing them is rooted in me. None of this could ever be uprooted by books. You play tough, but me, I remain humbly prostrate before their power.”
“I’m afraid as well…”
“Fear is not enough.”
“God welcomes lost sheep back into the fold.”
“The loas are the gods of the blacks of Africa. God is universal. The loas are taking revenge because the blacks were deserted and enslaved and persecuted, and so voodoo will someday rally them together. But you are not a black man.”
“Am I a white man?”
“No. You’re not a white man either.”
“If you have no idea who I am, leave me alone and listen. The gods are here to teach us to depend on our own strength. The God who created me will give me the courage to defeat the devils. God has done His godly duty by putting us on this earth. He expects us to raise ourselves up to Him through sheer will. You’re right, I panicked for a minute. I am going to put the Christ back in its place and the dishes in the trunk.”
He’s afraid. He’s struggling between the horror of seeing me mock these pious relics in his presence and the desire to keep them within reach so he can take comfort from them once in a while.
“I won’t stop you from praying anymore,” I promise him.
“Who could stop me from praying?” he replies.
The sound of footsteps interrupts us. No, it’s something else. We throw ourselves against the wall. A few small, clumsily thrown stones fall to the pavement. One of them reaches the door. It’s Cécile! We see her behind the window she has cracked open. She quickly opens it, raises her arm and with all her might throws one last stone, a larger one that falls before our eyes right outside the wall against which we have flattened ourselves. It is wrapped up in something and there’s string around it.
“A message from Cécile!” I exclaim.
“What message?”
“There’s a piece of paper wrapped around the stone.”
“You are not going out!”
“I’ll have to anyway to get the water and the coal.”
“I am hungry” he confesses.
“So you see. Wait a little, until tonight.”
I’m upset with myself for having wasted the water and syrup on libations. I feel weak and starved. We each take a sip of clairin from the bottle and cough.
“This stuff scorches my guts,” André says quietly.
I go back to the wall to feast my eyes on the stone, harbinger of happiness. Nothing could stop me. I would snatch it from the very jaws of the devils if I had to. Cécile must see it from her window as well.
“Plug up the hole,” André tells me. “It stinks more and more outside.”
He angrily chases off a rat that jumped down from the roof to rummage for something to eat.
“What are you looking for?”
“Some cardboard to cover the chamber pot.”
He urinates holding his nose, then puts the cardboard on the pot.
“I’m hungry,” he says again.
“There’s syrup in the marassas dishes.”
“Are you crazy?”
The silence is strangling us. I even miss the whistling of bullets. Something terrible is coming, I am sure of it. Nothing moves, not even the leaves. The heat of a Haitian midsummer sets sky and earth ablaze. The road stretches out, lonesome and red right up to the church where the bodies have been piled. How can they kill as the sun is setting? How can they kill as the sun rises? Everything is so beautiful at all hours of the day and night! For the moment, the sea embraces the sky right where the sun has sunk dressed in saffron and crimson. An entire section of the sky has been set ablaze. Flames leak through the clouds and light them on fire. The sun is a centaur with a blazing mane. I am mounting the sun. I am clinging to two monstrous waves that have miraculously retained their immaculate color. I catch two clouds as they pass, thin as ribbons and red as bloodstains. I am standing atop the sun, in the midst of white waves, my muscles taut, head wreathed by the emerging stars, like a god on a chariot dripping with light.
“Plug the hole back up,” André tells me.
I am as startled as if something had bitten me; I’m panting, drunk on sun and clairin. I plug up the hole and go to bed next to him on the floor.
I am suffocating. I am thirsty and hungry. Oh God, let night come!
I’ve had three swigs of clairin one after the other and André has hung the jug around my neck, behind my back.
We cautiously took down the barricade and I pushed the door open. I threw myself to the ground and crawled up to the corpse with my eyes closed, holding my breath. I picked up the stone and I slipped it into my pocket. Then I went back to the yard and ran to the faucet, grabbed the coal basket, put the filled jug and the stove in it, and then ran back, this time ducking all the way back to the front door. In my slow and jerky dash, the water spilled on the coal. I was sweating profusely As I passed the dead body, rats came at me as if they wanted to make up for not having noticed me the first time around. I had to put down my basket to get rid of them. Their onslaught forced me to linger and look at the body. In the darkness, it seemed to me to have shrunk, more like the remains of a dog than of a man. Teeth jutted sharply from his lips, which had been gnawed by rats and ants. I hurried back. Trembling, André was waiting for me by the door he had cautiously closed. Together we rebuilt the barricade and filled the stove with coal. We had to search for a long time before we found the matches and the coffee, which I had inadvertently put back in the trunk with the dishes.
“Leave the trunk open,” André said.
He has been scratching the enormous scar, disfiguring his forehead enough to draw blood.
“Dr. Prémature didn’t sew you up properly,” I told him.
“You think so?”
“Well, long live the good Dr. Chanel! Unfortunately, he’s dead.”
“Maybe it’s the heat. Give me some clairin to clean it.”
I give him the clairin and search my pocket for the stone.
“The letter! It’s disappeared.”
“The rats must have eaten it.”
I lowered my head, perplexed, turning the stone between my fingers again and again.
“Why did the rats eat it? Why?”
“Because you’re just unlucky, that’s all. Come on! It’ll be all right. I’ll stand by you. We’ve been friends from childhood. We scribbled our first verses together. I’ll stand by you.”
As I light the fire, he kneels before the crucifix and slowly recites the Pater Noster. I set the water to boil and slowly pour coffee into the bag.
“No point making coffee,” André tells me. “I could never drink it black.”
“Take some syrup from the dishes.”
“Don’t tempt me, don’t ever tempt me,” he suddenly yells.
His own voice frightens him so much that he throws himself to his knees, grabs the jug and sprinkles the trunk and the dishes with a ritual gesture.
“I may be thirsty,” he tells me, “but so are the loas.”
He takes a drink and holds out the jug to me.
Sitting, hands crossed on lifted knees, he chants a voodoo song in a plaintive voice. He swings back and forth to the rhythm of the song, and little by little his eyes close. He slides onto his back and falls asleep. I stay near him, lying on the floor, waiting up like a guard dog. Oh, how I’d like to sleep! To sleep!
Commandant Cravache, what are you doing at this hour? Leave the prisoners alone, and come out and confront the devils. Commandant Cravache, face the devils! You who twice beat us up for public drunkenness and incitement when we recited Massillon Coicou’s “L’Alarme” in unison. [52] Oh! Oh! Oh!…
Do you hear the cry that resounded: To arms!
Horror still! Blood still! Tears still!These mournful echoes, it is not the cannon
Of Crête-à-Pierrot that thunders its fury
To defend or avenge the rights of the Country…
Oh! Oh! Oh! He doesn’t seem to like Massillon Coicou much, our Commandant Cravache. He grabbed me by the collar, kicked my backside twice, and, calling me crazy, hit me over the head with his coco-macaque
“Brotherhood of mad poets,” he called us.
And he also hit André, Jacques and Simon. Over the head. Always over the head. He has a bit of nasal twang, Commandant Cravache, and seems to me-as Simon put it-just a tad effeminate. He strikes and stares at his victim with a funny expression. He strikes and after each blow leans in to sniff the blood. He strikes and caresses the gaping wounds with an almost religious gesture. The good Dr. Chanel sewed back my ear and my left temple, but he’s dead, the good Dr. Chanel. In the meantime, I would like to know what they are waiting for to clean up the town. Club in his fist, revolver on his hip, rifle on his shoulder, why doesn’t he confront the devils, fucking Commandant Cravache! I am going to lodge a complaint against Commandant Cravache, who is responsible for the security of this district and who has evaded his responsibility. Unless they’re in cahoots, the devils and him. People in uniform always have each other’s backs. If that’s true, then we are lost, utterly lost. Because he will recognize me disguised in the ranks of the devils and will finger me and the devils will murder me and I will die like an animal and my body will join the others on the pavement. And that I don’t want. God chose me to liberate the town. Am I going to shrink from this undertaking? My skull hurts. Bones are cracking in my head. It starts in the nape, right below the occiput, and pulls at my temple. My ears are ringing. “You’re burned out!” the good Dr. Chanel would diagnose. It’s true that my head has been working nonstop. And then, this disappointment. I have the stone in my hand. I bring it to my lips. Cécile! Cécile! Your black eyes! Your black hair! Your plum-brown skin! There’s a jazz session in my stomach: cymbals, drums, bamboo trumpets, trombones, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, maracas, all mingled in an uproar. Am I hungry? It seems to me that I will never be able to be hungry or sleepy. I am slipping in and out of consciousness. And when I move my head, I hear bones cracking inside.
“You drink too much,” good Dr. Chanel used to say. “You’ll drown your talent in alcohol.”
Another ignoramus-after all, Baudelaire drank and Villon drank before him and Rimbaud drank too. [53] The taste of it returns as I keep thinking about it, and I look for the bottle near André, who’s snoring away, just to get a mouthful, no more than a mouthful.
I feel sure someone just knocked cautiously on the door. I wake up André. He opens his red eyes and fish mouth.
“Someone knocked,” I say.
“Don’t open it,” he begs.
“Wait!”
I run to the wall but can’t see a thing through the hole. It’s dark as the devil’s lair.
“You must have been dreaming,” André whispers.
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
This time we both distinctly hear three little knocks. A voice whispers:
“René! René!”
“It’s Jacques! He’s not dead,” I say to André, shaking him. We clear the door and Jacques comes in.
“Oh!” he cries, seeing André, “I was sure I’d find you here.”
“Oh, little buddy! My little buddy! I thought you were dead,” André says, hugging him.
“Dead! Me! And why?”
“The devils!”
“What devils!”
“Why, the ones escorting you. René saw you going with them. You seemed so proud, so brave! You were reciting your poems and you were walking among them paying them no mind.”
“That’s right. I remember now. They said to me… You know what they said to me: Jacques, you’re a genius. We’ll leave you alone because you’re a genius.’”
He straightens his back and grabs the bottle of clairin.
“You pranksters! You guys are hiding out so you could drink without me.”
“We’re hiding because of the devils, you know that. We’re no geniuses, so they might kill us.”
“Anyway, I don’t want to see them again,” he says. “They’re awful, horrible…”
He shudders.
“Sit down,” I say to him.
“He looks so tired,” André says to me.
“Yes, he is as skinny as we are.”
“I’ve forgotten to eat,” Jacques admits.
“Alas, there’s nothing here.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“You didn’t see Simon?” André asks.
“The devils may have murdered him,” I say.
“I left him two days ago, no three… Ah, I don’t remember.”
“Let him be,” André tells me, “he seems exhausted.”
“Did you see the corpse?” I ask him.
“What corpse?”
“The one in the street, in front of the door.”
“Yes, that’s a dog.”
“But no, that’s Saindor, the one who runs the place by the sea.”
“It was dark,” he says. “I thought it was a dog.”
“The devils killed him right in front of René,” André says.
“And the other bodies? Did you see them?”
“Where?”
“By the church.”
“Yes. Piles. Hundreds of bodies. I saw them, I saw them…”
All of a sudden he starts to shriek, and I throw myself on top of him to keep his mouth shut. I put all my weight against his back, my left arm around his chest and my right hand muzzling him to the point of smothering him.
“Are you trying to draw them here?”
André was trembling so much that he staggered when he got up and would’ve fallen if he hadn’t held on to the table.
“Give him some clairin” I say to André.
“No,” he replied, “alcohol excites him. Let him go. You’re choking him. Let him go,” he cried violently. “Come, little brother, you have nothing to fear. Look, the barricade is solid and no one can come in if we don’t open that door.”
I free him. He gasps.
“It’s your fault,” he tells us, “scaring me with all your talk of devils. You know very well that I’m a bundle of nerves.”
“My mother told me she saw one,” André says. “She was going to early mass and she got the time wrong. Some sort of naked giant blocked her path, telling her: ‘Beware if you know who I am.’ She passed out on the road to church and that’s where she was found at dawn.”
“The devils are in uniform,” I say to him.
“There are all kinds of devils,” André replies. “I dreamed about one. He was white with red horns and tail. He was gesticulating in a funny way and threatening me with his pitchfork. After class, I told Brother Justinien about my dream and he said to me:
“‘Do you have a voodoo shrine at home?’
“‘Yes,’ I said to him.
“‘Destroy it,’ he advised me, ‘or the devils will take hold of you.’
“I went eight days without being able to sleep. My mother was already dead and it was to me, as the oldest, that she had entrusted her loas. I wasn’t doing anything wrong by giving them food and drink even if Jacques and I were hungry. And it seemed to me that Brother Justinien didn’t understand anything since he was French.”
“There you go!” Jacques protests. “So you want to hear me scream again.”
“Don’t scream, I’m begging you, you’re going to sit down in that corner like a good boy and keep quiet. There you are, some paper and a pencil, write us a nice poem.”
“That’s it, I’ll write a poem about the devils. Unfortunately, I didn’t look at them. I did see a horde of strange people in the street who cheered as I went by but I couldn’t tell whether or not they were devils. I should have thought to take a good look when one of them called me a genius.”
“Write about something else,” I recommend paternally “forget the devils. You’re safe here.”
He sniffs around, glances around for a chair, and seeing that they are barricading the door, sits on the floor and, eyes raised, absorbs himself in the composition of a poem.
André and I should be careful not to show our terror in his presence. He is frail and sickly. He had a nervous breakdown when he was fifteen and his mother, beating herself up for neglecting the loas, paid a houngan to treat him. She ruined herself. She died of consumption. She spit up every last drop of blood in her body. And the houngan was there by her bedside to accuse her mercilessly of treason and indifference toward the loas.
This recollection makes me uneasy.
What’s the use of religion if it oppresses instead of consoling? If it offers despair instead of relief? If it takes away instead of preserving? André is kneeling in prayer. Where does his mysticism come from? I saw my mother serving her loas constantly and I coldly received the sacred legacy from her hands. I pray to the loas and invoke them with the conviction of an actor in a play.
“Hamming it up!” Simon once said to me, “you’re no more a believer than I am. You can’t reinvent yourself. We are both impervious to the notion of religion.”
He’s wrong. I love Jesus, not as wonder-worker, not as Son of the Holy Spirit, but as man, because he preached love and compassion. Is that incompatible with religion? André prays. He prays furiously But something tells me that I am closer to God than he is. God is tired of prayers. God is tired of recriminations. God is tired of requests. God is tired of our resignation. Who knows if He didn’t open the gates of our town to the devils in order to make us come out of ourselves. The Grand-rue and its smugness! Mme Fanfreluche and her jewels! Mme Fanfreluche and her high heels, making her entrance at high mass, haughty and disdainful. Magistral’s widow and her daughter Cécile! Cécile! Cécile! As far as you’re concerned, I give you the benefit of the doubt. You received my poem with laughter, but in the depths of your eyes there was something like sunshine. And those who have a little sunshine deep inside them can’t be completely lost. I hold onto an imperishable memory of you. It was on Christmas Eve, at Brother Justinien’s. The tree was shining with multicolored lights. We sang “Silent Night” and “O Christmas Tree.” Brother Justinien said:
“Everyone take one little bundle. They’re from Father Christmas.”
We rushed at the bundles. I undid mine and was appalled: there were just a dozen marbles, but you, you were holding a beautiful pocketknife that I had so often admired at Mme Fanfreluche’s store. You looked at me and said:
“Take the knife too. I’m a girl. I don’t need a knife.”
And I took it. I was twelve and you ten…
Would you love me if I were famous? Would you love me if I defeated the devils?
André keeps praying and Jacques keeps writing. Peace be upon my poor head. I say peace be upon this poor head split by migraine. André may be convinced that the devils have not yet pushed in this door thanks to his prayers. But I know very well that its pathetic appearance is what protects us. Never will the devils guess that here lives someone whose mind is ceaselessly at work contemplating their ruin. My poverty is my protection because a discreet and humble beggar has a better chance to pass unnoticed than a cheerful-looking rich man.
My eye pasted to the hole, I let my gaze wander outside. It goes from the corpse now teeming with worms to the corpses stacked in front of the church. I am gliding like the birds between splendor and squalor. I see part of the horizon where a sliver of sky and sea meet as though only for my sake. From evening to morning, I see them change according to the slow and indefatigable course of the sun. Its distilled heat now marks noon. A shadow moves behind Cécile’s window and I see Mme Magistral. She’s looking at my house and seems to be talking to someone I can’t make out. I can see this so clearly that I am afraid someone from outside might see my glowing eyes. All the same, I remain there, my eyes glued to that window where perhaps Cécile is also standing. What is her mother doing? Has she caught on to our game? The window opens wide and Cécile appears in a blue nightgown, her long black hair flowing over her shoulders. Close the window, careless girl! Even if you are worried about me, close it or the devils will see you! It’s over. She’s vanished. The window is closed…
“I’m hungry,” André says.
“Me too,” Jacques says.
“Unfortunately, there’s no sugar for the coffee,” I reply.
“Give me the bottle of clairin” André says.
He drinks and spits. I drink too but don’t spit.
“Give Jacques the jug,” I say to André.
Jacques takes it and drinks.
“I want to drink clairin too,” he says.
“It’ll make you agitated,” André says.
“Yes, but I won’t feel hungry anymore. When I drink, I go crazy and when I’m crazy, I’m not hungry.”
André furiously scratches his scar and passes the bottle to Jacques.
“Shit!” he exclaims, “it’s like fire.”
He starts writing again. He suddenly seems very far away from us, as if in one leap he had jumped the fence into an invisible world. Ecstatic, he stares at one corner of the room and writes. How can he write without looking at his hands? His lips are moving slowly. He’s fallen into the snare and can’t get out. He can’t run anymore to escape the rhymes. His legs have been maimed. The mechanism of the snare has been triggered and has sheared off his legs to the thighs. A thousand, ten thousand, a million poets with empty bellies have been snared by the rhyme traps sown on the road. A hard rocky road, full of ruts and ditches, that we keep ascending, exhausted and worn-out, a road that wears holes into our beggarly shoes, but a road we cannot resist. The Road of Haiti framed here and there with green hope, red victory, white purity and yellow saffron. Rainbow colors wafting indifferently above the rocky road designed by the profaning hands of men. Nature, forever merry, giving birth without pangs amid the joyful polychromatic foliage, giant butterflies whirling madly around it. Merry, merry, making merry! And here we are, locked up, sweating the last bit of moisture out of our bodies, starving. All because of the devils. It’s high time for me to take action. André and Jacques are in my way. I need to be alone to think. Jacques’ blind gaze and his hand running over paper distract my thought from its objective. André’s dazed inaction gets on my nerves. He is always sitting, arms dangling, mouth gaping, unless he’s clasping his hands and mumbling prayers. I am alone. More alone than before. No matter how much I focus, I can’t recover my train of thought. And yet I had come up with a plan to defeat the devils. I’m trying to find it. Trying to find it. I’m turning in circles. I am stuck on the wrong trail. Still trying to find it. Suffocating. As though a leaden hand is keeping my head in a sea of tar. I’m struggling. It’s dark, dark. I can’t see a thing in front of me. Wrestling with truth. It’s luminous but I don’t understand it. Empty! Empty! I am going to sink. I’m wallowing in unspeakable darkness. The glimmer returns. I reach for it. It slips away. Ah! My head is going to explode. My heart is going to give out!…
I would sometimes go to the market on Saturdays with my black mother. She would make me sit beside the goods tray and I would help her set up the cheap cloth swatches, the Creole hoop earrings, the lace trim that I was learning to measure by the ell, the silver medals, and the calico scarves. She was proud of her big goods tray that she carried on her head as night fell. Around us, the servants and the beggar-cripples came and went, as did the beggar-thieves whom we watched out of the corner of our eye. Mama would say to me:
“Don’t let them leave your sight, they’re more cunning than cats.” But all I could pay attention to was Alcindor, an old drunk who would roll on the ground and get up again in a moldy old frock coat-a gift from the prefect-white with dust, and do a banda dance. [54] His toothless mouth tied in a grin to his ears, he would sway his hips and we would clap to the rhythm to get him going. Bam bidim, bam bidim, bam bidim… bap! At noon, we would buy our meal from my mother’s cousin Justina, Aunt Justina as I called her, but whom others including my mother called strictly Mme Macius after her marriage in deference to the new wedding band on her finger.
When did I leave the common people behind? When we walked by, people used to say to my mother:
“How’s your mulatto boy Sister Angélie?” And my mother would reply:
“Praise God, he’s growing, my sister; he’s growing, my brother.”
“Oh, cousin!” Aunt Justina would cry out, squatting before her huge pot, “he’ll be a man soon!”
“God is good!” my mother would be quick to say, warding off bad luck.
For she feared the evil eye would fall on her mulatto boy like the plague. And especially because he was different from all the black boys. When did I abandon the people? She had hung around my neck the scapular medal Father Angelo had offered me at first communion. And the scapular hung near a large evil-eye bead on a red string that she wouldn’t have taken off me for anything in the world. I wore the scapular on the outside and the evil-eye bead underneath, and I could feel it bounce against my navel with every step. When did I lose my evil-eye bead? It was no ordinary evil-eye bead. Gromalin, the houngan my mother visited once in a while to make sure things went well for her, had endowed it with the miraculous power to keep all evil spirits away from me. When did I get rid of my evil-eye bead?
I grew up listening to the French writers talking in the books Brother Justinien lent me.
“You are very bright, René,” he would say to me. “I will keep pushing you in your studies.”
But he was seventy-three and died a short time before my mother did. And I cried, for I have a tender soul and all poets are tender-souled, sensitive types. I am talking about the true poets, not the false ones who write because it’s fashionable, to get attention. I wrote verse in French about Christophe, Dessalines, Toussaint and Pétion. I am clinging to the colonial legacy like a louse. Why not? Dessalines thought he had uprooted it when he yelled:
“Off with their heads, burn down their houses!”
His Declaration of Independence, did his secretary Boisrond-Tonnerre [55] write it in Creole? What about Toussaint? What language did he learn to parry wits with Bonaparte?
“Do you want a séche?” <strong>[56]</strong> our French friend Simon said recently offering me a cigarette.
I stared at him without understanding…
I can see the town’s houses dancing. They’re going around my shack. As they file past, I hear good Dr. Chanel’s piano and then Mme Fanfreluche’s radio. A Mozart concerto rises up from the former, a popular merengue from the latter. Mozart breaks the spell of the drum over me. Who taught me to love Mozart? One day, I had opened the door to Dr. Chanel’s living room without knocking and he caught me standing very still, listening, arms crossed, serious and attentive. He said to me:
“Now, that’s what we call music, my son. Mozart alone is an angel among spirits.”
I felt the notes penetrate my flesh, mingle with my blood. I understood only later that on this day I had encountered something universal, out of the depths of a shared humanity, something that legitimately belonged to me as well, for the ties between it and myself had already been established. Mozart, the German, was my brother, beyond blood and distance, beyond centuries. A hyphen between races, as with Villon, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud. Mozart’s biography, which Dr. Chanel had me read, gave me ambitions.
“I will write,” I exclaimed, “poems that will shake the world.”
And thereafter, I discovered that such a task demanded one’s blood, drop by drop. I opened my veins and vainly dipped my quill in blood. Accursed poet! A poet on layaway! A French-minted black poet! Where is your tongue? Give me the clairin! I got drunk night and day to forget. Like Villon, like Baudelaire, like Rimbaud…
“Brotherhood of mad poets!” Commandant Cravache sniggers.
Hearing that we’re crazy, again and again, will make us so. In any case, he’s tried everything he can to make that happen, our Commandant Cravache. How many times must we get our heads bashed in? How many months in jail? And why, oh gods? Who are they trying to frighten by attacking us, hunting us down, persecuting us, beating us up?…
I don’t like this silence. It’s been weighing on our heads for too long. A terrible explosion will make everything disappear. The blast will come suddenly, lifting the houses and transforming them into torches, reducing human beings to dust. It’s coming. It’s coming. The wait is so awful! No respite from it, neither in oneself nor others. To know, to feel the creeping danger. Am I hungry? I don’t have time to think about it. I have to implement a battle plan.
“I’m hungry,” André says.
“Drink a little damn”
“It makes me feel like vomiting.”
“Bugger me!” [57]
“You’re imitating Simon,” Jacques says to me, having stopped writing.
“No. I’ve seen it in books. I can’t imitate Simon, white as he is.”
“Do you think he’s a great poet?” André asks me.
“What the fuck would a great French poet be doing in this mud-hole?” I replied, imitating Simon.
“You’re imitating Simon,” Jacques repeated.
“No. Whites in general call our country a mudhole. And so, imitor patrem. <strong>[58]</strong> Have you forgotten that my father spoke French like a Parisian?”
“You’ll never admit it, but you’re imitating Simon.”
Simon the bohemian. Filthy and flea-ridden like us. A bearded giant who lives off his “regular girl,” as he calls her. His regular girl is Germaine, a plump black woman, all dimples and more jealous than a wildcat.
“You’ll never believe me, old man,” Simon once told me, “but I wound up on the Haitian shore, coughed up from the cargo hold of an American ship.”
He’s been happily warming himself in the heat of our sun for the past six years, sick one day out of three. Puking his guts out from spicy food and booze, and vowing that these white pinkish innards of his will either get used to this or kill him…
I hear the bells toll… dong… dong… dong…
“Do you hear the bells, André?”
“The bells!”
“Listen!”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“You’ve always been hard of hearing. Jacques! Jacques!”
“What?”
“Do you hear the bells?”
He pricks up his ears attentively. His young, angelic face, black and beautiful, is lifted toward the ceiling, disfigured by fear.
The room smells disgusting. Or is it the corpse?
“Did you hear it?”
“Yes,” he answers.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” André sighs.
“Leave God and the saints in peace.”
“You can’t stop me from praying,” he protests.
“Let him pray,” Jacques says softly.
It is high time to begin preparations for the struggle. Alone. I am going to do it all alone. What can I hope for from these two? They really seem to be dying. They’re my buddies, I pity them. But this is no time for pity. I have to act.
The corpse is starting to scare me. It’s disintegrating there before my eyes as a reminder of what awaits me. I don’t dare unplug the hole. Dong… dong… dong… The bell keeps tolling in its mournful reverberation. Could that be Father Angelo burying the dead under the very noses of the devils? Bravo, Father Angelo! There’s a real man under that cassock of yours. I immediately get up. Now I am resolved. I am going to leave and rouse the town. As cowardly as they may be, they will have to come out of their lairs to listen to me. I am waiting for Jacques and André to fall asleep to open the door. Perhaps I’ll die. But no matter! First I will alert Commandant Cravache. He’ll have to prove his courage, justify his epaulettes and medals, and outdo himself, for fear of an official report. I will also notify the mayor, that fat bastard who does nothing but fuck Laurette, the prostitute on rue des Saints. Like it or not, he’ll also answer the call and for once work to save our town, along with the prefect and Dr. Prémature, who carry weapons as well. They seem harmless and absolutely hopeless next to the devils. All the same, I am secretly convinced that, once the fight begins, the devils will find in them the most terrible of adversaries. Unless, of course, they panic and run first. You never know what to expect from these monkeys. In any case, it falls to me to set an example, to make them come out of their torpor. I will have weapons of my own. Molotov cocktails that I will light but not throw at the devils. Who knows how they will react to fire? I am going to try to communicate with Cécile before throwing myself into this adventure-a dangerous one, I have no illusions about that. Though in my weakened state I’ve been rambling, frolicking in the past, I still feel that I am in possession of all my faculties. My black mother didn’t nurse me for two years for nothing. I am filled with no less courage and fervor than Samson leading his Israelite brethren. From the beginning, I’ve known that once my plan was ripe I would not back out. Only a Haitian, however well intentioned and determined, is unable to consider death without thinking for days about what could have been, what should have been and what will never be. A hairsbreadth away from death, I will dream of a final spasm on top of a juicy black woman’s soft round belly. I will close my eyes with Cécile’s braids flowing over my face. And death will be nothing but a game for me. I think of her black eyes, her black hair, her plum-brown skin, as I rip open my mother’s old pillow for cotton.
“What are you doing?” André asks me.
“Nothing. Sleep, sleep.”
Jacques snores quietly on his side, head in his poems.
I am watching André out of the corner of my eye. As soon as I catch him closing his eyes, I rummage in the trunk and find six empty bottles. I squat and start stuffing them with cotton, my back turned to my friends. I wet the cotton with alcohol and stick the matchbox in my pocket. That’s it! I’m ready. Where is the army of devils right now? That’s what I am trying to find out as I look outside through the hole. The bells toll. Dong! Dong! Dong! And nothing else save a terrible humming, as if thousands of insects were flying around me. But there’s not a single insect. Not even a mosquito. Nothing. Maybe it’s just the screaming silence that a human ear can make out only when everything is quiet. In any case something mysterious is happening in the room: two stars fly out of my eyes dancing and then flee through the keyhole. I run to the door and see two eyes staring at me from outside. Someone is there, I’m sure of it. Putting a finger to my lips, I wake up André:
“There is someone behind the door,” I say to him.
He quietly leaps onto his knees and clasps his trembling hands together.
“Don’t move,” he says to me.
There is a knock at the door.
Jacques wakes up and I put a hand over his mouth.
“The devils?” he whispers to me.
“Hush! Quiet!” André tells him.
And he pulls Jacques toward him and puts an arm around his neck.
We stay there like that, all three of us mute, pouring sweat. I hear bullets whistling, brushing against the roof of the house. The front door is riddled with them. A lightning bolt explodes in the sky and sets off a downpour over the sheet metal. Water seeps through the roof. A hail of metallic balls bounce at regular intervals, sounding just like bullets. A powerful blast disperses the trees. I hear them run and shriek. I rush to the wall and glue my eye to the hole. The trees lie on the ground. The sky has opened. Gigantic black clouds wrestle each other furiously Fireworks explode, throwing up dazzling arabesques here and there. The crowd is hanging from the clouds. It is weeping, its tears streaming down on the road. The corpse is floating in a lake. It’s at eye level now.
I am unsteady on my legs. Bones crackle in my head and two more stars come out of my eyes and stay there whirling round the room with no intention of leaving…
“What’s going on?” André asks me.
“Nothing. It’s the rain. I swear, go back to sleep.”
“You haven’t seen them?” Jacques asks me.
“Who?”
“The devils.”
“No. Lie down and go to sleep.”
“I need to be alone…”
At the age of twelve I became very sick. And my black mother Angélie, who believed as much in the loas as she did in God, as much in the houngan as in the doctor, got all mixed up in her panic and called the priest, the doctor and the houngan at the same time. Dr. Chanel was such a crafty old peasant that he energetically shook Gromalin’s hand, saying to him:
“We’ll save him, my colleague.”
But Father Angelo absolutely refused to shake the hand of the voodoo priest.
“Angélie, my daughter,” he reproached my mother, “why have you called me to your house to see a houngan?”
But she was weeping at my bedside.
“Ah, my father,” she wailed, “you come from a white country where people are good to each other. Here, in Haiti, the devils are everywhere. They take the shape of honest people. They greet you and say, ‘So long, my friend, good health to you and yours, sister’; they look at you with innocent eyes and settle the score with you in an underhanded way. As for me, I am sure my little René doesn’t have a natural illness, an illness that good Dr. Chanel can cure. Only the houngan can fight the spirits of the dead that some of my neighbors have set upon my child.”
“Angélie! Angélie!” Father Angelo protested. “Voodoo is making you lose your head! You have nothing but good neighbors! Good people who have known you since childhood and who have never hurt a fly. Don’t you know it is wrong to be on terms with the devil?”
“Evil exists, my father, evil exists. I am afraid of them, I am afraid of them all, even of my cousin Madame Macius.”
“Justina!” the priest cried out. “But you are crazy, my poor Angélie. Never accuse your fellow man if you don’t want God to judge you harshly, and follow Dr. Chanel’s advice if you want to save your child.”
But my poor black mother, who could neither read nor write and who piously served her loas, also followed the advice of Gromalin. She bought the medicine prescribed by the doctor and, secretly, received a simple from the houngan, which she put under my pillow and for which he asked a lot more than the disciple of Ascelpius who had actually saved my life. For my mother, my recovery was a miracle and she dedicated me to the Holy Virgin Mary whose colors I then wore exclusively. When did I stop wearing these colors?
Memories come and go in my exploding head. My dear black mama!
“No more red beans and potatoes for him,” cried Dr. Chanel, pinching her ear. “He’s growing. He needs meat and vegetables.”
“Look at me, Doctor,” she laughed. “Look at what beans and potatoes did for me.”
“That’s right,” Dr. Chanel said, “and you should lose some weight! You look just like a fat potato covered in black beans.”
“Lose weight!” my mother cried out. “You want people to pity me and laugh! Leave my fat alone. No such thing as a skinny black woman that’s beautiful.”
Her fat killed her. “It’s her heart!” Dr. Chanel diagnosed when he rushed to her bedside. I was twenty and was ashamed of my tears.
Oh dear black Mama! The weight of your head dead in my hands! Your stiff heavy body that Simon, André, and Jacques, who was only fifteen, helped me lift into the coffin. They all loved you, my good black mother! We were never hungry as long as you lived. When André and Jacques’ mother coughed up blood and died, you said to me:
“Have them come over from time to time and I’ll put a full pot of cornmeal and beans on the stove.”
Your death made four orphans in place of one.
I sold your trinket tray for peanuts to cousin Justina who now looks down her nose at me under the pretext that I am nothing but a “tafiateur” an alcoholic and a disgrace to your name…
I lean over Jacques and then André. Their eyes are wide open. They aren’t going back to sleep. I put the bottles in a safe place in a corner of the room and cover them with a rag.
Jacques suddenly sits up. He gathers up his poems, looks for a blank sheet of paper, and starts writing again.
“It’s dark,” I say to him, “you won’t be able to write.”
“I write with my hand and my heart, not with my eyes,” he replies. “I’ve written twenty poems since I’ve been here.”
“You should sleep a bit.”
“I’m hungry! Give me a little clairin”
“There’s a full bottle in the trunk. Take it.”
“Where is the other one?” André asks me.
“Is it empty?”
“You drank the rest?”
“Yes.”
“Well!…”
“What’s in that trunk?” Jacques asks.
“His mother’s shrine,” André answers.
“There’s syrup in the dishes!” Jacques cries out.
“It’s an offering to the loas. Don’t touch it.”
“I’m so hungry!”
“Don’t touch it,” André says again.
Jacques takes a bottle of clairin, opens it and gives it to me.
“Help yourself, René.”
I drink and they help themselves in turn.
“It’s not that good, clairin, when you have nothing else in your stomach,” Jacques notes.
He sits down and writes. In the dark, his young bony face appears a shade of ash gray. We’re looking good, the three of us. Filthy, sweaty, stinking. What could the time be? Is Jacques going to spend the night writing? He’s collapsing from fatigue now, pencil clenched in his hand. André looks more and more dazed. Clairin always turned him into an idiot. He’s sitting there, arms dangling, looking at me. Why he is staring so hard at me?
“René,” he says with a pasty mouth, “we used to be happy before.”
“Before what?”
“Before they came here. We were happy but we didn’t know it.”
“It’s always like that.”
“What’s always like that?”
“You don’t realize you’re happy until you aren’t happy anymore.”
“Yes. And the unhappiness of the present makes you miss the past no matter how miserable it was. What I really miss is childhood. A child always lives in complete ignorance of misfortune. He feels protected by God, by nature, by all those who surround him. He trusts…”
“Yes. Trust! Faith! You lose them when you grow up.”
“I still have them.”
“No. Deep down, you don’t. And that’s why you’re afraid. These dishes full of syrup that could save our lives, and you don’t dare touch them because you’re afraid. Jacques is getting weak. Let’s give him a little syrup.”
“I can’t, I would never dare.”
“You’d rather see us croak of hunger. How many days have we eaten nothing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Light the stove. I’m going to make some coffee and we’ll use some of the syrup to sweeten it.”
“No. I won’t touch it.”
Our discussion has woken up Jacques. He complains quietly and calls out to me in a weak voice.
“René!”
“What do you want?”
“You’ve seen them?”
“Who?”
“The devils?”
“Let’s not talk about them anymore. Sleep.”
“I’m afraid!”
“Close your eyes. You’ll fall asleep again.”
“I hear steps!”
He gets up in a single bound and runs to the wall where he flattens his arms in a cross like a great butterfly pinned by the wings.
“They’re coming!” he tells us.
He lets out a hideous scream and turns to us:
“Their faces! Their faces! René! Ah! My God…”
“Calm him down,” I say to André. “He doesn’t see anything. He’s delirious from hunger. Calm him, for God’s sake! I have to do everything around here. Oh bugger me, try a little harder! Keep him next to you. Come on! A little courage. Help me a little, just a little bit. Here, take this spoon and give him a little syrup.”
He refuses to obey and vehemently shakes his head. I dip the spoon into the dishes and make Jacques drink some syrup. Then I run to the wall.
They are here indeed. Myriads. They have invaded Grand-rue. All the houses are lit up. Movement behind Cécile’s curtains. Their helmets glowing. Red boots kicking up dust on the road. They’ve set ladders against the balconies and are climbing up. The hour of battle tolls. I can’t back out anymore.
“What’s going on?” André asks me.
“They’re here!”
“Ah!”
He’s trembling, his teeth knocking together.
“I want to get out of here,” Jacques yells.
He frees himself from André’s grip and twists and twitches as if he were possessed.
“It’s the syrup,” André says, frightened.
Jacques suddenly vomits and hits his head against the floor.
“I want to get out of here. I want to get out of here,” he begs.
Red! Black! Gold! Are they going to climb up Cécile’s balcony? Flames rise up several houses away from hers. Immense flames crackling up and falling down in sparks. The cries and screams begin again. Jacques is still writhing at my feet, hitting his head against the floor. I see Marcia, Cécile’s maid, come out. She runs to the side street and then throws herself to the ground and crawls. Is she going to crawl to my house with a note from Cécile? I just lost sight of her. Cécile is calling me to her rescue! That must be it.
I’m waiting, all my senses wide awake. Dawn has drunk up the night in one gulp and the sun is pointing its head, very slowly, very discreetly, as it turns its eyes toward the burning house. The devils are scurrying back down the ladders, fleeing at the sight of it now. Ah! Ah! Ah!
“They’re backing off! They’re backing off!”
Cowering Jacques suddenly goes slack.
“I feel sick,” he says in a weak voice.
“It’s the syrup,” André repeats.
“Let’s give him a sip of damn”
We lift his head and pour some clairin in his mouth.
“I’m feeling better,” he says.
I return to the wall. The trees are standing again. The lake with the corpse swimming in it has disappeared. All that’s left is a little smoke coming from the house next to Cécile’s.
“What are they doing?” André asks me.
“Who?”
“The devils.”
“They’ve disappeared. Everything is calm. Too calm even. They went to dig themselves in somewhere but they’ll be back, that’s for sure. Their attack is always unexpected.”
“We’re going to stay locked up?” Jacques asks.
“We have no choice. The streets are deserted. Listen to how quiet it is!… In any case, last night I discovered their weakness: they are afraid of the sun. The execution in broad daylight was just a ruse. They will only attack us at night.”
“I always knew it,” André says. “My mother used to say devils only leave hell at night.”
We hear a knock at the door, startling all three of us at the same time.
“God almighty God almighty God!” a voice thunders, “are you going to open this door or not?”
“It’s Simon,” Jacques exclaims.
We pull away the barricade and Simon enters.
“Hell and damnation!” he yells. “What were you waiting for to open the door, you bloody bastards?”
He slaps us heartily on the back, practically toppling us over. Tall and bearded, he fills up the entire room.
“So, you’ve locked yourselves up to drink without me? You abandoned your buddy Simon in the claws of his black vampire woman?”
He hugs us and helps put back the barricade. He gets tangled up in the furniture like a disjointed marionette.
“All right, wise guys! Where’s the bottle?”
“You’ve managed to make it here in one piece?” Jacques asks.
“It took some doing my friend, let me tell you. I basically ran here from home.”
“Shh!” André motions cautiously.
“You’re right. They’ll track us down. Bugger me!”
He grabs the bottle again and drinks.
“Jungle-juice,” he says, “but it lights a fire in your ass.”
Jacques wrings his hands and plugs his ears.
“Shh!” I whisper. “He’s just had an episode. We need to take it easy with him.”
He looks at Jacques and says:
“Son, you look as sick as a dog. You got to eat, I’ve said so before.”
“We got no grub.”
“You’re imitating Simon,” Jacques pronounces with conviction.
“Leave me alone, you,” I cry impatiently.
“What’s going on?” Simon asks.
“He thinks I imitate you when I speak.”
“Bah!” says Simon. “So you got no dough, eh?”
He rummages in his pocket and pulls out a gourde.
“I swiped it from Germaine before I ran off! Bitch. She doesn’t often leave money lying around.”
“What’s happening now?” André asks him.
“Oh, it’s dead calm. Torrential rain, a fire, that was plenty. You saw it from here?”
“What?”
“The fire.”
“Don’t talk about it, or else Jacques will…”
“He was that scared?”
“But we were all scared,” André confesses, “weren’t you?”
“I saw plenty worse during the war in 1940. It’s easier to go up a ladder to rescue a little girl from a burning house than it is to deal with German bombs, I can tell you that much.”
“You rescued a little girl?” Jacques asks, lifting himself on an elbow, eyes shining with curiosity.
“They lost their heads and were all climbing at once. So, I screamed, ‘You bunch of morons, can’t you see the ladder’s about to collapse?’ And they jumped to the ground. The little girl, the Bérenger girl, you know her? She was on the balcony, crying and holding out her arms, and her parents, who were at a party at Madame Fanfreluche’s, were running like mad, their fat bellies bouncing up and down. So, I climbed up and got their daughter down for them…”
“I’m feeling sick,” Jacques suddenly says.
His black face has turned ashen.
“He’s sick again,” André says, panicking.
“You probably gave him too much to drink,” Simon declares, “and what’s more, it stinks in here. What’s in the chamber pot?”
“What you generally find in a chamber pot,” I reply.
“Well, it really stinks. Let’s open the doors and tidy up a little.”
“What if they come!” André exclaims fearfully.
“Who?” Simon asks.
“No, don’t open, don’t open anything,” Jacques begs.
And he crawls up to Simon and grabs his feet.
“What’s the matter?” Simon asks.
“He’s afraid,” André answers, “and so am I. René’s the only brave one. He even made Jacques drink the syrup.”
“What is he talking about?” Simon asks me.
“He’s reproaching me for not having respected the syrup left as an offering to the loas”
“What rubbish! My poor André! You who’ve read so many books!”
“What do books have to do with the gods of black folk?”
He shivers, his teeth chattering.
“So, are we going to open these doors or not?”
“No, no,” Jacques implores.
He clasps both of Simon’s feet, lifts his head and collapses.
“For the love of God!” Simon cries out. “Now he’s passed out.”
He picks up Jacques and slowly rolls him on his back.
“He needs air. Let’s get some fresh air in the house while he’s out of it.”
“No,” André begs in turn, “I’m cold. Jacques hasn’t lost consciousness. He’s sleeping. I know him. He’s my brother, isn’t he?”
“Ah, well then, deal with this yourself. What are the three of you plotting? No politics for us, that was our vow and we should respect it… Lordy! Either you look like a bunch of conspirators or I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
He grabs the bottle of clairin and sucks down several gulps one after the other.
“Brrr… I saw them disembark. They’re inspecting the area. Would you believe me if I told you that it’s not worth getting your knickers in a twist?”
“So why are they here?” André asks.
“To occupy themselves. Fuck them, I say.”
“They probably won’t go after whites,” I say.
“Fuck them, I say,” Simon repeats.
“Shh!” André hisses.
“What’s the point of burying oneself alive? If they’ve decided to fuck with us, they’ll fuck with us.”
“Not if they think we don’t exist,” I say.
“Chickens!” Simon explodes.
“No, careful,” says André. “You can’t be too careful with them.”
“Well then,” Simon cuts in, “enough about them… I wrote a poem, a masterpiece. About Haiti the beautiful, the pure and warm, about its drums and black women, its body and soul. I’ve fallen in love with this island. In love, love, you hear me?”
“Shh!…” says André.
“Haiti, Haiti!” Simon hums, paying André no mind. “I’ll never set foot in France again and if they have another rotten war, I won’t wear the uniform a second time to help them win.”
“A uniform!” I say. “What was that like?”
“I was eighteen years old in 1940. They took me from my mother and sent me to the front. They froze my toes, messed up my legs, split open my head till I was cracked. They can have their next rotten war without me. Me, I’m just a poet! A neglected poet. I have no desire to kill or to be killed. I want to drink, I want to write, and I want to make love with the women of Haiti.”
“Leave my country alone,” I say to him.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“You don’t love it.”
“I tell you I do love it.”
“If you loved it, you would help us deliver it from the devils.”
“What devils?”
“You see! You haven’t even noticed. What have you been doing all this time?”
“I just told you. I wrote a masterpiece about Haiti.”
“Leave my country alone, since you don’t even realize it’s in danger. Have you really seen nothing, heard nothing?”
“Yes, of course. When I saw this wretched detachment arrive from Port-au-Prince, I told myself, ‘Something’s up.’ But even though they patrol the streets armed to the teeth, they don’t seem to go after anyone.”
“We’re not speaking the same language,” I said to him. “I’m talking to you about the devils and you start talking about something else.”
“Why are you trembling all of a sudden?”
“Me, trembling! Now you’re completely crazy, my poor Simon! It’s just that I thought of you as a brother but instead discover you’re a white man living in a black country.”
“Don’t start on this absurd issue of skin color and race. I am your brother, heart and soul. You know that.”
“So, have you seen the devils, yes or no?”
“Wait. Let me think about it over a drink. Brr… Bugger me, now I’m just about drunk. Damn Haitian tafia!… I did think I heard a strange noise the other night. It was dark and Germaine was lying next to me. I heard a crackle of sparks. I got up and opened the door. A rain of stars was falling from the sky onto the roof of the house. Real fireworks, something fantastic, my friend, something that only a poet’s trained eye could catch. I’d been drinking a bit so I thought it was a hallucination. I went back to bed and the next day, I got sick. A horse fever with diarrhea and the shakes. Germaine mentioned the devils that morning, I remember now. She had locked me up, accusing Old Tulia of giving me the evil eye. Me, I kept writing despite the fever, I didn’t care. ‘This neighborhood is full of devils,’ she insisted, ‘I know what’s wrong with you.’ She always knew what was wrong with me and she always took good care of me. I spent the day swallowing her herbal teas and soups. ‘Something bad is in the air,’ she kept saying. But I kept writing, paying no attention to her or anyone else. You know how you get when a poem is plaguing you?”
“They’ve been here for days!” André sighs.
“Who?” Simon asks.
“The devils.”
“Yes… the devils,” Simon acquiesces, conciliatory.
“Isn’t it because of them that you ran all the way here?” I said to him.
“Yes, now that you mention it, why did I run?” Simon replies. “I must have been scared without knowing it.”
“You always know it when you’re afraid,” André says.
His teeth chatter.
“So you’ve seen them?” Simon asks.
“Who?”
“The devils?”
“Yes,” I answer.
“They have horns and tails?”
“No. Boots, weapons, helmets.”
“Apart from that they’re naked?”
“No, they’re wearing uniforms.”
“My God!” he says. “It all reminds me of the horrors I saw at the front. I was just a kid and my mother was crying and my teeth were chattering like André’s, and each time I heard a bomb go off I would pass out. But I would get up, run like everyone else, shoot at the enemy with my eyes closed, and throw myself on the ground with my hands over my ears. I had shrapnel in my skull and they thought I was dead. I spent eight days under the snow. But I’m a tough bastard and only lost four of my toes.”
“We’re familiar with you and your toes,” said André.
“You were really lucky” I told him.
“Lucky!”
“Because you didn’t die.”
“Yes, but my mother, she died of it. When I left the hospital where I had been taken, I looked for her everywhere. I roused our whole neighborhood and they locked me up in an asylum. But I wasn’t crazy, I kept telling them. One day, the head doctor came to see me because I was giving the orderlies a hard time, making a devil of a racket. He said: ‘What do you want, son?’ And I ripped the pen and paper from his hands. ‘From now on, you will give him what he needs to write,’ he told the orderlies. ‘I think I’ve figured out how we can get him to behave.’ But one day I had enough and ran away. I hid out nearby and then jumped on a passing truck. ‘So, pal,’ the driver told me, ‘cutting school, are we?’ I gave him such a wild look that he kept quiet. I went straight to a publisher and left him my poems. More than a hundred. Everything I had written in the asylum. I begged, slept outside on public benches. I was cold. I was hungry. But I patiently awaited wealth and glory. This time the publisher greeted me laughing.
“‘Good sir, this is the tale of a madman you’ve got here… The public will have no use for your ravings… ’ But all I had done was to faithfully record what I lived through during their rotten war.”
“Vulgarians love to talk about what’s realistic and what’s not,” I said, “as if it’s so easy to tell true from false.”
“I feel sick,” André whispers.
“No. One is enough. Bugger me!” Simon protests. “Have a little courage. We’ll be able to get out of here soon. We’ll go to the shore, to Saindor’s…”
“He’s dead,” I say.
“Dead!” Simon cries out.
“They killed him,” André says.
“When?”
“Didn’t you see his body in the street? Right in front of the door.”
“When did this happen?”
“A few days ago.”
“Bugger me! If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were crazy.”
“Unfortunately we are,” I reply.
“You’re making me fucking nauseous with your devil stories,” Simon screams. “I’m already drunk as a skunk, and you’re fucking making me nauseous with your devil stories!”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” André sighs. “They’re going to hear him.”
“Shit! I’m drunk as a skunk! When I’m drunk, there’s nothing to do, you know, I have to scream.”
And he screams.
“The devils will hear you,” André whispers in a weak voice.
“Let them come,” Simon roars.
This is no call for rebellion
Just a poor drunk white man with his full white moon in the air
Like so… staggering about <strong>[59]</strong>
he recites with sweeping gestures, getting his arms tangled in the barricade.
“Don’t know if you noticed,” he says, suddenly calm again, “but I just butchered Prévert.”
“In two places,” André answers.
“What is he doing against the wall?” Simon asks André.
“He’s spying on Cécile,” André answers.
“Clever man!” Simon exclaims. “She’s beautiful, eh? She inspired one of my poems. Listen:
Young goddess of bronze and amber
Black woman of sun, adorned in tender grace.”
“Leave Cécile out of it,” I say.
“Jealous?”
“Leave her alone. That’s all. Sleep.”
They both yawn and Simon stretches, touching the ceiling. They lie down on the ground and yawn again. Finally I’ll be alone! I am waiting for them to start snoring before returning to my post. Cécile’s light is on. There are figures coming and going behind the curtains. Young goddess of bronze and amber, as Simon said. She’s mine. He’s wasting his time. I hated him during that moment when I heard him speak of her beauty.
Nothing must distract me from my goal. I know they’ll come back. I need silence and solitude. I won’t open up to Simon anymore. He wouldn’t understand. He’s made me waste enough time. My battle plan is perfect. I am ready for the great offensive. They’ll be back, I can feel it. They must be there, lying low somewhere waiting for a signal, some order coming from I don’t know where but which they will know how to interpret. A few lights tremble in the distance and the vague silhouette of the Grand-rue emerges as an extension of these lights. Grand-rue, dear to my heart, lined with beautiful multistory houses crowned with hat-shaped gables! Tall houses with wraparound balconies and white brick verandas! Grand-rue’s business district, and high-society Grand-rue where my love lives. I have kept the stone that was wrapped with her billet-doux, as a charm. I press the stone against my lips while watching for her behind her window. The guys are sleeping and snoring. I can think a little now. I like neither the color of the sky, nor this split lip smiling between the clouds trying to pass for the moon. The air smells of hypocrisy and treason. There are no more dead in front of the church since Father Angelo buried them, but there will be others tomorrow, alas! If we remain barricaded in our houses there will be fresh ones each time God makes the sun rise, until the complete annihilation of the town. Am I the only one to conceive of a battle plan? How can we join forces? How can we establish contact with others who like me are organizing the Resistance? Simon fought his war. He may curse it now, but he’s done it and he can live at peace with himself. What’s going on right now is none of his business. I’ve hurt him, insulted him for nothing. He’s right to feel detached from it. I will ask for his forgiveness. The grave responsibility that falls to me, and which I will proudly assume with courage, weighs heavily on my shoulders. I can always daydream, happily wallow in the past, spy on Cécile’s graceful and comforting silhouette, but I can’t escape from the noose slowly tightening round my neck. I will never sleep another night even if I were to live a hundred years. Am I hungry? I’ve gotten used to sleeplessness and hunger. Everything leaves me indifferent, except struggle and love. For one follows from the other. I will have Cécile’s love if I defeat the devils. The corpse shrinks day by day, hour by hour. The worms are finishing their work. No one to remove it from sight. Father Angelo himself has forgotten to inspect this alley. Our back alley where only the near-beggars live! My shack! Flattened at the feet of Grand-rue’s tall houses! My shack crawling like an earthworm beneath Cécile’s flowered balcony! My darling black mother, you earned it with the sweat of your brow and it means something to me. Had you told me: eat and drink, I would have eaten and drunk. I’ve lost my good angel since your death, since the mysterious disappearance of my evil-eye bead, since I starved the loas with which you entrusted me in my apathy, since I stopped kneeling before the crucifix, since I stopped prostrating myself before the holy tabernacle! I tried in vain to remain the trusting and pious child I had been. I kept my fists closed tight around my treasures. One day, I looked in my hands and they were empty. Whose fault, Mama? After your death, life jumped on my back and rode me like a horse. I galloped under the whip through deserted fields, through merciless cities, panting, sweating, feet bruised, nostrils dilated. The commandant raised his bludgeon and beat me. He raised his feet and trampled me. He spit in my face, called me a mulatto bastard, me, your son. He is black like you, my black mother, but he took me for the real thing, an eighteen-karat mulatto, as they call them around here, one of those beautiful, pretentious men, their heads covered with smooth hair and filled with prejudice. Is it for my chicken-shit color that they persecute me? Is it because of this rotten coconut color that I can’t go left or right? Simon says one has to forget this absurd issue of skin color and race. If that’s right, then why did the commandant call me a mulatto bastard? Setting aside the question of color, since as far as whites are concerned I’m a black man, why did the commandant think calling me a mulatto would be an insult? Do I call him black? This label, for it is used as a label, singles me out, makes me feel uneasy in my own skin, like a transplanted animal that’s forgotten its native country. Are the devils also versed in discrimination? Against whom do they bear a grudge? Did they attack us only to side with some of us against the others? Or are they trying once and for all to drown that old quarrel in a general bloodbath? No matter how diabolical, their intervention would then have a salutary result. In that case, why did they spare Jacques? Why did they spare Simon? Representatives of the two extremes of which I am a product. I am cunning. I’m a clever man, as Simon says. And André and Jacques will be my shields in case of extreme emergency. I will keep them near me with jealous care. I’m not that desperate. I will take action without committing suicide. Now I’ve caught the thread of my thought firmly. There, standing before the wall, my eye to the hole, I understand that neither food nor sleep is necessary for a man to behave like a man…
“It smells like a prison around here,” Simon wakes up and exclaims.
“Maybe it’s the chamber pot,” André answers, rubbing his eyes.
“Prison! It was so filthy!” Simon says again. “I would rather deal with an army of devils than go back there.”
“Don’t talk about them,” André advises quietly.
“About whom?”
“The devils,” André answers.
“But where are they? Your devils. You haven’t told me yet.”
“Don’t joke about them,” I caution him.
“We’re old friends, aren’t we, René? I’m not used to holding back anything from you. So! These devils of yours, me, I don’t believe in them. I’m an atheist, don’t forget that. And an atheist accepts neither the idea of God nor the devil.”
“This is not the best time for blasphemy,” André whimpers. “We’re already in debt to the loas since René touched the syrup, so don’t force God to turn from us as well.”
He traces a large cross on his chest and sniffles.
“I am not trying to hurt anyone,” Simon says. “To each his convictions. But that syrup, if you would permit me, I’ll lap it up in front of you without leaving a drop.”
“Don’t touch it,” André yells.
“Pass me the bottle of clairin and calm down. I will drink it only if you permit me to do so. And, one way or another, you will. Me, I don’t know how to live without eating and I’ll be hungry soon enough.”
“You’re drinking all the clairin” André protests.
“Say what you will, but this is the good life,” says Simon, lying down on the floor. “Even if it stinks, this is the good life. Too bad it smells a bit like jail. The bastards! They almost had our hides! Things like that could make you go crazy. Do you remember how they woke us up with kicks one day and told us we were going to be executed? And that other time when they amused themselves by slapping us and making us crawl naked on all fours like dogs. No doubt about it, they persecute poets here. Even French poets. They have no regard for foreign nationals. It’s our ambassadors’ fault; they land on this island like Robinson Crusoe… Do you remember what the commandant said to me when I protested and threatened to invoke my flag? He said, ‘Shut your dirty trap, white trash, or I’ll make you swallow your teeth along with your tongue.’ No respect for me, a French citizen marooned here of my own accord, who boasts and sings Haiti’s praises in poems that may be published one day throughout the four corners of the world… As a matter of fact, we never did recover from the commandant’s blows. But probably the most vicious were the ones who were helping him. Never seen anything more diabolical than the expression on their faces!”
“Be quiet!” André yells.
“Why? We are locked up. No one can hear us. This is stupid!… Poor Jacques getting hit in the head by one of them! Bap and bap and bap until his nose and eyes were bloody. What’s wrong, René? I’ve never seen such a grin on your face! Why are you looking at me like that? You’re scaring me. You look like a wild beast. Get a hold of yourself, my friend!”
“I don’t like to hear you lie,” I whispered furiously “You’re talking about things I don’t remember. If Jacques had indeed been hit in the head, how could I ever forget that?”
“I don’t remember much either anymore,” André admitted sadly, voluptuously scratching the scar on his forehead.
“What scheme are you two hatching? Or are you trying to make me think I’ve gone completely nuts? You, André! Where did you get that scar?”
“I don’t know, I don’t really know… I fell, I think, when I was little, just like that…”
“Like that, really!”
“And anyway, leave us alone,” I shouted.
“I have the right to talk about it, hell and damnation!” he shoots back. “I’ve had my fair share of beatings and getting slapped around, just like you. No point blubbering. They won’t come looking for us where we are. And anyway, were we arrested for a political reason? We weren’t, were we? So then? We’re not doing anything wrong. We are locking ourselves up to get drunk and that can’t bother anyone, not even the devils you pretend you’ve seen… Oh! Oh! Oh! You bunch of pranksters!…”
“Don’t laugh at them,” I say to him.
“Gosh! You’re looking dangerous there. Thin as a rail but standing on his spurs like a fighting cock. Say, old friend, you’re not going to beat up a poor drunk white guy, are you, your poor drunk white buddy?”
“Don’t talk about them or you’ll draw them out.”
“About whom must I no longer speak?”
“The devils.”
“But I wasn’t talking about them,” he protests. “I don’t believe in them, I tell you.”
“You get everything mixed up and you don’t understand a thing,” André tells him. “Take René’s advice. In reality, you’re just a white man and our country’s mysteries are beyond you. Take René’s advice. He’s the boss.”
“The boss of what?”
“The boss!” André adds without any further explanation.
“Shit then,” Simon exclaims. “Me, I can’t keep up with you anymore.”
“That’s because you are just a white man,” André answers.
“Oh! Really now,” he protests. “Fuck off with your white man bullshit. Aren’t the four of us brothers who go way back, yes or no?”
“Yes,” I reply, “but there are things in our country you will never understand.”
“What, for example? That I’m forbidden to drink your syrup even if I am croaking of hunger, because you’ve supposedly already offered it to your loas? Hold on! Watch this! I am going to swallow your syrup, you watch me…”
“No!” André shouts.
“I am a white man,” Simon yells, “and I’m hungry.”
He leans over the trunk and grabs the dishes.
“Double dishes of baked clay!” he says with admiration. “Joined like Siamese twins! Bugger me! They’re full of syrup! I could never swallow that much! Nothing can make a man as sick as sugar after alcohol. I’m going to barf and I don’t like barfing… Him, why is he sleeping like that? Hey, Jacques! Wake up, sonny. He’s still as a dead man. Anyway, here’s your syrup. Looking at it makes me nauseous. Dear loas, I return to you what’s yours. Ah! Ah! Ah! Bugger me! I like clairin better. Why is he sleeping like that? Hey! Wake up…”
I see him suddenly put the dishes down on the trunk and lean over Jacques. He finds his heart and puts his ear to it. He looks so funny in that posture that I burst out laughing.
“He’s dead,” he tells us and gets up staggering, goes toward André and puts an arm around his neck.
“He’s dead,” he says again.
“You’re mad,” André says coldly.
“He’s dead, I tell you!” he yells.
And he begins sobbing noisily, like a big child, fists in his eyes.
Pain suddenly hit me, sinking into my skull like a knife and swelling in my brain. A thousand red-hot needles pierced my right temple and a gong resounded in the distance, mournful and deafening.
“The signal,” I cried out.
“What signal?” Simon asked.
I threw myself on the wall, trembling, barely able to stand on my legs. The gong resounded a second time, then a third. I saw a multitude of devils coming out of the ground. They were naked this time and all black with red horns and tails. They were moving in rhythm as if to the beat of some strange, stylized voodoo dance. I saw one of them climb a beam up to Cécile’s balcony with the agility of a monkey. He broke open the door to the living room and came out carrying her under his arm like a small package. He jumped over the balcony and let himself slide to the ground, where he put her down. He tore off her clothes, leaving her naked. I seized my weapons. I shoved five bottles into my pockets, struck a match and lit the sixth.
“What are you doing?” I heard Simon say as in a dream.
I looked at him calmly. At the approach of danger I was swept with confused happiness, almost incomprehensibly so. I removed the barricade, opened the door and went out in the street. The light blinded me. Eyes closed, I threw the bottle against the pavement with all my strength. I heard the bottle smash. The ground gave way under my feet. And at once the drums began to roll, conch shells roared, flutes and bamboo trumpets wept. Their mingled sound, distant at first, swelled and echoed. The mountains leaned on each other’s shoulders, their blue-green bodies encircling and slowly, inexorably approaching the city. Everything started to go topsy-turvy: trees, houses, streets. Everything got mixed up, clustered, stuck together in a single bubbling cauldron of scarlet lava full of townspeople struggling and screaming. I recognized my mother, Father Angelo, Dr. Chanel, Saindor, cousin Justina, Simon’s black woman Germaine, Mme Fanfreluche, and I threw myself down screaming and began rolling on the ground. Simon sprang up and lay on top of me, holding me tight:
“It’s out of grief,” he said. “He’s gone mad over Jacques’ death.”
“Our Father who art in heaven,” André began to recite, “thy will be done…”
A crowd gathers around us. Simon, astride my legs, holds me firmly by the shoulders, while André, kneeling, watches me with his arms crossed. Leaning over me, Simon says to me in hushed tones:
“God almighty God almighty God!” he says. “What possessed you to start screaming like that? What with the men on patrol from Port-au-Prince, what’s going to come down on us now? Calm down, old friend! You’re about to faint, that’s what brought you to this, grief too, and all that clairin. Get a grip! You’re going to need your wits about you. Reach out to your loas, call on your God, but let’s get out of this mess.”
THE PRIEST (clearing a path for himself in the crowd with great difficulty): Excuse me, excuse me, please. I know these boys, excuse me, please.
SOMEONE IN THE CROWD: Let Father Angelo through!
ONE OF THE PEOPLE: He is possessed by his loas, that’s all. Father Angelo can’t help him.
SOMEONE: He’s going to exorcise him! It’s a simple case of demonic possession. Looks like they’d locked themselves in for eight days. Ugh, that dead dog over there stinks!
SOMEONE: Look! Father Angelo can’t control him either. He’s rabid. He’s going to smash his own head open. Oh, here come the police!
THE COMMANDANT: What’s going on? I heard screaming all the way from the prison. What’s going on? Where are the witnesses? The crowd backs away.
THE COMMANDANT: Nobody move! The crowd freezes.
THE COMMANDANT: Step aside, step aside but don’t go anywhere. Make room for the police. Hey, get back here! Stand right there. I’ve got a bullet for the first one who tries to run. Make way for the police, make way! Father Angelo, get up! And you too, white man! He leans down and sniffs at a broken bottle.
THE COMMANDANT: Molotov cocktails! Adjutant, notify the patrol! I’ve uncovered a plot! Nobody move, God damn it! Father Angelo, get up! You too, white trash!
M. POTENTAT (to an unsavory individual listening to him a little too closely, an obvious spy): Here comes the patrol. My God! Just my luck getting mixed up with this crowd. My, they reek, these beggars. And this dead dog crawling with worms is making me sick! And now I may get caught up in this damn plot nonsense.
THE INDIVIDUAL: You seem a bit nervous, Monsieur Potentat!
M. POTENTAT: Me? Nervous? And, pray tell, why should I be nervous?
THE INDIVIDUAL: Stay where you are, Monsieur Potentat! This is a serious matter.
M. POTENTAT: What insolence! Don’t you dare take that tone with me or you’ll regret it!
THE INDIVIDUAL: Me, I’ve got nothing to lose: no house, no wealth. So I can take this all the way.
M. POTENTAT: Oh, come now! Take it easy. There, take this money and keep your mouth shut.
A ONE-ARMED BEGGAR: There goes my day! Why are they asking me to stick around? I’m just a wretch begging on the roads.
A ONE-LEGGED BEGGAR: We should have stayed on the church porch.
A BEGGAR (with both legs amputated, crawling): Excuse me, good people, excuse me. You others, why don’t you crawl and get out of this crowd here?
A BLIND BEGGAR: And get myself crushed? No thank you.
THE COMMANDANT: You beggars over there, settle down and stay right where you are. Hey you there, creepy-crawly! Not another move or I shoot!
SOMEONE (standing in his way): Will you stop, beggar? Or you’ll make cripples of all of us!
PATROL MEMBER: Well, Commandant, have you laid hands on the conspirators?
THE COMMANDANT (strutting): I’ve been watching this shack for eight days.
PATROL MEMBER: Who lives here?
MARCIA: The man on the ground does. The one who’s possessed. He hasn’t opened his door in eight days.
THE COMMANDANT: Who said that? Where’s the witness? Step forward.
MARCIA: NO, no, I didn’t say anything. I don’t know anything.
THE COMMANDANT: Take her into custody!
MARCIA: NO, no, no, I didn’t say anything. I don’t know anything. Help! Mademoiselle Cécile, they’re arresting me! Let me go, I haven’t done anything. Let me go!
CÉCILE: She’s my maid, Commandant, and I can vouch for her.
PATROL MEMBER: Take her into custody too.
CÉCILE: Father, say something!
THE PRIEST: Commandant, consider what you’re about to do! Mademoiselle Magistral is a young woman from a respectable family; her father was one of the most notable figures in the province.
THE COMMANDANT: Father, time is of the essence. We are faced with a plot against the security of the State. Public order has been compromised. We must question the witnesses. Where is the prefect? Where is the mayor?
SOMEONE: Nobody knows.
A BEGGAR (to another): They must be hiding somewhere.
PATROL MEMBER: Someone go get the prefect and the mayor. Commandant, why don’t you dispatch your warrant officer. He knows their habits better than we do.
THE COMMANDANT: Make it happen, Adjutant.
THE ADJUTANT: Yes, Commandant, sir.
CÉCILE: FATHER, I want nothing to do with the police. Father!
THE PRIEST: You must bow before the holy will of God, my daughter, and wait for the prefect to come. He alone will be able to help you.
PATROL MEMBER (to another in a low voice): She’s fine-looking! I’ll take real good care of her in prison.
THE COMMANDANT: Go on! Move along! Let the prisoners through. He fires two shots in the air and the crowd immediately disperses, running.
SIMON (to me): Get up, old friend. They’re taking us to prison.
PATROL MEMBER (jamming a few kicks into my ribs): Get up, mulatto bastard!
SIMON (to me): Try to get up. Hold on to your old buddy.
PATROL MEMBER (pushing André and hitting him in the face): Didn’t you hear me? You, let’s go, start walking!
CÉCILE: Somebody tell my mother. She’s sick in bed. Somebody tell her. Somebody take care of her. Father Angelo, I leave her in your hands.
THE PRIEST: You can count on me, my child. Courage! You too, my little ones. (Blessing them) Go in peace!
SIMON: Oh, Father! spare us your blessings and instead tell them to give us food and drink before the interrogation. Look at them, Father. These two can barely stand. They’ve had nothing but clairin for eight days.
THE PRIEST: Why?
SIMON: They didn’t dare come out on account of the devils.
THE PRIEST: What devils?
SIMON: The ones that have invaded the town.
THE PRIEST: Here comes Dr. Prémature! Doctor! You must intervene. According to what Simon tells me, we’re dealing with a rather peculiar kind of collective madness. These poor boys had shut themselves inside because of devils that they claim invaded the town.
THE DOCTOR: Is it to chase away devils that they smashed this bottle in the middle of the street?
PATROL MEMBER (entering the shack): Commandant! Come see! There’s another one in the house and it looks like he’s dead.
THE PRIEST: Lord! Have mercy on their souls.
THE COMMANDANT: Bring the prisoners inside the premises. Sorry, Father, but let the police do their job. Doctor, come inside to make your official report.
THE DOCTOR: Open the door. It’s suffocating in here… He’s dead, Commandant, been dead for several hours.
PATROL MEMBER: Handcuff and then search them!
PATROL MEMBER: Come on! Hold out your mitts. You over there, what’s in your pockets? What do you have here? Bottles! Bottles stuffed with cotton and alcohol! So, you were plotting, huh? You wanted to commit arson? You wanted our hides, huh? I asked you a question, scumbag. I’ll make you talk, I will!
CÉCILE: Father! Someone go to my mother. I beg you.
THE PRIEST: Doctor! These men have had nothing but clairin for eight days. Look at them. Ask that they be fed or else they’ll die from the beatings. Farewell, Cécile, I am going to your mother’s bedside.
THE DOCTOR (to me): What possessed you to get mixed up in a political matter? We help you out, we give you charity, we look after you, and this is how you thank us.
ME:?…
THE DOCTOR: Do you want to eat something?
ME:!…
CÉCILE: This one is sick, too! Oh, my God! Doctor, do something.
THE DOCTOR (to André, whose legs are wobbling): You want to eat something?
ANDRÉ: I’m hungry.
DOCTOR: Commandant! I have observed these men. They appear to be in such bad shape that I wouldn’t be surprised if they lost consciousness during questioning. Let’s feed them so that they’ll be able to talk.
M. POTENTAT: I must protest against such leniency. These people are despicable subversives.
UNSAVORY INDIVIDUAL (whom M. Potentat cannot shake off): I suggest the Commandant conduct a general search of all the houses on Grand-rue.
M. POTENTAT: Dr. Prémature is too soft on these traitors.
PATROL MEMBER Unconscious or not, I’ll loosen their tongues. I promise you that much.
THE COMMANDANT: Quiet, people!… It might be better to listen to the doctor’s advice. Otherwise, they’ll be useless.
PATROL MEMBER: Commandant Cravache, these men are political prisoners. They must be treated as such. If they lose consciousness during questioning, we have the means to revive them.
MARCIA (in tears): I want to go. I haven’t done anything. All I did was throw stones at the dead dog. I just kept an eye on the mulatto from a distance because he’s always talking to himself and gets all strange when he looks at our house. I even suspected that he wanted to climb the balcony to rob us at night. He was always watching the balcony out of the corner of his eye. I swear I’m telling the truth.
SIMON: Be quiet, bitch.
MARCIA: You won’t stop me from talking, you crazy old white man. Everybody here knows you’re crazy. And the dead one was crazy too. Everybody knows that.
CÉCILE: Quiet, Marcia!
PATROL MEMBER: All right, stop your sniveling!
MARCIA: Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.
THE DOCTOR: What is that stench?
PATROL MEMBER: A chamber pot.
THE COMMANDANT: You found nothing else?
PATROL MEMBER: Yes. Papers and a trunk full of all sorts of stuff.
THE COMMANDANT: Weapons?
PATROL MEMBER: NO, Commandant. Personal effects. Marassas dishes with syrup, dressed candles, bags. Let’s leave this stuff alone. This one’s dead, this one possessed, another lost his marbles, the fourth an idiot-all proof that these loas are dangerous.
THE COMMANDANT: Close the trunk!… You, the white guy, you don’t look so bad to me. Take care of the dead body, before I tickle your fat gut with my club.
SIMON (taking Jacques’ body in his arms): Don’t count on my gut, Commandant. It’s full of gas and alcohol and will explode in your face if you touch it.
CÉCILE: Don’t provoke them, I beg you.
SIMON (quietly to Cécile): Keeping quiet won’t prevent anything. Might as well insult them.
CÉCILE: No. I beg you. They’re terrifying.
THE COMMANDANT: Gather the evidence. No, no, leave the trunk where it is. Just bring the papers from the floor and the bottles. The curious crowd has reappeared, lingering near the front door, at a sufficiently respectable distance from the shack.
SOMEONE: We shouldn’t have come back. That was careless.
ANOTHER: NO. Look, they arrested the offenders and the witnesses.
ANOTHER: You never know with them. Once they start making arrests, they seem to go mad.
ANOTHER: Oh! A dead body! They killed someone. Look!
A LADY (sighing): Poor Cécile got dragged into a really nasty mess.
A YOUNG GIRL (to another): Do you really think she was plotting with them? I never would have thought Cécile capable of that.
MME FANFRELUCHE: I found her to be very strange lately. Gaunt, anxious and strange. She’s not all that beautiful anymore, that’s the truth.
AN OLD MAN What rubbish, Madame Fanfreluche! That girl is beautiful and you are jealous, admit it. You just want the prefect to notice you, but he only has eyes for her.
MME FANFRELUCHE: What insolence! How dare you speak to me?
THE OLD MAN Rubbish, Madame Fanfreluche! Your tone is old-fashioned. Times have changed and now it’s your turn, mulattoes, to lower your heads. Maybe there’s truth to the gossip going around, that you’ve dropped your color prejudice lately, for the color of gold makes you forget about the color of skin. Amazing how gold blinds! Look at the prefect! Is he handsome? Light-skinned? Answer me that much, Madame Fanfreluche!
MME FANFRELUCHE: You old ape!
THE OLD MAN: An old ape in whose face you once spit for daring to propose to you twenty years ago, and who now insults you in his turn.
MME FANFRELUCHE: I’m going to lodge a complaint and have you flogged.
THE OLD MAN: By whom, Madame? By a black man or a mulatto? Since you’re dancing in both circles quite nicely. But despite your little schemes, you and your kind will pay for your stupid prejudice. The punishment has begun already, or are you blind? Maybe I’ll die soon, but the ants, as the peasants like to say, will bring me news of this world.
MME FANFRELUCHE: Stop insulting me or I will denounce you as a traitor to the nation.
THE OLD MAN: Who knows! They might be crazy enough to believe you. In any case, stop jangling your bracelets in my ears. It’s annoying.
A LADY: There’s Madame Fanfreluche crying out of indignation! What a ridiculous woman! As usual, Old Mathurin shut her up good, and there she is sniffling like a little girl.
PATROL MEMBER: Quiet over there or I’ll break it up. Doctor, stop feeling sorry for the prisoners. This is a serious matter.
THE DOCTOR: I am not feeling sorry for them, chief. They’re guilty, so punish them. My suggestions were only meant to make your job easier.
CÉCILE: DOCTOR, I beg you, look in my pocket-you will find the key to my house. Go see to my mother. Father Angelo probably couldn’t get in and she’s all by herself.
THE DOCTOR: Me, look in your pocket! Certainly not! I can get inside your house without your key. All right, duty calls. Farewell, gentlemen, and long live law and order!
THE COMMANDANT: We’ll be calling on your services again, Doctor.
THE DOCTOR: I’m at your disposal, Commandant.
PATROL MEMBER: Get the prisoners out. Let’s go!
SOMEONE IN THE CROWD: My God, Magistral’s daughter in handcuffs! If the father were still alive, he’d get himself killed in front of her.
SOMEONE: And the poor mother with heart trouble! Who will dare go to their house if not Father Angelo?
MME FANFRELUCHE: She’s alone and the house is locked. It’s dangerous to go see her. One always risks getting caught when going inside a suspect’s house.
A YOUNG LADY: Look at the one walking next to Cécile. Look at his eyes and his smile.
ANOTHER YOUNG LADY: Why is he smiling?
MME FANFRELUCHE: But he’s a madman! He’s the son of the trinket vendor, Angélie. You didn’t recognize him? Come on, they’re not serious! They’re arresting madmen!
THE ADJUTANT (returning: Commandant! Commandant, sir! I was unable to find either the prefect or the mayor. I looked for them everywhere. Even Laurette has no idea where they are. Here comes Saindor. He claims he saw them driving to Port-au-Prince at full speed.
SAINDOR: Yes, Lieutenant, they left a while ago and they must be far away by now… Hey! If you guys get arrested, who’s going to pay me? You owe me five piastres, and you ten, and you, Simon, a lot more than that. Hey! I want to get paid, you hear? Find a way! Mademoiselle Cécile! My God! What are you doing with these bums? If your poor father, who I knew so well, saw you in handcuffs! And your mother? She will die of it. The prefect could help you but you’ve been stubborn and pushed him away. He was telling me about it just last night and even got drunk to drown his despair. The prefect and the mayor, hah, they must be far away by now.
THE COMMANDANT: We’ll manage without them. Always have to manage without them whenever there’s work to be done or things get dangerous. This is a police matter. And the police will act.
CÉCILE: My God!
ME: Don’t be afraid. I’ll save you a second time.
THE ADJUTANT (to me): Hey you, what’s in your hand?
PATROL MEMBER: Open your hand. Right, there’s something in his fist. Open your hand, mulatto bastard! A possessed man with a stone in hand, not a good idea. Drop it, you son of a bitch.
ME: NO.
THE COMMANDANT (slapping me): Drop it.
CÉCILE: For pity’s sake, throw it away.
THE COMMANDANT: Let’s go! Keep moving. The rest of you, make way! Clear out.
ME (to Cécile): It was from you.
CÉCILE: What?
ME: The stone.
CÉCILE: What do you mean?
ME: There was a letter wrapped around it.
CÉCILE: What letter?
ME: The one you threw to me from your window. I saw the stone fall and I went to get it. But alas, the letter was gone.
CÉCILE: Oh!
ME: Thank you all the same.
CÉCILE: I still have your poem. I find it very beautiful. I also write poems, I’d like to show them to you.
ME: You’ll read mine and I’ll read yours.
CÉCILE: There’s the prison!
ME: Don’t be afraid. I’m with you.
PATROL MEMBER: Take the girls this way.
ME: If they question you, just say: René is guilty. He made weapons and conspired against the security of the State. He alone is guilty.
CÉCILE: Is that true?
ME: Yes.
CÉCILE: You sound like a sensible man.
ME: Do you think I’m crazy like everyone else does?
CÉCILE: I don’t know. That’s what I’ve heard, but I don’t know anymore. I’ve known you since you were little and I feel as if I’m seeing you for the first time. Your eyes, your smile, they’re not the same.
ME: That’s because you never looked at me before today. In your eyes I was just a beggar. Misfortune has brought us together.
CÉCILE: I hate the prefect, I hate the commandant, I hate them all. They disgust me and I’d like to see them dead.
ME: Don’t forget, Cécile, I’m the guilty one, I’m guilty, you have to say that.
THE COMMANDANT: Stop whispering, you two! Separate them. And bring me the girls.
ME: Farewell, Cécile.
CÉCILE: Farewell, René.
SIMON (to André): Stand up straight, old man. I’m scared too, and your brother’s body is heavy, but I’m holding up well enough.
ANDRÉ: I’ve never been in very good health. Our mother died of consumption. And recently I’ve been spitting up a little blood, too.
SIMON: Bugger me! Look! There’s Germaine! She’ll stop at nothing to get us out. I know her. She’ll sleep with the entire patrol if it will help. A good black woman, yeah. She’s waving to us. It’s good to see her.
PATROL MEMBER (hitting Simon in the back): Shut your hole, white trash, and put down the body.
They dug a hole and dumped Jacques’ body. I was standing between Simon and André. All of us shuddered at the thud of the body in the ditch. Sweat dripping in our eyes, teeth knocking together from faintness and terror. They herded us with their rifle butts into a room where they lined us up faces against the wall. I heard Marcia crying; Cécile’s silence seemed brave and dignified. The commandant asked for coffee, ordered that we be locked up, and left the room followed by the others. We were separated from the women and thrown in a cell.
“Shit!” Simon said. “Our goose is cooked.”
“I’m hungry,” André mumbled.
“How can you be hungry at a time like this?” I asked.
“I’m hungry,” he repeated.
Almost all at once we sank into a deep sleep. At dawn, they woke us with kicks and we found ourselves in a room with the commandant and three men from the patrol sitting at a table. Two rickety green wooden benches leaned against the wall, and there were torture instruments on the table in front of the policemen.
Looking worried and important, the commandant started handling the objects laid out before him with ostentatious reserve.
“I have pointed out the serious charges against the defendants. They have criminal records and left prison barely three months ago. I’ve been kind, indulgent, and today I regret it.”
“What were they guilty of?” one of the three men asked.
“They were inciting a mob, shouting: ‘To arms!’”
“You pardoned them?” the same man exclaimed. “And you dare admit as much!”
“It would appear that these words are from a poem by Massillon Coicou,” the commandant admitted sheepishly.
“Who is this Massillon Coicou?” the man asked. “Is he still in prison?”
“He’s dead,” the commandant answered. “At least, that’s what they’ve told me.”
“Do you hear the cry that resounded: ‘To arms!’” André said suddenly in deep, low voice.
“Silence!” the commandant shouted, “or I’ll break your neck… That verse, we checked it out and it really is from the poet Massillon Coicou. I thought a good beating and six months of detention would be enough punishment.”
“They’re making an ass out of you, Commandant,” one of the three men sniggered. “All one has to do is look in their eyes to see that they’re making an ass of you. That verse by Massillon Coicou, they’re using it to express their own feelings.”
“They’ll live to regret it, I swear,” the commandant hastened to assert.
“I find your zeal to be somewhat tepid,” added the one who had spoken first. “Don’t forget, we were ordered to suspect our own shadow and spare no one… Why don’t you begin the interrogation, Commandant Cravache?”
“You, white man, come forward,” the commandant said.
“Last name, first name, address and occupation,” one of the patrol members recited slowly while dipping a quill in an inkstand.
“Simon de la Pétaudière, French poet, residing in this province, cohabiting with Germaine, merchant on rue Chochotte.”
“Spare us the details,” one of the men pronounced slowly, “and go put yourself against the wall, arms crossed, feet together.”
“Next! Last name, first name, address and occupation?”
“André, son of Julie, poet, born and residing in this town, rue du Diable-Vauvert.”
“Speak up, imbecile!”
“Rue du Diable-Vauvert.”
“Have you heard of it, Commandant Cravache, Devil ‘Green Calf’ Street?” [60]
“No, but we’ll find it. They’re always holed up in ridiculous places, the swine.”
“Next! Hurry up. Last name, first name, address and occupation?”
“René, son of Angélie, malnourished poet.”
“Spare us your tales of malnutrition and just answer the questions.”
“René, son of Angélie, born in and residing in this town, rue de l’Enfer.” [61]
“Quite a brotherhood,” the commandant declared in annoyance. “All obsessed with the same fixed idea: speak French, write verse.”
“Rue de l’Enfer! Rue de l’Enfer! The streets of this town have ridiculous names!” exclaimed the patrol member who was writing everything down. “No wonder they shelter so many subversives.”
“Bring in the girls,” the commandant then ordered.
The adjutant entered, roughly pushing Marcia and Cécile before him.
“Here they are, Commandant.”
“You, the maid, come over here.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”
“Tell us your name.”
“Yes, sir. It’s Marcia, sir.”
“Marcia what?”
“Marcia Nanpétrin, yes, sir.”
“Where do you live?”
“At Madame Magistral’s, sir. Since I was ten.”
“How old are you now?”
“Twenty, sir.”
“Do you have parents?”
“Yes, sir, in the mountains, far away. Up in the coffee farms.”
“You were the first to hear the bottle crash. Tell us what happened?”
“Here is what happened, Commandant! I was leaving Madame Magistral’s house when I saw the door of the shack open-it had been closed for eight days. The mulatto came out, eyes closed and hand lifted high. He walked like a blind man, hesitating, and then he threw the bottle under the balcony. I saw flames running along the ground and then the mulatto threw himself on the ground screaming and the black guy and the white guy came out of the shack, and the white guy stamped out the flames and lay down on the mulatto and starting saying something in his ear.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it, yes, sir. I swear on my mother’s life.”
“Fine, go stand by the wall and wait.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”
“Come forward, you. Last name, first name, address and occupation.”
“Cécile Magistral, born and residing in this town, teacher at the Holy Sisters School.”
“What do you know about this twisted plot against the security of the State?”
“I don’t know anything about it, Monsieur.”
“Talk or you’ll regret it.”
“I have nothing to say.”
Two men came down from the platform on which the table stood and loomed before Cécile.
“Talk,” one of them said.
“I swear I don’t know anything.”
“You want a beating? Huh!”
One of them tore off her blouse and grabbed a bundle of leather straps that lay on the table.
“She doesn’t know anything, she doesn’t know anything,” Simon yelled.
“Tell them, Cécile,” I begged. “Tell them what you know.”
“I don’t know anything,” Cécile said.
“Fine. I am going to loosen your tongue. You’ll see.”
He shoved her to her knees and struck her. The straps marked her flesh with long red streaks.
“No! No!” I couldn’t stop yelling.
“Let him kill me,” Cécile shouted to me.
“No! No!”
“I won’t be able to live after all of this. Let them kill me!”
Two patrol members had to hold me back. I had rushed at them like a lion. They twisted my arms and I fell to my knees.
“Cécile, think of your mother,” I begged again, “tell them what you know.”
“I don’t want to live anymore, I don’t want to live anymore,” she sobbed.
“You bastards,” Simon shouted.
And he leaped on one of the men and hit him in the head with his handcuffed fists.
“Shoot him,” ordered the patrol member who had remained at the table with the commandant.
“I am French, I invoke my flag,” Simon protested.
“We shit on your flag,” one of the men answered. “You struck law enforcement personnel.”
“My embassy will be notified. You’ll have to answer for my death.”
“You were conspiring against the security of the State.”
“You’re lying There was never a conspiracy.”
“And the petrol bombs? Where did they come from?”
“They’re no more threatening than firecrackers, they’re stuffed with rotting cotton and clairin. I demand to be transferred to Port-au-Prince and allowed to contact my lawyer.”
“Hah! Hah! Hah!” one of the patrol members sniggered. “He thinks we have time to waste. How many days did you stay locked up in the shack with the conspirators?”
“I repeat, there was never any conspiracy,” Simon roared.
“Let him be,” said the commandant, who seemed preoccupied by an inconvenient thought. “Let’s take care of these two first.”
“Come with me,” said one of the men. “See these goodies? They will make you as soft as a woman’s hand.”
And, tearing off our shirts, he burst into hideous, demonic laughter.
“Look at that, thin as a rail. You won’t be able to make it through an hour of torture. Commandant Cravache, give me the studded whip.”
“I’m the only guilty one,” I cried. “I made the weapons myself while they were both sleeping.”
“Who were you trying to set on fire?”
“The devils,” I responded.
“What devils?”
“The ones who invaded the town.”
“He’s a mad fool,” Simon yelled. “Don’t you understand that?”
“I wonder which one of you is best at playing the fool?” the commandant replied.
He came down off the platform, grabbed some kind of pliers off the table and dangled them before me:
“I will tear out your flesh, I will flay you like a hog, but you will talk.”
“I’m the only guilty one,” I repeated.
“Who were you after?”
“The devils.”
The commandant smashed my face with the pliers and blood ran down my cheek.
“You’ve already been beaten with a stick, right? That can be tiring for the person doing it, but this”-holding the pliers under my nose-“is a game that can last for hours. It is reserved exclusively for little plotters such as yourself. Tie him to a chair!”
Two men rushed over, grabbed me and bound me to a chair. The commandant held out the pliers to the patrol member who was still smiling in his seat, saying to him:
“Go ahead, Sataneau, do the honors.”
And the man took the pliers and came toward me. He was very small with a somewhat elongated head and slanting eyes framed by large pointed eyebrows. He smiled and his lips revealed brilliant white, pointed teeth. The face of the man leaning over me suddenly blurred, melting before my very eyes into a blinding metallic plate.
I bowed my head, and with my mouth contorted and eyes closed, cried out:
“The devils! They are here. The devils!…”
I knocked over the chair and fell at their feet, screaming and twisting despite being tied up.
“What the fuck is this nonsense about devils?” the commandant asked in a worried voice.
“He sees them all the time,” Simon replied. “He claims they’re hiding somewhere in town.”
The man was standing, pliers in hand, watching me twist at his feet.
“There is something unnatural about all this,” he said. “Let’s exterminate them and be done with it.”
The devils opening the gates of hell
Will escape by the thousands
Black, red, sparkling with weapons and gold
To sow death and gladden Lucifer…
André began to recite. His voice seemed to come from another world. I was twisting and foaming at the mouth, pricking up my ears to hear what was being said.
“What’s that idiot saying?” the commandant asked.
“He’s talking about devils too,” one of the patrol members replied, visibly disconcerted.
“René described them to us,” Simon said in a declamatory tone. “He has seen them every God-given day.”
“I’ve seen them too,” André said softly.
“You, idiot, you’ve supposedly seen them too?”
“I’ve seen them.”
“When?”
“Every evening for eight days.”
“And who are they after?” the man with the pliers asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Who are they after?” the man with the pliers snapped, leaning over me.
“Untie me! Untie me!” I begged him, writhing. “They’ll be back!”
“Untie him,” ordered the man with the pliers. “And have Dr. Prémature come.”
“Will do, chief,” the corporal answered.
And he ran to the exit.
“He’s pretending to be a madman,” the agitated commandant said nervously, “but I have learned that you can’t be too careful even with real madmen. Admit this is an act. Admit that you’re not crazy,” he grunted, hitting me on the head.
“I am not crazy,” I said, “I have seen the devils. And they’ll be back. They are armed. They don’t have faces and they wear red boots. Black and red, in golden helmets, that’s what they look like. I tell you: when the devils return none of us will escape.”
“He seems sincere,” muttered one of the patrol members.
“And he doesn’t seem to be crazy at all,” the commandant answered. “In fact, he’s admitted he wasn’t.”
“I saw them,” I slowly enunciated. “Black and red, in golden helmets. They move without noise but in the midnight silence you can make out the pounding of their boots and the sound of their voices. Their voices are like hissing bullets. They kill too, and the spilled blood disappears with the rising sun. At the stroke of midnight, prick up your ears, if you’re not scared.”
“Were dead bodies found in the street these last eight days?” asked the man with the pliers, who was growing concerned.
“Dead dogs,” the commandant answered, “and three children on the outskirts of town.”
Dr. Prémature came in with the corporal, trembling.
“Commandant,” said the corporal, twisting his hands, “the women on rue des Saints, led by Germaine, are inciting the crowd with their tales.”
“Two merchants were found dead along the trail to the coffee farms and people claim they’ve seen great black and red shapes running in the woods.”
“Mercy, Holy Virgin!” Marcia moaned. “They’re on their way to my house.”
“They’re there!” I exclaimed in an implacable voice. “I see them!”
And getting up, I slowly walked to the door, looking straight ahead, my hands contorted. The doctor watched me in silence, hands in his coat pockets. He turned to the commandant and said quietly:
“Commandant Cravache, these men are not in full possession of their faculties. Torturing them will be a complete waste of time.”
“Are you sure they’re crazy?” the commandant whispered. “In these godforsaken parts, everyone is called crazy by someone else. Do you take full responsibility for this diagnosis?”
“Look for yourself!” the doctor said.
André had gotten on Simon’s back, and Simon was prancing around with a beatific smile, winking at the man with the pliers. I scanned the surroundings from the doorway, my hand over my eyes. The glint in my fixed, haggard eyes must have been unbearable because the commandant walked up beside me and searched the horizon. Then, he roughly pulled André off Simon’s back. Raising his hand, he touched the scar on his forehead and said to him:
“Where did you get this?”
“I fell when I was little, like so,” André replied.
The commandant stared wildly at Dr. Prémature, leaned over and whispered to him:
“Dr. Prémature, three girls died this month from complications as the result of an abortion. I have received a number of complaints from their parents accusing you of rape and homicide. Either these men are in their right minds or I’ll bring your case to justice…”
“Did I ever say they were crazy?” the doctor exclaimed, becoming pale. “I was merely giving an initial diagnosis. I will have to examine the prisoners more carefully to make a definitive determination.”
“My advice to you is not to make a mountain out of a molehill or I will have no choice but to relieve you of your weapon.”
“They are not crazy!” the doctor exclaimed. “Just now I caught a glint of malice in that one’s eye. I’m certain they’re not insane.”
He was pointing a finger at me.
“You’re making me waste my time, Commandant Cravache, and I don’t much like it!” the man with the pliers suddenly roared. “You write to Port-au-Prince asking for reinforcements under the pretext that there’s a conspiracy. You tell us you found the plotters and then you turn over three loons and two sniveling females.”
“The commandant is new here,” Marcia intervened inopportunely. “I told him they were crazy but he didn’t want to believe me. Everyone in these parts knows they’re crazy. Even the children.”
“Quiet!” the commandant advised fiercely.
“Yes, sir, I’ll keep quiet, yes. Thank you, sir.”
The commandant was still looking at Dr. Prémature. He abruptly turned toward the man with the pliers and spoke with his eyes fixed on the doctor:
“Dr. Prémature,” he said, “have you observed the prisoners sufficiently to offer a diagnosis?”
“Yes,” the doctor answered.
“Are they insane?”
“No,” answered the doctor.
“Have them executed to set an example,” the man with the pliers concluded. “I’m in charge of deciding the prisoners’ fate, and I declare these men traitors to their country. Execute them and don’t waste time. You, Corporal, cuff them.”
“No!” Cécile cried.
“You others, the women, get the fuck out of here,” the man with the pliers added.
“Commandant,” Marcia said, “not to bother you either, sir, but last night, several men came into our cell and raped us.”
“Forget whatever you’ve seen or heard and anything that’s happened to you in this prison, unless you want me to rip out your tongue,” the commandant replied coldly.
“Yes, Commandant, thank you, Commandant.”
“I want to die, I want to die,” Cécile sobbed.
She was slowly getting dressed and weeping as she looked at me. I smiled at her so peacefully so serenely that she thought I was mad. André seemed to be asleep. Simon looked at the doctor with hatred, spit at his feet and shouted:
“Oh bugger me, just get it over with, get it over with.”
Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? I asked myself. Nothing seemed important. Not love. Not even death. They pushed us outside and we staggered to the place of execution.
“Oh Christ!” I cried. “Since they’re going to tie us to a post like they nailed you to the cross and cover our bodies with wounds, let our deaths mean something and don’t let our names become lost in oblivion.”
And it was then that the sky slowly opened up, and I saw angels in song descend on gleaming wings and take us away in their arms…
<a l:href="#_ftnref37">[37]</a> Diderot: from Diderot’s satirical philosophical dialogue Rameau’s Nephew, written in 1762, in which the title character argues that there is no such thing as virtue (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref38">[38]</a> Dessalines! Pétion! Toussaint! Christophe!: heroes of Haiti independence. Jean-Jacques Dessalines (c. 1758-1806) was one of the leaders of the 1791 slave revolt; he became emperor of Haiti in 1804, but was assassinated in a coup by Pétion and Christophe. Alexandre Sabès Pétion (1770-1818) was the mulatto son of a wealthy French colonist, who served as president of an independent republic in southern Haiti from 1807 to 1818. Toussaint Louverture (c. 1743-1803) was a former slave who led the 1791 rebellion and became the effective ruler of Haiti by 1797; when Napoleon Bonaparte sent an expedition to reconquer Haiti, Toussaint was arrested, and he died in a French prison. Henri Christophe (1767-1820) was a former slave and one of Toussaint’s lieutenants; after the assassination of Dessalines he became president of northern Haiti in 1807 and king in 1811 (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref38">[39]</a> Legba: the preeminent god in voodoo practice; the father of all the gods.
<a l:href="#_ftnref40">[40]</a>marassas dishes: double clay vessels used during voodoo ceremonies or in household shrines. Marassas is the Creole word for twins, who are believed to have special powers in voodoo practice (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref41">[41]</a> piastre: one gourde (see note 3 on p. 377) (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref42">[42]</a> studded whips: Both lanières ferrées (studded whips) and rigoises (stiff cowhide whips) were used on slaves in Haiti; the latter are also still used on restaveks or unpaid child servants (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref42">[43]</a>coco-macaques: peasant clubs or bludgeons (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref44">[44]</a>Iambi: conch shell used as a horn.
<a l:href="#_ftnref44">[45]</a>coumbite: collective farm work.
<a l:href="#_ftnref44">[46]</a>hounsis: voodoo dancers.
<a l:href="#_ftnref47">[47]</a>“restez-avec-monsieur”: Here Chauvet gives the etymology of the Haitian Creole word for an unpaid and illiterate child servant, the reste-avec or restavek. As Chauvet points out, reste-avec is short for “restez-avec-monsieur”-“Stay with the gentleman” (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref48">[48]</a>tafia: See note 7 on p. 377.
<a l:href="#_ftnref48">[49]</a>Cocobés: Creole word for cripples (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref48">[50]</a>houngans: male voodoo high priests (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref48">[51]</a>simples: A simple is a plant or other substance having one “simple” remedial virtue (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref52">[52]</a> Massillon Coicou’s “L’Alerme” in unison: Haitian poet (1867-1908) executed by President Pierre Nord Alexis. The poem refers to the siege of the fort of Crête-à-Pierrot (1802), a major battle of the Haitian Revolution in which Dessalines’ 1,300 men were surrounded by Leclerc’s 18,000 French colonial troops; the rebels ultimately broke through enemy lines and escaped the fortress largely intact (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref53">[53]</a> Baudelaire… Rimbaud drank too: Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), French Symbolist poet associated with decadence, author of Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil); François Villon (b. 1431), French lyric poet whose rowdy and sometimes criminal life included time in prison; and Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91), French Symbolist poet who sought mystic revelation through a “derangement of all the senses” (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref54">[54]</a>banda dance: suggestive Haitian dance, associated with voodoo ritual; also known as the “guede” dance; possibly related to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonial zarabanda or sarabande, banned in Spain in 1583 for its obscenity (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref55">[55]</a> Boisrond-Tonnerre: Louis Boisrond-Tonnerre (1776-1806), Haitian historian who wrote the 1804 Independence Act of Haiti (trans.).
<a l:href="#_ftnref56">[56]</a>sèche: French slang for cigarette (trans).
<a l:href="#_ftnref57">[57]</a> “Bugger me!”: This conversation is part of a larger discussion about francophonie. René’s conclusion is that a poet who writes in a loan-language is a loan-poet (poet on layaway). His exclamation “bougre de bougre” highlights the historicity of language. “Bougre” is a seventh-century term that is short for the Latin word for Bulgarian, a term that first meant heretic, then sodomite and then dummy. A few lines down, when René asks “What the fuck would a great French poet be doing in this mudhole?” the French word used for mudhole is bled, a slang word coined by the French military in Algeria, which in turn comes from a local Arabic word (blad) for town (trans).
<a l:href="#_ftnref58">[58]</a> imitor patrem: Latin for “I imitate my father,” a sarcastic allusion to Catholic catechism (trans).
<a l:href="#_ftnref59">[59]</a> This is no call: A butchered quotation from “La crosse en l’air” (1936), by the French poet Jacques Prévert (1900-77):Rassurez-vous braves gensce n’est pas un appel à la révoltec’est un évêque qui est saoul et qui met sa crosse en l’aircomme ça… en titubant…There is no call for alarmthis is no call for rebellionjust a drunk bishop waving his white cross in the airlike so… staggering about…
<a l:href="#_ftnref60">[60]</a> “Green Calf” Street: Vauvert and veau vert (green calf) are homophones in French (trans).
<a l:href="#_ftnref61">[61]</a> rue de l’Enfer: Hell Street (trans).