Continental Drift

by Russell Banks

  Resté arresté la! Pa wé ou, messieurs! Moin la!

  Claude sat upright, and hearing now a mumbling mix of English and Creole as several people came aboard, understanding more of the English words than the Haitians seemed to and more of the Creole than did the captain and his crewmen, he decided that this was a prearranged stop, that the Kattina was picking up marooned Haitians and the captain was being paid in American dollars for it.

  Haitian people, Claude said to Vanise.

  How many?

  I don’t know. More than two. Listen.

  Police.

  No. People from Haiti, going to America. The gros neg is taking money from them.

  Vanise grunted. What food have we? They’ll want our food.

  Maybe they have their own. We have only biscuits and cheese and some tinned beef.

  I’m thirsty, Vanise said in a low voice cut with resignation, as if she expected never to drink again.

  Maybe the Haitians will have water with them. Listen, he said. I believe one of them speaks English.

  The men were standing almost directly overhead now, and indeed, one of the Haitians was speaking in broken English to the captain, arguing that they should be allowed to stay abovedecks, promising to go below if another boat came in sight and assuring him they’d stay out of the way of the captain and his crew. We pay money, plenty money. We have got wet from the open sea, now we must dry, or a cold will enter us, Captain. No problems for you.

  All right den, mon. Stay above if dat what you want.

  Ah.

  Got sumpin down dere better’n up here, mon.

  Yes?

  Got a gal. Haiti gal down dere, jus’ waitin’ for a big ol’ black Haiti mon to come down an’ chat wid her.

  Yes?

  Haiti gal an’ her pickney an’ a pretty bwoy down dere wid her.

  Yes? A pretty boy, eh? Massisi?

  The fat man laughed. Yas, mon, him a pretty bwoy, all right, but de gal, dat de real beef. Make de journey sweet.

  Yes. So we dry and warm ourself in the morning sun, eh? Then we go chat up the Haiti gal and pretty boy, eh?

  Eh-eh-eh, the captain said, laughing, walking aft toward the wheelhouse. Eh-eh-eh. Dem Haitians-dem, all over de fuckin’ ocean, worse’n Cubans-dem.

  The engine turned over slowly, caught, and resumed its steady, familiar rhythm, and the bow of the boat lifted slightly, and once again Claude and his aunt and her child adjusted their balance and body weights to fit the lapping of the waves and the slow rise and fall of the boat.

  We will get to America now, Claude said. Because of the Haitians.

  In a short time, it got very hot, still and close, and soon they were taking short, shallow, quick breaths, like dogs sleeping in the noonday sun. Claude stripped off his shirt, rolled it into a ball and stuffed it into the bundle behind his head. He was very thirsty, thirstier than he had ever been before, and he knew Vanise was also, and after a while he pulled himself slowly to his feet and made his way aft, climbed the ladder and pushed the hatch cover up.

  The glare of the light hit him in the eyes like a hard slap. All he saw was white, a pure, sourceless field of white. Staggered by the blow, he looked back down into the hold. Then, shading his eyes with one hand, holding up the cover with the other, he squinted and saw through a white cloud that three Haitian men were lounging on the deck a few feet away. They were young men, under thirty, thin and wearing farmers’ clothes, short-sleeved shirts and faded cotton pants and sockless leather shoes. One of them, who looked the oldest of the three, smoked a pipe. He turned slowly and saw Claude.

  Hello, boy, he said, speaking Creole. You decide to come up for some air?

  The others turned and looked at him with idle curiosity.

  This the massisi? one asked.

  The man with the pipe laughed.

  Will you ask the man for water for us? Claude said. The breeze on his face cooled him and smelled clean and fresh, and he pulled himself halfway out of the hold.

  What de hell you doin’ up here! the captain called. He was at the wheel in the aft cabin. Too many fuckin’ Haitians up here already!

  Him want water, the man with the pipe said.

  The captain nodded and sent the young white man forward to the hatch with an old rum bottle full of water. When the Englishman handed Claude the bottle he smiled, and Claude saw that he was missing most of his front teeth and was very ugly.

  Now get yer arse back down there, the white man said. These boys here are travelin’ first class. Tou an’ yer sis are steerage. He laughed, and he shoved Claude back down the ladder and closed the cover over him again.

  The hold stank of seawater and burlap and body sweat and got worse as the temperature rose. They urinated and defecated into bilge water between the slats of a pallet as far from their place in the bow as they could, and the soft, hot odor of their own wastes drifted slowly back to them. There were rats now, emboldened by the stillness of the people in their nest in the bow. Twice Claude reached to adjust the bundle at his head and heard a rat scuttle away in the darkness, until he took his shirt and the biscuits and cheese out of the bundle, gave half the food to Vanise, ate half himself, and threw the bundle toward the stern, where he soon heard the rats foraging for crumbs.

  They suffered silently, even little Charles, although now and then Vanise, in a weak, low voice, sang a line or two from a baby’s song and then left off, as if the effort were too much for her. And much later, when the heat lessened somewhat, the men came back down again, the brown Inaguan and the Englishman, laughing and drinking clear rum, sending Claude with the baby aft while they raped his aunt.

  When the Haitian men came down, Claude was surprised, for they behaved like the others, even the man with the pipe, who tried to grab Claude when he stepped away from them, grasping at the boy’s trousers and yanking on them, and when Claude fought and squirmed free, the man hit the boy in the face with his fist and cursed at him and moved forward to where the others were holding Vanise against the sacks of sea salt.

  They did not sleep, but, like small animals in shock after being hit by an automobile, they were not awake, either. It was cool for a measureless period of time, and then it grew hot again, like the inside of an oven, and when it was hot, the men did not come down into the hold, so that Claude almost felt grateful for the stifling, stinking heat. But soon it began to cool, and he knew they would come again, and they did, sometimes one at a time, sometimes two or even three, and eventually one of the Haitians, not the one with the pipe, grabbed Claude by his arms from behind so that he could not get away. The man threw the boy down, and when he had yanked his trousers down, the man jammed his knee between Claude’s legs and spread them and entered him—a savage tearing, a rip in both his body and his mind that made the boy scream and left him crumpled, burning with rage and shame and holding inside himself a dark star of pain. When the man was through with him, the boy cried, and when he could stop himself from crying, he picked his body up with pathetic care, as if it were not his own, and carried it forward to where Vanise lay with her child.

  Then one time, after it had been cool for a long while, it did not get hot again as it usually did, and the boat began to surge and dip, and the waves began to smack harder against the bow, until soon the boat was lifting in the water at a steep angle, as if climbing a mountain, then tipping, sliding swiftly down into a hole. The bilge water sloshed wildly, and sacks of salt shifted and fell.

  Claude and Vanise and the baby scrambled about in the hold, struggling to find someplace safe, where they could curl up against one another and not get tossed about, until at last they ended clinging to the ladder below the hatch cover. Vanise held her baby with one arm, the ladder with the other. Claude, wrapping himself around both woman and child, clutched the rails of the ladder and clamped them to it, as the boat tipped and fell, then rose again and tipped and fell again.

  They could hear a wind roaring abovedecks and heard waves slam against the boat with furious force and
weight. Pray for us! Claude ordered. Pray to les Mystères the way you know how. Pray to Agwé, your mait’-tête, he pleaded, so the boat will not sink and drown us. Pray to the Virgin and to the saints and to Jesus Christ, to Papa Legba and Damballah and all the others. Pray! he shouted into her ear, and Vanise began to murmur incoherently, mixing half-remembered songs and prayers and chants together as best she knew how: Coté ou yé, metté hounsi-yo dey ors, gan malice oh, cé passé’l t’ap passé. Dou quand Bon Dieu réle ou. Je vous prends pour me rendre les services que je veux, au nom de Mait’ Carrefour et de Legba, generation paternelle et maternelle, ancêtre et ancètere, Afrique et Afrique, au nom de Legba, Baltaza, Agwé, Erzulie, Ghede, Ogoun, Damballah … and on and on, as the storm raged against them.

  After a long time, Vanise grew weary and confused and too ashamed to go on, for she knew only scraps and bits of the proper prayers and calls to the loas, and she said to her nephew, I can’t! I must not! We must let le Bon Dieu take us over now.

  No, he said. Go on, pray for us!

  And so she resumed, throughout the storm, until, at last, the roar of the wind lowered somewhat, and the boat ceased to tip and thrash about as wildly as before, and gradually, after many hours, they came to believe that the storm had passed by and that it could not have been a hurricane or even a northwester, but a squall, perhaps, for now they heard rain falling on the deck above their heads, steadily and heavily, without wind, and the sea seemed almost calm.

  First Claude loosened his grip on the ladder, and then Vanise let go of it, and they slid slowly to the pallet below, where they lay collapsed around one another, like lovers, their child between them, about to fall peacefully asleep together. Yet even as they lay, they still clung to the base of the ladder, as if manacled to it.

  The captain lifted the hatch cover and waved Claude, Vanise and the child up. It was night, and the rain had stopped. In the northwest, a crescent moon floated behind strips of silver-blue cloud, and the sea glittered with phosphorus.

  The boat had rounded the western tip of New Providence Island, and when Claude and Vanise had pulled themselves up the ladder to the deck, it was as if they had returned from their own drownings. There was air here, fresh, cool air, and endless space that seemed tangible, and though it was night, the air was filled with light and the smells of what it was not—the sea, land, trees, fruit, human beings. They inhaled and looked at their hands and each other’s faces and rediscovered their own battered bodies. They looked off the starboard side and saw the headlights of automobiles beading the north coast of the island. Off the bow, they saw the first lights of the city, Nassau, casting a dull, whitish glow against the bruise-colored sky. They had come over three hundred miles as if chained in darkness, a middle passage, and the sight of so many of humanity’s lights at once was a sharp, confusing blow to them that left them stunned, for they had come to believe that, except for the six men on the boat, there was no one else left in the world. Now they looked out and saw high, rectangular hotels on Cable Beach a half mile away, glittery casinos, crowded restaurants, strings of streetlights, beacons blinking off North Cay at the entrance to the harbor, a jet plane taking off from the airport inland, banking southwest and disappearing, small boats and yachts passing slowly out of the harbor, and there ahead of them, the city itself, with tall pink buildings, a green and white Holiday Inn and a half-dozen more hotels, with spotlights hidden among hibiscus and casuarina trees playing against the terrace windows while shadows of royal palms fluttered against brightly painted pink, yellow, white and blue walls.

  They passed the large wharf and two Scandinavian cruise ships tied up there, sleek, white and huge, with strings of lights running up the masts and stacks like Christmas tree decorations, and slowly moved farther down the harbor, with Paradise Island off the portside, downtown Nassau off the starboard, where taxis cruised through Rawson Square, turned and headed out to the casinos or cross-island to the airport for late-night arrivals from London, New York and Miami.

  It was as if Claude and Vanise had been carried to another planet than the one they had known, and they stood silent and awestruck, crowded with the other Haitians into the aft cabin, where the captain had told them to stay. The three Haitian men ignored Claude and Vanise now, treated them as if they had never seen the boy and the woman before and were not in the slightest interested in or even curious about them.

  The captain had instructed the Haitian with the pipe to explain to the others that they should all stay low inside the cabin until the boat was tied up, and then, when it was clear that no one was watching, they were simply to walk off the boat one by one, to move down the pier and away. No one would stop them, he said, not at this hour, if they walked quickly and seemed to know where they were going. Every one of them, including Claude and Vanise, had been listed as crew members, he said. The harbormaster wouldn’t check for them until morning, if he checked at all. Dese Bahamians, mon, him don’t care where you go, long’s you not standin’ next to him when him look for you. The captain laughed and walked forward, while the white man steered from the bridge and brought the boat safely around and put her with silent ease into a slip on the dark side of a small pier next to a pair of low turtle boats.

  There was a moment of confusion and some heat, while the three Haitian men argued over who would leave the boat first, but the man with the pipe, called Jules by the others, prevailed. The youngest of the three would go first, then the next youngest, and finally Jules himself. They would meet on the street, he said, and he would lead them on the journey across the island to his cousin in Elizabeth Town. He glanced at a hand-drawn map, apparently sent to him by the cousin, and said he was sure Elizabeth Town was on the outskirts of Nassau and they would be able to arrive there before sunrise. He carefully folded the map and put it in his shirt pocket.

  We will follow you, Claude announced.

  The men turned and looked at him with mild surprise. No, you can’t do that, Jules said evenly. There would be five of us then and a baby, he said, and the police will want to know right away who we are. It’s bad enough we have three to travel together. And until we are outside the city, he instructed the other men, we should walk separately. That way, if one of us is captured, it will be too bad, but it will only be one of us. But you two, Jules said to Claude and Vanise, you and the infant, you’re on your own now. We don’t know you.

  Claude said nothing. The boat bumped softly against a pair of old truck tires tied to the pier, and the Inaguan leaped out at the bow and tied the boat to a bollard there, then ran to the stern and tied her to another. The first Haitian stepped from the cabin and in seconds had strolled nonchalantly down the length of the low pier, passed through a chain-link gate at the end and down an alley beyond, until he disappeared behind a squat gray cinder-block storage building. They saw a car splash by on the street where he had disappeared, and a second later, the second Haitian left the boat. When he, too, had disappeared, Jules left.

  What should we do? Vanise asked.

  Follow them.

  But you heard …

  No matter. We’ll follow them. We can’t stay here, he said.

  Our clothes, Vanise said, looking suddenly confused. Our bundle, it’s down there. We left it down there.

  No matter. It’s better not to carry anything. Like them. Come, he said, grabbing her hand. Come! and he pulled her from the cabin, over the rail to the pier and quickly away from the boat, where the captain stood in the bow, hands on hips, watching.

  The white man came forward and joined him. It’s pathetic, ain’t it? He flipped his long hair away from his face and lit a cigarette.

  The captain nodded. Dem Haitians, mon, dem worse’n Jamaicans. Live like dogs, mon. Tou cyan deal wid ’em like dey was normal people.

  The white man smiled as if the captain had told a joke. Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth, though.

  2

  It was late, after midnight, and the area around Bay Street and Rawson Square, downtown Nassau, was nearl
y deserted. Across the harbor on Paradise Island, however, and out along Cable Beach and east on Montague Bay, hotels and casinos were bustling with noise and bright lights as cars and blatting motorcycles pulled up and departed and sunburned white people laughed and danced, drank and gambled happily through the night.

  The three Haitian men, Jules leading them by about a half block now, turned right at Bay Street and headed for the quiet, locked-up center of the city, past exclusive shops that hid behind iron grilles to Rawson Square, where the darkened straw market and Prince George Wharf were located. Taxis, like seabirds, swept in along Bay Street to the square, looped toward the harbor and discharged half-drunk ladies and gentlemen beside the Scandinavian cruise ships, then hurried back out to the hotels and casinos for more.

  Claude, as he and Vanise came off the pier onto Bay Street, caught sight of the last of the three men. There! he said, and he started walking quickly, pulling Vanise along behind. At the square, Jules turned left down a quiet side street and walked casually, as if heading home from a long day’s work at the straw market, past the post office and courthouse. Palm trees shuddered overhead in the light offshore breeze, and the narrow, wet street below, shiny as polished ebony from the recent rain, reflected back streetlights and lamplit second-story windows.

  Then Jules was leading them uphill, away from the harbor and the downtown area, around Shirley to East Street, with the top of the hill and a water tower in the east silhouetted against a pale, peach-colored glow from Montague Bay and the Fort Montague Hotel beyond, past old pink limestone houses shuttered against the night, until at last, beyond the city, Claude and Vanise were sweating from the effort of keeping up, out of breath, and then—as the street became a darkened road leading south from Nassau and as one by one the Haitian men ahead of them disappeared into the gloom—they grew frightened again, alone in darkness, lost.

  They stopped. Behind them were the lights and streets of Nassau, the hill outlined sharply against the sky, the water tower, the harbor, boats moving in and out; ahead of them, a soft, enveloping darkness that had swallowed the three Haitian men whole and was now about to swallow Claude, Vanise and Charles as well. They could feel the rough limestone road beneath their feet, but did it narrow to a pathway, did it suddenly loop to the left or right, was there a cliff at the edge of the road, a wall, a prickly hedgerow? The sky was clouded over here, remnants of the squall that had passed over them at sea; there was no moonlight, no stars.