“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 u
s. 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…”
Love, Anger, Madness Page 36