“What’s this?”
Nicolas did not answer. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, his jaw was clenched so tightly. He heard a scream from the back of the house and his blood curdled. He jerked in the men’s grasp, but the head Macoute didn’t lift his eyes from the document. Finally he stopped on a certain line. He squinted incredulously as he brought the page closer to his face.
“Are you aware of what you’ve written?” He looked directly at Nicolas. “You wrote this?”
Nicolas said nothing.
“This is a plot, a plot to conspire against His Excellency. What do you know about Jacques Stephen Alexis? Where did you get this information?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nicolas blurted out. The words collided in his head. Had he ever, in the luxurious comfort of his study, imagined actually denying this?
Nicolas didn’t anticipate the blow to the face, and he kept his eyes closed as the man struck him again. Pain came next, rocketing through his jaw, but he almost welcomed it.
“Traitor!” the man spat. “You are an enemy to the Republic of Haiti. Our source was right.”
“No…no traitor,” Nicolas grunted, gritting his teeth. He’d never been hit before. His lips were numb with pain, but he tried to think on his feet. “I have friends at the Ministry of Fi—”
“Shut up! You seem to think you’re in a position to argue. One more peep and I will blow your brains out. Then I’ll collect them and bring them to His Excellency myself.” He stared hard at Nicolas, clearly eager to deliver on his promise. “You are coming with us to Casernes Dessalines, and there you will await your transfer to Fort Dimanche!”
The Macoute turned to the others. “Anything else?” he asked.
Nicolas bit his lip.
“There’s no one else here,” one of the Macoutes replied. “We found an empty crib, no child. No wife. A packed bag. There’s a maid out back. She claims she doesn’t know anything, but we’ll see about that.”
Nicolas gasped. Poor Freda! And yet it seemed like Eve had gotten away. For now.
The Macoute’s mustache twitched again. “So noted. The wife’s escape is proof of her guilt as well. Let’s go.”
The men filed out of the house. A cool wind blew in from the garden through the open door, and Nicolas smelled the familiar fragrance of his roses and jasmine blossoms. They’d never smelled so sweet. Two pairs of hands dragged Nicolas outside. He resisted their grip, then felt the hard butt of a rifle against his cheek. Another punch to the jaw darkened his consciousness for a moment. He came to quickly, his mouth filled with blood.
Monsieur Pierre-Louis’s dog leapt against the fence, barking furiously. The other dogs on the street swiftly joined in and a concerto of howls rose in the night. Nicolas thought he saw a light at Monsieur Pierre-Louis’s window. Maybe Eve and Amélie had found their way in next door.
He felt a tightening around his head. A hood. Flashing before his eyes in the sudden darkness, he saw his garden, the pink-and-white rose petals crawling along the stucco, and he felt his daughter’s small hand clutching his finger, the softness of Eve’s raven hair. He was thrown into a truck and felt himself pulled under.
Raymond only opened his eyes when he accepted the knocking on the door would not stop. He lay there waiting, praying that Madame Simeus would leave. He could hear her raspy voice insulting him through the door.
His head was pounding. He’d found a half bottle of rum that Yvonne had snuck home from her Friday night job, and he’d downed it in one sitting, hoping to escape his agony. Raymond had never been a drinker. In fact, Nicolas always teased him about it, saying he had the alcohol tolerance of a five-year-old girl.
“L’Eveillé! Open up!”
Raymond was soaked in sweat. What day was it? He tried to remember, and it came back, slowly, the memory of having remained in bed all day without going to work. The memory of that evening on the beach, of the night in his car when he’d come to understand the depth of his abandonment. He rolled over and moaned, his head throbbing against the pillow. Slowly, he stumbled out of bed.
He limped barefoot in the dark. He lit a kerosene lamp on the kitchen table and stepped over the shoes he’d kicked off at the entrance. When he opened the door, dawn blinded him. A black silhouette stood before him. He squinted, bringing it into focus. Madame Simeus stood with a hand on her hip, her face scrunched into a scowl.
“It’s six o’clock in the morning!” she snarled.
His eyes burned in their sockets. “Wake up, Madame Simeus!” he roared. “You’re sleepwalking again.”
“I beg your pardon?” Madame Simeus grumbled indignantly. “You have a phone call. We’ve discussed this before: phone calls are between eight and six. Have you no respect for others?”
“I don’t understand,” he mumbled.
“Someone is on the phone for you!” she snapped. “It’s the third time she’s called this morning! And it’s not your wife, L’Eveillé. Is this why Yvonne left you? You’re a coureur de jupes? A womanizer?”
She stuck her neck out, sniffing the air before grimacing. She reminded Raymond of a turtle. “Eh! And you’ve been drinking?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Raymond slurred.
He fought back the urge to vomit. He needed water desperately. He had no idea who was calling him. If it wasn’t Yvonne, then who? Since he couldn’t afford a phone of his own, he’d given Madame Simeus’s phone number to the children’s school and to Nicolas and Eve in case of emergency. Had something happened?
Raymond backed away from the light. He grabbed a pair of pants, gulped some water, and tried to keep his balance as he stumbled out into the yard. Madame Simeus walked ahead of him, muttering under her breath. Raymond followed close behind, shading his eyes from the light. The thick, sweet smell of the gardenia blossoms made his stomach churn.
Once in the house, Madame Simeus led him to the telephone in its small vestibule. A faint smell of coffee floated in the air, together with the salted herring and cornmeal she always had at breakfast. Raymond’s face flushed with embarrassment. He’d always been an early riser. Right now, he should be getting ready for work. But he’d been too weak to get out of bed since Yvonne had left.
“Is this going to happen again?” Madame Simeus asked, pointing at the receiver. “If it does, you’re out of here, no excuses.”
“Thank you, Madame Simeus,” Raymond spat before picking up the receiver.
“And tell the hussy to stop calling.”
“I’ll let you know when I’m done,” Raymond said.
He watched her walk down the dark hallway, pausing briefly to adjust an old photograph of her deceased husband on the wall. Suddenly, he felt sorry for the sad, old woman. He was like her now: left here all alone. Raymond pressed the phone against his ear.
“Who is this?” he asked.
“It really happened, Raymond.”
“Eve?”
Raymond supported himself against the wall. It was Eve’s voice, but he had never heard her like this. The poise was gone, replaced by urgency, desperation.
“They took him.”
“Eve? What are you saying?”
“They took Nicolas, Raymond!” she screamed into the phone. “They came into the house, and they took him! Do you understand? The Tonton Macoutes arrested him, and they took his manuscript. They found it. Oh God—” She broke into wails at the other end of the line.
Raymond was suddenly awake.
“They took Nicolas?”
“Are you listening to anything I’m saying? Raymond, I need you.”
Raymond heard her speak, but it was like a dream. His head felt like it was full of cotton. He tried to shake off the exhaustion and self-pity and rum.
“Eve, slow down!” Raymond was convinced he was going to be sick right here in Madame Simeus’s vestibule. He took a deep breath.
“There’s no time. You wake up right now. Get dressed. You have to get him back for me. Do you hear me? You have to
help us!”
EIGHT
Raymond’s car slipped through the gates of his brother’s house at seven. The padlock had been severed—the Macoutes must have used bolt cutters to let themselves in. The sun had already risen, and the Turgeau neighborhood rang with the bells of shoeshine boys canvassing the streets. He parked next to Nicolas’s car.
The neighbor’s yellow mutt ran to the fence to bark at him, and Raymond jumped back, startled. He wondered what the dog had seen, and if it had been barking when they came to take his brother away. Did Nicolas know they were coming for him?
Raymond found the front door slightly ajar. The strike plate was loose, indicating an attempt to break the door down. Raymond ran his fingers along the acacia frame before pushing the door open. The chaos inside left him breathless. He took in the shattered glass, torn lampshades, overturned chairs, dangling paintings, and, there, the rocking chair he used to sit in with Amélie—a gaping hole in the center of its ornate caning. Raymond’s heart broke.
“Eve?” he called as he entered the living room, stepping over books and papers.
The house was unrecognizable. Nicolas and Eve had been so proud when they first bought it. Raymond had helped them move in the furniture Eve had commissioned from the friars of Saint-François de Sales, fixed the cabinet doors, and painted Amélie’s crib. He knew this house as well as they did, almost as if he’d built it with his own two hands. He had the blueprint etched in his mind, and he fantasized about using this house as a model for the one that he would own one day, that he would build for his family. A house with three bedrooms, a kitchen with running water, tables carved out of mahogany or oak, and a backyard where his kids could play without having to answer to a grumpy landlord. Nicolas’s house was all he’d ever wanted for himself. Raymond felt as if it were his own home that had been violated.
“Eve? Where are you?”
“I’m in here.”
He followed her voice as she repeated, “I’m in here, in here,” like a chiding parrot. He didn’t know what to expect when he walked in Nicolas’s office, but hoped she wasn’t hurt. He found Eve sitting in a corner, holding Amélie against her chest. The child was sound asleep in her small white shirt and pants. The room was dim, so Raymond pulled back the curtains. The sunlight spilled in, blinding Eve. Raymond saw her rocking back and forth, eyes swollen, skin pale in the bright daylight. No bruises. No blood. He wondered if he should look away because she wasn’t properly dressed, but in this moment, he had to ignore the shape of her bare breasts under the nightgown, her bare shoulder where the child’s brown head rested.
“Are you all right?” he whispered as he approached her.
He stepped over an antique clock whose time had stopped, the glass cracked, the hands frozen at four o’clock.
He saw trails of dried tears on Eve’s face, and her eyelashes were still wet from crying.
“No one would come,” she muttered.
Raymond rested his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead. She let him, didn’t push him away. His knees trembled and nearly buckled as he righted a chair and sat down next to her. Raymond put his arm around Eve and pulled her closer.
Amélie awoke, opened her eyes, and smiled when she saw her uncle. She reached for him and Raymond sat the baby on his lap. She was warm and smelled like talcum powder, and he buried his face in her curls. She too had been crying, he could tell.
“No one would come,” Eve repeated. She turned to face him. Her hair was still in large pink curlers. Her lips reminded Raymond of faded rose petals.
“I’ve been up all night with the neighbors,” she said. “Monsieur Pierre-Louis from next door saw me jump the fence, so he took us in. He hid us in his maid’s room.”
Raymond felt her body move away, as if she were suddenly waking up. She shifted in her seat.
“I wanted to stay with Nicolas,” she continued. “But he wouldn’t allow it. He made me leave. And Amélie, I had to think of her.”
Raymond listened but didn’t speak. He let her describe how she’d first run to Freda outside, how the maid had held the baby while she jumped the fence. She’d often played out the scenario in her head and had planned to take the bag that she’d prepared for emergencies. But when the moment came, she’d forgotten, too crippled with fear.
After the Macoutes left and everything seemed quiet, Monsieur Pierre-Louis had warned her not to return to the house, warned her that they might come back, but she had to go see for herself. She wanted to make sure Nicolas wasn’t there, that he wasn’t dead. Freda had spent the night awake in terror.
“The Macoutes sent men to interrogate her,” Eve said. “They didn’t arrest her, but she was afraid for her life. She told them she had no idea where I was. They beat her…”
Raymond’s eyes lingered on Nicolas’s empty desk chair. He pictured men handcuffing his brother and hitting him. It was difficult to stomach. Nicolas was too dignified a man to be treated this way! His brother’s absence, the fact that Duvalier’s henchmen had really and truly abducted Nicolas—the meaning of it all started to sink in.
“Freda said she heard them take him away, my Nicolas,” Eve added, her voice breaking. “She said they were taking him to Casernes Dessalines. My poor Nicolas…”
She paused, unable to suppress a shudder. “I called everyone we know,” she said. “I called Jean, Georges, and neither one would come. They were too afraid. They said there was a curfew.”
She turned her large, wet brown eyes toward him, her thin eyebrows arched in desperation. “I’m never going to see him again, am I?”
Raymond lowered his gaze.
Amélie rested her face against Raymond’s chest and he sighed. He missed Adeline and Enos. He held her closer as if to compensate for their absence. Amélie was round and chubby, her skin almost as delicate as a spiderweb. She was different from his own children, who were frail like small twigs and black like the night; his children, who smelled like the lemongrass leaves they stirred at night in their tea when there was nothing to eat for dinner. He felt overcome with a wave of grief. He thought of telling Eve about their departure, but he was afraid both of them might collapse under the weight of so much loss.
Raymond handed the baby over to her mother and stood up to peer out the window. No one was out there, but he was still uneasy. Monsieur Pierre-Louis was right. Returning to the house hadn’t been a good idea.
Something crunched under his shoe. He picked up the picture frame and stared at the black-and-white photograph. Two little boys stood side by side in shorts, long-sleeved shirts, and ties. The taller boy had an arm around the younger one. Raymond’s heart sank. He’d forgotten this picture existed, but remembered the day it was taken. It was from Nicolas’s First Communion—a rosary dangled from the boy’s hands. Raymond searched the young faces and found that he was the only one smiling. In the photo, his little brother was frowning. That was Nicolas. Always so serious.
“Raymond?” Eve said. “Will I ever see him again?”
She’d started to tear up again.
The words rolled out of his mouth as he put the picture frame down.
“Don’t worry,” Raymond said. “We’ll find him.”
NINE
Jean Faustin’s office was located on Rue Pavée, at the center of downtown Port-au-Prince, a few miles from Nicolas’s home. Raymond almost missed it, its narrow steel door wedged inconspicuously between a third-generation Lebanese fabric store and a sandwich shop where Nicolas once said he used to buy lunch for his mentor.
The entrance was further obscured by the mass of street vendors on the sidewalk. Raymond and Eve had to fight their way through spreads of peanuts, coconut brittles, and avocados. The door was locked, and they waited a few steps away for Jean-Jean.
The old man turned up just a few minutes later and paused a moment to bicker with the vendors. Raymond heard him plead with them that the clutter was bad for his business.
“My clients won’t come to consult me in the thick of an o
utdoor market,” he complained. But the vendors paid him no mind.
One woman laughed at him outright. “Everyone needs to make a living,” she said. “The streets belong to all of us.”
Jean-Jean finally relented and pulled out his keys. He fumbled with them, holding them up to the light. Raymond had heard his brother say that the judge’s vision, affected by diabetes, had started to fail him, making it increasingly difficult to locate small objects or read street names. He didn’t notice Eve and Raymond standing there. Raymond kept his hand on Eve’s back, steering her through the crowd as she held the baby.
Jean-Jean was hunched over the latch, his face close to the bolt as he manipulated the key. He was dressed in a navy suit and held a tattered briefcase, which he carried everywhere he went.
“Jean-Jean,” Eve called. She shifted Amélie from one arm to the other. The little girl sucked on a pacifier and kicked her legs, her eyes damp with uncertain tears. “It’s me.”
Jean-Jean turned around, startled. The color drained from his face, and his mouth trembled.
“Eve? What are you doing here?” he asked. His eyes darted left and right to make sure no one else was lying in wait. “You can’t come here.”
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Eve said. “You said on the phone that you couldn’t come because of the curfew, so we came to you.”
Raymond stepped in closer and looked at him. It took a moment for Jean-Jean to recognize rough, disheveled Raymond as Nicolas’s brother.
“Can you help us?” Raymond asked. “Nicolas was arrested this morning. They found his book.”
Jean-Jean averted his eyes, but Raymond had already seen the sheepishness in them. He knew that look. He’d seen it many times in his cab when passengers scratched their heads because their wallet had suddenly gone missing, or mumbled that they were short on cash. Disappointment seeped into Raymond’s bones. This was the man Nicolas spoke so highly of?
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