Dancing in the Baron's Shadow

by Fabienne Josaphat

  The warden approached and Nicolas, undone, vomited on the floor. Yellow bile splattered on the desk and on the warden’s shoes. Nicolas kept his head down, embarrassed and paralyzed with fear. Joseph. Yes, he knew a Joseph, a student, that limping young man who’d recorded him in class and followed him to his car. He whimpered a stupid prayer as the warden’s hands tore off his underwear.

  He was naked when the warden’s teeth sank in his flesh. He gasped with both pain and shock and let out a scream. The warden was on top of him, and there was blackness, a sickness, a wave of rage against his own helplessness. When the club penetrated him, his entire being convulsed. He tried to scream again, but a sudden silence deafened him. He went limp.

  When Oscar finally pulled away, he wiped the club against Nicolas’s skin and exhaled. Nicolas gritted his teeth, but more pain was coming. The club came down like a machete hacking away at cane stalks in the fields. The blows fell on his bones as if to crush them one by one, as if he were being tossed between the jagged wheels of a sugarcane mill. The agony rippled across his neck and head. There was nothing left to do now but to hope for death.

  Raymond knew Eve had fallen asleep after they’d passed Portail Léogâne and merged onto Route du Sud, southbound. Glancing back, he saw her head resting against the window, her forehead smudging the glass. Amélie was asleep on her chest, rocked by the motion of the car. Raymond was desperate himself for rest, but didn’t think of stopping. His head still hurt, but the air got cooler the farther he drove into the southern mountains. His hunger pangs had subsided, but his stomach was now gurgling uncontrollably.

  Raymond weaved in and out of traffic, ignoring the irritated drivers honking their horns after him. No one seemed to be tailing them. Perhaps they were safe. He wedged his Datsun between two large public transportation trucks painted in bright reds and yellows. Men and women sat in the open backs, hanging on to straps like smoked herring in the blazing sun. Some men clung to odd parts of the vehicle to avoid falling off onto the road.

  It was the same kind of truck Raymond had taken to get to Port-au-Prince the first time. Nicolas had been the first to leave l’Artibonite, and he’d caught a ride with a friend who owned a car, but Raymond had no friends with such resources. So he’d climbed up among sacks of charcoal, just like these people, hitching a ride to the capital. The passengers seemed unaffected by the rough conditions, their faces burning with hope for a new beginning. Raymond hadn’t contacted Nicolas until he’d already found a place to stay and a job. He knew he’d have to distance himself from Nicolas and prove to himself that the trip to the capital had been worth it.

  The tap-tap behind Raymond stepped on the gas and went around him, blasting evangelical hymns as it sped down the Route du Sud. The farmers huddled on the rooftop of that car were traveling with goats, and through his window, Raymond heard their screams, like human children in agony. The sound made Raymond’s skin crawl. He wished he could roll his windows up to drown it out, but he had no air-conditioning and was relying on the pure southern air to keep them cool.

  Raymond smelled the ocean, and out the window where Eve rested her head, he saw palm trees and a slice of azure shimmering in the sunlight. He knew this beach. This was where he’d gone looking for Yvonne and the children. Raymond looked straight ahead and kept driving. He couldn’t think of them now. It would do him no good.

  His limbs felt numb as he sped down the road, and his eyelids were heavy with sleep. Raymond was exhausted, but he had no choice. He struggled to stay awake as he drove through green mountains, past open fields of sugarcane, rice paddies, and plantain trees in full bloom, their purple buds dangling over the fertile earth, pregnant with fruit. The hills that bordered the road soon parted to reveal Lake Miragoâne, a good sign of progress. He kept driving, hopeful. The village of Marigot, where they were headed, wasn’t too much farther.

  He pulled over at a gas station to refuel after a three-hour drive. They were in a small town near Jacmel. The attendant pumped his gas without a word. Raymond surveyed the area, watchful for police. He asked the attendant how much longer he needed to drive, and the young man shrugged.

  “Where you going exactly?”

  “Bainet,” Raymond lied, naming a city past his intended destination.

  “Another hour or so, maybe.”

  So Marigot was just minutes away.

  As they arrived in Jacmel, the ocean unfolded before them. Eve rolled her window down to smell the salt air as the wind tossed the waves against cliffs and boulders. They passed the beach of Ti Mouyaj, and in the distance, Raymond saw a finger of land extending into the sapphire sea: Marigot.

  A few minutes later, Raymond slowed down. He called over two shirtless boys who were selling freshly caught snapper by the side of the road. They held up their prize with pride and grinned, hoping Raymond was stopping to make a purchase. The fish scales caught the daylight like a prism.

  “Bèl pwason?” the boys cried out. “Buy some fresh fish?”

  “Where is the turnoff for Marigot?” Raymond asked.

  Just a mile later, Raymond pulled into the small, sleepy community of Marigot. Yellow and red banners flapped in the afternoon breeze, and everywhere they looked, ribbons and signs clung to tree branches. A large banner floated overhead, announcing in painted letters, “Fete Patronale de Marie Madeleine Pérédo à Marigot.” Raymond drove carefully, noting the stares of passersby. They’d arrived during the annual festival for the town’s patron saint. The residents were still hoisting signs announcing the names of their local sponsors: mayors, doctors, and justices of the peace. Raymond knew most of those local leaders must hold a MVSN Macoute card. Duvalier’s influence was everywhere and often felt through Macoutes appointed as chefs de section, or deputies, and local police throughout Haiti.

  He turned down a narrow path that had not been paved. The sign at the entrance was hand painted, a red arrow indicating “Plage.” The gravel crunched under the car’s wheels as they drove deeper into a small forest of palm trees bearing clusters of green coconuts. Through the palm fronds came glimpses of turquoise ocean. On both sides of the road, they passed women and children riding mules and pulling donkeys, balancing baskets of mangoes and avocados and cobs of golden corn on their heads, each one eyeing the car with curiosity.

  Eve rolled her window down. “This is so beautiful,” she murmured. She turned to Raymond. “Is this where we’re going?”

  Raymond didn’t answer, and when he approached the sea, he saw it: a blue adobe beach house with a thatched roof and red shutters like open eyes. Eve whispered something Raymond couldn’t make out.

  “Where are we?” she asked again.

  A group of small, barefoot children ran out to see the Datsun. Some of them sprinted away to the shore, where small, painted canoes were beached on the sand. Others hid behind coconut palms. Raymond parked under a giant West Indian almond tree, and the rest of the children crowded around the vehicle. There were no other cars around. Raymond noticed a bicycle leaning against a tree behind the hut.

  “Raymond?” Eve repeated. “What is this place?”

  “Stay here,” he said.

  Raymond exited the car and looked around. He didn’t step forward so as not to frighten the children. Instead, he leaned against the vehicle.

  “Bonsoir, timoun,” he said, greeting them politely. “Honneur. Are you alone here?”

  The children shook their heads. Their ages ranged from eight to twelve, and they were shirtless, like most of the fishermen and children whose livelihood depended on the ocean. Their skin was gray from constant sun and sea exposure.

  “I’m looking for Milot Sauveur. Is this where he lives?”

  Raymond braced himself. He had taken a chance by coming here and now he was nervous that it had been a mistake. If he couldn’t find the journalist, if he couldn’t get help from him, then he wasn’t sure what their next step would be. He was running out of adrenaline and out of ideas. His mind started to race when the kids exchanged ca
utious looks.

  Then an adult male voice startled Raymond. “Who’s asking?”

  Raymond’s eyes searched for the speaker. He stepped away from the car door and his shoes landed not on gravel, but on soft sand.

  “My name is Raymond L’Eveillé. I’m a taxi driver from Port-au-Prince. I helped Milot Sauveur out of Cité Simone.”

  Something moved on the porch. A silhouette rose from a rocking chair, came forward, and stopped on the steps. He was a man of average height, and when a lone ray of amber sunlight caught his face, Raymond registered an unkempt beard, bushy hair, and dark eyes that scanned his face with curiosity. Was this the same man he’d rescued from the Macoutes? Raymond stepped closer.

  “He said if I needed help with anything, to come here and ask for him.”

  He thought he saw a glimmer in the man’s eyes, and suddenly a bright smile flashed through the thickness of his beard.

  “Brother!” the man shouted. “It’s you! I remember you!”

  He ran down the steps toward Raymond, and instead of shaking the hand he was presented, he grabbed him by the shoulders and hugged him, holding him close like an old friend returned from a long voyage.

  “My brother! Welcome.”

  Raymond looked through the window of Milot Sauveur’s kitchen. The shutters opened onto a square of undulating waves, and the breeze fondled green palm fronds. The sun was bowing low, and the horizon blushed in gradient shades of twilight. This world was far removed from the incessant hum of Port-au-Prince. Here on the shore, there were no cars. There was no honking, no screaming, no rat-tat-tat-tat of gunshots piercing the air at curfew. Raymond thought of the city noise that rocked him to sleep at night, of the chant of coffee vendors that woke him like a call to prayer at dawn. Here, on this beach, Haiti’s heart beat to the slow rhythm of waves.

  Raymond saw Eve down by the shore, pacing. She held her palms pressed together in prayer. She’d left Amélie asleep on a cot next to Sauveur’s infant son while Claudette, Sauveur’s wife, kept an eye on the children as she brewed tea on the veranda. She was using a three-legged recho stove and fanning the flames with an aluminum lid. The coals glowed red under the pot, and when she switched the tea for a hearty stew, she fanned the smoke away from her face.

  Raymond watched his sister-in-law as she plopped down in the sand and faced the ocean. He could only see her silhouette against the sunset.

  “She might be angry with me,” Raymond muttered. “I can’t tell. When her escape plan fell through, I just started to drive. You were the only person I could think of…”

  Sauveur sat across from him at the kitchen table. He was rolling cigarettes in the light of a small gridap lamp, using his fingers to measure the tobacco before folding the paper around it. In the next room, scrambled radio voices were announcing news in Spanish from the Dominican Republic.

  Sauveur looked out the window and saw Eve.

  “Don’t be stupid.” He shook his head. “Women don’t get in cars and travel miles with people they’re angry with. You will be safe here for a while. Don’t worry.”

  Raymond took a closer look at the man whose life he’d recently saved. Sauveur looked nothing like he’d expected, but each time he spoke, his voice put Raymond at ease. On the radio, Sauveur always began the news with his trademark line: “You’re listening to Radio Lakay, vwa pèp la, the voice of the people.” Radio Lakay was now on and off the air, struggling to keep its reporters who, like Sauveur, were under constant threat of being arrested—abducted—in the dead of night.

  Raymond had always pictured Sauveur as a heavyset man because of his deep, throaty voice. But Sauveur was small framed, probably in his thirties, with a little nose and high cheekbones, his teeth yellowed by nicotine. Sauveur coughed, straining to detach phlegm from his lungs, and then licked the flap of his new cigarette and sealed it. The aroma of tobacco was embedded in his brown skin, his discolored nails, and the linen of his embroidered gwayabèl shirt.

  “They’ll never let my brother out of that prison,” Raymond said. “The last time we saw each other, we squabbled over the risks he was taking. He got so mad, you would have thought I was Duvalier by the time I left their house.”

  Sauveur offered him a cigarette. Raymond shook his head. Sauveur tucked the rolled cigarette behind his left ear.

  “These days, we’re all pitted against each other. It’s what fear does to us. My Claudette, for instance.” Sauveur threw a tender glance toward his wife. Dusk cast a solemn glow on his face.

  “Tonton Macoutes came to the hospital where she worked,” he said. “A journalist from Radio Caraïbes was recovering from a severe beating. The Macoutes came to finish the job and shot him in the mouth right before her eyes.”

  Sauveur paused and shook his head. Raymond could tell the horror was still swimming there.

  “She panicked and ran home. Didn’t even take a taxi. She was still scrubbing the blood off her uniform when I came home that day. That’s what got me into trouble, see? I reported the story on the radio that same evening, and the next thing I knew, they were calling the station looking for me. We fought about that for a while. She was angry I reported the story. I was angry she brought it home!”

  Sauveur’s eyes caught the flicker of the flame between them. “Thank God for you, my brother. We’d have died that day without your help.”

  Outside, Claudette was transferring the stew into a large enamel bowl. Sauveur licked the edge of another rolling paper and spun the cigarette between his fingers. Raymond saw his eyes gleaming in the fading light.

  “Now we’re here,” Sauveur said. “I’m in the middle of starting a newspaper along with three other local journalists.”

  “A newspaper?”

  “Sure. A rebel newspaper. The best kind!”

  Raymond had caught a glimpse of a room with a pair of headsets, a radio speaker, and a couple of handheld transceivers he’d only seen used by the police and the Macoutes.

  He motioned toward the garbled sounds of the radio. “Isn’t that—”

  “Yes, quite dangerous,” Sauveur said. “There is a good Samaritan helping me stay incognito here. He also brings me news from abroad, and I keep the locals informed of rebel insurgents in the mountains, at the border, or even overseas. The latest is that the Haitian rebels in Santo Domingo are allying themselves with the Constitutionalists to fight the war with them.”

  “But it’s not our war,” Raymond said.

  “It is if we want the Dominican Republic to continue offering us safe refuge from Duvalier,” Sauveur exclaimed, his excitement growing. “Plus, the kamoken could use the training and the weapons. Once things get back to normal over the Dominican border, they will return with arms and the know-how to overthrow Papa Doc.”

  Sauveur said those final words with a passion Raymond found disconcerting. Here was a man who truly loved the danger and chaos of his profession. Here was a man who meant business. His position against the regime was clear, and although it jeopardized his safety, he was in it for the long haul. He remembered the fear in Sauveur’s eyes that fateful day, and he had imagined the close brush with death would force Sauveur to back down. He had been wrong.

  “I do my part by letting the local community know about the rebels so they can get what they need: food, weapons, training.”

  Sauveur inspected a cigarette in the light of the naked flame between them, then tucked this one behind his right ear. It made sense for a man who chain-smoked all day. He was already rolling another, and this one he lit with the same flame. The end of the cigarette burned red, and Sauveur puffed plumes of fragrant white smoke as he sucked assiduously. He then leaned back in his seat, pushing against the back of his chair until it rested against the wall.

  “I am the voice of the people, a messenger. Duvalier is the criminal. He is the one who eliminates those who stand in his way.”

  He paused. The smell of tobacco was comforting—the first moment of normalcy Raymond had experienced in a while. He never wanted
to leave this kitchen, the wooden surface of the table, the basket of plastic fruits between them, or the clay jug with a ladle in the corner, cooling the drinking water inside.

  “You said if I needed help I could come find you,” Raymond interrupted.

  Sauveur nodded.

  “I need to get my sister-in-law out of the country. That’s first.”

  Sauveur squinted. Raymond expected him to say something, but he did not. A garbled merengue came through the radio speakers in the background.

  “Everyone’s deserted us,” Raymond said. “All the so-called friends of his, they’re gone. No one will help. We tried pleading with Adjudant Joseph at Casernes Dessalines, but he wouldn’t help either. It’s clear Eve’s not safe. I’m afraid they’ll come after her and the baby.”

  “Did they say why they were arresting him?” Sauveur asked.

  “Treason,” Raymond snapped.

  He realized he’d raised his voice. He took a deep breath and leaned in closer, regaining his composure. Sauveur did not flinch, his gaze steady.

  “He’s just stubborn,” Raymond continued. “That’s all. Worse than a mule. He wrote a book, and—”

  “A book?” Sauveur asked. “What kind of book?”

  He moved forward and sat up in his chair, as if this information had suddenly raised the stakes. He was fully attentive, staring into Raymond’s eyes. Raymond told him what he’d heard from Eve and Nicolas in passing, the notes his brother kept hidden, the manuscript he’d just finished that mentioned the writer Alexis.

  “They found the book while they were searching his house.”

  Sauveur’s eyes suddenly caught fire. “Really? Who betrayed him?”

  “What difference does it make?” Raymond asked. “They charged him with treason and they threw him in Fort Dimanche. Simple as that.”

  “You realize, this sort of thing makes your brother an enemy of the state, the worst kind. How do you know he’s still alive?”

  “I need to believe he is!” Raymond said. “I was hoping you could help me figure out a plan to get him out.”