by Nick Lake
I’m trying to show you the noise. I’m making it here in the dark and I’m not doing it so good, but still, if you could hear me, you’d understand.
But you don’t hear me, do you? I hear your voices less and less often now – the voices asking if there’s anyone alive down here – but you don’t hear mine. You don’t hear me when I shout back.
So, I have to describe the noise. It’s hard to do. You’ll have to use your imagination.
OK, you’re in the dark. There’s piti-piti light coming from the rich houses on the hill, but in the slum it’s preske pitch-black. You can hardly see a thing except for candles, matches, the glow of cigarettes. You can just smell the salt of the sea and the fish. You can smell oil from the bike chain in your hand. But mostly you can smell sewage. From somewhere in the darkness this rumbling sound is coming, and then from somewhere above you another sound is coming, like, thwup, thwup, thwup, thwup, incredibly loud, a million bees overhead.
That was what it was like – and also not. I can’t put it into words.
I dropped the chain. I thought I’d better run from whatever was making that noise, so I started to move.
But suddenly there was bright light everywhere, and I froze. A spotlight on an armored truck came on, blinding white. Fire was spitting from guns.
A bullet went, fwwwwiiiiiip, and pinged into the corrugated iron behind me.
I was terrified. I felt like I couldn’t get enough air in my chest to move, like I was just eyes, watching, and ears, hearing the boom of the gunfire, and all of the rest of my body had disappeared.
I thought, very clearly, I’m going to die.
And I knew – really knew – for the first time that I didn’t want to.
I saw UN helmets and under them machine guns, rattling fire. That sound above turned out to be a helicopter and it was shooting down into the shacks on the other side of the street.
There was more gunfire coming from the shacks. A man was running away down the street. I didn’t know if he was a chimère or not, but it didn’t matter cos one of the soldiers shot him in the back. I saw a little girl standing very still and screaming, screaming, on the other side of the street from our shack, till something hit her and the top of her face was taken off, and she swayed on her legs for a moment, then fell in the mud.
There was a door open and through it I saw Jeanne. She was this woman who lived opposite us with her little baby Willie. I never knew where the papa of this baby was; maybe he was dead, or maybe he’d just left her cos he couldn’t afford to look after Willie. Anyway, she was lying on the ground in anpil blood, Willie on top of her. I wanted to see if he was alive, cos I liked Willie – he would smile when he saw me – but I couldn’t cos there were still bullets flying all around.
I went down on my knees. I couldn’t run; I could only stay there. I saw Manman standing outside our shack, shouting and shouting at me to run, but I couldn’t – I was seeing these bullets flying everywhere and I was convinced that if I moved, one of them would hit me. I thought if I crouched, very still, then maybe they would stop shooting, and I would be OK. I turned around and there was this enormous tank coming toward me, still a little way off, but it wasn’t steering away from me.
And the guns just kept firing. Dread’s soldiers, they were trading fire with the casques-bleus, but I didn’t see many MINUSTAH go down – they were all wearing armor and their guns were better. A couple of the gangsters dropped their guns and put up their hands, then the UN guys grabbed them and dragged them into an armored vehicle, a Humvee. I didn’t know it then, but one of the people they arrested was Biggie. He spent, like, a couple of years in prison after that night. They said he killed a soldier. Maybe he did, I don’t know.
Finally I saw Dread Wilmè come out of a shack. I had no idea he was sleeping so near to us, but the chimères were always moving around, especially after Aristide was deposed. They never stayed in one shack for two nights running, in case someone found them.
Well, I guess someone found Dread Wilmè that night. His dreads were swinging crazily and he had a gun in each hand. I didn’t know what his guns were then, but I do now. They were Uzis.
Dread Wilmè hit one soldier in the leg. But they were shooting him from the helicopter, they were shooting him from the tank, they were shooting him from the ground. Something hot exploded in my leg and I looked down to see a blossom of red on my jeans. I knew it was blood. The thing that shocked me was how much it hurt. I was already on my knees and now I fell down altogether.
Time slowed.
My leg pulsed with pain.
Lying there, I saw the ground stretching out before me, an endless muddy plane, and I saw my manman leave the shack and start moving toward me.
— No, I tried to say. Stay –
But then I must have fainted, cos I don’t remember anything else. The rest is what my manman told me.
Manman was moving toward me and then something seized her tight. She was being held by a soldier – he’d come out of the blackness and grabbed her arms, and she was struggling to get away, to run to me, but he wasn’t letting her go. Me, I was lying in the mud, unconscious, and Dread Wilmè was between me and Manman. Coming toward me from the other side, still not stopping, was an armored vehicle, and Manman could see that it was heading straight for me, was going to crush me without hesitation to get Dread.
There were so many holes in Dread Wilmè, Manman said, you could see the light from the trucks and the torches on the soldiers’ guns shining through him. I never believed that, but she swore it was true. Now, I kind of believe her. Now, I’ve seen shit that makes me think she was telling the truth. All these bullets in him, through him, my manman said, and he was still standing there, filtering the light, like that was his destiny.
Then – and this is the crazy bit – Dread Wilmè turned to me, and Manman said it was like he saw something holy, something that could save him. He started to move toward me. Bullets were still slamming into him, but he staggered toward me, the light flickering through the holes in him, like his body was the night sky and the bullet holes were the stars. And all the time that tank was continuing toward me – toward Dread Wilmè especially, but it was going to have to run me over to get to him.
Dread Wilmè did not want that to happen, it seemed. He staggered toward me without stopping for anyen, even as they shot him.
Dread Wilmè was still dying, still moving toward me, the tank approaching. Manman couldn’t believe how long it was taking, and she was screaming the whole time for the tank to stop. Manman said it took Dread minutes to reach me, not seconds, and he kept shouting:
— Ayiti viv, Ayiti viv.
Long live Haiti.
I don’t believe that, though. If he was shot that many times he wouldn’t have been shouting anyen. Me, I got shot in the leg and I fainted. In reality, all of this must have happened in, like, the time it takes to click your fingers.
Manman stood in the mud, constrained by the soldier who was pinning her arms behind her back. The street was running with blood like a river. That tank was just going and going, rumbling toward me, and she could see that some of the bullets were flying toward me, too. She knew that if the soldiers didn’t stop shooting and the tank didn’t stop driving I would be dead very soon. She was calling to the soldiers for help, but she was calling in the wrong languages. She found out afterward that the soldiers were from Jordan, which is a desert country far away – Manman told me they have camels there. What they were doing in Haiti, I don’t know.
Finally, Dread Wilmè reached me, and he picked me up, Manman swore it, just as the Humvee was about to hit me. It was looming over us, like a moving wall. She was scared for a moment that it would hit him, and turn me and him into bloody mud, like the rest of the street. But Dread was just in time. He bent down, picked me up, and carried me to the side of the street. He pushed me against the wall of a shack and he lay over me, covering me. They continued to shoot him, again and again, till he didn’t move anymore.
Then the so
ldiers got back in their trucks and their tank and the helicopter went, thwup, thwup, thwup, thwup, and flew away.
Manman crawled toward the body of Dread Wilmè. He was more holes than flesh and he was leaking all over the world, but she swears – mwen jire, mwen jire – that he opened his eye and rolled off me when he saw her. He was lying in a pool of blood, like the one that had grown between her legs when me and Marguerite were born, and she had a sense deep inside her of déjà vu. He had a socket where one of his eyes should have been and he was bleeding from a thousand wounds.
Dread fumbled in his pocket and took out this stone, a smooth pebble, like something worn by the sea. He pushed it into Manman’s hand. She knew that it was a pwen, and there was a god in it that had traveled all the way from the old country in west Africa to be in her hand on that bloody street.
— For the boy, he said. He only has half a soul. He must be protected. One day soon, another soul will possess him and it could be good or it could be bad, but this shorty could be the one to . . .
He coughed, and blood flew from his mouth. There was a terrible, long pause.
— Ayiti, he whispered.
Haiti.
Manman tried to ask him more, to understand what he meant, why he had done what he did to save me. She had the feeling that she had heard a prophecy, but she didn’t know what it was. She knew that Dread Wilmè was deep in vodou, was almost a houngan himself, and that he said and did nothing without meaning it. She couldn’t stop thinking of him lying with me in that flaque of blood, and of the houngan who had told her that the baby inside her would be born and die in blood and darkness, but would live forever, too.
But Dread was gone. His blank eye, the one that was left, reflected only the blackness of the sky, as if the night had poured into it. Apparently, at the very moment he died, I took a deep breath and opened my eyes and squealed with terror and pain.
Manman held me in her arms, and she looked up and saw a black sky covered in stars, the same sky she’d seen through the hole in the church roof on the night we were born. Later, when she returned to our shack, she saw that the roof was full of bullet holes – from the helicopter, she guessed. She knew that if me and her had been in there we would have died, and she knew that this was a sign.
She just didn’t know what it meant. Or, to be more precise, she was afraid she did. She was afraid Dread Wilmè’s soul had left his body and entered mine, to take possession of Marguerite’s half of my soul.
She was wrong, I know that now. It was not Dread Wilmè who became the other half of my soul.
Then
Toussaint rode at the head of the small army. The soldiers, if they could be called that, were mostly on foot, dressed in mismatched raiment of multicolored cloth, ragged, their headdresses and weapons ludicrous and supplied by necessity alone. Some were even in women’s dresses, their feet bare beneath, sporting with mockery the fine silks of their erstwhile masters.
He had gathered the slaves who had been at Bois Caiman, and they had quickly overcome the masters in this small corner of the country, meeting little resistance. As they went, they increased in strength, recruiting more blacks to the cause with each plantation that they liberated, growing larger all the time, as a baker rolls his dough about the board to incorporate the small pieces that have broken off.
However, the whites would be gathering their troops in the south, and it wouldn’t be long before war began. Toussaint was determined to reach high ground before then. He had taken some maps from his ex-master’s office, and had made a study of them. He reckoned that the mountains of the interior would make a fine redoubt, offering the advantage of height and secrecy, whilst providing land that they could cultivate. Many of the other slaves were thinking only of revenge, and several times he had intervened to prevent atrocities when they came to challenge the white self-styled owners of the land they freed. Toussaint was thinking further, though. He was thinking about what they would do when they had all quit their posts, and were free. They would need to eat. They would need to hold out against their foes, for surely the French would send reinforcements to destroy them?
Ahead, he was going to rendezvous with Boukman, who had ridden west already, with twenty men, to free the blacks and clear the land in front of them. Then, together, they would lead their people into the mountains and hopefully join up with the other leaders of the rebellion. Rumors had reached their ears that slaves in every part of the country had risen up, casting off their yoke of oppression and proclaiming themselves free. Toussaint had instructed all the men of his still-small army to spread the word that they were going to the high places to consolidate their power. He was confident that some blacks from other provinces would join him: the women and children, certainly; the cowards, no doubt; but also those with a longer-term view of the situation.
Toussaint could hear the men behind him singing of their victory. Already they had made up songs about the freedom they had won, and were chanting them more enthusiastically than they had ever chanted work songs, although the rhythms were the same, he noticed. He knew it would be a longer struggle than they suspected, but he didn’t comment. He didn’t think it would be good for morale.
At his side, Jean-Christophe was silent, riding with a thoughtful expression on his face. That was one of the things Toussaint liked about the boy and he was pleased to have him by his side. Jean-Christophe thought a lot, even if he was sometimes naive in his conclusions. Well, he considered, a little innocence would probably do Toussaint himself good in his new role – give him perspective.
The younger man had been trained by Bayou de Libertas to add up numbers and keep his accounts. Toussaint thought that could be useful, too. He’d had to prevent the men singing behind him from destroying everything in those old plantation houses. He had ordered them to be very carefully looted, and the gains brought with them, since they would need money as well as food. Inevitably, he hadn’t been able to prevent deaths entirely, and he was sorry about that. The worst excesses, yes – he had saved some daughters from rape, some of the crueler masters from torture – but war was war, and he had been unable to help some. He thought he saw the dead whites behind him, too, traipsing at the rear of the rag-tag army, insubstantial, pale ghosts in fine clothes.
He was turning back in his saddle, regarding the motley soldiers, thinking about ghosts, and so he heard Jean-Christophe gasp before he saw anything. When he whirled around, his gorge rose, and he made a horrified noise. Ahead of him was a black man nailed to a tree by his feet, his head swinging upside down, his entrails hanging out and buzzing with flies.
Toussaint dismounted and stepped into the complicated shadow of the tree, lightness and darkness making curlicued patterns at his feet, as if trying to convey something by means of runes that no man could read, not even he.
When he drew nearer, he saw that the man was Boukman, and he felt something in his chest that might have been his heart breaking.
The younger man’s throat had been slit – his head hung low because of it, the savage cut having severed the spine – and it was for this reason that Toussaint only recognized the features when he was close by. The stomach had been opened, too, and there was a bullet wound in the forehead.
— My god, said Jean-Christophe. It’s as if they killed him several times.
— Yes, said Toussaint.
He was thinking of Boukman’s pwen, and how the other man had always said that it would protect him and guard his life. Perhaps it had, thought Toussaint. Perhaps Boukman had been difficult to kill, and so they had to mutilate him like this.
Holding his breath – the smell was awful – he patted Boukman’s clothes until he found what he was looking for. Boukman had sewn the stone into the lining of his jacket. Toussaint frowned at that and he wondered if Boukman had known, somehow, that he was in danger.
— What’s that? said Jean-Christophe.
Toussaint turned the stone over in his hands.
— It’s a god, he said. It gives prote
ction.
— It doesn’t seem to work, then, said Jean-Christophe.
— It depends when he died, doesn’t it? Toussaint said. If a man has to be shot, knifed, and gutted before he dies, I’d say he was well protected.
Jean-Christophe blanched.
— I suppose so, he said.
Toussaint didn’t know what the stone might do, or had done, but he knew it had been important to Boukman, as he knew that the rebellion was important to Boukman. He polished the pwen with his sleeve, then he slipped it into his pocket. This god had come all the way from Africa to live in Boukman’s stone and Toussaint wouldn’t let its journey end with Boukman’s lifeless body. He crossed himself.
He took one last lingering look at Boukman’s face. As he did so, an image proffered itself to his inward eyes: Boukman, at the card table in Toussaint’s home, banging his hand on the table as he likened the whites to the house of a casino, and told Toussaint and the other influential slaves gathered there that they should no longer suffer their cards to be dealt to them, that they should take their cards for themselves. This was soon after Boukman had been brought to the plantation next to Bayou’s to oversee the field labor. Boukman was smart, and the whites were smart enough to use him. They just didn’t know how smart he was, or what he might use his intelligence for.
The card game had stopped – things tended to stop when Boukman spoke. With his hands, as he talked of the freedom they deserved, he rapidly constructed a castle of cards.
— This is the white nation of Haiti, he said. Nothing but a house of cards. We outnumber them. They hold their dominion over us through a kind of mental trick, making what is delicate and weak seem solid.
He blew on the cards, made them scatter.
— We are the wind, he said. We are the air and earth and mountains of this country, and we will take it from them.
Toussaint closed his eyes, remembering that voice, remembering the rapt expressions on the faces of the other men there. He only hoped he could inspire as Boukman had inspired.