by Nick Lake
No, because then he was pulled again. He was no longer flying, but being carried by something invisible yet powerful. He rose up, up, up. The valley became smaller and smaller, until it wasn’t a valley, but a single cleft in a stone, filled with moss. Then he was in a vast whiteness, like a thick fog.
He rose through it, broke through it into a clean blue sky, and the clouds he had come through were a great white carpet below him, stretching all the way to the horizon, where he could see stars. Stars – in the daytime!
With a rush, the clouds began to roll beneath him; the sun above turned through the sky. There was no precise sensation of speed; he had no skin to register the pressure of air, no nose and no throat to feel the rushing push of the wind as he moved, but he knew that he was going very fast, just as he knew he was traveling around the world.
I’m going home, he thought.
He broke through the clouds again and saw the green island laid out underneath, vivid against the blue of the sea. It was dusk – he saw the sun setting over the water to the west, saw lights glowing from the land, so many lights.
Toussaint descended with growing wonder, staring down at the strange country he was falling into, seeing the sprawling cities that had swallowed the forest, the great buildings that had replaced the plantations. A colossal machine with the wings of a bird flew underneath him with a roar, turning him in the wake of its eddies. He fell past it – or fell through it, perhaps.
The cities were too big; it was impossible. So many people could not live in one city! They would go mad; it was a kind of prison. Thousands and thousands of lights glowed in the gathering dark, and as he accelerated through the air he saw that each light was not a home, as he had thought, but only one of many windows in each building. The lights burned everywhere; the people in the Haiti below him seemed unable to bear darkness. Even the flying machine, banking as it approached the ground, flickered with red and white lights. Between the cities, even, stretched tendrils of light, as if the cities themselves required connection, required touch, like people, and so were putting out filaments of bright engagement, as if they had been turned, by the habitation of so many people, into living beings themselves.
All this, he noticed in a heartbeat. Then he was closer, and he saw that this was a broken land. It had seemed so beautiful from above, sparkly and many-pointed with light, but now he saw that most of the buildings were collapsed or collapsing, and everywhere was rubble. Trees and walls lay flat on the ground, flying machines circled, as if fascinated by the damage.
What happened to it? he thought. What?
As he neared the tops of the buildings, the ruination became even more clear – he could see where people had erected villages of tents amongst the debris of the city. From its location on the island he could tell that it was Port-au-Prince, but it was not the Port-au-Prince he knew. It sprawled, it contained multitudes – and it was shattered.
And yet . . .
And yet . . .
And yet, rushing through the air, Toussaint saw black people everywhere, walking the streets, talking, sitting in groups around fires. He saw only a handful of whites, and he understood that this great city – this immensity of lights – was a city of blacks, and he was shown that in this shining future his people were free.
A roof rose quickly to meet him. It belonged to a great square building with thousands of windows, many of which had shattered as the building had slumped to the ground, as if too exhausted to remain standing. He tried to cushion his fall; the hard plane of the roof was coming faster, faster, faster, and then . . .
Then he was inside dense material – it wasn’t stone because he couldn’t feel it living – and there was twisted metal, too, and glass. He was inside this nightmare only briefly before he landed with a crashing impact.
He waited, but nothing changed.
His journey had ended; his exodus was over.
He had returned.
But to where?
He was in a small place, he sensed, something like his cell in the French prison.
He was aware of someone whimpering in the dark, and he was not at all sure that it wasn’t himself.
He was inside the broken building, he knew that. But that was all he knew.
He put his hand in front of his face. He could see nothing. He was stunned by the heft and weight of his arm, by the familiar conspiracy of muscle and tendon and joint that raised his hand before him. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, felt the foreign hardness of the tooth firmly planted in his gum, the one the gun shell had knocked out.
My tooth grew back?
He opened his mouth to scream, and that was when the pain struck him: the sensation was of a brick slamming down onto his leg, of a fire in his arm. He probed with his fingers and felt the stone-like material that trapped him. He was in a body once again, though not his own, apparently.
He was a prisoner once again.
He was trapped in an impenetrable ruin, with something heavy bearing down on his leg. He didn’t know what had happened to this world, but he could see that it would never be the same again. He was not in a valley, he realized with horror; he had never been in a valley.
He was in a cave, and there was no way out.
Always
We are in the darkness.
We are always in the darkness.
We understand what Boukman said in Bois Caiman; we understand it for the first time. Behind the mountain is another mountain; behind the fire is another fire; behind all of this is another thing, another mass, and it does not correspond to the contours of this world; it is everything that is here in the world, but it is so much more, too.
We have a mouth – we can feel it in our face, an opening into us that can let the spirit out – but when we use it, when we speak, there is no one to listen. The voices that come to us, drifting through the darkness beyond our prison, they might as well be the voices of the dead.
Far beyond our walls, far beyond the bounds that hold us, there are people who want to help. There are always people who want to help, but they are too far away, and we are too silent. Though we have control of our own body, can animate our limbs to touch the boundaries of our reality, we are powerless to break through our reality, powerless to go out into the light, where the masters live.
We are a slave.
We are a slave to this space, to the inevitable decay of trapped things. We can feed ourselves, but there is no food; we can work with our hands and with our minds, but there is nothing on which to work; we have eyes, but there is nothing to see.
There is no future and no past.
We are in the darkness.
We are one.
Now
I have an idea.
There’s nothing else I can do, so this is my only idea.
It’s the last thing left.
I remember how Manman said that back in the day, instead of offering sweets, they used to kill two chickens for the Marassa and give the lwa the blood, proper old school. I can feel the blood from my arm, thick and kind of trickling.
I figure it’s worth a try.
I don’t know how to make the veve of Marassa. Even if I did, it’s too dark and I don’t have shit to write with. But I put my fingers in my wound and I bite a scream that wants to come out. I take some blood and I smear it on the rubble in front of me.
My voice, it’s rough and dry; it’s like a cog on a bike that hasn’t been oiled. But I sing as best I can:
— Marassa Simbi,
Mwen engage dans pays-a,
Marassa Guinin, Marassa la Côte,
Mwen engage dans pays-a!
I sing it over and over, even after I think my voice will dry up altogether, refuse to move anymore, like cogs do sometimes. It doesn’t.
But nothing happens, either.
Some time passes, and nothing continues to happen.
I realize that I’m ready now, that all my options are gone. I’m waiting for the end – or we are, I should say. It seems there’s someone
else here, someone older, but someone I know. Someone I’ve been, or who has been me. Someone from my dreams. I know that doesn’t make sense, but I’m dying; I don’t have to make sense.
I’ve told you my story now, so perhaps you can leave me in peace.
I wonder if maybe I should have taken that half of the necklace from Manman and put it with mine. I wonder if I should have forgiven her. No, that’s a lie. I know I should have forgiven her. She’s my manman, and I sent her away full of shame and guilt. For all I know she’s dead now, and I’ll never be able to say sorry.
I close my eyes, try to picture my manman’s face. It’s not happening. I manage to remember an eyebrow, a certain smile. But the image of her is like a TV screen where the aerial has gone crazy. Not only have I lost her in the darkness, but I’ve also lost the memory of her. She’s destroyed completely; I got nothing left but an eyebrow and a smile, some things she said, the memory of the warmth of her hug.
She’s gone, and I’ll never see her again, not even in my mind, cos my mind is a dark place and images get lost in it, distorted.
I say it to myself over and over, I’ll never see her again. But not with my mouth cos my mouth is too dry, with my mind only.
I begin to cry.
I wonder, if I die, and she’s dead, will I see her then? Will I see Marguerite, too, and Papa?
And I answer myself, no. There’s nothing after death.
I know cos I’ve been in the darkness all this time, which is as close to death as you can get, and I’ve seen no moun, apart from when I was Toussaint and I saw all those people of his – Boukman and Isaac and Brandicourt. But that wasn’t real; that was my mind breaking, like my leg, crushed by concrete and darkness.
I keep my eyes closed.
I begin to die.
There’s a ripping, tearing noise, very loud and close. I think, this is maybe the end, maybe death is finally come. I’m glad. My arm and my back hurt, my mouth is again as large as the world, and there’s someone here in the darkness I need to meet, who I need to be one with.
Through the pain of my thirsty mouth I say:
— Thank you.
Then there are anpil shouts and screams. I think some of them are in English, but most are Kreyòl. At least one sounds like a woman’s voice. I wonder if this is the land under the sea where the dead go, and if I’m gonna meet my sister there.
But suddenly I smell something other than my sweat and blood. I can smell the outside, I can smell the real sea, far off.
I open my eyes.
I see people looking down at me, with wide smiles on their faces. There’s the sharp jaw of some kind of digger above me; it looks like a dinosaur looming above me, and I’m afraid of its teeth.
Someone’s crawling over the concrete toward me. Then hands are on me, lifting me up, touching me as if for luck.
Something unties itself inside me and floats loose. At the same time, something takes root inside me, or someone, I should say, cos I feel . . . I don’t know, but I feel that it’s the person who was in the dark with me, the person who was dying with me in the dark. I know deep down who it is, but I can’t say it even to my ownself, cos it’s insane.
I can read, I think. And I have feelings and a soul in my chest, and I can talk and laugh and cry just like a real person, and I’m capable of doing good things. I’ve fucked up in the past, oh yes, I know I have, but, Manman, I’ll try to make you proud.
I wonder again if Manman is still alive. I’d like to see her; I’d like to tell her I’m sorry, that I forgive her. Cos I understand, I really do. I understand why she did what she did, why she told me Marguerite was alive – it was to spare me that pain. She knew what Marguerite was to me, that she was one half of myself.
I’d like to accept from Manman the half of the necklace that she took from Marguerite, so I can wear both halves together, so she can see that I’m whole now, no longer half a person. I’d like to be hugged by her, to know that she will always be there, no matter what I’ve done. I’d like to know that she forgives me, too, as I forgive her.
But this isn’t gonna happen.
Manman is gone. She must be gone. I saw the way everything was destroyed.
Some of the rescuers, or whoever they are, they’re trying to talk to me. I can’t speak, though, not yet. I’m aware of people moving the stuff that’s weighing me down, then hands catch me under the armpits and lift me up, and I’m over someone’s shoulder and I’m being jolted as they carry me through the rubble. It’s still dark here, we’re still inside, or at least we’re still under all the stuff that fell and broke.
— Wait, says one of the blancs in French.
— What?
— There are a lot of people out there. They’ve been holding vigils for days. If we don’t prepare them, there’ll be a riot. They’ll see one boy and think there are more.
— Hmmm, says the first voice.
I’m set down on the rubble, still in the hospital, and I see the man who was holding me start to go out into the light.
Suddenly, I lose my shit. I don’t mean to, it just happens. I feel something snap inside me. I want to go with him, you see. I don’t want to be left behind in the darkness anymore. I start to scream and cry. My face is all wet. It’s seriously embarrassing.
So, the guy turns around and comes back to me. He bends down close. He says:
— Rete trankil, p’tit, rete trankil.
Maybe it’s cos he’s telling me to calm down in Kreyòl, maybe it’s cos he’s been kind enough to use my own language, or maybe it’s the way he bent down so gently, so sympathetic, I don’t know, but the important thing is I stop screaming. I manage to nod at him, like, OK, you go and come back for me.
— Bon, he says. Bon.
Then he really does go into the light, and he leaves me here. I want to follow him so bad. There’s, like, a glow of white around him, like the fuzz around the sun. When he properly leaves the inside and goes outside it’s like he just disappears, burns away into light. It makes me think of Marguerite, the way her frizzy hair merged into the daylight, the way you couldn’t see where she ended and the hot blur of the sun began.
From the stunning whiteness into which he’s vanished, I hear the blanc say:
— We’ve dug out one boy.
He puts a stress on one. I hear a couple of people make sharp sounds of happiness, but anpil more people cry and wail. I guess a lot of them are there waiting for people who aren’t boys – people who’re still under the rubble.
— He’s a teenage boy, about fifteen. We’re bringing him out. We’ve found no other survivors.
More crying now.
When the blanc comes back and picks me up again and walks us forward, I see the people who’ve started to rush into the building, the ones that the police and the blancs haven’t been able to hold back. Some are whooping with joy and some are crying. I see Haitians crouching with their hands over their mouths, tears running down their cheeks.
— Is anyone else alive in there? one of them asks. Did you hear anyone?
— No, I say. There’s no one.
There was, though.
There was someone else, but he’s me now.
The man carrying me stops to get his breath. We’re still inside, just. I’m gazing around me cos everywhere is twisted iron and shattered concrete, and I realize we’re in the lobby of the hospital when I see the broken glass from the front windows all over the tiled floor. There are anpil blancs here, too, in red helmets; I think maybe they’re firemen. I can just see through the hole where the doors were, and I perceive that the whole city has fallen down, that there’s only rubble out there, only trash. As I look round I see that I did float above the hospital, that the country really has been ruined, that everything I saw is true.
I feel tears coming down my cheeks. Manman, she can’t be alive, surely? But I’m alive. I’m alive, and I know I’ll look for her and maybe I’ll find her. I let my hand open and my half of the necklace falls to the ground; I
don’t need it to be complete anymore, and so I leave it there among the other broken things.
It’s strange. I do this, and an image appears in my head. It’s the mural on the next street, the one on the morgue, of the girl being raised up to heaven, an angel’s hands under her. Only now, the face of the girl is Marguerite’s, the girl is Marguerite. There’s the sharp hotness of tears at the corners of my eyes, cos that’s what I want: I want her to be taken, to be held, to be embraced.
One of the blancs says:
— You’re very lucky, you know.
And I think, no, I’m not. Everything that matters to me is dead. Even this country is dead.
These blancs, they look very proud, though, so I try to smile, cos I know how much they love to help, how much they’re always helping, how they can’t just mind their own zafè and keep off our island. Look where their help got us; look at the mess we’re in . . .
But no, I can’t hate them, cos there’s a woman in front of me: she’s shining a torch in my eyes, she’s using a bottle to drip water into my mouth – it tastes like everything good in the world – mangoes, bananas – and she has this T-shirt on, it says, Médecins Sans Frontières. This woman, she’s got blonde hair and blue eyes, fine blonde down on her ears. She’s the woman who took the baby from Marguerite all those years ago. She’s been here ever since, or she came back, I don’t know. But I don’t think she recognizes me. I understand, I don’t blame her for it, cos I’m covered in dust and dirt; I’m a dead person dug up and brought out into the light. So I just say to her what I wanted to say all those years ago.
I say:
— Your hair is amazing.
I say:
— Your ears are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
And she looks at me, like, what the fuck?
Then I hear this noise; it’s a noise I know so well, a voice I know so well. And I’m pushing past this woman, even though I love her, even though I love everyone here. Seriously, it’s like my whole heart is this shining ball of love in my chest, beating like the sun, a hammer that builds and doesn’t destroy.