Peacekeeping

by Mischa Berlinski

  * * *

  At four in the afternoon they counted the ballots.

  There were twenty or more of us in the concrete schoolroom. On the chalkboard were the remains of the lessons from the day before: arithmetic exercises and the conjugations of the French verb avoir. The local election officials were seated at a long table, the ballot boxes arrayed in front of them, and the observers squeezed themselves into the students’ rickety chairs. No wind tempered the still heat of the room.

  Until the moment that the president of the Voting Bureau cut the seal on the ballot box, the room was filled with nervous laughter, but when the ballot box was open, the room went quiet.

  All across the Grand’Anse—indeed, all across Haiti—the ballot boxes were being opened at that moment, and all across the Grand’Anse—all across Haiti—we were leaning forward, hardly breathing.

  The president of the Voting Bureau reached into the plastic box and pulled out the first ballot. He unfolded it and inhaled. He looked at it with a puzzled expression and whispered in the ear of the first secretary.

  “Blank,” he said.

  He showed the ballot to the audience of observers, who all began simultaneously to roar in protest, like sprinters after a false start.

  The first secretary said, “I confirm it’s blank,” and placed the ballot on her desk, faceup in front of her. She made a check on her tally sheet, the president made a check on his tally sheet, and the observers all scratched a mark in their notebooks.

  The president removed a second ballot from the box and unfolded it. He held it between his thumb and forefinger.

  He said, “Sénateur Maxim Bayard.”

  He passed the ballot to the first secretary, who said, “Maxim Bayard.”

  She placed the ballot on a new pile.

  The president said, “Sénateur Maxim Bayard,” and handed another ballot to the first secretary.

  “Maxim Bayard,” said the first secretary.

  The judge got his first vote on the fourth ballot. When the president said, “Johel Célestin,” the observer for the judge in the rear of the room began to clap.

  “Silence!” the president said.

  “Johel Célestin,” the first secretary said.

  The counting of votes continued in this manner for several hours—there were three separate ballot boxes of almost three hundred votes each. The president did not hurry, and he read out the results of each ballot as if the name were a surprise. From time to time the Sénateur or the judge would go on a little run of votes—three or four for one candidate or for the other, and you’d think one of them was tearing away with the race; but whenever one candidate would pull ahead, the other would come back.

  The only time the counting of the votes was interrupted was when a sparrow flew into the schoolroom and could not find its way out. The small bird flew in frantic circles from desk to desk. The president interrupted the counting of the votes, and the observers laughed as one after another tried to catch the bird and failed. When the sparrow found the window and flew out, the president resumed his count.

  When he was done, the president announced his official tally, ballot box by ballot box.

  In ballot box number one, there were 280 votes counted. Seven were blank, 5 showed votes for both the Sénateur and the judge. There were 123 votes for the Sénateur, 101 for the judge, the remaining votes disbursed among the minor candidates.

  In ballot box number two there were eleven blank votes, three double votes, 130 votes for the judge, and 109 for the Sénateur.

  In ballot box number three there were two blank votes, one double vote, 119 votes for the judge, and 99 for the Sénateur.

  The judge’s observers disagreed with the count of the third ballot box. Their count showed the Sénateur with 96 votes, not 99. The president agreed to recount the vote. By now night had fallen and the room was lit only by gas lantern. The president and first secretary, by the same slow and methodical method as the first count, arrived again at 99 votes. The judge’s observers admitted that the count was correct.

  “I declare the count official and valid,” the president said. “Long live Haiti! Long live democracy!”

  Then the first and second secretaries carefully sealed the ballots and the tally sheets where the president had kept the official vote counts. The results of the election were affixed to the wall of the schoolroom: the judge had, by a slender margin, won this polling station. But there were many other polling centers throughout the Grand’Anse. Out in front of the polling center there was a Uruguayan armored vehicle to collect the ballots and tally sheets. More remote corners of the province were being reached by helicopter, and a few polling centers were accessible only by donkey. The ballots and tally sheets would be transported to Jérémie, then sent on to the national tabulation center in Port-au-Prince.

  6

  The judge counted the votes collected by his electoral observers and knew that he had won. He had a substantial plurality and was very close to a majority. Everybody supposed that if the election went to a second round, the judge would win easily.

  But nobody knew how the CEH would produce the official election results. Just as the CEH had the power to choose illegitimate candidates, so too the CEH had the power to eliminate obviously fraudulent results—a ballot box, say, in which the voters unanimously favored one candidate over his rivals, or a box in which the number of votes counted far exceeded the number of voters assigned to that urn. The judge knew that these powers could be easily abused, and there was no court of appeals to decisions of the CEH but the CEH itself. The judge was worried that the CEH, either through incompetence or malfeasance, would hand the victory to the Sénateur at the last moment.

  It took almost three weeks before the CEH announced the results. The town and nation passed the time in a frenzy of anxious anticipation. Almost daily we were assaulted by rumors. But the manifest content of these rumors was never political, reminding me that the Freudian notion of displacement could apply to entities larger than a single troubled soul. In the weeks we awaited the final decision of the CEH, an invisible zombie with a lethal touch prowled the streets. Schools closed as worried parents kept their children home, and the annual Miss Creole Beauty Pageant was suspended. Then the cathedral was burgled and the chalice of the Eucharist stolen, presumably to serve black magic ends. The night before the election results were announced, a woman in Sainte-Hélène began to rave about red water; and in the slum behind the grand marché, two men died at the same time in different houses, the last words on both men’s lips inexplicably the same.

  * * *

  Late in December, the CEH in Port-au-Prince called a press conference. The judge decided to hold a party at his election headquarters to watch the election results on television with his supporters.

  The press conference was scheduled for seven in the evening, but it was midnight before the CEH spokesman ventured out into the ballroom of the Hotel Montana. The delay was designed to reduce the possibility of violence on the part of supporters of the defeated candidates. Grinding tension took over campaign HQ as we waited. Terry chain-smoked on the terrace, and Nadia sat cross-legged, rocking quietly and staring out at the Place Dumas, where a small crowd of the judge’s supporters were assembled. The judge walked around the room, shaking hands and rubbing shoulders. The campaign staff and volunteers were drinking beer. A phone rang, someone answered and then told the group that his friend in Port-au-Prince reported that riot police were beating a protester in front of the Hotel Montana. Then another phone rang and someone’s friend in Port-au-Prince informed us that we would soon learn that the election had been canceled entirely. Out front, a chant went up, “Judge Blan today / A road tomorrow.”

  Around midnight, the spokesman for the CEH appeared on the television. He was visibly nervous: his face would be associated across Haiti with election results that would be criticized the next day, whether fairly or unfairly, by half the candidates as fraudulent. Dark pools of sweat colored his shirt.


  “Man’s deodorant is definitely not working as hard as he is,” said Terry.

  The judge chuckled, but truth be told, he didn’t look much better than the spokesman for the CEH.

  The spokesman began with the campaign for deputy, the lower house of Parliament. His voice was a monotonous drone as he read out vote totals for each candidate. There were nearly a hundred races, and in some of the races, there were a dozen candidates or more, some taking as little as a dozen votes. A few of the races seemed like omens: up in the north near Ouanaminthe, there had been another candidate who had promised to build a road. He lost, and a groan echoed around the room.

  “Does not matter, does not matter at all,” said the judge.

  Nadia sat still as the results were read. It was only from her billowy shirt that I knew that her pregnancy was advancing, but I don’t know if anyone else in the room was aware of her secret.

  Then a candidate for deputy who had favored building a road was announced a victor. The room began to cheer and clap.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” said the judge. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  The reading of the deputies lasted a long time, and I stepped outside onto the Place Dumas. Now the crowd was thick: unable to sleep in the hot, nervous night, they had come down to the Place Dumas to observe firsthand the electoral results.

  I went back inside as the spokesman began reading the results of the senatorial races. The judge turned up the volume on the television. Then the spokesman read the results from the senatorial election in Port-au-Prince.

  “Jean-Emmanuel Robert, quarante-sept mille, deux cent vingt-trois,” he intoned. That was Ti Jean. He had won.

  We all began to applaud enthusiastically, stomp on the ground.

  Then finally it was time for the judge’s race. I heard the spokesman read off names and numbers—I remember that Thibault Antoine Erick just missed winning his ten thousand votes and three hectares of arable land—and I tried to keep a written tally. But in my excitement I couldn’t translate the French into digits with sufficient dexterity. I remember that the Sénateur had something-something-cinquante-six votes and I was trying to figure out what percentage of the vote that was.

  Then the room exploded.

  The judge had won 42 percent of the votes in the first round, the Sénateur down at 28 percent, the motley crew of also-rans dividing up the rest. Every car in town was honking all at once, cheap Chinese firecrackers were going off like ammunition. There wasn’t a throat in the room that wasn’t shouting in joy.

  “Congratulations, Sénateur,” Terry said.

  “We still got to do it all over again,” the judge said, thinking about the second round, but the way he was smiling, Terry knew the judge wasn’t worried.

  “Forty-two fucking percent,” Terry said. “And fuck the rest of them.”

  Terry and the judge rubbed their big unshaved faces against each other, both of them slick with tears, Terry running his hands all over the judge’s head.

  Soon the party spilled out of campaign HQ into the Place Dumas, everyone coming out to drink and dance and enjoy the warm night, like Carnival in December. In anticipation of victory, Johel had used campaign funds to buy fuel for the civic generators on the rue Abbé Hué, and the streetlights came on all over town, lighting up a dark night.

  * * *

  No one was happier than Terry. He’d had a fight with Kay just a few days back, the two of them shouting at each other over Skype.

  She said, “Terry, what I just want to know is why you’re still doing all this.”

  “I want to build a road,” he said.

  “Give me a fucking break,” she said. “Just for once in your life, give me a break.”

  But Terry thought the road would be solid. And one solid thing might be enough for a lifetime. For Terry, it’s always been about the road.

  That’s what he said to the judge at the end of the night. Terry wrapped his arm around the judge, pulled him so tight he could smell his aftershave. He looked him in the eyes and said, “Thank you, brother.”

  The judge understood. “I was just hired labor,” he said.

  “Cheers,” Terry said.

  They knocked their glasses together.

  “Promise me something. Look me in the eye.”

  “Anything,” the judge said.

  “I want you to promise me, whatever happens to me, you’ll finish our road.”

  “You know it.”

  “What I’m saying is, that road, the day they get it done, I’m not there, whatever happens—you just drive down that road and think about what we did here together.”

  * * *

  The victory had been Nadia’s as much as the judge’s, and when the results were announced, she had let out an exhilarated cry. But quickly, exhaustion took her and her face went slack. Soon Nadia asked Terry if he could drive her home.

  Terry had not been alone with Nadia since they buried Toussaint. They drove up the hill in silence, a few stray dogs following the car and baying. Out in front of the low brick wall, Nadia closed her eyes. Terry put his hand on her dress, at the place where the hem met her thigh. She squirmed backward into her seat.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “He’s not coming back for hours.”

  “Every day, I’m so scared.”

  “It’s almost over,” he said.

  But his voice was clouded by irritation. He didn’t want to talk about her fears. His body was tense with desire. He leaned over to kiss her, and she turned her head away.

  “I miss the thing we had,” he said.

  “What thing?”

  “Our thing.”

  “When are you going home?”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “No, I mean when you go home to—”

  She gestured upward with her eyebrows, to his home across the waters.

  “I don’t know if I’m ever going home,” he said. “I don’t know if I have anything waiting there for me.”

  Terry had never said a thing like that to Nadia. He felt her drawing closer to him. Nadia looked at him for a long time. She was breathing in the air he was breathing out, and in that shared breath, he felt as if she were weighing, measuring, judging him.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  “Does Johel know?” he finally asked.

  She shook her head.

  Terry’s face moved faster than his thoughts. Terry wanted his face to tell one story, but it was telling another—and just who was telling the truer story, his face or his thoughts: that was something Terry would wonder about for a long, long time.

  Terry was thinking that this thing had to happen like this, sooner or later. The notion of a pregnancy had never crossed his conscious mind, but he wasn’t surprised: he had seen the glow of life in her skin. Terry wanted his face—his dark, expressive eyes, the kindly cast of his mouth—to tell Nadia of the love he felt for her and all the fragile creatures who struggled alone in this hard world.

  But Terry’s face had another agenda altogether. Terry raced after his face as it told Nadia that it was over between them. Terry’s face, shrewd and unsentimental, knew that there was no other way to understand this baby that wasn’t his. Terry’s face was thinking about Nadia and the judge, the judge rolling around on Nadia, her face and his face, and Terry’s face, jealous of their pleasure, knew that all the love he had felt for Nadia had been like pouring water on hot sand, soaked up and leaving nothing behind. And then, just for a moment, no more than a passing instant, Terry’s face was angry.

  Nadia saw his face, and she knew she was alone. How foolish she had been to entrust her safety to a blan. She climbed out of the car.

  “Wait,” Terry shouted.

  But Nadia had already closed the gate of the cement house behind her.

  * * *

  The judge called Terry the next morning.

  “Too much last night?” Terry said. “You sound like death.”

  “Com
e on over,” the judge said.

  Half an hour later, Terry was up at the judge’s house. The judge was pouring sweat: he was wearing his own campaign T-shirt, the red one, soaked through.

  “You feeling okay?” Terry said, thinking heart attack.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Maybe we’ll get you to a doctor.”

  There was a morning flight to Port-au-Prince—they had ninety minutes or so.

  Terry followed the judge into the kitchen. Something wasn’t right with the way he was walking, his stride stumbling, shambling, off-balance. In the kitchen, the judge poured himself a tumbler of clairin, the smell of ginger and alcohol so strong that Terry could smell it across the room. He’d never seen the judge drink in the morning, never seen the judge out of control.

  “Want one?” the judge asked.

  “It’s too early for me,” Terry said. “Maybe it’s too early for you too.”

  “I’m still celebrating.”

  “Maybe we should stop the celebrating and get to work.”

  “You know who wrote me this morning?”

  “Who?” Terry said, keeping an eye now on the judge’s hands, an old instinct.

  “You’ll never guess.”

  Terry didn’t talk. She must have stayed up late following the election results as they were published online. He imagined Kay sitting at the kitchen counter with a bottle of white wine, clicking and refreshing, clicking and refreshing all night long. Everyone was celebrating without her—she was alone, after all the work she had done. Maybe she was waiting for someone to call her and say thank you. Then she hit the send button.

  “Oh,” Terry said. Then, “Brother—”