She sang to no longer hear noise of the pickaxe. Still refusing to make the link between the man she had just seen pass and the hole. When the aide stopped digging, she immediately stopped singing, held her breath, and put her right hand over her mouth in order to not scream and frighten Dieudonné. To not attract anymore of Dorcélien’s attention nor to upset Tertulien. She held Dieudonné in her arms even tighter, so that the evil breath that swept over the hill wouldn’t touch him.
The peasant was buried somewhere at the bottom of the bridge, in the depth of the ravine, not far from the arbre véritable.* They must have gagged him so that he didn’t cry like an animal being slaughtered. Dorcélien’s aide mixed blood with dirt to cover it up. Once their task was complete, Tertulien, Dorcélien, and his aide wiped their hands with plants plucked along the path. Dorcélien and his aide disappeared behind the house, climbing up the other side of the ravine.
Tertulien opened the door a few minutes later and asked Olmène for water to wash his hands. Despite how hard it was to breathe, despite her fear and stupor, Olmène didn’t let on that she knew anything. She looked fixedly at the color of the water, hypnotized. She didn’t serve Tertulien his cup of coffee. She didn’t hear him say that he would return in three days. She didn’t see him leave. Her eyes had preceded her conscious decision, were already blind to this man.
Olmène was already far. Very far. Inside of herself and somewhere else. For a long time the water would have the bitter taste of blood. The image of the man, his mouth gagged, his hands tied, his eyes big with fear, would long eat away her nights. Ours, too, once Olmène told us the story of that cursed afternoon.
When, three days later, Tertulien returned to visit her, Olmène greeted him with a mix of resignation, fear, and disgust, persuaded that even Tertulien’s smell wasn’t the same. That he smelled of rot and suffering. Yes, suffering. And, after he turned over onto his stomach, she really thought she had fornicated with the devil himself. At that very instant, Olmène made the decision to leave. It didn’t matter where, but to leave. She thought intensely about Léosthène. He felt a little further away every day in our minds and we knew that she would end up leaving us, too. That one day, it would be her body that would abandon us. Just by watching her or walking over to her you could make out the words that she repeated to herself over and over: “I will eventually put one foot in front of the other. I will end up doing it. Saved. I’m going to save myself and I’ll be saved.”
Tertulien felt his hold over Olmène loosen despite the progress he was making with the men in blue, despite the money he was amassing. He doubted himself, because he wanted everything, the money, the progress, and Olmène. He started to reprimand her for taking too long at the market, for spending too much time with Ermancia and Orvil, and for his meals, bland like his body that didn’t respond anymore. So one day he hit her. Then another day. But he came back every time without saying anything, like an animal caught in the act. Clumsy in his movements and words, which he seemed to struggle to find while shouting. Wondering what would help him jump this wall that Olmène had built. Not standing it any longer, one afternoon, he took her by force, holding her wrists to the mattress and asking her with each thrust if it was as good as with the young, inexperienced ones. Olmène, her thighs bloody, didn’t respond. Never responded during all the visits that followed. She didn’t respond to anybody. Even one morning when Fénelon came to help her with the planting, he asked her, seeing her swollen skin, if she had fallen down. In her mind, she was already on the journey. Léosthène hadn’t wanted misfortune to drag him to his knees. Olmène didn’t want a man to wear her threadbare.
The day before her departure, she spent the night with Ermancia and Orvil, and asked Fénelon to be on the lookout. Ermancia reminded her of all the lessons of life, men, women, of the earth, of the gods. Orvil walked around the démembré with her and Olmène lit a candle under each of the trees where the family gods rested, lingering before the one where her umbilical chord was buried. We followed them in silence, tears in our eyes, anger at the back of our throats. Fénelon, unlike us, didn’t cry. He gathered up his own anger to make it into something other than than resignation, submission, or scheming. Something that we all wanted to know but that he hid from us well.
Orvil spent all night preparing protection for his daughter. A little statuette with a piece of broken mirror on its chest that he placed in a bottle of water. A way of alerting the angels under the waters, Damballa,* Aida Wèdo, Agwé, Simbi, and Lasirenn, that if his daughter found herself in a bad stretch, for them to protect her. At dawn, the moment of departure, Orvil implored her to return. Even if it wasn’t for a long time. But to return. To not put herself in danger. The Lafleur’s struggle had to play out here and nowhere else.
Olmène kissed Dieudonné, who was asleep right next to Ermancia, without waking him. All that Olmène had from there on out was in a bundle of clothes that she hid under some vegetables in a basket. To not arouse any suspicions. To not loosen any tongues.
Leaving the past behind her was an experience that Olmène lived like it was a gift. Like a present. She didn’t want to be defeated. She would return from the other side of resignation, of fear, of anger. She would return. But first she had to flee, to tear herself away from a dark future. Olmène was hardly eighteen years old and wanted to summon life. Burn the days. All of Anse Bleue had gathered before Orvil and Ermancia’s hut. Olmène detached herself from us and walked to the end of the road with light steps, like she was going to dance.
Four days after Olmène’s departure, Tertulien, distressed and filled with rage, showed up at Orvil’s hut and gave him the order to return her to reason and to her house, and he even set a deadline: “If in one week…” From Tertulien’s voice, you could tell that the man had regained his power. At his father’s arrival, Dieudonné ran toward him laughing, on his shaky little legs, and clung to his pant leg. Tertulien deigned to rest his hand on his hair and spoke forcefully to Orvil, who never responded. He left without turning around, amid the cries of his son who called for him. Olmène gone, Dieudonné had become absolutely insignificant. Meaningless. A love child, illegitimate.
After Léosthène’s departure, the peasant’s death, and Olmène’s escape, we were from them on, in Anse Bleue, even more than before, going to be overwhelmed by the events coming from far away. And then we would drag our feet because of the weight of what we ourselves were going to create.
20.
“You are nothing but cowards. A bunch of wimps…You let yourself get beat up without saying anything. Not a single word. They trample you and, instead of defending yourselves and kicking back, you lie down, stretch out your body, your back, your head, so that they can walk all over you. So that they can squash you like earthworms. Yes, that’s what you are, earthworms.”
Father Bonin had chosen to speak to us about anger that Sunday. His skin had taken on a red that we’d never seen before. Unleashed, he gave his sermon with great vigor. Had he drunk more wine than usual? We didn’t know. But his voice was hoarse like that of an old drunkard. In any case, it was through this raspy voice that the word of God passed. And, if you were to believe what Father Bonin said, God didn’t love us very much that Sunday.
We told ourselves that maybe a frightening lwa Pétro* danced inside Father Bonin’s head. He was really angry at us. At those who left villages and hamlets on the backs of trucks. At those who took them away. At those who picked them up. At us, who let them leave. “And the land, tell me, who is going fight for her?”
Taken by surprise, we did not flinch, some of us were wrapped up in a scapular, some in a rosary, and others in both. Hiding our shock well, we didn’t even let the slightest comment pass between us. Not a word. We didn’t move. Encased tighter than ever in our Sunday best, our only. In our stoicism. In our peasant silence. Apparently, Father Bonin was aware of events and things that we weren’t. The news of those more powerful than us, the news of the grands Nègres and the grands Blancs. The t
hings we had no control over and wanted to stay away from.
Dorcélien left the church in a fury, shaking his finger at Father Bonin, who stopped for several seconds and looked him straight in the eye. Dorcélien and Father Bonin seemed to have started a conversation over our heads and understood each other. Unlike us, who stood still as statues, silent, squeezed shoulder to shoulder, breathing a little heavier than usual. This scene only made it clearer to us that it really seemed to be a story between people more powerful than us.
After Dorcélien left, Father Bonin went on: “A child of God is also a child who lifts his head and chases the unbelievers like Jesus with the merchants of the Temple. You do not have to accept everything, swallow everything without saying a word, without opposing any resistance. They will annihilate you to the end if you say nothing. If you don’t raise a stick to strike the enemy.”
We nodded softly. Perhaps without realizing it, because none of us wanted to have anything to do with Dorcélien.
Is it because of this slight movement that Father Bonin could read on our faces that we were relieved by Dorcélien’s departure? Hard to tell. He made himself even more conciliatory when he added, in a Creole that he was starting to master:
“Well, I know you. You really think that I don’t know that you come to church, that you kneel, that you receive the body of Christ and that, once you return to your homes, you abandon yourselves to the rites of savages! Yes, savages! So I am going to tell you, I am, what will happen to you: the night will no longer give way to day, the plants will soon become stones, that’s right. The fish will only be memories in your dry nets. And your animals will no longer reproduce. That will be the will of God. Amen.”
And we responded: “Amen.”
Then Father Bonin forcefully called Yvnel, who came forward in his all-white clothes of an altar boy. His voice was still as unrecognizable when he tackled the song in Latin. One of the songs whose tones we had come to learn just by listening. So we repeated with him, but louder than usual, so as to relieve a weight in our chest:
Agnus Dei
Qui tollis peccata mundi
The songs rose within us like a sun, giving us a little respite. Some, arms open and extended toward the sky, swayed from right to left. Calling at once God, the saints, and the lwas to our rescue.
Dona eis requiem sempiternam
Once the mass was over, Ermancia slipped in among the faithful, still under the effect of Father Bonin’s sermon. She had to speak with the Virgin, whose statue crowned the entrance, to the right of the church, just in front of Saint Antoine de Padoue’s. She opened both of her arms and lowered her head to tell her, the Virgin, that she was still waiting for the miracles but didn’t see them coming. That her patience was wearing thin. That she had asked her for Olmène and Léosthène to send a sign. At least once. That she would soon turn toward those more powerful than her: Saint Jacques, the archangel Gabriel, or Saint Patrick. Yes, absolutely. Ermancia, disappointed and angry, hit the statue with her palm and railed against the Virgin: “You are there, standing, doing nothing, not lifting a finger for your children. Since the time I asked you to give me news of Olmène and Léosthène. But I got nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Ermancia didn’t hear Father Bonin approach. When she turned around and saw him, she quickly changed her blows into sweet caresses. Father Bonin watched her from the corner of his eye, dubious, knowing that Ermancia wasn’t speaking to the Virgin Mother dying on her knees, but rather to Erzuli Dantò with the scar on her cheek, protecting her child against the winds, hunger, the sun, the evil spirits. Ermancia closed her eyes piously, made the sign of the cross, and left, head down, after greeting father Bonin.
“That’s it, Madame Orvil, that’s it.”
Father Bonin had come to love us just as we were. We had come to love his tough tenderness. Yet he didn’t ever really understand us. We never really understood him either. Never. But was that the most important thing?We would never have let anyone touch a hair on his head, and he would have defended us against an entire army.
Father Bonin’s sermon didn’t stop Fénelon from joining the blue militia two weeks later. Father Bonin could have left and gone home at any moment. Where he wouldn’t be afraid. Where nobody would come to seize his lands, steal his animals, or drag his sister away. We had nowhere to go. And, since fear was gaining ground around us, in Anse Blue, Fénelon chose to be on the side of those who doled it out. On the side of those with the black glasses, machetes, red scarfs, and revolvers. Not on the other side, among those who suffered the fear. With no rule of law to block the road to fear, he chose to be the only law, and to generate fear himself.
Fénelon enlisted as soon as somebody proposed it to him, a man who’d bought some fish from him for cheap in Ti Pistache, to sell it at a high price in Baudelet or even as far as Port-au-Prince. The man introduced him to Toufik Békri, Madame Frétillon’s brother, who had transformed one of the Békri houses into a headquarters for the men in blue. Toufik Békri was the unit commander.
So, the second time that Tertulien came to Orvil, he was greeted by Fénelon, dressed in his blue uniform and flaunting the red scarf around his neck, the revolver at his waist, and the machete in his hand. Despite his great surprise, Tertulien didn’t let anything slip. Nothing. Only speaking to say: “Olmène, did she return?” Without insisting. Upon parting, Fénelon and Tertulien saluted each other like two bulls comparing their horns, scraping the bottoms of their hooves before a fight that wouldn’t take place.
After this event, Fénelon sparked fear and terror in the five surrounding villages. In the merchants. In the peasants. In the representatives of order and justice. In everyone. Every time Fénelon passed, someone became poorer, lost something, or suddenly felt smaller. And, in the presence of those who used to disdain him, who used to look at him with their noses in the air, like the judge, the chief of police, or the few bourgeois in Baudelet, his pleasure was tenfold. It intoxicated him to exist just to threaten them and smile. To make them suffer and rejoice. Sometimes alone, sometimes with noisy company, with Toufik, Dorcélien and his aide. For those who, like him, were as poor as Job, he started by exacting small misfortunes. Drop by drop. Waiting to exact greater ones until the occasion presented itself.
21.
Dieudonné grew up between the sea and the hot, rocky earth of Anse Bleue. Learning alongside Orvil and Fénelon to decipher the signs of the sky. To understand the language of the waters, the alphabet of the winds. To read the clouds in the sky, to decipher if they carried rain. To remember that to go out to sea is to know the time of departure, but never that of the return, because only Agwé and God know. To take out the animals from the enclosure and lead them to drink. To bend over and break your back under that sun makes your skin sticky, under the dry skies that, day after day, close the belly of the earth and push stones over her. To caress the belly of this same earth so that she delivers again. Green. Thick. Soft. To ration the millet flour in the big mortar in the middle of the lakou, for the only meal of the day. To distinguish the work of women from that of men and to be served by them. Namely to let the women fly like flocks of birds in the early morning, and wait for them in silence in the sweetness of the twilight. To collapse into sleep with the density of a stone and the lightness of an angel, to await the visitors of dreams.
Dieudonné had formed the belief that he had three fathers and three mothers. A close father, Orvil, another further away, Fénelon, and a father of whom they never spoke. Three mothers: Ermancia, Cilianise, and an absent one, Olmène, who sometimes appeared in his dreams. She came from the sea or from the lands behind the mountains, dressed in white, and descended a ladder to approach him. He stretched out his arms and then she vanished into a great white cloud.
Dieudonné often caught his grandmother Ermancia in the act of throwing one last glance at the horizon before closing the door of the hut at dusk. You’d think that she was waiting for somebody. Like Olmène or Léosthène would return as they had left. Without warni
ng. Without goods to carry. Their only baggage their feet, sturdy enough to walk to the dreams that had called them. She imagined these same feet, strong as she preferred them, returning them to childhood, returning them to the lakou.
Dieudonné grew up with our same fears, those of wandering spirits, of curses, of paquets rangés* at the crossroads, and he learned the spells to summon the Invisibles, the verses to petrify the devils and the psalms to ward off all dangers. “The Lord is my shepherd, if he is with me, who will be against me?” And Dieudonné never took his eyes off his grandfather Orvil as he mixed, crushed, kneaded, and blended the strange herbs, the rare spices, and the dark debris, reducing them into a smooth and light ointment or a thick and greasy potion. Nor when he prepared the bains de chance* with flowers, fruits, spices, and perfumes, for promises that lit up the eyes of visitors. Dieudonné wove bonds from the act sharing of all with all. Always an unequal division, like the rights to the lands, but one that made us remain together like the fingers of one hand. Like us, he shared dreams upon awaking and listened to everyone’s interpretation.
As he faced the world, all, fathers, mothers, uncles, and aunts of the lakou, taught him to master the art of being invisible. Poor, maléré, and above all invisible. Invisible to the dangers lying in wait, to those more powerful and of all those who weren’t from the lakou. “Make them believe, Dieudonné, that you do not exist. You have to make yourself smaller than you already are. Invisible like a lamp in the fire of hell.”
Moonbath Page 9