Nou se lafimin o
N ap pasé nan mitan yo n alé
We are like smoke
We pass among them and go
In the indolence of clear days, Dieudonné swam far, very far, with Oxéna, the other cousins, and Osias, a friend from Ti Pistache. They sometimes swam until they were in the open sea. Their only buoy a tree trunk or a big plastic bucket. They only returned when the silhouettes on the beach had become as tiny as flies, reminding them of the boats that had gone out never to be seen again. And then they all swam slowly to the shore, thinking of the spanking that awaited them and the reprimands—“Vagabonds, sans aveu”—that would rain down at the same time as the blows de rigoise.* But the sufferings were much more ephemeral than the enchantment of the sea. Dieudonné never regretted loving her so much.
He often fished for tadpoles or eels in the mud and amused himself by watching the pink flamingos in the marshes. He went with the girls and other boys from the village to the brush to help them prepare bird traps for turtledoves and ortolans.
The rest of the time, Dieudonné ran after a big mango or avocado pit, or the rare tin can covered in bits of fabric in the guise of a ball. Then, later, he kicked a real ball, on the field behind the Chapelle Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue that Father Bonin had built, just next to the school that Dieudonné hadn’t attended in three years. “A child in school,” Ermancia had proclaimed to Father Bonin, “that’s two fewer hands in the house and in the the jardins, and two fewer hands for the catch.”
As far back as he could remember, Dieudonné had heard those strangers who ventured as far as Roseaux ask to see Fénelon with the same words: “The chief, is he here?” and left him a sack of rice, two chickens, some Guinea fowl, or some vegetables. In his presence, they always said the same, “Yes, chef mwouin, yes, my chief,” even after having waited two hours under a sun that burned their scalp, a fly on the hungry saliva at the corners of their lips. Dieudonné always connected Fénelon’s power to that of the danti of a lakou, like his grandfather Orvil, or a leader even stronger than all the leaders, the one who wore a black hat and thick glasses.
Thanks to Fénelon’s generosity, Ermancia set up her first shop—with a counter that Nelius carved from rough wood—at the entrance of the lakou. The the first real structure built in Anse Bleue. She stocked the shop with sugar in little brown bags, sold tablettes de roroli,* ginger candies, rapadou,* cassavas, and, in season, avocados and mangos. When she received the first bottles of kola from Fénelon, she saved a silver can for each vendor.
We ate better than many, and the fear of men and of their curses was kept at a distance. We soothed our fear of the gods with offerings. More numerous. More generous. But we never asked Fénelon questions. Not why? Nor for whom? Nor how? Maybe we didn’t want to know. Misfortune is a low wall. We didn’t have the strength to hop it. So we bowed down and closed our eyes.
Dieudonné hadn’t known Fénelon’s true skin, the one that covered him before the blue uniform. He was too young. He didn’t know how his eyes used to be, before they were hardened by fear and blood. Plus, Dieudonné drew a certain pride from his uncle’s power. Like us, he wanted misfortune to loosen its grip. But, unlike us, Dieudonné didn’t have anything to compare it to and had grown up without any confusion. In this unique knowledge which, all considered, was an abyss of ignorance.
22.
When the stranger arrived alone one morning, Dieudonné, sitting next to his grandfather, was barely ten years old. He laughed while listening to Orvil tell him about the time from before, from long ago, and didn’t guess by his look that he was thinking of Léosthène and Olmène. For the land and the sea, Orvil relied on his perseverance and on the goodness of the gods. All of that worried him, as did the rising power of his son Fénelon. Orvil and Dieudonné were mending a net and turned around in unison when a strange voice greeted them in a Creole from the city: “Honor.” They hadn’t heard the steps of this man, who hadn’t come from the front of the house, but from the path alongside it. A man showing up like a prowler. Orvil responded: “Respect,” as per custom, but didn’t ask him if he could make himself useful.
It had been three days since Orvil, and then all of us, had been warned of his presence. We feigned not knowing, not having seem him, but we were nonetheless watching him, eyes wide, noses alert, ears open. We asked ourselves as much as we could about the reasons that could have pushed such a man to find himself here, in such a place. With us. To find himself in this strange spot on a road at the end of the world. Dieudonné looked at the stranger and whispered: “Who is that?” and clung tighter to his grandfather, and we knew just by looking at him, we did, that the loaded dice of chance had already been cast. That we were going to have to chose between the misfortune of this stranger and our own.
It was warm. Very warm. The heavy and sticky heat. Without a single breeze. Not one. We were used to the heat, sometimes it even washed out the colors. The stranger asked for water and, despite the hunger that made his eyes bulge, his cheeks sink, the hunger that howled from the corners of his mouth, he didn’t dare ask for food—the restraint of a man who had always had enough to eat. He was content to look at Orvil and chase the flies who came to land on his dry lips. He wasn’t shaven, and the scrapes and cuts on his face, on his arms, revealed, without him realizing this, his clandestine routes, his fears, the maquis. His face, emaciated, unwashed, said what his tongue kept quiet: “I haven’t eaten in two or three days. I am afraid.” We, we knew that language better than anyone, but those who have never known hunger couldn’t know it. We had this lead on the stranger, this foreigner. Who didn’t suspect just how foreign he was to us. He suspected it even less since his fear, not being able to keep up with him, had let go for a moment. Fear gave itself a break.
The time came for Orvil to offer him a piece of kasav and half of an avocado. The stranger ate with such an appetite that he slobbered and wiped his lips with his shirt, his right sleeve, then his left sleeve. A shirt that wasn’t clean. Not for a man like him. His shoes neither. Holes in places, which exposed the grimy nails on his black feet. Shoes in too bad a shape for a man who obviously had to wear clean ones, new ones, since his first days, since his first steps. He had without a doubt walked a long time in fear, fear in his guts, at his heels, the sweat of fear. God, how afraid he was! And he needed to be comforted in this village lost in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t ask to hold our hands nor feel the heat of our arms. All he asked of us strangers was that we simply be there for him. To look at him eat and then drink, and then eat again. To remind him that he still belonged to the race of chrétiens-vivants. He needed to lower his guard for a moment. Not to have to suspect every gesture, every look, every smile. He needed this break to forget the cries of the comrade captured a few meters away from him. Before his eyes. Some weeks ago. He hadn’t been able to do anything. So yes, he needed this presence to quiet his own fear. God, how afraid he was!
Watching him out of the corner of our eyes while going about our own business, we all asked ourselves the same question. And Orvil, more than all of us, asked it: what is Fénelon going to do with this cumbersome presence? Yvnel, always wanting to play the most malignant among us, even went as far as saying to Nelius, his father, “Good thing for him that Fénelon isn’t here.” And stopped short when Ilménèse brought a disapproving finger to her mouth. Because the stranger’s fear wouldn’t trouble Fénelon. It would even give him strength. Would give him the urge to play with his prey, like a wild animal, before devouring him. This fear would fuel the vanity of a subordinate looking for a promotion.
Orvil held out a little water in a gourd to the stranger and gave him some kasavs that he rushed to put in an old satchel hanging on his shoulder. Not a single question was asked of him. Not one. By looking at him, we all understood that he held, shut inside of him, something he couldn’t tell us. Maybe he himself thought he knew it, but in reality it escaped him. Orvil pointed him to the path the least frequented by Dorcélien, Tertulien, F
énelon, and all the others. He advised him to be careful, to not follow the road to Ti Pistache, and to ideally walk at night: “You never know.” The stranger thanked him again. He wanted to say something but held it back. Unlike us, he didn’t know how to play with fear. It was all new for him. The stranger was a novice to fear. We all watched him leave in knowing that, before long, he would be dead.
Two days later, Fénelon called us all around Orvil and Ermancia’s house to announce that a stranger, a kamoken,* had been killed, and that his decapitated head had been sent in a jute sack to Port-au-Prince, to the man in a black hat and thick glasses. Under Toufik Békri’s order, Fénelon, Dorcélien, his aide, and two other men had surrounded the stranger, then made him get on hands and knees. One of them had yanked back his head, dug a knee into his lower back, while the aide pulled his arms in front. Another had then seized the machete and, in one stroke, separated the stranger’s head from his body. The peasant who had accompanied the stranger to the end of the road where he had been captured met the same fate. He who had only showed him the way. He whom chance had placed there on that day, in that place, at that hour. We listened, dumbfounded, afraid, silent. And since we didn’t say anything, Fénelon thought that we approved of it. That we gave him the right. We couldn’t approve of something that we didn’t understand, but we didn’t tell him this. And then, there was this stranger, coming from who knows where to seek death in our bayahondes. We didn’t understand this either. But while Fénelon told the story of the death of this prisoner and the peasant, Ermancia, Cilianise, and all the women of Anse Bleue, without exchanging a word, thought of their mothers, who hadn’t even been able to kneel down to listen to life escape the throats of their sons in their final breaths. Like water from too narrow a bottleneck. These mothers hadn’t been able to hold them until their hands were red with the blood of their hearts.
Yvnel thought it best to break the silence by congratulating Fénelon for his courage as a true leader:
“You are truly strong, Fénelon!”
The latter didn’t fail to puff up his chest a little and make the revolver at his hip even more obvious. He took his machete, flicked it around with his wrist, and responded with the confidence of one assured of his own importance:
“Well you’re either a leader, or you’re not.”
Our chatter increased. When you start out with cowardice, you don’t know where you’ll stop.
We didn’t dare look at Orvil, who didn’t flinch, didn’t say a single word. Fénelon, perhaps to coax him, held out, like a spoil of war, a letter folded into four, found in one of the pockets of the stranger’s satchel. Orvil seized it brusquely, because he wanted to keep this stranger’s final memory from being tarnished. Then, standing before Fénelon, he asked him to leave Anse Bleue, to go move into Olmène’s house. Against his own wishes, Fénelon didn’t dare oppose his father.
Ermancia, Ilménèse, and the others were wracked by convulsions and pushed out a single great cry. The cry of an animal being slaughtered. They repeated unflaggingly: “Manman pitit, the pain of a mother is immeasurable.” Cilianise held her last-born in her arms and moved her torso back and forth, wailing. She understood how this child would now be her sweetness, her fatigue, and her despair. Looking at her son Fénelon, Ermancia felt in the air a storm that was advancing and would burn her. When he left, she screamed. For him, for mothers, for her.
At Olmène’s, Fénelon opened a gaguère that everyone frequented out of fear of reprisals, and where Fénelon alone was allowed to speak his mind. He bought points and lwas that weren’t those of the lakou of the Lafleurs, and forged a reputation as a healer. He had a sign made that read: Fénelon Dorival, healer of maladies natural and supernatural.
In a dream one night, Ermancia saw Fénelon struggling in the middle of an immense field of flames. And none of us, no matter what we did, could save him.
Orvil wondered, after the death of the peasant and the stranger, after the metamorphoses of Fénelon, whether he would have the strength to fight the fight that was coming. “I’m not sure,” he repeated to himself. “Not sure.” He thought of Léosthène, of Olmène, and told Ermancia that he felt tired much more often than before.
Orvil was the danti of the habitation, the patriarch, the spiritual master of the place. His uneasiness and his confusion were ours. And he became even more powerless against the dirt and the rocks that blocked the paths on the slopes as we tried to clear them. Against the growing power of the hurricanes. Against the droughts, each more devastating than the one it followed. Against the breakdown of our jardins as they abandoned us. Against the big sawmill of Toufik Békri, who rushed to cut down the trees and destroy natural borders. Against the selling of our lands, which were shrinking to the point of making us chers maîtres and chères maîtresses* of sorrow.
23.
The sea shines. Each wave like so many small mirrors shaking softly under the moon. My father warned us. He took the night very seriously. Mother, too. But Abner reassured them.
The first time that I brave the night, it’s with my brother Abner. Beneath a full moon. We go to the side of the Peletier Morne. An uprooted and deforested part. The moon, high, shines all the way to the bottom of the ravine. Riddled with white spots, it was like somebody had scattered limestone pebbles. Abner already knew things that made him no longer fear the night. And I’d wanted to know them, too.
The fascination with the moon, my love, nothing but that. I like you. I don’t know a single other face to compare with yours.
I breathe the air of the night, in distinct layers because of the moon. I taste the night on my face. Certain words should never come out of my night. The night deep inside. Known to me alone.
I had to force this man to notice me, to force the door to his flesh. Red sandals. The girls are right. You don’t wear such sandals in plain day, but, me, I do, despite the looks I got. I do it because of Jimmy.
Something must have happened to me. I was waiting for something to happen one day that would cure me of my desire to leave Anse Bleue. I wanted it, but not in this way. No, not like this.
Hardly any words exchanged, a finger pointed in my direction, and here they are screaming as they approach me. The stranger brought a squat man with him, wrapped up in a garnet red cardigan, torn at both elbows. A third man follows them. He had to get them out of bed. Each of them already is going, I’m sure, out of his knowledge, his wisdom, and his explanations.
Once they’d gotten up close to me, the man in the red cardigan took out a chubby hand to touch me. To see me lying with this frozen expression in the sand wasn’t enough for him. He had to touch me. The other, a real giant, seems to have chosen to attend the event like a show, securing a seat standing just behind the two others. They leaned over to examine me under my clothes. But the stranger, unable to bear it any longer, turned me over with a violent kick in the back. All three of them retreated, and the squat man came toward me again, so close that he could smell me, lowering his head to the right, to the left. Then he lifts the only intact arm I have left and lets it fall in the mud and the puddles.
Birds fly over the sea, white with foam. I watch it rise in milky sprays. Wild. Each wave watched, surveilled. I look at the sea before the arrival of the pack. My secret will come to shatter, too. To stretch out there on the oyster-colored sand. On my stomach. I feel it. I will be the only one to know it until the end of time…
The three strangers keep turning me over, around. One way. Then the other. They want to examine every part of me. All of me. To better convince themselves of that they see.
Their little game has been going on for a few minutes. I would have preferred for them to leave me alone for good. Alone with my thoughts that fly toward a piece of land where my childhood is sleeping.
I am going to gather my thoughts. All of my thoughts, before the whole village descends on me. The squat one keeps guard while the two others go back to their huts, they want to wake everybody up.
I hear some cri
es in the distance. Sure that this time the whole village is going to gather around me. So long as no wandering dogs come to sniff me, too. Humid muzzle to my skin, my flesh.
The crowd grows. I have to be careful not to lose myself in useless contemplation. To gather my last strength. I have to make sure to listen to everything. Watch everything.
Abner, my brother, is the strongest of us. The strongest among the men. The first to have rushed into the countryside around Anse Bleue three days ago, as the night fell. The first to have cried my name, his hands cupped around his mouth, until his lungs were torn.
It’s his voice, the last, that I heard before that of the stranger on the beach, who cried the names of these people whom I didn’t know and who come closer. And closer.
I’m in pain and I am exhausted. The dawn slowly dissolves the heavy clouds, somber and dark like mourning, which flooded the sky nearly three days ago. A very soft light finally veils the world. Reflections of a pinkish mother-of-pearl, almost orange in places, brush my lacerated skin, my open wounds, and sink into me, to the bone.
The whole village will soon surround me. All wrapped up in their rumpled bonnets, their faded cardigans, their clothes layered so as not to get cold, their night clothes and night breathing. A man even arrived wearing only one shoe. Too rushed to come see this apparition from the belly of the sea. Right next to an old woman, head bare in the coolness of the morning. The discussion livens as the crowd grows.
When somebody asks if I shouldn’t be thrown back into the sea with solid weights attached to my feet, a voice, old and shaky, says “No.” And everyone turns in its direction. It has enough authority to be heard. The same authority that made the voice shut down the suggestion that I be burned. Not seen. Not known. “You want to bring even more bad luck? You don’t already have enough?You want to lay on more?You band of unbelievers, sans aveu.”
Moonbath Page 10