Moonbath

by Yanick Lahens

  Once in the truck that was going to take him back to Port-au-Prince, Léosthène turned around one last time and thought that perhaps, in the future, Ermancia and all the others’ days would be spared the exhausting weight of servitude. At least he hoped.

  It was a beautiful day. Léosthène, taking in the view of his childhood, turned his back for a moment to the wounds of the earth, to its deep scars, and looked at Anse Bleue bathed in liquid light, the sky and the water spreading as far as the eye could see. Each wave that was sinking, frothing on the sand, would die in a shining net of water. The birds brushed against the crests of the waves, came out of the sea, and took flight over the weary sky.

  28.

  The giant seized his cell phone. He repeats every word he hears. The man with the one shoe asks that he not to spread the news. Certainly not.At the risk of of attracting a justice of the peace, policemen, and journalists who will not fail to stick their noses in our business: “Who saw her first? Who knows her? Who touched her?” They all speak together. Loud. They do not get along. Do not understand each other anymore. For the small crowd assembled there, the question of my destiny remains untouched until a woman emerges from I don’t know where, cries, after two Jesus, Mary, and Josephs, three Lord Have Mercys, “She comes from Anse Bleue. She is the daughter of…”

  That stranger, she went to get a sheet. To cover me. As she approached, she did not want to look at me. She just stretched out the sheet to the man with the red cardigan and turned around. The man grabbed the sheet. He is proud to be directing the operations like a leader. He placed the sheet on the sand and asked two other men to help him. It took three of them to lift me and put me on top. We went toward Anse Bleue.

  In my wake, I drag about twenty men and women, agitated as though they were going on a crusade like the Charismatics or the Pentecostalists. All that is needed is a pastor or a priest to begin an ecumenical song: “God Almighty, Thou art great!”

  Hardly have we left Pointe Sable when in the distance I see Émile, the school’s headmaster in his brown shirt with the halos under the armpits that I know so well. He speeds up, driven by curiosity. He stops the procession and everybody starts talking at the same time. Impatient, the headmaster asks to see. Moves forward and looks. His eye almost touches my face. His shock freezes him. He makes the sign of the cross three times then starts yelling, turns back, and runs in the direction of Anse Bleue. I cannot explain anything to him. Nothing. I can’t anymore. I don’t want to anymore.

  I will always remember the first time Headmaster Émile spoke at great length about the Earth, that it was round. An orange in his hand, he asked me how I saw it. I replied that the orange was round but that, behind the horizon, there was a large hole into which one inevitably fell. He lowered his arms, laughing. Then he asked me to look carefully at the orange and he began to turn it, to tilt it to one side then to the other to explain again the rotation, the revolution, the equinoxes and the solstices. Running back through his laborious explanations. I listened to him, swinging my legs on the wooden bench, elbows on the table, my face resting on my palms, reassured that I had never felt the earth tilt or turn. Imagining Agwé, Labalenn,* and Lasirenn, still there on their islands under the waters. So, the headmaster, I believed him and I did not believe him. As I did not believe it when he told Cocotte, Yvelyne, and I to come back because the wind would rise and we had to beware of strangers coming from the cities. I did not believe him.

  29.

  Having come to the conclusion that he’d had his share of joy and sorrow, Orvil decided that the best thing for him to do was to leave. That’s just what he did one morning in May 1982, between the short and the long rainy seasons. He now felt insignificant in a world in which he had always been powerless. Powerless, but a son of the gods. Blind, but steady on the raging waters, in the turmoil and the great hurricane of life. His impotence had lately been transformed into weariness. He no longer had the strength to wait for his two children to return from God knows where. He no longer had the strength to call the gods. Of this he was certain. He wanted to join them. Where they were. Be by their side. Fall asleep at their feet. Feel their hands on his wounds. Return to Guinée. To the early days of the sea. To the lights, the ones you can see in the devant jour, those that you can’t see in the storms at night, those in the hearts of the trees and plants, the pristine and intact light of the bon ange, the same, always, the only.

  He was crippled with pain and was no longer able to devote himself to the labors whose roughness and monotony nonetheless brought him a form of peace and the feeling of still being rooted in the soil or gliding over the current. He walked slowly, stubborn as the donkeys who carry out a task with strain and caution. His jaw fell open because of gums that had receded over the years. He was nothing but skin and bones, like death wanted to carry him away light as a child, bare as an angel.

  On the eve of the day when he had chosen to leave, Orvil fell asleep calmly, and upon waking called Ermancia for the coffee that he drank thick and sweet au rapadou. He sipped it while sitting at the entrance of his hut, waiting for everyone’s greetings: “How was the night? Figi a fré papa? You’re looking well? Kouman kò a yé?” The round of greetings had barely ended when Orvil asked Ermancia, with authority and tenderness, to draw him a bath. Ermancia placed the white enameled basin, lined with blue, in the sun and crushed up orange tree leaves, ti baume, and soursop. Wrapped up in a threadbare woolen blanket, Orvil waited, sipping the last drops of coffee that filled his mouth with a lukewarm sweetness. Once the bathwater was warm, Ermancia helped him take off his clothes, sit down in the basin, and vigorously, with her right hand, rubbed his back, chest, and stomach with soap. Then she bent the palm of her left hand to collect the water that she then poured on Orvil’s chest, stomach, and back, rinsing him slowly. Sweetly. With infinite tenderness. Singing him a song he loved. And he, twenty years her senior, he who could have been her father, wanted to call her Mother. As men here tend to do when they really give in. It was the only way for him to tell her that he had lived life with something good, sweet, and strong beside him. “You know, I’m leaving today. Mwen pralé.” And when she told him to stop talking nonsense, she told him, really, that even if his other women had come to the fence one day to insult her, it did not matter. He thanked her without saying so for the two children who were not her own and to whom Ermancia regularly sent rice, vegetables, and money as though they were her own flesh. When he repeated for the third time, “I am going away, Sia. Mwen pralé,” Ermancia told him, openly, that he’d been beaten down by his worries, the stingy sea, the abandoned land. By Olmène, who had never returned. By Léosthène, so far away. By Fénelon too. But that, even if the land did not give as much and the sea neither, she and Dieudonné had gotten by, with the bread oven and her small business at the stall. Orvil did not respond.

  After the bath, he walked barefoot, with slow, measured steps, taking in the landscape, his body collapsing under the wind. Relieved by having nothing else to do in these moments but contemplate the world and let himself be invaded by its light. He had suffered the burning of the sun on the hard blue of the sea, its unrelenting bite on the knotty paths of the Lavandou and Peletier Mornes. He had done his time. He sang, in a whisper, a song he learned from Bonal, his father, who learned it from his own father, and he traced it back to Dieunor, the franginen forefather, who said that it was necessary to pass it down and let it go before leaving. But pass it down to whom?

  Orvil stopped his pained stride and found himself saying out loud: “I did my duty. I led this lakou with a firm and just hand. I do not know how much I have protected each of the chrétiens vivants of this lakou against the night, the evil spirits, and the shadows within us. Yet someone must continue. Maintain the blood. As long as the lwas are there, there will be something to give. To ourselves, to others. All I know, I learned by feeding each other, by giving. Léosthène won’t return, Fénelon cannot. No, he cannot and must not. Dieudonné, when the time comes, will ta
ke over. That’s all. It’s time for me to leave…“And Orvil continued to walk. He had always savored this time on the paths. Never lost. Suddenly, under the weakness of his body, an unexpected strength unburdened his steps.

  At the end of his walk, he leaned his chair against the imposing mapou and began to sing again. He did not reply to the greetings of the men who were returning from fishing. To those returning from the lands. To the women preparing the meal. To those who were leaving to do laundry in the river. We thought that Orvil was starting to lose his mind. At the strike of three, Ermancia yelled for him, only to find his head bent over his chest, his arms dangling, his hat on the floor. Orvil was already a limp rag, barely warm.

  Cilianise was on the Dieu très haut bus, sitting on one of the eight benches occupied by fifty-six chrétiens-vivant who were on their way to Baudelet, and lent a distracted ear to the community radio. The driver shrieked, rocking beneath the weight of three goats and six chickens tied together by their feet and two other goats atop the vehicle, that the sky was wearing its mask of clouds and that they had to go fast, pressé, pressé. The crew got going in its usual commotion. And between the sound of the engine, the chattering, and the cries of the animals, the radio rang out his long list of messages: “Roselène, who lives in Périchon, pas bliyé, don’t forget, Macéna is waiting for you at the Carrefour de Ti Pistache for the commission.” “André, Ismena has a high fever and will not come to the market today, but tomorrow, God willing.” “Cilianise, who lives in Anse Bleue, come back immediately, pa mizé, Orvil malade grave.” Cilianise could hardly make the connection between her name, which came out of the front of the truck, and herself. When she finally understood that it was for her, she let out a piercing cry and was seized by convulsions. The fifty-six passengers helped her carry her grief to her destination.

  With Cilianise, Ermancia, and Dieudonné, we helped Orvil’s soul depart intact. We helped it to not disseminate everywhere. To not leave any trace. In his hut, in the trees, in the gardens or the nearby rivers. To go intact toward its true death. We did all that was necessary for Orvil to leave quietly and calmly. A hougan, led by Érilien, helped Agwé, his mèt tèt, let go of him. Ermancia cut his nails and hair, which she kept in two vials, and told him her messages for the Invisibles: “Ask them to tell you where Olmène is, tanpri. When you find her, tell her in a dream that I love her. That I have never forgotten her. And then, watch over us. Over our gardens. Over our animals. Over our commerce. Over our boats.”

  It was Father André, Father Bonin’s successor, who presided over the funeral. The man with the black hat and thick glasses, wishing to indigenize the clergy, had sent us Father André, who sometimes cleaned his gun right in front the presbytery. A way to say that he had his eyes on us and would send reports to the priests more powerful than him—who, in turn, would hand them over to the man with the black hat and thick glasses—reports on our possible disobedience. It was the only thing that mattered to him. We never gave him the opportunity to make such reports. Nor to kill any of us. Why had he joined the Holy Order? We never knew. Perhaps he just wanted to never go hungry, never have to worry about tomorrow, to be above earthly creatures like us. None of these questions stopped us from smiling at him, from pleasing him with the produce of our jardins and the few poultry of our coops, and from secretly watching him.

  Father André was not the least bit surprised to find us on the road to Anse Bleue, zigzagging, turning back, going from one side to the other with Orvil’s coffin, to make him lose his way. To rid him of any desire to return to visit us before he had finished his journey. Zigzagging, retracing our steps, going from one side to the other, we had erased our own footprints and we were as incapable as Orvil of going back.

  Ilménèse and Cilianise took over and cajoled the Invisibles, awaiting their calls, messages, and lessons. Dieudonné still wasn’t ready.

  With Orvil’s death, all of Anse Bleue had the feeling that this was a world that was receding. The old world. That Orvil had left us in an even greater confusion and disorder slithering like Mary Magdalene’s serpent, spreading out like a contagious disease.

  30.

  Dieudonné met Philomène Florival for the first time on the road near Roseaux, one day when he was going toward the thick brush of Nan Pikan, despite the ban by the health authorities, to sell one of the last indigenous piglets of Anse Bleue to a hougan. Dieudonné did not notice Philomène immediately, but rather when she was about to pass him near the cattle market. And, despite her calm demeanor and the conservative clothes she wore as she stood beside her mother, Dieudonné noticed her young honeypot body. Watching her out of the corner of his eye, he would have sworn on what he held most dear that Erzuli Fréda herself slept inside Philomène’s eyes. She was sleeping, but she was there, sensual and capricious. Dieudonné was sure of it.

  They crossed paths a second time at the Frétillon’s shop in Baudelet. She was choosing colored buttons from glass jars for dresses that her mother sewed from dawn to dusk, pedaling on an old Singer machine: “A dozen big yellow buttons, tanpri, two dozen small white buttons, six blue buttons, six red buttons, mési.” When she turned to leave the shop, Philomène smiled at Dieudonné and left as though she was bathed in molasses. Yet she was not like those young women in Baudelet who now wore heels so tall they could hardly walk. No, Philomène had chosen to remain as the good Lord had made her, round and juicy like a mango. She didn’t powder her face, nor did she put polish on her nails or red on her lips, and she had none of those dresses that stopped above the knee and sealed the real jeunesses of today’s girls. But, without even noticing it, she had, solely by the power of her presence, brought the sun with her into the shop and left Dieudonné, stunned, stuck there like a stake in the ground.

  The third time he saw Philomène, on Good Friday, she was dressed in all white, a missal in her hand, a scarf tied round her head as she returned, tired from having gone through the fourteen stations of the cross. Despite her loose clothing, Dieudonné could see buttocks and nipples that would captivate even the wisest angels in God’s domain. He was convinced that, beneath her holy air, always by her mother’s side, always saying: “Yes, sir.” “I beg your pardon?” “Tomorrow, God willing.” Eyes lowered, she taunted him. Not like a jeunesse, oh no, but like a tease, a riseuse. Yes, that’s right, she was taunting him, Dieudonné Dorival. He swore to Fanol and Ézéchiel that he would have her and that she would be his wife. They told him he was kidding himself and that such a girl was too fine for his peasant’s mouth.

  We saw Dieudonné borrow money from Fénelon, buy a large sack of rice, which he sold at a profit near Ermancia’s stall, cut trees on abandoned land to make coal, and, thanks to the profits on all these sales and the money Léosthène sent, open the first borlette* between Ti Pistache, Anse Bleue, and Roseaux. Dieudonné now spent a good part of the day with his ear glued to the post to hear that day’s numbers. He had come to know the Tchala by his fingertips, the great book on the interpretation of dreams, which assigns a number to each of them. This skill made him a reputation far beyond Anse Bleue. It was enough for the client to tell what he had seen behind his eyelids the night before: “I ran, chased by a three-horned ox, and fell, breaking my little toe.” Dieudonné, without hesitation, replied, “Fourteen for the three-horned ox, twenty-two for the fall, and fifty-three for the broken toe.” Between customers, he played dominoes on the table set up for that purpose in front of his borlette. Where men gathered who, tired of the earth and disappointed by the sea, awaited envelopes from Miami, the Bahamas, Guadeloupe, or Turk and Caicos, along with the exhilarating and marvelous luck of numbers, before falling asleep toward new dreams.

  Dieudonné saved so much money that one morning he stopped Philomène on the road to Ti Pistache and offered her three mints that she accepted with a laugh. And, at the end of a sunless afternoon in September, he asked permission for a little indecency. Then she took him by the hand to an isolated hut not far from Ti Pistache. With the other wand
ering hand, she guided him between her powerful and chubby thighs. She clung to his back, and Dieudonné sunk deep inside her, letting out a long moan. Dieudonné did not know where Philomène’s sweet fury came from. No, he didn’t know. But he took advantage of it as a hungry man picks up crumbs under a table. All the crumbs.

  With the speed of a madman Dieudonné built a hut next to his grandmother’s and, once the door and the windows were installed, Ermancia and Cilianise saw a young woman arrive, three months pregnant.

  Dieudonné would often take Philomène, willing and silent, in that same glowing vertigo. In Philomène he found several women, all women, the sweet, the courageous, and the serene. And Dieudonné wanted them all. Happiness filled the hut. All of it. And then the children were born and days passed, seemingly alike, boredom gnawing at them from within. Then Philomène spent most of her days threading a needle, then later pedaling on the Singer machine that she had inherited from her mother. At night she opened herself obediently to Dieudonné’s seed. A seed that he also shared with some young negresses, in the villages further inland. Philomène, the first of his wives, raised no fewer than two sons and two daughters. Her youngest boy died at birth and the second daughter from malaria that had been mistreated. No one knew the exact color and shape of those borne of other wombs.

  Some women were angry with Philomène. Others even wanted her dead. By accident or illness. One, whom Dieudonné had given two children, attacked her not far from the market, shouting threats against she whose bread she had taken from their mouth. In a moment of rage, Philomène grabbed her dress and pulled it so forcefully that the fabric tore, exposing her neck and two breasts to the outcries of the women and onlookers.