Moonbath

by Yanick Lahens

  Abner ranked the event in the long list of those which had upended the quiet life of Anse Bleue in recent months, after having disturbed that of the whole island. Cilianise went on, speaking from a jaw swollen by words that were too heavy.

  Oxéna was about to give her opinion, when Dieudonné, my father, gave her a gesture to be silent. Then, looking up at the sky four times in a row, he spoke in a voice that meant that the debate was once and for all over. Then, without having to mention it, it was as clear to Dieudonné as it was to all of us that we would swear to all those who were not from Anse Bleue that we had seen nothing, heard nothing that night.

  Pulling up the collar of his torn sweater, he concluded that it had been too long since the Spirits had been fed, and that all these events were there to remind us.

  I turn around and go back. One last time. Approaching my second death.

  The real one.

  “You seek me, you will find me.” Why does this phrase haunt me?

  The second time I meet Jimmy, I’m already a fool for love.

  I forgot many things I wanted to remember and remember things I should forget. But that’s how it goes. My soul, my bon ange, do not abandon me. I ramble, I ramble…

  I haunted the village for three nights. Crawling between the interstices. Without flesh and bones. Flesh and bones already dissolved by salt and water. Splitting the shadows like the bow of a boat.

  I did not want to leave Anse Bleue. Not like that. Fortunately, as often happens, the direction of the wind suddenly changed in the night: I did not go to the high seas, but I turned back. I walked along the coast. It was like Loko, Agwé, Aida, Wèdo and all the others did not want me to leave Anse Bleue and its surroundings. Not so early, not so quickly…

  So, all night, I haunted the village. Until the early morning. My strong scent, like a marine animal, penetrated everywhere without making anyone retch. I snuck in between the walls of the huts of the village, lifted the few frayed curtains of the rickety windows, blew open the poorly built doors like a headwind, and howled their names, but nobody seemed to see me. Nobody seemed to hear me. No one. They only said my name in muffled sobs.

  The procession stopped and the four men set me on the sand. This is their second break. They are thirsty and ask for water from two women who left work in the early morning to come to join the small crowd accompanying me.

  This morning the world is beautiful, the sky will soon be washed after the rains. I think of Abner, who never lets himself be prey to misfortune. Who always refuses to follow its black corridors. While I, long drawn by the void, I sink into Olmène’s steps.

  41.

  Altagrâce swore to have seen Jimmy on the road between Ti Pistache and Roseaux in the pickup that Octavius, a man from Roseaux, described. He’s also the one who told the story.

  As soon as they had fallen asleep, he, who was a light sleeper, perceived a stir, murmuring outside. Looking through a hole in the window, Octavius distinctly saw the contours of a big new green pickup. “Two men came down,” he claimed. “I recognized the short, bulky man who spoke only Spanish, he had a bottle in his hand. The other man, probably the one who was driving,” Octavius went on, “lit a lighter. They know how to do it, I tell you. Specialists. And I saw the flame approaching the rag. I shuddered in thinking, ‘There’s no way they’re going to do that,’ and I shouted. And I woke up my brother Brignol. I woke up my mother. The squat man’s arm relaxed and the flame made the arc of a circle coming straight at us. The bottle hit the wood on the window and I pulled back. The blast nearly burst our eardrums. The flames ran on the floor, crackling, crackling, the crackling took over everything, everywhere. We ran out to escape the fire and the suffocating smell of gasoline. And we all heard the driver throw out the words: ‘Next time, we kill you, Octavius. It’s a warning.’ I had to keep myself from wetting my pants. Because these men are terrible.”

  Then, very quietly, he told Altagrâce how, two days later, Jimmy had threatened him even more seriously: “Next time I will debase you, massisi,* before killing you.” He had said it leaning against his car, a toothpick between his lips. I wanted to ask Altagrâce to keep quiet. Stop spreading gossip. But I did not say anything. I didn’t say anything to Cocotte or Yveline either

  “Where did you meet the squat man?” “How did you know Jimmy?” Octavius had become entangled in confused explanations. In fact, Octavius had been working for Jimmy. For his mother, for the neighbors, for everybody. But no one had believed him. The next day, I met Octavius and I hated him, that snitch…

  “You’re jealous, come on!” I repeated to myself, silently, several times in row.

  So when the plane flew over Anse Bleue a second time, we had already been warned. Éliphète had seen it right. Even more than Abner. I wanted to know more. So I went hunting. On the hunt for a vandal of a man.

  The next day, I surprised Jimmy, not far from the Blue Moon, handing a package to Octavius. Jimmy saw me and ran after me to catch up. When I turned around, I did not say anything. I would have been too frightened to betray myself by explaining everything. I preferred to thicken the layers of silence that encloses everything in the tomb of forgetting. I gave into sleep as one abandons herself to death. Wasn’t I born in a shameless time?

  Despite the recommendations and warnings of the teacher, radio, and CASEC* members who came to warn us that a major hurricane was going to hit the coast, I took my sweet time. Who knows why.

  There are those big mounds of salt and foam on the sand.

  But in this twilight three days ago, I saw nothing. Nothing. Too busy trying to breathe. Too busy trying not to see everything coming next.

  “Do not do what you might regret,” my mother hammers. “Don’t do it.”

  Later, the wind blew without stopping. Ripping branches from trees. Stirring up the leaves in gusts. I thought of Pastor Fortuné’s sermons, which Ézéchiel and Oxéna related at Pentacostalist church. Noah’s Ark. And I imagined that the sea had taken the place of the sky and poured all of its water on us. I really believed that. And that soon men, women, animals, and children…

  Bursts of water from the black sky spilled over Anse Bleue and the purple sea. The wind, in all this water, unleashed itself, deepening the swirls of air and rain, making giant waves on the rocks, uprooting the trees, ripping off sheet metal, undoing thatched roofs.

  Very quickly, lightning slashed the sky like an old calabash. I pretended to listen to the advice. To return. Instead I hid behind the bayahondes at the top of the dunes.

  I fall and lose my footing. I no longer spit out water in sonorous gurgles on the surface of the water. My heart abruptly stops its free run.

  Loko, in the voice of the wind, blew the whole afternoon until I staggered, until I fell on my knees. It is one of those hurricanes with the wind that enchants and drives you mad. It rose into a crash banging against my temples. Suddenly, a pure joy assailed me. I remember a kind of drunkenness taking hold of me. I was free, in the wind. In the sea. Given to the big wild heart. Crossing the same violent eddies. I wanted to cry out: “My love, where are you? Do not be afraid. It is only the fascination of the moon. That’s all, my love.”

  And then, above my head and against my neck, two hands that force me to sink into the waves. Despite myself. Despite the breath that begins to leave me, I grab in every direction. My gestures are as abrupt as they are desperate. I struggle with all the strength of my arms, with all the strength of my legs. I struggle to the point of exhaustion. Until breath abandons me.

  But now I’m losing my footing. I drink the water until I suffocate. I collapse like an animal who is knocked down. Between my thighs, a hand, a flesh that tears me. I turn around. My astonished eyes roll up. And suddenly, the liquid darkness. Colder and colder. In that night of wind and water, he grabbed me by the shoulders and held my head under water before rushing into the bayahondes.

  Approaching Anse Bleue, despite their great fatigue, the four men walked faster. I perceive, in the distance, o
ur hut and all the others, still wrapped in the fog of the fable. All faces turned north. In the direction of the advancing cortege. Men sweat in large beads. Their arms, though robust, tremble. A dead woman, that weighs a lot.

  I hear a sort of uncontrollable sound, like something that would come from the gut of an animal being slaughtered. And which, after having dug itself out of the black hole in the deepest bones within the flesh, climbs into the chest, squeezes the throat, and spurts out of the mouth into the fresh air. My mother shouts my name very clearly in a deafening treble: “Cétouuuuuute, Cétouuuuuute.”

  Anse Bleue cries, but soon Anse Bleue will do everything to keep me from roaming around. So that everyone can very quickly think of me without being sucked into the other side. I will come back only to do them good. There is the side of grief that still belongs to life, and there are the gates of death.

  42.

  The sun had already unraveled the last shreds of clouds when Abner saw a strange procession from Pointe Sable arrive on the north side of the beach in Anse Bleue. The cry of his mother Philomène tore the air, made tatters of the sky…Dieudonné, bellowing out his grief, held himself together as best he could. Abner felt quite alone. Alone. Desperate. He waited a moment and swallowed reluctantly. His lips began to quiver, and his vision blurred. He felt a need to cry and struggled against this desire by rubbing his eyes quickly in the crook of his elbow. He went to join the procession. We saw him leave and followed. He took out his cell phone and dialed the number of the police station in Roseaux. For the first time, men of order and justice would tread the land of Anse Bleue.

  After having spoken to them, he told us that he had regained the courage that he thought had abandoned him forever. He thought of the harvest that would be more generous this year because of the irrigation works of Jean-Paul and François, because of the construction of the Pentecostal clinic that was done, because of the cooperative. All this put a little mercy in his heart. For a few seconds. Just a few seconds. He did not give up…He went on. He almost staggered.

  Then, we followed Abner, so at ease in the bayahondes that blurred the path ahead. The way to tomorrow. These thickets where we could see no way out. Unlike us, Abner, with an invisible machete, seemed to be tearing out bushes and going on. We measure our steps by his.

  43.

  My real death will begin when they wash me, cut my fingernails and a few strands of hair, which will be carefully preserved in a vial. And Dieudonné, my father, Cilianise, Fanol and all the others will entrust me with messages for those I will see or see again before they will. Dieudonné will murmur the three sacred passages into my ears. I will go alone under the waters, leaving my protective gods in the water of the calabash right next to me.

  When, after forty days, they take me out of the water, I shall at last turn my eyes toward the light, and it will be, for my people, the beginning of a companionship with them. My death will no longer be a torment. I will bandage the wounds. I will sweeten the bitterness. I will intercede with the lwas, the Invisibles.

  I would ask Altagrâce and my mother, if I could, to put me in my white dress, like Erica’s in All My Children, and put on my red, high-heeled sandals. Altagrâce, my sister, knows exactly where they are, in a trunk beneath my bed.

  I would like to arrive in Guinée, to be with the Grand Maître, wearing the dress of a queen and with feet on fire. That’s how I’m prepared. I am Fréda’s daughter.

  GLOSSARY

  *The spelling of the Creole was simplified by the author to render it more accessible to the French reader. All notes are the author’s unless otherwise noted.

  AgwéThe divinity of the sea, of oceans.

  Ancêtres marronsEscaped African slaves (trans.).

  Arbre véritableThe breadfruit tree.

  AssonA hollow calabash filled with small bones, a sort of rattle, which serves as a ritual scepter to the officiator during voodoo ceremonies.

  BadjiThe sanctuary of the voodoo temple.

  BakaAn evil creature.

  Bain de chanceA bath specially prepared to attract the favors of the divinities.

  Banane peséeFried plantains.

  Bâton gaïacA stick of guaiac wood, particularly solid.

  BatouelleA bottle.

  BayahondeA wild shrub.

  Bois-fouilléA boat built in the trunk of a tree.

  BorletteThe lottery.

  Bougie baleineA simple candle, originally made with whale fat.

  CacosRebels who resisted the American occupation of Haiti (trans.).

  CandélabreA variety of plants used to build fences in the countryside.

  CarabellaA fabric made of coarse cotton.

  CarreauxA traditional Haitian unit for measuring land, corresponding to about 3.19 acres.

  CasecThe French acronym for conseil d’administration de section communale, or Boards of Directors of Communal Sections.

  Chanson-pointeA song that obliquely comments on an event that took place in a community or a politi-cal issue.

  Cher maître, chère maîtresseA master who owns property and isn’t accountable to anyone but himself.

  Choukèt larouzéThe deputy head of a section who, before 1986, ensured order and security in the countryside.

  Chrétien-vivantA human being.

  ClairinA distilled spirit made from sugar cane.

  CoucouyeA firefly.

  CoumbiteA form of collective work, mutual assistance.

  DamballaThe serpent divinity who is often depicted alongside his wife Aida Wèdo.

  DantiThe head of a lakou, who wields great decision-making power.

  DémembréA piece of family land where the spiritual attributes of a lineage reside.

  DésouninThe ceremony that takes place after death to prepare passage to the after life. The word can also be used as an adjective meaning “disconcerted.”

  Djon-djonA black mushroom that colors rice or meat and gives them a particular taste.

  DokoA remote and clandestine place that served as a refuge for insurgents after independence.

  DonA powerful landowner.

  DrapeauA flag made of bright, glittering colors and symbolizing the protective divinities of the lakou.

  Erzuli DantòAnother counterpart to Erzuli, who symbolizes endurance and strength.

  Erzuli FrédaThe divinity of love, beautiful, coquettish, sensual and lavish; one of the three most im-portant female divinities.

  Femme-jardinA common law wife charged with cultivating a parcel of land for a master.

  FranginenAn individual born in Africa who survived the revolution of 1804.

  GaguèreA highly prized space reserved for cockfighting.

  GédéThe divinity who symbolizes life and death.

  GourdeHaitian currency.

  Gran BwaThe divinity of trees and forests.

  Grand MaîtreThe name of God in the voodoo religion.

  GriotFried pork.

  GrouilladesSwaying hips.

  GuayabelleThe typical shirt of the Caribbean (guayabera).

  GuildiveA small distillery.

  GuinéeIn voodoo, after a person dies, his or her soul returns to freedom in Africa, in Guinea (trans.).

  HabitationA large property.

  HouganA voodoo prayer.

  HounsiAn initiate into voodoo.

  JardinA field or a property belonging to a farmer.

  JeunesseWoman of ill-repute, prostitute.

  KabichUnleavened bread.

  KamokenOpponents to the Duvaliers, father and son, from 1957 to 1986.

  KanzoA voodoo initiation rite that protects a person from being burned by fire.

  KasavA cake made of cassava flour.

  LabalennThe Haitian divinity of water.

  LakouThe dwellings of an extended family.

  LaloWild spinach.

  LambiA conch used as a horn by peasants.

  Lampe bobècheA receptacle where a wick is dipped in oil.

  LasirennThe divinity who pulls the dead under water to take them to Af
rica.

  LegbaA divinity who opens the way and is invoked at the beginning of religious services to open the way to other divinities.

  LokoThe divinity of the wind.

  LwaA divinity in the voodoo religion.

  Majò jonSomeone who, in the rara carnival (see below), juggles a stick or a cross made of four branch-es of equal length.

  MamboA voodoo priestess.

  MantègueLard.

  MapouA sacred tree with big trunk and deep roots, with the same function as the baobab tree in Africa.

  MassisiA homosexual.

  MateloteA mistress.

  Mèt tètThe divinity most important to a person.

  NordéThe wind of north.

  OgouThe divinity of war and fire, whose Catholic double is Saint James the Great.

  PailleA name for marijuana.

  Paquet wangaA bundle filled with ingredients containing magical powers.

  PétroA Créole divinity, not of African origin, deemed violent.

  PlaçageThe most common type of marital relationship, a form of concubinage.

  PointThe power given to somebody by a hougan or a mambo.

  Poto-mitanThe central pillar to a voodoo colonnade, through which the divinities descend.

  Priyé deyòAll of the prayers which precede a religious service.

  Ralé min nin viniA magic powder used to attract somebody.

  RangéIntended to do harm.

  RapadouBrown sugar.

  RaraA carnival in the countryside that starts after Ash Wednesday.

  RigoiseA whip made from a blackjack.

  RoiSomebody who presides over the family clan and is generally the leader of the lakou.

  SimbiOne of the divinities of the sea.

  SonA cuban dance from the beginning of the twentieth century.

  Tambour assòtòrThe largest of the drums.

  Tap-tapShared taxi or bus.

  TchakaVery rich dishes prepared with millet, beans and other vegetables.

  TrempéA distilled liquor steeped with herbs and spices.