They sat together in the lone room with a roof, bathed, during the day, by light filtered to a rainbow kaleidoscope of hues by a stained-glass window. When not crying or praying, Natasha passed the time listening to Monsignor Dorélien, wondering how she screwed up her shot at heaven so completely when life’s fragility should have given her better ways to spend the finite time she had. How could you have forgotten to be grateful for the loves in your life? How could you abuse them so? Monsignor Dorélien, for his part, simply wished the child would eat something.
You should go out and find him, the priest said out of the blue one afternoon.
You should rest, Natasha said.
What’s today’s date? He asked.
February fourteenth, she said.
Ah, it’s Valentine’s Day, he said. Is that why you’re so grumpy? You miss him, don’t you?
Who?
The boy.
You mean, my husband.
No, I mean the man you love more than Jesus.
Father, you blaspheme. That’s not funny.
Monsignor Dorélien started to laugh, but the mirth got blocked by his collapsed lungs and reverted to a cough, a choked rattle so violent it scared away the black vultures that had been waiting on top of the church’s pink walls for his corpse.
You should leave me be, the priest whispered once his coughing fit subsided, exhausted. I’m done. I’ll die as soon as your sad eyes turn away.
I can’t, the young girl whispered, eyes welling with affection.
The priest, who was gray like a damp sheet and so close to death you could almost see the angels standing guard check their watches, lifted a trembling hand and placed it on Natasha’s hand. The girl grasped the hand so hard it almost hurt him. This is new, the priest thought. Since Natasha Robert had been a child she had one quirk: she hated to be touched. She was a wonderfully pleasant girl. She was quick, kind, and pretty, with flowing heaps of curly hair that attracted people’s attention like bees to honey. She also had the pretty girl’s desire to deflect attention, to be seen as a madonna and not a doll or trophy. Of all the orphans and young people Monsignor Dorélien had taken under his wing in his sixty-year career, Natasha Robert was unique in that she asked for precious little—from the church, God, or her fellow man, especially men. Instead, she was a giver, an eager-to-pleaser. She gave kindness, inspiration, sympathy, and humor. She strove to give her community beauty. She yearned for security and the comfort of reliable routine, like everyone else, but she did not actively seek it from the people around her. We are all children and would prefer to behave like children at our happiest, the priest knew, but this child, by fate or nurture, worked hard to hide her inner child, even when she had been a child and had every right to petulance and selfishness. Once she entered the cathedral that fateful day as a preteen, she developed into something of an actress. She liked to pretend to play the role of the charitable adult in charge that most of us often avoided or performed clumsily. She was a sweetheart at it as long as you didn’t touch her.
Something had changed in the child since the disaster, Monsignor Dorélien feared. When she found him buried alive in his office in the back of the cathedral, she had summoned all her strength, and God’s grace with more than a few deargodhelpmes, to pull cement blocks off him as quickly as she could. Which was natural and typical of Natasha, Monsignor Dorélien knew. What was new was the desperation and pitch of her cries for help once her strength began to falter. Those cries were heartrending. Monsignor Dorélien almost wished he had died so he could have been spared hearing the anguish in the child’s voice that day. The men who eventually joined her in saving what little of him was left under the unbearable embrace of the massive slabs of granite seemingly doubled their efforts to quiet the hysterical child.
For a long while afterward, the girl stared at the wounded priest in dumbfounded silence. She seemed elated that her prayers for his rescue had come true, but she couldn’t understand why her prayers for others’, notably Alain’s, did not. The ideas of atheists sneaked up on her. Life was just a game. Life had no deeper meaning for humans than it had for animals. There was no heaven, and there certainly was no hell. There was no God. There was good luck and there was bad luck. Luck was to be prepared for and seized or frittered away. Bad luck was meant to be endured and shrugged off. Everything passed with time. There are an awful lot of coincidences. Blame yourself for your poverty. Credit your genes, genius, and moxie for your wealth. Hate Dad. Beauty was mathematical. Making money was art. What money bought best were toys. Evolve or get out of the way. What about the conscience? she thought. What did the atheists have to say about the source of pangs of guilt, and the soul, that stupid, bigger-than-you essence of yourself that craved harmony and love with everything and everyone in its environment? Where do they seek comfort in the days after everything they believed in, like justice and love, has fallen apart or disappeared altogether? Things don’t fall apart just in Africa. They fall apart everywhere. Everywhere. Anytime.
I wasn’t ready for the apocalypse, she said.
What apocalypse? Monsignor Dorélien said.
You know, the earthquake, Father, the slight twitch of dirt that killed almost everyone we loved in the city the other day.
Child, please. That wasn’t the apocalypse. Do you believe that after the apocalypse, you’d still have the luxury to sit around and feel sorry for yourself? Here I thought you’d finally lost the rose-colored glasses you wore all the time.
But, Father, if that disaster wasn’t the apocalypse, an end of all things, what was it? Punishment? That’s what some people believe, you know.
A test, child. Goudou-goudou was a test. That’s all it was. A test. You’ve read your share of Bible stories. You know God puts the people he loves the most through the worst sacrifices. If you ask me, this is one of the easiest tests we’ve faced in a long time.
The priest chuckled, then coughed.
Why do you say that, Father?
Well, for one, it wasn’t subtle. It was so loud I still can’t hear anyone more than a meter away from me. Every Haitian alive knows it happened, got its message, and responded to it in a way that revealed the limits and strengths of their character and faith. They now know full well how to improve their standing with God and Jesus based on their behavior. Jesus still loves them, but they will find lying about who they are and could be to themselves much harder. Second, the damage the earthquake caused was mostly physical! Rebounding from physical loss, even on that scale, should be a piece of cake for a people who so ably recovered from decades of slavery. The old Port-au-Prince was a city they inherited. The new city will be the one they create for themselves. It’s a rare opportunity to start over fresh. You don’t get many of those in this life. Can they? Can you? It’s not a bad question. You could be facing worse challenges, you know.
Intellectually, that makes sense. Emotionally the whole thing is baffling.
I know it is. Which leads to my third point: the earthquake was the latest sign that God loves Haiti.
He what?
He loves you. Of course God loves Haitians. Why else would He encourage us to keep our faces pressed against the windows of great American and European wealth and grandeur, so close yet so cruelly far, like a nation of Holly Golightlys? Why else would He chin-check us every couple of years with trying natural disasters—an earthquake here, a few hurricanes there, with a dash of floods? Why else would He constantly tempt our rich and powerful to be corrupted by short-term profits in an almost barren world? Finally, why else, dear child, would God make our life so hard yet so sweet on an island so beautiful yet so, so fragile? Think about it: The moral of most stories in the Bible is that God’s chosen people, Adam, Eve, Abraham, the whole lot, will constantly be asked by Him to make the greatest personal sacrifices possible to honor His mysterious glory. The way we Haitians suffer misfortune, deprivation, and disproportionate foreign enmity is right in line with the fate of chosen peoples throughout history. Biblically speaking
anyway. God may love us too much, I’d say.
The old priest was either completely daft, Natasha thought, or taking her to a deeper understanding of things than she could handle at her age and in her current frazzled state. Before Monsignor Dorélien could continue his sermon for one, a boom filled the room. A strong breeze from an opened-and-slammed door rushed in. Candles flickered. Dorélien gave Natasha the nod to go see who had entered the church. Natasha walked into the large main hall and stood next to the altar. For the first time in a long time, she felt no fear. One reason she’d sought refuge inside a severely damaged church despite public warnings for all Haitians to avoid going inside buildings before they were inspected by the authorities on account of the risk of aftershocks was because she secretly dug the idea of being killed by a cathedral’s tumbling walls. There was something artful about getting buried alive by a cathedral. Maybe even having her head crushed or heart speared by a toppled crucifix.
In the church that evening, however, Natasha was in no mood to die. She felt fine, with the first glimmers of inspiration for her life’s next act. A test? she thought. She liked tests. Miraculously, the tears that seemed permanently painted in the corner of her eyes had dissipated. She turned her back to the altar and faced . . . a mob. About twenty young men holding candles and megaphones and shovels in their hands stood at the end of the cathedral’s long hall. They looked to be in various stages of exhaustion. They were laborers, gravediggers, probably, and their day had been long. Once they saw her, they erupted in song. They sang a hymn of beauty and optimism with such vigor Natasha clutched her chest:
O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee:
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
When through the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze:
And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin:
When Christ shall come with shouts of acclamation
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!
Then I shall bow in humble adoration,
And there proclaim, my God, how great Thou art!
The young men sang like angels. Their clothes stank to high heavens. Yes, they were gravediggers. The foul smell that came from their sweat as they sang confirmed it. Natasha had heard rumors about a group of men from the outskirts of Pétionville near a soccer field in a valley. After the earthquake, these men had organized themselves into a brigade that took charge of policing and protecting survivors living in camps and finding help. Incredibly, they earned people’s trust by burying, free of charge, the stacks of dead, often decomposing, corpses that littered the neighborhoods. We have to do it for ourselves was their motto. Their leader this night stepped toward Natasha, but not too far forward, for he knew he carried the stench of hundreds of dead bodies. Jean-Richard Souvenir, he said. Natasha hesitated to say her name. They might recognize it, and she’d jeopardize one of the myriad security protocols of the first lady of Haiti. Bah, they probably don’t read the papers much, she thought.
Natasha Robert, she said.
We’re sorry for disturbing you, madame.
That was some entrance.
We sing when we enter a room at night to let people around know we mean no harm.
Outside, the day had slipped into night without Natasha’s noticing. A full moon hung overhead, silver and cheesy. Natasha felt hungry and horny for the first time in a long time; the appetites of the normal had taken over her body where depression had ruled. Fleetingly, Natasha wondered what making love to twenty strapping young gravediggers in the church’s pews would feel like.
That hymn was written from a nineteenth-century Swedish poem, Souvenir said.
So they do know how to read, Natasha thought. Shit. They know who I am.
Come in, she said. Sit, sit. Make yourselves comfortable. You look tired. You must be exhausted. I’ll get you some water. I have no food, just some bread.
That’s OK, Souvenir said. We picked up some fritailles before we came. We don’t want to trouble you. We only wish to bunk for the night.
There are marchands de fritailles working already?
Yes, ma’am.
This was the first good news from the city outside the cathedral Natasha had gotten in days, too many days for her to remember. Small fried food stands were running! That’s terrific news. Was it possible that birds would soon start singing again, lovers start caressing and arguing, and live bands start inspiring slow-dancing to return as the national pastime? Over fried pork chunks, plantains, and sugared water, the men ate in silence and shared what they could with Natasha. When the first bellies felt satisfied, their owners began to banter. They joked about some of the most elaborate funerals they remembered. They talked of tombs that were bigger and more stylishly designed than many houses. How common it was to see a woman who lived in a shack be buried in a minicastle.
When Natasha chimed in, mouth full and fingers greasy, she wondered why, with all the funerals that were surely taking place around town these days, no one came to the cathedral for services. A silence fell with the thud of an iron gate. One man got up and walked away, disappearing into one of the pitch-black corners of the church. Another did the same. Many lowered their heads or looked away. Most looked to Souvenir to speak. The moment was awkward. You could hear rats skitter for crumbs across the marble floor.
First we tried to identify the dead, Souvenir said. His voice echoed around the church. We really tried, but there were too many. The smell was making everyone sick. It wasn’t just us. The government, business owners, everyone who owned a truck, it seemed, helped, pitched in, but there were too many corpses. Too, too many. The best we could do was keep a running tally on sheets of paper as we scooped corpses with loaders and deposited them in dump trucks.
Dump trucks?
Yes, dump trucks.
One of the men flung a beer bottle against a wall in disgust. Mon Dieu, forgive us, another said. Another crossed himself.
To be fair, some families did come retrieve bodies along the way, Souvenir continued. Those that could afford to bought pretty caskets and draped them with flowers. They drove their dead themselves to a crematory or family plots, God bless them.
Amen, said an older man sitting in the pew next to Jean-Richard Souvenir.
Those who had no money burned the bodies themselves, Souvenir said. Initially we tried to wrap all the dead tightly in pink and white sheets stripped from beds or salvaged from the rubble, and then carefully placing them on sidewalks for loading. Soon, even relatives who had spent days digging up their dead were too tired to care about what happened to them. They placed them on the sidewalks. We picked them up and went looking for places, and then we buried the bodies. We did what we could. It wasn’t pretty.
And some people criticized us for it, said the man who had walked away upon return. His face lit up close by yellow candlelight. Us!
The prime minister said the country cleared some hundred thousand bodies in the first five days alone. Can you imagine a hundred thousand dead bodies in one city like that? And we barely scratched the surface. Léogâne’s dead have barely been touched. There are more bodies all over the streets.
So many more, someone else said.
Who knows how many.
The government really did try to figure out how to best handle all the dead bodies after goudou-goudou. We all wante
d to find an alternative to putting bodies on loaders and having loaders put bodies in trucks, and having trucks take bodies to improvised dump sites, like so much trash. Those people deserved better. But the bodies were beginning to decompose, to smell. We were facing a choice: leave them in the streets to rot where you would never be able to identify them and run the risk of making people living around them sick, or leave with them and bury them wherever we could, as well as we could. We all decided to put the safety of those people who are still alive ahead of better treatment of the dead.
Who gave you the right, huh? the Angry Man said, angrily. Who?
The Fort National cemetery was quickly filled beyond capacity, Souvenir said after a sympathetic glance at Angry Man. There were bodies on top of bodies on top of tombs.
All the men shook their heads at the memory. One looked like he wanted to literally shake the memory out of his head. Natasha listened with her mouth open.
The earthquake demolished a lot of tombs, so what we did was, we broke into tombs to create mass graves. It was the simplest solution for us to quickly remove the bodies from the streets.
Angry Man sucked his teeth loudly.
Some people are upset, Souvenir said. The government buried five thousand bodies in a landfill in Titanyen, then the people living in the neighborhood near it started protesting. The government had to quickly find another location while trucks loaded with bodies stood still. The government designated a new site. People started dumping bodies there, on the road near there, on the road to go there, everywhere, without even burying them. We’ve been burying those bodies to protect the locals from diseases. We all wish things worked out differently. Jesus Christ, why couldn’t we have more body bags at least?
Angry Man walked away again and disappeared into the darkness on the other side of the cathedral. His sobs wafted through the pews seconds later. The sobs were heavy and watery.
God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) Page 15