Kannjawou

  ANSELME IS DEAD. Wodné had a doctor come, a friend of a friend, and seemed very proud of having contributed, although to what I don’t know. After a short exam, the doctor said, “It’s the end,” and left. An hour before, Mam Jeanne had said the same thing. But she had stayed so that there would be one more person. In his delirium, Anselme might have thought that the six people surrounding him in his little room were a crowd come for one last kannjawou to celebrate his accomplishments. Maybe he thought that Mam Jeanne was a mambo* officiating over his bedside, his daughters were hounsis*, and Popol, Wodné and I were notables from neighboring towns who had come bearing messages of peace and to attend the party. Delirium releases us, allowing us to see everything as something else that fits in better with our dreams. Maybe he thought that the little potted plants that Sophonie had placed on the windowsill and watered every day were big mapous* that no nor’easter or storm or drought could topple down. Maybe he had returned to a time that he himself had never experienced, at the beginning of the first Occupation, when—as Mam Jeanne says—the streams weren’t just memories of which only the names remained, but a beneficence that dampened the very hearts of the rocks, making them softer. A time when parakeets and agouti cats and barn owls and geckoes defied man’s rule and displayed themselves flagrantly, for there were so many of them they weren’t afraid. Anselme is dead. Without any celebration, except in his dreams. There wasn’t any religious ceremony. The girls agreed on this point. There won’t be a journey home, either. It would cost too much to bury him in his childhood land, in the Arcahaie region. It’s sad for the living when they don’t have the means to honor the wishes of the dead. It was done very quickly, the day after his death. Early in the morning there was a short visit to the funeral home to prepare his body. Then we returned to his home so that people could come pay their respects. Halefort came with some of his men. Mam Jeanne. Joseph the book-binder and Jasmin the shoemaker. And the neighborhood kids, with Hans and Vladimir leading the way. Lots of people. Small business owners. Neighbors. Old people who know it will soon be their turn. Géralda, the fortune teller whose business had boomed when Anselme had gotten sick and who had brought other members of the profession with her. It’s not very far from the house to the cemetery. Halefort and his men said that they would take the coffin to the tomb. And it was they who sealed it, prepared the mortar, and laid the bricks. Then Halefort wrote something with his index finger in the mortar before it dried. An hour later you could read it: PINGA—DON’T TOUCH—in big, clumsy letters like a child’s. But no one will ever touch that coffin, apart from the moths. The street was lively, every door open. Two groups of children, led by Hans and Vladimir, had hung banners from every roof in sight, which were now flapping in the wind: “Anselme, we’ll never forget you.” Mam Jeanne and other women were serving coffee and tea in their homes to anyone who wanted some, along with toasted sweet bread with peanut butter. It’s a funny street, Burial Street. Maybe, as Joëlle says, it doesn’t know how to help people live—but ever since it’s watched the dead from other streets pass by, it’s reserved the right to give preferential treatment to its own.

  EVER SINCE ANSELME’S DEATH, MAM JEANNE HAS BEEN COMPLAINING ABOUT HER GOOD HEALTH. She says that she doesn’t want to see young people die. For her, Anselme is sort of young, like all those who weren’t alive during the first Occupation. But Anselme has been dying ceaselessly for ten years, never moving from his bed. Dying isn’t always the worst thing. The evening that Anselme died, after Mam Jeanne left, the five of us found ourselves alone with the departed. Except he wasn’t participating in our silent conversation. The five, all together. It was the first time in a long time. And probably the last. You know those types of things without having to say them. Ever since then, protests against the Occupation forces have been increasing. Risk premiums are becoming more important, there’s a changeover in personnel, and life goes on. In our own lives, just a small part of the whole, Popol took over leading the Cultural Center. He has many plans and has so far succeeded in mobilizing a lot of people, allowing him to increase the number of activities. He’s gotten artists and researchers from other neighborhoods and backgrounds to come, and it makes the members happy to see new faces and hear new voices. When an outsider isn’t coming to kill you or to teach you a lesson, you can be poor and welcoming. He also organizes field trips. And so some kids from our street have been able to see the sea up close. In the mornings, he still teaches classes in the middle schools and high schools. That pays very badly and he has to run from one school to the other. By the afternoon, he’s already tired. I don’t know how long his energy and convictions will last. Sophonie left the family house to Joëlle. However modest the little house and the few gourdes* in a savings account may be, she prefers to live without an inheritance. She moved in with Popol, but given their work schedules, they really only see each other on Wednesdays. Sophonie now works for a women’s organization and often travels outside the city and to rough neighborhoods. On Wednesdays, she pitches in at Kannjawou. Popol goes to fetch her, just as he’s always done. There are still plenty of people. Monsieur Vallières still shows up, but he talks less and less and it’s hard to understand what he’s saying. He must be furious on the inside, considering that he’s always complained about having children who haven’t mastered complex sentences and who can’t articulate well. The owner drinks whisky neat, just like before, and answers the telephone less and less often. As for me, I’m living at Mam Jeanne’s house. At her request. “You have to give the lovers some space.” But those lovers often invite others to share a meal with them. And if one evening they were to find a young woman sick on the street, not knowing what to do with herself, they would make space for her without asking for anything in return. I think that Mam Jeanne is tired of not having anyone to talk to other than her old cat. She misses the little professor. In a way, she’s sort of asked me to take his place. We talk a lot in the evenings. Joëlle is working on her thesis so that she can get a scholarship in order to “leave and live.” This angers Wodné, who’s doing the same thing without daring to admit it. He talks just as much as before, dispensing ideas and notes, and keeps doing things to his hair in an attempt to find an identity. Whenever I see him, I smile at the thought he had had about himself when the wind had brought us close to the dead. What a terrible thing fear is! I hope that Joëlle will finish first, get her scholarship, and leave him to his fears. If he’s the one to leave first, she’ll suffer from having sacrificed everything for a jailer who only wanted to escape her. But I still don’t know if Joëlle knows how to suffer. As for me, in my room at Mam Jeanne’s house, I scribble things down at night. I’m not writing about the banks and streets of the old city anymore, nor about the cemetery and its occupants. I’m not going to submit a thesis or paper to some jury. I got in touch with Monsieur Laventure. He suggested that I call him something else, that I not be so formal, but I can’t help it. I’m still reading to the children. Once, I didn’t prepare anything to read and I had to improvise. I confessed to Mam Jeanne that evening that I had had to make things up off the top of my head, telling them all sorts of nonsense, mixing it all together. She reproached me for not having given enough credit to the children’s intelligence. If they appreciated your story, it’s because it was a good one. She advised me to write the story down, and that I’d better have that party. I’ve taken up the habit of going to drink a beer in a bar after speaking with Mam Jeanne. Not far from our street. But where from time to time, people I don’t know come in. And every time the door opens and a new face appears, I say to myself: you’d better have that party. Yes, Mam Jeanne, better have it. But with who? With who?

  IT’S TRUE THAT THE STORY I’VE COBBLED TOGETHER FOR THE CHILDREN, BRINGING TOGETHER ALL THE CHARACTERS I MET AS A CHILD AND IN THE LITTLE PROFESSOR’S LIBRARY AND CONNECTING THEM TO “REAL PEOPLE,” SEEMS TO PLEASE THEM. It pleases me, too. And Mam Jeanne. She praises it. Corrects it. Even if I don’t dare believe in it too much. It’s a constantly
changing story without an end that I’ve titled Kannjawou. The country, town, and village change. It’s a story of everywhere. There are humans in it. Every side is adorned with a cornucopia. The cemeteries become gardens. No one orders, no one enforces. All the borders are open to anyone who crosses them with open hands and a heart on their sleeve. And everything ends with a big party, called by many different names. Here, we call it a kannjawou. Lots of different characters pass by. I see Joëlle and Sophonie come out of the water together. All the Joëlles and all the Sophonies from every street in every city, moving forward, free. And little Wodnés, freed from their fears and their solitude. Popols, Hanses, and Vladimirs, drawing cities that can be lived in with enough space for lovers. Enough happiness so that everyone can say to everyone else, I’ve got enough happiness for two. So have some. If you want it, I can give it to you. I see Hans and Vladimir teach the soldiers that if it’s better to lounge around doing nothing and playing spinning tops than it is to come to other people’s countries with bombs and guns. To say to them: If you want to be brave, follow me. I’ll bring you to the middle of the wind. And Anselme, who is less sorry to have lost the land that he wanted for himself than he is to not have shared it with all the people of Arcahaie. And the drums. And the vaccines. And Monsieur Régis instructing Isabella: Stop watching over every penny. Let loose. Come. Dance with me. I love you. And all the Sandrines going from city to city, not to conquer or to whine about small problems but because of joy. All of them invited to the party, with the condition that they reciprocate. They go, go, go this way, the men, the women. A big party, for everyone equally. And Monsieur Vallières: “I’m done with the sad alcohol. I want to drink celebratory alcohol. Superior. Inferior. All of that is bullshit.” And me, the little scribe, recording the abundance of happiness in my notebook. And the little professor, tossing books from his library to anyone who passes by in a spirit of celebration. And Joëlle and Sophonie, still, forever. I look at them. They smile. I love you. I love you.

  2.Marc-Endy Simon, Je ne pardonne pas au malheur, Atelier Jeudi soir, 2011.

  GLOSSARY

  SYLLABAIRE: A reading instruction book with a gray cover that used to be very popular in the Haitian education system.

  AKASAN: A beverage made with milk, cornmeal, vanilla, and cinnamon, popular with the working class and often consumed as a breakfast replacement.

  CHARLEMAGNE PÉRALTE (1895–1919): The leader of the military resistance movement against the United States occupation of Haiti, which took place from 1915–1934. After he was captured and executed by the American army, his body was crucified on a door and photographed. The photo was reproduced thousands of times and distributed throughout the country via helicopter by the American army. The U.S. military also threw his body into a pit that was at least ten feet deep.

  BABACO: Synonym for kannjawou.

  BOKOR: Voodoo priest.

  MAMBO: Priestess.

  HOUNSIS: A choir of women in Haitian Voodoo ritual.

  GOURDE: The national Haitian currency.

  PIASTRE: Another name for Haitian money.

  MAPOU: A giant tree, related to the baobab.

  VACCINES: Wind instruments.

  LYONEL TROUILLOT is a novelist and poet in French and Haitian Creole, as well as a journalist and professor of French and Creole literature in Port-au-Prince. In addition to publishing poetry, he also writes song lyrics for such musical artists as Tambou Libète and Manno Charlemagne. Trouillot is a co-editor of the journal Cahiers du Vendredi, and along with his sister Evelyne Trouillat and her daughter Nadève Ménard, he founded the writers organization Pré-Texte.[2] In 2014 he co-wrote, with Raoul Peck and Pascal Bonitzer, the script for Peck’s feature film Murder in Pacot. Trouillot was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2010. For his novel La Belle Amour humaine, he was awarded the Grand Prix du Roman Métis (2011), the Geneva Book Fair Literary Prize (2012), and the Gitanjali Literary Prize (2012). Having lived in exile in Miami for several years, he has now returned to Haiti and lives in Port-au-Prince.