Too Close to the Wind

by Richard Attree

  We walked a short distance through the rainforest until we came to a group of huts. Children were playing and a few chickens, goats, pigs and dogs wandered around. The usual scratchy Merengue riffs and delicious aromas hung in the humid air.

  I noticed, with a wry smile, that some of the shacks had incorporated windsurfing components in their construction. Broken masts had become supporting beams, torn sails patched up holes in the palm-thatched roofs, delaminated boards made great tables. I thought how cool it was to recycle these discarded toys, my tribe’s unwanted carbon, mono-film, and fibreglass, to become essential components in the fabric of everyday life.

  “Mi pueblo” Nicole said, a measure of pride in her voice.

  She nodded to her daughter and Jacqueline ran off to play with her friends and their animals. We sat down outside one of the huts. It was painted every shade of blue: from the turquoise of the ocean, with a few leaping dolphins, to the deep purple of the night sky, complete with a graphic, laughing man-in-the-moon. Someone here was an artist and it was confirmed by a stack of canvases propped up against the wall.

  I put the Master’s letter and package on the table—which on closer inspection appeared to be a classic Naish thruster wave-board supported on a broken boom. Nicole went inside, returned with a beer for me and opened the letter. I sipped my drink and watched a series of emotions animate her face as she read it ... initially, recognition—she glanced from the letter to me almost as if she’d been expecting both; then surprise—she looked at the Master’s package as if it might be about to explode (something that had worried me as well, given his use of the term: ‘target’); and finally, resignation as she read his last instructions and nodded—sadly, it seemed to me.

  She put the letter on the table and stared into space. I sipped my beer and allowed the moment to stretch out. It was wonderfully tranquil here after the bedlam of Cabarete—just the faint sounds of children, animals and domestic bliss. Even the Merengue was muted, pianissimo.

  Some kind of parrot squawked rudely in the trees, jolting Nicole from her reverie. She folded the letter and put it in her pocket, picked up the package and asked me, abruptly:

  “What day is today?”

  “Sunday” I replied, surprised how quickly she could forget.

  “No, not day ... how you say: ¿Cuál es la fecha de hoy? Ah, oui ... what is the date today?”

  I told her: “November the first.”

  She nodded, thoughtfully, as if memorising it, and muttered something under her breath: “Ah, oui, Día de Muertos!”—at least I think that’s what she said.

  I waited for her to explain the significance, but instead she asked me how I knew the Master. I told her my story, or at least an edited version. She listened carefully, nodding, occasionally asking for clarification. It was dark by the time I’d finished and I’d sank a few more beers. I asked her to reciprocate and tell me her own story but she sighed and told me it was getting late, they must eat and sleep—tomorrow was Monday and school started early.

  She called out: “Jacqueline, ici maintenant!” Her daughter came running and they spoke in some kind of French Caribbean dialect.

  “Oui, c’est créole we are speaking” she explained, smiling at my puzzled expression. “Now, I sorry, but come back tomorrow. You eat with us and I explain you about the Master, our story.”

  I thanked her and agreed to return the next day. Apart from anything else I was still owed the second half of my fee, which I assumed was included in the package I’d just delivered.

  Then I followed the path back through the jungle and danced my way along Cabarete’s crazy main street to the Windsurf Hotel. Manic Merengue pumped out everywhere but I was exhausted. I drifted off to sleep with salsa-on-speed running riot in my head.

  7

  Voodoo Child

  The next day I repeated my routine: a leisurely breakfast, jog on the beach while waiting for the wind to wake up, and a fantastic session playing in the waves on the reef. Then lunch in a chiringuito followed by a siesta, shower, and a few beers with my friend, the windsurfing barman. I’d shouted “hola hombre” to him on the water earlier and we’d shared a wave, grinning manically at each other. I finished the afternoon with a stroll down the main street, along the path, to Nicole’s little hut in the jungle.

  She greeted with French style, planting a kiss on each cheek. Jacqueline smiled shyly from behind her mother’s skirt. A couple of dogs emerged from the little house and welcomed me warmly, slobbering over me in their own version of kisses. Nicole called to them: “Legba, Simbi ... siéger! Bons chiens. Aller! ¡Vamos!”

  “Interesting names” I said, “I never heard them before ...”

  “They are names of spirits” she muttered, “names with power, from my home. One day I explain you.”

  She shooed the dogs away and they scampered off to chase some chickens. Jacqueline went with them to join her friends playing around the communal well at the centre of the pueblo. The children’s happy voices mingled with the dogs excited barks, chickens’ clucks, pigs’ snuffles, parrots squawking in the trees, scratchy Merengue guitars, delicious aromas ...

  I thought how fortunate these people were. They may not have many possessions but they had a community. The children could play safely, the dogs could wander freely, no-one agonised about ‘health and safety’. They were living a pared-down life, without even electricity, but they made the most of what little they had. Nicole seemed to read my mind:

  “We no have much. We try to look after each other, but many problems here: much diseases and no money to pay doctor when childrens sick. The houses are not strong. When hurricanes come it is terrible here. There is no work and no money for education to get work. This is why I help with teaching ...”

  She tailed off into a melancholy silence. Clearly, I’d over-romanticised the picture of an idyllic unspoilt life in the jungle. Nicole was like me though: an optimist, a survivor ... and someone who enjoyed their food. She soon snapped out of the sadness and bustled me towards her kitchen.

  “I cook dinner for you now. You like chicken, plantain, rice and beans, no?”

  I nodded enthusiastically. It was just what I needed after several hours ripping up waves on the reef.

  “Bueno, ‘cos that all I got!” she said, with a shrug-smile familiar from my own repertoire.

  We went inside her little hut. You could call the interior ‘open plan’ or use my own description: ‘pared down’, perhaps even ‘minimalist’ … but only if you were being ironic as well as pretentious. There was just room for a table—again constructed from an old windsurfing board, and a couple of rickety chairs. I sat down, carefully. She opened a bottle of Tropical beer for me and placed a plastic bag on the table next to it.

  “The Master, he put money for you in the parcel.”

  She counted out a wadge of US dollars from the bag and handed them to me—the balance of my fee. I thanked her and put the money in my pocket. I had fulfilled my obligations to the Master now. Job done.

  “He is giving money to me also, for helping you. In his letter he tell me you are starting a new life in la República Dominicana and I must teach you about the country, the peoples.”

  I shrugged.

  “He say you are running from things in your past—peoples from your country. You need, how-you-say, move on?”

  Again I shrugged, wary of where this was going.

  “This is true for me also. I escape from my country, Haiti, from bad peoples there. This is why I am afraid when I see you yesterday. I think you maybe un tipo malo.”

  I sighed. “Yes, well I’m glad we’ve cleared that up now. I’m just the messenger and you know what they say … ?”

  “—” She looked at me blankly.

  “You know: don’t shoot the messenger and maybe he won’t shoot you … ?”

  Still no reaction. She was busy preparing the food now, conjuring up a meal in the tiny kitchen.

  “So, Nicole, tell me about your work here” I asked
her.

  “When I come here to the pueblo there is no school for the local childrens. I ask the mayor of Cabarete and he say it possible the government make a school here in the jungle, but no possible money for a teacher.”

  She frowned as she chopped the vegetables, wielding the knife as if it was los tipos malos she was chopping up.

  “I say OK. No problema. I no teacher but I help my daughter learn read and write Spanish, French, a leetle English, numbers, art ...”

  She smiled at Jacqueline who’d joined us at the table, tempted by the delicious aromas that were now wafting from the hut.

  “El alcalde, the mayor, he say bueno—is possible a school … if I am the teacher.”

  She chucked the vegetables into a pan of boiling water dismissively, as if it was the mayor she wanted to boil alive.

  “I tell him: OK, I teach the childrens but I no happy! I’m not a teacher, I am an artist, a painter.” She gestured to a pile of canvases in the corner. “I struggle to earn enough to live and now he want me to be like how-you-say: charity?”

  I picked up one of the canvases and complimented her. It was full of local colour. At the top was the ocean, waves on the reef, sails and kites, the beach fringed with palm trees, some with kids climbing for coconuts; at the bottom: her pueblo in the jungle, with children and assorted animals. She’d even included some of the cannibalised windsurfing components in her depiction of the huts.

  She smiled at my compliment but her smile was tinged with irony:

  “These are my tourist paintings. I sell them on the beach so we can eat. Jacqueline is helping me make them.”

  Her daughter smiled shyly.

  “My own work is different. Come, I show you ...”

  I followed her into the hut’s only other room—their bedroom. There, on the wall above her bed, was a large portrait of a powerful black man surrounded by various objects, set against a backdrop of a dark, stormy sky. The man was looking out of the picture with an intense, cruel stare and he had a vicious blood-red scar on his cheek. There was a brutality about him. The objects seemed to be floating or flying around the man, circling him—or perhaps they emanated from his imagination. Some were ethnic, primitive: an African-looking mask, a drum, a machete, and others were modern: a mobile phone, cigarette lighter, car keys.

  I stared at the painting. There was something familiar about the style. I couldn’t put my finger on it but I could see what she meant. This was completely different from her simple, colourful ‘tourist paintings’. It had a dark, brooding power and it was radical—neither figurative nor abstract, more dreamlike, hallucinatory, magical even—as if the artist had endued each object with significance, power.

  I racked my brain, searching my limited knowledge of art for the influences—possibly cubism, or perhaps surrealism? No, neither. The phrase: ‘Magical Realism’ came to mind. I’d seen art like this before but I couldn’t place it. Was it the colours, or the composition? I voiced some of these thoughts, including my Magical Realism label and asked what had been in her mind?

  She smiled and inclined her head to one side, looking at the painting as a dog might.

  “Interesting, your ideas Malcolm, but my picture no have these things. They are for the European artists. My work is exploring my own culture. It comes from Africa originally. We call it Vodou and you say ‘Voodoo’. But you are right about the objects in my painting—they have power. You call it ‘magic’ and we say ‘essence’ or ‘spirit’.”

  She went on to explain how her painting worked on two levels: superficially, as ‘art’—an object for someone like me to look at, think about, perhaps put on the wall of a gallery. But it had a deeper purpose … The combination of these particular ‘power-objects’, placed around the human subject in exactly this composition, functioned either to protect or control the subject, almost like putting an invisible force-field around him. Only someone with the ‘Knowledge’ would see this other level in the painting.

  This was intriguing. The dual function idea reminded me of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’—the famous film of Oscar Wilde’s story in which the protagonist, Dorian, sells his soul to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. But regardless of the Voodoo spirit stuff, Nicole’s work was undeniably powerful and contemporary. I didn’t know much about art but she clearly had a unique perspective and rare talent. I asked her why she’d given up her own work.

  “I am single mother with no money. Nobody here buy paintings like these. They are too strange, too dark. So I must make tourist paintings to eat. No time for Art ... (a bitter laugh as she spat the word) ... only time for life!”

  I replied that her skill and vision were wasted making pretty pictures to sell for peanuts on the beach. She should persevere with her own paintings and perhaps one day the art world would discover them. It wasn’t impossible for a gifted young artist to be discovered, escape from the ghetto and have a career …

  For example, Jean-Michel Basquiat—a young, self-taught black artist, had come from a modest Haitian background to become one of the most famous artists in the New York Graffiti movement. He was championed by Andy Warhol and now his paintings sold for millions of dollars. He was known as the ‘Radiant Child’ and for about a decade his star burned bright. He was only in his twenties when he died from an overdose, cut down at the peak of his powers just like Jimi Hendrix. I remembered the song that had been playing in the bar when I was looking for Nicole …

  “Maybe one day you’ll be as famous as the ‘Radiant Child’ and people will call you the ‘Voodoo Child’!”

  She laughed and told me she knew all about Basquiat. He was a sort of hip-hop hero on the streets of her barrio and his success was an inspiration to her. She’d just begun to get a bit of recognition for her own work when she had to leave Haiti:

  “I was making these paintings for many years in my hometown, Port-au-Prince. People were starting to notice them and, how-you-say, to give me money: las comisiones y honorarios, to paint a picture for them—some important peoples, like the Master ...”

  Suddenly I remembered where I’d seen a painting like this one. Of course, it was on the wall of my cabin aboard the Abyss. Now it all made sense … The title was ‘Le Maître de ma Mer’ and she’d signed it: Nicole Jean-Baptiste Beauvais. No wonder I recognised that name when I opened the Master’s package.

  I told her I’d seen her painting of the Master on his yacht. She nodded and went on to explain how he’d commissioned her to paint it and later helped her escape from Haiti:

  “So, I am just getting a leetle successful but then I must leave my home—escape from my life there. The Master, he help me escape. But is not possible to bring all my paintings, just this one ... (she touched it reverently) ... it is not for sale.”

  I asked her who the subject was—the big man with the scar and those cruel eyes?

  “He is el tipo malo who want to kill me. I run for my life from him. He is my husband, Jacqueline’s father!”

  I gasped. Now I understood why the barman had been so reluctant to reveal her whereabouts and why she’d been so afraid of me. She must have thought I was a hit man sent by her husband.

  “This painting is protecting us. When it is close, en la casa, he no have power over us. That is why it is not for sale!”

  I thought of the portrait of Dorian Gray hanging in his attic, protecting him from the ravages of time. What about Nicole’s painting on the Abyss—was it protecting the Master somehow? Or perhaps it protected her from him? I asked her how she met him …

  “Alejandro see my paintings in the market in Port-au-Prince and he ask me to explain them. When I tell him what I tell you: they are about Vodou, then he give me good money for them.”

  I nodded. I could well understand the Master being interested in her work and the culture it sprang from.

  “He invited me onto his boat. First I think he wants to buy my body. I say: it not for sale. I’m no hooker. I’m married with young child. He is laughing and
telling me no worry—he only interested in my paintings and my mind, not my body.”

  I smiled. That also tallied with what I knew of the Master. She went on to describe the effect the Abyss had on her—the food, the opulence, the crew in their immaculate white uniforms, the Master, all in black, asking her question after question, probing her with those shaded eyes. Nicole taught him everything she knew of Vodou and her ‘Dark Art’, as he called it. He understood the power in her paintings and he told her she was now one of his Group.

  “I no understand him” she confessed. “Then he say: I am a ‘shaman with my brush’. I no understand that neither” she said, laughing.

  He kept his word and was always a perfect gentleman, only ever interested in her work and her knowledge. But his patronage still created problems for her …

  “My husband is a jealous man, un hombre muy violento. He no want me to be an artist and he no like me to make money with my paintings. His friend tell him he see me with a rich white man, on his boat, and he is very angry. He beat me. I am used to it, but then he threaten to hurt Jacqueline. This is too much for me.”

  I looked into her eyes, the eyes of a survivor, and saw myself in her.

  “I tell the Master and he help me to run away. He fix me a passport and he take us on his boat over the border into la República Dominicana. Here we are safe, but now I am single mother with no money. He give me money for my paintings and to help us here. All he ask is I teach him my Knowledge, make art, make education for local childrens, and wait for him to send me new student—you!”

  I recognised the Master’s modus operandi: rescue someone in trouble, introduce them to his ideas aboard the sealed world of the Abyss, give them a new identity, new passport, money ... and what then? Enlist them into his cult—the Group and send them back into the world to carry out his ‘missions’?

  Not for the first time I thought of the Faust myth, the way he sold his soul in a contract with the devil. Had I been ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’ when he’d rescued me?