by Maryse Conde
“My heart is glued to this country!” she said.
Babakar’s feelings for her were confused. Sometimes his heart overflowed with gratitude, thanking her for the love she showered on Anaïs and the atmosphere of plenitude she wove around him. Other times he woke up in the middle of the night and wondered what this pretty, somewhat plump girl was doing in his bed.
It’s a well-known fact that peace never lasts in our countries. The massacres began again, worse than ever. Although it had failed, Henri Christophe’s attack on the presidential palace had enraged and stricken with terror the interim president. He rallied his allies. During a punitive operation openly named “Total Extermination,” his troops managed to encircle Henri Christophe in his Quisqueya Palace and riddle him with bullets, along with his beloved companion, Estrella, who was asleep in his arms. For good measure, they killed more than a dozen bodyguards. Tonine’s body was nowhere to be found and the most preposterous rumors were bandied around. She was a “guédé,” wasn’t she? A spirit of the dead who had left her coffin and now wandered freely on this earth spreading her wickedness.
Babakar’s grief was boundless. Estrella, a woman he had seen only once, now joined the pantheon of all those he had loved and lost. What fatality was clinging to him? What virus was he secretly carrying? Jahira was not offended that he could no longer make love and gave him herbal teas to drink to help him sustain an erection.
“Someone’s jealous of you and wants to do you harm!” she claimed.
Thécla broke into his dreams, but remained very cold.
“I know you don’t really want to see me at this time. But I couldn’t help coming to warn you. Prepare yourself for an important event which will force you to confront the life you are leading head-on. You think yourself happy, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t!” Babakar stammered. “But what do you expect me to do?”
Thécla vanished without a word.
Two days later he received a letter from the Eradicate Poverty Foundation.
The Foundation apologized profusely and explained it could only afford to pay a third of the grant it usually allocated to La Maison. Given the severe crisis affecting the entire world, and especially the US, it was obliged to seek other partnerships if it intended to pursue its charity work in Haiti. If this proved fruitless, they would have to shut up shop and sell the Center. They would keep him posted on the situation.
For the first time Babakar envisaged closing the Center. It would mean leaving Haiti. Had he grown fond of this country and would he be sorry to leave it? He was unable to say.
Why does a land one day become a motherland? It’s not because of a cool breeze or the vivacity of the sun or, on the contrary, the humidity of the undergrowth. It’s something mysterious and secret, which is indescribable. Babakar’s feelings for Haiti, a land that held everything he cherished—Anaïs, Jahira, and the memory of Movar—hadn’t yet clicked. Because, in spite of all its trials and tribulations, Haiti manifested an explosive, swollen vitality which frightened his secret nature.
He was amazed by Fouad’s reaction, which revealed feelings that Babakar never thought his friend harbored.
“Our humdrum life is perhaps threatened!” Fouad said.
Humdrum? Babakar would never have thought of using such an adjective. It was true they spent most of their time working: no weekends or holidays for him, since a woman’s womb knows nothing of such things. Yet every time he helped a baby into this life, he couldn’t help feeling victorious. Babakar would follow the baby in thought along the long winding path that led the child to life’s end. The same was true every time he entrusted an orphan to a family: he imagined the baby in its new surroundings. For Haiti had become a preferential land of adoption. Those who were in need of children fought over the offspring of misery, and the underprivileged left to reach the shores of opulence and happiness.
While wrestling with his anxiety, Babakar had an idea. Couldn’t the government come to the aid of a state-approved medical center? He convinced Fouad to ask Monsieur Saint-Omer for an interview. Ever since the last elections Monsieur Saint-Omer now had an important job under the strange title of “Head of National Renovation.” The presidential palace was tightly guarded by new recruits, all youngsters, almost children. Babakar and Fouad felt sorry for these naive, penniless young fellows who were risking their lives. Monsieur Saint-Omer, slightly more complacent than usual, welcomed them in his magnificent office furnished with pieces made of mahogany from Honduras and encrusted with ebony. He began by giving them a long-winded homily on Africa, which should now enjoy the rightful place it once had before colonization and which today it was entitled to. He sounded like Hassan the last time Babakar saw him in Eburnéa. Why do politicians always spout the same hackneyed words?
Then once he had listened to them attentively, Monsieur Saint-Omer declared, “Let me speak to my brother, the President. He is very fond of you and admires the way you helped the people of Saint-Soledad during the hurricane, expecting nothing in return. He would like to decorate you with the National Order of Merit, but as he is constantly traveling in an attempt to restore Haiti’s tarnished reputation, he hasn’t yet found the time to organize the ceremony.”
A few days later, he called. His brother, the President, offered Babakar a managerial position at the Ministry for Health and Fouad the job as head chef at the presidential palace where, several times a week, dinners were served to foreign businessmen who were just as numerous as in François Duvalier’s time. Fouad and Babakar both made the same face. They preferred to keep their distance from the powers that be. Fouad especially had no inclination to be available on a daily basis at the presidential palace.
“I’m not a civil servant!” Babakar grumbled. “What on earth would I do in a ministerial office?”
They therefore decided to start a cost-saving program in hope of ensuring the survival of La Maison. Alas, as we know, life is a mule that does exactly as it pleases. Everything they undertook backfired.
Giscard introduced them to Otto, the grandson of one of Duvalier’s ministers, like him, who had returned home to “expiate” the crimes of his grandfather. He directed a program, L’Avenir, funded by a group of wealthy individuals who felt guilty about the state of the world. On his advice and with a heavy heart Babakar entrusted his precious little ones to an orphanage managed by Catholic priests from Portugal. Then he and Fouad rented out La Maison’s Building C to a Korean who wanted to open a language institute. Since there were far fewer meals to prepare now, Fouad left the cooking to Myriam and then left La Maison to take up management of the Toreen, the only Palestinian restaurant in the country, and perhaps the entire region, which had been going strong for years. Rabbob, the owner, was going to retire and relax in Saint-Martin and spend her well-earned money: twenty years earlier she had seen her husband and two sons killed during the Israeli operation named “Peace for Galilee.”
As we have already said, life does exactly as it pleases and all these changes were going to have disastrous consequences. First of all, whereas Movar’s disappearance had brought them closer together, these days Fouad and Babakar no longer saw each other. Fouad left at dawn and only returned when the last customers at the Toreen had finished dinner. Gone were the long chats and readings of their favorite poems.
As if things were not bad enough, Karl, one of the physicians, had to return home to his country. He had been diagnosed with a serious neurological disease. He left behind a concubine and three illegitimate children, all inconsolable.
Babakar was snowed under with work. Between the deliveries and the search for medicines and provisions in the markets, he was exhausted and still incapable of making love to Jahira. Haunted by a deep sense of guilt, he wondered what type of man he was. His sex life seemed dull and lackluster.
Jahira and Myriam were now convinced that Movar was dead. He had been gone for six months and there was still no
news of him. They had gotten to know a certain Dimitri, a survivor from Labadee. He had tried to penetrate the enclave without authorization in order to sell his paintings that the tourists were so fond of. He had been spotted and only got away thanks to the speed of his legs. Revealing a scar caused by a bullet that had cut through his shoulder blade, he claimed that each time an American cruise ship docked, the guards had no qualms firing on those who tried to get closer. They then threw the bodies into a common ditch without further ado. Previously, it’s true, there used to be a recruitment office in Labadee; the Royal Caribbean International hired a hundred or so Haitians for the cruises. But because it was constantly besieged by thousands of jobless from all over the country, resulting in brawls and violence, the office had been closed and transferred to Fort Lauderdale.
“So,” Babakar exclaimed, clinging to a glimmer of hope, “perhaps Movar left for Fort Lauderdale!”
“In that case, he would have written,” Jahira retorted. “Unless his boat capsized, in which case it would have been in the papers.”
In the meantime, Myriam and Jahira unearthed a certain Sô Euphrasie, a less expensive version of Sô Fanfanne. Despite numerous séances filled with candles and the smell of incense she could neither prove nor disprove Movar’s death.
They then received an unexpected visit from Captain Dalembert.
It was a bad Wednesday for Babakar, who had been unable to save a baby and had to pull it out stiff and blue from its mother’s womb. The mother, barely fifteen years old, couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or upset. Her relief, however, didn’t last long for she would soon be pregnant again and back in the maternity ward. Even after so many years of delivering babies, Babakar could never get used to the abomination of a dead infant. In a gloomy mood, he walked across the park, which, since the hurricane and the disappearance of Movar, left much to be desired. Never had Babakar been so affected by the way La Maison now looked neglected, even sinister.
A young man was sitting on the terrace of Building A dressed in military uniform, bareheaded, his tangled mass of dreadlocks making an attractive lion’s mane. Jahira was fussing around him with a tray of drinks. Anaïs, sitting in her high chair, was smearing crème caramel all over her face and holding her spoon out to her father.
“You can have it,” she said graciously.
Such a kindly grace was even more surprising since she was becoming more and more capricious and subject to inexplicable fits of anger or tears. Only Jahira managed to calm her during those moments and make her smile again.
“It’s her real maman she’s looking for,” she explained, “and she can’t find her.”
At first glance, Babakar didn’t recognize the captain. When he did, he exclaimed roughly, “You!” Then he endeavored to make amends by presenting his belated condolences. But Dalembert treated them with a kind of contempt.
“You haven’t finished hearing about my brother. I have retired to our hometown of Jérémie and am writing his memoirs as he dictates them to me, so to speak. It will be a fascinating book, for my brother has lived two lives, that of his ancestor and that of himself. You should come with Jahira to see me. In my opinion, Jérémie is the most beautiful town in the country. It’s also one of the richest, culturally speaking. Émile Ollivier and Émile Roumer, to quote just two authors, were born there. People attach great importance to Alexandre Dumas’s father, who was born there, but I have read neither The Three Musketeers nor The Count of Monte Christo. How about you?”
Babakar shook his head.
“And what about Émile Ollivier? Émile Roumer? Or René Philoctète? Have you read them?” he asked.
“None of them,” Babakar confessed.
“So, you know nothing about Haitian literature?” the captain asked with contempt.
Mortified, Babakar managed a smile. “Everyone knows about Jacques Roumain, Jacques Stephen Alexis, and René Depestre. You must know that my daughter is called Anaïs in memory of Masters of the Dew.”
“Your daughter? Well, well!”
The indefinable tone of voice with which these words were pronounced made a shiver go down Babakar’s back. An irrational fear overcame him. Where did this man come from? Who was he, in fact? What did he want?
Fortunately, the visit was soon over. Unless you go by ferry or plane, the state of the 250 kilometers of roads between Port-au-Prince and Jérémie does not make for easy traveling. Dalembert refused the invitation to stay for dinner and got up. He hugged Jahira and kissed her tenderly.
“I’ll be expecting you. Don’t make me wait too long.”
She returned his kiss. “I promise. I’ll come very soon.”
The Creole they spoke together wrapped them in an oasis of intimacy. You sensed they were alike in every way and bred from the same soil. Once the captain had disappeared at the wheel of a red Maserati, Babakar turned to Jahira, surprised by his raging jealous fury.
“Do you have sex with him?”
Jahira burst out laughing as if the question was deeply amusing. Then she calmly said, as if speaking to an unreasonable child, “Now look, if I were having sex with him, I wouldn’t have brought him here, in your presence. I would have gone to join him in hiding. I’ve already told you Dalembert is my brother. He’s the same age as Movar. He knows how upset I am about Movar. At Jérémie he works with a very powerful clairvoyant called Fwé Euloj. Thanks to him, Dalembert has found his older brother again, along with his entire family. He now sees his brother whenever he wants. They go and swim in the river, take walks together, and pick mangoes, just like when they were little boys.”
“Oh, really!” Babakar said in a deliberately mocking tone of voice.
Jahira clasped his face between her two soft hands and kissed him. “He’s going to introduce his brother to Myriam and me. He’ll arrange a séance.”
“Excellent idea!” Babakar said even more mockingly.
She came closer. “Why are you upsetting yourself with your stupid ideas?” she murmured tenderly.
Ashamed, Babakar didn’t insist.
Four times a day the students and teachers of the language institute walked across the garden to their classrooms. As they walked past, they chattered and guffawed noisily. During recreation, they made a terrible racket, yelling and fighting or playing violent games. At noon, since they didn’t have a canteen, they sat down on the ground to eat their lunch, making just as much noise as they wolfed down their codfish and peanut butter sandwiches and littered the place with wrappers and piles of greasy paper.
In mango season, the situation became even more unbearable. Armed with slings, or simply stones, they spread out under the trees, aiming at the ripe mangoes, shouting with joy when they managed to get them to fall, indulging themselves on their thick flesh and leaving piles of peelings which in turn attracted flies. In his exasperation, Babakar was about to complain to the director of the language institute when an event of great importance made him change his mind.
The savings he had hoped to achieve at the cost of so much sacrifice had served no purpose. The Eradicate Poverty Foundation sent Babakar a new letter informing him that it had been obliged to sell its land at Saint-Soledad to a Chinese company, Yen Kao, which owned an internationally renowned hotel chain that planned to build yet another luxury hotel.
It’s ridiculous! he thought, chagrined. What was the point of replacing a humanitarian center with a tourist operation? What’s more, it won’t work, as there isn’t a single tourist left in Haiti.
He had to share such an important piece of news with Fouad as quickly as possible and decided to go and find him at his job. Late afternoon he managed to force his way through the chaos of tap taps, jeeps, and jalopies that, be it rush hour or not, converged on Port-au-Prince. After an hour of this commotion, he was able to park and extricate himself from the car.
Located at the back of a courtyard, the restaurant was crammed
full of expats, MINUSTAH soldiers, and other forces that were pullulating all over the country. The restaurant’s specialty was lamb with young okras, which everyone was very fond of. Babakar pushed open the door of the kitchen, a paradise with a thousand scents, where a young Arab kitchen help—which hell had he escaped from?—was chopping sweet herbs while Fouad was garnishing the plates that two Haitian waitresses were taking into the dining room.
“What good wind brings you here?” Fouad shouted. “Or rather what bad wind brings you?” he corrected himself, on noticing Babakar’s expression.
“Very bad!” Babakar added. “I’ve come to show you the letter I received this morning.”
Fouad slowly read the letter from the Eradicate Poverty Foundation and casually handed it back. “Well! It looks as though this God in which neither of us believes is forcing us to make a decision and get the hell out.”
“Get the hell out?”
“Yes, you’re a physician, you won’t have trouble finding a job with a hospital or a clinic. And I’ll do what I’ve always dreamed of doing.”
“And what’s that?” Babakar asked.
Instead of replying, Fouad put his hand on Babakar’s shoulder. “Go and have dinner. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
Babakar entered the dining room. He was puzzled by his friend’s attitude. It was as if he was relieved and felt liberated. Had he been thinking of leaving Haiti already? Since when? Like a husband who discovers his wife has been cheating on him, he could kick himself for not having seen it coming. But hadn’t Hassan said a few years earlier that he was blind?”