Colour of Dawn (12 page)

‘In the end the dope possesses you. Your guardian angel abandons you, leaving you alone on the vast plain of life, driven away.' He paused for a moment, heaving a great sigh before continuing, gazing into the distance, his hands calmly resting on his thighs. ‘You can't resist the oppressive voices of the radios, nor the furious voices of the authorities. It's impossible to resist lectures like that!!!'

Her lips pressed together tightly, face impassive beneath her scarf, Aunt Sylvanie did not try to interrupt him once.

‘At first you're more afraid of blood than of those they send you to kill,' he said. ‘Then you're even more afraid of the anger of the authorities than of the blood and then after that you're no longer afraid of anything at all… Until the day when death catches up with a few like me and takes away our sleep.'

Cars overtake us at speed, some of them with sirens blaring, guns poking from their windows. We all, the driver included, take up positions that ensure we do not meet the eyes of the passengers in these vehicles that paint a new face on an old disaster with which we are all too familiar. One day, someone in this city must have given a signal for disorder and ever since then there has been no respite. No safety catch. The order of time, of space has not returned since. And today this city continues its inexorable progress into horror.

Our tap-tap is stopped by four youths in rags who are soon joined by quite a horde swarming around the vehicle. Without a moment's hesitation they attach themselves to the bonnet and the doors, dancing and yelling out their excitement. Their faces covered with bruises, their feet and calves with cuts. They twist, remove and smash everything in their reach, man-made objects, public or private property, bodies and souls. And this afternoon they are armed to the teeth.

Two of them take aim at us, each with a gun he can hardly hold in his hands. They are barely twelve, thirteen, fourteen years of age.Young adults who have only just arrived on the scene are carrying automatic weapons and cartridge belts on their thin shoulders. They have scarves wound around their heads and wear shades, no doubt stolen, that swallow up their faces, with secondhand jackets and T-shirts that are too big for their frail bodies: Nike, Puma, Adidas. The man with the bull's neck wearing the T-shirt with the image of the leader of the Démunis exchanges a sign of recognition with them. They twist their hands and wrists and give out a resounding ‘Yo', a kind of war cry of complicity. My vision becomes blurred. My ears are ringing. I am overcome by dizziness.The youths have surrounded the taptap and are threatening us with their guns while the younger kids calmly strip us of everything that comes to their hands. I hold out my purse and my earrings. I would have held out anything. And then things happen quickly, very quickly.

The driver takes off at speed, happy to be alive. As we are. The silence that follows is filled with shame and anger. Other tap-taps surge into the alleyways in an icy panic. All that can be heard is the sound of engines. The exhaust gas burns our eyes. I crouch down into my seat until I can no longer be seen from the street. Next to me on my right there is an elderly man whose lips are still trembling, mumbling out disjointed words in a low voice, while to my left are two building workers, who will no doubt have handed over their tools and their day's pay, and behind me a young university student who has clearly not yet read the book that will give him the key to what he has just experienced, an explanation to show him the way. I can't help thinking of a song I heard the other day:

I have no work, I don't need it.
I was born to steal your money.
I was born to kill you.

Nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing. No-one will believe any more in the miracles of the rains or the blossoming of the trees. No-one.We are heading towards the night, in the silence of stone, the muteness of tombs.

Eyes half-closed, I want to be silent to swallow my shame. Any further and we would all have soiled our underwear. Myself included. And we would have sat in our filth without flinching. We have lost all self-respect. But you can get used to anything, even losing your selfrespect.

I am becoming a woman who doubts. This evening, I will kneel on the ground at the foot of my bed and I will humbly ask God to forgive my lack of faith in the work of the men of this place, as His ways are so mysterious. Eyes closed, head nodding, I silently murmur a hymn and cannot stop myself from asking God to help me, humble creature that I am, never to doubt.

TWENTY-TWO

W
hatever catastrophes the radios foretell, I do my best to distance myself from their predictions, to deny their effect on my life. Once Madame Herbruch has left I choose a station that plays nothing but music to forget by, and lose myself in a zouk to ward off all these prophecies. And I think long and hard about my next chance to go dancing with Lolo. The next chance to find myself face to face with Luckson like on that first evening when, without telling me he desired me, without him knowing how much I wanted him, we finally tasted each other's lips, savoured one another's skin.

It was at the Groove Night Club, a crowded disco between a smelly ravine and a makeshift school. Lolo had persuaded me without much difficulty to go with her that evening. Fignolé's band, who were starting to make a name for themselves, were playing there for the first time. A few young people were jostling one another by the entrance. I remember how happy I was to see my younger brother's budding success. And for a few months now there had been Ismona, dawn and dusk, rain and shine. I rushed to his side to congratulate and encourage him. And although he hugged me with incredible tenderness, I felt he was as absent as ever. Fignolé was visibly elsewhere. He had crossed the borders of the world beyond which ghosts come to find us. He had left us to float on his cloud. But that night the cloud was on fire. Fignolé's eyes were glowing like a city in flames, and Fignolé was not a man to recoil from a fire he had lit himself. No way! There's nothing for it, Fignolé's hooked, I told myself. And to be hooked is to be a touch below the condition of being mortal. It is to be chased from Paradise a second time.Yet Fignolé has created a quarantine, I don't know by what miracle, and succeeded in preserving a clear spirit, one of sanity amidst the confusion, the abandonment, the great tropical disorder. I feel it at the same time as I am gripped by the certainty that life will crush him. Soon. Very soon. Because life kills pure hearts first of all. This certainty made itself felt so strongly that I was submerged in that strange anxiety that sometimes catches drunkards unawares and settles right in the middle of their happiness.

I had never seen Fignolé with such an expression, never. And I was scared. I went hot, cold, then hot again. There was no longer a drop of blood in my veins, nothing but hot, liquid fear. This fear could have devoured me from the inside if I had not suddenly shaken it off and sent it away. I devoured it first. I inoculated myself with all the arrogance of my youth. One by one, I treated the bites of anxiety. I slowly filed down the sharp claws of fear. I slowly breathed in an incredible force to hold me steady. To hold me on my feet, on my high heels. And I danced through the night, danced to exhaustion.

Lolo had arranged with Paulo to get us one of the tables right next to the band. We had hardly sat down there where the first males came round on their inevitable prowl. With the intention, who knows, of stealing from Lolo and me a bit of our flesh in a night that looked set to be long and turbulent.That's how men are. And Jean-Baptiste was one of those who is not content simply to prowl. He followed my every step. He was hunting me down. Whatever I did I was observed, spied on, tracked. Lolo immediately suggested I had a drink.

‘I'm just not getting you tonight. You need a drink, otherwise you'll never be on the same plane as us.'

The drink fizzed in my throat and made me cough slightly, reawakening the fleeting shadow I'd felt. Then cheerfulness took hold little by little. I could once again raise my eyes and face all those stares. Especially that of Luckson. Luckson, who was carried along by the night. Standing in silence, exuding strength. I was enraptured by his presence. I sensed eyes on me, calling me. Eyes for which I was prepared to be damned on the spot.

The band played as the curtain was raised. We danced to the sounds of Fignolé's compositions and covers of Bob Marley, Shaba, Alpha Blondy. Fignolé played like never before, as if he were playing for the final time in his life. As if it were his last will and testament. And I was once again gripped by the beauty and gentleness of his latest composition. Music and lyrics in which the spirit can roam, elated and wondering. A gathering-place for all the ancient forces, all the age-old powers. Fignolé wanted them to come and take him over, move through him, submerge him and drag us all in his wake. I felt the little grey stone inside me slowly melt into indulgence and elation. We danced in an extraordinary joy and excitement. The music moved me, carried me away, made me reel, while the boys tried to grab me by the waist each time I got close, closer. We were a little crowd come together there who, for the space of an evening, refused to think of the hardships of the moment, and closed the doors on the shadows outside.

After the band's set a DJ excelled himself and literally set the room on fire with the music of Janesta.

And while I danced and spun, surrounded by bodies, Fignolé watched me from behind his cloud of smoke and smiled at Ismona. Luckson came up to me and never took his eyes off me. It was strange to be able to look at him so close up and to be looked at by him. Luckson didn't dance. He didn't need to. Luckson knew that this young woman passing from hand to hand was a burning torch. Luckson knew I was already dazzled. Already enraptured by him. He knew. But I did not smile at him. I did not speak to him. I could be lost at the slightest smile, or at the slightest word. And I don't want to be lost.

Ismona joined me and we laughed our hearts out between these two men.

TWENTY-THREE

P
ort-au-Prince has planted poisoned seeds in me and the deadly tree will not stop growing, growing. Portau-Prince has slipped away from us like water running through our fingers. Disorder has gnawed away at every inch of this land and it is now a disorder of the soul. We cannot get better. Perhaps we don't want to? In the outlying districts a boy of twelve is an old man: he has already dispatched two or three human beings over the precipice into eternity and has brains scorched by the ether. He has seen too much, heard too much, done too much. A girl of thirteen is a worldly woman with two or three lovers to her credit and has already helped boys to fill the void of death. And if hardship comes knocking at your door one day, don't even think of complaining. Those appointed to the defence of victims are experts in red tape and pull them apart to the bone. That will not stop me this afternoon – I, Angélique Méracin, daughter of Venante Méracin – from going to the police station to report the disappearance of my brother Fignolé. And if he does not return before nightfall, tomorrow I will register a complaint against persons unknown. It's a matter of principle. ‘A complaint against persons unknown' is a formula I hear on the radio and from the lips of lawyers. I will at least have the satisfaction of keeping to a principle in a country full of ‘maybes', of ‘keep your head down', of ‘ifs' and of ‘you never know which way the wind will blow'.

In the darkness behind my closed eyelids I have not been able to stop myself from thinking of Fignolé.Where are you, Fignolé? Please give us a sign.

Tell the bad girl and the prodigal son that they can come home if they hurry.

Disappointment in the Démunis made Fignolé bitter at first, then mad with rage. I suspect he also wanted to lose himself in love affairs I will not name, to court death. As he waits, he blinds himself with the dope he breathes in, which gives him wide, slack eyes. Detached from the circles of mortals, he falsely believes he can join the gods and forget us all. But there's nothing for it, Fignolé, the world will get you. It always gets us. But I promise you now that when the world gets you I will be by your side. I promise, I swear. And I will know how to take your hands in mine like when you were tiny and took your first steps. I will know how to warm you with words like Joyeuse.Yes, exactly like Joyeuse. By your side I will swell the ranks of the chosen. I will be one of yours… I'm rambling, I'm rambling… I know I'm rambling. A lump is forming in my throat. And my thoughts turn to that other youth whose eyes I have just closed on an eternal night. How can I forget him? How can I forget Fignolé, of whom we have heard nothing since yesterday evening? I don't know what he does with his evenings when he leaves, guitar under his arm. Or rather, I do know.Yes, I do know really. I suspect. I imagine. As if I were by his side, behind him, in his shadow. Like I'm beginning to inhabit the shadow of that sick man lying on a hospital bed.

Through the windows I see the sky bring down the colourful canvas of the sunset. And I am held by these fixed moments in a strange, celestial stupor. These minutes, summoned only to sweep so quickly into the great void of the other side. I have nothing left but words of survival that break against my teeth, and this day that is disrobing itself with the movements of a damaged tree. As I approach the house I have neither name nor face. The afternoon has smashed inside me into thousands of glass fragments. Fragments glowing with colour – mauve, pink and yellow – that spin, whirl and all but suffocate me.

A flock of birds streaks the sky.

I get down from the tap-tap and I see in the distance the afternoon bleeding into the blue horizon.

TWENTY-FOUR

I
t must have been midnight when a young man, standing in the entrance to the Groove Night Club, made a sign to Jean-Baptiste. I couldn't make out his silhouette too well in the half-light, and I don't know why I followed Jean-Baptiste. Concealed in a corner by the door, I caught the first few words of one of those stories that leave no room for doubt – men going off to kill or be killed. Jean-Baptiste was leaning against a tree by the main entrance and I could see from the fire in his eyes that he felt a brutal delight in anticipation of this chase. Jean-Baptiste doesn't have a thought in his head, I said to myself at the time, he has nothing but urges. All it took was for a few acquaintances to chance by one day with a fistful of dollars, some girls and a set of wheels for him to return to the wretched gang. It would be no mistake to think of him simply in terms of a body – one made for pleasure, clothes and violence. And that evening I was as certain of the latter as of two and two making four. Intrigued and disturbed, I went back to the noise of the party.