The Return (16 page)

The house where we sleep

has no roof.

I spend the night strolling through the Milky Way.

And I think I recognize my grandmother

in a lonely star

I spot for the first time,

not far from the Big Dipper.

A Window on the Sea

Bare mountains on the right.

Giant cactus on the left.

The asphalt road from a distance

looks like a quiet lake.

The trucks that used to carry

animals to the slaughterhouse

are now used for humans

who travel standing,

their heads covered with dust,

their mouths filled with mosquitoes.

We near the famous cliffs

that provoked the

worst nightmares

of my childhood.

Reality is much more modest.

At the bend the blaring horn

of a red truck coming in the opposite direction.

Childhood fears surface again.

You have to wonder whether the country's highways aren't all one-way because the peasants who travel to Port-au-Prince never go back. First they are sucked in by the center of the metropolis, then they're soon thrown back toward the overcrowded periphery. Where it is impossible to survive without at least a knife.

Beyond a certain number

people's lives don't have the same value.

They're used as cannon fodder

or they do the dirty work.

Some manage to make a way for themselves

without being too compromised

by general corruption

and everyday murder.

We arrive late in Ville-Bonheur where

two virgins reign.

The Christian one is called

Mary of the Immaculate Conception.

Her twin, who sits on the throne in the voodoo pantheon,

is Erzulie Freda Dahomey.

Thirsty virgins.

One, for blood,

the other, for sperm.

The chauffeur pays tribute to both.

At the end of the road

we find a small hotel,

completely rickety,

where food is being served.

The bedbugs are waiting for us between the sheets.

How can we convince this woman

who is so proud of having been to New York

that all we want is fresh fruit juice

and not warm Coca-Cola?

For her, the local fruit is good only

for poor people and pigs.

The young man who seemed

so dangerous with his scarred

face turns out to be sweet-tempered.

His wounds were caused

by a thief he caught in his field.

As so often happens we

confused the victim and the criminal.

Everything is a miracle

in this little place.

Starting with the mere fact of existing.

A pig made it possible

for the young man to study agronomy

in Damien, near Port-au-Prince.

He speaks of it like a member of the family.

The pig is the peasant's bank account.

When after an epidemic

they asked the peasants in the region to kill

all the pigs to avoid putting

people's lives in danger

they hid them in the mountains.

In the eyes of a peasant a pig

may be worth less than his family

but certainly more than the advice of the minister

of Agriculture.

We stop at a snack bar by the sea. Thatched roof. No door. Everything exposed to the elements. Six bare tables. The sea literally beneath our feet. On the menu: grilled fish, salted fish, threadfin in hot sauce. My nephew can't abide fish. The chauffeur and I tuck in. He even agrees to loosen his tie.

I watch my nephew eating oysters with his face to the sea. From time to time a truck goes by, without stopping, its passengers covered in dust. The feeling that in this country you don't go from one city to another but from one world to another. The horizon is completely empty. Except for the lady selling coconuts who is at the mercy of the truck that stops sometimes, but few of them do at this time of day.

Just as we get back in the car

we change our minds

dive naked into the warm sea

and stay there

till nightfall.

The chauffeur sits on the hood of the car

and waits patiently.

The strange poise that men in the tropics have.

I felt

I was

lost to the North when

in the warm sea

in pink twilight

time suddenly became liquid.

My Father's Other Friend

Return to Croix-des-Bouquets where, this time, I catch up with the painter I used to see all the time before I left. He is a skillful colorist who used to paint nothing but landscapes filled with pigeons and overripe fruit. We talk a little and drink a lot in his darkened studio. Rum for me. Milk for him since his illness. A bunch of bananas rotting in the shadows reminds us of his odd obsessions. His heavy body. His sleepy voice. We slip into lethargy. The fact that the studio is also a voodoo temple adds to the paintings' poisonous charm. The strange way of looking he has and the enigmatic way he speaks put me ill at ease. I always feel we are communicating between two parallel universes: the master of this place and me. Once we leave, the chauffeur admits he felt strong negative vibrations in the room. My nephew had spent the whole time watching the young vendors in the yard next door.

A large basin of cold water

where young women selling mangos

bathe as they cover their breasts

and scream in shrill voices.

Their dresses plastered to their bodies.

The painter emerges from his studio

to show me the road

that leads to my father's friend.

He lives, he told me, behind the market.

We had to make a long detour.

It is impossible to drive through the market.

The chauffeur parked under a tree

then went to look at the stalls.

Some malangas had caught his eye.

My nephew stayed with him.

I have to meet my father's friend by myself.

I find him feeding his chickens. He seems even more frail than in the photo I saw at the ex-minister's house. His piercing eyes and firm handshake tell me it would be a mistake to underestimate him. A strong personality. He goes and fetches two chairs and sets them under the arbor. So he's dead. Who's dead? I ask like an idiot. Your father. He recognized me. Someone told you. I don't see anyone besides my chickens and the peasants who come and ask me to write letters for them. How do you know then? You're his spitting image. And that's the only reason you'd come all this way to see me here. You want something? All I drink now is tafia. I'll have a little glass too. In this heat it's not advisable for someone who comes from the cold. Something cool then? He nods discreetly to a girl washing clothes under the mango tree. That's my granddaughter, Elvira. Since her mother died she lives with me . . . So, Windsor K is dead. He died in Brooklyn. I don't give a damn where he died. You don't die somewhere, you just die. He retreats into memory for a moment. Our history teacher had to absent himself for one reason or another, and Windsor took his place. He got up in front of the class. And immediately demanded silence from the bunch of stubborn mules that we were. Then he told us the history of our country, according to him. We all sat there, stunned. Never seen anything like it. He was seventeen—we all were. I watched him go through his paces and I said to myself that I'd follow that guy anywhere. And that's exactly what I did. I wasn't the only one, but I was the closest to him.

Elvira comes back barefoot

in the warm dust

with the drinks on a little platter.

Piercing eyes.

A shy smile.

Long graceful legs.

Her modesty can't

hide the explosive energy

she got from her grandfather.

We drink in silence. I couldn't have said what my drink is made of, but with an effort I recognize papaya, grenadine, lemon, soursop and cane syrup. In any case it's cold. I look around as I listen to the voices of the mango vendors. We're in no hurry here, he tells me with a mocking but friendly smile. Windsor knew a lot of people, but we were the Gang of Four. The inner cell. What we wanted was simple: revolution. Windsor got the idea to start a political party. We were twenty years old. “The Sovereign,” because it was the party of the people and the people are always sovereign. We didn't follow any rules. We had no qualms about using our fists. We went into the offices and kicked out the pencil-pushers and replaced them on the spot with honest and competent employees who didn't necessarily belong to our group. We had one list of dishonest employees and another list of competent, honest citizens who couldn't find work, which meant we had plenty to do putting things right. We didn't have a job; we had a mission. We wanted a country run by citizens, not cousins. We were for action. What about Jacques?

Elvira comes back with a basin of water

and places it on a rickety little table.

François gets up to wash his hair,

his armpits and his torso.

She dries him tenderly

with a big white towel.

The young vestal virgin

caring for her grandfather.

His face transfigured now. Suddenly he's twenty years younger. I am a plant that needs watering from time to time, otherwise I dry out. I like water too. He sits down again. You said Jacques...? Jacques! Jacques! It was like a punch in the gut and I've never gotten over it. Neither did your father. Marie told me because no one could know what he felt. I say no one, and I was his lieutenant. No one except for your mother. She told me he cried. Do you have any news of Gérard? He tosses some grain on the ground and a few seconds later we are surrounded by a flock of chickens. Here I will speak only of Windsor and Jacques. You speak only of the dead? I speak only of people I know. I thought I knew Gérard. That's all I can say. I feel it's my turn to talk now. My father put a suitcase in a safety deposit box. It's certainly not money—your father wasn't the type to save. What do you think it is? I ask him. Oh, he says, scattering the chickens, I have no idea. I have gotten rid of everything that once weighed me down and the past was the heaviest part. When I left Port-au-Prince, all I brought was my own corpse. But your father was a historian; maybe they're documents, but let's forget about it. He takes a long breath as if preparing to say one last thing before falling into silence. All I know is that I loved Windsor and that Jacques is the wound in my life. Now I live here with my granddaughter, surrounded by insatiable chickens I have to feed every hour, illiterate peasants I help to write letters of protest, and noisy women who don't stop chattering from morning to night, and I have all that I desire.

We leave the market area

and are already heading south

when I notice behind the car

Elvira, running in long strides,

bringing me a hen,

a gift from her grandfather.

Instead of my father's suitcase

that stayed behind in a Manhattan bank,

my inheritance is a black hen

from his best friend.

My nephew couldn't breathe

the whole time

Elvira was standing by the car.

And the silence that

followed her departure.

Like the plains after a wildfire.

A Green Lizard

I go for a walk in

the peaceful cemetery of Petit-Goâve.

Graves scattered in the tall grass.

On my grandmother Da's headstone,

a green lizard looks at me

for a long while

then slips into a break in the rock.

It isn't far from the des Vignes River

where I caught crayfish

with my cousins

during my rainy childhood.

A girl from the North came

to this cemetery

a few years ago,

with a modest bouquet of flowers for Da

whose grave she sought in vain.

That's because Da lives

in my books.

She entered head held high

into fiction.

The way others elsewhere

enter heaven.

For the simple bouquet placed that day

on the nearest grave

I promise, Pascale Montpetit,

you'll always have a spot

in the modest cemetery in Petit-Goâve,

where the gods converse

unsmiling with women.

A man napping

in the shade of a banana tree.

Lying on a tombstone

by the cemetery exit.

Is it more restful

to be that close

to eternal sleep?

I walk up Lamarre Street to number 88, the old house where I spent my childhood with my grandmother Da. As I move up the street, I recognize it less and less. It takes me a while to locate the house. The little field where Oginé kept horses for ten centimes while their owners sold vegetables in the market has changed places. Mozart's store has done the same. Mozart died before Da. I manage to find the house only because of the building across from it. It has remained intact, the way it was in my memories. The pink-and-white doors and the long walkway where a black dog stood guard. One evening, it went for a thief's throat.

I picture Da sitting on the gallery and me at her feet watch-ing ants go about their business. People greet Da and she offers them a cup of coffee. In her yellow dress, Vava goes up the street with her mother. My friends Rico and Frantz will pick me up and we'll go stand before the sea. That afternoon will never end.

Heading South

Just before Carrefour Desruisseaux

and the cutoff toward Aquin,

we stop at Miragoâne to

fill the car with gas.

I recognize the gas station guy.

We had our first communion together.

He hasn't changed a bit.

He's the same forty-five years later.

He still has that foolish smile that

has protected him from the sting of time.

The rain has been pelting down since Miragoâne.