What am I guilty of? I keep asking myself but there is no answer. And yet incomprehensible remorse pricks at my heart. I try to exonerate myself in my own eyes as best as I can. I am guilty: of accepting injustice without protest, of wallowing in opprobrium and immorality and behaving like Pontius Pilate, offering smiles for the well-heeled to flatter them, groveling like a dog, tail between my legs, to make myself small in the presence of power, guilty of trembling before the district commandant, of indifferently witnessing Saindor’s murder, guilty of secretly rejoicing over his death because I owed him ten piastres. What else could I do? My God! It’s hard to know, hard to understand, hard to decide. Poverty has annihilated me. I saw M. Potentat and his red carpets, yellow carpets, white carpets. I saw all of his wealth and I looked the other way in order to accept the alms he gave me in exchange for running an errand. His wealth goes back as far as yesterday. How has he been able to accumulate so much in so little time in such a poor country? I don’t want to think about it. Not yet. Even my thoughts make me shiver. M. Potentat has scads of spies at his disposal and they could be roaming, invisible, around my house. But no, I am forgetting the devils. The devils have driven away M. Potentat and his henchmen. They are not afraid of anything, the devils! They are not afraid of anyone. So then why are they armed to the hilt?…
I knew my father by sight and reputation.
“Look,” my mother said to me one day, pointing out a man as light-skinned as a white man with a soft felt hat on his head, beautiful polished shoes, and, on his arm, a beautiful lady who looked like she could be Mme Fanfreluche’s sister. “That’s your father.”
A great landowner, who also had buildings on the Grand-rue, he wouldn’t give me an inch of thread for a pair of pants. My mother had been brought to him when she was fifteen by some of the farmers who had settled on his lands and who wished to get in his good graces. These farmers happened to be my mother’s own parents. Poverty forces poor blacks to grovel like dogs before the rich. They offered him their only daughter as a house slave, making her a “restez-avec-monsieur” [47] in exchange for a plot of land to cultivate. One night, the “monsieur” jumped on the little house slave and raped her.
But in reality that’s nothing. There’s worse. The crippled beggars dug into the mountains somewhere, with neither food nor water, nor voodoo drums nor dancing, nor clairin nor tafia. [48] They’re extraordinary, Haiti’s blacks. Even when they’ve been reduced to their last extremity they cling to life like a cherished possession. The moment the devils leave town and someone beats the drum and distributes tafia, you will see them come down, thinner than living skeletons, whirling, drunk, lopsided, possessed, resurrected, transformed. Cocobés, [49] famine-crazed, flea-ridden, they ward off danger as best they can: with visits to the voracious houngans [50] who extort every last coin they’ve harvested in the course of a long day of going up and down begging, with prayers to every saint in heaven, with simples [51] and charms to protect them from evil spirits. Now go and try to get them to come out of the woods where they’ve hidden. The devils are there to settle their devil business; no one will get mixed up with this and pay for all the broken eggs. The beggars were the first to vanish from circulation. The devils would be clever indeed if they ever managed to smoke them out.
André, beside me, has a pitiful expression. He’s just discovered the marassas dishes and knows why the bottle of syrup is empty. But he doesn’t dare say anything. He too has his own loas and will not judge me. He is a mystic who lives in communion with a whole mass of things he sees in his dreams and even in broad day, their meaning depending on how he interprets each symbol. For now, despite his hunger, he cautiously keeps quiet in the presence of the gods of Guinea because it is said that they are greedy when it comes to offerings and libations.
“Why all this?” he asks me. “You don’t even believe in it. You have always boasted of being tough, one of those who turn neither to prayer nor to loas. Without faith what can this accomplish? Why did you lay Christ down on the floor? What do you expect from him, you who don’t believe in miracles?”
His pure and beautiful face makes me forget the ugliness of the devils. And also, he heals me from my fear.
“Put the Christ back where your mother left it and put the dishes back in the trunk. It’s bad luck to invoke God and the loas without believing in them. I drank religion with my mother’s milk. I grew up with a shrine of saints and loas in our bedroom. The fear of displeasing them is rooted in me. None of this could ever be uprooted by books. You play tough, but me, I remain humbly prostrate before their power.”
“I’m afraid as well…”
“Fear is not enough.”
“God welcomes lost sheep back into the fold.”
“The loas are the gods of the blacks of Africa. God is universal. The loas are taking revenge because the blacks were deserted and enslaved and persecuted, and so voodoo will someday rally them together. But you are not a black man.”
“Am I a white man?”
“No. You’re not a white man either.”
“If you have no idea who I am, leave me alone and listen. The gods are here to teach us to depend on our own strength. The God who created me will give me the courage to defeat the devils. God has done His godly duty by putting us on this earth. He expects us to raise ourselves up to Him through sheer will. You’re right, I panicked for a minute. I am going to put the Christ back in its place and the dishes in the trunk.”
He’s afraid. He’s struggling between the horror of seeing me mock these pious relics in his presence and the desire to keep them within reach so he can take comfort from them once in a while.
“I won’t stop you from praying anymore,” I promise him.
“Who could stop me from praying?” he replies.
The sound of footsteps interrupts us. No, it’s something else. We throw ourselves against the wall. A few small, clumsily thrown stones fall to the pavement. One of them reaches the door. It’s Cécile! We see her behind the window she has cracked open. She quickly opens it, raises her arm and with all her might throws one last stone, a larger one that falls before our eyes right outside the wall against which we have flattened ourselves. It is wrapped up in something and there’s string around it.
“A message from Cécile!” I exclaim.
“What message?”
“There’s a piece of paper wrapped around the stone.”
“You are not going out!”
“I’ll have to anyway to get the water and the coal.”
“I am hungry” he confesses.
“So you see. Wait a little, until tonight.”
I’m upset with myself for having wasted the water and syrup on libations. I feel weak and starved. We each take a sip of clairin from the bottle and cough.
“This stuff scorches my guts,” André says quietly.
I go back to the wall to feast my eyes on the stone, harbinger of happiness. Nothing could stop me. I would snatch it from the very jaws of the devils if I had to. Cécile must see it from her window as well.
“Plug up the hole,” André tells me. “It stinks more and more outside.”
He angrily chases off a rat that jumped down from the roof to rummage for something to eat.
“What are you looking for?”
“Some cardboard to cover the chamber pot.”
He urinates holding his nose, then puts the cardboard on the pot.
“I’m hungry,” he says again.
“There’s syrup in the marassas dishes.”
“Are you crazy?”
The silence is strangling us. I even miss the whistling of bullets. Something terrible is coming, I am sure of it. Nothing moves, not even the leaves. The heat of a Haitian midsummer sets sky and earth ablaze. The road stretches out, lonesome and red right up to the church where the bodies have been piled. How can they kill as the sun is setting? How can they kill as the sun rises? Everything is so beautiful at all hours of the day and night! For the moment, the sea embraces
the sky right where the sun has sunk dressed in saffron and crimson. An entire section of the sky has been set ablaze. Flames leak through the clouds and light them on fire. The sun is a centaur with a blazing mane. I am mounting the sun. I am clinging to two monstrous waves that have miraculously retained their immaculate color. I catch two clouds as they pass, thin as ribbons and red as bloodstains. I am standing atop the sun, in the midst of white waves, my muscles taut, head wreathed by the emerging stars, like a god on a chariot dripping with light.
“Plug the hole back up,” André tells me.
I am as startled as if something had bitten me; I’m panting, drunk on sun and clairin. I plug up the hole and go to bed next to him on the floor.
I am suffocating. I am thirsty and hungry. Oh God, let night come!
I’ve had three swigs of clairin one after the other and André has hung the jug around my neck, behind my back.
We cautiously took down the barricade and I pushed the door open. I threw myself to the ground and crawled up to the corpse with my eyes closed, holding my breath. I picked up the stone and I slipped it into my pocket. Then I went back to the yard and ran to the faucet, grabbed the coal basket, put the filled jug and the stove in it, and then ran back, this time ducking all the way back to the front door. In my slow and jerky dash, the water spilled on the coal. I was sweating profusely As I passed the dead body, rats came at me as if they wanted to make up for not having noticed me the first time around. I had to put down my basket to get rid of them. Their onslaught forced me to linger and look at the body. In the darkness, it seemed to me to have shrunk, more like the remains of a dog than of a man. Teeth jutted sharply from his lips, which had been gnawed by rats and ants. I hurried back. Trembling, André was waiting for me by the door he had cautiously closed. Together we rebuilt the barricade and filled the stove with coal. We had to search for a long time before we found the matches and the coffee, which I had inadvertently put back in the trunk with the dishes.
“Leave the trunk open,” André said.
He has been scratching the enormous scar, disfiguring his forehead enough to draw blood.
“Dr. Prémature didn’t sew you up properly,” I told him.
“You think so?”
“Well, long live the good Dr. Chanel! Unfortunately, he’s dead.”
“Maybe it’s the heat. Give me some clairin to clean it.”
I give him the clairin and search my pocket for the stone.
“The letter! It’s disappeared.”
“The rats must have eaten it.”
I lowered my head, perplexed, turning the stone between my fingers again and again.
“Why did the rats eat it? Why?”
“Because you’re just unlucky, that’s all. Come on! It’ll be all right. I’ll stand by you. We’ve been friends from childhood. We scribbled our first verses together. I’ll stand by you.”
As I light the fire, he kneels before the crucifix and slowly recites the Pater Noster. I set the water to boil and slowly pour coffee into the bag.
“No point making coffee,” André tells me. “I could never drink it black.”
“Take some syrup from the dishes.”
“Don’t tempt me, don’t ever tempt me,” he suddenly yells.
His own voice frightens him so much that he throws himself to his knees, grabs the jug and sprinkles the trunk and the dishes with a ritual gesture.
“I may be thirsty,” he tells me, “but so are the loas.”
He takes a drink and holds out the jug to me.
Sitting, hands crossed on lifted knees, he chants a voodoo song in a plaintive voice. He swings back and forth to the rhythm of the song, and little by little his eyes close. He slides onto his back and falls asleep. I stay near him, lying on the floor, waiting up like a guard dog. Oh, how I’d like to sleep! To sleep!
Commandant Cravache, what are you doing at this hour? Leave the prisoners alone, and come out and confront the devils. Commandant Cravache, face the devils! You who twice beat us up for public drunkenness and incitement when we recited Massillon Coicou’s “L’Alarme” in unison. [52] Oh! Oh! Oh!…
Do you hear the cry that resounded: To arms!
Horror still! Blood still! Tears still! These mournful echoes, it is not the cannon
Of Crête-à-Pierrot that thunders its fury
To defend or avenge the rights of the Country…
Oh! Oh! Oh! He doesn’t seem to like Massillon Coicou much, our Commandant Cravache. He grabbed me by the collar, kicked my backside twice, and, calling me crazy, hit me over the head with his coco-macaque
“Brotherhood of mad poets,” he called us.
And he also hit André, Jacques and Simon. Over the head. Always over the head. He has a bit of nasal twang, Commandant Cravache, and seems to me-as Simon put it-just a tad effeminate. He strikes and stares at his victim with a funny expression. He strikes and after each blow leans in to sniff the blood. He strikes and caresses the gaping wounds with an almost religious gesture. The good Dr. Chanel sewed back my ear and my left temple, but he’s dead, the good Dr. Chanel. In the meantime, I would like to know what they are waiting for to clean up the town. Club in his fist, revolver on his hip, rifle on his shoulder, why doesn’t he confront the devils, fucking Commandant Cravache! I am going to lodge a complaint against Commandant Cravache, who is responsible for the security of this district and who has evaded his responsibility. Unless they’re in cahoots, the devils and him. People in uniform always have each other’s backs. If that’s true, then we are lost, utterly lost. Because he will recognize me disguised in the ranks of the devils and will finger me and the devils will murder me and I will die like an animal and my body will join the others on the pavement. And that I don’t want. God chose me to liberate the town. Am I going to shrink from this undertaking? My skull hurts. Bones are cracking in my head. It starts in the nape, right below the occiput, and pulls at my temple. My ears are ringing. “You’re burned out!” the good Dr. Chanel would diagnose. It’s true that my head has been working nonstop. And then, this disappointment. I have the stone in my hand. I bring it to my lips. Cécile! Cécile! Your black eyes! Your black hair! Your plum-brown skin! There’s a jazz session in my stomach: cymbals, drums, bamboo trumpets, trombones, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, maracas, all mingled in an uproar. Am I hungry? It seems to me that I will never be able to be hungry or sleepy. I am slipping in and out of consciousness. And when I move my head, I hear bones cracking inside.
“You drink too much,” good Dr. Chanel used to say. “You’ll drown your talent in alcohol.”
Another ignoramus-after all, Baudelaire drank and Villon drank before him and Rimbaud drank too. [53] The taste of it returns as I keep thinking about it, and I look for the bottle near André, who’s snoring away, just to get a mouthful, no more than a mouthful.
I feel sure someone just knocked cautiously on the door. I wake up André. He opens his red eyes and fish mouth.
“Someone knocked,” I say.
“Don’t open it,” he begs.
“Wait!”
I run to the wall but can’t see a thing through the hole. It’s dark as the devil’s lair.
“You must have been dreaming,” André whispers.
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
This time we both distinctly hear three little knocks. A voice whispers:
“René! René!”
“It’s Jacques! He’s not dead,” I say to André, shaking him. We clear the door and Jacques comes in.
“Oh!” he cries, seeing André, “I was sure I’d find you here.”
“Oh, little buddy! My little buddy! I thought you were dead,” André says, hugging him.
“Dead! Me! And why?”
“The devils!”
“What devils!”
“Why, the ones escorting you. René saw you going with them. You seemed so proud, so brave! You were reciting your poems and you were walking among them paying them no mind.”
“That’s right. I r
emember now. They said to me… You know what they said to me: Jacques, you’re a genius. We’ll leave you alone because you’re a genius.’”
He straightens his back and grabs the bottle of clairin.
“You pranksters! You guys are hiding out so you could drink without me.”
“We’re hiding because of the devils, you know that. We’re no geniuses, so they might kill us.”
“Anyway, I don’t want to see them again,” he says. “They’re awful, horrible…”
He shudders.
“Sit down,” I say to him.
“He looks so tired,” André says to me.
“Yes, he is as skinny as we are.”
“I’ve forgotten to eat,” Jacques admits.
“Alas, there’s nothing here.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“You didn’t see Simon?” André asks.
“The devils may have murdered him,” I say.
“I left him two days ago, no three… Ah, I don’t remember.”
“Let him be,” André tells me, “he seems exhausted.”
“Did you see the corpse?” I ask him.
“What corpse?”
“The one in the street, in front of the door.”
“Yes, that’s a dog.”
“But no, that’s Saindor, the one who runs the place by the sea.”
“It was dark,” he says. “I thought it was a dog.”
“The devils killed him right in front of René,” André says.
“And the other bodies? Did you see them?”
“Where?”
“By the church.”
“Yes. Piles. Hundreds of bodies. I saw them, I saw them…”
All of a sudden he starts to shriek, and I throw myself on top of him to keep his mouth shut. I put all my weight against his back, my left arm around his chest and my right hand muzzling him to the point of smothering him.
“Are you trying to draw them here?”
André was trembling so much that he staggered when he got up and would’ve fallen if he hadn’t held on to the table.
Love, Anger, Madness Page 34
