Dancing in the Baron's Shadow

by Fabienne Josaphat

  He leaned back and felt his sweat-soaked skin clinging to his shirt. “We lost them.”

  The sound of his own voice startled him. He glanced in the rearview mirror—his mysterious passengers sat stiff as statues against the scorching vinyl, the child still crying and the woman patting his back to soothe him.

  “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you did, but we’re coming up on Portail Léogâne,” Raymond said, glancing over his shoulder. “That’s where you get out.” “Thank you, brother,” the man said.

  Raymond caught a glimpse of the man’s face in the mirror. He was staring up at a slice of sky through the window. The man seemed almost sedated, his frightened eyes shrinking slowly as he took the time to breathe. Their eyes met in the mirror. “Thank you.”

  Raymond looked away. That voice. Where had he heard it before?

  Portail Léogâne sprawled before them, bubbling with curfew’s chaos. It was a transportation hub that Raymond was all too familiar with. The trucks and buses sped away from the curb at full speed, zooming past Raymond’s Datsun in a blur of hibiscus reds and canary yellows, their frames lacquered with biblical paintings, portraits, and quotes from Scripture. The drivers parked along the sidewalk honked impatiently under a row of palm trees, their horns blaring “La Cucaracha,” weaving yet another song into the street’s antic brouhaha. Street vendors swarmed through the parked cars, sandal-clad feet stomping against the hot asphalt, headed home with their products tucked away in baskets atop their heads. Others were still brave enough to linger behind, raising oranges and roasted peanut toffees to the windows, desperate for one last sale. “Bel zoranj, bèl chadèk! Beautiful oranges, beautiful grapefruits! Won’t you buy a dozen, darling? Good prices for you, pratik!”

  A mother grabbed her daughter’s arm and ran across the street in pursuit of a southbound bus. Raymond honked his horn at a vendor, and the old woman scrambled to move her straw basket as he pulled to the curb. Finally, the Datsun came to a halt.

  “We’re here,” Raymond said quietly over his shoulder. If there were Tonton Macoutes at the station, Raymond was certain he and his passengers would all be apprehended.

  A bus loomed over the little cab, and its driver stretched his neck out a window and bellowed, “Move your bogota, man! You’re blocking me! I need to get out of here!”

  Raymond raised his hand to placate the anxious driver as his passengers were scrambling out. At Raymond’s window, the man’s hands trembled while he dug through his pockets. “God bless you,” he muttered.

  “Just go,” Raymond said. “Get on that bus, get out of town! I don’t want your money.”

  The man peered into his eyes.

  “Not a cent,” Raymond insisted, holding his palm up. He would not make money off of someone who’d almost lost his life to the Macoutes, no matter how desperate things were. It would be dishonest, even immoral. Somehow, he knew, taking money would upset the balance of things. He just needed to leave, to get away from these people, to make it home by eight o’clock. Thankfully, home was just a few minutes from here. The more time he spent with these fugitives, the more he was convinced danger would haunt him.

  “I owe you—”

  “Go!” Raymond repeated. “Get on that bus!”

  The woman stopped on the sidewalk, staring back at them. “Milot, let’s go!”

  The man leaned in closer to Raymond at the window, and the bus driver let loose a fresh string of obscenities.

  “God bless you for all you’ve done for us today, brother,” the man said. “You saved our lives. If you ever need help, come to the town of Marigot, past Jacmel, and ask for me on the beach. The blue house with red windows. My name is Milot Sauveur.”

  Raymond frowned. Sauveur. That name was familiar. And that voice? Raymond’s face brightened and he leaned closer. “Milot Sauveur? The reporter from Radio Lakay?”

  Sauveur nodded. Raymond couldn’t believe it. Here was that voice, in the flesh, a voice he’d spent long afternoons listening to in his kitchen while shining his shoes. Here was that voice, whose reports he’d so come to trust. Six weeks ago, when Milot Sauveur had suddenly gone silent, everyone had assumed the worst. Raymond was thrilled to see him in one piece, but what did this mean? He was alive, but for how long? People like Sauveur had only two fates these days: imprisonment or death—the same thing, effectively. Sauveur leaned in and tossed ten gourdes on the dashboard before Raymond could refuse. The bills fluttered around and fell on Raymond’s lap.

  “I’ll never forget this,” Sauveur said, squeezing Raymond’s arm. Raymond could only nod in response.

  Then Sauveur ran toward his wife, grabbed her hand, and shepherded her and the baby onto the bus. There was a brief commotion inside. Raymond could hear passengers sucking their teeth and caught a glimpse of eyes rolling in annoyance as the family stumbled down the aisle. The bus’s engine came to life in a cloud of black smoke.

  Raymond pulled down his visor and looked again at the photograph of his children. Go home, Raymond. His eyes shifted to the rearview. Nothing suspicious. He backed out of his spot, repressing a shudder as he lost himself in the traffic.

  Raymond parked his Datsun in the driveway and exhaled. He’d made it home alive, intact, with four minutes to spare. He wanted to run inside and lock the doors. He needed the safety of his home, the two-bedroom apartment they’d been renting for a few years, in the back of an old gingerbread house. Yet he found he could barely move.

  He peeled his fingers off the wheel and stared at them, willing the tremors away. His entire body seemed to be vibrating with a mild seizure, and he smelled the sweat festering in his armpits. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest. He couldn’t extract himself from the car. Not yet. He needed his legs to stop shaking. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d confronted death this way, come so close to it. In some ways, he thought, it was surprising. Everyone in Port-au-Prince lived in death’s shadow.

  Finally, he got out, wobbling. He considered the small white Datsun he’d been driving for years. It was now his accomplice in a crime, regardless of good intentions. He had acted purely out of instinct. And now, heart racing, he faced the likely facts of his situation: they must have his license plate number. A description of his vehicle. He cursed under his breath. The little Datsun was now as incriminating as a murder weapon.

  He looked around anxiously to make sure no one was watching. A streetlight cast a white glow over the driveway. Just above the rear bumper, his eye caught a bullet hole in the body of his Datsun. He inserted his finger in it and fought off another chill. He would have to do something about this. His friend Faton knew someone at the vehicle registration office who could get him a new license plate, but bodywork, like everything else, was costly. Raymond scratched the anxiety crawling under his sideburns like a colony of ants.

  He glanced at the big gingerbread house. An old rocking chair trembled on the veranda, back and forth. But there was no breeze. The doors and window shutters were lacquered in a glossy, peeling gray that revealed termite bites in the mahogany. The windows opened onto a brightly lit interior with a wooden staircase and a wall of sepia-toned family portraits. Raymond suddenly smelled a familiar waft of tobacco burning in the warm evening air. Now a woman appeared in the rocking chair, her shape becoming more distinct in the dark as she nodded, the embers of her cigarette glittering red like a lonesome koukouy, or firefly, suspended in midair.

  He steeled himself. Perhaps he could get away with pretending he didn’t see her. Perhaps he could walk past the veranda with his head held high, and she would let him go home without saying a word. He scurried up the driveway toward the back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement and heard a depressing scratch of the throat. Then a voice cut through the night.

  “I see you, L’Eveillé!”

  He froze, his eyes cutting through the evening light.

  “I’ll call the police.”

  TWO

  Nicolas L’Eveillé stood
between his friends Georges Phenicié and Jean Faustin. They were peering over a stack of typewritten pages Nicolas had just freed from the confines of a rubber band.

  He could smell the cigarettes and coffee on his friends’ breath and could feel the tension as the setting sun threw shadows across the walls of his study. Next to the manuscript was a small black notebook stuffed with newspaper clippings, Nicolas’s black Smith-Corona, and a photograph of his wife, Eve, her black hair perfectly curled, holding their newborn.

  Jean Faustin, whom Nicolas and his close friends affectionately called Jean-Jean, gingerly slid a newspaper clipping from the notebook. He held it away from the window. In the newsprint photograph, a man disfigured by a scar from his eye down to his chin grinned in the sunlight. Standing next to the man on a balcony was Papa Doc, his smirk and glasses unmistakable. Jean-Jean’s age-spotted, bald head tilted back as he let out his habitual, pensive grunt. He was in his seventies and had lived through enough to move away from the window lest anyone see what they’d found. He retreated to an empty space between the bookshelves that lined the walls.

  “I don’t understand,” Georges said. His large belly rolled forward as he leaned over to extinguish his cigarette in an empty espresso cup. He was a handsome, heavyset man who always wore white or beige linen clothing that set off his inky skin. He had large eyes and purple gums that flashed nebulous teeth when he spoke. His rich baritone filled the room.

  “I know you said you wanted to write a book, but—when did you have the time to do all this?”

  “Took me a few months,” Nicolas said. “But never mind that. I called you here because I need your help.”

  Georges’s fearful eyes belied his calm voice. “Help?”

  “As you know, I’ve been collecting notes on Duvalier and Jules Oscar,” Nicolas said. “I have the evidence. It’s all in the book, but now—”

  “Slow down, son. Please.” Jean-Jean fell in a chair. He was still holding the photo. He shook his head and lowered his voice as though someone might be listening at the door. “This is very dangerous, Nicolas. Are you prepared for what could happen?”

  Nicolas picked up the notebook and approached Jean-Jean. He held it open for the older gentleman to see. He had hoped for help from Jean-Jean, his mentor. Georges was an old friend, yes, but Jean-Jean’s sour history with Duvalier had put him in a position of kamoken anba chal, a rebel in disguise, someone who actively spoke against Duvalier, if only in whispers, behind closed doors.

  The man was like a father to Nicolas. After being accepted to law school in Port-au-Prince, Nicolas had sought an internship at the prestigious Cabinet d’Avocats with Jean Faustin, a judge who himself had started out as an attorney. That first day, Jean-Jean had carefully appraised Nicolas’s curriculum vitae, then studied his cheap, worn-out dress shoes and the glimmer of ambition in his eyes, before deciding to take the young man under his wing. And now here they were, in the successful protege’s beautiful library, surrounded by hundreds of books. Jean-Jean leafed through a few pages of the manuscript.

  “What exactly do you plan on doing with this?” he asked Nicolas. “You’re thirty-five, with a beautiful family. You’re far too young to risk losing everything. You must not have thought this through…”

  Nicolas’s shoulders were broad, and he towered over Jean-Jean, who stared at him with a combination of love and suspicion, like a man waiting for his son to confess to a serious transgression.

  “I was hoping you could find a way to smuggle it to that friend of yours in France,” Nicolas said. “The editor? I have a mountain of research and evidence, things I can’t keep locked in my drawer forever. It’s only a matter of time before…”

  He handed the notebook over to the old man, but Jean-Jean motioned for him to put it away. Nicolas froze. He’d expected shock, yes, but also that Jean Faustin would understand. What he hadn’t expected was dismissal. His mentor looked pale.

  Nicolas took a deep breath. He was not giving up so easily.

  “More sugar?” He reached for the cubes on the tray.

  Jean-Jean shook his head, waving them away. “You know I can’t have that,” he grumbled.

  In his distraction, Nicolas had forgotten Jean-Jean’s diabetes, which required his old friend to give himself insulin injections several times a day. Nicolas backed away and took a seat at his desk facing the two men in their wicker chairs. Their faces drooped—they hadn’t been prepared for this when they’d strolled in earlier. The shelf next to them held leather-bound books on civil and penal codes and a black-and-white portrait of the L’Eveillé brothers. Nicolas, dressed all in white, knelt at a pew holding a rosary next to his older brother. Somehow this image gave him strength for what he was going to say next.

  “I have proof he ordered the arrest and execution of Dr. Jacques Stephen Alexis. No one will doubt it now. It’s just—”

  “That’s the extent of your plan?” Georges looked at him incredulously. “Export an accusation to France and then sit tight? Like news of this won’t come back to hurt you?”

  “Have you forgotten where you are?” Jean-Jean bristled. “If you get caught with this, the Baron’s spies will take you away.”

  Nicolas looked down at his shoes, silently pressing his toes against the floor to control his frustration. “Which is precisely why I need it out of my hands.”

  “And then what?” Jean-Jean asked.

  “Are you trying to get us killed too?” Georges hissed. “And what about your family?”

  “I realize it’s a lot to ask,” Nicolas said. “But I can’t just throw this out.”

  “Of course not,” Jean-Jean said. “I was thinking a bonfire.”

  “Help me, Jean! Or I’ll find someone who will.”

  Jean-Jean’s voice burned with an anger Nicolas had never heard before. “Like who? That poor idiot who got caught at the airport smuggling in newspapers? Where is he? No one’s seen him since. Just for bringing in a few op-eds by foreigners! You are not prepared to handle this—”

  “But I am prepared,” Nicolas started to argue.

  Jean-Jean held up a silencing hand and turned toward Georges, who was now chain-smoking. “Talk some sense into the boy, Georges. What is it your friends at the ministry are calling writers these days? A danger to the Republic?”

  Georges blew plumes of white smoke into the air. They curled into spirals and crashed against the art naïf paintings on the wall.

  “He’s right, Nicolas,” Georges said. “To ask us to help you with this—it isn’t just madness; it’s callous disregard for everyone’s safety. You simply cannot expect us to release this information.”

  “How can I not release it?” Nicolas said. “Who else will talk about it if not me? Are we supposed to go on pretending that Dr. Alexis just vanished into thin air? It’s all here for anyone who could possibly have doubts.” He grabbed another clipping from his notebook and held it up. “I have his signature approving the order to be carried out by the warden of Fort Dimanche.” He pointed at the photo in Jean-Jean’s hand. “It was Jules Sylvain Oscar who ordered his Macoutes to cut—”

  “Enough!” Jean-Jean stood up and ran his hand over the thinning gray hair around his bald spot. “I’ve heard plenty.”

  He tossed the photograph on Nicolas’s lap. The room fell silent.

  Nicolas stood up and looked his mentor in the eyes. “You knew Dr. Alexis, didn’t you?”

  “What difference does it make? And how the hell did you get this information, anyway? Who’s your source?”

  “I can’t get into that right now,” Nicolas said.

  “Bullshit!” Jean-Jean turned away.

  The disappearance of Jacques Stephen Alexis four years ago, upon his return from Moscow and Cuba, had left Haiti bruised and drained. Yet another brilliant intellectual the regime had done away with, fearing the contagion of communism. Of course, it had never been proven.

  “You need to slow down, approach this differently, and hope—” Georges paused. He look
ed uncomfortable, constipated. “Hope like hell this doesn’t leak. Who else have you shown this to? Who else have you told?”

  “You said you wanted to see him toppled, didn’t you?” Nicolas yelled at Georges, who was lighting another cigarette. Georges brought his gold-ringed finger to his lips.

  “You said you knew a guy who prints tracts and distributes them in the middle of the night,” Nicolas said. “Could he print this book in a compact format? This way it would be easier to—”

  “Ah non!” Georges shook his head. “Be reasonable!”

  “Jean-Jean?” Nicolas turned to the judge, who was staring at him through narrow eyes. “What about the editor you always visit when you travel over the border to visit your sister? I’m sure he’d be interested.”

  Jean-Jean gazed back in disbelief. Nicolas waited, his heart racing. Finally, Jean-Jean shook his head. “I can’t believe you’d entertain that idea. What do you want me to do? Travel with a ticking bomb in my suitcase?”

  Nicolas didn’t move. He didn’t dare. But he held his mentor’s stare.

  “Help me get the book to him while I find my way out of Haiti. The whole world is going to want to read this. I’m not stupid enough to sit here and wait for them to arrest me. I have a plan. But for me to have any chance, the book needs to go out now.”

  “They’ll kill you, you lunatic!” Jean-Jean yelled, and immediately caught himself. He peered out the window, but there were only breadfruit tree branches and rosebushes swaying in the evening breeze.

  “I’m going to leave the country,” Nicolas reiterated, “and take my family. They won’t find us. Jean-Jean, if she’ll have us, we could go live with your sister in the Dominican Republic—me and Eve and the baby. We’ll hide there until we can figure out how to get to Europe and apply for asylum.”