Dancing in the Baron's Shadow

by Fabienne Josaphat

  “Are you really serious?” Georges asked. “Is this what Haiti has done to you?”

  “It’s what Haiti is doing to all of us!” Nicolas snapped. “Come on, Georges! Give me a break. You mean to tell me your passport isn’t stamped and ready? You mean to tell me all those phone calls from your kids in Switzerland aren’t about figuring out how to get you out of here? Forever?”

  Georges’s eyebrows met for a moment, but he didn’t deny the charge.

  Nicolas turned to Jean-Jean. “And you, Jean? Tell me, you old patriot! No one loves his flag more than you, but you’re visiting your sister more and more. Before long, you won’t bother to come back. Tell me I’m not right.”

  Jean-Jean tried to answer, but Nicolas cut him off. “I’m not judging you,” he said. “I don’t want to leave either. I love my home. I love my work. I want to be able to do that work without looking over my shoulder all the time. But I have a daughter now, and a wife who lost her whole family last October in that massacre of rebels.”

  Nicolas took a deep breath. His friends were silent now, subdued by his outburst. He turned around, pulled out a drawer, and placed the manuscript and his notebook inside before shutting it.

  “You know Eve and I had to go into hiding after her father and brothers were killed,” he whispered. “I can’t take the pressure any longer. When I lecture my students, I can feel myself on the verge of telling them that censorship is wrong, that education should never be compromised. This isn’t the Haiti I want my daughter to grow up in.”

  The older men let an acquiescent silence settle over the room. Jean-Jean shoved his hands in his pockets. Georges looked at the floor between his shoes.

  “It wasn’t always like this,” Jean-Jean said. “We’re better than this.”

  He wrestled himself out of the chair, took a few steps forward, and rested his hand on Nicolas’s shoulder. “We’ve had a rocky political history, but never like this, no. Duvalier’s the worst devil of them all.”

  A dog barked in the distance, as if in rebuke at hearing Papa Doc’s name spoken out loud. Georges flinched in his seat.

  Jean-Jean squeezed Nicolas’s shoulder. His face was sullen. “Walk us out, will you? It’s almost curfew.”

  Outside, the gardens hemorrhaged fragrances of rose and jasmine. Eve had potted every variety of fern and red ginger, dangled orchids from the branches of trees, and placed laurels and frangipanis at the entrance to soak the house in color.

  The men stopped in front of Georges’s black Citroen. He and Jean-Jean had come together, and now they looked anxiously at their watches.

  “Please tell Eve we’re sorry to leave in such a hurry,” Georges said. “Time is our greatest enemy these days.”

  Nicolas said nothing. He needed an answer, and his friends were leaving without a promise or even giving him any advice. He watched them climb into the vehicle. Georges started the engine. The rumble interrupted the chirping of pipirit birds.

  “Let me think about this, Nicolas,” Jean-Jean said, scratching his neck in thought. “I will come up with something, God help me!”

  Nicolas met his mentor’s eyes, his heart swelling with hope. Georges coughed and glanced at the old man.

  Jean-Jean lowered his voice. “I mean, I’ll see what I can do. But we will need a commitment from you, and a time frame.”

  Nicolas’s eyes sparkled with gratitude. He opened the gate and let the Citroen roll out. Everything was quiet and still, and as Georges drove away, Nicolas watched the sun fall behind the mountains.

  THREE

  In times like these, Raymond found himself taking stock of the differences between himself and his brother. Raymond, like any good farm kid, could always dig perfect trenches in the soil, find his way home by the position of the sun, and synchronize the harvest with the moon. Later, he learned how to hotwire cars and siphon out fuel or coolant. Nicolas, on the other hand, was the one who wrote letters for the illiterate villagers and whose teachers wrote him glowing letters of recommendation to medical school in Port-au-Prince. When he didn’t get in the Faculté de Médecine, other letters won him a spot in law school and he accepted the privilege. Today, at thirty-eight, Raymond was different from Nicolas in every way. And that was fine by him. He knew that his talents were God’s merciful gift. If it had been Nicolas at the wheel earlier today, he would have never been able to find his way out of a convoluted shantytown like Cité Simone, much less lose the Tonton Macoutes. Then again, his brother didn’t have to deal with people like Madame Simeus.

  “I’ll call the police,” his landlady threatened again as he hurried toward his little house. “And I’ll tell them your rent is past due.”

  Madame Simeus’s voice croaked in the night like an old crow’s. Raymond bit his tongue. This encounter was the last thing he needed. He took a closer look to make sure she wasn’t sleepwalking again. Alas, no.

  She extinguished her cigarette into a potted frangipani and blew plumes of smoke toward the garden. Her gold bracelets clamored around a bony wrist as she pressed the butt into the damp soil and hoisted herself up. When she moved into the light, he saw the bags under her eyes, her thin lips, her small body floating under a large housedress. She stood with her arms akimbo, like vulture wings.

  “I’ll have it for you.” Raymond sighed wearily.

  He was used to her threats. Madame Simeus regularly promised to call the police over late rent or his children making too much noise in the yard or when an item went missing in her home. He didn’t think she meant it, but he didn’t want to push his luck. Although perhaps the police would come and arrest Madame Simeus for wasting their time? He smiled at the idea.

  She lived alone and spent most of her time in the garden, escaping the loneliness of her empty home. Her husband and only son had both died of typhoid back in 1960, months before Raymond had moved in. Spending time outside also allowed her to spy on her tenants and her neighbors. It gave her something to do. She knew Raymond’s comings and goings, and frequently offered unsolicited opinions.

  “With the curfews and all, money’s been tight,” Raymond added. “Not many people are hailing cabs these days.”

  “You’re three days late,” she reminded him.

  “I’m good for it, Madame Simeus. You’ll have it. Good night, madame.”

  Raymond hurried toward the back of the house.

  “I don’t want to have to remind you again!” she shouted after him.

  The evening air was heavy, and as he reached his door, he could still smell her tobacco. As much as he disliked her harping, she was right. This was the sixth time he’d been late. He didn’t like it, and he couldn’t stall her with excuses. She wasn’t interested in others’ problems. “If you can’t pay, you can’t stay,” she’d say.

  When Raymond opened the door, two pairs of small arms threw themselves around his legs. “Papa’s home!”

  Raymond let the children hold him for a while and pressed his hands against their small backs. It often struck him how small Enos and Adeline were. He knew they weren’t getting enough to eat, and he couldn’t get past the guilt he felt when he ran his hands along their backs and felt their bones. But he loved that their smallness was still a kind of innocence in a place where so much experience was painful. He bent over and kissed them on their foreheads. Adeline was six, Enos four, and they wore their smiles like torches, lighting up the dark corners of his heart.

  “How was your day? Tell me, my little angels.”

  He picked Enos up and walked over to the small kitchen table, his other arm wrapped around his daughter’s shoulders, the children clinging to their father like vines. As he sat down, the chair wobbled and shifted under his weight. Some nights, he came home with a piece of candy in his pocket, or gum, or dous kokoye, sweet coconut. Tonight he had nothing.

  On the counter, his wife, Yvonne, had left bowls and basins filled with water they’d fetched from the back of the house. Dishes were piled up, glistening with dinner’s rancid oil. On the wall, th
ere was a holographic portrait of Jesus—crucified and resurrected—and a photograph of his wife and children in Sunday church clothes, leaning against Raymond’s car. The wall calendar, still turned to January, featured a black-and-white photograph of Duvalier, lips curled in a devious smile, trailed by a gloved First Lady craning her neck like a condor.

  Yvonne rushed out of the bedroom. “Where have you been? I was getting worried.”

  In the dim light, her skin glowed as if lit from the inside, like a fanal, those festive paper lanterns. These days, she rarely greeted him happily with the children. Instead, she’d wait for him to come to the kitchen where, wiping empty plates, she’d complain about the price of rice, of shoes, of medicine, about the chronic pain that gnawed at her bones, about the heat that choked them all day and night. Even as they fell asleep, she repeated the familiar questions in the dark: “Must we live here forever? Can’t we have just a small, nice kay with trees?”

  Right now, however, her face displayed genuine concern. Yvonne rested her hand on his head. “It’s really late,” she said.

  “Have the children eaten?” he asked.

  “You almost missed curfew!” She pulled away, yanked the kitchen towel from her waistband and threw it on the countertop. “Yes, they’ve eaten.”

  She was scared. He recognized this, and still he said, digging through his pockets, “You don’t want to know what I’ve been through today.”

  He shifted Enos onto his other leg and gave his earnings to Adeline, who handed the money to his wife. Yvonne stared at him for a moment, the way she always did when she couldn’t get a good read on her husband.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He nodded. She reached for his hand. Her palms were sandpaper rough, the result of years of handwashing sheets and towels in hotels with cheap, imported chemical soaps. He looked down and saw how the dyes had stained her nails, how the flesh was worn around the beds. Those hands had never been smooth. The very first time she’d held his face, he’d felt the damage of her life against his cheeks. He recognized the same toughness from his mother’s hands.

  “Why are your hands shaking?” she asked.

  “It’s been a long day.”

  He put Enos down and asked the kids to go prepare him a bath. They grabbed a bucket and ran out, the back door slamming behind them. Yvonne counted the bills quietly.

  “That’s all?” she whispered. “Thirty gourdes, Raymond. What am I supposed to do with that? That’s just enough for the kids’ tuition.”

  “There’ll be more tomorrow,” he said.

  She stuffed the bills into her bra, her eyebrows knitted into a frown. “Enos’s doctor bills keep piling up, and we must pay them. Plus Madame Simeus won’t stop harassing me about rent. Are you going to solve all this by tomorrow?”

  “I said I’ll get more money tomorrow,” Raymond repeated. “What do you want me to do? I can’t work miracles—”

  “Maybe you should stop giving away free rides,” she said.

  This was not how he had envisioned ending the day, but it was how days usually ended. In their arguments, his generosity became an offense to Yvonne, as if having a little humanity was an affront to their family.

  “I don’t just offer free rides for the hell of it,” Raymond said slowly, patiently, clenching his jaw, the desperate faces of Milot Sauveur and his family flashing in his mind.

  “There is always someone with an excuse, isn’t there? Someone who got mugged, someone who is homeless, someone who’s sick. That is not the way to do business, Raymond. Everyone will take advantage of you!”

  Raymond closed his eyes. It was so simple for her to tell him how to do his job. She wasn’t the one at the wheel, observing the decay out there.

  “You forget that’s how we met,” Raymond said.

  Yvonne glared at him. It pained him that they were already fighting. But he couldn’t help it. He had to remind her of that fateful day when she’d been left stranded in the rain in downtown Port-au-Prince. She’d have caught a cold if Raymond hadn’t come to her rescue.

  “That’s not fair,” she said.

  “You don’t understand what it’s like,” he moaned, rubbing nervously at the stubble on his chin. “I almost got killed today.”

  Yvonne listened as he told her what had happened, staring like he was a ghost. As soon as he was done, he saw her lower lip quiver and he regretted having told her. She had enough to worry about.

  “I—I don’t know what to say,” she stammered.

  “There’s nothing to say,” he replied. “I had to do something. I couldn’t let them die on the street like that. Could you?”

  She lowered her eyes, but did not answer.

  “I’ll have to be extra careful the next few days.”

  “What about us?” she asked. “What about the kids?”

  “I just need to get a little work done on the car, replace the license plates, and we’ll be fine. They’ll never find me.”

  “How are we going to pay for that?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You can’t afford not to work for a few days—”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he repeated. “Could I have something to eat?”

  Yvonne jumped up and grabbed a ladle to stir a pot of bouyon. The aroma filled the apartment. Raymond began to salivate, and his stomach ached. All he’d eaten today were two hard-boiled eggs, purchased in Cité Simone on the side of the road from a large woman with dirty fingernails and unsightly moles on her face. He watched his wife pour the soup into a bowl, her thin waist and shrinking frame barely visible under her dress. Even her hair was graying early, and these days she kept it hidden under a scarf because she didn’t have the luxury of caring for what used to be a spectacular mane of wiry curls. She placed the bowl in front of him. Raymond noticed it was only half full. He ran his spoon through it. No meat. Just a few chunks of plantain and yams.

  “I was thinking…” Yvonne swallowed and sat next to him. Outside, they heard the children laugh. She bit her lip. “I was thinking, maybe you could get a loan? Maybe ask Eve and Nicolas?”

  Raymond turned to her and she lowered her head, avoiding his eyes. He clenched his jaw again and felt his appetite leave him. “Don’t,” he said.

  “They’ve got the big house in Turgeau, more money than they need. They’re bourgeois, Raymond,” Yvonne continued. “Isn’t he just a little bit embarrassed that you have nothing? Don’t you think he could spare some money for his brother?”

  “Stop,” Raymond said.

  “But it’s so unfair—”

  “I’m not begging my brother for money!”

  Raymond seldom raised his voice. He brought the soup to his lips quickly as if to swallow the anger churning inside. He gulped spoonfuls even though he was no longer hungry. It was impossible to ignore Yvonne. She was there, boiling with need and despair, and he felt it. He understood it. He smelled the permanent odor of laundry soap and ammonia that clung to her skin as she rubbed her temples with impatience.

  She sighed. “Well, we’re going to be beggars at some point. Might as well beg from your family.”

  Their eyes finally met. She grabbed hold of his fingers. “Raymond, listen to me,” she said slowly. “You’ve been pushing the same old car downhill since I met you. I just don’t see how things can get better for us if you can’t even provide for your children. If you won’t ask your brother, then maybe I can talk to Eve?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  She paused. Raymond noticed her nostrils twitching as she pulled her hand away. He continued to eat in silence, hoping she’d drop the subject. But she cleared her throat.

  “Well, then I’m going to have to take the kids lòt bò dlo.”

  Raymond’s spoon clattered against the edge of his bowl.

  “Not that again!” he howled. “My kids are not getting on a damn raft to Miami. Just last week I heard another story. Twelve families piled inside a rickety tugboat that started to sink. The capt
ain threw them overboard. You really believe those stupid stories people tell you? That money there comes easy? You think you’re just going to walk off the boat and start picking money off trees like mangoes?”

  Yvonne shook her head. “I’m a hard worker,” she said.

  “So am I,” Raymond replied. “But I’ll be damned if my kids end up in the belly of a shark.”

  He didn’t need this. He wanted to take a bath and go to sleep—then the chase, the bullets, this argument could go away for a while.

  She finally looked up at him. “They’re my children too.”

  “Then think about what you’re saying,” Raymond said. “The Macoutes control the wharfs. If they suspect anything, they’ll shoot you on sight.”

  “It’s an option.” She still would not look at him. She knew he was right. “It’s better than this,” she added, and shrugged.

  “It’s suicide.”

  A torturous silence fell over them.

  “My uncle in Miami has plenty of connections,” she said. “He made it fine. He’s got a job now and—”

  “I’m not having this conversation.” Raymond pushed his bowl away and splattered its contents across the table. He stood up.

  “I just want something better for us,” she mumbled.

  He knew she was on the verge of tears, but Yvonne was good at not crying. In front of him, anyways.

  “There’s no such thing as ‘better,’” he said. “Wake up!”

  He walked out the back door and left Yvonne sitting at the table.

  There was no grass growing behind the house. The ground had been paved to save Madame Simeus the trouble of upkeep. Raymond picked his way over to the edge of the water basin where the kids were waiting, sat down, and fumbled in the dark until he found the faucet he was looking for. The water trickled out in a thin stream.

  “Wash your faces, your hands, your mouths,” he said as the kids reached toward the faucet with their small fingers. “You need to be nice and clean before bed. Hurry.”