City Beasts

by Mark Kurlansky

  Howard had been trying to show me his shop before, but I had been too dumb. What was I going to say now when he asked me about my shop?

  “Howard,” I said.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it? I’ve had it for seven years.”

  Wasn’t there something in the Bible about a seven-year plague? “Howard, aren’t you worried about health concerns?”

  “Health concerns? What health concerns? It’s a hat shop.”

  “But I mean, all these women you don’t know trying on hats and then putting them down and the next one trying on the same hat and you don’t know what’s in their hair.”

  “This again.” Howard smiled his smile. “Don’t be such a nitpicker.”

  A feeling of panic shot through me. How did he know?

  HAITI

  The Leopard of Ti Morne Joli

  Izzy Goldstein felt in his heart that he was really Haitian, although no one who knew him understood why he felt that way.

  “Izzy, you’re Jewish,” his mother would say with sorrow showing on her brow as she examined the vodou artifacts displayed in his Miami Beach apartment. He had a particular affection for Damballah, the snake spirit, and there were steel sculptures, beaded flags, and bright acrylic-on-Masonite paintings of snakes. He had thought of getting a terrarium and keeping actual snakes, but then there would be the responsibility of feeding them.

  His original connection with Damballah began when he became convinced that the spirit was Jewish. True he was a lwa of Haitian vodou and of African origin, but when not a snake, he was often portrayed as Moses and there were several richly colored chromolithographs of Moses holding the Ten Commandments on Izzy’s wall that he had bought in Little Haiti. This was little comfort to his mother, because Moses was shown with horns. But even worse, from his mother’s point of view, was the other Damballah poster in which he was depicted as Saint Patrick dressed like a Catholic cardinal with a Celtic cross and snakes at his feet.

  Izzy argued that the name Damballah ended with an h and that Creole words never have a final h. Hebrew words, on the other hand, frequently do. His mother did not find this argument convincing. He also had an ason, a gourd covered with a net of snake vertebrae, that he had bought in Little Haiti, and had the habit of shaking when making a particular point, to the general annoyance of friends and family.

  Also in his apartment was a picture of an admiral. This was in fact Agwe, whom Goldstein tried to consult regularly because he was in charge of the sea. The sea was important in his life. He had learned to sail in small boats, handling a mainsail and a jib across Biscayne Bay, running to one causeway just so he could go beating in the wind to the other end of the bay. He tried to get away from the sea by going to college in Wisconsin, but after three semesters he dropped out and joined the merchant marines and spent five years on freighters across the Atlantic.

  Five years of that was enough, and he was back in Miami, trying to find a direction for his life.

  Damballah offered fertility, rain, and wisdom. It was only the last of these that interested Izzy Goldstein. Back in Miami, he kept reading about Haiti. Then he started to go to Little Haiti, eat griyo and bannann peze in the restaurants and learned about vodou. He even started going to ceremonies late at night. He wanted to be possessed by a lwa, he wanted Damballah but would have accepted whichever one wanted to take him. Only, it reminded him of that period before his bar mitzvah. He wrapped himself in his tallis, closed his eyes, and bobbed his body up and down in rhythmic rapture as he recited ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, languages, to be honest, he understood even less of than he did Haitian Creole. But no matter how hard he tried, the Hebrew god did not stir within him, and now neither did the lwas.

  At the lunches in the little restaurants, at the late-night ceremonies, at the clubs where groups played konpa and merengue and the people danced so perfectly while hardly moving at all, he asked, “What can I do for Haiti?”

  No idea came to him. There was no wisdom from Damballah. The lwas were as silent as Yahweh. Until one day . . .

  A 110-foot rusted Honduran freighter was for sale for so little money that he could buy it with the money he had saved from the merchant marines with enough money left over for the repairs. The engine needed only a little work, which he could do himself, the shaft was straight, the screw was almost new, and he had to spend only a small amount on scraping and repairing the hull. A forward pump needed a little work. And then Izzy Goldstein was captain of a freighter.

  He was going to name it Damballah, but then a better idea came to him in Little Haiti on a block of two-story yellow buildings shining hot in the Florida sun. He could form an organization that brought relief to Haiti on his freighter. What kind of relief? Doctors? Medicine? Food? Tools? What should he bring them? He went to the Jeremie, a little bar where he could find his friend DeeDee.

  DeeDee, whose real name was Dieudonné, was a light-skinned Haitian with graying hair. He kept moving back to Haiti and then back to Miami, back and forth as regimes changed and he was in or out of favor. DeeDee took him to a lawyer in a gleaming white office on Brickell Avenue. The lawyer’s name was Smith. He was tall and lean and had his hair slicked back in that way that had become fashionable for men with that kind of straight hair. He was from that rare group known in Miami as Anglos. An Anglo was a negative grouping. If you did not speak Spanish and you weren’t black and you weren’t Haitian and you weren’t Jewish, you were an Anglo. Smith wore powder-blue-striped seersucker, and this worried Izzy. He never trusted men who wore seersucker suits. Izzy was surprised that a lawyer who specialized in Haitian clients would have such a luxurious office, but whatever reservations Izzy had about the lawyer were laid to rest when the lawyer told him that he was not going to charge him. “I’ll just do it for Haiti.”

  Wasn’t that wonderful. The lawyer showed him how to establish a nonprofit organization with tax-exempt status and a fund-raising program. Izzy called his organization National Assistance for a New Haiti and had the letters NANH painted on the hull of his freighter. Haitians pronounced it like the Creole word nen, which means “dwarf” and made them laugh, but Izzy Goldstein didn’t know anything about that.

  What he did know was that thousands of dollars from concerned Americans was contributed to NANH, and with that money DeeDee loaded the freighter at night. He said it was too hot during the day. When they were set to leave, Izzy was surprised to see his deck stacked high with used cars, bicycles, and even a few Coca-Cola vending machines.

  “I don’t know, DeeDee. Is this the kind of stuff that they need in Haiti?”

  “They need everything in Haiti,” he said with a big sweep of his arms. “Even bicycles.”

  “But shouldn’t we bring medicine?”

  “We are gonna do that, too. But you have to be careful with medicine.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Not everybody is happy to see white people come with medicine.” Izzy looked worried. He didn’t like being reminded of his color. “We will go to Ti Morne Joli and Madame Dumas will explain everything, man,” said DeeDee with a reassuring smile. The lawyer had talked about Madame Dumas also. She was going to be important for NANH.

  They pulled up the anchor and made their way around the curve of the Miami River into the bay Izzy had always loved and set a course for Gonaïves, Haiti. In the pilothouse Izzy Goldstein was too excited to sleep. Help for Haiti was on the way.

  * * *

  When Haitians die, which happens every day, it is Agwe’s work to carry them across the ocean back to Africa. But Agwe did not always have to do this work. In ancient times, when Haiti was still connected to Africa, life was much easier for Agwe and, in fact, for all the old lwas. In those days all the lwa and all the animals of Africa could easily walk to and from Haiti. Haiti had lions and elephants and tigers and giraffes and leopards. The forests were thick with vegetation and the tree branches were heavy with every kind of f
ruit. But that was in the old days.

  * * *

  Gonaïves looked white in the hot sun with a black sky behind it filled with rain that would not fall. It was even hot at sea and it got hotter as they approached the stone-and-cinder-block ramparts.

  Below on the quay was chaos. There were trucks and cars but mostly large handcarts and children chasing them, hoping for something that dropped. The port official boarded and Izzy Goldstein told him it was “the NANH from Miami,” and the official, hearing “the nen from Miami,” smiled. Izzy supposed that the man was laughing at his French. The official said something in Creole and Izzy looked confused and then he said in very good English, “How much are you gonna pay to dock here?”

  DeeDee took over and Izzy was led by a deckhand down to the teeming, sweating crowd, and in the middle of it he was introduced to the most beautiful man Izzy had ever seen. Jobo was tall, broad-shouldered, and lean and muscular, and his skin had the satiny luster of burnished wood, perhaps a very dark walnut. He led Izzy to a perfect, polished white Mercedes that clearly did not belong there in the ramshackle port.

  Jobo seemed a pleasant young man, there was a sweetness to him, but when he sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key, he was transformed. With his fist he pounded ferocious blasts of the car horn and left no doubt that anyone in his way would soon be under his tires. The crowd parted and they were on their way, climbing only slightly as they left the steamy dilapidated city and entered the last green village on the edge of a bone-colored Saharan landscape that rolled on and on like a sea.

  Again Jobo honked the horn insistently in front of an iron gate, which, to the great excitement of Izzy, was fashioned into a swarm of black metal snakes. A boy appeared and with every ounce of his small body managed to push the gate open. The car drove into a lush tropical world of ponds and fountains and green and orange broad-leafed plants and drooping magenta bougainvillea and coral-colored hibiscus sticking out their tongues suggestively. Rising above this forest were high-pitched roofs and wide balconies.

  They got out of the vehicle and stepped up to a wide, high-ceilinged porch with a tiled floor and large potted plants. Between two lazy banana bushes was a tall cage about two yards square. Inside was a leopard, lean, with angry yellow eyes and ears cocked back and fur like silken fabric in black and rust and ochre. The cat was pacing back and forth, as though exercising to keep in shape. Overhead, a palm crow whined its “cao-cao” plea that made people straighten up so the bird would not mistake them for dead and swoop down for a peck. Izzy did look weak at the moment and he did not know to straighten up. He was hoping someone was about to offer him a tall, cold drink.

  * * *

  When Haiti was sent away, many of the lwas—including Damballah, Èzili, Legba, and Agwe—went with Haiti, but most of the animals stayed in Africa. However, Èzili kept one leopard because she could not resist beautiful things. She wanted to keep the leopard the same way that she kept closets full of beautiful dresses and fine jewelry. The leopard tried to run away, and so she kept it in a pink jeweled cage.

  * * *

  Jobo ushered Izzy inside, holding open a large glass door that did not fit with the rest of the house. Once inside, Izzy’s body instantly hardened to a tense knot. It was as though he had walked into a refrigerator, possibly a freezer. He was not sure but thought he saw traces of vapor from his breath. A furry red creature glided toward him, speaking the same formal and emotionless French of his ninth-grade French teacher who had always called him Pierre because she said there was no way to say Izzy in French.

  “Bonjour, bienvenu. Comment allez-vous,” she said with a smile made of wood. She was wrapped in a thick red fox coat. Her body stuck out at angles, a hard, thin body. Her straightened black hair was swept up on her head. She wore shiny dark purple lip gloss with an even darker liner. Her green eyes were also lined in black, which matched the carefully painted polish on her long nails filed to points as though for weapons. All this dark ornamentation on her gaunt face made her skin look pale with a flat finish, like gray cardboard.

  On one finger was a very large emerald that was close to matching her eyes, and when she held her long hand to her face the stone appeared to be a third eye. She would have been attractive, except that everything about her seemed hard. Even her face was bony. Maybe, Izzy thought, she understood this and wore the fur to try to appear softer.

  She turned to Jobo and ordered him in French to fetch a cold bottle, which was what Izzy wanted to hear. To Izzy it seemed odd—here he was trying to learn Creole—that a Haitian would speak to another in French, even though Jobo answered only in Creole. Izzy soon realized that she also spoke nearly perfect American English. So who was the French for? Even when she spoke English she punctuated everything with “N’est-ce pas?”

  Jobo returned with two very long crystal champagne flutes and a bottle of champagne, which he opened with the craftsmanship of a well-trained wine steward. It was cold and bubbly, with a flush of rose like the blush on her protruding cheekbones, though probably more natural.

  “Pink champagne, n’est-ce pas?” she said. “Don’t you love pink champagne?”

  “Èzili’s drink,” said Izzy, who knew that Èzili loves luxury and her favorite color is pink. The smile flew off her face like a popped button, leaving Izzy to wonder what he had said that was wrong.

  She offered him a building near the port that he could use as the NANH warehouse, although when he said “NANH warehouse” she smiled. She could also provide a staff for distribution of the goods he brought in so that he simply had to bring goods in and the rest would be taken care of. She asked nothing for this service, simply explaining, “I am Haitian and I love my people.” He was moved, but he thought he detected a certain angry glow in Jobo’s eyes while she was speaking.

  “All I ask, mon cher . . .” She paused, and he thought maybe she was going to ask about aid to a favorite cause. Which in fact, may have been the case. “Gasoline, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Gasoline?”

  “Mais oui. Beaucoup, beaucoup. I will tell you how many barrels.”

  “But, ah—Madame Dumas?” He was so cold his teeth were chattering as he tried to speak.

  “Oui,” she said softly like a kiss.

  “How do I justify spending relief money like that?”

  “Ah-bas, c’est tout correct, n’est-ce pas? It is an operating expense, n’est-ce pas? It’s for my generators.” And she moved her green eyes across the ceiling. “This takes a lot of gasoline, n’est-ce pas? And then there are the freezers for the meat, n’est-ce pas?”

  He supposed that she was keeping meat for the village, and that would be a worthwhile thing to subsidize. Far safer than leaving meat out in this tropical heat. Although you could keep food fresh forever in this living room.

  “As a matter of fact, I am going to buy a freezer compartment for your ship. You can bring down meat.”

  “That is a wonderful idea. Put some protein in people’s diets.”

  “Eh, oui,” she said in a distant philosophical tone. “Jobo, this reminds me. Feeding time.” She put on a pair of French horn-rimmed sunglasses. And then she said something in Creole that Izzy didn’t grasp, though it sounded like something about his shirt, which he then removed as he went out into the heat.

  She smiled at Izzy and said, “He is too beautiful for clothes, n’est-ce pas?”

  Izzy nodded, unsure of how to answer.

  “So it’s all arranged. My man is paying them off so you can unload right now.”

  “Paying the . . . ?”

  “All taken care of,” she said merrily, with a gesture like washing her hands. He was informed that he would be staying in Madame’s house, which he did not feel entirely comfortable about, but he had no other ideas of where to stay.

  He was put in a room as cold as the living room, with carved wooden panels and a ceiling fan for which there was no real
use. The air-conditioning could not be turned down or off and the windows did not open. But the bed was equipped with fluffy goose-down quilts imported from Austria.

  Izzy went outside to warm up. Jobo, with a large ring holding many keys, was coming from a wooden shed with a package. He stepped up to the porch and over to the leopard cage. He unwrapped the package and took out what looked like two sirloin steaks. Izzy assumed he was mistaken about the cut, but the steaks were nicely marbled. All the while, the leopard paced, stopping only for a second to snarl. The animal was dangerous, and Izzy could see claw marks—parallel lines on both sides of Jobo’s shirtless back.

  “Jobo,” said Izzy. “Is there some kind of a ceremony I can see?”

  Jobo showed a sweet smile. “You want to see some real voodoo?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “I can arrange it, but it is koute chè.”

  “How expensive?”

  “Anpil. Anpil. I will take you to Kola.”

  “Kola is the ougan?”

  “He’s a bòkò. He can fix it. I’ll go talk to him now.” And with that, shirtless and with claw marks showing, he walked down the driveway and out the gate of iron snakes.

  Izzy sat on the porch, watching the incessant pacing of the leopard. The cat had one of the steaks in his mouth but he didn’t stop moving, not even while eating. Izzy thought about the vodou priest named Kola. Did that mean a line? A queue? It must mean something.

  * * *

  The leopard pleaded with Agwe that he did not want to be locked in a cage and asked to be taken back to Africa. But Agwe said, “I can only take spirits back after they die.”

  “Then kill me. I want to go back,” said the leopard.

  * * *

  Haitians like nicknames. Dieudonné was called DeeDee, Ti Morne Joli was always called Joli. Madame Dumas was LeChat, the bòkò was Kola, Jobo was Beau. And Izzy? Everyone in Joli called him Blan.