Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  "Uh-uh." Carita's husband emphatically wagged his head. "Right now, Tontons are running scared in the provinces, where they're vulnerable, and pouring into the city here for protection." He paused in thought. "You know—it's a bit weird, what's happening in Haiti at the moment. To forestall a rebellion by the people, the regime has turned the Tontons loose on them like a pack of mad dogs. But now the people are fed up and fighting back, and the Tontons are their principal target." He stopped himself with a mirthless laugh. "But listen to me sounding off. Roddy, what are your plans?"

  "I don't know. I'm just glad to be here."

  "You're to stay here with us," Lee said. "Isn't he, Carey?"

  "Of course, if he wants to."

  "I think I'd go to Glencoe if I could," Roddy said. "I mean if I stay here, I'll be a prisoner in this house, won't I? You say Tontons from the provinces are pouring into the city. If I'm seen by any of those who tried to hunt me down . . .”

  "It could happen," Virgilie said.

  "And if they found out where I'm living, you'd all be in danger. No, I can't stay here." Roddy put his knife and fork down and leaned back, shaking his head. "Dela will be okay; in the morning one of you can drive her to the school where her son is. The Sisters will give her a job and consider themselves lucky to have her, I'm sure. But I ought to get out of Haiti if I can— if not to Jamaica, then to the States."

  Carey said, "We told you how we got Ginette and Guy out of the country, didn't we?"

  "Yes, you did. Do you think that same boat fellow—"

  "He might even take you to Jamaica if the price is right.

  I'll drive to Leogane tomorrow and have a talk with him."

  "Good!" Roddy said. "I'll go with you."

  Carey's uplifted hands were two stop signs. "No way. I'm a doctor; I don't get stopped too often and can always say I'm going to call on a patient. You have a choice of two moves, it seems to me. You can stay under cover in this house or live at the embassy until I've arranged for you to be smuggled out of the country. Right, Vern?"

  "That's about it," Carita's fiancé said. "You certainly can't risk attempting to leave the usual way, Roddy. More than ever the airport is crawling with Tontons."

  Roddy thought about it, then said with a sigh of surrender, "Well, if it's all right with all of you, I think I'll stay here. At least until we find out if I can get out of this hell hole."

  2

  "At the time your mother and I walked across the Massif du Sud, this road was unpaved and one of the dustiest in all Haiti," Carey said. "In dry weather, that is. After a rain the limestone was slick as grease. In fact, driving anywhere on the southern peninsula was full of uncertainties in those days."

  The remark was addressed to the girl from Malrouge, grown-up now, who sat beside him in her nurse's uniform with his bag on her lap. At the last minute Virgilie had persuaded him to take her along.

  "If you're stopped, having me there in my nurse's uniform will more than double your chance of getting through without any trouble," she had insisted when at daybreak he had been about to begin the journey alone. "A doctor and his nurse . . . and I know just what to tell them if we are stopped."

  It was always hard to argue with this bright Haitian lady who, years ago, had stood on a schoolroom desk in a mountain village and saved lives by showing the other children how well she could use her artificial leg. The little black girl was a woman of twenty-nine now. More than once, while serving as his nurse, shehad kept him out of trouble with her innate knowledge of Haitian ways.

  "How far is Jamaica from Haiti?" she asked.

  "I don't think I know. Two hundred, three hundred miles maybe, as Sylvestre would travel." Feeling good with her beside him in the car, Carey turned his head and smiled at her. "Some of Columbus's men made it in a canoe, you know."

  "What?"

  "They did. On his fourth voyage to the New World he had four ships. One he lost to Indians in Central America. Worms riddled a second. Limping along the north coast of Jamaica, his remaining two caravels, Santiago and Capitana, were in such bad shape that he had to beach them. He was marooned there for a year." Carey smiled again. "Old Kim Tulloch should be telling you this bit of history. She'd have had you hanging on every word."

  "I am hanging on every word. Columbus was marooned on Jamaica a whole year?"

  "That's right. He shored the two caravels up side by side and turned them into fortresses. He—or rather one of his men, a Captain Diego Mendez—persuaded the Indians to supply food in exchange for trade goods. Then he conceived the idea of sending a native canoe to Hispaniola with a plea for help, and the same Captain Mendez volunteered."

  Virgilie had turned on the seat and was frowning at him. "A canoe," she said. "A dugout canoe."

  "Actually two of them. Mendez was in charge of one, an Italian named Bartolomeo Fieschi commanded the other. These were big canoes, you understand. Each had a crew of six Spaniards and ten Arawaks. Miraculously they got here, too, though a number of Indians died of thirst and all might have perished if they hadn't found water on little Navassa Island."

  "Where did they land?"

  "Near where Tiburon is now. Your mother and I fell in love with that village on our walk across the mountains. Do you know where it is?"

  "Mother told me." Virgilie aimed a finger at the windshield. "If we were to keep going today, we'd eventually get there."

  "But not in the car, unless they've extended the road since she and I were there."

  "Well, anyway, did Columbus's people get help?"

  "Let me tell you something about man's cruelty to man," Carey said. "Then maybe what's happening here in Haiti today won't be so hard to understand. The way they had planned it, if the two canoes reached their destination, Mendez would continue alone to Santo Domingo while Fieschi would return to Jamaica—he would have favorable winds and currents for the return journey—with word of the expedition's success. But Fieschi's men, even the Indians, refused to try their luck at sea again.

  "On they all went to Santo Domingo. But Mendez did not get far before learning that Governor Ovando, the man he had to see, was close by in the western part of the island, engaged in the popular Spanish pastime of slaughtering Indians. He found Ovando's camp, where his pleas for help were ignored because Columbus was very much out of favor at the time."

  "But Christopher Columbus was a great man!" Virgilie protested.

  "He wasn't then. In fact, Ovando was so determined to keep him from meddling in Santo Domingo that at first he refused to let poor Mendez leavethe camp, then wouldn't even give him a horse when he was allowed to leave. So Columbus, back in Jamaica, had to go on waiting, not knowing whether the two canoes made it to Hispaniola or not.

  "We're coming to Gressier," Virgilie said. "I'm sorry. Go on with the story, but keep an eye out for Tontons. We could run into some here."

  Carey was silent while driving through the little town some eight miles from their destination. A market town, Gressier could be crowded, but there was no market this morning. Nor were any of the dreaded blue uniforms in evidence among the handful of peasants trudging along the footpaths at the edge of the road.

  "Man's cruelty to man," the woman in white beside him said. "Poor Columbus. I see what you mean."

  "Not all of it, you don't. Not yet. While his people were getting the cold shoulder in Hispaniola, Columbus and the castaways waited in Jamaica, not knowing what had happened. Some ofthe men deserted and made an effort to follow Mendez and Fieschi in canoes they obtained from the Indians. Storms drove them back, and do you know how they saved themselves from foundering?" Virgilie only looked at him.

  "They threw their Indian paddlers overboard and chopped off the hands of those who clung to the dugouts. Then, afraid to return and face the admiral's wrath, they roamed the island by themselves, mistreating the Indians and plundering Indian gardens. That's what I really had in mind when I mentioned man's cruelty."

  "How did Columbus get away from there?"

  "Well,
that brings into play the old story that every school kid knows—at least, every American school kid. With the mutineers looting and destroying, and the men at the beached ships running short of trade goods, the Indians figured the time had come to rid the island of all their unwelcome visitors. The best way to do it, they decided, was to stop supplying food. But old Christopher had one last trick up his sleeve. He called the chiefs to a conference and sternly warned that the all-powerful God of the Christians would punish them. Unless they continued to bring food, he warned, God would destroy the moon. The Indians scoffed. But at the predicted time, which he knew in advance from his almanac, Christopher called upon God for action and the terrified Indians saw the moon turn dark. So the Spaniards didn't starve after all."

  "And then?"

  "One day a small caravel sailed into the bay and dropped anchor. A ship from Hispaniola at last! But Columbus hadn't counted on the cruelty we've been talking about, and the cheers became groans. Hispaniola's Governor Ovando had given the ship's captain no orders to rescue the castaways, only to see if they were still alive. The vessel sailed away again."

  "And left them there?" Virgilie gasped.

  "And left them there. Then the mutineers—the men who had chopped off the Indians' hands to save themselves—got tired of living like animals in the bush and made an attempt to seize the two worthless ships half buried in the sand. Some were killed, some taken prisoner; the rest surrendered. Their leader, Francisco de Porras, was clapped in irons. And the long wait went on."

  "But, of course, it finally did end."

  "Yes, when Diego Mendez, after surviving the canoe trip to Hispaniola and the long walk to Santo Domingo, finally managed to obtain a ship. Ovando wouldn't give him one, but he at last obtained one newly arrived from Spain and sent it to Jamaica. Columbus and those of his men who were left were rescued then, and the admiral returned to Spain."

  "A hero."

  "Ah, no. That, Virgie, was the final cruelty. The Great Navigator died, in fact, only three years later—an aging, disillusioned man forgotten in the rush for New World riches. And by the way—"

  In a suddenly sharp voice Virgilie cut him short. "Be careful! There are three men under a tree up ahead who look as though they're planning to stop us. If they do," she quickly added, "let me talk to them. My Creole is better than yours!"

  Carey saw the trio just as they stepped from the tree's shadow into the road and ordered him to stop by lifting their hands. All three wore blue denim shirts and carried Uzis. As he put his foot to the brake pedal he muttered, "I should have had bulletproof glass installed in this thing," and it was not said in jest.

  With their weapons at the ready, the three men stepped up to the car, one on Carey's side, two on Virgilie's. One of the latter seemed to be in charge. "Who are you?" he demanded.

  In Creole, Virgilie said calmly, "This is Dr. Aldred. I am his nurse. We have been requested by the palace to attend a man in Leogane."

  The man had a face of black concrete, but his eyes betrayed him. They had been squeezed half shut in a scowl but suddenly widened. "The palace? By whom in the palace?"

  "We are not permitted to tell you that."

  He stared at her, then at Carey. "If this man is a doctor, let him speak for himself!"

  "Our Creole has never been easy for him." Virgilie shrugged. "I can tell you this much: it was not Jean-Claude who sent us, but someone close to him."

  "His wife, you mean?"

  "You said it, not I."

  The fellow scowled at them again, then at his two companions. "Who do you go to see in Leogane?"

  "A man called Tacius."

  "Tacius? Papa Tacius, the houngan?"

  Virgilie responded with another shrug. "Again you said it, not I. At any rate, he needs help and we are to help him. If you will be so kind as to step aside and let us proceed, that is."

  The Tonton leaned into the car and touched Carey's shoulder with his gun. "You. Is this true, what she says?"

  "It is true. Why else would we be here? My office in Pétionville is probably full of angry patients at this hour."

  "You could telephone the palace, you know," Virgilie told him when he still seemed unable to make up his mind. "Of course, if the call takes a long time, asit probably will, and Papa Tacius dies while we wait here . . ." Her shrug this time was truly eloquent.

  "Very well." Blue shirt stepped back and waved his two companions to do the same. "You may proceed."

  Carey drove on, keeping an eye on the rear-view mirror. When the Tontons were out of sight behind them, he took in a deep breath, let it out, and saidexplosively, "Virgie, you werewonderful! Just magnificent!"

  She smiled. "Didn't I tell you my nurse's uniform would help?"

  "You did. But the way you handled yourself helped more. Who is this Papa Tacius you talked about?"

  "A houngan who lives in Leogane. And maybe it isn't true that he visits the palace to serve Michele Duvalier, but how could they know? All they could be sure of was that if they guessed wrong it would be the last mistake they ever made."

  "What if they call the palace?"

  "They won't," Virgilie replied without hesitation. "If they're still here when we come back, though, they may have thought of more questions to ask us. But I believe I know a way to handle it."

  They were not stopped again. But when they reached the town that was their destination, they found a surprise awaiting them.

  Leogane was one of Carey's favorite towns. Its handsome square was almost always full of sound and color. Its old church might have been erected there expressly to frown down on the townspeople and keep them peaceful. He had not expected a market crowd in the town today, though, and was puzzled to find a solid sea of people.

  No, not people. Men. And all of them seemed to be struggling to force their way into the enclosed portion of the market. The road, too, was solid with men. As he inched the car along, he looked at Virgilie in dismay.

  "They must be cane cutters signing up to work in the Dominican Republic," Virgilie said. "There was something about it in the paper."

  When he could, Carey turned down a side street to find driving room. That street, too, was crowded with men struggling to reach the market, but at least it was less so. Suddenly, above the mob-mutter, he heard a sound of gunfire behind him and stopped to look back.

  He could not see all that was happening. As the gunfire continued, the crowd was a sea suddenly swept by gale winds. Where the waves had been orderly, all surging in one direction, they now went wild. Back where the head of the crowd struggled to get into the building, men in the olive green uniforms of the army seemed bent on maintaining some kind of order, while the cane cutters angrily fought them off. But it was not the soldiers who were firing into the crowd. That, it seemed, was being done by Tonton Macoutes.

  "People are being killed back there!" Virgilie said. "We'd better get out of here!"

  Yes, people were being killed. Others were being trampled as the crowd broke up and tried to flee the gunfire. A full-scale hurricane could have made no more noise.

  Reaching the end of the street, Carey turned toward the waterfront. That had been their destination anyway; this way was longer, that was all. As the car picked up speed along this less-crowded street and the yells and gunfire at the marketplace died away behind them, Carey's breath gusted out in an explosion of relief.

  "Now what was that all about?" he said. "I mean, what could have started it?"

  Virgilie shook her head. "All I know is what the paper said. Thousands of cane cutters wanting work would be coming here to sign up. I hadn't realized it was today."

  "I thought they didn't want to work in the Dominican any more after what happened last year. Weren't they robbed at the border when they returned? By Duvalier's people who were supposed to exchange their pesos into qourdes?"

  "Father, they're hungry. All kinds of people are hungry these days. People have been raiding stores, warehouses, even schools and hospitals." Carey heard a sob and t
urned to see tears in her eyes. "But why," she said, "why would the Tontons kill unarmed people just to break up a crowd?"

  Carey knew the answer to that. "Because the Tontons themselves are scared now," he said. "And brutal men, when frightened, do senseless things."

  But the turmoil was behind them now. Close to the waterfront Carey pulled up before a two-story wooden house that was somewhat better than its neighbors. He had been here before.

  When he knocked on the door, it was opened—somewhat cautiously, he thought—by a woman in her forties who peered at him before speaking. "Ah, yes. Dr. Aldred," she said. "Come in, please. Come in!"

  She waved them past her and locked the door. Leading them into a small living room where Carey had talked to her and her husband before, she waited for them to sit, and then sat facing them. "And how are the lady and gentleman Sylvestre took to Florida, Dr. Aldred?" she asked.

  "They’re fine, thank you."

  "And who is this, please?"

  "My daughter, Virgilie."

  "Your daughter?" Her gaze went questioningly from Carey's face to Virgilie's.

  "My adopted daughter. Madame, we are here to speak with your husband."

  She sent an anxious glance toward a window. "He went to the market with his brother Desama, from Carrefour. And I am worried about them. I thought I heard sounds of shooting from there just now."

  "You did," Virgilie said, and told her what she and Carey had seen.

  The woman sat there wringing her hands and looking frightened. "I don't know why Sylvestre had to go there!" she wailed. "Or his brother either! God in heaven, when Desama got home last year after cutting the cane, he hadn't a centime to show for all those weeks of hard work. Not a cob! And it won't be any better this year. I told him it wouldn't. But he said it was better than starving to death here—and my foolish husband went with him to keep him company at the signing."