Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  Oh Lord, Carey thought. If the two of them are in that mob, running from the Tontons, there's no telling when they'll get back here. We may have to wait for hours.

  He was wrong. Or at least half wrong. Less than twenty minutes later, while he was attempting to explain the purpose of his visit to Sylvestre Santil's wife, someone pounded on the door. When the woman unlocked and opened it, a man who had to be her husband's brother staggered in and collapsed onto a chair. His shirt and hands were smeared with blood. Tears ran down his face. When he could stop sobbing, he stumbled from the chair, fell on his knees in front of the woman, and clasped her legs.

  "They shot him!" he bawled. "Zanni, he's dead! He died in my arms!"

  Santil's wife gazed in horror at his upturned face, and then collapsed in a heap. Carey and Virgilie stepped forward as one to pick her up, get her onto a chair, and revive her.

  "Sylvestre—dead?" she whispered then, gazing at her husband's brother.

  He too had recovered somewhat by then. "They were firing into the crowd, Zanni. Not at anyone. One bullet hit him in the face, another in his chest. I couldn't bring him back with me. I stayed until I was sure he was dead, but they were still shooting so I had to run."

  "It was your fault!" the woman suddenly screamed.

  "No, no. I—"

  "Yes, it was! It was your fault for wanting him to go with you while you signed up! You killed him! You!"

  Desama looked helplessly at Carey. "It is not true, what she says. I did not ask my brother to go with me; he offered to, so I would have someone to talk to while I was waiting. Please—make her understand?"

  "Give me a minute." Carey went out to his car and returned with his bag. He had not expected to use it. It had been no more than a prop in case they were stopped. But, anticipating that some Tonton might insist on seeing what was in it, he had not emptied it.

  Opening it, he took out a sedative and looked at Virgilie. She went into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. Both of them approached the dead man's wife, who had stopped screaming accusations and now sat motionless, gazing vacantly into space.

  Virgilie persuaded her to take the sedative, and then turned to Desama, who in his misery had watched the procedure in silence. "You live in Carrefour?" They would be going through there on the way back to Port-au-Prince.

  The man nodded.

  "Do you want a ride home?"

  "Yes! Oh, yes, please!"

  "Very well, we'll take you. First see if you can find some neighbor who will come and stay with your sister-in-law until she is over the worst of this. She'll sleep after what we have given her, but she shouldn't be left alone."

  The man was anxious to get away from that house, obviously.

  He hurried out without a word. Ten minutes later he was back, accompanied by a young woman with a baby in her arms. "This is Zanni's niece. She will stay here as long as she is needed." Virgilie said, "We want a blanket of some sort. Can you find one?"

  He went into a bedroom and returned with one. But when he offered it to her, she shook her head.

  "It's for you. When we get into the car, I want you to sit in back with this wrapped around you, hiding your face. You must look sick. If we are stopped by Tontons, I am going to say you are Papa Tacius. Do you know who Papa Tacius is?"

  Though obviously bewildered, Desama nodded. "But he is a houngan. I am not a houngan!"

  "Never mind. If we are stopped by a certain three men, as I expect, and we tell them you are he and we are taking you to the hospital, they will believe us. Unless, of course, you say or do something foolish, in which case they may shoot all three of us. Do you understand?"

  "I—think so, m'selle. I am Papa Tacius. I am to sit in back, wrapped in this blanket, and if anyone speaks to me I will only moan a little because I am too sick to talk."

  Virgilie looked at Carey, who was instructing the neighbor woman what to do if her aunt awoke and required attention. Catching her glance, he nodded. A moment later they departed.

  They had only a glimpse of the carnage as Carey maneuvered the car through back streets to avoid being stopped. There were many dead, Carey guessed, and for every person murdered there were relatives wailing over the bodies. At Gressier, where the car had been stopped before, the three Tontons did not reappear. At Carrefour, the brother of Sylvestre Santil got out, thanked them, and walked away with the blanket draped over his shoulder.

  There would be no boat carrying Roddy to Jamaica, Carey thought. Until some other plan of escape presented itself, Lee's brother would have to hide out in the Pétionville house.

  Poor Haiti. Poor, sad, tortured Haiti. When would the horrors end?

  3

  In her room at the school for handicapped children, where La Petite Directrice employed her as a housekeeper, Dela Basile had a small television set. It was a gift from Roddy Bennett. When she could not sleep, which was often since the burning of Le Refuge and the murder of Roddy's wife, she liked to lie in bed and watch whatever was on it.

  Tonight, as she lay awake thinking of her son Lucien, how well he was doing in spite of being blind, the TV informed her that she should remain alert for an announcement of great importance.

  "It's about time," Dela snorted.

  She knew what the announcement would be, of course. Someone high up in the government would inform the people of Haiti that their president-for-life was at last yielding to the public outcry and leaving the country. But why a special announcement when everybody, or anyway lots of people, already knew it? Hadn't it already been broadcast from the United States, and didn't many Haitians regularly listen to the news from there on their shortwave radios?

  It should be something to see, though, when Baby Doc or someone speaking for him finally came on the air to admit that, despite all the efforts of his Tonton Macoutes to keep him in power, he was at last admitting defeat. She should call her beloved former employer and tell him, no? Yes, of course she should! Because it was after two in the morning and probably no one at the Aldreds' house had been watching TV.

  Getting out of bed, Dela hurried down the hall to usea telephone.

  Dela was wrong in thinking no one at the Aldreds' would be awake. Carita, with her book on Haiti more than half finished, had recently discovered, to her surprise, that words flowed from her typewriter more easily late at night than at any other time. Of course, working late meant working in her room with the door shut, lest the noise of the typewriter disturb others in the house. But she did not mind that.

  Tonight she had begun a chapter on the murders in Leogane, based on the grisly story told by her father and Virgilie. At least twenty-five people had died there at the hands of the Tonton Macoutes, her fiancé had reported. As she struggled for words that would make her readers feel the senseless horror of it, the phone on her desk rang.

  "Yes?"

  It was Dela Basile, wanting to know if she might speak to Roddy.

  "Dela, he's asleep. It's after two. Is this really important?"

  "Well . . .” Roddy's former housekeeper told about the alert she had seen on her TV. "I just thought someone at your house should be watching when the announcement comes, Miss Carita."

  "Did they say when it would be made?"

  "I—well, I don't think so. They just said to stand by."

  "We'll do that, Dela. At least, I will. Thank you so much for calling."

  Aha, Carita thought as she hung up. So Vern was right, and it's happening. Uncle Roddy has to know this. Of course he does.

  She went to her uncle's room. He slept with a nightlight on —something new, she suspected, since the gang-rape and murder of his Olive. Standing by his bed, she looked down at him for a moment, thinking of what he had been through and wishing she knew how to help him overcome the trauma of it. Then she spoke his name to wake him.

  He opened his eyes, saw her, and struggled to sit up. "Carita? What is it?"

  She told him. "I thought you'd want to turn the TV on and wait for the farewell speech or wha
tever he's planning. I'm going out."

  "Out?" Roddy looked at the clock on his dressing table. "At this hour?"

  "Of course! After he makes his speech, he'll be on his way to the airport. In fact, he may very likely let someone else do the announcement and leave for the airport before it happens, to be sure he doesn't run into a mob on his way there. I have to see him leave! It will be the high point of my book!"

  Roddy reached out to grasp her arm. "Rita, for God's sake, it's the middle of the night. You won't be safe out there!"

  But even as he said it, he remembered that she was a daughter of his sister Leora, and no one had ever been able to tell Lee what to do. "Look," he finished lamely. "At least pick Vern up. Take him with you. Will you promise to do that?"

  "I promise." She had intended to do so anyway.

  "And be careful. For God's sake, be careful."

  She leaned over to kisshim on the cheek, and then ran. If she were right about the upcoming TV announcement, Jean-Claude might even now be on his way to the airport.

  Vernon Jansen lived in a rented home in Turgeau. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he said with a wry grin, "You're crazy, you know, but all right. Let's use my car, though. Might be a little safer, though probably not much."

  "Can we go by the palace?"

  "By it, maybe. We can't stop. No car stops anywhere near Baby Doc's playpen at night unless its occupants want to be contestants in a quiz show."

  He drove. Carita sat beside him, already scribbling impressions in a notebook. Down through the Place des Heros de l'Independence Vernon took them, down past the Palais National. There seemed to be more than the usual number of lights on in the palace, Carita noted, but no other signs of special activity were evident. Obviously relieved to have that part of the city behind them, Vernoncontinued on down through Rue Champ de Mars, past the prison, to Grand Rue. There were people in the streets, Carita wrote in her notebook—the same streets that until now had been significantlyempty of life at night. As the car neared the notorious La Saline slum, where so many of the city's poor lived in abject squalor, the number dramatically increased.

  "Looks like a Mardi Gras mob," Vernonsaid. "Thank God they're celebrating and not mad at something."

  He drove very carefully now. People in such a crowd—if the crowd were good natured—usually made an effort to get out of the way. But if a car happened to hurt someone, the mood could swiftly change. Cars were beyond the reach of these people. Most did not know how to drive one. What might be an innocent accident, therefore, could in their eyes be a deliberate act of arrogance.

  Very slowly, with the windows rolled up and Vernon fiercely concentrating on his driving, the car wormed its way through a shouting, laughing, dancingmob of slum-dwellers until the way to the airport was clear.

  "Francois Duvalier Airport," Vernon said laconically. "Back in better days it used to be called Bowen Field. That was when the country's flag was red and blue, not red and black. Too bad the Duvaliers had to change so much else here." He made the right turn to their destination. "I think we're early, lady."

  Carita leaned forward to peer through the windshield. There were lights in the airport buildings, but no more than usual. The things she had half expected—a lighted plane waiting at the terminal, vehicles that might have brought the president and his people and their belongings, a crowd of curious onlookers—those were not in evidence.

  "Don't go too close, Vern," she warned. "Pull over here, why don't you?"

  "And wait, you mean?"

  "Of course! They'll come eventually. And I have to see it!"

  Even as she spoke, she was scribbling again. Vernon glanced from the notebook to the frown of concentration on her lovely face, and let a simultaneous smile and shrug demonstrate his feelings. Pulling the car over to the side of the road, he dimmed its lights and sat there with the engine idling.

  They waited. Carita finished scribbling notes on what they had seen and done, closed the notebook, and snuggled against him. "Hey," she said softly, "I love you."

  "I love you," he said. "Do you realize that if things weren'tso screwed up in this country, we'd be married by now?"

  "We soon will be."

  The wait continued. "Let me ask you something," Vernon said, putting an arm around Carita's shoulders. "When it's all over here, will your folks be staying, do you think?"

  "They haven't said."

  "Your grandparents are at Glencoe, right? And Grandfather Bennett isn't doing too well."

  "He has lung cancer. My hunch is that mother and dad will go there as soon as the war ends here, Vern. I don't know. They haven't said so. But I think they will."

  "What about you and me"

  "Wherever you go, I go. Always."

  He kissed her—gently, but for a long time.

  The waiting continued.

  "I wonder if he's made the promised TV announcement," Vernon said. "Or has he changed his mind about a farewell speech? It will be daylight soon. I thought for sure he'd want to make his run to the airport under cover of darkness."

  President-for-Life Jean-Claude was delivering a message even as Vernon spoke.

  At the house in Pétionville, Roddy had been seated in the living room, watching the TV, ever since Carita's departure. Lee, Carey and Virgilie had been a little less devoted in their vigil, at intervals going into the kitchen for food and drink, but were still prepared to celebrate Duvalier's surrender. A radio in another part of the room was also turned on, just in case.

  Becoming more and more anxious about his daughter, Carey looked at Lee and said, "I wonder where Carita is. Damn it, she shouldn't have gone out in the middle of the night like that. Not with the whole city likely to explode."

  Lee hid her own anxiety behind a shrug. "Nobody could tell me what to do when I was her age, darling. But I never did anything really foolish. She won't, either."

  Suddenly the radio, tuned to the government's own station, caught their attention. All in the room stared at it, aghast at what they were hearing. When the voice stopped speaking, they looked at one another in shock.

  Roddy said, "A state of siege? What's going on, for God's sake? He's supposed to be leaving!"

  They talked and waited. The tension in the room was so great, the pressure building up so swiftly, that Lee felt the windows would explode. Carey suddenly pushed himself to his feet and strode to the radio, saying over his shoulder as he switched it to short wave, "Let's see if the U.S. is reporting this."

  The United States was indeed reporting—but not a state of siege in Haiti. What those in the room heard was a statement from White House Spokesman Larry Speaks that Jean-Claude Duvalier, the former president of Haiti, had left Haiti about two o'clock.

  "Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Lee said.

  Carey switched the set back to Radio Nationale and Lee soon got her answer in Creole. The voice of the man who supposedly was no longer in Haiti suddenly filled the room. People were saying he had flown away, Jean-Claude declared. They had been saying it since two o'clock that morning. It was not true. He was still in Haiti. He was stronger than ever.

  "Oh my God," Lee whispered, reaching for her husband's hand. "The city will explode . . . and our little girl is out there somewhere!"

  Carita and Vernon did not hear the American announcement of Jean-Claude's departure; their car radio did not have a shortwave band. In any case, they had already decided something was wrong and had left the airport.

  "If we can get back through that mob in La Saline," Carita said, "maybe we should check on the palace again."

  "If we can get past the crowd. Lady, this whole expedition was a bad idea."

  "But I have to know what's happening! For my book!"

  "You may never get the write the book."

  Despite his apprehension, however, Vernon was a good man at the wheel. He got them safely through the worst of the still-jubilant crowd that all but choked the road between airport and city. Then when the car was clear of that particular mob
but still in sight of it, the voice of Jean-Claude Duvalier came over its radio.

  People in the crowd must have heard the same voice on the little portable radios many of them carried. Songs of victory changed to shouts of rage that swelled into an eruption. Lee looked back in alarm.

  "We're getting out of here," her fiancé said grimly. "I'm taking you home!"

  "Vern, I have to—"

  "Your book can wait, pal. These people were celebrating a victory and now it's been snatched away from them. They'll tear the city apart!"

  He was partly right. Cheated of their triumph, the street crowds in the capital had begun trashing and burning. Carita saw some of it as her husband-to-be zigzagged wildly through the city, trying to avoid streets too full of demonstrators. Then as they approached one major intersection, Vernon said in amazement, "Well, I'll be damned!" and pulled over to the curb.

  Together they stared in disbelief at a procession passing along the street they were approaching.

  A radio van had already rolled by. Now a second vehicle churned into view, filled with men in blue armed with the familiar, dreaded Uzis. Then came a limousine bearing Jean-Claude and his wife with Michele at the wheel, the president beaming and waving.

  "I can't believe this," Lee said. "Do you suppose they're headed for the airport?"

  "Not with that escort. If you ask me, they're out to show the people they still own the country." Vernon reached out to turn on the car radio, which he had earlier turned off to avoid attracting attention. Either from a recording being played in the van or some hookup between that vehicle and the limousine, came the voice of Jean-Claude, loudly declaring he was president for life and intended to remain so.

  In sudden, uncharacteristic fury, Carita said, “I think I want to throw up. Anyway, you should probably be at the embassy. Take me home, will you?”

  Vernon took her home, then departed. Soon afterward, over shortwave radio, those in the Pétionville house heard America's Larry Speaks say that the Duvaliers had not left Haiti and the country was under martial law.

  Carita worked on the notes she had begun scribbling early that morning. "All over this sad country," she wrote, "people must be drowning in a tidal wave of despair."