Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  4

  The people of Haiti were doing more than drowning. Some of what was going on Carey learned from his patients. Vernon Jansensupplied other details.

  "Not everyone knows what happened," the embassy man said one evening at the Aldreds' dinner table. "Most do, of course, and are furious, but others still think the Duvaliers really left. It makes no difference; the reaction is the same, even if some are celebrating and others enraged. People everywhere are turning on the Tontons."

  On another occasion he said, "You know, until now I always had a feeling the ordinary Haitian fellow was something of a wimp. Ever since the Duvaliers took over the running of this country, he's been kicked around unmercifully, and it seemed he would go right on accepting such a fate without protest—as if Le Bon Dieu had planned it that way, so to speak, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. But now, by God, the downtrodden fatalist issuddenly fighting back, and I feel like cheering him on."

  Another time: "Have you heard what happened in Leogane? A crowd there trashed a plantation that belonged to a big-shot Tonton. That took courage, by God. But they paid a price when the big shot heard of it. While they were still celebrating, a gang of Tontons arrived and shot them up with machineguns. Nobody knows how many were slaughtered. The place was strewn with bodies, I'm told."

  And another time: "It can't go on like this much longer. Why Duvalier changed his mind about leaving, God only knows, but he'll have to go soon or there'll be nothing left here for him to rule over."

  "What about the army?" Carey asked. "Which side are the soldiers on?"

  "Not Duvalier's, it would seem. Certainly not all of them. In some places they're just standing by, looking on, while mobs destroy things. The Macoutes are a different breed, though. They're scared, and they're killing people."

  "In Port-au-Prince?"

  "Yes, in Port. That's where most of them are now, it would seem. But the people are out for revenge and are getting it, even in the capital. Some grisly things are going on there."

  "What is Jean-Claude doing?" Lee asked.

  "Biting his fingernails off to the elbows, I would guess. Whatever he's up to, Rome is burning while he's doing it. Incidentally, some U.S. senate committee has asked the OAS to send troops here to restore order. They won't do it, of course. There'll be the usual cry that Uncle Sam is meddling. But we hear Baby Doc is—well, annoyed, at least."

  And again: "Here's something that should interest you folks. Jamaica's Eddie Seaga has sent an envoy here to tell Jean-Claude he ought to leave. And people are pointing out that we're getting very close to Mardi Gras."

  Lee said with a frown, "What on earth has Mardi Gras got to do with it? I shouldn't think there would even be one this year."

  "Oh, there'll be one. Nothing short of a plague or a hurricane could keep these unhappy people from having their one big blowout. There may not be the usual floats and formal parades, but you can bet there'll be crowds of marchers everywhere."

  "What if Duvalier tries to stop it?"

  "Well, you know, I think it might be rather like a circus parade of elephants that suddenly went—what's the word for what rogue elephants do? Whatever—I don't think I'd want to be in the way of it. If Jean-Claude isn't totally stupid, he must be thinking about that. Of course, he'd have his Tontons. Their hands are so bloody now, they have no choice but to do what he tells them."

  "Are there enough of them to put down a full-scale revolt?" Roddy asked.

  "Perhaps not. But the streets of the city would be a battlefield, and maybe the world would finally wake up to what's going on here."

  Few patients with simple complaints such as la fiev came to Carey's backyard office at this time. Many with injuries turned up. Lee, who still served as his nurse when Virgilie had to be elsewhere, spent more and more time with him, patching up people who had been shot, beaten, or slashed with machetes.

  At 10 a.m. on the sixth day of February, a barefoot boy about nine years old, clinging to the hand of a woman old enough to be his mother, stumbled into the backyard building. Other patients awaited treatment, and when Carey opened the door of his inner office to summon the one whose turn it was, he saw the boy and the crude, bloody bandage on his chest.

  "What happened, commere?"

  Her wailing filled the room. "He was in a crowd that was stoning a Macoute, doctor. A big stone hit him. I think his chest is broken!"

  Carey reached for the boy's hand. "Let's have a look at you. Come."

  Lee was his nurse that morning. Together they removed the bandage—it had been torn from a sheet, apparently—and examined the wound. "Damn," Carey said with an angry headshake. "We need some toxoid, and we're out of it."

  "Let me see what I can do." Lee went to the phone and began to make calls. Carey was still cleaning the boy's lacerated chest when she finished.

  "I've located some." She named a doctor who had worked with Carey at the Kelleher and now had a private practice on the outskirts of the capital. "Virgie's at the hospital. Shall I send Roddy or go myself?" Answering her own question: "I'd better do it. Roddy doesn't know where Alix lives."

  There were two vehicles at the house: a Jeep and a sedan. Lee took the Jeep, thinking it would be easier to maneuver if she ran into a crowd. Twice she found streets blocked by prowling mobs and had to seek other ways to get through. She should not have taken the Jeep, she realized. True, it was not the kind the Duvaliers were said to hand out to the Tontons as rewards for nasty jobs well done, but not all members of an angry mob could be expected to make a distinction. When she finally arrived at her destination she was shaking and frightened.

  "Alix, I didn't think I'd make it. People are on the warpath everywhere!"

  He was a big, round man with a dour expression. "You shouldn't have come alone, you know. But I hear the Duvaliers will soon be leaving, so perhaps the mood of the city will change, eh?"

  "We thought they were leaving before," she reminded him.

  "Ah, yes, but this time it seems they must. It seems the army no longer supports them. I heard yesterday, from a reliable source, that when Jean-Claude wanted the soldiers to halt the uprising by force, the man at their head refused to give such an order."

  Lee took the vaccine, thanked him, and got back into her Jeep. Ten minutes later the vehicle was surrounded by a mob and she was being dragged from it.

  Suddenly a voice yelled, "Wait! Wait! Wait! I know this woman!" and the hands pulling at her let go. A face, grinning from ear to ear, was thrust into hers. "Madame, do you remember me?" His breath stank of the raw rum called clairin.

  "Friday!" In her terror that one word, his name, was all she could manage.

  He patted her hand and turned proudly to face the crowd. "This woman is the wife of Dr. Aldred!" he said—and they had to be quiet because they sensed something dramatic was happening and wanted to hear him. "Years ago—years ago! —she and the doctor walked across the southern mountains from Tiburon to Jeremie because they love our country! And I walked with them, just a boy then, and we ended up being the best of friends." Spinning on one foot, he reached for Lee's hands. "Madame, to meet you again is wonderful! Just wonderful! We apologize, all of us. It was just that we do not like most of the people in Jeeps these days. Please, please"—he was trying to help her back into the vehicle without touching her too much—"please forgive us. Where are you going?"

  "Home," she managed. "Petionville."

  "Then let me go with you, to make sure you arrive there without any more trouble." He leaped into the Jeep. "It is not safe for you to be alone."

  "Vendredi Malfam," she said asthey left the crowd behind.

  That was his name, Vendredi Malfam. She remembered now. "From Tiburon. What are you doing here?"

  "I came here a long time ago to be a Tonton Macoute."

  "You what?"

  "It's true, it's true. Another fellow and I, we heard that if you were a Tonton, serving Baby Doc, you would have a nice place to live and plenty to eat and people would treat yo
u with respect. But when we got here, we learned that you also had to do terrible things, even kill people, to have those things. So my friend and I did not become Tontons. We got jobs on the waterfront and lived in La Saline where there are no decent houses and not even water fit to drink and everyone is hungry. We should have gone back to Tiburon, God knows, but we kept hoping things would get better, and they never did."

  The old story, Lee thought. The old, sad story.

  "But we hear Baby Doc is leaving," Friday went on in a rush. "Really leaving this time, because people everywhere are willing to die to get rid of him if they have to. So maybe things will get better now, no?"

  Maybe they will, Lee thought. If it's true that he's leaving. But he was supposed to go before, and didn't.

  "Vendredi," she said, "thank you for saving my life back there."

  When he did not answer, she turned her head to look at him. It was in 1957 that Carey and she had walked across the Massif with this man, she thought. He must be forty-six now. He didn't look it. At the moment, he looked like a boy again.

  Soon after midnight the telephone rang in the Aldreds' house. Carita answered it. The caller was her fiancé.

  "Did I get you out of bed?" Vernon Jansensaid. "I always think of you in bed at this hour and wish I were there with you.',

  Carita did not laugh. "Roddy and I are listeningto the radio."

  "Why?"

  "Odette Beaulieu called a while ago. Said she'd heard a Stateside radio say the Duvaliers were leaving. We thought there might be some kind of announcementon the radio here."

  "There probably won't be, but he is," Vernonsaid.

  "What?"

  "He's leaving at 2 a.m. Washingtonis sending a plane from Fort Bragg to fly him out of here. I suppose you're keen on seeing it."

  "Of course!"

  "I'll be by for you in fifteen minutes."

  When Carita told her Uncle Roddy the news, he only sat there looking at her. Nothing much had mattered to him since the brutal murder of his wife, she suspected. Perhaps, as her mother had suggested when talking about him recently, nothing very much had mattered since the loss of his first love, Heather McKenzie.

  "Vern is taking me to the airport," she said. "Would you like to come?"

  He shook his head. "I'll read about it in your book."

  "Well—"

  "Be careful, baby. If Odette heard about this, others must have. And a lot of people here would rather see Duvalier dead than flying off into exile to spend all those millions he's stolen.'

  "I'll be careful. Don't worry."

  "Better wear something bulletproof."

  She laughed in her excitement. "I do have to change, though."

  In her room, which was next to the one in which her parents slept, she was careful to make no noise that would wake them. After the rioting that had followed the Duvaliers' false departure, she was sure they would not want her to go to the airport again. By the time she had put on a gray skirt and blouse, her fiancé had arrived.

  On the way down the steep road to the city she turned on the seat to frown at him. "Tell me something, will you? What finally persuaded him to throw in the towel and leave?"

  "A number of things, probably," Vernon said. "Ambassador McManaway met with him a few days ago. Secretary of State George Schultz came out point-blank on Good Morning America for a free election here. Washington has told him we'd be cutting back on financial aid—most of which ends up in his own Swiss bank accounts anyway, I suspect. And his army seems to be defying him. That's just for starters."

  "I see."

  "I wonder. I mean—will anyone ever really know what finally got to him? Maybe all he did was ask his voodoo gods what to do, and they told him the facts of life."

  "Where is he going?" Carita asked.

  "France—and even that's only temporary. He tried other countries but no other would have him."

  The word was out, apparently. There were people in the city, people at the airport. At the airport, Vernon looked at his watch. "Only one o'clock," he said. "Relax. He's not due for an hour yet."

  By two o'clock the big C-141 cargo plane that was to take Haiti's president-for-life and his family into exile had landed and was waiting to take off again. Fifteen minutes later two limousines arrived. Out of them stepped relatives of the fleeing dictatorbut not the dictator himself. Then, for an hour, trucks full of luggage and possessions pulled up and were unloaded.

  Carita sat on a bench and scribbled in her notebook, so that when the time came to do the final chapter of her book she would not have to rely on memory alone. No need to take notes on the building itself; she had been in it time and again on flights to Jamaica and Florida, with her parents, to visit both sets of grandparents. The thing to do now was to catch the feel of what was happening here, to try for an understanding of what various people might be doing as they hurried about on mysterious errands, and of what they might be thinking behind all those expressions of fierce concentration.

  Vernon had left her, to perform certain mysterious duties of his own. She got up and walked about. Outside the building the crowd was larger now and becoming larger every minute. Inside, some of those pacing about or standing in small groups seemed to be suffering a change of mood and appeared to be increasingly anxious and uneasy. Many in the groups gesticulated as they talked. She saw Vernon doing some arm-waving of his own. When she returned to her bench, he came and sat beside her, shaking his head.

  "Is something wrong?" she asked. "Has he changed his mind again?"

  "He can't have changed his mind. His people are here, and all his personal belongings. But I just heard he's throwing a farewell party at the palace. Can you believe it? He was told to be here at two, and he's throwing a party. You know"—the headshake seemed to have become a habit—"I'm beginning to wonder if we've misjudged him. Maybe he isn't so much a tyrant as just a spoiled, naughty little boy who never grew up."

  "The crowd's getting bigger," Carita said.

  "Yes. More than a few people must have heard that CBS broadcast. You can be sure the telediol has been at work here, too."

  Carita looked at her watch. "He's more than an hour late."

  "And," Vernon said explosively, "here he comes, at last!"

  Standing at his side, Carita watched the drama unfold and prayed for a photographic memory. Notes were out of the question now. Even if the success of her book depended on it, she could not have managed any with such a history-making drama unfolding before her eyes.

  The green-and-gray plane still waited on the runway. In from the road rolled a procession of cars filled with men wearing the army's olive green. After those came a gray BMW with Jean-Claude at its wheel and his wife beside him. Both Duvaliers seemed determined to put on a final front for the history books, Michele calmly smoking a cigarette, the president solemnly gazing straight ahead through the car's windshield. In the predawn darkness, camera flashes added glitter to the airport lights.

  With three bodyguards and nineteen members of the clan, the late arrivals climbed the boarding steps and disappeared into the plane. It taxied out to take off. As it roared down the runway and rose into the night sky, the significant sound accompanying its departure was not that of its four snarling engines but the storm-noise of triumph that burst from the throats of those on the ground.

  As she stood there at the forefront of the crowd, watching twenty-nine years of Duvalier tyranny come to an end, Carita felt a hand clasp hers and looked at the man beside her.

  "Hey," he said with a wry smile. "Do you suppose we can be married now?"

  5

  All Haiti had gone mad.

  On city streets and country roads people marched and danced and laughed and sang. They waved the new red and blue flags. They pounded on congo drums and blew into the long bamboo tubes—vaccines—used by Rara bandes at Easter.

  They beat with sticks on empty buckets, and banged pieces of iron pipe together. In the mountains they exchanged congratulations via conch-shell trumpet
s.

  With dozens of other improvised instruments they produced a sound of freedom that rang from one end of the nation to the other.

  They also sought revenge.

  The deposed dictator had fled on a Friday. Sunday evening, at the Aldreds' home in Pétionville, Vernon Jansen said, "Here in Port they caught one of the worst of the Tontons and sliced him up alive. Out near Petit-Goave, I'm told, they tore another one's testicles off and stuffed them down his throat before using a machete to chop off his head—then played soccer with his head in the middle of the road, blocking traffic. If I told you all I've heard, you—"

  "I don't think we want to hear it," Carita said with a shudder. "Daddy has heard some awful things, too, from some of his patients."

  "And witnessed a couple aswell," Carey said. "When I made a house call yesterday, I saw a crowd douse a fellow with gasoline and burn him alive. Another bunch were having themselves a sort of Mardi Gras parade with a Tonton's head on a pole." Shushed by Carita, he acknowledged her censure with a sheepish grin. "Sorry, girl. It will end when the anger dies down, of course. But right now, all over the country, people are settling scores."

  Roddy had been sitting there sipping coffee, contributing nothing to the conversation. He put his coffee mug on a table beside his chair now and said quietly, "I hope it doesn't."

  "You hope it doesn't what?" Lee said.

  "End."

  They looked at him in silence.

  "All right, I'm a monster." He spread his arms in surrender. "But it's true—I hope the killing goes on until every last one of those bastards is made to pay. I wish I could be there to see them beg for mercy."

  "It looks as though many will pay," Vernon Jansen said. "People know who they are. They can't hide."

  Gazing at her brother, Lee told herself it was good that he was going to Jamaica. The sooner he left Haiti, the sooner he would get over what had happened at Le Refuge. He had written their parents to say he was coming and would stay with them at Glencoe while deciding what to do with his life.