The World is Moving Around Me

by Dany Laferriere

  The Energy of Money

  We know about the energy that money brings. It’s an aggressive force that happily sweeps aside everything in its path. The man who helps you sometimes grants himself the privilege of judging you. The least you can do is listen to him. The argument runs like this: your knowledge has failed. Don’t bother protesting, because that’s the truth. He’s helping you, and not the other way around. He’ll shove his culture in your face with a tone of false humility, which is the worst vanity of all, along with the arrogance that comes from believing that the other guy hasn’t understood the situation—and that he’s swallowed your line whole. Those who have come to help should receive a crash course in popular culture: if someone listens to you without interrupting, it’s not because you’re interesting, it’s because the other guy is waiting for you to finish so he can get down to serious business: money. Do you have any? And how much? In small bills, if possible. I’ve heard the directors of big companies and humanitarian organizations state in no uncertain terms for the camera that they’re here to help people, and have no ulterior motives. That’s possible. But why do they get angry when the other guy forgets to kneel down and thank them? The problem is that, over time, Third-World populations have developed a welfare mentality. They know the workings of the international aid system—we can sense that. They have studied it carefully. Some of them have nothing else to do. They know that the amounts distributed by private individuals are reimbursed by the tax departments and ministries of revenue in their home countries. The money has its source in the workings of accountants. Then you have to factor in the aura of belonging to a group of people with a social conscience. The information circulating among the poor has given them the impression that they are partners, not dependents. Which saddens those people whose job it is to help, and who are only asking for a little recognition in return. But the clever folks in the Fourth World have quickly understood that recognition has an exchange value and shouldn’t be tossed out the window. On the Judeo-Christian exchange, charity is still in the top ten. It’s a vicious game and neophytes are quickly devoured. People would be better off following the example of those smiling sisters who have been working in the Haitian countryside for decades. Those women would make short work of a hoary old Marxist or even a retired Mafioso. The nuns are real pros, and they have accumulated the kind of knowledge that should be put to work if we want charitable gifts to lead to real action.

  The Beggar’s Alms

  A woman took my arm and smiled.

  “As soon as I saw those pictures on TV, I thought of you.”

  >She looked me straight in the eye. A small woman, thin, in her sixties.

  “Can I give you a hug?”

  She put her arms around me.

  “I’ve prayed a lot for Haiti. And I’m still praying. What a disaster! If there’s one country that doesn’t need misfortune, it’s that one.”

  She held my hand. Her eyes were on mine. I felt her gentleness.

  “I’m not going to claim I sent money to Haiti. I don’t have enough for that. But I’ve prayed a lot for the Haitian people. Proud, clean people who don’t deserve such a fate … I wonder how they get along.”

  “They do everything possible to live as long as possible.”

  “I understand … I have nothing to give, like I told you. Except my heart.”

  “That’s a lot, madame. Your gift will be delivered. I’ll see to it myself.”

  She took me in her arms again.

  Calvary Mountain

  Our cook lives on Calvary Mountain. To return home after work, she has to walk a good twenty minutes to get out of Delmas 31 where our house is, then she waits for a tap-tap on the highway that will take her to Pétionville, in front of place Saint-Pierre, and from the square, she walks the rest of the way. On rainy days, like today, my sister drives her home. Instead of staying inside and watching the rain fall, I go with them. The city is under water. The wind is at gale force. The vendors we drive by are soaked to the skin. They climb the slope, their eyes closed against the pelting rain that punishes their faces. We reach Calvary Mountain. This is the first time that I’ve come up here. I get a sick feeling every time I come close to the cliff. I’ve always associated this region with the ladies who sell us those fat onions and juicy carrots that smell of the rich earth. In fact, this is the richest zone in Haiti—unless there’s one richer that I don’t know about. I’ve never seen so many magnificent villas. Giant pine trees surround them or stand on either side of the entryways like faithful sentinels. A feeling of peacefulness holds sway here; it makes you want to die. You have to keep reminding yourself that you’re not on the shores of Lake Geneva. I’m not envious, actually, and I don’t care about other people’s wealth. I haven’t internalized the class struggle, but here I’m really astounded. And to think my cook lives next to such abundance. Every day she walks through this district and goes down to work in the heart of Delmas. And never a complaint. She thinks that’s as normal as the rain pelting the roof of the car. Most of these houses are empty. Their owners spend part of the year in Italy and part in England or somewhere else. I’m not criticizing their lifestyle (I travel a lot myself), but the fruit rotting on the ground and the empty rooms are a shame in a city where the majority of the population lives in precarious conditions. On the way back down, we go past the camp on place Saint-Pierre. When you think that the people who live here get hit with a downpour almost every evening and that the wind sometimes blows away their tents. And that every morning luxury automobiles from Calvary Mountain (a calvary for whom?) rush past them, driving children to school. I wonder if those children ever ask their parents about how the other children (it’s the same word for both groups) live, the ones they see emerging, fully dressed, from that anthill. Maybe no one sees what’s so obvious. But I’m sure that kids pick up on the situation right away. It’s not surprising that some leave home as soon as they can. Some kinds of pain can’t be silenced with drugs.

  Living Together

  I wonder what happens in those tents that have sprung up everywhere. How do people manage to preserve their private lives? Do men who snore too loud have to sleep during the day to keep from waking everyone up at night? People are experiencing a dual misfortune: individual (they have lost friends and family) and collective (they have lost their city). How do they find a way to mourn their dead when it’s so difficult to find a moment to yourself? It’s easy to imagine idyllic scenes under starry skies, but where do people actually make love? In thickets, where cries of pleasure won’t be heard. They say that in some camps, there’s an empty tent with a sign that says “For the moment.” A way of having a sweet interlude in a discreet setting. We know that neither fear nor pain nor indigence will keep desire from flowering. It doesn’t take very much: the bend of a neck, eyes that linger—and everything changes. It’s the only thing that can get our minds off a difficult situation. And how is food shared with new neighbors? Does family hierarchy continue in a tent city? Living in a group requires constant discretion if you don’t want to offend other people. The poorest are ahead in this game, since they’re used to rubbing elbows; they’re not afraid of touching each other. Some individuals feel physical revulsion at the idea of rubbing up against people they consider lower class. It’s possible that an unexpected situation, if it lasts long enough, will cause major changes in people’s lives.

  Reading in a Tent

  For adults, it’s desire. For kids, reading. A child lost in The Three Musketeers isn’t living in a tent. He’s in a Dumas novel. A life of adventure. Galloping through the night. When he gets tired, he stops at an inn and wakes the innkeeper, who was sleeping next to the missus in his nightcap. He sits down before a copious meal after ordering a bale of hay for his horse, which has been sent to the stables. It is no easy task, for the roads are not safe. Suddenly, he is surrounded by a group of masked riders. Just as d’Artagnan is about to unsheathe his sword, he hears a voice that is too familiar and too shrill to be Milady
’s. It’s the young reader’s mother calling him for supper. She smiles when she sees her son come running with a book under his arm.

  The Prodigal Son

  I went back to the Hôtel Karibe, where it all began. The feeling of returning to the scene: one foot in the past (that vibration again) and the other in the present. Which has me shaking a little. I didn’t go through the front door for fear the return would be too sudden. I chose the side entrance, the exact spot where I met Saint-Éloi who had just arrived on that January 12, about 3:30 pm. The conference room wasn’t too badly damaged. I went through the courtyard. The rear façade of the hotel has been repaired. I stepped onto the tennis courts where shadows once moved. The swimming pool, its surface unmoving. The garden with its flowers that withstood the earthquake. In the restaurant, I came upon the owner who hugged me passionately. When I congratulated him for not having lost his cool during those difficult days, and most of all for having stayed with his guests when he could have gone home to sleep, he told me confidentially, “Instead of destroying me, the tragedy gave me the energy I needed to do better.” Just then the waiter appeared, the same one who was serving us just before the earthquake. The plump man was wearing the same warm smile he’d never lost, even at the worst times of the crisis. I reminded him I was still waiting for a lobster, and that he had gone to get it when the earthquake struck. He gave me a sly smile, then disappeared into the kitchen. I was talking with a chambermaid when he returned bearing a lobster. So fast? He’d wanted to surprise me and sent the order as soon as he saw me come through the gate. We laughed. I was moved. I sat down at the table where I’d been on January 12, when disaster visited us, and this time I was able to enjoy my lobster in peace.

  The Tenderness of the World

  Wherever I go, people speak in low voices. Their conversations are cut with silence. Eyes averted, they reach for my hand. Through me, they hope to speak to the island that has been wounded, but has escaped its isolation. People ask me for news. They quickly realize they are better informed than I am. I removed myself from that poisonous buzzing, better to preserve the images that burn inside me. On the first night, that little girl who was worried if there would be school the next day. Or the mango lady the following morning, sitting on the ground, back against a wall, with her pile of mangos for sale. When people speak to me, I see in their eyes that they are addressing the dead, while I am clinging to the slightest crumb of life. But what really touches me is how moved they seem by their own emotion and how they hope to keep it with them as long as possible. They say one catastrophe replaces another. Journalists can go prospecting elsewhere, but Haiti will continue to occupy the heart of the world for a long time to come.

  How It Came to Be

  Three Hotel Rooms and a Train

  The way this book forced itself on me is really no surprise. On the tennis court, I made up my mind not to let the earthquake upset my schedule. Not that I’m insensitive to what happened. When I close my eyes, the images come rushing back in all their horror. The only way I can breathe is to move. I owed my publisher Rodney St-Éloi a book. It was supposed to be notes about writing. On my previous visit to Port-au-Prince, my nephew wouldn’t stop bugging me with all his questions about style. I refused to answer; the issue is bound up with the act of writing itself. Which is like saying you learn to write by writing. Good writers are their own masters. The main thing is to be attentive to two fundamental points: music and rhythm. If you have a tin ear, you might as well do something else. No one can teach you how to write a sentence that sounds good. My nephew kept insisting. He was looking for specific advice. “And not another book that’s going to make me feel desperate,” he called on his way to the bathroom. I ended up accepting the challenge. The title was ready-made: Notes to a Young Writer in Pajamas. I know it might sound pretentious to start giving advice. But I figured that over the last thirty-five years, I must have learned a thing or two about writing that I could tell him. Like keeping the spontaneity that adds so much charm. Everything seems much too clean these days (now the old man is judging his contemporaries). Buffon was right when he said that style is the man. I like to feel there’s someone behind the door. Even if you have talent, you can’t make it without character. The book (Notes to a Young Writer in Pajamas) was finished, but it still required careful rereading. I needed time to write. I had two weeks to make the necessary corrections. Don’t go thinking that those two weeks were waiting for me with a smile. Every day was filled with something else. I’ve understood for some time now that I can have whatever I want—except time. André Breton was a prospector for the gold of time. I don’t have it. Don’t have it any more. The freer I feel in my mind, the less I belong to myself. Freedom gives off a scent that attracts people. I looked at my calendar. Three trips in the month of March. I had two weeks before the book was due at the publisher’s. I threw my notebook and my little Toshiba computer into my suitcase.

  Tallahassee Hotel

  Last year, Martin Monroe, a professor and specialist in Caribbean literature, invited me to a colloquium on contemporary Haitian literature. I couldn’t really refuse since I had just gotten through declaring in Port-au-Prince that culture was the only thing Haiti had produced in the last two hundred years. Culture is the only thing that can stand up to the earthquake. I’m not only talking about intellectual culture, the kind that comes from books, but what structures a nation. If we don’t want to turn into a victim nation, we have to keep moving. We’ll cry later when things are better. In the meantime, let’s go forward. That was my decision. The hotel wasn’t far (a twenty-minute walk) from Florida State University where my eldest daughter studied French-language literature. Why an American university? “American schools are loaded with money,” she told me at the time. “They can line up three Nobel Prize winners at the same table.” Really? This big conference about Haiti had been in the works for two years. It was my first contact with a university since my return. I decided to add a short text about the earthquake at the end of my book about style. I would relate my first impressions when the tremors struck. That turned out to be my Pandora’s box. Gold fever. Every time I had a free moment, I slipped back to my room. If I had one piece of advice for a young writer, it would be this: “Write about what makes you passionate. Don’t look for the subject; the subject will find you.” Except that it doesn’t always show up at the right time. I was supposed to be correcting a book that had been advertised everywhere. An anxious publisher was waiting for it. That’s not the time to let yourself get distracted by something new. But a good subject sets off energy in me that’s like physical passion. It’s all I could think about.

  Brussels Hotel

  By the time I left Tallahassee, I had surrendered to the monster. I got to the Brussels Book Fair. What a reception! They welcomed me with such ceremony—but it was Haiti they were taking into their hearts. I had interviews everywhere. Belgian intellectuals (Yvon Toussaint, Jean-Luc Outers) were deeply moved by the Haitian tragedy. I saw the same thing in the schools. I’d never witnessed such fervor toward a nation. The grade-school students who went to the fair with their teachers asked me about the history of the country instead of just the recent events. They were interested in daily life there. The questions were well thought out and most of them touched on love and death. They had all read Je suis fou de Vava and La fête des morts. Eyes open wide, they asked all kinds of hard and essential questions. Do you still love Vava? Can you love the same person your whole life through? Do people die differently in Haiti? Can you love someone even after death? Whose death: yours or the other person’s? Laughter. A short interlude when I didn’t think of my book. Then I ran back to the hotel room. Frenzy: I was writing non-stop. If that kept up, with no writer’s block, I’d finish the earthquake book in five days, and use the remaining six to correct Notes. The room was well lit. Through the window, I could see the trees gently stirring. Anything that moves still scared me. I dove back into the book. That feeling of reliving everything, moment by
moment. I had to make choices to keep from getting lost in the details. I was writing this book as much for myself as for others. Everyone who hadn’t been there. A friend, Ann Gerrard, protected me by telling everyone that I wasn’t available, without giving any explanations. I met up with Alain Mabanckou at the “Échappées africaines” booth. He was in a hurry too. We took a little time to talk. He had been expected in Port-au-Prince on January 13. When the earthquake struck, he was finishing a book illuminated by the presence of his mother: the Pauline Kengué I wrote about in The Return. In that book, Pauline dies in Haiti. Of her, I wrote, “She always said she’d come here so Alain would feel Haitian when the time came.” I felt that fate was awaiting him in Port-au-Prince. Good thing he didn’t make it. He was the first to announce that I was still alive. Our constant correspondence keeps us friends. I woke up early to write, then packed my bag and took a taxi for the station.