by Cave, Hugh
"Madame." Polinard was tapping her on the shoulder again. "I feel the car swaying. Are we getting a flat, do you think?"
She hadn't noticed, but he was right. She stopped. The road was level and straight with lush greenery on both sides. Even before she could wriggle out from under the wheel—she thought she might burst if she moved too fast—their passenger had dropped from the back.
When she reached him, he was on one knee, frowning at the left rear tire. It was not flat, but obviously it soon would be.
"I'll change it, Madame. You have a pump, I see, but it would probably only go soft again." Lifting the jack and tools from the vehicle, he went to work.
She returned gingerly to the front and crooked a finger at little Tina. "Ti-fi, do you need a bathroom?" The child's head bobbed briskly up and down. "Come on, then. This is our chance."
If Polinard guessed what they were up to, he gave no indication of it. When they returned from the greenery, his tire-changing was almost finished. He completed the task, and Kay thanked him. A little later darkness fell.
She was not used to driving Haiti's country roads at night, and cut her speed so as not to be booby-trapped by potholes. Lamps came on in scattered peasant cailles beside the road. Now and then, the jeep passed a pedestrian holding a lantern or a bottle-torch to light his way. Tree frogs sang a shrill symphony to fill the night with sound. Little Tina fell asleep.
Driving along that empty black road with a hulking stranger sitting just behind her was not a joyous experience. It scared her. But the miles to Cap Haitian passed without incident, and though the girl at the river had distinctly called her "M'selle" and Polinard must have heard it, the ugly man was still politely calling her "Madame" when they reached their destination.
6
It was beginning to rain when they reached Le Cap. Having been in the city only a few times before, Kay was unsure of herself in the wet darkness.
"I have to go to the Catholic church," she said to their passenger. "Can you direct me?"
He did so, remarking that he lived not far from there himself. She stopped under a street lamp near the church entrance. The rain misted the lamp and the jeep's headlights. "For us this is the end of the line, M'sieu Polinard. Tina and I will be staying here tonight with the sisters." That had not been her intention, of course. She had expected to reach Trou. But the late start had made a stopover necessary.
Their passenger got out and thanked her. Ignoring the rain, he gravely offered his hand to Tina."Ti-fi, I hope everything will be fine for you when you reach home. I will pray for you." With a bow to them both he turned away.
How in the world could she have thought him ugly? "Where do the sisters live, Tina?"
"I don't know."
"But you stayed here almost a month!"
"I didn't know what was happening then."
Kay gazed helplessly at the church, a massive dark pile in the rain, and suddenly saw that Emile Polinard had stopped and was looking back. He returned to the jeep.
"Something is wrong, Madame?"
"Well, I—I thought Tina would know where to find the sisters, but she doesn't seem to."
"Let me. Is there a particular sister you wish to see?"
She felt guilty, keeping him standing there with the rain falling on him. But if she did not accept his help, what would she do? The church compound was dark; she had no idea what to look for. "It was a Sister Simone who brought Tina to the hospital. If you could just ask for her, please? But if she isn’t there, someone else will do, I suppose."
"Sister Simone. I know her. She should be here."
He was back in five minutes holding aloft a large black umbrella under which trotted a black-robed woman not much taller than Tina. The sister said cheerfully, "Hello, you two! Tina, move over!" She climbed into the jeep. Emile Polinard handed her the umbrella and she thanked him. "Just drive on," she said to Kay. "I'll show you where to go."
Kay, too, thanked "ugly man" Polinard. He bowed again. Driving on, she turned a corner at the sister's direction, turned again between the back of the church and another stone building.
"Come," the sister commanded, and, with much rustling of her robe, swung herself out. To hold the umbrella so it would protect them, she had to reach high, she was so tiny. They hurried into the building. Was it a convent? A nunnery? Kay did not know. How many sisters lived here, anyway? Perhaps it was just a residence for two or three. She knew little about these things. Once inside, the sister was less brisk. Giving the umbrella a shake, she closed it and placed it in a stand near the door, then hunkered down in front of Tina and put out her arms. "How are you, little one?" She was Haitian, Kay noticed for the first time. Her face, remarkably pretty, was light brown. Take away the heavy robe, and she couldn't weigh ninety pounds.
"It's a good thing I phoned you yesterday," Kay said. Actually, she had telephoned only to say they would be passing through Le Cap on their way to Trou and would stop for a few minutes. "I'm afraid we'll have to ask you to put us up tonight. Can you?"
"Of course, Miss Gilbert. What happened? Did you have car trouble?"
"We got off to a late start. Tina had one of her headaches."
"Ah, those headaches." The sister reached for Tina's hand. "Come upstairs, both of you. First your room, then we'll see about something to eat."
She put them both in the same room, one overlooking the yard where the jeep was, then disappeared, hoping to return. There were twin beds with a window between them, two chests of drawers, two chairs. "We'll need our gear," Kay told her charge. "I'll go get it while you wash up." But on the stairs she met Sister Simone and a second nun coming up, each with a duffel bag from the jeep.
They supped on soup and fish in a small dining room downstairs: Kay and Tina, Sister Simone, Sister Anne who had helped with the duffel bags, and Sister Ginette who at sixty or so was the oldest. There was little conversation. What there was concerned only the journey. "That road is not easy, is it? . . . It so badly needs repairing. . . And the Limbé bridge was closed? Oh-oh, you had to come through the river, then. . ."
Why don't they ask about Tina—what we've been doing with her all this time, and how she's coming along? They did talk tothe youngster, but asked no personal questions. It almost seemed a conspiracy.
But when the meal ended and Kay took Tina by the hand to walk her back upstairs, Sister Simone said quietly, "Do come down again when she is in bed, Miss Gilbert. Please? We'll be in the front room."
When she descended, she found the three waiting there on uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs. It occurred to her that perhaps Polinard had built them. An empty chair was in place for her. On a small table in the center of the circle lay a wooden tray on which were mugs, spoons, a pitcher of milk, a bowl of sugar. A battered coffee pot that might have been silver was being kept warm over an alcohol flame.
The nuns rose and waited for Kay to be seated, managing somehow—all but Simone—to sit again precisely when she did. "Coffee, Miss Gilbert?" Simone asked.
"Please."
"Milk and sugar?"
"Black, please." It was a crime to tamper with this poor country's marvelous coffee.
Simone served the others as well—perhaps this was an after-supper ritual—then seated herself. "Now, Miss Gilbert, please tell us how Tina regained her memory. All we know is the little you were able to tell me over the phone yesterday."
She told them how Dr. Robek had hit on the idea of reading map names to Tina and how, on hearing the name Bois Sauvage, the child had snapped out of her long lethargy. "Like Snow White waking up when the prince kissed her."
They smiled.
"Then she remembered her own name. If, of course, Tina Louise Christine Sam really is her name. We can't be sure until I get her to Bois Sauvage, can we? Or even if that's where she came from.
The oldest sister, frowning deeply, said, "Bois Sauvage. Isn't that away up in the mountains near the Dominican border?"
"According to the map."
"H
ow in the world will you get there?"
"I've been promised a guide at Trou."
"But you can't drive to such a place. There aren't any roads."
"I suppose we'll walk, or ride mules. I really won't know until tomorrow." She waited for them to sip their coffee. Then: "Now will you tell me something, please? How did Tina come into your care in the first place? All we've ever heard is that she was brought to you by a priest."
"By Father Turnier," Simone said, nodding. "Father Louis Turnier. He was stationed at Vallière then and had a number of chapels even farther back in the mountains. We have a picture of him." She put her coffee mug down and went briskly, with robe swishing, to a glassdoored bookcase at the side of the room. Returning with a large photo album that smelled strongly of mildew, she turned its pages to find what she sought, then reversed the book and held it out to Kay. "That's Father on the right, in front of the Vallière chapel. Those big cracks in the chapel were caused by an earthquake just a few days before this picture was taken. Can you imagine?"
Kay saw a husky-looking white man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. French, she guessed. Most of the white priests in the Haitian boondocks were French. He wore no clerical garment; in fact, his shirt was neither buttoned nor tucked into his pants. The way he grinned at the camera made her instantly fond of him.
"He was coming back from some far-off chapel one day," Simone said, "and stopped at this isolated native caille beside a little stream. He hadn't ever stopped there before, he said. In fact, he didn't usually pass that way, but a landslide had carried away part of his usual trail and forced him to detour. He was on a mule, of course. He always made his chapel trips on muleback. And the animal was weary, so he thought he would just stop and talk with these people a while."
Kay gazed at the photo while she listened.
"Well, there was this child lying on a mat inside the caille, and the people asked Father to talk to her. She had wandered into the clearing a few days before, they told him, and couldn't or wouldn't say who she was or where she had come from."
"I see."
"Well, you can see from that photo what kind of a man Father Turnier is. He forgot all about returning to Vallière and simply stayed there, trying to persuade the child to talk to him. He ended up staying the night and deciding she must have been through some really traumatic experience and ought to have help. In any case, she couldn't remain there with those people because they didn't want her. So at daybreak he lifted her up in front of him on his mule and carried her to Vallière, still not knowing her name or where she came from."
"He's a wonderful man," Sister Anne said.
"And loves children," added Sister Ginette.
"Then what happened?"
"Well, he kept her at Vallière for about three weeks —he and young Father Duval who was stationed there with him—but she didn't respond as they hoped she would, so he brought her here to us." Sister Simone paused to finish her coffee, and then leaned toward Kay with a frown puckering her pretty face. "You haven't found any reasonfor her lapse of memory?"
"None."
"On hearing the name of her village she just suddenly snapped out of it?"
"That's what happened. We've always thought there was nothing much wrong with her physically. Of course, when you brought her to us she was underweight and malnourished—not your fault; you didn't have her long enough to change that," Kay hurriedly added. "But she seemed all right otherwise."
"How strange."
"I wonder if her people in Bois Sauvage have been looking for her all this time," Ginette said. "It's been how long? Father Turnier had her for three weeks. We had her a month. You've had her for nearly six months."
Simone said, "It could be longer. We don't know that she went straight from her village to that caille where Father found her. Maybe that journey covered a long time." Life was full of puzzles, her shake of the head said. "Miss Gilbert, we can only say bless you for taking her home. None of us here would be able to do it, I'm sure." The puckering frown returned. "But have you thought of leaving her here and having us send for the father in that district to come for her?"
"Father Turnier, you mean?"
"Well, no, it wouldn't be Father Turnier now. He's no longer there."
"It would be someone Tina doesn't know, then?"
"I'm afraid so. Yes."
Kay shook her head. "I'd better take her myself. And I don't mind, really. It could be fun. It'll certainly be a change from hospital routine."
All the sisters nodded and looked at her expectantly. It was close to their bedtime, Kay guessed. Time for her to go upstairs, anyway. She rose.
"I'd better make sure Tina is all right, don't you think? She has nightmares sometimes."
"And the headaches, poor thing," Simone said.
"Yes, the headaches. Like this morning. Well, then . . . until tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," they said in chorus, and little Simone added, "Sleep well, both of you."
Kay climbed the stairs. As she went along the corridor to their room she heard a drumming sound overhead that told her the rain was still falling. Please, God, let it stop before morning or that road to Trou will be hell. The room itself was a steam bath. Tina slept with her face to the wall and her arms loosely clasping an extra pillow.
Kay shut the door and began to undress, shedding her clothes without bothering to put on the light. What had the sisters thought of a nurse who came to supper in khaki pants and shirt? Or hadn't they thought anything? Anyway, she had never expected to be dining with nuns, or with anyone else who might think pants on a nurse a little unusual. In bra and panties, with one hand reaching down inside the panties to scratch her bottom because muggy weather like this always made her itch, she looked with affection at her sleeping roommate.
Tina Louise Christine Sam, she thought. Sam Sam, Sam. There it was again, like a phone in her head that wouldn't stop ringing. She had been thinking about him all day, and about that weekend in Jacmel. Until her stubborn mind got to the end of that weekend she probably would not be able to think along to any of the other things he and she had done together.
Opening her duffel bag, she took out the pajamas she had brought. Flannel ones because the mountains were likely to be cold, or at least cool. Here it wasn't cool, though. God, no. Deciding against the pajamas after all, she stuffed them back and got into bed the way she was, pulling the sheet up over her because it seemed to help a little against the dampness. There was something about this room she didn't like. Something that made her edgy. What was it?
She turned to look at the window between the beds. Light from a street lamp or yard lamp somewhere close by shone through the wet glass to create small yellow flickerings on one of the bureaus. Jacmel again, she thought, frowning. There had been a street lamp outside her window there too, and rain had begun to fall that night soon after she and Sam had left the pension's little bar and gone up to their rooms.
In Jacmel, though, the light from outside had illuminated the door, not a piece of furniture.
She looked at the door here and suddenly was not sticky hot anymore, but cold enough to shiver. If it opened here as it had there, she was sure she would scream.
True, she had not screamed that night. Hadn't known what to do when the creaking of the unoiled hinges had wakened her and she had found herself sitting up in bed like a wooden doll, staring at him in total disbelief.
If he had just opened the door and come to her in his pajamas, she might have understood, though they actually had not slept together at that time. They had killed a good half bottle of rum down there at the bar, he drinking most of it, she not wanting to hold him back because he was so obviously upset by his encounter with the voodoo fellow at the street dance. Maybe she had even wanted him to come to her room. Otherwise why hadn't she protested on discovering there was no key to her door?
But he hadn't come in pajamas to talk her into letting him into her bed. When the door finished its ghastly creaking and was fully open, he
was standing there like some weird visitant from another world, naked as Adam in the light from the window, his arms dangling like an ape's and a completely un-alive look on his face. Drunk? No man had a right to be that drunk. . .
From the other bed came Tina's sleepy voice. "Miss Kay, is something wrong?"
She dragged herself back from that ghastly Jacmel room. "No, baby. Why?"
"You were making funny noises. You woke me up."
"I woke you up? Gee, I'm sorry. It's been kind of a long day and I guess I wasn't sleeping too well. I must have been dreaming."
"Oh. That's okay then. Good night."
"Good night, ti-fi."
Only I wasn't asleep and it wasn't a dream, baby. I wish to God it were.
7
Wearing a much-patched carpenter's apron this morning, Emile Polinard stepped back to look at the table he was working on. It was a large one of Haitian mahogany, crafted to order for a wealthy Cap Haitien merchant. Emile switched on his electric sander but turned it off again and removed his wristwatch, lest wood dust get into the watch and do some damage.
The time, he noted, was twenty past eight. The rain had stopped just before daybreak and now the sun shone brightly on the street outside the open door of his little shop.
His helper, 17-year-old Armand Cator, came from the back room and said, "I've finished the staining, M'sieu Polinard. Should I start on Madame Jourdan's chairs now?" Armand was a good boy, a hard worker, always respectful. Polinard sometimes wished his own two sons might be a little like him.
"Do that, please, Armand."
"Yes, sir."
Glancing out the door at the welcome sunshine while turning the sander on again, Polinard saw a familiar vehicle coming down the street and voiced a small "Ha!" of satisfaction. He had been expecting to see it. To get from the church to the main north-coast highway, it would have to pass his shop. He shut off the sander a second time and placed it on a bench. Hurrying out onto the cracked sidewalk, he fixed his gaze on the approaching jeep and waited.
