The sun would be setting. He walked, his steps shorter than in time past, down the street and onto the beach, where he stood in the sand watching the sun slipping down to the horizon. Stiffly he lowered himself to sit on the cool sand. Soft waves made way for an occasional boomer. The beach was empty, as were most of the houses behind him now that October was looming. He thought of Douglas up there in the pine forest. Probably dead now. As poor Vincent was, after the local doctor had given him a mistaken injection of some kind the year after their short acquaintance.
Did anyone but him remember Vincent, he wondered? (And how could it have been thirty-three years ago when in his mind it was all so fresh?) Levin recalled now, staring at the waves, that Jimmy P., also dead, had once mentioned that the turpentine still had never been lit. Out of fear, Levin wondered, or for some business reason? Or had Jimmy gotten it wrong? But the main questions were always answerless.
He hated his loneliness, it was like a rank closet, a damp towel, loose shoes. Then why not offer marriage to the girl, make her his heir? But money had no meaning to her, and he had so little life to promise. But this endless string of days that threatened to unroll emptily before him was intolerable. Why not a trip to Haiti? Try to see how it all turned out. The thought, absurd as it seemed, quickened him, drove off his weariness. But who would he look up? Mrs. Pat was surely gone by now, and probably her daughter too. It was so odd that he alone might be carrying the pictures of these people in his mind. Except for him keeping them alive in the soft knot of tissue under his skull they might have no existence. And of them all, it was Douglas who returned most vividly to Levin, especially his Yankees cap and throaty voice; he could still hear him shouting, “This country is dying, Vincent!” The anguish in that man! The longing he must have had to . . . to what? What was he about?
Staring at the gray sea, the darkening sky, it was suddenly obvious to Levin that for Douglas the turpentine still must have been his work of art. Douglas was sacrificing himself, his career, his wife and children, to the creation of a vision of some beauty in his mind. Unlike me, Levin said to himself, or most people who never get to intercept that invisible beam which stirs them with its power to imagine something new. So what matters, he thought, was creation, the creation of what has not yet been. “And this I could never do,” he said aloud, chilled now and tramping excitedly up the beach toward his house.
He stood still for a moment in the middle of his living room, struck by the question of whether—what was his name? The young son of—what was her name again? Yes, Lilly O’Dwyer. Peter! Yes, it was Peter. Could he still be there? He’d only be in his forties now. For the first time in memory, Levin felt life surging into him again. How glorious to be here, standing upright on the earth! To be free to think! To ride one’s imaginings! He clapped his hands together and quickly found Adele’s old address book in the drawer under the phone, and searched for their travel agent’s number. Kendall Travel. Mrs. Kendall, yes. A very helpful woman.
“Kendall Travel, can I help you?”
She was alive! He recognized the voice. A wave of self-pity engulfed him as he realized he was going to Haiti, but alone. Then anguish all over again for his extinguished wife. And finally in the plane, wondering why he was doing this, going to a country that by all accounts had sunk into the abyss. What was behind it, he wondered? Could it be simply that he was an idle old man who needed something to do?
• • •
Peter O’Dwyer remembered him, an amazement to Levin who, however, had recognized him the moment he entered his small chaotic office on the pier. Two prefab metal windows looked out on the harbor with its half-sunk derelicts and a rusting freighter whose deck showed no sign of life. A dozen or so black workers were assembling and packing chairs in the corrugated steel warehouse through which Levin had passed to get here.
Peter was still the dark-skinned, barefoot child Levin recalled eating all the cherries on their first evening, only big now, almost his height, and powerfully built. There was something like meanness in his face, or just toughness, it was hard to tell, but he had remarkable water-gray eyes, like Weimaraner dogs.
“We make chairs for export, woven raffia,” Peter replied to Levin’s questions. “What brings you to Haiti? And how’d you know to find me?”
“The Gustafson manager.”
“Right. Phil. What can I do for you?” There was something punished in his eyes.
“I won’t take your time—”
“I remember you playing that night, a duet with your wife.”
“I’d forgotten that.”
“It was the first time anyone had gotten real music out of that piano.”
“I hadn’t thought of that in years. In fact, now that you mention it, I think it was a Schubert piece.”
“I don’t know that kind of music but it was really terrific.” Peter’s open admiration surprised Levin and helped launch him now. “You still playing?”
“No, not seriously. My wife died, for one thing.”
“Oh, sorry. So what can I do for you?” he repeated, with some insistence this time.
“I’ve been wondering about that turpentine still up in the pine forest.”
“The what?”
“The still that man Douglas put together up there. He was a good friend of Vincent’s.”
“Vincent died, you know.”
“I heard. You didn’t know Douglas?”
Peter shook his head.
Levin felt stymied; he’d assumed that in this small country with so few whites they would all know everything about one another. He felt alarm, and as he took in Peter’s honest vacant look, the question crossed his mind whether (impossible, of course) Douglas had ever really existed.
Levin smiled, and making light of Douglas said, “He was kind of a whacko. Lived up there in the forest in a kind of wrecked bungalow with his family.”
Peter shook his head. “Never heard of him. Did my mother know him?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m pretty sure she knew about him. Is she . . . ?”
“She’s gone. And Grandma.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“What’d you want with him?” Peter’s interest at least had been captured, but confronted with the bald question Levin was at a loss. What did he want with Douglas? “I guess I . . . well, I’m curious whether he ever started up that still. Because Vincent was very concerned, you know, about an explosion.” The explanation seemed ludicrous to Levin. An explosion thirty years ago had brought him here now? So to keep things real he reached for something business-like. “He was going to use the resin from the pines. He thought there was a big market for turpentine here.”
To his surprise, Peter’s expression changed to one of sympathetic curiosity. “From those pines, really?” Something had apparently caught his imagination.
Relieved now that he was not being thought mad, Levin pressed further into the hard realities. “It wasn’t the best resin but good enough, according to Vincent. But the whole contraption was improvised and stuck together from odd parts, and the pressures were very high. I’ve wondered if it blew up or what.”
“And that’s why you came?” Peter asked, more intrigued than critical, which gave Levin the sense that maybe they shared some need, still undefined, or a view of some kind, a feeling. And with the relief of the confessor he laughed and said, “I wanted to find some way to get back up there, although it’s probably gone by now. But maybe not.”
“How do you plan to get up there?”
“I don’t know. I thought I’d rent a car, if that’s still possible. It’s all pretty chaotic here, I understand.”
“I’d take you up.”
“Would you? That would be fantastic. I’m ready any time.”
“How’s tomorrow? I’ll have to tend to some things around here first.” Peter stood. Levin rose and offered his grateful hand,
and feeling the power in Peter’s grip, it seemed as if he’d crossed from water to land.
• • •
The Land Rover truck rode hard, its diesel engine sounding like a rolling barrel of bearings. Peter was wearing a tan shirt and white duck trousers, along with thick, well-worn work boots and a baseball cap with a Texaco logo. The sleeves of his shirt were neatly rolled up, exposing thick, tanned forearms as tight as the cheeks of a horse. Behind the front seat stretched a full-sized mattress covered with a red plaid blanket and two pillows at the forward end. The manager of the Gustafson, chatting with Levin at the hotel’s entrance, had grinned on seeing this vehicle pulling up, and smiling wickedly, had said something about there having “been a lot of living on that mattress.” And Peter was handsome with his clean, tanned face. He seemed eager, less guarded than on their meeting yesterday. As they left the city behind and climbed toward the pine forest he sounded happy, as if he welcomed the outing. “I haven’t been up here since I was a kid,” he said.
“Is there another road going up?”
“No. Why?”
“It doesn’t look like I remember it. Wasn’t there forest here?”
“Probably.”
Peter had shifted out of fourth to third to make the climb and in places had to go down to second. On both sides of the road, bare soil dissolving to dust and sand stretched away into the distance. Levin’s memory still held the image of the trees. Before them lay a beige-white expanse of bedrock where the pavement vanished.
“How far is it to the top?”
“At least an hour, maybe more on this road.”
“Vincent had said they were stealing the forest.”
“Yes, everything,” Peter said.
“I can’t believe this.” Levin waved at the blasted landscape.
Peter merely nodded. It was hard to tell what he was feeling. He braked to a halt, estimating a gulley a couple of feet deep that cut across the road. Then proceeded into it and climbed back out, the truck’s stiff frame groaning.
“Jesus, I remember a good road here.”
“Erosion. With all the trees gone the last hurricanes really wiped things out.”
“Looks lost forever.”
Peter nodded slightly.
“It’s like they ate the country and shat it out.”
Peter glanced at him, and Levin regretted his outburst; things were so far gone here that indignation had to border on self-indulgence.
In fact, Levin’s indignation reminded Peter of people he had known as a boy. His father and then grandma and his mother used to sound like this, like there was something to be done about things. The idea interested him, like old-time jazz, distantly. He liked the beat but the words were silly and ancient.
The bedrock was tilted here. Peter had to hold on to the door handle to keep from falling on Levin, who gripped the dashboard. Levin remembered nothing like this. Now, off to the right, there were people and what looked like tables set out on the ground. Peter headed across the rocky desert and stopped the truck. There were shanties clustered beyond the tables, a small village. The scene seemed as novel to Peter as to himself, Levin thought.
They were mostly women in rags, each hovering around her own table on which she had set out her wares, incongruous out here beyond any buyers. Peter and Levin moved among the tables, nodding to the women who barely acknowledged their greetings. On the tables were old combs, mismatched tableware, knives and spoons and forks—some of them rusted—and on one table old pop bottles made opaque by sun and rain, bottle caps, pencils and pencil stubs, worn-out shoes, and everywhere hunger-bloated children underfoot, some of them under a year old, mouthing dust. Peter picked up a small spoon engraved with unreadable writing and gave the woman money. Finally they came to a halt, looking around. People pretended not to be looking at them.
“Why do they do this, where would customers come from?”
Peter shrugged, and seemed annoyed by the question, as though Levin had spoken too loudly at a graveside. They went back to the truck.
The semblance of road was indicated by a few feet of snipped-off restraining cable that had once marked its edges. “Am I wrong?” Levin asked. “This was all forest, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Probably. But the island had eighty percent of its surface in forest a hundred years ago, and it’s less than three percent now.” After a moment he said, “You say you met this Douglas guy?”
“Yes. Just briefly. I was only up here one day.”
“What was he up to?”
“It’s hard to describe. He was almost in a fever. Vincent thought he was slightly cracked, but that he wanted to do something for the country as well as for himself. Start a little industry and create some jobs, give the people some dignity. I heard him say that.”
“Is that why you’re interested?” There was no ironical inflection, no mockery in Peter’s voice.
“I’m not sure,” Levin said. “In a sense, I suppose, yes.”
“In what sense?”
“I’m not sure how to put it exactly. I guess it was his conviction. It impressed me. In his crazy way I think he loved this place.”
Peter turned abruptly to Levin, then back to the road. “What’d he love about it?” he asked. The question seemed important to him.
“Well, I don’t know,” Levin laughed, “now that you ask.” After a moment he said, “You never heard of Douglas at all?” The truck was pitching wildly from side to side.
“No. But I was running around all over the place in those days, didn’t stop to listen much.” After a moment he asked rather shyly, “You came all the way down here for this?”
Levin was embarrassed. “Well, I don’t have much to do. My wife is gone, practically all my friends. I’m not sure why, but the guy keeps coming back to me. I think about him a lot. And frankly,” he tried to chuckle, “sometimes it seems like something I dreamed. And now, I come down here,” he did laugh now, “and there are no witnesses left!”
Peter drove in silence, edging cautiously around the big holes. They’d begun to pass patches of surviving pines and the air had cooled. Levin continued, “To be perfectly frank about it, I really don’t know why I came down. Except that I felt I had to. It’s almost a question of,” he laughed again, “sanity.”
Peter glanced at him.
“I’d really like to find that still, if it’s possible. Just to see it again.”
“I understand,” Peter said. And then he added, “I’d like to see it too.”
They were grinding up out of a draw, and reaching the top, they saw a hundred yards ahead another Land Rover parked on the wasteland with half-a-dozen people seated around it. Peter pulled up and got out, and Levin followed him over to the vehicle, a taxi, which was listing sharply to the right. A man was lying underneath it—the driver, Levin gathered, trying to make a repair. The onlookers were an odd collection: a somber young woman in a short red dress with black net stockings and high heels and large brass earrings and hair piled high on her head was sitting on a newspaper on the dry ground; and beside her sat a short, large-bellied man with a pistol on his hip who occasionally eyed her like a dog guarding a sheep. A skeletal woman sat on a flat stone clutching a baby, and two others, a pair of young peasants, stood smoking, while another young man sat with his head between his knees.
No one spoke as Peter bent to see under the chassis. He had not greeted the people or taken any notice of them. Now he spoke Creole to the taxi driver, who ceased working and replied in soft tones to Peter’s questions. Levin heard a clattering at his back and turned to see a brown, white-faced horse and rider galloping across the waste toward him. The horse was small but beautifully formed with an Arab head and slender, nervous legs which, when he was pulled up by the rider, never went still, its hooves constantly clacking against loose stones. Around the horse’s neck a rope as thick as a hawser was neatly
wound up to its jaws. The rider had long dreadlocks and a perky smile. “God’s blessing on you all!” he called cheerfully. “Think of the sufferings of this world and thank your heaven for health and good spirits! I greet you, brothers and sisters, with all the good will in the creation!”
The group had turned to listen to him without reacting. Peter stood and walked up close to the rider and said, “They have a problem.”
“Yes, I see,” said the rider, “but we must have no doubt it could be much worse.”
“I would like to buy the rope.” Peter pointed at the rope wound around the horse’s neck.
“Oh, I regret that is impossible. I need to tie him or he will run off when I get down.”
“I would pay and you could find another rope.”
“But how then could I get down?”
“You might find someone to hold him while you buy the rope.”
“No-no.”
“I will pay you a dollar American for the rope.”
“No-no.”
“Then two dollars.”
“For this rope?” He seemed to be reconsidering.
“Yes.”
“No-no,” the rider said. The horse, its eyes rolling, suddenly danced a complete circle and faced Peter again. Unaccountably, the rider unknotted the rope, unwound it and let it fall into Peter’s hand. Peter reached back for his wallet, but the rider, fighting to hold the reins and having to turn himself left and right to keep facing Peter and the group, lifted one arm and called out, “Remember God!” then crouched low to keep his seat as the horse flew off, its hooves sending loose stones clattering down the bare slope.
The unexpected gift of the battery thirty years ago crossed Levin’s mind, and his back chilled. Peter crouched beside the truck and instructed the driver on where to place the jack under the frame. A U-bolt had broken, releasing the spring from the frame link. His commands seemed brutally brief, impatient, sometimes scornful. “No! To the left, the left, don’t you know left from right? Hold it in place and pump it up. Good. Now come out.” The driver squirmed out from under the truck, and Peter lay on the ground and slid in with the rope. The group watched without commenting, interested but keeping clear. Everyone waited in silence while Peter worked. Presently he slid out from under the vehicle and accepted with a nod—not quite of thanks but mute acknowledgment—a large blue bandanna from the man with the pistol with which to wipe his hands. The driver, exhausted, bone-thin, stood before Peter saluting.
Presence Page 39
