Hadriana in All My Dreams

by René Depestre

  “Why not hold the viewing in the town square, under the hundred-year-old trees lining Lovers Lane?” suggested my uncle Ferdinand.

  “That seems like an excellent idea to me,” said Maître Homaire. “A virgin bride belongs to the realm of the stars and should be mourned beneath the open sky, near the nests of the birds . . . What do you two think?”

  André and Denise Siloé nodded absentmindedly.

  “Maître Homaire has just brought up the virginity of the deceased,” interrupted Madame Losange. “In the case of a death like this one, isn’t properly deflowering the victim the very first precaution to be taken? Who’ll be handling that?”

  Uncle Ferdinand tried delicately to evade the indelicate question. “That precaution would be absolutely useless in the case of a prominent French—and Catholic—family, thank the Lord,” he argued.

  “Prominent French family or not, registered Catholic back to front or not,” insisted Madame Losange, “we’ve got to protect this child’s final voyage. We could ask Lolita Philisbourg to do it, but I fear that the hand of a twin might further provoke the perversity of whatever evil genie is responsible for this death.”

  You could have cut the silence in that sitting room with a knife. The person standing closest to Madame Losange savagely pinched her fleshy thigh in an attempt to silence her, while my mother made discreet signs of disapproval.

  “After all,” she continued, undaunted, a fearsome gleam in her eye, “the sacred duty belongs to Hector Danoze, the legitimate spouse. But he’s been hospitalized, left in a state of shock . . .”

  “In my humble opinion,” chimed in Scylla Syllabaire, “this task should be executed by an innocent. It should be done by a boy as virginal as the deceased.”

  “Do you have someone in mind?” asked Madame Losange.

  “Why not Patrick Altamont?”

  Completely stunned, I quickly lowered my head. Thankfully, my mother came to my rescue at once.

  “Nana and Patrick were held over the baptismal fount by the same woman,” she argued. “They’re basically brother and sister. And I agree with Maître Homaire—the Siloé family is out of reach for the bizangos.”

  The minds of Hadriana’s parents were elsewhere. They seemed to have gone back in time together, reliving their years with their cherished little French girl, a thousand miles from this profane discussion.

  “It is my duty to insist,” persisted the mambo. “Abominable violation threatens this angel we’re shedding tears over right now. She must not arrive before God with her beautiful innocence sullied, her intimate self cruelly defiled. It’s the only thing missing from Granchiré’s backlash. Believe Madame Brévica: the honeymoon of a baka is no First Communion party.”

  “To avoid it, all we have to do is place the lovely lady facedown,” Togo Lafalaise, the tailor, remarked.

  “No, not that, you fool,” admonished Madame Losange. “Any baka kept from entering through a woman’s garden side will head straight around to the backyard with an equally devastating erection! If we do away with the sacred deflowering, we must at the very least put a loaded pistol and a well-sharpened machete next to Miss Siloé. Athletic as she was, she’ll be able to resist her abductors. We’ll also need to sew up her mouth with black thread to keep her from answering when she hears her given name called out three times in the night.”

  This was the nature of the heated debate that was taking place when Reverend Father Naélo and his vicar, Father Maxitel, entered the sitting room. They headed straight for the sofa where Denise and André Siloé were seated. These four, along with my mother, my uncle Ferdinand, and Maître Homaire, sat for a long while and held a sort of private consultation to determine the details of the wake and the funeral. It was past eight o’clock when Father Naélo, looking worried, stood up and immediately began speaking.

  “My dear friends,” he said in a sermon-like tone, “Hadriana Siloé will be viewed underneath the silk-cotton trees in the town square in a manner that most conforms with our Christian traditions. Once Prefect Kraft has silenced the carnival, all Jacmel will get down on its knees and join in God’s frontlines of defense to protect the remains of our dearly beloved fairy. After the formal Mass at noon, Madame Hector Danoze will be buried in accordance with the rites of our Sainted Mother, the Church. All together, in the dignity of our grief, we will be certain to respect the wishes of this honorable Catholic family that fate has so unjustly stricken in their adopted country. Madame Luc Altamont, creator of the bridal gown, is alone charged with dressing the body. We ask those who have nothing to add to this pious operation to please leave. In approximately one hour, we will all gather on the square. In truth, the whole world is disgraced when a young girl of nineteen is struck down on her wedding night.”

  “Amen,” said all those present, crossing ourselves vigorously.

  Chapter Three

  Hadriana in the Lap of the Gods

  Follow me to the bottom of that magic well that Jacmel

  Fell into that night, along with all its inhabitants.

  —R.D.

  1

  Long before the clock struck ten p.m., Hadriana Siloé’s catafalque had been placed between two rows of candles in the middle of Lovers Lane. The stars shone so low that they seemed part of the chapel. People had brought chairs and benches from all the nearby houses. When the open coffin arrived, all the carnival drums stopped at once. Not yet knowing what to do with my intense sadness, I took advantage of the sudden calm to slip into the crowd.

  The carnivalesque bands had completely taken over every square meter of the plaza. As expected, the most prominent people of the southwest region were there. For the time being, musicians and dancers seemed to be bivouacked amongst their sleeping instruments: drums, vaksin, conch shells, rattles, saxophones, flutes, trumpets, and accordions. Dispersed here and there, eating and drinking under the trees, people began telling all those tales one tells at wakes.

  I stopped first in front of a group of men dressed up as women. They had placed pillows and cushions under their green satin dresses, so as to simulate the final stages of pregnancy. They had the breasts and buttocks of the Venus Callipyge. Leaning on their clubs, the cross-dressers conversed with another group of revelers who, having wrapped themselves in white sheets and stuffed their ears and noses with cotton, spoke in decidedly nasal voices. A few steps away from these counterfeit-dead, a few half-naked werewolves, glazed from head to toe in cane syrup and soot, seemed to be plotting amongst themselves. The tin cones affixed to their fingertips clicked at the smallest of gestures. They had stuck orange peels between their teeth and lips, giving their faces terrifying expressions.

  A little farther, I came upon Madame Lil’ Carême’s Charles-Oscars: adorned with blue and red kepis, they wore black fitted coats with saffron-yellow buttons, scarlet pants tucked into white gaiters, and giant spurs on their heels. Every Charles-Oscar boasted his military prowess with a sign hanging from his back: Colonel Later-and-Sadder, Commander-Who-Gives-Each-Household-Its-Share-of-Tribulations, Divisional-General-of-the-Seriously-Malicious-Member.

  Near the music kiosk, I came upon a school of Pierrots in multicolored clothes, wearing pale-blue masks of metal cloth and bells on their belts. Alongside the police headquarters, Carib Indians, brilliant in their plumage, paid tribute to a demijohn of rum, their bows and arrows piled up on the sidewalk. Disguised as a vulture, the prefect’s parrot General Télébec mockingly repeated: “Here’s to you, you Indian pieces of shit!”

  Camped out on the terrace of the Star Café were the Mathurins—that crew of devilish boys there to channel Jacmel’s esteemed Mathurin Lys, the magical delegate who had fought long ago to put our dreams on the map. Clothed in loose bathrobes, they sported colorful papier-mâché bolivar hats garnished with peacock feathers and long braids, and topped with assorted objects—horns, dolls, medallions, glass beads, small mirrors, amulets—all held together by a madras cloth and roped to a kind of bamboo mast.

  Other masqu
eraders had set up camp on the eastern and western edges of the square. Indian caciques frolicked freely with young Arawak beauties whose bare breasts rested harmoniously above brightly colored pareos made of woven straw. Queen Elizabeth’s pirate bands—the Brothers of the Coast and the Dogs of the Sea—had tattoos of skulls and snake vertebrae on their torsos. Under Francis Drake’s tender gaze, they fearlessly felt up the sumptuous buttocks of Bambara African girls who wore nothing but flowered turbans, their pubis hidden by an elegant white velvet mask with phosphorescent lips and eyes.

  Barons and marquesses of the court of Louis XIV played leapfrog on the lawn with friars in the habit of third-order Capuchins, rosaries on their belts, wooden crosses on their chests. High-ranking officers, black and mulatto, in the uniforms of the Grand Army of Napoleon, arm wrestled amicably with Marine Corps officers from the days when President Wilson’s assault troops occupied our island.

  In the colorful crowd I also recognized Simon Bolívar himself: completely and totally naked, he was engaged in an epic parry and thrust with the fervent and barbarous flesh of Pauline Bonaparte, while Toussaint Louverture, in the governor of Saint-Domingue’s uniform, jokingly pulled the ear of General Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc, the magnificently cuckolded husband of the future Princess of Borghese.

  King Christophe, on an official visit to Versailles, paced majestically—arm in arm with the wife of Charles X—in front of mirrors that reflected sparkling images of a pleasure party to come. In a neighboring salon, Alexandre Pétion, Mulatto and republican, was busy kissing the prodigiously lyrical thighs of the very young Madame Récamier with a passion equal to that of the other Alexander, the Macedonian general.

  A few feet away, the Haitian emperor Jacques the First played some form of table tennis with his partner, Generalissimo Stalin. Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was decked out in the formal costume worn by all Russian czars. Those two petite fathers of their people showed equal dexterity as they volleyed a human head back and forth, the head having been shrunken using a technique invented by the Jivaros. This primitive ping-pong ball changed from black to white to yellow to red in accordance with whichever world championship was being disputed.

  All over the square, the various masks reconstituted the particular time and space that corresponded with the heroes they represented at the moment of their participation in the planet’s history. But historical memory had gotten mixed up to the point of ridiculousness, not unlike the paths that once led people from the capital to the Tarpeian Rock. Alongside all the legendary characters, but never truly joining them in their fantastic adventure, roamed a host of other Jacmelian visions, just as fancifully dressed, but who had opted for the less spectacular roles of pigs, orangutans, birds of prey, bulls, sharks, cobras, crocodiles, tigers, Tonton-Macoutes, and leopards.

  This masked occasion had convoked three centuries of human history to my sister’s wake. Figures sculpted from the purest marble and figurines of rotten wood had come together to dance, sing, drink rum, and refuse death, kicking up the dust on my village square, which, in the midst of this general masquerade, took itself for the cosmic stage of the universe.

  2

  While I was gone, Hadriana’s parents had taken up their position next to the catafalque. They were flanked by the most prominent citizens of Jacmel. I identified many familiar faces. Madame Brévica Losange seemed to have completely recovered from her disappointment of earlier that evening. Having gone home to change, she was back looking fresh as day in a long indigo dress—reminiscent of those caraco tunics of days past—that draped without a wrinkle over her laced boots. She had gathered her gray hair on the nape of her neck in an impeccable 1900-style bun. It was said later that the necklace she wore on her bosom had a spirit imprisoned in each of its amber beads. A subsequent calculation led to the conclusion that no less than three dozen spirits kept company with Madame Brévica’s highly perched breasts during the long nocturnal march of January 29–30, 1938.

  When I arrived, I noticed a tension among those gathered that seemed not to be connected to mourning, no matter how intensely everyone was grieving for Nana. Seeing my confusion, my mother rushed to quietly fill me in on what had happened during the previous hour.

  “Everything has been set,” she whispered to me. “The prefect has already decided: the festivities will take place as planned.”

  “With drums, dancing, and everything?”

  “Yes. The priests and nuns, supported by a few zealots, failed to get the authorities to postpone carnival simply because of Nana’s death.”

  “How did they try to make their case?”

  “Father Naélo said that an explosion of paganism on the square risked forever compromising the salvation of the angel of love Jacmel was mourning.”

  “And what else, tell me!”

  “Cécilia Ramonet said that the carnival groups would not be satisfied with dancing and singing modestly in homage to Hadriana. We had to be prepared for all the orgiastic excesses of Vodou.”

  “Such as?”

  “Animal sacrifices, lascivious dances, a red Sabbath, and other scenes of witchcraft.”

  “Who was in the other camp?”

  “Maître Homaire, Uncle Féfé, doctors Braget and Sorapal, Didi Brifas, and Lil’ Jérôme Villaret-Joyeuse—and me too, of course.”

  “What did Maître Homaire say?”

  “Nana Siloé must remain forever linked in our town’s memory to the passion for life that burned within her more radiantly than in any young woman of her generation.”

  “He actually said that?”

  “Her beauty, he added, resounded far more like the beating of a drum than the tolling of a bell!”

  “And the priests had nothing to say to that?”

  “Father Maxitel said that such declarations amounted to Freemasonry. Sister Hortense said Maître Homaire should be ashamed of having profaned the open coffin of a saint in the presence of her intercessors before God.”

  “Didn’t Dr. Braget say anything?”

  “He went even further. He said that the banda dance, when performed with real talent, was the most beautiful form of prayer that men and women had ever invented.”

  “Fuel to the fire!”

  “Wait, it gets better!”

  “Impossible. Okay, go ahead.”

  “Henrik Radsen, in all his blustering Danishness, stepped up. He said that, even more so than prayers, the dances of Vodou were unparalleled hymns to the human adventure that God keeps rolling out like a carpet under our feet here in this world. In Europe, he said, the faithful pray using their eyes, hands, knees, and lips. Haiti’s charm in its dealings with God is that the hips, loins, buttocks, and private parts all take part in the soul’s most exalted deeds. They are the very driving force of redemption. The banda is perhaps the most beautiful oratorical form ever imagined.”

  With these words, Mam Diani told me, the priests and nuns made the sign of the cross, speechless with indignation. Sister Hortense threw herself to her knees, both hands on her rosary.

  “Then,” my mother continued, “Cécilia Ramonet, even more of a hard-nosed widow than ever, went on the attack. Sirs, she said, you’re going to end up killing the Siloés’ wonderchild a second time. It isn’t enough that she’s dead—you want to add the bestial rutting of Baron-Samedi! Isn’t the brutality of her disappearance enough for you? Now you want to deliver her to the tribe of pagan gods who debase this Christian country!”

  “I certainly hope you protested,” I said to my mother.

  “My blood was boiling. I don’t know where I got the courage to confront General César in public! I was with Nana for every step of her short life, I said. Before making her wedding gown, I’d already sewn her the first dress she ever wore. I made sure that her godmother, Germaine Muzac, was also godmother to my only son. I saw her transform from a little tyke into an exceptional beauty. She wouldn’t have appreciated what you just said. The only time I ever heard her talk about death, do you know what she said
to me? ‘If I die young, I would like my death to be lived by all those who loved me—lived through the drums and masks of a carnival celebration!’”

  I wanted to throw my arms around my mother’s neck to thank her. She had not betrayed the girl of my dreams!

  “Who spoke after you?”

  “None other than the prefect, Barnabé Kraft. I haven’t said anything until now, he said, because I wanted to give everyone a chance to speak their mind. Here’s my opinion as prefect: the party shall proceed as planned. I’ve consulted with the Siloés and the Danozes: André and Denise, Priam and Carmita, like myself, would like for there to be no changes in the unfolding of the festivities Jacmel had planned for the celebration of their children’s happiness.”

  3

  At that very moment, the bugle for the torchlight procession sounded on the north corner of the plaza. Captain Armantus’s men burst onto the square. As they approached the crowd, they began marching in step. Bare-chested, torches aloft, they were all dressed up in the garb of François Makandal’s infamous turban-wearing Maroons. Spurred on by the bugles, the carnival musicians all of a sudden called upon the libertine spirits of the rada drums. Vodou immediately took over the military march, the way a flaming cock drowns out the squawks of a runaway hen. Straightaway, the Maroon impersonators and the various masked people on the square gave themselves up to an extraordinary dance of shoulders and hips, their knees slightly bent, their heads and torsos vigorously thrust forward. Hundreds of people began pivoting on themselves, never interrupting the feverish rotation of their hips. Others hopped on one foot, pretended to kneel down, then began leaping and spinning in wild abandon, as agile as any feline. About thirty yards from the catafalque, the musicians suddenly cut short the frenzy by executing a perfectly timed drum break: the crowd stopped dancing and began imitating Hadriana Siloé’s stiffened corpse, transforming the square into a region of the kingdom of the dead.