Hadriana in All My Dreams

by René Depestre

  12

  I was able to collect what force I had left so as to remain intensely attuned to the tide that endlessly ebbed and flowed with the kernels of my will to live. I was able to stand upright within myself despite the dreadful numbness caused by the zombifying poison coursing through my veins, despite the airless atmosphere. I listened to the living memory of the most wonderful years of my former life echoing in the secret swells of the bay. I escaped the rigid walls of the coffin, my cadaverous stiffness, the horror of my zombie death, the horribly oppressive space. I threw myself into the sun-filled Jacmelian outdoors. It was just like those days of childhood or late adolescence when I would lie on the mosaic tiles of my balcony, doors wide open onto the bay, on the lookout for even the slightest stirrings of life. For me, the magic would always begin in the garden. My father, an amateur botanist, had wanted to please us by cultivating not only the plant life particular to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but flora from all over the Caribbean—from Cuba to Trinidad, passing by Jamaica, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and the entirety of the French Antilles. Thus there was a sample of each and every species of flowering plant blossoming outside our house, from the most humble to the most spectacular: from sea grape to leatherwood; from morning glories to cabbage palmettos; from cinnamon bark, with its smell of cassis, to tree ferns; from miracle leaf to wild plantain; not to mention the silk-cotton trees, bay laurels, amaryllis, rosebushes, orchids, bougainvillea and climbing jasmine, hibiscus, and dwarf palms; and not counting the fruit trees—coconut, guava, Spanish lime, soursop, breadfruit, mango, star apple, lemon, orange, avocado, scarlet plum, tamarind; and so many other species that I counted among my companions—gumbo-limbo, water mampoo, ram goat, cactus pear, mimosa, all manner of magnolia, breaknail, and mountain blueberry. All the flora of the Caribbean imaginary was in my sight and within my reach, leaving me susceptible to their intoxicating fragrances from morning till night. With its hundreds of species, our garden was a sort of botanical feast—as representative of the coast as of the mountains, of the wildest forest as of the tamest, most well-manicured garden. At the age of sixteen, I impudently parodied a Surrealist poet, taking his macho modernist lyricism and making it feminine: If there was anything strange about the young girl, about her wandering and vagabond nature, it easily could have been summed up in the two syllables of the word garden.

  Everything in me—the spirit of childhood, a voracious sensuality, the Haitian gift for wonderment, the impulsive humor of the French, all my joy at being in the world—curved my back (and even more lyrically curved my buttocks) there before the trees and the sun-drenched hedges of our garden. On days when the sun was just too overwhelming, I would hang my drowsiness on the cool vines, and my flesh itself, which felt like it was nearly on fire, would become the refreshing liana that my most fervent daydreams would climb up. The grass was soft beneath my bare feet as it sloped gently down toward the water’s edge! The shadows were cool and tender on the mango trees at noon. All my adolescent dreams were perfumed by the smells of that garden. Just as others might head aimlessly down any number of roads, testing their vagabond love of life by visiting diverse climates, all I needed to do to sample all of life’s finest and most joyful passions was head down to our garden! I listened to and took stock of the manor house: neither town house nor traditional provincial home, it was a two-story dream house, its facade dotted by large windows with adjustable blinds and by ironwork balconies. Its fortress-like walls enclosed large, airy rooms, cozily charming, reflecting a Creole taste and style—bright during the day, illuminated at night by bronze and glass flower-patterned lamps. Such was the “Siloé Manor.” Yet I never had the sense of living in a “seigneurial dwelling—some kind of little country castle.” I never felt like the chatelaine of an old manor waiting at her window for some “knight with a white feather galloping on his black steed.” But if ever there were, in the 1930s, a place on earth at once real and ideal, that was built for living and dreaming one’s life, it was that house—situated at a distance from every other one, just below the central square, between the Bel-Air and Seaside neighborhoods in Jacmel. From the ground floor to the attic, following the house’s enchantment up the stairs and down the corridors, from one room to the next, the rustic jalousies opened onto infinity just as the windows opened onto the garden and the bay. From the sitting room to the terraces, from the bedrooms to the pantry, from the cellar to the dining room, from the laundry room to the bathrooms, from the veranda to the library, a windmill of dreams, a generator of magical electricity, created a current of wonder that sent a flow of mysteries, great and small, to tweak and regulate the changing of my seasons. But above all, the manor’s baroque charm—so apparent in its mahogany, acajou, and rattan furnishings, as well as in every small decorative object made of ivory, silver, porcelain, or opal—was most fascinating to me in the wing where the kitchen and communal spaces were situated. From my earliest childhood until the age of nineteen, these spaces were the true crossroads of my fantasies and my constant state of giddiness. They attracted me less because of the culinary delights being concocted there or the melancholy sleepiness that inevitably followed the midday and evening meals. It was more the fact that it was always there, in the glow of the charcoal stoves, that Haiti began for me. That was where I would go to find Felicia, my personal maid, Sister Yaya the head cook, old Merisier the gardener, Lil’ Boucan the houseboy, and three other servants appointed to take care of the household, do the shopping, make the desserts and sorbets, or to perform whatever other minor tasks came up. Together, the seven of them made up “our surrogate indigenous family” (as Mama used to say), affectionate and obliging. They had given themselves the responsibility of satisfying my daily hunger for a dose of something marvelous that took hold of me like a visceral need, not unlike the desire to drink, pee, or sleep. In their eyes, a blond spirit named General Marvelous lived inside Miss Nana. Whenever he possessed her, be it in the kitchen or in the intimacy of her bedroom, everything else came to an abrupt halt, and she had to be given, as Sister Yaya used to say, “dewdrops to drink and Erzili herbs to eat.” Out of the stories told to me day and night, the mythology of Vodou entered into my life. The gods, the dances, the drums—none of it held any mystery for me until the moment when one of its lecherous butterflies, controlled by some secret society, poured zombie poison into some icy lemonade on my wedding day.

  13

  All during that fateful and disastrous Sunday, my fabulous past cleared a passage from the sea all the way to my shipwrecked consciousness. In that narrow space, dark as a well, where I had been immobilized, the tangled skein of my happy memories unraveled slowly and completely, pressing me to embrace hopefulness and to stay vigilant as I waited for whatever was to come that night. I waited patiently, without any sense of time, buffeted by hazy reminiscences and by the lapping of floating recollections. There was nothing else standing between me and overwhelming despair. Nothing to counter my own sense of what was happening. I must have lost consciousness and reawakened several times. During one of these brief respites, I had the feeling that the pincers of some necrophagous insect were nibbling away at the wall of silence that enveloped me. Then it felt as if the dirt covering my coffin was getting lighter. I was not mistaken: before long, a metal shovel was striking at the roof of my cage; soon afterward, the lid shifted. Strong arms lifted me by the shoulders and feet. That first brutal contact with the fresh air was almost suffocating. I was able to make out the silhouette of three men around my open grave. In addition to the two who had disinterred me, a third man stood in the background, his eyes fixed on me. He seemed a great deal older than the others. He was a thick-necked Haitian man, broad-shouldered and massive. He wore a machete in his belt and held a long whip in his hand. He shouted my name three times, in a thunderous voice, as if he had to use all of his strength to call for me.

  “Hadriana Siloé, goddamnit!” he yelled the third time.

  He took a few steps toward me. He crouched down at my
side. He looked at me for a moment before slapping me hard enough to draw blood. Seeming satisfied, he sat down on a grave and hoisted my upper body onto his lap. He then brought a flask to my lips. A thick, heavily lemon-scented liquid ran over my clenched teeth. After a brief pause, he had me drink more of the antidote. As I swallowed, an intense heat coursed through me—first my lower limbs, then my entire body began to awaken, infused with newly oxygenated blood. I could move my tongue once I had imbibed the last sips of the zombiemaker’s drug.

  “Feeling better, my little pussycat?” he said.

  I was able to nod my head. For a brief moment I forgot that I was in the arms of one of Baron-Samedi’s henchmen. The smell of maleness, of fresh earth, and of the impending storm all helped to restore my vitality like a blessing.

  “With a nice piece of woman like yourself, things will move along quick and easy,” he said. “This is a homemade potion that Papa Rosanfer is using for the first time, made specially for his petit bon ange from France!”

  With that, he leaned over me and grabbed the hem of my wedding dress. He parted my knees, all the while talking into my ear with his raspy, searing voice.

  “From now on, everything that’s right-side up in your white woman’s existence will be turned upside down and made black, starting with your name: Hadriana Siloé is no good for a zombie; there’s too much white salt in that name. My turn to baptize you: Eolis Anahir-dah! Now that is a fitting name for Papa Rosanfer’s dark femme-jardin. Yes, I, Don Rosalvo Rosanfer—great man of Haut-Cap-Rouge before the eternal Baron-Samedi—I am now the master of your back door! Eolis, Lil’ Lilisse, Sweet Lil’Dah, ohoho! It’s already nice and sunny under there. It’s already well past noon under these veils. I’m turning everything in your life upside down, except, except . . . except what—can you guess? Cat got your tongue? Of course, you have no idea . . .”

  All this time, his fingers were moving crablike and feverishly up my thighs.

  “Except for this!” he said, brutally flattening his peasant’s hand against my ripe almond. “Talk about a flowering plant in the hands of a magic gardener! Hello there, flower-of-the-rising-sun! Greetings, sweet peach of Queen Erzili-Fréda! Congratulations, Madame Rosalvo! My friends, ohoho! This bride has a set of twin gods under her veils! A veritable zombie-mattress for General Rosanfer! Twin fruits, filled out in two places—why, hello there!”

  After this outburst, he pulled himself together. He gave me a friendly tap on the bottom and gently propped me up against a tomb. He then turned to his companions, who had been standing off to the side.

  “Let’s hurry this up! Looks like rain’s coming. Bring the horses quickly.”

  His accomplices gone, the man looked up at the rapidly darkening sky and then exclaimed: “This is going to be much worse than a little sun-shower! We’re looking at a big-mama-flood of a storm. We’re going to have to rush those beasts along. You’re a good rider, right?”

  At that exact moment, I looked at myself in my inside mirror and said: Let’s go, Hadriana! Without waiting a second longer, I leaped up in a flash and took to my heels, my athlete’s blood and endangered life right there alongside me. Losing Papa Rosafer among the graves was child’s play. I had not gone a hundred yards before it began to rain: not a little sprinkle, but one of those torrential storms I had loved as a young girl. Seeking shelter in a small mausoleum, I took a few moments to remove everything that could hinder my getaway: my high heels, bridal veil, and train. I tied the whole package around my waist and plunged headlong out into the downpour. I knew that graveyard like the back of my hand. To get out of there, I avoided the main path and gate. I took a shortcut that led to the friars’ school in Petite Batterie. Once I made it there, I quickly crossed the street and picked up my pace, taking another detour. Just as I had done so many times before, I inched closer and closer to Bel-Air. I did not even feel the deadly exhaustion of the past day and night. A sort of animal strength propelled me forward through the deluge that, although it blurred my vision, could not distract me from the single-minded intention that was spurring me on: escape from zombification. Should I head straight to my family home? Instinctively, I thought that would be a huge mistake. My pursuers would be waiting to ambush me there, or patrolling the deserted edges of the property and the town square. An idea came to me a few yards from the prison: why not seek refuge in there? What safer harbor was there for a young girl being chased in the middle of the night by a trio of criminal sorcerers?

  “Halt! Who goes there?” shouted the guard on duty as I approached.

  He recognized me as soon as he saw me standing there in the rain. He let out a scream of astonishment and dropped his rifle. Teeth chattering, he closed the gate from the inside before running away with the keys.

  Then it was my turn to scream: “Help! I’m being chased by a bunch of murderers! Open up!”

  Not a soul appeared. I went back up the long hill to the market. Threading my way through the stands and metal vaults, I headed toward the same church I had left feet-first fifteen hours earlier. I took a passageway that opened onto the main entrance of the rectory. The gate was closed. The driving rain drowned out my cries. I picked up some pebbles and threw them vainly at Father Naélo’s balcony and shutters. Water blocked my nose, mouth, and ears—it was as if I myself was one with the thunder and rain. Taking the same narrow path that bordered the church, I retraced my steps back toward the iron market. I took shelter under its roof and tried to catch my breath. I remembered my friends the Altamonts: Patrick lived with Mam Diani’s brother, Uncle Féfé. If I took Church Street, I could get to Bourbon Street in just a couple of minutes. Furious gusts of wind deepened the shadows all around me. I moved forward from balcony to balcony, avoiding the central alleyway. Overcome with joy, I made my way up the path to the steps of the magistrate’s house. I literally threw myself on the door and pounded with both fists. I waited for several minutes, knocking for what seemed like forever . . . in vain.

  14

  I knocked on the doors of nearly all the houses on the northern edge of the square, including the iron doors of the prefecture where my friends the Krafts resided, and on the doors of the Star Café—all in vain. Across the way, at the convent, I threw fistfuls of gravel at the windows, to no avail. I could have climbed the walls of the school and hidden safely in that familiar place until daybreak. But instead I decided to risk crossing the square and navigating the two hundred or so yards separating me from my family home. I stopped for a moment at the music pavilion and peered into the surrounding darkness before plunging through the diagonal sheets of rain. I arrived at the doorway of the manor house within moments. Out of breath, I desperately rang the bell. A great surge of hope passed through me: I heard steps and voices in the corridor on the ground floor. I waited for several minutes with my finger glued to the doorbell. Suddenly, a flash of lightning cleared away the darkness: in that second, I was able to make out three men on horseback at the end of Orleans Street, coming toward me at full tilt. Gasping with fear, I dashed off in the opposite direction toward a narrow passage where a set of natural stairs tumbled down the length of the fence bordering our property. I took them four at a time, at breakneck speed, and finally reached Main Street. I shot across the road, planning to plead for protection from the sentinels at the police headquarters. I found myself face to face with the two sentries standing watch there. On seeing me, one of them passed out immediately—right in the sentry box. The other one pulled the trigger of his Springfield. Too scared to aim properly, he missed me. In the time it had taken me to get from the prison to the barracks, the rain had put the finishing touches on my horrifying appearance. I picked up my pace and avoided Saint Anne’s Street, cutting across a corridor that led to the beach. The sea, whipped into a violent frenzy by the storm, was a dark, raging cauldron. Its savage rumblings drowned out the sound of the rain. I wanted nothing more than to bite into its nocturnal fury—a fury as strong as the will to live that nourished each one of my freely taken steps
as a woman “brought back” from the dead. I headed into the breaking waves: with overwhelming zeal I breathed in the aroma of salt and gulped down a mouthful of water that was even cooler than the rain still pouring over me. I walked along the shore, heading west. The wet sand was pure heaven compared to the hard surface of the streets. I forged ahead in a whirl of confusion and despair. It was unbelievable: in less than twenty-four hours, my name no longer opened any doors in Jacmel, not even that of my own home. I had been shot at without warning. That was all I could think of until finally reaching the first steep slopes of La Voûte Mountain. Not at all out of breath, I climbed the same paths I used to crisscross on horseback, either alone or with my parents. The regions of Haut Gandou, Trou Mahot, and Fond Melon were perfectly familiar to me. The storm faded amidst the clearings that had opened up in the predawn skies. Vegetation was spread out across the landscape, having freed itself from the scores of moist shadows as daylight fell over the groves of banana, coffee, and orange trees. On several occasions, flocks of guinea fowl, wood pigeons, and ortolan buntings flew out of the rain-soaked bushes growing on the sides of the road, their wings still drenched with rain. I managed to keep up the brisk pace of those adolescent hikes until the sun rose. I walked with a long, supple gait—that easy way of undulating and swaying that I had learned as a child from the dark-skinned canephors that lined the valley in Jacmel. I had resolved to reach the village of Bainet and to call my parents from there. They would take the paved road to come get me. I had already dealt with what was most important: I had ditched my kidnappers. From the very first moments after regaining my freedom, I felt that my ordeal had anchored me even more squarely in my existence. From then on I would know, a thousand times better than before, how to fill every hour of each day and each night in the future, which was my greatest dream after the experience of death. To have had my horizon so frighteningly suspended between death and life would make my existence at once more dynamic and more sensitive to the delicately complex doings of my fellow man. My connections to the sea, the sky, the birds, the rain, the trees, and the wind had been forever fortified, just as my most vital senses had become better attuned to both animals and human beings. I would do a far better job of listening to all aspects of my feminine voice, though always well aware, from that morning on, that while the natural woman may have been reborn from these trials more capable of fully savoring every moment, the woman I was in society would never completely recover from the wounds on her hands made by all the doors she had knocked on that night. The main thing was having escaped safe and sound from my zombification. Those hours of rigorous effort had done my body a lot of good. I felt as if I had flushed out most of the zombie poison as well as the antidote that had gotten me back on my feet. Something had gone wrong in Papa Rosanfer’s calculations. He had not managed to capture my petit bon ange. Is it possible he confused it with the gros bon ange of my sex? The idea made me laugh. What an extraordinary delight it was simply to be able to laugh in the boundless, sun-drenched morning air. My burst of laughter was so clear that it seemed to have been filtered underground through the crystal of a mountain spring. Its streaming waters refreshed my degraded and injured flesh. Emerging from a banana grove, I found myself in the Haut-Coq-qui-Chant section of Jacmel. There was the sea, spread out before me in the morning light: dense and flat, superbly clear blue, and already calm after the violence of the night before. At the same time I discovered, near the steep and twisted shoreline, the cheerful plains of Bainet, stretched around the crescent of a sparkling bay. What must I have looked like in my tattered wedding dress, with its flounces flattened and its train and veil rolled up around my hips like a deflated life preserver? Spattered with stains and stuck to my skin, the layers of tulle and lace looked like a dirty, pitiful, and ragged old piece of gauze. I wanted to fix up my zombie getup as much as possible before I ran into any living souls in broad daylight. More or less tidying up my outfit, I found myself surprised in a way that fit perfectly with the outrageous surrealism of my adventure. An envelope containing my dowry was in the little purse attached to my belt. It contained several thousand-dollar bills, and a prophetic note written on my father’s calling card: For our Nana on her wedding day, we offer this modest sum for a rainy day. My second surprise turned out to be the welcome I received from the inhabitants of Bainet. On the tip of a peninsula just outside of the coastal village, I was carefully making my way down a rocky path that led to a small cove, when I noticed a group of men and women heatedly conversing around a large sailboat anchored between two rocks. When they heard the noise of my timid footsteps, they stopped talking and followed my progress, their expressions friendly and attentive. They were far from shocked by my strange appearance. In fact, the closer I got to them, the more their faces shone with marvel, as if my outfit, shabby testament to the shipwreck of my wedding day, was for them the revelation of a fascinating mystery.