by Maryse Conde
I was in agony. I couldn’t stop thinking of my sisters and Fouad. I was scared too of what I would find at the journey’s end. I was unable to close my eyes at night. Even those passengers who were asleep uttered terrible screams while they slept or else groaned and cursed.
The sea is an awesome sight! From wherever you look at it, it’s always the same. It’s not like a landscape with lovely or ugly features. Or eyes that move from left to right or a face that smiles or pulls a grimace. It’s the same color wherever you look, waves that are flecked with identical patches of dirty white foam.
All day long we roasted from the heat—and as soon as the sun dived into the sea, we shivered from the cold. An icy darkness swooped down on us. These changes in temperature petrified the body and drained the mind. After several days we no longer had the strength to move a finger; some passengers stayed crouched like tree stumps.
On the morning of the fifth day at sea a woman who had never made a sound and who read the Bible from morning to night got up and began to sing a well-known Haitian melody:
Fèy o, sové la vi mwen
Nan mizè mwen yé o
Fèy o, sové la vi mwen
And while she sang, she ripped off her clothes piece by piece, her skirt, her blouse, her bra, her panties, and sent them flying through the air. She stood naked. Before we had time to be embarrassed, she climbed over the edge of the boat and slipped into the water. When we realized what was happening, we looked for a life belt but she had already disappeared into the watery depths and the sea had smoothed over again. It was then that Reinette came over to sit beside me. She too, like everyone else, was shaken. “What is your name?” she asked.
She spoke French! I was not mistaken. She wasn’t a child from the slums like me. But like all of us, she was a victim of violence. She never told me as much, but I guessed. I think she left Haiti because the journalist she lived with was killed—like Frère Hénock, like so many others. He had written stuff in his newspaper that the President didn’t like. Consequently, she was afraid for herself and the baby she was carrying in her womb. I never dared ask her too many questions.
After eight days at sea we arrived at our destination. We had to stay a whole day on a little island they call “Englishman’s Head.” There were too many coastguards patrolling in their outboards, speeding round in circles, almost colliding, and aiming their machine guns in every direction. Apparently, the place was a meeting point for drug traffickers, some of whom came from as far away as Colombia. At nightfall some sailors came to fetch us and landed us safely. I knew the address of a Haitian, a certain Magloire who rented rooms for the night. So that’s where we went.
I loved this island as soon as I saw it. You can find everything you want to eat and drink in the supermarkets packed with goods. Not like those in Haiti, which are always empty. What’s more, the people are nice and quiet. There’s no disorder except at carnival time. Then everyone crowds into the streets in disguise and parades, beating the gwo ka drums. Unfortunately, I soon realized they didn’t like Haitians. Why? Because of our voodoo?
Reinette and I found work at the Model Farm where they raise chickens, turkeys, and guinea fowl. Half of the fifty employees were Haitians. They gave me an apron to tie round my waist and put me on the maintenance crew. Since Reinette could read and write French to perfection they put her in an office. She earned twice as much as me and I was somewhat ashamed when I brought home my pay.
She was the one who asked me to stay with her. Not because she wanted to sleep with me; I realized straightaway that that type of idea never entered her mind. She was too much in love with her Leo who, according to her, was the ideal partner. She needed me rather as company, a restavek. And then she was afraid. Too afraid to live on her own in a house in the woods. She was scared of the glowworms that twinkle in the evening, of the thunder that rumbles, of the wind that whirls and howls as it knocks down the mangoes and the breadfruit, of the bats as they slip rustling under the corrugated iron of the roof. But I noticed that wasn’t the only reason she was afraid: something else was tormenting her. What exactly? I shall never know. She would spend hours on the lookout for a noise. She had nightmares. She believed someone was coming to kill her or hurt her. Who?
“Can you hear? Can you hear?” she whispered.
“Yes, I can hear,” I laughed. “I can hear the wind bringing down the mangoes, the sound of the rain on the roof. There’s nothing else!”
I cradled her like a baby. And it was one night when I was hugging her against my chest that the inevitable happened. We did what a man and a woman do together. I loved her, but she never loved me. When she mistook me for Leo, I didn’t mind. He was dead and buried. I was alive. I was the winner.
She also needed me because she was hopeless at doing things herself. I was her boy, her restavek, as I said. I washed her clothes, even her panties, ironed and cooked and cleaned the house. I worked a lot in the garden. That’s where I discovered I loved the trees, the lianas, the plants and flowers. I should have been born in another country and not in a slum built of corrugated iron and wooden planks. With that never-ending rain, I had a lot to do. If I wasn’t careful, in two days the grass would have swallowed us up.
Death came and put an end to this happiness—for it was truly bliss. I was the one she left behind; I was still young with many years yet to live.
The reason I came to see you today was not to talk about Reinette and me. It’s for another very important reason: Reinette never stopped repeating, “I’ve got a feeling I’ll soon be dead.”
“Where did you get that idea from?” I would say with a shrug.
She would shiver. “I sense something is waiting for me, watching me. One day it will sweep down and that will be the end of me.”
Two days before she died—I can remember it as if it were yesterday—I was using a pole to pick a breadfruit for lunch when she came up to me, tears running down her cheeks.
“I’ve had a dream. I know I will die giving birth.”
“Stop saying such nonsense.”
“Take care of my child. She’s a little bit yours. It’ll be a girl since you made love to me while I was pregnant. I beg you, take her back home to Haiti.”
“To Haiti?” I shouted. “You must be mad!”
“Yes, home to Haiti,” she insisted. “That’s the way it is. You only have one country to call home, just like you only have one family, for what it’s worth. I don’t want my child to grow up among strangers, especially here where they hate us. I have a sister, Estrella. There’s also my servant Tonine who looked after us when our parents died. Blood is thicker than water. I hope that in spite of everything they’ll take pity on my child, a poor innocent orphan who has done no harm to anyone. Promise me you’ll give them my child.”
I said yes. So she went and fetched her Holy Bible and made me swear on it. The reason I didn’t say anything when you stole her baby right in front of my eyes and Yvelise’s, when people came and interrogated me with all sorts of questions and I refused to answer, is that the baby is better off with you, a respected, well-known doctor with money in the bank. She’s better in your company than Yvelise’s and mine, who have next to nothing. But I’ll never leave you in peace if you don’t carry out the promise I made to her mother and take her back to her family. You’ve never been to Haiti, have you? It’s become dangerous, very dangerous; you can be kidnapped, even killed. You can’t go there alone. I’ll have to go with you.
-
PUZZLED, BABAKAR LOOKED at him. He was at a loss what to think of this muddled tale with a threatening ring to it. What kind of a madman was this? Then he recalled the man was distraught with grief. The loss of the woman he had loved and called his for such a short time had virtually made him crazy. And Movar had broached a subject which tormented Babakar every day, making him regret the singular way he had taken possession of Anaïs. But to travel to Haiti and
return the child to her so-called family was out of the question. As for the patronizing airs of this young fellow who had been victim to every kind of violence, they could not be taken seriously.
Movar laid an envelope on the desk.
“Mwen poté foto pou ou.”
Thereupon, as if his proposition was a done deal, he got up and left.
Babakar remained lost in thought for a long while, surprised by the sympathy this energumen inspired in him. It was as if he had known him for a very long time. Movar was like a cousin, a younger brother, an alter ego born out of the thighs of a poor wretch rather than those of the lovely Thécla Minerve. He began by casting a suspicious look at the brown envelope Movar had brought him. He hated photos: he had lost most of his as he drifted through a life of chaos, all except a portrait of his grandparents seated serenely on stools in the courtyard of the family compound; his father dressed in his notable’s getup, his mother smiling under an enormous afro, her face invisible behind huge sunglasses.
He pulled out of the envelope three scribbled sheets of lined paper, a photo portrait, and a dozen blurred and yellowed snapshots of no artistic value.
The portrait depicted a young mulatto man with sharp Italian-like features. One of the snapshots showed a well-to-do couple, the woman wearing large Creole earrings and a heavy necklace. Another represented a baby who looked a lot like Anaïs; the same huge eyes, an identical rounded forehead. Another showed a slender little girl in a triple-flounced skirt holding the hand of her nurse, who was grandly dressed in a white apron and checkered head tie. Here was a group of well-dressed people laughing and raising their glasses as they sat on a veranda. Babakar felt a wave of pity as he looked at these bits of paper like the stones in the tale of Tom Thumb leading him to decipher the singular identity of Reinette, apparently an illegal stowaway but in fact probably someone quite different. Neither the portrait nor the photos bore any indications on the back: no date, no place. The sheets of paper, however, indicated a series of addresses, mysterious as hieroglyphs:
Our house, 100 rue du Travail, Bois Patate
Father Déodat Théolade, Bon Repaire Cathedral
Madame Sidonie Pius, 50 avenue Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Jacmel
Jean Caloda, 96 Delmas
Babakar half-heartedly resumed his consultations.
Once he had finished examining his last patient and everything was in order—no ectopic pregnancy, no signs of a miscarriage or premature birth—Babakar returned home to where Anaïs was in the capable hands of Chloé Ranguin. Considering she was only four months old, the child was remarkably alert. She could already sit up, and if you laid her on the floor she would try to crawl on all fours. What worried Babakar was that she wasn’t a happy child. She often started for no reason at all then began to peer into the air as if she heard noises or saw things nobody else could see.
“What are you hiding from me in your little head?” he would ask, smothering her with kisses.
Obviously, she didn’t answer.
Babakar went to take Hugo Moreno out as usual at dusk to give him a breath of fresh air.
“In town,” Hugo Moreno told his old friend as they went down to the beach, since Hugo couldn’t go a single day without seeing the sea, “people are bad-mouthing you!”
“How do you know?” Babakar joked. “You never go out.”
Hugo continued in a serious tone of voice. “A group of men including a certain Aristophane came to visit me,” he explained.
“What did they tell you?”
“That’s not the point. I want your version. You weren’t involved with that Haitian woman?”
“No, not at all.” Babakar confessed.
“So, it’s not your child? Why did you take her then?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you one day, I promise.”
“I’ve been to Haiti,” Hugo mused. “What an extraordinary island! Yet despite its vitality it will be one of the first to disappear. Nature is in league against her. She’s already sinking into the sea.”
They continued their walk in silence, Hugo’s wheelchair bumping over the stones. It was not one of those manicured beaches like those to the north, with white sand and languid waves, but a creek open to the Atlantic where you could see the waves rolling in from behind the horizon; sometimes several meters high.
“When I die, I ask for just one thing,” Hugo said. “Scatter my ashes here. Over the ocean. I wish for one thing: to be united with all this majesty.”
They returned home at nightfall. Bobette, who looked after the place, was cooking for Hugo.
Carmen was watching out for Babakar and said excitedly, “It’s not only the people from here who have got it in for you. The Haitians too are furious and want to put their voodoo on you.”
“If that’s all they want to do,” Babakar laughed. “Speaking of voodoo, I wouldn’t mind spending a night in the arms of Erzulie, the goddess of love. It would no doubt spice up my life.”
“The school principal says the court will ask you for a DNA paternity test.”
Babakar laughed even louder. “Let them try!”
“It’s no laughing matter!” she protested. “His brother is police captain in town. What on earth was a man like you doing with an illegal immigrant?”
Her voice was loaded with contempt, for she was a mulatto woman. Her skin was almost white and her hair black and curly. Her ancestors were Spanish peasants, originally indentured for thirty-six months but unable to return home for want of money, who had settled in Ponderosa. They had kept their blood more or less pure; in other words, they hadn’t mixed much with the Blacks.
For Carmen, who knew Babakar well, it was all beyond understanding. He wasn’t a womanizer who sowed his wild oats about everywhere; she remembered how she had had to chat him up the previous year.
One morning he had entered her beauty salon and inquired about the price of a haircut. It was the end-of-week rush. The two cousins she employed for free on weekends were busy dyeing, braiding, or straightening and relaxing hair with a cold comb or even a good old hot comb, when the hair is manhandled and screeches and moans. Leaving the cash desk, she had dashed to greet this unexpected customer and said coquettishly, “A haircut, of course! Do you prefer a scissor cut or clippers?”
He had shrugged, unable to make up his mind.
“Scissors are best!” she had claimed.
While cutting away she asked him about his scar. “Who worked you over like that?”
He stroked his cheek pensively. “It’s a souvenir from the war.”
She was amazed, somewhat exaggeratedly. “The war? You’ve been in a war?”
“Sort of. There was a war in my country. Not now. It’s all over. Yesterday’s enemies have become today’s brothers.”
His words were loaded with irony. He left with a shaved head and without leaving a tip. She sensed, however, that it was not out of stinginess but absentmindedness. His mind was elsewhere, that’s all.
Two days later she had waited for hours in his waiting room with the excuse that she needed a pap smear. He hadn’t recognized her at first and asked one of his nurses to take care of her. She had maneuvered so skillfully, however, that she had managed to get herself invited to admire the ginger lilies that grew so profusely in his garden. Once she had made her mark, it didn’t take much for her to land up in his bed. Their liaison had already lasted a year, and she had no reason to complain. He was an absentminded lover, but assured when it was needed.
“What would you say if I left for Haiti?” he asked her. “That would put a stop to all this controversy.”
“Haiti! There’s nothing to eat in that country and there’s voodoo, and what’s more the Blacks and the mulattoes loathe each other and are at each other’s throats.”
“That’s nothing new. And I’m used to futile conflicts,” he assured her. “Don’t fo
rget what I told you: I spent years in a country bogged down in a ridiculous civil war.”
Let us now go back to the story of Thécla and Babakar Traoré Sr. that we interrupted.
The birth of a son transforms the heart of a father, and the change is sometimes radical. The most timorous of men become daring; the most fainthearted, boisterous. For the newborn male they are prepared to confront the worst of life’s vagaries. At least that’s how we explain the radical change in Babakar Traoré Sr.’s character.
When, after having narrowly missed being sent to prison, he had been shamefully stripped of his job as minister, he swore he would never again meddle in politics. Politics, he would repeat to anyone willing to listen, was a dirty game for the mediocre. In his exile in Tiguiri, the press informed him of the government’s caprices.
Lo and behold, after the birth of his son he began to write a voluminous correspondence and multiply his attempts at reconciliation with those in power, the very men who had tarnished his reputation and thrown him out. His efforts were finally crowned with success. After months of negotiations he was appointed Secretary of State for Alternative Development. What did the job involve? No idea! As we said, the important thing is to be made minister, a title you can take with you to the grave.
Her husband’s new job drove Thécla to despair. First of all, she hated authority and the toys that went with it: fancy car and government villa with garden carefully maintained by gaunt Burkinabes. Bamako had only left bad memories for her when she had made the rounds of school principals who wouldn’t hire her. She didn’t mind the isolation imposed on her in Tiguiri. She was content to have a loving husband in her arms and a healthy son. Moreover, she couldn’t decently continue to work, so she gave up teaching and was sentenced to a painful idleness. She attempted to enroll in the association La Parole aux Négresses, which defended the rights of black women oppressed throughout the continent, but even here the activists feared the color of her eyes. The term “witch” stuck to her more and more. Under her very nose and on the advice of their fetish priests the servants burned salt and herbs as a protection against evil spirits. A few months after her arrival in town she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. Instead of sharing her grief, people accused her of eating the newborn child. Nevertheless, the worst was Babakar’s change of behavior. From one day to the next Thécla found herself married to one of those men who are never home, occupied with meetings, lectures, and conferences whenever he was not traveling somewhere. We should also note that however incredible it may seem, Babakar Traoré Sr. remained not only passionately in love with Thécla but faithful. The truth is he had no inkling of the torment endured by his wife. The stories that circulated about Thécla’s eyes amused him.
