Waiting for the Waters to Rise

by Maryse Conde

  “Saying they are no good is mere gossip in a country where people have an unbridled imagination. What harm have Estrella and Tonine done exactly?”

  He now wondered whether he shouldn’t have listened to the wild imaginings of that drunk, Roro. “A fat pig,” Estrella had said. She had rebuffed him and he was taking his revenge. As for Tonine, was it her fault she was so black and so ugly? Didn’t her ugly appearance perhaps mask a heart of gold?

  That was when he saw Jahira sashaying cheek to cheek with the dashing Captain Dalembert.

  -

  OVER THE FOLLOWING days, Babakar couldn’t get Estrella out of his thoughts and was genuinely lovesick. It was no use telling himself it was senseless and that only blue-eyed mothers are witches; Estrella had put a spell on him.

  In an attempt to forget her, he immersed himself in work. He scarcely had time to play with Anaïs who until then was the incarnation of his happiness. As for his mother, he rebuffed her as soon as she appeared.

  “Maman, I’m worn out.”

  One evening at dinner, Movar declared, “Babakar will have to accompany me again tomorrow to Sô Fanfanne’s. She has just let me know that she has something important to tell me.”

  Babakar didn’t have the heart to refuse and Fouad merely rolled his eyes.

  The next day, therefore, all three climbed into the brand-new Jeep Pajero, bought on credit, which had finally replaced the van marked The Cedars of Lebanon: Sophisticated Mediterranean cuisine. Very quickly, Fouad asked to be let off at Giscard’s, one of their friends, a craftsman in wrought iron bursting with talent, who carved fantastic, magical creatures out of oil drums and tin cans: toucans, unicorns, crowned cranes, elephants, winged horses. Giscard was the grandson of a well-known Duvalierist who had long been Minister of the Interior. He was nicknamed Giscard Lamerde.

  “When Papa Doc died,” he liked to explain, “my father fled to Mexico where my mother came from, convinced that Baby Doc’s reign wouldn’t last more than a year as he was so stupid and everyone knew he was virtually a half-wit. That’s where I grew up, without ever hearing talk of Haiti. Alas, when I was fifteen, I was invited to a school sports tournament in Montreal. There I discovered other Haitians. On seeing me they held their nose, saying, “As General Cambronne said, you smell of shit.” It was there I learned of all the regime’s turpitudes: the torture room in the presidential palace where Duvalier watched his victims with his huge toad’s eyes; as well as the Tonton Macoutes, gangs of thugs, drunk from alcohol and the smell of blood, who massacred whole families with their knives. It was then I made up my mind to return to Haiti in order to confront the evil my family had committed and try to atone for it.”

  He had elaborated a theory of Repentance and Art which he used for the slightest reason and perhaps for no reason at all.

  “As soon as I arrived, I realized there was only one way to ‘expiate,’ and that was to create. If our people manage to resist and survive so many calamities, it’s thanks to the magic of its thousands of artists, some famous, some anonymous. Art uses the splendor of music, painting, and sculpture to wipe out the ugliness and evil of the crimes committed by every regime, the theft and looting by every dictator and their savagery.”

  Babakar was incapable of joining in this discussion, of the sort that Fouad reveled in. Babakar was a practical man: infections, hemorrhages, and torn muscles were his daily lot. He took over the wheel from Fouad and drove the rest of the way to Léogane. Unfortunately, Juana wasn’t there that day and he could not be massaged. He had to be content with smoking cigarette after cigarette in Sô Fanfanne’s tiny garden. The wait was long. It was around 10:30 p.m. when Movar finally reappeared.

  “Sô Fanfanne wants to see you!” he announced.

  He preceded Babakar to a small room where she presided, still dressed in red and lost in a haze of incense and candle smoke.

  “Movar’s business,” she explained, shaking her head, “is much too difficult. They were no ordinary people who killed Reinette. They killed her from a distance using dwarves of the sort nobody can see who roam all over the place. They took Reinette far, far away—to a place so far, it’s almost impossible to get her back to Earth. Even so, I can try to achieve such a feat because I have friends in all the realms of the other world. But it will take time and, above all, lots and lots of money. I have to pay go-betweens. In order to continue, I need ten thousand dollars. American dollars.”

  Ten thousand American dollars! Babakar wondered whether Sô Fanfanne didn’t take them for a naive trio of suckers and dimwits, whereas they hardly managed to make ends meet; La Maison was crippled with debts and the gynecologists had accepted a cut in wages. Where on earth would they find ten thousand dollars, American or otherwise?

  When they got back in the Pajero, Movar grabbed Babakar feverishly by the arm.

  “Not a word to Fouad, please! I know you can’t come up with such money and I’m not asking you to. Reinette was my woman, so it’s my business and mine alone. It’s nobody else’s business. I’m going to look for work and try to manage on my own.”

  “And where do you think you’ll find work?” Babakar retorted. “There are thousands of unemployed in this country and everyone is leaving.”

  “I’ve got something in mind,” he replied mysteriously.

  The very next morning Movar stopped looking after his precious garden. He disappeared each morning and returned to La Maison only at nightfall.

  “Where does he go?” Fouad asked in exasperation. “What does he do all day long?”

  “He’s looking for work.” Babakar finally confessed the whole affair.

  “Where does she think we’ll find ten thousand dollars?” Fouad asked flabbergasted. “She’s taking us for three suckers.”

  One evening, Movar returned at dinnertime, sat down at the table, and announced, “I’m leaving for Labadee.”

  “What’s Labadee?” Babakar and Fouad both asked in amazement.

  Movar explained vaguely. “It’s in the north, not far from Cap-Haitien. Once a month, the American cruise ships dock there, full of tourists.”

  “And what do you think you’ll do there?” Fouad asked.

  “They’re hiring a bunch of people and paying them with American dollars. Some of them work on board, others are in charge of the tourists on land, taking them to the beach, supervising them while they swim, or helping them buy souvenirs.”

  “You’re neither a sailor, nor a guide, nor a lifeguard!” Babakar interrupted him abruptly. “What’s more, you don’t understand a single word of English. Please, Movar, don’t make another move until I find out more.”

  Two days later, taking no notice of Babakar’s words, Movar disappeared.

  Early in the morning, he kissed his sisters and Anaïs more tenderly than usual, while they were still asleep, and simply whispered, “Pa oublié’m! Don’t forget me!”

  Myriam and Jahira spent the following days in tears. The information that Babakar could gather was hardly reassuring.

  Labadee is a tourist enclave rented since 1986 by successive governments to the Royal Caribbean International whose headquarters are based in Fort Lauderdale. They pay six dollars per tourist to the Haitian government. In exchange for this godsend, there is no question of being overrun by starving hordes and the enclave is patrolled by private security guards with the help of Cuban mastiffs.

  Movar’s departure, coming after Babakar’s unfortunate crush on Estrella, plunged Babakar into despair. It was becoming obvious he was incapable of protecting those he loved. He had been unable to prevent Ali from pursuing his futile dreams and dying off the island of Lampedusa. He was unable to save Azélia and he couldn’t prevent the sweet, tender Movar from heading into a most uncertain future. At night, he was racked with nightmares.

  -

  LET US FOLLOW Movar on the road to Labadee.

  Swinging his haver
sack, he climbed on board the first tap tap, God is Great and Merciful, packed like all the rest, heading for Gonaives. The “City of Independence” had not recovered from a hurricane the year before and was nothing more than a heap of rubble through which the inhabitants and stray dogs roamed, all equally skin and bones. Even so, at the market Movar managed to buy some bread and a box of La Vache qui Rit cheese. Alas, he had to hand over his frugal meal to a band of yelping child beggars who wouldn’t leave him in peace. Hardly had he got rid of them than he managed to scrape by an old man adamantly shaking his begging bowl. For the first time in his life his heart was filled with a feeling of revolt. Having to be separated a second time from his beloved sisters, from Fouad and especially Babakar whom he adored, as well as little Anaïs, Reinette’s child whom he considered somewhat to be his own, had the effect of a terrible injustice. Why must some people constantly have an empty stomach and watery eyes? He turned these unfamiliar thoughts over and over in his head.

  In the second tap tap, named Redeeming Faith, which trundled along towards Cap-Haitien, he sat down beside a man who gave him ample time to brood over his growing anger since the man never stopped snoring, his mouth wide open revealing a set of rotting teeth. Movar was already familiar with the majestic landscape, stacked high with fawn-colored mountains whose bare slopes served as a setting for the destitution of the North. Why so much misery amid so much beauty, he asked himself? Who was responsible? What could be the solution?

  He reached Cap-Haitien at the end of the day, when a mauve-colored sun was about to sink into the sea. Movar intended to ask his uncle Ephrem—his mother’s half-brother whom he hadn’t seen for years—to put him up for the night. Blood is thicker than water, as the saying goes. Night fell on him all of a sudden while he was walking at a brisk pace, and a chilly wind cut through his cotton shirt. Without the least feeling of foreboding he headed for Sainte-Trinité, the huge shantytown which mushroomed its blight at the foot of the ruins of the Sans-Souci Palace. Yesterday’s dream: today’s reality.

  He had no difficulty finding his uncle’s house located within the maze of alleyways lined with makeshift shacks. His sly, two-faced uncle had no recollection of him until two American dollars jogged his memory. He had a wife, Pulchérie, and half a dozen children, all girls, who resembled Jahira and Myriam, the sight of whom moved Movar to tears. Over a semblance of a meal, his uncle never stopped complaining. Haiti had only one president who showed concern for his people and look what happened to him! Henri Christophe was a huge disappointment. After having promised to avenge the former president the coward was withdrawing his troops from the North and taking refuge in his Palace of Quisqueya because he was scared stiff of the Americans. Then Ephrem began bombarding Movar with questions. What was he doing in Cap-Haitien? Movar endeavored to explain, more clearly than he ever had. He had come to look for work at Labadee. He had heard that the Royal Caribbean International, the owner of the resort, was obliged to hire Haitian citizens to work in the ships’ kitchens and clean the passengers’ cabins. His uncle shook his head. Nobody is let in to Labadee. It’s in Haiti and yet it isn’t. The place is surrounded by walls and electrified barbed wire. Since Movar wouldn’t hear a word of it and seemed determined to try his luck, he didn’t protest and instead suggested they walk over to Chez La Marmotte, a bar open day and night where they sold the best rum in the country. On the way they stopped to pick up Fwé Dieudonné, a friend. Fwé Dieudonné, who lived a few steps away, was a giant whose overdoses of crack and alcohol had injected his eyes with red fibrils. The three of them set off.

  Here and there, oil lamps lit up the women seated on wooden stools selling unwholesome food. Apart from the glow of the lamps, the night was jet black. A real no-go zone.

  It was there on the road to La Marmotte that it happened.

  Ephrem and Dieudonné threw Movar to the ground, relieved him of his wallet, which contained only two carefully folded American five-dollar banknotes, his jeans, and his best checked shirt. Then they kicked him and sent him flying into the gutter where, with a shattered sternum, he sunk into the stinking water.

  It was a sad and pitiful sight!

  But let’s not linger over the description. Let us rather imagine the last images that crowded in under Movar’s eyelids while he was losing his blood and his life: the first time he met Reinette at Desperacion, she was trying on a wide-brimmed straw hat; the first time they made love together, she had called him Léo. Now that she had returned from the place where Sô Fanfanne had been unable to find her, she was leaning over him.

  “I’ve been waiting for you. We will never leave each other again. Never.”

  Movar’s murder went completely unnoticed.

  The police never set foot in Sainte-Trinité, a place filled with danger. Henri Christophe’s henchmen owned low dives there where men were regularly found dead. It was a place for drunks, drugs, and all kinds of forbidden games. From time to time municipal garbage trucks drove in, but the agents preferred not to inspect too closely what they were collecting.

  This was not the first time Ephrem and Dieudonné had played a dirty trick. They got a good price for Movar’s jeans and shirt as well as for the contents of his haversack: a pair of drill trousers, two more shirts, and three pairs of underpants.

  -

  BEFORE MYRIAM’S BELLY began to swell out majestically, heavy with the fruit she was carrying, Babakar, preoccupied with his own problems, hadn’t noticed her condition. It was only when Fouad dragged the two sisters into Babakar’s bedroom that he realized what was going on.

  “But you’re pregnant!” he exclaimed, staring at Myriam in amazement.

  “It’s a boy,” she replied proudly.

  “A little brother for Anaïs,” Jahira added.

  Thereupon, they left in a burst of laughter and the two men remained alone.

  “Who’s the father?” Babakar asked.

  “I’m the father,” Fouad declared abruptly, having trouble hiding his embarrassment.

  Babakar was at a loss for words.

  “I know, I know,” Fouad continued. “I’ve filled your head with stories about Cuca. Cuca, my beloved wife. The truth is that in the end Cuca became like an evanescent perfume whose scent had evaporated. Myriam was there with the Palma Christi smell in her mop of hair and the taste of congo cane on her skin. I could no longer go to bed all alone. One evening, I cracked. At first, only my body was involved, then love moved in.”

  Fouad and Myriam’s wedding took place the following month; a civil wedding, since Fouad was Muslim. That did not prevent Myriam from sporting a magnificent white golle dress, ample and with a lace yoke. Fouad agreed to go along with such a ceremony solely in order to please Myriam, who had always dreamed of being called Madame and wearing a wedding ring. They were still expecting Movar but he didn’t turn up, which cast a shadow over the event. Where could he be? What trials and tribulations was he going through?

  Monsieur Saint-Omer gave his usual endless speech in Creole, a custom he had kept from his days with the Lavalas political party. He made the guests cry when he celebrated the beauty of love in uniting a Lebanese with a Haitian.

  The reception took place in La Maison’s day-care center and, in place of the bouquets of flowers, it was decorated with greenery and wrought-iron objects loaned by Giscard. Babakar had difficulty joining in with this euphoria. Like Movar, he felt that Fouad was abandoning him while paradoxically setting an example: giving up his dreams, starting a new life, and no longer running after the unachievable.

  Zohran, Fouad and Myriam’s son, was born four months later: a magnificent four-kilo baby boy, his head covered with a fleece of fawn-colored, curly hair—nothing like a Haitian. As Babakar was unable to get them to leave the room, the father and aunt witnessed the birth. Once everything was back to normal and the baby was washed and diapered, Fouad and Babakar went out into the immense park around La Maison.

&nbs
p; The evening was quiet and the air unusually cool and humid. Babakar couldn’t help recalling the birth of Anaïs on a dark and tragic night and his first meeting with Movar.

  “You have all you could wish for!” he said to Fouad. “A wife and a son.”

  Without realizing it he spoke with an irony which wasn’t lost on Fouad.

  “You can’t believe what you’re saying!” Fouad retorted. “Don’t get me wrong. In a way, I’m very happy. Myriam is the perfect wife. She cured me of the nonsense I was imagining in my head. Yet there are so many things that leave me dissatisfied. I dreamed of becoming a second Mahmoud Darwich. I can never forget how I have done nothing for my poor suffering country. I get the feeling, more so every day, that I have betrayed the struggle that Zohran waged.”

  After a moment’s silence he continued. “How will my son judge me when he finds out I have chosen to live a safe little life abroad? That’s all I can think about since he was born and it fans the embers of my remorse even more.”

  How complicated we are, Babakar thought. For that reason, we’ll never be happy.

  A few days later, Fouad came to find Babakar in his office.

  “Have you heard the news about the weather?” he asked anxiously.

  Babakar looked up. “No. What’s going on?”

  “An enormous hurricane is approaching. It’s already close to Gonaives. That’s the third one they’ve had and it’s forecast to come directly our way.”

  Babakar’s sojourns in the neighboring island, which year in year out got its usual lot, had familiarized him with tropical storms, hurricanes, and other meteorological furies. As a result, he was not worried. Nevertheless, he took the necessary safety precautions. He spent the day buying sheets of plywood so as to barricade doors and windows. He climbed onto the roofs of the three blockhouses that formed La Maison in order to make sure they were waterproof, and in the biggest of the three he organized the day-care center as well as a number of camp beds and mattresses. He offered to shelter the auxiliary staff—composed mainly of single women with swarms of children (one wonders where the men were)—as well as Giscard, who was living in a wooden shack. But he hadn’t expected so many of the poorly housed to come and ask for shelter and he had to arrange accommodation for hordes of terrified men, women, and children as well.