Haiti Noir (25 page)
“That is a wonderful idea. Put some protein in people’s diets.”
“Eh, oui,” she replied in a distant philosophical tone. “Jobo, this reminds me. Feeding time.” And then she said something in Creole that Izzy didn’t grasp, though it sounded like a comment about Jobo’s shirt, which he then removed as he went out into the heat. She smiled at Izzy and added, “He is too beautiful for clothes, n’est-ce pas?”
Izzy nodded, unsure of how to answer.
“So it’s all arranged. My man is paying them off so you can unload right now”
“Paying the … ?”
“All taken care of,” she said merrily, with a gesture like washing her hands. He was informed that he would be staying in Madame’s house, which he did not feel entirely comfortable about, but he had no other ideas of where to stay.
He was put in a room just as cold, with carved wooden panels and a ceiling fan for which there was no real use. Evidently the air-conditioning could not be turned down or off, and the windows did not open. But the bed was equipped with fluffy goose-down quilts imported from Austria.
Izzy went outside to warm up. Jobo, with a large ring holding many keys, was coming from a wooden shed with a package. He stepped up to the porch and over to the leopard cage. He unwrapped the package and took out what looked like two sirloin steaks. Izzy assumed he was mistaken about the cut, but the steaks were nicely marbled. All the while the leopard paced, stopping only for a second to snarl. The animal was dangerous and Izzy could see claw marks—parallel lines on both sides of Jobo’s shirtless back.
“Jobo, is there some kind of a ceremony I can see?”
Jobo showed a sweet smile. “You want to see some real Vodou?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I can arrange it, but it koute chè.”
“How expensive?”
“Anpil. Anpil. I will take you to Kola.”
“Kola is the ougan?
“He’s a bòkò. He can fix it. I’ll go talk to him now.” And with that, shirtless and with claw marks showing, he walked down the driveway and out the gate of iron snakes.
Izzy sat on the porch watching the incessant pacing of the leopard. The cat had one of the steaks in his mouth but he didn’t stop moving, not even to eat. Izzy thought about the Vodou priest named Kola. Did “kola” mean a line? A queue? It must mean something.
The leopard pleaded with Agwe that he did not want to be locked in a cage and asked to be taken back to Africa. But Agwe said, “I can only take spirits back after they die.”
“Then kill me. I want to go back,” said the leopard.
Haitians like nicknames. Dieudonné was DeeDee. Ti Morne Joli was always called Joli. Madame Dumas was Lechat, the bòkò was Kola, Jobo was Beau. And Izzy? Everyone in Joli called him Blan.
“What is this blan up to ?” asked Kola, a short stocky man with a powerful body, shirtless like Jobo, sitting under a leafy tree, on the stripped-bare engine block of a long-dead car. All the other parts had been sold and someday the block would be too. He dug in the earth with a trawl and pulled out two small green Coca-Cola bottles, felt them to see if the ground had kept them cool, dusted them off with his thick but skilled fingers, and handed one to Jobo.
Jobo smiled. “What do blans want? He wants a Vodou ceremony.”
“A Vodou ceremony?” Kola had a wide toothy smile. He rubbed his stomach. He was proud of his belly because he was the only one in Joli who had one. “San dola. Tell him there is a nice ceremony for a hundred dollars. For one-fifty I can show him something special.”
Jobo nodded.
“But what does this blan want? Is he bringing blan doctors and their medicines?”
“No, I don’t think so. But I wanted to talk to you about your medicines.”
“You need a powder?” asked Kola.
Jobo looked at the ground and shook his head.
“Do you have money for my powders? What do you need? A rash, a headache, a fever, the stomach? What would you like to do?”
“You know my aunt’s baby died today?”
“I know.”
“Do you know how much meat Madame Lechat has? Do you know? Anpil, anpil. Three big freezers. It all goes to that cat. If she died, everyone in Joli could eat meat for three weeks.”
“Yes, but for a great lady like that, that koute chè. Do you have that money?”
“No. But if I did, you could help me?”
“It would cost less to kill the leopard. Then she wouldn’t need the meat. Maybe you could take it.”
“I don’t just want the meat.”
“What do you want?”
“M vle jistis.”
“Ah, justice. Justice costs. Justice is very expensive.”
Izzy was pacing the porch, almost the same strides as the leopard, though he didn’t realize it. Something about that animal made him restless. That and an occasional harsh cry from upstairs. “Jobo! Jobo!” Finally, she came downstairs and out onto the porch. The light from inside was shining on her. She was wearing a long silk shift and he could see that there was no shape to her body—just long and thin. He also saw through what was left of the makeup that she was a bit older than he had first thought.
“Have you seen Jobo?”
“He went to the ougan to arrange a ceremony for me.”
“The oun … ?”
“Kola?”
“Ah, the bòkò, Kola.” Then her green eyes darted past him. It was Jobo coming back. Izzy sensed that he should retreat to the other end of the long tiled porch.
“Jobo,” she called out. “Jobo, viens ici. Viens.” She spoke in that melodious high pitch used by Frenchwomen when calling their pets.
And he did come, and she put her arms around him, her cardboard gray hands looking bright against his dark back as she dug her black-polished nails into his skin.
“DeeDee, can you help me?” asked Jobo.
“What do you need?”
“Money.”
DeeDee laughed.
“I need to pay for something very expensive. Just one time I need some money. I can work.”
“Why don’t you ask the blan?”
“This is not the blan’s business.”
DeeDee understood and told him that he was loading a shipment of mangoes on the
NANH
late that night.
“I’m not sure I can get away at night.”
“Late-late. I am paying very well for this particular shipment—of mangoes. Give her a lot of champagne.”
“Mais oui.”
DeeDee paid off all the port officials with money from Madame Dumas and the
NANH
untied and set her bow northwest to round the peninsula and head to Miami. The mangoes helped the ballast but the freighter was still sitting a little too high in the water. They had to hope there were no storms. Izzy was surprised when he inspected that the mangoes were just piled in the hold without any crates. “It will take forever to off-load,” he complained. DeeDee shrugged.
Then Izzy noticed they were off course, but DeeDee explained that they had to make a quick stop.
“To take on more ballast?” asked Izzy.
There was no answer, but DeeDee was busy navigating. They dropped anchor by a reef—a strip of white sand and a grove of palm trees in the middle of the turquoise sea. Izzy saw nothing heavy to load on the boat.
Then the crew lifted the cover off the hold and Izzy was astounded by what he saw next. Haitian men and women, one child of about eight, under the yellow mangoes. They staggered up, their limbs stiff and their eyes blinded by the hot light. Some were almost naked. They were hurriedly helped to the beach on their shaky legs. There were eleven of them, including three who were dragged and appeared to be dead.
Shouting erupted in Creole. Arms flayed the hot air angrily. They were saying, “This is not Miami! You took our money!” Some pleaded, “Please, don’t leave us.” But DeeDee insisted that this boat was too big to bring them in and that small boats would come tonight to drop them on the Florida coast.
Izzy was angry and fought with DeeDee all the way to Florida. DeeDee’s answers made no sense to him.
“Why are we doing this?”
“Because we can’t bring them into Miami.”
“Why were we carrying them at all?”
“They needed the help, Izzy.”
“I have to tell the Coast Guard. They’ll starve in that place.”
“No. It’s all arranged. Boats will come for them tonight.”
“They said they paid. Who got the money?”
“The mango growers.”
They tied up on the Miami River. But they were not going to be able to return to Haiti: there was a coup d’etat. Little Haiti was intoxicated with the news. A new government was being formed. There were curfews. There was rioting in Port-au-Prince. In Gonaïves, a mob attacked the NANH warehouse, took everything, then tore down the building a chunk at a time with rocks and machetes. After a day, all that remained of the two-story building was a few steel reinforcing rods sticking out of the ground.
DeeDee soon vanished and it was said in Little Haiti that he was now an official in the new government. Izzy hadn’t realized he was involved in politics. He had never seemed interested in anything but commerce. Then a man approached Izzy one afternoon alongside his boat on the river. Izzy recognized him. He was usually in Bermuda shorts with an
I Love Miami
T-shirt, a Marlins hat, and a camera. But this day he was wearing a suit and showed Izzy something that said he was an FBI agent.
Kola had a new Coca-Cola cabinet. It was red-and-white metal with a glass door. A stray rock from the riot had dented one side but the door was intact.
Of course, it didn’t keep anything cold because Kola had no electricity. But it was a good cabinet and he kept it behind the temple to store his bones, herbs, potions, and powders. His Coca-Cola was still in the ground where it was cool.
Soon Madame Dumas began experiencing something completely new to her. She started to sweat. Even in her airconditioning she was sweating. It poured out of her forehead and ran down her fine cheekbones, and from under her arms a rivulet flowed to the small of her back; under her breasts, sweat soaked her stomach. Her pink silk shift had turned cranberry with wetness. And as the sweat poured out, she became weaker and weaker—while Jobo watched.
Madame Dumas collapsed on the living room floor and crawled to the couch. She looked up at Jobo with her arm reaching out at him. “Jobo, aide-moi.” Help me.
He only stared at her.
“I need a doctor.”
“I can’t get a doctor. The roads are closed. The coup.”
“Oh, yes, the coup,” she muttered, as though there was a secret irony to this that only she could appreciate. “Then the bòkò. Can’t he make a powder to fix me?”
“Mais oui,” Jobo answered, appreciating his own secret irony.
“Vas-y. Get something!”
Jobo left and did not come back for hours. When he did, Madame Dumas was not sweating anymore. She was stretched across the cool floor tiles—dead.
Jobo unceremoniously removed all her clothes and carried her out to the leopard cage. He opened the door and dumped her on the floor. The leopard, who he had not fed in three days, was so startled that he stopped pacing. He walked over to the body and sniffed it as Jobo started to close the cage. Suddenly, the cat leapt over Jobo, knocking him down, and off the porch into the bush, over the wall in graceful flight, and was never seen again. He might have run to the arid desert in the northwest and managed to find a way to survive there. Or maybe he ran along the Artibonite River to hide out in the mountains above the valley where many others have hidden.
The leopard had left Jobo with the question of what to do with the unwanted remains of Madame Dumas. He consulted Kola but neither could come up with a good solution. Several days later, while Jobo was still contemplating this dilemma, someone started clanging the locked gate. Jobo ran down and saw Kola framed in black iron snakes. He explained that Madame had a family that wanted both the house and the body. They wanted to bury it in France, but Air France had suspended flights because of the coup.
“Eh oui,” said Jobo, who had never seen an airplane close up, with feigned comprehension.
“Poutan!” shouted Kola, raising his stubby index finger to make a point. “I told them if they want to come get the body in a week or even two, I can use magic to keep it in perfect condition.”
“Magic?”
“Mais oui. And you have that magic in your house. It is the magic of meat.”
Now Jobo understood. “And they will pay?”
“Gwo nèg koute chè,” Kola said. You have to pay a lot for an important person.
Jobo smiled. “Anpil, anpil dola?”
“Anpil. Very expensive.”
After Kola left, Jobo went back to the cage and picked up Madame. She still had not stiffened much. He emptied one of the big top-loading freezers and dumped her in. She landed in a most undignified pose and was soon petrified in ice, to be thawed and served up properly by magic in due time.
Jobo was right. Once the freezers had been emptied, the people of Ti Morne Joli ate meat for three weeks. Many became sick because they were unaccustomed to such a rich diet. But it was not likely to happen again.
It was Damballah who finally confronted èzili, bribed her with dresses and bracelets and pink elixirs until she set the leopard free. The animal ran and ran and ran, as though he could run all the way back to Africa. But the ocean was there now. He ran so hard that he turned into a man. That was the first Haitian, and that is why Haitian people always struggle so hard to be free.
* * *
“I want to talk to my lawyer,” said Izzy.
“I think you need a new lawyer. He’s been arrested. Seems you were just a small part of the operation.”
Izzy thought,
They arrested the Anglo. Isn’t that something? They got the Anglo.
Then he spoke: “Why do you say that the goods were stolen? Everything was paid for.”
“We were watching you. What tipped us off was that you had Coca-Cola machines. You can’t buy them. Only the Coca-Cola Company owns them. You’re not the Coca-Cola Company, are you?”
Translated by Nicole Ball
T
he stench of sulfur mixes with the reeking blue toxic trash that was dumped on the hill that January day. It has been named “the blue hill” ever since. Everyone is afraid to say who is responsible for this open gash in the earth that poisons everything and will, eventually, eat up the legs of children and rot the roots of plants, cause the dogs, the flies, and the fish to disappear. Even the mosquitoes won’t survive.
Rumor has it that the garbage comes from a friendly country that has an overload of chemical refuse and needs to find generous neighbors who can house it for them. So far from God indeed. Proximity is sometimes a curse. That’s how a dump like this came into our backyard. Except that at City Hall, under the pretext of us being the twin city of God-knows-where, they pocketed the cash that was exchanged for this so-called favor. On top of that, the military, the ministers, and the honorable members of the government have all made tons of money.
One fine Monday, at exactly noon, the ship, sailing under the friendly neighbor’s flag, reached the harbor. The kids swam close to it, performed amazing pirouettes and somersaults, acrobatics meant to impress cruise ship tourists in the hope that the visitors would enthusiastically throw their pennies into the water. In no time at all, instead of being filled with generous tourists, the wharf was under military watch. The ship was full of guards with the faces of unleashed and trained dogs eager to stuff themselves with nigger meat. You could see battle dress, golden flashers, and a thousand boots of the Special Forces. On their heads were green berets and on their cleanshaven faces were plastered a kind of cynical seriousness, a conquering look of
What do I care about petty local squabbles?
They spoke sternly into their walkie-talkies, surely of matters of state. The seaside was promptly evacuated, with a huge deployment of troop vehicles whose sirens and tinted windows scared the locals. Trucks transported hundreds of suitcases up the hill. Shops and businesses were forced to close their doors. The chemical trash–dumping troops went around every street, every neighborhood, showing off their machine guns at every window. They imposed a curfew without warning. It was just a matter of military strategy, letting people know that they had taken over the city. So every mouth stayed quiet. Local men were rounded up and forced to work day and night for a whole week to burrow everything into the blue hill.
That blue dirt didn’t look like the sky, the locals joked.
Soon, many residents became covered with blue pustules, large blue stinking marks. Lacerations invaded bodies. Slashes marked their faces. Gashes on their bellies.
Yes, it’s the blue disease, brought to us by the fatra pwazon, they said. Forced to remain silent, the few doctors in the area couldn’t give a name to that blue body-and-mind disease which was spreading as quickly as mad grass. They say it’s a matter of national security, and that’s why it’s not being mentioned in the papers or on the radio.
Detective Simidor, whose local police duties had been immediately neutered by the invasion, refused to accept the curfew. Even though his massive, muscular physique hadn’t been affected, he immediately began to feel his mind slipping. For one thing, he could not remember any specific moments from his past. Had he always been a bachelor locked up in a one-room house by the blue hill? Did he have a wife, children, who somehow never made it home? Was he a brother? An uncle? A nephew? Did he have a living mother? A father?
He hadn’t slept since the blue invasion began. All he could think about was what he knew had once been a city— his city?—and the blue hill. How can the city defend itself, he wondered, when the people have barricaded themselves inside their homes, becoming accomplices of their own confinement, while peeking from behind their windows at the invading blue trash army? Watching the trucks full of blue chemicals being dumped on the hill by his countrymen, he felt like shouting out that the plot must not succeed. But it was already too late. He wanted to loudly preach to everyone, hammering the truth into them. Our cowardice is our suicide, he wanted to say. Our silence is our coffin. It seemed, however, that he would have to pursue this job of enlightening people singlehandedly. The next day he would go into the streets and declare to whoever was willing to listen that the ground was soiled and that everything had been contaminated, that they would have to yell to be heard, that they would have to move heaven and earth to shed light onto the graveyard the country has become.
Life on your knees is no life at all, he would say. Pito nou lèd nou la. What was the point of this horrible, stupid charade, clinging to the remnants of day-to-day existence, an absurd life, as absurd as the bright spots that once in a while made you think that light was awaiting us at the end of the tunnel?
Dragons now routinely walk on the sea, he would tell them. They unwrap their wings, their mouths of fire. In the mythical world from which these invaders and their blue trash have come, giant creatures swallow entire schools of flying fish and set ablaze incandescent beams that wipe shores clean. Millions of gallons of oil spew out of the core of the earth, from deep beneath the sea. A sign of the times: the end of the world is striding in. At the first ring of the church bells, the residents must not scurry off and seep into burrows under the sand like spider crabs, hiding their faces under seaweed flowers of transparent green.
Some of them, paralyzed with fear, are still hiding under their beds, reciting their rosaries, purring strange words in strange languages: God of Mercy, may our prayers be answered! And there are those who are stronger and pick things up: this one a chair, that one a mattress, that other one a bucket, and in the daytime, before the next curfew, they follow the path to the hills to take shelter on the mountainside. But what is the point? Despair is the only certainty here. If it doesn’t kill you, they say, it will strengthen your veins, your muscles. Despair sticks to your skin; it’s your sweat, and the air you breathe. Despair is second nature from which everyone draws the joy of laughter and resilience together, so we can go peacefully to cockfights, bet on the winning numbers at the lotto, and pretend that the crystal ball of luck is turning smoothly—but doom, like a valiant soldier, always comes hounding.
Apocalypse, Apocalypse, he would tell them. In the last days, dogs will not recognize bones. Sons will not recognize their mothers. Cats will think they are lions; birds will have beaks of fire; oceans will be large mouths of flame. The sky will sweep down on us like a vulture. The blue priests and their blue cassocks will come from everywhere, but they will be of no use.
Now sweating in his room behind the police station where he believes he has barricaded himself, Simidor fights the blue fever madness that has turned the entire town into blue-hilldigging zombies and thinks that perhaps it would help them come out of their blue fog if he told them the story of the little black saint named Santik Du.
Around the year 1350, a plague was terrorizing the country. Santik Du was living a life of hardship and charity. He went around barefoot in the hope of relieving the wounds of the sufferers. He promised them eternal life and solace. That is how Santik Du contracted the plague and died. Simidor would not make the same mistake—though he, like Santik Du, was on the side of humble people. He could not remember ever being a praying man. But this was finally something he could remember. He had learned the story of Santik Du at the school-required catechism, just like the rest of them. That is, those whose parents could afford to send them to school. Even those who hadn’t learned this version of the story still knew to pray to Santik Du when they had small ailments: headaches, colds. They even prayed for compensation from petty thefts. Sometimes he would joke to them that Santik Du was making his job insignificant. Yes, he could still remember that. When someone loses something, all he has to do is say the Santik Du prayer: help me, Santik, to find my wallet and I will give you five pyas. And that’s why you can find near the Virgin Mary, along with many written prayers, small bills wrapped in handkerchiefs, and a prayer specifically addressed to the black saint, gourds filled with offerings. Often, for lack of money, they will leave a mere piece of bread and a few peanuts. It’s reassuring for the people to find a saint who resembles them for a change; Detective Simidor could maybe talk to the city’s patron saint who fastened the rope of bad luck around the whole nation. Santik Du, help my people come out of the blue fog. Save me, too, who wants to save them. Don’t let me die before I tell them all this. Don’t let the fatra pwazon take over our brains before it kills us.
Simidor imagines himself as Santik Du on a crusade, making signs with his big cross: get rid of your superstitions, destroy your dolls of wax, get rid of your lwas, throw away your rituals and your damned souls in the morning ashes; throw away, brothers and sisters, the rogations of your gods and those holy pictures you worship. Throw away your stinking blue marks and pustules, the lacerations on your faces, the gashes on your bellies. The scent of the ylang-ylang tree, mixed with the smell of sulfur, will cure you, along with invocations of three-leaves, three-roots, three-drops of your tinctures. The dragons move forward a lot faster on the water, opening their mouths of fire once more, smashing up pirogues. They tread forward on the rough sea, flames tearing into the horizon. Time and again the stars turn off at the same moment as the kerosene lamps. The mountains swallow up the stars and the angry wind rises. The tree branches play lago, hide-and-seek, in a macabre clatter, the endless moaning of the dead. Windows turn into kites. Tin roofs fly from house to house. The waves come knocking madly on every door. The candelabra, lilac, and hibiscus fences are on their knees; the coconut trees creak and come crashing down with sharp noises.
Simidor imagines himself crossing the waters. He stretches out his hand as a sign of respect for Agwe, the god of the sea. He invokes Ogoun, the god of war.
Ogoun down wind
Down raging waves
Down down fire
Ogoun, he sings, we inhabit an isolated, pristine, gentle island with vegetation that escapes human comprehension. Rare species with names of flowers and trees that nobody knew existed. Before the blue hill, you could rest here in peace. There was nobody and nothing to bug you, no longing. We had named this place Ozanana, the new Promised Land. We sang the songs of the hills. Happiness was avoiding the anger of the gods. But what unites us now is the catastrophe of the blue hill, sings Simidor. Ozanana, the word must be repeated over and over again. For isn’t it true that only words exist, and only words give shape and flesh to the universe?
Lying there dying from the blue fog that is killing everyone, Simidor wishes he could tell his compatriots to pay attention, for the last days seem to be coming nearer. Write down the spectacle of the last hour, he would say, record all the details. Chain all the demons that are inside of you and outside of you! Describe everything you feel. We will at least have the elegance to bear witness. Our words will have served as breviaries for the castaways if any of them survive. If you see a black lamb astray, do not kill it; show it the way to the caves that the gods tell us were our first homes. Show it the way to the trees that the gods tell us were our first places of worship. If you see a horse of fire being whipped, a big black horse, gallop with it and hold its bridle. If you spot a glorious knight, beg him to give up his armor, his wine, his wheat, and his crown. If, God forbid, you happen to touch the dying lamb with seven horns, the horse with golden eyes, or the knight with the shark head, the sun and the moon will come down over your head and their fire will burn you. Then you will know thunder, typhoons, volcanoes, earthquakes like you have never imagined.
In his mind, Simidor starts to play a barbaric opera, a funereal song that pierces the air with all the wrenching cries of those dying around him. The agony of the earth is beginning today. The roosters are singing their last cock-a-doodle-do before passing away under the demented clouds. The trumpets are sounding for the most beautiful women, the bravest men, the gentlest children. The trumpets bore through your ears, drill into your insides, and make your hair rise straight up on your head. That’s when the beast with the thousand horns appears. It sets up its gigantic legs on the clouds, trampling down whatever is still on earth: limbs, faces, and human traces. The music swells in Simidor’s head. The trumpets shiver, play a staccato that makes the stars fall. The sun, which feeds the belly of the garden, is fading. On that very day, what is said is done. The sun rolls over the river and dies abruptly of a stroke. Latibonit o! Even the sun cannot protect itself against death now. The sun is dying. Tell me, my friends, tell me, my comrades, how should I bury the sun?
Down, down, tongues of the men of this country! Simidor’s delirium shouts. The beast with a thousand horns has overtaken me. Is that really his goddamned mouth of fire? Is it the Apocalypse? The coffin is swaying over the crowd like a tongue. The army has risen from the waters. The stench of blood and mud on the faces of the dying. The images loop by, immense, worse than in the nightmares of the darkest days. What can we do with these dragons? Why this fire, taking the shape of a huge rainbow? Why are these myths merging in my head?
Simidor rubs his eyes, turns to the other side of the bed and switches on the light for the last time. Is it day or night? The alarm clock says 4:53 p.m.