Heading South (4 page)

“Yes,” I say.

She smiles. I manage to get out of the car, and it pulls away.

I GO INTO
the bar. Chico is sitting by himself in a corner, flipping through the pages of a magazine. I make my way towards him. He looks up just as I get there.

“Fucked. My uncle wasn't there. Of all the rotten luck! What about you? How did you get on with your bourgeoise?”

“Next time I'm going to make her pay me.”

“Good,” Chico says calmly. “I'll be able to get some new shoes.”

More customers arrive. The nine o'clock crowd is leaving the Rex Theatre, next door. There's a new song on the radio.

“I don't get people like that,” says Chico. “He seemed like a nice guy . . .”

The announcer has just said the singer's name: Dodo.

“Dodo! I don't know any Dodo. Where's he from, I wonder?”

“For sure Denz would know.”

“Not me. I'm going home.”

Even Nice Girls Do It

AT THE LAST MINUTE
, Christina changes her mind and decides to stay home and rest. She hasn't felt well all afternoon. She knows she's probably only coming down with the flu, but she doesn't want to go out feeling like this. She feels cold deep down into her bones (and she's in a tropical country). Ever since she arrived in Port-au-Prince, her greatest fear has been contracting malaria. She knows what she's going to do. She's going to make herself a nice hot toddy (rum, lemon, sugar) and curl up in bed with the new John le Carré. She likes his dry, refined sense of humour. This is how she intends to spend the evening. Harry can go to the Widmaiers' without her.

“You're sure you don't mind if I don't go, sweetie?”

“I'd rather you came with me, but if you're not feeling well, my dear . . . I'll just show up for form's sake and come home as soon as possible.”

She knows Harry has no intention of leaving the party until the “last interesting woman” has departed, which means the woman with the roundest ass and the thickest lips. Suffice to say that Harry has a weakness for the young Haitian women who invariably show up at the Widmaiers' parties. But Christina is not a jealous woman, and Harry isn't a fool. He likes coming home. If he fantasizes about black women that's his business. In a way, it has nothing to do with her. Christina, it should be pointed out, is a brunette, born to New York Jewish parents. She loves Woody Allen, and her favourite writer (apart from le Carré) is Philip Roth. Which means she appreciates humour and cultivates an air of desperation towards life. She has followed Harry here and has landed a job teaching contemporary literature at the Union School. Harry works at the American Embassy as the cultural attaché. He's the lean type (but well muscled) with a prominent brow, which makes him look vaguely like a serial killer. His eyes, however, are bright, and he has the lips of a gourmand. He's difficult to define. As for Christina, she's a tad on the dry side, thin-lipped, tight-bummed, but very intelligent and a veritable dynamo of energy. It amuses her that men find her attractive. At parties she is never at a loss for admirers. But she much prefers intellectual conversation to primitive sex. Which is not easy to explain to a man with a hard-on. And so she avoids the usual parties as much as possible, since they are, let's face it, nothing but pretexts for drinking and cruising. Which became clear the night a drunk pinched June's bottom. June is their seventeen-year-old daughter, born in Manhattan. The name June doesn't suit her. Harry named her after a Henry Miller character he found particularly disturbing. A sort of femme fatale who evoked every hell Miller could concoct. And every paradise. Harry's daughter is nothing like that. She's a classic beauty. Nicely rounded, as the saying sometimes goes. Adored by her professors. So gifted she takes her courses in French—a language she hadn't known before coming to Port-au-Prince—and is doing quite well. She never raises her voice. Always calm. Usually to be found in her room either studying or listening to music. She so seldom goes to her friends' surprise parties at Kenscoff or La Boule that her friends have pretty much taken her off their list. Sometimes Christina wonders, with a growing sense of unease, if her daughter isn't turning into a nun before their very eyes. At first it was a joke that she and Harry shared, but lately it's begun to be a serious concern. To the point where Christina has started to be on the lookout for her daughter.

“June, you'll never guess who I ran into today.”

“Hansy.”

“How did you know?”

“I know you, mother. You've been talking about him for a week. I knew you'd hook up with him sooner or later.”

Christina takes a shallow breath.

“Do you mind that I invited him over next Saturday for a little badminton party?”

“I have an exam on Monday.”

“But my dear, you study all the time. You should get some exercise.”

“But mother, we do all kinds of sports at school.”

“My dear, there's more to life than sports,” Christina says, sounding slightly vexed. “There are boys, too, and they're good for our equilibrium.”

“What do you mean by that, Mother?”

“June!”

“I'm joking. I know exactly what you mean, Mother, and I assure you I have no problems with my equilibrium.”

Christina seems to reflect on this for a moment.

“My dear, you know that the mind isn't everything.”

“Why are you telling me this?” asks June, suddenly anxious.

“I'm telling you this,” Christina begins, keeping her voice gentle, “because I myself have fallen into this trap.”

“I don't get you.”

This time Christina takes a deep breath.

“All right . . . Well, I mean I wasted a lot of chances I might have had with men I found interesting because, to put it simply, I sublimated my intellect as an adolescent.”

“You know, I don't always follow you, mother.”

“Good God! . . . Listen, sweetie, there are times when the body must speak out . . . No other part of you . . . just the body . . . Nothing you can do about it. It's the way we're made.

It's physical, June. It's natural. We're animals, you know, just like other animals. Monkeys do it. Dogs do it. Birds do it. For all I know even plants do it. June . . . June, look at me . . . June, your mother does it. Even nice girls do it. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“Look, Mother, I'm not stupid. I know all about that.”

“June, there's a huge difference between knowing something and accepting it. Or rather experiencing it. I'd hate to see you going down the same path I took. I have suffered too much, and I want to save you from the same suffering before it's too late . . . I don't want you to become nothing but an intellectual. I want you to have a good mind, of course I do, but I also want you to have . . . a body. Do you see what I mean?”

“Yes, Mother.”

THEY TALKED FOR
a while longer, and then June went up to her room to work on an assignment. Christina took a long, cold shower (menopause). Then she called her best friend, Françoise (she'd met Françoise Saint-Pierre shortly after her arrival in Port-au-Prince). For a brief time, Françoise had been Harry's mistress (Christina knows that), but he dropped her when he started becoming interested in Haitian women.

“Françoise, I told her everything . . . Absolutely everything, including the bit about animals. I felt like a complete nincompoop! She listened calmly enough, as she always does, but I know her, I know she was shaken . . . Of course she was, she had to have been, seventeen years old, beautiful as she is, and not a soul calling her at home except when they need help with their homework . . . Do you think that's normal? What would you have me do? I had to take the bull by the horns! Now all I can do is wait and see . . . Yes, Françoise, wait. I've planted the seed, now I wait for it to bear fruit . . . Of course I'm worried, what do you think? She might decide to go out with four different boys at the same time. But I'd prefer that! I can't sleep. All I hear is the time bomb ticking, and I try to guess when the damn thing is going to go off! You know, I see her when she's a young woman indulging in fantasies in her bedroom. No, no, she has to get out, get some fresh air, meet some young men, enjoy herself, have fun, you know what I mean, it's important for her to do that! Life is too absurd, Françoise, to be taken so seriously. I want her to let herself go (Christina begins to cry), get some kicks, be happy, enjoy life, gobble up everything that love has to offer (she sobs). That's all I want for her. Go ahead and say it, all the things that I never had . . . Yes, I know one can't make up for what's missing in one's own life by vicariously living another person's life . . . Oh, I've got to go, Harry's just come home. As far as he's concerned, everything's just ducky . . . Lots of sun, tropical fruit, Haitian women with big asses: he thinks he's died and gone to heaven. And there are no problems in paradise . . . I'll call you later . . . And what about you, anything good going on with you these days, Françoise?”

A long pause.

“Let's get together soon and talk about it . . .”

“My dear, you're leaving me on tenterhooks . . .”

“I'll call you when we have more time to . . .”

“How about tomorrow, at the Bellevue . . . Harry has a tennis match . . . We can have lunch together.”

“Great.”

“I can't wait to hear all about it, Françoise. Really.”

THAT CONVERSATION
took place exactly one week ago. Today, Christina feels a fever coming on, and she's mentally preparing herself for a restful evening with a good rum punch and a good read, followed by a good sleep. At the last minute she decides not to go to her own bedroom, but goes instead into the guest room. It's a pretty room, much smaller than the master bedroom, but well appointed and extremely comfortable. Christina likes taking refuge in this room because it reminds her of her university days, when she lived in a rooming house not far from Columbia U. She felt torn, at the time, between solitude and freedom. Or rather, she felt more at loose ends than free. She spent her time reading Virginia Woolf (even though she did her dissertation on Colette) hoping someone would come and knock on her door. Now she reads nothing but mystery novels or the latest Philip Roth (luckily he publishes about a book a year) to try to pamper the migraine that never gives her a minute's rest. In any case, this room makes her feel like the free, young, solitary woman she was in the early 1960s. The guest room opens onto the verandah, where Absalom sleeps when Harry isn't in the house. Absalom is the young man recommended to them by the Widmaiers. A total pearl, according to Jacqueline Widmaier. Polite, a good worker and above all intelligent. Sometimes Christina thinks about bringing him to New York when Harry's posting is finished. He already speaks a bit of rudimentary English and understands everything anyone says to him. Harry is very fond of him because of his quick wit. The speed at which he grasps the most complex situations never ceases to amaze them. Absalom is already getting himself ready for bed. He has a room at the far end of the courtyard where he keeps his things, but Harry has asked him to sleep on the verandah when he has to come home late after a party, or after spending a torrid night with one of his Annaïses. That way Absalom can respond quickly to the slightest alarm. There are assassins and thieves everywhere these days. Christina smiles at the thought that no one knows she is here, because she decided only at the last minute not to go to the party. She hears June going down the stairs to get herself a glass of milk in the kitchen. She hears her daughter's footsteps going back up the well-waxed stairs. Odd, she thinks, smiling, how clearly one can hear everything that goes on in the house from this little room. She'd never noticed it before. It's like an acoustic trap. Through the half-opened window she can follow Absalom's slightest movement on the verandah. In her room, June is listening to the Billie Holiday album they gave her for her seventeenth birthday. What a smart girl she is! she thinks, if a bit inscrutable at times. An Oriental calm. A steady flame in the eye of the storm. Christina pictures her daughter sitting in her room listening to the record and trying to decode the dazzling poetry in Billie Holiday's songs of despair and longing. Absalom is also listening to music on a tiny radio he keeps beside his head. Haitian music. Very sensual, joyous, lively. Music made to dance to. Haitian music and painting took Christina's breath away when she first came to Port-au-Prince. So different from the miserable lives the people here live. They may be starving, but they go on creating this joyous music, these fantastically colourful paintings, so filled with life. We Americans, on the other hand, who have everything, spend all our time moaning and groaning. Pessimism. The Haitian is the absolute opposite, she thinks, of the New York Jew. The Jew according to Woody Allen and Philip Roth. Modern America is like a fast-food restaurant serving up despair. Man cannot live on hamburgers alone, says the Bible. One (Woody Allen) brings out a film a year. The other (Philip Roth), a book. Our annual ration of angst. American angst. The starving poor. The despairing rich. But here we're a long way from Manhattan. Despite its terrible misery, Christina recalls (with a rueful smile) how much she missed Manhattan when she first came to Haiti. Manhattan snobbery runs in her veins. The radical chic of the sixties, that was her era. The bright lights, the drive-by murders, the Yellow Cabs, the wet sidewalks, Cuban coffee, the happy hookers. Life in the fast lane, what could she say! At first she missed it all. Not so much, now. She remembers with an enigmatic smile that she could do up there in one day what it takes her six months to accomplish here.

“Where does the time go?” she asks herself, without trying to find an answer.

SHE WAS SO
caught up in these thoughts that she hadn't noticed a curious exchange taking place out on the verandah.