“Not the same,” said David Alan. “Probably worse. Much worse, even.”
“Then we won’t be alive,” I said, “because if the country gets any worse we’ll have no choice but to head for the rain forest.”
“Maybe so,” said David Alan.
We had reached the center of the city and the neon signs shaded my friends’ faces yellow, then blue, then red. We shook hands formally and parted ways. I started for the Coves, which was where my mother had a stand selling fried fish, yucca, and beans. Alan and La Mouette headed to New Town, which was a workers’ housing complex that a Belgian architect had built ten years ago on the edge of the city, next to two mills; it was already falling down. As I walked, I started to whistle a popular song. Then I passed some white kids, who must have been tourists though they didn’t look like it, and I composed a poem in my head about human solidarity, more powerful than race or nationality. The white kids, one girl among them, got into a Cadillac convertible and peeled off, making the tires squeal. I stood there watching the trail of exhaust they left until they disappeared down avenue de l’Indépendance. When I got to the stop, my bus was long gone and I decided to save the money and walk.
I don’t know why, but I resolved to take a shortcut (or what I thought was a shortcut) through the hills. I had never gone that way before. Whenever I was on foot, I walked along rue du Commerce, where the thronging masses were up and about until late. Maybe that particular night I wasn’t in the mood for thronging masses; maybe I wanted to try a new route; maybe I wanted to breathe the fresher air of the upper reaches of Port Hope.
All I know for sure is that instead of turning right toward the sea, I turned left onto a fairly wide street running uphill, almost imperceptibly at first. I can’t remember what it was called. After a while, the palm trees to either side of the street vanished, replaced by pines, big royal pines that towered in the night. The sounds of the city vanished too and all that was left was the muted rumble of a few cars and the chorus of night birds calling to one another. I recognized the heehee bird, which seems to be laughing at everyone, and I thought I also made out the call of the radiator bird, whose song or cry is full of ennui.
Then I passed a gas station that still had all its lights on but where I didn’t see a single person. I noticed this immediately and was a little alarmed, since in those days gas station robberies were a common occurrence, according to the papers. I walked faster and, when I had left the gas station behind, I realized that the road was getting steeper and there were fences on either side now instead of houses, as if the land had only just been parceled out. Each lot had a different fence. The side streets weren’t paved.
When I got to the top of the hill I saw the sea and the lights of the port and the traffic along the promenade. I didn’t see the lights of the Coves, which was on the other side of the bay, on the banks of the Coconut River. For a second, I thought that my sense of direction had abandoned me. But I was sure that if I kept walking and got over the second hill I’d soon be in the Old Hospital neighborhood, which I knew like the palm of my hand, and from there it was steps to the beach.
So I kept walking until I reached a lush plaza, full of trees and big dark plants that made strange sounds in the breeze. As if they were talking. As if they were all mulling over the same story. As if the eclipse, which wouldn’t come again for another thirty years, had settled permanently in their leaves. And I heard the heehee bird again. It was calling to another bird, or so I guessed, but there was no answer. Hee hee, hee hee, hee hee, from the top of a pine. And then the silent wait. No answer. Then the bird called again and waited again, and again the same result. It was still in good humor despite the fruitlessness of its call, I mused. It must be laughing at itself, not at anyone listening to it. Then, without thinking, I answered it.
“Hee hee,” I said, under my breath at first, like a shy heehee bird, then louder, until I hit the right pitch.
The silence that fell suddenly over the plaza gave me goose bumps. It wasn’t just that the heehee bird didn’t answer, it was as if all the plants were turning to look at me. Feeling watched didn’t discourage me and I called to the bird again in its own tongue, which consisted of just two syllables, meaning that any verbal nuance must come from the tone in which they were uttered. Maybe, I said to myself, the heehee bird’s hee hee meant I’m alone, I want a girl bird, or I’m ready and waiting, I want a girl bird, and my answering hee hee might mean I’m going to kill you, I’m going to rip you to pieces, I want your feathers, say, or I want your guts.
As might have been expected, there was no answer. I imagined the heehee bird hidden on some branch, watching me with a sardonic smile on its beak, the smile of an old joker with the words trickery and blood hanging from it like worms. On the other side of the plaza, the street split in two. Mentally I asked the bird to forgive me for the joke I had just played on it and I turned down the street to the right, which was possibly better lit than the street on the left.
At first the street went downhill, but after a while it leveled off. The houses were big and each had a yard and a garage, though some late-model cars were parked along the curb. The street smelled like freshly watered plants. The grass in the yards looked neatly cut—unlike, say, the grass at De Gaulle Park. Every few feet there was a streetlight and, as if that weren’t light enough, almost every house had a little porch lamp wreathed in mosquitoes and moths. Through a few windows, I caught glimpses of people up late talking, or watching the late shows on TV, though my general sense was that most of the street’s residents were asleep already.
I walked faster. Across the street, next to a streetlight and an enormous pine, there was a telephone booth. I remember I thought it was strange, even ludicrous, to see a telephone booth in a neighborhood where everybody surely had phones at home. The public telephone nearest to us was more than three blocks away and most of the time it didn’t work, so when my mother or I needed to make a phone call we had to walk at least six blocks to the next phone, which was on rue du Vélodrome, by the seafood stands. Just then, as I was walking along the opposite sidewalk, the phone rang.
I slowed down but didn’t stop. I heard the first ring clearly, then the second. I imagined that a boy or a girl would come running across one of those verdant yards to answer it. The third ring sent a shiver through me, then came the fourth and the fifth and I stopped. For an instant, I thought that the noise would wake up the neighbors and they would see me walking down their street, a stranger whom they would probably take for a thief. The phone rang for the sixth time, then the seventh. I ran across the street. When I got to the other side, I stopped and imagined that it would stop ringing, but then came the eighth and the ninth ring, magnified. Before the phone could ring for the tenth time, I slid into the booth and picked up the receiver.
“Who is it?” asked a voice that didn’t sound south Guianan or central Guianan, much less north Guianan.
“Me,” I said, stupidly.
“Good, very good. What’s your name?” The voice didn’t have a French accent either. We were speaking in French, of course, but it didn’t sound like the voice of someone from France. It might have been the voice of a Pole speaking French, say, or a Serb speaking French.