“All you Haitians, you’ve got too much pride. That’s what keeps you from getting ahead. .”
“I can’t argue with you there. At my age, people don’t change, Sam. .”
Sam laughs heartily. A fat cat’s laugh.
“Well, then, let’s shake and be done with it. . You’ll always be welcome here. . Will you have a drink with me?”
“I don’t drink.”
“But it’s a significant occasion.”
A beat.
“All right, I’ll have a small one. .”
“Albert!” Sam calls out suddenly. “Bring me two glasses and a bottle of rum. .”
HARRY COMES IN with a group of young Haitian women, all friends of Tanya’s. They gather at the far end, close to the water, where they can get their legs wet when a large wave comes in. They laugh as they take off their shoes.
What we are seeing is a kind of revolution. Instead of a crowd of white, middle-aged women clustered around a young, black Adonis, we have a clutch of young, black women accompanied by a white man of a certain age.
A waitress comes up to them.
“We’ll have the grilled meat, lots of it, and a bottle of ‘saddled-and-bridled.’”
The young waitress isn’t quick enough to hide her astonishment. “What’s wrong?” Harry asks.
She starts to laugh. Harry smiles. The girls around the table cry out shrilly every time a wave comes up to their ankles.
“Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”
“No, sir. . It’s just that I didn’t know whites knew about ‘saddled-and-bridled.’”
“I’m Haitian.”
The young waitress laughs again. Tanya turns around sharply, as though stung by a wasp. Harry is flirting with the little tramp. That’s the problem with whites, you have to watch them all the time. They can’t seem to get it into their heads that there is also a social hierarchy among blacks. Waitress, heiress, it’s all the same to them. An all-inclusive racism. Everyone is equal and everyone is welcome. When in fact they’re not interested in anyone.
“I’m thirsty,” Tanya calls to the waitress. “Go get me a Coke. . Go, go, what are you waiting for?”
“I’m going to take everyone’s order at the same time.”
“What? What are you telling me? I tell you I want something, and you tell me I can’t have it? You go get me a bottle of Coke, and then you come back to take their orders.”
“Well,” Harry cuts in, “it would be simpler if. .”
“You!” Tanya says to Harry. “Your job is to pay.”
Harry shuts up. The waitress goes back to the bar.
“Never do that to me again, you hear?. . Are you with me or with her? Because I can leave right now if you want, but as long as I’m sitting at this table, I’ll make the decisions, not her. .”
“You Haitians are so hard on each other.”
“And you Americans aren’t? When your wife’s at the Bellevue Circle, is it her or the waitress who gives the orders? Would you have the nerve to try to pick up a waitress if your wife were there?”
But now Tanya realizes her mistake. Men like Harry are always trying to pick up waitresses, right under their wives’ noses. It’s their favourite sport. Harry’s laugh puts Tanya back in a good mood.
ALBERT IS STILL totalling the bar receipts when the inspector comes in.
“So, that’s it?”
“Yes, sold this morning,” Albert replies without looking up from his precious maroon ledger.
“I just saw Sam. . What about you?”
“Going home to the Cap. My mother is getting on. She’s been living with my sister since my father died. I’ll take her back to her own house. It needs some work done on it. Roof needs repairing. And I’ve still got a few old friends down there.”
“You guys from the provinces, I envy you. . You can always go back to your childhood. .”
“Maybe, but I feel like my life is here in this hotel. . If I hadn’t come here, I thought of becoming a sailor. I love the sea, foreign countries, languages. That’s something I really like. . When you come right down to it, this hotel has been the boat I didn’t take. . Where are you with your inquiry?”
“Everyone’s gone home. . And I’m not in Criminal Investigation anymore.”
“Who took your place?”
“André François. You know him, he’s the one who. .”
“I know him well. . So where are you now?”
“I’ve been sent to help out Yves Nelson at the Department of Commerce. I’ve worked with him before, he’s a good man, but I’d rather spend my time conducting inquiries. The chief said to me the other day that I’d be happy conducting inquiries until the whole force went bankrupt. Really, I don’t know what he meant by that, because I only earn a small salary and I pay most of the expenses of an inquiry myself. .”
“Will you take a glass of rum? It’s the last time I’ll be able to offer you one. .”
“Of course. . Here’s to you, old brother. .”
The inspector studies the golden liquid in his glass for a long time. Night is beginning to fall. A red sun slides gently into the Gulf of Gonâve.
“Did you finish your inquiry?”
“What do you mean by finish?”
“Did you arrest anyone in the end?”
Silence. The inspector’s glass is refilled.
“Now that you mention it, no. I never found out who was guilty. . It’s hard when you hold an inquiry meant solely to find a guilty party. I met a lot of guilty parties in the course of my inquiry, but none of them were the one I was looking for.”
“Did you arrest them anyway?”
“No. . it’s against my code of ethics. I know there are other inspectors who find things out along the way, but I have a problem with that. .”
“You mean to tell me they shouldn’t act on what they find out?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned, no.”
“What if they’re important discoveries, of great benefit, like Fleming when he discovered penicillin when he was looking for something else?”
“If that’s not what he was looking for, then he shouldn’t have to tell anyone about it. From a strictly ethical point of view.”
From the other end of the bar comes the low sound of Harry’s laughter and the high shrieks of girls being tickled.
“Your new clientele?”
“He’s a friend of Sam’s.”
“I know who he is,” says the inspector. “He’s the American consul. Yves told me about him. He’s in the business of trafficking passports to any crook who’ll supply him with girls. Yves has had to go see him a few times at his cottage in Mariani.”
“So, if you found proof positive of something like that, for example, are you saying you wouldn’t arrest him?”
“I’m not in the Morality Squad. That’s Gérard Henry’s division. .”
“But you just said he’s trafficking in passports. .”
“Did I say passports? Sorry, I meant visas. . I told Yves there’s nothing illegal about it. A consul has the right to issue visas. It’s up to him if he wants to open his country’s door to every asshole in Port-au-Prince. If it were the other way around, that’d be different. .”
“The other way around?”
“If someone was getting his jollies by issuing Haitian visas to every scumbag in New York, then I’d step in. . As far as I’m concerned, what goes on in that cottage is private business. . Anyway, to be honest, I’ve got to say I prefer less complicated cases. .”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. . Spend some time with Yves at Commerce, I guess, and if it turns out that that’s not my bag I might try taking my chances in Montreal. I’ve got a cousin up there. .”