“Nadia, Johel wants to keep that boy safe. And I want to keep that boy safe too. That means keeping you safe. But I can only keep you safe if I know the truth. And I know that you killed him.”
Nadia opened her mouth. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t true. That was what the suspect always tries to say.
But Terry said, “Let me talk now. You can talk later. But I know for a fact what happened.”
Now anything could happen. Nadia’s phone could ring, the guard could knock at the door, and the moment would be lost. Then Terry would never know the truth. But nothing happened. Sometimes Terry will tell a suspect that they were captured on a surveillance camera. Sometimes he’ll talk about a witness, or endotriglyceride levels. Today he talked about his dreams.
* * *
The café at which Terry and I sat in the Coral Gables Barnes & Noble was directly adjacent to the fiction department, in whose aisles a few dedicated members of my tribe sat cross-legged on the floor or stood balanced on one leg like fragile birds. By now afternoon had passed to evening. Darkness had fallen and the plate glass windows reflected only the bookstore’s light. The air was thick with stories. At other tables, people read stories or told stories on their phones or sat at their laptops and typed out stories of their own.
It is nonsense, of course, that stories make us live: that is the precinct of a sufficient number of calories, of protein, of vaccinations and antibiotics, of clean air, safe water, solid shelter, and, as Johel Célestin understood, of good roads; for life you need money. But I learned in Haiti that stories, if not a necessity, are not a luxury either. Only the rich and the lucky can afford to live without stories, for without stories, as every Haitian peasant knows, life is all just things that happen to you, and you are just something that happens in the lives of others. The highbrows may snoot, as they will, but by my lights, a good story is the greatest of all literary inventions, the only realm in our existence where for every “Why?” there exists a commensurate “Because…” Those two words, “why?” and “because,” might be the best thing our species has going for it.
And so we follow that trail, leaping across the terrifying abyss and landing on those strong stones until, just beyond the last “because,” there is, as every Haitian knows, something sublime — so close that you can touch it, so near that you can smell it, so hot that it can burn you.
* * *
Not even Terry knows which story is true.
The first story Terry tells Nadia is the story he has read in the chat rooms, the story Nadia’s enemies are whispering. It is the story of an ambitious man and an even more ambitious woman. Terry talks about a man who loved a woman with a rare love, who gave up everything he had for her: another woman, his home, his career. When did she first poison him? When he fell in love with her? When did she realize that she was smarter than the man? When did it occur to her that the crown was within her reach? Did she lie in bed and imagine herself dressed in a widow’s weeds, the mournful crowd hushed, every tear a thousand votes?
How easy it was for such a woman to find the boko. How easy it was for such a woman to wait for the right moment: after the first round of the election, before the second. How easy it was for such a woman to slip the coup poud’ in the judge’s drink. How easy it was for this woman to cry.
But there are two stories; there are always two stories. The only difference between the stories is that we can live with one story and not the other. Innocence is never an option.
So Terry tells the other story. It is the story of a woman who had no choices, a woman who had no passport and no visa. This was a story of a woman just trying to get by — and the good Lord knows, getting by isn’t a sin. This was the story of a woman who had never lived free a moment in her life, passed from man to man like a donkey or chattel, until she finally found herself in a cage with only one key, a terrible key. There were loup-garou in that cage with her. She didn’t want to turn that key. She turned to Terry first to keep her safe in the cage; he couldn’t. She begged, she pleaded with him to give her a visa; he wouldn’t. Then she discovered something to live for, something more important than herself. And still she wouldn’t turn the key until she had no choice, none at all.
Maybe she had prepared, just in case, visiting the boko when Johel wouldn’t listen to her. Maybe she had what she needed tucked in a corner of her valise. Maybe that terrible morning when Johel hardened his heart to her, when he wouldn’t listen to her story … A woman like that — who can blame her? Who can blame her for defending herself, her baby? Who can blame her for wanting freedom, for wanting what every man, woman, and child is owed by the good Lord? Who can blame her for wanting to live?
Not even Johel could blame her, says Terry. You have time to think in the Other Land across the Sea, time to reflect on your sins. Johel understood now that she had no choice. Johel understood his sins.
Now Terry waits. He knows the moment is ripe. He can see that Nadia wants to tell him the truth. He knows that she understands the gravity of her crime, that she has thought of nothing else since the moment she acted. He knows that human beings, sinful as they are, strive for goodness. He knows that human beings want to confess. They want to tell the truth and be forgiven.
And so, when Nadia looks at him, and says, “I want only to be free,” he says what he always says.
He says, “I understand.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I have taken liberties with the details of recent Haitian history. Attentive readers will know, for example, that there were no elections in the weeks preceding the earthquake. I am not I, you are not you, and my Mission is certainly not MINUSTAH, the Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti. Nothing that I have written here should be taken as true in the journalistic sense of the word: the characters, scandals, and successes depicted in these pages are all products of my imagination.
There are other scandals associated with MINUSTAH that I have not written about. Certainly the gravest is the introduction of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae by Nepalese peacekeepers into the Meille River. The resultant cholera epidemic has killed at least ten thousand Haitians. The crystal waterways of the Grand’Anse, when I knew them, were so clean that villagers drank river water without undue concern. I remember bathing happily in the Roseaux River. No one would dare do such a thing nowadays.
My spelling of Haitian Creole is unorthodox. I have decided to spell Haitian Creole as I have both because the currently accepted spelling of Creole is so ugly on the page, and to allow Francophone readers a firmer toehold into this wonderful but inaccessible language.
I have translated Avocat Noé Fourcand’s speech from the words of the historical Noé Fourcand, quoted in Arthur Rouzier’s Les belles figures de l’intelligentsia jérémienne du temps passé—et du présent. This is the finest introduction to the lost poets of Jérémie.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could not have been written without the generous assistance of the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mischa Berlinski is the author of the novel Fieldwork, a finalist for the National Book Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Addison M. Metcalf Award. You can sign up for email updates here.