Two hundred thousand dollars for the rich girl. First the phone call, then the text message. Come alone. Bring $10,000 in $100 bills. Have exactly $190,000 in a new account, and bring the account numbers. Don’t tell your wife. Don’t call the police. For all you know, this might be the police. Believe, now and forever, that you are speaking with the police. Be ready at all hours. Keep the phone near your head. We came for her, didn’t we, like a thief in the night? We came, didn’t we, on blood horses in the sky? We came, didn’t we, with knives and automatic rifles? In the fullness of time we’ll call. We’ll tell you when and where. Take off your shirt, get in your car, drive to the place. Keep her safe. Don’t make her unsafe because of your bad behavior. The time is now to start making good choices. Listen to the sound of my voice. I’m your best friend, Samir Nasser. You have no better friend in the world.
Twelve hours passed. He put on his good suit. He made quiet inquiries with friends whose children had been kidnapped and ransomed, but they all had American passports. They had the FBI. There would be no FBI for Samir Nasser. He went to the banks and did his business, and his bankers thought nothing of what he’d asked. He’d asked for more in the past, quickly, and anyway it was not a country where bankers felt it prudent to ask too many questions of businessmen.
When the call came, he was ready. He took the money. He took off his shirt. Delmas 73, the voice said, and he drove there and waited. The parking lot of the police station, the voice said, and he drove there and waited. Do you have the money? Yes. Good. Drive to the Lesly Center near the cathedral and wait. He did. Do you want to see your daughter alive? Yes. Good.
Drive to the Marché Hyppolite and park on the street and wait. Do you see that man on the street in the white shirt? Do you see that woman selling lettuce? We have eyes by the hundreds. You must be humble. Have you been humble in your life, Samir Nasser? Are we good friends? Touch the bag with the money. Take off your pants. Fold them. Set them in the passenger seat. Put them back on. You can’t walk out into the street, a rich man without pants. Walk in the direction of the palace. See that tree? Set the money there. Don’t worry. We are watching the tree. Walk away. Get in the car. Drive toward home. You will await further instructions. It’s not yours to know when. You’ve done well, Samir Nasser. Tonight you may drink for pleasure. Kiss your banker for me.
It was three days before he saw his daughter again. He went on the radio to make his plea. I’ve paid the money. I’ve done all you’ve asked. Be honorable, he said.
There was a general buzzing throughout the province. Everyone agreed that the chimères had taken her because her parents owned the Beirut. People argued about the nature of the Lebanese: All Lebanese are thieves. Is it wrong to steal from thieves? Fewer Lebanese are thieves than Haitians are thieves. Everything in Haiti belongs to Haitians, not to the Lebanese. All the children of the world belong to their parents. All the children of Lebanon belong in Lebanon. She was born in Haiti. Her mother and father were born in Haiti, and their mothers and fathers. She is a Haitian citizen. She travels with a Haitian passport. She is blan. She is Haitian. She is bourgeois. She is a human being. She is a parasite in the intestine.
Samir washed his face three times daily. He rubbed his wife’s shoulders. The house filled with relatives he was expected to feed at all hours, and Samir told his wife not to tell anybody anything. Maybe there’s a spy among us, he said. He told the relatives in the house that they must be strong. In the bathroom, beneath the Levantine crucifix, he pissed blood. He had a vision of Lake Pontchartrain, a body of water he’d once crossed by bridge in the company of a woman from Boston. He was upset by the unnecessary word chimère. These were young men, not ghosts. But what was more disturbing, the taking of his daughter by young men or ghosts? The beating of his daughter by young men or ghosts? The sexual assault of his daughter by young men or ghosts? Young men had bodies. Young men could torment bodies with bodies. Ghosts could only torment the mind, the spirit. Ghosts could slip into the invisible night, flee on a carriage of warm air, ride some passing storm, stir it into a hurricane, but young men could be hunted down and killed, and Samir felt capable of killing. He felt the ferocity of a father, the skull inkwell from which he’d pen the fated names the moment he learned them.
Then it was three o’clock in the morning. He was sitting on the front porch with the night watchman when the buzzer rang from the gate, where she stood wrapped in a sheet she said she had stolen from a laundry line, and the owner of the sheet had chased her through the streets for half a kilometer. We must pay her for the sheet, she said, and he picked her up, cradled like a child, and carried her into the house, and kissed her cheek and her forehead, and didn’t even tell anyone she was home, and rocked her in her mother’s gliding chair, and pressed her cheek to his cheek, and together they wept until they woke her mother, and then the room was full of people, and he sent them out into the yard, and told the night watchman to turn on the yard lights, and told the cook to bring out the food and set it on picnic tables, and they went into the bedroom, the three of them, and got into the bed, under the covers, husband and wife and daughter in the middle, the way they had when she was a newborn baby, and they cooed without embarrassment, made all the same sounds they had made when she was a newborn baby, and touched her face, and her back, and stroked her hair the same way they had when she was a newborn baby, and the whole room filled with the rank, unwashed smell of her, and her mother drew her a bath, and her father set her in it, and he left the room as her mother washed her.
On the radio, the priest from Bel Air said enough is enough. Is this not our country? he said. We must claim it for decency. All children are ours. I will provide the candles, and we will raise them to the sky, and all the saints will be reflected in the flames, and all our ancestors.
The procession wound through the city, the marchers and their candles, and others joined them as they marched. When she appears on the balcony, her mother said, she must be wearing a white dress like a baptismal dress, and they summoned the tailor, and quickly, while she had the curlers in her hair, the dress was made ready.
Here again: ugliness and beauty. What was it like for her to look at herself in the mirror in the supermarket fur shop, her hair in dark ringlets to her shoulders, the white dress, the waiting crowd, the grieving and rejoicing parents, the boyfriend on his way to the airport with the bag of cash, the preparation of the fireworks, the secret knowledge opening a void inside her. You are a woman, and I have treated you like a child, her father said. He put his hands on her shoulders. When you get to Rhode Island, don’t come back. Don’t write for a while. Don’t call. Put this place behind you. But before you go, if you can bear it, tell me the faces, tell me the names, whatever you know, I will put an end to their comfort.