She made a little sign and said, “It’s all right now. I killed him.”
I gave her a hand and swung her aboard. “You killed who?”
She was sweating a little, silver beads popping out of her tan skin. Her stare was grim. “One of my own people. Or so I thought until a few minutes ago. He disobeyed orders and followed me when I started back here. Strictly against my orders, Nick! I wasn’t sure at first, but he was clumsy and I kept hearing him behind me and I set a trap and he walked into it.”
I nodded. “What did he say when you jumped him?”
Lyda gave me a very odd look. “Say? He didn’t say anything. I didn’t ask him anything. I just shot him. His name was Tomaso — one of the blacks.”
“You’re sure he’s dead?”
She nodded. “I’m sure. I checked that.” She let out a deep shuddering breath and sat down abruptly on the deck. “Now that it’s over I’m not so sure. Maybe he was just curious. Nosey. He would know that I wasn’t alone.”
“And maybe he was working for Papa Doc,” I said. “Forget it. You did the right thing. Just so you’re absolutely sure that he’s dead.”
“Right between the eyes at ten feet,” she said coldly. “I told you. He’s dead.”
I accepted that. I was a little worried about the shot but there was nothing I could do about it. We had to stay where we were until dark.
“Give me a cigarette,” Lyda said, “and get me a drink. I need it.”
I did and also brought the maps out on the deck. When she got the drink down and had a couple of puffs I said, “All right. What’s the score?”
The drink had helped her. Her hands stopped trembling and she smiled at me and said, “Everything is all right so far. A man, one of the fishermen, is on his way to the mainland to set it up for tonight. Here, I’ll show you on the map.”
She took my pencil, studied the map for a moment, then made a small black X halfway between Port de Paix and Cap Haitien.
“We go ashore here. Somebody will be waiting for us. The coast is desolate, rain forest and jungle — there’s not a road for miles — and it’s only about 25 miles inland to Sans Souci and P.P. Trevelyn’s estates. There are a few villages, but the only town of any size is Limbe and we can swing around that and come in from the west. There is another town, Milot, to the east of Sans Souci, and Papa Doc has a lot of troops in there.”
I studied the light pencil tracings on the map. “There’s a main highway just beyond this town? Milot.”
“Yes. My people tell me it is heavily patrolled just now. Troops and Tonton Macoute all over the place.”
When she said Tonton Macoute she stopped and looked at me and I saw the terror in her eyes as I had seen it before. It was as good a time as any.
I said: “What is it with you and the Tonton Macoute, Lyda? I know they’re rough and miserable bastards, but why do they scare you so? You don’t seem to be frightened of much else, but the Tonton have got the sign on you. How come?”
For maybe thirty seconds she didn’t answer. She didn’t look at me. Then, in a whisper that I could barely hear, she K said, “They raped me when I was a little girl. I was fifteen. It was just after Papa Doc came to power — the Tonton Macoute came to arrest us one night. We were brown, mulattos, and we owned a lot of land and we lived well and they hated us. They wanted our land and our house.
“That night they beat my father up and hauled him off to prison. He died a week later. They made my mother watch while six of them raped me on the floor of the living room. Later, a whole lot later, I got away from them and left Haiti for the States. I had some American friends and they managed it for me. I took my mother with me and she died insane in Bellevue. I–I hadn’t any money for a private hospital. I hadn’t any money at all.”
She was crying softly, remembering. I kept silent. This was the first time she had ever really let her hair down about her personal life and I wanted to hear it. How I wanted to hear it! The more I knew about what made her tick the better chance I had of staying alive and bringing the mission off.
Lyda wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket and kept talking. For once I felt that she was telling the absolute and I exact truth.
“There were quite a few Haitians in the States. Mulattos and blacks, all running from Papa Doc. Most of them were poor and they weren’t organized. There were two little ghettos — might as well call them that — one in Brooklyn and one on the west side up close to Columbia. We were in the States on sufferance and we were poor and we did menial jobs and got by the best we could. I was lucky. I was working as a waitress in a bar at 113th Street, and one night Dr. Valdez came in with some friends. He heard me speaking to another waitress and knew at once that I was Haitian. He didn’t say much that night, but a few days later he came back to the bar, alone, and we got to be friends.”
“Did you know that Valdez was a Communist?”
She was doodling on the edge of the chart with a pencil. She bared her teeth at me and gave a snorting laugh. “Communist? Hah I Romera Valdez was an innocent, a political innocent! My Christ, he was naive. He could even see some good things about Papa Doc. Romera was a parlor Commie, a fellow traveler that didn’t know what it was all about, a gentle man that hated to swat a fly. He used to make me so furious that I wanted to kill him, the way he always wanted to turn the other cheek.”
I had her talking and I didn’t want to break the spell, but I had to ask the question. “Were you in love with Valdez?”
She nodded quickly, and for a moment quicksilver glinted in her eyes again. She found a handkerchief and dabbed.
“I was mad about him. We went to bed for the first time on my 17th birthday and I lived with him for three years. I kissed the ground he walked on. He was a father and a brother and a lover all in one. A husband, too, though we couldn’t get married. His wife is still alive, somewhere in France, and he’s a Catholic.”
I lit another cigarette and kept quiet. She hadn’t finished. There was more and I wanted to hear it.
“Romera got a little apartment for me, on 115th Street near the Drive, and I entered Columbia. I had been to school in Paris and Switzerland — I was home on vacation when the Tonton Macoute came that night — and I passed a special examination and Columbia admitted me. Romera was a full professor by then and whenever we met on the campus we had to pretend to be strangers. I didn’t have him for any classes, of course — he was far too advanced for me and he only taught graduate students.”
Lyda finished her drink and held out the glass. “A little more, Nick darling. Then I think I’ll sleep for a while.”
When I came back with the drink she was stretched on the deck with her eyes closed and the sun on her face, her big soft breasts moving rhythmically up and down. For a moment I thought she was asleep, but she held out her hand for the drink and gulped it eagerly. Then she began to talk again.
“It was fun for a time, sneaking around like that I was only a kid, and it was mysterious and intriguing to pass Romera on the campus, me with an arm full of books, and just give him a cold little nod and keep going. All the time laughing inside and thinking of what we had done in bed the night before. We saw each other nearly every night and on weekends, though we had to be very careful. Then five years ago it happened. Five years this June. The week before my graduation.”
She was silent for a long time. I didn’t push her. I picked up one of the machine guns and went forward. The creek ran silent and deep and deserted and birds flashed brightly in the wild cane and my friend the lizard had brought a buddy with him to see the strangers. Things looked and sounded right in the jungle and after a minute I went back to the girl and squatted with the machine gun across my knees. The sun was lowering to the west and the palm trees were reflected in tall dark shadows striping the boat.