my nephew points out, worried.
It’s true you have to be able to change
into a woman, a plant or a stone.
All three realms are necessary.
Watching the vein in his temple beat that way, I know he’s thinking fast. But you haven’t explained the most important thing to me. What would that be? It’s not just the story, it’s how you tell it. Then what? You have to tell me how to do it. You don’t want to write something personal? Of course. No one can tell you how to be original. There must be tricks that can help. It’s always better if you discover them yourself. But I’ll waste time. That’s the point: time doesn’t exist in this job. I feel like I’m all alone. And lost. What good is having an uncle who’s a writer if he tells you he can’t help you out? At least you know that much. A lot of young writers think they can’t write because they aren’t part of a network. Maybe I don’t know how to write. You can’t say that if you haven’t spent at least a dozen years trying to find out. What do you mean? A dozen years to find out I can’t write? Well, believe me, that’s a conservative figure. So what good is the experience then? I can’t tell you any more than that, Dany.
My sister’s son is called Dany.
We didn’t know you were going to come back, my sister told me.
The exile loses his spot.
He goes and gets himself a glass of juice, then he’s back on the subject. One last question: is it better to write by hand or on a computer? It’s always better to read. Okay, I can see I’m not going to get anything out of you, he says, then takes a Carter Brown novel from the shelf and heads for the bathroom.
On the little gallery.
I am sitting.
He is standing.
A respectful distance.
You never talk about your times.
I don’t have a time.
We all do.
I’m sitting here with you, that’s my time.
The cry of a bird that can’t stand
the noonday heat.
My aunt takes me aside,
in a dim room
where the furniture is covered with white sheets,
and rattles on and on about some
endless family saga
whose protagonists
are unknown to me and whose claims
are so confusing
that even she gets lost.
It’s like being in a novel
by a sloppy writer.
My nephew goes to meet a friend
by the gate.
I watch them talking.
Their affection
for each other.
They share the same tough choice:
stay or go.
City of Talk
This man sitting alone,
his back against the gate,
is soon joined by a stranger
who begins telling him all sorts of things
that make absolutely no sense.
Hunting down the solitary man
is a collective passion
in any overcrowded city.
A tank truck parked
on the sidewalk across the way.
I watch my mother
favoring one leg
cross the street to
buy bottled water.
I never knew crossing a street
required so much willpower.
Christian, a nine-year-old neighbor
who spends a lot of time at our house,
comes and sits next to me.
We go almost an hour without talking.
A good breeze blows through the leaves.
I soon drift off.
The boy slipped away so quietly
I thought I’d dreamed him up.
My nephew tells me
he burned his first novel.
All good writers start by
being pitiless critics.
Now he has to learn
a little compassion for his work.
My nephew and I sit together on his squeaky narrow bed. I read detective novels, that’s how I relax after a day at the university. A lot of hard work? Actually, we don’t do anything at all. What do you do? Everyone is waiting for their American visa, and once they get it, even if it’s in the middle of an exam, they take off.
A leaf, near me,
falls.
No sound.
What elegance!
A dull thud.
The noise a fat lizard makes
as it falls by my chair.
We consider each other a moment.
In the end it gets interested
in a spinning fly.
I listen to the radio.
A silky voice like a veil
that obscures the truth without managing to hide it.
People always have some story to tell
in a country where words are
the only thing they can share.
The music dies suddenly.
No sound.
Emptiness.
A power failure?
Endless silence in the street.
Then a cry of pain from the young girl next door.
To be able to hear silence this loud
in a city of talk
means so many people had to
keep quiet at the same time.
The radio announces
the death of a young musician
beloved by the public.
My nephew knew him well
having shared with him
for a brief moment
a girl’s heart.
My nephew changes clothes quickly. My mother’s worried look. The banged-up Chevrolet parks on the sidewalk across the way. Five of them are inside. Two girls in back. My nephew slips in between them. His face immediately transformed. The car pulls away. On the radio is the singer who just died. My sister looks straight ahead without a word. Now I see what my mother’s face looked like when I went out like that on a Saturday night. We would cross paths near Saint-Alexandre Square, on Sunday morning, as she was going to church and I was coming back from a party.
My Mother’s Song
We are on the gallery.
By the oleander.
My mother is speaking to me softly of Jesus,
the man who replaced her husband
in exile for the last fifty years.
In the distance the voice of a woman selling baubles.
Every family has its absent member in the group portrait. Papa Doc introduced exile to the middle class. Before, such a fate was reserved only for a president who fell victim to a coup or one of those rare intellectuals who could also be a man of action.
I took all possible precautions
before announcing to my mother
that my father had died.
First she turned a deaf ear to me.
Then took it out on the messenger.
The distance is so slight
between lengthy absence and death
that I didn’t take enough care
to consider the effect the news would have on her.
My mother won’t look at me.
I watch her long delicate hands.
She slides her wedding band
on and off her finger
and hums so softly
I have trouble understanding the words of her song.
Her gaze is lost in the clump of oleander
that reminds her of a time
when I did not yet exist.
The time before.
Is she recalling those days when she was
a carefree young woman?
Her fleeting smile moves me more than tears.
I hear my mother singing
from the room next door.
The news of my father’s death
has finally reached her consciousness.
Sorrow is her daily escort,
the empty days
alternating with the magic of the first smile.
Everything resurfaces.
I finally catch a few words
of my mother’s song
that speaks of panicked sailors,
rough seas
and a miracle just when
all hope seems lost.
She likes to listen to the radio on the little set I sent her a few years back. Tuned to the same prayer station. She listens only to sermons and religious music except for Chansons d’autrefois, the show where the singers hit notes so high they make the old dog whimper from under the chair where it sleeps.