Food is the most terrifying of drugs. We always go back to it: three times a day for some, once in a while for others. Gary Victor told me he never knew the great famine. Me neither. Which made us think we’d never be the authors of the great Haitian novel whose subject can only be hunger. Roumain touched upon it by making drought the subject of Masters of the Dew. Drought is thirst. The earth that is thirsty. I’m talking about a man who is hungry. Of course the earth feeds man. I tried to console Victor by bringing up subjects that could be as interesting, like exile, but that theme doesn’t stand up to a man who is hungry. When we parted, he had a certain sadness in his eyes.
But it’s not just the subject of a novel.
We can be impassive
faced with our own hunger but what do we do
when a child is hungry
and reaches out his hand
as happened this morning near the market?
We give him a few pennies
knowing full well the problem
will return in less than three hours.
This man sitting in the shade
by the wall of the hotel.
On a handkerchief he sets
a large purple avocado next to a long loaf of bread.
He slowly produces his jackknife.
This is his first meal of the day.
Such pleasure is unthinkable
for those for whom eating
is not the primary goal of existence.
At ninety-eight this lively, joyful old lady
who runs the Hotel Ifé
and who still fights every day
to keep her head above water
with a smile that never fades
is the mother of a poet friend.
In this country the poet’s mother
has to work till her dying day
so that roses can flower
in her son’s verses.
He preferred to go to prison
than to work.
Here we are wedged into a corner of a little restaurant in my old neighborhood. A simple meaclass="underline" rice, avocado, chicken. I like restaurants that serve just one dish. You get there, you sit down and you talk until the food arrives. I was eating, head down, when I spotted a beggar watching me from behind the window with wide liquid eyes so much like my mother’s.
My Nephew’s Version
My nephew is doing the talking tonight.
Back against the wall.
Calm and resolved.
We listen to what he has to say.
He is telling today’s life story.
How does he see things?
What does he feel?
We want to know.
He knows that too and embellishes.
Once I was in his position.
Standing by the door,
my mother smiles.
She has listened to three generations of men,
if we count my father,
each telling
a new version
of the same facts.
My grandmother Da. My mother Marie. My sister Ketty. These women don’t concern themselves with History but with daily life, which is an endless ribbon. No time to look back when every day means serving three meals to the children, rent to pay, shoes to replace, medicines to buy, money for Friday afternoon soccer, Saturday night movies and the Sunday morning church fair. Just because you’re crushed by dictatorship doesn’t mean you have to live poorly.
The most subversive thing there is,
and I’ve spent my life repeating it,
is to do everything possible to be happy
under the dictator’s nose.
The dictator insists on being the center of your life
and what I did best in mine
was to banish him from my existence.
I admit, to do that sometimes I had to throw
the baby out with the bathwater.
So I left and then returned. Things haven’t changed a bit. Going to see my mother this evening, I crossed the market. The lit lamps made me feel I was traveling through a dream. A little girl in a short pink jersey dress was sleeping in the arms of her mother who was counting the day’s receipts. This tenderness that lets you accept the rest exhausted me and will soon exhaust my nephew.
The people in this neighborhood,
in these modest houses on both sides of the ravine,
earn a salary
on which
it is impossible to live.
By “live” you must understand:
the simple ability to feed oneself.
The other features of life,
like going to the movies
or buying an ice cream
on a Sunday afternoon,
have grown so distant
they no longer concern them.
If they are mentioned it’s only out of nostalgia.
When a few Dior-soaked gentlemen
mix every day
with a dense crowd stinking of piss:
the war of the smells.
I know the solution
is not to go for your neighbor’s jugular.
At least that’s what’s said
in certain parlors.
But just how long
can this kind of tension last?
My nephew doesn’t put it that way
but in his head I can hear
a familiar wave of background noise.
He doesn’t want to worry my mother
whose husband and only son had to go into exile
for the same reasons.
It’s up to the third generation
to ask the question that has no solution.
A leaf falls from the tree
onto the notebook where
I am writing these things down.
I save the leaf.
I can’t keep my eyes off
that black bird
with the long yellow beak.
I don’t see things the way I used to, my nephew tells me. How did you used to see them? I ask without trying to figure out what things he’s talking about. Like things that are happening in my life. And now? Like things that are happening around me. What do you mean? I feel more distance between me and reality. Maybe that’s your space for writing.
The Dead Are among Us
My nephew drives me back to the hotel. We are in his friend Chico’s car, and we have to keep our feet directly below our legs because there’s no floor. We can see the asphalt go by and puddles of greenish water. The car is like a convertible in reverse. His brother left him the car when he went to Miami, and four of them use it. Put some gas in it and it’s yours. When it breaks down, they chip in and take it to a mechanic. Chico is set to go next week and he’ll leave the car to his friends. They take turns using it but they all have to go to the same club on Saturday night. With their girlfriends that makes eight. A pretty tight squeeze. The girls insist on paying the Saturday night gas.
I turn around to see
my mother standing near the big red gate.
She must have woken up suddenly and gotten dressed
in a hurry when she understood I was leaving.
That tense face I know so well.
As if she sensed constant danger.
The last image of my mother
as the car goes around the curve:
I see her take the hand of the little boy next door,
her last confidant.
My nephew drops me off near the square.
I feel like watching the evening
settle over Pétionville.
Those who haven’t wandered through a city