I can’t seem to have a personal conversation with my sister. We understand each other too well. I can follow the arc of her life even if I don’t know the events that shape it. Our relationship moves between the closeness of our adolescent years and the distance forced on us by exile. A good deal of that oscillation is due to the fact that we didn’t spend our childhood years together. She stayed in Port-au-Prince with my mother, while I was sent to my grandmother’s in Petit-Goâve. We spent our nights telling ourselves stories. We go about it differently. She tells; I analyze. I give importance to a minor event by tying it to a chain of events that are just as minor. I believe that stories aren’t necessarily big or small but that they’re all linked together. The ensemble forms a hard and compact mass that we can call, for convenience’s sake, life.
My sister and I form a single person. The only thing we can’t share is my father. I’ve always suspected her of hoarding images of my father in action. If anyone could remember his face, it would be her, even if she’s a year younger. I was in Petit-Goâve when my father was in Port-au-Prince. He lived with my mother and my sister in a big wooden house on Magloire-Ambroise Avenue. My sister was three years old and I was four. She’s always maintained she can remember my mother’s voice when she was nursing her. And I’ve always been the only one in the family who believes her. As for me, I remember nothing, except what my mother has told me. Knowing my sister’s exaggerated sensitivity to detail and absolute olfactory abilities, I’m willing to bet she remembers my father’s smell. We can’t speak of his death because we shared nothing of his life.
Aunt Ninine takes me aside. She carefully closes her bedroom door. We stand in the middle of the room. Suddenly, she attacks. You have to save Dany. I have to save myself from what? I’m talking about your nephew, you have to save Dany. From what? You have to do something for him. I don’t understand. He has to leave this place. We decide people’s destinies here? He’s twenty-three years old but his opinion doesn’t count. His life doesn’t belong to him. He absolutely has to leave this place, my aunt repeats. What’s the point, I think, if it only means returning thirty-three years later like me? My mother comes into the room wearing her mischievous smile. Aunt Ninine immediately begins talking about her health. My mother can feel that something is going on and she leaves us to our discussion. I head for the door to escape what’s coming. Just as I’m about to cross the threshold, Aunt Ninine grabs me by the arm. Something tells me that, even if my nephew’s future is important for her, it is not her only concern. Zachée called about your father. Your mother needs your support now. Even if he did disappear, your father was the only man in this house. Her way of blaming me for my absence these last few days, or would that be the last three decades?
Can anyone know what goes on in the head of a man who has lost his mind? I wish I’d inherited his ideas of social justice, his intransigence toward power, his disdain for money and his passion for other people. And what would your mother get? What she was always able to hold onto above and beyond her pain. Our eyes meet in silence. Then Aunt Ninine finally opens the door.
The Killer on the Motorbike
In the theater of Port-au-Prince
everything comes at you live.
Even death which can show up
at any moment
on a Kawasaki.
Death imported from Asia.
A young man in dark glasses
revving his little yellow Kawasaki
shows off on the square.
“A bad seed,” declares
the lady sitting next to me.
We find out later
that a young man on a motorbike,
without even stopping, shot at
two doctors
going into their clinic.
Right close by.
Death at top speed.
The witness (a man of about sixty): “I was right there, next to the doctors who were talking. I heard a motorbike. I turned around to see where it was coming from. Bang. Bang. Two shots. The two doctors fall. One’s shot in the throat, the other in the heart. He didn’t even stop.”
A crowd quickly gathers around the only witness to the two murders. The ambulance hurries to pick up the wounded. One is already dead. The other who was shot in the throat doesn’t stand much of a chance. His wife rushes up and starts talking about having him transferred to Miami by helicopter.
The same witness: “I admire people who are good at their job. He hardly slowed down at all. Such precision! Not everybody can do that, I mean, I rode a motorbike for ten years. It was a Kawasaki, a new model. Compact but reliable. Obviously if you’ve got a bike that breaks down, as often happens, then it’s more risky. You can see he takes his job seriously.”
A policeman comes up to him. The crowd parts in front of the man who is still admiring the killer’s precision work.
Policeman: You’re coming with me.
Witness: Why?
Policeman: You seem to know what’s going on here. I think you’re going to be able to help us.
Witness: I happen to live around here. . I’m just a motorbike fan.
Lady: Maybe he likes motorbikes but he doesn’t live around here. I’ve been in this neighborhood for forty-six years and it’s the first time I’ve seen him.
Policeman: You’re going to come with me.
Witness: I live in Jalousie, just up the mountain.
Lady: All the hoodlums who terrorize us live up there.
Witness: I’m not an accomplice. . I simply appreciate a job well done.
Policeman: Come with me or I’ll put the handcuffs on you.
Witness: This is a democracy…
Other Lady: Maybe he’s telling the truth, maybe he just likes motorbikes. . Some people don’t know when to keep their mouths shut. When faced with death, we must simply bow our heads.
Policeman: Come with me. And you, Madame, you’re a witness too?
First Lady: No, I was eating when it happened.
Policeman: All right, break it up, move on, everybody…
When everyone
runs every which way through the market
it means there’s someone
for whom time has stopped.
Lying on the ground in his own blood.
The last spasms of life.
The sound of a motorbike speeding off.
The young guy on the bike got away easily.
But they’ll catch up to him soon enough.
The slum where he lives is crawling with
police informants
most of whom are killers too.
According to a New York Times investigation most of the murders are ordered by powerful businessmen who live in the luxury villas high on the mountain slope. Right across from the slums where the killers live.
The contracts are negotiated by cell phone, from one ghetto to the other. The starving masses and the upper classes have always been interested in technological progress. The latter for security reasons. The former to remain in the battle.