Near the University
Since I’m here I take a look around. I like to scout out the locations and know where I am, to avoid ending up in a blind alley if ever I have to run. I come across a little park filled with former students who can’t find work. Those who haven’t yet understood that only ten percent will get a decent job when they get out of school. And that their studies aren’t enough. To work in this country, a bitter but lucid student told me, you have to come from a good background or ally yourself with a powerful political family.
The unemployed lying on park benches
with white handkerchiefs over their faces.
A few prostitutes in miniskirts
trying to pass themselves off
as modern literature students.
A dozing policeman,
his gun and nothing else between his legs.
Rest for the wretched.
A girl accompanies her mother
who is herself so young she could
be her older sister.
They accost me quickly
to inquire after my desires.
They say that a mother and daughter in the same bed
can still excite an old senator.
I’m not there yet.
They go off with their arms around each other’s waist.
From behind, I can’t distinguish the mother from the daughter.
The young man sitting next to me watches the van full of police from the international squad go by. The more cops there are, the more thieves. What do you mean? I ask. They’re all the same. I don’t get it. The ones who are supposed to be protecting us are in business with the killers when they’re not killers them-selves. How do you defend yourself? We walk in the shadows and stay at home as much as we can. I’m telling you only a dictator can save this country. How old are you? Twenty-three. I bet you never knew the dictator. No, but I’m telling you all the same: this country needs a leader, otherwise it’s total disorder. And where is the chaos? He gives me a stunned look. I see order everywhere. The powerful keep everything for themselves. Since the little guys have nothing, they tear each other apart for the few crumbs that are left. If we name a dictator, we’ll simply make the way things are official. I still believe we need a leader in this country. These days, every neighborhood is controlled by armed gangs that constantly fight each other and terrorize everyone else in the process.
We take a few steps into the park. What are you studying? Political science. And you want a dictator? Yes, sir, anything but this untenable situation. We could always protest against the dictator on the international scene or even try to topple him. The one I knew, if you add the father’s regime to the son’s, ran from 1957 to 1986, twenty-nine years. What you’re seeing now is their legacy. A dictator would only give them legitimacy. And order serves only to enrich one particular group. Disorder begins when other groups start demanding their share. You don’t live here? I came from Montreal. And there’s no dictator there if I understand correctly. No, but there’s winter. It’s not the same thing. Of course not, I was joking. His face darkens. Is the winter so terrible up there? You have to go through it to understand. So it’s subjective then? More like democratic. Everybody suffers. Not everybody: those who can get away, do. It’s like here: people who have the means don’t have to suffer the rigors of dictatorship. I’d like to go up there and see one day. You don’t just go and see. You go for a while and end up spending your life there.
I leave him, hoping he won’t end up like the people he is denouncing. Still, he’s got the right profile. The feeling of being looked down on by a certain class, the enormous financial difficulties that keep him from satisfying his most primal needs, and to that you have to add an immoderate taste for flowery language and the loneliness (sexual hunger is part of it) of someone who was orphaned at an early age. Not so different from the young François Duvalier when he wrote his poem “Les Sanglots d’un exilé” whose main theme is the resentment that would later serve as his political platform.
I continue my walk
trying to remember
the dictator’s poem I had to
learn by heart at school.
“And the black of my ebony skin was lost
in the shadows of the night.
When, that night, as hideous as a madman,
I left behind my cold student room.”
Everything is there. Frankenstein let loose.
At the far end of the park, there is a small market where the ladies selling tea entertain themselves with no heed for the few customers. One of the women is telling a sex story with all the appropriate gestures. She shakes her big round butt in the youngest woman’s face to tease her. The other women look on and smile, their heads resting on sacks of tea. Now and again laughter rises in the perfumed air.
A skinny young man
tries to load a long rifle
while slipping on a khaki cape.
His friend also plays the role
of security guard in a supermarket
across the street.
A city ready for war.
Crazy about rap music.
Reads only mangas.
Eats only pasta.
Quiet by day.
Talkative by night.
That’s my nephew.
We understand each other easily.
Looking at him I think of those times
when everything exasperated me.
I avoid preaching to him
and slip him some money
when his mother is looking elsewhere.
Money is to boys
what perfume is to girls.
It makes them euphoric.
The young woman at the cash in this little restaurant near the university has a way of smiling at me. A few students are wolfing down a mountain of rice. The old waiter ambles over with our plates, his shuffling feet barely leaving the floor. Everyone has the same meal (chicken in a sauce, white rice and potato salad). We eat with our heads down. A tall glass of soursop juice. Close by, my black notebook where I write down everything happening around me. The smallest insect visible to my eye.
If there is one thing I like about my nephew, it’s how he isn’t in a hurry to talk. He hasn’t opened his mouth since he got here, but when he does, it’s for real. That part of town isn’t too dangerous? Sometimes it is. When the government decides that we’re too quiet, it sends in agents disguised as students to stir things up. How do they do that? They show up a week before the police. They start by recruiting the leaders. Then they wait for the right time. We know they’ve started their game when on a Monday morning tires are burning in the courtyard of the school. Then the government sends in a squad of cops to supposedly restore order. The TV is in on it too. Standing at the windows, the provocateurs pretend to fire at the police hidden in the park. They end up wounding one or two of them but never seriously, which gives the squad the excuse to charge. Five minutes later, the tanks arrive. What do you guys do? At first, nothing, we sucked it up, but finally we figured out their technique and invented a little system that so far seems to be working. As soon as we see the flaming tires, we slip away and let them face off against each other. They fire at one another thinking we’re still in the area. Luckily they’re pretty stupid, but they’ll end up catching on sooner or later. His calm even voice frightens me. He seems unimpressed by what could happen to him. No more than a slight smile that reveals a subtle appreciation of the facts. In any case, he continues, I don’t know why they go to such trouble to screw up our plans when nobody wants to stay here anyway. If they don’t want us around, they should just hand out American visas and the university would empty out in a minute. The students seem even more desperate than in my day. Still, that was Duvalier. The Tonton Macoutes. The black years. The bloodthirsty police force of a barbarous regime. The bitterness may well spring from the fact that they believed a change would come after Baby Doc’s departure. Nothing worse than hope betrayed.