The Men Who Thought They Were Gods
I decided to bring along my nephew
who was bored silly
in a house
full of nervous old aunts
and rosaries blessed by drunken priests.
I see a lot of pregnant women.
An endless flow of newborns
insidiously urging
the old folks toward the cemetery.
Always keep a black jacket close at hand
after you hit fifty.
You’ll need it to attend the funerals of childhood friends.
The open gate of the art center
where I spent time when I was seventeen.
More for the painters
than the paintings.
This morning there is no one but Mademoiselle Murat
who’s been the director forever.
She greets me with mocking eyes
softened by a disarmingly guileless smile.
She has lived so long among paintings
that she’s become a character in a novel.
I tour the dark empty rooms
of the art center feeling as if the tenant
has just left without daring to take along
the many paintings that come to life
in this wooden building with creaky floors,
as I drink a cup of coffee
served by Mademoiselle Murat
with the disturbing but warm-hearted Robert Saint-Brice
and the big baby-faced boy named Jean-Marie Drot.
I should write a story from the point of view of the dog
wandering through the purple painting by that painter
who disappeared one day without a trace.
That was back when a man was no more than
a rabbit in Papa Doc’s black hat.
I realize as I go by a small crowd praying
that people here talk about Jesus
in a normal everyday tone,
as if he were
someone they could
always meet
on the street corner.
They expect everything of him,
but in the end settle for very little.
The slightest surprise is welcomed
like a miracle.
Mental stability depends on being able
to move, without a transition,
from a Catholic saint to a voodoo god.
When Saint James refuses
to grant a certain favor
they quickly direct the same prayer
to Ogou, the secret name given
to Saint James when the priest began enjoining
the faithful to renounce voodoo
in order to enter the Church.
If they accept the gods so easily
it’s because people believe
they are gods themselves.
Otherwise they’d be dead already.
In those places where people tell each other
their dreams every morning
over the first cup of coffee,
turning day into a simple extension of night,
the traveler wonders if this sense of tranquility
in the face of death springs from the fact that
time is not used to measure life here.
That little girl, not even nine,
feeds her younger brother
and goes without food herself.
Where does such precocious maturity come from?
A Man Sitting under a Banana Tree
I used to like going to Jean-René Jérôme’s little studio in the crowded suburb of Carrefour. I would spend hours watching him paint women with lovely curves and a red flower behind their ear, which he did to support his bohemian lifestyle. He worked very quickly, with scarcely a glance at the canvas. Since we weren’t far from the sea, at noon we would go eat fish on the beach. Years later his wife sent me a small photograph of him and me drinking coffee in his studio, packed with paintings, seashells and dusty sculptures. Today he looks so young in the photo. I can’t remember what we talked about. I just remember my pleasure as I watched him dance as he painted those lighthearted, sensual women. As for the paintings that really mattered, he would hide in order to paint them.
That fog in the distance
is rain moving in on us.
Chaos already. People running everywhere.
How is it that people
who on a daily basis
face disease, dictatorship and death
panic when it comes to getting wet?
I treasure the radiant face of the peasant
walking into the rain.
We stop by the side of the road for this old gentleman who seems to be returning from mass. Where are you going? I’m going to see a sick lady friend, just at the bend of the road. Climb in, you’ll get there faster. I’m almost there as it is. I insist, and he gets into the car. I’m not used to automobiles. I consider I’m an automobile myself, he says, laughing at his own joke. Sure, but sometimes they can help if you’re in a hurry. I don’t see what could make me go faster than my own two feet. You can leave me here. I watch him climb a little path snaking upward. I bet he’s going to the other side of the mountain, the chauffeur laughs. When he reaches the top he’ll still have another good hour’s walk. Why didn’t he tell me where he was going? His world is not ours.
If we return to the point of departure
does that mean
the journey is over?
We won’t die as long as we’re moving.
But those who have never crossed beyond
their village gate
await the return of the traveler
to figure out whether it’s worth
the trouble of leaving.
The poor peasants pay taxes
without expecting anything from the government.
Things would be all right
if it let them live in peace.
The State doesn’t like being judged in silence.
I think of that as I see them bent over in the fields.
Near the old Port-au-Prince cathedral, I bought a magazine that had a long interview with Lazare the painter. He spent a good part of his life in New York before returning to Haiti. After a very brief stop in Port-au-Prince to say hello to a few friends, he moved on to the little hut tucked away on a banana plantation. The image of that place, almost religious, brightened his loneliness in New York. He awoke one morning in a sweat, with the feeling that his last day in this hard, cold city had come. He knew he would suffocate if he didn’t return immediately to Haiti. He grabbed his passport, emptied out his account at the Chase Manhattan Bank and took one final taxi ride to JFK. That evening, he was back in a small café in Pétionville with what was left of the old gang of painters and poets who once dreamed, as he had, of changing the world at the beginning of the sixties. But his journey wasn’t over, and wouldn’t be until he reached the hut that had kept him alive during his long years of depression in New York. In the magazine photo, Lazare sits bare-chested under a banana tree; in the background is a little thatched hut with blue windows.
We’ve been driving blind for a while.
A truck is raising a great cloud of white dust
ahead of us.
A long line of trucks
carrying sand stretches out behind us.
Blaring, urgent horns.
We roll up the windows to keep from swallowing
that penetrating dust.
After a few hours of driving, we have to pull over to the side of the road. Smoke is pouring out from under the hood. The chauffeur leaves with an empty can to get water from a peasant who lives on the side of the bare mountain. Water, so rare in this dry region, is offered to us even before the chauffeur can ask. The peasant says he will come down with his family to help us push the car. The chauffeur spends the evening cleaning every grain of sand out of the motor. Night falls. The man offers us a place to stay. We climb the mountain holding each other by the hand to keep from getting lost in the darkness.