We go through a village that’s deader than a cemetery. Besides the mangy dog that followed us to the other side of town, no one notices we were there. You didn’t see them, the chauffeur says, but the adults were watching us from behind every door and the children were hidden behind every tree. How do you know? my nephew asks. I grew up in a dump like this, the chauffeur retorts.
Since the black hen keeps on clucking,
the chauffeur advises me
to cover her head
with a sock
so she will see nighttime
in the middle of the day.
We stop in a hamlet to buy a straw hat for my nephew who is suffering from heat-stroke. A few huts in a half circle around a tamped-earth yard surrounded by dusty bayahondas. Men play dominos under a broad mango tree. A few women are cooking at the rear of the yard. Naked children run from one group to the other. I feel I’ve stepped into another time. I didn’t know that just by changing locations I could feel this way, as if ten years separated me from Port-au-Prince, though I’ve only just left it.
The Caribbean Winter
In this region
the famine was so terrible
people had to eat unripe fruit
and the leaves of young plants.
Trees stripped bare along the way.
A kind of Caribbean winter.
The sky has more stars here
than anywhere else.
The night is blacker too.
We move past people
whose voices we hear
though we don’t see their faces.
Sometimes I note down
my impressions
long after leaving
a village.
Such destitution leaves me
speechless.
We drive through another dry village.
A small boy runs after the car
waving his hands wildly,
a wide smile on his face.
I watch him fade
into a cloud of dust.
I will never get over
the extreme courtesy of the peasants
who will offer you their bed
with an immaculate white sheet on it
and sleep under the stars instead.
The car stays by the bridge, watched over by a tall, serious young man who confided to me that his greatest dream is to go to Port-au-Prince one day and meet the radio announcers he listens to. The morning he spent with us, he had a transistor radio glued to his ear. When a new announcer came on, he wanted to know if we knew him. Rico? Marcus? And Bob? What about Françoise? Or Liliane? Did you ever meet Jean? He knows them intimately though he has never met them.
We climbed to the top on horseback. Of the three horses, I got the most stubborn. The one that insisted on walking on the edge of the cliff. What is my life worth to an animal that wonders what I’m doing on its back? I suffer from vertigo and don’t dare look down. The young peasant guiding me gave me a knowing wink then urged the horse toward the middle of the path.
A small reception under the arbor. We are greeted enthusiastically as if we were honored guests. The people bring us coffee, tea, alcohol. There is a distillery on the plantation. A long table loaded with food. I eat the best meal of my life. Next to me my nephew shovels it in. A half-dozen girls dressed in white serve us. It’s like living in a dream world where every desire comes true. The master of the property, a rich farmer, pushes me into the arms of his youngest daughter, a timid, modest beauty who has not budged from her chair underneath a calabash tree. As I get ready to go back down the path, I discover she studied medicine at Harvard, and the feast is to celebrate her return home. I like the idea of her, underneath the coffee tree, in the arms of the young peasant who is looking at her with a desire so intense he seems willing to face death to win her.
At that reception I met an old professor of Greek who was still teaching two years ago in a Port-au-Prince lycée. He had published a collection of poems in the manner of Verlaine and Vilaire. We were talking about Césaire, who left him cold, when one of his friends showed up. They began to converse in Greek. I had forgotten about culture in the provinces, so refined and so musty.
The peasants refuse to take the money I offer for their trouble and since I insist, one of them admits they have done all this for the minister. In the car, the chauffeur tells me we never would have been able to travel so freely if people hadn’t recognized the minister’s car. If the region enjoys irrigation, it’s thanks to him.
I ask the chauffeur why he didn’t eat anything at the reception. First he pretends not to hear. I have to remind him that if he fears something it is his duty to tell me, since I am under his protection. In that mysterious tone he takes on from time to time, he tells me there’s no risk as long as a person knows nothing. I have to insist and finally I get a clear explanation. We were received with such respect because we represented very powerful gods. Which ones? He doesn’t want to answer. And you? For the ceremony to begin, the god had to honor the meal. What kind of ceremony was it? The girl’s betrothal to Legba. So I was supposed to be Legba, since the master of the house kept pushing me into her arms? No, it was your nephew. Then why did he take such good care of me? He needed to soothe Ogou, a jealous, wrathful god who could have spoiled the feast at any moment. And you? Since I hadn’t taken anything illicit, I was a mere mortal accompanying the gods. I’m not sure he is telling me everything. Mystery is a vital part of voodoo. And when I hear tourists and ethnologists claim they attended “a real voodoo ceremony…” Except there is no real voodoo ceremony — it’s like believing you can buy your way into heaven. The real stakes are found in other spheres.
The Son of Pauline Kengué
Monsieur Jérôme, our mysterious chauffeur who has always refused to tell us his last name, comes from a little place that’s not on any map. One of those crossroads known only by those who live there. Yet people are born, live and die in places like that, just like everywhere else. No better, no worse. I discover our chauffeur’s name when we stop at the local market. People come and gather around him, touching him with great feeling, speaking to him gently. “I never thought I’d see you again before I died, Jérôme,” says a bent old woman selling Palma Christi oil. For her, he is the son of Pauline Kengué, a Congolese woman from Pointe-Noire who arrived in the village one morning and stayed. According to the old woman who was her best friend, the people of Pauline Kengué’s tribe believe that those who die in Africa return to earth in Haiti, preferably in a village. Until her death, Pauline spoke endlessly about her son Alain who had remained behind in Africa. She always said she’d come here so Alain would feel Haitian when the time came. We belong to the country where our mother is buried. Was that some mad pronouncement due to the delirium of her last moments? People will know only if the son shows up and goes to pray at his mother’s grave in this lost village in Haiti.