Melancholy and Aunt Renée
When I was young, I noticed that one of my aunts always kept to herself, which was striking in a house overflowing with laughter. She could spend hours without any emotion crossing her face. There was talk of migraines that gave her a pensive look. She didn’t seem to have a sweetheart. Her work as a librarian across from City Hall and her spot on the gallery where she spent her time reading — that was her life. Men carefully avoided her. She was the one who helped me grasp the subversive nature of a woman reading in a small provincial town. How could you disturb her when she was conversing with Stephan Zweig, her favorite writer? She read his novels but didn’t try to share the emotions that obviously shook her. At times I would hear her sigh, but that was all. Zweig may be a little precious, but he’s not necessarily worldly. His sad inner monologues and deleterious atmospheres created a state of total dependence in a passionate reader like Aunt Renée. I wonder whether Zweig’s toxic prose turned my aunt into a melancholy being, or whether her melancholy drove her to Zweig. How was it that such a sad creature appeared in our family in which everyone loved celebration? I must confess that, though I’m not sad myself, sadness has always intrigued me. What struck me was the respect she earned through it. As if her natural delicacy of feeling conferred a kind of grace to our town. Yet her life was lived according to strict ritual. She went to the library in the morning and returned to the house in the afternoon. I remember her colorful parasols, her only touch of fantasy, that sheltered her from the implacable four o’clock sun when she went to visit Dr Cayemite’s dispensary for her medicines. I always felt that people sought to protect her from the vulgarity of daily life. As if Aunt Renée represented that nobler part of themselves they could be proud of. As I watched her, I understood that pain in its constancy had profoundly shaped her personality. Her breathing, shallow as if she were gasping for air, gave her a particular winged way of moving — that was pain showing itself. Yet she stubbornly concealed her suffering. I remember that when the pain got too intense, she would go and lie down on the couch in the shadowy living room. She would stay there an hour or two without moving; the smell of camphor filled the air. You have to picture the rest of the house to understand the impact that sort of behavior had on a ten-year-old boy. Ours was a large house with six doors and four windows where people and animals alike moved in and out at all times. Aunt Renée made me see that we all had an inner life. She made dangerous incursions into Zweig’s universe and surfaced only to catch her breath. Sometimes she closed her eyes and hovered in her own darkness. How can a person retain such intensity when all around her people are chatting away? Once, one single time, when I asked her what she was thinking, she gazed at me, then said she couldn’t tell. Is it a secret? No, it’s intimate. That’s a word we don’t hear any more. Like the word melancholy, for that matter. The two go hand in hand. That art of living seems to have completely disappeared from our world, though it was only yesterday. Is that due to the fact that we can no longer tolerate the slightest pain?
Malaria
After the cemetery, we attended a small reception at a cousin’s house. The sea was right close by. In the center, under the mango trees, a dance floor where they had set up a long table covered in a white cloth. The family’s teenage girls served us. Now and again, someone took me aside discreetly to give me an account of everything that had happened in Petit-Goâve since I left in 1963. Naturally, I knew none of the names that were mentioned, but what touched me was the gravity with which these sagas were told. I didn’t know how to react, because I wasn’t sure what these people were getting at. We just want to talk to you, one of my cousins said. We don’t see you very often. At the end of the story, they shook my hand and held it, gazing into my eyes. I turned away in the face of such intensity. Calloused, peasant hands that left a smell of green leaves. City people smell like gasoline. The difference in smells separates us. We are all related in these little towns where cousins marry each other. I joined the rest of the group that was laughing as they told a story about Aunt Renée. After coffee and a last glass of rum, we went into the town, and I lingered by the harbor. The church, where I once waited on the steps for my teacher Mr Calonges, who gave me private lessons, is now a ruin. The library across the way, where I gave a talk last December, is just a memory. Not a stone standing. As I stood by the presbytery, I could see the water. On the way back, I met a young doctor working for the Red Cross. He told me in no uncertain terms that malaria had made a dramatic return to the region. Since I hadn’t taken my pills before I left on this trip, I went back to the car, and we got ready to leave. Back in 1974, I did research in Petit-Goâve and discovered that the town, surrounded by swamps, was infested with anopheles brimming over with malarial parasites. When we tried to drive off, we discovered that that car had an alternator problem. We left it in Petit-Goâve, in the care of one cousin, and set out in the car of another. That’s what funerals are: a tribe of cousins, men and women both. Total darkness on the highway. Luckily, we didn’t break down on the road. All that night, my sister was in a state of anxiety about the car. Since the earthquake, it’s important to have a car in good working order — for those who own one. She works on the other side of the city. We returned Saturday evening. On Sunday morning, a driver left early for Petit-Goâve with a second-hand alternator he’d bought. They installed it quickly so he could be back in Port-au-Prince before nightfall. My sister started smiling again. “That car is like my legs,” she sang. “Without it I couldn’t go to work. And if I don’t work, I’m dead. Dead, dead, dead.” There’s no one more alive than my sister when she’s happy.
A Body Quake
A friend invited me to a restaurant. Night was falling. We heard whispering nearby. A swarm of humans moving inside their tents. A few lamps lit. As we climbed toward Pétionville, we saw how much it had rained. We reached the place Saint-Pierre. I wondered how these people manage to sleep in the mud, night after night. Fortunately, the sun dries everything out during the day. Rainwater comes sweeping down the mountain. We went by a discotheque. Line-ups of luxury cars. People have come here to let go after all their trials. The restaurant is perched on a hill with a magnificent view of the city. I see people up there and wonder what it must be like, eating as you look out on a broken city. My friend took me to La Plantation where the fish is very good. Just before dessert, I went into the bathroom to rinse my face when my legs gave out. I grabbed onto the sink. I felt a good strong shock. My breath gone. Sweating already. I sat down on the toilet. My legs were weak. I went back to the table once I’d gotten hold of myself. The same atmosphere as before. Nothing indicated there’d been a tremor. I can’t be the only one who felt it. People are going to mention it. I just need to wait. The conversations were as lively as ever. Finally I understood that my body had shaken, not the earth.