“I can’t promise you that. No one book takes the place of another.”
I gave him my point of view. In any case, that kind of novel isn’t up my alley. It would take a kind of power I don’t possess. Besides, nature has already written it. A grandiose novel in the classical style that features a time (4:53 in the afternoon), a place (Haiti), and more than 2 million characters. You’d have to be Tolstoy to take up a challenge like that. I watched his determined expression. Homer believed the gods send us misfortune so we might make poetry of it. Tolstoy, Homer: we picture ourselves like them before we start writing. But what if this young man has what it takes? Just as I was leaving, my mother slipped an envelope into my pocket.
The Parish
We had to make a long detour to reach the Delmas highway. I opened the envelope and found a picture of the Virgin inside. On the back, in pencil, in a trembling hand, it was written that this image had been blessed by the priest of Altagrâce, the church my mother has attended since the family moved to Delmas. It’s more difficult to adapt to a new church than a new neighborhood. When we were in Carrefour-Feuilles, she went to Saint-Gérard. She knew the church well, since it was the same one she attended when we lived in Lafleur-Duchêne, though we were a lot closer to Saint-Alexandre. She went to mass at Saint-Gérard for more than thirty years, which helped her get to know her neighbors. People meet at the market or at church. At first, she had all sorts of complaints about Altagrâce — even the priest’s accent exasperated her. She didn’t like the poor people there; they were too aggressive compared to the Saint-Gérard parishioners. But now she couldn’t picture herself anywhere else. You should have heard her heart-felt hallelujah when I told her Altagrâce had been spared. I have no news about Saint-Gérard, but people say that Carrefour-Feuilles is in ruins.
Trouillot’s House
We get to Lyonel Trouillot’s neighborhood. A group of people surround the car. They’re shouting and waving their arms. Finally I understand that someone is hurt and needs to be taken to the hospital immediately. Trouillot solves the problem by finding another car. The noise fades. We move slowly toward the house, since people keep hanging on to the car doors to give us news of the neighborhood. We sit in the small yard of a modest house. Plants growing everywhere. I breathe easier. A short time later, the oldest of the Trouillot brothers makes an appearance in a chair (he has trouble walking). He is set down next to us so he can be part of the conversation. Smiling as always, because nothing can get him down. Michel-Rolf Trouillot is the author of the first history of Haiti written in Creole: Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti. I met him in Montreal when he was working on the book. He was teaching in New York at the time. He couldn’t believe that there were no works of history in Creole, the language the slaves used to express themselves, the very ones who struggled to turn the colony into a country. For him, that was the whole point. He didn’t see Creole as the language of the heart, whereas French is supposed to be the language of the mind. Everyone knows Senghor’s formulation: “Emotion is black, and reason, Hellenic.” Trouillot’s view of Haitian history is Marxist. I remember those debates that dominated the 1980s. I can still see him leap to his feet to clarify a point of history and advance his Marxist vision of events. He wasn’t always this old sage who is sitting to my left, a peaceful smile on his lips. A shame that his health problems have kept him from continuing his research with the same intensity. We discuss what has happened, while all around us, people are running every which way as if we were in a war zone. Our calm attitude, which is only superficial, is designed to show others who are watching us from a distance that the situation is in hand. As they talk about this and that, the Trouillot brothers keep an eye on what’s happening. There’s a car that can take injured people to the hospital, but no driver. The yard seems to be the headquarters for neighborhood operations. Coffee shows up at the same time as the driver who heads for the hospital after downing a cup that will keep him from dropping from starvation on the way there. The coffee also helps us keep hysteria under control and makes our actions more efficient. The district is heavily damaged, but still, laughter can be heard. As we leave, we go past the Université Caraïbes that one of the Trouillot sisters is keeping alive single-handedly. It is nothing but rubble now. Dozens of casualties, they say.
The Hôtel Montana
Police are blocking the road to make way for an enormous crane that is trying to reach the Hôtel Montana perched on the top of a steep slope. A man running with sweat and covered in dust comes up to the passenger side of the car. I scarcely recognize the director of the Institut français who impressed me with his passion for turning young people into readers. Now he is part of the rescue team working on the hotel up ahead. I stayed there at the beginning of December. I can scarcely imagine the disaster. All this effort to save the Montana, while right next to it people are pleading for help. Is it to bury the dead or save lives? I have no idea. A man standing next to the car remarks, without too much bitterness, that there’s more here than the Montana. But it’s the place where big contracts are negotiated and important political decisions made. The favorite hotel of the international stars who have gotten interested in human misery. Humanitarian organizations send their people to stay there. And since most journalists (especially the ones from TV) have made the place their headquarters for years, you can imagine the enormous coverage the Montana is enjoying. It’s true, there are a lot of dead (and a few survivors) in the ruins of the hotel that collapsed in the first few seconds. The crane that was blocking traffic has finally started climbing toward the top of the slope, and we’re waved through.
How Georges Died
There are cars in the supermarket parking lot. A dozen or so. We pull into a space. Inside, complete chaos. In the liquor section, half the bottles are on the floor. We walk on broken glass through a pond of red wine. The shelves are nearly empty. Saint-Éloi manages to get his hands on a few cans of sardines. We pick up a dozen bottles of water. People are chatting in line. No electricity: the clerk is concentrating on his little pad of paper as he tallies up the bills. Behind me, an overwrought photographer is announcing the death of Georges and Mireille Anglade. I saw them last night at the hotel where they were attending a private reception. Always that mischievous look in Georges’ eye. Such warmth in the way he opens his arms to welcome you. Mireille waits patiently for Georges to finish crushing you against his chest by way of embrace. She is more delicate, with more nuances of feeling, but just as warm. A riddle of a smile. As always, Anglade was laughing, and every inch of flesh on his body danced. These last years, he had put all his energy into promoting the lodyans, the narrative form nearest, he maintained, to our way of seeing the world. He believed that Haitians are born storytellers who nowadays express themselves through writing. Recently he reread a good amount of our fiction (“from Independence to the present,” in his bulimic fashion) and discovered that our best writers are nocturnal storytellers. Our writing has its wellspring in that orality — that “oralature,” as he liked to call it. Georges was exaggerating, of course, but with such a good heart. The man had a kind of energy that could sweep you along like a wave. He loved endless discussions at the dinner table with good friends. A geographer who was also a politician, his true passion was literature. An incorrigible dreamer — that’s what he was. I can’t imagine him without Mireille. They died together.