Heading South (12 page)

“Why is that?” Carl-Henri asks, almost timidly.

“Well! Every time he takes up a paintbrush he knows that he might be about to paint his own death scene, and yet his hand never trembles.”

The young man comes out with a large bowl balanced on his head. Behind him come the girls, in single file, with the large woman bringing up the rear. He sets the bowl down among us. It is filled with food—goat stew, peeled bananas, white rice, yams, breadfruit, carrots, beets, eggplant and cream sauce.

“No utensils!” Jacques Gabriel cries delightedly. “We eat with our fingers, our good old fingers . . .”

Brief silence.

“Won't it be too hot?” asks the journalist.

“It'll be fine!” says Gabriel, plunging his hand into the middle of the bowl.

That's the signal. We are all, it seems, famished.

I don't know if it's all these happenings, or the strange atmosphere (the starless night, the light breeze, the distant beating of a drum), the tender flesh of the goat (was it an animal or something else entirely?), or the subtle aroma of the yams, the taste for breadfruit that I definitiely thought I'd lost . . . Or maybe it's the combination of all of it that makes me think this is the best meal I have ever had in my life. I once saw on television (the usual scene) a family of lions devouring a young antelope. When they were finished there was nothing left but white bones, without a trace of flesh left on them.

We can see the bottom of the bowl before we know it. At the same moment, a song splits the air. I can see the young man's throat swelling and deflating, like a lizard's. A formless emotion grips my heart. I feel as though I'm in another world. Somewhere far from Pétionville and its mundane concerns. The young man is leaning against a post and singing about a woman from Artibonite whose husband (Solé or Soleil or something) is gravely ill. A choir of young voices accompanies the woman in her distress. The man hovers between life and death, between night and day. But the woman is brave, she fights to save her man. Then the young man goes on to sing several folk songs that tell about the misery of peasants' lives.

Suddenly there is a sacred song:
“Papa Legba ouvri baryé pou
mwen . . .”
I sense a new energy flowing from the choir. The girls' voices climb higher and higher, as though announcing the arrival of an eminent personage. In fact it's the Prophet, who has just appeared at the door (as the Prophet, or Legba) wearing ceremonial robes. His face is even graver than it was at our arrival. The voices reach their highest pitch and then descend slowly into silence.

“The painting is finished,” the Prophet says laconically, making a sign to the young man to bring it out.

The fat woman begins to dance, although there is no music. We hear only the heavy sound of her bare heels on the ground. Suddenly she breaks into a sacred chant. A warrior's chant, although I can't make out the words. Most of them seem to be of African origin. Her flesh ripples. She scowls menacingly. The Prophet follows her with his eyes, looking vaguely disturbed. A terrible god is knocking at the door. He cannot break into our circle. Suddenly the woman slumps down in a corner, exhausted. She looks like an unstrung marionette. The audience breathes. Ogou, the terrible god of fire, couldn't spoil the party. The young man comes out carrying the Prophet's painting. It is covered with a mauve cloth. One of the young girls comes over and removes the cloth, and the magnificent but terrifying painting is revealed to us. All in mauve. The Prophet's colour. The figures and their surroundings are all mauve. All of us are in the painting. The young man, the girls in their white robes, the fat woman in mauve, the little prostitute, Carl-Henri and me. There are three figures at the centre: the Prophet in the middle, Jacques Gabriel on his left and the journalist, wearing a white wedding gown, on his right. The girl who uncovered the painting goes over to the journalist and drapes the mauve cloth over her head. All the blood has drained out of the Parisian journalist's face.

“You are witnesses to the mystical marriage of the Prophet Pierre, living and domiciled in Croix-des-Bouquets,” says Jacques Gabriel in a serious and authoritative voice, “and of M.R., living and domiciled in Paris. This marriage is performed by the will of the gods, some of whom are here present.”

Hysterical howling from the young girls.

SOME TIME LATER.

“No one asked me what I thought!” says the journalist, still in a state of shock.

“Voodoo gods aren't democratic,” Jacques Gabriel replies, not missing a beat.

“Nevertheless, I find it scandalous.”

“But if you don't believe in voodoo, it's just an amusing spectacle.”

“Of course I don't believe in voodoo, whatever you . . .”

“Listen,” says Gabriel, cutting her off. “You are going to return to Paris and forget what happened tonight.”

“I want to go back to my hotel.”

And she goes and sits in the car.

“Was it just an amusing spectacle?” I ask Carl-Henri, already half-knowing what he'll say.

“It was real. More real than anything that takes place in a church. Wherever she goes, she'll have the gods with her. She belongs to us now.”

“Still,” I risk, “it's a bit scary.”

“On the contrary, Fanfan. Now nothing can touch her. No one can ever come up to her with the intention of hurting her. From now on she is protected. She's the wife of a very powerful member of the voodoo pantheon.”

“What?” I say, astonished. “You mean it wasn't the Prophet she married?”

“No.” This time it's Jacques Gabriel who answers. He is heading towards the car. “It wasn't the Prophet, it was Legba, the god who guards the border between the visible and invisible worlds.”

M.R. DIDN'T SAY
a word the whole way back. Neither did the little prostitute.

Magic Boys

THE OWNER OF
the tiny Hibiscus Hotel had worked all his life in New York, in Brooklyn. He'd held down two jobs in factories that were at least an hour and a half from each other; he'd also owned a small bakery on Church Avenue. There are many like him, people with a dream in their heads who, in order to realize it, work like dogs in the hell that is New York. Such men and women are so obstinate that it sometimes takes thirty or more years of banging their heads against the city (New York's heart is made of granite) to knock those dreams out of them. Simply put: to stop a Haitian from dreaming, you have to beat it out of him.

The man we're concerned with now is named Mauléon Mauléus. His late father, a former judge in Gressier, left him a piece of land near the beach. He had not spent a single day in the factories without thinking about that postage stamp of land, nurturing his dream of building a small hotel, no more than a dozen rooms, nestled in the land's luxurious vegetation. As time went on he added a few huts, separate from the hotel, for clients who wanted to feel closer to nature. He'd have to bring in some white sand from Montrouis, because even though the water at the hotel was crystal clear, the sand around there was black and grey and hardly conformed to the notion of cleanliness that he associated with paradise. Blue (the sea), white (the sand), green (the countryside), those were the colours that sang of life.

And now that he has built his hotel, he doesn't have a red cent with which to hire even the small but diligent staff he would need to buy the food (fresh fish, of course) and drink for the establishment. He has been caught in this impasse now for two months. He's beginning to see nature closing back in around his hotel. Of course, there have been many who, learning of the situation, have come up to Mauléon to propose some sort of partnership deal, but he has decided he will never join up with a Haitian. His father told him often enough that when you have a Haitian for a partner one of two things can happen: either you go bankrupt within one or two years, or the Haitian will somehow arrange to have you thrown into prison while he takes over your business. “That's the way it is, that's the way it has been, and that's the way it will always be,” the irascible old judge of Gressier had decreed.

Completely desperate, Mauléon has gone to see Old Sam, an American who buys up most of the small hotels in the region when they begin to experience difficulties. Sam is a red-blooded old mercenary who sold his services in many parts of the Caribbean (Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, the Bahamas) before settling in one of Port-au-Prince's dingier suburbs about a dozen years ago. Mauléon met him through a casino manager who owns a cottage in the area.

One day, Sam shows up at the hotel and spends the afternoon giving the place a minutely detailed inspection (the rooms, the grounds, the huts, the beach).

“The best thing you can do, Mauléon, is to get out while there's still time . . .”

“Why's that, Sam?”

“Look, I've owned hotels all over the Caribbean for twenty-five years, and I can tell you that a set-up like the one you've got here will do nothing but totally ruin you . . . I know you're a hard worker, but I don't see any possible solution . . .”

“What's not working?”

“Well, for one thing, it's the wrong location. The ocean is too rough in these parts . . . I know this business, Mauléon: you have one drowning and no one will ever come to this hotel again.”

“Anything else?”

“I've been noticing a kind of strange smell since I got here . . . Is there a sulfur spring around here somewhere?”

“Yeah,” says Mauléon, nearly inaudibly, “but I can fix that.”

“Tourism is a fragile business, Mauléon . . . It's not something that just anyone can get into . . . To put it bluntly, I don't think I can work with you on this . . .”

“Sam, if you agree to invest in the hotel, I'm ready to split the proceeds in equal parts: half for you, and half for me . . .”

Sam remains thoughtful for a long moment.

“Look, I'll buy the whole thing from you outright . . . I'm not in the habit of taking on partners, you see. I've always worked alone. If you're willing to sell, I'm willing to go along with it . . .”

“You just told me the place isn't worth anything, and now you say you want to buy it. Is there something going on here I'm not getting . . . ?”

Silence.

“Look, Mauléon, you've gone about as far as you can go with this place, but you don't have the capital it would take to take it further. So why not let me pick up the slack?”

“Why not come in as my partner?”

Sam smiles sadly.

“Business is business, Mauléon . . . Sell now. In three months it won't be worth half of what I can offer you for it today . . .”

Mauléon's face is furious.

“This discussion is over . . . Whatever happens, I'll never sell the judge's land.”

MAULéON IS SITTING
at the side of the road, across from the hotel, thinking things over. Of course he can always borrow more money, but then he'd have to be certain that the hotel would make a profit, and in the first year. On the other hand, there's total bankruptcy, possibly even prison. Already there are two other hotels in the vicinity that are, according to Sam, in serious trouble. But Sam, of course, is trying to panic Mauléon into selling. Maybe that's the only solution. Sell everything. But what then? Return to that hellhole, New York? No, that he will never do. But what, then? He doesn't want to move north, and he has no chance if he stays here. It's like that nightmare that has been haunting him ever since he came back to Haiti: he scrambles up a tree to escape from a tiger only to find a python sleeping in the top branches. The only thing he is sure about is that he can't hold out much longer under the present circumstances. And Sam, that old shark, will attack at the first sign of weakness and swallow him whole.

The next day Mauléon again takes up his seat on the side of the road and continues his reflections. He knows full well that the solution will have to come from his head, since he has nothing whatsoever in his pockets. Strange that he could come safe and sound from the worst jungle in the world— the Bronx, where he spent the last two years of his New York exile—only to die of boredom on the shores of Gressier. In the Bronx, one moment of inattention could earn you a bullet in the back of the head; here it's boredom that'll skin a man alive. If you have nothing to do here, you'd better invent something quick, or else long siestas, alcohol or malaria will bring you down. Mauléon is still sitting there when he notices a curious exchange taking place a hundred metres down the road: sitting on the porch of another hotel is a woman who appears to be in her fifties, sipping a coloured drink, when a young man of sixteen or seventeen crosses the sun-drenched road and approaches her table. They talk for several minutes, then the barman comes out and tells the youth to leave the porch. The young man rises politely and makes to leave, but the woman, a guest of the hotel (which is known as a gathering place for people from Quebec) says something to the barman and the young man sits back down. However, they don't stay for long. The woman empties her glass, picks up her handbag, and the two of them head off towards the beach.

Mauléon watches them for a moment as they enter the water. The woman is tall and elegant. The young man is neither particularly handsome nor well muscled. A relaxed couple. What interests Mauléon is that they didn't head straight off to one of the rooms, but went instead to the sea. The sea that knows no age. In the presence of that turquoise eternity, fifty years is not that far from seventeen. Playing in the water makes you young once more. As young as the world. Mauléon waits for a while before going over to speak to the barman. He finds the man standing on a table, changing a light bulb. He, too, is in his fifties, self-assured and a bit taken with himself.

“That couple who just left?”

Yes, of course he knows them.