In Darkness (32 page)

But this is not sad.

This is beautiful.

The beauty of this is that when you die there will always be someone waiting, there will always be those you have lost, standing there, the curve of their back and the stance of their feet so familiar. There will always be someone there, saying:

— We have waited so long. It is so good to see you. Come here.

Come here.

Now

I have to tell you the rest quickly now, cos it’s necessary that I die soon. I don’t want to, but the time has come, I sense it. I was trying to reach the light, so I was hauling on a block – at least, I think it was a block – and something came free. There was a great creaking noise and then it fell down on me, crushing me. I think my leg’s broken. It doesn’t matter, really. I’ll starve or die of thirst soon anyway.

Manman was right. I was born in darkness, and I will die in darkness. I can’t even see the crack of light anymore, cos it was blocked by the thing that fell down.

Now you know why I want to throw my story behind me, like rubble. Now you know why I don’t want it anymore. I’m a killer and I shot so many times I made a goal in the end, and I got what was coming to me. I deserve all this, I realize that. Still, the feeling I had when I knew that Biggie was one of the men who killed Papa, when I realized it was Route 9 all along, that was like something tearing inside me, like I was giving birth to something, but the only thing that can come out of me is misery and darkness.

Tintin came to visit me in the hospital, I told you that. I didn’t explain anything. I just listened to him talk his stupid hip-hop talk and then I pretended to be asleep, so he would leave. He brought me a CD walkman and some CDs. One of them was Biggie rapping about air strikes and Tec-9s, and one was of Biggie Smalls saying he was ready to die, and I thought, yeah, I know the feeling. In the end, I can’t bring myself to hate Biggie, not exactly – he’s a chimère, what did I expect? – but I don’t want to listen to his music, either, so when Tintin was gone I shoved the CDs away from me.

Tintin will end up leading Route 9, I bet. Biggie’s dead, and so is Mickey. Tintin will say that he was a hero that night in Boston; he’ll talk it up so he didn’t run away. I know this. I don’t care, though. Let him have his precious Route 9. It’ll still end in a hail of bullets, like the rap songs say.

Stéphanie came to visit me, too. She sat down on the edge of my bed, though I didn’t want her to. She had been crying; I could see the redness around her eyes.

— They don’t want to give Biggie a funeral, she said. They think it would become a pretext for violence in the Site. After what they did, with their guns!

She started to cry. I felt like I should put an arm around her or something, but I didn’t. She might have wanted to help the Site at the beginning, but she got seduced by Biggie and his gangster lifestyle, and all that went out the window. She may have been UN, but she wasn’t much more than a girl, twenty-five at the oldest. Some people like that, they’re drawn to the power of guns, even if they say they only want to save people.

— Why did they do that? I asked her. MINUSTAH. Why did they kill him and the others?

— They think they’re helping, she said. They think they’re helping to keep the Site free of crime.

— If they want to do that, they should pay for some schools, create jobs. Then people wouldn’t want drugs.

Shit, I thought. I sound like Biggie.

— I agree, said Stéphanie. I tell them that, but they don’t listen to me. Sometimes when you have a gun in your hand it starts to do your thinking for you.

I knew what she meant. Sometimes when I was holding a gun it was like the gun wanted to kill people, not me. Never me.

That was a lie I just told you. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’d lie. You know perfectly well that I’ve wanted to kill people in my time, and that I’ve done it, too.

Stéphanie didn’t stay for long. We didn’t have a lot to talk about. I asked her what she’d do with her baby. I said I knew from Biggie that she was ansent, and I could see it, too, from the way she held her hand on her belly, even if it wasn’t showing yet.

— I’m going back to France, she said. To Lille. I don’t want my baby growing up here.

I told her that was a good idea. I told her I wouldn’t want my baby to grow up here, either, if I had one. She smiled at that. Soon after, she left. She said she’d visit again.

She didn’t.

I hope she got out alive. I hope the earthquake didn’t bury her and Biggie’s baby. Since I’m already confessing, though, I might as well tell you that part of me wouldn’t mind if his baby was never born. I understand Biggie and I don’t hate him, but that doesn’t mean I forgive him.

Finally, my manman came to visit.

She sat down in the plastic chair beside my bed and she cried. Then she asked me what had happened. I told her everything I’ve told you – I told her the whole story. The only part I left out was that it was Dread who ordered Papa’s death, cos I didn’t think she could stand to know that. At the end she wasn’t crying, but I think that was only cos she had no tears left to cry. Then she stood up from her chair and she leaned over me.

— I did this, she said. I blamed you when you joined Biggie and his gang, but I was the one who did it.

— No, you didn’t, Manman, I said. It was me. I should have listened to you.

She sobbed.

— No, it was listening to me that got you into this mess, she said. You should never have listened to me.

— Why, Manman?

She sat back down and she looked away from me, at the wall. Then there was, like, a click in my mind, and I could see why in the grief of her eyes. I could see what she was about to tell me and I wished I could stop time, like it stopped when I was down by the sea, looking at Marguerite, or the girl who seemed to be Marguerite. But time just kept on going; I could hear it being cut into pieces by the clock on the wall. I couldn’t make it stop.

Manman rubbed at her eyes and she looked over to the corner of the room. This fly was there, buzzing and buzzing against the window, not realizing it was glass it was trying to get through and that it was trapped.

I felt like that fly.

No. I wished I could
be
that fly; at least it would die soon, and its imprisonment would be over. I remember the sun was bright against the window, making it look like a painting of a blaze, an opening into hell.

— Marguerite – began Manman.

— No, I said. No.

I didn’t want her to tell me. I knew what she was going to say and I didn’t want to hear it. I tried to put my hands on my ears, but Manman wouldn’t stop and she pulled them away.

— They killed her that night, my manman said. Marguerite. I lied to you about it. When I went out into the street after they’d all gone . . . I didn’t see her at first, it was so dark. When I saw . . . something broke inside my mind. I told you she was alive cos I wanted you to have hope. It was something I didn’t have anymore, but I wanted you to have it.

I had known it already, but when Manman said it, something broke inside me and I stopped being me, stopped being a person.

I tried to breathe, but it seemed like all the air in the room had gone, and I was in a void. Good, I thought. At least then I’ll die.

But I didn’t die.

My heart kept up an offbeat rhythm in my chest, kept making its stupid music. At last, with a raw sound, air flooded back into my lungs.

— But . . . the girl . . . she didn’t shoot me, down by the sea.

— Someone else, said Manman. Someone who didn’t want to kill you. There are people like that, you know – even in the Site.

I stared at her. She had broken my heart, and part of me wanted to break hers. Part of me wanted to tell her:

— Manman, did you know that it was Dread who killed Papa? Did you know that when you moved to Solèy 19, you moved into the house of your husband’s killer and named it your own?

But I didn’t tell her. I didn’t really want to hurt her, even now. Let her think that Papa died cos we lived in no man’s land, not cos Aristide and his cronies found him a nuisance. Let her go on believing the world was a place where random bad things happened, not a place where people – boys – did terrible things just cos they could.

Manman reached into her pocket, and before she even took out her hand I knew what would be in it. I knew what she was trying to give me, and I knew that if I took it, it would be like I was absolving her, so when she tried to hand me Marguerite’s half of the necklace, I closed my fist against it, refused to take it, and crossed my arms over my chest.

— You should take it, said Manman. You could put the pieces of the heart back together.

— No, I can’t, I said. She’s dead. You took the necklace – you keep it.

— I’m sorry, said Manman. I’m so sorry.

I closed my eyes.

— Leave, please, I said.

Sometime after that, everything fell down.

Then

When Toussaint first arrived, his cell had a window and through it he could see the River Doubs and the Besançon road. He could see mountains with snow on them, something he had never seen in Haiti. It was a sight that filled his heart with fear – that, and the cliffs and precipices of this god forsaken land in the alpine region of France.

Initially, despite being imprisoned, Toussaint was treated with respect. He was permitted paper and a pen; he was encouraged to write, in fact. He should have been suspicious about that, but he retained the foolish conviction that he would be allowed a trial. He conversed with the director of the prison, a civilized man, and received from him books and plays to read, as well as news of the outside world. Once, this man, Bresse, brought him a certain play by Alphonse de Lamartine that had been published and performed in Paris. It dramatized Toussaint’s life, telling the story of his struggle in rhyming monologue without regard for truth or even likelihood.

He read the play, shivering at his high window, with amusement and amazement. Hardly a word was true. In it, he was a Greek god, fierce in countenance and in battle, an avatar of furious vengeance, determined to wreak murder on the slavers. He was uneducated and single of purpose. There was no mention of his supervision of agriculture, his efforts to ensure his people were always fed, or of his sudden acquisition of the ability to read and write and make maps. One of the play’s more outlandish fictions was that he had buried a fortune in the mountains of the interior, a cache of gold, silver, and jewelry taken from the plantation owners, when Toussaint had always taken pains to restore the slavers’ possessions to them. He considered writing to the playwright to inform him of his mistakes, but he did not.

Instead, he wrote numerous letters to Bonaparte, pleading his case, arguing that all he had done he had done for Haiti, that his constitution had been intended to secure her safety, that he and the country remained faithful servants of France, but not slaves.

These letters went unanswered.

After some two months’ imprisonment, he received a visit from Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp, a man named Cafarelli. When the envoy was shown in, hope blossomed in Toussaint’s chest like a rare flower.

— Toussaint l’Ouverture, said the man, I come from Bonaparte with an offer.

Toussaint smiled, something he had not done in a long time. Perhaps he would see his son again, after all.

— Tell me, he said.

— The emperor wishes me to convey to you that, should you –

— The emperor? said Toussaint in disbelief.

Cafarelli colored slightly. He was small of stature, with thin whiskers in the place of a mustache. He seemed a little like a rat that had grown enormous on scraps of prison food, put on a doublet and hose, and come to pay a visit to the prison’s most famous inmate.

— The . . . ah . . . consul is so styled now, Monsieur l’Ouverture.

Toussaint laughed. The blacks had freed themselves after French philosophers argued that all men had a right to liberty, after the French rose up against their king. Now the French had replaced a king with an emperor.

— Apologies, he said, stifling his laughter. I have interrupted your offer.

— Yes. The emperor wishes me to convey –

— You’ve done that part.

— Yes. If you reveal to me the location of your buried treasure in Haiti, he will restore to you your freedom and pardon your crimes.

— My crimes?

— You rebelled against France.

— No, said Toussaint. I rebelled against slavery. Never against France.

The aide-de-camp shrugged.

— Do you deny that you declared a constitution without permission? That you named yourself Governor-General without ratification from the con— the emperor?

— No, but it was merely a constitution, and my term was merely three years, and the terms expressly forbade me from standing again. You should have seen what the Haitians wanted to give me. They’d have made me a king had I not resisted. I gave them freedom, I gave them peace, and they would have made me a dictator in return. Your emperor should thank me for my forbearance and strength of character in my insistence on democracy and my desire to maintain links of trade and amity with France. I even made Haiti a dependency! I could have severed all ties had I wished.