BÉ HAS BEEN OVER AT THE HOUSE with me for a few days, as she wanted. She tries hard to be discreet, but from time to time she tiptoes hesitantly into the study like a beggar to offer me something—to freshen my water or get me some tea. Her presence is both a comfort and a concern. What happens if there is an attack, or if the house gets shot at?
Early November. Twilight, like a mantle of mourning, comes quickly. Then a dull silence as the night takes hold of everything. But today, dusk brings along some ruckus about the inauguration tomorrow. Toni runs over, despite the fear, to bring us the latest news. Has she lost her mind? She’s so reckless. She cut through the middle of the thicket—she’s afraid of being seen by the militia in case they’re still out on the road—and charges in, drenched in sweat. Her words tumble out, confused. “When will this noise end?” she asks me. I confess I’m losing my mind too. Throughout the afternoon, all we could hear was the chaotic howl of people and animals, a metallic thrum, the blare of horns, vaksin, trumpets, and drums. The sky went dark, as if it were filled with anger. Toni tells us that down in town, they’re going around with their rifles on their shoulders, knocking on doors to hand out crucifixes painted red and black. The makout have decreed that all Vodou priests, manbos, Catholic priests, and pastors must be at their service.
“What the devil have we fallen into?” I ask Bé. “Are we going to be able to hold out?”
“The situation is explosive, but it’s got to stop. We will hold out, you can be sure of that,” Bé says. “They’ll have to stop!”
I nod, timidly. I’d love for her to be right.
“Hope alone isn’t enough to dismantle the system, Bé.”
My voice is a faint whisper, and suddenly I start to cry. I sniffle, tears rolling down my cheeks. Too late; all the emotions of the past few months have put my nerves to the test. I am spent.
“Are you forgetting, my girl, that even the MacDonald stopped?” A runaway train is one thing; this madness won’t subside so easily.
Tante Bé hasn’t seen me cry since I was a child. She’s startled, and dejected: she knows I rarely cry. I feel guilty for blubbering around two old women. There’s no way they can defend themselves against this madness. But I can’t help it…“Do you realize that the three of us are alone in this big house, isolated here at such a dangerous time?”
Bé silences me with a gesture of her hand, calm but vigorous.
“We are not alone, Mika.”
I wait for her to continue but she gets up and goes to the window. She sits sideways, and for a long time she contemplates the darkening road, from which a constant, threatening growl arises. She looks back at Toni and me. “Their trucks are moving in, trucks full of killers. They’re going to invade the whole city at dawn. Yet we must not give in.”
Bé’s voice, firm and full of conviction, is a whip. I know that voice, her tone is so familiar, I’ve always known it. She will not tolerate a single thoughtless word. For a second I remember how she would stand up to my father or Clarisse. That voice; she never shouted or lost herself in needless antagonism. It’s a voice that comes from the womb, with such quiet strength and assurance that whoever hears it is struck dumb.
Bé stares at me. “I’m surprised at you, my girl, at your words. That’s not how I brought you and your sister up. Don’t you dare say we’re alone. We’re not half-women! We look upon death—death, which has been lurking for nearly a whole year, but the deaths we mourn must compel us to hold our heads higher each day. Trials and privation, humiliation, kidnappings…None of it will make me a victim! Do you hear me, Mika? I have to grab fear by the collar, and you should do the same. Otherwise death wins.”
Tante Bé has her own notion of existence: her tendency to refer to proverbs, to the past, but also to her own experience, all of it feeds her abiding conviction that human beings come into the world in order to fight. Her basic maxim is that you are only alive if you are ready to fight.
Bé reminds us yet again of the MacDonald train derailment. She doesn’t recall exactly when it happened, but her retelling is vivid: the train tore through the town like a wild animal.
“It had gone for miles and miles. You’d have thought it would go on forever. There wasn’t a building that could stop it, no pillars, bridges, or barriers. The MacDonald was loose. The damage was as bad as the most savage of hurricanes. But then there was the Pic Macaya. They collided like two rival beasts, and the mountain, without lifting a finger, sent the MacDonald flying into the Artibonite River, where its rusting remains still lie.”
In a superhuman effort to tame my trepidation, or to show Bé that I am worthy of her, I offer to walk Toni home. I don’t dare ask her to sleep over, that would just be too risky: every night, I count the hours, hoping for morning. Before she leaves, Toni reaches into her bra and pulls out a piece of paper folded umpteen times. She unfolds it carefully, smoothing it flat with her hands. She asks us to pray with her. Bé doesn’t mind, mainly out of friendship for Toni.
Bé hates priests, pastors, houngans, and all the rest of them as much as Clarisse does. They have too much power, they say. Toni reassures her: the most powerful vibration in the universe, she explains, is prayer. She tells us to close our eyes and gather our thoughts. Toni’s voice trembles with faith, frequently tested.
“Almighty God and all the saints in heaven, as we await the great day of deliverance, we ask that you grant us strength and support. Keep us, protect us; in you we place our trust. Saint Jude, patron of desperate causes, listen to us and help us out of this hardship. Saint Anthony, you who know where all things are that have gone astray, bring us peace. Saint Augustine, who has the power to shun the rats and all the vermin and parasites, get rid of the Duvalierist dreck that is ruining this country and take away the terror that paralyzes us. Saint Louis, you who know abscesses so well, see that all these rabid dogs die quickly. Saint Barbara, let us be rid of all this carrion as soon as possible. Saint Benedict, they are all evildoers and swear only by evil spells; let them poison and destroy each other.”
By the time Saint Fiacre comes around, whose help is implored to get rid of haemorrhoids, Bé reminds Toni that it will be dark soon. Maybe it would be best to continue the prayers on the way home.
Toni and I walk one behind the other because the path to her house is narrow and crowded with weeds. We tread slowly, weighed down by the horror that surrounds us on every side. It only takes about ten minutes, but it seems like forever. Toni quietly reels out an unbelievable litany that would have given Clarisse quite a laugh. I follow her, slowing my steps because she can’t go very fast.
When I get back, Bé and I fall asleep huddled together, like in the old days, when I was a child. I used to wake in the dark and go slip into her arms. Barefoot, creeping down the long corridor where the bedrooms were lined up, I would work out my plan: I’m going to tell her that I’ve felt nauseous for a few days. I would stop and think. Better to be careful, Bé has to believe me. There I was, moving my lips, working out the flaw in my plans, searching in my little head filled with ghosts and steam-snorting horses with metal hooves, wondering what perils might stir Tante Bé’s sympathy so she’d let me sleep in her bed. Now, with Bé here, I’ve left my hideaway against the big cabinet in the study. That night, I sleep a little bit longer. I dream of flying pigs, of women shucking their skins and soaring through the neighbourhood gobbling up newborns. When their escapade is over, the flying cannibal women are chased by the MacDonald train while militiamen with hippopotamus mouths jump from the moving train to gut them, their carnassial teeth as long as swords.
An insistent chime draws us from our dreams. Frozen with dread, we wonder if it might be the fire brigade, but Bé reminds me that there are no firefighters in the city. It’s true: we watch houses burn as if it were a show. When a house catches fire, well, it must be because its occupants deserve it, it can only be a punishment. If by chance there’s a hydrant nearby, the punishment is mitigated, because you can count on the solidarity of the whole neighbourhood forming a human chain, buckets full of water passed down to appease the demons who’ve decided to engulf the house and its inhabitants. I rush to the window. The ungodly racket must mean the festivities have started up again, Bé points out.
“The brigands are back at it,” Bé sighs. “But the second half has a much more elegant name: here comes the Te Deum now,” she announces, pursing her lips comically.
We decide to follow the broadcast of this masquerade on the radio with Toni, who flits over again today. She’s too nervous and especially too worried to stay alone, she says. According to the announcer, the butchers are meeting with all the churches of the country, with much fanfare. At the cathedral in Port-au-Prince, he purrs, a ceremony will be held to bring together dignitaries and distinguished embassy staff.
“Grim bacchanals,” Bé laments. “The country’s new masters are all there. What I wouldn’t give to see all those priests and Monsignors—servants of the great Satan, fierce defenders of the regime…That must be quite the shoving match, all of them in their ceremonial robes elbowing each other out of the way; all that bowing and scraping.”
“Quiet!” Toni shushes her. While Bé rants, the announcer is listing names: “The bishops Kebreau, Ligondé, Agénor, and other priests, like Father Georges and Father Papayer...”
“Their job is to recruit needy students—nothing too complex—and hand them over to the thugs,” Bé goes on.
Toni sighs, annoyed. “I should have stayed home,” she sulks.
I can’t hear anything the announcer is saying.
“But you don’t understand!” Bé bellows. “I can see them from here, these men’s hands are stained by so much blood, puffing their chests out. They have no shame. It makes me want to scream. And tomorrow we’ll have their faces on the front page of the newspaper, because they’re the first to force their way to the front of the canopy. They have all the space they want now that they’ve run the uncooperative clergy into exile or thrown them in jail.”
“The followers of the father of the nation,” the announcer continues, “have formed a human barricade all around him. We can see the architects—Barbot, Tassy, Franck Romain, Ti Boulé, Gros Féfé, Ti Bobo, Saint-Albin, Abel, Jérôme, Kanbronne, Daumec, Gérard, Louis, Cinéas—the police prefect, Day, and so many others.”
Bé angrily snaps the radio shut. “That macabre edifice won’t be coming down any time soon.”
Toni is clearly dismayed and terrified.
“So many people,” Bé wipes away a tear, “must be watching these monsters strut around and sobbing as I am for not having been able to read the signs. You can’t say it wasn’t obvious, that’s for sure.”
I must look baffled. Bé stands up, upset.
“I’m talking about those who felt the thrill of the election campaign. I can still hear all of them, complicit, on the airwaves of all the radio stations, those tribunes of doom campaigning for Duvalier. Today we know that they were gravediggers, their tongues scooping out graves for so many people who were marked by the regime’s vindictiveness. For a long time now we have been hostages of these monsters—they’re not humans—with their simple speeches and their lethal language. Remember, Toni? Do you remember all those voices on the radio: So-and-so, you have the floor! That gruesome circus, their calculated indemnity…They paved the way for the makout. They took the floor and left the rest of us without a voice. And now, today, they are tossing the souls of our people on the pyre and reaping the rewards for their work. They must be elated, those courtesans, trussed up in their abominable red and black.”
Bé comes out of the room, running almost, as if she’s fleeing from some grim spectacle. She shuts herself in the kitchen and I can hear her scrabbling around, rummaging in the cupboards. She must be cleaning, or looking for a bite, to try to calm down. She’s going to make herself sick, choking down food whole like that. Trying to eat her anger.
With Bé out of the room, I turn the radio back on and listen to the commentary. The announcer is obviously overwhelmed. From time to time, he stutters, stumbles over his words, lops off a syllable here and there. I hope to God his fumbling won’t get him headed straight for the firing squad. I shudder: and now, arriving at the cathedral, the announcer says, the First Lady—that yellow-skinned woman who’s always made up like a clown for public appearances.
The host’s voice is muffled by the loud applause that greets her.
“It’s probably that ghastly band of sabre-toothed females, led by Rosalie Bosquet and that madame Lalanne, who are clapping like that,” Toni whispers.
“The applause is sinister, like the beating of crows’ wings,” I tell Toni. “Her name is Simone Ovid.”
“I know,” Toni replies. “And she must have those four puffy-faced runts shuffling their feet by her side. I saw them at the Champ de Mars during an army parade. Three girls—that day, they were dressed up in these red tulle dresses—and one boy, about eight years old, walking ahead. He looks like some kind of amphibian. And believe it or not, Mika, he was carrying a huge machine gun!”
A power outage puts an end to the misery, and Toni goes home. Disoriented, Bé and I take refuge in bed and spend the whole morning there.
Later, Toni tells us about a scene that everyone was talking about, but which apparently wasn’t broadcast. The makout leader’s wife, nicknamed Madame Zonbi because of her vacant look, went crazy all of a sudden, claws out, demanding that they give her the canopy. Without a word, and bowing like a maniac, one of the bishops placed the umbralucum over her head. Little by little, two horns started to poke through, piercing the cloth. The president himself wore a cassock and his eternal bowler hat. He never takes it off, probably because it covers his own horns. With his zonbi consort on his arm, he opened the ceremony. As for his wife, she stuck two candles on the horns that had just sprouted.
What a peculiar day. Nature itself is rebelling, like on the eve of a storm. In late afternoon, gusts of wind sweep through the city. People run around without knowing where to go, hiding under shaky porches on the verge of disintegrating, scrambling for space under tattered awnings. Is this a nightmare? The waking dream of uneasy minds? Sadly, no. Doors hanging half off their hinges slam with an awful bang, and sheets of steel and bits of rusty metal dance through the air, threatening to decapitate passers-by, before landing on the branches and shrubs that have fallen into the middle of the road. Petrified, the population barricades itself in a silence deeper than the tomb.
I come into the kitchen; something smells delicious. In front of the stove, Bé is humming. She’s prepared a goat fricassee. “Let’s eat before the world ends,” she says bitterly.
“I’m sure if you call Toni and tell her what you’re cooking, she’ll come over,” I suggest.
“I was thinking of phoning her, but I doubt she’ll come back, even if the wind dies down. I know it won’t last, even strong as it seems. But I know Toni. She must be in bed, trembling, convinced that the hurricane has been ordered by Satan himself to subdue us.”
After a few hours, the storm abates. Only the rain continues to fall, slowly. The only sound is the heady patter of drizzle on the sodden ground—a whisper, a complaint. Those who are paying attention see the clouds rushing by, as if they were escaping toward a safer, more merciful sky. “The sky wants to wash the earth clean of all this horror,” Bé mumbles, “but even the heavens can’t do it.”
The day goes by, and the noises of life trying to resurface can be heard: muffled words, children sobbing, the shrieks of startled birds. Toni comes back, proving Bé wrong.
“I’m going to be rude,” she says, “and eat and run before it’s too late or the wind starts blowing again. They say on the radio that the rain caused a lot of damage. Some of the houses in Bois de Chêne are flooded. Clara heard that after the rain, the women around here were drawing blackish, tarry water.”
“Wouldn’t we like to know, to understand why and how things work—” Bé starts to say, but her words are lost in in Toni’s prattle.
I risk a glance outside. Behind the torn rags of the clouds, no one can see the gashes in the sky, the long slashes of the knives and the crimson trail.
Evening comes quickly. Down below, lights turn on and go off just as quickly. It’s time to still the crying of children, and to cower, tiny and mute, in the darkness of our homes. Already the streets belong to the hunters.