Red, black, gold!
Flames, abyss, ambition!
Captivating colors of damnation…
By the glory of our forebears, I’m going to do it, kick the door open and walk up to them. Dessalines! Pétion! Toussaint! Christophe! [38] I call on all our indomitable heroes for help. On God Himself! Yes, God! Why not! I unhook the crucifix, piously, I who had forgotten all about it for so long, since the day poetry replaced everything for me, since the day I tried, shut away in my Haitian Parnassus, to create my own god, a truly Haitian god, half-white, half-black, a blend of Christ and Legba [39] in whom I took refuge, wings dangling, eyes closed to better carve my way through an entanglement of traps, reversals, life’s one hundred thousand humiliations; to hack a path to freedom with an imaginary machete through the thicket of campeachy mahogany, and oak, and climb the unreachable hill of dreams. I must no longer dream. I must face danger. With what weapons? I put the crucifix on the floor, pointing its face at the front door. I, who haven’t believed in miracles in so long, here I am, today, awaiting one from God. My poem in the French manner has suddenly left me. Sad and nostalgic Creole stanzas have replaced it, and two astonishingly violent verses spring out of my mouth. Trembling, I yell them out, lying on the ground, hands lifting the crucifix. Then I put it back down, piously kissing its feet.
My black mother, before you died you told me:
“Serve the family loas and pray God you’ll never be in anyone’s debt.”
But I despised the loas and avoided the thought of God. I was hungry too often, and a man praying on an empty stomach is spitting in his own face.
I feel weaker before the devils who have invaded our little town, more inclined to seek divine protection. You can stifle hunger! but the devils…
I pull the trunk toward me and open it. Beneath the dusty layer of books and papers, I find a pile of sacred objects for a voodoo shrine: marassas dishes, [40] candles dressed in the seven colors of the rainbow, little pitchers stuffed with dried leaves meant for protection, the miraculous amulets I wore on a red string around my neck as a child. My black mother, who didn’t know how to read and who sold trinkets at the market, slaved away to make a scholar of her son. I left Creole and voodoo behind by going to school, and she, who was never able to say a French word to me, would beam when she heard me recite lessons she did not understand.
What are the good French sisters at the Sainte-Marie-de-Dieu school doing right now? Or the good French brothers at Saint-Valentin High School? They are on their knees, interceding with God on behalf of the cursed town, beseeching Him to vanquish the devils, to slay and crush them. And what if evil were to triumph over good yet again? Might as well wheedle the loas and have them on my side as well.
I take out the things from the trunk with ceremonial respect and pour water on the ground, offering drink to the gods of Guinea; then, I fill the marassas dishes with cane syrup and surround them with amulets and pitchers. I have nothing else to offer them, neither liquor nor candy, and in my generosity risk croaking from hunger while I wait for the devils to depart. Having pleased the loas, I lie sated on the floor, hands behind my neck. A thin trickle of light comes through a hole in the boards and I jump up and paste my eye to it. I would have preferred the whistling of bullets to this all-pervading silent torpor. From this observation post I have a wonderful view of Cécile’s tall house, the white railing of her balcony, her potted carnations, her lace curtains. I seek in vain for signs of life there. Where is she? What is she doing? What has happened to her parents? Their devious maid, Marcia, a pretty black girl, used to smile at me and shout:
“Lost your mind, heh! crazy mulatto, lost your mind…”
But the only woman I ever had eyes for was her mistress. And she knew it. What did I care about the insults of a poor, ignorant black girl mad with scorn to the point of throwing stones at me and making the kids of the Grand-rue chase after me!
I was biting my nails, bemoaning the fact I had not sought the object of my desire sooner, when I heard a man cry out. He was doubled over and running away as fast as possible, straight in the direction of my house. I saw Cécile’s window open slightly. In the time I lost looking for her silhouette the man fell, riddled with bullets. Two tiny devils, their weapons slapping their backsides like tails, leaned over the body and smashed its face in with their red boots.
Cécile’s window was closed again. I plugged up the wall with a piece of soap and took off my sweat-soaked shirt. On the ground, the crucifix gleamed in the half light. I stretched out on the floor again. I am on the floor with all of them now. On the floor with Jesus. On the floor with the loas, for it is said that the spirit of the gods of Africa descends upon the offerings for nourishment. On the floor, like a pariah. I burned my last mat to get rid of the bedbugs busy eating me alive at night. Before being reduced to this, I knocked on every door: Mme Fanfreluche’s door, and M. Potentat’s, both with businesses on the Grand-rue, both passing for rich people around here. I knocked on every door, repeating myself like a parrot in a voice growing weaker and weaker from rising hunger:
“Please give me some work.”
They would whisper something to each other that I could not hear and would put a twenty-centime coin in my hand for an errand I had agreed to run. But what can a man do with a Haitian coin of twenty centimes?
I am thirsty! My water pitcher is half-empty I will need to ration myself. Ah, if only I had enough courage to go cross the yard to get some coal and the little stove and make a bit of coffee! Thank God for the day my mother had the good idea to buy me this chamber pot.
Here I am alone as I have never been. Alone with my memories, my regrets, my remorse. Why remorse? Is it always there? After my mother’s death, I reproached myself for cutting short my mourning, though I had shut myself in for a month, even refusing to see the good Dr. Chanel. The doctor was the only one, apart from Father Angelo and Brother Justinien, who made sure I did not die of hunger. But, like the Haitian saying goes, the good ones don’t last. And it is true that death always picks off the best. Dr. Chanel is dead. So is Brother Justinien. As for Father Angelo, just as good but now old, he can barely walk and, cassock or no, he does seem to live by begging just like me. For there is more than one way to beg.
[38] Dessalines! Pétion! Toussaint! Christophe!: heroes of Haiti independence. Jean-Jacques Dessalines (c. 1758-1806) was one of the leaders of the 1791 slave revolt; he became emperor of Haiti in 1804, but was assassinated in a coup by Pétion and Christophe. Alexandre Sabès Pétion (1770-1818) was the mulatto son of a wealthy French colonist, who served as president of an independent republic in southern Haiti from 1807 to 1818. Toussaint Louverture (c. 1743-1803) was a former slave who led the 1791 rebellion and became the effective ruler of Haiti by 1797; when Napoleon Bonaparte sent an expedition to reconquer Haiti, Toussaint was arrested, and he died in a French prison. Henri Christophe (1767-1820) was a former slave and one of Toussaint’s lieutenants; after the assassination of Dessalines he became president of northern Haiti in 1807 and king in 1811 (trans.).