“You haven’t seen them?” Jacques asks me.
“Who?”
“The devils.”
“No. Lie down and go to sleep.”
“I need to be alone…”
At the age of twelve I became very sick. And my black mother Angélie, who believed as much in the loas as she did in God, as much in the houngan as in the doctor, got all mixed up in her panic and called the priest, the doctor and the houngan at the same time. Dr. Chanel was such a crafty old peasant that he energetically shook Gromalin’s hand, saying to him:
“We’ll save him, my colleague.”
But Father Angelo absolutely refused to shake the hand of the voodoo priest.
“Angélie, my daughter,” he reproached my mother, “why have you called me to your house to see a houngan?”
But she was weeping at my bedside.
“Ah, my father,” she wailed, “you come from a white country where people are good to each other. Here, in Haiti, the devils are everywhere. They take the shape of honest people. They greet you and say, ‘So long, my friend, good health to you and yours, sister’; they look at you with innocent eyes and settle the score with you in an underhanded way. As for me, I am sure my little René doesn’t have a natural illness, an illness that good Dr. Chanel can cure. Only the houngan can fight the spirits of the dead that some of my neighbors have set upon my child.”
“Angélie! Angélie!” Father Angelo protested. “Voodoo is making you lose your head! You have nothing but good neighbors! Good people who have known you since childhood and who have never hurt a fly. Don’t you know it is wrong to be on terms with the devil?”
“Evil exists, my father, evil exists. I am afraid of them, I am afraid of them all, even of my cousin Madame Macius.”
“Justina!” the priest cried out. “But you are crazy, my poor Angélie. Never accuse your fellow man if you don’t want God to judge you harshly, and follow Dr. Chanel’s advice if you want to save your child.”
But my poor black mother, who could neither read nor write and who piously served her loas, also followed the advice of Gromalin. She bought the medicine prescribed by the doctor and, secretly, received a simple from the houngan, which she put under my pillow and for which he asked a lot more than the disciple of Ascelpius who had actually saved my life. For my mother, my recovery was a miracle and she dedicated me to the Holy Virgin Mary whose colors I then wore exclusively. When did I stop wearing these colors?
Memories come and go in my exploding head. My dear black mama!
“No more red beans and potatoes for him,” cried Dr. Chanel, pinching her ear. “He’s growing. He needs meat and vegetables.”
“Look at me, Doctor,” she laughed. “Look at what beans and potatoes did for me.”
“That’s right,” Dr. Chanel said, “and you should lose some weight! You look just like a fat potato covered in black beans.”
“Lose weight!” my mother cried out. “You want people to pity me and laugh! Leave my fat alone. No such thing as a skinny black woman that’s beautiful.”
Her fat killed her. “It’s her heart!” Dr. Chanel diagnosed when he rushed to her bedside. I was twenty and was ashamed of my tears.
Oh dear black Mama! The weight of your head dead in my hands! Your stiff heavy body that Simon, André, and Jacques, who was only fifteen, helped me lift into the coffin. They all loved you, my good black mother! We were never hungry as long as you lived. When André and Jacques’ mother coughed up blood and died, you said to me:
“Have them come over from time to time and I’ll put a full pot of cornmeal and beans on the stove.”
Your death made four orphans in place of one.
I sold your trinket tray for peanuts to cousin Justina who now looks down her nose at me under the pretext that I am nothing but a “tafiateur” an alcoholic and a disgrace to your name…
I lean over Jacques and then André. Their eyes are wide open. They aren’t going back to sleep. I put the bottles in a safe place in a corner of the room and cover them with a rag.
Jacques suddenly sits up. He gathers up his poems, looks for a blank sheet of paper, and starts writing again.
“It’s dark,” I say to him, “you won’t be able to write.”
“I write with my hand and my heart, not with my eyes,” he replies. “I’ve written twenty poems since I’ve been here.”
“You should sleep a bit.”
“I’m hungry! Give me a little clairin”
“There’s a full bottle in the trunk. Take it.”
“Where is the other one?” André asks me.
“Is it empty?”
“You drank the rest?”
“Yes.”
“Well!…”
“What’s in that trunk?” Jacques asks.
“His mother’s shrine,” André answers.
“There’s syrup in the dishes!” Jacques cries out.
“It’s an offering to the loas. Don’t touch it.”
“I’m so hungry!”
“Don’t touch it,” André says again.
Jacques takes a bottle of clairin, opens it and gives it to me.
“Help yourself, René.”
I drink and they help themselves in turn.
“It’s not that good, clairin, when you have nothing else in your stomach,” Jacques notes.
He sits down and writes. In the dark, his young bony face appears a shade of ash gray. We’re looking good, the three of us. Filthy, sweaty, stinking. What could the time be? Is Jacques going to spend the night writing? He’s collapsing from fatigue now, pencil clenched in his hand. André looks more and more dazed. Clairin always turned him into an idiot. He’s sitting there, arms dangling, looking at me. Why he is staring so hard at me?
“René,” he says with a pasty mouth, “we used to be happy before.”
“Before what?”
“Before they came here. We were happy but we didn’t know it.”
“It’s always like that.”
“What’s always like that?”
“You don’t realize you’re happy until you aren’t happy anymore.”
“Yes. And the unhappiness of the present makes you miss the past no matter how miserable it was. What I really miss is childhood. A child always lives in complete ignorance of misfortune. He feels protected by God, by nature, by all those who surround him. He trusts…”
“Yes. Trust! Faith! You lose them when you grow up.”
“I still have them.”
“No. Deep down, you don’t. And that’s why you’re afraid. These dishes full of syrup that could save our lives, and you don’t dare touch them because you’re afraid. Jacques is getting weak. Let’s give him a little syrup.”
“I can’t, I would never dare.”
“You’d rather see us croak of hunger. How many days have we eaten nothing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Light the stove. I’m going to make some coffee and we’ll use some of the syrup to sweeten it.”
“No. I won’t touch it.”
Our discussion has woken up Jacques. He complains quietly and calls out to me in a weak voice.
“René!”
“What do you want?”
“You’ve seen them?”
“Who?”
“The devils?”
“Let’s not talk about them anymore. Sleep.”
“I’m afraid!”
“Close your eyes. You’ll fall asleep again.”
“I hear steps!”
He gets up in a single bound and runs to the wall where he flattens his arms in a cross like a great butterfly pinned by the wings.
“They’re coming!” he tells us.
He lets out a hideous scream and turns to us:
“Their faces! Their faces! René! Ah! My God…”
“Calm him down,” I say to André. “He doesn’t see anything. He’s delirious from hunger. Calm him, for God’s sake! I have to do everything around here. Oh bugger me, try a little harder! Keep him next to you. Come on! A little courage. Help me a little, just a little bit. Here, take this spoon and give him a little syrup.”