* * *
Even the lowliest peasant in the most remote village of the Haitian hills will know the name Andrés Richard, or they will call him by his nickname, La Gueule d’Haïti — the snout of Haiti. What the nickname meant was this: What came into Haiti, and fed the nation and nourished it and was essential for survival, passed through him. He chewed upon and digested the meat of the nation. If you spend a dollar in Haiti, some portion of that dollar will filter upward through middlemen and merchants until it has settled in the Richard family coffers. Haiti is an island nation that produces nearly nothing: what is consumed must be imported. So every drop of gasoline in the nation came through Andrés Richard’s oil terminal, and every grain of imported rice was stored in his warehouses. Groupe Richard held a controlling stake in the leading distributor of filtered water; they owned the leading bank and its competitor. It was said that the Richard family alone possessed more wealth than the Haitian peasantry combined; of the great mulatto families who lived in the hills above Port-au-Prince, his by far was the greatest and most powerful. Otherwise sober men and women in Port-au-Prince swore that Andrés Richard owed his fabulous success to human sacrifice.
“Abraham Samedi had told me that you have political ambitions,” Andrés Richard said to the judge, his voice faint and palsied over the telephone. “Haiti needs men like you.”
Château Richard was accessible only by private road — or helicopter. Johel had never been in a helicopter before. The thing rose up in a swirling cloud of dust, then banked, and the city swung skyward, slums spreading like concrete fungus up the sides of elephant-hide mountains. Hulks of rusting ships gleamed grotesquely in the bay. As the helicopter circled over the hills, Johel could see vast neighborhoods of shimmering tin shacks, and in the streets, brilliantly colored cars like jewels, the sun reflecting off each emerald, amethyst, or topaz roof. The last concrete roofs of Port-au-Prince receded into the lower distance as the helicopter rose; then they disappeared entirely from view, the helicopter following the bowls of great canyons and mountain ridges until, at a distance, Johel could see, set on an immense green lawn, the marmoreal whiteness of Andrés Richard’s house. Andrés Richard had purchased not only the mountain on which his own house was situated but also the two mountains visible from his home, to ensure that his view was never marred by the encroaching bidonvilles.
A uniformed servant led Johel to the terrace of the house, where a large parrot in a cage that might comfortably have accommodated a family of three regarded Johel with mild curiosity. Johel waited on the terrace for several minutes, considering the splendid lines of the deck furniture, the tranquillity of the pool, and the undulating form of a large steel sculpture, until another servant emerged from the dark interior of the house pushing an aged lizard in a wheelchair.
“Don’t get up,” the lizard croaked. “I can’t!”
The lizard then flicked out his tongue to gather up a spot of spittle on his lower lip and began to laugh.
“Andrés Richard,” he said, extending a hand. “At your service.”
* * *
There was a hole in Andrés Richard’s wall, and now that he was old and was going to die, that hole bothered him, worried him at night, and deranged what little sleep he had. What he had built and what he had accomplished, when weighed in the balance of his soul, meant little against the hole in his wall. He had raised children and seen them grow to be wastrels, failures, drinkers, scoundrels — but that troubled him less than the hole in the wall. He had built an empire. He had made love to scores of beautiful women, had made and unmade presidents. He had held private audiences with three popes. He had made his peace with his Lord, but evidently his Lord had yet to make His peace with him.
The hole was in the wall of Andrés Richard’s private chapel.
It had been a decade at least since Andrés Richard had left his mountain sanctuary; and on his return from his last descent into the valley and country below, he had decided that to complete his estate and solidify his soul, he needed a space of solitary refuge and prayer. A man of impeccable taste himself, he had called on other men of superior taste to accomplish the work, providing them with all the resources at his command. He wished for a place of simplicity and beauty, and on the fringe of his estate, in a grove of pine and acajou, such a place had been erected: not large, not ostentatious, open windows overlooking only the grandeur of nature, and at the altar, the brilliant triptych by Michel Dumartin depicting his Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection.
Now Andrés Richard knew that death was very, very near, and one piece escaped his grasp, the third painting of the triptych. To complete the triptych would be to complete his collection and his chapel, and this, Andrés Richard felt sure, was necessary to ensure the survival of his soul in the world to come.
* * *
“Have you made the Sénateur an offer for the piece?” Johel asked.
How easily he slipped into the role of counselor. This was how he felt most at ease in the world, contemplating the problems of others and applying his intelligence in the search for a solution. Johel took Andrés Richard’s problem seriously: it was obviously of great importance to Andrés Richard, and whatever is of great importance to a man like Andrés Richard is important.
“Of course I’ve made him an offer for the painting! I’ve offered him buckets of money for that piece!”
“And he won’t take it?”
“Young man, do you really think Maxim Bayard wants my money? If you do, then your reputation for cleverness is severely overvalued.”
“I suppose he wouldn’t.”
“I suppose not.”
Johel knew that the problem was the former president. Andrés Richard had been one of the organizers of the coup d’état that forced him out of office and into exile. On the day the former president left the country, the Sénateur, interviewed on Haitian national television, had wept convulsively. A documentary filmmaker from Oregon had put the moment in his film, Haiti: Tragedy of a Nation, set to a Haitian soprano singing funereal songs.
The terrible irony of the situation was that before the departure of the former president, the Sénateur had agreed to sell Andrés Richard the painting. Andrés Richard had never imagined that a matter of politics would interfere with business between reasonable men; had he known that the Sénateur would be so troubled, he would have held his hand until the painting was in his possession. This was one of the great miscalculations of his life.
But Monsieur Richard’s role in the ouster of the former president had made the Sénateur an implacable enemy. When Andrés Richard contacted the Sénateur again to complete the transaction, the Sénateur had said, “Monsieur Richard, I look upon that painting every morning to remind me that the path to salvation is straight. If keeping that painting in my possession preserves my soul and damns yours, then it is an object to me of inestimable worth.”
Thereafter, Andrés Richard, for all his wealth, power, and influence, had never succeeded in convincing the Sénateur to part with his painting.
In the subsequent years, Monsieur Richard told the judge, he had tried many schemes to convince the Sénateur to sell the painting. He had hired a man from France to pose as a collector, and he had attempted to convince the current president to seize the painting as part of the national patrimony. (This plan had foundered only when the Sénateur had threatened to burn the painting before he relinquished it, at which point Andrés Richard had ordered the president to desist.) He had used all his political influence to stall the Sénateur’s projects. The Sénateur remained indifferent.