Raynand is standing, more or less, at a north-facing window of the sanatorium. Near his mother, who’s dying along with the last rays of the July sun. The internist is saying something about a rupture of the pulmonary vessels, a situation that medical science could address, if it weren’t already too late … But Raynand’s gaze floats over Port-au-Prince, spread out at his feet. Dives recklessly into the city in its petri dish. Rises back up toward the church bells. Lingers on the roofs of the big buildings. Follows Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard. Flies up to the smoking chimney of the Hasco sugar factory. Takes in the Plain of the cul-de-sac. And throws itself into the sea where the light is slowly disappearing in a bloody sunset.
When he comes back to himself, to the vast white room of the sanatorium, the old woman Marguerite is already wearing the cold sandals of eternal silence, fading away as discreetly as she’d come into being. For once letting go of the self-effacing role she’d taken seriously to the very end. Ridding herself of those dreams she’d always believed could be realized with God’s grace … with her prayers … with her novenas … and with the countless pilgrimages she’d made to all the churches in the city.
At seminary, I took communion every Sunday at the seven o’clock mass. Instead of teaching me that this was a purely symbolic ceremony, the teachers saw fit to fill my little kid’s head with the idea of a God buried somewhere inside the host. And I was supposed to swallow the divine cautiously, without it grazing my teeth. It contained the body and blood of Christ. And it required some serious lingual acrobatics to dislodge the circular wafer stuck to the roof of my mouth and bring it to my throat.
One morning, coming back from the Sacred Table, I surreptitiously took the host out of my mouth and placed it on the armrest. Then, after having examined it carefully, I put it back between my teeth and patiently chewed it — as I would have done with a hard candy. I couldn’t detect any hint of blood. Just to be sure, I licked the palm of my hand with my moist tongue. Nothing appeared aside from a bit of viscous spittle. I was puzzled. Disappointed, even. I spent the whole day thinking about it. Questioning myself. Crying about it. Especially troubled because I couldn’t share with anyone the profane nature or the disastrous results of my experiment. I suffered terribly and couldn’t eat anything that Sunday. It was the first shock of my life. A whole section of a marvelous edifice began to crumble amidst a thick cloud of dust that, once it had died down, left a hideous void around me. Much later I realized that I just taken my first difficult step in the painful ordeal that leads to enlightenment, to true peace of the soul. Other facts arose that shook my faith in the teachings and practices of religion.
I left school one afternoon. Nearing the Cathedral, I was caught in a sudden downpour and obliged to take shelter inside the church. Hours passed and the rain kept coming down. At seven in the evening, a priest, followed by the sexton, came around. Ceremoniously, he reminded all those present that the doors to the church would be closing and that we would all have to evacuate God’s house. I didn’t wait for him to finish his sermon. I was the first to leave, braving the furious downpour. I arrived home soaked to the bone. My mother gave me some ginger tea. And she rubbed my chest. Despite these efforts, because of my weak bronchial tubes, I fell seriously ill and owe my life to an unending list of medical prescriptions.
In sixth grade, during the school holidays, I became passionately engaged in reading the Bible. I was floored to discover the existence, on every page, of a cruel and unjust God — a true despot who accepted Abel’s offerings while disdaining those of his brother Cain. That hurt me. I suffered along with Cain. This poor peasant who knew how to till the earth. To sow seeds. To observe the germination and growth of plants. To make out the circulating of green sap in the branches. To pick the most beautiful fruits of his garden. To bring them to his lord and master. Only to be rejected with a slap in the face from He who desired a blood sacrifice. All of that marked me deeply. The inexorability of a god served by angels armed with double-edged swords. The shortsightedness of a vengeful and jealous creator driven to drown his work in a flood. And then his regret at having breathed life into man. All these pages revealed to me the monstrosity of a tyrannical and capricious God.
However, from as far back as I can remember, it was in philosophy class that I received the real sledgehammer argument (don’t worry — I’m not going to bore you with the details of all my readings). Of course, I had gotten to know about History and about the great masters of scientific thought. I knew how Christianity had come into being and developed in the context of the slaveholding Roman Empire until it became the state religion. The Inquisition. The persecution of progressive thinkers. The discrediting of Epicurus, who wanted to free men from their fear of the gods. Giordano Bruno’s auto-da-fé. Vanini’s tongue ripped out. Galileo’s sad story. Darwin’s evolutionism. Marxist theory. Freud’s discoveries. The theological and philosophical uncertainties of Teilhard de Chardin, who preferred talking about the noosphere and the Omega Point as expressions of divine transcendence, following which he should have logically posited, at the end of his scientific research, the spiritual dynamic of matter and the primacy of energy in all cosmic, physical, and biological phenomena. Of course, I knew all of that.
However, what struck me was a perfectly banal fact. It happened in 1955. High schools were going to the airport to welcome the American vice president Richard Nixon. I got into line with everyone else. Suddenly, at Grand Street, I was struck in the forehead by a rock that some kid had thrown at a dog pissing on the wheel of a car. With a black eye and the arch of my eyebrow slightly fractured, I had to leave the parade. Once home, I immediately placed a saltwater compress on the swollen wound. Plunged into bitter thoughts, I shivered at the idea that I easily could have lost an eye for no reason. I spent the whole day trying to find the causes that might have explained the fact that I’d been hit by this projectile. Why me personally and not someone else? I didn’t find any convincing explanation. I also looked for what I might have done wrong, but couldn’t point to anything. So it was that I began thinking about chance. Religion offered no decent explanation. Only scientific data came to my rescue and, just like that, I understood the laws of ballistics: understood, that is, the fact that I’d been walking in line, in step with the rhythm of my column; that the rock had been thrown clumsily, in accordance with its own speed; and, finally, that at one point I’d very logically become a specific target on the trajectory of the projectile. Sudden clarity. I’d seen the light. My heart beat more quickly. I forgot the pain in my head. Chance no longer existed for me. My thoughts extended outward to consider the sufferings of all those who seemed to be victims of some dreadful fate. Those who lived in slavery or misery. Peoples oppressed by wealthy nations. I began to understand it all. Underdevelopment. The appearance of political leaders, artists, scientists, geniuses. Beauty. Ugliness. Natural epidemics. Progress. Vices. Births. Wars. Victories. Defeats. Scientific discoveries. Works of art. From one thing to the next, the world unfolded before me, clear like water from a stone. Nothing stopped me anymore, since I’d found an explanation for all cosmic phenomena. I was now equipped to perform an autopsy on both happiness and sorrow. I left behind anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism any time I needed to analyze some particular occurrence or other. I considered man as one animal among many. And, courageously, I told myself that anything that can happen, good or bad, to any of the other species is just as likely for man. The only difference — a quite significant improvement, to be sure — is that we fully understand the situation! And even there, the keen awareness that we have these problems draws all its enlightenment from the blinding sun of science.