The Return (18 page)

A lady comes to offer me a well-sweetened cup of coffee, as is the custom. I drink it sitting on the car's hood. A boy who lives nearby brings me a chair. A little girl wants me to admire her skill as she spins pirouettes with her jump rope. Evening is just beginning to fall and already I hear the hum of mosquitoes preparing to attack. And now Monsieur Jérôme is coming back with the tire repaired and a swarm of children buzzing around him.

It took him a while to return because he knows a woman in the area. Attentive to the unfolding of his story, I understand they have two children together. Is she your wife? No. The children are from him, but they're not his. What does that mean? He tries to explain a highly embarrassing situation. The mystery deepens the more details he provides. If I understand correctly, his father had to acknowledge the two boys because he was a minor at the time of their birth. So they must be adults by now? His face brightens. They're good workers, and most of all they're honest. One is a shoemaker in Les Cayes, the other's a mechanic in Port-au-Prince. So what's the problem? The story is complicated, I'm afraid. The woman's father never forgave him for spoiling his plans. He had other ideas for his daughter. Her father swore he would chop off his head if he came near the house again. Even now? He's old, but he's still strong and still angry. People never forget anything around here. Monsieur Jérôme arrives at the most sensitive part of the story: he wants me to go and say hello to the woman for him and discreetly slip her an envelope. What if her father catches me and chops off my head? Monsieur Jérôme's face darkens but then he assures me that the man would never do that, since he is really quite courteous. Except when it comes to him, Jérôme. He thanks me with profuse expressions of regret for having to ask such a favor.

I doze off a little

despite my sore back.

Two nights in a row I've slept

curled up in a ball in the car.

I'd like to stretch out on a real bed.

I would have gladly accepted

the wealthy farmer's invitation to stay

if I hadn't been so afraid to end up with

his daughter in my bed, caught

in a complicated tale of dishonor

that would have been settled with one swift blow of a machete.

A necklace of red pearls.

It's not that I am

such a prize catch.

But it's an obsession among some rich farmers

to have an intellectual in the family.

The way the middle class

bought up ruined aristocrats

so their grandchildren could carry

a noble name.

Night has fallen. I knock timidly at the door. An old man shuffles over to open it. Excuse me for disturbing you at such a late hour, but I have a message for Madame Philomène. Did Jérôme send you? he asks with a smile in his eyes. Yes. Tell him he's welcome here. And that he can stay the night. I go back and give Monsieur Jérôme his envelope. When we get there, the beds are already made up. Monsieur Jérôme spends the rest of the night conversing in low tones with his father-in-law. The next morning, we get back on the road after a strong cup of coffee. Suspecting that business is bad, Monsieur Jérôme does not want his father-in-law to go to any extra trouble. When it is time to leave, the older man declares that “this whole business was just a terrible misunderstanding.” On the road, Jérôme tells us that the friend who was supposed to build bridges between him and his father-in-law had lied to both of them, and that during the negotiations he kept asking for Philomène's hand for himself, which the old man always refused.

The Farewell Ceremony

My nephew sits down next to me

on the hood of the car.

A pink sky edged in darkness

above a vast desolate landscape.

In a moment it will appear,

bringing the world to life as we watch,

the star that novelist Jacques Stephen Alexis

called General Sun, My Brother.

The only reason to wake up in so poor a place.

Every detail I notice

that others do not see

brings fresh proof

that I am not of this place.

I long for the coolness

of primitive dawn.

I would like to lose

all awareness

of my being

to blend

into nature

and become a leaf,

a cloud

or the yellow of the rainbow.

We piss, my nephew and I,

off the edge of the cliff.

Two continuous streams.

Pure arcs.

A slight smile on both our faces.

I hear a man singing

but do not see his face.

Someone tells us he is crippled

and never leaves his room.

A song so desperate

it has lost all humanity.

The coffee arrives. The taste of Césaire immediately comes into my mouth. Césaire who spoke of “those who explored neither the seas nor the sky but those without whom the earth would not be the earth.” Now they are walking past me, in this little market that's slowly coming to life.

People here are not

in the habit of complaining.

They have the ability to change

all pain into song.

The tobacco the women

chew at noon

shaded by their broad hats

makes the bitter taste of life tolerable.

I slip the old water-warped copy

of Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

into my nephew's bag.

We need it before we leave.

Not when we return.

In his own way, he seems very happy with this trip that has helped him understand the difference between the big city and peasant life. But I can feel he is beginning to miss his friends from university and wants to be back in the urban dirt and violence. That's what he's made of. A person doesn't change his nature in a few days.

In the end I decide to go ahead on my own. With no other protection than the blood that runs in my veins. I give the rest of my money to Monsieur Jérôme who refuses it at first, but I convince him he will make better use of it than I. Two letters hastily scribbled on the car's burning hood. The longest to my mother and the other to the former minister who willingly let me use his car. A final hug for my nephew and I climb into this shuddering jalopy, with my black hen as sole companion. Destination Baradères, my father's native village.

I watch the Buick 57 pull away in a small cloud of dust as I negotiate the fare with the driver. You were in good company, he tells me with a conspiratorial smile. My nephew and the minister's chauffeur. That's what you think, but I recognized Zaka. Zaka, god of peasants. How did you recognize him? A throaty laugh that signifies the end of the conversation. I find a spot in the back of the truck.

And Now Baradères, My Father's Village

Sacks of green bananas.

Cans of oil.

Coal and flour.

Chickens, goats and even a donkey.

A fat man snoring in the back.

Rumbling breath issuing from the bottom of his belly.

I banish all reflection

even the most intimate

and give in to the embrace of this crowd

where the boundary between man and animal

is so narrow as the truck

makes its way through the arid landscape.

A soft voice behind me. A woman in black whose husband has just died. The mother and the son lived in Brooklyn, though the father stayed in Haiti. She tells her story. The first time she saw him was at the door to the lycée. Her girlfriends made fun of him. But he was so sweet she immediately fell in love with him. He was shy, even in their private life, and he remained that way till the end. He was a delicate man. He died of throat cancer, without a complaint. His name was Séraphin.

The coffin is at the back. Securely tied to a bench. Taking up space for six passengers. Since he is dead the widow paid for four seats only. She wouldn't have had to pay anything if she had agreed to have the coffin tied to the roof of the truck. She decided, whatever the price, Séraphin would not ride up there with the dust and the goats and the chickens. They would make their last journey together.

His young son is wearing a white shirt

and a black tie.

His head leans on his mother's shoulder.

Somber and silent.

I hear a lady whisper,

“The spitting image of his father.”

She knew him well.

Actually, I'm in the same situation.

Except I have no body with me.

And almost no memory of the departed.

This journey is to bring him back

to his village that I will be discovering at the same time.

A funeral without a body.

A ceremony so intimate

it concerns only me.

Father and son, for once,

alone face to face.

To disappear without a trace.

Or anyone to remember you.

Only a god deserves such a destiny.

Here is Baradères in the rain.

It's been raining for two days.

Water rises fast here.

Houses on stilts.

The truck turns carefully behind the church.

We come upon a modest cemetery

under water where small golden fish

swim into the cavities

of freshly buried bodies.

A small group is waiting

at the foot of the tall cross.

Soaked to the skin.

The gravity of death.

The boy in the black tie

is not so sure he wants to get out of the truck.

He doesn't know all these relatives

who have stepped out of another age.

Or this town drowned by the rain.

Or this cemetery where his father will be buried.

In Brooklyn it's hard to imagine Baradères.

In every cemetery there is

a large black cross by the gate.

And an empty grave that belongs to no one.

That's where Baron Samedi lives,

that funereal and dissolute god

who is the guardian of the cemetery where

no one may enter without his permission.

We stroll along the brightly lit streets

of the world's great cities

with our urbane airs and our educated politeness

not knowing that our lives are filled

with secret feelings and sacred songs

we have lost somewhere inside ourselves

and that resurface only at funerals.

We have two lives.

One belongs to us.

The other belongs

to those who have known us

since childhood.

The mother's tongue.

The father's country.

The son's bewildered look

as he discovers in a single day

his own legacy.

They rush the coffin

toward the far end of the cemetery.

Past the last graves with flowers on them.

A few stones this way and that in the tall grass

where fat pink fish swim.

The best spots, by the entrance,

are reserved for those who

have never left Baradères.

This wild kid who wreaks

havoc in Brooklyn

suddenly discovers

his origins

in a lost village.

He bends over to catch bare-handed

a pink fish with an electric charge.

It sends him hopping on one foot.

The fish makes its getaway

to the sound of the laughing crowd.

I stand at the edge of the group

to attend the ceremony,

not wishing to disturb them.

No one seems to notice I am there.

That's what they want me to think.

I have learned how discreet

people are in this part of the world.

A man comes up to me, his formal manner from another era. It would give us great pleasure were you to remain with us afterward, he tells me. Later I learned he had worked for
UNESCO
as a translator and after he retired, he returned to live here. The continuous movement between urban and rural worlds strengthens the bonds between culture and agriculture.

The house where the funeral reception takes place stands on the slope of a deforested hill. The kids, along with a few young goats, keep rushing down it. To dry my clothes, I sit by the fire where ears of corn are being smoked in the coals. A little girl in a pretty blue dress and sparkling eyes brings me a cup of coffee. She curtsies by way of greeting. I kiss her on the forehead. She opens her eyes wide then runs off. In a storm of saliva, the retired polyglot confides in me that finally he has time to reread the Aeneid.

No one asks me

where I came from nor where I am going.

My past counts no more than my future.

They accept me in the gravity of the present

without demanding explanations.

A starry sky

that makes me dream

of hot evenings on the gallery

with my mother

and of course Baudelaire whose

“The Balcony” was my father's

favorite poem.

I also recall the picnics

Aunt Ninine organized at the beginning of July.

And other precious memories

that convince me, now,

that my childhood was but an

endless season of sunshine,

though the rain did fall.

Nothing is more brilliant than sunlight in the rain.

Suddenly I feel so light.

The sky is no farther

than that banana leaf

that brushes my head.

A Dandy Dies Like a Dandy

I push my way through the banana plantation

divided by a stream

whose song I heard

before discovering in the shadows

its shining back

lit by moonlight.

I come upon an old man

sleeping under a banana tree.

What kind of life

has he lived

to go on smiling

in his dream?

I suppose it was different from

the former minister's who spends his nights

in a museum, where most of the paintings

reproduce the bucolic setting where this peasant is sleeping.

One is living in the other's dream.