There is a Land (A Libète Limyè Mystery) (27 page)

Separate from this scene, tucked away behind matchstick stalls and tarps, stand Cinéus and Wilnor, watching with slit eyes. Even before neighbors carry Jeune away to his home to recuperate, before Libète is allowed to leave the market, the pair have slipped away. They whisper as they recall wisps of something once heard.

— Who is this one? Cinéus asks his brother.

— That could know to do such a thing! Wilnor replies. A peasant girl!

— Unbelievable.

— Do you think–

— Could she be–

— But here? Of all places–

— The one we’ve heard about?

— The one they’re looking for?

The fireworks exploding in the sky herald change. They are beautiful and brilliant and defy the darkness that surrounds.

— Hard to believe it’s already here. When the days feel like forever.

— Kanaval, Jak sighs. What a thing.

— And we’re stuck in here, Libète says.

Carnival’s arrival felt like a perfectly timed diversion. The prior nights’ events with Laurent cast a pall over the arriving day. Though they longed for rest, the Sun peered over the ocean and made its unwavering demand that they live and move and hurt. Laurent remained in his room much of the day. Madanm Manno had checked in on him, and Jak had spoken with him a little, but Libète had stayed away.

— I don’t think he remembers much. Enough to be ashamed.

Libète was wary to mention the picture on his desk, but it had been on her mind the whole day.

— Did you see the portrait?

He stroked his chin. You mean of Steffi?

She gave a long and expectant nod, full of gravity. Jak missed any meaning.

— He swatted it down when I walked in on him our first night here. A day later I went snooping through his room – Jak glared, but Libète didn’t care – it was nowhere to be seen. I thought it was surely kept in his desk’s top drawer. The one that’s locked.

—
Libète
. Jak didn’t like where she was leading him.

— Steffi’s message. Laurent has been lying all along. Saying that he hadn’t heard from her, that she couldn’t be in touch!

— Still, Laurent was pretty torn up over the message.

— Jak, do you think Laurent is . . .

— What?

He was going to make her say it. Her mouth pressed in a tight line.

— In love . . . with . . . his sister.

— No. No, no, no. There must be something else there. How could that be?

She shrugged. Steffi is adopted. And they’re different ages–separated by, what? Ten, twelve years?

— Steffi said he went to college at eighteen. She was just a little girl when she was adopted. It’s not like he grew up with her.

— Still. It’s gross. She snapped her fingers. Maybe that’s why he acted like an ass back at Moïse’s house on New Year’s Eve. Because Remi was there! He was jealous!

— Hmmm. I could
understand
being in love with her–

Libète laughed, the first time in a long while. Jak, I didn’t know!

— Wha–no! No! I don’t mean I
do
love her, just that if I were, if I was older . . . ah, leave me alone!

She cackled. Woo! I won’t tell, Jak, I won’t tell. Don’t you worry!

— Let’s not talk about it anymore.

— Suits me just fine.

A new round of explosions filled the sky, and Libète turned toward them, watching streaks of ruby fade to nothing. Her smile faded.
That’s all life is. Bursts of happiness, soon gone.

She rubbed her hand against the spackled balcony wall. The world’s passing us by, Jak. Out on those streets is the biggest party in all of Haiti. Carnival in Jacmel. She clicked her tongue, shook her head. And we’re under house arrest.

The fireworks were just the formal start of festivities that would have been set in motion for weeks prior. Carnival in Cité Soleil was as crude and alive and joyful as Carnival ought to be, but paled next to Jacmel’s. Here, it became its own religion. It was legendary throughout the Caribbean and Stephanie, the connoisseur of Haitian art and culture, had strangely wanted to keep them from it. Instead they embarked on weekend trips around Jacmel; she would take them to the waterfalls and blue-green pools of Bassin Bleu, the pine forests of La Visite, or even farther afield. Stephanie was not particularly religious, but it seemed like the revelry awakened a penitent spirit pounded into her by the Catholic sisters who had taught her in school.

We’ll go when you’re older, was her refrain whenever they begged. She was a surprising prude, treating them like they were innocent and to be sheltered from bawdy humor and sex.

All that when they came from Cité Soleil? Ha!

Just walking down the street, the things you’d hear! They were packed so tight in the slums you couldn’t help but catch the telltale sounds of people in the act. And Jak and Libète’s peers in school were already deep into experimenting with sex–not on the campus grounds, at least not that they were aware.

Libète assured Stephanie in plain terms that she was well acquainted with such things, but utterly immune to temptation. Revolutionaries have no time for such business, Libète had said dismissively at the sight of kissing on screen or handholding in public. Love–romantic love–it’s a distraction from the things that really matter, Libète would say. And besides, Jak can hardly bring himself to say that little three-letter word.

Such conversations discomfited Stephanie greatly.

Libète thought of herself uttering such sentences with conviction just a few months ago. Her self-righteousness now made her queasy.

Another firework exploded, lighting up her eyes and Jacmel’s bay. The street near their home was clotted with cars full of pilgrims who had come to celebrate from all over Haiti and abroad.

— I’d give anything to be down there. To see the parade tomorrow, the costumes, the papier-mâché, Jak mused. What a thing! To just sit and watch. Maybe even sketch as they go by . . .

Libète looked at her friend, held rapt by the sparkling streams of gold and red and blue. Her brow dipped and her lips curled into a smile, forming a familiar but long-absent look, one, that if seen by Jak, would have made him profoundly worried.

Masks

Malè yon nonm ki mete konfyans li nan yon nonm.

Woe to the man who puts his trust in another man.

Sunday sees Libète renewed.

The hour is early. She knocks on Jak’s door.

— Jak.

No reply.

—
Jak!

Still no answer. She knew telling Jak her plan in advance would have seen him rebel against it, so she didn’t.
There’s no time for this.
She barges in the room, and Jak leaps out of bed.

— Libète! He jerks a sheet over his lower half. I’m in my underwear!

— Aw, big deal. She walks to his trousers folded carefully over the back of a chair, picks them up, and throws them to him. Get those on.

— Is it an emergency? He pulls the sheet over his head and, stumbling ghostlike, tries to pull on the pair of pants.

Libète smirks. Wi. A
gran
one. And we’ve got to go! Quick!

He races for his shirt, and his fingers nimbly feed the buttons through their holes. She is already down the stairs and out the door. He catches up with her. Here, she says, handing him a piece of bread, the cheese already spread inside.

— Why, thank yo–wait a minute. What’s going on here?

She tightens the straps on her red pack. Kanaval, she says, a smile lighting her face.

Libète looks to the pitted road as she walks behind Saint-Pierre, Magdala, and Félix, worrying, worrying, worrying. Félix and Magdala glance at her over their shoulders, unable to understand her quiet. It was as if leaving the market a hero was the worst that could happen.

Nearly everything they had carried to market had been snapped up post-
resureksyon
–what Jeune’s revival was being called–and now, they have a fistful of notes and coins while Saint-Pierre ports the weight of Foche’s kind thanks back up the mountain.

— Wait, Libète says. Félix tugs at Saint-Pierre’s bridle to slow his ascent.

They are passing Délira’s home.

— She’s not home yet. No one’s there, Félix says.

Libète struggled to lift off the saddlebag full of gifted food. Magdala’s lips pursed and she reached for Libète but said nothing. Libète carried the bag into Délira’s home and emptied the produce in a heap on her friend’s table. Libète toted the empty saddlebag and walked ahead and alone. I didn’t deserve this, she said over her shoulder.

Félix stood dumbstruck. But you saved him!

—
Him
no less! Magdala added. You worked a miracle, Sophia. Did a good thing. I didn’t even know you had that in you!

Libète spun. I
hesitated
. To protect myself. And now everyone is wondering who I really am again, how I could know to do such a thing.

— That’s just ridiculous, Félix said. This will make you loved by everyone! It’s the best thing that could have–

— Just leave me alone.

Magdala rushed to her, embraced her, held her tight even as Libète struggled against the restraining hold. It’s true. There will be more questions now. But what you did, she whispered, was
right
. It was
good
. Such good acts, the ones that cost us, are lights in the dark.

Libète finally succumbed and leaned into Magdala’s arms.

— We’ll face whatever may come, my dear. You are not alone. Whatever happens, you are
not
alone.

The rest of the day slipped away.

Magdala went to check on the new mother and her infant on the other side of the mountain, an obligation she couldn’t forget. She asked Libète if she wanted to join her.

— I still need to think, Libète answered absently.

Magdala gave a wary nod. She left the girl with her heavy mind.

After Libète swept out the house, wiped dust from every surface, did the wash, fed the pig and goat, and prepared an early dinner of
bouyon
, she had run out of chores. She bathed in the midafternoon to cool her head and, as the last effects of adrenaline receded, found herself utterly exhausted. She descended into sleep.

Hours passed. She woke to a dim house. Numbed, Libète rose from her mat to sit in the doorway and watch the world as light faded from it. The breeze blew and caressed her like a consoling touch. She closed her eyes for a long while and controlled her breathing. She heard the melody again, the same phantom music from Delivrans’s birth, and now from Jeune’s resurrection. It was like a call emanating from deep within herself.

She opened her eyes and flicked the lingering flecks of sleep from them. She cocked her head. There was something curious there, resting on the roots of the mapou tree.

Can it be?

She got up and walked suspiciously to the spot, looking down the road, into the fields, up the mountain. No one was near.

It was.
My notebook!

She slid her hand over its cover, felt the spiral ring, opened its pages. It was intact!

All of her memories laid down, a fixed and definite record, a tether to everything she’d been through and everything she’d faced! She fell to the ground and began revisiting the past.

She skimmed through Jak’s small sketches stuffed inside with her poetry and thoughts. But they were still there too. The Numbers. She had woven the digits through past entries so that only she knew how to re-collect them. She considered burning the notebook on the spot but knew she never could. There remained an irresistible power in the knowing.

She revisited her compositions, enjoying a Libète who seemed so self-assured and content, until all her joy turned to sadness. She came upon her final and most recent piece, a tribute she had been working on when the notebook was stolen. Seeing the words snapped her back through time, bringing to mind all of the pain that had carried her to Jacmel, and all of the pain that carried her from it.

It was still incomplete. Hope had stilled her hand then, and it did so again now. She reread the opening stanzas:

There was a Land.

And in that Land, there was a Boy.

And in that Boy, there was a Seed.

Long before the Boy came the Land.

Full of crafted spires and flowing rivers.

It was blessed and planted with Goodness.

The words brought such pain, and yet, peace. She turned the dog-eared page, her eye leaping to its end to notice something previously missed. New words, written in a bold and unfamiliar hand:

Follow the drums when they sound again.

And following it, appended to her own verse in the same handwriting, were words that stopped her heart:

There is a Land.

And in that Land, there is a Girl.

And that Girl, she is on Fire.

With the help of a ladder they are up and over the gate–Laurent and Madanm Manno have the only keys–and on the street, running, running, running.

It is exhilarating, like those days of weightless ignorance in Cité Soleil when the Sun beat down and their spirits could not care less, days altogether pleasant and altogether wonderful. Jak still protests, but halfheartedly, out of habit. As they know too well, life can be short, and this,
this
, he does not want to miss.

Most who walked Jacmel’s streets at this hour were heading to early Mass. Some looked to resist or condemn the carousing the day would hold. Others prepared to scrub their souls clean before they blackened them again by late morning.

The children knew these streets from past days spent with Stephanie in lazy cafés and age-old restaurants. She introduced them to the history of the place as she had experienced it growing up there.

They passed the town hall and square, moving down the Rue de L’eglise, past unmanned stalls and closed stores. The streets were immaculate, as if the slanted sunlight sliding across the streets had purged them of all refuse. Anticipation ran through the roads like a current, passing through all who put foot to earth.

— Just a few hours and it’s all going to be packed.

— Look, Jak! There’s your cathedral!

They took in the decrepit church–the Cathédrale de Saint Philippe et Saint Jacques–and listened as choral hymns wafted out into the streets like a perfume.

— Saint Jacques. Has a nice ring, no?

Jak smiled, before turning to look down the road, saying nothing. His face soon soured.

— What’s the matter? she asked.

He bit his lip.

Libète’s skin prickled.

— Nothing, he finally spoke. A trick of light. I don’t like how empty the streets are.

— Let’s . . . keep moving.

Instead of promenading down the middle of the road, they took a different path, walking under hotels’ and stores’ covered sidewalks. They looked over their shoulders at turns.

— Laurent will be worrying, Jak said.

— I left a note.

— I doubt that will help.

The churches began letting out, and the penitent streamed into the streets. Everything was coming alive. The crowd gave them their anonymity again, and they breathed more easily. They reached Avenue de la Liberté. She ribbed Jak. You’ve got a church, but I’ve got a whole
avenue
. She flashed a smile, so rare these days, and it made Jak light up.

Though they’d never seen it, the two knew the parade would begin here and would flow around the perimeter of the city, along Avenue Barranquilla. They watched from the side of the street in wonder as trucks with floats began lining up and people converged from all corners: band members with their instruments in hand, dancers in flowing dresses, costumed figures. Music began clamoring as laughter rose higher and higher.

Watching was not enough. In they plunged.

They strode through a troupe of youth costumed as Taíno Indians, members’ skin lightened with paint and their hair bedecked by cords of sisal and elaborate feathered headdresses. A young man aimed his mock bow and arrow at Libète as if to fire, and she put up her fists, daring him–they both cracked smiles.

Also weaving through the assembly were ghouls, blood spilling from their eyes, their faces turned into bone masks. Jak was unnerved, but tried to not let it show. A mule was also there, wearing tennis shoes. And behind him, political figures: all of the recent presidents of Haiti in papier-mâché standing in a line: Martelly and Préval and Aristide and Baby Doc, joining hands and dancing in a circle.