“No,” Andre begs in turn, “I’m cold. Jacques hasn’t lost consciousness. He’s sleeping. I know him. He’s my brother, isn’t he?”
“Ah, well then, deal with this yourself. What are the three of you plotting? No politics for us, that was our vow and we should respect it… Lordy! Either you look like a bunch of conspirators or I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
He grabs the bottle of
“Brrr… I saw them disembark. They’re inspecting the area. Would you believe me if I told you that it’s not worth getting your knickers in a twist?”
“So why are they here?” Andre asks.
“To occupy themselves. Fuck them, I say.”
“They probably won’t go after whites,” I say.
“Fuck them, I say,” Simon repeats.
“Shh!” Andre hisses.
“What’s the point of burying oneself alive? If they’ve decided to fuck with us, they’ll fuck with us.”
“Not if they think we don’t exist,” I say.
“Chickens!” Simon explodes.
“No, careful,” says Andre. “You can’t be too careful with them.”
“Well then,” Simon cuts in, “enough about them… I wrote a poem, a masterpiece. About Haiti the beautiful, the pure and warm, about its drums and black women, its body and soul. I’ve fallen in love with this island. In love, love, you hear me?”
“Shh!…” says Andre.
“Haiti, Haiti!” Simon hums, paying Andre no mind. “I’ll never set foot in France again and if they have another rotten war, I won’t wear the uniform a second time to help them win.”
“A uniform!” I say. “What was that like?”
“I was eighteen years old in 1940. They took me from my mother and sent me to the front. They froze my toes, messed up my legs, split open my head till I was cracked. They can have their next rotten war without me. Me, I’m just a poet! A neglected poet. I have no desire to kill or to be killed. I want to drink, I want to write, and I want to make love with the women of Haiti.”
“Leave my country alone,” I say to him.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“You don’t love it.”
“I tell you I do love it.”
“If you loved it, you would help us deliver it from the devils.”
“What devils?”
“You see! You haven’t even noticed. What have you been doing all this time?”
“I just told you. I wrote a masterpiece about Haiti.”
“Leave my country alone, since you don’t even realize it’s in danger. Have you really seen nothing, heard nothing?”
“Yes, of course. When I saw this wretched detachment arrive from Port-au-Prince, I told myself, ‘Something’s up.’ But even though they patrol the streets armed to the teeth, they don’t seem to go after anyone.”
“We’re not speaking the same language,” I said to him. “I’m talking to you about the devils and you start talking about something else.”
“Why are you trembling all of a sudden?”
“Me, trembling! Now you’re completely crazy, my poor Simon! It’s just that I thought of you as a brother but instead discover you’re a white man living in a black country.”
“Don’t start on this absurd issue of skin color and race. I am your brother, heart and soul. You know that.”
“So, have you seen the devils, yes or no?”
“Wait. Let me think about it over a drink. Brr… Bugger me, now I’m just about drunk. Damn Haitian tafia!… I did think I heard a strange noise the other night. It was dark and Germaine was lying next to me. I heard a crackle of sparks. I got up and opened the door. A rain of stars was falling from the sky onto the roof of the house. Real fireworks, something fantastic, my friend, something that only a poet’s trained eye could catch. I’d been drinking a bit so I thought it was a hallucination. I went back to bed and the next day, I got sick. A horse fever with diarrhea and the shakes. Germaine mentioned the devils that morning, I remember now. She had locked me up, accusing Old Tulia of giving me the evil eye. Me, I kept writing despite the fever, I didn’t care. ‘This neighborhood is full of devils,’ she insisted, ‘I know what’s wrong with you.’ She always knew what was wrong with me and she always took good care of me. I spent the day swallowing her herbal teas and soups. ‘Something bad is in the air,’ she kept saying. But I kept writing, paying no attention to her or anyone else. You know how you get when a poem is plaguing you?”
“They’ve been here for days!” Andre sighs.
“Who?” Simon asks.
“The devils.”
“Yes… the devils,” Simon acquiesces, conciliatory.
“Isn’t it because of them that you ran all the way here?” I said to him.
“Yes, now that you mention it, why did I run?” Simon replies. “I must have been scared without knowing it.”
“You always know it when you’re afraid,” Andre says.
His teeth chatter.
“So you’ve seen them?” Simon asks.
“Who?”
“The devils?”
“Yes,” I answer.
“They have horns and tails?”
“No. Boots, weapons, helmets.”
“Apart from that they’re naked?”
“No, they’re wearing uniforms.”
“My God!” he says. “It all reminds me of the horrors I saw at the front. I was just a kid and my mother was crying and my teeth were chattering like Andre’s, and each time I heard a bomb go off I would pass out. But I would get up, run like everyone else, shoot at the enemy with my eyes closed, and throw myself on the ground with my hands over my ears. I had shrapnel in my skull and they thought I was dead. I spent eight days under the snow. But I’m a tough bastard and only lost four of my toes.”
“We’re familiar with you and your toes,” said Andre.
“You were really lucky” I told him.
“Lucky!”
“Because you didn’t die.”
“Yes, but my mother, she died of it. When I left the hospital where I had been taken, I looked for her everywhere. I roused our whole neighborhood and they locked me up in an asylum. But I wasn’t crazy, I kept telling them. One day, the head doctor came to see me because I was giving the orderlies a hard time, making a devil of a racket. He said: ‘What do you want, son?’ And I ripped the pen and paper from his hands. ‘From now on, you will give him what he needs to write,’ he told the orderlies. ‘I think I’ve figured out how we can get him to behave.’ But one day I had enough and ran away. I hid out nearby and then jumped on a passing truck. ‘So, pal,’ the driver told me, ‘cutting school, are we?’ I gave him such a wild look that he kept quiet. I went straight to a publisher and left him my poems. More than a hundred. Everything I had written in the asylum. I begged, slept outside on public benches. I was cold. I was hungry. But I patiently awaited wealth and glory. This time the publisher greeted me laughing.
“‘Good sir, this is the tale of a madman you’ve got here… The public will have no use for your ravings… ’ But all I had done was to faithfully record what I lived through during their rotten war.”
“Vulgarians love to talk about what’s realistic and what’s not,” I said, “as if it’s so easy to tell true from false.”
“I feel sick,” Andre whispers.
