“Five dollars,” the small man said, lowering the bullhorn he used to advertise his wares as he reached into a small black pouch for the aspirin.
To get the five dollars-an exorbitant price-Rosanna had to open her purse in front of everyone. She reached in awkwardly, and in doing so a bunch of Haitian dollar bills that Aunt Solange had secretly stuffed in her purse rose to the surface, looking like a flush in a game of poker.
“Mademoiselle!” Davernis gasped from where he was standing, the crowd now seeming to push him back to purposely keep them apart. The people around Rosanna couldn’t help but notice the bills. Even Rosanna seemed shocked to see them. She was now an even bigger magnet. A group of beggars pushed in, landing on her like flies. Their hands stretched out toward her, they pleaded for help.
Now deciding to forsake the aspirin, Rosanna shoved Aunt Solange’s surprise deep into her purse. There must be at least a thousand Haitian dollars there, she thought.
Then, out of nowhere, two well-built men, men who looked like they might belong to a SWAT unit, approached her. “Get out of here! Get lost!” they ordered the group of people surrounding her. “Leave this beautiful lady alone!” They shouted at the beggars as they chased the crowd away. They were responsible for security in the area, they told her.
“We’ll hang around and look after you,” they said, “until you board your bus.”
“You are very kind,” Rosanna answered, relieved that they were there, since Davernis had simply disappeared, “but I really don’t need protection. I’m expecting a friend.”
Hardly had she uttered the words when one of the alleged security officers grabbed her arm as the other pushed a small handgun into her spine. The one who grabbed her arm picked her up off the ground and carried her away, with the other one trailing behind. The crowd quickly scattered, and even though the first man was carrying her, he ran faster than the second one with the gun.
“Don’t say a word,” she heard the one carrying her say. “If you cry for help, we’ll blow your head off. Do you hear?”
An intense fear invaded her, causing her to feel even dizzier. She was much too afraid to yell. Besides, everything was happening so fast that she had trouble concentrating on any one thing.
Soon she was in the back of a jeep with darkened windows. The man threw her in headfirst and quickly placed a dirty black rag over her eyes. He turned her on her belly and tugged at both her arms, forcing them behind her, ripping the sleeves of her blouse in the process. She could hear the tearing of duct tape, which he used to wrap her arms and hands together. Then he turned her on her back and placed a strip of tape over her mouth.
When the door slammed shut and the car barreled away, she fell on the floor between the front and back seats- cracking, she was almost sure of it, one of her ribs. Only as the sharp pain of the fall shot through her body did she realize fully what had happened. She was barefoot. Her shoes and her purse were gone. Over the hum of the car engine beneath her and the bounce of the bumpy road, she heard the loud chatter of commerce at the port and realized that they were driving along Bicentennial Road.
She had been kidnapped, she could now fully admit it to herself. On Bicentennial Road, at the seashore, albatrosses and pelicans used to glide low over the waves as large vessels approached the port. This, of course, was during another time, when she was free.
A shudder ran through Rosanna’s body when they arrived at what she imagined was the hideout. They removed the tape on her legs so that she could walk but kept the blindfold on her eyes and the tape on her mouth. One bandit placed her hand on his shoulder so that she could follow him like a blind person with a guide. Underneath her feet were muddy rocks and puddles. Then there was a stretch of dry earth. She heard the unlocking of a padlock and felt a shove on her back: she was being pummeled against what felt like an unfinished concrete wall. She hobbled along a corner, offering her now severely aching back some support. Nearby, as if in the next room, she heard some dogs barking. They sounded like hungry dogs, she thought, her heart racing. She wondered if eventually they would use these hungry dogs against her. She pushed her back deeper into the wall and tried to remain still.
A rancid smell hung in the air as the men paced back and forth around her. One was wearing boots, she could now tell by the way his feet hit the concrete on the ground. The other was wearing regular shoes, fake leather loafers, it sounded like to her. There was no air passing through the room. Perhaps there was no window.
“Now,” the man with the boots said, “let’s get started with the important part!”
It seemed that their plans for a ransom demand had already been set in motion. The one with the boots would make the call, they decided, while the other one remained in the room guarding Rosanna.
Before he left, the one with the boots ordered Rosanna through clenched teeth, “Don’t cause any trouble and you won’t get hurt.”
Rosanna tried to anchor herself against the wall, which was hard with both hands taped behind her back. She thought of Davernis who might be looking for her, of Aunt Solange who had not wanted her to take the camion in the first place, but had given in to make her happy. She thought of the stories of other kidnappings she’d heard in the past. The men were always beaten badly. The women were often raped. Some small children had been killed when the ransom was not paid. She thought of the shock that this could cause Aunt Solange.
Davernis drove back home as fast as he could. He was screaming like a madman when he got to the front door of Solange’s compound. From the slew of words that came out of his mouth, the only ones Solange could understand were: “Rosanna has disappeared!”
“What did you say? What do you mean, Rosanna has disappeared?” demanded Solange.
“Madame Solange, I swear, I looked everywhere. She was nowhere to be found!”
Suddenly there was commotion all over the house. The servants couldn’t control their emotions. They let out loud screams and tears flowed. As for Solange, she seemed dazed as she screamed over and over, “Oh my God, please have mercy! Rosanna was kidnapped!”
The neighbors started showing up. Having somehow gotten wind of the commotion, they came over to see what was happening, then they started offering advice. Many of them had themselves been victims of the recent kidnapping wave that had struck the capital.
“You have to pay the ransom right away,” they all agreed, “so that she can be released as soon as possible!”
Solange blamed Davernis. How could he let himself be separated from Rosanna?
“Why, for God’s sake, would you leave my niece alone in the middle of this crowd of thieves?” Solange banged the table with her fist. Then her cell phone started to ring. The screen read,
A deep voice with a menacing tone spoke at the other end of the line. “Madame, listen carefully to what I am about to tell you. I will be brief, so open your ears and open them big. First, if you inform the police of our negotiations, I can assure you that you will never even
“How is Rosanna-” Solange started to holler, but before she could finish the sentence, the man hung up.
“Who could have done such a thing?” Solange shouted out loud to herself. “Who would want to kidnap Rosanna?”
One of the neighbors, a bony pale-skinned man, whose elderly mother had suffered a heart attack and died during a kidnapping attempt at her own house in broad daylight, had become extremely philosophical, a filozof, in such matters. He chimed in, saying to Solange, “Ma chere, this country is a land of mystery. Mysteries enter your home quietly, and always when you least expect them. They come like a closed padlock and always without the keys to their puzzle. It’s almost impossible to discover what’s behind a mystery in this country. They are part of the essence of our people. They are stained into the fabric of our culture. When you hear the sound of drums coming from the depth of night, what you really hear are echoes. And never, never can you discover the true source of the drumbeats. And never mind whose hands are beating the drums. Those are the mysteries of the night. You know, madame, when the flying werewolves are in the air, one can only see the traces of their flames, but never can one guess which direction they are taking, or in whose yard they will land. Never will we know, as they fly, whose children they plan to eat during the night. But sometimes the solution to a mystery is right under our noses. In other words, what you need to know is right there next to you, though sadly, you never see it. Madame, you will never know who took Rosanna. The why, we know, is money. Money, we know, or lack of it, is the primary obsession of a
