with plenty of wine and champagne. Our port was opened to Europe and the United States, and Grand-rue overflowed with French, German, English and American products. The Syrians, recently naturalized as Haitians in order to benefit legally from all of our privileges, were also supplied by these boats.
In the year 1912, I was barely twelve when I became friends with Teresa Aboud, a very sweet Syrian girl with long black hair who spoke nothing but Creole. I only saw her at school, and even then only while concealing it from the mother superior. One day she came and told us that the Syrians were being driven out of the country by the president of Haiti and that they, the Abouds, would starve to death in Kingston, where they planned on taking refuge. My friends and I found such a measure truly unfair and took Teresa under our protection.
“Papa,” I asked my father at the dinner table, “why does President Leconte [17] want to drive the Syrians out of our town?”
“Because they are getting rich at our expense,” my father replied. “What’s more, they spend little, hoard money, and are seeking protection under the wings of foreign powers whose citizens they now claim to be. Because of their disloyalty, the competition has become unfair and the poor Haitians are being driven to bankruptcy.”
“We waited too long to drive them out,” my mother interjected with rancor. “The competition ruined my parents.”
“Is that true, Mama?”
“It’s true, my child.”
Back in school, I avoided talking to Teresa and also refused the candy she offered me every day.
“Why?” she asked me.
“You have ruined my mother’s parents,” I answered harshly, “so go back to your own country.”
One evening, I saw my father come home all worked up, announcing that British warships had weighed anchor in Port-au-Prince harbor to protect their Syrian subjects. Dora Soubiran, Eugenie Duclan, Jane Baviere, Agnes Grandupre and I trapped Teresa at the gate and beat her up.
The next day, my father received Dr. Audier and my friends’ fathers. They seemed really worked up, and the cocktails prepared by my mother, who tiptoed in and out like a shadow, stoked their vigor and agitation.
“The foreigner has invaded our country,” my father barked. “Our businesses are now in the hands of the French, the Germans, the British and the Americans. The Syrians are mere surrogates. All of this is simply competition between the great powers. Who is it that’s arming the people and teaching them to say: ‘Down with the Syrians’?”
“The French,” Dr. Audier replied.
“And who is openly protesting the expulsion of the Syrians?”
“The Americans and the British,” Dr. Audier answered again, looking to the others as witnesses.
“The United States is afraid to be supplanted by the Europeans in imports,” my father added. “It’s a cold war between Europe and the United States. What are we in all of this? Lost lambs devoured by wolves. Only one man has been able to meet the challenge and drive out these Syrian undesirables, and this man is none other than our beloved leader. Long live President Leconte!”
“Long live Leconte,” they roared, raising their glasses.
“The people will suffer from unemployment,” my father continued. “They will be prey to poverty in a country without industry. These great powers call us incompetent: they insinuate themselves into our affairs, demand control of our customhouses and, like jackals, fight over our very hides. I am a patriot, a nationalist, and I will defend what I believe to be the national interest until my dying breath…”
“Long live Deputy Clamont!” a short, chubby man named Laurent cried out.
“Long live our deputy!” the others echoed.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” my father answered quietly, as if he were not privately enjoying these outbursts of enthusiasm. “My hour has not yet struck but I am sure it will. For now, I will continue to give my full support to our leader and to watch the opposition closely. I am returning to Port-au-Prince on the next ferry. In my absence, anyone who betrays him must be denounced to the police and punished without mercy…”
My mother found me hiding under the table, my eyes fixed on my father.
The next day, at dawn, the clarion call of the district commandant got us out of bed. We rushed to the balcony. He was resplendent in his uniform with its huge epaulettes and his bicorne hat. He was reading out a statement, surrounded by a police force of “little soldiers,” [18] whose shoulder sashes emblazoned with the word
And we learned that the Syrian businesses had just been notified of the order of liquidation.
I wasn’t there to witness the departure of Teresa Aboud because I was in bed with measles. My friends had been forbidden to come near my house for fear of contagion. When a week later I was able to leave my room, from the veranda I noticed the sealed doors of the Syrian shops, and Dora told me that a fanatic had struck Teresa’s mother with a stone as she stepped aboard the American ship.
A little later, our simmering little city learned that the Palais National had been bombed and that more than three hundred soldiers had perished with President Leconte. Reports accumulated and spread far and wide. Day and night, men were scuttling in the streets at all hours or gathering at the Cercle to discuss politics more freely. Who gave my father such an absurd idea? I never found out. But soon he launched his electoral campaign and began preparing his speeches.
Tonton Mathurin, who lived alone in a large beautiful house like ours, was for a time tolerated by decent society in our little city. When he was suddenly accused of consorting with riffraff and of luring local young maids to his home for unsavory purposes, he was quite simply quarantined. My parents threatened to lock me up if I ever spoke to him.
“He lives in sin,” my mother explained to me, “and sin is contagious.”
Despite my precautions, once in a while I caught a glimpse of the man sitting in a wicker chair hidden behind a bush a few paces away from his gate. Once, coming home from school, I found myself face-to-face with him and stood there mesmerized, staring at his enormous eyebrows and his good-natured black face, his wide innocent mouth grinning ear to ear. I spit at his feet and made a sign of the cross.
“Heh heh!” he said. “Do you think I’m Satan in the flesh?”
I fled when I heard him say that, and the next day sought comfort in confession with Father Paul for the vile sin I had committed. In return, each time Tonton saw me he’d thumb his nose at me or show me his fist.
The Grandupre house was next to his. Poor Agnes reminded me of Sophie Fichini, [19] gaunt and weepy-eyed, shrieking every day under the blows she received. She too was pilloried. One day, my mother said:
“You are not to play with Agnes Grandupre anymore, neither in school nor at her house. You’ve got that? She’s a nasty little girl who goes to old Mathurin’s house behind her parents’ back.”
Agnes’s vice intrigued me. I thought about it so intensely that I began to spy on her from my house. One day, I saw her weeping on her veranda after a thrashing. I called her over. She showed me her legs and arms covered with scratches and, turning a distraught eye toward her house:
“They’ve beaten me again, Claire,” she said to me. “They won’t let me see Tonton Mathurin, but he’s the only one who’s good to me.”
“What does he do to you? What does he say to you?”
“He strokes my hair and tells me about Suzette, the daughter he lost. I look like her.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, I swear.”
I heard my mother scream. My father rushed up and when he saw us together turned pale with anger.
“Come here, Claire.”
Agnes leaped to the street and ran home.
“Come here,” my father repeated.
And when I was before him:
“Who gave you permission to play with the little Grandupre girl?” he yelled, smacking my back with such force that it knocked the wind out of me. “Who? How many times have you seen her? What did she tell you? What have you done together?”
Each question was reinforced with a terrible blow from his belt. At the third lash, I started screaming as loud
