The years went by. Some died, others were born. The Syrians reinstalled themselves in our town, and little by little we got used to the khaki uniforms worn by the Americans and our policemen. We familiarized ourselves with certain American expressions like “goddamn” or “son of a bitch.” Then there was the uprising: the Marchaterre Massacre, [24] the student strike, and finally, in 1934, the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Students returning from Port-au-Prince told us how they witnessed, with tears in their eyes, the restoration of our flag over the barracks built by Leconte, where it hadn’t flown since 1915… But let’s return to what my life was like during that stretch of time.
And so one day I suddenly found myself the head of a family with about sixty acres that had been saved by some miracle from my father’s costly ambitions. Right away I faced countless difficulties. I was only nineteen years old and I now regretted that I did not go with my father to the fields more often. However, to imitate him and to prove my competence, twice a week I got up before my sister, whom I left with Augustine, mounted my horse and galloped to Lion Mountain. Papa Cousineau, the voodoo priest, had died a few months before my mother did and his hut was sealed forever. Unlike my father, I was neither feared nor respected. The 540 acres he had sold to pay for his electoral campaign had come into the hands of black peasants who now worked for themselves. With my ridiculous reserve and coldness, I confronted Alcius, Louisor and a few other peasants whom we hired during harvest. I would give orders, squint at processing equipment I knew nothing about, and return home convinced of the futility of my visits. The first year, Louisor brought me a meager sum of money that he assured me came from the sale of the coffee, and I accepted it without protest. The second year, I received a much smaller amount. The price of coffee had gone down, he told me, and I only owned sixty acres. Was he trying to discourage me until I gave up my land to him for a pittance?
“At that rate,” I remarked, “we’ll soon have nothing to chew on.”
“Business is bad,” he replied.
And in the look he gave me I thought I saw bad faith, verging on hatred.
I then tried to win them over. I brought clothing for their wives, rum for the men, I went to their homes with candy for the children, cleverly trying to buy their devotion by spoiling them. I learned the hard way that it wasn’t enough, because the next year I got even less money from Louisor.
It was around then that a German named M. Petrold settled here. He bought up coffee, shipped it on a German vessel and began to grow wealthy. Soon, there was a rumor he was trying to set up his own factory and was eyeing Lion Mountain and wanted to buy it. I went to see Dr. Audier for advice.
“I’m not getting anything from the farmers anymore and I’m struggling to make ends meet,” I admitted to him.
“Are you thinking of selling what’s left of Lion Mountain?” he asked me.
“Yes, if the German gives me a good price. All we have left is about sixty acres, but the factory is worth its weight in gold.”
“Do you authorize me to speak to Monsieur Petrold on your behalf?”
“Please do so, Doctor, I need help.”
To ruin the peasants and get my revenge on them, I set the price for my coffee myself that year and gave preference to M. Petrold.
“Who fixed the price of their coffee at twelve centimes? Who is the greedy swine pushing us into bankruptcy?” the peasants yelled the next day at M. Petrold’s door.
Concealed in my room behind the blinds, I could see the peasants raising their fists at my house.
“You don’t want to sell?” M. Petrold was saying to them. “So go home with your coffee. If Lion Mountain is selling coffee at twelve centimes, why should I pay you more?”
“Maybe Lion Mountain has a secret way of breeding money,” one peasant shouted, “some big secret that put the Lion and his wife in their grave. But thank God, we’re still kicking, and Lion Mountain will have to answer for this wicked deed.”
My father’s farmers paid with their lives for my brilliant idea, because about twenty planters armed with machetes descended on our land and slaughtered them. The next day, sitting stiff and straight on my horse, I saw with my own eyes the bloody bodies of our farmers, their wives and children, all hacked to pieces. The killers were caught and the rural administrator brought them to jail. The police, represented by a soft, inexperienced young lieutenant, could not prevent retaliation. No one dared openly attack me, the daughter of a great despotic and merciless landowner, but I was responsible for everything and everyone knew it. I finally received the young lieutenant, who questioned me about my coffee plantation.
“My farmers were stealing from me. So I sold my coffee to Monsieur Petrold at a price that was too low. That’s all,” I explained, “and they took it out on my farmers.”
“You are a terrible businesswoman,” he replied. “To avoid such incidents in the future, get some advice before doing anything.”
I thanked him, and almost in spite of himself he added:
“It seems as if things will get more complicated. To get revenge, the peasants have sent emissaries to Port- au-Prince. They bought the silence of the rural administrator, and what was initially a matter of private order seems to be taking on terrible proportions.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged and left without adding a word.
Eight days later, a terrible hurricane flattened the coffee, tore the roofs off houses and drowned the cattle. For forty-eight hours, the skies were dark. Heavy black clouds, thick and suffocating, rolled along the horizon. A thin rain mixed with wind lashed the paving stones and by the end of the day began to whistle and scream, swelling the sea and flooding the rivers.
“Hurricane coming,” people cried from one window to the next.
Two hours later, all the doors were boarded up. I called for Demosthenes to shut himself in the house with us but he was gone. Augustine, my sisters and I were left to listen to the lamentation of the trees uprooted by the blasts of wind, the whistling of the roofs ripped from their beams that flew past us with a sinister beating of wings. Water invaded the Grand-rue and began to slowly filter out of the storm drains. It rose and soaked the furniture. We could hear awful screaming. The ground shook in protest. Everything moved. We found ourselves on the ground, clutching each other convulsively. The untold damage ruined most of the growers and herders. Many of us were killed, and Father Paul started going around to bless the dead and comfort the orphans. The Daughters of Mary, to whom I belonged, were asked to help, and the day after the cataclysm twelve young women dressed in the colors of the Virgin administered first aid to the wounded. I had no tears left by the time I threw myself upon the bodies of Demosthenes and of my horse, both found in the flooded river.
“We have been damned by our sins,” Father Paul preached to the small crowd of survivors gathered in the church. “God has punished us. We must repent and do penance. Blood was spilled. What right do we have to make our own justice when God is watching over us?”
Bodies were piled in the freshly made puddles. They were identified and the municipality inscribed their names on a list. The dead included: Tonton Mathurin, who had, we later learned, left his fortune to Georges Soubiran, who went to study in France; Laurent; Mme Marti; and all those who had in one way or another tried to rescue their possessions from destruction.
Up there, the mountains greened, resplendent despite the ruins, in spite of death. All of nature seemed to rise up purified from the squalls. At Lion Mountain, the coffee plants lay destroyed and uprooted atop a foot of soil that had been churned up by spindrift. In town, waterlogged goods piled up unrecognizable in the stinking muddy shopwindows. Haitian and Syrian storekeepers alike were crying and wailing. Of course, those hit hardest were the peasants. Homeless and destitute, they came down the mountain to swell the ranks of the beggars. The harsh sun returned after the hurricane and dried out the enormous mounds of garbage choking the streets. Mud turned to dust, a thick, blinding dust that became a whirlwind at the slightest breeze. Typhoid, malaria, and influenza kept everyone in their sickbed. Poor children died every day by the dozen for lack of care. Father Paul continued to draw on our devotion and the Daughters of Mary worked like galley slaves. Eugenie Duclan, Jane Baviere, Dora Soubiran and I helped Mme Camuse, whom Father Paul made president of the Relief Association. Mme Marti, our dressmaker, had died under rather mysterious circumstances. She was found at her home, her neck half-slit. “She tried to save our little dog! She ran in to get our little dog!” her children sobbed. Mme Camuse took them in. Fifty coffins were blessed in a ceremony attended even by the least pious among us. Father Paul’s sermons spared no one. Our bloodstained land had been washed clean by God’s mighty waters, he repeated, and the wind, he hoped,
