Love, Anger, Madness

I run to get a bottle of clairin that I had completely forgotten about, since no Haitian poet can drink and toast unless he is in good company. I pour two glasses and lift mine:

“To the defeat of the devils,” I cry out.

“Shhh!” Andre motions to me.

I point to the crucifix lying on the floor and abruptly pour the clairin down my throat. It sets my stomach ablaze like a torch.

“May God and the loas protect us,” Andre says.

I’m completely euphoric. Andre’s presence and the heat of the clairin spreading in my organs lift my courage and I feel capable of confronting a whole army of devils. In the blink of an eye, a crackle of bullets destroys my vague attempt at audacity.

“They killed him,” I say to Andre.

“Why did you say that?”

“Didn’t you hear the sound of the firing squad?”

“No.”

“You’ve always been a bit hard of hearing. Listen to the bullets!…”

“They killed him!”

“Alas!”

“Let me leave. Let me go get his body.”

“So you too can get killed!”

I force him to drink his clairin, helping him hold the glass to his lips wet with tears.

“He was only twenty” he laments.

“Drink, drink.”

Night falls. I look around through the wall. Nothing moves. Dimming its lights, the sun dyes the clouds orange and shrimp pink. And the clouds deserting the sky gather voluptuously around the sun, which suddenly abandons them and disappears behind the sea.

We slept only an hour or two on the floor. At dawn, I was already flat against the wall, drinking up the least signs of life from the town like a starving man. Nothing stirred. All around, immutable nature seemed to mock our anguish. I listened to the nightingales modulating their clever trills. They were singing perched on a palm tree. While the fronds of the palm tree swayed in the breeze outside, in my room I was suffocating from the heat. Oh! To be able to just get out and run with open arms to the beach, fill my lungs with air, throw myself in the salty water, dive in without taking a breath, to drown!…

“Is there no one in the streets?” Andre asks me.

“No. Not a breath of life. It’s a siege. Either we turn ourselves in or we die.”

“Do we have what we need to make some coffee?”

“The coal and the gas stove are at the other end of the yard. There are two of us now. One of us will keep a lookout and the other will go get them.”

“What if they catch us?”

“We’ll be careful. Stop shaking. You’ve already crossed yourself a hundred times since you’ve been here. There’s no more time for prayers, only action.”

His face is drenched in sweat. He is as thin as I am, and he looks so much like me we could be brothers.

“That body has started to stink,” he says. “It’s making me sick. Why don’t they pick it up?”

“Do you know him?”

“Who?”

“The dead man.”

“It’s probably Saindor, he runs the bodega by the sea.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I owed him five piastres.” [41]

“And I ten.”

“Poor guy!”

“Yes.”

“They murdered him right under your very eyes?”

“Just about.”

“He screamed before he died.”

“Shrieked.”

Andre sticks two fingers into his stomach and a terrible belching pours out of him. He suddenly hiccups. He must be starving.

I watch Cecile’s house through the hole. I see her behind her curtains. She’s looking at my house. Is she worried about me? I quickly tie a handkerchief to a wooden ruler and slip it through the hole. I wave the handkerchief. Cecile’s window opens a little and she leans her head out to make herself visible and then disappears. I quickly withdraw my white flag and start pacing around the room, anxiously.

“Who were you making signs to?”

“To Cecile.”

“You’re still thinking about her?”

“I love her.”

“But she will never love you. She’s rich and you are poor. People like that, they’re snobs.”

“She did accept my poem.”

“She was laughing.”

“What does that prove?”

“She was making fun of you.”

He swallows more clairin and slams his glass on the table.

“It’s them, they’re the ones responsible for this. They made a big bonfire where every piece of kindling was soaked with hatred. They lit the fire and fanned it.”

“So write a poem about hatred.”

“Jesus preached love.”

“Then write a poem about love.”

I push him to the table blocking the door and give him paper and pencil. He begins to cry quietly, head in his arms.

“I can’t, I can’t write, there’s too much hate all around me.”

“Write, God damn it! Destroy hatred and sow love with your poems.”

“Don’t you remember, Rene? The market women who went down the hills at dawn, baskets on their heads! We would wait for them on the road to lift their skirts. And their endless chatter. And the rhythm of their rumps! The smell of the donkeys loaded with produce. The fragrance of the mangoes, quenepas drying under the quenepa trees that reminded us of Madame Fanfreluche’s imported plums, which Brother Justinien made us try one Christmas! Dawn to dusk, all the smells of the day! There isn’t a single scent, not even the smell of the fresh catch struggling in the fishermen’s nets, that I don’t miss right now!…”

He gets up and walks to the wall.

“Oh! The smell of the sea! Put your nose against the hole in the wall. Can you smell it?… To live here, locked up, waiting for death… This torment reminds me of something. We were once locked up somewhere, but where? …”

“Keep quiet!”

“Let me get out of here.”

“No.”

“I want to go.”

He starts trying to unblock the door and I grab him roughly.

“You’ve got to settle down,” I tell him.

He sits on the floor and starts crying again. There’s a large purple scar on his black forehead. He scratches it absentmindedly and wipes the blood that comes out with his shirtsleeve.