Love, Anger, Madness

this and pay for all the broken eggs. The beggars were the first to vanish from circulation. The devils would be clever indeed if they ever managed to smoke them out.

Andre, beside me, has a pitiful expression. He’s just discovered the marassas dishes and knows why the bottle of syrup is empty. But he doesn’t dare say anything. He too has his own loas and will not judge me. He is a mystic who lives in communion with a whole mass of things he sees in his dreams and even in broad day, their meaning depending on how he interprets each symbol. For now, despite his hunger, he cautiously keeps quiet in the presence of the gods of Guinea because it is said that they are greedy when it comes to offerings and libations.

“Why all this?” he asks me. “You don’t even believe in it. You have always boasted of being tough, one of those who turn neither to prayer nor to loas. Without faith what can this accomplish? Why did you lay Christ down on the floor? What do you expect from him, you who don’t believe in miracles?”

His pure and beautiful face makes me forget the ugliness of the devils. And also, he heals me from my fear.

“Put the Christ back where your mother left it and put the dishes back in the trunk. It’s bad luck to invoke God and the loas without believing in them. I drank religion with my mother’s milk. I grew up with a shrine of saints and loas in our bedroom. The fear of displeasing them is rooted in me. None of this could ever be uprooted by books. You play tough, but me, I remain humbly prostrate before their power.”

“I’m afraid as well…”

“Fear is not enough.”

“God welcomes lost sheep back into the fold.”

“The loas are the gods of the blacks of Africa. God is universal. The loas are taking revenge because the blacks were deserted and enslaved and persecuted, and so voodoo will someday rally them together. But you are not a black man.”

“Am I a white man?”

“No. You’re not a white man either.”

“If you have no idea who I am, leave me alone and listen. The gods are here to teach us to depend on our own strength. The God who created me will give me the courage to defeat the devils. God has done His godly duty by putting us on this earth. He expects us to raise ourselves up to Him through sheer will. You’re right, I panicked for a minute. I am going to put the Christ back in its place and the dishes in the trunk.”

He’s afraid. He’s struggling between the horror of seeing me mock these pious relics in his presence and the desire to keep them within reach so he can take comfort from them once in a while.

“I won’t stop you from praying anymore,” I promise him.

“Who could stop me from praying?” he replies.

The sound of footsteps interrupts us. No, it’s something else. We throw ourselves against the wall. A few small, clumsily thrown stones fall to the pavement. One of them reaches the door. It’s Cecile! We see her behind the window she has cracked open. She quickly opens it, raises her arm and with all her might throws one last stone, a larger one that falls before our eyes right outside the wall against which we have flattened ourselves. It is wrapped up in something and there’s string around it.

“A message from Cecile!” I exclaim.

“What message?”

“There’s a piece of paper wrapped around the stone.”

“You are not going out!”

“I’ll have to anyway to get the water and the coal.”

“I am hungry” he confesses.

“So you see. Wait a little, until tonight.”

I’m upset with myself for having wasted the water and syrup on libations. I feel weak and starved. We each take a sip of clairin from the bottle and cough.

“This stuff scorches my guts,” Andre says quietly.

I go back to the wall to feast my eyes on the stone, harbinger of happiness. Nothing could stop me. I would snatch it from the very jaws of the devils if I had to. Cecile must see it from her window as well.

“Plug up the hole,” Andre tells me. “It stinks more and more outside.”

He angrily chases off a rat that jumped down from the roof to rummage for something to eat.

“What are you looking for?”

“Some cardboard to cover the chamber pot.”

He urinates holding his nose, then puts the cardboard on the pot.

“I’m hungry,” he says again.

“There’s syrup in the marassas dishes.”

“Are you crazy?”

The silence is strangling us. I even miss the whistling of bullets. Something terrible is coming, I am sure of it. Nothing moves, not even the leaves. The heat of a Haitian midsummer sets sky and earth ablaze. The road stretches out, lonesome and red right up to the church where the bodies have been piled. How can they kill as the sun is setting? How can they kill as the sun rises? Everything is so beautiful at all hours of the day and night! For the moment, the sea embraces the sky right where the sun has sunk dressed in saffron and crimson. An entire section of the sky has been set ablaze. Flames leak through the clouds and light them on fire. The sun is a centaur with a blazing mane. I am mounting the sun. I am clinging to two monstrous waves that have miraculously retained their immaculate color. I catch two clouds as they pass, thin as ribbons and red as bloodstains. I am standing atop the sun, in the midst of white waves, my muscles taut, head wreathed by the emerging stars, like a god on a chariot dripping with light.

“Plug the hole back up,” Andre tells me.

I am as startled as if something had bitten me; I’m panting, drunk on sun and clairin. I plug up the hole and go to bed next to him on the floor.

I am suffocating. I am thirsty and hungry. Oh God, let night come!

I’ve had three swigs of clairin one after the other and Andre has hung the jug around my neck, behind my back.

We cautiously took down the barricade and I pushed the door open. I threw myself to the ground and crawled up to the corpse with my eyes closed, holding my breath. I picked up the stone and I slipped it into my pocket. Then I went back to the yard and ran to the faucet, grabbed the coal basket, put the filled jug and the stove in it, and then ran back, this time ducking all the way back to the front door. In my slow and jerky dash, the water spilled on the coal. I was sweating profusely As I passed the dead body, rats came at me as if they wanted to make up for not having noticed me the first time around. I had to put down my basket to get rid of them. Their onslaught forced me to linger and look at the body. In the darkness, it seemed to me to have shrunk, more like the remains of a dog than of a man. Teeth jutted sharply from his lips, which had been gnawed by rats and ants. I hurried back. Trembling, Andre was waiting for me by the door he had cautiously closed. Together we rebuilt the barricade and filled the stove with coal. We had to search for a long time before we found the matches and the coffee, which I had inadvertently put back in the trunk with the dishes.

“Leave the trunk open,” Andre said.

He has been scratching the enormous scar, disfiguring his forehead enough to draw blood.

“Dr. Premature didn’t sew you up properly,” I told him.

“You think so?”

“Well, long live the good Dr. Chanel! Unfortunately, he’s dead.”

“Maybe it’s the heat. Give me some clairin to clean it.”

I give him the clairin and search my pocket for the stone.

“The letter! It’s disappeared.”

“The rats must have eaten it.”

I lowered my head, perplexed, turning the stone between my fingers again and again.

“Why did the rats eat it? Why?”

“Because you’re just unlucky, that’s all. Come on! It’ll be all right. I’ll stand by you. We’ve been friends from childhood. We scribbled our first verses together. I’ll stand by you.”