Mr. Clarinet

cacti. It reminded him of postcards he'd received from friends who'd taken a trip to the great southwestern states.

They drove up into the mountains. They were nothing like the ones he had back home. He'd been to the Rockies and the Appalachians, but these were completely different. They were brown, barren mounds of dead earth, being slowly but systematically eroded by every breath of wind, every drop of rain. It was hard to imagine that the whole island had once been rainforest; that this environmental catastrophe of a place had had life, that it had been the commercial cornerstone of a foreign empire. He tried to imagine what the people who lived in the mountains would look like, and he came up with an Ethiopian famine victim.

But he was wrong.

They might have been every bit as poor, but the country people lived somewhat better than the miserable souls in town. The children, although thin, didn't have the bloated bodies and starved, haunted looks of their Port-au-Prince counterparts. The villages they passed weren't anything like the desperate hovels of Cite Soleil. They were collections of small huts with thatched roofs and thick walls painted in bright colors?reds, greens, blues, yellows, and whites. Even the animals looked better off: the pigs less like goats, the goats less like dogs, the dogs less like foxes, the chickens less like anorexic pigeons.

The road got bad and they slowed to a crawl. They had to drive around potholes five feet deep, drive in and out of craters, creep around hairpin bends in case someone was coming their way. They saw no cars at all, but there were a few wrecks, stripped right down to pencil outlines. He wondered what had become of the drivers.

Despite the air-conditioning keeping the car cool, Max could feel the heat outside, pouring down out of the light blue, cloudless sky.

'Allain didn't tell you everything about Noah's Ark,' Chantale said. 'Not surprisingly?given your attitude.'

'You think I was out of line, sayin' what I did?'

'You were both right,' she answered. 'Yeah, it's wrong, but look at this place. More people than crops.'

'What didn't he tell me?'

'Background stuff, about the contracts. All the time those children are growing up, they're constantly reminded where they came from and who it was who took them away from that. They're taken to Cite Soleil, to Carrefour, to other nasty places. They get to see people dying of starvation and disease?not to teach them charity or compassion, but to teach them gratitude and respect, to teach them that the Carvers are their saviors, that they owe their lives to the family.'

'So they're brainwashed?'

'No, not really. They're educated, taught the Carver creed along with their verbs and their multiplication tables,' Chantale said. 'Anyway, they're basically convinced that the minute they leave the Ark they'll end up in the slums with poor folk.'

'So, when they turn seventeen or eighteen and the contracts come out they happily sign their lives away?' Max concluded. 'So they trade Noah's Ark for the Carver empire?'

'That's right.'

'How come they hired you?'

'Allain likes to hire outsiders,' she said. 'Apart from his servants.'

'But this contract?it's not enforceable if you go overseas, right? Say you're studyin' in America and decide you wanna go work for JP Morgan instead of Gustav Carver, they can't stop you.'

'No, they can't, but they do,' she said, lowering her voice, as if someone were listening.

'How?'

'They have contacts everywhere. They're very rich, powerful people. People with influence. Try and break a deal and they break you.'

'Have you known it to happen?'

'It's not something they exactly brag about or anybody finds out about, but I'm sure it's happened,' Chantale said.

'What happens to the kids who don't conform? The problem kids? The ones who rebel in the back row of class?'

'Again it's not something they openly talk about, but Allain told me the kids who don't get with the program are taken back to where they were found.'

'Oh that's real civilized,' Max said bitterly.

'That's life. Life isn't easy anywhere, but here it's worse. It's hell. It's not like those kids don't know how lucky they are.'

'You need to change jobs. You sound like your boss.'

'Fuck you,' she said under her breath. She turned the radio on and turned up the volume.

Max thought for a while about what he'd heard, then he switched off the radio.

'Thanks,' he said to her.

'What for?'

'Opening up a whole new dimension to this investigation: Noah's Ark.'

'You're thinking the person who kidnapped Charlie might have been expelled from there?'

'Or had his or her future destroyed by the Carvers, yeah. A life for a life. Third oldest motive in the book.'

Chapter 35

TO MOST HAITIANS, Saut d'Eau is a place where the waters have miraculous healing properties. The story goes that on July 16, 1884, the Virgin Mary appeared before a woman who was standing in the stream, washing her clothes. The vision then transmogrified into a white dove that flew off into the waterfall, forever imbuing the cascade with the powers of the Holy Spirit. Since then Saut d'Eau has attracted thousands of visitors every year, pilgrims who came to stand under the blessed waters and pray out loud for cures to illnesses, relief from debts, good crops, a new car, and quick solutions to U.S. visa problems. The anniversary of the Virgin's appearance is also celebrated with a famous festival around the waterfall, which lasts all day and all night.

When he first set eyes on the place, Max almost fell for the legend himself. The last thing he expected to find after hours of driving through the arid wilderness was a small piece of tropical paradise, but that was exactly what it was?a proverbial oasis, a mirage made real, or a sanctuary?a reminder of the way the island had once been, and all it had lost.

To reach the waterfall, Max and Chantale had to walk along the banks of a wide stream that cut through a forest of densely packed trees, overflowing foliage, thick, dangling vines, and riots of sweet-scented, brightly colored flowers. They weren't alone. As they'd drawn closer to their destination, more and more people had joined them on the road?most on foot, but some riding donkeys and tired-looking horses?all of them pilgrims heading for a cure. Once they'd reached the stream, they'd waded into the water and walked solemnly and humbly toward the hundred-foot-tall cascade. Despite the great roar of the crashing torrent up ahead, there was a deep quiet within the forest, as if the essence of silence itself was locked into the soil and the bountiful vegetation. The people seemed to sense this, because none of them spoke, nor made much noise in the water.

Max saw that some of the trees along the way were studded with candles and covered with photographs of people, Christian saints, cars, houses, postcards?most of them of Miami and New York?as well as pictures cut or torn out of magazines and newspapers. These trees, with their enormous thick trunks and thin, spindly branches, some heavy with cucumber-shaped fruit, Chantale explained, were called mapou in Haiti. They were sacred in voodoo, trees whose roots were said to be a conduit for the loas?the gods?from this world into the next, and whose presence was meant to signify the nearness of flowing water. The tree was inextricably linked to Haiti's history: the slave rebellion that brought Haiti independence was rumored to have started under a mapou tree in the town of Gonaives, when a stolen white child was sacrificed to the devil in exchange for his help in defeating the French armies. Haitian independence was declared under the very same tree in 1804.

When they reached the waterfalls, they stopped at the bank, near a mapou. Max put down the hamper he'd been carrying. Chantale opened it and took out a small drawstring bag of purple velvet. She removed four metal candleholders, which she stuck into the tree in four equidistant points, like those of the compass. Moving counterclockwise, she spiked four candles into the holders?one white, one gray, one red, and one lavender. Then she took a picture out of her wallet, kissed it with her eyes closed, and tacked it in the middle of the candle arrangement. She sprinkled water on her hands from a small, clear, glass bottle, and then rubbed what smelled like sandalwood lotion into her hands and arms. Whispering quietly, she lit each candle with a match and then, tilting her head back, she looked up into the sky and stretched out her arms, palms up.

Max moved a little away, out of her immediate range, to give her some privacy. He looked at the waterfall. Off to the left there was a break in the trees, where the sun streamed through and made a gigantic rainbow in the mist rolling off the torrent. People were standing on the rocks directly under the falls, water pounding on their bodies. Others stood apart, off to the sides, where the cascade was not as forceful. They chanted and held their hands up to the sky, in much the same way Chantale was doing; some shook instruments like maracas, others clapped their hands and danced. They were all naked. Once they got close to the rocks near the falls, they shed