A Rendezvous in Haiti (6 page)

Caroline asked, “And who or what was that? I'm new, remember.”

“Came to power in a comic-opera revolt, scarcely able to read and write, and was shortly deposed, when he decimated the aristocracy. He took refuge in the French legation—civilization, after all! Somehow, tiens, somehow!, he was flung bodily over the wall, into the street and the hands of an outraged mob who did what outraged mobs are so often reputed to do but so often fail to do: tore him to pieces.”

“One hears,” Scarron added, “that they ate his heart raw, there in the street.”

McAllister muttered, “I'm sorry. I like your country. Is there any middle class at all?”

The attorney general said, “Me.”

His Excellency enjoyed a rich laugh; they joined him. They were all sipping at vintage Perrier-Jouet in proper glasses.

“And me,” said a handsome coppery woman in low-cut cloth-of-gold. Her glossy black hair lay in ringlets, and between her breasts an emerald glistened. “If we had a university I'd be a professor of anthropology. As it is I'm only a woman. Society likes me to write at home and publish in Paris.”

“Women are voting in many of our states,” said the colonel. “It will be national before long.”

“Good God,” Scarron said. “Elections.”

“You'll have elections,” the colonel said. “I promise you that.”

“Will they matter?”

Colonel Farrell was taken aback.

“Let me speak frankly again,” Scarron said. “Last century the flag followed the cross, so I can share the blame. Now it follows the banks. It was good of you to fund our loans, but your reward was railroad concessions and banana plantations and labor for pennies a day. I never hear the Marines mention that. It is always democracy, with the Marines; or ‘self-government' or ‘prosperity' or some other indefinable gift. Why not tell the truth?”

“Perhaps because it is not so simple.” This was an olive-brown gentleman with white hair en brosse; the Finance Minister, Caroline believed. She was no stranger to guests of ministerial rank, but tonight's was a grand array, apparently for His Excellency's birthday. “We owed money to half the countries of Europe—some of them now defunct, by the way—and that was both expensive and undignified. Now we have you, and the difference is notable—we may hope for a functioning sewage system in Port-au-Prince, and perhaps a few decent roads in the countryside.”

Caroline was affable: “Built by the corvée?”

The attorney general waggled a finger at her: “The corvée has been abolished. And I thought you were new here?”

Father Scarron said, “It is remarkable that a young American woman should know anything at all about us.”

The Haitian men bowed. Caroline smiled apologies to the anthropologist.

Scarron went on: “If not for the corvée, Martel might be on our side. A chief of staff like Toussaint.”

The colonel told her, “Martel is the rebel leader.”

The attorney general corrected him: “One of the rebel leaders. A country politician—a warlord, really—called Fleury supplies him with money, and covets the northern provinces.”

“The Cacos,” McAllister said. “I wrote you about them. Martel refused the corvée, wouldn't do road work, so they arrested him.”

“That was worse than a crime,” Scarron said.

“A blunder,” McAllister agreed. “You knew him?”

“We're of an age. We studied together, with the fathers, before I left for Europe. He's paid a visit to France himself.”

“A capable man,” said Colonel Farrell. “A strategist. An orator. A natural leader. He should have been commissioned in the Gendarmerie d'Haiti.”

“I scarcely need remind you,” said Father Scarron at his most icily Hibernian, “that there are no Haitian officers in the Gendarmerie d'Haiti.”

In time, and in various excellent champagnes, all brut, all seven years old, there were toasts: to His Excellency, the Republic of Haiti, the colonel, the beauteous Miss Barbour, and several long-dead national heroes. Caroline drank cheerfully and told McAllister and Scarron, as they drifted across the terrace and into the gardens, that she was pleasantly tiddly.

“A terrible word,” McAllister said. “A little girl's word.”

“But that's what I am.” Tambors tapped and boomed from the hills. “Oleander. That's poisonous.” Tree frogs shrilled, kee-kee-kee. “And I forget which ear to wear the hibiscus behind. I believe left means available and right not. Or is it the other way around?”

“It depends on the island,” Father Scarron said, “and is a Pacific custom. Here in Haiti everyone is available.”

“Surely not the clergy,” McAllister said.

“You're a very handsome pair,” Caroline said. “Both in white. Both in uniform.”

“This is a most unusual evening,” McAllister said to Scarron.

“For me too,” Scarron said.

“I envy you,” McAllister said, “and I hope the Marines do leave soon. I don't know about banks and corporations. I do know that the Corps wants to clean up, supervise an election, and go home.”

“Home to the plantation, I believe.”

“My men are dying,” McAllister said.

“Yes; my apologies. And why do you envy me?”

“Your future. You may even be president of this country some day. I don't say all priests are selfless and honest; but it's a place to look.”

“Good Lord. Most of our presidents are poisoned or blown up.”

“That's why I'm here,” McAllister said.

Lieutenant McAllister and Miss Barbour made their farewells to various Excellencies and Honorables, to the colonel and assorted majors, to the attorney general and the anthropologist, and to Father Scarron. They descended stone steps and crossed a dark gravel drive by the light of torches in tall cressets. Distant drums still beat. In the drive coachmen sat like wax figures, glowing yet colorless in the licking torchlight; sat like well-trained circus tigers. McAllister handed Caroline into a fiacre; the night was dry and the roof was folded down, so they sat prim and proper, only holding hands. “A long day for you,” he said. “All those ensigns.”

“A remarkably handsome wardroom,” she assured him.

“Swabbies,” he said. “I wish we were at the hotel. I'd like very much to put my arms around you.”

“I think I'd like that too,” she said.

And they arrived not at Olofsson's, which was full of Marines, but at the Grand Hôtel de Paris et de Port-au-Prince, which was small and clean and quiet, and they climbed the wooden stairs together, and crossed the broad threshold together, and walked arm-in-arm to the balcony to look out over the city. They kissed, tentatively and then with passion, and they stood embraced. The tambors followed them even here, and in some black alley a child wailed. McAllister drew back to look carefully at his lady's face.

“Don't you dare say goodnight.”

“You're exhausted. I'm a brute.”

“No, you're not. I'd call you homely but honest.”

“That's me,” he said.

“You're still not sure.”

He released her. “I make two thousand dollars a year plus two hundred overseas bonus.”

“But your quarters allowance has risen to four hundred and thirty-two dollars,” she said.

“I told you not to be clever. Anyway I
still
have to buy my own uniforms. How do you like my dress whites?”

“Unbearably handsome.”

“Ten seconds ago I was homely. You're as confused as I am.”

“I'm a bit confused about our tomorrow,” she said, and retrieved him, “but I am not the least confused about tonight.”

On the Wednesday—what was Wednesday? Here the days flowed, merged; perhaps Sunday would orient them, churchbells—they joined Father Scarron to attend a public function. “By all means wear your medals,” the priest had said. “Be resplendent. Don't come to Saint Rita's; I'll meet you at your hotel.” Now they were strolling the boulevard in the general direction of the Champ-de-Mars, Caroline and Scarron in white, McAllister in khaki; Caroline carried a parasol and wore a wide-brimmed straw hat. “It is the first school to be dedicated in over a year. Le tout-Port-au-Prince will be there. A chic woman will lose an earring. Sleek men will murmur assignations. Elegant polyglots will sweat like pigs. There will be no refreshments and in the end we will drift out of the courtyard and go our ways.”

McAllister grumbled, “Why drag us along?”

“A demonstration of progress. Also, you paid for it. And your uniform will create good will among our upper crust, whom you are defending from soulless revolutionaries.”

“You're making fun of everyone,” Caroline said.

“Yes. I'm sorry. I spend too much time in the company of God. It leads to snobbery.”

“Is your Martel soulless?”

“Not a bad question. Without a soul he would not rebel; but to rebel, one must sell one's soul. He has sold his to that Fleury, up north.”

“How very Gallic: a French Lucifer. What color is Martel, of the thirty-two?”

“Quite black, and his people are on the whole far blacker than the aristos here. Yet Fleury, his principal support, the Engels to his Marx, is an ivoire, a backwoods populist sugar magnate who yearns for the purest democracy. I believe shade is a matter of indifference to Martel; a useful weapon now, but he has promised himself and others to abolish those silly distinctions.”

“Not Lucifer, but Robespierre.”

“No, not Robespierre either: Charlemagne. He was named—though I am not sure by whom—Charlemagne Masséna Martel. Martel was a great king, and Charlemagne was his grandson, and Masséna was one of Napoleon's favorite marshals.”

“He was the Prince d'Essling,” McAllister told them, “and Napoleon said he was the Revolution's favorite son.”

“Le fils chéri de la … wasn't it victory's favorite son?”

“Well, I don't recall now,” McAllister said.

“I'm impressed,” Caroline said. “You may ask me to dinner.”

They had left the boulevard and now entered a flowered courtyard through a gateway in a stone wall higher than a man. In the courtyard buzzed a crowd of starchy, formal appearance, and at its deep end stood the school. There was an improvised stage, and before it stood some forty folding chairs of the kind McAllister associated with tent shows and Fundamentalist corroborees. Behind the school there seemed to be another street: roosters crowed, dogs barked. “Many of these guests are politicians,” Father Scarron said, “but the level of manners will be high. There will be no assassinations.”

Caroline said, “The scents are wonderful.” Many of the women wore jewels and flowers. McAllister bobbed bows left and right. Men consulted in grave metropolitan French, with many a “formidable” and many an “évidemment.” A handsome bespectacled black-haired woman in a blue linen suit greeted them; Caroline recognized the anthropologist, whose name now proved to be, rather oddly, Langlais. Caroline asked, “I suppose this is a parochial school?”

“Well, they all are, you see.” Madame Langlais seemed apologetic.

Not so Scarron, who said, “And why not?”

McAllister laughed. “Catholic or voodoo?”

Madame Langlais said, “I wouldn't joke about vodun.”

“Yes, I'm sorry, you're right,” McAllister said. “I tell my own men not to joke about it. Some of them say they've seen files of zombies.”

“Nothing to do with vodun,” Madame Langlais said briskly. “Your men saw them in farm country?”

“I suppose so, yes,” McAllister said.

“What you call zombies are catatonic hebephrenics, touched in the head and very often kept on a doped diet. Malnutrition, cretinism, superstition—and a traditional source of slave labor. Horrible. Vodun, on the other hand, is a religion. A real religion.”

“Indeed,” said Scarron.

“Farm country,” Caroline said. “It sounds so peaceful.”

“It's not dull,” McAllister said.

Scarron asked, “When must you go back?”

“Day after tomorrow,” McAllister said. “It's just patrols.”

“And while you enjoy the countryside,” Caroline said, “I languish in my room.”

“I shall show you the big city,” Father Scarron said.

The school was a white wooden shed with a corrugated iron roof also painted white. The shed was perhaps thirty feet by twenty, and the playground or courtyard about thirty feet by fifty: here the children would kick a ball, beat one another, scream and shout and sulk. Within the shed, Father Scarron explained, they would glance for a few minutes a day at some outlandish text, surely French in origin. “Some day we'll teach in Creole. For now they will learn, or be exposed to, the life of Toussaint, the highlights of the French Revolution, the alphabet and some arithmetic. They will hear a few of La Fontaine's fables and will be reminded again and again that Haiti is the only country in the world to have revolted, abolished slavery and expelled the former masters.”

There was of course no electricity for this school, but that would arrange itself quite soon.

There was of course no plumbing but that too would arrange itself quite soon.

There were no books but that was irrelevant because there were no students.

“Any Haitian who can afford unemployed ambulatory children can afford the lycée,” Father Scarron said. “But the Americans paid for this public school, and we Haitians are a polite people—cette fameuse politesse française, after all—so it has been constructed and advertised and every effort will be made to seat at these small desks deserving Haitians between the ages of six and twelve. And one of them will some day be a cabinet minister and it will all have been worth it.”

The audience straggled to its wooden chairs and applauded politely at the mention of France, the United States, and the Haitian government. The school was described. It was to be observed that the east and west walls were mainly shutters, so that the presence or absence, indeed the very velocity, of the trade winds could be taken advantage of. A plaque would in time be erected, commemorating the generosity of the American people, who were the friends and benefactors of all the world now that war had been abolished.