Can anyone know what goes on in the head of a man who has lost his mind? I wish I'd inherited his ideas of social justice, his intransigence toward power, his disdain for money and his passion for other people. And what would your mother get? What she was always able to hold onto above and beyond her pain. Our eyes meet in silence. Then Aunt Ninine finally opens the door.
The Killer on the Motorbike
In the theater of Port-au-Prince
everything comes at you live.
Even death which can show up
at any moment
on a Kawasaki.
Death imported from Asia.
A young man in dark glasses
revving his little yellow Kawasaki
shows off on the square.
“A bad seed,” declares
the lady sitting next to me.
We find out later
that a young man on a motorbike,
without even stopping, shot at
two doctors
going into their clinic.
Right close by.
Death at top speed.
The witness (a man of about sixty): “I was right there, next to the doctors who were talking. I heard a motorbike. I turned around to see where it was coming from. Bang. Bang. Two shots. The two doctors fall. One's shot in the throat, the other in the heart. He didn't even stop.”
A crowd quickly gathers around the only witness to the two murders. The ambulance hurries to pick up the wounded. One is already dead. The other who was shot in the throat doesn't stand much of a chance. His wife rushes up and starts talking about having him transferred to Miami by helicopter.
The same witness: “I admire people who are good at their job. He hardly slowed down at all. Such precision! Not everybody can do that, I mean, I rode a motorbike for ten years. It was a Kawasaki, a new model. Compact but reliable. Obviously if you've got a bike that breaks down, as often happens, then it's more risky. You can see he takes his job seriously.”
A policeman comes up to him. The crowd parts in front of the man who is still admiring the killer's precision work.
Policeman:
You're coming with me.
Witness:
Why?
Policeman:
You seem to know what's going on here. I think you're going to be able to help us.
Witness:
I happen to live around here . . . I'm just a motorbike fan.
Lady:
Maybe he likes motorbikes but he doesn't live around here. I've been in this neighborhood for forty-six years and it's the first time I've seen him.
Policeman:
You're going to come with me.
Witness:
I live in Jalousie, just up the mountain.
Lady:
All the hoodlums who terrorize us live up there.
Witness:
I'm not an accomplice . . . I simply appreciate a job well done.
Policeman:
Come with me or I'll put the handcuffs on you.
Witness:
This is a democracy...
Other Lady:
Maybe he's telling the truth, maybe he just likes motorbikes . . . Some people don't know when to keep their mouths shut. When faced with death, we must simply bow our heads.
Policeman:
Come with me. And you, Madame, you're a witness too?
First Lady:
No, I was eating when it happened.
Policeman:
All right, break it up, move on, everybody...
When everyone
runs every which way through the market
it means there's someone
for whom time has stopped.
Lying on the ground in his own blood.
The last spasms of life.
The sound of a motorbike speeding off.
The young guy on the bike got away easily.
But they'll catch up to him soon enough.
The slum where he lives is crawling with
police informants
most of whom are killers too.
According to a
New York Times
investigation most of the murders are ordered by powerful businessmen who live in the luxury villas high on the mountain slope. Right across from the slums where the killers live.
The contracts are negotiated by cell phone, from one ghetto to the other. The starving masses and the upper classes have always been interested in technological progress. The latter for security reasons. The former to remain in the battle.
Near the University
Since I'm here I take a look around. I like to scout out the locations and know where I am, to avoid ending up in a blind alley if ever I have to run. I come across a little park filled with former students who can't find work. Those who haven't yet understood that only ten percent will get a decent job when they get out of school. And that their studies aren't enough. To work in this country, a bitter but lucid student told me, you have to come from a good background or ally yourself with a powerful political family.
The unemployed lying on park benches
with white handkerchiefs over their faces.
A few prostitutes in miniskirts
trying to pass themselves off
as modern literature students.
A dozing policeman,
his gun and nothing else between his legs.
Rest for the wretched.
A girl accompanies her mother
who is herself so young she could
be her older sister.
They accost me quickly
to inquire after my desires.
They say that a mother and daughter in the same bed
can still excite an old senator.
I'm not there yet.
They go off with their arms around each other's waist.
From behind, I can't distinguish the mother from the daughter.
The young man sitting next to me watches the van full of police from the international squad go by. The more cops there are, the more thieves. What do you mean? I ask. They're all the same. I don't get it. The ones who are supposed to be protecting us are in business with the killers when they're not killers them-selves. How do you defend yourself? We walk in the shadows and stay at home as much as we can. I'm telling you only a dictator can save this country. How old are you? Twenty-three. I bet you never knew the dictator. No, but I'm telling you all the same: this country needs a leader, otherwise it's total disorder. And where is the chaos? He gives me a stunned look. I see order everywhere. The powerful keep everything for themselves. Since the little guys have nothing, they tear each other apart for the few crumbs that are left. If we name a dictator, we'll simply make the way things are official. I still believe we need a leader in this country. These days, every neighborhood is controlled by armed gangs that constantly fight each other and terrorize everyone else in the process.
We take a few steps into the park. What are you studying? Political science. And you want a dictator? Yes, sir, anything but this untenable situation. We could always protest against the dictator on the international scene or even try to topple him. The one I knew, if you add the father's regime to the son's, ran from 1957 to 1986, twenty-nine years. What you're seeing now is their legacy. A dictator would only give them legitimacy. And order serves only to enrich one particular group. Disorder begins when other groups start demanding their share. You don't live here? I came from Montreal. And there's no dictator there if I understand correctly. No, but there's winter. It's not the same thing. Of course not, I was joking. His face darkens. Is the winter so terrible up there? You have to go through it to understand. So it's subjective then? More like democratic. Everybody suffers. Not everybody: those who can get away, do. It's like here: people who have the means don't have to suffer the rigors of dictatorship. I'd like to go up there and see one day. You don't just go and see. You go for a while and end up spending your life there.
I leave him, hoping he won't end up like the people he is denouncing. Still, he's got the right profile. The feeling of being looked down on by a certain class, the enormous financial difficulties that keep him from satisfying his most primal needs, and to that you have to add an immoderate taste for flowery language and the loneliness (sexual hunger is part of it) of someone who was orphaned at an early age. Not so different from the young François Duvalier when he wrote his poem “Les Sanglots d'un exilé” whose main theme is the resentment that would later serve as his political platform.
I continue my walk
trying to remember
the dictator's poem I had to
learn by heart at school.
“And the black of my ebony skin was lost
in the shadows of the night.
When, that night, as hideous as a madman,
I left behind my cold student room.”
Everything is there. Frankenstein let loose.
At the far end of the park, there is a small market where the ladies selling tea entertain themselves with no heed for the few customers. One of the women is telling a sex story with all the appropriate gestures. She shakes her big round butt in the youngest woman's face to tease her. The other women look on and smile, their heads resting on sacks of tea. Now and again laughter rises in the perfumed air.
A skinny young man
tries to load a long rifle
while slipping on a khaki cape.
His friend also plays the role
of security guard in a supermarket
across the street.
A city ready for war.
Crazy about rap music.
Reads only mangas.
Eats only pasta.
Quiet by day.
Talkative by night.
That's my nephew.
We understand each other easily.
Looking at him I think of those times
when everything exasperated me.
I avoid preaching to him
and slip him some money
when his mother is looking elsewhere.
Money is to boys
what perfume is to girls.
It makes them euphoric.
The young woman at the cash in this little restaurant near the university has a way of smiling at me. A few students are wolfing down a mountain of rice. The old waiter ambles over with our plates, his shuffling feet barely leaving the floor. Everyone has the same meal (chicken in a sauce, white rice and potato salad). We eat with our heads down. A tall glass of soursop juice. Close by, my black notebook where I write down everything happening around me. The smallest insect visible to my eye.
If there is one thing I like about my nephew, it's how he isn't in a hurry to talk. He hasn't opened his mouth since he got here, but when he does, it's for real. That part of town isn't too dangerous? Sometimes it is. When the government decides that we're too quiet, it sends in agents disguised as students to stir things up. How do they do that? They show up a week before the police. They start by recruiting the leaders. Then they wait for the right time. We know they've started their game when on a Monday morning tires are burning in the courtyard of the school. Then the government sends in a squad of cops to supposedly restore order. The
TV
is in on it too. Standing at the windows, the provocateurs pretend to fire at the police hidden in the park. They end up wounding one or two of them but never seriously, which gives the squad the excuse to charge. Five minutes later, the tanks arrive. What do you guys do? At first, nothing, we sucked it up, but finally we figured out their technique and invented a little system that so far seems to be working. As soon as we see the flaming tires, we slip away and let them face off against each other. They fire at one another thinking we're still in the area. Luckily they're pretty stupid, but they'll end up catching on sooner or later. His calm even voice frightens me. He seems unimpressed by what could happen to him. No more than a slight smile that reveals a subtle appreciation of the facts. In any case, he continues, I don't know why they go to such trouble to screw up our plans when nobody wants to stay here anyway. If they don't want us around, they should just hand out American visas and the university would empty out in a minute. The students seem even more desperate than in my day. Still, that was Duvalier. The Tonton Macoutes. The black years. The bloodthirsty police force of a barbarous regime. The bitterness may well spring from the fact that they believed a change would come after Baby Doc's departure. Nothing worse than hope betrayed.
I always dreamed of living on a campus back when I was in Port-au-Prince. My main activity would have consisted of assiduous library attendance because of that girl who was doing research on the slave trade and its impact on the European economy of the period. I would have participated half-heartedly in the interminable discussions about the Wajda and Pasolini movies screened by the film club at the back of the yard. And in the accusation of censorship leveled against the rector who would have prevented the first-year students from watching Deep Throat. And in stormy protests against the government that would have confiscated the copy of State of Siege. The first kiss with the girl from the library the evening before a major exam. The feeling of having to choose between her and my future. And of screwing up my life no matter what choice I made.
The Ancient Caribbean Wind
My mother takes me aside
to give me a little photo
of my father with my sister on his lap.
And me standing beside him.
My sister is crying.
My father and I have the same serious face.
My mother tells me the photo was taken by a friend of my father's, a “comrade in arms.” They tried to take another picture to have a happier memory of that sad time, since my father and his friend had made a quick visit before heading for the hills, but my sister wouldn't stop crying all afternoon.
Her voice becomes even softer as she remembers that afternoon. My father's friend was called Jacques. He was so full of life. He played guitar and loved to dance. After the photograph, he played a Spanish song in fashion at the time and my mother danced in the kitchen. Since my father and Jacques were being hunted by the President-for-Life's men, they disappeared once night fell. Later my mother found out that Jacques had been caught and had died in prison.