Alphabet of the Night Read online

  The same day

  1 p m

  I stop at Chez Frantz.

  I almost missed the door of the restaurant. I like this place. It would have been a pity to walk straight past. Such absentmindedness would have forced me to ask directions from the locals, to retrace my steps, to walk back over two kilometres of potholed roads. I came back here two years ago, to get revenge on desires of mine which have been lost over the years. My friends and I were impressed by what this restaurant represented for us. It haunted our youth. Every Friday afternoon we used to come to the Avenue des Dattes to steal sugar cane. We never left before the start of the Rotary Club meeting. To begin the meeting, the Club members had to sing a verse from the national anthem: “For the flag, for the homeland, let us dig with joy.”

  I never saw anyone from my family at this meeting of worthies. My father always lied to me about it. He told me he was not invited for several reasons, such as the Rotarians’ habit of hitting the bottle. He likened their meetings to drinking sessions. It was not that he couldn’t afford the subscription, or that he wasn’t pale enough. What he failed to tell me was that he was a banished White, of doubtful stock. He knew that the other Whites did not have to slave away in order to earn a living. They are part and parcel of the plan to whiten the race. That is why they can marry the children of politicians to produce mulattos. These breeders have access to all levels of government, to all the clubs. Unlike us, these invaders only set foot in dearest Haiti with the idea of making a life for themselves. They have run away from unemployment, legal proceedings, hypocrisy. My parents were not that kind of casual displaced person. I am from the people of no fixed abode.

  The restaurant Chez Frantz has lost yet another star. The last time I came I imagined I was taking away two. Legitimate revenge. The Rotary Club has completely disintegrated. A victim of prudent exiles. The national anthem is never sung now, only played. Monsieur Esdras has been Club President for over ten years. He comes out of habit, like a sleepwalker at the waning moon. At the start of each meeting he pours a glass of Coke for every permanent absentee. He has stopped paying his subscription. Besides, there is no longer a fund. The wife of the last treasurer handed it all over to the colonel to pay for her husband’s tuberculosis treatment in prison. The Rotary Club now only exists in memories. A few diehard members still dare get together. It is their way of recovering from careers cut short, the pain of life after prison, businesses seized because of colleagues who headed for the hills. No more worthies, just the salt breeze that blows on the outskirts of a new neighbourhood.

  I am too bitter to notice the relentless call of the hummingbird in the flowers on the balcony. It seems his ancestors always did the same thing at the same time. Perhaps this one came back with damaged wings, or with the pain of his fellow creatures that fell during the journey. But he did not take the time to make friends again with the place that once sheltered him as a station on the route of his life. I had to stumble over the image of Lucien’s body dripping with blood before I could understand the eternal, unchanging flight of the hummingbird.

  I am not a fugitive. No complaints have been made about me. Lucien’s body is already in the communal grave that is avoided even by Baron la Croix, who handles the mysteries of life in death. I am not going to be a witness. I’d rather close my shop. But the news is spreading across the département. The domineering and excessive voice of the Republic of Port-au-Prince imposes itself on the other Haiti:

  “The President of the Republic has called an urgent meeting of the Chiefs of Police of the country’s nine geographic départements. The schedule for this meeting, planned for tomorrow at the National Palace, has been published by the presidential press bureau. On the agenda will be the opening of a debate on the latest outbreak of violent robberies that are threatening the credibility of the revolutionary government. The Head of State has made it clear that he fought his election campaign on the issues of security, economic growth and social justice. He has every intention of working with the government to achieve results that are in line with the promises he made. The death toll from last night is twelve.”

  Without pausing for breath, the presenter moves on to the rest of the news.

  “Shopkeepers from this country have moved their businesses to the Dominican Republic. To help them set up, the Dominican authorities have given them substantial tax relief and aids to integration. At a press conference in the Dominican capital this morning, according to a report by the government press agency, these stateless people spoke of the climate of fear in Haiti, and the burdens imposed by the country’s administration. Apparently they left the country owing ten year’s unpaid tax.”

  * Foreigners.

  5

  27th October

  5 00 p m

  MUSIC FILLS THE CAR. I have no desire to get out. Too tired. My immediate plan is to rediscover a particular corner in the playground of the École des Frères, a school for Christian education. I let my portable cassette player keep playing. For me, each missing friend has their own few bars of music. Today I am listening for Fresnel. We grew up together. It was with him I marked out all the doorways in this part of town, which has changed so little over the years. When we needed to, we came here to hide to escape punishment. We kissed each other dozens of times, because we were children, because it was habit. One day he said it was better cuddling me than being subjected to Brother Pascal’s bad breath.

  We spent most of our time spitting out the taste of cheap tobacco and fear after having to pay another visit to the office of our cassock-wearing instructor. Over the years our love created affection and complicity between us. But it was nothing compared to the power of a counsellor that the Brother, our teacher and lover, was always imparting to us.

  I haven’t heard from Fresnel for days. I can’t imagine he has disappeared in the wild frenzy of a night from which there is no return. Maybe they haven’t had time to take him to prison yet. Killed on the spot by mistake. I always thought he would come to a tragic end. He drinks too much, and with anybody. He’s crazy when he’s drunk, just blurts things out. The militia are everywhere, listening. No one knows who is going to inform on who. When flies are in the air, you can’t tell what sex they are. And this is definitely a state of flies. They poison everything, do it with a passion.

  Once again the idea of death has just passed through my life. Always in the same direction. It would be insensitive to talk about coincidence, about victims who never stood a chance. Even in my head, blues music is redesigning the eternity of tastes. I know it would please Fresnel, the artist of absence. I invest this place of our forbidden games with the fear that I will invent a way of managing departures. First him, and then Lucien. My relationship with Fresnel began when I found a reason to love, to give myself. As for Lucien, he was a passing affair that lasted. We made love out of solidarity, out of a need to make the most of the rare mornings we were given.

  Music is a cure for fear. It has countless lives. I always buy two of the same record. I listen to them. I copy them on disc. I put them on cassette. On Sundays I used to go and listen to old records at Fresnel’s place. I liked his little house at Pétion-Ville, his way of associating music with our every gesture. We always made love to a background of a cappella. Once he was satisfied, he often left me in bed with the smell of our bodies to go for a drink and talk history with his fellow teachers. He knew more about my family than my father did. Other people’s histories are his passion. He only has me and a few friends he once spent a night with who will have experienced the intimacy of rare moments that are totally his, without any history, without the need to prove anything to others.

  According to the rumours, we were blood brothers, baptised together, business associates, old friends, but never lovers. It is true we were already adolescents when we arrived in the capital with the same recommendations from Brother Pascal for the Little Seminary of the Collège Saint-Martial. People saw us arrive. I am a white Jew, the son of a provincial grocer. Fresne
l is a mulatto from the same place. These outward signs blocked access to my nudity. As long as this country has amnesia, my past is protected. People pass through, stopping just long enough to shatter their lives on the pylons of the town, whose length is forever unknown. Around me grows the time of a solitary past. Not a single old person remembers me growing up. Nobody wants to remember anything. The past is left to drift away in the mists of dawn. Without descendants, without a prayer. You are alone with destiny, the destiny of someone who is just passing through.

  I have no more school friends left. They are all dead; or worse, they have left. The last one who called in at the shop to say hello thought I looked old and shabby. He had trouble finding a safe Western product without too much fat content. I thought he was a bit too obsessive about the nasty little bacteria we eat here from morning ’til night. He normally did his shopping at the big, sterile supermarket chains. He left the way he came: as a tourist.

  He reminded me of my years with the Brothers at the school for Christian education. It was a socialisation project whose secret was known only to my father. My native community seems to have a divine mission to colonise. It always joins the most reactionary local movement, the one closest to the powers that be. Like a long-term investment I found myself placed among the legal Whites of this country. The Brother-Headmaster only accepted me after making my father promise that I would not be allowed to run rackets with my classmates, selling them trinkets and broken biscuits.

  I hear the six o’clock news over the twelve rows of bricks round what used to be my school, where you learnt everything, even how to love in a good non-Christian way.

  “American coastal patrols have picked up what remains of a boat— two hundred and six passengers, including crew—which had most likely sunk in the Vent Canal. To date, American figures, which are reliable, show that more than two million people have braved sea crossings to get to the coast of Florida. Are they fleeing poverty or terror? Of these latter-day adventurers, five hundred thousand have managed to get through the protective wire fencing along the coast. Two hundred thousand have been turned back to Haiti and the rest unfortunately perished. Of those turned back to Haiti, half have already disappeared. Twenty thousand of them are clinically insane. At night they can be heard telling the story of the struggle of their hopes against the cynicism of the waves.”

  And the news continues:

  “Former Police Inspector Paul Jumelot was arrested this morning for conspiracy against State security. He has been taken under close surveillance to a secret location known only to the Bureau for Investigation and Action for Internal Security.”

  6

  27th October

  7 00 p m

  THE FLEETING CRIES of nightfall glance off the final notes of a treacly performance of blues, muffled and slow-moving. The imaginary presence of Fresnel drifts around in the growing darkness, leaving brief reflections of our first acts of madness that were really just faux pas. It is the moment to let myself be absorbed by the hesitation of our bodies parted for ever, by the uncontrolled echoes of our elation. In the death pangs of each minute that carries off the remains of the sun into the depths of the night, my rootless mind withdraws to the ruins of my loves, to the bundle that is Lucien, his blood, into the finality of a vanished word.

  The day, the physical symbol of flourishing life, disappears with its knapsack still undone. Out of it tumbles a ray of sunshine, the last chime of the ice-cream man’s bell, the furtive bouncing of a ball, a last display of kites tearing holes in the north wind. The people of Gonaïves get ready to greet the night. The town has no choice but to obey the wishes of the darkness. No one knows if the neighbourhoods that have trouble lighting up are not part of some mysterious plan to stop life going on. In my little corner, Fresnel’s reawakened tenderness seeps into my pores, places a kiss in my path. But the weight of the dead who lie submerged in my fear suddenly comes to the surface. A desire to take my rips and tears into the first all-night bar I come to along my broken road.

  The town catches up with me once I get to the power station. All night its roaring will be in the ears of the people who live nearby. None of them like to go to bed without this accompaniment. The ten big petrol engines keep on running, providing the tempo for the right to exist. I am going to attack the town at the part that is hidden from the inquisition. I too have the right to wear a mask of normality, to feed off the habit of dying. The car will take me through the streets of the little town, past houses almost buried⎯like drowned dreams⎯during the last rains. At ten kilometres-an-hour, with muted movements, like the winding spiral of men and women with a naked destiny, my mind will unwind in a wave of taboos.

  At the door of the Café du Port the precocious night breeze dies away. My family knew this town during the time of the bogeymen. My parents always discouraged me from coming here. It is an area that has never been built up, but which grew to serve the needs of ship-owners searching for love, shifty-looking soldiers, writers without family ties, good-time girls whose lace gets excited by the mist. This is the place to come for everyday slap-and-tickle. It is forbidden to talk of sadness here. Everyone parades their own particular reason for living, puts their cards on the table. The aim of the nonstop music is to fill the room with shrill, lively, tropical notes. No one has the decency, let alone the strength to keep still.

  Like an anthill at harvest time, footsteps take bodies, tired but happy, from tables to the bar, from the bar to the dance floor, from the dance floor to the bedroom and from the bedroom to seventh heaven.

  Pleasure has been decreed a substitute for conscience, a painkiller for misfortune. Even when happiness is writ large in the subdued light, every creaking door adds a strangled voice to the necklace of stolen lives. Wounds, concealed by the attitude of girls who rule over nights behind closed doors, get a cynical reception. Queens of the night, witches of the day, they live in fear of dawn’s approach. The daylight likes to feed on make-up and illicit perfume. No one is sole owner of the non-stop party. The prostitutes at the harbour turn their backs on the sun and look forward to the reign of the half-light.

  I have just discovered the many-headed spectacle of unconditional love. The woman who owns the bar has a sales technique quite unlike my own. To work at this counter you mustn’t be inquisitive. Above all you have to know how to corrupt every client who arrives by chance or in need of therapy. I am too sad to be any good at selling fantasies. I always try and find an echo of the street in people’s gestures. Sometimes, in the eyes of an upper-crust woman, I manage to understand her fear of a night of vampires. As a rule I am interested in my customers’ wounds. I am an inquisitive salesman; along with my passions, my special offers, my everyday products, I go into all the houses in the area. My clients see me in my shop calendar pinned up on their living-room wall. Perhaps they see me in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, printed by the thousand at the end of December, in every promise of a national holiday.

  Never has there been such a total ban on rumours from outside. The news bounces off the armour plating of the cursed and happy harbour district. One after another the queens come walking along their patch, disappearing behind a door into places big enough for two. It is a good idea to have a drink. It is advisable to make love. It is wise to forget your sorrows. The news will wait outside the door for morning. This special neighbourhood beside the sea is deaf, and suffers from amnesia.

  7

  28th October

  8 00 a m

  MORNING FOUND ME down at the harbour, by a sea that was pursuing an old, everyday wave. It caught me with my head in hands that were still warm with desire. Its rhythm stood bolt upright in my path. I have a horror of the sea. It is too closely linked to my family history. How many Jews have made a destiny for themselves out of fantasies about the ocean swell? I have no right to leave. The sea reminds me too much of running away, of stories told to one horizon after another. My family tradition is a bottle thrown by a chain of events, trailing behind it a stream of discr
iminations crammed together in every harbour in the world.

  Instinctively I step back from the sea. How can a whole race make an entry in their diary which might involve being tossed about by floods? To my way of thinking, exile is that profound self-perception that comes after every journey into the events and places nearest me.

  Permanent escape. This is the sum total of my inheritance. It is more than a century since my family settled in this country, juggling their shop with the bureaucracy of consumer regulations, and already I want to leave; and that is the best reason of all. In one of his escapist, Sunday moods, Fresnel suggested I do a survey of the twenty-eight thousand square kilometres that make up this country. I always treated his suggestions like just another product on offer, of no interest to a good businessman. I always frustrated his efforts to introduce me to anything apart from my shop and our Sundays of love. Now I see how pitiful I am to rely on rumours, on what others tell me. And what others?

  I grew up wedged between two shelves. At home we had a swimming pool, built to make my father’s last days more comfortable. Most of the time it was empty, due to lack of water and guests. I never benefited from this luxury to wash away the traces of ludicrous, irrational games (to use my father’s expression). The sound of celebrations and holidays fell flat at home. They were always kept indoors to be corrected. Before letting them out again, our way of life took care to prune out any heathen songs, the music of sloth. This is where I get my fear of taking time, of seeing the other world. It contrasts amazingly with my desire to sin; or, to put it nicely, to finish the apple that Adam could never eat while he was under the malicious gaze of the Creator.