Alphabet of the Night Read online

  I know these people who are walking. I am witness to their journey. I can predict the route they will take. The people from the markets of En-bas-la-Ville have to stop at the far side of the Carrefour Péan before scattering to the four winds. Aéroport, Cité Cadet, Cité Militaire, Aviation, Saint-Martin, Solino, district by district, the news on the street will become a chameleon.

  It is time to be getting home. Despite the fear of Lucien’s dried blood which comes back to me, violent, threatening, I head for Pétion-Ville with a half-hearted plan to skirt round the city. I have learnt to avoid the main entry points, to change my route depending on the day or the prevailing mood. And it is now after eight at night and the town is getting dangerously empty. In a few hours, the masters of midnight, the squadrons of death, will fill the streets in search of the heart of the silence. At every crossroads, cigarette and hot rum sellers set out their packets and bottles. They are privileged people, allowed to confront the night. The lucky man at Lector Market even has a big truck battery to power his Japanese stereo and a light bulb. Everyone has their turn. Everyone has their use. It is in the nature of things that there are salesmen who serve the mysterious workings of the night.

  The hot rum seller sets up, the weather changes its clothes. Doors close on plans for nightmares. The lights go out one by one. And because we don’t laugh any more in this country after a certain time of night, all you can hear is the crying of a child who hasn’t had enough to eat, the retching of someone spewing up their gastro-enteritis. How many bogeymen will be cursed by helpless mothers tonight? Finally I decide to go home. Since I have no reason to hide, I will go to the back room of my shop and wait for Fresnel who won’t come, not tomorrow or after that. I get no pleasure from hiding. The night knows its hunting ground. Here, elsewhere, all the walls have ears.

  It was with my Jew’s instinct that I came back to this town, which is darker than anywhere else. For me, abandoning your business is like getting out of your tomb. I have a shopkeeper’s destiny to fulfil. If I had been a historian I would have hidden myself away in a library to understand the past so I could stick a label on the present. I am the inheritor and owner of a shop. I earn my living from the day, even if it is wounded. It is my duty to use my nights of fear to prepare the days. No one can stop me stock-taking, placing orders, selling things to feed those who can bear deep frozen, imported surplus from overfed America. I take on my de facto role again, with plans to make the town bow down to a tall hoarding in coloured neon. The name of Assaël will be visible from every direction, sending the message to the palace itself that the Jews have put down roots. I was born into a line of lice that you can’t get rid of using ordinary tweezers.

  With his mania for other people’s history, Fresnel would have been able to give me a historical explanation for why I refuse to admit defeat. The bastard sons of those who colonised Haiti gave themselves the right to decide who lives and does business in this country. When the first Levantines arrived in Haiti, fleeing poverty elsewhere, the country’s lords and masters couldn’t even tell the difference between a Syrian, a Palestinian and a Jew. We were all the same: vermin who laid out their trinkets in the street, next door to businesses owned by White Europeans who were accepted and integrated. We hid our religion, our age-old quarrels with the Muslims. This compromise allowed us to ruin the European dandies, who were never able to sell anything except their names, to which they had added titles especially for the New World. The Europeans made themselves aristocrats; we made ourselves rich. It is true we have not made much profit from the beaches in this country. But one day we will set up there. Behind a counter, of course.

  The shop has not moved. Misfortune is the only thing to leave its mark. I remember that a few days ago, death passed by and mowed down Lucien. How many smothered sighs did he leave in my bed? His memory comes back to me in a burst of silence. From the bedroom comes his collection of messages, adrift among my souvenirs of warmth. I loved his body, tormented by a head that had no feasible plans. Here I am, back in one of my many cells full of memories of happy dawns. Senses numb, I will try and open another window onto the subconscious dance of passions torn apart by morality’s unheeded voice.

  In my panic to get away I never thought to switch off the radio and its news. It is nine o’clock. It is time to count the spent shells, to measure the depth of the machete blows. I sit in a chair. I light my pipe. I take the news as it comes.

  “From a combination of sources. The executive of the governing party has come out in silent protest against the President’s militia who, in their alleged ignorance, are turning the country into a no-life zone. This morning a people’s deputy, a member of the party executive and a personal friend of the President, was attacked by young militants from Bel-Air. It appears the people no longer acknowledge their leaders. The people accuse them of blinding the President with their new wealth. For their part, the militia denounce, among other things, the way their status as guardians of the Revolution has been trivialised.

  If this news is confirmed, in the next few days we will almost certainly see a ministerial reshuffle, a suspension of parliament, government by direct rule and, who knows, an official recognition of the militia’s effectiveness as the only ones capable of suppressing the nights of rebellion in this country.”

  PART TWO

  1

  HAITI IS THE LAND of the seven ways, the seven crosses, of all the truths. To get to the bottom of a problem you have to knock on more than one door. That is what the old people say. And they have lived. If no one else, they at least can claim to know this country. In Haiti, everything is abnormal.

  One of my customers woke up one morning to find her leg swollen like the trunk of a mapou tree. I told her to go and see the Cuban doctors, who are renowned as masters of the art of healing. After numerous examinations the doctors told her the leg could not be saved. Flouting this diagnosis, her family came and took her out of hospital. Two weeks later the woman looked fit enough to run a marathon. She had taken the alternative way. That’s Haiti for you. You have to see all the cards before throwing in your hand.

  I decided to take my troubles to the court of the invisibles. Lucien is dead. I know that for certain. A bullet doesn’t forgive. But it’s different with Fresnel. His case is still open. He might be in prison, he might be dead. If it turns out to be the latter, I won’t be able to rest until I know how it happened. And anyway, no secret is safe in Port-au-Prince. You just have to know how to go about things. If I have to winkle out the truth with tweezers then I will, however forbidden it might be.

  Three stations, three chances. To start with I intend to go and see the Missionary on the Mountain. His influence extends over the whole country. He has contacts everywhere. The preachers of Pastor Johnny Bell take the Good News to the remotest corners of the land. There is no doubt that these same preachers act as informers for the central office of the Mission. In my opinion, Pastor Johnny Bell is the leader who has by far the only reliable and effective network in the country. “Everything works for the good of those who love God.” The Missionary loves God and knows the things and the people of this country.

  If the pastor has trouble ridding me of the slings and arrows of my grief, I won’t think of giving up. I will knock on other doors. On Zaccharias’s, of course, the head of the army of the wild nights. If my journey takes me into the passages of the underground, mystic world, I will follow in the footsteps of my guide, Edner the hougan.

  2

  6th November

  2 p m

  YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE an American missionary to get your gardener to make two ordinary hedges stand up at right angles with the mean-minded intention of protecting a path. The Bells’ house is furtive. Even in Haiti, this family can’t get away from the image of the little house on the prairie. It is a sign of divine blessing. Milk and honey flows in the pond of promised fish. Who would imagine that a huge, filthy, sleepwalking town has set off towards the Mountain intending to conquer it? Port-au-Prin
ce is striding in other directions. As a town spreads itself out, each new strip of land gained becomes its own, bears its imprint in years to come. I have seen nothing. I know nothing. Porte-au-Prince is climbing. The headquarters of the American Baptist Mission had better keep its distance.

  Protestants, as embodied by this family, live for the struggle, the fight against evil. Port-au-Prince is Sodom. Port-au-Prince is Gomorrah. The Protestants of Haiti are already half-way to Heaven. The rest of their road has to be sown with conversions, with those who have returned to the fold for lost sheep. A true Haitian Protestant does not mix with the world. By ‘world’, they mean a way of life that is far from the presence of God. No trips to the cinema. No alcohol, no cigarettes. Dances, public festivities are forbidden. Politics is not allowed. A Protestant is just a passive citizen, no more no less, who claims his place in Heaven. You must give to God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s.

  There is heaven on earth. A white child falls off his pony. His mother, wearing a flowery skirt, lets out a devout “My God”. The child gets up, wiping a dewdrop from his jumper. The mother takes him in her arms and all the Haitians in the vicinity begin to pray. Even when he is the child of a missionary, a little American always remains what he is: reinforcements from the centre of the world, a rope hanging down from America to take the star-spangled banner everywhere. Fresnel told me that the chairman of the Mission had all the native children with access to the residence and the Sunday school vaccinated, before letting any missionary’s children go there.

  Single-handed, I am every part of a lumbering procession pushing the wreckage of its life that is abandoned to silence. There are so many gates that will open at the sound of my whining voice, which barely hides the wounds inflicted by a sun that has gone sour. Or into someone’s back pocket? I search for a day in the impenetrable past. In the name of criminal excesses, of cries smothered by the fog, I mean to find the source that makes the big secrets of this country grow.

  Seventeen times my tongue silently rehearses its speech. It will break its silence to ask for help, to find Fresnel or perhaps his body. My tongue has known days of rapture with Fresnel’s body. It can still taste the quivering saltiness, the touch of a skin that shatters into a thousand dreams. I have already encountered the presence of the Bells. They come to stock up with American goods on the rare occasions they come down from the mountain to confront the heat, the misery and the chaos of Port-au-Prince. Even if you wrote it in blood, they would refuse to understand that a man can love a man. Lousy American hypocrites! Everyone knows the puritan’s song: God does not wish … the Holy Bible forbids … but this doesn’t stop them moving in political circles without actually getting involved in politics.

  From time to time government ministers come to taste Mrs Missionary’s famous doughnuts. More than one claims to have seen the venerable pastor get a professional and/or social visit from the President. It goes without saying that people regard the clique of missionaries as CIA agents, anticommunist Neanderthals, post-colonists. They get involved everywhere, supporting the people of Haiti in their enormous need for spiritual and material food. The Mission runs more than three hundred schools, fifty health centres, two hospitals; not counting the road-building projects, professional training, re-forestation, and support for agriculture and crafts.

  The blessed court of the Mission is a catalogue of unusual images. It is the central office of a vast network of churches and associated activities. Everything is run from this court. The Mission rarely uses contract workers. It has its own engineers, doctors, theologians, teachers, its own agronomists, its own fleet of vehicles. The offices of the different departments all revolve round the church, whose cross can be seen for miles around. Like worker ants, the pack of labourers, owned by God and managed by the Mission, bustles about in the warehouse which is piled with humanitarian aid in the form of food, medicine and building materials.

  Creole is the order of the day here. The Americans never speak English to the Haitians. Between themselves they understand each other. It took ages before I realised that all the Haitians who work for the Mission speak Creole with the same accent as the Americans. The pastor is white. The White man is good. His word comes from God. So does his accent.

  Naturally, there is also a mad woman. She is part of the furniture. She is obsessed, she has the God disease. She has gentle eyes and a new and holy Bible. She talks about God to everyone. She hands out the Good News for free, without any aggression. Just for the pleasure. Just out of madness.

  “Blessed is he who accepts Christ and makes Him his driver. Man is nothing but a truck, and the only experienced driver is Jesus, the only Son of God. Trust Him with your life and He will wipe the mark of the Devil and the wicked from your brow. Be welcome in the House of God and accept the Light. If you remain deaf to my call, you will have missed one of the last chances to be among the chosen elect. You might well be rich, young and healthy. None of that can protect you. Haiti is going to collapse. Nothing can stop the plan of destruction which the devil has set in motion through politicians who are murdering the institutions, nights that steal memories, children with wounded days. Convert, or leave this cursed land.”

  The mad woman’s hand takes hold of her skirt. Her eyes follow an imaginary flight of migrating birds. And, having spread the Word, her voice fades away. I continue along my road towards the Light. The pastor’s house exudes grace.

  3

  13th November

  2 20 p m

  FOR MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES I have been in an enormous living room with an open view. Given my anxiety, life closes up over this space. No one has ever sinned in this room. It exudes saintliness. Above the door are the words: God is the invisible host in this house. The décor is in good taste, very Haitian Lifestyle. Even the yellow imitation leather sofa, so dear to Americans, has not found a place here. The transistor drags me back to reality. It is the only thing that everyone has in common in this country: the news.

  “Our correspondent in the north of the country has just told us about an event which, in the opinion of experts on political turmoil, will be a terrible blow to the current regime. Following an altercation between two representatives of the government in the north, the life Deputy of the town of Cap-Haïtien, the first antagonist, gunned down the mayor of the town with seventeen bullets. We consider it necessary to remind you that both men are members of the same political party, that of the President, the government, the absolute majority in Parliament, all the director generals, and of the starving people, etc.”

  With perfect timing, the pastor comes in the door and turns off the radio. The news obviously gets on his nerves. I understand. I am sick of it too; except that my curiosity is a motivation without logic. I try and understand the dawning of days in half-tint, the disappearance of my loved ones.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I wasn’t sure I wanted to visit with you” he says. “I know you are a homosexual. But since God is love and forgiveness, I must just make it clear that I have agreed to see you as a director of conscience and not as a friend. God loves you and wants to cleanse you of your sins.”

  I knew I was going to be up against a morality specialist. But I never imagined he was sufficiently interested in me as a person to be aware of my sexual orientation. I have always been discreet about my private life. What had I done to deserve the coup de grâce before the conversation even started? Still, he might be God’s representative on earth, but I am a Jewish shopkeeper: a good reason to negotiate.

  “Pastor, I’m sorry to keep you from your work, which is so important for the spiritual and material well-being of this people who are spurned and in need of shepherds. But I know that God’s house is open to all his sons, regardless of their race or sexual orientation. And I would feel more comfortable if you treat me as a person who is homosexual rather than saying I am a homosexual.”

  “I hope the purpose of your visit is not to give me the reasoned, academic argument for accepting
differences. I am not a racist, despite my strong conviction that Haitians are incapable of logical analysis. I assume you are not intending to ask me to tolerate a practice that is defiling and against nature, if I may refer to the holy dictates of the Bible.”

  To keep the discussion on the right track, I steer away from home truths. The pastor is not above suspicion. I know his activities do not stop at preaching the Word. To be able to reconcile religious fervour with wealth, you have to have good outward defences. And in any case I need to ask him a favour. I know he can help me, despite my being a sinner. I am looking for Fresnel, that is all.

  I explain what my problem is, making a point of looking him in the eye. He understands. I know from experience that there is a solidarity of colour in Haiti. He and I are both foreigners and white. We are united by a kind of primal need: the need to conspire against this people. We are both in business. We both do well out of it. He senses that I envy him. He knows I do. I too would like to traffic in the lives of my congregation, to be permanently exempt from customs duty, be a guest of the President, get paid for lobbying.

  Even though he is reported missing, Fresnel would understand why I persist in steering a situation in a direction where, de facto, I might get caught out.

  I was afraid of having to keep quiet, and thus lying indirectly so as to be able to keep him a little longer; to prolong the pleasure of feeling that I am waiting for him, for some play of his body or his eyes.