A Clean Pair of Hands (16 page)

Nikko, the chief designer at the Bodins’ business, always started work early. He was an effeminate gay, and was shy in the company of women, so he found that working in an office with several of them was unhelpful to his creativity. He liked to sit down alone in the morning, make himself a fresh coffee, light a cigarette and ponder the current assignment without interruption. That was when he came up with his best innovative ideas. In this field, Nikko was extremely talented and in his opinion he was the main reason that the company did so well. The clients liked his quirky and original designs and appreciated his ability to extract the most commercial value from their workspace. That morning, Nikko made some changes to a plan on his computer and, when he was entirely happy with it, pressed the print button, sending it to the architectural-size printer/photocopier in the machine room. When he went to collect his print, he was dismayed to find the machine damaged and with Michel’s note stuck to it. He saw a paper in one of the output trays and picked it up, but instead of his plan, he found a dark, life-size photocopy of a coupled male and female. It was slightly blurred, indicating that the photo had captured the participants in action. He smiled, folded the document into
a small rectangle, and placed it in one of the drawers of Michel’s filing cabinet, where it remained undiscovered for a considerable time.

Months later, after Caroline had left the business, when she was looking for Michel’s carelessly stored expense receipts in his cabinet, Charlotte unfolded the document that Nikko had placed there and immediately closed her eyes to hold back her tears. It didn’t work. She ran out of the office and didn’t return that day.

The attempted reconciliation had lasted only a few months before both parties had proved to themselves that it was unrealistic. Michel resumed his new life plan and eventually brought his mistress Sonia out of the background and presented her to the family in a forceful and arrogant way that brought more diplomatic problems for Thérèse.

“Sonia was not the cause of the break up,” he insisted. He had met her after his separation from Charlotte. He obviously didn’t know that the letter Charlotte found in his pocket had been discussed more widely.

Thérèse and George invited Michel and Charlotte to George’s birthday party. In response, Charlotte phoned Thérèse to say that Michel had already told her he intended going with Sonia. Charlotte therefore declined the invitation.

Sure enough, without saying anything to his hosts, Michel turned up with Sonia and introduced her. It was the first time the family could observe Sonia in detail, and compare her with Charlotte. There was a physical resemblance in that both women were slim, of similar height and had dark hair. Some of the guests, who knew what was going on, thought it strange that Thérèse would have invited Sonia. Other, more distant relatives, who knew nothing about the changes, commented that Charlotte appeared to have aged. At first sight Sonia did look older
than Charlotte, though the gap was closing fast as the anguish of her situation gnawed at Charlotte’s looks.

After this party, Charlotte was silent for several months. When Thérèse finally contacted her and asked what was wrong, she criticised Thérèse for inviting Sonia and making her welcome, while she had been left out. It was some time before Charlotte was able to accept that Michel had stage-managed the whole thing and had treated Thérèse with the same disregard as he had Charlotte.

Michel bought one Paris apartment in their joint names for Charlotte and rented another where he lived with Sonia and her son, Claude. The two properties were within ten minutes of each other near the Eiffel Tower. Having recently sold his second business, Michel felt relieved of one part of his burden of responsibility, and was satisfied that he had converted most of his assets into cash. Once again, he was working as a consultant to the new owners, and getting around Paris visiting clients as before on a motorcycle. He invited Thérèse and George to stay with him and Sonia, which they did on two occasions, getting to know her a little better. In their private discussions the Miltons speculated on where the relationship might be heading.

Sonia was at first sight less classy, more lascivious than Charlotte. She behaved more like a slave than a partner, and although publicly intimate conversations between Michel and Sonia were lovey-dovey, Sonia was entirely subjugated by Michel. His behaviour towards her was more oriental than European. Observers got the point that this must be exactly the life Michel wanted, the life he couldn’t have with Charlotte who, although compliant up to a point, insisted on having a voice of her own.

In discussion with Sonia, Thérèse found an opportunity to ask her how she felt now that she had met Charlotte at a
recent family gathering, at which the Miltons were absent. Sonia replied confidently that she had no regrets on that score. “Charlotte seems to have understood that it’s a law of nature for couples to become bored, the girls are grown up now, and once she comes to terms with reality she will realise that their marriage was over.” Her tone irritated the Miltons but they accepted that there was some foundation for what she said and they had no immediate intention to argue.

Thérèse and George speculated on Michel’s rationale. He clearly took pride in trying to be avant-garde in some aspects of his life, but that did not include his domestic arrangements where he was conservative, not to say reactionary against current perceptions of women’s roles. They wondered why he had married Charlotte, who wanted to be an equal partner in everything, when in fact he wanted someone who would look after the house, washing, food, children and accounts, and warm his bed, leaving him as undisputed head of the household and free to follow his fancies. When he had allowed Charlotte to participate in the business and use her talents, he appeared to do so without shame, but there must have been some insurmountable inner tension. He was happy to accept the benefits of her participation when it suited him, and looking back, it didn’t seem to bother his conscience that since their separation and until the sale of the business, Charlotte had been meeting him daily at work and running the company administration and their private bank accounts. In his own mind, Michel felt that before the truth spilled out, resulting in their break-up, he had found the right balance with Charlotte; a balance that enabled him to live in his own way at home, and made it easier for him to freely pursue his ‘real’ life outside. He had not considered Charlotte’s
sentiments, only the practicalities of home life and the freedom he needed. Only when Charlotte declined to follow him into his new existence was it necessary for him to find a new running mate and somewhere else to live.

Michel thought that until their separation, unlike other men who abandoned their wives or who hid their mistresses, he could bring the two together in a harmonious sublimation of wives, mothers, housekeepers, and lovers. He would be their benefactor. He was acting responsibly and financially generously towards his wife and the girls. He was resolved that if the rest of the family had difficulty accepting this, then relations may have to become more distant, especially with his aunt Thérèse, who on the one hand he admired greatly, but who on the other hand, he thought, was too drawn towards questioning his attitudes and his behaviour. Though she could know little of the details of his secret life, Thérèse, like Charlotte, had enough intuition to guess the rest, and that was sufficient for her to feel that Michel could not be trusted or believed. This conclusion opened a crack in their relationship. Michel preferred their conversations to be channelled towards theoretical ideas and concepts where he would never lose his sense of humour, whereas Thérèse explored more personal questions that irritated him and made him suffer from an acute persecution complex, making it difficult at times for him to stay cool in the way that Thérèse was always able to do. Also, Michel was fully aware that Thérèse and Charlotte were close and he assumed that they spent enough time on the phone to concoct plots to exclude him and Sonia from the family that he was determined to keep in his grip.

Only Johnny Mendez was a really reliable friend, he thought. He admired Johnny and judged him to have more talent and daring than himself. He had recently become
more intimate with Johnny and his family and was confident enough to quote him in discussions at home as if he were an authority on matrimonial matters and life style decisions. He clearly shared a passion with Johnny and maybe with Ayida and their daughter Beatrice, but did Johnny have reciprocal feelings towards Michel? Thérèse thought Johnny incapable of such elevated sentiments. She had no detailed knowledge of Michel’s partnership with Johnny and the investments he made, nor did she suspect that Johnny was willing to involve his wife and daughter to achieve a level of dependency by Michel and others. But Thérèse had previously noted during visits to the Bodins that Johnny would call Michel at almost any time of day or night, and sometimes Michel would put on his motorcycle jacket and leave the house for an hour or more, without explanation. Instinctively, she did not trust Johnny Mendes.

Having thought over his plans for Charlotte yet again after the short-lived reconciliation, Michel was reviewing his options and changing his mind. He now saw himself as wanting to escape from a marriage that imposed more responsibilities than he could accept if he were to realise his dreams. He wanted more freedom to be a student of everything, following his insatiable desire to taste and learn, to meet, exchange, and share his ideas and enthusiasms. He consciously tried not to be selective about making contacts and he showed the same interest and respect for drop outs as for scholars, though his friends were mainly street-wise, self-made and usually, like Michel, running a business of some kind and could therefore be useful as well as socially compatible.

The job he had retained with the new owners of his
previous business still earned him all the day-to-day money he needed and it left him time for research and practical testing of opportunities to reach out and express himself in whatever way he wanted.

Nobody in the family could see or know what Michel was getting in return for his generosity and unaccustomed submissiveness bordering on obsequiousness towards Johnny, but Michel felt that Johnny had taught him a lot and given him confidence to realise his own ambitions. It was Johnny who showed him how to target a new mistress and make her current married lover feel inadequate, thus opening the way for his own proposition. That was how he had won Sonia. For, although her husband was effectively out of the way, she was already becoming involved with one of Michel’s friends. Michel followed Johnny’s advice, talked to the friend, and aroused his scruples by making him see that as he could not support Sonia and her son financially, it would be better to let her go. Events swung in Michel’s favour without him needing to refer to what might be the implications of the man’s wife finding out what was going on. Michel then made his move with Sonia and she allowed herself to be flattered by Michel’s extravagant advances. To him, it was now a tested method, taking him to a new level of capability to achieve the desired result. It had worked in the heat of battle, so Michel was tremendously excited by his success. It was a tactic that he planned to use again and he expressed his gratitude to Johnny by working and playing even more closely with him. It was plain to the family that, strangely, Michel needed Johnny.

Sonia had every reason to mould herself to Michel’s requirements to gain a level of security for herself and her son, something she could never have achieved alone
after the café that she had been running with her husband had to close and they had gone their separate ways. Her husband’s way was to lose himself in alcohol, while Sonia was left to fend for herself and her son in any way open to her. In her relationship with Michel, each appeared to offer what the other wanted.

During one of their phone calls, Michel announced to the Miltons that he and Sonia had been to Haiti on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, with his friends Johnny and Ayida Mendes, and they had both bought adjoining tracts of land in the north of the island near a large town called Port de Paix. One of their French friends had bought a tract of land near there some years earlier and was developing a resort. Michel intended to build an idyllic home and possibly develop a holiday business when he retired fully. The Miltons’ first reaction was that it was a mad scheme set in a dangerous country, but they wished him luck with it.

What Michel did not disclose was how they were able to buy a substantial tract of prime land by the shore of a large bay when sale to foreigners was supposed to be restricted.

Michel had done his research carefully, using his extensive library of travel books and by putting Sonia to work on the internet. He found out that Port de Paix is probably one of the most beautiful, most peaceful areas of Haiti. It’s a place that Christopher Columbus named Valparaiso (Paradise Valley). Now a sprawling city of over two hundred and fifty thousand people (about the size of Orleans in France or Trenton, NJ in the US), it forms one of the
principal centres of the remote northern region. It has the great advantage of being sufficiently cut off from the violent politics of the south to have created its own economy and commerce based on access to the outside world via the sea. Visually it resembles many cities on the African continent, with contrasting colonial style public buildings and larger, opulent, nineteenth-century three storey residences similar to those found in smarter Paris suburbs. However, unlike Paris, the leafy gardens and colourful churches are surrounded by high cantilevered security fences, topped by razor wire. The spread of building is immense; not-yet-painted grey concrete buildings with ornate pillars and arches extend down to and into the sea, others display an amazing optimism in spreading out into bays and estuaries, using concrete piles to gain more space. The city centre is characterised by its immaculate white and varied colour-washed buildings and ornately paved public spaces, contrasting with crowded main streets with narrow pavements, forcing all traffic including pedestrians into roads shared with all types of vehicles and animals. Towards the periphery of the city, there is a shambles of incomplete buildings and muddy access roads, piles of building materials and rubbish. Look up, and electric wires and telephone cables slice up your view of the sky. The music you hear and the people you see are unmistakably African.

As you move away from the city with its overwhelming smell of drains, the landscape opens up to reveal a coastal tropical paradise where a few modern luxury hotels occupy prime sites along the margin between the vegetation and the beach. This was the area that Michel and Johnny hoped to exploit by investing in cheap land and building a tourist complex, along the same lines as
their friend who was already established and attracting holidaymakers from North America.

When the Mendeses, together with Michel and Sonia, flew into Port de Paix airport, they were among the few tourists and aid workers on the plane. In the next seats across the narrow aisle from Michel were two Haitians from Toronto, Canada. The man was dressed in immaculate white trousers, a bright red tee shirt which emphasised his arm muscles, and huge multi-coloured trainers. The woman had her hair carefully combed and braided and wore clothes that suggested, no, demanded closer observation of what was underneath. Michel started chatting to the man, speaking loudly to overcome the noise from the turbo-prop aircraft engines, and sympathetic vibration of just about every cabin fitting. His neighbour’s partner occasionally leaned across to add her comments. The Haitians, who were about thirty years old, explained that they were flying into Port de Paix (
Podépé
in Creole) rather than to Port au Prince, because some of their friends had been robbed in the capital within a few minutes of leaving the airport. The armed robbers were not satisfied with cameras and contents of the tourists’ cases, but also took their clothes, and they left the victims standing naked behind a derelict cinema after hi-jacking their taxi.

In another story told by the Haitians, a white woman had been kidnapped from her hotel and the kidnappers had issued a video of her being carried out of the hotel naked. She disappeared and was never seen again. It was said that she may have been used as a voodoo sacrifice, though there was no evidence that humans were still used in this way.

When Michel asked a question about voodoo belief in modern times, the woman explained that the modern
view is dominated by physical, touchable reality, but in Haiti the spirits are as real as your wife or your dog. Michel asked if they had any plans to settle in Haiti or buy a property there. Both Haitians laughed, the woman’s ample breasts entertainingly bouncing up and down as she did.

The answer was, emphatically, no. Anybody with any education and ambition would choose to leave at the earliest opportunity as they had done, and whilst some expatriates felt it would be nice to go back and help the country of their birth to progress towards modernity, and everybody hoped that one day the economy might be able to develop, most felt that the security situation still made any such ideals too risky. No, they were just here for a holiday and to look up some family contacts. Michel pressed again to find out if they knew how to buy land for investment.

The Haitian woman by the window leaned across her partner’s lap and shouted across the aisle. Michel leaned towards her and found the close proximity satisfying, though the information he gained was not.

The woman began to explain, “In Haiti, you can legally own the land on which you live and have a primary residence. If you are a non-black non-Haitian, you cannot own rental properties or business properties – but people do all the time, subject to deals. But be aware that as you are white, your testimony is inadmissible in a court case, just as the testimony of blacks was inadmissible in some parts of the USA during slavery times. Haiti is not signed up to many international conventions on law or human rights and reconciliation, and even if they were…” She hissed into uncontrollable laughter, and then blinked in an exaggerated way to bring her face under control. “If you are going to buy land anyhow, be aware that if someone can squat on it for more than six months, you have to go
to the high court to evict them and you might not succeed, especially if they are Haitian and you are not. Also, make sure that you get a decent lawyer to do an ‘
Extrait des
Archives
’, basically a title search, because due to the incredible corruption of the Haitian courts, there may be four or five people with ‘deeds’ to any given piece of land. You buy the land, the other ‘owners’ run to court, and you will never, ever be able to live on that property, but you won’t get your money back either.

If a man sells you his land and dies years later, his heirs can come to your house with machetes and try to run you off, I saw that happen to a Frenchwoman whose Haitian husband died. I personally would never, ever, buy land in Haiti, and if you do you’ll probably be sorry!”

As this was entirely consistent with what Michel had already heard from Ayida and others, he had little more to say, but decided to shelve his dream for the time being.

There being no radio contact with the ground before landing, the aircraft had overflown the airfield to give the ground attendants time to remove as many bystanders, children, and goats as they could from the narrow runway which ran alongside encroaching dwellings, but the aircraft was surrounded by a band of sightseers as soon as it stopped. What the ground team could not do was remove the gravel, including stones the size of eggs covering the landing and taxiing surfaces. It was no surprise to the visitors, on descending from the Saab twin turbo-prop aircraft, to see that the plane’s tyres had threadbare patches and the underside paint was badly scarred. Michel estimated that by the time it reached Port au Prince after another take-off and landing, there would be nothing but the carcase showing on the tyres. He later learned that the Port de Paix airfield is one of the most dangerous in the world, but what would normally be defined as emergencies are
an everyday affair and so go unreported. At that point he made a mental note that in future he would fly in and out of Cap Haitien, the other northern airport, even though it meant a longer car journey.

As the passengers descended from the plane, the small group of American Haitians seeking to rediscover their roots were immediately distinguishable by their designer branded clothes, ‘cool’ sunglasses, digital cameras, and loud English language.

A few days later, the French visitors were sunning themselves at their superb, modern, low-built hotel near Port de Paix. Michel was conscious that on arriving in Haiti he felt release from most of his concerns. There was no news and he was satisfied to be completely cut off from Europe, and in particular France. Could he now begin to realise some of his dreams? Michel’s comforting contemplation was interrupted when a young Haitian man approached them. He looked about sixteen, was painfully thin, with a hollow chest, large sun-glasses that seemed to cover most of his face, and worn but clean shirt and faded long shorts. He carried a clip-board as if it were a symbol of authority, though the cracked ball point pen attached to it looked exhausted. His name was Stephane. He asked if they were having a good time and whether they might like to stay longer in a property of their own. The two couples explained that they had considered buying a property that they could develop as a combined residence and business, but had so far shelved their plans on advice from all quarters, including the woman on the aircraft, which had left them with a picture of insurmountably obstructive legislation, bureaucracy and risk. The young man sat down with them, removed his sunglasses and revealed a habit
of rolling his eyes disconcertingly, so that at times while he was speaking, his listeners could see only the whites.

“I work for the local government in Cap Haitien and they are keen to open up this area to tourists. They have tried by building lovely hotels like this one, but still the people don’t come in sufficient numbers to boost our economy, so we think it would be better to sell some land for private development, to prime the pump so to speak.” He paused. “Would you be interested?” They said they might. Ayida spoke to him in Creole and there was much nodding and head shaking, leading eventually to a suggestion that they should look at a piece of land now, just as an example of what might be possible. They packed their things, put on shoes, and followed the man towards the beach, and walked for about twenty minutes along the water line until they could no longer see the hotel or any other buildings. When they saw the land Stephane described as for sale, they were overwhelmed. It was vast, beautiful and cheap for the surface area and location. It was the perfect spot to start their enterprise. The blue water of the sea showed no signs of the pollution that poisoned most of the estuaries and ports along the coast; the sand was immaculately clean, the whole bay area was surrounded by mixed jungle growth leading up to a steep green mountain with exposed rocky crags near the summit. They stood and looked in each direction, admiring the curve of the bay, the flights of tropical seabirds and appreciating the absence of any signs of other human beings.

“I must warn you,” said their guide, “that the administration is not totally straightforward, because a small number of people are opposed to this kind of sale. We must be very discreet and resolve to win allies in the right places. You first need to obtain an
Extrait des Archives
, to
confirm that a land purchase is possible and will not be disputed by other certificate holders, and that requires some work to be done on your behalf by a person in authority.” Michel and Johnny had a fair idea as to what this might mean and anticipated the level of personal inducements required, but they agreed to the proposition so far.

“If you are really interested you will need to come to Cap Haitien for a few days and my boss will describe to you in every minute detail what needs to be done. In less than a week, you could be the owners of this land and go ahead with your building plans.”

They agreed to discuss the proposition over dinner and Stephane, the ‘Realtor’, as his grubby business card described him, said he would return next day.

That evening, the discussions and speculation went on till late. There would have to be bribes. How sure could they be that the sellers were the only owners and that they were entitled to sell the undisputed freehold of the land? If they bought it, would they be free to build or was there another set of obstacles ahead? Who would look after the property when they were away? Once the word got around, would their asset be in danger of unruly locals taking revenge? These were just a few of the questions debated by Michel and his friends before they agreed to explore the idea further and arrange the trip to Cap Haitien during the next week.

Cap Haitien, where Ayida Mendes was born, is a smaller city than Port de Paix, but still with 190,000 inhabitants and suffering from the same urban sprawl degenerating into
favelas
around the edges. It lies about forty kilometres along the coast to the east of Port de Paix and is a colourful historic centre with a wealth of French colonial architecture in the same style as New Orleans in the USA. The
buildings are surprisingly well preserved, proving that the town shares the advantages of other northern region population centres of its remoteness from the south. Its local government and merchants have benefited from the comparative stability assured by the dire transport links to the capital Port au Prince, which insulate it from the violence and political instability that plague the south of the island.

Haiti has a long history of brutal authoritarian dictators, who lived like kings, but impoverished the once wealthy country. A
coup d’état
in 2004 had done little to restore order and provide any semblance of modernisation. One reason for the continuing poverty, given by a Haitian national staying at the same hotel as the Bodins and Mendeses, was that African tribalism prevails, and leaders, whether in power by dominating their competitors, or elected by whatever means, act as though they had won the lottery rather than become servants of the people. Possibly because of the background of slavery, the mere suggestion of providing any kind of paid or unpaid service is often seen as a personal insult. The population is comforted in its poverty by superstition, voodooism and alcohol. Those who are not thus comforted, and who show any kind of dissent, often become victims of naked violence.