Caribbean (134 page)

“What can we do?” her uncle asked, and she had only one suggestion: “Get on a boat, any boat—the way your brother did, and get out of here.”

“Too late,” her uncle said, and she burst into tears, for she knew he was right. For this family it was too late.

For younger Haitians, there was still a chance, and they meant to claim it. One afternoon when she went into St.-Marc to buy her uncle some groceries she saw in the shallow bay a boat so pitifully small that she thought: It ought to be on a lake somewhere, not in the ocean. But when she passed it again at dusk, she watched about forty black people climb into that fragile thing and sail off into the Atlantic. Horrified by the thought that they might be trying to reach the United States in such a vessel, she walked along the shores asking questions, and learned that yes, these fugitives were risking their lives on the high seas in an overloaded boat with insufficient provisions rather than remain one more day in Haiti. She fell to her knees at the edge of the Caribbean and prayed: “Beloved God, send a boat from Canada to rescue them,” and in that moment she ceased being a trendy intellectual from Cambridge drinking Perrier water for lunch and listening to Vivaldi and became once more a Haitian black woman struggling against all odds to keep her life together.

When, still brooding about the refugees in their tragic boat, she delivered the groceries to her uncle, she found that an extraordinary item of news had arrived by runner from a much smaller village, Du Mort, four miles back into the mountains: “A zombie, eleven years dead, has come back to life.”

The word
zombie
irritated her, because in both Québec City and Boston well-intentioned friends, when they heard she came from Haiti, had pestered her about zombies, as if they were the major characteristic of her homeland. Most such questions she laughed off, but some were more serious, particularly at Harvard.

To these scholars she replied truthfully: “I’ve heard folk tales about zombies throughout my childhood. And I was terrified. A zombie, we were taught, is a dead person brought back to life and used thereafter as a slave in perpetuity.” Asked if she had ever heard of a real, authenticated case she was always tempted to answer, with a touch of ridicule: “No! Did your family ever see one of the giants or elves they told you about?” But she refrained from a blanket denial because she had an Uncle René, shot later by the Tontons Macoutes, who swore that when he was a boy a zombie, dead for many days, had been brought back to life and had served as a slave to a wealthy family. But like always, this very circumstantial miracle had happened in another village farther on.

But now it was a village only four miles away, in the real year of 1989, and she could go and check out the preposterous story for herself. Enlisting one of the two taxis in the village, she took her notebook and kit of medicines and drove out to where the alleged zombie had been seen.

The village contained some thirty mud-floored shacks distributed around a handsome public square, one side of which was a colorful market with stalls occupied by sellers of meat and fish, vegetables, fruits, needlework and clay pots. Near the village pump squatted a young black woman, about twenty-eight, of presentable appearance and fine placid features—except that she was almost inanimate. Her eyes showed no recognition of things about her; she did not respond to questions; and if anyone approached her, she drew back in obvious terror. If any human being could be justly described as “the living dead,” it was this unfortunate.

Tessa was immediately drawn to her. “Who is this person?” she asked about, and several bystanders were eager to provide answers and explanations: “Her name Lalique Hébert. Her tombstone at edge of village, over there.” And Tessa was taken by villagers to the rude cemetery where a flat tombstone made of flaking cement showed clearly that interred below were the mortal remains of
LALIQUE HÉBERT
, 1961–1978.

When Tessa asked: “Is this the same person?” one of the bystanders
cried vigorously: “Yes! Yes! I know her sister.” And another said: “I knew her parents.” And when the question became: “But did any of you attend her funeral?” someone replied: “Yes, that one helped carry her coffin.” And a man of about fifty stepped forward, willing to be interrogated.

“You carried the coffin?”

“I did.”

“Did you actually see the corpse?”

“We all did,” and a group of women moved toward the grave to confirm that they had seen the girl Lalique Hébert in her coffin at her home and had then helped carry her here for burial.

“You’re sure she was dead?”

“Yes! We saw. Doctor signed paper.”

A quick check at the church registry showed that in June 1978 the girl Lalique Hébert, aged seventeen, daughter of Jules and Marie Hébert of this parish, had been buried, her death having been attested to by a Dr. Malàrie two days prior.

“Where could I see Dr. Malàrie?” Tessa asked, and the custodian of the records said: “Dead, three years ago.”

So back she went to the square where Lalique was still squatting by the pump in a position which would have numbed the legs of an ordinary person. “Hello, Lalique.” No response. “Lalique, look at me … I want to help you.” Not even a glance upward. But then Tessa had a clever idea. “Lalique, do you remember when you were dead, in your coffin?”

Very slowly the impassive woman raised her handsome, placid face, dark as ebony, to look at her questioner, and at first her eyes were filled with terror, as if Tessa reminded her of some woman who had abused her during her eleven years of zombie existence, but when she saw in her slow dumb way that this woman was much younger and lacked the brutal sneer of her longtime mistress, terror fled, and she answered: “Long time in grave, men come, I rise.” And with her arms extended upward, she rose to a standing position from which she looked directly into Tessa’s eyes. Then she collapsed again into her squatting position, inaminate as before.

In some agitation Tessa looked about for someone to consult with, and two women moved toward her. “What are you going to do with this woman?” Tessa asked, and one said: “Nothing. She is dead. She come back. She live …” They both made vague gestures with their hands.

“Where did she sleep last night?” and she was answered in the same indefinite way: “Maybe sleep here. Maybe against that wall.” When Tessa showed astonishment, one of the women explained: “Not good have zombie in village. She come for revenge, maybe. Someone here in bad trouble, maybe.”

“What will happen?” and the women both spoke at once: “She try to stay, people drive her out.”

“Where? Where will she go?” and the women, speaking for their entire village, said: “Who knows? Zombies go many places. They not need eat … sleep … think. Missy, they not like you and me.”

Distraught, Tessa left the harsh, practical women and returned to Lalique: “I am your friend, Lalique. Can I take you somewhere, help you in any way?”

When the zombie did not even look at her, Tessa had no option but to return to her taxi, but as they neared her home village she thought of all her lonely and outcast days in Québec City when she had first arrived in that cold and seemingly hostile city, and she cried out: “Driver! Take me back!”

When she reached the market square she saw that Lalique had not moved from the pump, and running to her as if the zombie were a lost daughter, she reached down, clasped her hands, drew her reluctantly to her feet, and led her toward the taxi: “We’re going home, Lalique,” and when they were in the cab, she hugged the frightened woman to her and began to sing an old Haitian lullaby:

And for the first time in many years, Lalique Hébert, the verifiable zombie, clung to another human being and fell asleep.

Early next morning Tessa was called to her village’s public phone, and a man’s voice asked with obvious concern: “You the young woman from Harvard? Yes? Is it true that you went to the village of Du Mort and brought a young woman known as a zombie home with you?” When Tessa said yes to each of his questions, he said: “I’m Dr. Briant from St.-Marc. I’ve been specializing in this zombie business for the government and I must see your Lalique right away.”

“Come over. You know where my village is.”

“I’ll be right over. Don’t let anyone harm that young woman.”

“Would that be likely?”

In a short time Dr. Briant arrived, a dark-skinned medical doctor in his fifties, graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C., and a big, enveloping kind of man: “I’m fascinated to hear that after eleven years a woman relatively young made her escape. Tell me—why did you feel it necessary to rescue her from her village? Can she communicate?”

“No. I think she may be feeble-minded.”

“Don’t say that,” Briant snapped. “They say that about all these unfortunates,” and when Tessa led him to Lalique, who had slept in a bed for the first time in years, he was gentle and reassuring: “Lalique, I am your friend. Would you like some salt?”

For that brief moment the zombie was much more animated than she had been with Tessa, and when the doctor took from his pocket a little box of salt and sifted some onto his palm, she buried her face in his hand and lapped the salt like a dog.

“Horrible folk custom. Anyone who gets hold of one of these unfortunates … belief is that if you deprive them of salt, they stay mesmerized. You want some more salt, Lalique?” and again she gulped down the precious substance which had been denied her for so long.

“Who’s been keeping her prisoner?”

“We’re never able to find out. Nor will we ever know who put her in this condition and buried her alive.” After feeding Lalique a further carefully controlled ration of salt, he asked: “Then you saw her grave?” When Tessa nodded, he said: “We must go there at once. Photograph it with the gravedigger, if we can find him. And any witnesses.”

The two young women climbed into Dr. Briant’s wobbly old car, and he drove hurriedly the four miles to Du Mort, where he created a sensation when he stepped out of the car with his camera and quickly issued forceful instructions to the villagers: “Take me to the cemetery. Fetch me the gravedigger. Bring me the record book from the church so that I can photograph it in sunlight. And I want everyone who knew this young woman eleven years ago to line up. Mlle. Vaval, please take their names in order.”

And in the next hour he produced, with closeup photographs of each narrator, a compelling visual and oral account of the 1978 zombification
of the seventeen-year-old girl Lalique Hébert. Knowing from long experience what questions to ask, he unraveled the story: Lalique had been the second of three daughters, a strong-willed girl who wanted to leave Du Mort and go to Port-au-Prince and become a secretary. In a quarrel over a young man, she incurred the jealousy of her older sister and the downright animosity of her mother. “It must have been,” an old woman confided, “her own mother and her sister who had her murdered. I helped dress the body for funeral.”

Dr. Briant did not flinch: “I suppose they paid a voodoo bocor to kill her?” and two women confirmed this guess: “They did. He was not from this village but his magic was powerful.”

He then wanted to talk with the gravedigger, who was now an old man but who remembered well the burial of the pretty girl: “June … maybe July? No big storms. I dug right where you see the tomb. You can read the name
LALIQUE HÉBERT
.”

The old man had much more to say, because the return of a zombie to a community in which she had been buried was an exciting matter, but Dr. Briant cut him short: “So for this one you dug a very shallow grave … maybe eighteen inches?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Tell me, did you ever dig eighteen-inch graves before?”

“Once. For a man nobody liked.”

“And what happened?”

The gravedigger looked about the cemetery he had served so long, and whispered: “You seem to know,” and Briant said: “I do. But I want you to tell her,” and the man said quietly to Tessa: “He became a zombie too.” Dr. Briant turned to Lalique, standing motionless, expressionless beside her grave, and tried to make her realize what was happening: “This is it, Lalique. Can I read your name as I point to the letters?” Tessa turned Lalique to face her grave and even inclined her head to make her look at the grisly tomb, but she refused to do so. But then, with a gesture so sudden that both Tessa and Dr. Briant were startled, she clasped Tessa in a passionate embrace and cried in a wail that filled the cemetery: “Lalique, Lalique!”

On the drive home the two women rode in the back seat, and like before, the shivering zombie recalled from the dead clung to Tessa and fell immediately asleep.

Dr. Briant remained two days at the Vaval place, during which he made minor progress in bringing the zombie back to reality, but his reassuring words accomplished little in comparison to his salt. Deprived of it for years, she craved it more than food or sleep or love.

During the two days, Briant shared with Tessa his accumulated knowledge on the zombies of Haiti: “They’re real. Your Lalique was murdered. In a manner of speaking, she was clinically dead, and the doctor must not be abused for having certified the fact. She was buried, as you have seen, and during the second night she was taken from her grave and brought back to life. She was then sold, by her mother and sister, I’m sure, to someone who kept her in a zombie state and used her as a slave. Somehow she escaped, and with sure instinct found her way back to her home village. And if you hadn’t rescued her when you did, she might now be dead. Murdered for the second time. This time for real.”