Dancing in the Baron's Shadow (7 page)

“But—”

“Next class, we'll talk about misdemeanors and punishments. I'll bring in a mock case, and you get to take first crack. Show me what you're made of. How does that sound?”

Joseph grinned, his face beaming in the sunlight. “
Au revoir,
Maître.”

Nicolas left the young man standing there as he got in his car. Through the din, he recognized a particular car horn, blaring repeatedly as it got closer. He looked over his shoulder and saw a white Datsun fly past the university. An arm popped out the window, and a large hand waved. Raymond. Nicolas waved back, and then Raymond was gone again.

Behind the wheel of his own car, he thought about what Raymond had done, how he'd risked his life without thinking of the consequences. His brother knew how to push his buttons, but they had to find a way back to each other again. After these scuffles, Raymond always pretended nothing had happened, and
Nicolas would generally offer a stiff grin and try for a while to be more tolerant of his older brother. Sometimes, though, he'd drag out the tension until Raymond gave up and avoided their house for weeks. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but Nicolas relished torturing his brother that way. Eventually, when he got tired of his own passive aggression, he'd find an excuse for them to speak again. He'd invite Raymond to come over and watch a football game, or he'd stop by Raymond's place with books for the kids or to teach Enos how to kick a ball like Pelé. He'd always stay in the alley, though, refusing to enter the tiny apartment.

“Won't you come in?” Yvonne would ask. “I'll make coffee.”

“Oh, thanks, but I don't have time,” Nicolas would say. “I'm just saying hello.”

He didn't want to look at the broken faucets or inhale the permanent stench of onions and decaying wood. He didn't want to bring to his lips a cup he suspected hadn't been properly washed or sit on a wobbly chair. So Nicolas stayed outside and Raymond bit his tongue.

When he pulled in that afternoon, Raymond found Madame Simeus in front of the house, mumbling as she watered her plants. She regularly patrolled her front yard, plucking dead leaves from hibiscus bushes, straightening croton branches, and sometimes talking to herself. Today, she was wearing an oversized plaid dress and kept pulling bits of string from her pockets. Her gray hair was set in rollers, and she held a cigarette clamped between her lips as she tied expert knots around bundles of branches and stems.

Raymond approached her with a sigh. He noticed a solemn droopiness to her face as she muttered to herself. He couldn't make out what she was saying, but her tone was oddly grave. Had someone died? Was she sleepwalking again?

He greeted her and expected the habitual, acerbic “Where's my rent?” Instead, she lowered her eyes.

Raymond preempted her, producing the neatly folded money
from his pocket. She took the bills quietly, counted them, and shook her head.

“I told her it wasn't proper, but she wouldn't listen.”

Raymond shook his head, confused. “I'm sorry?”

“I don't want to get involved,” she continued. “What goes on between you and your wife is none of my business, but…” She shook her head.

“What are you saying?”

Madame Simeus blinked. “Your wife. I saw her pack her bags and get in a taxi with the kids. Someone else's taxi, of course.”

Raymond took off running toward the apartment. It wasn't possible. They'd just discussed leaving and he'd made it clear that he wouldn't stand for it. The kids had to stay home. Raymond fumbled with his keys, grabbed the handle too hard, and finally managed to push the door open.

“Yvonne! Yvonne! Where are you?”

The kitchen was perfectly clean, no dishes soaking in the sink; a five-gallon container of water sat half full in a corner. Raymond ran to the bedroom and saw the children's cots empty, the blankets folded. The small, scuffed shoes had disappeared. Their boxes and suitcases had vanished. The armoire door was open, but the hangers hung bare except for Raymond's. The children's books were still there, surely too heavy to take.

Raymond's stomach convulsed. “Enos? Adeline?” He knew they were gone, and saying their names would not conjure them back.

His and Yvonne's bed was neatly made, her clothes and shoes missing. Raymond felt his chest cave in, and he grabbed his head with both hands. Gone. Raymond struggled to breathe. An invisible fire tore through him as he careened out of the house, crushing a small toy car he'd made for Enos out of a juice box and bottle caps.

In the garden, Madame Simeus was standing in the same spot, dumbfounded. She was shaking her head in sympathy.

“Where are they?” he shouted.

She shrugged, and for a moment he thought he recognized genuine fear on her face. She tried to speak, but the words didn't come.

“Where?” he said again.

“I don't know,” she said.

“What did she say?”

Madame Simeus stepped back. He'd never been aggressive like this before.

“That's all I know. Shall I call the police? What kind of woman—”

Raymond's eyes widened. Of course. The uncle. How could he not have seen it coming? Of course this is how she would have done it. The only way she could have.

Raymond jumped into his car, leaving Madame Simeus in her garden, perplexed. As he backed out, the taxi's wheels sloppily spinning against the grass, she began running toward him, the skin sagging from her forearms as she waved frantically.

“You're ruining my garden!”

He sped away, his bumper grazing the open gate.

“My gate! Slow down.
M'ap rele la police!”

The Datsun roared, tires screeching, around the corner of Rue Capois.

SEVEN

B
y the time Raymond made it to the Plage Publique de Carrefour Dufort, the sun was bowing out behind a curtain of flames. This, he supposed, was where the boat would have come. Yvonne had mentioned once or twice that Dufort was the place. Raymond sprinted through a dense forest of palm trees, sinking into small crescent puddles that the high tide had left near the shoreline. His toes caught the root of a palm tree, and he broke the fall with his hands.

Then he saw the ocean sprawling far into the horizon and frothing gently against the shore. Raymond felt furry cattails brush against his legs as he raced toward the water, avoiding the green coconuts littering the sand. He passed a group of fishermen pushing their canoes between clusters of tree trunks. Inside the hulls, they'd dumped large, heavy fishnets filled with crabs and silver-scaled snappers.

“Yvonne!”

He knew it was hopeless. There were only fishermen and a few teenage boys on the beach now. Yet some part of him believed she was somewhere nearby, that she'd changed her mind. Maybe she'd hear his voice on the wind, turn around, and wave back at him. He didn't see any boats on the water. They were long gone.

Raymond felt something crack inside him. His shoulders dropped.

He spotted a young man sitting on a hollow tree trunk with a geography book and asked him if he'd seen a woman with two little kids. He held up his precious photograph in the fading light. Ribbons in Adeline's hair, blue shorts on Enos, a floral scarf around Yvonne's head. The young man shook his head.

“The boy is very small,” Raymond said, gesturing with his hand. “Like this. No?”

The boy might very well have been there, the young man explained, seeing as the ferryman had come today. Whenever he pulled up his little tugboat, the hundreds of men, women, and children massed on the beach would fight their way aboard, begging for the privilege to pay the ferryman's colossal fee. The boy might have been there, but the young man couldn't remember seeing anyone who stood out. There were just so many of them.

How had Yvonne gotten the money? Raymond wondered. She must have been saving up for a very long time.

Raymond appealed to the fishermen, but they hadn't paid any more attention than the young man. He finally came across an old man who said he'd seen a mother with two children boarding a boat around noon. That would mean they really were long gone, probably past the isle of La Gonâve by now, in a boat overflowing with refugees.

“She didn't tell you she was leaving?” the old man asked. “So much danger in this
kanntè
business. These boats are not safe. Too many people.”

Night soon cloaked the shore in an inky blue. Raymond kept walking. His body was exhausted, but his eyes still frantic, searching the horizon. There was nothing but a fine line slicing through sky and sea—no trace of a sailboat, ship, or raft.

How could he not have seen it coming? He should have paid attention to what she'd been telling him for so long about her plans to take the children to live with her uncle in Miami. She had given up trying to get him to come with them. He wanted
to punch himself for not having listened. Had he really believed she would stay by his side when he couldn't feed his children?

Raymond dropped to the ground and sat another hour, his head on his knees, until he lost all feeling in his legs. He took no notice of the drunks and vagrants traipsing around by the shadowy coconut palms. Exhaustion and pain throbbed in his bones, but there was another pain running even deeper, a great darkness he knew would plague him forever. He remained seated awhile longer, until the stars shimmied overhead and a breeze began to blow in off the ocean.

Raymond found a vendor selling
clairin
and bought a little bottle of the sweet spirit with the remaining change in his pocket. He wasn't a heavy drinker, so the alcohol swam up to his head on the first sip. He plunged through the darkness in the direction of his car, balling his fists, his nails digging into his own flesh. He wanted to hate Yvonne for what she'd done.

As Raymond neared his car, he felt his knees go weak, envisioning it before him: an overflowing boat, the turbulent waves, interception by the Macoutes, the possibility of getting shot, of capsizing, of being chased by the American coast guard, of being eaten by sharks. He plopped into the seat of his car and leaned against the headrest. Defeat was settling in, bone crushing. Under the soles of his muddy shoes, he felt the grittiness of sand.

Raymond removed the red ribbon from his mirror and tossed it on the floor. He lowered his windows. With no chance at making it home before curfew, it seemed best to stay here. He closed his eyes, praying for sleep. But behind his eyelids was the image of Yvonne on the day of their small church wedding. She'd seemed to him like the Virgin Mary herself, in a dress of intricate lace and flowers a local seamstress had stitched.

They had traveled to her hometown on the island of La Gonâve. They'd found a pretty blue church on a hill. That day, she wore a veil that hid her face. He lifted it to find that she'd smeared her cheeks with too much rouge, and that the hot comb she'd used to straighten her hair had burned her hairline. She'd doused herself
with so much perfume that his head spun when he leaned in to kiss her cheek.

“I had to cover up the ammonia smell,” she whispered, lowering her eyes.

Raymond smiled, moved by her desire to be beautiful for him on their special day. He knew her job as a laundress would ruin her looks, but he loved her regardless.

If she hadn't left, she'd be in bed, breathing next to him. He would turn and move his face closer to hers, feel the heat of her body. And he would listen in the night, shutting out the scurrying and scratching of mice against the wooden floors to pick out the sound of his children's soft snores nearby.

Opening his eyes in the dark car, he brought the bottle to his lips and gulped the rest of the alcohol, giving himself over to absurd fantasies about their return. Remorse burned his throat.

At dawn, right when curfew lifted, Raymond drove home like a zombie, lips tight at the corners. He swerved off the road once to avoid an oncoming pair of headlights. When he opened the door to his apartment, the silence shattered his heart all over again. He couldn't stop looking for the torn laces and damaged soles of his children's shoes, the dirty socks rolled inside like little cotton fists. Now there was nothing.

He fell onto Adeline's cot, curled up with his head nestled in the hollow of his arm. He stayed there all day. The silence was in his head, biting at him under his scalp like lice. When night fell again, he tore at his hair to get it out, but it was no use. The silence ate him alive.

A day after the intruder in his yard, there was a loud banging on the front door. Nicolas jolted out of bed and listened.

The knocks persisted. Eve sat up, startled.

“What is it?”

Before Nicolas could answer, a voice rose in the night, shouting something he couldn't quite understand. His heart quivered in his chest. He opened the bedroom door halfway.

“Who is it?” he called down the hall. He could hear the tremolo in his own voice. “It's the middle of the night!”

“MVSN! Open up!”

Eve cursed. She jumped up and grabbed the baby from the crib. Nicolas froze. Impossible! His body sagged against the doorway, and he clasped the knob to keep himself upright.

“Open up, or we blast this door open!” the voice shouted.

Nicolas had rehearsed this moment in his mind many times. Now it was truly happening. The strange phone calls, the shadows in the yard, and now here they were. He turned to his wife.

“Take the baby. Get out of the house. Now!”

“You're not coming?”

Her voice was uneven, and in the faint light, he could see that she was white as a sheet. Her chest rose and fell as she tried to breathe through the terror.

“Go! Find Raymond. He'll help you.”

The banging on the door rattled the furniture around them. Amélie started to fuss. Clutching the baby, she headed toward the kitchen. Nicolas waited a few moments longer, heard the kitchen door close and the latch click.
Let her make it safely,
he thought. He hoped she would follow their plan. They'd talked about it, of course, like so many Haitians had: She would sneak out the back, escape to the alley. She would find a place to hide. She would jump the fence if she had to. She would go to their neighbor's and find a way to contact Raymond.

Nicolas pushed his way to the beleaguered front door as if through water. He turned the lock and was immediately flung back. Men dressed in blue, with red ascots around their necks, stormed into the foyer and the living room. They held their machine guns up and scanned the room while one of them shouted orders in Creole. Nicolas was grabbed by the collar, his face pulled toward the barrel of a handgun.

“What is this?” Nicolas cried out.

He was surprised to find the courage to speak into the mouth of a gun. Somehow, he hadn't expected such sudden violence.
Hostility, yes. But not this. He blinked at his own reflection in the Macoute's aviators and saw there a naive and coddled fool. It wasn't the Macoute he hated in that moment, but himself.

“Go!” the Macoute ordered, and the other men dispersed into Nicolas's home.

The Macoute kept one hand on Nicolas's pajama collar while the other adjusted his grip on the weapon. He seemed ready to fire, and Nicolas clenched his jaw as the man turned to him. Perhaps it was for the best that the glasses hid his assailant's eyes. Whatever evil leered beneath was probably worse. The glasses were a crucial element of the Macoutes' uniform, fueling the rumors that they were not men but devils, evil spirits, loup-garou.

“Are you Nicolas L'Eveillé?” the Macoute barked.

Nicolas nodded, breathless. The Tonton Macoutes were ravaging his home, tossing cushions, tables, and chairs across the room. They seemed possessed with anger. A vase shattered; a picture frame slammed against the terrazzo floor. He heard more commotion behind them. They were in his study. Nicolas thought of the secret compartment, the drawer in which he kept his gun and his notebook. It was shocking how foolish real fear made you feel. How stupid.

Nicolas noticed his assailant's bushy mustache. His upper lip quivered with rage when he spoke. Nicolas recognized spite when he saw it. What had he ever done to this man?

“Am I under arrest?” Nicolas asked, dropping his voice to the only octave of calm he could summon. “What is this about?”

In the background, men moved briskly, methodically ransacking the living room. He heard other sounds coming from the study: a heavy piece of furniture scraping over the floor, drawers sliding open, the rustle of paper. He prayed they stayed inside. He prayed Eve was gone, safe from the wrath he'd brought upon them. He wanted to leap across the room and destroy these men. But what could he do? For all of his revolutionary fervor, he'd never hit a person in his life.

“You are under arrest for high treason,” the man replied, and laughed.

“Treason?” Nicolas echoed. He felt something crawl into the lining of his stomach, a wave of sickness churning in his guts. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Oh, you don't know?” the Macoute said.

He lowered his gun and shoved the barrel deep into Nicolas's belly. Nicolas held his breath. He wasn't thinking of the bullet. A bullet was quick. If he had to die, then he wouldn't suffer much, he hoped. He was thinking of Eve and Amélie. He couldn't stand to think of what might be done to them.

“Are you mocking me?” the Macoute said. His breath reeked of
clairin.

How much alcohol had this man consumed? Nicolas's mind raced. How could he stall the Macoutes to give his family more time?

“W-why would I mock you?” Nicolas stammered. “Why are you charging me with treason? I haven't done anything.”

The man laughed again. “I am charging you with nothing. I only follow orders.”

“Found something!”

One of the men came out of his study holding the green folder. He handed it to the mustached gunman, who passed off Nicolas to several others.

His book, his manuscript, with all of those names right there in black ink: Jacques Stephen Alexis, Jules Sylvain Oscar, Juan Bosch, François Duvalier.
These names will kill me,
he thought, heart racing as the Macoute scanned the pages with a plump finger.

“What's this?”

Nicolas did not answer. He couldn't even if he wanted to, his jaw was clenched so tightly. He heard a scream from the back of the house and his blood curdled. He jerked in the men's grasp, but the head Macoute didn't lift his eyes from the document. Finally he stopped on a certain line. He squinted incredulously as he brought the page closer to his face.

“Are you aware of what you've written?” He looked directly at Nicolas. “You wrote this?”

Nicolas said nothing.

“This is a plot, a plot to conspire against His Excellency. What do you know about Jacques Stephen Alexis? Where did you get this information?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Nicolas blurted out. The words collided in his head. Had he ever, in the luxurious comfort of his study, imagined actually denying this?

Nicolas didn't anticipate the blow to the face, and he kept his eyes closed as the man struck him again. Pain came next, rocketing through his jaw, but he almost welcomed it.

“Traitor!” the man spat. “You are an enemy to the Republic of Haiti. Our source was right.”

“No…no traitor,” Nicolas grunted, gritting his teeth. He'd never been hit before. His lips were numb with pain, but he tried to think on his feet. “I have friends at the Ministry of Fi—”

“Shut up! You seem to think you're in a position to argue. One more peep and I will blow your brains out. Then I'll collect them and bring them to His Excellency myself.” He stared hard at Nicolas, clearly eager to deliver on his promise. “You are coming with us to Casernes Dessalines, and there you will await your transfer to Fort Dimanche!”