God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) (12 page)

My father and I ambled down to the river most often on mornings when it was too hot for me to play football with my friends and too early for him to have worked through the night's hangover. We sat in his small boat for hours. My father often slept during this time, but with his eyes open. I stared at the schools of fish swimming around us in the still river, and I imagined I had a machine gun to speed up their conquest. On days when I had problem that needed sorting, I asked my father for advice. I was a shy child. I stammered a lot. But, strangely, not when I spoke to my papa. I told Papi of a kid in school who I thought was a friend but who hurt my feelings by making fun of me. Recently, he had started taunting me by calling me Garcia, my middle name. In front of all our classmates, he kept saying that my name was Dominican and that I wasn't really Haitian. I was a traitor, a spy. All the kids laughed at me. I hated it. I am Haitian, Papa, right? I said. I'm not a traitor, right? I would never hurt people. What was this boy talking about, Papa? I'm not Dominican, right? Even I was, all Dominicans are not spies and enemies, are they?
What should I do about this boy? He bothers me nonstop, Papa. I'm starting to lose concentration in class.

What?! my father said, startled awake. He coughed and wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve. He wore that pained look he got whenever he was confronted with unpleasant news. My father always looked like he was easily wounded, for he was a thin man. Thin eyes, lips, hands, legs, and torso. People in our
quartier
called him Chinaman. The women loved him. They wanted to cradle his waifish frame. They liked his easy, lopsided grin. His head was clean-shaven yet gray at the temples. Raffish and handsome and somnolent, that was my father, the latest in a long line of easy-to-love men in our family that ended with me.

What is the boy's name? my father asked me that day in the boat. B-B-B-Bernard, I said. Bernard Métélus.

Métélus's boy? he said. You letting that little runt get to you? What's wrong with you, son? Did you punch him in his face after he insulted you? Did you punch him and tell him that Dominicans and Haitians don't exist? It's one damn island, one country of people stuck on an island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. We're the same squirrels trying to get nuts from the same stingy bastards.

Non, papa
, I said.

Good, Papa said. What a fucking fool, that Métélus kid. Just like his father. Still. You're better off keeping that to yourself. Better to make friends than enemies with him. Don't let that anti-Dominican shit get to you, son. I gave
you that name for a reason. The Dominicans are all right. Don't let the loudmouths fool you. That doesn't mean they don't have their funny ways. Not too long ago, they had a president, Rafael Trujillo, a real asshole, who, on a whim, ordered his army to execute the Haitian population living in the borderlands we share with them. In a few months, the Dominicans killed somewhere between twenty to thirty thousand of us. Probably more. No one can ever tell how many Haitians are in any one place at a given time. We're everywhere! Anyway, the Dominicans really got carried away with themselves that day. The soldiers used knives and swords. They didn't spare women or children. You see, some Dominicans never got over the fact that their people are Haitian. African, Indian, with a dash of European. Haitian. The island was one country for a long time, for a longer time than it's been artificially separated by the Americans. The propaganda that keeps us separated is ridiculous. Oh, we don't share everything. Over there, they have a thing for Christopher Columbus that's pretty embarrassing. No one else in the hemisphere likes that motherfucker. We prefer to celebrate the people who stood up to the Spanish conquistadors. Here, we love our African soul. Not in the DR. They love their Spanish roots. It's no big deal. To each his own God be true, right? However, being mad at sharing our ancestry is like being mad at being called human. The human condition has no mysteries for us Haitians, does it, son? We take its best and its worst, with
a shrug and a chuckle and a glass of rum. We're tough hombres, foolish, maybe a wee bit crazy from the sun and sex, but we have good taste. We take the best shots from God and the devil on any given day and still we rise. My father chuckled. I didn't understand all of what he was talking, but I got the gist of it.

The Dominicans called the massacre El Corte, the cut. The sad event was also known as the Parsley Massacre from stories people told about how the soldiers made sure they killed defenseless Haitians and not defenseless Dominicans by accident—ah, the complications of fratricide. Trujillo had the soldiers hold up parsley sprigs to their potential victims and then ask them, What is this? If the potential victim said the word “parsley” with the wrong accent, off went her head. To illustrate the absurdity of it all, my father then said the word “parsley” with pitch-perfect Spanish and the widest, toothiest grin. A bit of drool dribbled down the corner of his mouth.

Natasha, I could care less about history, not now and definitely not back then, the President said, holding Natasha's gaze as steadily as he held her hands. In my teenage mind, the moral of the story he told me revolved around the magical powers of immortality conveyed from knowing the right way to say the right word, like “parsley,” at the right time. You could say my political career was born that day. I became a listener. I became a diplomat of sorts, a reconciler and not a fighter. A crowd-pleaser. A shit-eater. A winner. I got off that boat and went back to
the neighborhood determined to become Métélus's best friend. I wasn't going to ask him to stop mocking me. I was going to make him like me so much that mocking me would come to seem a waste of his time. I was going to become useful to him, you see. And it worked! I rode his coattails to the presidency! Everyone wants to be liked and served, especially bullies. I didn't want to be coddled by everyone like my father was, but I figured being inoffensively offensive in aggressive and hostile surroundings would spare me the worst of any situation. I was not a quiet boy or a choirboy. I could fake humor like the best of men. On my journey to manhood, I simply found the easiest way to eliminate obstacles was to listen, then seduce. Just so. Never too much. Too much of anything, especially words, ruined events, moments, made life unnecessarily harder. Live in the moment, but without excess. Have faith, have cool, have a ready modest smile. So when Métélus became president of Haiti, I was his right-hand man.

Some of the people who were about to die during the massacre realized immediately what the murderous Dominican was asking of them with the parsley sprig facing them, father said. They would say the word the wrong way, realize their mistake, then try again quickly to get it right before the first blow fell on them. Sometimes they tried after the second or third blow too. It was always too late. There was no mercy to be had. You cannot take words back after they've been spoken, son,
my father said. In my long life, I've seen his advice hold up well over the years. So, baby, as you embark on this adventure with me and you feel your nerves getting the best of you, just do what I do when I get confronted by a scary situation.

What's that? Natasha said.

I say the word “parsley,” the President said. Over the years, the word became part incantation and part reminder for me to stay calm and careful in situations where most of my friends or competitors would panic. It was a way to remind myself that whatever odd situation I had gotten myself into was of my own creation and thus it was amply manageable. Natasha, sweetheart, you should have faith that much of the same is true for you. There is nothing bad that is going to happen to you as long as you are with me as we move around this planet. There's no threat that you won't have the power to handle whether you're with me or not. Your will to power got you this far in life. I doubt you'll face anything worse than the things you had to overcome already.

In her heart, she knew he was right. Natasha felt her spirit swell with strength that she did not think she was capable of feeling. You really think so? she said, immediately regretting the girlish pitch in her voice.

I do believe you will be fine, my love, he said. As long as you repeat the magic word after me.

What's that?

Parsley, he said.

B
efore she could react, his phone rang. The ringtone was unfamiliar to her. High-pitched. The President's face grew dark. He turned away from her. A first. He usually liked to have her witness as he conducted the affairs of the state.

A lot of people on the streets think us politicians are all crooks, he used to say. How could the people in charge of a country so poor have politicians as corrupt as vultures? What do they think we're robbing? The place has nothing, absolutely nothing. So to prove the sincerity of my intentions, the President said during their courtship, I will be totally transparent with my business. You will see that I'm not a crook. I am conflict-averse and a terrible public speaker, but I am not a plundering president of Haiti like some of my predecessors. Not that I'm a saint or anything. But by the time I got to office, the national cupboard was basically empty. I hope you come to understand the limits of the powers of my office, of our nation. I hope you could grow to trust me.

Natasha thought the man was crazy. Still, his generous and probably dangerous gestures had the desired effect on her. She grew to appreciate the privilege of bearing witness to the politics of their country as they happened in real time. Haiti's sad state sickened her and made her want to flee the island in disgust more than ever. The place was a wreck, and Natasha was in no mood to be fascinated or philosophical about it. The view from a front-row seat in
the President's office freaked her out instead of giving her the more common frisson of a rubbernecker. So now for the first time, as her commitment to him was about to reach a fraught climax, he wanted to keep a piece of his business secret from her. She was not going to let him. She walked up behind him and stopped just short enough to eavesdrop on his conversation.

Yes, Mr. President, he said.

Mr. President? she thought. This was the first time she had heard him speak English and call another person Mr. President. He had to be talking to the American president. That's the only other president he's ever referred to. Wow.

To be honest, a big part of me feels relieved, sir, he said. You really believe my people will be proud of me for doing this? I'm impressed by how well you understand the Haitian people, sir. I'm sure the American people would also be proud to learn one morning that their president had overnight chosen to retire to the Italian countryside instead of serving their interests until the end of his mandate. You don't have to threaten me, sir. I was just making a joke. I am fully aware of the fact that your predecessor had my predecessor exiled to Africa and banned from ever entering the Western Hemisphere. The Central African Republic. Not somewhere nice like Egypt or Gabon. Right. Yes. I understand. Italy is a much nicer place for me to start a family. I'll have a nice trip, sir. Thanks for taking time from your busy . . . Mr. President? Mr. President? Mr. President?

Who was that? Natasha said.

The boss, he said.

Who?

Who do you think? the President snapped. What, you didn't think your president had a boss? I do. Everyone does. Even you do.

Even your boss does, Natasha said.

The President looked curiously at his new bride, then he trudged on. They walked up the steps to the airplane. Halfway up, the President tossed his cell phone away. He didn't throw away the device in anger but did so softly, wearily. He was letting go of the unmentionable everythings it represented, did, and had him do. He was too tired from years of hating most of it to muster rage. He watched the black phone fly through the humid air. Suddenly, he found himself flying toward the phone. He found himself floating in the air away from the plane, horizontally, like Superman. The President looked like a fat, bald, nattily suited beach ball soaring through the sky between the sun and an undulating sea of asphalt. He didn't know what caused this to happen. He knew the landing on the tarmac's asphalt, whenever it occurred, was going to hurt like hell. The force of his momentum was such that his tie smacked him dead in the eye. His eyes watered. Now that, that really pissed him off.

Merde
, the President said.

His jaw was the first part of his body to hit the ground.

PART III

If
sub specie aeternitatis
there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn't matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism and despair.

—Thomas Nagel, “The Absurd”

        
LOOKING FOR A NEEDLE IN THE RUBBLE

O
utside an isolated tent a hundred meters from hundreds and thousands of newly planted tents for earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince, two doctors, one American and the other French, had a cigarette before starting their workdays. It was six a.m., a couple of days after the quake. In most countries not located in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, there would be a slight chill in the air at that hour. In Haiti, the temperature was perfect, not too hot, not cool, just right. The doctors felt good in their skins. This bothered them. Life shouldn't feel this good when death was so spectacularly random and massive around them. They smoked nervously. In the evening after dinner, they will drink heavily.

They say the first seventy-two hours are your best chance of finding survivors after disasters like this, the man, a Frenchman, said. In Banda Aceh, they found practically no one after forty-eight hours.

I know, an unmistakably American woman said. We got to Pakistan four days after their big one. There were no survivors.

None?

Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Putain
. The poor bastards.

Inside the tent, which the doctors thought to be a storage tent, for it was the only tent with an armed guard standing in front of it at all times, the subconsciousness of a sleeping earthquake survivor filtered their analysis. Natasha Robert sprang awake. She was alert and amped, as if one of the doctors had extinguished his cigarette directly in her eye. She foraged around for her clothes, but all she could find were a pair of white tennis sneakers.