God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) (18 page)

Don't listen to our predecessor over there, Mr. President, Métélus the angel said. You have a nice track record of resisting the impulse to abuse your privileges. There are many, many diplomatic and decent ways to deal with your issues with Alain Destiné. You know them well, instinctively. They will serve your purposes.

Thank you, gentlemen, the President said, blinking away the avatars of his good and evil instincts. I'll take it from here.

The President held off replying to Bobo's message with new orders.

T
he town car pulled in front of the United Nations headquarters, 405 East Forty-Second Street. Dark, cold
clouds surrounded the tower of the Le Corbusier-designed Secretariat. The grandiosity of New York City generally made the President feel small. Tall buildings, seemingly held up by puffy clouds, that were lithesome in the summer and moody in the winters. Boroughs connected by long, winding, and lanky multilane bridges choked with giant delivery trucks whose rumbling sounds were always menacing and angry, like warnings to stay out of Gotham or to enter Gotham at your own peril. As the car made its way into the city, the President noted how easily people disappeared in New York City. In his decades of coming here, he couldn't say he'd actually seen a New Yorker in the same way that, for example, a visitor can see every bead of sweat, sinewy muscle, and concern in the face and body of a Haitian in his or her thin dress under the clinically unforgiving glare of the Caribbean sun. If the President saw New Yorkers at all, they were usually hidden in plain sight, walking fast, talking as if distracted, camouflaged by layers of clothing and hats and behind sunglasses and faraway stares no matter the season.

Chills ran up the President's spine to the back of his head from the tips of his toes. He had stepped into a puddle as he climbed out of the car.
Merde
, he said. Wet feet felt squishy. Guards in the lobby of the UN building greeted them with friendliness once the group emerged through revolving doors. A lassitude came over the President, and he walked with a stoop while entering an elevator. The kid on his right, his new foreign minister, stopped briefing
the President on the agenda of the coming Conference to Take Over and Carve Up Haiti Further with the People Who Screw the World for the first time since they'd met in the new all-tent presidential quarters near Toussaint Louverture Airport. Finally! the President thought. He shut up. The elevator went up slowly. A hush fell over all of them. All eyes lifted toward the lights above, tracking their rise through floors with soft beeps. Most buildings in New York City did not have a thirteenth floor out of deference to some age-old superstition. But this building did, and it was off-limits to everyone except heads of states. Leaving his staff in the elevator, the President was greeted by a sumptuous dark red carpet and the biggest chandelier he had ever seen. A valet solemnly took his coat. The valet was also known as the secretary general of the United Nations. The man also known as the SG grasped the president of Haiti's hands and bowed. The President felt as if he were attending his own funeral.

So good to see you, Mr. President, the SG said. He was a slight man of indeterminate race with the honeyed voice of a practiced undertaker. I wish we were seeing each other under more cheerful circumstances.

I know, the President lied.

Come, the oily secretary general said, the others await. They are eager to share their sympathies with you.

Into the inner sanctum of the masters of planet earth, the President entered. He liked this part, a little. He liked how staff, ministers, generals, and business partners, not to
say the media, were banned from getting off the elevator on this floor. A few years ago, the President had met the president of Benin on his way out. He had walked funny. What rotten luck could have happened to his country to force him to submit to such a gangbang?

My son, the president of Benin said to the president of Haiti, arms open. The Beninois's face actually went from bloodshot to something akin to a smile. The hug was heartfelt.

Oh, you didn't know Haitians were the sons of Benin? Where do you think your voodoo came from? Don't you know where Toussaint Louverture and his gang of rebel slaves were born? Oh, your stock's been watered down through the centuries, but look at you, handsome and proud. Those and all your other blessings came from Benin, my friend.

The President wasn't sure if this cheery African was lying or telling the truth, but during his embrace was the only time in his trips abroad the President had not felt like the loneliest man in the world.

The gang was all there when the President walked into the oak-paneled conference room. They wore dark suits and red or blue ties. The Frenchman was short. The German was tall. The Italian looked bored, and the Russian radiated sympathy. The Chinese was cool in thick black-frame glasses. The American was the only one sitting in a gold-trimmed armchair and smiling. He motioned for the Haitian to join him in a nearby chair. A glass of a well-cubed,
dark and lovely drink materialized in the President's right hand. He sighed and sat down.

Look, man, the American said. That earthquake was fucked-up. I'm sorry. We're all sorry. How are things down there?

Bad, he said.

Katrina bad?

Hiroshima bad.

Goddamn it, the American said, slapping his thigh. That's fucked-up. I'm sorry to hear that, man. I really am. Why do bad things keep happening to the noble while the craven and feckless mint money without trying? Damn, that was good. I should write that down so I don't forget it. Dominic, write that down for me somewhere, will you? And text it to Anthony in Washington. Now where was I? Hiroshima bad, huh? That sounds expensive.

Yes, very.

We're willing to take care of you. We're humanitarians after all. We'll need a few things in return.

I know. But no more drugs, man. The people can't take any more pain.

Shh, shhh, the president of the US of A said. Don't worry about the details. You personally will be taken care of. The Tuscany deal still stands.

The American looked at his Italian counterpart. He nodded sagely.

But I have to go back . . .

Because your lady's still down there. We know. We're
all family men. You get home and get her. You get to stay until after the elections for your replacement. I think we'll schedule them for November. What do you think, fellas? November sounds like a good time?

The Haitian president's mind briefly checked out of the meeting with his grinning northern counterpart and his amigos.

Alain Destiné, his wife's friend, had been born under a lucky star. That's why the President had mixed feelings about him. A big part of him liked the kid. At age nine, when Alain's father, a colleague of the President's at medical school, had brought him to Haiti from abroad, the boy was beautiful, bright, curious, and tough in a way that made the President wish the boy was the son he suspected he would never have. As the years went on, he kept expecting the kid to grow out of that winner's sheen, especially after his father lost his prestigious job and retreated to the placid life of a bookstore owner on Place Boyer.

Instead, the boy grew bolder as he grew older. Destiné went from having a vitality the President admired to one the President envied. The boy lived like he expected to win—at soccer, at politics, at business, at love. The President, he played the angles and tried to come out ahead of losses, which had worked out reasonably well for him. The President dreamed of avoiding nightmares; Destiné seemed to dream mostly of glory. But Destiné over-reached, didn't he? He overplayed his hand. You don't sleep with another man's wife. You certainly shouldn't
sleep with a friend and mentor's wife. No man is so stupid not to know when his wife's fucking another man. No old man anyway. Figuring out who the man is can be tricky. But we become aware of it on some level the moment of the first spark of electricity, the first penetration.
Pfft.
The boy was his father's son. His father over-reached with the wrong woman too, and it practically ruined him.

Still, murder went against the new leaf the President had turned since the earthquake destroyed Haiti. The media and, even more important, Haitian word of mouth for the most part praised his sangfroid, compassion, and, to everyone's surprise, eloquence in helping the people deal with the tragedy and traumas that followed. In marshaling resources around the world to help the country figure out how to pick up the pieces, the President had been darn-right heroic. Haiti had developed faith in its president after years of familiarity, a first in the country's history.

In the lobby of the United Nations, the President's cabinet greeted him with desperate, searching eyes. Although the President had gotten sick and thrown up during the elevator ride down after the meeting with Satan and his kitchen cabinet, the humiliating ritual did generate good news for the fate of Haiti. The superfriends would provide resources for Haiti's resource-free government and send armies armed with potential relief for the victims of nature's freakiness. The President gave the guys the thumbs-up. They jumped for joy. He had secured billions
of dollars in grants and low-interest loans from the American and his friends, to be funneled through United Nations agencies and other nongovernmental organizations to rebuild Haiti. Build back better, they said. The President watched his cabinet high-five and hug each other. The President was careful to avoid hugging anyone. He didn't want them to smell the vomit on his breath.

In the euphoria, the President also decided he didn't want Destiné dead for sleeping with his wife. Part of him did. Really, really did. But when the President considered the order he'd given Bobo, regret gave his heart an acidity he longed to erase. He couldn't help but try to distance himself from it. He didn't want Destiné dead, he decided, just roughed up. A warning. So he would finally stay away from Natasha for good. If that hardheaded boy would not obey such a reasonable message, the President would come up with an alternative solution that would be effective but not deadly.

Murdering Alain Destiné would have been the first time I've used my power as head of state to try to give myself a small amount of pleasure. Would God forgive me for this sin? Will God forgive me anything? I am doing the right thing for millions of others. Belatedly, but still. Will my immortal soul pay for this one indulgence if I manage, in my final act as a public servant, to corral commitments to bring food and water and medicine in a timely fashion to millions of people who are hungry, unemployed, without homes, and living in the bull's-eye of a host of coming rainy seasons, deadly diseases, and natural disasters?

When the President was finally alone in his suite at the Warwick Hotel a few hours later, he groped for an answer to the right moral choice despite his aggrieved pride. He got on his knees by his bedside, a habit of well-bred boys he'd acquired, and he said the Lord's Prayer. He took a hot shower, put on pajamas, and crawled into bed. The team had made him promise to check out the news to see sound bites from the press conference he'd participated in at the UN that afternoon, so he turned on the eleven o'clock news. He watched the American president announce the humanitarian financial package the international community had pledged to help Haiti, our neighbor and friend in its darkest hour, come out from under the rubble and chaos caused by the earthquake “better than ever before.” The Haitian president flashed back to a chart some United Nations Development Programme consultant had showed him estimating the earthquake had generated as much rubble as twenty World Trade Centers. It took New York City one entire year to clear the rubble of its ground zero, and nearly ten years later they had yet to finish constructing a worthy replacement, and that disaster was located in the center of one of the wealthiest cities in the world with access to the best and biggest trucks, the widest streets, and state-of-the-art dump sites, construction experts, architects, engineers, and technologists. If politics and grief could paralyze mighty New York, how much time will Haitians need to clear the chunks of concrete littering their towns when all they have are bare hands, mighty hearts,
and traffic-clogged streets and zero public awareness of the concept of a dump site and pooling resources for collective sustainable development? How would the people of Léogâne, Carrefour, and Port-au-Prince muster the patience and strength to spend the next twenty years sanding down, cleaning up, and rebuilding streets when food, health care, education, and care for their children will also be concerns without regular relief? The President had no answer, and no answer came to him while he knelt and bowed his head in his hotel room. How diminutive and frail and hot under the collar that consultant back then, like the American president today, made him feel by his disparity of know-how and resources in the face of such a great challenge. The President rushed to the bathroom to vomit. While worshipping the porcelain god, he had an epiphany about the frailties of the Haitian condition and the coping devices his people, particularly, their men, had relied on over centuries and generations to gain and maintain a little dignity. The President hunted down a Haitian radio station on the AM dial and found a syrupy Roger Colas song he hadn't heard in years, “Tu peux compter sur moi.”
Sur qui?
the President wondered.
Sur Lui? Ou lui? Lui et moi?
And for the first time in his long, tough life, the President felt a tinge of pity for someone other than himself. Out of the seeds of pity grew a wave of warm kindness and affection for a collective that had come to be symbolized by the face and fate of one stupid young man. He picked up his Black-Berry and he wrote Bobo.

It is extremely important that Alain Destiné is not harmed under any circumstance. Arrange to have him medivaced to Miami for treatment of his injuries as soon as possible. I'll be home tomorrow.

Alain Destiné would live, the President decided, or at least not die by his hand. He'll lose permanently his right to live in Haiti, but he'll get to keep his life. The boy, like most of us, had lost enough things that mattered in his young life. Not least of which will be the woman he loved, my wife.