God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) (7 page)

Again, Duvalier paused to turn around and give a stern look to the President in the eyes. What, the President thought, you of all people find me wanting? If a chocolate-brown man could blush, the President's face would have turned red. There was a big-enough grain of truth in Duvalier's contempt for him that his pride felt cut in a place he didn't know existed. Before Duvalier could go on, Saint Peter raised a hand and stopped him. Thank you, Dr. Duvalier, he said with finality. We have heard enough. We shall render our verdict on your fate.

Now sweating as if his body were already halfway submerged in hellfire, the President watched the saint's face closely to gauge his reaction to Duvalier's plea. As the verdict became clearer and clearer, the President suddenly saw another grand, glorious nimbus of light. The fierce fire looked as if heaven itself had opened up to swallow or eradicate them all. Afraid, the President turned away.

Opening his eyes, he discovered that he had returned
to Toussaint Louverture Airport's tarmac. Ruined, broken Toussaint Louverture Airport in the wan afternoon sun was a happy sight for his sore eyes. The President felt relieved, light-headed, and, for the first time in a life steeped in passive-aggression, determined. He felt as if he had received from God a reprieve from an almost guaranteed trip to hell. His own date with Saint Peter had been delayed. He didn't know how much time he had left. From what he saw up there—or was it down there?—anything can happen after you die. There might be an opportunity for him to get certain things right, or to right certain things he believed he may have gotten wrong, royally wrong, all his life. Where to start?

Mr. President! Mr. President!

They were soldiers, young and unhurt. Foreign. They stood at attention with spines straight, cream-colored jaws squared. They awaited orders. His. His hearing was off, way off. Dust caked his lips as though he had been eating sand all afternoon. There was work to do.

Mr. President, come with us.

Excuse me?

Sir.

What?

Sir!

That's better. Talk to me.

A Captain Waughray, a dark-eyed London cop turned blue-helmeted United Nations neocolonialist masquerading as a peacekeeper, told the President the sad tale of
the earthquake that had risen unexpectedly from a shift of tectonic plates deep beneath the Caribbean Sea to destroy Port-au-Prince as he knew it forever. The President took in the news soberly. He began to search for the right and bright new words to soothe his people in this, their darkest hour since they had been French slaves. He blocked out the impulse to acknowledge the freakiest fact, that in his sixty years never once had anyone he knew or anything he'd read about in his lifelong study of Haitian history mentioned the word “earthquake” as a part of life on the island. In his role as a natural then popular elected leader of the community, tragedy had been his daily bread. When people read the common description of Haiti as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, he often thought that they probably had no clue what living that fact was like for a sensitive person. Though his heart had filled with doubt about the quality and number of virtues Saint Peter, Jesus, and God would find in there, he knew his capacity to absorb and help others cope with the torrential pour of unexpected bad news that often characterized life in Haiti was true. So he walked briskly toward a hastily built command center on the tarmac surrounded by a half-dozen earnest and strong young men, and he hurried his emotions to process and discard as quickly as possible the potential pain the disaster may have caused him personally. His wife, his mother, his relatives, friends, and protégé were out there, caught in the brief but deadly maelstrom, and
they were unaccounted for so far.
Les soldats étrangers s'en foutent
. So should he, for now, he decided.

Sitting down felt nice, even on a metal chair. The tent was meant to be his own. The foreign soldiers handed him a bottle of Evian, a sandwich, and a wet towel so he could wipe his face and attempt to freshen up. They apologized for the lack of air conditioning. It should be operational in the morning, they said. The President chased away a bitter thought about how these Americans—and all foreigners in Haiti, to him, were either American or largely funded by America, which made them, often, even more American—could have all these creature comforts and resources so at the ready, so nearby, that they could mobilize them so quickly after such a disaster. The air conditioning in my office at the National Palace hasn't worked in a year, but I'll have an air-conditioned tent in the middle of an airport runway within twenty-four hours of the nation's destruction. The irony. The American armed forces had sent a slew of giant airplanes. His gracious hosts were beginning an informal occupation, a tightening of a grip meant to keep his country stable, which was a far cry from healthy, and a galaxy away from developed or even developing. This state of affairs is to be a source of strength for you, old man. A state of grace. The Americans blanketed the darkening sky with jumbo jets, dropping off men and supplies whose silent footfall reminded the President of midday summer rains in Jacmel or November snowfalls in Montreal. The President listened to the hum of activity
surrounding his tent for a while, then dozed off in his metal chair. The cool of the Port-au-Prince night greeted him when he woke up, fitfully, to the sight of Captain Waughray, poker-faced but youthful, almost kind.

Sir, we have a situation, he said.

H
is wife held him. They held each other. He wept. Natasha's grip was strong; her fingers dug holes in his skin. He bled, happily. Her relief came in shuddering waves of emotion. This must be how a child would hold her father after a near-death experience, he thought. Such transporting, intense love was something he could only imagine, because he had never had children, which was very unusual for a man of his age and standing in Port-au-Prince. It was a lapse that would haunt him to his grave.

The next day, he woke up to life in a tent in a ruined city at a loss for words. He busied himself mastering the art of nodding sagely to United Nations and/or American military officers during their briefings on the health, education, infrastructure, economic, and political effects of the earthquake. The briefings were constant. The data dizzying. The range of trauma stupefying. The death toll caused by the earthquake grew exponentially seemingly by the minute. He began to feel as though the earth had kept on shaking and killing more of his people all day long after its splashy thirty-five-second eruption. His mind found it harder and harder to accept the fact
that such a brief tremor could cause such carnage. The whole world is with Haiti, the foreigners told him. The outpouring of aid is unprecedented. You are not alone. That's how the officers concluded each briefing. For some reason, each time he heard the pat phrases he cringed. This is between us and God, he wanted to say. We appreciate your help. Could you please leave our island now? Instead, he nodded.

Natasha spent the day sleeping, or lying in her cot in their tent with her back turned away from him and the world. Her mind was far away and seemingly unreachable to him. He was afraid of what she was thinking. Did she also think me unworthy? Could she validate me?

That night, when the emergency camp at the airport was asleep, and even the millions of newly homeless Haitians around the city slept to keep from weeping, he suffered great anxiety. The cure wasn't going to be found on the island. He scurried behind a pile of rubble, sat down, fished out his cell phone, and dialed a number he hadn't dialed in years but remembered by heart. The phone rang an unfamiliar tone. What time was it in South Africa? Only an hour later than Paris. He should be awake.

Bernard Métélus speaking.

Hello?

Hello?

The President cleared his throat. Forgive me, Father, I have sinned, he said. It's been six years since my last confession.

Seated in a car in the parking lot of the University of Johannesburg's Soweto campus, Father Métélus, a defrocked priest and former president of Haiti, turned off the engine and covered his mouth to suppress a gasp. His oldest friend in the world was on the phone. In the twenty four hours since the earthquake had struck down Haiti, he had been famished for news from home. After a sleepless night watching CNN, Bernard Métélus had decided he had a good-enough feel for the scale of the tragedy to stop listening to foreigners' takes on it, either on TV or in the faculty lounge at the university. He did have a good laugh when a Rwandan criminology professor told him he felt sorry for Haiti and added, It was a shame to see so many people naked and barefoot and desperate on TV like that. Why can't they get it together? Easy, buddy, Métélus wanted to say, Haiti has its failings, but we never up and killed a million of our own in one month, like your people did in the nineties. But Métélus had long ago become accustomed to the absurdly extreme reactions Haiti provoked in people around the world. So he bit his tongue and spent his time swimming in nostalgia of his favorite places in Port-au-Prince: La Saline, Cité Soleil, Champ de Mars, Paco, Carrefour Feuilles. He liked that his heart had seemed to accept the probable premature deaths suffered by many of his loved ones with a certain amount of Zen. Maybe his old priestly wisdom hadn't completely disappeared after all. He now realized that his calm in the face of his wife's and other Haitians'
hysterical reactions to the horrific event back home was a front. The sound of the voice of an old friend, even one who had become a colleague he despised and a successor he dismissed, pierced a thick wound he long thought healed. His emotions outran him, spilling tears through his eyes and spectacles, sandpapering his throat. If the President had survived the gruesome destruction of the National Palace, maybe Tante Evelyne in Léogâne survived too? Maybe my domino-player buddies in Carrefour survived too? Maybe the daughter in Port-au-Prince whose existence I had to deny survived also? Maybe the Lord does finally have mercy on me? Maybe He forgives my hubris? Maybe, just maybe, He loves me still. Maybe, just maybe . . . and then Bernard Métélus, failed Roman Catholic priest and politician in exile, for the first time in a long, long time, felt hope fill his soul, like fresh air through the lungs of a drowned man left for dead.

Go on, my son, Métélus said, with a quivering voice.

PART II

Now it is time that we were going, I to die and you to live; but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God.

—Socrates, in Plato's
Apology

        
THE PRAYER

F
ive minutes before the earthquake no one knew was coming destroyed everything everyone held dear, Natasha Robert was a confused young newlywed, standing on the tarmac of Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince. She was clutching a one-way ticket out of Haiti, worried she had married the wrong man and wondering whether God would forgive her for that sin. I love you, she whispered to the memory of the other man, her ex-lover. But I cannot be with you anymore. I must leave Haiti. Please leave me be, she said to herself with mounting anxiety. Grant me peace! Please? The memory took the shape of a stone-faced ghost, and the ghost showed her no pity. The young woman was the only person in the presidential entourage assembled at the airport who saw the ghost, so no one outside her head could hear her scream. The air smelled a woozy mix of Caribbean sea and jet engine fuel. Primly dressed in a formal white-and-black
dress, and standing on a tarmac that glittered, positively glittered, under a bright sun, Natasha tried to blink away her past in favor of a swanky future. The effort stalled. One last memory lingered. The memory was a good one too, seemingly endless and sweet. The winter day had been unusually hot. To all the world, Natasha looked the picture of poised, exquisite, and carefree beauty. But her heart nursed a wound inflicted by her head, and now it was fit to burst if she didn't get herself together. Tears were on the verge of ruining her makeup. A disaster of epic proportions. She should be happy. She was about to have one of her childhood dreams come true—Leaving Haiti for good! Yay!—but the image of a handsome young man, a dreamboat with a nightmare's poor timing, came jarringly into her mind, wrecking her nerves, breaching the dam of her cool facade. Why am I seeing your ghost when I know you to be alive and well? she thought. Feelings for this man, her heart insisted on reminding her, the young man she'd jettisoned recently for a wealthier and much older man, and, in the process, casually, cruelly, and pretty much completely breaking both their hearts, surfaced in her chest with a vehemence that stopped her in her tracks. She stood still in the middle of the group. The group was in a hurry. The airplane they were about to take for a permanent leave of their island nation shimmered like a mirage under the assault of the Caribbean heat. The plane, like most escape fantasies, looked as though it could disappear before they reached it.
This made folks nervous. Their nerves weren't helped by the fact that the tarmac's asphalt was so hot it was melting the soles of their loafers and high heels. Some began to fear for the fate of the bottom of their feet. Their feet could not possibly put up a better fight than Italian leather did. As if alone, or, to her impressionable new friends, on a movie set, Natasha loosened her collar, lost in her thoughts, still not walking toward her husband, who was at the head of the queue, a hand imperiously thrust at her.

Until the moment she abruptly stopped the exodus, Natasha had been all smiles; an award-winning, movie-star-worthy grin, her entourage noted early and often. Her smile was indeed winning. All her life, its brilliance seduced women and men, boys and girls, soldiers and nuns, and elders and babies. Recently, her gentle yet arresting beauty had ensnared a head of state and his entourage and her nation, too—well, the small percentage of the population with access to television sets. Her wedding day was like a national holiday. Their every move became an opportunity to celebrate rare national glamour. Even on this treacherous day, when the first couple secretly planned to ditch Haiti for Italy, smatterings of cheering throngs accompanied their procession from the National Palace to the national airport for what the President's public relations people billed as the new first couple's first foreign tour, featuring a first stop in Florence, Italy, to support Haitian artists featured at a biennale in the Uffizi. To be fair, crowds lined the streets of Port-au-Prince all the time.
Sidewalks were too narrow or nonexistent throughout the city. The streets contained more adults, children, dogs, pigs, sometimes cats, bikes, puddles, and garbage piles at all hours than the overcrowded and lightly governed city could handle. Still, in a disturbingly short amount of time, Natasha had grown attached to the cheers, the approval of strangers. They had the livening effect of a good new drug. The first pangs of withdrawal pain already loomed in her spirit's outer edges. On good days, or during good moments on uneven days, the flush of mass approval justified Natasha's choice of husband and nursed her shattered and shamed heart. Life was golden, her entourage told her. You're so beautiful, they said. You're so lucky.