The Best American Travel Writing 2011 (10 page)

"It was
very
beautiful," I said, looking for a diplomatic answer.

The conversation attracted, as often happens in Haiti, a crowd of kibitzers, all wanting to throw in their own two cents. Two Haitians can converse, but three is an argument. Some maintained that the presidential palace was the most beautiful building in the world: others that it was the most beautiful presidential palace in the world. The argument was not about aesthetics but about the precise recollection of a fact that had been memorized in a schoolbook. The conversation got quite heated, and in the end one man had to be taken away before he slugged somebody.

In a city of remarkable piles of rubble, the presidential palace rubble was particularly spectacular. In its collapse it looked as if it had been constructed originally with Legos, then smashed by the hand of a very large child. It was somewhere between
fracturé
and
krazé
—it all depended on whether one looked to the wings, which were almost intact, or to the center. Certain portions of the rubble expanse could even be described as
penché.

A large tent city had cropped up directly in front of the gates of the palace, and then metastasized to the palace's flanks. Each of Port-au-Prince's tent cities had its own character, as any small town will, and here the mood was surlier and more aggressive than in other refugee camps. I asked somebody why the mood in this particular camp was so rough, and was told that it was due to the presence of the many escapees from the National Penitentiary, which was just a few blocks from here—although I found this explanation unlikely. Surely if anyone had cause to rejoice these days, it was the escapees.

 

Just three days before the world came to an end, Venance Lafrance slunk back into Port-au-Prince like a beaten dog. His return to Jérémie had been disastrous. His mother had gotten sick. His brother had gotten sick. And then he'd gotten sick too. He had almost died. All the capital he had accrued in the chicken game sweating over a hot barbecue, he had lost. He'd gone home to Jérémie to show off what a big man he'd become. But now, just to get back to Port-au-Prince, Venance had visited a local politician and agreed to sell her his vote in the upcoming parliamentary elections in exchange for a place on the big Trois Rivières, the weekly ferry to the capital.

The next morning, Venance made his way on foot (not even a gourde to take a bus) up to Cousin Maxo's little concrete house in Bel Air.

"Venance, I didn't know you were coming!" Cousin Maxo said,
happy to see him.

Cousin Maxo wasn't just happy to see Venance on account of Venance being Venance, but also because Cousin Maxo
needed
Venance Lafrance. Madame Cousin Maxo gave Venance some bread and coffee, and then Cousin Maxo told Venance the bad thing that had happened in his absence. It was just a couple days back. Madame Maxo had been out grilling on the Champ de Mars when the police had come round. She wasn't fast enough. The police had seized the family barbecue and all the chicken on the grill, too. She had gotten away with just a bowl of raw bird.

Cousin Maxo sent Venance out to buy some water for the house. Venance came back with five five-gallon buckets. After he had bathed, Venance lay down on the floor of the house and went to sleep for the rest of the morning.

Venance was finally home. Venance was finally needed.

 

The Rue Dalencourt winds down then up the steep valley between the Avenue John Brown and Canapé Vert. Before the quake, this had been a shady street of small houses and apartment complexes. The largest of these apartment complexes, a homicidal five-story monster, had come down. A few surviving relatives—a young woman, her brother, some friends—had hired a group of young men to do the dangerous work of pawing through the rubble. I sat outside and watched the diggers for a few minutes. Not far from us on the ground was a charred spinal cord and skull. The smell of decomposing flesh was quite strong in the air. Later, the diggers came up with the body of the young woman's sister—a large woman, to judge by the six men needed to carry her. Haiti is a country where women take pride in their voluptuous displays of grief—there exists an entire profession of paid mourners, whose copious tears and loud wailings are taken as a tribute to the qualities of the departed. I had been at a funeral not long before the quake where distant lady friends of the deceased had attempted to throw themselves bodily into the coffin. Now this young woman walked over, identified her sister, and walked back with a cool smile on her face.

This was like another country than the one I thought I knew.

 

On Tuesday, January 12, in the late afternoon, Venance Lafrance was playing dominoes out front of his friend Alfred's house. The board was balanced on the players' knees. They'd been slapping the bones for hours—days even. There was a big crowd around the board waiting to get in on the game. The board started shaking. The tiles started sliding. One of the fellows said, "Who's shaking the board?" Another fellow said, "Not me." Then the bricks started falling—
ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo!
Venance heard a noise like ten thousand trucks roaring up a steep hill. The street itself started making waves. Some of the fellows who'd been waiting to play dominoes started running—but Venance didn't run; he just stood his ground, watching the houses shaking and the street swinging up and down like a rubber hose, rolling up, down, left, and right. The dominoes that had been on the board were on the ground, clattering like they were dancing. Right in front of Venance a two-story brick house leaned over on its side in a big cloud of dust, like it was tired and needed a break—
penché.

When the ground stopped shaking, Venance's first thought was Cousin Maxo. He ran home through the streets. He passed collapsed house after collapsed house; the entire population of Port-au-Prince was in the streets.

Cousin Maxo's two-story house lay on a little alley. The cinder-block walls had given way and buckled outward. The first floor had come down, exploding massively as it made contact with the concrete foundations. Then the roof had come down also, staying largely intact. The house that had been two stories, or about twenty feet tall, was now just concrete slab on a waist-high pile of rubble.
Krazé net.

Madame Maxo was outside. She was showing up at the house just as Venance was getting there. She was saying, "Where's Maxo?" Then she was saying it all over again: "Where's Maxo?" And again, "Where's Maxo?" Venance knew where Cousin Maxo was. When Venance had left to play dominoes earlier that afternoon, Maxo had gone upstairs to take a nap.

"Maxo's inside," he said.

"Are you sure?" Madame Maxo said. "Is it true?"

Venance thought a second. But he knew Maxo had been sleeping. He was sure of it.

"Yes," he said.

"Then he's dead," she said.

Venance Lafrance stood with Madame Maxo out front of the rubble that buried the body of Cousin Maxo. She began to cry. Now the neighbors were drifting out front of the collapsed house. Madame Maxo collapsed into their arms. All that evening and night, Madame Maxo lay on the sidewalk on a cardboard box out front of her collapsed house with her head in Venance Lafrance's lap. She didn't know yet—nobody knew—that the city was destroyed; she thought it was just her house that had collapsed. Venance ran his hand through Madame Maxo's hair to calm her. The radio announced that there would be another quake in the night, and the radio was correct: there were aftershocks all through the night. In the distance there was the sound of sirens.

Venance stayed with Madame Maxo for two days in front of the ruined house. For two days he didn't sleep. Neighbors cooked and passed around food—only Madame Maxo didn't eat. Venance had never been responsible for anyone before. Now he washed the children and made sure they ate, and kept far from the rubble, and stayed far away from the burning bodies. When Madame Maxo cried, he consoled her, as best he could. Madame Maxo had a little money in her pocket when the quake hit—that's what kept the family going. Venance himself didn't cry for Cousin Maxo. The tears wouldn't come. He felt light in his head—like he had been transported to some strange new world.

 

Behind the Église Sacré-Coeur—
krazé
—there was a little garden, with benches and a small statue of the Madonna. Both a school and a rectory had collapsed here, and many priests had died, their bodies decomposing not far from where we stood. A middle-aged man with a trim beard and spectacles approached me and asked in French if I had noticed the amazing particularity of the Madonna.

"No," I said. The Madonna had neither fallen nor was it weeping.

He looked at me a long time, as if I couldn't possibly be as dense as I seemed.

"
She's turned to the east
," he finally said.

"To the east?"

"To the east."

The Madonna, on further examination, had shifted slightly, several degrees off the horizontal.

The man went on to claim that
all
of the Madonnas of Port-au-Prince had shifted to the east. He had gone around and examined them, he said. I asked him what was the significance of this unusual fact.

"This could not be an accident," he said.

 

Venance Lafrance, wearing sandals, stepped on something soft and squishy—a lady's arm, just lying out on the Champ de Mars. Venance Lafrance, whose fast feet had made him a natural in the chicken game, sprinted off. Bodies. Bodies starting to smell, bodies rotting in the sun. Fat dead people. Skinny kids. Big strong corpses, corpses built from lifetimes of lifting, toting, and hauling. Bodies of families. Bodies of naked old ladies. Bodies of naked old men. All the bodies puffy and gray. A guy saying, ''You got to see this," then a big crowd watching a couple of dead kids having sex in a hotel room on the Grand Rue. More bodies. Some covered. Some not covered. Bodies in flames—the smell of meat cooking. Still more bodies. A tractor loading up bodies, scooping the bodies into a dump truck. Venance figured, based on the numbers of bodies he saw in the streets, that most all of Port-au-Prince was dead. That's what Venance saw on the way from Cousin Maxo's house in Bel Air to my house. When he got to my house, it was closed, locked, and empty. Then Venance kept walking, all across town, to his niece's house in Carrefour. On the way he saw two young men, handcuffed, splayed out on the ground, sticky blood running river-like from their heads. Shot by the police. The folks watching them called them
voleurs
—thieves. When Venance got out to his niece's house, it was gone, collapsed, like all the others.

On the radio they had announced that the government of Haiti had arranged free transport to the provinces by all available means. Venance left Madame Maxo and her children on the street beside the rubble of the house they had occupied: he was just another mouth to feed. Cousin Maxo's body still lay trapped under the crushed cement—a few days later he would be pried out and burnt on the street. Venance left Port-au-Prince with nothing but the clothes that were on his back when the quake struck.

The return to Jérémie was not easy. Others had the same idea as Venance, and the Wharf Jérémie was packed. The wharf was not large, and great nervous crowds jostled for position. There was no place to stand or sit. Venance heard snippets of conversation: "Let me go! Let me pass! I didn't die on Tuesday, I'm not going to die in Port-au-Prince!" People carried what possessions remained to them in huge bundles on their heads and in suitcases. Venance spent almost three days trapped on the wharf. The pier itself had collapsed, and access to the Trois Rivières was only by private canoe or dugout: those who could pay found a place onboard. Venance had no money; the big boat left; and he waited. He didn't eat. Water was his priority. He found some.

By the time the ferry returned, barges had been stacked to create a makeshift dock. He found a place on the boat—nobody knows just how many were onboard, but every available inch of the boat was packed: the aisle, the stairs, the decks. The mood was tense. A large aftershock hit, and from the boat you could see the city rise and fall. The passengers began to stampede back to solid ground. Venance shouted, "You're on the boat, you're on the sea! Why are you running? If you run on the ground, you could die!" But nobody listened. When the ground calmed down, they came back on the boat.

Then, finally, the boat set sail, and Venance Lafrance watched Port-au-Prince recede into the distance.

 

Venance's story has an epilogue, of sorts.

When Venance called me very early in the morning, it meant that he was alive—and that he wanted money.

He told me that he had big plans: he wanted to start his own business barbecuing chicken in Jérémie, and he was looking for an investor. I gave him a hundred dollars. Later, I learned that he spent it on a couple of pairs of jeans and some shoes. When I remonstrated with him, he explained that nobody wants to buy chicken from a chicken man who looks like a bum.

Where there's life, there's hope; and where there's hope, there's life.

Long live Venance Lafrance.

FROM
The Atlantic

C
ALL ME WHATEVER.
I went to sea in 1970, when I was eighteen, not in Top-Siders, but in steel-toed boots.

I was deck boy aboard a Norwegian tramp freighter. My pay was $20 a week, about $100 today. Overtime paid 40 cents an hour, 60 on Sundays. Not much, I know, yet I signed off after six months with $400 in my pocket. My biggest expense was cigarettes ($1 a carton from the tax-free ship's store; beer was $3 a case). I've never since worked harder physically or felt richer. The Hong Kong tattoo cost $7 and is with me still on my right shoulder, a large, fading blue smudge. Of some other shore-side expenses, perhaps the less said, the better.

The term
gap year
wasn't much in use then, but I've never thought of it as a gap year. It was the year of my adventure. I was "shipping out," and there was romance in the term. I'd read Conrad and Melville at boarding school. It's tricky—or worse, boring—trying to explain an obsession. Mine had something to do with standing on the ice out on Narragansett Bay, watching the big ships making their way through the ragged channel toward open sea. Maybe it makes more sense just to quote from the first paragraph of
Moby-Dick: