The Return (5 page)

I was four or five

when my father left Haiti.

He was in hiding more often than he was at home.

Here is the man at the origin of my life

and I don't even know how he tied his tie.

In the stifling loneliness of exile

one day he had the grand idea

of entrusting a suitcase to the bank.

I picture him strolling through the streets

after having put in a safe place

his most precious possession.

The suitcase was waiting for me.

He had faith in his son's reflex.

What he didn't know

(shut up, you can't teach a dead man anything)

is that destiny is not passed on from father to son.

That suitcase belongs to him alone.

The weight of his life.

Last Morning

I don't know why

this morning I have such a desire to see

my friend Rodney Saint-Éloi at 554 Bourgeoys Street.

Appreciate the irony of this street name

for a modest left-wing publishing house

in the working-class neighborhood of Pointe-Saint-Charles.

Waiting for me at the top of the steep staircase

Saint-Éloi and his wide smile

with a salmon cooking over low heat

on a bed of thin slices

of onion, tomato, lemon and red pepper.

Hanging on the wall the luminous poems

of Jacques Roumain, the young man who sang

so sadly of the fall of Madrid

with a feminine elegance

that reminds us of Lorca.

Here we are sitting,

Saint-Éloi and me.

Face to face.

Both of us from Haiti.

Him, scarcely five years ago.

Me, nearly thirty-five years back.

Thirty endless winters separate us.

That's the hard road he'll have to take.

He arrives just as

I'm leaving.

He's starting

as I finish.

Already the next generation.

So much time has passed.

One day, before him

will stand another man

who will resemble him

like a younger brother.

And he will feel

the way I do today.

The red sofa where this tall dark-haired girl is sleeping so soundly. The night was eventful. Several empty wine bottles, a make-up case, a black-and-yellow bra. The remains of a meal still strewn across the table. Spices in small bottles. Towels on the bathroom floor. Dirty dishes cluttering the sink. I step onto the little balcony that overlooks the grassless yard. The life of an intellectual in a working-class district.

Tiga paintings on the walls. A photo of the poet Davertige (light-colored suit, black bowler hat, big smile) in the vestibule. His smile beneath the pain of a dandy at rest reminds me of my father. Scattered here and there, the most recent books published by Mémoire d'encrier: between the sheets, under the bed, on the fridge, in the bathroom, even on the range where a Creole-style chicken is simmering.

Exile combined with cold

and loneliness.

One year, in those conditions, counts as two.

My bones have dried out from inside.

Our eyes tired from seeing the same scene.

Our ears weary from hearing the same music.

We are disappointed at having become

what we have become.

And we understand nothing

of this strange transformation

that has occurred without our knowledge.

Exile in time is more pitiless

than exile in space.

I miss

my childhood more intensely

than my country.

I am surrounded by books.

I am falling asleep on my feet.

In my dream I see

my father's suitcase

tumbling through space.

And his judging eyes

turning slowly in my direction.

One last look out the airplane window.

This cold white city

where I've known my strongest passions.

Now ice lives inside me

almost as much as fire.

Part 2

From the Hotel Balcony

From the hotel balcony

I watch Port-au-Prince

on the brink of exploding

by the turquoise sea.

In the distance, the island of Gonâve

like a lizard in the sun.

That bird that crosses

my field of vision

so quickly—barely eight seconds.

Here it comes again.

The same one?

As if that mattered.

The young man sweeping

the hotel courtyard so energetically,

so different from the old man yesterday morning,

seems to have his mind elsewhere.

Sweeping, because it lets you dream,

is a subversive activity.

This morning it's not Césaire

I feel like reading

but Lanza del Vasto

who was able to be satisfied

with a cool glass of water.

I need a man of serenity

not some guy seething with anger.

I don't want to think.

Just see, hear and feel.

Note it all down before I lose my head,

drunk on this explosion of tropical

colors, smells and tastes.

I haven't been part of a landscape like this

for so long.

In the slum called Jalousie (because of how close the luxury villas are, which tells us something about the sense of humor you need to live there) the little girl woke up before the others to go fetch water. I follow her with the binoculars the hotel owner lent me. She climbs the mountainside like a young goat, with a plastic bucket on her head and another one in her right hand. I lose sight of her as I scan the neighborhood waking up. There she is again. Her wet dress flat against her thin young body. The guy with the mustache and the tie sipping coffee on his gallery watches her too.

Let us carefully observe the scene.

Close-up on the face of the mustached guy.

His intense concentration

on the dance of the girl's hips.

The slightest movement of that wonderfully supple body

is absorbed by his greedy little eyes.

The nose awakens to the scent.

The cat leaps.

Claws buried in the back of her neck.

The girl's arched back.

Not even a cry.

Everything happened

in his head

between two sips of coffee.

I sit on the veranda

and gently place the binoculars

at the foot of the chair.

Warmed by the sun

already strong at six in the morning

I soon slip into sleep

both light and deep.

Almost asphyxiated

by the smell of warm blood

that goes to my head.

The butcher is cutting

beneath my window.

The machete whistles.

A red rainbow in the air.

The cut throat of a young goat.

The animal seems to smile in its pain.

Its eyes, soft green, find mine.

What is there beyond such sweetness?

Its neck breaks

like a cane field bent low by the breeze.

Behind me the owner

smiles with her eyes.

Her long experience

of pain

should be taught

in these days

when we learn everything

except how to face

the storms of life.

The Human River

I step into the street

to bathe

in the human river

where more than one swimmer drowns

each day.

The crowd chews over the naïve fresh meat

of all those exiles who hope to recover

the years of absence in their energy.

I'm neither the first nor the last.

On the sidewalks.

In the parks.

In the middle of the street.

Everyone buying.

Everyone selling.

They try to trick poverty

through constant movement.

My eyes take in the scene.

Peasants listening to their transistors.

Hoodlums on motorbikes.

Girls working the street by the hotel.

The music of flies

above green mud.

Two bureaucrats slowly crossing the park.

Zoom in on that girl laughing on the sidewalk across the street with a cell phone jammed in her ear. A car stops next to her. Strident honking—as if the driver's hand were stuck on the horn. The girl pretends not to hear. The driver goes on his way. Laughter from the fruit vendors who witness the scene.

Primary colors.

Naïve motifs.

Childlike vibrations.

No space left empty.

Everything full to the brim.

The first tear will cause

this river of pain in which

people drown, laughing, to

overflow.

Proud carriage.

Empty belly.

The moral elegance of the girl

who walks past me

for the third time in five minutes.

Without a look in my direction.

Attentive to my slightest move.

Have you ever considered a city

of more than two million people

half of whom are literally starving to death?

Human flesh is meat too.

How long can a taboo

stand up to sheer necessity?

Fleshly desires.

Psychedelic visions.

Sidelong looks.

They'd like to devour

their neighbor for lunch.

Like one of those mangos

with such smooth skin.

A man whispers something into the ear

of his friend who smiles discreetly.

A gentle breeze lifts the woman's dress

as she runs laughing to hide behind a wall.

Drops so fine

I didn't realize it was raining.

Pain takes a time out.

This undecided lizard,

after much thought,

jumps from its branch.

A grass-green flash

cuts through space.

I am in this city

where nothing

for once

happens besides

the simple pleasure of being alive

under the blazing sun

at the corner of Vilatte and Grégoire Streets.

Hundreds of paintings covered in dust hang on the walls, all along the street. They look as though the same artist painted them all. Painting is as popular as soccer in this neighborhood. The same luxuriant landscapes remind us that the artist doesn't paint the real country but the country of his dreams.

I ask that barefoot painter

why he always paints trees bending low

under the weight of ripe heavy fruit

when everything around him is desolation.

You understand, he tells me with a sad smile,

who would want to hang in his living room

what he can see out the window?

What Happened to the Birds?

When I see that teenager sitting by himself

on the branch of a mango tree

strumming away on a battered old guitar,

I understand that amateur musicians

have taken over from the birds.

All that boy needs

is a pair of transparent wings.

A man who knew me thirty-five years ago comes up to me, arms open. With abundant details and flying spittle, he conjures up memories I'd completely forgotten and, worse, that don't interest me. I try to avoid his eyes as we speak. What started as a wonderful reunion has turned into torture. I'm waiting for him to get to the point: money. In the end he moves on without asking anything of me. I might have underestimated him. As I walk, I try to retrace the thread of his story. Why didn't I listen to him more carefully? Because of his dirty clothes, his black fingernails, his toothless mouth? If he had been cleaner and more prosperous, would I have paid him more attention? Even if he opened the photo album of my teenage years before my eyes.

This old gentleman slightly bent at the waist

sweeping dry leaves

that have fallen into the courtyard of the city hall.

An activity that must take him all day.

From time to time, he sits down

but gets up with every breath of wind

that brings with it more dry leaves.

Not far away, on a yellow sofa that a little girl has just finished cleaning, two businessmen are chatting as they wait to see the mayor. People's voices cover the hushed tones of negotiation between these men who have always lived in a world protected by cash.

You have no idea

of the effect that new bills have

on people's eyes

in a country

where a worker makes

less than a dollar a day.

Last night, in front of the discotheque,

a teenage girl in a red miniskirt

and a tiny yellow blouse

screamed that she wasn't a whore

because “I don't want money,

I just want what you can buy

with money.”

I am sitting under the hotel's almond tree

during the afternoon siesta.

A low pink wall

separates me from the street.

Life is on the other side.

Standing on the bench, I look over the wall at three young women in front of a pyramid of brightly colored fruit. They are talking among themselves so fast I can't make out what they are saying. Their words interest me less than the beauty of the scene.

What I see in the marketplace

is no different from what I see

in the little painting I just bought.

I look at the two scenes

unable to say

which one imitates the other.

A bird flies swiftly

into the clear hard noonday sky.

So thin but with an astonishing

determination to get as close

as possible to the sun.

It goes so far up

my eyes abandon the quest.

Death Doesn't Exist Here

A well-groomed young woman.

Black skirt below the knee.

She crosses the little square quickly

on her way to the phone booth

whose wire has been cut.

She sits down on a bench next to the phone.

Her head between her hands.

Men in black.

Women in tears.