Albert
I was born in Cap-Haïtien, in the northern part of Haiti. My grandfather was also born there. You may already know this, but my whole family fought against the Americans during the occupation of 1915. I come from a long line of patriots. My father died never having shaken a white man’s hand. For him, whites were lower than monkeys. Whenever he saw a white man, he used to say, he always wanted to turn him around to see if he had a tail. My grandfather didn’t even go to that much trouble. As far as he was concerned, a white man was an animal, pure and simple. He’d say “the whites,” but he was talking mainly about Americans. Those who dared invade Haitian soil. The supreme insult. A slap in the face to a whole generation. I came to work in Port-au-Prince when I was twenty-two, after my father died, and got a job in this hotel right away. If my grandfather knew that his grandson was serving Americans he would die of shame. This new army of occupation isn’t armed, but it has packed its suitcase with a scourge much worse than cannons: drugs. The Queen of Crimes, and she always comes with her two sidekicks: easy money and sex. There’s nothing here, sir, that hasn’t been touched by one or the other of these plagues. There was a time when we had morals. Now I look around me and I see that everything has come crashing down. I look at our customers, respectable women who twenty years ago, when I first started working here, would have been with their husbands. And what do I see? Lost women, animals lusting after blood and sperm. And whose fault is it? His, the master of desire. He’s seventeen years old, he has eyes like glowing embers, a perfect profile. Legba: the Prince of Storms.
Ellen
When the police found his body on the beach one morning, they immediately assumed that a drug deal had gone wrong. They didn’t give a shit about the delinquents. Legba was what they call well-known to the police. He sold drugs to everyone on the beach. You don’t think for one minute that the Port-au-Prince police, one of the most corrupt forces in the Caribbean, would waste time investigating the death of a young prostitute, do you? You’ll have to excuse me, I’m used to saying what I think. That’s why I don’t really understand what you’re doing. You say you work for a self-regulating department? Criminal Investigation Services, is that what you called it? I don’t know what good that can do now that Legba is dead. And I also wonder why you are so interested in such intimate details. I know it’s probably none of my business, but you’re going about this inquiry in a very strange way, sir. What else do you want to know? . . . Yes, he was a hoodlum, but Lord, was he good looking! What’s more, he knew how to make love to a woman. It’s true, he could have got what he wanted just looking like a young god, and as far as I’m concerned that would have been enough to make me happy. I could have spent hours just looking at him. He could do whatever he wanted with me. And in that he was indefatigable. I mean, think about it: I spent eighteen years in the best universities in the States learning the best ways of improving my quality of life on this planet, and that whole time all I really needed was an adolescent here in Port-au-Prince. He played my body like a guitar, and believe me, he knew how to handle his instrument. There were times when I thought I was going to die, I kid you not. My body felt completely drained, as though he’d pumped everything out of it. He could bring me to orgasm almost without touching me. Me, who had always intimidated American men, who are supposed to be the most powerful men in the world, at least in terms of economic and political power, and here I was completely in thrall to a boy in Port-au-Prince. With him I was no longer Ellen the Cynic, I was a little twit who wanted nothing more than to be touched in the right places. And he knew them all, by instinct. The first time I laid eyes on him, down by the hotel, I was afraid of making a fool of myself; after all, I was in my fifties. And I wet myself. I had to go up to my room to change. I stood in front of my mirror and masturbated, thinking about him. He had such an insolent mouth, and my God did I want that mouth. I dreamed about him caressing me with his hands so often that when he finally did touch me it was like we’d always been lovers. But what I wanted most, what gave me the highest orgasms, was to have his long, fine penis in my mouth. I would wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night. By day it was different, I could be Ellen the Cynic, able to thumb my nose at the rest of the world. My punching bag at the time was that fatty, Sue. I didn’t care at all that she was fat, but I could never understand why she would choose Neptune when Legba was available. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now. How could she not get down on her knees before such a black sun? To me, anyone who feels nothing in the presence of such beauty is dangerous. Of course, if she had once dared to look at Legba I would have scratched her eyes out.
Albert
One day I came upon them by the stairs. She was hanging on his neck and complaining that he was driving her crazy. You know who I’m talking about? That intellectual from Boston, the one with her nose always up in the air. Legba wasn’t saying a word, as usual. His face was blank. He knew how to drive that kind of woman around the bend. She was crying like a teenager who’d just lost her first love. Yes sir, as I’ve always said, it’s the cynics who are the hardest hit.
Brenda
I always try to speak well of people, but since you asked me what I truly think, I have to admit that Ellen isn’t a woman, she’s a bitch in heat playing at being an intellectual. She was lost the moment she first laid eyes on Legba. Really, it was disgusting to watch. People like her don’t know the difference between sex and love.
Sue
It’s true, Brenda is very discreet. She’s not one of those women who shows her emotions. Her face is always calm. I would never have known what she was going through if she hadn’t confided in me. That day she seemed totally lost. I’d never seen her like that. She came into my room, which she’d never done before, and said: “I can’t do it anymore, Sue. I think I’m going to kill him, and then kill myself.” Coming from Brenda, I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even know who she was talking about. I vaguely thought she was talking about her husband, because I knew they weren’t getting along very well. I thought that this was why she’d come down here on her own this time. That’s what I thought, anyway. Until she admitted to me that she was in love with Legba. How a woman like Brenda, who is so serious, such a devout Christian, could fall in love with a little gigolo like him was beyond me. He acted like a prince because this German woman had given him a gold chain that he wore around his neck like a leash. A pitiful little drug dealer. Surely you know he sold cocaine on the beach? Since his death the other young prostitutes have vanished into the woodwork. I haven’t seen one of them on the beach. Gogo, Chico, not even the handsome one, Mario. All gone off somewhere, like a cloud of flies attracted by the smell of a fresh corpse. Anyway, when Brenda came out and told me point blank that she was in love with the little rat, I had the surprise of my life. But there’s no point going on about it. People’s feelings are part of life’s impenetrable mysteries, I must have read that somewhere. Oh, I stopped wondering about life a long time ago. I take things as they come. Brenda told me that Legba had stopped coming to their rendezvous, and she couldn’t stand the pain of it any longer. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t eat. All she could think of was him. And he couldn’t care less about her. The only thing he was interested in was money. She spent the whole day in her room, she said, bawling her eyes out under a pillow. She couldn’t go on living like that. She was talking quietly, sometimes so low I couldn’t understand half of what she was saying. Just saying his name, over and over. Such pain, I thought. There’s nothing I can do for her. She’s the only one who can control her destiny. That’s just the way it is. I suggested she take some tranquilizers, and she just looked at me in alarm, and I knew she’d already tried that. That’s when I realized that if Brenda was confiding in me it could only mean one thing: she wanted me to stop her from committing a crime. Of that I am certain.
Ellen
I love love so much—love or sex, I don’t know which anymore—that I’ve always told myself that when
I’m old I’ll pay to get it. I just didn’t think it would happen so soon. That boy was Satan personified. The Prince of Light. But the kind of light that can kill you. He showed me what hell was like. I’d never been afraid of suffering, but this was too much. I’d given him everything. In return, he’d humiliated me in ways I’d never imagined possible. He dragged me through the mud. I took it all. It makes me laugh, now, the way Brenda goes around acting like the weeping widow. I’m the widow. Brenda couldn’t have known a hundredth part of what I had to put up with just to be near him. The flames of hell. Imagine a young, arrogant kid like he could be, with a woman of my age. Can you even imagine what it would be like with him and his friends? There’s Ellen Graham, the hag. But time heals all wounds. Brenda spends her days in her room, crying. Me, I don’t cry.
Sue
It’s a terrible thing to say, but I’m sure it was either Ellen or Brenda who killed him. He drove them to it, them and others too, and what was bound to happen one day happened. All because of the contempt that Northern men have for women of their own race.
Albert
That morning I went to see a friend who works at a small hotel not far from here. When I came back, I walked along the beach. It was dawn. The beach was empty except for someone who looked as though he’d spent the night there. As I got closer I could see it was Legba. He looked like a sleeping angel, curled up on the sand like that. His face in complete repose. When I reached him it seemed to me that the night had been pretty rough on him. But even then all I saw was a frail young man. He even looked like he was smiling. I don’t know why, but I sat down beside him. There was no one else on the beach. There was that strange dawn light. The feeling of being nowhere. I began to stroke his hair. He shivered as though he was cold. I lay down beside him and took him in my arms. I can’t tell you how bizarre it all seems to me now. It was like I was watching my double. I remember that light in my eyes. That music in my head. That young body on the beach, almost naked. And no one else about. Careful, I told myself, beware of the sweetness of this skin. And I . . . kissed him. I kissed Legba. It was the first time I’d ever kissed a man. I kissed him. Everywhere. He responded to my caresses in his sleep, I think it was probably out of habit. I should have gotten up and run away, but it was too late. I was already caught up in the fiery ring of desire. I hadn’t known that such physical happiness could exist. That morning I ate of the fruit of the tree of good and evil. Strange, isn’t it, that without even asking me any questions you’ve made me bring up all the secrets that I kept hidden in the deepest recesses of my being.
Ellen
Well, he certainly hid his light, didn’t he, the hypocrite! Every time I went out looking for Legba I’d get this mean look from him . . . Because he was a rival. I wanted to go up to him and slap him in the face. I can tolerate anything but bigotry. Always with his nose stuck in the Bible, the little shit-ass! Now that he’s got a taste for it, as he says, he’s not going to switch to another road. I don’t believe a word of what he told you: the dawn, the light, the music of the spheres, the forbidden fruit—it’s all just shit in a silk stocking. Oh sure, once it was over he had to rush off and do his penance. I’d like to have seen him whipping himself. He’s the worst kind of sadist. And let me tell you something: that’s the kind that can kill.
Brenda
Of course I can’t go home. I don’t have a home anymore, or a husband. I don’t want to have anything more to do with Northern men. I’d like to spend time on other Caribbean islands. Cuba, Guadeloupe, Barbados, Martinique, Dominica, Jamaica, Trinidad, the Bahamas . . . They all have such pretty names. I want to get to know them all.
THREE LETTERS YOU WILL NEVER READ
BY GEORGES ANGLADE
Quina
(Originally published in 2006)
Translated by Anne Pease McConnell
In the collective memory of Quina there had only been two judicial executions in all the history of the town court. And since both of them took place during the same month of August in 1956, they became as unforgettable as a cyclone. I am not, of course, referring to the frequent extra-judicial executions, dating back to the mists of time, in the abject jails of the provincial police. No! I mean a sentence of death on paper, in due form, pronounced by a judge on the recommendation of a jury. Such extreme sentences were not rare in Quina, but from appeals to commutations of sentences, everyone knew that these games among the local members of the bar guaranteed that no one would ever have to face a legal firing squad. To get to that point, not only did bad luck have to have been involved, what’s more this had to happen to Little Innocent who in his grandstanding threw himself into the thing so energetically that the impossible occurred.
He was really named Little Innocent, this the first man to be executed that August. The son of Madame Innocent of Porte-Saint-Louis, not to be confused with Madame Innocent of Porte-Gaille, the mother of Yvette and Fernande. Little Innocent was fairly badly named, given that he was neither little nor innocent, but no one could do anything for this younger brother whose older brother had been named Big Innocent before him. It was if he had been branded by fate from birth always to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Quina was the only province that invented names that brought about hilarious associations in the midst of tragedy. And so let us imagine a Little Innocent inextricably compromised in an affair of double adultery followed by murder, rapid-fire executions, sordid revenge, all against the political background of a year when a presidential campaign was being prepared. The summer of 1956 will not be outdone by any other summer in Quina!
The affair, which was neither commonplace nor ordinary, grew nevertheless out of events which were conceivable in any province. A new and quite young junior officer fresh from the military academy would be stationed somewhere and would find himself delighted, with the help of his uniform, to be a little village Casanova, pursued by promising winks from ladies whose marital passions had grown cold. Some of these officers would succumb to a provincial melancholy against a background of boredom, especially the ones who came from the capital. The most recent to arrive in Quina had everything required to let himself be tempted by the calls of its Sirens: he came from Port-au-Prince, wore his khakis with a haughty air, and his kepi at a jaunty angle, while an attractive, perpetual smile indicated how highly he thought of himself. A future colonel, undoubtedly, or even a general, who knew? But for Quina he was just another stud, with all the risks implied by the term. The observers from the galleries did not give this latest arrival much of a chance as he passed by them morning and evening on the plaza, strutting to beat the band. The competing women would swallow him whole. And it was the very beautiful Madame Little Innocent who won this obstacle course among the chosen finalists.
It must be said, as a balm to the disappointment of the losers, that Madame Innocent was a woman from Fond-des-Blancs, blue-eyed, with a lovely mane of hair and black aquiline features. The ingredients of this beauty could be traced back to the Polish brigades of the War of Independence, who had deserted Leclerc’s French army to join the ranks of the indigenous army in the south. The racial mixture that was to result from this became a sort of Ethiopian type, the marabout that the local language had transformed into the diminutive boubout, a title for a woman who might elsewhere be called a lady friend, a girlfriend, a lover. My boubout. This lady was a boubout worth looking at twice. The little junior officer hadn’t a chance.