He took the shotgun blast from the front, point blank, while trying to jump over a fence at two o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, August 3, his trousers still at half-mast. Caught in the act, he had tried to flee. But it was buckshot meant for large quadrupeds which had wandered into other people’s fields. In Quina, a sort of common law said that any animal that had wandered out of its master’s enclosure to feed on forbidden fruits was considered wild game, and because of this was subject to being legitimately shot. The court-appointed defense attorney would later point out this analogy. The young officer had been found bloodless and bent in two over the barbed wire he was straddling, his crime perpetuated, as the defense will insist, and no form of help would be of any use to him with his chest wide open from the impact of the unforgiving buckshot.
Naturally, Little Innocent was not home that evening, and he was not arrested until around four o’clock in the morning, with dawn approaching, when he was quite simply returning to the conjugal home as if nothing was wrong. The crowd in front of his house and the swiftness of the police who took him into custody really seemed to surprise him. When his rights were read and he was shown the reason for his arrest (that was still done then, really; I was in the crowd of onlookers), he indignantly proclaimed his innocence as a town bourgeois, but refused categorically to say where he was at the time of the murder—of the execution, according to the defense lawyer, who will later plead justifiable homicide. The most he would say was that as a gentleman, it would be impossible for him to compromise a lady with whom he had spent the night. And so Little Innocent had no alibi; and what is more, he had all the motives. The case had the earmarks of revenge: the husband keeps watch, forces the lover to flee, and brings him down. What is more, Little Innocent was a good hunter and he knew (as did everyone else) that no ballistic tests could identify the twelve-gauge shotgun that had fired buckshot at the imprudent boy. He also knew that every family in Quina had at least one twelve-gauge and a few buckshot cartridges on hand. The investigation was turning out to be difficult, but everyone in Quina also knew that it was completely unlike Little Innocent to kill anyone, least of all his wife’s lover. He had lived with her for a long time under a nonaggression pact formed by old lovers whose fire has died out.
The case was handled quickly, under orders from above telephoned to the prefect by the general-president in person. This hinted at the approaching elections. The victim was a military officer and the leader, who had his eye on a reelection prohibited by the constitution, could not let the death of a young first lieutenant—guilty of adultery or not—go unpunished six months before the coup which he believed would bring about a second term. And so an extraordinary court session was decreed from Monday, August 9, to Friday, August 13, by the town authorities; and Little Innocent was immediately dragged before the judge who was assisted by a mixed civil and military jury composed of three soldiers and three civilians. It was unusual, but Quina had always made broad interpretations of the civil and military codes in effect in Port-au-Prince.
For five days, Little Innocent would take advantage of this unhoped-for platform to deliver a performance which those who were there fifty years ago still talk about. First, he made sure he would represent himself, in order to take the fullest advantage possible of his opportunities to speak. He claimed to have no knowledge of the facts before the time of his arrest, and that besides, his wife, his femme-chance (woman-through-luck), had no reason for self-reproach and nothing to justify, since she was assured of the honor of his highest esteem. That did not prevent him from having a mistress, like everyone else, his femme-douce (sweet-woman), whom he would not compromise for any reason, even to gain an alibi which would save him from death. He concluded each of his flights of oratory with C’est ainsi que les hommes vivent—That’s the way men live—addressing himself to the numerous youths present who would applaud and take up the refrain, singing it with him and imitating the voice of the great singer Léo Ferré, in spite of the judge’s threats of removal from the courtroom and the hammering of his gavel. That’s the way men live . . . and their sins follow them from afar. All that smacked of the end of a regime.
Toward the middle of the week, the matter of the letters arose in response to a question from the judge: if he could not provide a direct alibi through the testimony of the person he was with at two o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, August 3, was there some indirect alibi that would prove the existence of this liaison which was the only thing that could demonstrate his innocence? Yes, there were three letters, three marvelous letters written some ten years ago by his lover in such a sensuous style that he had reread them every day that God had granted him since receiving them. For ten years! In the face of his refusal to submit them as evidence, even if it might mean escaping a firing squad, the judge was reduced to asking him to outline their contents in order that their existence could be decided upon. That was the turning point of the trial. The testimony of Little Innocent was to reach a level of eroticism rarely heard in a courtroom. He knew by heart the three letters and their amorous laments, which he recited while acting them out, like the dubbing of a love scene in a porno film. At times, naughty sighs arose from the spectators’ section, which irritated the judge intensely, his eyes going from one row to another searching for the culprits. But when Little Innocent came to the salutation at the end of each letter, I kiss you everywhere you like to be kissed, daring to bring up that great feminine art, things had gone too far. The judge ordered that everyone under the age of twelve leave the courtroom so that the testimony could continue, rated “triple X,” he ordered the court reporter, who did not miss a word.
The next morning, Thursday, the judge imposed a court-appointed attorney and a gag on the defendant so that he would remain silent and the trial would not be drawn out interminably. On the insistence of the powers-that-be, it was necessary to bring in a verdict by Friday the thirteenth at the latest; which was a bad omen for everyone. That day, Little Innocent was found guilty of first-degree murder and condemned to death, not without a final scene created by the defendant, railing this time against his lawyer who, wishing to save him, requested the court’s leniency since this was a crime of honor committed by a cuckold. Hearing that word, Little Innocent had thrown himself on the lawyer, pouring out abuse on him for insulting his wife. Nothing remained but the task of setting the conditions of the execution in a ruling that would be given on the following Monday, August 16.
A crowd formed even before the trial reconvened, for if they expected the normal delays that would finally make the sentence null and void, there was also the fact that they were dealing with the army in a case of the murder of an officer. You see, it is well known in this country that laws are made of paper but bayonets are made of iron. The judge had obviously worked hard during the weekend, for he gave his ruling in a severe tone that brooked no protest. He ruled that Little Innocent had abused the court to such an extent that before he could be executed he was required to reimburse the State for the cost of the bullets in the Springfield rifles to be used by the firing squad; and what was more, he must pay off, through forced labor, the rental of his prison cell and the court costs incurred. All this was at the usual exorbitant interest rate of 1.5 percent per month commonly used by banks with embarrassing aplomb. Since Little Innocent was a pauper who ended up living from hand to mouth by the end of each month, he was insolvent and had no means of raising the round sum of six thousand three hundred and twelve gourdes and thirty-five centimes, which he was to pay by the end of August before the interest began to accrue, making the debt he was required to pay before he could be executed heavier each month. This ingenious idea on the part of the judge was commented on at length and with admiration—he must have dug deeply to come up with the Chinese tradition of making the condemned man pay for the bullets used to kill him, and with the Australian practice, used against illegal immigration, which required that stowaways refusing to leave of their own accord must reimburse the costs of their impriso
nment through a life of forced labor. The judge must have kept late hours to come up with these penal curiosities, and all Quina showed him discreetly, with a more pleasant smile or a more marked doffing of a hat, the esteem in which they held him for his skillfulness. Little Innocent would not face the firing squad.
But two days later, in the sickly pale dawn of Wednesday, August 18 (for all such dawns are sickly pale), the second detonation of the month rang out. It was rumored that Little Innocent had been executed by the captain who had been assigned temporarily to the post during the crisis. He had carried out his orders immediately upon receiving an anonymous envelope containing exactly the sum the condemned man was required to pay before he could be executed. His task done, the officer went to the judge to give him the six thousand three hundred and twelve gourdes and thirty-five centimes in their original envelope. The town was in shock. All the ingredients for a riot were in place, and the authorities reported immediately to Port-au-Prince that something was brewing and the situation had to be defused. Who could have paid the ransom that wasn’t meant to be paid? The army, immediately suspect, swore that they had not done it, and you-know-who, at around eleven o’clock in the morning, telephoned the prefect for the second time to vindicate that institution and to promise an immediate investigation to find the anonymous donor. This was not necessary.
At noon precisely, a woman dressed all in black and heavily veiled in black crepe falling from an equally black wide-brimmed hat, crossed the plaza in front of the church where she had just gone to confession, and went to the courthouse where she brought proof that her jealous husband, the awful man from whom she had been separated for a long time, had arranged the whole thing—from the buckshot to the fine—to bring down her lover.
The third detonation of the month took place at the Angelus on Saturday, August 28, market day, against the wall of the cemetery adjoining the landing strip. No one jumped this time—all Quina, speechless with astonishment at the month’s events, was present.
THE PORT-AU-PRINCE MARRIAGE SPECIAL
BY EDWIDGE DANTICAT
Delmas
(Originally published in 2008)
"They told me, Madame, that I’m going to die.”
I don’t know if it was a dreadful gut feeling that had sent Mélisande to that particular clinic, rather than other healing places, but she’d gone down near the bicentennial park downtown and had gotten her arms pricked and her blood drawn, only to receive a death sentence. She’d been coughing for some time, soft and discreet at first, then more and more thunderously, which had led to my removing my young son from her care. But only this morning when she got a fever and developed a level of sluggishness, which I instantly recognized, from my late father’s battles with various types of respiratory illnesses, possibly as pneumonia; only then did she finally decide to seek medical care.
She was sobbing now as she stood in the doorway of my bedroom, her body as flat as one of the doorframe beams. Leaning against the somber wood, she hiked up a flowered silk skirt to wipe the tears from her face. I immediately recognized that skirt as one I’d formerly owned. I had paid about seventy dollars for it at a sale at a fancy boutique in Miami—back when I was in college, before I married a classmate, a fellow Haitian, whose family owned a hotel in Port-au-Prince.
“Have you told your mother?” I asked her.
She was a child really, a girl, fifteen or sixteen at most. Her mother worked as a cook at our hotel. They had lied about her age so that Mélisande could get the job as one of our son’s nannies, but given the fact that the mother had six younger children in the provinces, in Léogâne, I figured that Mélisande had plenty of experience for the job. I don’t know why I trusted Mélisande. Perhaps it was because she was from my parents’ hometown. Some of her relatives might have known some of mine. I didn’t trust that many people with my son, but it was obvious as soon as I placed him in Mélisande’s arms and she probed out of him the loudest laugh he’d ever tried, that he loved her. Perhaps what drew him to her were the same things I found appealing about her: her elfin face, her reedy voice, her slightly hesitant walk, as though she was never really sure it was safe to touch the ground.
Roland, my husband, had thought that Mélisande should be in school, but we hadn’t forced it or insisted, as we could have, that she go. Or at least that she attend some type of vocational class in cooking or sewing when she wasn’t looking after our son. Sometimes, during her free time, we saw her helping her mother cook or I saw her joke with the hotel maids as she cleaned the guests’ rooms with them. The agreement she had with the maids was that whenever she helped them out, whatever was left behind in the rooms would be split with her.
Sometimes, aside from the tips, they’d find small pieces of gold or silver jewelry—mostly earrings and bracelets—that my husband would hold on to for a while and then, after no one had called or come back to claim them, would allow the maids to sell them to the jeweler down the street who’d pay a few dollars just so he’d melt them again into other pieces to sell back to other hotel guests. This was a bit of extra money that she might not be making if she were in school, I sometimes told myself. But school might have helped with the future. And now she might not even have a future.
Shame on me, I think now. I’d kept hoping that she’d find a good night-school or an adult literacy class on her own, but I never did more than hope. I never even talked to her about it, never offered her the evenings off to do it. I was prepared, however, to let her go if she asked, but she never did. Now I would right this wrong. Somewhere between when she came to work for us (or maybe it was before) and now, she had contracted this disease. Perhaps if she had been in class, and had had homework and exams and yearly promotions, it wouldn’t have happened.
“Come in and sit down,” I told her.
I got up from my bed and walked over to the doorway. I was still in my pajamas, pink silk pajamas that she’d probably inherit from me one day, assuming she wasn’t in fact dying. My son was downstairs with my husband in his office. As I guided Mélisande toward a rocking chair by my bed, she felt extremely light to my touch, almost like paper, cloth, or air. Even though her feet were gliding across the wooden floor, I still felt as though I was carrying her. Her body slid down into the chair where I immediately piled up a few cushions around her. I pulled an ottoman from a corner and pushed it under her feet. Resting my arms on her shoulders, I felt some of the warmth of her lingering fever through her plain white T-shirt.
“What did the doctor say exactly?” I asked.
“He said,” she replied, with her face buried in her hands, “that I have SIDA. AIDS.”
I had been expecting anything but that. Perhaps pneumonia or some bronchial infection, but not that. When she came home from the doctor, I was prepared to lecture her about not waiting so long the next time to get herself checked out. There were things that could kill people in the countryside that could easily be treated here in Port-au-Prince. This is what I had prepared myself to tell her. I thought at most she would need antibiotics.
“Even with the SIDA,” I was telling her now, “they have all these drugs. People live for years on them.”
This provoked a new flurry of sobs from her. Her shoulders were bobbing up and down and I began to panic. My son. My boy. She had touched every part of his body, had washed, had wiped, had kissed and cuddled him. Had they accidentally exchanged saliva, blood? I suddenly wanted to leave her there and run through the hotel and find my son. As usual he had woken up earlier than all of us and my husband had taken him to his office. He was probably even now crawling under his father’s desk, giggling, singing with delight.
Mélisande was still sobbing, her face soaking in the pool of tears gathering in her hands. We’d have to get Gabriel tested. And how would we deal with it? How would I live with yet another loss? How would I live with myself—how would I live—if he had been infected?
I decided that I would simply let Mélisande cry. Let her get it all of it out of her s
ystem before we tried to come up with some type of solution. There were just a few clinics which offered retroviral treatments. Some offered them for free. Others expected you to be a guinea pig in some questionable experiments. The clinic where Mélisande had been tested offered some counseling but no treatment.
Why hadn’t I suspected all this sooner? I stepped away from her and staggered to the edge of the bed. I should have urged her to go to the doctor when she first began to lose weight. I should have stopped her not-so-secret flirtations with many of the hotel’s male guests. The concierge, a former brothel manager, had told Roland that Mélisande liked to seek out some particular guests—the fat white ones—who she thought, because they seemed to have never missed a meal in their lives, were rich. It didn’t seem to matter to her that most of the time she had no idea, until they lewdly grabbed some part of her body, what they were saying. The exchanges of “What?” and “Who?” were a delightful game to her. By repeating the sometimes obscene things they said to her, she thought she was learning English or Spanish or whatever language they spoke. She would disappear for a few minutes with them into their rooms, but it never seemed to me long enough for her to have had sex with them, only to make a rendezvous perhaps for a later encounter, during her free time. Again, I didn’t want to cause trouble for her. There were six young children counting on her and her mother for food, clothes, and school fees back in Léogâne. I thought she was protecting herself, aux moins.
She stopped crying for a few minutes because she seemed to run out of tears. And now she had the hiccups, which forced her head to jerk back and forth.
“We have to find you a place where you can get a second test performed,” I told her.
She raised her head and glared at me, then she opened her eyes really wide as though a beehive or a bird’s nest had suddenly appeared on top of my head. Her eyes were extremely red, the bulging capillaries having taken over her eyeballs.