Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [15]
“Sometimes.”
“Who are those people out there?”
“Haitians,” snapped the frustrated mulatto. Mason finally had to turn the key himself, which went with an easy click. The mulatto sighed, then pulled two plastic garbage bags out of the armoire.
“This,” he announced, stepping past Mason to the bed, “is the treasure of the Haitian people.”
Mason stood back as the mulatto began pulling rolls of canvas from the bags, stripping off the rag strings, and laying the canvases on the bed. “Hyppolite,” he said crisply as a serpentine creature with the head of a man unfurled across the mattress. “Castera Bazile,” he said next, “the crucifixion,” and a blunt-angled painting of the nailed and bleeding Christ was laid over Hyppolite’s mutant snake. “Philomé Obin. Bigaud. André Pierre. All of the Haitian masters are represented.” At first glance the paintings had a wooden quality, and yet Mason, whose life trajectory had mostly skimmed him past art, felt confronted by something vital and real.
“Préfète Duffaut.” The mulatto kept unrolling canvases. “Lafor-tune Felix. Saint-Fleurant. Hyppolite, his famous painting of Erzulie. There is a million dollars’ worth of art in this room.”
This was a lot, even allowing for the Haitian gift for puff. “How did you get it?” Mason felt obliged to ask.
“We stole it.” The mulatto gave him an imperious look.
“You stole it?”
“Shortly after the coup. Most of the paintings we took in a single night. It wasn’t difficult, I know the houses where they have the art. A few pictures came later, but most of the items we took in the time of the coup.”
“Okay.” Mason felt the soft approach was best. “You’re an artist?”
“I am a doctor,” said the mulatto, and his arrogance seemed to bear this out.
“But you like art.”
The mulatto paused, then went on as if Mason hadn’t spoken.
“Art is the only thing of value in my country—the national treasure, what Haiti has to offer to the world. We are going to use her treasure to free her.”
Mason had met his share of delusional Haitians, but here were the pictures, and here was a man with the bearing of a king. A man who’d gutted his best chess game in thirteen moves.
“How are you going to do that?”
“There is a receiver in Paris who makes a market in Haitian art. He is offering cash, eighty thousand American dollars if I can get the paintings to Miami. A shameful price when you consider this is our treasure…” The mulatto looked toward the bed and seemed lost for a moment. “But that is the choice. The only choices we have in Haiti are bad choices.”
“I guess you want the money for guns,” said Mason, who’d been in-country long enough to guess. There were fantasts and rebels on every street corner.
“Certainly guns will have a role in this plan.”
“You really think that’s the solution?”
The mulatto laughed in his face. “Please, have you been drinking today?”
“Well.” Like all the observers, Mason was touchy about appearing naive. “It took the army a couple of million to get Aristide out, and they already had the guns. You think you can beat the army with eighty thousand dollars?”
“You are American, so of course everything for you is a question of money. Honor and courage count for nothing, justice, fear—those people in the palace are cowards, okay? When the real fighting starts I assure you they will run. They will pack their blood money in their valises and run.”
“Well, first you have to get the guns.”
“First the paintings must be carried to Miami. You are an observer, this is the same as diplomatic immunity. If you take them no one will search your bags.”
Mason laughed when he realized what was being asked, though the mulatto was right: the couple of times he’d flown out, customs had waved him through as soon as he flashed his credentials.
“What makes you think you can trust me?”
“Because you lost at chess.”
“Maybe I’m just bad.”
“Yes, it’s true, you are very bad. But no one is that bad.”
Mason began to see the backward logic of it, how in a weird way the chess games were the best guarantee. This