Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [118]
He hadn’t slept since the blue invasion began. All he could think about was what he knew had once been a city— his city?—and the blue hill. How can the city defend itself, he wondered, when the people have barricaded themselves inside their homes, becoming accomplices of their own confinement, while peeking from behind their windows at the invading blue trash army? Watching the trucks full of blue chemicals being dumped on the hill by his countrymen, he felt like shouting out that the plot must not succeed. But it was already too late. He wanted to loudly preach to everyone, hammering the truth into them. Our cowardice is our suicide, he wanted to say. Our silence is our coffin. It seemed, however, that he would have to pursue this job of enlightening people singlehandedly. The next day he would go into the streets and declare to whoever was willing to listen that the ground was soiled and that everything had been contaminated, that they would have to yell to be heard, that they would have to move heaven and earth to shed light onto the graveyard the country has become.
Life on your knees is no life at all, he would say. Pito nou lèd nou la. What was the point of this horrible, stupid charade, clinging to the remnants of day-to-day existence, an absurd life, as absurd as the bright spots that once in a while made you think that light was awaiting us at the end of the tunnel?
Dragons now routinely walk on the sea, he would tell them. They unwrap their wings, their mouths of fire. In the mythical world from which these invaders and their blue trash have come, giant creatures swallow entire schools of flying fish and set ablaze incandescent beams that wipe shores clean. Millions of gallons of oil spew out of the core of the earth, from deep beneath the sea. A sign of the times: the end of the world is striding in. At the first ring of the church bells, the residents must not scurry off and seep into burrows under the sand like spider crabs, hiding their faces under seaweed flowers of transparent green.
Some of them, paralyzed with fear, are still hiding under their beds, reciting their rosaries, purring strange words in strange languages: God of Mercy, may our prayers be answered! And there are those who are stronger and pick things up: this one a chair, that one a mattress, that other one a bucket, and in the daytime, before the next curfew, they follow the path to the hills to take shelter on the mountainside. But what is the point? Despair is the only certainty here. If it doesn’t kill you, they say, it will strengthen your veins, your muscles. Despair sticks to your skin; it’s your sweat, and the air you breathe. Despair is second nature from which everyone draws the joy of laughter and resilience together, so we can go peacefully to cockfights, bet on the winning numbers at the lotto, and pretend that the crystal ball of luck is turning smoothly—but doom, like a valiant soldier, always comes hounding.
Apocalypse, Apocalypse, he would tell them. In the last days, dogs will not recognize bones. Sons will not recognize their mothers. Cats will think they are lions; birds will have beaks of fire; oceans will be large mouths of flame. The sky will sweep down on us like a vulture. The blue priests and their blue cassocks will come from everywhere, but they will be of no use.
Now sweating in his room behind the police station where he believes he has barricaded himself, Simidor fights the blue fever madness that has turned the entire town into blue-hilldigging zombies and thinks that perhaps it would help them come out of their blue fog if he told them the story of the little black saint named Santik Du.
Around the year 1350, a plague was terrorizing the country. Santik Du was living a life of hardship and charity. He went around barefoot in the hope of relieving the wounds of the sufferers. He promised them eternal life and solace. That is how Santik Du contracted the plague