Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [14]
* * *
Depressed, Dread Lanfè didn’t go home. He had another plan in mind. He decided that this was a bad-luck night, and he shouldn’t do another job. He went to Paola’s, his Italian mistress. She worked for an NGO and was always proud to show him off—him, Dread Lanfè, like a trophy you fought hard to win. He was fond of Paola even though he knew she didn’t care too much about the dire poverty of the people in the city where she’d come to work. Her apparent commitment was hiding something else. Some deeper discontent. A loneliness her culture had planted in her. Poverty, death ever-present, black bodies gleaming with sweat. All those niggers wanted was to gobble up white women and that made her panties wet—she, who had been frigid before. When she met Dread Lanfè, it was love at first sight, an explosion. The man had the reputation of being a criminal. He was tall, ugly, wild, and most of all, blessed with a member (a publicly known fact) that made all the other niggers in town envious. When Dread Lanfè put his hand on her, she could visualize mud and blood, and that propelled her right down the track to orgasm. And Dread Lanfè told himself that Paola was his safety net in this fucked-up country. Perhaps some day she would take off with him and they’d go live under other skies. That’s why he felt he had to concentrate on her, always keep himself in condition to satisfy her well.
So he knocked on Paola’s door. As soon as she knew it was him, she yanked the door open. She didn’t even give him time to undress. She wanted him to take her right there and then, in the living room. Dread Lanfè lifted her up with all his strength, propped her against a shelf, crushing china, pictures, statuettes in the process, like the brute he was. The anger he felt about the botched job at Fanfayon’s increased his energy tenfold. Paola nearly fainted after her orgasm. Dread Lanfè, following the ritual they had worked out together, made her come back to reality with a pair of slaps.
“Let’s go to bed,” she stammered.
“Give me a little powder first,” ordered Dread Lanfè.
She complied. After they had both snorted their dose of coke, they felt like the world was at their feet. Paola quickly fell into a deep sleep. Dread Lanfè then remembered that he had Fanfayon’s finger in his shirt pocket. He couldn’t fall asleep with a dead man’s finger on him. He got up, took the finger, tried once more to take the ring off it, but didn’t succeed. That ring could very well bring him a nice bundle of dollars. Dread Lanfè knew how to recognize gold. He put the finger on the dressing table, in a china glass. Paola would see the finger when she woke up. Lanfè didn’t care. It would only add to his charm. He tossed his shirt over on a chair and came back to lie down next to her. He tumbled into a heavy sleep, disturbed by the impression that a foreign body was crawling over his chest. He knew it was the finger when he felt the ring rubbing against his skin. He screamed and sat up on the bed, gasping, his body drenched in sweat. Thinking that maybe some horrible creature had slipped in next to him, he jumped out of bed. But he couldn’t find anything suspicious. The finger was still on the dressing table. He managed to convince himself that it was just cocaine playing tricks with his mind.
“What’s the matter?” asked Paola somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.
“Nothing,” he muttered. “A bad dream.”
“Come back to bed. Come closer to me.”
Dread Lanfè went back to bed. He held her tight, seeking comfort and