Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [34]
“Have you been out of town?”
“Not possible, monchè. The soulèvman’s still up and running.”
At this, Doctor Oliver’s withdrawal pangs got sharper. “I thought those things were only supposed to last a day.”
“Supposed to,” Charlie said. There was no electricity in the bar, which was shadowy as a cave. Charlie stepped to tip ash through the blazing doorway and took a quick look up and down the street. “Full moon’s coming,” he said. “They’ll start the ceremonies on Morne Calvaire. That might shut it down if it was local but word is those guys on the barricades came up from Port-au-Prince.”
“Who’s running them?”
Charlie shrugged. “There’s a hundred stories.”
“That guy who was after me on the square,” Doctor Oliver began. “He was, I don’t know, more possessive than usual.” Possessed was another word that came to him. As if the whole person was owned, invaded, by the phrase he kept repeating.
“There’s some strange stuff swirling around today.” Charlie leaned forward, pushing his sunglasses up above the dustcrusted rim of his red bandanna, exposing to Doctor Oliver his tired eyes. “They killed La Reine D’Ayiti, did you know that? In the Place Montarcher.”
“What?” Place Montarcher was a smaller square, only a few blocks uphill from the cathedral. Nothing bad happened there. “In daylight? Who?”
Charlie Chapo was nodding slowly. “I meant to tell you that. Chimè.”
That, Doctor Oliver knew, was the current word for zenglendo or bandits or occasionally lawless persons who might sometimes engage in political thuggery, abruptly materializing, then fading away. Those on the barricades were chimè as well. The literal translation was “chimera.”
“They cut her heart out,” Charlie added.
“Jesus. Why?”
There was a flash behind the bar, where a server had silently appeared, his eyes widening white in the shadows at what Charlie had said.
“Scare the bejabbers out of everybody.” Charlie shrugged.
He had known her, Doctor Oliver realized, this harmless madwoman who’d styled herself the Queen of Haiti and did the stroll from Place Montarcher to the Boulevard de la Mer, capturing whomever she could in tight lassoes of her crazy talk.
“There’s always a sort of big energy buildup,” Charlie Chapo was saying. “Between Pentecost and Trinity—and it releases in the ceremonies. Normally it should. A thing like this, though … it can all start going in the wrong direction.”
“I need to get out of here,” Doctor Oliver said. The demonstrations had cut him off from the airport, which was probably out of service anyway; he was meant to have flown to the States three days before.
“Right,” said Charlie, “it’s inconvenient for me too.”
Doctor Oliver touched the bottle in his pocket. Two pills left and why was he saving them? So there would be that much between him and the void. He resolved to speak about this to Charlie Chapo, who was sometimes something of a fixer.
“Charles. I need to …” A delicate matter. “Um. Refill a prescription.”
Charlie was looking at him slantwise. “For what?”
“Um.” Too much delicacy and he would not be understood. “Well, it’s Dilaudid. But I can substitute! OxyContin, Percocet even …”
“Or heroin would do.”
“Yes,” replied Doctor Oliver, naked now, and almost unashamed. “It would.”
But Charlie Chapo was shaking his head. “There’s coke around,” he said. “There’s even crack, believe it or not … but what you’re after—it’s not obvious.”
“At the hospital maybe?”
He felt Charlie Chapo withdraw a little, though his body had not moved. “You do the medical missions, right? So you know, they never have enough painkillers for …”
… nonrecreational users, Doctor Oliver thought, his shame bitter now.
“I’ve got a couple of cats to kill,” Charlie said. “I think you shouldn’t be kicking around by yourself—not today. Magloire’s looking for you, maybe he can help.”
“Oh,” said Doctor Oliver, remembering the name scrawled in the dust. It gave him a faintly reassuring sense of connectedness. “I thought he was looking for you.”
“I don’t have