Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [64]
Suddenly there was commotion all over the house. The servants couldn’t control their emotions. They let out loud screams and tears flowed. As for Solange, she seemed dazed as she screamed over and over, “Oh my God, please have mercy! Rosanna was kidnapped!”
The neighbors started showing up. Having somehow gotten wind of the commotion, they came over to see what was happening, then they started offering advice. Many of them had themselves been victims of the recent kidnapping wave that had struck the capital.
“You have to pay the ransom right away,” they all agreed, “so that she can be released as soon as possible!”
Solange blamed Davernis. How could he let himself be separated from Rosanna?
“Why, for God’s sake, would you leave my niece alone in the middle of this crowd of thieves?” Solange banged the table with her fist. Then her cell phone started to ring. The screen read, Private number, but given the circumstances, she replied anyway. “Hello, hello! Who is this?”
A deep voice with a menacing tone spoke at the other end of the line. “Madame, listen carefully to what I am about to tell you. I will be brief, so open your ears and open them big. First, if you inform the police of our negotiations, I can assure you that you will never even find this girl’s body. Second, start gathering your money and make sure it is the exact amount of the ransom. Listen carefully! I will not repeat myself. Collect five hundred thousand U.S. dollars, do you hear? And then we’ll tell you where and how to give it to us!”
“How is Rosanna—” Solange started to holler, but before she could finish the sentence, the man hung up.
“Who could have done such a thing?” Solange shouted out loud to herself. “Who would want to kidnap Rosanna?”
One of the neighbors, a bony pale-skinned man, whose elderly mother had suffered a heart attack and died during a kidnapping attempt at her own house in broad daylight, had become extremely philosophical, a filozòf, in such matters. He chimed in, saying to Solange, “Ma chère, this country is a land of mystery. Mysteries enter your home quietly, and always when you least expect them. They come like a closed padlock and always without the keys to their puzzle. It’s almost impossible to discover what’s behind a mystery in this country. They are part of the essence of our people. They are stained into the fabric of our culture. When you hear the sound of drums coming from the depth of night, what you really hear are echoes. And never, never can you discover the true source of the drumbeats. And never mind whose hands are beating the drums. Those are the mysteries of the night. You know, madame, when the flying werewolves are in the air, one can only see the traces of their flames, but never can one guess which direction they are taking, or in whose yard they will land. Never will we know, as they fly, whose children they plan to eat during the night. But sometimes the solution to a mystery is right under our noses. In other words, what you need to know is right there next to you, though sadly, you never see it. Madame, you will never know who took Rosanna. The why, we know, is money. Money, we know, or lack of it, is the primary obsession of a poor country like ours. But as to who committed this crime, I am speaking from experience: your mystery will now join the rank of all the other mysteries that will never be solved in this country—”
“They want half a million American dollars,” Solange finally interrupted her philosophical neighbor, lest he should go on speaking forever. “It’s too much. Far too much. I have to imagine that they would take half of that, which is all I have liquid right now.”
* * *
In the windowless room where Rosanna sat contemplating her fate, the heat kept rising and her body began to shake in fear. She couldn’t stop thinking of all the kidnapping cases that had been in the newspapers. Of the sixteen-year-old boy who was killed and dumped on a trash heap even after his family had paid the ransom. Of the girl who had been taken