Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [65]
There were mosquitoes flitting about Rosanna now too. By the thousands, it seemed. Flies buzzed annoyingly around her ears, occasionally landing their tiny moistened tentacles on her skin. She could also hear the man guarding her, breathing across the room, swatting the mosquitoes dead with loud slaps to his own skin.
Meanwhile, because they could not go to the police, Solange’s philosophical neighbor took Davernis with him back to the Portail Léogâne bus station, hoping to find witnesses. The bus that Rosanna had intended to take to Les Cayes had already left. The street vendors who had surrounded her, and even the others who had not, but had seen everything unfold before their eyes, refused to tell them anything.
“M pa konnen,” they answered to Davernis and the neighbor’s repeated questions. I don’t know.
“I understand.” The neighbor tried to coax them with small purchases until he had an armful of wilted fruits and vegetables. “You have to come back here every day, and even talking to me right now might put you in danger, but I am a customer and customers and vendors have an intimacy.”
“M pa konnen mesye,” they all repeated, the fear evident in their eyes.
The guard was still looking at his beautiful captive, cowed in a corner in the unfinished house where they housed their victims. His blood was heating up in his veins, images of him and the girl whirling in his mind. He pictured her as a nightingale in a cage and himself both her potential killer and protector. The sense of power that this visual metaphor inspired vibrated through him. He had rarely felt this before—that is, sympathy for his captives. She wasn’t a regular payday in his eyes. His other captives were often rich men and women, spoiled aristocrats who wanted water or even soda as soon as they got here. This one had not even groaned to have the duct tape removed from her lips and she actually seemed like a genuine innocent.
A few drops of rain could be heard tapping the tin roof above them. To him it sounded like a rhythm of Gede, the god of love and death. To her it sounded like thunderclaps, and she imagined each drop as the toll of a bell that might bring help.
“Mademoiselle, I have an offer for you,” the guard said. Rosanna could hear the mild hesitation in his voice. Even though he was the one with the gun and the power and she was blindfolded and helpless, he was addressing her the way men of his class addressed women of hers. He was addressing her the way Davernis would.
“I can let you go unharmed, mademoiselle.” He tried to make his voice sound more forceful. “You are a woman, mademoiselle; you must know what I am trying to tell you. I am a man, and this desire is flowing strongly through my body. The attraction you carry around yourself creates in me the desire to make love to you. And naturally, if you allow your body to slip under mine, maybe I’ll let you escape. I have the power to let you go.” The captor removed the duct tape from Rosanna’s mouth.
“Monsieur, zanmi mwen, I beg you,” Rosanna pleaded, addressing him like someone of her own class. “You’ve already taken my freedom. Please don’t take my …”
The man stood up and abruptly unzipped his pants. He pulled out his penis and pointed it toward her, taking pleasure in knowing that she would