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Red, black, gold!

Flames, abyss, ambition!

Captivating colors of damnation …

By the glory of our forebears, I’m going to do it, kick the door open and walk up to them. Dessalines! Pétion! Toussaint! Christophe!2 I call on all our indomitable heroes for help. On God Himself! Yes, God! Why not! I unhook the crucifix, piously, I who had forgotten all about it for so long, since the day poetry replaced everything for me, since the day I tried, shut away in my Haitian Parnassus, to create my own god, a truly Haitian god, half-white, half-black, a blend of Christ and Legba3 in whom I took refuge, wings dangling, eyes closed to better carve my way through an entanglement of traps, reversals, life’s one hundred thousand humiliations; to hack a path to freedom with an imaginary machete through the thicket of campeachy mahogany, and oak, and climb the unreachable hill of dreams. I must no longer dream. I must face danger. With what weapons? I put the crucifix on the floor, pointing its face at the front door. I, who haven’t believed in miracles in so long, here I am, today, awaiting one from God. My poem in the French manner has suddenly left me. Sad and nostalgic Creole stanzas have replaced it, and two astonishingly violent verses spring out of my mouth. Trembling, I yell them out, lying on the ground, hands lifting the crucifix. Then I put it back down, piously kissing its feet.

My black mother, before you died you told me:

“Serve the family loas and pray God you’ll never be in anyone’s debt.”

But I despised the loas and avoided the thought of God. I was hungry too often, and a man praying on an empty stomach is spitting in his own face.

I feel weaker before the devils who have invaded our little town, more inclined to seek divine protection. You can stifle hunger! but the devils …

I pull the trunk toward me and open it. Beneath the dusty layer of books and papers, I find a pile of sacred objects for a voodoo shrine: marassas dishes,4 candles dressed in the seven colors of the rainbow, little pitchers stuffed with dried leaves meant for protection, the miraculous amulets I wore on a red string around my neck as a child. My black mother, who didn’t know how to read and who sold trinkets at the market, slaved away to make a scholar of her son. I left Creole and voodoo behind by going to school, and she, who was never able to say a French word to me, would beam when she heard me recite lessons she did not understand.

What are the good French sisters at the Sainte-Marie-de-Dieu school doing right now? Or the good French brothers at Saint-Valentin High School? They are on their knees, interceding with God on behalf of the cursed town, beseeching Him to vanquish the devils, to slay and crush them. And what if evil were to triumph over good yet again? Might as well wheedle the loas and have them on my side as well.

I take out the things from the trunk with ceremonial respect and pour water on the ground, offering drink to the gods of Guinea; then, I fill the marassas dishes with cane syrup and surround them with amulets and pitchers. I have nothing else to offer them, neither liquor nor candy, and in my generosity risk croaking from hunger while I wait for the devils to depart. Having pleased the loas, I lie sated on the floor, hands behind my neck. A thin trickle of light comes through a hole in the boards and I jump up and paste my eye to it. I would have preferred the whistling of bullets to this all-pervading silent torpor. From this observation post I have a wonderful view of Cécile’s tall house, the white railing of her balcony, her potted carnations, her lace curtains. I seek in vain for signs of life there. Where is she? What is she doing? What has happened to her parents? Their devious maid, Marcia, a pretty black girl, used to smile at me and shout:

“Lost your mind, heh! crazy mulatto, lost your mind …”

But the only woman I ever had eyes for was her mistress. And she knew it. What did I care about the insults of a poor, ignorant black girl mad with scorn to the point of throwing