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By Root 480 0

in the distance for a long time, patiently, annihilating all other sounds, even the hoarse martial blast of the lambi8 calling the peasants together for a coumbite,9 even the rumbling of the rada drums calling hounsis10 to the voodoo ceremony. Everything is drowning in a sea of blood. I would like to stare in the devils’ faces as they kill. From a distance, they all look the same in their uniforms. Neither black, nor white, nor yellow. Colorless! Like crime. Colorless! Like injustice and cruelty. You see nothing of them under their uniforms. Headless bodies. Faceless heads in golden helmets. Would I have the courage to stare at them even from behind the walls of my shack? They are anonymous, like stupidity and meanness. Their ugliness overwhelms me, demoralizes me. The way the surface of the face and its features decompose beneath the weight of sadistic cruelty—this is what I call ugliness. They enjoy killing too much. There are hundreds of bodies in front of the church. I hear another blast of bullets. These shots, I only understand this now, are their language, their voice. Here’s one of them now at the end of the street. I clutch at the wall and look at him. He’s just across from us. His face is cast in some kind of metal, like a blinding mirror in the sun. I close my eyes, suddenly feeling weak.

“What’s wrong?” André asks.

“Did you see?”

“Who?”

“The devil there, at the corner of Grand-rue.”

He throws himself on the floor and curls up trembling behind the trunk, hands clasped together.

No point talking to him. He only knows how to tremble and pray. His presence weighs on me. It seems to me that if I were by myself I’d be able to think of a solution more easily. His terror is contaminating me. I make vain efforts to turn inward, to focus. As in a dream, I feel like I am running after something that escapes me just as I think I am about to catch it in my hands. Oh! My God, the ugliness of that face! Could I ever forget it?

“Stop mumbling prayers,” I shout to André impatiently. “You’re not letting me think.”

“Hush! Lower your voice,” he begs.

I’m hunting down an idea. Surely it concerns the devils. To defeat them, but how? Fight them, but how? I’ve got it. I’m going to kill one of them, just one, I will slip on his uniform and then I will wedge myself among their ranks and keep my head down. An exterminating angel striking at hell’s minions with my blade! I will free the town from the devils’ clutches. God has designated me for this role. I will fulfill my destiny only when I obey Him. Each of us has a role to fulfill down here, otherwise how can we justify having been created? But one must not play dumb and blind, but obey. As for me, I have ears to hear with and eyes to see with, and I have heard and I have seen. What I experience cannot be merely personal. Will the others shirk responsibility? Are they going to close their eyes and ears like André? Until this very minute, I thought that the corpse was the source of the turmoil within me. But I see the light now. I feel lifted by an unexplainable force that paradoxically inclines me to great humility. I feel like a child who, one fine day, finally receives a long-coveted toy.

The body is teeming with ants, its eyes slowly disappearing into two deep orbits traced by the ravages of the merciless insects. I will stoically bear witness to its slow and irreversible decomposition.

Original sin is like a tattoo, we are cursed from the beginning. Where did I read that? Is this fair? If the devils have made ours their town of choice, it can only be because of original sin. What are we guilty of? Let each of us cry out: “Mea culpa, mea culpa,” and the devils will disappear. God has unleashed the devils upon us to punish us. Otherwise, how can we explain their power? God is tired of us. God spits in our face.

God tortures us so that the punishment will bear fruit once and for all. Who has not felt the icy finger of remorse weighing on his heart at least once? Hedonists, exploiters, frauds, spies, torturers, all kneel and cry out: “Mea culpa!” “It seems begging has become