Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [154]
“Now, that’s what we call music, my son. Mozart alone is an angel among spirits.”
I felt the notes penetrate my flesh, mingle with my blood. I understood only later that on this day I had encountered something universal, out of the depths of a shared humanity, something that legitimately belonged to me as well, for the ties between it and myself had already been established. Mozart, the German, was my brother, beyond blood and distance, beyond centuries. A hyphen between races, as with Villon, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud. Mozart’s biography, which Dr. Chanel had me read, gave me ambitions.
“I will write,” I exclaimed, “poems that will shake the world.”
And thereafter, I discovered that such a task demanded one’s blood, drop by drop. I opened my veins and vainly dipped my quill in blood. Accursed poet! A poet on layaway! A French-minted black poet! Where is your tongue? Give me the clairin! I got drunk night and day to forget. Like Villon, like Baudelaire, like Rimbaud …
“Brotherhood of mad poets!” Commandant Cravache sniggers.
Hearing that we’re crazy, again and again, will make us so. In any case, he’s tried everything he can to make that happen, our Commandant Cravache. How many times must we get our heads bashed in? How many months in jail? And why, oh gods? Who are they trying to frighten by attacking us, hunting us down, persecuting us, beating us up? …
I don’t like this silence. It’s been weighing on our heads for too long. A terrible explosion will make everything disappear. The blast will come suddenly, lifting the houses and transforming them into torches, reducing human beings to dust. It’s coming. It’s coming. The wait is so awful! No respite from it, neither in oneself nor others. To know, to feel the creeping danger. Am I hungry? I don’t have time to think about it. I have to implement a battle plan.
“I’m hungry,” André says.
“Drink a little damn”
“It makes me feel like vomiting.”
“Bugger me!”21
“You’re imitating Simon,” Jacques says to me, having stopped writing.
“No. I’ve seen it in books. I can’t imitate Simon, white as he is.”
“Do you think he’s a great poet?” André asks me.
“What the fuck would a great French poet be doing in this mud-hole?” I replied, imitating Simon.
“You’re imitating Simon,” Jacques repeated.
“No. Whites in general call our country a mudhole. And so, imitor patrem.22 Have you forgotten that my father spoke French like a Parisian?”
“You’ll never admit it, but you’re imitating Simon.”
Simon the bohemian. Filthy and flea-ridden like us. A bearded giant who lives off his “regular girl,” as he calls her. His regular girl is Germaine, a plump black woman, all dimples and more jealous than a wildcat.
“You’ll never believe me, old man,” Simon once told me, “but I wound up on the Haitian shore, coughed up from the cargo hold of an American ship.”
He’s been happily warming himself in the heat of our sun for the past six years, sick one day out of three. Puking his guts out from spicy food and booze, and vowing that these white pinkish innards of his will either get used to this or kill him …
I hear the bells toll … dong … dong … dong …
“Do you hear the bells, André?”
“The bells!”
“Listen!”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“You’ve always been hard of hearing. Jacques! Jacques!”
“What?”
“Do you hear the bells?”
He pricks up his ears attentively. His young, angelic face, black and beautiful, is lifted toward the ceiling, disfigured by fear.
The room smells disgusting. Or is it the corpse?
“Did you hear it?”
“Yes,” he answers.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” André sighs.
“Leave God and the saints in peace.”
“You can’t stop me from praying,” he protests.
“Let him pray,” Jacques says softly.
It is high time to begin preparations for the struggle. Alone. I am going to do it all alone. What can I hope for from these two? They really seem to be dying. They’re my buddies, I pity them. But this is no time for pity. I have to act.
The corpse is starting to scare me. It’s disintegrating there before my eyes as