Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [157]
“Have them come over from time to time and I’ll put a full pot of cornmeal and beans on the stove.”
Your death made four orphans in place of one.
I sold your trinket tray for peanuts to cousin Justina who now looks down her nose at me under the pretext that I am nothing but a “tafiateur” an alcoholic and a disgrace to your name …
I lean over Jacques and then André. Their eyes are wide open. They aren’t going back to sleep. I put the bottles in a safe place in a corner of the room and cover them with a rag.
Jacques suddenly sits up. He gathers up his poems, looks for a blank sheet of paper, and starts writing again.
“It’s dark,” I say to him, “you won’t be able to write.”
“I write with my hand and my heart, not with my eyes,” he replies. “I’ve written twenty poems since I’ve been here.”
“You should sleep a bit.”
“I’m hungry! Give me a little clairin”
“There’s a full bottle in the trunk. Take it.”
“Where is the other one?” André asks me.
“Is it empty?”
“You drank the rest?”
“Yes.”
“Well! …”
“What’s in that trunk?” Jacques asks.
“His mother’s shrine,” André answers.
“There’s syrup in the dishes!” Jacques cries out.
“It’s an offering to the loas. Don’t touch it.”
“I’m so hungry!”
“Don’t touch it,” André says again.
Jacques takes a bottle of clairin, opens it and gives it to me.
“Help yourself, René.”
I drink and they help themselves in turn.
“It’s not that good, clairin, when you have nothing else in your stomach,” Jacques notes.
He sits down and writes. In the dark, his young bony face appears a shade of ash gray. We’re looking good, the three of us. Filthy, sweaty, stinking. What could the time be? Is Jacques going to spend the night writing? He’s collapsing from fatigue now, pencil clenched in his hand. André looks more and more dazed. Clairin always turned him into an idiot. He’s sitting there, arms dangling, looking at me. Why he is staring so hard at me?
“René,” he says with a pasty mouth, “we used to be happy before.”
“Before what?”
“Before they came here. We were happy but we didn’t know it.”
“It’s always like that.”
“What’s always like that?”
“You don’t realize you’re happy until you aren’t happy anymore.”
“Yes. And the unhappiness of the present makes you miss the past no matter how miserable it was. What I really miss is childhood. A child always lives in complete ignorance of misfortune. He feels protected by God, by nature, by all those who surround him. He trusts …”
“Yes. Trust! Faith! You lose them when you grow up.”
“I still have them.”
“No. Deep down, you don’t. And that’s why you’re afraid. These dishes full of syrup that could save our lives, and you don’t dare touch them because you’re afraid. Jacques is getting weak. Let’s give him a little syrup.”
“I can’t, I would never dare.”
“You’d rather see us croak of hunger. How many days have we eaten nothing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Light the stove. I’m going to make some coffee and we’ll use some of the syrup to sweeten it.”
“No. I won’t touch it.”
Our discussion has woken up Jacques. He complains quietly and calls out to me in a weak voice.
“René!”
“What do you want?”
“You’ve seen them?”
“Who?”
“The devils?”
“Let’s not talk about them anymore. Sleep.”
“I’m afraid!”
“Close your eyes. You’ll fall asleep again.”
“I hear steps!”
He gets up in a single bound and runs to the wall where he flattens his arms in a cross like a great butterfly pinned by the wings.
“They’re coming!” he tells us.
He lets out a hideous scream and turns to us:
“Their faces! Their faces! René! Ah! My God …”
“Calm him down,” I say to André. “He doesn’t see anything. He’s delirious from hunger. Calm him, for God’s sake! I have to do everything around here. Oh bugger me, try a little harder! Keep him next to you. Come on! A little courage. Help me a little, just a little bit. Here, take this spoon and give him a little