Love, Anger, Madness_ A Haitian Trilogy - Marie Chauvet [66]
He’s grown friendly with Joël Marti. They talk about music and literature. I am astonished to see him so animated. He gets all worked up during these conversations and is full of exuberance.
“But no, no, you’re wrong, Chopin is still a poet, a melancholy poet, a musician for neurotics; Beethoven personifies courage in suffering, the struggle against misfortune. His infirmity enriched him instead of diminishing him. His behavior should be an example for us. All of his compositions are hymns to life. Listen …”
He plays Chopin’s Concerto no. 1 for a minute and then Beethoven’s Concerto no. 5.
“Compare them,” he adds.
“Well, my old phonograph doesn’t have the same sound. It’s a very old machine, you know.”
Jean Luze laughs, he is happy. He needed friends! I bring them glasses, ice and what is left of the whiskey M. Long brought.
“No, Claire, some rum, Joël prefers rum and lately so do I,” Jean Luze tells me.
He leans over Joël.
“You are only twenty years old,” he tells him, “and you live in an outdated world. I will guide you. What authors do you like? It’s amazing to discover someone like you in a place like this, someone so curious, educated, enthusiastic and sensitive.”
“A lot of those arrested by Calédu were like me, hungry for more education. There were many of us here writing poetry, interested in music and literature. Our meetings were forbidden. We protested and they hunted us down. Some have disappeared and others have fled. I would like to leave too but, sadly, I am too poor.”
His shaking hand reaches for the rum bottle, and he helps himself. Later in the day, I see him staggering home.
Jean Luze has no idea how easily these misunderstood poets can get drunk.
Maybe this vice of theirs brings them a false sense of transcendence.
I’m being unfair. They are right to seek distraction from their suffering, to drown their unhappiness in a sea of alcohol, because their future is as dark as an abyss …
Jean Luze now feels compelled to restrict Joël’s drinking. He even preaches to him about it.
“Take it easy, Joël, easy,” he said to him today, taking the rum bottle from his hands. “It’s a slippery slope.”
Joël, already drunk, doesn’t take it well.
“Oh no, absolutely no lectures please or I’ll drink elsewhere.”
He becomes abusive and Jean Luze calms him.
“I only want what’s right for you, you know.”
“I know, I know. But what bothers me about our friendship is that you will never understand …”
“Never understand what? That you want to get piss-drunk. No, I’ll never get that. I understood your despair better when you were trying to console yourself with poetry. All of you seem to think you have a monopoly on suffering. Nothing can better drag a nation into moral and intellectual bankruptcy than believing its misery is special.”
“And what do you know about misery?” Joël screams.
“I know what I know!”
“Do you know who my brother was? Do you know what he meant to me? When my parents died, he took care of me like a father. He was intelligent, honest. They drove him insane. It’s their fault, you hear me, their fault! And I too will go insane one day …”
“Oh, enough of that!” Jean Luze lashes out in a voice so forceful that the boy is startled. “Are you also going to throw yourself headfirst into the trap they’ve set for you? You want it to be your turn to serve as their target?”
Joël looks away.
“What’s the use, they’re going to get us all,” he mutters in a mournful and desperate voice. “We’re caught in the teeth of the gear and the only solution is flight or despair.”
“No, you have to fight.