Edwidge Danticat - Haiti Noir

Josiane watched me eat. She was spying on me from under the thick fringe of her eyelashes. I thought again of the girl I’d seen asleep in the room with a décor from beyond the grave. I could see her breasts again, the hollow of her belly. Once again, after dinner, I felt almost faint. I was drifting sweetly, wearily along. I thought only of Josiane’s body, so very present in the room. All my questions sank into oblivion. The rhythm of my blood was slowing. My movements were getting all bogged down. I had only one desire: to give myself up to Josiane’s skillful youth.

And yet when she put her hand on me, a last burst of conscience propelled me to my feet. I was sinking, calmly disappearing into quicksand. They’d sent me here to destroy me. Paradise Inn would be my final destination. But it wasn’t too late to escape. I had to get out of here right away, on foot if need be, this very night. I’d surely find a truck driver on the highway who would take me to the next town. My survival instinct was telling me to react, to shake off this torpor that was inexorably condemning me to oblivion.

I caught Josiane’s wrist and twisted it until a little cry of pain burst from her lips. I badgered her with questions.

“Who are you? Who is your mother? Who do you put up in this hotel? Where are the other guests? Who are you working for?”

She was turning blue with pain under my grip. It hurt me to manhandle her, but I had to save my skin first. She gasped out: “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I only work here. Ow! You’re hurting me.”

I felt like slapping her. All compassion left my soul. I just kept squeezing her wrist harder.

“I won’t let you go until you answer all my questions. Got it, you little bitch? Who are you, you and your mother?”

She was groaning with pain but said nothing. I squeezed her wrist harder still and kept on pushing her with questions.

“Who does the cooking, and the wash, and the cleaning up here? Why is the rest of the house dead? What is hidden behind all that?”

Josiane’s silence was incredibly irritating. I was foaming with rage. This little woman thought she could manipulate me through sex, lead me to the scaffold by my prick. I was going to teach her a lesson she’d never forget. I let go of her wrist and slapped her very hard. I thought I’d broken every bone in my hand. Her head was wobbling, she looked like a puppet. She fell to her knees and I kept badgering her.

“Where do you get the electricity from? I haven’t heard a generator and I don’t see any other system, how do you make electricity? Answer me, for Christ’s sake, or I’ll strangle you!”

Kneeling on the floor, she tried to look into my eyes. Maybe she thought she’d move me. Her lower lip was already swollen; blood was gushing out of a crack in it. At last she spoke. It was hard to understand her words.

“I’m telling you, I swear. I don’t know anything… My mother takes care of everything!”

A tear flowed down her cheek. I wanted to continue my questioning. I raised my hand to hit her again, but my energy was rapidly disappearing. I was out of breath, my heart was about to burst in my chest, as if I’d run a hundred miles. I had exhausted my last stock of energy. I was being paralyzed by a will stronger than my own. My arm fell to my side. All I could do was drag myself to bed and sit down. Josiane realized I couldn’t budge; she understood my exhaustion. She kept on crying softy as she spoke to me. I could hardly make out her words, which seemed to drift over to me from so far away.

“I don’t know the people who live here. They’re all men but you can’t see them. They’re sent here by the high command. The electricity that powers the hotel comes from draining their energy and willpower. They don’t last long. That’s all I know. You’ll become like them too, until you’re just a breath. You never should have set foot in this place. Never.”

That’s all I heard. I couldn’t hold my body up anymore. I sank back into the pillows and passed out.

I felt better in the morning, although still very weak. When I looked at myself in the mirror, all I could see was a silhouette, a blurry image. My car was no longer in front of the hotel. On a hunch, I searched for my weapon in the chest of drawers where I was sure I’d left it the night before, next to my police badge. They had disappeared too. I smiled. I couldn’t care less about all that anymore. I didn’t give a good goddamn. It really relaxed me to not worry about a thing. All I was thinking about was having a good breakfast in the dining room on the ground floor, at my table, number 6. And above all, enjoying a big cup of that good, strong, scalding coffee my dear hostess had served me the day before.

I was calmly eating breakfast at table 6. Banana peels and crumbs of bread littered the other tables around me. But the guests still could not be seen. Through the window, I saw my brother Roland arriving. He parked his car in front of the hotel with a big squeal of the tires. He seemed worried. He rang the little bell and spoke to the manager as soon as she appeared. I heard my name. I realized my brother was giving her my physical description. He raised his arms to indicate my height, and with both hands he outlined my width. My hostess shook her head and looked truly regretful. No. No. She hadn’t seen a police captain around here for ages. She said she was sincerely very sorry not to be able to help Roland. And I watched the scene from my table, sipping my coffee, totally indifferent. The high command had sealed my fate. Another life was beginning for me. I thought Roland would see me but his gaze just passed over me as I sat there, no more than ten yards away from him. He stood still for a moment, hesitating. Then he thanked the lady and walked away.

The great-aunt in Brooklyn had promised to come get one of them, but which one? And take her in under her own roof, in her four-bedroom apartment-a godsend in New York! In a neighborhood that was getting less and less shabby: now the whites were trying to force her out.

“They can’t make me leave. They can move in with their sidewalk cafés, their little ‘boutiques’ with those French names they pronounce in their terrible accent. No way I’m leaving here!” declared the aunt in Brooklyn.

“Her apartment takes the place of a husband,” her niece Beatrice confided. “A submissive husband who doesn’t answer back, stays clean, and doesn’t have wandering hands. Who could ask for more? Four bedrooms is a luxury in New York!”

The bathroom next to her bedroom was graced with an enormous bathtub on ornately decorated feet. She had it put in after visiting the house of a friend audacious enough to tell the aunt that not having a bathroom connected to the master bedroom revealed a standard of living that was borderline primitive. The Brooklyn aunt allowed no one she knew to school her, be they relatives or friends. After all, ever since she came to the States she’d worked for a rich family on Long Island, Italian Jews with a taste for the good things in life and the ability to turn their money into more money. So nouveau riche Haitians thinking they could spin yarns to her-that really takes the cake! At her last yearly visit, Beatrice had gone into long raptures about the Italian tile in the bathroom and the bouquets of artificial flowers decorating the master bedroom. The second bedroom was reserved for the few rare relatives and friends bold enough to face the aunt’s sharp tongue for more than a few hours. After all, she was a hardened spinster set in her opinions and prejudices. The third bedroom was transformed into a sewing workshop where the aunt made cushions and curtains in velvet materials she thought were fancy because her employers were crazy about them. For the moment, the fourth room, the smallest, was full of old furniture and knickknacks. It served as both a storehouse and a treasure trove. This was the shambles she counted on fixing up to take in one of her grandnieces, one of the daughters of her nephew Aramis. But which one?