Dany Laferrière: Heading South

I AM SEVENTEEN years old (although because of my size and my easygoing nature I look much older) and I live in Port-au-Prince, on Capois Street, near Place du Champ-de-Mars. I live with my mother and my young sister. My father died a few years ago. My mother is still very beautiful. Large, moist eyes, bright flushed cheeks and a sad smile. The kind of tragic beauty that is very attractive to men. But as they say, she is a one-man woman. My father was not handsome (we have a large photograph of him in the living room), but he was tall and elegant. He always wore white and changed his shirt at least three times a day. They say women were crazy about him, which drove my mother to despair. According to her, what made my father different from other men was his great sensitivity and his keen sense of responsibility. “I can always count on your father,” my mother would say every time I forgot to do something. As far as she is concerned, my father is still alive. She talks about him every day. She quotes him every chance she gets. If I come home a bit late on a Friday night, my mother never fails to point out that I behave badly only because my father isn’t there. She never says because he’s dead. My mother talks so frequently about my father that often I find myself thinking as she does. Some days, at around two o’clock in the afternoon, a feeling comes over me that he’s about to walk into the house and, as was his invariable custom, toss his hat onto the table.

“Madeleine, I’m hungry.”

“What have you been up to, then?” my mother would reply, smiling.

And he would sit down at the table and wolf down his dinner. No one ate faster than my father. After eating, he would take a short siesta. It was forbidden for us to make the slightest sound while he was resting. At five o’clock sharp he would go out the door and the house would return to normal.

My mother has never accepted his death, but I wasn’t always like her in that regard. At times I was even glad that he was no longer around to prevent me from living my life. In a way, my situation wasn’t so different from that of my friends. Most of them never knew their fathers (killed, imprisoned or just gone off). At least mine hadn’t died in prison. We were all brought up by our mothers. My mother lost her job shortly after my father’s death. She had been a junior clerk in the National Archives, behind Saint-Martial College. Now she works as a seamstress, at home. My sister is two years younger than I am. She goes to a snooty private school whose principal is one of my mother’s clients. It’s only because of this connection that my sister is allowed into her chic school. My mother insisted on it, because she wanted my sister to make “good contacts for later,” as she puts it. In a country like Haiti, where the rich barricade themselves in their fancy houses up on the mountainside, the only place we poor folk ever get to mingle with them and make connections is in the classroom. That’s what my mother says. In any case, unlike me, my sister does well in school. And despite the two years’ difference in our ages, she’s the one who always does my homework. Everywhere she goes — before the chic college she went to the Lycée de Jeunes Filles — she quickly becomes the pet of all the teachers. And since she is very giving, which is to say she does all her friends’ homework for them, no one gets jealous. As for me, I’m not ashamed to say that school was never my thing. Honestly, I don’t see the point in going to school. Only poor people like us knock their heads against the wall trying to solve airy-fairy problems that have nothing to do with real life. And after all these years of school I don’t see that it has done them any good at all. People are rich because their parents are rich, it’s as simple as that. And their parents are rich because their grandparents were rich. And so on. And when you get down to the source of all that richness, you’ll always find someone who made their fortune by robbing from the public purse. That’s Haiti for you, and it’s not my job to change the way this country is run. My sister got her intelligence from my father. Me, mostly what I got is his size. “You’re going to be as tall as your father,” my mother often tells me. And I get my delicate features from my mother. I have always been popular with girls. Ever since I was twelve I’ve known that I could do what I wanted with women. That’s just the way it is. Nothing anyone can do about it. My sister’s friends are always giving me the once-over — some of them are bolder about it than others— but girls don’t interest me very much. I like my women more mature. I like watching them lose their cool. Especially those who take themselves seriously. For some time now I’ve had my eye on a really choice bird: the principal of the school my sister goes to. I always make sure I’m home when she comes to see my mother for fittings. I don’t do a thing. I know she’s a respectable person, but I want to see her private side, what’s hidden behind her mask, the dark side of her moon. So I sit very still in the room. I know she’s spotted me. I’ve often caught her looking at me out of the corner of her eye. I play the innocent. I pretend I have no idea what’s going on. I put on my angelic face, my mother’s features. Except that my mother, as my father used to say, is a saint. I’m not. I’m rotten inside. I’m like a spider crouching at the edge of its web, waiting for prey.

My mother has just rushed out of the house to visit a sick friend who called her for help. She asked me to explain her absence to Madame Saint-Pierre, who is supposed to come at two o’clock this afternoon. My sister has gone to a friend’s house in Pétionville to study for her second-term exams. She won’t be back before four. And then she has to join my mother at the hospital, the Canapé Vert. So I have at least two hours at my disposal. I take a Carter Brown from the little bookshelf. I turn the pages mechanically, passing the time. The trap is set. Waiting is the hardest part. I get up, take a few deep breaths, then go out into the yard. A dead rat near the cistern. I give it a swift kick that propels it into the yard of the next-door neighbour, a kid of about twelve with the brains of a two-year-old. I smile at him and wave. He stares at me like I’m some kind of celestial apparition. Maybe he’s not seeing me at all. A car stops in front of the house. Two o’clock on the dot.

She’s a punctual lady. I open the door.

“My mother has gone to see a sick friend.”

“Oh!” she says, her voice deep and musical. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“I don’t know, madame, she didn’t tell me what it was.”

“Did she tell you when she would be back?”

“No, but I don’t think she’ll be late.”

“Well, then, I’ll wait for a bit.”

And so she has decided to stay.

“Not that chair, madame, it’s not very solid. Sit here, you’ll be more comfortable.”

She sits on the edge of her seat. Her way of letting me know that she has twigged to my little game and she isn’t going to give me a lot of her time. I, in turn, do not fall for that: I already know that whoever controls time wins. I sit down calmly, across from her. I have all the time in the world. I look her straight in the eye, which I have not done to this point. And then I attack.

“Your dress suits you very well, madame.”

“Your mother is an excellent seamstress, it’s true.”

She wants me to go on.

“It’s the yellow that suits you, madame.”

Which is the limit of insolence. But my innocent face (wide-open eyes, bright smile) saves me. She blushes. I lower my gaze. A bit troubled.