Dany Laferriere - The Return

Climbing the gentle slope

that leads to Saint-Pierre Square,

suddenly I think of Montreal

the way I would think

of Port-au-Prince when I was in Montreal.

We always think of what’s missing.

I wander into a new bookstore called La Pléiade. At the end of the ’60s, I used to go to Lafontant. He was always sitting by the door: an affable man despite the bushy eyebrows that gave him a surly look. He didn’t speak much. We would go straight to the back to look for the books that interested us — never more than one at a time. We chose them from the famous Maspero collection, which was censored by the paranoid powers of the day. Old Lafontant took a chance selling something besides detective novels and trivial magazines displayed on a table by the entrance. We calculated the price and, moving past the cash register, put the exact amount on the counter. Without a look back, we made our way to the exit. The entire operation had to be carried out seamlessly. We would practice at home.

We would get together afterward,

my friends and I,

in our little restaurant

across from Saint-Alexandre Square,

each of us with the book he’d bought.

We would put all the books on the table.

Then draw straws to see who would read what.

We were so serious at twenty

that a girl practically had to rape me

before I understood

what was happening around me.

The girls who listened to The Rolling Stones on the radio

had already progressed to the sexual revolution

while we were still reading the New China News Agency.

We were desperately seeking

in the speeches of our idol Zhou Enlai,

that severe, elegant Party strategist,

the scent of a woman

the glimpse of a leg

or the downy nape of a neck

that would have given us the gift

of erotic dreams.

I opened my eyes and realized we were just a tiny group busy making the revolution in our minds, which mainly meant commenting on the political essays we purchased at Lafontant’s store. The rest of the world lived in carefree pleasure and was no worse off for it. I was ready for my first intellectual vacation.

Suddenly I was terribly attracted to the very guys I’d had such contempt for a short time earlier. Guys who lived for dressing sharp, wearing the right cologne and dancing to slow songs by The Platters. Guys who’d never opened a book. And who didn’t care about the feelings of those inaccessible princesses who filled our dreams, but only about their graceful slender bodies under their Saturday night dresses. Guys into whose arms those princesses melted, the ones who never considered us. Guys whose bloody faces on page one of the newspaper (they always ended up in a fatal sports car crash) got more press at the Girls’ College than Davertige’s latest volume of poetry.

Old Lafontant bequeathed his bookstore to his two daughters (Monique and Solanges) who split it into two parts. One store in Port-au-Prince, a little bigger than the one in Pétion-ville. I converse a while with Monique who runs the Pétionville branch. She points to a girl paging through one of my novels. I am fascinated by the back of her neck (the nape speaks volumes about a woman reading). I go into the courtyard, under a tree, to keep from embarrassing her in case she turns and recognizes me. I never imagined that one day I’d find myself at La Pléiade as a writer.

As I move through this universe (the city, the people, the objects) that I’ve described so often, I don’t feel like a writer, but more like a tree in its forest. I realize I didn’t write those books to describe a landscape, but to continue being part of it. That’s why the newspaper vendor’s comment hit me so hard. In Port-au-Prince at the beginning of the seventies, I became a journalist to denounce the dictatorship. I was part of the little group that bared its teeth to power. I didn’t ask any questions about myself until that sexual crisis at the very end. I grew aware of my individuality in Montreal. At minus thirty, I quickly developed a physical sense of myself. The cold lowers the mind’s temperature. In the heat of Port-au-Prince the imagination is so easily enflamed. The dictator threw me out the door of my own country. To return, I had to slip in through the window of the novel.

The crowd pushes me into the street.

Cars brush past me.

I’m already running with sweat.

Suddenly a red Jeep stops next to me.

The door swings open.

I get in.

A second later I’m not part of the prey anymore.

My friend drives through the crowd.

He saw my picture in this morning’s paper.

He called Le Nouvelliste and his friends

to find out what hotel I was staying at.

No one could tell him.

And now, just like that, here I am in his car.

He gets on the phone to his wife.

You’ll eat with us?

I nod yes.

In the red Jeep with chrome wheels.

The music loud.

We talk over it.

On the side of the mountain

a small yellow airplane skims the treetops.

The pilot sticks his head out the window to wave

to the young boy who pulls off his shirt as he dances.

My childhood cuts through me like a knife.

My friend and his insouciance are just like before.

Here, he tells me, we live intensely

since we can die at any time.

Those who live in the lap of luxury

speak most casually of death.

The rest are simply waiting for death,

which won’t disappoint them.

The women descend in single file.

Along the cliffs.

Mountains of fruit on their heads.

Their backs straight.

Their necks sweaty.

Elegant in their effort.

A truck breaks down

on the narrow road to Kenscoff.

The women climb down.

The merchandise is already on the ground.

The men have to push the truck

onto the side of the road.

A low chant rises up.

The voices of men working.

The higher we climb, the fewer people we see.

That brightly colored little house

on the mountain is

hidden in the morning fog.

Settle in there and write

that long historical novel in five volumes.

Mistaking myself for Tolstoy late in life.

The red earth produces such beautiful onions.

The vendors hoist their baskets up to our level.

My friend lowers the window to buy

carrots and onions.

The smell of rich earth makes me dizzy.

The voices of the peasants

coming down the river.

Barefoot in the water.

Straw hats.

Each with a fighting cock under his arm.

And a bottle of alcohol

in his back pocket.

They are going single file

to the Sunday fights.

A dog looks for a sunny spot

then ends up lying down by the wall.

Its muzzle moist.

Its eyes half-closed.

The siesta comes early.

Everything grows here.

Even what no one has planted.

The earth is good.

The wind scatters the seeds.

Why do people gather

where it smells of gasoline and shit?

Where it’s always too hot?

Where it’s so dirty?

Even as they admire beauty

some prefer to live in ugliness,

often richer in contrasts.

I can’t breathe

when the air is too pure.

The landscape too verdant.

The living too easy.

The urban instinct is sharp within me.

From the other side of the cliff,

a horse slowly turns in my direction

and casts a long look at me.

Even the animals have started to recognize me.

Maybe that’s what a country is:

you think you know everyone

and everyone seems to know you.

The Jeep swings suddenly to the left.

For ten minutes or so, we follow