Dany Laferriere - The Return

Later, he escorted me into his office for a serious discussion. Since the latest riots, no one trusts the domestics any more. Unlike the rest of the house, his office is almost monastic. That’s where he plots his master strokes. He moves his armchair close to mine so our knees touch. He pours himself a shot of rum and fills my glass to the brim. Let me explain a few things to you that you don’t seem to understand, which is normal for someone who’s been away for more than thirty years. You may think we’re living under a new regime since the one you knew isn’t operative anymore, and its children are all overseas. But they’ve been replaced by their former enemies who are a lot worse than they were. They are frustrated and starved, and they panic at the thought that they might not be able to devour everything before they croak. But really they’re just puppets that other people are manipulating from behind the scenes. We never see the true masters of this country. For them, the story has been running without a break. A single straight line. They’ve been keeping watch over things since the end of the colonial period. It’s always been the same business: one group replaces another, and so it goes. If you think there’s a past, a present and a future, you’ve got another thing coming. Money exists; time doesn’t. He takes a long sip of rum and gazes at me through bloodshot eyes. I’m going to do something for you because Windsor was my best friend. I’m going to let you have my car and my chauffeur so you can move around the country in complete security, since you haven’t seen the place in a while. I’m falling asleep on my feet. Now, if you’ll permit, I will go off to confront my childhood monsters.

I decided to bring along my nephew

who was bored silly

in a house

full of nervous old aunts

and rosaries blessed by drunken priests.

I see a lot of pregnant women.

An endless flow of newborns

insidiously urging

the old folks toward the cemetery.

Always keep a black jacket close at hand

after you hit fifty.

You’ll need it to attend the funerals of childhood friends.

The open gate of the art center

where I spent time when I was seventeen.

More for the painters

than the paintings.

This morning there is no one but Mademoiselle Murat

who’s been the director forever.

She greets me with mocking eyes

softened by a disarmingly guileless smile.

She has lived so long among paintings

that she’s become a character in a novel.

I tour the dark empty rooms

of the art center feeling as if the tenant

has just left without daring to take along

the many paintings that come to life

in this wooden building with creaky floors,

as I drink a cup of coffee

served by Mademoiselle Murat

with the disturbing but warm-hearted Robert Saint-Brice

and the big baby-faced boy named Jean-Marie Drot.

I should write a story from the point of view of the dog

wandering through the purple painting by that painter

who disappeared one day without a trace.

That was back when a man was no more than

a rabbit in Papa Doc’s black hat.

I realize as I go by a small crowd praying

that people here talk about Jesus

in a normal everyday tone,

as if he were

someone they could

always meet

on the street corner.

They expect everything of him,

but in the end settle for very little.

The slightest surprise is welcomed

like a miracle.

Mental stability depends on being able

to move, without a transition,

from a Catholic saint to a voodoo god.

When Saint James refuses

to grant a certain favor

they quickly direct the same prayer

to Ogou, the secret name given

to Saint James when the priest began enjoining

the faithful to renounce voodoo

in order to enter the Church.

If they accept the gods so easily

it’s because people believe

they are gods themselves.

Otherwise they’d be dead already.

In those places where people tell each other

their dreams every morning

over the first cup of coffee,

turning day into a simple extension of night,

the traveler wonders if this sense of tranquility

in the face of death springs from the fact that

time is not used to measure life here.

That little girl, not even nine,

feeds her younger brother

and goes without food herself.

Where does such precocious maturity come from?

I used to like going to Jean-René Jérôme’s little studio in the crowded suburb of Carrefour. I would spend hours watching him paint women with lovely curves and a red flower behind their ear, which he did to support his bohemian lifestyle. He worked very quickly, with scarcely a glance at the canvas. Since we weren’t far from the sea, at noon we would go eat fish on the beach. Years later his wife sent me a small photograph of him and me drinking coffee in his studio, packed with paintings, seashells and dusty sculptures. Today he looks so young in the photo. I can’t remember what we talked about. I just remember my pleasure as I watched him dance as he painted those lighthearted, sensual women. As for the paintings that really mattered, he would hide in order to paint them.

That fog in the distance

is rain moving in on us.

Chaos already. People running everywhere.

How is it that people

who on a daily basis

face disease, dictatorship and death

panic when it comes to getting wet?

I treasure the radiant face of the peasant

walking into the rain.

We stop by the side of the road for this old gentleman who seems to be returning from mass. Where are you going? I’m going to see a sick lady friend, just at the bend of the road. Climb in, you’ll get there faster. I’m almost there as it is. I insist, and he gets into the car. I’m not used to automobiles. I consider I’m an automobile myself, he says, laughing at his own joke. Sure, but sometimes they can help if you’re in a hurry. I don’t see what could make me go faster than my own two feet. You can leave me here. I watch him climb a little path snaking upward. I bet he’s going to the other side of the mountain, the chauffeur laughs. When he reaches the top he’ll still have another good hour’s walk. Why didn’t he tell me where he was going? His world is not ours.

If we return to the point of departure

does that mean

the journey is over?

We won’t die as long as we’re moving.

But those who have never crossed beyond

their village gate

await the return of the traveler

to figure out whether it’s worth

the trouble of leaving.

The poor peasants pay taxes

without expecting anything from the government.

Things would be all right

if it let them live in peace.

The State doesn’t like being judged in silence.

I think of that as I see them bent over in the fields.

Near the old Port-au-Prince cathedral, I bought a magazine that had a long interview with Lazare the painter. He spent a good part of his life in New York before returning to Haiti. After a very brief stop in Port-au-Prince to say hello to a few friends, he moved on to the little hut tucked away on a banana plantation. The image of that place, almost religious, brightened his loneliness in New York. He awoke one morning in a sweat, with the feeling that his last day in this hard, cold city had come. He knew he would suffocate if he didn’t return immediately to Haiti. He grabbed his passport, emptied out his account at the Chase Manhattan Bank and took one final taxi ride to JFK. That evening, he was back in a small café in Pétionville with what was left of the old gang of painters and poets who once dreamed, as he had, of changing the world at the beginning of the sixties. But his journey wasn’t over, and wouldn’t be until he reached the hut that had kept him alive during his long years of depression in New York. In the magazine photo, Lazare sits bare-chested under a banana tree; in the background is a little thatched hut with blue windows.