Dany Laferriere - The Return

The house where the funeral reception takes place stands on the slope of a deforested hill. The kids, along with a few young goats, keep rushing down it. To dry my clothes, I sit by the fire where ears of corn are being smoked in the coals. A little girl in a pretty blue dress and sparkling eyes brings me a cup of coffee. She curtsies by way of greeting. I kiss her on the forehead. She opens her eyes wide then runs off. In a storm of saliva, the retired polyglot confides in me that finally he has time to reread the Aeneid.

No one asks me

where I came from nor where I am going.

My past counts no more than my future.

They accept me in the gravity of the present

without demanding explanations.

A starry sky

that makes me dream

of hot evenings on the gallery

with my mother

and of course Baudelaire whose

“The Balcony” was my father’s

favorite poem.

I also recall the picnics

Aunt Ninine organized at the beginning of July.

And other precious memories

that convince me, now,

that my childhood was but an

endless season of sunshine,

though the rain did fall.

Nothing is more brilliant than sunlight in the rain.

Suddenly I feel so light.

The sky is no farther

than that banana leaf

that brushes my head.

I push my way through the banana plantation

divided by a stream

whose song I heard

before discovering in the shadows

its shining back

lit by moonlight.

I come upon an old man

sleeping under a banana tree.

What kind of life

has he lived

to go on smiling

in his dream?

I suppose it was different from

the former minister’s who spends his nights

in a museum, where most of the paintings

reproduce the bucolic setting where this peasant is sleeping.

One is living in the other’s dream.

I go through the little cemetery.

The earth has drunk up all the water from the sky.

The dead were thirsty

though they do prefer

something stronger.

I just need to look up

to see Sirius

on the collar of Canis Major.

I will spend the night

with this brightest of stars.

I sit down

in the night

on a headstone

to smoke a cigarette.

And think of my father.

That teenager who yesterday was running

nearly naked in the rain

through the streets of Baradères

could have lived out his life

like his friends

who never left their native village.

And never have known

such a strange destiny.

The path trampled through the grass crosses the cemetery and hits the rocky track that leads to the paved road. He started out on that path on his way to Port-au-Prince. And years later, to Havana, Paris, Genoa, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Rome, the world’s great cities. And then New York where I recently saw him stiff in a black alpaca suit with a magnificent tie of the same color. Always elegantly dressed. The way his generation was. The only personal feature: that smile pinned to his face, witness to the final burst of pain.

My mother questioned me at length

about what he wore for the funeral.

Every detail of his appearance

counted for him — and now for her.

All I remembered were his hands

and his smile.

In the end, once a dandy, always a dandy. Especially when the dandy has stopped taking care of himself. The form can change. The personality, never. If personality never changes, then that Baradères teenager knew everything back then. All the roads he was to take were already laid out inside him.

On a night like this, he must have

looked into the sky at

that great life-size map and seen

all the hospitals, prisons, embassies,

feigned celebrations and lonely nights

that one day he would face.

And if the moon was full and bright

he must have seen my life too,

an extension of his

so similar to it.

We each have our dictator.

For him it was the father, Papa Doc.

For me, the son, Baby Doc.

Exile without return for him.

For me, this enigmatic return.

My father has returned

to his birthplace.

I brought him back.

Not the body

burned to the bone by ice.

But the spirit that made it possible

for him to face

the deepest solitude.

To stand up to that solitude

all those gray days

and cold nights,

how many times did he

picture in his mind

the primitive images

of Baradères in the rain?

He in Baradères.

I in Petit-Goâve.

Then each followed his path

through this wide world.

To return to our point of departure.

He gave me birth.

I take care of his death.

Between birth and death,

we hardly crossed paths.

I have no memory

of my father that I can trust.

That belongs to me alone.

There is no picture

of us alone together.

Except in my mother’s memory.

Even before the new day dawns

I can hear

the sounds of the town

awakening like a servant girl.

On her tiptoes.

A woman brings me coffee.

The white cup.

The embroidered cloth.

She waits until I have finished drinking it.

The way they say good morning in Baradères.

The man appears soon after. With his hat over his heart. I make room for him next to me. He sits down. For some time he says nothing. That’s my grave, he murmurs. My whole family has been buried there for four generations. I immediately get to my feet. Stay. It’s an honor for us. Again this silence I have no intention of breaking. My wife recognized you. You know me? Legba. He is confusing me with the god who stands at the border between the visible and invisible worlds. The one who allows us to move between them. I’ve been out of the country. We know that. I’ve come to bury my father, and now I am being welcomed like a god in his native village. We were waiting for you, he says solemnly. But I am not Legba. You are the son of Windsor K, my classmate. We went to grammar school together here. I am amazed, astonished. If we didn’t know who you were, you wouldn’t be alive now. You’re not the first to return to bury a family member. I see. But you’re the first I’ve seen without a body. And you are accompanied by Legba. And Legba chose to spend the night on our grave. We don’t deserve such an honor. What sign spoke to you of Legba? The black hen. The hen? Yes, the black hen. Of course, the black hen. Sometimes you have to pretend to understand, because here no one will explain to you what you are supposed to know.

A large but skinny and mangy dog

comes and rubs himself against his leg.

I wonder if he

isn’t a god too.

The dog star I saw last night.

Children cross the cemetery

on their way to school.

As they go past they run their palm

over their ancestors’ graves.

That way they keep daily contact

with the other world.

By road or by sea?

I choose the sea.

It so happens, the man tells me, there’s a sailboat

about to leave the harbor.

It’s my cousin Rommel’s boat.

A village of cousins.

First we go to La Gonâve for wood

that we’ll deliver to Pestel.

Several women get on board the Epiphany.

They need oil, salt and flour.

They impose the rhythm of daily life

on the sailboat.

We fish along the way.

On the great salty highway.

Mostly threadfin.

The women never look at the water.

Half the crew doesn’t know how to swim.