Franketienne - Ready to Burst

— You’re sure we can trust this American’s word? says Verdieu Belhomme skeptically.

— Don’t worry. The American will send the boat. With the money, of course. He’s a rich man. He seems to really need these pistachios for his soap and oil factory in Puerto Rico.

— All the same, let’s wait. We’re really counting on this deal.

— It’ll work. There’s no doubt.

— You’re not thinking that it’s the Good Lord of the poor who’s come to help us in the form of some white man. That’s not it, is it, Raynand?

Raynand doesn’t answer. The next day, he returns to Port-au-Prince with his load of pistachios and puts them in an old house on Saint-Martin Street. Waiting for the steamer Mary-Jane .

More than a month goes by. The Mary-Jane still hasn’t pulled into the harbor in Port-au-Prince. Day and night, Raynand walks in circles down at the wharf. In the beginning, visions of bundles of dollar bills danced in his head. He whistled happily from morning to night, humming boleros, rancheras, and all sorts of popular tunes. He’d fall asleep and plunge into a dream of future projects, at the end of which there was always a little car, a pretty house. And, of course, all of his beautiful dreams featured the presence and the finery of an imaginary woman, a marvelous spouse who’d make Solange regret her betrayal.

Some weeks later, he started feeling nervous. An interminable waiting game. Rain falling every night. Unbearably hot days. A sniggering sun, a veritable fire monster. A fire-breathing dragon. And then, in the afternoon, the dry earth split open, becoming chapped. And the next night, rain. A veritable tolalito — a hopeless quest — set to the rhythm of downpours and relentless sun. A constant maïs-l’or , †livened up at times by a slow-turning game of jump rope with either the sun or the moon.

After a month of fruitless waiting, Raynand is devastated to learn that the American was an impostor. A fake industrialist. He’d figured out how to exploit the situation of underdeveloped countries so as to mint money. A crafty bugger who’d put his mind to work at thieving and scheming. He’d been to several islands of the Caribbean where he’d been able to collect immense sums with a mere signature. A white man’s initials — that’s a guarantee! In poor Haiti, he’d managed to squeeze more than a hundred thousand dollars out of his naïve partners. Not to mention the awful trick he’d pulled on those who’d stocked enormous quantities of unsold pistachios.

Overcome, Raynand listens to Paulin tell him about the numerous exploits of this international con man, a thieving artist, a Luciferian monster vomited up by the hell of a decadent American society. Evidence, also, of the naïveté and innocence of the world’s little people. But now, there’d never be a boat, Raynand says to himself. Pulling himself together, he leaves Paulin. He heads directly toward the old house on Saint-Martin Street, where he’d stored his sacks of pistachios. What would he do with them? He doesn’t really know. But he’s worried about what to tell Verdieu Belhomme. For the time being, the main thing would be to save some part of the money by reselling the pistachios on the cheap.

This morning, the weather is just fine. The temperature cool. The sun shines without heating things up too much. The sky a clear blue. Cloudless. The key to the warehouse in his right hand, Raynand begins to think, maybe even to dream. Seated on the narrow concrete-coated step leading up to the depot.

Far away. He falls into a moment of total distraction during which a series of confused images follow one another incoherently. Without paying any particular attention, he crushes all the little ants swarming up his splayed legs. A cockroach passes by and he flattens it with a quick jab of his heel. A sticky, whitish substance surges from the insect’s rear, and he looks at it for a while. Hideous creature, I crushed your foundations, your vile parachute. You won’t do any more damage. Go back to the malodorous gutter you came from. Life is already so difficult. Man can’t even feed himself. There’s not the slightest piece of straw to spare for parasitic beasts. The tender flesh of cats is edible. The drunkards know that all too well. It’s time, long past time that we start eating dogs and rats. Raynand scratches at the dusty ground with the tip of his shoe, covering over the roach, which clearly isn’t completely dead, as its legs are still moving. How to escape, when life is nothing more than a brief parenthesis in the interminable dictation of absences and death? And Man is no good at spelling. The centuries, a long series of exterminations. Raynand ends up burying the insect under clumps of earth. What a marvelous grave digger I’d make! he says to himself, standing up. He fits the key into the lock. He turns it twice to the left. The double doors open instantly onto a marvelous burst of colored wings. An awakening of wriggling, unexpected light. A multicolored flight of butterflies whip Raynand’s face. Confetti of noisy wings. A gentle rain of butterflies — purple, blue, yellow, sequined, striped with black luminescence, green phosphorescence. A swarming, sparkling kaleidoscope.

On the damp floor, piles of blond caterpillars. No more pistachios. All that’s left are a few rotten pods in the humidity of the room. More than half the stock had flown off in a fireworks of wings and luminous dust. Raynand doesn’t even try to understand. What would he know about the marvelous process of metamorphosis? How would he ever be able to seize, in flight and on the fly, the brilliant rainbow in which animal and vegetable meet in all their splendor on a bridge of softness and clarity? And so he prefers to distance himself from the shock of this shack. Without saying a word. Nourishing the blissful illusion that he’d been the maker of miracles in the middle of the day.

In traversing the entry gate, he surprises himself by thinking, without really knowing why, about Paulin’s novel — still without a title.

Daughter, bring me a straw chair so I can sit down! The hard rock is hurting my bottom. And I’m tired from standing up for so long. I want to gaze upon the teats of time. The jumble of clouds eaten away by parasites. The moon secretes a sour milk on stubborn eyes. Inflamed gaze from the burns of corrosive stars. My daughter is a child of the islands where a people of sleeping warriors reside. Fever of the past. Coldness of the present. Uncertainty of the future. The chained-up giants fear their own awakening. Phobia of risk. Tired spines. Death is up on its feet. Let’s lay it down in a hammock and rock it to sleep! Combat ruse and not pitiful surrender. My daughter is from Haiti. Island with gaping jaws. What troubling expectation is being incubated at its black breasts? Mountainous island with its marrow sucked dry by foreign lions .

Daughter, bring me a low chair so I can stretch out on the arbor of old stories from back home. The dying wizard cannot take the whole village to the cemetery with him, says the old man with the white beard. The tale is so long that the end won’t come soon enough. Patience is a slow team of oxen in the night. May my eldest daughter serve white rum to the neighbors who come to take part in the exorcism of the castle steeped in a nightmare! Set up the chairs in a circle and leave a place in the center for the best storyteller to animate the wake. He speaks. The chorus responds: if ever the earth should tremble, may the children of tender and pure flesh survive!

Nathalie, my daughter, listen well … Once upon a time there was a giant with unusually long fingers. Fingers that crossed mountains, oceans, continents. Swept away the plains. Stirred up the sea. Rooted around in the soil. Took away the cattle, the provisions, the precious metals. This clever giant thus took over all the useful things that do not belong to him. Seized all goods to be found within ten thousand leagues of his home. And with his powerful fingers he even uprooted the living, grabbing them by the stomach. Insatiable, he drank the blood of all living beings. Inexorably he chewed up the bones of any valiant warriors who dared to protest .