Franketienne - Ready to Burst

It is urgent that we capture the escaped python. Allow it to slip — alive — around our neck. Unstoppably talkative, my soul radiates the stripes of time on the paleness of the autumn landscape.

Friendship loses water from the torn basket, which retains only the brackish mud. Where have they all gone, the friends I loved so dearly?

The wind is better than I am at finding the feeble spark that will keep reddening independent of the scattered ashes.

Again, I make the mechanical gesture that reanimates my heart: a semblance of living.

The pure ones have never seen the sun set; they know nothing of the darkness or the veiled trickery of fog.

Who will dig out the center of marooning words? I’m talking about sugar granulated like the sex organs of a half-deflowered maiden. And I’d bet that there’s no woman sweeter than the one you mount at dawn.

Have we captured the receiver of stolen goods from armed robberies? I hear the rumbling of drums all over the world. The devilment of Carnival rope launchers. Display of vampire wings. America spits red into the Mississippi. Let the valiant Negroes hold on to the password!

Near the terrace, I gesture to the girls carrying water, who instantaneously become paralyzed, blind, and mute. The calabashes are broken; I remain beside myself with thirst. Ah! Cactus-armed women, why do you turn me into a wandering ghost? Kill my fervor, suppress my hunger before you leave. The sun tilted toward the sea lays down my fleeting shadow. What bloody kiss will be able to freeze my lipless lover’s heart?

It’s always despicable that sand and water betray the secret fragility of love.

I appeal to torrential loves … plaintive washerwomen of the most squalid roadways!

Paper river mouth you sad suitcase stamp dead rock tobacco voice face agreement demand madness denial homeland fatigue love leaving work break misery rage race or flight ah! polyvalent life words men things stuffed with meaning! It’s in you that I’ve searched for myself for so long and am still searching.

The small van, a Peugeot 404, cream colored, full to bursting, tears up the highway to Delmas. Among the passengers, Raynand and Paulin. Seated in the last row, they talk without stopping. The vehicle’s speed seems to rip up the bushes, the electric poles, the pedestrians, the sidewalks. At the wheel of the car, Titon spiritedly executes his job as driver. He has to make the Port-au-Prince to Pétionville round-trip as quickly as possible. Finish off the day with a profit. Speed is the rule of the day. Accelerate. Win the race against time that flies and flies away. Go. Come back. Charge down the road. Speed. Drive. Devour the kilometers.

A passenger worries about the speed. You’re going much too fast, she says.

Titon is a good driver. He knows his job. He’s a real champion, responds Raynand.

A driver after my own heart! Faster than the wind! The open road beckons him to pounce. Faster than the wind! adds Paulin.

They attract the disapproving glances of the other passengers.

He who goes slowly arrives surely, replies an older man who hadn’t said anything up to that point.

Ironic, euphoric, Paulin and Raynand flatter Titon’s pride. They laud his agility in having just missed a mule crossing the road. Then, with an explosion of bawdy joy that shocks their neighbors, they take up and repeat:

Cherished driver, who knows how to heat things up! Go ahead and floor it! Dismantle your pedals! And smash right through death’s asshole!

At the end of the line, near the Pétionville cemetery, a place that serves as a station for transport vans, Raynand and Paulin are last to get off. Reluctantly, they’ve come to attend the religious ceremony for Bob’s wedding. They’re really only interested in the reception, which follows the blessing. A nice way to spend a couple of hours. When they arrive, the godfather is just in the middle of making a toast to the new couple. A long line of cars are parked in front of the house. A gathering of the curious. Inside, the folkloric lighting is overwhelmingly blinding. Starving guests. Thirsty alcoholics. Pockets of silence. Whispers. Coughs. Commentaries spoken into one another’s ears. The guttural and trembling voice of the orating godfather dominates the room with a false eloquence. Moldy speech. Scent of mothballs.

… like two inseparable turtledoves. My dear godchildren, you may experience difficult and trying moments. And it is then that you must really come together. In sincere and lasting dialogue, free of all secrets. Dialogue is the most eloquent form of mutual understanding. A union that rests on …

— Bob’s wife seems very old. She’s got to be more than forty.

— She’s forty-three.

— Christ’s age plus ten. An old she-devil with sawed-off horns. A real cradle robber! A complete fraud of a woman!

— She’s rich. A well-stocked shop. A property in Laboule. Several cars. A fat bank account.

— Bob has bet it all on the ball that rolls around in the fat of dollar bills.

— Because two poor people combined still won’t have enough to make ends meet …

… for happiness comes from inner peace. Material suffering doesn’t kill conjugal life. It’s the drying up of the soul that brings about rupture and ruin.

— The godfather is an out-and-out liar. Misery is the execution post of love.

… to acknowledge your duties to society, to the children you’ll have to raise. For these things, fidelity is the key element …

— You think she can have kids?

— She’s already well past her prime.

— A real tacky woman. Bitter and unripe.

— For a long time, she was the favorite mistress of a top customs employee who let her order her goods without paying any import tax.

— A real womanizer.

… to affirm, without risk of being contradicted, along with the eminent sociologist Frédéric Le Play, that the family is a social unit of the greatest importance. My dear godchildren, the commitment you’ve just made belongs to the purest humanist tradition. Christian Humanism, as defined by Saint Augustine in his remarkable work The City of God . If you understand that …

— He’s boring us stiff with this endless funeral oration.

— It stinks of bad medicine and rotten fish.

— I’m tired of his verbal diarrhea.

— I’m thirsty. I’m hungry.

— My feet are killing me.

Impatience is written on everyone’s face. People inhale the aroma from the champagne glasses. Standing, the guests keep shifting their weight. The neighborhood dogs bark incessantly. The waitresses and the kid who chops the ice bicker in the kitchen. And when, in the midst of some flight of lyricism crafted three months earlier especially for the end of his toast, the godfather invites all in attendance to empty their glasses in celebration of the newlyweds, a sigh of relief seems to escape from every chest, in a unanimous rush to do so.

Then the godmother, inviting the guests to the decorated tables, decides to take the floor, offering in turn some words of thanks. The majority of the guests stay up in front, some put the weight on their left foot, others on their right. Ready to go. In a likely race to the buffet. A frightening marathon of aloufas — so many greedy dogs — ready to pounce on the booty. Raynand already has his eyes fixed on an enormous pink cake. Strange swaying of torsos tilted forward for a final assault. Curious momentum of racers waiting for the starting whistle to blow. Jostling of elbows on a makeshift track where the finish line whets the appetite. Mouths water. With the godmother’s final words, a powerful cyclone of open hands comes down on the decorated tables, mercilessly and neatly razed by hundreds of greedy fingers.