Franketienne - Ready to Burst

Once again, Paulin stops speaking, interrupted by the frenzied bravos of the overexcited crowd. Elbowing his way forward, Raynand gets a lot closer to the low wall where the speaker is standing. He screams Paulin’s name at the top of his lungs, trying to be heard over the general enthusiasm. The patriotic fervor swollen with the stormy din of an indignant, highly charged crowd.

… People of Latin America, Asia, Africa, of the Indian Ocean, the time has come to urge you to combine your efforts to slice off the tentacles that pitilessly suck you dry. The time has come to track the predators skillfully hiding behind the angelic masks of philanthropy. In this regard, it’s urgent …

At this precise moment, the crowd is thrown into disorder by some violent, unexpected movement. What follows is an indescribable brawl. The protesters disperse in complete panic. The invaders, pitchfork-wielding monsters, knock down the participants, the militant activists, the bystanders, and the passersby. Paulin is arrested and savagely beaten. His head wounded, he bleeds profusely. His face swollen, he hurls abuse at his torturers as they strike him with ferocious rage. Raynand tries desperately to get closer to Paulin. Suddenly, he, too, is seized brutally in the sharp claws of two of the monstrous creatures. He struggles courageously. But the deep bites and scratches of the horrifying beasts soon overcome his physical resistance. As he’s being manhandled, forced to walk, he looks around for his friend Paulin while screaming, like a madman, with a hoarse voice:

— Paulin! Paulin! I’ve found a title for your novel. The perfect title for your novel.

But Paulin, piled into a van, doesn’t hear his friend. The evil wind that’s blowing that day greedily swallows up Raynand’s cries, mixing them with the yelps of some angry dogs nearby.

Leave your lamp lit, well in advance of the eclipse of the dying star. The lamp’s flame flickers. What treacherous love does it still offer to amnesic butterflies?

Tongue of flame, the wick lights a message much older than the lamp. Let’s strip bare the symbol of the light! And from its flesh flows the blood of living things. The flesh is the burning place of all speech; outside it, there is nothing but noise and cold winds. Words that lead nowhere — that inspire neither running nor walking — amount to no more than a leprotic tongue in a useless mouth. Just as poetry is neither scribbling on paper nor drug in the night. It’s the shortest path of distraction from the light, the steepest of sloping lines .

Eyes dilated, nostrils flared, ears cocked, pools of light, odors, sounds. Who, then, could possibly speak of incommunicability faced with the persistence of windows opened on to infinity? Depending on the situation, we’ll have to use pity or rigor, sympathy or loathing. It’s a question of sanctioning the journeyman’s guild of rumor and silence. The flames of paradox. Thus will no weapon, no force pull free the cement that binds hands linked in such love .

Rain on spindly fingers, chatty seamstress. The agitated sea deploys its rows of foam-headed horses on the crest of the waves. The clouds unfurl in a blast of blood. There’s where our alliance truly begins. Possessed by all the gods and the loas, I want infinite spaces for my insane gestures, on the scale of my mad horse’s blood .

Water only knows how to slither along the belly of the earth. Nourishment and blood of warriors, it stands tall in the trunks of trees. Soldiers off to war in the mists of time! Heroes disappeared while drilling in the inexhaustible mines of milky auroras! Brave women dead for love or bread for your children! Caonabo, Anacaona, Boukman, Dessalines, Charlemagne Péralte, when will the star-fruit tree return? Your descendants march in the streets of Port-au-Prince, Mexico, Havana, Dakar, Johannesburg, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, New York, Montreal, Paris … Come back to see your Vietnamese children hold out bloody palms while being bombed with napalm .

Enslaved people! Destroy the screen that blocks your view! And you’ll understand better. Rebellious people! May the word be free and swollen with light! May the mouth keep resisting the muzzle! You’ll be able to give your understanding. But don’t take off your shields. Don’t accept any form of servitude. Don’t sell your soul any longer. Propose and dispose at the same time. If need be, rest yourselves! But never put down your weapons!

Break the chains!

Tear down the barriers!

Unfasten the muzzles!

Now raise your vertical voices high above the flatness of the day!

Ten days. It’s been exactly ten days. Raynand is bored in the vast courtyard of a camp that the major general of the occupying forces has transformed into a jail so as to accommodate the high number of detainees. The perfume of vetiver, regional flower, the outline of the peak of La Selle hill, the smell of the sea and the intermittent sound of the waves — all of this put together tells Raynand that the prison must not be far from the Carrefour highway. Maybe in Bizoton, he thinks.

The silence of the night allows him to follow the buzzing of motors. Melancholic progression of trucks coming from far away. They pass right in front of the camp. Then they continue on their way. Raynand pictures the sound mounting and fading along a parabolic curve whose apex corresponds to the very highest volume. Well practiced in this acoustical game, he manages to discern the direction of the cars. At times, the wind brings a faraway melody to his ears, a bit of jazz music in the shape of clear blue waves, smooth bursts. And quite often, in some turbulent interior voyage, he’s tempted to build a veritable musical architecture with imaginary notes that might harmonize with all the rest.

Little by little, his captivity allows him to discover possibilities in himself he hadn’t known before. He knows himself better and better. Recognizes himself. Birth of the self to the self, which situates man with respect to the outside world, the subject with respect to the object. A meticulous prospecting of the unexplored mazes of his existence. Bitterly, he uncovers resources within himself that have never been used, left piled up in his interior caverns. Riches tucked away in deep cavities. So many years lost … he thinks sadly. I’ve been useless … I’ve been useless … never really knowing other people or myself. Useless. Vainly, I looked under my own skin. I didn’t even know how to rummage through my own veins, or how to find, along the pathways of my blood, the fabulous treasures of a heart too patient to have beaten for nothing. Today a captive, I am born to the infinite liberty of life; and I feel capable of just about anything. Raynand thinks for a long time and tells himself that on the other side of those bars stands a porthole that opens onto a better view of himself.

Obsessed by the idea of seeing Paulin, he feels greatly disappointed by the fact that his friend isn’t locked away in the same prison along with him. Despite more than a week in the camp, he’s only spoken to a small group of four prisoners, two of whom stand out: an older, serene-looking man named Ganord and a young athlete whose muscles ripple under a filthy sweater whenever he moves his arms. Raynand liked them from the beginning and enjoyed their company. They spoke often. Too often, even. Attracting the attention of the guards, horned monsters with chewed-up lips, pointy teeth, and contorted limbs.

— They’re so disgusting.

— Lower your voice. They’re watching us.