Franketienne - Ready to Burst

In our neighborhood, Bel Air, there lived an Italian named Papito, a deserter from Mussolini’s army. Taking advantage of the black market, he’d been able to make some money selling soap made out of guaiacum wood. On Sundays, he’d round up all the kids in the neighborhood and take them to the cinema. Later on, suspected of having tried to introduce us to the world of alcohol, cigarettes, and pederasty, he was more or less cast out of the community. At the end of the war, called to return to his country, he preferred to put a rope around his neck instead. After breaking down the front door of his house, the police found him hung on a beam, his eyes bulging, his face swollen with black blood. The neighborhood was completely shaken up, just like when Lescot first declared war on the Axis Powers at that time .

And I’m not sure why, but today these two facts are permanently linked in my memory: Lescot’s unthinking bravado and the suicide by hanging of Papito the Italian .

There are three hundred of them. Four hundred fifty. Eight hundred. Close to a thousand. In the corridors. In the hold. On the bridge. They’re young. Old. Sad. Pensive. Taciturn. Chatty. They’re there. Piled on the ship like so many pieces of damaged merchandise. A scrap heap of a boat chartered by the Bahamian governor to repatriate the mass of Haitian nationals living illegally in the various islands of the Bahamas. The wind blows strong. The waves break ferociously against the port side of the boat. Some of the refugees stacked on the bridge look out, at once nonchalant and livid, as the lights of Nassau fade little by little. It’s seven thirty in the evening. The same situation. The same conditions. The same troubles. The same despair. An immense wandering heart. A misery without moorings.

They’d spent a month, two months, four months in the English prisons of the Bahamas before being stockpiled here, on this old ship headed for Haiti. No one knows exactly. A truly loathsome trip home. A backpedaling that no one had the slightest desire to make. Having come to these islands with a trunkload of hopes, they were headed back home today against their will. Hearts ripped apart in fear of what lay ahead. Hangdog souls. Suffice it to say, these travelers weren’t at all happy to be seeing their homeland again. A few of them, slumped in a corner, showed absolutely no sign of life. Others took little steps to stretch their legs. There were those who spoke. Some under their breath. Some with voices raised. But all their secrets, all their accusations, all their mutterings, the wind, the uneven sea, the rolling of the ship, together formed a strange symphony of desolation. Drama of ultimate despair. Tragedy intensified by the bitterness of the women’s sorrowful voices. A heartrending panting that reached up to the veiled backdrop of the sky.

— What can possibly await me there? The infernal welcome of atrocious suffering. Unbearable unemployment. Intolerable privations. And prostitution.

— I’ve lived thirty years of tribulations. That’s why I seem so worn-out for someone who’s only thirty-eight years old. I’m sure that, looking at me, you’d take me for fifty.

— In my whole life as a perfectly fit man, I don’t believe I’ve worked more than thirteen months … as a carpenter in the Artibonite Valley. Ever since, walking day and night, looking everywhere for work, all my sap has been drained. Now I’m reduced to the dregs. No job. No profession. It would be one thing if I hadn’t been looking … But still …

— I who thought myself brave enough to move mountains, who had the drive to take over the world! What have I become? A loser. A useless limb. A good-for-nothing wanderer. A vestigial organ.

— My infirm mother has no one but me to count on. Once upon a time she sewed, did laundry, ironed for people in the neighborhood. On Césars Street. But for a while now there’s been no work. She’s rotting away in her run-down cottage. In these hard times, everyone’s doing his own sewing, laundry, ironing. In coming to Nassau I thought I’d be able to help her out and even get her old house fixed up. She’ll never survive this. No question, she’s simply going to die …

— Those days, nightlife didn’t exist in Port-au-Prince. Everything was dead. From what I’ve heard, nothing has changed. The slump is still going. The cafés are moving in slow motion. Business is at a standstill. One good day … four bad days. The worst thing about it is that the Dominican prostitutes have taken over the best bars. Without the slightest effort they’re replacing the Haitian prostitutes. Full of prejudice, the clients prefer those Spanish chicks for their thick, long tresses and their coffee-and-cream complexions. These foreigners are well paid. Sometimes up to thirty dollars a blow job. And to think, some of them are no better than mango leaves … Unequal combat where the black woman has her own brothers fighting against her. Haitian men are seriously messed up!

— There are times when you don’t even have enough money to pay for food and rent. In the end, what more could I do — aside from be completely discouraged? Accept failure. Hunger. Death. What kills me now is that I have to go back without a cent. Shame on my grimy face.

— I left Môle Saint-Nicolas stowed away in the hold of a ship. Hidden among hundreds of sacks of rice and bunches of bananas. Just a year ago. Thanks to the help of a member of the ship’s crew to whom I’d promised eighty dollars, I was able to get around the vigilance of the captain. Moreover, I’d have offered my very life to pay for the trip if necessary. Look at the ropey, bulging veins wrapping around my arms, my hardened hands, my fingers streaked with grooves and calluses. They’ve been useless, you know. I’ve wanted so badly to work. To be able to come home at night, muscles aching. To be able to say, pleased with myself, that I’d earned my daily bread by the sweat of my brow. To experience the satisfaction of having accomplished my task as a good father to my family. I had none of that … All that was left for me was begging. Theft. Pederasty. Corruption. Prostitution. My dignity sorely tested, I couldn’t go on. I was at the end of my rope. Undone by idleness …

— All I have to do is start thinking, insofar as I can even manage that, and I start wishing for death. What’s waiting for me … an ordeal without end. I’m already shaking. Unemployment. Hunger. Fear. Anguish. Nightmare from which there’s no awakening. Paralysis of the tongue. Stiffening of the limbs. All that kills without mercy. And the rest of the footage for this film isn’t very hard to imagine … Walking mummies. Individuals reduced to children. Zombies kept in line with whacks of a cudgel. Oh yes, zombies! We’ve all become zombies.

— What I’ve endured to make it here! I have no words to describe it …

— You’ve got to be kidding me! It tears me up inside to have to remember my own situation. And my memory has been bleeding during this whole relentless ordeal. We’ll call it purgatory, if it’s God’s stick that’s beating me — the horrors of hell, if it’s the evil of men! The journey we went through, no way I’d ever have believed something like that possible … Nine of us had paid one hundred and fifty dollars up front to the owner of the bathtub that was meant to bring us to Nassau. A clandestine voyage for which we had to take every precaution, exercise maximum discretion. Sails flapping, we’d left the shores of Gonaïves one Tuesday at dawn. The day went by without incident. In the afternoon, we came upon a big, oblong boulder, shaped like a big loaf of black bread, a few scrawny mangrove plants growing on its surface. The captain made clear that we were to get out there and wait for him for half an hour at most. To give him some time to contact his associate, he explained, a smuggler who usually assisted him in these sorts of schemes. In any case, he hastened to add persuasively, “My friend isn’t far from here; he lives in the area, on one of these little islands; he’s an experienced seaman; he knows his way around better than I do.” And so we peacefully disembarked to wait for him. An hour went by, followed by several others. The bathtub was taking a long time to come back. Our eyes searched the darkness. Our voices trembled with fear. In spite of the cold and the humidity, we were resigned to spending the night on the boulder. Huddled together on top of one another in a compact mass. In a common anguish. With no cover. Suddenly, since we weren’t sleeping, the sound of steps, like the rustling of dry leaves, caught our attention. We got up cautiously, guessing at what it could be. When we used our lighters, the horror of a bloodcurdling spectacle presented itself before us. A terrifying army of crabs had already invaded the entire surface of the boulder. Enormous, bulging, greenish crabs. Despite our screams, the noises we made to scare them, we were barely able to chase them away. Unbelievably, their numbers kept increasing. Incalculable hordes. They grasped at our pant legs. Scratched. Bit. I felt my legs swelling from their stings, bites, and scratches. We continued to battle them. But each time we managed to crush a few of them, more aggressive successors immediately launched an attack. A horrifying crunching of antennas, legs, blistering mouths. In the end, confusion took hold. Besieged. Disheartened. Panic-stricken. We jumped into the sea. Then, to top it all off, only five of us knew how to swim. We couldn’t save the others, weak as we were, depressed, and fearful that the worst would happen to us too. After more than three exhausting hours of swimming and painful paddling through the waves, we were rescued — half-dead — by a patrolling lifeboat. We were given first aid. A week later, still suffering from shock, I found myself in a dark room with only a basement window providing air. To my great astonishment, I’d been shut away in a Nassau prison where I was to await my imminent repatriation to my home country …