Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

The procedure that followed was lengthy, and when a month later there was still no trace of Nadia, when his heart was still like abraded flesh, Johel called Monsieur Etienne on the phone to complain. Patience, the older man advised, patience. There exists the time of men and the time of spirit: there are no clocks or calendars in the celestial realm.

* * *

The powerful beings who had taken possession of Johel’s amorous dossier required a full year to act. Then she called. She was in jail in Dade County. She had been arrested together with Ti Pierre and two other members of the band as they went up north from Miami; dogs smelled the cocaine in the trunk. This was magic surely of the most powerful order. How many times had the band driven north with no problems whatsoever? How many dogs had sniffed the car and smelled nothing?

What Johel thought on his way down to Miami was this. He thought he’d send her back to Haiti and he’d be free. For months, he had dreamed about her every night, rolling over in his sleep and moaning with sorrow and pain — and then the dreams had stopped. He’d started dating: nice women, professional women, women who understood the kind of life a man like Johel needed. Once, he’d even gone on vacation with a lady. The two of them went to Paris, and for five days Johel didn’t think once of Nadia or her green eyes, just thought how nice it was to be in Paris, eating fine French food and seeing the museums. A friend told him that Jennifer McCall was engaged, and he sent her a card, wishing her all the happiness in the world. She wrote back, graciously wishing him the same.

Then, when he saw Nadia in the visitors’ room in a prison jumpsuit, he knew he was lost to her forever. He knew that nothing mattered more to him than those eyes. He felt the magic with which she had ensnared him throb in his veins. Johel saw her delicate, almost childlike face and he knew that some prison spell would simply kill her: one day she would close her eyes and her soul would slip away. Johel remembered stories of the days when Haitians were slaves. There was a tribe from Guinée — his mother had told him, her mother having told her, stories like this one handed down through the Haitian generations — who when the chains were locked on, simply died. A sob, a moan, and then the overseer found the bodies of these strong men and lithe women in the cane fields. That was in Nadia’s blood — and it was in his blood too.

When she saw Johel, she did not cry. Her restless green eyes roamed across his swollen face. He knew that she had no one in the world but him. So he called a man whose business card read “Criminal Law” and wrote a check, and then he waited. The law is like this: there is the sea, and there are currents in the sea, and only an expert sailor knows the deep currents where the real force and energy of the sea dominate. Only an expert sailor knows how to navigate the hidden shoals and reefs of the law, knows how to find safe harbor even in a vicious storm. The man with the business card made a deal. In exchange for her cooperation and on account of her youth, she will be deported. Nothing else.

When Johel told her this, she didn’t understand. Then she did, and now, for the first time, she began to cry. She had not cried when the police stopped her and Ti Pierre; she had not cried when her cousin called from Haiti the year before and she learned that her mother, the lady who had sold her across the waters, was dead. Nothing brought the water to her eyes until she learned that Johel was sending her back to Haiti. For her, Haiti’s the prison: the ocean is a wall, the hills are bars, the guards are everywhere. And she will be alone. Nothing frightens her more. Nowhere is life harder than her Haiti, not even here in some Florida prison. She looks at Johel and sees in his smile the cruelest betrayal.

She looked at Johel and saw that he understood nothing at all.

And so she sat in the chair across from Johel and cried until Johel did understand. Then he didn’t think: he made the most important decision of his life as naturally as breathing.

The others drifted off, one by one or two by two, until by the end of the evening it was just us Jérémie folk at the table: Terry and Kay, Johel and Nadia, and me. We were like members of some secret society, bound together by geography, intrigue, gossip, and isolation. It felt natural that we would finish the evening just the five of us.

I don’t know what prompted me to ask Johel if he was still interested in running for the Haitian Sénat. “No,” he said. “That’s not right for me.”

“So what made you change your mind?”

The judge reached out for his wife’s hand. “I guess I just don’t want to shake all those hands.”

“Bullshit,” Terry said. “You just pussied out.”

“Meow,” said the judge.

Kay laughed.

Terry said, “We got to do this thing, Johel. Just for the road. That’s all I’m saying. Just for the road.”

“You seemed pretty set on the idea that day at Anse du Clerc,” I said.

“Rum and sun,” he said. “Just rum and sun, messing with my brain.”

“I know that story,” Kay said. “There was this time in college—”

“Like a couple of kings,” Terry interrupted. “One day — one fine day — we’ll drive down that road and we’ll be like a couple of kings. Then when you and me — when we’ve got just about six marbles together rolling around upstairs, when we’re sitting in the nursing home and the nurses are changing our shitty-ass diapers, I’ll look at you and you’ll look at me, and we’ll just grin. Because we got that road built.”

Johel inhaled, started to say something, then stopped. His eyes glanced down at his wife’s hand. She was trembling very slightly, as if feverish.

Kay said, “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“This is no game ,” Nadia said.

“Of course not, of course it’s not a game,” Kay said.

“For you this all some funny game. This some funny game you play, and if you win, you feel nice in your heart, and if you lose, you say, ‘Too bad.’ But you don’t know Haiti. Haiti is no funny game .”

Johel said something to Nadia in Creole. His voice was too soft for me to understand. She shook her head.

“She’s tired,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”

Kay said, “Don’t talk about her like she’s not even here, Johel. If she’s tired, she’ll say she’s tired.”

“Kay—,” Terry said.

“Kay what ? Am I too tired also? Is that what you want to say?”

“Maybe we’re all a little tired,” I said. “I know I am.”

“Amen,” the judge said.

Terry said, “Listen. This is a decision, obviously this is a decision you guys got to make by yourselves. But I want to say one thing.”

“You—,” Nadia said.

“Just listen to me.”

“Where we gonna go now?” she said. “You tell me where. Where I gonna go now?”

“Just listen to me.”

“We all listen, listen, listen you. We don’t want to listen you no more.”

“Let him talk,” Johel said.

“The only place we go now is dead,” she said.

Terry ran his fingers through his hair. He said, “If this is about security, I will be with Johel every step of the way. Just listen to me. Haiti’s no game, but I’m not playing. Kay, you tell her — you tell Nadia that when I make a promise, I keep it. And I’m promising Nadia right here and now, win or lose, that she’s going to be just fine.”

“That’s true,” Kay said. “Nadia, you should know that. What Terry is saying is true.”

“What I’m saying is you either shit or you get off the pot,” Terry said. “Don’t just sit there squeezing.”