Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

The mayor sends his cousin to Jérémie straightaway with the money, grateful that he has a friend, and Johel tells the mayor that he’s arranged everything. He’s going to send his mechanic out with the motorcycle the next day. Only the next day, the mechanic never shows. Not the day after that either.

The way the judge tells it later, Fanfan gets to calling multiple times every day. Fanfan’s got to thinking about that motorcycle so much he’s not thinking no more. Fanfan so mad, he could eat a chili pepper and shit flames.

Fanfan’s thinking that with a motorcycle like that, no more walking in the mountains, embarrassing himself like that. Now he can head up into the hills, visit his ladies, visit his kids in dignity. Fanfan is thinking that the development of his commune just starts with a motorcycle. You can’t be donating a motorcycle if you’re not donating money for petrol, maintenance.

He calls the judge up, says, “Where’s my motorcycle?”

Judge says, “That motorcycle, it’s got a problem with the tires.”

Only way a beautiful bike like that got a problem with the tires, somebody been riding it. Mayor Fanfan’s not dumb. Fanfan figures only person riding that motorcycle is the judge.

The judge is making excuses.

The judge is telling the mayor that the tires are okay now, but his mechanic has a fever, motorcycle just sitting in the judge’s house, waiting for the fever to break.

The next day the judge is telling the mayor that the bike has no gas, and there’s a gas shortage in Jérémie, no way to fill it up.

How much more I got to suffer , thinks Fanfan.

Mayor Fanfan looks on his Facebook and sees a photograph of Johel Célestin riding high and proud on a motorbike. Johel Célestin don’t even look like he know how to ride that bike, how you got to sit low and nice.

* * *

The story germinates, an idea blossoms. The idea gets tossed back and forth, those two guys on those long, bad roads, bouncing and jostling — they’ve already talked pussy and the four-seam fastball and love powder and pussy again, considered the effects of love powder on pussy — and the one guy says to the other, “You know, brother, I was serious what I was saying the other day. We could do this thing, we could get it done. Get that road built.”

And the other guy says, “Huh.”

Soon the judge was hearing the same thing everywhere, from ordinary people. His neighbor comes over for rum sours and says, You should be senator, Judge. Get that road built.

Huh.

The pharmacist sells him some ibuprofen for his headaches and says, Judge, this country wouldn’t be the way it was, men like you were in charge. We’d get this done.

* * *

Everywhere Mayor Fanfan goes, he’s hearing laughter. He figures folks laughing at him on account of him still driving the Camel while the other mayors be cruising. He’s out near the Protestant church, and he hears a little boy giggling. Mayor Fanfan gets down from the Camel, takes the belt right out of his pants, and teaches that boy that no one laughs at legal authority. Then one of his ladies asks Mayor Fanfan just why his face is so sour, whether he shoved a lemon up his ass. He talks; then she says, “Fanfan, you so angry about the motorcycle, you go get it. Be a man.”

Mayor Fanfan starts feeling angry. Calls the judge in the dead of night. Judge wakes himself up and says, “Listen, Fanfan, you want the bike so bad, come and get it yourself.”

Mayor Fanfan says he will.

Not that night but the next, Mayor Fanfan gets to drinking clairin infused with ginger. That kind of brew makes a mild man headstrong, and a headstrong man wild. What Mayor Fanfan starts thinking is how good it’s going to feel driving his new motorcycle back to Les Irois, his people seeing what kind of mayor they got for themselves. How nobody be laughing then, they be seeing him riding low and nice on the blan ’s motorbike.

That’s how it happened that Maximilien “Fanfan” Dorsainville presented himself at Johel Célestin’s very home at three in the morning, the judge saying, “Let’s go get that motorcycle now, Fanfan.” The judge and Fanfan driving right down to the commissariat together. And even in jail Mayor Fanfan was telling the other prisoners that Johel Célestin stole his damn motorcycle.

* * *

Then the judge starts thinking it over at night, when he’s alone and he’s sitting out on the deck nursing a whiskey and listening to Coltrane. Johel thinks of what Ogoun told him: Trees will come across mountains and fish will live on land. He thinks of big trucks laden with fruit, of flatbeds filled with mangoes, bananas, breadfruit, avocados, and papayas; he thinks of the fishermen putting their redfish, mahimahi, tuna, and bonito on ice.

The judge starts wondering whether he could win the election. That’s what he asks Terry the next day. They’re sitting out at that little restaurant at Anse du Clerc, taking a break from the roads and the heat, celebrating the arrest of Mayor Fanfan.

Terry says, “Honestly? You know what I think? I think you and I got a destiny. I think of all the things that brought us here, all the crazy luck and weird chances, and I don’t think we’re just out here by accident.”

* * *

A couple of weeks after the arrest of Mayor Fanfan, a Haitian lawyer presented himself at Mission HQ. He represented Toto Dorsemilus, and he said that a member of the Mission had severely violated the rights of his client.

The lawyer for Toto Dorsemilus claimed that his client had been returning to his home from an evening at a Jérémie nightclub when a paralyzing electrical shock caused him to tumble from his motorcycle. The fall caused skin abrasions of the forearms and face. Toto Dorsemilus, lying on the ground, was shocked multiple times. He was then beaten unconscious with a heavy stick, the blows concentrated on his legs, arms, and abdomen. He had lost multiple teeth in the beating. His pants were then pulled down around his knees, and the toothbrush on which his client habitually chewed had been forcibly inserted into his anus. A blow from a boot had caused the toothbrush to puncture his bowel.

Toto Dorsemilus claimed to recognize his assailant as the “blan” who had been present at his arrest all those months ago.

The case was referred to the Special Investigations Bureau of the Mission for further investigation. The SIB quickly discovered that Terry White was checked in on the night of the alleged assault to a Port-au-Prince hotel, where he had been traveling with Johel Célestin to attend a judicial conference. Mission travel logs confirmed travel to Port-au-Prince the day before the assault. Investigators from the SIB spoke with Judge Célestin, who confirmed that he had dined with Terry on the evening of the alleged assault. No physical evidence linked Terry White to the assault, and although Toto Dorsemilus insisted that Terry White was his assailant, he failed to pick out Terry White in a photo array.

The investigators from SIB sent the dossier to the review board with a recommendation that no further action be taken, owing to insufficient proof of the assailant’s identity. All members of the Mission enjoy complete immunity from local prosecution under the Status of Forces Agreement signed by both the United Nations and the government of Haiti, and the case was dropped.

I met Toussaint Legrand just a few days after I came to Haiti. I was walking to the beach, about a mile from the center of town, and all along the way, little voices shouted, “Blan!” I waved and dispensed casual smiles and received in reply giggles, grins, and suspicious stares. The yellow sun cast sharp, sparkling shadows on the white dirt road. It was cockfighting day, and the men carried roosters, the birds’ heads stuffed into socks. The way it works, a rooster can’t see, he thinks everything’s copacetic: soon as the sock comes off, first thing he sees is some other damn rooster there, disrespecting him.