Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

Not that there was much campaigning yet to do — the election was still months away. The judge hadn’t even gotten himself on the ballot yet. So in the absence of actual activity, there was an almost nonstop evening party, where the judge’s friends, disciples, acolytes, and acquaintances presented themselves at dusk for cocktails.

Jérémie was a small town, and the hours could stretch out. So it was nice to have a little social club where in the evenings we could repair for drinks. There was usually music on the stereo — Haitian Compas, Dominican merengue, or reggae. It all depended on who was closest to the stereo at a given time. Sometimes my wife would come and we would dance. Somebody would bring in a huge pot of rice and another huge pot of beans and plates of deep-fried plantains. The judge would be in shirtsleeves, collar loosened, sitting on the edge of his desk, talking about whatever was on his mind: some recent Supreme Court decision up in the States, his experience as a champion speller, the advantages of a road. He often wore a white Greek maritime captain’s hat perched on his large head — I have no idea where it came from, but it suited him in a kind of lighthearted, self-mocking way. Terry was in charge of the blender, mixing up drinks and pouring them with a bartender’s flair into the outstretched cups. (And it was thanks to Kay that there was a refrigerator that was cold and full of beer and ice…) It was the kind of place where people would bring a friend of a friend, just to talk politics and get a drink; it got so bad after a while that Terry had Toussaint hire two friends to serve as security guards to make sure no one walked off with the judge’s laptop.

The judge called all of this “holding a meeting.”

I found it strange to see Terry and Kay together. One evening I watched them dance the bachata . Both of them were light on their feet, with a good sense of rhythm, and to see their glowing, sweaty faces, you would have thought they were the most contented of couples. She was wearing a pretty sundress, and his hand lay authoritatively across her lower back, fingers splayed wide. Then he whispered something in her ear that made her laugh and blush.

But just that afternoon Terry had asked me if I had gone to see Nadia yet.

“I don’t want to get involved,” I said. “Kay’s my friend too.”

“Just tell me she’s okay. That’s all I have to know,” Terry said.

“And if she’s just fine?”

“Life goes on,” he said.

I was watching Terry and Kay dance and thinking about the mystery that is a man and a woman when I felt the heavy weight of the judge’s hand on my shoulder. I startled slightly at the unexpected touch.

“Easy now,” the judge said.

The smile on his face was so sincere — seeing me, his smile said, was the latest but certainly not the least significant in the string of happy moments and coincidences that made up an altogether happy life — that I was tempted for a moment to hug him. I enjoyed the smell of his aftershave.

“So you’re doing it after all,” I said.

The judge sipped from his beer. He was dressed as casually as I had ever seen him, in an immaculately pressed white shirt, open at the collar and rolled halfway up his chubby forearms.

“I took a long look in the mirror.”

“What did you see?”

“A lot of lines. Gray hair. Time passing.”

“A senatorial look, sort of.”

Through the open doors of the campaign HQ there was the Place Dumas. Citizens had come to enjoy the warm night air, playing dominoes and drinking rum. Terry dipped Kay and she giggled. Toussaint was talking to one of the judge’s prettier female students. “That night at the hospital, I made a promise to God,” the judge said. “I promised God when they were lifting up those bodies that if He gave that child back to his mother, I would do the right thing. I told God that He had to give me a sign.”

“I don’t know if you’re contractually obliged to keep that promise.”

His face settled into thoughtfulness. “There was offer and acceptance,” he said. “Due consideration. Not sure about the precedents. Probably a conflict of interest with the magistrate, but it’s not going to be easy to change venue. I’ll keep my side of the bargain.”

“How’s Nadia taking the decision?”

“She’s barely spoken to me since I told her.”

“And you’re still doing it?” I asked. “I wouldn’t have the balls.”

He started to chuckle, but the smile didn’t get past the corner of his lips. He nodded very slowly, his big chin merging into the wide neck. Then in his pleasant baritone he began to recite:

Ah, Love! could you and I with Fate conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire!

Would not we shatter it to bits — and then

Remold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire.

I told the judge that I was writing a piece about deportees. They were a distinct subculture in Haitian life: formed on the island, finished in the States, and then sent back to Haiti, sometimes penniless, sometimes not, as a result of some sin or failing after decades abroad. The stories of deportees were inevitably fascinating. The judge called Nadia on the spot, and she agreed to see me the next day at four.

* * *

When I saw her the next day on the sun-dappled terrace of the judge’s small house, I wondered how I could ever have thought that this was anything but a beautiful woman. She wore a white skirt and an apple-green blouse, a silver scarf wrapped tightly around her head. The ensemble lent her an air of faraway glamour, as if she had been transplanted that afternoon to Jérémie from the chicest café of Dakar or Abidjan. I had not noticed before how graceful she was. This was the first time I was alone with her, the first time she gave me her full attention. Her sea-colored eyes glittered.

“I’m happy to be here,” I said.

When a man describes a woman’s smile as “enigmatic,” it generally means only one thing: he is wondering what she thinks of him . Nadia now smiled enigmatically.

My notebook rested on the table between us. Nadia picked it up and began to thumb through it. From time to time I had attempted pen-and-ink sketches of interesting places in the Grand’Anse. “That’s Dame Marie,” I said.

“Very nice.”

Then she looked at sketches of the beach at Anse d’Azur and the fish market at Abricots and the hot springs near Sources Chaudes. Over her shoulder I could see the judge’s boxer shorts hanging on the laundry line, baggy, shapeless things, like hopelessness incarnated in an undergarment. They inspired me to say, “Terry asked me to come. He’s hurting something terrible.”

* * *

From time to time over the last five years (Nadia told me, her voice very low and soft, her remarkable eyes glancing at mine or resting on the horizon where the voiliers dipped and glided on the breeze) she had sung, when the mood struck her, with a local band. Galaxy was not a very good band, but they had a steady diet of gigs at nightclubs, feasts of patronal saints, political rallies, and private parties. For Nadia, having sung for years with a top East Coast Compas band like Erzulie L’Amour, Galaxy was just an excuse to get out of the house and onstage and let a little life back into her veins.

Nadia’s participation in Galaxy had produced a dozen fights or more with Johel. Perhaps because he couldn’t even carry a tune — Nadia winced when he tried to sing “Happy Birthday”—he couldn’t imagine the shared intimacy of the stage. Perhaps the look of transfixed passion on Nadia’s face as she sang disturbed him: that face, he thought, should be his alone. But the story he told her was that the back roads of the Grand’Anse were too dangerous for her to travel alone. Still, in five years, nothing had happened, if you didn’t count a few flat tires, until the incident in Dame Marie.