Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

When she arrived at Maxim’s house, it was clear straightaway on what kind of errand she had come. The Macoutes stood under the spreading mango tree, their sunglasses, worn even at night, reflecting the torches they carried.

Maxim was in his middle twenties, but in such a moment it was nevertheless the family matriarch, Evelyne Bayard, who took command. (Maxim’s father had been dead now almost three years.) She said, “Sanette Balmir, what do you want with us?”

“How are your roses this year, Evelyne?” asked Sanette Balmir.

“Healthy and beautiful. If you or these gentlemen have some happy occasion, I’ll be pleased to clip you a dozen.”

“A dozen will not be enough.” Sanette Balmir handed a machete to Maxim. “Boy, go and clip me as many flowers as you can carry.”

Maxim took the knife, warm still from the fat woman’s hand. He trembled as he walked toward the rosebushes, accompanied by another of the Macoutes, a young man his own age, Dieuseul Bontemps, someone he had known, in the way of small towns, since earliest childhood. They had tangled numerous times on the soccer pitch. Now Dieuseul refused to meet Maxim’s eyes, an evasion that frightened Maxim more than a glare of outright hatred. Maxim gripped the machete harder — but he knew that his mother and sisters were alone with Sanette Balmir. He would not risk upsetting her further.

It took Maxim twenty minutes to cut down an entire season of his mother’s roses. His hands and arms were bleeding from the thorns as he carried the stems bare-handed. Then he made his way back up the hill, where Sanette Balmir, the Macoutes, and Maxim’s family stood where he had left them. Sanette walked over to Maxim’s mother, and with a stroke of her machete cut open the older woman’s dress. Then she cut off her underwear, not caring whether she sliced open Evelyne Bayard in the process. Evelyne Bayard stood naked in front of her family and her attackers, a film of red sliding across her breasts. Groaning loudly, Sanette began to massage the blood into the older woman’s skin. Mosquitoes attracted by the smell of blood began to swarm.

The Bayards were taken on foot to the commissariat, walking through the streets where they had strolled every day of their lives. No one ran to their aid. No one cried that generations of Bayards had been their friends, benefactors, and neighbors for a hundred years or more. They felt eyes on them from behind every window and door. Maxim’s sisters began to cry. It was Evelyne Bayard who silenced them, hissing sharply through her teeth. They were kept in the prison for almost half a day, united in their cell with the large Sansaricq clan and the Guilbauds. Half the daughters in the room had succumbed at one time or another to Maxim’s touch. Now the women stood naked and shook in fear.

The three families — the first of what would eventually be a massacre that consumed the entire mulatto community of Jérémie — were taken on the white road that led past the beach at Anse d’Azur to an empty plain near the airport. The Macoutes, displaying rare efficiency, had dug a pit already. The shots came in volleys. Maxim had the presence of mind, when he saw his family crumple, to fall into the pit as well. The bodies of the Sansaricqs fell on the bodies of the Bayards, and the bodies of the Guilbauds fell on the bodies of the Sansaricqs.

Sanette Balmir tossed roses on the open grave.

* * *

His fingertips trembling, Père Samedi crossed himself.

“I came on foot,” said Maxim.

“The Macoutes didn’t see you?” asked Père Samedi.

“They were too drunk by the end of the night to notice. They were too drunk even to bury the dead.”

Père Samedi thought for a moment that he could hear Sanette Balmir’s raucous breathing in the very room itself. He excused himself from the small front room and retired to his bedroom, where he kept a private altar. He dropped to his knees and asked his Lord for guidance. Where did his duty lie? To his friend or to his parishioners? He asked his Lord to give him the courage to decide. When he was done praying, Père Samedi felt certain that the Lord wanted him to tend his flock. Père Samedi thought of his namesake, the great Abraham, obeying the Lord’s injunction to slaughter his beloved Isaac. Père Samedi adjusted his cassock and decided that he would offer his old friend the opportunity to confess his sins. He would prepare for Maxim a decent meal — and then he would ask Maxim to leave his hut and render himself unto Caesar.

Père Samedi stepped back into the small salon . Maxim was seated at the low table, a look on his face of utter confusion. Before there is sorrow or even anger, there is surprise. He looked at Père Samedi as if he had never seen him before. At that moment, recalling the taste of komparet , Père Samedi decided — it was an instinct, not a decision — to abandon the narrow course of his decent and obedient life. He begged the Lord to pardon him, then told Maxim to hide in the back room of the hut before his maid arrived.

When she arrived shortly thereafter, he told the woman, whom he did not entirely trust to keep a secret, that he had hankered all night for a variety of shrimp found chiefly in Dame Marie — a morning’s walk and an afternoon’s return. Grumbling loudly, she left the priest alone in his hut to plot.

That morning, Père Maxim Bayard of Bretagne, dressed in clerical robes, accompanied by Père Samedi, set off in the direction of Port-au-Prince. They traveled in Père Samedi’s beat-up but serviceable old Citroën, on roads that in those days could still convey the traveler to the capital in a matter of hours. At military checkpoints the two priests blessed the soldiers in their work. A Catholic priest in Haiti is still a man of considerable influence, and the soldiers allowed them to pass without incident, all the way to the Dominican frontier, which Maxim Bayard crossed on foot.

Père Samedi’s scheming was not without repercussion, however.

It was the same maid who found the poems in the pockets of the dirty pants that Père Samedi gave her to wash. She had never washed these pants before. Scraps of paper, strange verse — it was Père Samedi who had taught her to read. Now she read the name Maxim Bayard and was horrified. She understood immediately that he had been in the house, that her priest had harbored him. She thought of her babies. Were it to come out that Maxim Bayard had stayed the night in Père Samedi’s hut, who would believe that she didn’t know?

Père Samedi spent the next year in Fort Dimanche, the place where the Doc tortured his enemies before he murdered them. He emerged only thanks to the influence of the Vatican: even the dictator hesitated before shooting a priest. (The Doc had watched his Macoutes torture the young priest, burning his feet with cigarettes and placing electric probes on his genitals, and had developed also a strange and merciful fondness for the young cleric. It did not bother him to let this one go…) The Jesuits found the priest a new position in the Vatican, but it was quite some time before his eyes adjusted from darkness to light and he was able to read again.

* * *

François Duvalier was a man little satisfied with the destruction of his enemies: the Doc believed in sowing their fields with salt. The key to Jérémie’s prosperity had long been direct commerce with the world, exporting coffee, cocoa, and rubber directly from her port on ships serving the Caribbean and Europe. Now Duvalier ordered all international vessels to serve Port-au-Prince and Port-au-Prince alone, and the prosperous town of Jérémie was effectively cut off from the world.

From that moment, the town began to wither. Nothing came in or out but what came on the boat from Port-au-Prince. The great wooden houses went untended as those families not murdered by the regime fled, some to Port-au-Prince, others abroad. The road to Les Cayes, built under the American occupation and so solid in the Sénateur’s youth that a man could travel to Port-au-Prince and return on the same day, was left to deteriorate. Farmers ceased to plant anything that required access to roads or markets, and the most prosperous region of Haiti soon became the territory of subsistence farmers. Forty years later, no trace of the road was left, just massed rocks and crevasses of mud.