Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

“What about her?” I asked.

But Terry had already understood. “Man, have I got to take a crap.”

“I had no idea,” I said, thinking of that flock of children I had seen playing in the priest’s garden. Even if you’re looking, even if it’s all right in front of you, sometimes you don’t see the story. Then you wonder why you’re always so surprised by how the world turns out.

Johel nodded. We didn’t talk. Out at sea, you could see thick clouds and rain, a heavy storm over a small patch of big ocean. But it was sunny where we were.

She was nine. Her mother was taking her to Port-au-Prince. She had a toothache.

Coming in from the airport, just out front of the police commissariat, the first thing you saw was the judge’s face, twelve feet high and fake-smiling. He fake-smiled at the marchandes walking up the coast with baskets of fish on their heads, at the kids in parrot-bright uniforms heading off to school, at the old men rocking in their chairs and admiring the goats. The judge fake-smiled at the UNPOLs dropping off prisoners at the police station, at Balu, the chef de transport, buying beer at Marché Soleil, and at the Uruguayan soldiers heading down to the beach. He fake-smiled at the motorcycle taxi drivers and at the vendors of used American clothing. He fake-smiled at all of Jérémie, his bright, round face reminding every voter of the promise of a new day.

The new billboard was the start of the electoral campaign. Kay told me that the judge had hired a company out of Port-au-Prince to execute the work and had personally approved the heavily photoshopped image that hung there: the man that overlooked the rue Abbé Hué was some twenty pounds lighter than his fleshy reality. He had settled on his campaign emblem: a hawk soaring above two lines that suggested a road. This was Toussaint Legrand’s only successful artistic accomplishment. He had created the image in a single, perfect moment of inspiration. Beneath the judge’s face was written “Célestin: The Road to Prosperity.”

Although the campaign was in its earliest days, I couldn’t imagine that the judge had spent less than ten thousand dollars already and seemed prepared to spend much more. Johel in his own financial affairs was generally parsimonious. I had seen him pass ten infuriating minutes patiently bargaining down the price of a basket of bananas. His salary as a judge was barely more than an honorarium, if the government succeeded in paying him at all; but I understood that he had some family money and savings from his career in corporate law on which he relied, and he had inherited two apartment buildings in Port-au-Prince, one near Canapé Vert and the other in Pétionville. The rental income from these properties was probably sufficient for his needs.

Still, the prospect of financing a senatorial race out of his own pocket was daunting. Haiti is poor, and the Grand’Anse is the most remote corner of Haiti; but politics in the Grand’Anse were not cheap. I made a back-of-the-envelope calculation: the judge needed SUVs to transport him, his aides, and his security from place to place; he probably needed at least three vehicles, and he needed them for at least three months. He needed radio time, and pigs and goats to feed people at his campaign rallies. He needed tens of thousands of T-shirts imprinted with his smiling face. He needed to pay campaign staff and people to walk around the hills telling his story. He needed big crowds to attract big crowds at his rallies, and crowds of paid supporters don’t come cheap. He needed to pay kids to graffiti his name all over town. And above all, he needed to buy votes, because what poor man is ever going to give away something as valuable as a vote for free? And even that’s not enough, because the judge needed to buy the people who counted the votes.

There were diverse rumors explaining how the judge funded his campaign. One story, widely repeated, was that he was funded by the CIA. The story was not implausible: the United States did have a sordid history of meddling in Haitian politics, both covertly and overtly, and the Sénateur, with his socialist politics and fervent denunciations of the “cold nation” to the north, had not made himself any friends among that small coterie of powerful Americans who interested themselves in Haitian affairs. (I also heard stories that the Sénateur, whose campaign was equally expensive, was himself funded by the CIA, his rhetoric and ostensible political convictions an elaborate ruse.) Variants on these stories had the role of the CIA played by the secret services of Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia; or various narco-traffickers; or a consortium of real estate speculators eager to profit from the construction of the road.

There was one story, however, more widely diffused than any other, a story that had the additional merit of being true. I heard the story first from Toussaint Legrand, who, after his success with the logo, had painted a portrait of a three-legged yellow dog (he ran out of paint before applying the final limb) that he was proposing to sell to me. With the proceeds of the sale, he intended to buy a bottle of cologne, brewed locally and known as Lightning, so-called for its effect on the ladies. Toussaint indicated the subsequent step in his plan with a sheepish smile. I bought the painting, and Toussaint threw in the story for free. I later gave the painting to Kay White, who said, “That’s interesting .” She had heard the story also, and fleshed out further details. But the definitive version was told to me by the judge himself, speaking on the dual condition that the story would remain confidential for as long as he pursued or held political office, and that I remove Toussaint’s painting from the wall above the toilet of campaign HQ, where Kay had hung it.

* * *

Even the lowliest peasant in the most remote village of the Haitian hills will know the name Andrés Richard, or they will call him by his nickname, La Gueule d’Haïti — the snout of Haiti. What the nickname meant was this: What came into Haiti, and fed the nation and nourished it and was essential for survival, passed through him. He chewed upon and digested the meat of the nation. If you spend a dollar in Haiti, some portion of that dollar will filter upward through middlemen and merchants until it has settled in the Richard family coffers. Haiti is an island nation that produces nearly nothing: what is consumed must be imported. So every drop of gasoline in the nation came through Andrés Richard’s oil terminal, and every grain of imported rice was stored in his warehouses. Groupe Richard held a controlling stake in the leading distributor of filtered water; they owned the leading bank and its competitor. It was said that the Richard family alone possessed more wealth than the Haitian peasantry combined; of the great mulatto families who lived in the hills above Port-au-Prince, his by far was the greatest and most powerful. Otherwise sober men and women in Port-au-Prince swore that Andrés Richard owed his fabulous success to human sacrifice.

“Abraham Samedi had told me that you have political ambitions,” Andrés Richard said to the judge, his voice faint and palsied over the telephone. “Haiti needs men like you.”

Château Richard was accessible only by private road — or helicopter. Johel had never been in a helicopter before. The thing rose up in a swirling cloud of dust, then banked, and the city swung skyward, slums spreading like concrete fungus up the sides of elephant-hide mountains. Hulks of rusting ships gleamed grotesquely in the bay. As the helicopter circled over the hills, Johel could see vast neighborhoods of shimmering tin shacks, and in the streets, brilliantly colored cars like jewels, the sun reflecting off each emerald, amethyst, or topaz roof. The last concrete roofs of Port-au-Prince receded into the lower distance as the helicopter rose; then they disappeared entirely from view, the helicopter following the bowls of great canyons and mountain ridges until, at a distance, Johel could see, set on an immense green lawn, the marmoreal whiteness of Andrés Richard’s house. Andrés Richard had purchased not only the mountain on which his own house was situated but also the two mountains visible from his home, to ensure that his view was never marred by the encroaching bidonvilles.