Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

A uniformed servant led Johel to the terrace of the house, where a large parrot in a cage that might comfortably have accommodated a family of three regarded Johel with mild curiosity. Johel waited on the terrace for several minutes, considering the splendid lines of the deck furniture, the tranquillity of the pool, and the undulating form of a large steel sculpture, until another servant emerged from the dark interior of the house pushing an aged lizard in a wheelchair.

“Don’t get up,” the lizard croaked. “I can’t!”

The lizard then flicked out his tongue to gather up a spot of spittle on his lower lip and began to laugh.

“Andrés Richard,” he said, extending a hand. “At your service.”

* * *

There was a hole in Andrés Richard’s wall, and now that he was old and was going to die, that hole bothered him, worried him at night, and deranged what little sleep he had. What he had built and what he had accomplished, when weighed in the balance of his soul, meant little against the hole in his wall. He had raised children and seen them grow to be wastrels, failures, drinkers, scoundrels — but that troubled him less than the hole in the wall. He had built an empire. He had made love to scores of beautiful women, had made and unmade presidents. He had held private audiences with three popes. He had made his peace with his Lord, but evidently his Lord had yet to make His peace with him.

The hole was in the wall of Andrés Richard’s private chapel.

It had been a decade at least since Andrés Richard had left his mountain sanctuary; and on his return from his last descent into the valley and country below, he had decided that to complete his estate and solidify his soul, he needed a space of solitary refuge and prayer. A man of impeccable taste himself, he had called on other men of superior taste to accomplish the work, providing them with all the resources at his command. He wished for a place of simplicity and beauty, and on the fringe of his estate, in a grove of pine and acajou , such a place had been erected: not large, not ostentatious, open windows overlooking only the grandeur of nature, and at the altar, the brilliant triptych by Michel Dumartin depicting his Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection.

Now Andrés Richard knew that death was very, very near, and one piece escaped his grasp, the third painting of the triptych. To complete the triptych would be to complete his collection and his chapel, and this, Andrés Richard felt sure, was necessary to ensure the survival of his soul in the world to come.

* * *

“Have you made the Sénateur an offer for the piece?” Johel asked.

How easily he slipped into the role of counselor. This was how he felt most at ease in the world, contemplating the problems of others and applying his intelligence in the search for a solution. Johel took Andrés Richard’s problem seriously: it was obviously of great importance to Andrés Richard, and whatever is of great importance to a man like Andrés Richard is important.

“Of course I’ve made him an offer for the painting! I’ve offered him buckets of money for that piece!”

“And he won’t take it?”

“Young man, do you really think Maxim Bayard wants my money? If you do, then your reputation for cleverness is severely overvalued.”

“I suppose he wouldn’t.”

“I suppose not.”

Johel knew that the problem was the former president. Andrés Richard had been one of the organizers of the coup d’état that forced him out of office and into exile. On the day the former president left the country, the Sénateur, interviewed on Haitian national television, had wept convulsively. A documentary filmmaker from Oregon had put the moment in his film, Haiti: Tragedy of a Nation, set to a Haitian soprano singing funereal songs.

The terrible irony of the situation was that before the departure of the former president, the Sénateur had agreed to sell Andrés Richard the painting. Andrés Richard had never imagined that a matter of politics would interfere with business between reasonable men; had he known that the Sénateur would be so troubled, he would have held his hand until the painting was in his possession. This was one of the great miscalculations of his life.

But Monsieur Richard’s role in the ouster of the former president had made the Sénateur an implacable enemy. When Andrés Richard contacted the Sénateur again to complete the transaction, the Sénateur had said, “Monsieur Richard, I look upon that painting every morning to remind me that the path to salvation is straight. If keeping that painting in my possession preserves my soul and damns yours, then it is an object to me of inestimable worth.”

Thereafter, Andrés Richard, for all his wealth, power, and influence, had never succeeded in convincing the Sénateur to part with his painting.

In the subsequent years, Monsieur Richard told the judge, he had tried many schemes to convince the Sénateur to sell the painting. He had hired a man from France to pose as a collector, and he had attempted to convince the current president to seize the painting as part of the national patrimony. (This plan had foundered only when the Sénateur had threatened to burn the painting before he relinquished it, at which point Andrés Richard had ordered the president to desist.) He had used all his political influence to stall the Sénateur’s projects. The Sénateur remained indifferent.

Andrés Richard recounted all of this, then, despite the heat of the day, began to shiver.

“I don’t recommend dying, young man,” said Andrés Richard. “It is an unpleasant business.”

“I will try to keep that in mind,” Johel said.

“Are you at peace with your Savior?”

“We’re cordial.”

Andrés Richard began to laugh. His laughter drew the attention of his bird, who from his cage regarded the old man with alarm.

“That will not be sufficient, young man. That will not do! You see things clearer when the end is near. You see the necessity of things. I do not wish to confront my Maker with unresolved affairs here on this earth. You will see as you grow older that the walls of Hell are thick like mountains.”

The parrot began to squawk. Its perch began to swing. It flapped its broad wings, revealing a confusion of reds and blues.

“And how can I help you with your problems, Monsieur Richard?” Johel asked.

Monsieur Richard shook in his chair.

“Why, I thought it was obvious! I thought that was as clear as day!”

At the altitude at which the château was situated, the day was indeed immensely clear.

Andrés Richard lifted up his bony hand, which calmed itself as if by the force of the old man’s will into something like a staff or rod. He extended his forefinger until it pointed directly at Johel’s heart.

“I am going to make you the next sénateur of the Grand’Anse,” he said.

Then, exhausted by the gesture, the hand flopped down into Andrés Richard’s lap, and the old man closed his eyes.

They had been a threesome: Sénateur Maxim Bayard, Père Abraham Samedi, and Docteur Auguste Philistin. The Three Musketeers of the Lycée Saint Louis, the three survivors. Once a year they had met on the anniversary of the death of François Duvalier to drink a pair of toasts: the first was to their dead, tossed by the Macoutes into unmarked graves; and the second, to the Hell-Fiend who supervised the eternal torment of their enemy. Père Samedi’s defection meant that the table was set for two, just the Sénateur and his physician.

(Dr. Philistin himself later recounted to me the details of his last dinner with the Sénateur. Our appointment came about in the following manner. Some months after the election and the terrible events that followed, Dr. Philistin published in Le Nouvelliste a short appreciation of the Sénateur’s life, and included his email address, inviting others who had known the Sénateur to exchange reminiscences. He was gathering material for a biographical essay. We met at Dr. Philistin’s art-filled house in the hills above Port-au-Prince. He had only recently retired when I met him, but his firm handshake, his energetic manner, and his unlined face all suggested to me that had he wished to, he might have continued his practice a good deal longer. On the coffee table was an edition of the Sénateur’s poems. The volume, I noticed for the first time, had been dedicated to “Auguste Philistin, Master of the Healing Arts and Friend of Liberty.”)