Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

“Our problem here is this: Fishermen have little boats, no ice, and the big fish are too far out to sea for the little boats. Maybe you can catch a few itsy-bitsy fish to feed your family. But to lay nets, haul in a serious catch, you need a more serious craft. And who can afford to buy a boat like that if you can’t get your fish to market?” This, the judge said, was the poverty trap, when no matter what you do to get ahead sees you running in place.

The judge started running in place on the stage, huffing and puffing as he went.

“You’re not poor if you can work hard and get ahead.” The judge began to pant. “If you can work hard — and get ahead — then you just don’t have a lot of money. No sin, no crime in that.” The judge stopped running. “But if you work and work and work some more, and you’re still as broke the next day as the day before — then you need a road.”

When the judge started talking about the poverty trap, the man standing next to Terry, whose lined and leathery face suggested a lifetime on the seas, said, “That’s right,” and Terry knew that Johel had earned himself that man’s vote.

If the vote was counted.

* * *

In the last election, Abricots had not been peaceful. Armed partisans of opposing candidates had frightened the bulk of the population into hunkering down at home rather than venturing out to the polls. Turnout in Abricots had been extremely low.

This was the problem the judge proposed to discuss with Madame Trésor. Madame Trésor had never taken an active role in formal politics, seeing the business of elections and the state as beneath the dignity of an empress of the night. An incident the year before, however, had changed her perspective: her beloved younger brother had been imprisoned in Port-au-Prince, accused of being a member of a gang of kidnappers. Madame Trésor, whose power in her own commune was immense, was helpless to affect affairs in the capital, and so she had done what she was loath to do: she traveled all the way to Jérémie, a long and dusty road for a woman of her size, and made her way to the Sénateur’s house, where she was made to sit in the sun for hours, like a peasant, only to have the Sénateur’s security at the end of the day dismiss the crowd of supplicants, telling them to return in the morning. Madame Trésor was a woman whose capacity to perceive a slight was of infinite delicacy, and she returned that evening, in the dark, to her home in the hills of Abricots.

If it was known that she supported a candidate, the judge felt, his enemies would think twice before intimidating his supporters.

Madame Trésor lived in a stucco house about a mile out of town, not accessible by road, and the judge and Terry walked there after the rally. By the time they reached Madame Tresor’s little cabin, the judge’s face was swampy with sweat. Only after sitting down for five minutes on a mossy rock, breathing hard, and rubbing his forehead with a handkerchief was he able to concentrate on the business at hand.

Madame Trésor had been expecting Johel and she greeted him with the exaggerated, flirtatious warmth of beautiful fat women. She invited him to sit beside her on the couch and insisted that he drink a glass of grapefruit juice, made from the fruit of her own tree.

People told many stories about Madame Trésor, and some of them might even have been true: She could transform herself into a bat and fly through the night on gossamer wings. She was said to know the recipe for the poud’ that turned men into zombies and for the poud’ that made a man’s heart swell up until it exploded from his chest. People came to her to complain of their enemies or to avenge themselves on unfaithful husbands or to find relief from tormented dreams.

She was a large woman, with a nearly square head attached to an oval body. Her small dark eyes fastened on Johel and did not blink or move away. He wondered how she navigated her way up and down these hills. She didn’t look much like the feared empress of a secret society that ruled the Night — but then again, Johel figured, it was a secret society. She had a habit of saying “My Lord! My Lord!” but otherwise she listened patiently as Johel explained the reasons for his visit.

By now, he had become an excellent pitchman for himself. He had been trying to convince one important personage of the Grand’Anse after another to support his candidacy — and had been successful more often than not. Some wanted a school refurbished, others a new well, and still others just wanted cash. Johel thought seriously about each request and promised what he could. So he told Madame Trésor about the Canadians and the road and, having heard of her problems with the Sénateur, made sure to mention the Sénateur’s arrogance. He thought what she wanted chiefly was respect — and possibly vengeance — and her brother’s freedom. That was something, he suggested, that he could provide.

“My Lord! My Lord!” said Madame Trésor.

The little room was uncomfortably hot, and Johel felt himself sweating heavily as he spoke. Finally he finished talking, and a grave silence filled the room.

“I had a revelation about you,” Madame Trésor said. “A heavy revelation.”

Johel didn’t know if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

“I want you to see my babies,” she said.

She rose to her feet and shuffled out of the room. She came back a minute later with a Mason jar in which some strange thing floated in a tea-colored liquid. It was certainly a biological thing — maybe a squid? Not identifiably mammalian.

“That’s my femininity,” Madame Trésor said.

Johel was not sure if he was expected to compliment it, but the lady explained. When she was in her early twenties, the doctors had removed her uterus and ovaries. That was the thing floating in the jar. She had been until then without mystical powers. She had come home from the hospital in Jérémie unsexed but gifted with Sight.

“Take my children,” she said, and handed the jar to Johel. He didn’t want to, but he didn’t know how to say no. Despite the warmth of the room, he felt a chill of fear pass up his spine. The jar was heavy in his hands and sticky, and the thing inside seemed to vibrate and buzz. Johel suddenly was seized by a wave of nausea. He worried that he was going to vomit the juice on the floor. He saw children playing on the floor, a schoolgirl with yellow ribbons in her hair, a boy climbing a palm tree and flinging down coconuts …

Johel, frightened that he was going to drop the jar on the unfinished cement floor, handed it back to Madame Trésor, who accepted it gravely and kissed it, as a mother kisses her babies before sleep. Then she buried the jar between her immense breasts.

“My Lord! My Lord!” she murmured, her eyes closed, rocking back and forth on her heavy haunches. “Come to me, my Lord!”

She must have rocked like that, moaning and crying, for ten minutes or more before she finally sat up straight, her eyes so wide they seemed as if they might burst from her head. She stood up, saying not a word, and walked with the jar into the back room.

When Madame Trésor came back, she said, “My children like you.”

“I’m glad,” Johel said, not sure if that was the correct word at all.

“They tell me I need to help you.”

Johel found it hard to calm his racing heart. His mouth tasted sour, and it was difficult to understand just what Madame Trésor was saying. She was going to support his candidacy. But she looked him in the eye. Her children had warned her—“You have a traitor, a traitor in your camp. Your victory is in unity. You need to look left, look right, look high, look low. Look!”

* * *

That was two days ago, Johel told me, and he hadn’t slept since. Madame Trésor’s warning was dominating him. It was as if she were telling him something he already knew. He had never known a pain like this. Not a minute of sleep in two nights, just lying next to her, watching her breathe, thinking of Terry, each breath like a knife in his belly …