Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

Around midnight, the spokesman for the CEH appeared on the television. He was visibly nervous: his face would be associated across Haiti with election results that would be criticized the next day, whether fairly or unfairly, by half the candidates as fraudulent. Dark pools of sweat colored his shirt.

“Man’s deodorant is definitely not working as hard as he is,” said Terry.

The judge chuckled, but truth be told, he didn’t look much better than the spokesman for the CEH.

The spokesman began with the campaign for deputy, the lower house of Parliament. His voice was a monotonous drone as he read out vote totals for each candidate. There were nearly a hundred races, and in some of the races, there were a dozen candidates or more, some taking as little as a dozen votes. A few of the races seemed like omens: up in the north near Ouanaminthe, there had been another candidate who had promised to build a road. He lost, and a groan echoed around the room.

“Does not matter, does not matter at all,” said the judge.

Nadia sat still as the results were read. It was only from her billowy shirt that I knew that her pregnancy was advancing, but I don’t know if anyone else in the room was aware of her secret.

Then a candidate for deputy who had favored building a road was announced a victor. The room began to cheer and clap.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” said the judge. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about.”

The reading of the deputies lasted a long time, and I stepped outside onto the Place Dumas. Now the crowd was thick: unable to sleep in the hot, nervous night, they had come down to the Place Dumas to observe firsthand the electoral results.

I went back inside as the spokesman began reading the results of the senatorial races. The judge turned up the volume on the television. Then the spokesman read the results from the senatorial election in Port-au-Prince.

“Jean-Emmanuel Robert, quarante-sept mille, deux cent vingt-trois ,” he intoned. That was Ti Jean. He had won.

We all began to applaud enthusiastically, stomp on the ground.

Then finally it was time for the judge’s race. I heard the spokesman read off names and numbers — I remember that Thibault Antoine Erick just missed winning his ten thousand votes and three hectares of arable land — and I tried to keep a written tally. But in my excitement I couldn’t translate the French into digits with sufficient dexterity. I remember that the Sénateur had something-something- cinquante-six votes and I was trying to figure out what percentage of the vote that was.

Then the room exploded.

The judge had won 42 percent of the votes in the first round, the Sénateur down at 28 percent, the motley crew of also-rans dividing up the rest. Every car in town was honking all at once, cheap Chinese firecrackers were going off like ammunition. There wasn’t a throat in the room that wasn’t shouting in joy.

“Congratulations, Sénateur,” Terry said.

“We still got to do it all over again,” the judge said, thinking about the second round, but the way he was smiling, Terry knew the judge wasn’t worried.

“Forty-two fucking percent,” Terry said. “And fuck the rest of them.”

Terry and the judge rubbed their big unshaved faces against each other, both of them slick with tears, Terry running his hands all over the judge’s head.

Soon the party spilled out of campaign HQ into the Place Dumas, everyone coming out to drink and dance and enjoy the warm night, like Carnival in December. In anticipation of victory, Johel had used campaign funds to buy fuel for the civic generators on the rue Abbé Hué, and the streetlights came on all over town, lighting up a dark night.

* * *

No one was happier than Terry. He’d had a fight with Kay just a few days back, the two of them shouting at each other over Skype.

She said, “Terry, what I just want to know is why you’re still doing all this.”

“I want to build a road,” he said.

“Give me a fucking break,” she said. “Just for once in your life, give me a break.”

But Terry thought the road would be solid. And one solid thing might be enough for a lifetime. For Terry, it’s always been about the road.

That’s what he said to the judge at the end of the night. Terry wrapped his arm around the judge, pulled him so tight he could smell his aftershave. He looked him in the eyes and said, “Thank you, brother.”

The judge understood. “I was just hired labor,” he said.

“Cheers,” Terry said.

They knocked their glasses together.

“Promise me something. Look me in the eye.”

“Anything,” the judge said.

“I want you to promise me, whatever happens to me, you’ll finish our road.”

“You know it.”

“What I’m saying is, that road, the day they get it done, I’m not there, whatever happens — you just drive down that road and think about what we did here together.”

* * *

The victory had been Nadia’s as much as the judge’s, and when the results were announced, she had let out an exhilarated cry. But quickly, exhaustion took her and her face went slack. Soon Nadia asked Terry if he could drive her home.

Terry had not been alone with Nadia since they buried Toussaint. They drove up the hill in silence, a few stray dogs following the car and baying. Out in front of the low brick wall, Nadia closed her eyes. Terry put his hand on her dress, at the place where the hem met her thigh. She squirmed backward into her seat.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“He’s not coming back for hours.”

“Every day, I’m so scared.”

“It’s almost over,” he said.

But his voice was clouded by irritation. He didn’t want to talk about her fears. His body was tense with desire. He leaned over to kiss her, and she turned her head away.

“I miss the thing we had,” he said.

“What thing?”

“Our thing.”

“When are you going home?”

“I’m not tired.”

“No, I mean when you go home to—”

She gestured upward with her eyebrows, to his home across the waters.

“I don’t know if I’m ever going home,” he said. “I don’t know if I have anything waiting there for me.”

Terry had never said a thing like that to Nadia. He felt her drawing closer to him. Nadia looked at him for a long time. She was breathing in the air he was breathing out, and in that shared breath, he felt as if she were weighing, measuring, judging him.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

“Does Johel know?” he finally asked.

She shook her head.

Terry’s face moved faster than his thoughts. Terry wanted his face to tell one story, but it was telling another — and just who was telling the truer story, his face or his thoughts: that was something Terry would wonder about for a long, long time.

Terry was thinking that this thing had to happen like this, sooner or later. The notion of a pregnancy had never crossed his conscious mind, but he wasn’t surprised: he had seen the glow of life in her skin. Terry wanted his face — his dark, expressive eyes, the kindly cast of his mouth — to tell Nadia of the love he felt for her and all the fragile creatures who struggled alone in this hard world.

But Terry’s face had another agenda altogether. Terry raced after his face as it told Nadia that it was over between them. Terry’s face, shrewd and unsentimental, knew that there was no other way to understand this baby that wasn’t his. Terry’s face was thinking about Nadia and the judge, the judge rolling around on Nadia, her face and his face, and Terry’s face, jealous of their pleasure, knew that all the love he had felt for Nadia had been like pouring water on hot sand, soaked up and leaving nothing behind. And then, just for a moment, no more than a passing instant, Terry’s face was angry.