Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

Nadia saw his face, and she knew she was alone. How foolish she had been to entrust her safety to a blan . She climbed out of the car.

“Wait,” Terry shouted.

But Nadia had already closed the gate of the cement house behind her.

* * *

The judge called Terry the next morning.

“Too much last night?” Terry said. “You sound like death.”

“Come on over,” the judge said.

Half an hour later, Terry was up at the judge’s house. The judge was pouring sweat: he was wearing his own campaign T-shirt, the red one, soaked through.

“You feeling okay?” Terry said, thinking heart attack.

“I’ve been better.”

“Maybe we’ll get you to a doctor.”

There was a morning flight to Port-au-Prince — they had ninety minutes or so.

Terry followed the judge into the kitchen. Something wasn’t right with the way he was walking, his stride stumbling, shambling, off-balance. In the kitchen, the judge poured himself a tumbler of clairin , the smell of ginger and alcohol so strong that Terry could smell it across the room. He’d never seen the judge drink in the morning, never seen the judge out of control.

“Want one?” the judge asked.

“It’s too early for me,” Terry said. “Maybe it’s too early for you too.”

“I’m still celebrating.”

“Maybe we should stop the celebrating and get to work.”

“You know who wrote me this morning?”

“Who?” Terry said, keeping an eye now on the judge’s hands, an old instinct.

“You’ll never guess.”

Terry didn’t talk. She must have stayed up late following the election results as they were published online. He imagined Kay sitting at the kitchen counter with a bottle of white wine, clicking and refreshing, clicking and refreshing all night long. Everyone was celebrating without her — she was alone, after all the work she had done. Maybe she was waiting for someone to call her and say thank you. Then she hit the send button.

“Oh,” Terry said. Then, “Brother—”

“I’m not your brother.”

“Johel—”

“She was my life,” the judge said.

“Where is she?”

“She’s gone.”

“Is she—”

“They always ask me, ‘How can you trust the blan ?’ And I always say, ‘Terry? Like my brother, what we’ve been through. Man would throw himself on a hand grenade for me.’”

“It’s true, Johel,” Terry said. “I would.”

“Throw yourself on my fucking wife.”

“Where is she?”

“She doesn’t want you. That’s what she told me. She told me to stay away from you. She said you smelled like a pig. Had to take a bath every time she rode in the car with you.”

Terry said, “Johel, I need to know from you, right now, where Nadia is.”

That’s the training talking, the two decades of experience, Terry thinking of the judge’s big hands on her slender neck; the judge with a knife; the judge holding a pillow on her face. These things happen every day. Ordinary men snap. One man in a thousand will do something only one in a thousand will do.

“She’s in the mountains. She’s in Port-au-Prince. She’s on the fucking moon. I told her to get out of my house, and she left.”

The way he said it, Terry knew (twenty years of experience in interrogations teaches a man something) that the judge was telling the truth.

The judge started to talk, stopped. He walked over to the sink, let the water run. He washed his face, his big head. He came up from the sink looking like a lawyer who charges four hundred dollars an hour for his time.

“Brother, we’ve got problems, you and I, but we no longer have the same problems.”

“Let me talk to her,” Terry said.

“Let me tell you about your problem. As your lawyer, I’d advise you to get out of town, because if you’re here in an hour, you’ll be sitting in the penitentiary. They’ll put you in the prison and leave you there until you rot.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I can do whatever I want,” the judge said. “I won.”

* * *

Nadia went to her cousin’s hut. She didn’t know how long she would be allowed to stay: that hut was all mouths and no food, and she was bringing herself and a big belly too. In the mornings Nadia walked to the river with the girls to wash clothes and fetch water. Once, she saw Johel standing behind a tree. By the time she realized that it was only a shadow, the bucket of water she had carried up the hill had tumbled to the ground.

She was drowning when he woke her up. Before that she was on the Trois Rivières , where the men were eating chicken, ripping the bird apart. It was still alive. The judge’s goatee was covered in grease. Terry was gnawing at a fluttering wing. The Sénateur was sucking from a bone. Ti Pierre was laughing, his face coated in feathers. The bird was gone, the men were still hungry, and Nadia knew that they would eat her next. So she jumped into the water. She felt the water pulling her down, and when she opened her eyes, her clothes were piled high across her chest: the dresses, skirts, and blouses pulled out of the wardrobe, thrown haphazardly across her. They weighed more than she expected.

She said, “What are you doing?”

Johel didn’t speak. His face was rigid, as soaked from sweat as if he had stepped out of the shower. She waited for him to look at her, but he continued to throw her things on the bed with the mechanical gestures of a man seized by the Loa . She asked him again what he was doing, and he ignored her. His breathing was heavy.

When Johel picked up the ceramic figurine Nadia had bought for herself many years ago when Erzulie L’Amour played Boston, Nadia cried out. It was the only possession she had managed to maintain in her years of traveling. She had come to love the doll’s pretty painted face and strange costume. Then he threw the doll at a spot on the wall just above her head. The doll smashed into a thousand pieces, and Nadia felt the fragments fall across her face and shoulders. She screamed, knowing that no one could hear her. Johel left the room.

Nadia lay in bed, panting heavily. Terry had installed bars on the windows, and Johel stood between her and the front door. The Fear was in the room with her: she could see the Fear’s black shadow in the open armoire, smell the Fear’s rotten breath, hear the Fear’s ragged exhalations. Her figurine’s tiny face, with its brightly painted lips and sad eyes, stared up at her from the bed.

Then Johel was back in the room. There was a look in his eyes of endless melancholy. Nadia pulled herself out of the bed and dropped to her knees. She held on to his massive bulk with all her strength. She was weeping. She knew that if he would only listen, then he would understand. But he pushed her aside. “Please,” she said. “Please.” He had a roll of hundred-dollar bills in his hands, and he started flipping cash on the bed. The money fluttered down on her dresses and skirts until the bed was covered in a thin layer of money. “Never tell them I didn’t pay you,” he said. “Everything that you deserve.”

She waited for him to hit her, but the blow never came. This, in a way, was the worst thing: Nadia knew how to fight. She knew that if he came at her, she could scratch at his eyes, kick between his legs. They would fight until they were exhausted. Then he would put ice on her bruises, and she would tend his cuts. But he only stared at her. She had never seen in a man’s eyes such a combination of cold contempt and profound sorrow. Nadia’s mother used to say that a man who didn’t have the courage to beat his woman was the man who had the courage to slit her throat.

Johel left the room, and the house was silent. Nadia waited — one minute, five, ten. Then she packed up her clothes and the money in her old suitcase. She put on a pair of jeans and laced up her sneakers. Her head was light, as if she were going to faint. But the darkness didn’t come. Carrying her suitcase, she wandered through the house, through the living room to the kitchen. Johel was sitting on the terrace. She opened the door and spoke to him a minute, waiting for him to call her back. But he didn’t.