Haiti Noir

Soon Madame Dumas began experiencing something completely new to her. She started to sweat. Even in her airconditioning she was sweating. It poured out of her forehead and ran down her fine cheekbones, and from under her arms a rivulet flowed to the small of her back; under her breasts, sweat soaked her stomach. Her pink silk shift had turned cranberry with wetness. And as the sweat poured out, she became weaker and weaker-while Jobo watched.

Madame Dumas collapsed on the living room floor and crawled to the couch. She looked up at Jobo with her arm reaching out at him. “Jobo, aide-moi.” Help me.

He only stared at her.

“I need a doctor.”

“I can’t get a doctor. The roads are closed. The coup.”

“Oh, yes, the coup,” she muttered, as though there was a secret irony to this that only she could appreciate. “Then the bòkò. Can’t he make a powder to fix me?”

“Mais oui,” Jobo answered, appreciating his own secret irony.

“Vas-y. Get something!”

Jobo left and did not come back for hours. When he did, Madame Dumas was not sweating anymore. She was stretched across the cool floor tiles-dead.

Jobo unceremoniously removed all her clothes and carried her out to the leopard cage. He opened the door and dumped her on the floor. The leopard, who he had not fed in three days, was so startled that he stopped pacing. He walked over to the body and sniffed it as Jobo started to close the cage. Suddenly, the cat leapt over Jobo, knocking him down, and off the porch into the bush, over the wall in graceful flight, and was never seen again. He might have run to the arid desert in the northwest and managed to find a way to survive there. Or maybe he ran along the Artibonite River to hide out in the mountains above the valley where many others have hidden.

The leopard had left Jobo with the question of what to do with the unwanted remains of Madame Dumas. He consulted Kola but neither could come up with a good solution. Several days later, while Jobo was still contemplating this dilemma, someone started clanging the locked gate. Jobo ran down and saw Kola framed in black iron snakes. He explained that Madame had a family that wanted both the house and the body. They wanted to bury it in France, but Air France had suspended flights because of the coup.

“Eh oui,” said Jobo, who had never seen an airplane close up, with feigned comprehension.

“Poutan!” shouted Kola, raising his stubby index finger to make a point. “I told them if they want to come get the body in a week or even two, I can use magic to keep it in perfect condition.”

“Magic?”

“Mais oui. And you have that magic in your house. It is the magic of meat.”

Now Jobo understood. “And they will pay?”

“Gwo nèg koute chè,” Kola said. You have to pay a lot for an important person.

Jobo smiled. “Anpil, anpil dola?”

“Anpil. Very expensive.”

After Kola left, Jobo went back to the cage and picked up Madame. She still had not stiffened much. He emptied one of the big top-loading freezers and dumped her in. She landed in a most undignified pose and was soon petrified in ice, to be thawed and served up properly by magic in due time.

Jobo was right. Once the freezers had been emptied, the people of Ti Morne Joli ate meat for three weeks. Many became sick because they were unaccustomed to such a rich diet. But it was not likely to happen again.

It was Damballah who finally confronted èzili, bribed her with dresses and bracelets and pink elixirs until she set the leopard free. The animal ran and ran and ran, as though he could run all the way back to Africa. But the ocean was there now. He ran so hard that he turned into a man. That was the first Haitian, and that is why Haitian people always struggle so hard to be free.

***

“I want to talk to my lawyer,” said Izzy.

“I think you need a new lawyer. He’s been arrested. Seems you were just a small part of the operation.”

Izzy thought, They arrested the Anglo. Isn’t that something? They got the Anglo. Then he spoke: “Why do you say that the goods were stolen? Everything was paid for.”

“We were watching you. What tipped us off was that you had Coca-Cola machines. You can’t buy them. Only the Coca-Cola Company owns them. You’re not the Coca-Cola Company, are you?”

THE BLUE HILL BY RODNEY SAINT-ÉLOI

Ozanana

Translated by Nicole Ball