Haiti Noir

“No, put this picture in your mind. It’s the heyday of the Duvalier regime, when we were flirting with Cuba and the United States acted like a married man whose mistress was cheating on him. The political air was intense. Many young men had gone to study medicine in Cuba. There was a brilliant young guy who grew up a few blocks from here. His mother was of questionable vocation and thus no one knew his father. He was handsome and smart, so, like we do here in Haiti, he became everybody’s child. When he was about fifteen or sixteen, his mother died. He was taken in by the manbo next door.”

“Wait a minute, does this boy have a name?’

“Yes, he does, but it doesn’t matter because this is your story, my story, our story. He was about twenty when I heard that the manbo married him to èzili. He became the groom of èzili. Whether he knew or understood the implication, I’m not sure, because he fell head over heels in love with a local girl. She was nice. She had been sent to Port-au-Prince to study nursing, but once she fell in love with the boy, she never gave nursing another thought. The boy made a fatal mistake and married her. The manbo became raving mad. She killed the girl’s brother, sister-in-law, and their unborn baby. Then one day soon after, in the manbo’s compound, a young girl was raped and killed. Even though the young doctor was nowhere near the girl or the site, the police arrested him. He spent sixteen years away from the woman he loved and his baby daughter. Finally one day, he finds his way back to her. The manbo found out and killed them both.”

“This happened in Croix-des-Bouquets?”

“No, this is happening in Croix-des-Bouquets.”

“This is the best story you’ve ever told me.” Moah worked methodically as she nursed Pierre-Paul’s swollen limbs.

Everyone knew that Lamercie was going to kill Colin and Haba. She left her compound, machete in hand, her large blue dress flapping in the wind. At first it was the neighborhood kids who followed her. Then the neighborhood gossips. Pretty soon, all of those who lived in the bouk with nothing to do followed her past the cemetery. They followed her past Our Lady of the Rosary, Charlotin, and onto the busy rue Stenio Vincent. She cut through the yard of the old abandoned factory. By the time she got to the front gate of her destination, she was a woman possessed. She pounded on the half wall that held the makeshift gate. She trampled the patch of wild flowers struggling to hold on to the undernourished soil. Somehow, through it all, she heard the clicking of a gun. The crowd looked up.

Some will say that she wore her hat crookedly like some cowboy out of an old western movie. Some will say that Lamercie raised the machete intending to fling it at her. But everyone saw Moah raise the old gun and shoot straight for Lamercie’s heart. Everyone gawked as Lamercie thrashed like a chicken at a Vodou ceremony. Six of Pierre-Paul’s old bullets had penetrated her blue-clad body.

A week later, two gentlemen with serious looks on their faces claimed they had heard about some gunshots and had come to investigate.

“I was shooting birds,” Moah said. They paused; looked at her pretty face and her perky breast peeking from her sundress. Then they commented on how beautiful and tall the flowers next to the gate were. The flowers and a small cross had been planted over a tall mound at the gate. Although the men had long legs, they almost trampled the mound and its flowers when they tried to enter the yard. As they left, one of them kept repeating, “My, how do you grow such lovely flowers?” Moah simply smiled.

The police canvassed the neighborhood looking for witnesses who might know something about why Lamercie had vanished. No one had seen anything or knew anything. But everyone agreed with the officers that the flowers at the Didier family’s gate were the prettiest they’d ever seen in Croix-des-Bouquets.

THE LEOPARD OF TI MORNE BY MARK KURLANSKY

Gonaïves

Izzy Goldstein felt in his heart that he was really Haitian, although no one who knew him understood why he felt that way.

“Izzy, you’re Jewish,” his mother would say with sorrow showing on her brow as she examined the Vodou artifacts displayed in his Miami Beach apartment. He had a particular affection for Damballah, the snake spirit, and there were steel sculptures, beaded flags, and bright acrylic-on-masonite paintings of snakes. He had thought of getting a terrarium and keeping actual snakes, but then there would be the responsibility of feeding them.