Moonbath Read online

  We were united more than ever. Against the dangers coming from those stronger than us. Against the threats of all those who were like us, the vanquished, who resembled us like two drops of water do each other, but who were not the children of the démembré. We slipped on the paths, silent like pilgrims still inhabited by the mystery of a wise, joyful, and distant journey. Our dreams had taken us so far away, in a light so ancient that we staggered a little in the pink and bluish shadows of that dawn.

  We passed Father Bonin on his morning walk. All night long he had prayed to the sound of our drums, pleading to God that we might renounce Satan, his pomp, his acts. When he passed us, a desire to speak to us about heaven and hell seized him, but Father Bonin didn’t dare. No, he didn’t dare. The only place to rest our weary bones was called Guinée and, after the hard life that we had lead on earth, no divinity would even think of burning our bones anywhere else. Our eyes said all this, and more. So, for a few seconds, Father Bonin had trouble recognizing us, the sheep of his parish. Because of the whole host of divinities unleashed in our veins. Because of our eyes running wild, shining like the lampes bobèches in the early morning.

  14.

  As Olmène grew, the insidious and raging wind of the rumor blew throughout Anse Bleue. It gathered so much speed that it eventually came hissing through the two windows of Orvil and Ermancia’s hut, and forced open its only door. And one afternoon when he was leading the animals back into the enclosure, Orvil had to face the facts as he looked at his daughter holding her lower back, grimacing in pain: unless something were to change the course of events, Olmène would soon become a mother.

  So it came as no surprise one morning when Tertulien Mésidor visited Orvil. A morning when Olmène and Ermancia had gone to the market in Baudelet. After the customary greeting—“Honor”—and the response—“Respect”—Tertulien took off his hat, held it to his chest, and bowed. Orvil rose with the feigned remove of a hunter on the look-out and and pointed to the chair next to him, the one where Ermancia or Olmène sat when they shelled pois France, picked the straw from the rice, or piled up the kasavs once they were well-cooked. Then Orvil went toward the calabash tree at the far end of the lakou.

  Tertulien Mésidor took a long time to find his words, waiting for the best moment to say them without surrendering himself, hands bound and feet tied, to Orvil. He stayed shut within his silence, certain that the first to speak would reveal his weakness. He wasn’t going to be the one. Certainly not. The seconds passed, flowed, slow, heavy, dragging on cautiously, until a nervous Tertulien gave up, with a voice that lacked conviction but imitated the confidence of the conquerer: “Orvil, we need to talk.” Tertulien never remembered when and how these words had passed his lips. Forcing himself through a gauntlet.

  Savoring his first victory without showing any sign of it on his face, Orvil offered Tertulien some coffee, held the bottle of trempé to his lips, and proposed that they go under the old mapou,* pointing his index finger to the sky. The sun was as still as death and was soon going to make all conversation impossible. “Let’s go to the shade,” said Orvil. A way for him to up the ante. To pass quietly and calmly over the seconds like over a tranquil sea. He had seen some things in this life of his. Oh, what he had seen! The dry wind of misfortune, the deaths of castaways, an unforgettable harvest of red beans when he was twenty years old, the strong hand of the gods, the decay of the gardens, the sweet hips, so soft, of women. And many, many other things!

  Around noon, we, on the habitation, saw Orvil and Tertulien out of the corner of our eyes, sitting under the mapou, one with a bottle of trempé in his hand, the other with a cup of coffee. Both leaning against an old tree, protecting themselves from the sun and taming time. Real words were not exchanged. But those of the secret conversation to which they had the keys and knew the meaning. Another was superimposed on it. So, in order to bury it even deeper and poke big holes in the silence that surrounded them in the shadow of this tree, Orvil and Tertulien spoke of their challenges with livestock, the coffee that never grew back after the last devastating hurricanes, the sickness of the birds, and the earth so emaciated that you could see her bones. As though their problems were of the same sort, as though they were of the same world.

  For his part, Tertulien, believed that in the short run everything mattered and in the long run nothing did, and he accumulated goods, goods, and more goods, by means—theft, murders, and lies—that, very quickly, would be forgotten in oblivion. The other, Orvil, was convinced that, despite the power and money of the Mésidors, the Invisibles and the gods kept them—him and those like him, us—out of the grips of Tertulien and his ilk.

  Tertulien played with Orvil. He spoke to him like a child. Orvil played the child and feigned submission. Both were conscious of it. Because, despite his jovial laugh that morning, Tertulien wasn’t well. Like us, Orvil knew that behind that laugh hid a man who knew how to buy at a low price and sell at a high one and who, for once, was forced to talk to him like a man who had nothing to offer in exchange. At least, not right away. It’s not that Orvil was that good. Orvil was just one of us, a chrétien-vivant from Anse Bleue, a village lost between stone, sun, sea, and rain, but he held Tertulien, lord of the land, by something that was worth its weight in gold: his sixteen-year-old daughter.

  So, despite the worlds that separated them, despite the memories that had filled the first minutes of their meeting, a strange deal was made. Olmène, mistress of the springs and moons, whose smile cut the day in two like a sun, had just returned order to the universe.

  Early in the afternoon, Orvil and Tertulien drank from the same bottle of trempé. In small sips. Smacking their lips, their eyes half-closed. Each taking his turn to pick up the the bottle from the floor. Passing it now and then.

  It was September. Together they watched the day undo itself. Shorter than the day before in this season. Longer than those to come.

  15.

  No coumbite* was organized to weed the plot of land on the side of the Lavandou Morne to put down the stakes for a solid house. The first for a Lafleur descendant. Tertulien even hired workers from Baudelet, whom Léosthène, Fénelon, and even Nélius helped to build two rooms with a porch out front. Workers, brothers, mother, father, all, were enthralled by Olmène’s transformation into someone who was and wasn’t one of us. Olmène captivated us and we were proud, certain that she wouldn’t forget any of us. No one.

  But, more than the house, the quality of the clay-rich soil surrounding it, the three dresses, the cow, and the furniture, it was the pair of shoes from Port-au-Prince that really pleased Olmène. She had mentioned them several times to her aunt Ilménèse and to the other women of the lakou. “More beautiful than Madame Yvenot’s shoes?” asked Ermancia, doubtful. Shoes had never really impressed her. “Yes,” replied Olmène. Ermancia enjoyed watching her daughter swing into another world, while making sure that her gaze still kept her close.

  Before wearing her shoes the very first time, Olmène washed her feet insistently. She had taken care, so as not to be ridiculed, not to wear them in Tertulien’s presence, continuing to go about her daily tasks in bare feet. Once Tertulien turned around, Olmène stood up carefully and braved some timid steps that put her feet to the test. When she took off her shoes, it was to vigorously rub her toes, one after the other, the sole and instep of her two feet that, until then, had grown without obstacles, at ease. Of their own will. On the end of the third day, she ventured as far as the path that descended toward the road. After narrowly avoiding falling three times, Olmène quickly turned around, went back, shoes in her hands, like someone walking on hot coals. She prepared a basin of water with papaya leaves and soaked her feet for a long time until she dozed off. Despite the pain, she decided that day to wear her shoes whenever she heard Tertulien’s gray horse gallop at the end of the path. She no longer wished to be a bare-footed woman and sought to prove it to Tertulien, to Dorcélien with his air of an accomplished leader, to the women of Roseaux and Baudelet,
Madame Yvenot and Madame Frétillon. And, by means of her pains, blisters, and scrapes, she eventually got used to these foreign bodies that, by reigning in her sixteen years of freedom, made her a woman with shoes.

  On the road to Anse Bleue, she once met Father Bonin accompanied by Érilien, who often acted as his translator. Father Bonin looked at Olmène’s feet before reminding her that God didn’t approve of sin.

  “You are really Olmène, the daughter of Ermancia and Orvil?”

  Olmène nodded yes.

  “I remind you that woman must not separate what God has bound together. And that the faithful must baptize their children in His church. That a mortal sin is much more serious than a venial sin.”

  Érilien translated the words that neither he nor Olmène believed. Olmène lowered her eyes and responded with that submissive “yes” that comes so quickly to our mouths when we want to mislead others. She also looked at her feet, then her stomach, and said that, in any case, God, the Grand Maître, was really too busy to dwell on the thick feet of a peasant lost between Ti Pistache, Roseaux, and Baudelet, who carried within her the child of a man whom Erzuli Fréda Dahomey had placed on her path. And that she hadn’t strayed from anything. And that God would love her all the same. She left, begging Erzuli not to abandon her: “Erzuli, protect me. I am your child, pitite ou. And you know it.”

  A few weeks later, Olmène ran into Pamphile and Horace, two of Tertulien’s oldest sons. They stared at her for a long time. She already walked with more ease, shoes on her feet. Her gait wasn’t why they had stared at her for such a long time. She understood from their look that they knew. Because she, Olmène, knew that Marie-Elda, their mother, pretended to ignore her husband’s affairs and escapades. They looked at Olmène intensely, and she bore their look as she had faced that of their father in Ti Pistache. The path was narrow. They stopped to let her pass. Not a word was exchanged. Not one. But they had said it all.

  They were sure that Olmène, like their mother, wouldn’t have been so taken by Tertulien Mésidor had he not already broken so many other women. If that imposing number had made him seem like a man who was always ready to unbuckle his pants, it had also secured his reign across the hills, valleys, and plains. Olmène was a peasant, Marie-Elda a respectable lady. That didn’t stop Olmène from receiving the seed of the respectable lady’s fornicating and powerful husband. But at no moment had Olmène dreamed of taking Marie-Elda’s place. That would be unthinkable, and the world didn’t make room for the unthinkable. All of the women knew that. The others didn’t ignore it either. All of them were, in this sense, left to sharing the same man, under whom they had pushed out the same little cry of pleasure that blurred every border between the respectable lady and the peasant women.

  Olmène confessed to us that she’d thought of it when looking at Pamphile and Horace. But she knew that she was, for now, the strongest, the newest, and the youngest. And she simply wanted to enjoy this victory before another, younger and newer version of herself inevitably came to replace her.

  Without ever talking to each other, Olmène and Tertulien’s sons said all these things and much more. Olmène didn’t turn around to see them disappear at the end of the path.

  16.

  Over the months, the charms of a sixteen-year-old girl, in the thickets, bushes, and tall grass, had intensified the fervor of a man who, with fear, was approaching sixty. He sometimes had her with gentleness and firmness. Other times with greed or voracity. It depended. Sometimes without saying a word. Sometimes with insults, not expecting her to feel any pleasure. He had taken her like her father Orvil took her mother Ermancia in the only room of the hut. By surprise, just when she was falling asleep. But, once he’d finally settled her in the house, Tertulien took Olmène like she was his property. All of their couplings unfolded according to an unchangeable order. To keep his member extended for as much time as possible without really thinking of Olmène, Tertulien always ended up exhausting himself and sinking into sleep. If for him long grunts indicated that something had happened, for Olmène they were just interminable minutes, all the same and without tension, without start, without middle, and without end. Without the pleasure of being straddled by her guardian angel, of having her soul burst. Without the weariness of a satiated body, without feeling full. So, in those moments, naturally, Olmène’s thoughts floated toward other worries, earthly ones: the vegetables that she would grow with the help of her brothers, the two goats, the pig, and the poultry, in addition to the cow she would keep in a beautiful enclosure behind the house, the bread oven she would build, and then the trade that she, like Madame Yvenot, would develop between Santo Domingo and the villages here. Tertulien stopped from exhaustion and the two of them stayed there, frozen, silent.

  Very soon Olmène no longer felt any sexual pleasure, but settled on learning to let her body give in to the sweetness of things and to the besotted, though already tired, breath of an older man. This didn’t keep Olmène from preparing him the dishes that he liked: tchaka,* millet, or dried fish. To rub his feet in a tub of water when he asked, and, leaning over his bent head, to pluck out some white hairs when he fell into a light sleep.

  Tertulien had robust arms, the chest of a man who always had enough to eat and then some, the gaze and gait of a powerful man. Olmène, the poise, the gaze, and gait of a young woman subservient to a powerful man. Everyone who came across her was convinced of this, without ever imagining that between the four walls of the new house she had turned that certainty into a doubt that secretly ravaged at Tertulien. Leaving him, after every visit, with the dark feeling that his virility had been put into question. And Ermancia was vigilant about making sure that Olmène renewed her offerings to Erzuli so that Tertulien would never know peace of mind. Never.

  Little Dieudonné, fruit of her womb, was born five months after Olmène moved into the new house. She gave birth with the help of her mother and Ilménèse, who had taken care to chase away the strayevil spirits that could have wandered around the house or on the roof and devoured the newborn. Olmène put her hands firmly on a chair that Ilménèse, the matron, fanm saj, had fastened to the bed, and screamed: “Tertulien, I hate you. Never again will I let you touch me.” She cried several times in a row in the middle of the painful contractions that scraped the bottom of her womb like a knife.

  When the child appeared between her thighs, she called him Dieudonné. Because she liked the idea that this son be a gift from God, who knows everything, sees everything, hears everything, gives everything. Dieudonné would be a king, a roi. Her roi. Called to be the shooting star of the lakou. “Dieudonné will save us all. He will go to school and will be, why not, a carpenter or a doctor or, who knows, even president. Yes, president, and for us, in Anse Bleue, he will stop misfortune in its tracks.”

  Ilménèse rubbed her belly with a mix of papaya leaves, avocado, and quenepier. And, for a whole month, Olmène and her newborn didn’t leave their house. Olmène regenerated herself, soaked in perfumed baths to to keep her skin tight and smooth, listened again to the wisdom of matchmakers and all the advice of women ready to woo and be wooed. Meanwhile, from his mother’s breast and under the caresses of her hands, Dieudonné drew the primal forces from here and beyond, those visible, those invisible, to engage himself in this great task called living, to grow and to yearn, in a place where everything is defiance and victory.

  Four months after Dieudonné’s birth, Tertulien killed two goats and two pigs for a feast what we still remember today in Anse Bleue. All the branches of the Lafleur family were there. The women were dressed in carabella* dresses taken out from beneath their beds for special occasions, the men in their long tunics. The children laughed and ran through the forest of adult legs. Ermancia, Ilménèse, Cilianise, and Olmène finished preparing the meal. The smells came to us, gilded, joyous. Orvil sat down for a moment, silent, looking at all those he loved reunited there. All the branches of the great Lafleur tree. In the distance, the sea was beautiful and gentle. A light wind
from the mountains shook the trees. Orvil closed his eyes and breathed with contentment. Like one does when holding a rare gift.

  This was the one and only time we had leftovers. Irrefutable proof, if there were any, that the feast had been grandiose. That we had it for our grand goût. Tertulien Mésidor hadn’t skimped on anything: the tchaka, the goat boudin, grilled goat, pork griot, lalo* rice, chicken in Creole sauce, the bananes pesées,* crab, djon-djon* rice.

  We ate like it was our last meal. Like famine was at our heels and threatening to catch us. Right away. Like the food of the world would disappear forever. Like death already held our hand. We ate greedily. To be full. We ate with pleasure, mixed with the panic and dread of losing it forever. Our pleasure grew tenfold. The men undid the first buttons of their tunics and the women loosened their sashes. We ate to be drunk, désounin.

  With our dresses and our tunics stained with sauce and our hands greasy, all afternoon, we ladies and gentlemen danced the quadrille, the minuet, like the time when our ancestors, behind their huts, imitated the court of the kings of France. Some musicians came at Tertulien’s request from the other side of the Lavandou Morne and had us dance to the sound of the drum, the flute, the tambourine: “Kwazé les pas.”

  Misfortune was soon going to crack open our lives, but we didn’t know that yet. We didn’t know that it was the last time the Lafleur descendants would be together. Everyone. We didn’t suspect that events, following a wilder and wilder course, would seal and consecrate separations, departures and deaths, from which we’d never return. Never…

  We left at dusk, with the sweetness of a satisfaction that knew no bounds. Tertulien Mésidor watched the crowd walk away in its final laughs, some men staggering in the darkness, and the easy-going women with their swaying gait. He turned around and for a long moment admired Olmène’s blazing hips, her eyes that had struck him at the Ti Pistache market, the immense silence in which he so loved to forget himself. And Tertulien told himself that he was a powerful man, that he was quite lucky.