Dancing in the Baron's Shadow (10 page)

He hit the gas and swerved away from the curb, missing the car parked in front of him by an inch. Raymond stuck his arm out the window, pressing for drivers to let him through.

“We need to ditch this car,” he muttered.

Somewhere around Chemin des Dalles, with the shadows of the afternoon encroaching, Eve accepted that Nicolas was gone. Stopped in front of a street vendor on a crowded street, Raymond got back in the Renault with two colas and a fruit juice and found Eve regarding him sharply while she nursed Amélie.

“Nicolas won't get out of Fort Dimanche, Raymond,” she stated flatly. “Not with the charges they have against him. Not with the book.”

She had rolled her window down to purchase a bunch of
ti malice.
The fruit sellers, sensing a customer of means, were swarming around the car, but Eve didn't seem to mind as she bought the tiny bananas. Raymond pulled away before they were completely surrounded, not knowing where exactly he was headed.

“She's so hungry,” Eve said, wiping the baby's face with a handkerchief. “You must be too. Here. Eat something.” She handed Raymond a peeled banana.

Raymond took it and thanked her. He ate two as he drove, washing them down with the soda. They tasted so good that he had to stop himself from eating more.

“Raymond?” Eve adjusted the baby on her breast. “Yvonne is going to worry. We need to call her. I'm putting you and your family at risk now too.”

Raymond drove, his eyes glued to the winding road up the mountain.

“I'm not sure you understand. We need to warn her. She and the kids should go to the country for a while. You too—”

“Yvonne left me.”

There was a moment of silence. It pained him to say it, but he had to get it over with. There was no family left to worry about him or for him to endanger. No home to return to. He told her about the empty house, the bare hangers in the armoire, the deserted beach.

“Oh,” Eve moaned. “Oh, Raymond. My poor Raymond.”

When he glanced in the rearview mirror, he saw that she was crying quietly once more, her face buried in Amélie's curls.

“Please don't cry,” he said. “It's all right. Yvonne did what she felt was right for the children. I can't blame her: I could not provide for my family. And now, I must admit, I'm relieved they are gone. Because you're right, we're all in trouble now.”

“But it's not fair, Raymond,” Eve said, peering at him in the mirror, her eyes like black roses against her face. “None of it is fair. I'm so sorry. I feel so selfish, asking you to help—”

“Stop, please!” Raymond snapped.

Eve's voice cut off and she watched him, startled.

“It's done,” he said. “Let's not talk about it. Is there any more fruit?”

Eve blinked, her lashes still wet. She dug into an orange with her red fingernails and peeled off the stubborn skin. Raymond pulled over and ate the orange quickly, sweat pouring from his brow. All around them, vendors called to the pretty lady in the back of the fancy car, begging for business.

Eve ignored them, looking at her baby instead. Sated and happy, Amélie grinned at her, and she grinned back.

“Amélie and I are leaving, Raymond,” she said suddenly. “Jean-Jean was right. There is nothing I can do for Nicolas now, but there
is a plan in place for our escape, a phone number I can call. It is hidden at the house. We'll have to go back.”

“I'll go back on my own,” he said. “It'll be safer. Just tell me where it is.”

She shook her head. “I have to go myself.”

Raymond tried to dissuade her, but she was silent. It was as if someone entirely different had taken control of Eve's body. Even Amélie was quieter, different—following her mother's lead in all things.

“Take only what you need, nothing more.”

Raymond pulled the curtains to the side just an inch. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary outside. They had placed the call to the person Eve said would help them escape. A suspicious elderly voice—sex indeterminate—had taken her number and promised to call in ten minutes. A couple of cars drove by outside the gate, but no one stopped. Raymond wasn't sure what to look for. A vehicle stationed outside the house? A truck? A group of men in uniform or in civilian clothes? Raymond had parked three blocks away and they'd snuck in through the alley, taken all the necessary precautions, but what if somebody came? Then what would they do?

“Hurry,” he said.

He was in Nicolas's office. On the other side of the hall, Eve was opening and shutting drawers, making sure she wasn't forgetting anything. Their bag was already packed with diapers and a can of powdered milk. She grabbed her jewelry, gold chains and bracelets she could use as currency. She hid them in tissues and stuffed them among other things. Raymond watched her take a black and white photograph of Nicolas and himself, small boys dressed in white on First Communion day. She threw it in the bag.

“Your passports,” he said. “Grab Nicolas's too. Hurry.”

They had checked the back of the house and found Freda gone along with her belongings. The mattress in her room was speckled with blood. The poor woman had probably fled in terror. Raymond would have done the same.

Amélie was on the bed, crawling toward the bag, chewing on a piece of bread. She cooed and reached for a hairbrush. Eve trudged
into Nicolas's office. The mess hadn't been touched, and she stepped over books thrown carelessly on the floor as though they were stones in a field. She knelt before Nicolas's desk.

“What are you doing?” Raymond asked.

Eve was looking for something, her hand wandering beneath the drawer.

“We have to get out of here, Eve!” he pleaded.

She found what she was looking for, and when she stood up, she smiled at him with relief. He peered at the metal box she set down next to the typewriter. Eve fiddled with the clasp, and they both heard a click. She lifted the lid. Inside laid a small, worn notebook with a black leather cover. Newspaper clippings fluttered between pages.

“No,” he said.

She stared back at him, her chin held up in defiance. A strand of dark hair stuck to her wet forehead.

“You can't do this,” Raymond said, shaking his head.

“I have to,” she said, running her finger over the notebook. “This is all that's left of his work. If I can take it with me, then I'm not abandoning him, not totally.”

“It's too dangerous,” Raymond said. “We can't take the chance of being caught with this.”

Eve held the notebook against her chest. She clenched her jaw. “I won't leave it behind,” she said. “I won't. You can do what you want.”

Who was this woman? For a brief moment, he felt duped, as if he'd never really known her. In the background, Amélie was still cooing in the bedroom.

“I can't take this risk,” he said.

“I'm taking it, Raymond! I just need to know that all this wasn't for nothing. I'll do whatever I can for Nicolas, to make the world see what's happening to our country. That's what he would have wanted. I need you to understand that.”

Raymond rubbed his forehead to ease the pain.

“I
have
to,” she insisted.

Right now, nothing was more important than them leaving, going
into hiding somewhere. He'd heard the rumors about families that the Macoutes came back for, taking them away to their deaths. Raymond threw his arms up in resignation. There was no time to argue. Eve placed the notebook back in the box. At the bottom, Raymond noticed something wrapped in blue fabric. He was going to ask her what it was, but she cut him off.

“Damn it, when are they going to call?”

As if in answer, the phone jangled and Eve's hand leapt toward the receiver.

“Hello?” she said, and listened attentively for a few seconds. “I understand.”

“Our arrangement is no longer valid,” she said to Raymond, her eyes wide. “We are too hot to handle right now. We have to sit tight and call back in two weeks. They'll see what they can do then.”

Raymond met her eyes, his face ashen. “We have to get out of here, now!”

TEN

N
icolas only came to when the truck drew to a complete stop and the engine turned off. It was too dark for him to see the other prisoners. He tried to move and get his blood circulating. His urine-soaked pants stuck to his skin and the smell filled the air. He wanted to apologize, but he was too embarrassed to speak. And then it occurred to him that the others also stank of piss, and worse.

The truck doors opened, the light blinding. An order came to stand and he saw the bodies of other men struggling to get up. He saw the fear on their helpless faces. One man was still in his underwear and slippers.

The guards kept their gun barrels pointed at them, and Nicolas had one shoved in his face as he exited the truck. He felt his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. Water. He needed to drink something. He tried licking his lips, but everything, even his tongue, was dry. He needed to change his clothes, to clean himself up. When he stepped out, he knew exactly where he was: Fort Dimanche.

The pestilence surrounding the fortress was unmistakable. Fort Dimanche was built on swampland, just off the bay of Portau-Prince, near Chancerelle. A smell of sea salt and decay pervaded the air, rumored to stem from the marshes that had become the prison's execution fields. The Haitian American Sugar Company plant was nearby, and it was said that the roar of processing turbines concealed the screams of tortured prisoners.
The bordering slums of La Saline and Cité Simone, as well as the outdoor market of Croix des Bossales, added to the stench.

Nicolas thought it uncanny that men and women were brutalized and silenced here under the orders of a man who called himself a
noiriste,
a believer in Black Consciousness, right across from the very place where people were once sold into slavery. How much had actually changed when Duvalier was now the disease eating away at Haiti from the inside?

Armed guards surrounded the prisoners, toting their rifles with nonchalance. Many of them were young, barely twenty-five, dressed in the standard Macoute uniform, their eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Nicolas didn't recognize any of them. Some others wore civilian clothes and paced back and forth, hands glued to their pistols. The prisoners didn't speak, but Nicolas heard someone whisper a prayer. They all kept their eyes glued on the massive, mustard-colored edifice rising before them.

Nicolas had never seen Fort Dimanche up close. He took in every dark angle of the prison, every crack in its aging walls. A ray of sunlight blinded him as it reflected off the grimy windows behind steel bars.
Maybe some of the cells have windows,
he thought. What terrified him was the possibility of perpetual darkness, not seeing the sun or the sky for the rest of his short life.

Under the midday sun, Fort Dimanche glowed yellow like a pus-filled wound in the vastness of the land. The walls surrounding the property were flanked with barbed wire, left over from the American occupation in the 1930s. Fort Dimanche had been many things in the past, having served as barracks, a military base for the American marines, a training camp, a shooting range, and even an armory. It took Duvalier's sadistic rule to convert it into a prison death camp.

The metal door swung open and three men walked out of the fortress. Two of them wore slacks and carried rifles. They flanked a third man who was shorter, his hands clasped behind his back. He was dressed in a sharp, crisp khaki uniform with gold chevron insignia on his broad shoulders. Nicolas's eyes followed
the glimmer of a small gold medal on his lapel. Black and red. This man was more imposing and intimidating than the others, despite his height.

The three men stopped in formation and stared at the prisoners. The man in uniform began to speak, and Nicolas noticed the scar running from his right eyebrow to chin. His heart skipped a beat. He'd seen that scar in photographs. He'd written about this man who was now shouting orders at him between dramatic pauses.

“
Prisonniers, en garde!”
the man bellowed.

The prisoners adjusted their stance, awkwardly shifting their weight from one foot to the other. They glanced at each other, uncertain. They weren't soldiers. They had no idea how to obey those orders. The scar-faced man laughed at this and began to pace down the line, detailing each prisoner's presentation and features. Nicolas stood motionless between two other men, his wrists raw with pain.

The officer stopped in front of Nicolas but seemed to take no special note of him.

“My name is Jules Sylvain Oscar,” he said. “I am the warden here.
Bienvenue à Fort Dimanche.”

And then Jules Sylvain Oscar smiled directly at Nicolas, eyes twinkling.

Nicolas spent the next two days alone inside a cell so tiny he could touch the walls by stretching out both hands. They called it a
tibout,
or small piece. Every few hours, guards came and treated him to a
bastonnade,
their clubs raining blows on his body coiled on the hot cement. The first time they came, he could only think to ask them how they could stand to be torturers. “This,” they said, laughing, “this isn't torture.” After that, Nicolas didn't say anything, accepted the beatings. He wondered if he would die here like this, weak with pain and hunger.

On the third day, the men pulled him out of the
tibout
and dragged him down a hallway by the arms. His torso was stained with blood and bile, and they didn't want to get any of it on their
clothes. One of them complained that cell number six was too far to bother with.

“They should just let us waste the sons of bitches,” he said.

Nicolas couldn't see through the swelling in his right eye. The blood had started to coagulate there, leaving a sticky film coating his eyelashes. His heels scraped along the cold floor. Nicolas didn't know in which of the ten cells he would land. Not that it mattered. He was going to die. He was sure of it. He didn't know how he hadn't died in that first cell.

Along the hallway, Nicolas heard voices, screaming and moaning.

“Please,” someone lamented. “
Yon ti dlo,
a drink of water…”

They finally stopped in front of a narrow metal door. Nicolas heard the chiming of keys. A third voice was there, another man. Nicolas tried to see through the blood and thought he spotted a guard in a striped shirt standing against a wall with a pistol. Nicolas's head fell back as he collapsed to his knees.

“Stand up!” the guard ordered.

Nicolas heard them shout, but he couldn't respond. His legs were too weak. His head was spinning too fast, and everything throbbed. Soon, Nicolas, bloody and lacerated, was propped up like Christ on the cross, his arms extended. He felt a cool wind rush against his bare legs. He felt naked in his soiled underwear, but had no strength left for shame.

The guard next to him shouted, “Prisoners, step away from the door!”

Nicolas had never prayed for death before, but as the guard toyed with his keys and unlocked the door, he wished again for God to strike him down on the spot. He'd never suffered this much before, and when hands shoved him into a dark cell, he expected to meet an icy cement floor, to break his jaw or crack another rib. Instead, he landed onto a curious ensemble of limbs that broke his fall. Hands—hard, soft, callused, rough—brushing against his skin as they pulled him left and right, as if kneading and molding dough. He heard murmurs, whispers, and smelled a myriad of foul odors.

“Toss him there!” someone ordered. “This is my corner.”

“Eh!
Kenbe li,
catch him!”

Nicolas's head landed on a mat. He kept his eyes shut, his mouth closed. The air was thick with heat and stench, and the fiery ground sent pain rippling through his body. He cried out with his mouth open. No sound came out. He needed help. A doctor. Medicine. Painkillers. Air.

The mat was a single, unpadded layer of woven straw, and it stuck to the open wounds on his back when he tried to roll over. He'd slept on mats as a child, sharing a room with his brother. His mother bought the
nattes
herself from an artisan who wove them by hand. But those were comfortable.

He tried to speak and, instead, found himself gasping for air, trying to breathe in this oven. A wave of nausea swelled in his stomach. He turned on his side so he wouldn't choke if he threw up and promptly lost consciousness.

He dreamed of the countryside, of his parents and his brother and the fields. He dreamed of the children too, Amélie and Enos and Adeline, running and playing in the surf. He dreamed of the smell of the sand and his wife's skin. All around them on the beach, it was sunny, but gray clouds mounted on the horizon. They came and retrieved him as he was still dreaming, before he could run down to the shore and pick up his daughter, and he was almost grateful to have been pulled from the cell without having to meet its other inhabitants. Assuming he was going to be shot, he grasped for the memory of his dream. His lips moved, but no prayers came.

At first he thought the stench in the black hall was urine, but then he realized the odor was emanating from the walls of the prison itself. It was the smell of something rotten and decomposed, flesh that had been left to decay.

Fort Dimanche was a narrow two-story building, and Nicolas counted five cell doors on both sides of the hallway. A bright lightbulb flickered overhead, casting stark shadows over the
heads and shoulders of prisoners. They disappeared into another corridor, and Nicolas felt as if he were being swallowed whole into the mouth of a monster. Without warning, something sharp poked him in the rib. A Macoute was pressing the barrel of his rifle into his side.

“This way!”

Another guard grabbed Nicolas by the arm, leading him up an unsteady staircase. Nicolas's heart raced. The fear was real, alive in his flesh. Nicolas managed to look back toward the cells, but he saw nothing but inky darkness. He heard a thunderous whack behind a locked door. A feeble howl rose in the air. Then another whack, followed by a groan, and then…silence. Nicolas thought of his father, and his mother, and the friars at Frères de Saint-Marc Institution and the words they'd taught him to pray.
Our Father, who art in heavert…
How did the rest go?

The men finally stopped before a closed door. Nicolas saw a warm light shining beneath it. One of the men knocked. Nicolas closed his eyes again and tried to quiet the voices fluttering in his mind like wild, frightened birds.

A voice shouted from inside. “
Entrez!”

One guard opened the door and the other shoved Nicolas inside. Nicolas stumbled forward toward the light.

The room glowed orange from a lamp atop a metal desk where papers and folders were piled in stacks, forming a small barrier around the officer sitting at the desk. He kept his head down, signing and stamping documents one after the other. His movements were mechanical, and Nicolas could hear the grating of the ballpoint pen against the grain of the paper. The man kept his head down, but when he finally angled his face in the light, Nicolas recognized the stitched welt across his brown skin, the droopy eyelid over a scarred eye.

There was the man he'd researched, written about, sought to destroy with proof of his crimes, a man as repulsive as the leader he served. Oscar was personally responsible for horrors: selling
Haitian citizens over the border to the Dominican Republic for forced labor, trafficking cadavers to medical schools and young girls to pimps abroad. And then his name had come up in connection with Alexis. All of it was in the book Nicolas had written—which, of course, the warden now had.

“Sir, this is the prisoner, L'Eveillé.”

Nicolas's eyes swept over the desk and noticed an envelope stuffed with green American dollars. He stared at the bills and wondered why there was such a large amount of money just sitting there. Next to it, Nicolas recognized Duvalier's
Catechism of the Revolution.
Children were made to memorize it in school.

“Make him sit,” the warden said, putting his pen down.

Oscar grabbed the envelope and ran a red tongue across the fold while the Macoutes pushed Nicolas down onto a wooden seat. The guards unknotted the rope around his wrists and, just as he sighed in relief, grabbed his hands and bound them again around the back of the chair. He felt his flesh burn as the rope bit even deeper into his skin.

Behind the warden, there were shelves of books Nicolas sensed had never been read, the spines dusty, the lettering smudged and erased. There were also two framed plaques recognizing Jules Oscar for services rendered to the Republic of Haiti. Above the warden's chair loomed a large, framed portrait of François Duvalier, his steely eyes smirking. The president's skeletal gray hand and aging face were a testament to rumors about his declining health. He looked like a ghost, like the remains of a man, shrunken and solemn. Nicolas clenched his teeth at the sight. Even in a photograph, Duvalier's eyes seemed to see everything.

The warden reached down below his desk. When he came back up, he held a brown leather briefcase with a gold lock. He carefully stored the envelope of money inside and placed the briefcase back under his desk. Finally, their eyes met. Nicolas told himself to remain calm and composed. The men who had brought him in retreated into dark corners of the room, and
Nicolas was relieved not to have them breathing angrily down his neck, machete and pistol inches away.

“Nicolas L'Eveillé.” Oscar smiled. “It seems you are interested in me.”

His voice echoed in the cavernous room where the walls, crumbling and chipped, were stained with mildew. He gave a little laugh. Nicolas stared at the warden and tried to swallow, his dry throat sharp and painful.

“I know some things about you too, you know?” Oscar said, still smiling.

Nicolas tried to picture him without the scar, but it was impossible. There was a silent rage to his face, a cold, deep-seated spite.

“Attorney at law, worked out of Jean Faustin's practice back in…1953? Now you run your own show, I see. A bigmouthed professor. Getting off on impressing the youth with your intellect. How many books would you say you've read?”