God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) Read online

  I’ll say, Saint Peter said. It probably wasn’t a good idea for you to name yourself emperor of Haiti a few years into your presidency. The people were still angry at the French emperor.

  I know.

  Emperor!

  I know, I know.

  That politically tone-deaf move made you a dead man walking thereafter. The last thing your people wanted so soon after overthrowing Napoleon was another emperor.

  Sigh.

  What your people need is someone in charge of a government, autocratic or not, who serves their needs, dignity, and children first. Any form of government that did just that would do. Do you want to know who had you killed?

  No.

  Really? It would be no trouble for us. We can introduce them to you right now. Your killers, by the way, hacked your body into multiple pieces. The woman who collected your dead body for a proper burial had to make multiple trips.

  No, no, thank you. I don’t want to meet my Judas.

  Good answer. Now, would you please step aside for a minute while we hear your successor make his case for heaven? You look disappointed.

  I thought you’d send me straight to hell.

  Why, you’re in a hurry! It’s eternity. Hell, or heaven, for that matter, is not going anywhere. You and your people present us with a complicated case. We could use more time and evidence to deliberate before making our decision on your fates. Your inability to collectively band to develop that pretty island caused millions of people to needlessly suffer malnutrition and other cruel forms of death for generations. Sending people to hell when they had resources and know-how to save or improve millions, and in some cases, billions of lives on earth but failed to do so out of a smallness of spirit, a self-centered form of evil, is easy. You people, on the other hand, lived in hell already, the hell of slavery followed by a hellish poverty cocreated by your unforgiving former slave-masters. Your poor judgment still came down to vanity, an excessive amount of amour propre. Remember the first of the Ten Commandments, General Dessalines?

  Er, no.

  Of course you don’t. It’s “Thou shall not have other gods before me.”

  I believe you are mistaken, sir. I had no other God before God, Dessalines said. I bowed to no man!

  Sure, you did, Saint Peter said, you worshipped yourself more than you worshipped God.

  In the back of the long line of dead Haitian presidents, the last President swallowed hard. He watched his predecessors face Saint Peter one by one and come up wanting. Dessalines was followed by one of the men who may have had him killed, Henri Christophe, then Alexander Pétion, Jean Pierre Boyer, Charles Rivière-Hérard, Philippe Guerrier, Jean-Louis Pierrot, Jean Baptiste Riché, Faustin Soulouque, Fabre Geffrard, Nissage Saget, Sylvain Salnave, Michel Domingue, Pierre Boisrond-Canal, Joseph Lamothe, Lysius Salomon, François Légitime, Monpoint Jeune, Florvil Hyppolite, Tirésias Simon Sam, Pierre Nord Alexis, François Antoine-Simon, Cincinnatus Leconte, Tancrède Auguste, Michel Oreste, Oreste Zamor, Joseph Davilmar Théodore, Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave, Louis Borno, Louis Eugène Roy, Sténio Vincent, Élie Lescot, Franck Lavaud, Dumarsais Estimé, Paul Eugène Magloire, Joseph Nemours Pierre-Louis, Franck Sylvain, Léon Cantave, Daniel Fignolé, Antonio Kebreau. To a man, they told Saint Peter to send them to hell. They could have been better men, they said. Then, one step ahead of the President came the turn of the so-called devil himself, President Dr. François Duvalier.

  The man standing in the shadow behind Saint Peter cleared his throat. Peter looked at the diminutive and bespectacled dictator like an old acquaintance. Duvalier, he said. Let’s look at your ledger, shall we?

  The day got considerably warmer.

  Really, Duvalier said, do we have to? My ledger’s negatives are no different than those of any head of state to face this lectern in the history of man. I confess freely to physically and emotionally destroying my enemies and other irritants, both to win power and to stay in power during my long rule. My country had the reflexive dislike of authority more commonly found among teenagers. They needed a president with a strong hand. Right, fellas?

  The dozens of ex-presidents sitting in stands in nearby purgatory did not answer.

  I killed men and women with my own hands and the hands of my armed forces, he said. Did I get any further than my illustrious predecessors in figuring out a form of government to take care of the needs of our nation’s citizens? No. I couldn’t decide between capitalism and communism. I dithered and failed to come up with a third way. The power to turn sand and gravel into bread and lettuce to feed our masses never came to me despite my prayers. My citizens ended up the poorer for it, though not as poor as they became under the incompetent fools who took over trying to develop the place after my death.

  With that, François Duvalier turned around and looked at the President with more than a bit of disgust. The President felt his cheeks heat up. So many narratives, so many stories, so many faiths he clung to, shattered that instant. So many people told him and the world that François Duvalier was the anti-Christ, the worst man and Haitian to have ever walked the earth. He had lived the Duvalier era and survived and even thrived. But he felt its craven impotence in his bones. He saw it in the faces of his parents and neighbors and the widows and orphans of Duvalier’s murder sprees. The man bathed the country with negative energy. Even artists and poets felt their talents wilt at the thought of facing the idea of Duvalier. Only Natasha, his brilliant and precocious child bride, had the courage and wit to take on the diable. When he saw her canvas titled Duvalierism—a white canvas painted thickly and slickly black, a Rothko without a halo’s glow—tears streamed down his face. He was speechless. And now here he was, listening to Duvalier himself make a credible case to Saint Peter for his access to heaven. I loved, Duvalier was saying. I loved my wife and did everything I could to sustain her love, to keep her approval, her pride, and her affection. We had only one boy, and I loved him like few other fathers loved their son. I loved him like He loved His son. Like Him, I bequeathed a kingdom to my son. Like His son, the great power and our world’s great needs and flaws overwhelmed my son. Peu importe. I did my duty. I served my people as best I could. I fulfilled my duties as a loving father, husband, son, cousin, nephew, uncle, and citizen as best I could. I died in office in my bed, peacefully. Only six out of forty Haitian presidents can boast of such an accomplishment. I left my children a legacy of strength and wealth of resources that served them well for decades. Excuse my lack of modesty, Peter. It’s an old man’s habit. But I really do look forward to eternal life in heaven.

  Peter’s eyebrow shot up.

  Oh? he said.

  You’ve read my heart, Duvalier responded calmly. And you’ve read my press. Was the little patch of earth I was responsible for better off during my time there than after? It was, wasn’t it?

  Seemingly amused, Saint Peter asked, And what about the human rights you denied your citizens? The democracy you denied your country by staying in power for so long, and then passing governance over to your son as if it were a vintage watch? What about the highly preventable poverty you allowed your people to sink into? What say you, doctor?

  Riveted by Duvalier, a Dante verse floated through the President’s mind. It had the melody of a Smokey Robinson song.

  His face was the face of a just man,

  So mild, if you looked no deeper than the skin;

  The rest of his body was a reptile’s . . .

  Except in this vision, this glimpse of his future through the fates of his predecessors as they met their maker, the rest of the body of Duvalier that the President could see was that of a man, a small, stupid man.

  On earth, Mr. Peter, the dictator said, the incentives weren’t aligned right for me to do more than I did. I’m a simple man with simple tastes. I didn’t travel much. I didn’t want more from life than I had. I rarely ever left the palace, my home. I was a man caring for my family as best as I could, like all men try to care for their families. What
did I care that the roads to Hinche or Jérémie were shit? What did I care that people couldn’t vote, and the constitution was unreliable? Our education system was all right. They wanted to speak French. We gave them French. The people wanted to talk more than build. They wanted to study more than work. They wanted to pose more than serve. Talk, talk, talk, study, study, study. Dance, drink, drink. Fuck. They got that. If they wanted more, if they wanted to serve the land that birthed and fed us, they would have worked, innovated, and developed it. They played the short game. They got the country they worked for. They had the ambitions of children, so we treated them like children. What are you going to do, send all of us Haitians to hell because we had the attention span and work ethic of an orgasm? You got to give me credit for never leaving. Not that they were doling out Mediterranean retirement plans back then.

  Again, Duvalier paused to turn around and give a stern look to the President in the eyes. What, the President thought, you of all people find me wanting? If a chocolate-brown man could blush, the President’s face would have turned red. There was a big-enough grain of truth in Duvalier’s contempt for him that his pride felt cut in a place he didn’t know existed. Before Duvalier could go on, Saint Peter raised a hand and stopped him. Thank you, Dr. Duvalier, he said with finality. We have heard enough. We shall render our verdict on your fate.

  Now sweating as if his body were already halfway submerged in hellfire, the President watched the saint’s face closely to gauge his reaction to Duvalier’s plea. As the verdict became clearer and clearer, the President suddenly saw another grand, glorious nimbus of light. The fierce fire looked as if heaven itself had opened up to swallow or eradicate them all. Afraid, the President turned away.

  Opening his eyes, he discovered that he had returned to Toussaint Louverture Airport’s tarmac. Ruined, broken Toussaint Louverture Airport in the wan afternoon sun was a happy sight for his sore eyes. The President felt relieved, light-headed, and, for the first time in a life steeped in passive-aggression, determined. He felt as if he had received from God a reprieve from an almost guaranteed trip to hell. His own date with Saint Peter had been delayed. He didn’t know how much time he had left. From what he saw up there—or was it down there?—anything can happen after you die. There might be an opportunity for him to get certain things right, or to right certain things he believed he may have gotten wrong, royally wrong, all his life. Where to start?

  Mr. President! Mr. President!

  They were soldiers, young and unhurt. Foreign. They stood at attention with spines straight, cream-colored jaws squared. They awaited orders. His. His hearing was off, way off. Dust caked his lips as though he had been eating sand all afternoon. There was work to do.

  Mr. President, come with us.

  Excuse me?

  Sir.

  What?

  Sir!

  That’s better. Talk to me.

  A Captain Waughray, a dark-eyed London cop turned blue-helmeted United Nations neocolonialist masquerading as a peacekeeper, told the President the sad tale of the earthquake that had risen unexpectedly from a shift of tectonic plates deep beneath the Caribbean Sea to destroy Port-au-Prince as he knew it forever. The President took in the news soberly. He began to search for the right and bright new words to soothe his people in this, their darkest hour since they had been French slaves. He blocked out the impulse to acknowledge the freakiest fact, that in his sixty years never once had anyone he knew or anything he’d read about in his lifelong study of Haitian history mentioned the word “earthquake” as a part of life on the island. In his role as a natural then popular elected leader of the community, tragedy had been his daily bread. When people read the common description of Haiti as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, he often thought that they probably had no clue what living that fact was like for a sensitive person. Though his heart had filled with doubt about the quality and number of virtues Saint Peter, Jesus, and God would find in there, he knew his capacity to absorb and help others cope with the torrential pour of unexpected bad news that often characterized life in Haiti was true. So he walked briskly toward a hastily built command center on the tarmac surrounded by a half-dozen earnest and strong young men, and he hurried his emotions to process and discard as quickly as possible the potential pain the disaster may have caused him personally. His wife, his mother, his relatives, friends, and protégé were out there, caught in the brief but deadly maelstrom, and they were unaccounted for so far. Les soldats étrangers s’en foutent. So should he, for now, he decided.

  Sitting down felt nice, even on a metal chair. The tent was meant to be his own. The foreign soldiers handed him a bottle of Evian, a sandwich, and a wet towel so he could wipe his face and attempt to freshen up. They apologized for the lack of air conditioning. It should be operational in the morning, they said. The President chased away a bitter thought about how these Americans—and all foreigners in Haiti, to him, were either American or largely funded by America, which made them, often, even more American—could have all these creature comforts and resources so at the ready, so nearby, that they could mobilize them so quickly after such a disaster. The air conditioning in my office at the National Palace hasn’t worked in a year, but I’ll have an air-conditioned tent in the middle of an airport runway within twenty-four hours of the nation’s destruction. The irony. The American armed forces had sent a slew of giant airplanes. His gracious hosts were beginning an informal occupation, a tightening of a grip meant to keep his country stable, which was a far cry from healthy, and a galaxy away from developed or even developing. This state of affairs is to be a source of strength for you, old man. A state of grace. The Americans blanketed the darkening sky with jumbo jets, dropping off men and supplies whose silent footfall reminded the President of midday summer rains in Jacmel or November snowfalls in Montreal. The President listened to the hum of activity surrounding his tent for a while, then dozed off in his metal chair. The cool of the Port-au-Prince night greeted him when he woke up, fitfully, to the sight of Captain Waughray, poker-faced but youthful, almost kind.

  Sir, we have a situation, he said.

  His wife held him. They held each other. He wept. Natasha’s grip was strong; her fingers dug holes in his skin. He bled, happily. Her relief came in shuddering waves of emotion. This must be how a child would hold her father after a near-death experience, he thought. Such transporting, intense love was something he could only imagine, because he had never had children, which was very unusual for a man of his age and standing in Port-au-Prince. It was a lapse that would haunt him to his grave.

  The next day, he woke up to life in a tent in a ruined city at a loss for words. He busied himself mastering the art of nodding sagely to United Nations and/or American military officers during their briefings on the health, education, infrastructure, economic, and political effects of the earthquake. The briefings were constant. The data dizzying. The range of trauma stupefying. The death toll caused by the earthquake grew exponentially seemingly by the minute. He began to feel as though the earth had kept on shaking and killing more of his people all day long after its splashy thirty-five-second eruption. His mind found it harder and harder to accept the fact that such a brief tremor could cause such carnage. The whole world is with Haiti, the foreigners told him. The outpouring of aid is unprecedented. You are not alone. That’s how the officers concluded each briefing. For some reason, each time he heard the pat phrases he cringed. This is between us and God, he wanted to say. We appreciate your help. Could you please leave our island now? Instead, he nodded.

  Natasha spent the day sleeping, or lying in her cot in their tent with her back turned away from him and the world. Her mind was far away and seemingly unreachable to him. He was afraid of what she was thinking. Did she also think me unworthy? Could she validate me?

  That night, when the emergency camp at the airport was asleep, and even the millions of newly homeless Haitians around the city slept to keep from weeping, he suffered great anxiety. The cure was
n’t going to be found on the island. He scurried behind a pile of rubble, sat down, fished out his cell phone, and dialed a number he hadn’t dialed in years but remembered by heart. The phone rang an unfamiliar tone. What time was it in South Africa? Only an hour later than Paris. He should be awake.

  Bernard Métélus speaking.

  Hello?

  Hello?

  The President cleared his throat. Forgive me, Father, I have sinned, he said. It’s been six years since my last confession.

  Seated in a car in the parking lot of the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto campus, Father Métélus, a defrocked priest and former president of Haiti, turned off the engine and covered his mouth to suppress a gasp. His oldest friend in the world was on the phone. In the twenty four hours since the earthquake had struck down Haiti, he had been famished for news from home. After a sleepless night watching CNN, Bernard Métélus had decided he had a good-enough feel for the scale of the tragedy to stop listening to foreigners’ takes on it, either on TV or in the faculty lounge at the university. He did have a good laugh when a Rwandan criminology professor told him he felt sorry for Haiti and added, It was a shame to see so many people naked and barefoot and desperate on TV like that. Why can’t they get it together? Easy, buddy, Métélus wanted to say, Haiti has its failings, but we never up and killed a million of our own in one month, like your people did in the nineties. But Métélus had long ago become accustomed to the absurdly extreme reactions Haiti provoked in people around the world. So he bit his tongue and spent his time swimming in nostalgia of his favorite places in Port-au-Prince: La Saline, Cité Soleil, Champ de Mars, Paco, Carrefour Feuilles. He liked that his heart had seemed to accept the probable premature deaths suffered by many of his loved ones with a certain amount of Zen. Maybe his old priestly wisdom hadn’t completely disappeared after all. He now realized that his calm in the face of his wife’s and other Haitians’ hysterical reactions to the horrific event back home was a front. The sound of the voice of an old friend, even one who had become a colleague he despised and a successor he dismissed, pierced a thick wound he long thought healed. His emotions outran him, spilling tears through his eyes and spectacles, sandpapering his throat. If the President had survived the gruesome destruction of the National Palace, maybe Tante Evelyne in Léogâne survived too? Maybe my domino-player buddies in Carrefour survived too? Maybe the daughter in Port-au-Prince whose existence I had to deny survived also? Maybe the Lord does finally have mercy on me? Maybe He forgives my hubris? Maybe, just maybe, He loves me still. Maybe, just maybe . . . and then Bernard Métélus, failed Roman Catholic priest and politician in exile, for the first time in a long, long time, felt hope fill his soul, like fresh air through the lungs of a drowned man left for dead.