Kay Koule Twompe Soley Men Li Pa Twompe Lapli

Fooling the Sun

Fooling the Sun

Gwen Strauss

La Verrerie

84560 Ménerbes

France

+33.(0)4.90.72.64.75

+33.(0)6.89.82.69.01

September 25, 2011

Part One

Kay koule twompe soley men li pa twompe lapli.

A leaky house can fool the sun, but it can't fool the rain.

--Haitian Proverb

Erzuli

For weeks the bloated afternoon clouds would come, darken the sky, linger, taunting, then leave without giving up anything. The gardens were yellow and withered; the earth caked hard; the air gasped for water. There was a film of dust on everything. A car passing on the road shot up clouds of it like smoke. The bare feet of the market women walking past Eleanor’s house were white to the ankles with ashy socks. “We’re all going to die,” she heard an old woman cry out.

“Oh Lord, mez ami, please bring the rain,” another woman pleaded in response.

Everything longed for what the heavens withheld. Everyone looked at the brooding sky and repeated the same prayer, “Please, let it rain.”

Before the rains came, the cool wind arrived in a rush, pushing into the house, its fingers reaching into the corners. The wind came from the mountains, arriving like a cousin returned from exile back in the country at last, throwing open doors and windows. It came galloping down the hillside, breaking off branches, blowing leaves and knocking off ripe mangos and breadfruit that fell against the tin roofs.

When at long last the clouds clapped open, Eleanor felt an electric charge. At first it was just a few slow fat drops of rain that landed in the dust like someone dropping batter on a griddle. Then Eleanor heard a hissing noise, the city sighing with relief. The few drops quickened and turned into thousands. The rains came through the heat and washed away a season of grime. The rains split open the sky. They drummed on the roof. She watched from her balcony as her daughters danced in the rain, with their small white arms spread out, shouts of joy, faces turned upwards, mouths opened. The smell of the rain washed away the other smells, the rotting heaps of fruit, the exhaust from busses, the smoke of charcoal fires. When the rains came the city smelled of the sea again. The tin roofs of the city turned slick and the streets looked like creeks of rushing mud.

Eleanor felt jubilant and when Max came home she threw her arms around him. “I’m all wet,” he said, pulling her away. “You’ll ruin your dress.”

“Santano!” she called to the yardboy. She had to call loudly to be heard above the clatter on the tin roof. “Bring towels for Docteur!” Then, turning back to her drenched husband, she said, “I never thought it would happen. I thought this whole place would just wither and die.”

“Well, I fear the rainy season came too late,” Max said, patting her on the arm. Then Max reminded her that the rains were often just as devastating as the droughts. “Tonight many are wet, they have no roof. Or a roof that leaks.” He said the part about leaks while laughing because their roof leaked terribly. And no matter how hard she tried with Santano to repair it, each year the rains entered their house.

Max took off his wet shirt and handed it to Santano who exchanged it with a dry towel. Eleanor looked at Max’s nude torso. He was slender even skinny. He had never been a big man and in fact she was almost the same height. When she wore heals she was taller. He was fair skinned with ruddy almost red hair. His chest and back were splattered with freckles. Something about the wet whiteness of his exposed skin moved her. She felt a maternal affection.

“Don’t catch cold,” she said. Eleanor watched Max drying his face. He brushed the towel through his hair. It looked shaggy and ruffled. Normally Max wore his hair combed back with gel cream. He took care of his appearance. She chuckled and said, “You look like one of those hippies I read about the other day.”

“I need a haircut,” he said running his fingers through his hair to tame it back down into place. “Did you hear?” Max asked.

“Hear what?” she asked. Her voice was still giddy with the rain. Santano had gone back into the kitchen and returned armed with pots and pans ready to go to work. By the way Santano was smiling she knew that he too was pleased the rains had arrived at last.

“Someone’s moving in next door,” Max said, off-handedly as if it didn’t matter.

And so it was in this way that she would always remember it, that it was Max who delivered the news to her, shaking his head of wet hair like a dog. He was the one who gave her the first news of Polo arriving with the rain.

When Docteur Max went to change his clothes, Madame smiled at Santano, as if she were asking him to partner for a dance. She nodded, “Shall we begin.”

Santano felt his heart warm. The rains were here at last. Together they would catch the leaks from the roof. Madame’s house had a roof that wept like a woman. And just like a woman with her different sorts of tears, they each had their own character. To Santano these drops were familiar as returning friends. Some were tiny trickles, the long sadness of a difficult secret. Some were just a drop every few minutes, the tears of joy when good news arrives from far away. There were those that came by surprise when there was a west wind. It reminded Santano of the way Annaise might suddenly weep after their lovemaking. Others came only at the very beginning of a storm, angry and fierce. And some poured like a river, like a grieving mother with no end. Together Madame and Santano knew where to look and how to place each pot.

As they moved around the house putting pots and pans in strategic places, and noting where they might have to patch the roof later, Santano told Madame stories about when he was a young boy in a fishing village right near Port-au-Prince. He remembered that once there were pink flamingos that flocked down by the port. He could tell her about the island before the sprawling slums swallowed his village. Now the slums extended right to the water’s edge and snaked up every ravine into the hills. Now there were no fish to catch. Places where once there were trees, because no one thought they could build on such steep terrain, were now crowded with shanty huts, one built on top of the other. Each rain washed a few hundred out to sea.

At least the rains brought water, Santano said. Madame had to buy their drinking water and had it delivered to their house by truck. They kept the boiled water in large clay pots where it stayed cool even on the hottest days.

Santano told Madame the story about a family famous for their garden. It was Annaise’s family, but he did not mention her name. They lived in the valley a few hours from the city. In this valley, named Pelegre, was a hydroelectric dam that was supposed to bring electricity to the city. The garden was famous, Santano told her. But it no longer existed. It was flooded when the dam was built. This family had grown flowers in their garden that no longer existed on the island. They had kept this garden since the time of the first freed slaves.

“One flower from this garden,” Santano said standing up straight, “was carried by our great slave leader, Toussaint, into battle.”

Santano, unlike Docteur, was a tall man who towered over Madame. And when he talked about Toussaint he felt himself grow taller. But he usually stooped over, almost like an umbrella to shelter Madame from the hot sun. There was something about Madame that made Santano want to protect her. Perhaps it was the memory of Annaise, and his regret. When he met Madame, she too had that fragile frightened look in her eyes. Perhaps it was Madame’s breathtaking beauty that made him feel this way. She had skin as white as the sandy beaches of Kiona and jet black hair and green eyes and many who saw her passing by whispered that she was Erzuli herself. But Santano felt there was more to it than that. So often she looked lost and sad, a mysterious grief haunted her. When he made her smile, it was like seeing the rainbow of Ayida Wedo, the wife of Dambala, the loa of wealth and happiness.

Madame loved to hear his stories about the mythical days when life was better in Haiti. Santano told her how once, long ago, the island had rich fields and tall forests. He said there was a time when no one would cut down a mapou tree because they knew the spirits lived in the branches. But now people had cut everything to make charcoal.

He had pointed out the places where smoke rose in the mist and rain on distant mountainsides. That was where people were making charcoal, people who lived on the marché charbon. And he had pointed out the young boys and girls who sat on the edge of the road with their small basins of charcoal, little pyramids of black lumps. They were always so dirty, covered with coal dust. She said that they looked tired and hungry. She wanted to bring them home, bathe them and feed them. She said, “But I can’t imagine those children having the strength to cut down a big mapou tree.”

The previous rainy season, with Madame supervising, Santano had climbed up on the roof and tried to repair the leaks with patches of scrap tin. Their roof was patched like a peasants’ work pants. But with the new rainy season, it seemed their efforts had failed. He shook his head with defeat seeing one particular leak that they had tried over and over to patch.

“This is not a leak,” he said, pointing to the wet puddle on the floor and then looking up to the ceiling. “This is Nambo Nansi pissing on us.” And then he laughed at his own joke.

“Why does Nambo Nansi want to keep bothering us?” Madame asked, laughing with him.

“It’s his nature.” Santano shrugged his shoulders and opened his large expressive palms to the ceiling. Nambo Nansi was one of the island’s gods who visited from time to time. He was the one who stole things that mysteriously disappeared, and he was the one who made you drink too much. But still everyone liked him; he was a simple farmer, like most of the people on the island, and he was not mean or dangerous like some of the other gods. He was just a prankster trying to scratch out small joys from a hard life.

As they adjusted the pots to catch the water, the subject of the dam came up again, the one that the garden had been sacrificed to build.

“It was supposed to solve everything,” Santano said. “Clean water to drink and magic lights even in the biddonville. Imagine the promises they made to us!” Santano shook his head and clicked his tongue.

The dam had been plagued with problems. Money had gone missing just when the previous president had fled the country after the last coup d’état. There was talk that now he lived at peace in the best hotel in a country with high mountains covered with snow. When the foreigners went back to building their dam, parts had gone missing, essential gears and motors. And then a whole tanker of oil to keep the machinery working disappeared, sold on the black market. Everything went this way. Nothing worked out as planned on this island. Promises were never kept.

The last rainy season, Madame had said that Docteur was angry after the president cut down the forest on the hillsides above the dam. It was the last of the hardwood forests on the island. His soldiers razed the hillsides and left them barren. And so in the last rainy season, much the topsoil above the dam had eroded away, plunged in huge mudslides into the dam and silted it up, clogging it. Now the electricity was on for only an hour a day, if that. And only for the wealthy.

“It was a mistake to cut the trees,” Madame whispered to Santano. Everyone knew the president had cut the trees because he feared another coup d’état. He believed it would come from saboteurs hiding in the forests like Maroons, the runaway slaves of the past. He feared the spirit of Mackandal the famous Marron voodoo priest who led the six-year rebellion against the white planation owners. The president was wise in the ways of the island’s gods.

Santano shook his head. “It is not the president, Madame,” he said. “They say the dam is cursed by Clermeil, the blan loa.

“A white god?” She asked. He could see that his reasoning made her angry. This happened with them sometimes. Madame would be smiling, friendly and then suddenly angry. At those times he thought she was like Erzuli with her sudden fits of temper.

“When he is angry, he makes the rivers overflow,” Santano explained slowly and cautiously.

“It is not cursed,” Madame insisted. “It’s stupidity and ignorance that has ruined it.”

Santano knew that Docteur worked for the president in the Ministry of Health. Santano did not like talking about the president with Madame, or with anyone. It was not safe. The president had hired Docteur to set up a national vaccination program. The president himself had started out as a docteur. He was now a powerful hougan, with strong magic. And the president was also a very cruel and dangerous man.

“Oui, Madame,” Santano said forcing a smile. “But, Madame, the president is a wise man.”

“Of course he is," she agreed dismissively. She was angry. “I just meant that blaming things on Clermeil-- it’s not some white god’s fault.”

“Oui Madame.”

“We are here to help you people,” she continued. “The dam was meant to help.”

“Oui, Madame.”

“It’s been badly managed, is all. But it was meant to help,” she insisted again.

“Oui, Madame.” Santano wanted to ask her, who asked for this dam? And who has it helped? But he kept repeating the same phrase, even as he knew it made her angry.

“So people should stop blaming Nambo Nansi, or Clermeil, or whatever god, instead of their own ignorance.”

At these words, Santano could not hide the anger from his face, and Madame’s eyes shifted away, back to her mask of sadness.