They went on. Each climb followed a descent that didn’t lead to a plain but just to a strip of land that lead to a new climb on a narrow path bordering a dangerous abyss. Sensing that they were approaching Anse Bleue, they sped up in silence and climbed the last hill.
Olmène and Ermancia finally saw Anse Bleue. Behind them, the parrots coming from the distant mountains cried, announcing the impending rains. On the horizon, the red globe of the sun set amidst the squalls of seagulls. The wind broke the crests of the waves in sprays of foam that came to die on the sand. Anse Bleue was already sleeping. They descended the hill with a light step, almost running, magnetized by the village. Olmène was eager to see her father Orvil, her two brothers Léosthène and Fénelon, and the entire cohort of aunts, uncles, cousins. Everyone.
The way to Anse Bleue had been long. Very long. It led to our world. A world without a school, without a judge, without a priest, and without a doctor. Without those men who are said to stand for order, science, justice, and faith.
A world left to ourselves, men and women who knew enough about the human condition to speak alone to the Spirits, Mysteries, and Invisibles.
10.
The daily catch hadn’t been as good as the day before, because the nets hadn’t held up. Orvil left at the break of dawn with his sons, Léosthène and Fénelon, and they fought for two hours with a bonito that they didn’t succeed in catching, leaving a sea of red blood around them. The bois-fouillé* had taken on water and they thought that it would best to return with the few fish that they’d managed to catch earlier. On the way back to Anse Bleue, Léosthène and Fénelon scraped the scales and gutted the fish with their knives, and left them to dry in the salt.
But after this hard catch at dawn, Orvil was exhausted. “To live and to suffer are one and the same thing,” he’d always claimed, “with our whole lives to pass through our sufferings, heels fixed into the earth to not waver. And when we want to throw out fierce obscenities and curse the hell out of life, we call the Mysteries and the Invisibles, and we caress it, life, like one calms a rearing horse.”
Orvil had hardly passed through the door to his hut when he had to intervene to take care of Yvnel, the son of his younger brother Nélius. He put his blue handkerchief around his neck. Blue, the color of Agwé, his mèt tèt. He wore this whenever when he had to work to heal somebody, help with a difficult birth, or remove a bad spell cast over a chrétien-vivant, a house, or a jardin. Yvnel trembled from head to toe, overcome by a high fever. Orvil made his way to the back of hut, to the family grove. He gathered roots, bark, and herbs, which he crushed, mixed, kneaded in an enameled bowl while singing in a whisper:
Mèt Gran Bwa Îlé
Zanfan yo malad
Bezwen twa fèy sakré
Pou m bouyi te
Maître Gran Bwa Îlé
Your children are sick
I need sacred leaves, three
To prepare the tea
Grimacing, the boy swallowed three gulps of a green and viscous liquid. Only Orvil knew the recipe. When he went back to Yvnel’s mother, it was to reassure her.
Orvil finally sat down at the entrance to his hut, took his bottle of trempé and poured three drops in the dust for the Dead before bringing it to his lips. Once. Twice. Several times. The grave of his father Bonal, just beside the hut, between the stones and the wild grass, rose up behind the plumes of blue smoke from his pipe. He remembered the rider who had visited his mother, Dieula, and the month-long penance. He slid into a sweet sleepiness, nan dòmi, waiting for the the Invisibles and the Dead to visit him behind his eyelids.
And Bonal Lafleur soon made a sign above his grave. A sober, pensive, even uneasy Bonal, in his thin blue cotton shirt too big for his slight shoulders. And, behind Bonal, Orvil saw the furtive shadow of Dieunor, his franginen forefather. Long, evanescent silhouette, high forehead, emaciated face. But he would have recognized him anywhere, because of the scar on his right cheek. Not a day went by that he didn’t think of Dieunor, that he didn’t think of the secrets of this franginen ancestor, the secrets to which Bonal, his father, had been made the keeper.
When Ermancia and Olmène arrived, Orvil was still sleeping, his head bent slightly forward, his chair propped against the wall at the entrance to the hut. Olmène watched the ample movements of his thorax like those of an animal in repose. His motionless face showed a deep fatigue, which got mixed up with the forgotten smile on his mouth. For a moment, Orvil resisted the hand that shook him gently on the shoulder. Neither Ermancia nor Olmène mentioned the unexpected and untimely appearance of Tertulien Mésidor at the fish stall at the Ti Pistache market.
Orvil stretched out and asked, mechanically, if sales had been good. Ermancia pouted slightly and said the routine “Not bad,” while in fact they had sold everything, and for a good price. She handed out a portion, just a portion, of the profits to Orvil, along with the soap, the oil, and the cloth that she had bought from Madame Frétillon. Ermancia promised him that she would make him a new shirt in Roseaux. He nodded.
When she asked him for news of her sons, Orvil told her that Léosthène had just told him again about his desire to leave Anse Bleue and go to the Dominican Republic or Cuba. Anywhere, just to leave. Like Saint-Ange, the father of Ilménèse’s children. Like Dérisca, that man from Ti Pistache who had left for the big island and brought back, his words ringing like bells—“caramba, porqué no, si señor”—“guayabelles* like you’ve never seen and two gold teeth that speak volumes about what a man can get over there in Cuba.” Philogène, Orvil’s brother, before his death, had been able buy a bread oven for the mother of his children, who lived between Roseaux and Baudelet. “Just by cutting cane, Uncle Philogène did it,” repeated Léosthène.
“With Fénelon, you can never know,” Orvil added. “Never.” As much as Léosthène’s heart was on the side of the sun, for all to see: the joy, pain, torment, or contentment; Fénelon’s loved the shadows and silence. Nobody could say if he wanted to stay or leave, if he would open his hand to catch a dream or if he hid dark anger or resignation in his clenched fist. No one.
Léosthène wanted to go to the lands where fortune sometimes caressed the dreams of men like him. Images were turning inside his head like a wild sarabande and he kept repeating: “Mwen pralé, I will go. Mwen pralé.” He had buried his rage to live deep down, and only wanted to take it out to bite at hope. Orvil hadn’t paid attention to it the first times Léosthène had said said these words, but he finally accepted that they hurt him like the blows of a machete. The blood didn’t trickle but all the same. So many people had already left. Too many people. Orvil, every day, told himself that he would get through this suffering, too.