It was said that Tertulien Mésidor got his power and his money from a pact with the devil. That in the right pocket of his pants he hid a free pass, in indelible ink, issued by one of the secret societies, Zobop, Vlingbinding, or Bizango, that surprised the innocent on the roads at night. That he even reigned over one of them as emperor. That in the room upstairs, at the back of the far south end, behind two doors that were always closed, he hid a hideous creature with two horns on its head and a cork-screw tail. Without ever having seen it, several among us swore to have heard it howl at the full moon. Regarding the death of his fourth son, Candelon, we heard that he had offered him up in exchange for richness and power to a blood-thirsty God, Linglinsou or Bossou Trois Cornes.
“But they say so many things,” Olmène thought. She pushed back the blood that rose to her face and, with that blood, all these things said over and over again, endlessly repeated and rehashed, leaving the shock to fold into itself, inside of her, like an August storm.
As with God, if we believed in Tertulien, his power fascinated us all in spite of ourselves. Despite the suffering that he inflicted upon us, he fascinated us. Like his father, Anastase Mésidor, had fascinated us. Despite the wounds, thirst, pain, and hunger. And, since God made the earth tremble, overwhelmed the waters and crumbled the mountains, Tertulien perhaps had set his mind on resembling God. Maybe he wanted to outdo him by even making the stars and stones bleed. He was surrounded by this aura that power bestowed upon the strongest and that so often made us, the conquered, lower our heads and, nose to the earth, inhale the darkness.
When, some years before his death, a dispute had pitted his father, Anastase Mésidor, against men from the big city, the residents of these five hamlets and surrounding villages, including Anse Bleue, had armed themselves with machetes, cutlasses, and bâtons gaïacs.* And, with the help of some clairin, they pushed back the assault. The Mésidors had been dealt an attack by conquerers coming from afar, and we had all felt insulted by it. All of us. Without exception. Go figure! But that’s how we are. This pitched battle, which threw back the assailants, sealed a strange pact, another one, between the Mésidors, Anse Bleue, Ti Pistache, Morne Lavandou, Pointe Sable, and Roseaux. As fearsome and cruel as they were, the Mésidors were ours. We were even proud of them. But make no mistake about it. Under the shared blow, under the whipped pride, mistrust and fear were sleeping. They were always there. They blew inland like a soft black wind, sweeping the grass of the hills, passing through souls, and descending the dry slopes until reaching the sea. And returning to the hills and descending again. For us, mistrust and fear of a new and unexpected cruelty on the part of the Mésidors. And for the Mésidors, mistrust and fear of our unpredictable vengeance. Who knows?
When Tertulien Mésidor returned home after his trip to the market in Ti Pistache that morning, he, unlike other days, thought neither of his business nor of his political contacts, let alone of his wife, Marie-Elda. The image of Olmène had already taken hold over his entire body and swept everything else away. Absolutely everything. A man’s desire sharpened inside of him, and it made his eyes shine in the hot light of that early afternoon. He barely tasted what the servants put out for him on the table and he didn’t even notice his wife’s presence. “That’s enough, I’m not hungry anymore. I already ate.” At this very moment, all Tertulien Mésidor wanted a very young woman. Just one. A peasant, as he liked them. And not a meal.
It is the look of this man that Olmène had borne at the market in Ti Pistache. She had kept her eyes raised for a long time, but eventually dropped them before this rider who could have been her father and who had taken off his hat to talk to her, the daughter of a fisherman and a peasant. She had found the high and serene brow of man who, contrary to legends, contrary to what all of Anse Bleue slurred between clenched teeth, seemed to have a calm presence. The same calm with which he had gone inland toward his grand house with its big gates and all of its servants.
Ermancia, like the other women at market, like all of us, was caught between fear and wonder. Wonder sparked by the attention of a man that powerful, and fear by the often harmful consequences of such power over our lives.
7.
The first moment of stupor over, the man whom I do not know, after having retreated, advanced toward me again. He leaned over again, his eyes wide open. And I saw his face twist slowly in a strange grimace, his jaw slacken, his mouth open as his lips trembled. That’s when, all of a sudden, this face curled in on itself and the man started to cry out, with all of the force of his lungs, names that I didn’t know: “Estinvil, Istania, Ménélas, anmwé, osékou, come to me, help me.” At times he screamed words that fear broke, stretched out, distorted, mixed up. It was like a seawall had given way. And he could no longer stop the waves that gushed from his mouth.
I, I wanted to ask him to stop. Tell him that I would explain. And since I couldn’t, of course he continued to scream even more. It was awful!
Then, like he was mustering up the courage, he came even closer to me, his head bent forward, and opened wide his toothless mouth. No way to withdraw from nor escape his breath of night. No way. A breath to turn your stomach.
Wanting to drown myself in sleep. Just for a few minutes. Knees against my chin. Eyes shut. Shut inside of sleep like the inside of an egg. Let the night glide over my skin. With the memory of the coldness of the moon. Of the rippling water that sparkled like sequins.
At the edge of the village, a rooster shouts at the top of his lungs. Another responds to him. Both call forth a day that struggles to make itself seen.
“Do not do what you might regret,” my mother hammered. “Do not do it!”
My blood throbs outside of me in this wind where I hear this muffled breathing, the clinking of a buckle unfastening…And the cold member, straight as a stick…My neck hits the sand. The tearing. My body is lifted off the ground. The pain around my neck…And then the night… the sea…Again the night. Liquid. Black.
No matter what, in this story, you have to pay attention to the wind, its saline breath on our lips, the moon, the sea, Olmène absent…The earth that doesn’t give anymore. The stingy sea. And the foreigners arriving with their faraway customs. Their habits, their American cigarettes, their bodies, their odors, and their shoes that catch our eyes.
And I, who didn’t want to be here anymore, here I am powdered with sand, crowned with seaweed and longing for Anse Bleue.
“Osékou, anmwé.”There now, the cries of the stranger strike strong in my chest. Mixed up uncannily with my brother’s cries from three days ago, in the night.
My brother stops on each of the syllables of my name. He had to put his hands up to his mouth like a megaphone to make them travel. Far, very far. And then the cries of others who with him brave the night, the wind, the water to cry out my name. “Koté ou yé? Where are you? Answer!”
The people of Anse Bleue swam through the night and the water, their eyes open, like whales.
8.
Even though there didn’t remain much for them to sell—Tertulien Mésidor having bought so much from them in the early hours of the morning—Olmène and Ermanica decided to meet the other women at the market in Baudelet, which was bigger and busier than the one in Ti Pistache. The heat was already hanging over the paths leading to the Peletier Morne, weighing down the chrétiens-vivants, animals, and plants. Even the rocks groaned. Yet nothing slowed their course