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.
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