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Overview
“The Haitian-born Danticat has brought her country’s literature back into the world of English-speakers. Filled with delights and surprises, Haiti Noir, taken as a whole, provides a profound portrait of the country, from its crises to its triumphs, from the tiny bouks of the countryside to the shanties of the sprawling bidonvilles. Danticat herself has a lovely story in the collection, and permits two distinguished foreign writers on Haiti, Madison Smartt Bell and Mark Kurlansky, to slide in there among all the brilliant Haitians.” —Daily Beast
Brand-new stories by Edwidge Danticat, Rodney Saint-Éloi, Madison Smartt Bell, Gary Victor, M.J. Fievre, Mark Kurlansky, Marvin Victor, Josaphat-Robert Large, Marie Lily Cerat, Yanick Lahens, Louis-Philippe Dalembert, Kettly Mars, Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel, Evelyne Trouillot, Katia D. Ulysse, Ibi Aanu Zoboi, Nadine Pinede, and Patrick Sylvain.
“This anthology will give American readers a complex and nuanced portrait of the real Haiti not seen on the evening news and introduce them to some original and wonderful writers.” —Library Journal
“A collection possessing classic noir elements—crimes and criminals and evil deeds only sometimes punished—but also something else, perhaps uniquely Haitian too.” —Los Angeles Times
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781617750120 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Akashic Books |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2019 |
| Series: | Akashic Noir Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 322 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
ODETTE BY Patrick Sylvain Christ-Roi
The hum quickly gave in to the sound of a hundred tumbling oil drums. Then a morbid absence of sound. Odette lay there watching the shards and splattered chunks of grapefruit marmalade dotting the white linoleum floor of her house. A few seconds seemed like an eternity. There was no other way to say it. Could time even be measured anymore, in this new silent and fractured world?
When the crash came, her five-year-old granddaughter Rose watched her with an extraordinary intensity. It was as if at that very moment the child had inherited the gift that the women in her family had been known to have for generations. The gift of double sight. The child's amber eyes narrowed and she let out a loud melodic scream that lasted the entire thirty-five seconds of the shaking. But then, like the rest of the world, she too fell silent.
Her daughter, the child's mother, had the gift as well. But she had turned her back on it, joining a Protestant church that made her believe she was haunted by ghosts. Then, over time, Odette's gift had faded. After her husband died and her daughter left, she no longer felt the desire to tell total strangers to be careful because she knew there was nothing they could do. There was fate and there was destiny. And there was nothing you could do to stop your star from diving from the heavens, if that's what it wanted to do.
As the roar reverted to another prolonged hum, she heard a constant ringing deep in her ears and felt her eyes fill with dust. When she finally heard her granddaughter's voice, it was very far and faint. As the child crawled toward her, she noticed that the girl's bony little body was moving slowly. Odette's mind and eyes faltered between light and dark. For a moment, she couldn't figure out why the child was crawling toward her; nor could she grasp why she started feeling sparks in her spine and lower legs.
By the time the child's soft, warm hands touched her face, and she noticed the girl's tear-filled eyes, a valve seemed to be cutting off power to Odette's brain. The silence and darkness were deepening, becoming shapeless. Then something seemed to stir inside her. Was she in water? Drowning? That's what it felt like. She was drowning while listening to the sound of intermittent clicking. She tried to spit each grain of dust out of her mouth as though it were water, but she could not.
Her body was playing a strange orchestra. She hadn't played classical music in the house since her daughter left to marry someone from that church — extra protection, they had convinced her daughter, against the ghosts. Leaving the child behind was part of that too. Her daughter had dreaded when that day would come for her own daughter, when the earth would seem to shake and she would pass out and wake up with her gifts. Except they had not been gifts to Odette's only child. The entire world's pains had become her own. She could not read or write or even listen to the classical music she loved without intruding voices.
"We were going to the beach," Odette heard herself say. Before the earth began to shake, she and the child were standing in the kitchen eating bread covered with grapefruit marmalade and talking about taking a trip to the beach. They both loved going to the beach, especially since the child's mother had left. Odette's daughter used to love going to the beach too. There at the beach, between swims, they danced to the blasting konpa music of the other beachgoers' boom boxes. The music, like everything else, was in their bodies. But now Odette couldn't dance to it. Instead, waves of silence filled her. Her heart was pounding faster than normal. She wanted to scream but she couldn't. She closed her eyes and felt the child's hand on her face. The child's voice still sounded far away. At moments she thought they were both still standing in the kitchen eating their sweet bread, sobbing. She closed her eyes again and clenched her teeth. Her body felt like it was being pricked by thousands of needles.
Her granddaughter's voice became clear for a second. Then Odette saw what was pinning them both to the floor. A large cement beam the size of two kitchen chairs was on her lap and on the girl's head. Her granddaughter was completely drenched with blood. It was like when they played "monster" and the child covered her entire body with a sheet. Odette wanted to tell the little girl that she loved her. She wanted to laugh and tease her about not being a convincing enough monster, but something stabbed her in her coccyx area and flushed her head once again with darkness. She envisioned herself walking on the beach with both her daughter and granddaughter while eating ripe mangoes. In her ancestral village in the southeast, they raced each other by a stream of red and violet flowers.
"We can't get to the child," she heard a voice say. It finally registered that the voices belonged to some men who were helping to pull her out from underneath the concrete.
"The child is in pieces," she heard another say.
"Continue to be brave," another said. "We're going to get you out."
While those voices were instructing her, the pain spread from the center of her back and rapidly shot up through her entire body. She was still unable to scream.
She would later remember being raised by many hands, then placed on the ground with a small cushion behind her head. When she reopened her eyes, multiple heads were standing in a dark circle over her. A car came: a black shiny 1970 Peugeot pulled by two muscular Andalusian horses. Horses? Where could horses go in a broken city? They would ride over the cobalt-blue ocean of her daughter and granddaughter's favorite beaches and their perfectly spaced coconut and palm trees.
In the tent clinic, she smelled the rubbing alcohol as they poured it on the gashes on her leg, but she felt nothing. Around her, she heard people groaning and screaming, "M ap mouri!" I'm dying! It was as if they were all swimming in a pool of fire.
When she woke up from another bout of sleep, she was in a massive white tent surrounded by doctors speaking to each other in Spanish. She remembered the bright smile of one young girl — like her Rose, she couldn't have been more than five years old — as she lifted her stumped left arm.
"Alone. Dementia," she heard someone say. "But otherwise okay."
Dust was still blanketing the kitchen where she lay. A brown angel whose white wings flapped high up in the breeze touched the back of her hand and said in a very assuring voice, "You're lucky to be alive."
After her daughter was born twenty-five years ago, driving home from the hospital, holding the baby in her arms in the back of her husband's shiny black Peugeot, they had passed a bidonville in the middle of the city and she had thought of Hiroshima. The city she was being driven through now was like Hiroshima, the epic destruction reminding her of the World War II films her husband loved to watch. The National Palace's collapsed domes were like crushed camel humps; the National Police Headquarters compressed onto its blue and white walls. Thousands of desperate bodies were now sleeping on the streets, on bare concrete like stray dogs. Not sure where they were taking her, she felt defeated and small in the back of the open pickup. Then she remembered that she had asked to go. She had told them that she had a house, one of the few policemen still alive had volunteered to take her back to Rose, to take her home.
The entire front of the two-story terraced house had collapsed. As some of her neighbors ventured into her yard, both happy and surprised to see her, she longed for the strength to dig beneath the rubble with her bare hands to find Rose. Instead, she climbed as close as she could to where she thought the kitchen was and sat there weeping, with the scalding sun beaming down her back.
"You can't stay here alone," a neighbor said, while handing her a small packet of crushed saltine crackers. "Come."
And that's how she let herself be led to the tent city closest to her house.
In the middle of the sweltering assemblage of human bodies, she sat under a sheet held up by sticks all day and unbraided her long salt-and-pepper hair, which she then covered with a dingy red satin head-wrap that someone had given her. She had also acquired, she did not know where, a polished pine stick with intricate carvings that she tapped while humming before she went to sleep. Despite the constant chatter of her fellow evacuees, the tapping made a persistent noise in the humid hot air that seemed intrusive to some and meditative to others. Eventually, she began to inspire gossip.
The gossip was a way to both pass the time and deflect resentment, which, without an identified target, would have reattached itself to its originator. Odette thus became an unwitting target over the next several weeks, as words traveled from mouths to ears to other mouths. Her tapping and ongoing conversations with herself were rumored to be a secret code, her red satin head-wrap proof of what many had heard for years: that she was such a lougawou, a wretched person, that even her own child had abandoned her. Many could now recall her predicting some horrible event that had actually taken place. A car accident. A coup d'état. A bad hurricane season.
"Why didn't that old witch see this one coming?" they asked.
Rumor had it that Odette's only child had died from an infection and loss of blood after she'd left her mother's house and married a pastor.
"Even Jesus couldn't save the child from that old witch," they said.
People would have been happy to ask her about all of this, except Odette had not uttered an intelligible word since that horrible afternoon in January.
During the long sleepless nights of tent city life, gossip spread at a distorted speed, occasionally ricocheting past Odette's ears. She knew the pain of those who even in their search for food and water found ways to invoke her name. She started crossing herself multiple times before falling asleep.
Every once in a while, Rose would appear to Odette in her sleep. The child would unwrap Odette's head scarf and undo her gray tresses, then would braid them again and again. At night, the neighbors watched the old woman in silhouette as though she were the heroine of a silent film.
The less hostile ones sobbed, placing their hands over their mouths, as others continued to declare: "That woman is a witch!"
"I know one when I see one."
"I've been waiting for someone else to realize it."
"I don't play games with witches."
"In my old neighborhood, they never stayed around."
The neighbor who had taken Odette to the tent city was among those who just watched and sobbed. Her young daughter, also killed in the earthquake, had been Rose's best friend until the rumors had caught up with them. That neighbor appeared now and then with a plate of rice or some water for Odette. Otherwise, Odette would have died of hunger and thirst.
As she lay down in the dark one night, Odette heard the voices discussing her outside. Most of the talk was about her flying around in the dark, her being a witch. Closing her eyes, she longed for the clamoring of crickets, for the stillness of her old house, for the embraces of her daughter and granddaughter, for the breeziness of the beach. She had been living alone for so many years now that all this sudden company was agonizing.
An uneasy premonition was coming over her, an old sensation that she thought had long faded. Her hair stood up and her heart began to beat a little bit faster. As she listened to the voices, growing closer to her ears, she remembered how she had wailed helplessly when her mother was dragged into the street one night by an angry cross-wielding mob. It was the summer of 1955 and she was five years old.
Now, in a different time and place, that same fear and horror gripped her yet again. As the clamor grew louder, a wail pushed itself past her lips. The entire tent city seemed to be alive with commotion. The news that Odette, the lady lougawou, was about to be dealt with brought ecstasy to many.
A small group of stick-wielding women were already inside her makeshift tent. She felt an arm around her neck, which was followed by the tearing sound of the front of her dress and then a slap at the side of her head. All she remembered saying was: "Ki sa m te fè?" What did I do?
As the torrent of slaps continued, she wrapped both her arms around her head. Had it not been for a police pickup that was parked nearby, her body would surely have been hacked. Even in the presence of the officers, some managed to land a kick or a slap.
In the police truck, the destroyed city was not as visible, a less structured darkness now shielding the living and the dead from each other. The Andalusian horses were galloping ahead of them. Odette turned to the young police officer who sat next her to bring this to his attention, then she changed her mind. Instead, she raised her eyes to the sky, which was the brightest she had ever seen it and teeming with stars. She tried to search for her own star, but could not find it. It had forsaken her and dashed out of the heavens, it seemed, very long ago.
CHAPTER 2THE RAINBOW'S END BY M.J. Fievre Kenscoff
I'm sitting in my father's chair — a tattered and tired office chair that I've lugged to the porch. It is showing its age: scarred faux leather, armrests sprouting prickly stuffing, scents of Papa in the fabric. Half shaded by an acacia tree, I am sipping rich, dark café au lait, scattering a bit on the ground first, just like my father does, to feed our ancestors. The air is soft with breeze and sweet with roasting coffee, the few clouds in the sky moving like fishing boats out on the Caribbean Sea. The voices of the neighborhood rise and fall in spurts. Outside the prisonlike gates of my parents' house in Kenscoff, young girls balance buckets atop their heads, up and down the graveled roads. Sun-wrinkled women sell huge mangoes and homemade peanut brittle, while boys in cutoff jeans run in circles with makeshift kites or push around trucks made from plastic bottles.
Papa struts from the house. A dark beard nearly covers his entire face. This angled face is also mine. Only fear and distance make it seem less familiar. My father's hair is still wet from the shower. His I-am-home clothing is worn and comfortable: a stretched-out sweater, blue chinos, and old wool socks. The skin crawls on the back of my neck and the pit of my stomach crashes into my pelvis. My father's presence always makes me uncomfortable. He's more of a jailer than a father. I don't like his grim outlook on the world and the way he tries so hard to make a father and daughter out of us when we are in fact complete strangers.
He walks around behind me in his cramped, thin shoes, places his hands on the back of the chair, and asks, "What are you doing, Magda?" I can't see his face now but I know his eyebrows are furrowed in curiosity. I take a deep breath, push my wild furious loathing into a soft, horrible place inside myself, and I swallow. "Thinking," I say.
He sits in the rocking chair next to me, elbows on knees, with his whiskered chin in the palms of his hands, and sighs. Then he picks up the magazine I have been reading, clutches it in his calloused and rough hands.
"I don't think a girl should be allowed to go to nightclubs until she's eighteen," he says.
I nod my head up and down, like a bobble doll, pretending to be interested.
Papa looks at me. "You don't like me much, do you?" I raise my shoulders in annoyance. "Don't be ridiculous."
He takes a deep breath. "What if I let you go out with your friends tonight?"
Just like that. My life in Kenscoff becomes a dazzling succession of house parties, balls, gaieties, not only night after night, but also sometimes an afternoon gathering at one house followed by an evening party somewhere else. I dance, sing, and drink toasts with cheap beers. I wear trendy wide-leg jeans, white denims, belly shirts of neon colors, dresses with abstract, multicolored designs. At seventeen, I feel like I'm running my own show. I understand what it means to live at the rainbow's end and have its colors shimmer about me.
Tonight, Lakoup Nightclub is crowded, noisy, and literally vibrating with the beat of music blasting through large speakers. The air itself is alive with energy, the crowd abuzz with anticipation. I walk into the music, into the shadows, and the hot, sticky night presses against my skin until perspiration beads my upper lip. People line up three deep at the bar, in the rez-de-chaussée of the old gingerbread house. The bartender is chatting with a woman. "What is so dreadful about your hair that someone would call it dreadlocks?" she asks.
I don't know the number of gourdes required for a Coca-Cola or a Prestige beer. I let the sexy bartender get me a cocktail "on the house." I explore the dark, empty rooms upstairs. I walk out on the balcony, the den of iniquity, where a couple is smoking something with a peculiar smell. The girl laughs and reaches up. She slips her hand under the boy's blue shirt, up near the collar. Her hand is moving, rubbing the boy's neck. They're in search of privacy, but I just stand there. Then the couple leaves and I'm alone, under the stars, sipping my cocktail, watching people dancing downstairs, in the yard.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Haiti Noir"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Akashic Books.
Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Introduction,
PART I: WHICH NOIR?,
PATRICK SYLVAIN Odette Christ-Roi,
M.J. Fievre The Rainbow's End Kenscoff,
Gary Victor The Finger Port-au-Prince,
Kettly Mars Paradise Inn Gokal,
Evelyne Trouillot Which One? Lalue,
Madison Smartt Bell Twenty Dollars Morne du Cap,
PART II: NOIR CROSSROADS,
Edwidge Danticat Claire of the Sea Light Ville Rose,
Ibi Aanuzoboi The Harem Delmas,
Josaphat-Robert Large Rosanna Pacot,
Marie Lilycerat Maloulou Martissant,
Louis-Philippe Dalembert Dangerous Crossroads Pétionville,
Marvin Victor Blues for Irène Carrefour-Feuilles,
PART III: WHO IS THAT NOIR?,
Katia D. Ulysse The Last Department Puits Blain,
Nadine Pinede Departure Lounge Cap Haitien,
Yanick Lahens Who Is that Man? Saint-Marc,
Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel Mercy at the Gate Croix-des-Bouquets,
Mark Kurlansky The Leopard of Ti Morne Gonaïves,
Rodney Saint-Éloi The Blue Hill Ozanana,
About the Contributors,