"Would he lead another Bay of Pigs invasion?"
"Tomorrow, if the American government would allow it."
This occasioned a long pause, after which Roberto said, surprisingly: "Estefano, I do wish you"d break the careless habit of using the word American as if you had stolen it from the rest of us. Use norteamericano, because we Cubans and Mexicans and Uruguayans, we"re also Americans."
Up till now-the beginning of their second week in Cuba-the visit had been what it was supposed to be, an amiable family reunion. But Estefano had been nervous all along as to how he could approach Roberto about getting to see Castro. One night he said to Caterina: "I can"t ask Roberto outright: "Can I see your leader?" but you might drop a suggestion to your sister, something like: "Any chance of seeing Castro? To confirm he really exists?" " but she replied: "I"d feel safer if we didn"t see him at all. No rumors flying back to Miami."
But, finally, Estefano did open the subject with Roberto, saying, rather casually: "While I"m here, I"d sure like to get to meet Castro," and his cousin replied: "I"ll see what I can do to arrange it. He"s pretty open to visitors." But then he went on to say that Castro had the habit of keeping people on the hook for days, then without warning sending for them at midnight for a talk that lasted till dawn. So night after night, Estefano delayed going to bed early.
Then, on Tuesday night it happened. A senior official from Castro"s office dropped by the sugar mill to inform Roberto that if he cared to bring his cousin to the presidential quarters at eleven that night, Fidel would be pleased to chat with him about Cuban affairs in Florida, and without betraying that he had been awaiting just such a summons, Estefano said without undue eagerness: "I"d be honored to meet him."
Not knowing whether the invitation at that odd hour would include dinner, Estefano informed Caterina of the impending visit and then ate lightly: "To protect myself either way. If there"s to be a full dinner, I"ll be able to cram it in. If not, I won"t starve."
At ten-fifteen a chauffeured car accompanied by a police escort arrived, and as they sped through a lovely moonlit September evening, Estefano a.s.sured his cousin: "Don"t worry. I"ll tell him exactly what I told you. I oppose his politics, but I do look forward to the day when there will be free exchange between our countries."
"I"m sure that"s what he would like to hear."
"But on our terms, not his."
"For the past quarter of a century your country has been trying to dictate to him and you"ve always failed, miserably. Maybe it"s time to try some other tactic," and Estefano laughed: "Maybe, but not on your terms, either," and Roberto said as they approached the presidential palace: "Agreed."
It was made clear as the cousins entered the waiting area, a large and handsome hall, that Roberto"s role would be limited to introducing his cousin and then withdrawing to await the end of the conference, and he was not surprised at the arrangement. Both men remained in the outer hall for about two hours, after which the door to Castro"s quarters broke open with a bang and a huge bearded man in rumpled army fatigues slammed his way forward to extend both hands, one to Estefano, one to Roberto: "Welcome to the honorable children of our great patriot Baltazar Caldern y Quiroz." With that, he took Estefano warmly by the hand, leading him into his quarters and leaving Roberto in the outer hall.
With a wide swing of his big right foot, he slammed the door closed, indicated a chair for his American guest and fell easily into his own. He was full of restless energy, his agile mind leaping from one subject to another, his tireless hands waving a big unlit cigar as he talked.
"A temptation and an obligation," he said, indicating the cigar. "Doctors told me: "Fidel, you"ll die ten years too soon if you continue smoking," so I quit. But then our cigar manufacturers reminded me: "Fidel, you and your cigar are the best advertis.e.m.e.nt for Cuban cigars, and that"s where our foreign exchange comes from. Please keep smoking." So I obeyed both sets of advisers this way," and he jammed the big, cold cigar into the corner of his mouth.
They talked for five hours, barely interrupting for a meal of soup, chicken sandwiches and a remarkable sweet: "Do you, as a doctor, warn your patients against too much sugar, the way ours do?"
To Estefano"s surprise, he asked this and occasional other questions in English, and Estefano answered in that language, but when he finished explaining that yes, when he was a practicing doctor he did warn his patients against sugar, Castro leaped from his chair, wagged an admonitory finger, and cried in Spanish: "Well, stop it! We Cubanos want you to eat as much sugar as possible, and buy it all from us."
When the serious conversation started, Estefano was astounded at the breadth of Castro"s knowledge of things American, but he was also aware that the dictator was. .h.i.tting these topics to make himself seem an amiable fellow: The knowing baseball jargon "Why do the Red Sox always lose the big series?" The inside knowledge of American entertainment "How do they take it in Georgia, a Negro like Bill Cosby dominating television?" The awareness of intricate situations "How are the two Koreas handling the Olympics?" And a dozen little questions that quietly needled the Americans: "Did your government arrest any of those crazies who tried to tease our athletes into defecting at Indianapolis?"
Calderon, well aware that this pleasant chatter was preamble, waited for the politics to begin, and he was prepared when Castro shot out a barrage of questions regarding the att.i.tude of Miami Cubanos on conditions in Haiti, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico and Cuba itself. He was especially concerned with two problems on which he pressed Estefano almost to the point of rudeness: "If Manley wins the forthcoming election in Jamaica, will that reawaken anti-Americanism on the island?" and "What do you hear in Miami about racial unrest in Trinidad, like what"s been happening in Fiji?"
He also wanted to know how the Miami Cubanos had reacted to the American invasion of Grenada, and was not surprised to hear: "Among our people I heard not one adverse comment and a thousand cheers." But he was irritated to learn: "Most of us were convinced that communist Cubano infiltrators were about to take control of Grenada."
"Rubbish!" he said, using a Cuban word that could be translated more vulgarly. Then he leaned back, twisting his cigar between thumb and forefinger, summoned a waiter to bring more drinks, and asked: "Now, Dr. Caldern ..." and Estefano noticed that whenever he began the exploration of a new topic, he spoke formally, and invariably used the t.i.tle Doctor: "Explain in careful terms, because I know you"re informed on these matters, what does the word Hispanic mean in various parts of the United States," and Estefano also noticed that when Castro rolled out those magnificent syllables Los Estados Unidos, he did so with a certain respect, as if honoring the size of his northerly neighbor if not its politics.
Now the two Cubans settled down to another hourlong discussion, with Estefano reviewing various experiences he"d had with the Spanish-speaking peoples of America: "I"ve had to travel a lot as a Hispanic banking leader and chairman for the election and reelection of President Reagan." Here he broke into a quiet laugh: "The Anglo politicians running the campaign apparently said: "Look, Calderon speaks Spanish. And he has a good blue suit. Let"s use him widely to get the others lined up." So they shipped me off to New York, California and Texas."
Castro leaned forward, eyes gleaming above his dark beard: "A disaster?"
"Worse. In New York it"s all Puerto Ricans, and they have their own agenda, which is unique. I could hardly speak to them, and they certainly did not look to me for guidance. They were quite capable of providing their own."
"California?"
"I don"t want to insult you, Seor Presidente, but out there those red-hot Mexicans hardly know that you"re in command in Cuba. Couldn"t care less, because they have their own problems with Mexico. My ideas of politics and theirs are as different as night and day. It was a total flop."
"Texas?"
"On the surface the same as California, but fundamentally a much different set of Mexicans. Especially in Los Angeles they"re more sophisticated, have more political power. In Texas they"re more the peasant type. About two generations behind the Californians, I"d say."
They spent a long time exploring the differences among the four basic Hispanic groups as Estefano defined them: the Cubanos of Miami, the Puerto Ricans of New York, the sophisticated Mexicans of California and the st.u.r.dy peasants of Texas, and at the end Estefano hammered home one basic point: "Anyone who thinks he can lump them all together and form a cohesive Hispanic minority that he can shift this way or that is out of his mind." Here he stared hard at Castro and said: "Don"t even try to go down that road. It won"t work."
"All strongly Catholic?"
"Yes."
"All Republican?"
"I"m not sure about the Californians and Texans, but probably even them." Then he added a salient point: "Bear in mind one thing, Seor Presidente. The Cubanos you sent to Miami in that first batch were all educated, well-to-do, middle-of-the-road people. They"ve adjusted easily to American life. None were illiterate peasants." He hesitated, then added: "Sometimes in California and Texas, I found it difficult to believe that these people were Hispanics at all. They weren"t like anyone I"ve ever known either here as a young man or in Florida later on."
It was now well past three in the morning, and Estefano kept reminding himself that he must resist the blandishments of this extraordinary man: He"s the man who stole my country, who murdered many of my friends, who kept others in hideous jails, and who has done everything possible to embarra.s.s the United States and support her enemy, the Soviet Union. He had no love for Castro, nor even much respect, but he could feel the immense power of his charisma, and at one point when the dictator was being especially persuasive about never having had animosity toward the States, Calderon thought: Now I know how a bird feels when the cobra weaves its spell. This son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h is mesmerizing.
Then, at the end of a long oration about how the United States should conduct itself in Central America, Castro leaned forward, studied his guest, and asked in the most amiable voice possible: "Dr. Caldern, why did you feel that you, the son of patriots, had to leave Cuba?" and after a frank discussion of mixed signals and lost opportunities, Castro asked, at a quarter of four: "Under what terms would you come back?" and now Estefano felt both free and obligated to make several points: "With a great-grandfather like old Baltazar Caldern, I will always love and cherish Cuba. It"s in my blood. The fact that I fled proves I wasn"t enthusiastic about your takeover, but as you probably know from the reports of your consuls, I"ve never been a rabid anti-Castroite. And I"m convinced that because your island is so close to the States, some kind of reconciliation must be reestablished, probably before the end of this century."
"Does anyone else in your country think so?"
"Some of my more sensible friends in Washington ... the ones I worked with on Reagan"s campaigns."
Castro, realizing from this one sentence the reason Calderon had been sent south, looked up at the ceiling and started waving his cigar. Then he said as if he hadn"t heard what Estefano had just revealed: "The doctors told me: "If you stop smoking these things, you could live to see the end of the century."
"When were you born?"
"Nineteen twenty-seven."
"You"re only five years older than I am, and I certainly expect to see it."
"So you do come here speaking for someone, Dr. Caldern?"
"My wife came here to visit with her twin sister. Emotional meeting, I can tell you."
"Roberto Caldern"s a valuable man for us. Knows his way around." More cigar pirouettes, then: "You know, Doctor, if you ever wanted to come down here and start a really fine clinic-I"ve heard about the one you run in Miami-you"d be most welcome, and we"d provide the building."
"I"m honored."
"Tell me, if all restrictions were lifted tomorrow, and I mean all, what percentage of your Cubans would return to our island?"
"Of my original group, to visit the old scenes they love, ninety-eight percent. To remain here permanently and give up all the good things they"ve acquired in Florida, two percent."
"Of the Mariel group?"
"A larger percent, men eager to get back into the criminal action. But of course, you wouldn"t want their kind."
"And the children born there?"
"Not one in ten thousand. High schools, television, their own crowd, shopping malls. Irresistible to young people."
"So they"re a lost generation ... for us, that is."
"I think so."
"You never really answered me. Under what terms would you and your wife come back?"
Estefano pondered how to answer this question without giving offense, and finally said: "When a man breaks a bone, at first it looks as if it could never be remedied. But you immobilize it in a splint, let it knit, and six weeks later, a miracle! It"s stronger than it was before, because the tiny bits of bone have interlocked with each other. It"s the same with emigres. In the first six months away from the homeland, desolation of spirit. But then the knitting begins, and pretty soon the bond to the new land is overwhelmingly powerful."
"In your case, too strong to be broken again?"
"Yes."
Castro placed his arm on Estefano"s shoulder and said, as he walked him to the door: "Tell the man who sent you that if amicable relations are ever reestablished between our countries, I"d be happy to have you as the first amba.s.sador in La Habana."
On their last evening in Cuba the Miami Calderons felt obligated to discuss the inevitable Hispanic problem, and Caterina broached the subject: "You know, if you two should ever wish to come to America, get away from these tensions, Estefano and I will be prepared, even honored, to find a place for you to live ... help you and your children get established. We"d enjoy having them about us."
"We couldn"t ..."
Caterina broke into tears: "It"s been so wonderful, being together again. We"re a family, Placida, and we should not be in separate places. Please, please, think about what I"ve just said. And remember, Estefano feels the same way. You can stay with us ... two years ... three, until you get settled, isn"t that right, Estefano?"
"Roberto knows it is. We"d be overjoyed to have you with us again, and I don"t mean only you two. Your children could build great lives for themselves in America, and we"d help them."
Placida"s response, however, was not to her sister"s offer; instead, she placed her hand on Caterina"s arm and said with deep emotion: "Yes, we must stay together, now that we"ve seen how wonderful it can be ... But we should be here, where we all belong. And Roberto"s been working on a few plans. We could easily let you have two of these little buildings, and El Lider Maximo stopped by my office today to confirm what he said the other night. You can have a clinic in downtown La Habana. Come back home, Estefano, and join the building of your homeland."
By the time the two couples parted it was obvious that neither of the families would ever move, but both were sincerely convinced that in extending their invitations, they were acting solely in the interest of their loved ones. Estefano and Caterina were certain that the Cuban Calderns could find real happiness in the Miami they knew, while Roberto and his wife were equally sure that any self-respecting Cubano could find lasting happiness only in coming home and working for the revolution. And with these mutual convictions they went to bed.
But no one fell easily to sleep, and as Estefano lay awake, trying to a.s.sess what was said during his extraordinary visit with Castro, he became aware that Caterina was sobbing, and when he tried to comfort her, she said: "I should never have come down here. In Miami, I could ignore how much I was missing her ... and Roberto ... and the children ... and the old mill ... and let"s face it, Cuba." And then she added: "I"m a Cubana and I"m d.a.m.ned sick of supermarkets and television serials."
Homesick though they were, the Miami Calderons had to be cautious about their movements lest ill-wishers at home learn of Estefano"s visit to Cuba; they arranged a flight to Mexico City and a quick transfer to a jet which would deposit them at Miami International in late afternoon. At the Havana airport four of the gloomiest people in Cuba said goodbye, each realizing that this might be the last time they would ever meet on this earth-so close geographically to one another in the twin cities of Miami and La Habana, so terribly far apart in politics and the interpretation of the future. The farewells were muted, the two men engaging in formalities, while their wives stood apart, shedding hot tears of regret. Suddenly Estefano burst out: "My G.o.d! They"re a handsome pair of twins we married, Roberto," and the two men stared lovingly at these two women, so well preserved, so proud of their appearance and so similar in their att.i.tudes toward family and social responsibilities. They were, Estefano thought, two of the finest women of their age in the world and proof of what Cubanas could accomplish.
With tears in his own eyes, he kissed Placida farewell, shook hands with Roberto, and said: "I hope we accomplished something," but he was not at all sure, and when the plane rose into the sky he hammered his right fist into the open palm of his other hand as he looked down upon that lovely land of Cuba, so abused by its Spanish colonial owners, so maltreated by that gang of thieving murderers who had presumed to govern it during its first half-century of independence, and so misled by the Castro revolution which inevitably followed. "Cuba! Cuba!" he said as the island slowly vanished from sight. "You deserved so much more than what you"ve been allowed to be."
While he was tormenting himself with such thoughts, Caterina kept staring down till the faint outline of the island vanished totally from view. Then she sighed, reached back to grip her husband"s arm, and whispered: "You were so right in insisting that we come. What a n.o.ble city and how grand that old mill was." But later in the day when Miami came into view, she pressed his hand and said: "This is better," and both of them knew that down below waited the world they really wanted.
From his window Steve admired the glorious skyline with its towering skysc.r.a.pers of imaginative design lining the bay, the islands and the inland waterways, making it one of the most beautiful cities in America. Leaning forward, he said: "I know how Augustus felt when he cried: "I found Rome a city of brick and shall leave it a city of marble." We Cubanos found Miami a sleepy town of low, frightened buildings and we shall leave it a city of towers."
Proudly he pointed to the buildings his bank had helped finance with money earned and deposited by his Cuban a.s.sociates. "That one, those two, the one over there. All since 1959. Just thirty years. It"s been a miracle and I"m proud of it. Me leave Miami? Never," and Kate whispered: "Nor me." But then she added: "However, if things ever did open up, and George Bush felt grateful for your a.s.sistance this fall, it would be nice if he appointed you as his first American amba.s.sador."
The last words had scarcely been uttered when she felt Steve"s ironlike grip and heard his anguished whisper: "Don"t even think a thing like that. If people knew there was even a possibility ..."
When the plane landed almost secretly at a remote corner of Miami International, an ashen-faced a.s.sistant to Dr. Calderon met him with miserable news, which he delivered in a trembling voice: "Your new clinic building, the one that"s half finished ... they dynamited it last night ... burned to the ground."
And in the rush to Calle Ocho a suspicious car tailed them, pulled up beside them at a traffic light, and pumped four bullets directly at the Calderons. They missed the doctor but hit his wife three times, and before the car could speed to the nearest hospital, she was dead.
ON A BRIGHT January morning in 1989 the strands of Theresa Vaval"s life tangled together in riotous climax. She received her doctorate in social anthropology from Harvard; Wellesley confirmed that she had a professorial appointment there, with an implied promise of tenure track if she enhanced her scholarly reputation; her father, Hyacinthe Vaval, received notice that he and his family would be granted permanent residence in the United States, which they had entered seven years ago after temporary refuge in Canada; and Dennis Krey, professor of creative writing at Yale, had at last summoned up courage to inform his Concord, New Hampshire, parents that he and Tessa, as she was known to her college friends, were getting married. As if that wasn"t enough, the Swedish Lines had phoned, offering her an opportunity to teach a course aboard one of their cruise ships, the S.S. Galante, set to sail from Cap-Hatien, Haiti, on 30 January. One hundred and thirty-seven students had signed up for the three-credit, fourteen-day course, ent.i.tled "Cruise-and-Muse in Paradise." "We"ll do the cruising, you do the musing," the Swedish Lines representative had joked, telling Theresa that she would be the most honored among six lecturers already signed up.
All these happenings simply could not be better, especially the one concerning her father, for he had been one of the fine men of Haiti, descendant of that General Vaval who had played such a major role in helping Toussaint L"Ouverture win Haiti"s independence back in the 1790s. From that time on, the Vavals, through all their generations, had been defenders of Haitian freedom, often at great risk, and some had been publicly executed, but their courage never flagged. When Papa Doc Duvalier, Haiti"s self-appointed President-for-Life, sent out his death squads, the Tontons Macoutes, to terrorize newspaper editors and writers in the 1970s, torturing many to death, Tessa remembered her father coming home and saying: "No hope. Last night they killed Editor Gambrelle. We"re slipping out on the next ship that makes a run for it."
They had left Port-au-Prince in three different groups so as to escape notice by the deadly Macoutes, and reunited at the seaport of St.-Marc, where in what seemed to nine-year-old Therese, as she was then called in French, an insane decision, they boarded a small, leaky ship and in dark of night set out for the Atlantic. Those were days she wanted to forget but knew she must remember, for those experiences made Haitians unique. But her fiance Dennis Krey had to probe many times before she was able to speak of them: "Four people crowded on deck where one should have been. Food and water gone. Those who died pitched overboard and we could see the sharks. My mother told me: "If you keep your hand in the water, the shark will take it on his next trip." Each evening when darkness came I was terrified, but Father told us in rea.s.suring tones that masked his own terror: "Remember that Vavak fled St. John in a rowboat lots smaller than this, and he made it." We"d have fallen apart, all of us, except my father kept saying quietly: "We will live. It would be cowardly to die," and we survived.
"After eleven days on the water, a wonderful, beautiful Canadian ship picked us up, and it took us to Quebec City, where everyone spoke French and there was food and hope."
She wondered if Dennis had told his parents this story, and if it would make any difference to them. The Kreys were traditional New Englanders and Tessa, of course, was black. She was, however, one of those spectacular young Haitian women of light-tan complexion and exquisitely graceful carriage who seem as if they had dropped by a cafe on some Parisian boulevard. She was tall, slim, and blessed with a broad, even countenance that broke into smiles at any excuse. She had never worried about what might become of her in the cold lands of Canada, because young men persistently tried to date her, and once she moved to Boston, she had been among the most popular girls at Radcliffe. It did not surprise her that Krey had wanted to marry her; three or four other white young men had wanted to do the same, for against a New England background she was spectacular: tall, sinewy, with that glorious sunrise face and flashing white teeth.
But when Krey"s parents drove down to see her receive her graduate degree from Harvard and to attend their son"s engagement party, Tessa antic.i.p.ated antagonism. She knew they must have had more exalted plans for their son than marriage to a Haitian, but she was not prepared for the subtle ways in which the elder Kreys manifested their displeasure. Judge Adolphus Krey, a tall, austere man in his sixties, looked at her as if he were thinking: Regardless of this terrible mistake Dennis is making, we shall not disown him, for he is, after all, our son. And the chill that fell over the rest of that day intensified, until Tessa muttered to herself: "The whole d.a.m.ned lake is freezing over."
Mrs. Krey reacted somewhat differently. When she first saw Tessa she congealed so completely that she could scarcely thaw her lips for a limited smile, but when Dennis explained that Tessa"s father, Hyacinthe Vaval, would not be able to join them for lunch, she became enthralled by the reason her son gave: "He was summoned to Washington by President Bush. The new administration believes he might be just the man to serve as president of Haiti, if peace ever returns to that stricken island."
"As president?" she asked, but Tessa dampened the emerging enthusiasm by saying: "He"d be crazy if he takes it. Probably be murdered like his great-great-grandfather who tried to govern in the last century."
Mrs. Krey, who interpreted the remark as flippancy, glared disapprovingly and warned her future daughter-in-law: "At Concord, you know, young wives from outside have to earn their way, as it were," and Tessa said, almost harshly: "But we won"t be living in Concord. Dennis will be starting a new career at Trinity in Hartford and I"ll be doing the same at Wellesley."
"But you will be spending your summers in Concord, I hope."
"Later, perhaps. At first, mostly in Europe ... pursuing studies and the like." When Dennis verified their plans for the next few years, Judge Krey said stiffly: "We think it would be more prudent if our friends in Concord could see your wife ... get accustomed to her."
The implications of this revealing statement were too harsh for Tessa to accept unchallenged, and with the roguish humor she often used to puncture such comments, she broke into a ravishing smile and said: "You remind me, you really do, of the Jewish boy at Harvard who called his mother in New York to tell her: "Mom! Guess what! I"m marrying that cute j.a.panese girl you met at the Princeton game," and after a pause his mother said: "That"s fine, son. When you bring her down you can have my big room on the second floor." Delighted that his mother was taking it so well, he said: "No, Mom, you don"t have to go that far," and she said: "It"ll be empty, because the minute you bring that tramp in our front door, I jump out the window ... headfirst!" "
She allowed the awful silence that followed to hang in the air for about ten seconds, then laughed easily and placed her hand on Judge Krey"s forearm: "Our marriage can"t be as shattering as it must seem in Concord. Dennis and I will be living in communities that are long used to mixed couples like us. I think we represent the wave of the future ... of little or no concern to others."
Judge Krey, resenting the familiarity of her touch, withdrew stiffly, marshaled his New England rect.i.tude, and said: "Cambridge is not the world, thank heavens," and they moved on to the engagement lunch, which should have been a festive affair, considering the handsomeness of the intended groom and the beauty of the bride, but which was painfully strained. When the elder Kreys departed for their drive back to the security of Concord, they left no doubt about the chilly reception Tessa would face in that proper New England town. And Dennis added to her insecurity by saying, as soon as his parents departed: "You should never have told that joke about the Jewish boy and his j.a.panese bride. You should have foreseen that it would embarra.s.s my folks."
Somewhat chastened, Tessa put her Ph.D. diploma away and plunged into preparations for the Caribbean cruise. Swedish officials of the line that operated the Galante, aware that in addition to her impressive scholarly credentials, she was black, had thought it an a.s.set. They told her: "You"re a fine-looking black scholar explaining the new black republics in what we"re going to advertise as "your sea." And you have a marvelous French accent, don"t lose it. That"ll be a double a.s.set."
It was providential that the tour would be starting at Cap-Hatien, with pa.s.sengers being flown in from three major airports, for that would provide her with an opportunity to go down to Port-au-Prince two weeks before embarking and see what changes had taken place since that dark night in 1973 when the Vaval family had scuttled out of St.-Marc for freedom in Canada. When she informed Dennis of her plans, he was not entirely pleased: "I did approve the idea of the cruise. Great chance to renew your contacts in the area, but I hoped we"d have the time to ourselves before the boat sailed," and she replied: "For a Haitian to know what"s happening in Haiti is tremendously important. Anyway, we"ll be married as planned in late June."
The flight from Boston to Port-au-Prince covered far more than s.p.a.ce; for although she started out as a self-directed young woman of twenty-five with career and marriage well in hand, by the time she landed she was once more an awkward, spindly-legged child fleeing her homeland, not fully aware of how important a citizen her father was nor what a significant role her family had played in Haitian history. Later she had learned that in the mid-1800s one of her ancestors had served a three-year term as president, a responsible subsitute for the impossible generals, murderers and psychopaths who had run the black republic during its one hundred and eighty-five years of independence. His term had ended before a firing squad directed by the next group of generals waiting to take over, but his martyrdom continued to inspire hope that at some point Haiti would learn to govern itself. "The good President Vaval," he was referred to, and his grandson had been "that clever Vaval who held off the Yankees" when American troops invaded early in the 1900s and he governed for some twenty years.
She knew a great deal about the two Duvaliers who had murdered so many good men, and she remembered that her father had called their horrible Tontons Macoutes the "n.a.z.is of the New World, worse maybe, for they killed and maimed their own people, not a so-called alien race." At home her family had drummed two lessons into her: "If the slave Vavak had not had the courage to flee St. John when he did, none of us would be alive today, and if we hadn"t fled Haiti when we did, we"d also be dead."
She thus saw Haiti not only as a romantic island nation which as a child she had loved for its color and music and delightful people, but also as a forbidding prison from which only the lucky had escaped. In contrast, she now regarded Canada as one of the kindest nations on earth and the United States as the benefactor that had given her, practically free, her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. She was therefore in the proper mindset to evaluate her natal land, and what she saw appalled her. The revolution of 1986, which had ousted Baby Doc Duvalier and his outrageous entourage of thieves and murderers, had produced no brave new leaders like her father, and the continuing disorientation showed no signs of ending.
In Port-au-Prince, which she found a miasma of hunger and futility, only one thing gave her hope: when she stopped to speak to young people, explaining who she was, most of them greeted her enthusiastically: "Oh, Therese, I do hope your father comes back to run for high office. We need his guidance and his courage." But these signs of hope were dashed when older and wiser people whispered: "If he can get a foothold in the States, Therese, warn him never to return. This place is beyond redemption." After a string of such dismal days she caught a rickety bus that carried her north and into the rural area where the Vavals had for many generations owned a prosperous farm. She remembered this farm-the fine house of the owners, the earthen-floored shacks of the peasants-and she was dismayed to find that no improvements had been made in her absence. The poor people of Haiti still lived like animals, miserably housed, poorly fed and clothed in rags.
When she went to the main house, she found that even now it had no electricity; it still used a hand pump for water; and the rooms which had provided comforts for her family of seven now contained five different families living like rabbits in a crowded warren. Perching disconsolately on a bench improvised from a flat board propped on rocks, she turned in all directions, surveying the miserable signs of life: dangling from a frayed clothesline, laundry that should have been thrown away fifty washings ago, junky bits of machinery, shacks that were about to collapse, women of thirty who slaved so unremittingly that they looked sixty. Poverty and despair now defined a nation that had once been one of the richest in the world.
Then, inescapably, came the terrible question which had been in her mind even before she started her tour of the Caribbean: If Haiti had been an independent, self-governing republic ruled only by blacks since 1804, and if it had achieved so pitifully little for its people, what did that say about the ability of blacks to govern? And as she sat among the dreams of her childhood, she felt overwhelmed by the reality around her. She stood up, clenching her fists, and shouted at the cloudless sky: "What in h.e.l.l is wrong with my country?"
Her next two-minute self-lecture, as might be expected, was more academic: It could all be so different. Dear G.o.d, it could have been so much better. Suppose in 1920 you"d had three young people like me who attended a good Jesuit college in New England where they learned to think and act. And another three who enrolled in a strong liberal college in New York where they had sense and character knocked into them. And they"d come back to Haiti and put their talents to work. Goodness, they"d have cozened the United States and Canada into giving them millions of dollars. France would have helped out from pride, because we speak French. And Russia would have leaped in to prove it could do even more than the other nations. We"d have had roads and railroads and factories and colleges, and new methods of agriculture. We could have built a paradise here ... Haiti, which was once so wonderful, could have been wonderful again!
In the days that followed her disastrous visit to her old home, she met several leaders in Port-au-Prince who remembered her father, and they were pleased to learn that she would be teaching at Wellesley: "Fine college, we"re told. Excellent reputation." She did not inform them of her impending marriage to a white man from New Hampshire, for they would be smart enough to know that this implied some interesting conflicts. Instead, she interrogated them about the future of Haiti, and was delighted to hear them orate in their lovely mix of polished French and lowdown creole which could be so colorful and expressive. Their message was not heartening, for they saw little hope for their nation. "What do we make that the world wants?" one man asked rhetorically. "Only one thing. All the baseb.a.l.l.s used by the American big leagues are sewn together here. If the Taiwanese ever learn to sew baseball covers, we"ll perish."
They said that the political situation was so bleak that the patterns set in the last two hundred years were likely to continue: "One petty dictator after another, one general with a little more braid and less brain than his predecessor."
One knowledgeable fellow suggested that she hire a car and he and two friends who worked for the government would show her something of basic importance in the hills north of the city. When they were well into those once-forested mountains in which her ancestor General Vaval had so ably thwarted Napoleon"s French invaders, this young man pointed to the terrible desolation that had overtaken rural Haiti, for as far into the distance as she could see, the hills and valleys were denuded of trees. Every square inch had been stripped clean by charcoal makers, and the bare and dusty slopes were devoid of any growing thing, not even seedlings to replace the lost grandeur.
"See how the gullies run toward the sea. Torrential rains roar down them, carrying the loam away."
"You"re creating a desert," Tessa cried, almost in pain, and the men said: "Wrong. It"s already been created, and with rain and wind behaving as they do, it may never be reversed."