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Fiction

Detour

By Évelyne Trouillot
Translated from French by Paul Curtis Daw
"Trouillot’s most striking childhood memories of the Duvalier dictatorship remain the image of Duvalier’s militiamen searching her family’s and neighbor’s houses for publications and other works of art deemed subversive.”—Edwidge Danticat

To Nadève

At first Eléonore had been amused.  Why had she taken this detour?  A whim, a random impulse, and seemingly not such a bad one. But she began shaking her head in commiseration and mild indignation.  How could anyone let people live in such conditions?  Soon her hands grew moist with unease. She shouldn’t have chanced these unfamiliar roads, these broken traffic lights with their pitifully leaning poles, these faces that looked more and more sullen, these smells reaching her even through the closed windows of her Honda.  Noise infiltrated the car despite the voices of ’70s pop singers coming from her favorite CD compilation.  By the time she realized her uneasiness, it was too late to turn back.  She found herself in the midst of chaos. Trucks laden with bunches of plantains stamped with the names of their owners, goats trussed up and bound together, and, in the rear, human cargo with clothes and faces stained with dust and yellow-brown mud.  Between the enormous trucks, dilapidated little cars, the kind that always seem crammed with poor families en route to weddings or the cemetery; the huge, rattletrap buses salvaged from Florida, their grimy windows broken or laced with cracks, their exhausted, ravenous passengers gazing out vacantly, all in single file and all moving at the pace of resigned and overburdened snails.  The metallic blue of Eléonore’s Honda gleamed like a doll dressed for a fancy ball amid a crowd of hobbling beggars.  She would have liked to hit the gas pedal, veer left or right, make a U-turn, but escape was impossible.  No way to turn the car, not to mention the mess that would result if she even tried: the infrequent cross streets were blocked by vendors’ stands, the hulks of giant buses, and pedestrians clumped together in wait for a van or a motorbike.  She could only follow the others, bumper to bumper, until the next big intersection.

 

Slumped behind his hardware stand, Jonas was surveying the scene, seemingly indifferent to the familiar disarray.  The clunking shock absorbers, the vendors’ guffaws and insults, the screeching axles of wheelbarrows pushed by scrawny men whose upper bodies strained with effort, the women with the pungent body odor that neither soap nor perfume would ever totally eradicate or mask.  He couldn’t afford to treat himself to a cigarette today, at least not if he wanted a hot meal before the day ended.  The craving gave him a sudden urge to smash his fist against his hodgepodge of merchandise and send it rolling onto the filthy, noxious roadway.  Half-rusted locks, electrical cords, packets of pens and lead pencils, assorted screws of all sizes, slot-heads and Phillips heads thrown together, a jumble of trash in a pathetic semblance of order.  He associated the junky supplies with poverty and despair and sold them with reluctance.  Peddling them to the outcasts who made up his clientele sometimes wore him down, but most often it provoked his rage, directed against himself and others.  Against everyone.  He didn’t give a damn who was or wasn’t responsible for this state of affairs, he would have liked to bash someone, kick their butt.  Anyone. He felt a strong desire to dump everything onto the cars that were lined up in front of him with no prospect of moving forward or backward,  prisoners like him of this nauseating street.

When his eyes fell on the blue Honda, his face remained impassive, but he sneered inwardly. What was this woman doing here?  Her pampered appearance was an affront. With automatic resentment he eyed the car that was too flashy, too pristine, despite the splatterings of mud it had accumulated since daybreak.  He knew perfectly well that Madame had started her journey at the wheel of an immaculate car, that some poor guy like him, who’d migrated at great risk from his province or from a shantytown perched on a hillside above the city, had buffed her car at the crack of dawn, hosed down the wheels, shaken out the floor mats, polished the windows until they gleamed.  He knew because in a life that had swung between keeping his head above water and sinking beneath the waves, he had once landed at a villa in Thomassin as a custodian and handyman.  His employers talked about all sorts of things in front of him, sometimes switching to English when they discussed the salaries of the employees at their restaurant in Pétion-Ville.  He knew enough to understand that they were afraid of being robbed by those poor men and women, whose meager wages squelched any feelings of loyalty.

His employers’ stinginess did not particularly surprise him.  Everything in their villa was under lock and key.  Mme Gertrude, the head housekeeper, an old hen who had toiled for decades in their employ, oversaw everything with a laughably misplaced pride, totally unaware that they treated her like a domestic animal.  Not as well, in fact, as Safran, the little dog they regularly drove to the veterinarian.  Safran slept in the villa, in the vast recreation room where the children gathered to watch TV and where relatives and regular visitors were entertained.  The old woman slept in an outbuilding, in a little room that was tidy enough, it’s true, but not in the main house like Safran.  For his part, Jonas slept in a storage room, just like the cleaning lady who the local shopkeepers said was replaced by the owners every six months.  The temperature plummeted at nightfall on the heights of Thomassin, and they shook with cold in their unheated rooms.  Finally, after five nights of shivering in the penetrating February fog, he requested a blanket from Mme Gertrude, who referred his plea to the mistress of the house.  Three days later, the old woman presented Jonas and the cleaning lady with worn-out, threadbare blankets, which she admonished them to treat with care.  The blankets were to be given back when the employees left their jobs.  Before returning his eight months later, he deliberately made large holes in it.  He’d become fed up with rising at dawn, immersing his hands in the bitterly cold water to beautify Madame’s car, then doing the same for Monsieur’s 4×4.  After that, he was expected to sweep the courtyard, play the apprentice gardener, and finally to mop the floor and wash the windows, while remembering never to show his annoyance or  reveal the  pent-up resentment that was growing in him.  He sensed the same bitterness in the often agitated movements of the domestics and in the fleeting scowls of the fruit peddler forced to haggle over a few coins for her basket of oranges.  All those bourgeois fools ensconced in their air-conditioned cars, in their villas surrounded by trees and flowering plants—how could they think that everything was all right, that the well-behaved population didn’t hate them, that they could count on apathy and passivity indefinitely? That none of that would ever change, that they would be forever insulated from the wrath of the downtrodden?

Through the car window, Eléonore’s gaze met his.  The woman’s raw, runaway fear met the man’s wild, scathing contempt.

Eléonore tried in vain to prevent her expression from reflecting the panic that gripped her guts.  Where could she run?  Where could she hide?  Clutching the steering wheel, she no longer felt the cool gusts of air-conditioning.  Beads of sweat were running from her temples, but she hesitated to wipe her face.  As if such a gesture would call attention to her.  She suddenly felt exposed, vulnerable, and isolated.  One day, a somewhat cynical friend had reproached her for being too attentive to other people:  “You can’t go on living in this country if you care about everybody; you have to learn to close your eyes to certain things. It’s like when you’re driving: Almost all the roads are bad, if you try to avoid every little pothole, you’ll never get where you’re going.  If you fret about every petty vendor in the road, you’re finished before you’ve even begun. You just have to plow straight through and not worry about splashing mud on them. After all, you’re not responsible for the state of things.”  She wondered whether her failure to notice these people had made them invisible.  She had trained herself not to look at them, as if they could exist only in relationships she controlled, where they were always in positions of dependence and inferiority, where their nonexistence stemmed from inexorable forces.  In doing so, had she reduced them to mere shadows?  Could she in turn become invisible by the strength of her will?  Could she disappear in this environment where she felt herself so different, so removed from her own class, attracting suspicion and resentment?  The car windows failed to block the noises, odors, and stares.  Though she had always refused tinted glass, she now wished she had bowed to the pressure of her family.  She would have had at least the illusion of being sheltered from the increasingly hostile attention that surrounded her.

To his great astonishment, Jonas was much more amused than indignant as he observed the woman.  Maybe that was because he felt her discomfort, because he could imagine her inner thoughts, her habits, the aroma of the perfume she might be wearing. Perhaps the same fragrance that used to permeate the private rooms of his former employer when he mopped the floor, followed by a more intimate scent filtering down to his groin. To hide his growing erection he would purposely knock over the disinfectant bottle, earning reprimands from Mme Gertrude.  No doubt the interior of the blue Honda gave off the opulent smell of a new car.  She was probably listening to her CDs instead of relying on the local radio stations and the bumbling remarks spouted by overambitious announcers.  Had she perhaps changed her heeled sandals for flip-flops that matched her dress? He had noticed her glasses before she removed them with a nervous gesture; had she realized the crowd would guess that what she paid for them could feed a family of six for a week?  She probably didn’t give a damn what went on outside of her courtyard, beyond the wrought-iron enclosure bordered with flowers and climbing plants, her cobbled drive and her barred windows.  Too bad if she could get to and from her villa only by traveling down rutted roads, squeezing past shacks surrounded by children with ravaged faces, who were playing outside to escape the privation of their one-room dwellings and the hunger that gripped them nightly on the narrow straw mattresses where they lay huddled together.  She couldn’t care less about the stands that the vendors were shoving aside to make way for her vehicle.  She would lean on her horn so that her helper—that poor guy Jonas refused to become ever again, even if it meant constant hunger—would come running to open the gate.  He knew in his heart that he had quit his job for that very reason: because he couldn’t get used to the unpredictable whims of an employer returning exasperated from the office and to accusations made by a cleaning lady irked at her husband or by a crotchety old aunt wanting to prove that she still wielded some power over the hired help.  He had resigned with no explanation, and his employers had immediately suspected him of some sort of larceny.  Jonas had let them search him without batting an eye.  He had even very casually opened his old satchel and silently spread out his few belongings.  Then he had left, inwardly rejoicing at the foolish look of astonishment on Madame’s face, at Monsieur’s suppressed rage, and at the envious gleam in the eyes of the house staff.  Today, this sense of satisfaction returned to him more strongly than ever as he saw this woman on his turf, completely adrift, ignorant and precarious outside her stone walls and unprotected by her guard dogs.

More than all the other wary, irritated, or simply defeated glances that she sensed around her, the gaze of the man slumped behind his jumble of hardware troubled her.  She didn’t dare turn her head toward him, since she knew that he was following her slightest movements, that she was stranded like a fish out of its bowl and that she was at his mercy.  If he decided to pelt her with stones or to puncture one of her tires with a cheap screwdriver or chisel from his stock-in-trade, what could she do, what could she say?  She could only scream, or else stifle her fear, shrink down to disappear from the others’ view and hide like a coward.  Even if afterward she could be sure of taking her revenge, even if afterward she could resume her usual dominance and make him pay for his misdeeds.  For the time being he was the stronger one.  They both knew it, and the windows of the Honda could not shield her.  They both knew that, too.

Absorbed in her fear, her unchecked imagination giving free rein to the most violent scenarios possible, Eléonore felt a warm, steady stream of urine gush out and flow down her legs.  The liquid made its way into her pale yellow flip-flops, the ones she always kept in the Honda for driving, and created an unpleasant sensation between her toes.  The odor quickly reached her nostrils, and burning tears surged from her eyes.  She thought at first that she was too frightened to be ashamed, and yet her lips suddenly quivered in embarrassment when she realized that her courtyard helper would be shocked by the stench of urine hanging over the passenger compartment.

Jonas didn’t even realize that he had gotten up from his rickety bench studded with protruding nails that sometimes tore his pants.  With a robotic gesture, he pushed aside the objects that were blocking his path and advanced toward the blue Honda.  No one paid any attention to him, each one preoccupied with handling his own problems, with holding onto his tiny share of well-being.  Some pedestrians were hurrying along, stepping over the murky puddles, jostling the stalls, barely catching up with a van and hoisting themselves aboard in muddy, sweaty desperation.  Others refused to run and instead trudged along as if they were already beaten down by the surrounding brouhaha.  Drivers called to each other between vehicles and hurled insults at the pedestrians weaving their way between cars and trucks, risking annihilation at any moment.  The Honda hadn’t moved an inch in ten minutes.  When Jonas reached it, he saw the woman start and cast a frightened look toward the doors, which of course were already locked, and slouch in her seat.  He placed himself directly against the driver’s side door and leaned toward the window, his face separated from the woman’s by a mere pane of glass.  It seemed to him that their breaths were mingling.

Eléonore had held her breath as if she could conceal herself by being as quiet as possible, as if the man couldn’t see her through the glass, as if his vicious, mocking eyes were not fixed on her defiantly and provocatively.  She curled up in the seat.  In spite of herself, her eyes met the man’s for an instant and found themselves captive.  She understood that she would never forget that face.  He was pressing his fingers lightly against the pane, and she stared mesmerized at the roughness of his palms, a still-fresh scar, the crookedness of his index finger.  She thought she could hear his voice, but was he really speaking, or had she imagined it?  She seemed to detect a murmur reaching her, like a clumsy touch brushing her neck.  She was unable to look away, her eyes locked onto that hand.  Her clammy buttocks were stuck to the damp seat cushion.  She moistened her lips.  A suddenly intimate, muggy odor had invaded the space.  Between them, only the pane where he had set his fingers.  When the vehicle in front of her began to move, she remained immobile for several seconds.  A disruptive chorus of car horns finally drew her out of her trance.  Jonas had let go of the door and was backpedaling toward his stand, a strange smile on his lips.

“Le Detour” © 2013 by Evelyne Trouillot. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2013 by Paul Curtis Daw.  All rights reserved.

English French (Original)

To Nadève

At first Eléonore had been amused.  Why had she taken this detour?  A whim, a random impulse, and seemingly not such a bad one. But she began shaking her head in commiseration and mild indignation.  How could anyone let people live in such conditions?  Soon her hands grew moist with unease. She shouldn’t have chanced these unfamiliar roads, these broken traffic lights with their pitifully leaning poles, these faces that looked more and more sullen, these smells reaching her even through the closed windows of her Honda.  Noise infiltrated the car despite the voices of ’70s pop singers coming from her favorite CD compilation.  By the time she realized her uneasiness, it was too late to turn back.  She found herself in the midst of chaos. Trucks laden with bunches of plantains stamped with the names of their owners, goats trussed up and bound together, and, in the rear, human cargo with clothes and faces stained with dust and yellow-brown mud.  Between the enormous trucks, dilapidated little cars, the kind that always seem crammed with poor families en route to weddings or the cemetery; the huge, rattletrap buses salvaged from Florida, their grimy windows broken or laced with cracks, their exhausted, ravenous passengers gazing out vacantly, all in single file and all moving at the pace of resigned and overburdened snails.  The metallic blue of Eléonore’s Honda gleamed like a doll dressed for a fancy ball amid a crowd of hobbling beggars.  She would have liked to hit the gas pedal, veer left or right, make a U-turn, but escape was impossible.  No way to turn the car, not to mention the mess that would result if she even tried: the infrequent cross streets were blocked by vendors’ stands, the hulks of giant buses, and pedestrians clumped together in wait for a van or a motorbike.  She could only follow the others, bumper to bumper, until the next big intersection.

 

Slumped behind his hardware stand, Jonas was surveying the scene, seemingly indifferent to the familiar disarray.  The clunking shock absorbers, the vendors’ guffaws and insults, the screeching axles of wheelbarrows pushed by scrawny men whose upper bodies strained with effort, the women with the pungent body odor that neither soap nor perfume would ever totally eradicate or mask.  He couldn’t afford to treat himself to a cigarette today, at least not if he wanted a hot meal before the day ended.  The craving gave him a sudden urge to smash his fist against his hodgepodge of merchandise and send it rolling onto the filthy, noxious roadway.  Half-rusted locks, electrical cords, packets of pens and lead pencils, assorted screws of all sizes, slot-heads and Phillips heads thrown together, a jumble of trash in a pathetic semblance of order.  He associated the junky supplies with poverty and despair and sold them with reluctance.  Peddling them to the outcasts who made up his clientele sometimes wore him down, but most often it provoked his rage, directed against himself and others.  Against everyone.  He didn’t give a damn who was or wasn’t responsible for this state of affairs, he would have liked to bash someone, kick their butt.  Anyone. He felt a strong desire to dump everything onto the cars that were lined up in front of him with no prospect of moving forward or backward,  prisoners like him of this nauseating street.

When his eyes fell on the blue Honda, his face remained impassive, but he sneered inwardly. What was this woman doing here?  Her pampered appearance was an affront. With automatic resentment he eyed the car that was too flashy, too pristine, despite the splatterings of mud it had accumulated since daybreak.  He knew perfectly well that Madame had started her journey at the wheel of an immaculate car, that some poor guy like him, who’d migrated at great risk from his province or from a shantytown perched on a hillside above the city, had buffed her car at the crack of dawn, hosed down the wheels, shaken out the floor mats, polished the windows until they gleamed.  He knew because in a life that had swung between keeping his head above water and sinking beneath the waves, he had once landed at a villa in Thomassin as a custodian and handyman.  His employers talked about all sorts of things in front of him, sometimes switching to English when they discussed the salaries of the employees at their restaurant in Pétion-Ville.  He knew enough to understand that they were afraid of being robbed by those poor men and women, whose meager wages squelched any feelings of loyalty.

His employers’ stinginess did not particularly surprise him.  Everything in their villa was under lock and key.  Mme Gertrude, the head housekeeper, an old hen who had toiled for decades in their employ, oversaw everything with a laughably misplaced pride, totally unaware that they treated her like a domestic animal.  Not as well, in fact, as Safran, the little dog they regularly drove to the veterinarian.  Safran slept in the villa, in the vast recreation room where the children gathered to watch TV and where relatives and regular visitors were entertained.  The old woman slept in an outbuilding, in a little room that was tidy enough, it’s true, but not in the main house like Safran.  For his part, Jonas slept in a storage room, just like the cleaning lady who the local shopkeepers said was replaced by the owners every six months.  The temperature plummeted at nightfall on the heights of Thomassin, and they shook with cold in their unheated rooms.  Finally, after five nights of shivering in the penetrating February fog, he requested a blanket from Mme Gertrude, who referred his plea to the mistress of the house.  Three days later, the old woman presented Jonas and the cleaning lady with worn-out, threadbare blankets, which she admonished them to treat with care.  The blankets were to be given back when the employees left their jobs.  Before returning his eight months later, he deliberately made large holes in it.  He’d become fed up with rising at dawn, immersing his hands in the bitterly cold water to beautify Madame’s car, then doing the same for Monsieur’s 4×4.  After that, he was expected to sweep the courtyard, play the apprentice gardener, and finally to mop the floor and wash the windows, while remembering never to show his annoyance or  reveal the  pent-up resentment that was growing in him.  He sensed the same bitterness in the often agitated movements of the domestics and in the fleeting scowls of the fruit peddler forced to haggle over a few coins for her basket of oranges.  All those bourgeois fools ensconced in their air-conditioned cars, in their villas surrounded by trees and flowering plants—how could they think that everything was all right, that the well-behaved population didn’t hate them, that they could count on apathy and passivity indefinitely? That none of that would ever change, that they would be forever insulated from the wrath of the downtrodden?

Through the car window, Eléonore’s gaze met his.  The woman’s raw, runaway fear met the man’s wild, scathing contempt.

Eléonore tried in vain to prevent her expression from reflecting the panic that gripped her guts.  Where could she run?  Where could she hide?  Clutching the steering wheel, she no longer felt the cool gusts of air-conditioning.  Beads of sweat were running from her temples, but she hesitated to wipe her face.  As if such a gesture would call attention to her.  She suddenly felt exposed, vulnerable, and isolated.  One day, a somewhat cynical friend had reproached her for being too attentive to other people:  “You can’t go on living in this country if you care about everybody; you have to learn to close your eyes to certain things. It’s like when you’re driving: Almost all the roads are bad, if you try to avoid every little pothole, you’ll never get where you’re going.  If you fret about every petty vendor in the road, you’re finished before you’ve even begun. You just have to plow straight through and not worry about splashing mud on them. After all, you’re not responsible for the state of things.”  She wondered whether her failure to notice these people had made them invisible.  She had trained herself not to look at them, as if they could exist only in relationships she controlled, where they were always in positions of dependence and inferiority, where their nonexistence stemmed from inexorable forces.  In doing so, had she reduced them to mere shadows?  Could she in turn become invisible by the strength of her will?  Could she disappear in this environment where she felt herself so different, so removed from her own class, attracting suspicion and resentment?  The car windows failed to block the noises, odors, and stares.  Though she had always refused tinted glass, she now wished she had bowed to the pressure of her family.  She would have had at least the illusion of being sheltered from the increasingly hostile attention that surrounded her.

To his great astonishment, Jonas was much more amused than indignant as he observed the woman.  Maybe that was because he felt her discomfort, because he could imagine her inner thoughts, her habits, the aroma of the perfume she might be wearing. Perhaps the same fragrance that used to permeate the private rooms of his former employer when he mopped the floor, followed by a more intimate scent filtering down to his groin. To hide his growing erection he would purposely knock over the disinfectant bottle, earning reprimands from Mme Gertrude.  No doubt the interior of the blue Honda gave off the opulent smell of a new car.  She was probably listening to her CDs instead of relying on the local radio stations and the bumbling remarks spouted by overambitious announcers.  Had she perhaps changed her heeled sandals for flip-flops that matched her dress? He had noticed her glasses before she removed them with a nervous gesture; had she realized the crowd would guess that what she paid for them could feed a family of six for a week?  She probably didn’t give a damn what went on outside of her courtyard, beyond the wrought-iron enclosure bordered with flowers and climbing plants, her cobbled drive and her barred windows.  Too bad if she could get to and from her villa only by traveling down rutted roads, squeezing past shacks surrounded by children with ravaged faces, who were playing outside to escape the privation of their one-room dwellings and the hunger that gripped them nightly on the narrow straw mattresses where they lay huddled together.  She couldn’t care less about the stands that the vendors were shoving aside to make way for her vehicle.  She would lean on her horn so that her helper—that poor guy Jonas refused to become ever again, even if it meant constant hunger—would come running to open the gate.  He knew in his heart that he had quit his job for that very reason: because he couldn’t get used to the unpredictable whims of an employer returning exasperated from the office and to accusations made by a cleaning lady irked at her husband or by a crotchety old aunt wanting to prove that she still wielded some power over the hired help.  He had resigned with no explanation, and his employers had immediately suspected him of some sort of larceny.  Jonas had let them search him without batting an eye.  He had even very casually opened his old satchel and silently spread out his few belongings.  Then he had left, inwardly rejoicing at the foolish look of astonishment on Madame’s face, at Monsieur’s suppressed rage, and at the envious gleam in the eyes of the house staff.  Today, this sense of satisfaction returned to him more strongly than ever as he saw this woman on his turf, completely adrift, ignorant and precarious outside her stone walls and unprotected by her guard dogs.

More than all the other wary, irritated, or simply defeated glances that she sensed around her, the gaze of the man slumped behind his jumble of hardware troubled her.  She didn’t dare turn her head toward him, since she knew that he was following her slightest movements, that she was stranded like a fish out of its bowl and that she was at his mercy.  If he decided to pelt her with stones or to puncture one of her tires with a cheap screwdriver or chisel from his stock-in-trade, what could she do, what could she say?  She could only scream, or else stifle her fear, shrink down to disappear from the others’ view and hide like a coward.  Even if afterward she could be sure of taking her revenge, even if afterward she could resume her usual dominance and make him pay for his misdeeds.  For the time being he was the stronger one.  They both knew it, and the windows of the Honda could not shield her.  They both knew that, too.

Absorbed in her fear, her unchecked imagination giving free rein to the most violent scenarios possible, Eléonore felt a warm, steady stream of urine gush out and flow down her legs.  The liquid made its way into her pale yellow flip-flops, the ones she always kept in the Honda for driving, and created an unpleasant sensation between her toes.  The odor quickly reached her nostrils, and burning tears surged from her eyes.  She thought at first that she was too frightened to be ashamed, and yet her lips suddenly quivered in embarrassment when she realized that her courtyard helper would be shocked by the stench of urine hanging over the passenger compartment.

Jonas didn’t even realize that he had gotten up from his rickety bench studded with protruding nails that sometimes tore his pants.  With a robotic gesture, he pushed aside the objects that were blocking his path and advanced toward the blue Honda.  No one paid any attention to him, each one preoccupied with handling his own problems, with holding onto his tiny share of well-being.  Some pedestrians were hurrying along, stepping over the murky puddles, jostling the stalls, barely catching up with a van and hoisting themselves aboard in muddy, sweaty desperation.  Others refused to run and instead trudged along as if they were already beaten down by the surrounding brouhaha.  Drivers called to each other between vehicles and hurled insults at the pedestrians weaving their way between cars and trucks, risking annihilation at any moment.  The Honda hadn’t moved an inch in ten minutes.  When Jonas reached it, he saw the woman start and cast a frightened look toward the doors, which of course were already locked, and slouch in her seat.  He placed himself directly against the driver’s side door and leaned toward the window, his face separated from the woman’s by a mere pane of glass.  It seemed to him that their breaths were mingling.

Eléonore had held her breath as if she could conceal herself by being as quiet as possible, as if the man couldn’t see her through the glass, as if his vicious, mocking eyes were not fixed on her defiantly and provocatively.  She curled up in the seat.  In spite of herself, her eyes met the man’s for an instant and found themselves captive.  She understood that she would never forget that face.  He was pressing his fingers lightly against the pane, and she stared mesmerized at the roughness of his palms, a still-fresh scar, the crookedness of his index finger.  She thought she could hear his voice, but was he really speaking, or had she imagined it?  She seemed to detect a murmur reaching her, like a clumsy touch brushing her neck.  She was unable to look away, her eyes locked onto that hand.  Her clammy buttocks were stuck to the damp seat cushion.  She moistened her lips.  A suddenly intimate, muggy odor had invaded the space.  Between them, only the pane where he had set his fingers.  When the vehicle in front of her began to move, she remained immobile for several seconds.  A disruptive chorus of car horns finally drew her out of her trance.  Jonas had let go of the door and was backpedaling toward his stand, a strange smile on his lips.

Le détour

À Nadève

Au début, Eléonore en avait souri. Pourquoi donc avait-elle fait ce détour ? Un caprice, une idée vagabonde et pas bien méchante. Puis, elle avait tout de même hoché la tête avec commisération et un brin d’indignation. Comment pouvait-on laisser les gens vivre dans de telles conditions ? Et finalement, un sentiment de malaise rendit ses mains un peu moites. Elle aurait dû pourtant se méfier des avenues qu’elle ne reconnaissait pas, des feux de circulation qui ne fonctionnaient plus et dont les poteaux penchaient misérablement, des visages de plus en plus ternes, des senteurs qui lui parvenaient malgré les vitres fermées de sa Honda. Les bruits du dehors s’y glissaient aussi en dépit des voix des chanteurs anglais et américains des années 70 provenant de sa compilation de CD préférés. Lorsque l’inquiétude s’insinua en elle, il était trop tard pour faire marche arrière. Elle se retrouva au beau milieu du chaos. Les camions aux porte-bagages remplis de régimes de plantains marqués au nom de leurs propriétaires, de cabris ligotés et attachés les uns aux autres, avec à l’arrière, des êtres humains dont on apercevait les membres ou les visages terreux et poussiéreux. Entre les énormes camions, les petites voitures cabossées, de celles qui semblent toujours remplies de familles de pauvres en route pour des noces ou le cimetière ; les immenses autobus usagés importés de la Floride avec leurs vitres sales, brisées ou craquelées derrière lesquels des yeux affamés et fatigués regardaient sans rien voir ; tous, en file indienne, allaient du même train d’escargot défaitiste et accablé. La Honda d’Eléonore brillait de son bleu métallique, telle une poupée habillée pour un bal  de luxe parmi des mendiants éclopés. Elle aurait voulu presser l’accélérateur, tourner à droite ou à gauche, faire demi-tour mais aucune issue n’était possible. Aucun moyen physique de virer la voiture, sans parler de la scène qui s’ensuivrait si jamais elle essayait, les rares rues transversales étant bloquées par des étals de marchands, des carcasses d’autobus géants, des piétons agglutinés dans l’attente d’une camionnette ou d’une moto.  Il fallait suivre les autres, pare-choc contre pare-choc,  jusqu’à la prochaine sortie.

Affalé derrière son étal de quincaille au détail, Jonas regardait la scène, apparemment indifférent au désordre qui constituait son entourage familier. Les amortisseurs, les injures et rires des marchands, les grincements de roue des brouettes poussées par des hommes au torse raidi par l’effort et  qu’on pouvait difficilement trouver virils et attrayants, les femmes aux odeurs âcres d’une sueur sauvage née de tant de misère que le savon et le parfum ne parvenaient jamais à l’effacer tout à fait. Il ne pouvait se payer une cigarette aujourd’hui, pas s’il voulait au moins manger un repas chaud avant la fin du jour. Le  besoin irrépressible de fumer lui donna une soudaine envie de foutre son poing contre ce bric-à-brac et de l’envoyer rouler sur la rue sale et grouillante de microbes.  Cadenas à demi rouillés, câbles électriques, paquets de stylos et de crayons noirs, tournevis de toutes tailles, tête plate ou cruciforme confondue, mêlant leur médiocrité à bon marché dans un semblant d’ordre pathétique. Tous ces clinquants qu’il vendait parfois malgré lui, tant il les associait à la misère et au désespoir.  De les présenter aux laissés pour compte qui constituaient sa clientèle le remplissait parfois de lassitude mais le plus souvent c’était la rage qui s’emparait de lui, contre lui-même et contre les autres. Tous les autres.  Il s’en foutait pas mal de savoir qui était responsable ou pas de cet état de choses, il aurait voulu frapper, cogner son pied contre les fesses de quelqu’un.  N’importe qui. Il avait envie de tout balancer sur les véhicules incapables d’avancer ou de reculer et qui s’alignaient devant lui,  prisonniers comme lui de cette rue nauséabonde.

Lorsque ses yeux tombèrent sur la Honda bleue, il ne put s’empêcher de ricaner dans un mouvement intérieur qui ne se refléta pas sur son visage impassible.  Que faisait donc cette femme ici ?  Son apparence luxueuse gifla sa misère et il toisa avec une antipathie instinctive ce véhicule trop beau, trop neuf, malgré les  éclaboussures de boue que la carrosserie avait reçues depuis l’aube. Car il savait pertinemment que Madame avait quitté sa résidence au volant d’une voiture immaculée, que quelqu’un, un pauvre type comme lui, venu de sa province en péril ou de son bidonville perché sur les contreforts de la ville, lui avait torché à l’aurore son véhicule, avait lavé à grande eau les roues, secoué les tapis d’intérieur, frotter les vitres pour les faire briller. Il le savait, car au cours de sa vie zigzaguée entre survie et déchéance, il avait échoué dans une villa de Thomassin comme gardien/homme à tout faire.  Les patrons discutaient  devant lui de choses et d’autres, recourant parfois à l’anglais quand ils parlaient des salaires des employés du restaurant qu’ils possédaient à Pétion-ville. Il connaissait assez de mots pour comprendre qu’ils avaient peur d’être volés par ces pauvres hommes et femmes qui touchaient une pitance incapable de générer un quelconque sentiment de loyauté. Leur mesquinerie ne l’étonnait pas outre mesure.   Chez eux, tout était sous clef. Mme Gertrude, la gouvernante, une vieille qui bourriquait chez eux depuis des décennies, contrôlait le tout avec une fierté cocasse, sans se rendre compte qu’ils la traitaient comme un animal domestique. Moins bien en tout cas que leur petit bichon Safran qu’ils  conduisaient chez le vétérinaire régulièrement. Safran dormait à l’intérieur, dans l’immense office où les enfants se réunissaient pour regarder la télé, où on recevait les parents et habitués. La vieille dormait dans les dépendances, dans une petite chambre bien rangée, c’est vrai, mais  pas à l’intérieur, comme Safran. Jonas, de même que la femme de ménage que les patrons changeaient tous les six mois selon les petits commerçants du coin, dormait dans un cagibi,  où le froid leur tordait les membres car la température descendait le soir tombé dans les hauteurs de Thomassin.  Finalement, après cinq nuits à grelotter dans la brume pernicieuse du mois de février,  il demanda une couverture à Mme Gertrude qui transmit la requête à la patronne.  Trois jours après, la vieille leur tendit à la femme de ménage et à lui des couvertures usagées, assez élimées, en leur priant de faire attention. Ces couvertures devraient être rendues, à leur départ du travail. Il fit exprès de faire de grands trous dans le sien avant de le rendre, huit mois après. Il en avait marre de  se lever à l’aube, de mettre ses doigts dans l’eau glacée pour bichonner la voiture de madame, puis le 4×4 de monsieur. Ensuite de balayer la cour, de jouer à l’apprenti jardinier,  puis de passer la serpillière, de nettoyer les vitres et d’apprendre à ne jamais montrer ni irritation ni aucun sentiment qui pourrait leur laisser percevoir ce qui devrait pourtant être évident : cette somme de ressentiment qui grandissait en lui, qu’il sentait aussi dans les mouvements souvent rageurs des femmes de ménage, dans les yeux fuyants de la marchande de fruits qui négociait pour recevoir quelques gourdes de plus pour son panier d’oranges. Comment pouvaient-ils tous penser ces bourgeois engoncés dans leurs voitures climatisées, dans leurs villas entourées de plantes et d’arbres que tout allait bien, que la population bon enfant ne leur en voulait pas, qu’ils pourraient compter indéfiniment sur son apathie et sa passivité ? Que cela ne changerait jamais, qu’ils seraient  à jamais à l’abri de sa colère ?

À travers la vitre, leurs regards se croisèrent. La peur, accélérée et brutale de la femme rencontra le mépris sauvage et acerbe de l’homme.

Eléonore  essaya en vain de contrôler ses yeux pour qu’ils ne reflètent pas cette panique qui lui serrait les tripes. Où courir ? Où se cacher ? Les mains crispées sur le volant  de sa Honda, elle ne sentait plus les bouffées glacées de la climatisation, la sueur dégoulinait depuis ses tempes et elle hésitait à s’essuyer le visage. Comme si ce geste attirerait sur elle les regards, elle se sentait soudain à nu, vulnérable, si différente et isolée. Un jour, une amie un peu cynique lui avait reproché de trop faire attention aux autres. Tu ne pourras pas vivre dans ce pays si tu te soucies de tout le monde, il faut apprendre à fermer les yeux sur certaines choses. C’est comme lorsque tu conduis, les rues sont presque toutes mauvaises, si tu fais attention à chaque petit nid de poule, tu n’arriveras jamais à destination, si tu te préoccupes de tous les petits marchands qui envahissent la chaussée, tu es fichue d’avance. Il faut tout simplement foncer, ne pense pas trop aux éclaboussures que tu fais en chemin, après tout, tu n’es pas responsable de cet état de choses.  Elle se demandait si à force de ne pas les voir, elle n’avait pas rendu les autres invisibles.  En s’habituant à ne pas les regarder, comme s’ils n’existaient que dans les rapports par elle définis, où toujours ils se retrouvaient en situation de dépendance et d’infériorité, où leur inexistence découlait d’une force toujours fatale, les avait-elle réduits à des ombres ? Aujourd’hui, pourrait-elle à son tour devenir  invisible par la force de sa volonté ?  Ne pas être perçue dans cet  environnement où elle se sentait si différente, hors classe, attirant méfiance et ressentiment. La vitre ne la protégeait ni des bruits, ni des odeurs, ni des regards. Elle qui avait toujours refusé les vitres teintées, regrettait de n’avoir pas cédé aux pressions des siens.  Elle aurait eu au moins l’illusion d’être à l’abri des curiosités de plus en plus hostiles qui l’entouraient.

À son grand étonnement, Jonas se sentait beaucoup plus amusé qu’indigné au fur et à mesure qu’il observait la femme. Etait-ce parce qu’il ressentait son inconfort, qu’il pouvait imaginer son intérieur à elle, ses habitudes, l’odeur des parfums qu’elle pouvait porter et qui imprégnaient la chambre à coucher et la salle de bains de celle qu’il appelait madame lorsqu’il passait la serpillière et que les effluves d’une odeur plus intime lui arrivaient jusqu’à l’aine, et que pour cacher son érection croissante, il faisait exprès de renverser le liquide à désinfecter, s’attirant les remontrances de la vieille qui le supervisait.  La Honda bleue devait sans doute respirer la riche odeur des véhicules neufs. Elle écoutait probablement ses CD ne faisant pas confiance aux stations locales et aux inepties débitées par les animateurs en quête de renom.  Peut-être qu’elle avait fait glisser ses sandales à talons pour des tongs assortis à sa robe ? Il avait aperçu les lunettes avant qu’elle ne les enlève d’un geste nerveux ; pensait-elle que la populace autour d’elle se doutait que leur prix pourrait nourrir six jours durant une famille de six ? Probablement, elle se foutait pas mal de ce qui se passait en dehors de sa cour, au-delà des grilles bordées de fleurs et de plantes grimpantes, de sa rue carrelée et de ses fenêtres barrées. Tant pis si pour y arriver, elle devait traverser des routes défoncées,  défiler à proximité de taudis devant lesquels des enfants aux visages abimés jouaient à oublier que la misère les chassait de l’unique salle trop sombre, que le soir la faim les rattraperait sur leur paillasse trop mince, où ils se blottissaient les uns contre les autres. Elle s’en foutait des étals que les marchandes repoussaient pour qu’elle puisse passer avec son véhicule, pressait fort le klaxon pour que l’employé de maison, – ce pauvre type qu’il refusait d’être de nouveau quitte à ne pas manger à sa faim chaque jour, – se précipite pour ouvrir le portail. Il savait au fond de lui que s’il avait quitté ce job c’était justement pour cela, pour ne pas s’habituer à cette sensation de fausse sécurité liée à un job qui dépendait de l’humeur du patron rentrant contrarié du bureau, d’une accusation lancée par une femme de ménage fâchée contre son homme, ou par une vieille tante acariâtre voulant à tout prix montrer qu’elle a encore du pouvoir sur la domesticité. Il  avait donné sa démission sans offrir d’explication, et les patrons avaient tout de suite pensé qu’il avait du commettre un larcin quelconque.  Jonas s’était laissé fouiller sans sourciller, avait même tout naturellement ouvert sa vieille sacoche, étalé ses quelques effets sur  une chaise, en silence. Puis il était parti se réjouissant de l’étonnement un peu idiot étalé sur le visage de la patronne, de la colère rentrée du patron et de la lueur envieuse sur les traits du personnel. Aujourd’hui, cette satisfaction lui revint encore plus forte en voyant cette femme sur son territoire à lui, sans repères, ignorante et fragilisée hors de ses murs de pierre et de ses chiens de garde.

Plus que tous les autres coups d’œil soupçonneux, irrités ou simplement défaitistes qu’elle sentait autour d’elle, le regard de l’homme affalé derrière son bric-à-brac la perturbait. Elle n’osait tourner la tête vers lui,  savait qu’il suivait ses moindres gestes, qu’elle était devenue comme un poisson hors de son bocal et qu’elle était à sa merci. S’il décidait de lui envoyer un jet de pierres, de crever un de ses pneus avec l’une des tournevis ou ciseaux à bon marché qui constituaient sa marchandise, que pourrait-elle faire, que pourrait-elle dire ? Elle ne pourrait que hurler ou taire sa peur, se faire toute petite pour disparaitre aux yeux des autres, se cacher plus bas que terre. Même si après, elle aurait certes la possibilité de se venger, même si après, elle pourrait reprendre sa place de domination habituelle et lui faire payer ses écarts, pour l’instant il était le plus fort. Ils le savaient tous les deux, et les vitres de la Honda ne pourraient lui servir de bouclier. Ils le savaient tous deux.

Absorbée par sa peur, son imagination débridée donnant cours à des scénarios aussi violents que possible, Eléonore sentit une urine chaude et longue jaillir d’elle et mouiller ses jambes. Le liquide s’insinua dans ses tongs couleur jaune tendre, celles qu’elle gardait toujours dans la Honda pour conduire, et créa une sensation désagréable entre ses orteils. L’odeur lui arriva aux narines et des larmes tout aussi brûlantes sortirent de ses yeux. Elle pensait pourtant avoir trop peur pour ressentir de la honte, mais un embarras insolite fit trembler ses lèvres à l’idée que le gardien de cour allait s’étonner des relents d’urine qui envahissaient l’habitacle.

Jonas ne se rendit même pas compte qu’il s’était levé de son banc à demi cassé et d’où sortaient des clous rouillés qui lui déchiraient parfois ses pantalons. Il poussa d’un geste absent les objets qui barraient sa route et s’avança vers la Honda bleue. Nul ne prêtait attention à lui, chacun happé par son poids de problèmes à résoudre, par sa petite part de joie à conserver. Certains piétons se dépêchaient, enjambant les flaques d’eau bourbeuse, bousculant les étals, rattrapant de justesse une camionnette et s’y hissant avec un désespoir suant et boueux, d’autres cheminaient lentement comme si déjà ils se sentaient vaincus d’avance face au brouhaha qui les entourait et refusaient de courir. Des chauffeurs s’interpellaient d’un véhicule à l’autre et invectivaient les piétons qui se faufilaient entre voitures et camions, au risque de se faire écrabouiller au moindre mouvement. La Honda n’avait pas bougé d’un pouce depuis quelques dix minutes. Lorsque Jonas l’atteignit, il vit la femme sursauter et jeter un coup d’œil apeuré vers les portières pourtant déjà bloquées, et se rétrécir sur son siège. Il se colla tout contre la porte du chauffeur et se pencha vers la vitre, son visage séparé de celui de la conductrice par la lame de verre. Il lui sembla que leurs souffles se mêlaient.

Eléonore avait retenu sa respiration comme si elle pouvait se cacher en faisant le moins de bruit que possible, comme si l’homme ne pouvait pas la voir à travers la vitre, comme si ses yeux hargneux et moqueurs ne la dévisageaient pas, défiants et aguicheurs. Elle se recroquevilla sur son siège. Malgré elle, ses yeux croisèrent le regard de l’homme un instant, et se retrouvèrent captifs. Elle comprit qu’elle n’oublierait jamais ce visage. Il pressait doucement ses doigts contre la vitre, et hypnotisée elle pouvait voir la rugosité des paumes, une cicatrice encore fraiche, la courbe irrégulière de l’index. Elle crut entendre sa voix, mais parla-t-il réellement ? Ou l’avait-elle imaginé ? Il lui sembla qu’un chuchotement lui arrivait dans le cou, comme un effleurement maladroit. Elle n’arrivait pas à regarder ailleurs, et ses yeux s’accrochaient à cette main. Les fesses humides, collées contre le coussin mouillé, elle s’humecta les lèvres. L’odeur soudain intime, suintante avait envahi l’espace. Entre eux, seule cette vitre où il avait posé ses doigts.  Lorsque le véhicule devant elle démarra, elle resta quelques secondes immobile. Un cortège inopportun de klaxons la fit finalement sortir de cet état second. Jonas avait reculé et regagnait à reculons son étal, un étrange sourire aux lèvres.

Delmas, mars 2013

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