Popa Singer by René Depestre

Author:René Depestre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000 FICTION / Literary
Publisher: University of Virginia Press

6

Death Made to Measure

Guess who was on front desk duty at police headquarters that afternoon? My cousin, First Lieutenant Leslie Fontoriol, the youngest of my uncle Hans’s fifteen children. The eldest girl, Célina, was the angel of my adolescence. From 1937 to 1940, as I mourned my father, Lili embodied the consolation of happy vacation days up in the hills that tumbled down to the foamy coastline of the gulf of Jacmel. After so many years spent far away from her green eyes, being welcomed in a place like that by one of her brothers boded well.

“I’m well aware of your troubles, dear Dick,” said my cousin in a low voice. “Colonel Marcellus is waiting for you. He’s a good guy, you know, as long as there’s no police chief breathing down his neck. Like all of us here at the station, he’s terrified by that mercenary. But in the company of the lower-ranking squad members he’s more submissive than a second-class officer. If it’s only him receiving you, everything will be just fine. Chaperoned by another Macoute, he’ll be playing his role as poet-breaker to the hilt. I’ll bring you up to his floor.”

“Tell me how Lili’s doing, I said as we went up the stairs. I desperately long to see Uncle Hans, Aunt Frida, and—ave Maria!—Lili again! After our dips in the sea on those dreamy afternoons the whole crew used to rinse off in the waterfall of a mountain stream. Lili and I, we were always the last ones to make it back home, completely out of breath.”

“Lili’s expecting her fifth child. She’ll maybe have ten more like our mother. In Jacmel, my sister never stops talking about you: she always links the story of those vacations at Meyer Beach to some mysterious ‘third bank of the river’ . . .”

We’d arrived at Colonel Marcellus’s door. Leslie knocked on it lightly.

“Come in!” said a commanding voice.

I went in before my cousin. The colonel wasn’t alone. To his right was seated a middle-aged civilian. The man looked elegant in a very becoming navy blue suit, clearly a British cut. He didn’t even deign to get up, as the colonel had so courteously done to greet my arrival.

Leslie stood at attention, complete with heel-clacking.

“Mr. Richard Denizan, Colonel. The writer you summoned.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. At ease!”

At the moment of his about-face, I caught a flash of anxiety in Leslie’s gray-green gaze. In my incorrigible romanticism, I immediately saw in it a reflection of the marvelous days of Lili.

“Take a seat,” said the colonel, indicating a mahogany armchair. “His Excellency Clovis Barbotog, commander of the NSV, insisted on joining this conversation I wanted to have with you after what happened last night at your home in Bourdon.”

“So then, Comrade,” interjected Barbotog unceremoniously, “we have the nerve to insult the proverbial generosity of the Great Electrifier of the Loins and Souls of the Republic? Rather than accept the honor of dining at the table of the glorious presidential couple of this nation we prefer conspiring with white foreign authors?”

“.

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