Peacekeeping: A Novel by Mischa Berlinski

Author:Mischa Berlinski
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780374715168
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2016-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire!

Would not we shatter it to bits—and then

Remold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire.

I told the judge that I was writing a piece about deportees. They were a distinct subculture in Haitian life: formed on the island, finished in the States, and then sent back to Haiti, sometimes penniless, sometimes not, as a result of some sin or failing after decades abroad. The stories of deportees were inevitably fascinating. The judge called Nadia on the spot, and she agreed to see me the next day at four.

* * *

When I saw her the next day on the sun-dappled terrace of the judge’s small house, I wondered how I could ever have thought that this was anything but a beautiful woman. She wore a white skirt and an apple-green blouse, a silver scarf wrapped tightly around her head. The ensemble lent her an air of faraway glamour, as if she had been transplanted that afternoon to Jérémie from the chicest café of Dakar or Abidjan. I had not noticed before how graceful she was. This was the first time I was alone with her, the first time she gave me her full attention. Her sea-colored eyes glittered.

“I’m happy to be here,” I said.

When a man describes a woman’s smile as “enigmatic,” it generally means only one thing: he is wondering what she thinks of him. Nadia now smiled enigmatically.

My notebook rested on the table between us. Nadia picked it up and began to thumb through it. From time to time I had attempted pen-and-ink sketches of interesting places in the Grand’Anse. “That’s Dame Marie,” I said.

“Very nice.”

Then she looked at sketches of the beach at Anse d’Azur and the fish market at Abricots and the hot springs near Sources Chaudes. Over her shoulder I could see the judge’s boxer shorts hanging on the laundry line, baggy, shapeless things, like hopelessness incarnated in an undergarment. They inspired me to say, “Terry asked me to come. He’s hurting something terrible.”

* * *

From time to time over the last five years (Nadia told me, her voice very low and soft, her remarkable eyes glancing at mine or resting on the horizon where the voiliers dipped and glided on the breeze) she had sung, when the mood struck her, with a local band. Galaxy was not a very good band, but they had a steady diet of gigs at nightclubs, feasts of patronal saints, political rallies, and private parties. For Nadia, having sung for years with a top East Coast Compas band like Erzulie L’Amour, Galaxy was just an excuse to get out of the house and onstage and let a little life back into her veins.

Nadia’s participation in Galaxy had produced a dozen fights or more with Johel. Perhaps because he couldn’t even carry a tune—Nadia winced when he tried to sing “Happy Birthday”—he couldn’t imagine the shared intimacy of the stage. Perhaps the look of transfixed passion on Nadia’s face as she sang disturbed him: that face, he thought, should be his alone.

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