Chantal

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This was my first evening in Port au Prince and the emphasis was hot. The rattling taxi did nothing to relieve the heat with three of the windows down and one not working. The rectangle of the rear view mirror showed my driver was shining drips of brown framing bright white eyes and long lashes spring boarding drops that he was constantly wiping with a crumbled wet handkerchief.

We curved up a driveway and finally I was able to peel myself out of the springs under a thin coating of synthetic seat material to look up at my first impression of the hotel. My mouth hung itself open and I started to feel a little awe at the grandeur that was once more than now but is a grand piece of art.

The Grand Hotel Oloffson is gingerbread architecture in model, I tell you. This place is all turrets and steeples and balconies with delicacy at every curve. It looks as though a hard wind would blow down the match sticks holding the place together. But, for all its daintiness there is an assertion of power, an abode of power, like a strong horse taking prancing steps. The central part of the structure was lit from within by under-watt bulbs and seemed about to burst with a warm glowing.

Since I didn’t know what to expect at the Hotel Oloffson I had dressed respectful of island custom in long pants at night and a better quality cotton shirt. By the time my taxi arrived I had to take the shirt off and walk around the circular driveway garden holding it in front to dry in the humid self created breeze of my own walking. My legs wouldn’t stop draining their juices as I walked, and my pants stuck to me like a scared cat. The shirt did not dry completely but I figured everybody else must be having the same problems, so I ascended the stairs tucking the wet rag into my wet pants.

On my way up I could hear a languid Haitian meringue counterpointed by soft conversations on the verandah, laughed declarations, dishes clunking and glasses clinking.

The entrance staircase was a grandly styled divided series of steps that formed a diamond that met at the top leading to a long, shaded verandah. The steps were Italian marble, washed and bleached gleaming. The thick white railing was low cut to allow a view of Port au Prince out to the ocean.

Aubie, a local journalist who had referred me to this place, left his chair at the bar and two other people with whom he was talking and came to greet me at the entrance portal as though I was a real and old friend, clapping my shoulders, embracing me and kissing both my cheeks. He guided me back to the bar and introduced me to the other two men, both North Americans.

The night passed more or less like that, me being introduced to a multitude and interesting variety of people. By eleven the place was full and I was exhausted. The language at the Oloffson was so breathtaking… they rolled their letters and twisted syllables intricately, they hummed low tones and crisply argued to determine points, sharply etching the finer of our sipping sounds. How wonderful to hear the right, the just right insertion of French, Creole, German, Spanish, Swahili, ha ha Italian with always a translation for me. But, I grew physically sick of the perfection of conversation and the urgency of exclamation. I actually went to the men’s room and threw up.

It grew on you. It was an acquired taste, this beautiful redundant, display of language’s refined utilization. After a few days, meaning a few trips up the stairs to return to the Grand Hotel Oloffson I did not feel so inapt and could hold my own with an opinion on a subject that I could feel confident would go on if I were there or not. I could come and go into and out of conversations with all sorts and classes of people learning much and apparently contributing something. I made friends at the Oloffson. It became my second home.

Sometimes the Oloffson was boring. Too much of a good thing leaves you too stimulated at times when things fall just a bit short of that peak point.

One night, actually early evening just as the sun’s remaining aura was dwindling, I was playing backgammon with an artist buddy, Toussaint. We had been sipping rum from crystal shot glasses, our bottle on the side of the board. It was real humid. The overhead fans twirled just to keep themselves cool. No men in the half full bar or lounging areas were using the buttons on their shirts, including the waiters, who usually kept a neat sobriety about themselves.

Toussaint and I both had to wipe our hands with handkerchiefs before each backgammon move. We talked to each other to keep from napping in the heat of the place.

“I need to go to New York. “ Toussaint said, “There, my sculpture would be recognized.”

“If it could be seen by anybody.”

“I have cards. Many art dealers come to Haiti. Many have seen my sculpture.”

“Then, do it.” I made a regretful move but pokerfaced it over and looked around to point out something to him before he saw the position I was in. “J.C. is drunk.” Toussaint started to look toward the bartender, but it was too hot to turn and his slight movement made him catch my mistake.

“Ahh.” He smiled, greed sparkling in his elliptical eyes. Toussaint wiped his hand, keeping a stare pointed at the pieces. I felt he was being a little too elaborate in the wiping, a little too meticulous, taking too long.

“Go on and move.” I commanded, tight lipped and stammering with impatience.

“Temper, temper,” he grinned, “you know the game has a grand ingredient called patience, mez ami. Like love making those slight movements in appreciation of the time…?” He moved, under-cutting my whole strategy.

I looked away, out at the verandah and a party of diners just rising up the stairs, then past them to Port au Prince in this soft, pink, humid light.

“Your turn, mez ami.”

I turned back to Toussaint.

“Where’d you get the idea to sculpt roots?”

He smiled and reclined, wiping his neck with the handkerchief, looking up at the whirling fan above us with the same expression of consternation that I probably had whenever I looked up at it.

“My father taught me. My father taught me to look, not just with the eye, for a particular plant… that is only in the foothills, near Jacmel, where we are from. When we found this plant, a stunted tree with a bitter, almost poisonous fruit, we dig carefully and get the whole root complex. He felt that the whole plant was very holy, which I do too, now. We always performed a ritual, a sort of ceremony for a few days before we went to look for the roots. We did another ceremony when we find the tree, another when we dig it up and another before transport and another when we house it.”

“House it?”

“Yes… uh, we, what do we do then, oh yes, we have in our house a special, like closet that we put the roots and trees in…”

“Then you store them before working on them?”

“Yes, that is it, we store them. We always store them and then they choose to come out.”

“You mean… you can see the personalities in the roots, the characters in your designs?”

“You could say that, but it is more like they call and choose for us to take them out of …uh, their capture.”

“To be released from the trunk or branch or whatever?”

“Yes, whatever.”

“You have some now?”

“Yes, Rod, but I very seldom have to go down to Jacmel to look for them, I have some people from there come here to sell them to me.”

The party from the stairs were coming through the nearest of the large double entrances, whose drawn back lace curtains framed them in a portrait of colonial gentility. They were mainly men, laughing confidently at short bursts of little jokes in Creole. The men were all young and handsome and very well, though casually dressed in whites and beiges. Their focus was centered on the three women in their midst.

“Maybe “ Toussaint was saying, “we go down to Jacmel and dig a tree, me and you, mez ami?”

Then I saw her. She was dressed in white lace, a loose flowing thing that forced my eyes around and upon the energy of the body beneath the softness of the material. My eyes went up to the face, partially hidden by a wide white brimmed delicate hat, a face of soft oaken majesty and a laughing sensuous grace. Her green Eurasian eyes were focused upon mine. They were big and electric and beamed as though all things were a wonder. It was hard to look even at her nose or full lips and sparkling white teeth, the eyes drew me back up. I had forgotten to breathe.

“Yes, mez ami, she is the beauty of all beauties, is she not?”

I was captured by her stare but could see also that she was standing still and the gay blades around her stopped laughing and talking. A shorter woman took her arm gently and pressured her to a table on the other side of the doors, a bit out of my sight.

I exhaled loudly.

“She got you, Rod.” Toussaint shook his head lightly in my peripheral vision.

I nodded. “I’ve never seen a woman so beautiful. Who is she?”

“She is a movie producer. Black French. She has been here two weeks. You have not seen her before?”

“I just got back from the Sebastiens, remember? Shit, I’ve missed this?”

“She is married, my friend, and everybody is after her, as you see.’ Toussaint’s voice went low to a whisper. "She has given nothing to nobody. Even me.”

“You know her then? You can introduce me?”

Toussaint threw his eyebrows up and smacked. “Mez ami… I, me, I tried, my Rod, and nothing. Maybe I am too black. Some mulatte, they do not like the skin dark, so I would not say I know her, only that I tried to know her.”

I saw my friend Aubie go over to her table from the bar, so I rose and went over to his place at the bar to wait for his return, and to be able to look at her again. Nodding to J.C., the bartender, I turned and stared directly into her staring eyes. She was talking to Aubie, who kept looking back at me, laughing and smiling and talking to her.

Aubie bowed, took her hand and kissed it, to which my heart fluttered jealously, nod bowed to the other two women at the table, turned and with the broadest smile I have ever seen on his otherwise nonchalant countenance, came directly to me.

“Hello Aubie.” I said, looking past his shoulder.

“Hello my lucky friend, Rod.” he said.

“Lucky?” I questioned and looked down at him.

He smacked his tongue, “Yes, you have the prize. I do not know how or why but love truly is blind.”

I was not looking at Aubie now, but kept my heated stare at her.

“Chantal wants to meet the most beautiful man she has ever seen. Of course I knew she meant you, but could not believe it. Seated next to her are some of the wealthiest and handsomest Haitian men in the country. I mean, well you do have Haitian blood, so national pride can be kept in tact but to find a successful black French movie producer going, how do you say in Americaine?, ah yes, gah gah over a poor Haitian Americaine journalist… well, I applaud it. I never liked those bourgeois snobs anyway. I more than applaud it I shall sing praise to it in poetry and in the newspaper tomorrow.

Aubie took my elbows in his hands, “Now, go to her, Rod.”

Like a zombie I followed that order. I went to her, took a chair up from a table along the way and inserted it between a woman and this Chantal, who sat in one of those high backed fanning rattan chairs. I heard the dislodged woman’s chair scraping, protests and giggles, but it was not important.

As I sat I took Chantal’s hand, never breaking our eye contact. We both breathed through our mouths, licking our lips, making love in our own world.

We rubbed each other’s hands, smiling and pushing our gazing, and breathing, and licking lips. Now and then somebody at the table would say something but mainly they were all quiet, I think.

Finally, the woman I had pushed aside rested her hand on my arm.

“I am Luce.”

I blinked and quickly turned to her, then back to Chantal, who welcomed my return with a sigh and a soft smile.

“I am Rod.”

“It speaks.” Luce said in English. “The woman you are cherishing is Chantal Le Moine from Paris. She speaks very little English. Do you speak any French?”

“No.”

“Well…? This is difficult to say to you because I love love, but, Chantal is married and her husband has friends here in Port au Prince. Do you understand?'

Luce resumed seeing that I was not listening. “Well, I see that does not impress either of you but my mind is sober enough to protect my friend’s reputation. We will leave… Rod, is it?”

I did not answer, knowing I only had a few moments more of this living dream.

Luce wrote on a piece of paper. “This is my home telephone number. Call me tomorrow early. I may have an article for your publication. Aubelin informed us you are a journalist.”

Everybody but me and Chantal rose and talked. Then Chantal was assisted up by Luce, who was almost laughing with smiles at the both of us. I stood also, still holding on to her heartbeat through her palms and fingertips.

“Aurevoir, monsieur.” Luce said, taking a disconcerted Chantal by the arm, breaking our hold and guiding her away. Chantal turned several times, we both gulped with tears swelling. Then Luce whispered something to her and she smiled gaily and ran back to me.

“The telephone, oui, the telephone.”

I nodded, smiling stupidly. What an instrument her voice was, as though strings resonated through a trumpet’s proud throat.

“Je t’aime.” I said to her sparkling eyes.

“Je t’aime ausi, mon amour.” She turned and ran, then skipped like a little girl out the entranceway.

I waited a long half hour and J.C. allowed me, with great civility, to use the bar telephone.

“Allo?” Luce answered at the second ring.

“Allo. This is Rod. Can I speak to Chantal?”

“Doubt that you could over the telephone since you do not speak… much French, why don’t you come over and communicate the way that you and her know how?”

I looked down at the piece of paper and saw for the first time that an address was also written down.

“As soon as a taxi will get me there. And, thank you.”

“There is something special in this and I love it.” With that, Luce hung up the phone.

Chantal had only four days left in Port au Prince which went by like a very rich hour. We were seldom apart, seldom not touching. At times we would forget to eat. When we ate, during those four days, it was usually by demanded invitation. We would start those meals famished, gorging ourselves without breaking eye contact, but I don’t think we ever finished a meal. We would just rudely leave those assembled for our treasured room and intimacy.

I did not go to the airport to see her off.