Caribbean: a novel Part 48

She had brought with her the address of an uncle who had remained behind during the evacuation, and now she repacked her belongings and caught another fearfully overcrowded bus, which took her well to the north of St.-Marc, the seaport where Napoleon's Polish Battalion had ma.s.sacred the remnants of a black regiment, and if she had been appalled at conditions in the village north of the capital, she was speechless when she saw how her relatives were living. They had none of the amenities of a town, none of the incidentals which make even a life of poverty endurable: they were living as so many Haitians did, in a shack that had only bare earth for a floor, two mattress-less beds laid flat on the earth, two unsteady chairs, a rickety table, some nails for hanging such clothes as the family had acquired. They were living, these descendants of generals and presidents who had served Haiti well, at about the level that their ancestor Vavak had lived two and a half centuries ago when a slave on the Danish island of St. John.

Seeing this incredible degradation, caused by the endless chain of dictators who made themselves wealthy and their people poor, she impulsively threw open her purse, took out the wallet in which she kept her money, and gave her relatives funds she had saved for the purchase of books at various island stopovers: 'Please, Father would insist.'

'How did you get so much money?' they asked, and she said: 'In Canada everyone has a job. It's quite wonderful, really,' and she explained that most nations in the world provided for their people: 'First two years out of college I worked for the Peace Corps. In African nations ... probably because I was black. First-rate experience, and frankly, wherever I have been, I never found a country as poor as Haiti.'

This condemnation so moved her uncle that he went to a miserable wooden shelf he had nailed to the wall and brought back a big handsome book printed in France in vivid color: 'Each of us had to buy six copies, very expensive,' and when Tessa looked inside she saw a big photograph of Papa Doc, with the caption: 'The revered head of the nation presents the true visage of Haiti: the dignity, the pride, the wisdom of the thinker, the force of the conqueror.' But what made her really gag was a photograph of fifteen handsome young black men in sparkling blue uniforms which bore the insulting caption: 'The revered Tontons Macoutes benevolently a.s.sume responsibility for the liberty we enjoy.'

In trembling rage she slammed the disgraceful thing to the floor and kicked it into a corner, crying: 'They murder not only people but also the truth, and there is no shame in them, d.a.m.n them to eternal h.e.l.l!'

'What can we do?' her uncle asked, and she had only one suggestion: 'Get on a boat, any boat-the way your brother did, and get out of here.'

'Too late,' her uncle said, and she burst into tears, for she knew he was right. For this family it was too late.

For younger Haitians, there was still a chance, and they meant to claim it. One afternoon when she went into St.-Marc to buy her uncle some groceries she saw in the shallow bay a boat so pitifully small that she thought: It ought to be on a lake somewhere, not in the ocean. But when she pa.s.sed it again at dusk, she watched about forty black people climb into that fragile thing and sail off into the Atlantic. Horrified by the thought that they might be trying to reach the United States in such a vessel, she walked along the sh.o.r.es asking questions, and learned that yes, these fugitives were risking their lives on the high seas in an overloaded boat with insufficient provisions rather than remain one more day in Haiti. She fell to her knees at the edge of the Caribbean and prayed: 'Beloved G.o.d, send a boat from Canada to rescue them,' and in that moment she ceased being a trendy intellectual from Cambridge drinking Perrier water for lunch and listening to Vivaldi and became once more a Haitian black woman struggling against all odds to keep her life together.

When, still brooding about the refugees in their tragic boat, she delivered the groceries to her uncle, she found that an extraordinary item of news had arrived by runner from a much smaller village, Du Mort, four miles back into the mountains: 'A zombie, eleven years dead, has come back to life.'

The word zombie irritated her, because in both Quebec City and Boston well-intentioned friends, when they heard she came from Haiti, had pestered her about zombies, as if they were the major characteristic of her homeland. Most such questions she laughed off, but some were more serious, particularly at Harvard.

To these scholars she replied truthfully: 'I've heard folk tales about zombies throughout my childhood. And I was terrified. A zombie, we were taught, is a dead person brought back to life and used thereafter as a slave in perpetuity.' Asked if she had ever heard of a real, authenticated case she was always tempted to answer, with a touch of ridicule: 'No! Did your family ever see one of the giants or elves they told you about?' But she refrained from a blanket denial because she had an Uncle Rene, shot later by the Tontons Macoutes, who swore that when he was a boy a zombie, dead for many days, had been brought back to life and had served as a slave to a wealthy family. But like always, this very circ.u.mstantial miracle had happened in another village farther on.

But now it was a village only four miles away, in the real year of 1989, and she could go and check out the preposterous story for herself. Enlisting one of the two taxis in the village, she took her notebook and kit of medicines and drove out to where the alleged zombie had been seen.

The village contained some thirty mud-floored shacks distributed around a handsome public square, one side of which was a colorful market with stalls occupied by sellers of meat and fish, vegetables, fruits, needlework and clay pots. Near the village pump squatted a young black woman, about twenty-eight, of presentable appearance and fine placid features-except that she was almost inanimate. Her eyes showed no recognition of things about her; she did not respond to questions; and if anyone approached her, she drew back in obvious terror. If any human being could be justly described as 'the living dead,' it was this unfortunate.

Tessa was immediately drawn to her. 'Who is this person?' she asked about, and several bystanders were eager to provide answers and explanations: 'Her name Lalique Hebert. Her tombstone at edge of village, over there.' And Tessa was taken by villagers to the rude cemetery where a flat tombstone made of flaking cement showed clearly that interred below were the mortal remains of LALIQUE HeBERT, 19611978.

When Tessa asked: 'Is this the same person?' one of the bystanders cried vigorously: 'Yes! Yes! I know her sister.' And another said: 'I knew her parents.' And when the question became: 'But did any of you attend her funeral?' someone replied: 'Yes, that one helped carry her coffin.' And a man of about fifty stepped forward, willing to be interrogated.

'You carried the coffin?'

'I did.'

'Did you actually see the corpse?'

'We all did,' and a group of women moved toward the grave to confirm that they had seen the girl Lalique Hebert in her coffin at her home and had then helped carry her here for burial.

'You're sure she was dead?'

'Yes! We saw. Doctor signed paper.'

A quick check at the church registry showed that in June 1978 the girl Lalique Hebert, aged seventeen, daughter of Jules and Marie Hebert of this parish, had been buried, her death having been attested to by a Dr. Malarie two days prior.

'Where could I see Dr. Malarie?' Tessa asked, and the custodian of the records said: 'Dead, three years ago.'

So back she went to the square where Lalique was still squatting by the pump in a position which would have numbed the legs of an ordinary person. 'h.e.l.lo, Lalique.' No response. 'Lalique, look at me ... I want to help you.' Not even a glance upward. But then Tessa had a clever idea. 'Lalique, do you remember when you were dead, in your coffin?'

Very slowly the impa.s.sive woman raised her handsome, placid face, dark as ebony, to look at her questioner, and at first her eyes were filled with terror, as if Tessa reminded her of some woman who had abused her during her eleven years of zombie existence, but when she saw in her slow dumb way that this woman was much younger and lacked the brutal sneer of her longtime mistress, terror fled, and she answered: 'Long time in grave, men come, I rise.' And with her arms extended upward, she rose to a standing position from which she looked directly into Tessa's eyes. Then she collapsed again into her squatting position, inaminate as before.

In some agitation Tessa looked about for someone to consult with, and two women moved toward her. 'What are you going to do with this woman?' Tessa asked, and one said: 'Nothing. She is dead. She come back. She live ...' They both made vague gestures with their hands.

'Where did she sleep last night?' and she was answered in the same indefinite way: 'Maybe sleep here. Maybe against that wall.' When Tessa showed astonishment, one of the women explained: 'Not good have zombie in village. She come for revenge, maybe. Someone here in bad trouble, maybe.'

'What will happen?' and the women both spoke at once: 'She try to stay, people drive her out.'

'Where? Where will she go?' and the women, speaking for their entire village, said: 'Who knows? Zombies go many places. They not need eat ... sleep ... think. Missy, they not like you and me.'

Distraught, Tessa left the harsh, practical women and returned to Lalique: 'I am your friend, Lalique. Can I take you somewhere, help you in any way?'

When the zombie did not even look at her, Tessa had no option but to return to her taxi, but as they neared her home village she thought of all her lonely and outcast days in Quebec City when she had first arrived in that cold and seemingly hostile city, and she cried out: 'Driver! Take me back!'

When she reached the market square she saw that Lalique had not moved from the pump, and running to her as if the zombie were a lost daughter, she reached down, clasped her hands, drew her reluctantly to her feet, and led her toward the taxi: 'We're going home, Lalique,' and when they were in the cab, she hugged the frightened woman to her and began to sing an old Haitian lullaby: 'Bird over the sea, ho-ho!

You here on my knee, ha-ha!

Bird into the tree, ho-ho!

You stung by the bee, ha-ha!'

And for the first time in many years, Lalique Hebert, the verifiable zombie, clung to another human being and fell asleep.

Early next morning Tessa was called to her village's public phone, and a man's voice asked with obvious concern: 'You the young woman from Harvard? Yes? Is it true that you went to the village of Du Mort and brought a young woman known as a zombie home with you?' When Tessa said yes to each of his questions, he said: 'I'm Dr. Briant from St.-Marc. I've been specializing in this zombie business for the government and I must see your Lalique right away.'

'Come over. You know where my village is.'

'I'll be right over. Don't let anyone harm that young woman.'

'Would that be likely?'

In a short time Dr. Briant arrived, a dark-skinned medical doctor in his fifties, graduate of Howard University in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and a big, enveloping kind of man: 'I'm fascinated to hear that after eleven years a woman relatively young made her escape. Tell me-why did you feel it necessary to rescue her from her village? Can she communicate?'

'No. I think she may be feeble-minded.'

'Don't say that,' Briant snapped. 'They say that about all these unfortunates,' and when Tessa led him to Lalique, who had slept in a bed for the first time in years, he was gentle and rea.s.suring: 'Lalique, I am your friend. Would you like some salt?'

For that brief moment the zombie was much more animated than she had been with Tessa, and when the doctor took from his pocket a little box of salt and sifted some onto his palm, she buried her face in his hand and lapped the salt like a dog.

'Horrible folk custom. Anyone who gets hold of one of these unfortunates ... belief is that if you deprive them of salt, they stay mesmerized. You want some more salt, Lalique?' and again she gulped down the precious substance which had been denied her for so long.

'Who's been keeping her prisoner?'

'We're never able to find out. Nor will we ever know who put her in this condition and buried her alive.' After feeding Lalique a further carefully controlled ration of salt, he asked: 'Then you saw her grave?' When Tessa nodded, he said: 'We must go there at once. Photograph it with the gravedigger, if we can find him. And any witnesses.'

The two young women climbed into Dr. Briant's wobbly old car, and he drove hurriedly the four miles to Du Mort, where he created a sensation when he stepped out of the car with his camera and quickly issued forceful instructions to the villagers: 'Take me to the cemetery. Fetch me the gravedigger. Bring me the record book from the church so that I can photograph it in sunlight. And I want everyone who knew this young woman eleven years ago to line up. Mlle. Vaval, please take their names in order.'

And in the next hour he produced, with closeup photographs of each narrator, a compelling visual and oral account of the 1978 zombification of the seventeen-year-old girl Lalique Hebert. Knowing from long experience what questions to ask, he unraveled the story: Lalique had been the second of three daughters, a strong-willed girl who wanted to leave Du Mort and go to Port-au-Prince and become a secretary. In a quarrel over a young man, she incurred the jealousy of her older sister and the downright animosity of her mother. 'It must have been,' an old woman confided, 'her own mother and her sister who had her murdered. I helped dress the body for funeral.'

Dr. Briant did not flinch: 'I suppose they paid a voodoo bocor to kill her?' and two women confirmed this guess: 'They did. He was not from this village but his magic was powerful.'

He then wanted to talk with the gravedigger, who was now an old man but who remembered well the burial of the pretty girl: 'June ... maybe July? No big storms. I dug right where you see the tomb. You can read the name LALIQUE HeBERT.'

The old man had much more to say, because the return of a zombie to a community in which she had been buried was an exciting matter, but Dr. Briant cut him short: 'So for this one you dug a very shallow grave ... maybe eighteen inches?'

'Yes. How did you know?'

'Tell me, did you ever dig eighteen-inch graves before?'

'Once. For a man n.o.body liked.'

'And what happened?'

The gravedigger looked about the cemetery he had served so long, and whispered: 'You seem to know,' and Briant said: 'I do. But I want you to tell her,' and the man said quietly to Tessa: 'He became a zombie too.' Dr. Briant turned to Lalique, standing motionless, expressionless beside her grave, and tried to make her realize what was happening: 'This is it, Lalique. Can I read your name as I point to the letters?' Tessa turned Lalique to face her grave and even inclined her head to make her look at the grisly tomb, but she refused to do so. But then, with a gesture so sudden that both Tessa and Dr. Briant were startled, she clasped Tessa in a pa.s.sionate embrace and cried in a wail that filled the cemetery: 'Lalique, Lalique!'

On the drive home the two women rode in the back seat, and like before, the s.h.i.+vering zombie recalled from the dead clung to Tessa and fell immediately asleep.

Dr. Briant remained two days at the Vaval place, during which he made minor progress in bringing the zombie back to reality, but his rea.s.suring words accomplished little in comparison to his salt. Deprived of it for years, she craved it more than food or sleep or love.

During the two days, Briant shared with Tessa his acc.u.mulated knowledge on the zombies of Haiti: 'They're real. Your Lalique was murdered. In a manner of speaking, she was clinically dead, and the doctor must not be abused for having certified the fact. She was buried, as you have seen, and during the second night she was taken from her grave and brought back to life. She was then sold, by her mother and sister, I'm sure, to someone who kept her in a zombie state and used her as a slave. Somehow she escaped, and with sure instinct found her way back to her home village. And if you hadn't rescued her when you did, she might now be dead. Murdered for the second time. This time for real.'

'I'm totally at a loss.'

'Everything I've said is true. Verifiable. She's the fourth incontrovertible case I've had, but never before with such splendid photographs.'

When Tessa asked how all this was possible, he said: 'Let's walk along this country road. What I have to say will sound more plausible with the trees and the ancient fields about us.'

There had always been in Haiti, he explained, native necromancers or priests or holy men, or what scientists accurately call shamans and what Haitians call bocors. One found them in many primitive societies, but in Haiti they seemed to have special power, for they inherited from canny old men who had practiced the art in Africa a knowledge of secret and powerful poisons and drugs which in combination had the capacity to induce in targeted human beings a suspension of life functions: 'Like ether or chloroform, but more powerful and with even stranger consequences. What's in the mixture? I've worked on this for years, but have found only two bocors who would talk honestly with me, and I'm sure they've told me only part of their trickery.'

He found a fallen tree and invited Tessa to sit with him: 'I know they use powder obtained from the desiccated body of a bufo frog. I sent one to the medical laboratories at Johns Hopkins, and they reported: "We've known about the bufo for decades. Favorite animal of poisoners, but your Haiti version is incredible. A virtual repository of at least sixteen intricate poisons." And our bocors also use the blowfish, called by some the poisonous puffer. You may have read about it in j.a.pan, where they call it the fugu. I'm told, but have never had it verified, that the bocors also have a fatal cuc.u.mber, plus a kind of pepper from the Orinoco and a particular snake from the Amazon jungles.'

'Sounds like that mix would kill a horse.'

'It would. But that's not the purpose. The bocor becomes highly skilled in administering just the right amount to throw his victim into a kind of suspended animation. The corpse is buried in all solemnity, and two days later, at dead of night, the bocor digs it up, stops feeding it salt, and has himself a zombie.'

'Are the services of the bocor available to anyone?'

'That I don't know. In fact, there's a great deal I don't know. How frequently this happens, for example.' Then his voice firmed, and he said with great resolution: 'But that it's happening, in the year 1989, I have no doubt whatever,' and from his wallet he took photographs of three living zombies who had been declared dead, were buried, and then dug up.

'They live with me in St.-Marc. Government pays for their keep. And it's important that your young woman Lalique come home with me. Government will demand it.'

Tessa prodded: 'I'm interested in the zombie-maker. How does he become one?'

'Like a bishop in the Catholic church, who can claim a straight line inheritance from Jesus Christ, he's a straight-line descendant of some notable native doctor in Africa. But he has to be extremely skilled in making nice distinctions. Too much of his magical powder, the target dies. Too little, the target does not pa.s.s into perfect suspension, comes awake too soon, suffocates in his grave. Just right,' and he pointed to Lalique, who was again squatting in her old position against the trunk of a tree.

Apparently word of her discovery and whereabouts had reached the capital, for an urgent message had been delivered to Dr. Briant's office in St.-Marc and forwarded to Tessa's village: ACQUIRE GUARDIANs.h.i.+P LALIQUE HeBERT IMMEDIATELY. MINIMUM PUBLICITY.

So that afternoon the bedazed young woman-normal girl for seventeen years, dead for two days, zombie for eleven years, normal again for the rest of her life-left Tessa's care. 'It could be three or four years before she returns fully to life,' Briant said as he helped Lalique into his car. 'Salt will help. Vitamins will be needed. Contact with others. A human life being reborn.'

When the car disappeared, it left a bewildered Tessa Vaval. At Port-au-Prince she had been dismayed by the political corruption; at the villages to the north, by the unrelieved poverty and despair; and now, by the perpetual mysteries of her homeland. Haiti was an island not to be perceived from a distance nor understood by inquiring young men at Harvard. In fact, she was discovering, even a girl born on the island lost her intuitive comprehension if she moved to a foreign country and alien society: Heavens! I know nothing about Haiti. I've lied to others and myself about this island, and my ignorance terrifies me!

It was then that a crazy idea first tangled itself into her brain: Perhaps it would be better if I spent my life here, trying to make things better for others, trying to probe the mysteries of this place and maybe, in the future, writing about Haiti as generations of my family have experienced it.

For two days she wrestled with images that were more writhing and real than those of a boa constrictor: she was tormented by zombies and mountains denuded of trees and hordes of peasants living worse than slaves, for they had no food, and persistently she saw the unanswered question pa.s.sing before her eyes in flaming red letters: 'Is this what a black republic after nearly two centuries of self-rule comes to?' And she was so obsessed by these images that she went to St.-Marc, where she sought Dr. Briant and the three zombies who were domiciled with him. Overjoyed at seeing that Lalique after only these few days in his care was returning from the living dead, she threw herself on Briant's guidance and said: 'I have this terrible compulsion to give it all up-appointment at Wellesley ... certainly my marriage to the white fellow I'm engaged to. My life is here in the Haiti of my fathers.' Trembling, she asked: 'Would there be a place here, working with you on the abiding problems?'

She was fortunate in that she had come to the one man in Haiti best qualified to speak to the precise situation in which she found herself. 'At about your age,' he said quietly, 'I faced the same dilemmas. Pa.s.sed my medical exams, had a running start at a good job in the States, chucked it all because I was drawn back to Haiti. Wanted to save the world. Tried to open an advanced medical office in Port-au-Prince. Duvalier wouldn't permit it. His henchman controlled medicine on that level and they wanted no interference with new ideas from anyone like me. But I was filled with whatever it is that fills you when you're twenty-five. Besides, I knew Haiti needed what I had to give, so I forged ahead.' He stopped, laughed at himself, and asked ruefully: 'Dr. Vaval, have you ever been interrogated by the Tontons Macoutes? Seen your office smashed to bits? Been left flat in a corner bleeding and with your case records torn in bits and thrown over you like confetti?'

He led her to a kiosk, where they shared an iced drink as he concluded: 'The Tontons are still with us. Same men, same mission, different name, and they still interrogate in the same manner. A young woman with your ideas, and your family name ... in their hands you'd last ten minutes.'

'How do you survive?' for she had seen that he was an exceptional man.

'I work things out. I have my clinic, pitiful though it is. I write my papers. New England Medical Journal is printing one on tropical diseases.' He looked about. 'And I keep taking my notes on zombies, and maybe twenty years from now when the Tontons wouldn't care, I'll publish them, probably in Germany.' As placid as a man of fifty could be who had seen his life slip away, he said: 'So, Madame Professor of the Caribbean, please go on to Cap-Hatien and your s.h.i.+p ...' Then his voice broke, and he looked wildly at her and screamed there in the sunlight: 'And get the h.e.l.l out of Haiti!'

The hundred and thirty-seven advanced college students who would be enrolling in the 'Cruise-and-Muse' seminar had a.s.sembled two weeks earlier at cla.s.srooms in the University of Miami, where three able young a.s.sistant professors from different universities had given intensive instruction on the Caribbean and provided basic outlines and maps. They had now flown to Cap-Hatien to board the Swedish Galante, and they had one free day for which Tessa was responsible.

When she met them-two-thirds white, one-third black, with representatives from six foreign nations-she experienced that rea.s.suring sensation which good teachers encounter each September when they first see the young people they will be teaching through the coming year: They look so bright! So eager! Oh, if I can only send them forward! She thought that this one could become an editorial writer for The New York Times, that girl a doctor at Ma.s.s General, that one a surgeon in Chicago, and that saucy girl a political leader for sure. Then her enthusiasm sobered as she ended her speculation with the truths that have prevailed for millennia: If only they develop character, and use the brains they have, and somehow catch fire.' Looking at their smiling faces from Colorado and Vermont and Oregon, she promised herself: If there's any tinder in any of them, I will set it ablaze.

Tessa had arranged for jeeps to carry them inland to that incredible mountain fortress built by one of Toussaint L'Ouverture's black generals, with whom her ancestor, Cesar Vaval, had often served. Henri Christophe, a fiery individual with no training and a.s.sisted by no architect, had built in the early 1800s one of the brooding masterpieces of the world. She had to chuckle when they arrived there, for the local peasants had through the years been successful in stopping all governments from building a jeep road to the top; if you wanted to see Christophe's magical fortress atop its mountain, you climbed aboard one of their donkeys, and for a hefty fee rode up as their ancestors had done since 1820.

The painful ride was amply rewarded, for at a lofty alt.i.tude above the sea the students broke out of the jungle to see looming mysteriously above them a huge stone ma.s.s, frighteningly tall, with towers and ramparts soaring above them. When they had climbed laboriously to the top, Tessa said: 'Probably the most impressive building ever erected by a black man with no white a.s.sistance.' When a student spoiled the effectiveness of her statement by asking: 'Erected to what purpose?' she had to reply: 'No one ever knew ... then or now.'

Overawed by the power of this raw structure built by a black, she withdrew from the students to stand alone at the far end of the parapet, from where she could look down upon the green mystery of this unspoiled corner of Haiti. She felt a throbbing identification with this land and she could hear voices of Haitians she had met on this visit calling her by her real name, Therese, and it echoed in her brain in two syllables of enchanting beauty: Tay-rez!

Rejoining her students, she said hesitantly: 'You've been calling me Dr. Theresa, but it's really Therese ... more musical and feminine, don't you think?' and on the mountaintop they approved her rechristening.

When the newly reborn Therese returned to Cap-Hatien she was confronted by a wrenching tragedy, for along the waterfront there was noisy commotion centering upon a United States Coast Guard cutter that was delivering to local authorities thirty-two of the forty or so would-be emigres she had watched departing from St.-Marc. As she had foreseen, the leaky craft had proceeded only a few leagues northward when it began to sink, and as she moved among the survivors she heard their dismal story.

'Too many in the boat ... waves washed over us ... sharks followed ...'

'The boat should never have been allowed out of St.-Marc harbor.'

'We would all have perished if the Americans had not rescued us.'

But Therese wondered if the word rescue was proper, for these unfortunates were now not only back in a place they had tried to flee but actually worse off, for they were on police lists as fugitives who had tried to leave Haiti. When she left them huddled on the docks she felt a great soul sickness, which prepared her for the humiliation she was about to experience.

When the time came to board the Galante she found that its Swedish crew had brought their s.h.i.+p not to Cap-Hatien, a typical brawling black port, but to a tidy enclave some miles to the east where the company had leased a large tropical acreage of great beauty-low mountains, s.p.a.cious white beaches-and had completely enclosed it with a st.u.r.dy fence running for thousands of yards. In the s.p.a.ce thus protected from the general population of Haiti, the Swedes had constructed an almost flawless vacation spot which merited its name, Le Paradis. More than a hundred employees kept the beach spotless and the recreation areas free of debris. Neatly tended gardens were full of Caribbean flowers in profusion and trees swayed in trade winds as they displayed their luscious treasures: coconuts, breadfruit, mangoes, limes and papayas. For vacationing shoppers, cl.u.s.ters of neat kiosks with gra.s.s roofs were tucked beneath the trees, while in a cleared area seven green-topped tennis courts invited players, and a nine-hole golf course stood ready to test the s.h.i.+p's pa.s.sengers with its tree-lined fairways and gleaming white sand bunkers. To complete the Eden-like quality of the retreat, a fair-sized stream of clear water wound through the enclave on its way to the Atlantic.

Nearly five hundred years ago, during their first voyage of discovery, the three caravels of Christopher Columbus had anch.o.r.ed off this spot for their crews to replenish their water barrels prior to the long run back to Spain, and the sailors had declared the place to be a 'fair paradise gifted with all the fresh water and fruit we needed.' And so it still was, Therese concluded when she finished inspecting the place, but one with an appalling flaw, which she identified for her students: 'It's perfect, except that white people can come here from Cleveland and Phoenix, enjoy the tropics, see the beauties of Haiti, and escape coming into contact with the blacks who form the major population group of the Caribbean.' She spoke with some bitterness of the clever way in which this paradise had insulated itself and its wealthy clients from the realities of Haiti, ugly though they might be: 'Is this what the cla.s.sic travelers of history sought?' she asked. 'I mean the intrepid souls who went out from London and Paris and the German cities to explore strange lands and people equally strange? I think not. If this collection of tennis courts and golf links is indistinguishable from Shaker Heights or Westchester County, why should one bother ...?'

But she had to laugh when a young fellow from Tulsa broke in: 'Not many coconut palms in Shaker Heights.' Later, when officers from the Galante heard of her strictures, one of them asked to address the students: 'Every criticism Dr. Vaval makes is both accurate and relevant. Our company would have saved both time and money if we could have continued to make our stops at Port-au-Prince. Interesting city. Challenging history. Good food and people worth visiting with.'

'Then why did you abandon that stop?' a student asked, and he replied crisply: 'A chain of compelling reasons, and as you evaluate them, wait for the last in line, because it's a blockbuster. First, crime in the city endangered our pa.s.sengers' lives. Second, the economy was so debased that hordes of beggars trailed anyone who ventured ash.o.r.e, especially our women tourists. It was at first intrusive, in the end alienating, because you could see that no matter how much alms you gave, your charity accomplished nothing. Third, the discrepancy between the affluence of our visiting pa.s.sengers and the incredible poverty ash.o.r.e made the Haitians envious and downright hostile.' He paused and surveyed the students before offering his clinching argument: 'And in recent years the adverse publicity on AIDS, which has been reported as flouris.h.i.+ng in Haiti, scared the h.e.l.l out of our pa.s.sengers. For all these reasons people became afraid to visit Haiti, and when we continued to bring them here on our scheduled stop they told us frankly: "If you insist on visiting Port-au-Prince, we won't travel with you." Without speeches or committees they initiated a boycott, and we knew it would be folly to oppose it.'

He then shared with the young people his conclusions about Caribbean travel, a subject upon which he was becoming one of the world's experts: 'Many islands in this sea are kept alive only with the dollars which tourists inject into the economy. And these dollars can be earned easily and without any loss of self-respect, but they are terribly fragile. Had we Swedes not built Le Paradis up here and protected it from the disasters of Port-au-Prince, Haiti would have lost all her tourist dollars. Complete wipeout. As it is, our s.h.i.+ps pour a steady stream of currency into this black republic, but we can do it only if we maintain that fence which Dr. Vaval rightly condemns.' He stopped, looked directly at Therese, and said: 'Young people, please look at the world as it is. Haiti has a choice: no fence and no dollars, or a fence which does little harm but earns a great many dollars.' He then broke into a wide smile and said: 'Dr. Vaval's job is to visualize a world in which fences are not permitted, and we wish her well. Mine is to utilize such fences as we must have, and take constant steps to get rid of them. At Paradis we're doing just that.' But after he had gone, Therese told her young people: 'That fence is a moral abomination, for it keeps rich people from observing the problems of the poor, and believe me, whenever that happens, anywhere in the world, trouble is brewing.'

When the group finally boarded the Galante-18,000 tons, 550 feet long, 765 ordinary pa.s.sengers, 137 students, 418 crew, with the officers all Swedish, dining-room and kitchen help exclusively Italian, deckhands Indonesian, with Chinese hidden below to tend the laundry-Therese realized what a small proportion of the s.h.i.+p was allotted to her 'Cruise-and-Muse' group-just over fifteen percent. But they did add color, especially as they cl.u.s.tered about the pool. When older pa.s.sengers a.s.sured Therese: 'We're so fortunate to have young people sharing the cruise with us,' she said to herself: These next two weeks could be just what I needed.

That night as she sat in her cabin trying to forget the ignominy of being part of a black nation which experienced travelers were afraid to explore, she was visited by several students, who told her: 'Discussion group aft. Don't miss it. Topflight ideas get kicked around,' and, eager to escape her gloomy meditation, she allowed them to take her to where one of the other instructors was helping his students acquire a balanced view of the Caribbean; the topic was music: 'The United States is no doubt fortunate in having off each coast a magnificent collection of islands, Hawaii on the west, the Caribbean lands on the east. Neither is superior to the other, for in a curious way each supplements the other, but there are significant differences. In the field of signature music, Hawaii wins hands down. What a gorgeous array of wonderful tunes. "Aloha Oe," "The Wedding Song," "The War Chant," "Beyond the Reef." Name your favorite. The contestants seem infinite. But the Caribbean suffers from a paucity of comparable tunes. What represents the area, really, insofar as the general public is concerned? "Yellow Bird" is magnificent but very lonely on that banana tree. "Island in the Sun" is haunting but thin. "Mary Ann" is one of those throwaways, only seven notes, really, but captivating, and a few calypsos with limited staying power. And that's about it.'

Sharp discussion followed, with some students championing the Rastafarian reggae of Jamaica and others citing certain merengues and zouks from the French islands, but before the night's concert began, the students had to agree with their instructor that whereas they could sing from memory a dozen Hawaiian tunes, hardly anyone could sing more than a few phrases from anything Caribbean.