Haiti After Baby Doc

Until three days before I left, I had planned to have my 15-year-old son Ari accompany me to a place I had previously visited with his sisters and his twin brother. It was his turn to explore Haiti with his dad and, as a drummer in a jazz band--in fact, in two jazz bands--he was especially interested in taping voodoo ceremonies and Haitian percussion. Other members of the family stringently opposed the trip, but his desires and mine--I'm a fanatic for Haiti--seemed to prevail. Then this news dispatch appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Machete-Wielding Protesters Run Wild in Haiti's Capital"

A.P., June 5, 1986--Crowds demanded the ouster of three ministers and denounced alleged U.S. pressures ... barricades, burned tires, smashed cars ... machete-wielding gangs smashing cars in residential areas of Port-au-Prince and demanding money from people in the streets....

At that point, I cashed in my son's ticket. I would be checking up on Haiti after Baby Doc without Ari.

On the day of my arrival, a general strike was called by a loose alliance of street democrats. All work was supposed to stop. Everything would shut down. The People--that famous People with the capital P--would make known its anger. But what happens when you give a general strike and nobody doesn't come? Well, of course, the strikers, (continued on page 223)Haiti(continued from page 111) such as the Reverend Sylvio Claude, describe it as a great, great, great success: "We have made known the Will of the People."

But, of course, it also means that the genuine grievances are not answered, the police come out in the streets with their Uzis and the ruling council is emboldened.

Elections had better happen soon--they are presently planned for November 1987. And how can there be an election in a country that has never had a real one, where 85 percent of the people are illiterate and Baby Doc claimed the last referendum with a cozy vote of 99.9 percent? The candidates have their work cut out.

A cabdriver informed me, with rage in his voice, that two people had been killed the night before by a thief up the hill a little from the Hotel Castel d'Haiti. "Liberty, yes," he said, "but that is mere democracy." Like almost all chauffeurs, he was, no doubt, a former Tonton Macoute, or Duvalier bogeyman.

In their joy at the departure of the Duvalier oppressors, civic volunteers had cleaned the streets--and slaughtered scores, maybe more, of Macoutes.

We drove to see the emplacement near the port, where the statue of the first colonialist had been uprooted and thrown into the sea. Columbus landed on this island many years ago. "Deshokage, monsieur," said the cabdriver--that's the Creole word for uprooting.

"Where is Haiti? Where is Haiti?"

I once asked my uncle and aunt, just returned from a cruise of the Caribbean, which island they had liked best. My uncle turned to his wife and said, "It was number three, wasn't it?"

At a higher level of sophistication, an American Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, turned to a resident of Haiti and said, "We are very interested in Haiti. Tell me, where is Haiti?"

The resident answered something and the distinguished creationist and politician replied, "Niggers speaking French! Fancy that!"

The first black nation of modern times, a slave people that wrested its freedom from Napoleon in 1804, at the height of his powers, has always been a miracle, a wonderment, an enigma. The peasant geographers say, "Beyond the mountain lies another mountain." This makes for agricultural difficulties--farmers are killed falling out of cornfields. And beyond the mystery of Haiti--France and Africa, voodoo and Christianity, energy and languor, art and changelessness--lie a host of other problems.

How the devil can this dying nation survive its history, which most recently included the 28-year reign of the gang of thieves called the Duvalier family? There was Papa Doc, who wanted to be Emperor François the First (I once saw a poster depicting Jesus embracing the black-clad torturer, saying, "I have chosen him"), and his appointed successor, the son, Baby Doc, who didn't like the name I gave him: Furniture Face. How can Haiti make it?

Violence is disappearing because a peaceful folk is slaughtering the violent one.

Inside every Haitian, there is a sleeping president.--Creole Proverb

And outside of the candidate, there is someone who wants either to be his henchman or to kill him.

My friend F. Morisseau-Leroy, poet and playwright, director and superlative joker, arrived home from exile. He was met by radio and television crews. He stood in the airport and said proudly and loudly, "I have an important announcement to make!" His aureole of white hair blew about his head as he raised his arms in a statesmanlike greeting to his well-wishers: "I am officially ... not a candidate for the presidency! At least there must be one who is not!"

But he has returned to Miami to write his books and spend his days among his family. And so now, perhaps, there is nobody in Haiti who is not a candidate.

Besides the usual 6,000,000 candidates, some authorities estimate that there are 200 earnest ones. I cut this figure to 199 when one was arrested for reckless driving in Connecticut. This relieved my burden--now only 199 saviors of the nation want to be addressed as Your Terrificness, Your Wondrosity. For a few, Your Excellence might do. For example, Colonel Williams Regala, a member of the ruling junta--as it would be called in a Spanish-speaking country--announced, "I seek to do nothing but serve the people. History will judge me."

Uh-oh. When a colonel speaks of history, let's run to the churches of our choice and pray.

I visited three of the most interesting figures--the Reverend Sylvio Claude, a popular Protestant pastor; René Théodore, a Communist with strong links in Moscow and Paris; and Marc Bazin, a distinguished economist who left his brief appointment as finance minister under Baby Doc because he couldn't clean up the mess. Claude has gotten people out into the streets. Théodore enjoys a small success as the first openly Communist activist in years. Bazin, probably the best qualified for his position, is supported by a group of earnest reformers and technocrats.

With well-trained Haitian French logic, a friend sorted out the three types of presidential candidates. There are those who are capable and won't steal. "Monsieur Clean, plus brains." There are those who steal but don't want to get caught. "Brains but not clean." And there are those who steal and don't care if they're caught. "No brains, no clean."

I got a six A.M. appointment to see Bazin. I drove to Belvedere, high in the mountains behind Port-au-Prince, where he met me in a jeep and escorted me to the terrace of a large stone house. Bazin is a tall, sturdy, vital man who looks much too tough and happy to be a staid senior official with the World Bank, which was his job while in exile from Haiti. He was recently married for the first time. As a friend explained, he had thought it better to make many women happy than to make one woman unhappy.

We spoke of the need to get back some of the treasure stolen by the Duvalier family. Papa Doc spent the money on his security system. He wanted power in Haiti and planned to remain until his evil spirit was laid to rest. Baby Doc used the security machinery--the Tonton Macoutes, the torture--to capitalize the family for his eventual retirement. The Duvaliers should be able to survive on the $700,000,000 or $800,000,000 he has stashed away. "Perhaps, with diplomatic pressure, we can get some of it back," Bazin said.

This laborious people, groaning under 65 percent unemployment, needs food, work, roads, a water supply, health care. Any investment that involves labor will have a ripple effect on the economy. That so intelligent and forceful a man as Bazin wants to take hold is in itself a hopeful sign for Haiti. He has made a comfortable career at the World Bank. If he is willing to work for Haiti in Haiti, perhaps other talented Haitians will be willing to work for their country--even to learn, against all the tradition of Haitian genius, to consent to paying their taxes.

Driving among the magnificent hillside homes of Pétionville, Le Boule and Kenscoff--iron gates, swimming pools, floodlit tennis courts--I saw unashamed symbols of the lifestyle of the 450 millionaires in this poorest of nations. The man in the Rolls-Royce finds tax evasion a more engaging sport than tennis.

The Tragedy of the Black Haitian Pig

What follows is a nonkosher riff. When I first arrived in Haiti 33 years ago, I thought those were exceptionally agile, intelligent and curious little black dogs darting around the ditches, gardens, garbage holes and feet. They didn't bark; they didn't look at the sky. They kept to business.

The black Haitian pig was the peasant's pride and joy, his pet, his love, his bank account, his insurance policy. It was the vacuum cleaner that got rid of waste. It ate lizards, rubbish, even insects. Perhaps it lived on ideas and fantasy, too, like everyone else. It showed a touch of fanaticism about its continuous rooting. Eventually, it provided the essential ingredient of griots, the Haitian staple, tight, deep-fried little curls of piglet served with rice and beans--charming charcoal-smoked protein. And, just as important, certain voodoo ceremonies demanded the sacrifice of the cochon planche, the little bugger.

One theory of Baby Doc's downfall is that it was brought about by the pig tragedy. The CIA did it. The Iowa farmers, working through the CIA, did it. The Americans came in and said that the pigs were infected with the dreaded African swine fever. Every single one had to go. Weeping and stubborn anger among the peasants and the priests. The Americans, with the cooperation of Baby Doc--how could he? How could he have?--swept through the country pignaping, mad with pig lust. They gave money for each pig. They would eventually replace the Haitian pigs with huge pink-and-white American porkers. But that wasn't the point. The American pigs, clumsy and stumbly, couldn't be led to market on a string. They weren't cute; they weren't voodoo-effective; they weren't the pig of myth and dream. More practically, they seemed to require corn to thrive--corn that had to be imported from Iowa, corn that nobody could afford, corn that made the peasants dependent in still another way on the American dole.

Let's nag at this point a little.

The pink-and-white, sometimes ridiculously spotted American pig, as giant and stupid as a cruise-ship tourist, munches with its little tail extended like a tea drinker's pinkie. Its meat is bland. Its soul is empty--bred for troughs and pens. The gods reject it on Saturday night. Only a president for life, capable of betraying his people by marrying a divorced hussy with relatives in the cocaine trade, would allow such a disaster. Furniture Face even looks like a porker himself. And now, of course, he is an exile for life, though he seems to possess his hundreds of millions in stolen treasure.

The gods and the Swiss lawyers may get some of it back. Haiti has already reclaimed Furniture Face's Rolls-Royce, his Mercedeses (plural), his Jaguars, his BMWs, his speedboats and yachts and quite a few of his motorcycles. Just about $700,000,000 or $800,000,000 to go.

Surely, this also is part of the pig story.

Naturally, during the pig pogrom, a few clever farmers, influential politicians and idealistic voodoo priests managed to hide their heroic fugitives. They are beginning to emerge now. You still see the ugly American pigs. In the market place of Kenscoff, a Haitian friend pointed to the roasted pink American meat. "No taste," he said, "no good for griots. I spit on it."

Then Madam Sara--market lady--laughed and said, "Wait a little."

The new government is declaring an amnesty for the condemned. The survivors will come out of hiding. They will root in public like free black pigs in a happy pig world. Let the Americans deal with the virus if they don't like it. The gods require cochon planche.

The Military Strictness of Haiti

A small brown smiling man was a high-ranking officer of the Armée d'Haïti when I lived there with my first wife and two small children. When I complimented him on his Eisenhower jacket, that short military uniform made popular by an American general and President celebrated in his time, the Haitian colonel misunderstood what I was saying. "You find?" he responded proudly. "Yes, when I step into Café Society Downtown in your Greenwich Village, ever'body and master of ceremony say, 'Ooh, eet ees General Eisenhower. Ooh, no, eet ees the Colonel Willy from the armed forces of the république of Haiti, performing tour of military inspection on behalf of his so beautiful countree!' "

I failed to get a clear picture of the jazz lovers of Sheridan Square rising in awed unison to pay tribute to the Haitian officer.

My pretty young wife and I were invited to a party at the National Palace, where, nearby, the munitions for the army were kept under guard by the president's henchmen. After the party, we were offered a ride home by Colonel Willy, who had a plan. I was pushed into one chauffeured military Buick, while my wife was urged into the colonel's limousine. Uh-oh, I thought, this will be a contest of wills--the hero of Haiti us. a nice girl from Detroit.

My wife arrived home an hour later, grumpy but probably not as grumpy as the colonel. Yes, he had attempted seduction in the limo. It got a little heavy. So she stuck her finger down her throat and threw up on his Eisenhower jacket.

The colonel was irked with us for weeks. In those days, an officer with strict standards had to send his "jacket Eisenhower" by special plane to Miami for the first-class dry cleaning fine garments deserve.

But those were the Golden Days

This cute decadence was relatively affable, with only an occasional unexplained murder or disappearance and the normal level of graft and corruption. The widow of an officer in charge of the electrification of a section of Port-au-Prince sued in Haitian courts for the bribe owed her husband and won. Drivers were advised to back up and run over again anyone they happened to hit on the roads, because all you paid was $60 or so in funeral expenses, but you'd have to pay hospital costs for the injured. My friend Fortuné Bogat showed me his license to carry a pistol, which pledged that it was "to be used only against bandits, wild beasts, burglars, etc.," and remarked that most of the people he shot were etc.s. Later, when I sat on the arm of his wife's chair, he pointed it at me, because I resembled an etc.

Haitian art thrived. American women loved handsome Haitian officers and businessmen. Americans discovered the merengue, the beauty of the countryside, the sweetness of the people. Voodoo was exotic and the music was happy. It was French and African and a tasty bit of strangeness. American homosexuals learned a few secrets about Haiti--that in a poor country, boys are available. Also, the Grand Hotel Oloffson became a mecca for Marlon Brando, Truman Capote, James Jones, Lillian Hellman, John Gielgud and thousands of others who found the gingerbread palace the most charming inn in creation. I showed Graham Greene about; he bought me dinner and, in return, I nearly bankrupted myself buying him drinks. Later, he wrote The Comedians, a savory melodrama about the Duvalier madness, made into a film with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and all my friends and enemies represented by actors. Greene was the father of The Comedians, but I felt like its obstetrician, since I had introduced him to Aubelin Jolicoeur, that flirtatious, white-clad, cane-twirling model for Petit Pierre, Al Seitz and others.

In 1956 and 1957, the cute decadence rapidly degenerated into the horror of Papa Doc in his black garb of Baron Samedi, an evil and powerful voodoo god. The Tonton Macoutes extorted, tortured, castrated, killed and wore tacky sunglasses. Even a Duvalier family doctor got caught in their mesh and was beaten, hustled into a palace dungeon and forced to drink his own urine. Friendship and loyalty became confusing. In one house, everyone by the name of Benoît, including the dogs, was killed, because a man of that name was reputed to be a dissident. Bodies were exhibited at the airport. On the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I was on assignment in Haiti and heard the wild celebration at the National Palace, saw the building lit up while the rest of the city was blacked out. Papa Doc believed that his pins in his Kennedy doll had done the job.

In Pétionville, Macoutes with automatic weapons stood me up against a fence. One pinched my balls to express disdain. When I complained to the chief of police in Port-au-Prince, he smiled and remarked, "I guess they don't like journalists whose names are colors--Greene, Gold...."

When my article appeared, I was banned from Haiti. As Papa Doc was president for life, I was banned for life. But Baron Samedi turned out to be mortal; in my case, the matter is not yet settled. I received my new visa in the form of a postcard of a lovely Creole maiden standing in a waterfall, with a message from Aubelin Jolicoeur: "Herb! Please come back to see your friends! We miss you!"

Réfractaires--what might be called aginners--have been bred by Haitian history. To be educated, even overeducated, is a tradition of the elite. I was treated for malaria many years ago by the only doctor I could find during a five-day holiday: a man who was both a doctor and a lawyer and had never practiced either trade. He preferred to investigate, contemplate and cultivate his own virility. His brothers, uncles, father, cousins were judges of the supreme court, ambassadors and coffee traders. His grandfather had been president for a few days before being deposed and torn to bits by a mob.

Such a man, a member of the elite, would have his own child servants, called ti-mounes, or "little people," who would carry his tennis racket to the court and then chase the balls. The Haitian elite has grace and good posture--no burdens on its head or shoulders. Its members can make love without embarrassment, and even without lubriciousness, with little black servants in the room. It's as if the servant were a dog or a pet bird. It does not concern them.

The snobbery of that class was impressive. I used to be invited as a guest to the Cercle Bellevue in Bourdon, a country club that admitted neither blacks nor whites as members. A pretty lady explained to me, sailing on a Sunday, that there were no blacks in her family--she was descended from an infinite series of mulattoes.

The charm of Haiti's sophisticated elite is real. The suffering of the overwhelming majority, exemplified by the Boulevard de Millionaires, comes from another universe. What people call the Boulevard of Millionaires is a stretch of road in downtown Port-au-Prince, near the picturesque Iron Market, jammed with market women, carts, donkeys, orphans, peddlers selling a piece of chewing gum or an empty milk can, the sick and dying, the pregnant, the newborn--an urban ravine dumped with desolate humanity. These people are not doctor/lawyers. They have malaria, yaws, syphilis, AIDS and, among the children, kwashiorkor, that belly-swollen protein starvation, that frizzy reddish hair, that I remember from the war in Biafra.

An American friend, invited by Michèle Bennett Duvalier to visit the National Palace, reported that it had been redecorated all in pinks and creams: "It's as pretty as the White House would be if we could only afford it." Things don't seem to change around here.

The effete English writer Ronald Firbank once wrote a postcard to his friend Sir Osbert Sitwell: "Tomorrow I go to Haiti. They say the president is a perfect dear!"

Baby Doc's father was not a perfect dear. Enacting Baron Samedi in his funereal garb, he was the god of Saturday, because Christ was crucified on Friday and didn't rise till Sunday--Baron Samedi rules the time when there is no savior.

It wasn't just a metaphor. The castrations, tortures, murders, extortions and general rudeness were real. People say that nothing is permanent in this world; but in Haiti, nothing is merely temporary, either. Certain ambiguities persist: poverty, risk, the sun, the glory of pride, that unique Haitian sense of fun about things. When I ran with the best Haitian runners--including the man who finished last at the Montreal Olympics--peasants along the Kenscoff trail shouted, "Look, a white man running! Sweating! And he's not even a thief!" And their laughter followed me beneath the scent of eucalyptus and pine, the trees that remained when the coffee and mahogany were cut down for fuel.

The Haitian champion was a good runner. At Montreal, he was confused. He wasn't used to running with shoes. He had never been on an airplane before. He needed training and confidence. I had plenty of confidence but am a mere California health addict, not a runner.

As I ran, I remembered following the sound of the drums in the mountains above Kenscoff--drums, whistles, bamboo sticks--to watch a coumbite, a cooperative work rite, clearing a field of its rocks and gathering them to make a house. They chanted, "Bat tambou"--beat the drum--until I stumbled; and then, as I clambered aloft again, with torn jeans, the rhythm of their chant was the same, but the words had evolved: "Blanc tombé, blanc tombé"--the white man fell, the white man fell.

How could I not love this place?

When I went back to my little house in Kenscoff, the mosquito-eating lizard that liked to ride the carriage of my typewriter jumped off, seeming to know it was time for me to work; children poked their heads through the windows and the open doorway--the blanc is making rhythm on his machine! Later in the afternoon, it was my habit to join le Cénacle des Philosophes--the Philosophers' Circle--alongside the scales at the coffee dealer's terrace, where the retired judge, the former general, the Belgian priest, the coffee dealer and the green-shoed heir to a defunct president of the republic gathered to discuss the fate of the world. Monsieur Noe's wife served us very black Haitian-roast coffee, a nectar that convinced us all that, in the troubles between the Soviet Union and the U.S., Haiti could surely provide the trait d'union--the hyphen--that would mysteriously bring together these blundering great powers in peace and amity. The coffee spoke loudly; sometimes, in the evening, the rum spoke even louder.

Haiti has remained, these many years, a magic place of my nightmares.

Bye-Bye, Baby Doc

The riots of early 1986 were persistent. The Americans said to Baby Doc, "Time to go check personally on your Swiss banking." The boy president, now aged 34, sped through Port-au-Prince in his Porsche, everyone cheering, and went on television to say in his thin, soft, high-pitched voice that no, he wasn't going; he was "strong as a monkey's tail." Nevertheless, he left on a U.S. plane a few days later, accompanied by Michèle, the harassed, chain-smoking first shopper, his children and a few relatives and henchmen. In the days after the hectic departure of the Duvaliers, Haitian police seized a few kilos of cocaine in a Duvalier house and more than 200 pounds in the storeroom of a maternity hospital founded by Michèle.

I used to see the official bagman on his monthly trips in and out of Haiti to tote the country's money into the family's Swiss bank accounts. This time, they swept the treasury clean, as if with a careful broom. Morally, the Duvalier clan is as strong-smelling as a monkey's tail. Well, it's hard work stealing from the poor in a hot climate.

Now the corrupt regime is gone; good. The Tonton Macoutes have been beaten back, many of them killed in revenge; also good. People are no longer so afraid of torture and extortion. Good.

But, like prisoners suddenly released, people don't know the rules anymore. The police have little discipline; the army was subservient to the Macoutes; everybody was expecting pie in the sky right away. By and by is not soon enough.

In the slide toward anarchy, factories go bankrupt. For a while, nothing could be shipped in or out, because the customs employees were on strike. The acting head of state, Lieutenant General Henri Namphy, took to his bed with fatigue. Offers of aid could not be accepted, because there was no one around to sign the letters.

Hunger, want, manic hope and the reality of suffering: While the drums resound and songs of freedom rise in the air, the sweat of celebration dries on the bodies.

The Killing of the Loups-Garous, the Shooting of the Child and the Great Houngan of Gonaïves

Jean-Bernard Diederich, a young photographer, showed me his photographs of a roasting man--actually pieces of a man--outside Gonaïves. Diederich arrived just after the killing. He felt he had to find out what had happened. The people who did it explained that the victim had been not a man but a loup-garou, a werewolf. Besides the werewolf, several others had died. In the photographs, alongside the burned limbs, there were feathers, goat parts and a jacoute--a sack spilling out its charms, potions, leaves and personal items of menace. A mob of about 100 people danced and officiated over the execution, energized by clairin, the local white rum. In the distance, a trumpet sounded. The people, some in full voodoo drag, were wearing red headbands. Diederich smelled the pleasant scent of weed, which is new to Haiti. I might not have believed this, but the day before, I, too, had been offered a toke in the Protestant missionary restaurant in Kenscoff.

The reason the body had to be cut into small pieces before being burned was that otherwise, the loup-garou might put itself back together and return to avenge the insult of being beaten and chopped with machetes.

The next day, we drove to Gonaïves with Caleb Joseph, a 23-year-old ethnology scholar from the national university. He wished to make sure we understood that this was not voodoo but an act of pillage and, perhaps, revenge on an unpopular figure. I studied the graffiti on walls as we headed out of Port-au-Prince: Duvalier not here! misery finished! "The euphoria," said our friend, the young Haitian and voodoo expert. We spoke of the continued unemployment and the shortages of everything, including law and order. The prisons had been emptied, because who was guilty? Former Macoutes were being killed. Catholics and Protestants were attacking voodoo priests. "We others, we students, knew things would be difficult," said Caleb.

At the roadside, we studied the ashes of the loup-garou. We poked about the cinders. Jean-Bernard took pictures. We talked with a bright young fellow in a blue U.S. Navy-surplus shirt with the name Roisentenkovskyul stenciled on it. He explained that the loup-garou deserved to die. We went to see the burned-out house. The victim's animals had been distributed, his corn harvested. He had had 33 children by his several wives. We met one of the widows; we met his father; we expressed sympathy.

Then we headed up a rutted road and met a police jeep spitting up clots of mud. Four men and an officer greeted us, admired our tape recorders and cameras and began questioning people about the killings. Out of the caille-pailles--the clay-and-straw huts--various explainers gathered. Six men were rounded up and each was questioned by the officer while another soldier took notes. One, with the inflamed conjunctivas of a drunk, was shoved away. Jean-Bernard said in a low voice to me that these people looked familiar. Most of the others in the village had also been here yesterday, except for the wife and the old father. Suddenly a woman shouted, "He's the one! He started the killing!" and pointed toward a sullen-eyed barefoot man.

"I don't know nothing," the man said.

"You're under arrest."

Two of the soldiers were horsing around, pretending to duel with their clubs. They were also carrying old U.S. Army Ml rifles. Instead of getting into the jeep, the suspect broke and began to run toward the cornfield. "You may kill him!" the officer shouted. The soldiers began firing. The woman who had denounced him shouted, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" Five or six shots rang out, but the man didn't stop. He wasn't hit. The soldiers chased after him, followed by Jean-Bernard, who turned to yell at me, "Watch the car!"

In the high corn, where everyone was invisible, volleys of shots resounded.

A child about ten years old began to leap about, screaming. People told her to shut up. The woman who had denounced the fleeing man was still sobbing, "Don't, oh, don't!" The child ripped away her sleeve. There was a deep wound, with exposed veins and striations of flesh rapidly oozing blood. I began shouting for Jean-Bernard: "Jay-bee! Jay-bee!" If a wild bullet had hit this child, I wondered what else could happen in the cornfield.

It turned out that the man had escaped--"He knows every hole," said one of the soldiers--and they were shooting into the air to let one another know where they were.

After a time for reflection, the officer decided to put the child in the jeep. Her mother was brought up screaming, being dragged to join her daughter. She was afraid of the police. She thought she was being arrested. During the Duvalier days, many of those arrested never returned.

Hysterical, the woman fell and knocked her head against a rock. She was loaded into the jeep along with her daughter.

The officer began sounding his horn in imperative steady honks to summon the troops. They crowded into the jeep along with the child and her mother.

"This wasn't an affair of voodoo," said Caleb. "This was an affair of pillage." I knew what came next: Haiti is 60 percent Catholic, 40 percent Protestant and 100 percent voodoo. "That is our basis of philosophy and hope," said the ethnologist.

I thought of the cock's feathers left by the charred remains of the murdered man.

•

We drove down the back roads from Carrefour Poteau, where those events took place, to Carrefour Lexis, where lives Simon Hérard, one of the great houngans of Haiti, a leader of the Gonaïves district with a reputation as a wise man. During the early days of the Duvalier empire, he supported Papa Doc because of his voodoo connection. The Haitian version of the black-pride movement, the rivalry between black and mulatto, was also a factor. Hérard was, yes, linked with the Ton-ton Macoutes. Later, he made alliances with those who understood that the boy president for life, with his greedy mulatto bride, had to go.

Hérard is a thick, stocky man with an African chief's belly and a deep, resonant, raspy cigarette-and-rum voice. One of his wives, a mambo, or priestess, herself, and a few of his sons hovered about us as we chatted in his hounfor, or temple, seated at a large table under a suspended bottle of Piper-Heidsieck champagne. Actually, this outbuilding on his plantation was not strictly a temple but, rather, a place for bamboche, for dance, drink and celebration, for what one might call the weekly senior prom celebrating the coming of the Sabbath.

I asked Hérard about the incident at Carrefour Poteau. "Nothing to do with voodoo," he said. "This is deshokage, an excuse for revenge and disorder."

Caleb looked happy. Voodoo is peaceful; voodoo is philosophy; people should understand.

Jean-Bernard suggested I show Hérard the photo of the roasting pieces of man. "Uh-oh," he said with a deep chuckle. His wife and son gathered to gaze over his shoulder. There was silence.

Jean-Bernard, whose mother is Haitian, asked, "Why the cock, the feathers? Why were they wearing red headbands? Why did the trumpet sound? Why the chanting? Why are there goat parts and his jacoute filled with--what?"

"You must understand," said Hérard. "All Haitians are werewolves"--he chuckled happily--"if you want to burn them or steal or only kill." He fixed my eyes with a stare. I resolved to agree with everything he said, at least until I had crossed into U.S. airspace. "It was organized thieving, that's all. Organized with rum and disorder. Thank you very much for the visit."

Somehow, the officer figured out where we were--this is Haiti--and, as we were leaving, drove up in his jeep to give us the news. The injured child was being taken care of. Her mother had a headache. They would surely find the criminal tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.

He saluted smartly.

•

A few minutes from the Grand Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, on the day I was in Gonaïves, a man was burned in the street for being a werewolf. This time, the crowd found a lost child in a pit in his house. There was a pot nearby boiling with meat in it that looked suspiciously like cochon planche. A neighborhood woman had cut off the head of the loup-garou. A free-lance television cameraman showed me his video of the event. The crowd cavorted and danced before the camera, holding lemons to their noses because of the smell of the roasting werewolf.

How did they know he was a loup-garou? A sick child had cried when passing his hut; obviously, he had been drinking its blood. The people had long suspected it, but he had been protected by the Duvalier government. This time, he had no protection. They found the lost child; they found the pot; they saw the bones.

No police came to this party. It had been a man who lived alone. He must have been a loup-garou. In any case, he was dead and an affront to the noses blocked with lemons.

Later that evening, unable to sleep, I drove into the slum near the harbor where an artist, in the exhilaration of freedom at last, had painted the walls of two entire blocks of the Rue du Magasin de l'etat with heroic murals. He was happy to share his thoughts with me. He was only a poor man of talent who wanted to express his feelings. His neighbors had contributed to buy the paints. They wanted their district of shacks and blank walls to tell about the happiness of this moment in history.

Because the only public toilet in Port-au-Prince, built by the neighborhood people to celebrate the uprooting of Baby Doc, is on this street, he included the tiled urinal as one of the panels of his mural. It was clean; it was bright; it gleamed; it was a blessing. The artist left instructions against overcrowding the facilities, painting Pipi one, Pipi Deux.

"I stay on the street, I never go," he said. "Please come back to share our joy."

A Note on Birth Control in Haiti

This is the country in which Simon Hérard, my friend the houngan, is said to have 56 children (I haven't counted them personally). He believes in family planning, however. He planned to have 56. "And I am responsible," he was proud to point out. "I take care of them all."

•

On this last trip to Haiti, I stood one night looking over the balcony at the fuming city of Port-au-Prince. I remembered the American embassy official who had said to me on this same wooden ramp, leading to the Grand Hotel Oloffson, "This country destroyed my marriage, destroyed my health, destroyed my life, and I love it more than any place on earth."

I thought of the time an old friend had come to visit me in the dark of the hotel. "Herb, I hate to tell you this," he said. "I think you should go home tomorrow."

"Why?"

"Because there is no way you can go home tonight," he said. "I pray for you."

Now the long dismay of the Duvalier regime is over. But this lovely land remains a moving image of unease on earth.