Read Online A Rendezvous in Haiti by Stephen Becker - Free Book Online

toward the gate. Then they were upon her, two raising her off the ground while another clubbed at her and three or four more shielded sensitive observers from the necessary indelicacy. The audience returned its attention to His Excellency. Within seconds the beggar had vanished, translated to some other state of being.
    The ceremony ended at last, in a buzz of mutual congratulation. Greetings and farewells were exchanged. A few Haitians caught McAllister’s eye, bowed and grimaced; they were apologizing for the brief display of bad taste. Le tout-Port-au-Prince, chatting and chuckling, sauntered from the schoolyard like churchgoers dismissed. A man in gold pince-nez kicked a wooden crutch beneath the schoolhouse in passing. The anthropologist made her adieux. Father Scarron walked beside Caroline and McAllister; it was obvious that he wanted to speak and could find nothing to say.
    Caroline was wondering what sort of school this was without a jakes, or at least a hole in the ground where “deserving Haitians between the ages of six and twelve” could faire pipi.
    Nights were muggy, and the electric power ebbed and flowed, died, flickered to life; most of the city lived without it, and bulbs and fans were playthings of the aristocracy. Caroline and Bobby made slick love, and caressed each other with rubbing alcohol and sat quietly in the dark on the small jutting balcony. They held hands and enjoyed the street sounds: cocks crowing at midnight, shrieks of laughter, the shuffle and clop of donkeys. “You could extend your leave,” she said. “After all, a colonel’s daughter.”
    â€œThat’s just why I can’t. And nobody knows it better than a colonel’s daughter.”
    â€œYes. But how will I live? Two whole weeks. And I don’t like people shooting at you. Has it been rough?”
    â€œSome. When you lose men. The worst is, it doesn’t seem to do much good. This is a big country for one brigade. We’re lucky the Haitians squabble. There’s at least half a dozen ambitious rebels and some of them hate one another more than they hate us. You have no idea. Family feuds. Provincial warlords. Rich idealists like that Fleury. I shouldn’t complain. If they got together we’d be in real trouble.”
    â€œLet’s go inside. I waited a long time for you.”
    â€œYou won’t believe this,” he said, “but I waited longer for you. I was never brave enough for fleshpots or rich enough for grand bordellos.”
    â€œA poor virgin, but mine own,” she said.
    â€œWell,” he said.
    â€œThat’s right. I don’t want to know. Farm girls and haystacks. Inbred half-witted southern belles.”
    â€œI like you jealous.”
    â€œYou were less smug before your promotion. Oh, Robert, yes.”
    Before he returned to Hinche they decided to marry when his Haitian tour was over; money be damned. Simply to look at him, awake, asleep, naked, clothed, stopped her breath. And she was immensely flattered by the change she worked in him: with her he seemed to live in another air, one of perpetual and imbecile bliss, of stunned witless amazement at his own good fortune. She never said, “Don’t let yourself be killed.” He was a serving officer, and even in a war that was not a war, with no brass bands and no headlines, his work was more than a duty: it defined his life and gave him purpose, and she would not have him other. After all, that work had brought them together. He would not marry her now, only to send her away; nor would he leave her a young widow. Very well: what could she do but wait? Meanwhile he would have seventy-two hours every fortnight. It would have to suffice. Perhaps she could not do as virtuously as Pop wanted, but she would excel them all in fidelity.

4
    Louis Paul Blanchard did not make for the border. San Domingo was of no interest: more Marines, strutting Spanish bandits, and no old friends. He had