Overture

1.

One night a black lawyer from New York named Marcus Washington found himself wandering the slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with no notion of how he got there or when he would leave. Of course, he remembered everything that had led up to this: he remembered walking away from the hospital where his wife lay, walking away destitute, walking and walking, till he found himself here. His wife had only the night before gone blind in both eyes with a retinal detachment; his only child, a baby, crying all night for want of milk while the mother was in a surgery that failed, he'd killed. He hadn't meant to kill the child; he'd only shaken him, shaken him not even very much harder than he'd intended to; but nonetheless the baby had died. But he was not thinking of this memory, was not conscious of it, which is the same as it not existing. He became more like a vegetable than an animal, became more of the nature of the cells on his arm, as he moved his legs mechanically, more because it was his function to do so than because of any decision, as he walked through the rain (did I mention that yet?--yes, it was pouring rain, the air balmy and raindrops warm, but he didn't notice this either). Yes, he moved on and on, no longer knowing where he was; it did not matter what he did, did not matter when he should return to the hotel or hospital; did not matter should he just curl up and spend the night in a pile of trash here in this slum, and there were enough homeless children doing so anyhow. It did not matter because their child was dead, and his wife was permanently blind.

He thought on how he'd seen her, lying there, her eyes in bandages. The doctor had told her the surgery failed; he and his wife did not speak of this, for they both already knew, and neither wanted to think of it just now. She asked for Joshua, their baby; she was desperate to hold him in her arms. He hadn't had the nerve to tell her the child was dead. He told her the child was sick, with nothing serious, and was with a nurse that moment. He had no idea how he would get out of this lie, and hide it from her forever. It didn't matter anyway, he thought--the lies he told her about it mattered as little as a pack of cigarettes shoplifted by a mass murderer. She believed the lie; but he knew that she'd find out soon enough, may even already know. He didn't care one way or the other.

He had not informed anyone of the child's death, or even moved the dead baby from his crib. The baby sat there still, this very minute, thought Marcus; it did not matter to him if the hotel maid should find him, none of that seemed pertinent to the emotion he was feeling now. What was the only decision he had to make, what was the one thing he could do or not do, that would make any difference in anything, came to this: leave Haiti for New York, and abandon his blind wife and dead baby, or stay. And so he walked on and on in indecision.

It was during that agonizing wait in the hospital lobby while his wife was in surgery that the image of a face came to his mind, an image so precise that he could not deny he'd seen it somewhere, if not in real life then in a dream. It was a white man, just past middle age, a thin white man with straight, neatly combed white hair. His complexion was so pale as to seem gray, his cheeks were two oval shields, his chin square and German, his eyes blue and deep. The image of this face had begun to disturb him more than the lack of news about his wife, so that he paced from here to there in the hospital lobby as if with an itch he could not reach, since the only thing he wanted more than to hear that his wife was healthy was to find out whose face that was, and where he had seen it. His memory could not place it anywhere, nor could he get it from his mind. Every time he brought the face back to his mind's eye he noticed more details--the lines on the forehead, the crinkles in the corners of the eyes, the shaven face that showed stubble the exact pale color of the skin, the gray complexion that reminded him of snow or frostbite. But he could not place where he'd seen this man, though he was certain now that this man held some importance for him. For him, for his wife, for his destiny--there was a secret here, and he felt so anxious to solve the mystery that his disturbed mind could not put it down, and knew he would not sleep even a minute before he found out where he'd seen this man.

Later, his wife still in the hospital, when he'd arrived to the hotel, his baby still alive, he'd gone on somewhat of a rampage seeking to find out where he'd seen that face. He went through his wife's pulp detective novels, the book he was reading on the Civil War reconstruction, brochures--anything likely to have any sort of photo he sought out, glanced at and tossed aside, desperate to find out whose face this was that came to him. It is absurd, he'd thought, that he should be so desperate to find it out who this man was, without having any idea of the importance or lack of importance this man had for him. But it was just that--the fact that he had no idea of this man's relation to him--that was what made him desperate to place the man.

But now, wandering the Port-au-Prince slum, the rain started to slacken, and he saw that man ahead of him in the dim light: there he was, the man with white hair and gray skin, the man he'd seen somewhere, the man he'd had to place. He saw the man glance at him then hurry around a corner.

He moved on and turned the corner, to see the man, wearing a wool dress jacket with beige patches in the elbows, no hat on his white straight hair. The man was walking quickly away in the drizzle, and Marcus jogged slowly after him. He would have sprinted toward the man were it not for his numb exhaustion. He jogged, paced, jogged, paced. He was going very quick, he thought; and yet this man only walked, only walked with leisure, and he was getting farther and farther away. Right now he was at the end of this street, turning right, getting away and away; yet he only walked, while Marcus practically ran.

His lungs hurt from the cigarettes Marcus had smoked intemperately all day; but he pressed on, now sprinting after the man, pant by pant, taking each gulp of breath deep and using it for all its fuel. He came around the corner and saw the man standing there next to some tenement. The man glanced at Marcus then went through the door and disappeared. Marcus caught up to the wooden door, its lock broken, black wood coated in orange streetlight, and entered.

It was very dark inside. It was very dark inside. He felt his way to some stairs, and heard there the indistinct sounds of remote TV sets. He smelt cooking, heard people chatting. And--he paused--and a baby crying. That was Joshua! Joshua, his baby, whom he'd killed; but . . . Joshua was . . . no, Joshua wasn't here. It was only a baby that mimicked him, perhaps for the sole end of driving Marcus insane. He went to the door where the baby cried, knocked.

No one answered. He knocked again, heard a deep female voice: "What you want?" What did he want? He did not know what he wanted, why he'd come here; he did not know these people, did not know that the man with the gray face had even come into this apartment. Again he knocked, without saying a word.

"What in God's good name?" he heard, just as the door opened to a heavy-set black lady, with a baby in her arms. She stared at him, and he stared back.

"Well?" she said finally. "Am I going to have to call the police?"

"I can give you money," said Marcus. He was staring at the baby, unsure what he was saying or what it meant, not knowing anything but the astonishing coincidence that the child was a mirror image of his Joshua. "I can give you money, hundreds, thousands--you'll be rich, years of rent, you can buy a place here--I can give you thousands, thousands." She stared at him, thinking at first that he was after her; but then she saw where his eyes led. He wanted the baby.

"Come in," she said simply. He followed into her candlelit room.

"I don't know what you want with this child, and I won't take your word for it if you tell me. No. We shall find out what sort of man you are. Come. Sit."

There was a stool sitting across from a pillow on the floor. She sat on the pillow cross-legged, he on the stool, uneasy. She set the child down on the floor in his gray, cloth diaper. He giggled up spit on his back where she had put him.

"My name is Angelica," said the heavy-set woman, whose movements reminded Marcus of a waddling duck. "This is where I do my readings."

"Readings?" he said.

"Quiet, Mister. Are you ready?"

Marcus had no notion of what he was ready for, but he knew that after today, whatever it was he was ready for it. Angelica stood and waddled over to the kitchen, the sides of her hips rising and falling alternately according to her step. She returned with some water that had a few fragments of ice floating in it, white clouded ice, and a small knife with a sharp point at its end.

"Your hand, Mister," she said.

"My name's--"

"Your hand. The right one. Unless you be left handed?"

"No."

He stretched out his hand, and she took up his finger and pricked it with the knife with a quick motion. Blood gushed out in heavy drops. The thought crossed his mind that if he'd known such a wound was coming, it might have hurt, even badly. But the way it was done the pain was gone before he knew it existed.

She squeezed his fingertip into the bowl, so that his blood puffed up in clouds of redness that thinned out and floated lazily in the water.

Angelica handed him a candle. She did not give him so much as a word of direction, but stared at him as if there were complete understanding between them.

She nodded, and he poured the candle wax into the icy water. The wax spread out into two spikes, the left extremely short, the right shooting out long; then the wax was solidified.

Angelica gasped, staring at it.

"Again," she said.

Again he poured the wax, and this time the right spike went short, the left went long.

Angelica gasped again. She looked to his face.

"Your baby has died. That's why you want this one."

"Yes," said Marcus. "I can pay you, I can--"

"Come back three nights from now. Come back. The baby's mother will be here."

"How much do you . . ."

"Bring a lot of money. Just a lot. You're American?"

"Yes."

"Bring American dollars. But it is not for sure."

"No?"

"The mother of this child will know. She will know if it is for sure."

He left now, walked on, walked away with the paper towel she'd given him on his wounded finger, till he found how very much he was exhausted; then he still walked on. He finally saw a taxicab to flag down and take him back to his hotel.