Les affres d'un défi: An Excerpt

Author(s): Frankétienne and Carrol F. Coates

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Callaloo, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Summer, 1996), pp. 756-761
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3298980 .
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 LES AFFRES D'UN DEFI
An Excerpt

by Franketienne

The paths of Legba intertwine deep in the woods where the sacred stones lie;
they become entangled beneath our feet, infiltrate our nerves, stir up our blood,
flow through our bodies, electrify our senses. How far will the expiatory road
excavated within the pain of self-examination lead?
We awaken early; through the keyhole, we watch the zonbi go by, single file;
shortly before dawn every morning, Zofer leads them to the swampy rice paddies.
How can we speak without subservience or lyrical effusion of a tragic adventure
that touches us so intimately?
Servitude begins by the mortgaging of our desires, unleashing a waterfall of
alimentary inhibitions through the fear of transgressing artificial or natural bound-
aries.
Underlings carry out their trade as sinister spies; there are so many of them
around us that existence has become a daily exercise in skirmish and evasion.
A match scraped / fire breaks out and spreads / smoke bellows / a mere spark is
enough to make flames erupt from their barrels. We are fighting cocks, sparring
with beak and claws in the arena under the sadistic eyes of the spectators. For three
days, we have had nothing between our teeth; our children have neither eaten nor
drunk anything. / But, who would dare talk about a hunger strike in a country of
empty stomachs? The midnight horse hooves hammer the surfaces of deserted
streets / A powerful noise that kneads the muscles of the guts. / Sexual breathing
and the stench of fear.
We forge painfully ahead through a space become lusterless through our pro-
crastination / our broken wings sweep the dust foreshadowing the eclipse. A mortal
blow for the saltcellars / an outpouring of derisory words / an unforeseeable twist
of the pincers of hunger / we have been forced to change our course toward other
ports. After devouring rats and mice with great gusto, Master Cat emptied several
sacks of rice, corn, and millet; caught in the act, he left the empty house in a
whirlwind, leaving nothing but a heap of acrid excrement.
Who devastated a part of our fields? / What aggressive hands poisoned our
gleanings? / A war of hypertense nerves in which the fruits of madness ripen.
Hearts that are too delicate dare not enter the maelstrom / the weak should not take
a chance / A dazzling shock / Grimaces on faces distorted by demoniacal over
excitement / Overcoming the howling and stamping of the enraged crowd, we enter
booby-trapped terrain.

Callaloo 19.3 (1996) 756-761

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 CALLALOO -

Dust, mess, and desiccation of the members cast into the garbage can / Blood
curdles, decomposes, and rots in intestinal shadows. Through our indifference, the
cow has fled / the rope that linked the heart to hope has broken.
They have devastated and robbed our homes / Whining like idiots, we watch the
wind pass / Sickness impossibilizes our desires; and misfortune inhibits the
soaring of our dreams.
The vulnerability of the naive / the failure of buffoons / the degeneration of the
valets widowed by their masters. Sad and disarmed, we invoke the gods of chance
/ Rather than sleeping, we would do better to march / The virile joys of action
transcend the vapid inertia of sleep. Assassins of hope, robbers of souls, insatiable
carnivores who pollute the air with their breath, they have specialized in the
placement of sticky traps.
With layers of gray clouds, the tempest is preparing a coup d'etat by the
gathering of scattered winds above a sea at white-hot temperature. Prostitution of
the stormy waters reflecting spasms of fire; evil is unveiled in the menstrual fluids
of light. Thirst greater than martyrdom beneath the noonday sun / Carnage / Sweat
and blood oozing from the dilated pores.
Memory is peeled away at the threshold of insanity / Ghastly castration by
yanking out the tongue and puncturing the eyeballs. The bef chenn hurls impreca-
tions at the midnight-machine taking off at top speed toward death with barbed
disasters. Stench of crime / Vision of cadavers in the depths of their irises / They
have ground the bodies of children and stabbed mothers in their very breasts.
Unleashed torrents / Rivers at flood stage / Fury of the lavalas / Daily grumbling of
impotent adults. The aficionados confront each other with knives / The frightened
cocks flee the fight rings, abandoning the field of battle / Weaklings disappear.
Experiences of violence / drubbing / the imperviousness of dungeons / the hell
of prisons / wounds I bruises / running like hell / poisoned sores / nocturnal traps.
Open hostilities I savage aggressions / agitators snatch our portion of food by
twisting an arm and shoving us. We stumble on sharp stones. Then we stand up
again, pick up our shattered dreams. Sand swirling in the wind. At times, mirages
appear and dissolve on the horizon. We recharge our souls in the vortex of the stars.
Rejoicing under the sacred bowers in the midst of misery's aggravation and the
thickening of our unconsciousness.
All their promises reek of lies. They let us fall into mud. At night, we sleep under
bridges and on sidewalks. During the daytime, we wander through the streets of
the lower city, rummaging through the dumps at the edge of the public markets,
doomed to assume the same calvary, with empty hand, dry lips, bitter mouth, and
guts knotted by hunger.
Cleverly, they set up a superficial facade and, with great drum beating and rum
toasts, brag about the paradise of the poor, serving the farded truth to the naive on
a platter of smoked herring.
Skeptics continue looking; they have not yet discovered either Agarou's stone or
Ogou's machete. We will have to search on the other side of the myopic walls.
It is bewitching to swallow birds, clouds, the moon, the sun. Later, the result is
shock.

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 CA
CALLALOO-

The master thieves have devastated our fields and annihilated our crops. Unable
to react, we boil with rage. They twisted our wrists simply to divest us of a pittance,
depriving us of the lusterless pleasure of eating a few bread crumbs, a few kernels
of corn, a few grains of rice that should by rights be ours in return for the sweat and
blood of our labor in the swamps.
To begin with, they were able to slip some poisoned grain surreptitiously to our
fighting cocks.
Deformed creatures, believing in the power of an array of ouanga, they would
like for their ugliness to be transformed into beauty by the power of their boko. We
raise and train purebred cocks with gaily colored plumage for fantastic wagers.
They fidget, like insects waving their legs and antennae. In order to exasperate
us, the provocateurs speak ill of us and heap their offal at the doors of our houses,
sullying the very water we drink.
The zonbi wend their way across the plain covered by cacti with enormous
prickly pears; they walk behind one another without daring to speak. The female
zonbi are completely dressed in white; they husk the rice on Saintil's land.
Between chains, boundaries, suffering, suicide, death, anonymity, nameless
misery, lackluster modesty ... these paupers, accustomed to begging, besieged by
shades, end up walking with their arms outstretched and sleeping with arms open.
The scarab practices rolling little spheres of excrement on shifting soil. Broken eggs
/ the postponement of hope / we take too many risks by making wagers by which,
in advance, we offer unjustified advantages and pay outrageous taxes to our
powerful adversaries. We can never settle down in one place / we cannot sleep at a
specific place / our umbilicals reach down into a nest of ants I and our fingers are
intertwined with the earth's roots from which will burst tangles of fertile light.
Memory and future vengeance.
The ship capsized in the Channel of Saint-Marc. The sea swells are opulent,
blind, indifferent. Tomorrow, the waves will die down, dropping innumerable
pieces of flotsam on the mourning shore.

From violence to light, thefleeting brillianceof a living road.A blindingglow of light to

the eyes of the bold. Thehammerstrikes the iron barseveral times;bouquetsof sparksflyfrom
the anvil. Effortsto bite and bloodboiling. Thestylet penetratesthe backof theneckwith a soft
sound. Thewind rises, weakens,thendies down.Facetoface, thereare two cocks,petrifiedwith
fear. In a swarmof excitedflies, the dogs reengagetheir battlesby thegarbagecans,for bones
with no meat. How can the sky be resewn to the horizon with a brokenneedle? They have
pushed us around, humiliated us, for nothing more than a few scraps of sliced and resliced
meat. Importuningour children, they will not let us alone one second. A warning signal in
our aggravatednerves.A hullabalooto breakthe eardrums.In orderto defuseour conscience,
we relieve ourselves in a great verbalorgy.
The eel slips away in the waters of the swamp. An irresistiblewoman whose shadow we
glimpse in the distance.
The hollow glimmer of puncturedeyes. The horribleblindness of ignorance.Blind not in
the eyes but by the spirit.
The weevils devastateour cottonfields; the invadersattackon allfronts. A piece of cloth

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 CALLALOO-

to hide the nudity of our daughters.No use lamenting thefragility of the shelters that protect
us from bad weather.
Our enemieshavedaredto comeinto our homestrackingthe misfortunestuck to theirsoles
across our very door sills.

Thecocksheraldmorning;then, their wings close; their call summarizesthe night music.

The wind carries off words borne by rumor, disarming bastard traps, uncovering lips
dustedwith hatred.Coldsweat, bittersalt, enigmaticwaters on theface, mirrorof the shadow
master. The storm announces the arrival of the messenger carrying miraculous arms. The
preliminariesfor thefights fill us withfear. The neighbor'scockhad its combrippedoff and
its eyes put out by a guineafowl armedwith metalspurs. Defeat, like a knife in the sore. Acid
andfire on the burnsfrom the whip. Our bodiesare exhaustedand our souls are engobedwith
lassitude, after seven days of anguish and disappointmentsin the arena. They have scorned
several generations. And, today again, we cannot recognize the right or wrong side of the
mutilated landscapes. Would it be necessary to discover ancient truths, to freeze certain
fragments of present time or to deflowerthe inconceivablefuture in its uncertainapproach?
Devouredby morbidcuriosity, full of uneasiness, we sound the mysteries of the mortuary
waters beneaththe veil of the govi.

Translatedby CarrolF. Coates

Glossary of Haitian Kreyoil Terms and Names

Note that nouns have no plural marker, i.e., ouanga is plural or singular. The
standardized spellingfor kreyol words is used in the above translation (see Fequiere
Vilsaint, Diksyone kreyol/angle [Temple Terrace, FL: EDUCA VISION, 1991)).

Agarou:the spirit of thunder.

bef chenn:a baggage handler on taptap (trucks and pickups used for public transpor-
tation).
boko:an oungan (Vodou priest) who practices sorcery.
lavalas:a mountain torrent.
govi: a ritual vessel in Vodou.
Legba:in Vodou, the keeper of the crossroads between the spiritual and natural world;
associated with Saint Peter in Christian beliefs.
Ogou: the spirit of war (derived from Western African religions) and the patron of
blacksmiths.
ouanga:a magic charm prepared by an oungan to assist or protect a petitioner.
oungan: a Vodou priest.
Saintil: the boko who controls the zonbi in Les affres d'un defi.
Zofer:assistant to Saintil in the novel.
zonbi:a living dead person, enslaved and forced to work without pay. Franketienne
gives a long note in which he describes the vacant look, lack of memory, and utter lack
of willpower of the zonbi. He also describes the process by which a boko poisons the
prospective zonbi, giving the appearance that the person is dead, and then exhumes
the comatose person from the grave and restores their vital functions with another

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 C A L L A LO O

drug, leaving the victim in an apathetic, obedient state. Salt, the antidote for the
poison, is strictly prohibited from the zonbi's diet: even a grain of salt counteracts the
poison and the zonbi abruptly awakens with new energy and determination. In anger,
the former zonbi will become a bois-nouveau(new wood) with an uncontrollable urge
to seek revenge.

A Note on Franketienne's Les affres d'un defi

by CarrolF. Coates

Les affres d'un defi is a rewritten version of a novel that first appeared as Dezafi.'
Franketienne describes the dezafi as a "kind of country fair organized in certain
Haitian provinces." The word is also applied to the cock fight, a principal attraction
of the fairs and to the excited, unruly crowd that gathers around these events. In the
French version of the novel, the French title is like a phonetic pun on the kreyol title,
Dezafi becomes Les affresd'un defi [le za fR9dCu defi] and the dezafi (kreyol spelling) is
the locale around which the action of the novel centers. The excerpt translated above
follows directly the beginning sections of the novel, which were published as "Defi-
ance and Dread" in the first part of Haiti: The Literatureand Culture.2
It is difficult or misleading to speak of a "plot" in discussing this novel. The
unnumbered sections focus without warning on different sets of characters in differ-
ent settings, but it eventually becomes clear that the boko Saintil, with Sultana (his
daughter) and Zofer (his assistant), are keeping a crowd of zonbi and forcing them to
work the rice paddies. There is repeated reference to the need to acquire new zonbi.
There are scenes of magic rites and violent descriptions of punishment for the least
sign of revolt or attempt to speak, violence that includes maiming and even assassi-
nation. There are a number of scenes that take place at the dezafi, where the cocks are
fearful of entering the fight ring with the guinea fowl (pintadine), a fiercer species that
is illegally introduced in order to ensure victory in the high stakes fights. Sultana
complicates the situation by becoming enamored of Clodonis, one of the stronger
zonbi, and eventually gives him salted broth that brings him to consciousness. The
novel concludes with the revolt of the zonbi, led by Clodonis, and the assassination
of Saintil and Zofer. The action of the novel is set in existing geographical locations,
primarily in the Sacre Coeur quarter of Port-au-Prince and in small communities close
to Saint-Marc-Bois-Neuf and Ravine Seche (Franketienne was born in Saint-Marc in
1936).
Franketienne, along with Jean-Claude Fignole, created the "spiralist" movement
in Haitian literature. In describing his concept of "spiralism," he stated that it is

a movement from the bottom to the top, from the simple to the
complex. And in each spiral structure, each new turn is deeper
and richer than the last one. the spiral defines the perpetual
movement of life and of all evolving things; it is the characteristic
of dialectic.3

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 C A L L A L 0J 0

The spiralist discourse of both novels (Dezafi and Les affres . . ) is marked by three
different fonts. The normal font is reserved for the narrative (re'cit)that is closer to
ordinary fictional discourse. Italics represent a "poetic" discourse. Bold face type
indicates a kind of collective litany that is closely identified with the group murmur-
ing of the zonbi.4 The fact that the poetic or collective litany qualities sometimes carry
over into the narrative and that narrative "facts" are sometimes found in italics or bold
face make for a kind of discursive indeterminacy that brings the entire fiction toward
a norm of fuzzy discourse, reflecting the drugged state of the zonbi. In the first excerpt
(1992), there are sections in all three fonts. The excerpt published above is focused
primarily on the litany of the zonbi in bold face, with a poetic section following in
italics.
It is pertinent to state the obvious: the group of zonbi, enslaved by Saintil and
following a seemingly repetitive round of appearances in the rice paddies, Port-au-
Prince, and the dezafi, represent how the Haitians (or, eventually, any people) exist
under a dictatorship. The guinea fowl with their steel spurs suggest the tonton
makout (and other later groups of militia) of the Duvalier regimes. What Franketienne
stated about Dezafi can also be applied to Les affres.. .:

Dezafi has symbolically exploited the phenomenon of zombifica-

tion in order to denounce the horrors and alienation bred by all
forms of tyranny and totalitarianism. In this novel, the salt used
by one of the protagonists to awaken the zombis from their
lethargy plays the role of a powerful symbol: the symbol of full
awareness and recaptured memory. In a way, the last pages of
De'zafiforeshadowed the February 7, 1986 movement of revolt
which, confined within the limits of an uprising against very few
zombificateurs,did not have the scale of a true revolution against
the entire political system.5

Given the fact that the kreyol and French versions of the novel were both published
under the regime of Jean-Claude Duvalier, readers can hardly escape the inference
that the zonbi of each novel figure the zombification of Haitians under Baby Doc
(1971-86), the prolongation of the violent dictatorship of Papa Doc (Francois Duva-
lier, 1956-71).
NOTES

1. See Frank6tienne's Dezafi (roman) (Port-au-Prince: Editions Fardin, 1975) and Les affres d'un defi
(Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Henri Deschamps, 1979).

2. Part of the special Haitian double-issue (Callaloo 15.2 [1992]); "Defiance and Dread," trans. J.
Michael Dash, pp. 393-97.

3. See Charles H. Rowell's interview with Frank6tienne (Callaloo 15.2 [1992]: 390).

4. This specification comes from Frank6tienne, whom I interviewed at some length in Port-au-
Prince, 29 June 1995.

5. From Charles H. Rowell's interview with Franketienne (389).

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