The Return by Dany Laferrière Page A

reserved only for a president who fell victim to a coup or one of those rare intellectuals who could also be a man of action.
    I took all possible precautions
    before announcing to my mother
    that my father had died.
    First she turned a deaf ear to me.
    Then took it out on the messenger.
    The distance is so slight
    between lengthy absence and death
    that I didn’t take enough care
    to consider the effect the news would have on her.
    My mother won’t look at me.
    I watch her long delicate hands.
    She slides her wedding band
    on and off her finger
    and hums so softly
    I have trouble understanding the words of her song.
    Her gaze is lost in the clump of oleander
    that reminds her of a time
    when I did not yet exist.
    The time before.
    Is she recalling those days when she was
    a carefree young woman?
    Her fleeting smile moves me more than tears.
    I hear my mother singing
    from the room next door.
    The news of my father’s death
    has finally reached her consciousness.
    Sorrow is her daily escort,
    the empty days
    alternating with the magic of the first smile.
    Everything resurfaces.
    I finally catch a few words
    of my mother’s song
    that speaks of panicked sailors,
    rough seas
    and a miracle just when
    all hope seems lost.
    She likes to listen to the radio on the little set I sent her a few years back. Tuned to the same prayer station. She listens only to sermons and religious music except for Chansons d’autrefois, the show where the singers hit notes so high they make the old dog whimper from under the chair where it sleeps.
    I go back and forth from the hotel
    to the house hidden behind the oleander.
    My mother is surprised I won’t stay
    with her.
    It’s because I don’t want to give her the illusion
    we’re living together again
    when my life has gone on without her
    for so long.
    I keep coming back to her
    in everything I write.
    I spend my life interpreting
    the slightest shadow on her brow.
    Even from a distance.

Her Sadness Dances
    As I get dressed I think of that woman
    who spent her life taking care of other people.
    It’s a way of hiding too.
    Now for the first time she is laid bare.
    My mother in her naked pain.
    I’m in a friend’s car on the way to her house. I remember we never listened to music back then. The radio was just for the news. All it played were the same speeches celebrating the glory of the President. They went so far we sometimes wondered whether he didn’t smile at all that flattery. He was compared to the greatest men, even to Jesus once. My mother reacted with a burst of dry laughter. We had to pretend we were listening so the neighbors wouldn’t suspect us of not supporting the regime. We turned up the volume. Our neighbors did the same. An atmosphere of collective paranoia. Those were dark years. Our blood ran cold every time we heard classical music. Right after, they would announce a failed coup, which was always a pretext for carnage. I ended up associating classical music with violent death.
    Every morning, on the radio, a stentorian voice
    would remind us of our oath to the flag
    followed by the nasal voice of Duvalier
    himself who would declare “I am the flag, one and
    indivisible.” I’ve been allergic to political speeches
    ever since.
    I picture my mother dancing
    with a chair
    in the shadows of the little living room.
    She dances her sadness at five o’clock
    in the afternoon.
    Like a Lorca poem
    about Franco’s bloody nights.
    My mother loved numbers. Every morning she made her budget of the day’s expenses in a school notebook. Since she was always short of money, having lost her job right after my father left, she spent hours counting and recounting the few coins she had. Endless calculations. I do the same thing today, but with words. The bank was farther from my mother than the dictionary is from my hand.
    The neighbor boy lets me know with a nod of his head
    that my mother has fallen asleep