Some images stay in your memory forever. Sometimes you just need a reminder and they come pouring back again, just as potent and gut-wrenching as when you first saw them. So when I first read about Jean-Euphèle Milcé's Alphabet Of The Night, set in Haiti, a film reel started up in my brain.
It showed decrepit boats in choppy seas of fthe coast of Florida, overflowing with humanity, being turned away from the sanctuary of the United States by the Coast Guard, bigotry and Ronald Regan's paranoia; mobs running down streets waving machetes, houses burning in the background; and most gruesome of all, smoking corpses with their garlands of burnt tire laid out on streets and sidewalks.
It was the end of Papa Doc and Baby Doc's rule in the poor, set-upon island community. A descent into anarchy would have been a relief compared to what happened in the days that followed. For years afterwards coup followed upon coup, leaving the people destitute and the land scarred with blood and fire.
It's into this atmosphere of fear and unrest that we are dropped in Milcé's novel, Alphabet Of The Night. Through the eyes of his main character, Jewish storeowner Jeremy Assael, we watch and listen as both the history of Jews in the island nation is told, and the contemporary hell is played out.
As if being Jewish in a nominally Catholic country isn't enough of a minority, Jeremy is also gay. Although no one seems to make too much of an issue out of that fact, it may be because he's been very discreet. When your past includes a family forced to convert to Catholicism in order not to be expelled from the island, you grow up learning the meaning of the word surreptitious.
When we enter Jeremy's life he is trying to find out what happened to his long-time friend and lover who had "been disappeared" some time ago. Since then Jeremy has stayed in the shelter of his store, not venturing far from its premises. All that changes, however, when his current lover, who acts as store security guard, is gunned down by an off-duty police officer who had taken offence to something he had said or done.
Lucien's body left draped over the doorstep of the shop and the cop walking away completely immune propels Jeremy out the door to travel around the island to search for news of his vanished friend, Fresnel. Setting out on the search also sets him on a trip inside himself as he revisits some of their own old haunts which, triggers memories and thoughts.
I don't think that I have read a book before that deals with material this potentially dark in a manner as poetic as Milcé has managed. His use of language is evocative and compelling without being flamboyant or distracting. He has managed to find that delicate balance that separates art from indulgence in his creation of what is virtually a prose poem.
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